Trident Search

In this episode, we chat to Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals.

 

We discuss all aspects of scaling a tech agency during difficult times, how to leverage experiential marketing, why paying for a stall at conferences is a waste of funds for start-ups, and how to pivot through uncertainty using those vital skills gained during military service.


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  • 00:00:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Hi, I'm Chris, founder, senior brand designer and growth marketing strategist at House of hiatus brand Growth Studio, who wanted to document innovative and disruptive ideas from successful small to medium sized enterprises. Tell startups to get strong market position as quickly as possible in this episode, which has Josh Keeley's former romance commander.

    00:00:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And Co, founder of Trident search, a cutting edge cybersecurity and recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals. We discuss all aspects of scaling a tech agency during difficult times.

    00:00:31 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    How to leverage experiential marketing while paying for a stall at conferences as a waste of funds for startups and how to pivot through uncertainty using those vital skills gained during military service.

    00:00:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Josh, mate, it's good to see you again, mate. How's it going with Trident search?

    00:00:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Good, mate. Appreciate you having me on been a while. It's been a quite a long time. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Just want to search. What do I what do I tell you? So we're in our fifth year. I'm one of the Co founders. Me and a colleague, Charlie. He's actually a MATLAB submarine hence. Hence the name. Spencer spent all his life.

    00:01:12

    Pretty.

    00:01:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Definitely store another day and over over a beer, but yeah, so we're in our fifth year. We set up a couple months before COVID. We're a cyber security recruitment agency headquartered in London or.

    00:01:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And bridge, we're now 22 staff full time employees with aboard. We've got six that folks on the US 18 focus on the UK and Europe and we've got a couple of people in the Middle East, local Arabic speakers. So yeah, it's going alright. Yeah, it's.

    00:01:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Good, mate. That's happening. I got to say like last time we.

    00:01:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Last time we met off the top of my head, it was when I was at the BBC and I think you you were. It was just before you set up Trident. Yeah. And then obviously like, yeah, it would have been, yeah. It would have been like pre pandemic times and then.

    00:01:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    20/19/20 earlier.

    00:02:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah. You know, obviously I I kind of I can went out from BC and and you know we're still following your progress with it and all of a sudden I'm like I see Trent search online, I'm like that is it is cool. It's like a it's like a cool brand obviously like you know branding, branding is my thing. And so when when you get out there and you see you see some really poor branding, you see some really cool branding and you're like this is.

    00:02:23 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Like.

    00:02:24 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    This is fun. That like great work. This is brilliant. Like it's nice.

    00:02:26

    It it it did it.

    00:02:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    To see you.

    00:02:27 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Didn't happen overnight, though. Trust me when I say so. We've got Lottie, who's our head of marketing, right? She's epic like miles, miles smarter than any of us are to the point where you get into a room and you're like, don't say.

    00:02:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Anything stupid, don't say anything.

    00:02:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right.

    00:02:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So I'm no longer a line.

    00:02:44 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Manager put it that way.

    00:02:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right. But but more to the?

    00:02:48

    Point.

    00:02:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I looked back me, and she looked back at a PDF we created in 2020, honestly, and most from our bedrooms in January, like or even in COVID actually, maybe in March and to what we have now. I was like, how the hell did we we win any business? Like if someone saw it's basically a world copy, a couple of images and then you put it create as PDF and you're like, oh, that's slick.

    00:03:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I'll I'll send you a copy after.

    00:03:13 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    This and you'll cringe.

    00:03:15 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    00:03:18

    I mean, there's like there's.

    00:03:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Similarities there with like the gym shark story. When you think about it, isn't there kids? Obviously. Ben Francis, I think his name. He you know, he he also started.

    00:03:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Jim Sharpe, from his from his parents. You know, from his parents garage, you know, in. But this is like in the era of, like, my Canada that's dominating the markets. So must have been part of him.

    00:03:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:03:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    That goes I.

    00:03:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Am never gonna be to it. Those like those big players up there doing this, you know, content around the world and stuff and obviously now is a a billion dollar company and like it's inspiring, isn't it?

    00:03:47

    If you look.

    00:03:47 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    At these logos as well from back.

    00:03:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    In the day, they're terrible.

    00:03:50

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:03:51 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Competitive now, right, it's.

    00:03:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Easy to say this now on retrospect, but but yeah, so in our fifth year going strong.

    00:03:59 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The this year's looking very positive metrics are looking good. Last year was tough 2020. I think tough for a lot of.

    00:04:06 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    People economically.

    00:04:06 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It just rates conflict, etcetera. Big combination of the dip after COVID rebound and things like that. But we're still here still standing, still fighting and we're more global now than we ever were so.

    00:04:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That's pretty cool.

    00:04:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah. Well, it's interesting you say that because I've I've been doing some research on cyber security over the last kind of few, the last kind of 12 months obviously cause what we as we're building websites and stuff you you've got to have, you've got to know this stuff for you know, for building something that's secure, don't you, because you can't just let people in like leave holes in the fence all over the.

    00:04:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:04:38 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Place and so I took a real interest in it and obviously found that actually it transitioned really well from time in the BC because we're always getting cyber attacks and you know, like hacking attempts from from staff and the bureaus. Yeah. And so it it transitioned really well. But what the scary thing I found was that cyber security is going up exponentially in terms of its.

    00:04:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    It's what's it around, about $11 billion.

    00:05:00

    This.

    00:05:01 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Per per year now and it's looking to be, it's probably looking to double the next four years, which I found out which absolutely gobsmacked by that because I was like, wow.

    00:05:10 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:05:12 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's it's the more you. So we talked to a lot of the guys and girls who live on the underground and will sit in forums and talk to cyber criminals and obviously gather information like Becky.

    00:05:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right. And Recon and then take that to above ground and speak to the companies. Hey, so and so is about to hit you and etcetera, etcetera. So it's also CTR on the underground, right? They speak they speak different languages, they're alias is it's very similar to what you'd know from like the police, right? What the CA do and have always done even if.

    00:05:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's more like covert human stuff, right?

    00:05:39

    Yeah.

    00:05:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But the more you talk to those guys.

    00:05:41 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And girls, the more you like.

    00:05:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Holy **** like that actually happens and.

    00:05:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Like more stolen credentials and there's lots of websites you can put your like your own e-mail in right called like this one have been honed and it tell you if it's been like part of a breach and all kind of stuff. Right chance. Like it almost definitely has been. And then you need to change change password good hygiene and that kind of stuff. But in terms of the volume the numbers the metrics, yeah, it's not going away.

    00:05:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:06:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's getting worse and now you got AI and all these other bits coming into play, right, which again is a whole nother can of fish, but.

    00:06:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The the metric, yeah. But if you look at it, there's about four to 5000 cyber software providers or vendors right in the in the world. But you look at that come to fintech, there's like 50,000.

    00:06:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So when they're near.

    00:06:24 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:06:26 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The saturation levels, or fintech, which obviously has been around a lot longer, but people are already saying it's really competitive. The markets get saturated and.

    00:06:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You know it is, but in in comparison to other big SaaS markets like even martech, it's way bigger than silver, so.

    00:06:41 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There's still a lot more room for.

    00:06:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Growth. So yeah, really good stress.

    00:06:45

    Yes.

    00:06:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    No, but I definitely I think there's ever been like more of a need for services like yours than you know than than now, especially with, you know, like we said, AI.

    00:06:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    The the prediction I've seen is that it's the the amount of brute force attacks are going to increase, you know, and just and obviously you've now got threats like phishing, you know obviously phishing emails which are still being targeted to like parents generations and you know the the vulnerable generations which you know keeps me awake some nights. So I think about, you know, parents like.

    00:07:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Responding to a dodgy Facebook message or a, you know, a dodgy e-mail link sent out. So I'm like glad there's like companies like yours out there.

    00:07:17

    Yeah.

    00:07:22 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    But I guess kind of like was going rascals like where did the where the idea for Trident search coming from like was it was it something where you like there's I can see a real gap in the market here or or or did somebody come to you your partner come to you with?

    00:07:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Like the idea they say we we can do this.

    00:07:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    This little combo of that actually I think there is a there, there's.

    00:07:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There was a big gap in the market in terms of the quality of headhunters in cyber security. Cause information security has been around from since 2000 since.

    00:07:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The dawn of the.

    00:07:51 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Millennium right where it's how do you protect information you're putting online, IE personal information, etcetera. And then cyber security come around from the US and we just rebranded it, but it's been.

    00:08:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Around for a while.

    00:08:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There has not really been a dominant player in the.

    00:08:06 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Industry globally, that's something very.

    00:08:08 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Well, and I'm not saying we're perfect by any means. We've got a long way to go. The idea was how do we build a Lympstone commando training centre of the of the recruitment agency? Well, just generally, right. And if you can take the training disciplines, the, the ethos values, the kind of the way it's all structured and set up and even just the mentality of it.

    00:08:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And put that into any sales environment, particularly what we do, that's what we kind of knew. You've been pretty good.

    00:08:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And that goes that goes to like we can you can attribute that to the Royal School of Ballet. You can attribute that to live show, which used to be the England football training ground and other things way. And the idea was how do what's the foundations please put into play what the non negotiables that we need and and how do we kind of bring anybody from any walk of life that has some level.

    00:08:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Of like life experience.

    00:08:55 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So our average age in our teens is about 2930, right? So a bit older than a typical.

    00:09:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Agency and we just train them. They've already bringing the values and morals and you kind of put them into our machine almost. And then you have this. Yeah. You have these pretty strong headhunters. So it was that gap in the market. We also got really big on. And and this is what I really wanted to kind of implement and create because I didn't really have it in my other.

    00:09:20 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The agency that I I kind of fell into after the after the I left the.

    00:09:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Court, which was.

    00:09:25 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    How do I learn more about business? How do we train people to be more commercial? What is a P&L, what's profit, what's loss? What's like the basics of a bit of of like funding and what's entrepreneurship? And because it's quite simple if you think.

    00:09:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Of what I.

    00:09:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Do I have an organisation here? I have someone for a job and I.

    00:09:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Put them together and we.

    00:09:44 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Charge them 50, right? That's really the.

    00:09:44

    Yeah.

    00:09:46 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The the bare bones of what we do.

    00:09:47 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right. Obviously some people.

    00:09:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Complicate the now and I'm a bits and pieces in the.

    00:09:51 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    In a way, I wish everyone would do it.

    00:09:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But that's all well and good. A lot of people can do that. But then how do I make sure that if you join Trident in four years time when you leave cause?

    00:09:59 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's inevitable. We're humans.

    00:10:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And we don't stay anywhere forever. How do I make sure you are better from a business acumen point of view when you and you can go? Actually, I'm a better businesswoman or businessman. Come out the other end. So therefore, our alumni.

    00:10:13 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That are way stronger in terms of just being better professionals than just I was trying for four years I made a tonne of money and I was successful in terms of recruitment. What did did you?

    00:10:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Grow and develop as a human.

    00:10:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So that's the commerciality side. Yeah, gap in the market. And the other thing that I think that's a little different with us is like and everyone says this, but I I suppose only if you work for us where you know is like the winning together and the collaboration and like we are bootstrapped as a business, we've never taken funding me and Charlie and which comes its own challenges, right, which can come into later on.

    00:10:46 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But what that does mean is that we can put every.

    00:10:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Single penny back into the.

    00:10:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Teams, the infrastructure, the set up, the whatever it might be, the tech, it means we don't have to like answer to anybody. And yeah, our mindset is we don't need all that money in the bank, put it back into the team, whether it's High Commission, whether that's incentives away, whatever it might be. So and then everyone's in it together and then in turn.

    00:11:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Our attention's quite.

    00:11:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Good. And so everyone and everyone's just happy. You have fun when you're here.

    00:11:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Whether that be like city, like our Amazon Alexa is playing musical day, anyone's fighting over what song they want to put on or right. But my old agency, we didn't have music. We wouldn't even have put music on. It was you should be making noise by being on the phone and.

    00:11:28 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You're like now I look back now like.

    00:11:30 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Wow. All the walls are whitewashed, everyone's in a suit and look, it was a great place to learn and I developed loads.

    00:11:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There I was there for four years, but and and given good opportunities but but yeah, so there's lots of different like why we set up. But the big takeaway was that centre of excellence, the kind of lympstone if you like of.

    00:11:47

    Good.

    00:11:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The recruiting world.

    00:11:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, that's. I mean, one thing that struck me about the company was that it's got character which which?

    00:11:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Is, you know in in in some corporate sectors, it's very hard to see kind of a company with character and that's what I think the difference is between like you say, you know all these other agencies where you've got just white washed walls and the very corporate feel about it versus a company that's.

    00:12:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You know, it makes people feel welcomed and and you know and and respects them and obviously then rewards them as well and makes a makes a good environment. So I think it's good to see. I think it's a feature of businesses as well is that you can't, you know that's that's the same mentality we take as well as it can't just be a nine till 5:00 Monday to Friday thing. It's got to be.

    00:12:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You know, if you're gonna do stuff outside of it, you got to reward people and and, you know, make them feel part.

    00:12:33 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Of something and.

    00:12:34 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And you know.

    00:12:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Give give them back their their efforts.

    00:12:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It could be as quick like as small as last year. We've done like a well-being day we went down to Bath and we went paddle boarding down a river. Right and.

    00:12:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We had a.

    00:12:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Beer in a pub after right? So as small as that, it could be as big as we took.

    00:12:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    16 people to Dubai for three days, right? It could be, which we've got new SSD's, right? So that's never happening.

    00:12:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Ever again. But.

    00:12:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But then like.

    00:12:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So so it could be that or it could just be.

    00:13:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We like invested so much into our healthcare, it could be like it's it varies to different people, right? It could be the fact we have unlimited annual leave and like people generally use it. And like if you take 50 days off this year, that's cool, hit your target, do your figures and your numbers do whatever you gotta do and work wherever you want. We've had a guy this month.

    00:13:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Who's worked in?

    00:13:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Ireland for a whole month and it's like that's good and well.

    00:13:20 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Because we see the output because we have metrics and triggers and things.

    00:13:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That we can see.

    00:13:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Are you engage with the brand still and the internal WhatsApp groups and slap Trump? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Then you go do whatever you need to do. So it's definitely an adult working environment where we try and give back to everybody. But then yeah, it builds up the character. And yeah, there's loads. There's loads.

    00:13:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah. No, totally. It's, it's, I gotta say, it's inspiring stuff for like, you know, 55. That's 5 years old. That's as mature and as you know, the forward leaning forward thinking as that. I think it's like it sets a high benchmark for other companies, you know, to to aspire to kind of join as well. So but yeah more party that's that's cool too.

    00:13:57

    Trisha.

    00:13:59 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And it was. It's gonna. It was given to my next question like kind of how do how do customers and people find your company like in terms of you know how how do they first come into contact with you if anyone like social media on LinkedIn in person, what's the?

    00:14:06

    Yeah.

    00:14:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    So kind of.

    00:14:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Well, we're headhunters, so.

    00:14:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We're obviously quite proactive in in our.

    00:14:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So it would be, yeah, it it, it would.

    00:14:21 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Be misrepresenting if.

    00:14:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We weren't the ones outreaching to our market, but so we are, yeah.

    00:14:28 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We're very, very.

    00:14:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Proactive, but in terms of the channels and stuff, yeah, LinkedIn is our big one and we can come on to it later on and I'll I'll go into more detail around kind of.

    00:14:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The the importance of social media for us as an.

    00:14:38 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Agency. But umm.

    00:14:39

    Yeah.

    00:14:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, we're very, very proactive in our approach. You will walk into our office and everyone is on the phone speaking to people and engaging and saying hello to everyone in the communities and stuff. We're since Lottie's joined, we've been really big on. We build like communities in our individual disciplines, so.

    00:14:55 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We call them the tribal clubs.

    00:14:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So we have the Waterloo Cyber Club, which is the obvious one, which is anyone that's a veteran or a law enforcement veteran who now works in cybersecurity. We meet up quarterly and we just go for a beer at the Union Jack Club and just shoot the **** about the industry and catch up and spin training.

    00:15:12 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Bits I don't know but but but but.

    00:15:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Is it like computer bits is that?

    00:15:17

    Is that you?

    00:15:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    00:15:20 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Literally, yeah, yeah. I've done my sister. Let me tell you.

    00:15:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    About my yeah, exactly so.

    00:15:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And so we have the clubs. They're really important for us because it puts off right at the centre of the industry and all your kind of your very focused community, a lot is really big on we do lots of white papers, we write blogs, we ask the team to write blogs themselves. And again, just to kind of be really immersed in their in their networks, we're really big.

    00:15:44 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    On like the personal brands, so particularly this year it's individual peoples kind of brands about what are you known for in your space, the cybersecurity it might seem small, but when you delve into it, it's so many different disciplines and areas that we cover, but you might only have a couple of people in each space. So they're really.

    00:15:52

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:16:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So if you are doing that and your personal brand is quite strong and it's consistent, it's daily, etcetera, then you do get a lot of inbound kind of traffic if you like. So to give you an example on our website, now Lottie redesigned it last year. So I think he's done a great job and really kind of brought us up to where it kind of come up to where it was lagging behind, where we were as an agency.

    00:16:17

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:16:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But if you look at our traffic, 26% of our traffic, I think it's 26 is people directly Googling us. So putting in trying to search into Google. So I was like that's pretty high. I I was surprised when she told me and and kind of combined with a team a network of kind of side professionals wherever I think about 200,000 people that if you added up kind of all of our communities.

    00:16:30

    Right.

    00:16:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So.

    00:16:44 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, I suppose we find them. I I suppose that the answer, but now we're kind of seeing the reverse, which is way more direct inbound stuff via the website organically. But LinkedIn and then referrals for us. So yeah, referrals are huge. So people just talking in the in the community, in the network and I can't say it enough times our team.

    00:17:00

    Yeah.

    00:17:04 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Ping Daily and hey, Steve put me in touch with you. He said that I should talk to you for this or Sarah said I should do this. And so but again, that takes years, right? It certainly was not like that during.

    00:17:14

    Yeah.

    00:17:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    COVID, I'm gonna say that's I mean that that was that's part of the most astounding part of your story.

    00:17:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Is that you know, you told me that is it you? You managed to grow during COVID, which you know, there's a lot of industries that were shrinking and, you know, kind of like cutting, you know, cutting things. So like, what? How how was that for you guys? Because that's that's the sound like, you know.

    00:17:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, I think I think I think.

    00:17:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You have to remember we were small, right? So our overheads were like non-existent. So let's just get that straight, right. I wasn't. If we were a 25 person agency. Now overheads are crazy, crazy expensive and against COVID it'd be way more challenging. Right? Because then it's a it's it's way heavy on the cash flow, etcetera. And that's where difficult decisions will need to be made.

    00:17:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Or well made by other bigger agencies so.

    00:17:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We were kind of.

    00:17:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's a tale of two halves, right where 1/2 you're looking at and going. We're really lucky. Our overheads really low. Second is going ****. We just left left very well paid corporate jobs. Me try. Wait. Making where the six figures and then going. What? Freedom everyone. And I'm like I can't leave my house. I'm in my apartment and my flat and I'm just in my.

    00:18:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I've got an IKEA desk.

    00:18:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I've got my chair.

    00:18:20 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Our laptop and I'm like let's.

    00:18:21 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Go right and so.

    00:18:22

    Yeah.

    00:18:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We're very lucky also not just our own heads were low, but that we could be then super focused and dialled in cause you got all the hours under the sun, right? Yeah. And when you're very motivated because it's such a new thing for you going into code. For me it's just like, that's cool. Whatever. Everyone can sit in the zoom calls, getting drunk. I'm walking on my market.

    00:18:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right.

    00:18:40

    There it is.

    00:18:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Also, a lot of our clients and candidates and people in the industry were all alone. They're online all the time, right? You can go. So you're you're accessible, everyone's going back-to-back teams calls or zoom calls. So you could just, there wasn't a it would take an hour to get to the meeting, have an hour.

    00:18:47 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:18:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:18:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Meeting an hour.

    00:18:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Travel back. That's three hours a day, right? In that time, people.

    00:18:59

    Yeah.

    00:19:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Were doing 3 meetings and so.

    00:19:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We're really lucky in that sense. And then also just finally, the kind of military community just kind of wrap around us.

    00:19:08 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There's a stat that we produced last year which is as of 2023 fifty, 1% of hiring managers in cybersecurity in the UK are excellent military. So when you look at that stat, you're like, wow, we have such a unique selling point, which is, hey, we're all the same. Let's have a conversation. If we didn't deliver the same as the rest of the industry, if not better, we're military, right. You're gonna come for it? Like, you can have a virtual beer with me or whatever. So.

    00:19:17

    Wow.

    00:19:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We were lucky that kind of everyone put their arms around us and went, yeah, we want to.

    00:19:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    For you guys, and as soon as you say them, they're like, fast lane nuclear Subs and I like, speak to Charlie. I've nothing to do with that. So it was a wild. It was wild time. We actually hired two people, Sean, our first employee. He joined us in August. We set up in January. So kind of it was me. Eight months worth of convincing.

    00:19:55 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Sean, to hey, you don't.

    00:19:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Need that really well.

    00:19:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Paid salary? Forget what mean.

    00:19:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Journey come join the rocket ship and he was like, hey, it's COVID. There's no chance in hell. So. So yeah, it was wild. But there are lots of factors that we were very fortunate because it was good timing.

    00:20:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Us don't forget the security industry boomed because everyone's.

    00:20:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Working from home, they need.

    00:20:15 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To be protected etcetera, etcetera. So a lot of the IT teams internally were then investing in cyber security etcetera. So lots of factors come into play, but it doesn't go about like you're 18 hour.

    00:20:27 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Days it was graft.

    00:20:29 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah. No, man, I I can totally understand.

    00:20:31 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    I mean these these.

    00:20:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And because all of a sudden there was, you know, we went from everyone being in the office, you know, like you say three hour, 3 hour round trips for an hour meeting and stuff. Then all everyone working remotely from home and, you know, the the spike in peoples, you know, this whole offence is for example just getting bigger because everyone was then working from home and making a bit of like a, you know, a dream opportunity for.

    00:20:39

    Yeah.

    00:20:52 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Guess the cycle.

    00:20:52 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Criminals, I guess. And then people probably started seeing the the impact from it and then saying, ****, we need to invest in our cyber security like we're getting, you know, GDPR is guaranteed. We're we're we're losing a lot of like customer data we're getting. We're losing reputation as a result of that and kind of see the the whole like process kind of unfolding in front of you so.

    00:20:53

    Hmm.

    00:21:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    I can totally and totally understand how 18 hour days would have been.

    00:21:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Oh my God.

    00:21:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Where is it coming from?

    00:21:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, it could be as simple as people just didn't configure their Wi-Fi passwords right? And or more phishing attacks. So you're getting emails going. Hey, we can do work from home discounts and.

    00:21:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Hey you need.

    00:21:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Some furniture, hey click.

    00:21:32 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    On this link and like and and and if it's going to like a HR manager who's like ****, I need to look after my staff. Are they comfortable? They have their own setup and then?

    00:21:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    They have like 200 LB vouchers to then go and get their own home set up to keep productivity high. Yeah, people get attacked a lot. Phishing emails.

    00:21:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Went through the.

    00:21:49

    Roof. Yeah.

    00:21:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yes.

    00:21:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Uh.

    00:21:51 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Jesus cheese. Well, my. Yeah, I've I've literally like going away by how like, you know, the capacity for work and obviously the the growth and stuff, but maybe just get me on to my next question. So I wanted to ask how important those social media and LinkedIn been for growing your customer base at at?

    00:22:06 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Trident, good questions. So more recently where we've launched.

    00:22:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Our our U.S. team kind of mid to kind of was back Q3 last year. We pivoted really fast and and launched that pretty quickly because of a number of requirements and.

    00:22:21 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Requests and stuff.

    00:22:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But using LinkedIn and the power of social media, if you like, has allowed us to be very global quickly and have the access to the markets and build.

    00:22:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Our communities and.

    00:22:30 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Networks without actually having being like.

    00:22:32 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Being in the country and we.

    00:22:33

    Yeah.

    00:22:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Are now investing in I'm in the US once a month, right? So I particularly spend one week a month in the US and just come up from Washington recently, but.

    00:22:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I think it's allowed us to be very, yeah, the whole globalisation kind of effect, which is we don't actually have to be in country for us, have that access and build the brand and.

    00:22:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah. Amongst other things, in technologies and and and whatnot. But having that outreach on LinkedIn, you couldn't do that back in the day you'd.

    00:23:01 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Have to go.

    00:23:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And take five people in country and and.

    00:23:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It'd be very expensive with that that be that.

    00:23:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    OK so.

    00:23:07 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Be the ultimate experiment, right?

    00:23:08 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It'd be a costly investment.

    00:23:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:23:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    They totally. I'm just. I'm just thinking then, like, yeah, the the cost of, like, taking five people into the DC.

    00:23:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:23:17

    You.

    00:23:17 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Know every every month, every quarter and stuff. It's like we'll just rack up, wouldn't it? And it's you never really guarantee to get peoples time or and get an opportunity to get in and and showcase your work or your product or your service. It's always kind of like on the back foot. So yeah, completely.

    00:23:26

    Yeah.

    00:23:33 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, without without LinkedIn. Just use that as an example. So I went to DC. I'll book I'll I'll book DC around one or two meetings, right. I go right. We're we're committing. I'm gonna book it. Right. And you might invest 5000 in it right in one of the one.

    00:23:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And you go right how and for me personally to justify. I need two meetings a day when I'm there and and without LinkedIn, I couldn't have that outreach. I couldn't search for people in the area that I know or or leaders and founders and or I could ask for referrals and stuff like that. So and. And the last time we went, I think I had three days in DC I had like.

    00:23:49

    Yeah.

    00:24:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    12 Meetings it was.

    00:24:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Almost overwhelming, I was like.

    00:24:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I was like, I was like, I'll come back. I was like Jesus Christ. I felt like I was like, just been fragged for three days, just been on an exercise. But so yeah, all those exercises in bracons and stuff have done certainly well with no sleep, hungover and but.

    00:24:24

    Yeah. And then.

    00:24:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You make sure you get the red Eye flight home so you can just sleep solid for like 7 hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    00:24:28

    Good so.

    00:24:30 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, but that but that's that's.

    00:24:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That's the effectively team mate. Without that, you couldn't. You never get access to that many leaders and yeah, so yeah, it's it's it's pretty strong for us.

    00:24:35 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:24:40 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    So it's essentially it improves brand awareness, doesn't it, because obviously people can see your brand.

    00:24:44 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Resonating with it, see that you're you know, you're professional and kind of what they're after, and then that helps you tee up those meetings. When you do go over there because people, people were already kind of read in and said, yes, this is worth my.

    00:24:50

    Yeah.

    00:24:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Time and you know.

    00:24:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Having to just kind of convince for some of.

    00:24:55 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:24:58 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Time and so the next question is kind of how has the the changing business landscape push your company to experiment with new approaches to build your profile like have have you have you gone out there and tried you know TikTok or Snapchat, you know gone right this this doesn't work for us. Let's try this, let's try this approach cause obviously you went from.

    00:25:19 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Social media during the pandemic into live event like experiential marketing, so I guess is there any other things you've tried as well?

    00:25:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    For Anderson's.

    00:25:27 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, the expensive not mistake, but the expensive experiment was the in person exhibit exhibiting at conferences.

    00:25:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You paid 10.

    00:25:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    10,000 plus for a stand, right? Yeah. And you're hoping you get something from it. The ROI from knows are it financially minimal, like super, super minimal. However, the all the brands, the awareness.

    00:25:43

    Yeah.

    00:25:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The fact that you got your team on the stand, they're learning how to engage with customers and they're building their own personal confidence.

    00:25:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The team work and you can go out.

    00:25:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    In the evenings, if if it's like.

    00:25:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    A A conference.

    00:25:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Abroad or whatever. So.

    00:26:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That's invaluable, but the actual tangible ROI.

    00:26:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Was non existent.

    00:26:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right. Still blows my mind when recruitment agencies still exhibited these at these kind of events and you're trying to compete with the crowd strikes of the world and the well funded billion dollar PLC's.

    00:26:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    They have a Formula One can't stand.

    00:26:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There, you're just.

    00:26:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There, like so. So that was a that was kind of an expensive experiment. But yeah, it did help our brand and and and other things I think social media channels, we don't touch TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook.

    00:26:25

    Yeah.

    00:26:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It for a number of reasons. Maybe we're too old, but but we do have Twitter. We don't use it that much. It's really good for news and almost ingesting or digesting information, less so for us, putting any content on there. So yeah. And then it's just, I suppose, about how we keep pivoting.

    00:26:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And uh.

    00:26:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I suppose innovating on our kind of YouTube channel, which tried to talks because since COVID there's been a few more cyber recruitment agencies come up.

    00:27:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Come up and.

    00:27:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Borne out of the industry that have created their own podcasts. So then it just becomes very same same. So it's about how do we innovate that we're talking about that all the time internally and do we do. We've got a podcast studio in our office so it's like OK, what are we doing?

    00:27:03

    Yeah.

    00:27:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Some kind of round tables and which?

    00:27:16

    Yeah.

    00:27:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Get get a get.

    00:27:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    A crate a beer or a bottle of whiskey.

    00:27:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And to see where.

    00:27:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It goes what's?

    00:27:20 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The worst that can happen.

    00:27:21 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Right, so so.

    00:27:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But I think about like pivoting and we're lucky that we're quite.

    00:27:28 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Agile. So me.

    00:27:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And Charlie, to give an idea of our kind of personalities, I'm like.

    00:27:33 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Does it make sense yet? Let's do it. When can we start? Right. I'm very much a red.

    00:27:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Personality Charlie's like.

    00:27:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Well, what's the risk? Who does it affect? How much it cost? What's the plan? And he's more strategic. So I'm like, so we we balance really well because otherwise I'll just be changing pin it in and just like **** it, let's do it if it makes sense to do it. And I say there's two odds, right? Does it risk our reputation and are we gonna kill revenue on it?

    00:27:48

    Yeah.

    00:27:53 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    If it doesn't, if we're both like. Yeah, it's pretty good. Let's do it. Right. So we're lucky. We're it's small enough that.

    00:27:56

    Against.

    00:27:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We're still agile so.

    00:27:59 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    A good example is last year when we launched the US, We've always recruited in the US because we've had European clients that might go, hey, we actually have a team in the.

    00:28:07 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    US, we're struggling can.

    00:28:08 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You help us, so we've always done.

    00:28:09 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Like one or two placements 1/4.

    00:28:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Here and there they got.

    00:28:12 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To a point where it was really ramping up. And so I said to Charlie, I was like, look, we're the discussion I said we need to move fast.

    00:28:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It's obviously it's a $25 trillion economy. We're a 2 1/2 trillion dollar economy in the UK. It makes sense. It's less saturated in terms of agencies.

    00:28:27 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And I know this isn't quite about social media, but it's about pivoting and changing in the economy. And we're like like 2023, the UK and Europe was challenging. the US is always a step ahead and it's a bigger economy, like I said. So it was, I reckon, within the space of four weeks, my whole European network and community and everything had been given to the European team.

    00:28:47 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And I was heading up the US team. I'd hired 4 people.

    00:28:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Well, and and in in four weeks time, we were in Houston, TX, all of us as a new team meeting those people. So we had to pivot fast and it was. But then it's, you know, the the old, the phrase of is it a one way or two way door. So for us launching the US it was a two way door right we can come back from that we can kind of if we if if it never worked.

    00:29:10 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So if it was a one way door where there is no return, then it again would take more steps due diligence processes etcetera to mitigate risk.

    00:29:18 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So, but yeah, so that's massive pivot for us and and yeah, social media had big influence on that and the globalisation. So yeah, we had to think on our feet quite a bit and then.

    00:29:30 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Just go after it.

    00:29:32 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, it it makes complete sense. Like what? Just go looking back to when things he said and it's it's not the first time I've heard the the concept of like a low ROI coming from an event you know events, events, marketing if you will as and when you go to conferences and you pay like an exorbitant amount of money to stand there and obviously.

    00:29:50 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You know, kind of kind of get your brand out to people when that that initial kind of step of brand awareness, but what a lot of people are kind of noticing as well is that well people that expect to be sold to when they go to these conferences, they kind of put like the you.

    00:30:02 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Know the almost.

    00:30:03 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Like the earmuffs on walk around, you know, looking head strike force.

    00:30:04 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:30:06 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And engage with the sales.

    00:30:07 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Advisor, you know, and I'm like it.

    00:30:08

    Yeah.

    00:30:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    That makes sense. Like how? Why is there still companies are out there doing this apart from just to show.

    00:30:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You.

    00:30:15 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Know.

    00:30:16 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    That they exist. They're big player in their market, you know, it's not really a a kind of a a startup scale up mentality of of doing it. We get, we get a bit more kind of scrappy and a bit more innovative, don't we like right, we can, we can reach out social media when you do podcasts we can do, you know community marketing and stuff. I think it's yeah, fab.

    00:30:32 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And you could do and.

    00:30:33 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And I I would get way. Well we have had way more ROI by going let's meet those four people in a pub after.

    00:30:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And and guess what people want to.

    00:30:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Channel pub. Yeah. Yeah, it does blow my mind when people go to these events, known that they're full of stands where the vendors bring their sales people to.

    00:30:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Sell their product, obviously.

    00:30:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Right. And then yeah, they then walk through the the the the stalls and the stands and they put the blinkers on and they get passed off. When you start trying to sell them or or you just or just say hello just.

    00:30:58

    Yeah, yeah.

    00:31:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Say hello and they're like, no, no. And you're like

    00:31:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Why?

    00:31:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Are you here and so?

    00:31:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And it's it's typically to get out the office that I want to get out the office. Also. I wanna take a quick photo.

    00:31:07

    Yeah.

    00:31:09 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Of my badge and put it on linked.

    00:31:10 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    In the show 1.

    00:31:14 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Whereas I'd much rather have a be with that person after in the pub next door and.

    00:31:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And then, yeah, and then and and we've seen way much larger ROI from those smaller intimate events where there's actually value and and also you have to want to come to those. They're like private personal invites, right? So if you wanna come, that's fine. Don't come. But when you do, we'll have a lunch, dinner, whatever. And they know what to expect.

    00:31:26

    Yeah.

    00:31:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, I agree.

    00:31:39 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, it totally it. It makes sense. I'm. I'm, I'm glad. Kind of more. This messaging is getting out to kind of start-ups, you know, so they can say, right? Let's let's skip their expensive conferences now and just do what we know works.

    00:31:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, the idea is is slightly to help kind of veteran owned companies and startups. You know get get to that point of profitability as quickly as possible. So don't run out of runway in those difficult early days as you know as you and I definitely found so I.

    00:31:59

    Yeah.

    00:32:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Guess.

    00:32:05 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Is if it's not a silly question, I guess like do you see the business launching?

    00:32:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    New products or services based on the success of the market changes. Obviously AI we saw last year kind of was the the age of AI emerging into kind of domestic realms and stuff. So do you, do you see any kind of has that made any big impacts on on you guys from here?

    00:32:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, I think look, we don't offer products, right, we're.

    00:32:25 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Not software company, but service wise we.

    00:32:27 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We've we have now, we've always recruited go to market professionals into the software vendors, cybersecurity specific. So we call it the vendor team to give this as an example. We couldn't yeah, go to market team. So sales execs, it's sales engineers, it's customer success. We've pivoted kind of opened up two different areas or service lines if you like or we recruit two different areas.

    00:32:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To wrap around that vendor.

    00:32:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    One is software and product, so we now.

    00:32:51 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Recruit people that.

    00:32:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Build it for the company and then also marketers.

    00:32:53 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    It was.

    00:32:55 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Marketers. So we have someone that leads our marketing function and recruits marketers. So when you look at the vendor, we can kind of wrap around a whole company apart from the back office of finance and and and and admin, we don't touch.

    00:33:06 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Business admin or anything but.

    00:33:07 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah. So we printed to kind of open up different service lines basically on demand as long as there's a real niche in it and there's a demand for it and we can build communities around it, then we'll do it.

    00:33:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But there's two more things really, I suppose. Just to discuss AI. Yes, I.

    00:33:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Think there are.

    00:33:23 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    From wrong 700 AI companies that are funded last year in the US, they are in cyber security, right? They were funded that were given money. And so it's clearly a big there is obviously it it's not a hype anymore it's it's it's there. It's here for to stay. It's here for a reason.

    00:33:36

    Here.

    00:33:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Not just just as a quick example is to protect.

    00:33:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Employees inside large enterprises from using things like ChatGPT and it's not to prevent them from using it. It's about how to use it safely. How do you use it? So you got the right policies and controls. So therefore you do not, you're not in a finance team and you Chuck in your P&L into ChatGPT and say create a month end, right and they're like.

    00:33:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Well, now where's that PNL gone?

    00:34:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Cause it's not. There's no borders on ChatGPT. So somehow in Taiwan or someone now in New Zealand or whoever can access European help from let's say.

    00:34:02

    Yeah.

    00:34:07 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Barclays. Whatever. So.

    00:34:08 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:34:08 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    There's absolutely a need for AI.

    00:34:12 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Focused cybersecurity businesses and we was at the where the charity ball last Friday. I was sat next to someone who's just about to launch an AI cyber startup. He's in stealth mode at the moment, but gotta got quite a bit of funding even at seed, so it's definitely a demand for it. But where we're seeing demand, there are more about machine learning engineers, so that then.

    00:34:32 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Is the kind of machine behind the AI hype right? It's machine learning, right? So and people that understand large language models and things like that. So we're absolutely and that's our software team comes in.

    00:34:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But for us, in terms of the biggest focus for us, it's gonna be locations. So as and when the demand comes up, we will look at joint ventures with headhunters in their location and we have our eye on APAC at the moment because we do not really touch APAC and it's such a different time zone. It's very difficult to do from here. So we are absolutely in the market.

    00:35:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To create a joint venture with somebody who doesn't wanna go completely solo, build your own agency. But we could use our brand infrastructure. What we've learned, built, et cetera to then be an equity partner with us. But then that gives us access into Australia, Singapore, Japan, et cetera, so.

    00:35:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    We that's how we'll grow. We'll grow by locations and geography more so than new service lines or new products.

    00:35:28 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, great. Yeah, it's great to hear. Like, there's always that danger, isn't there? When there's there's difficult early years where you start to overextend and you go into something which is is you don't have the kind of like enough knowledge or experience. And then you and then you go like it's like a one way door itself, isn't it, where you're like, **** now I'm.

    00:35:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:35:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Now I'm stuck.

    00:35:45 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    In this product or service and stuff and then you're like.

    00:35:49 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    I've reduced that. I heard a great term recently which obviously resonated us as boot necks as air, the beach head industry, you know, which is like, what have you got that you can protect? You know, you can fortify, you can and then expand from a position of strength from. And I was like, I was such a good metaphor isn't, you know, be a big a boot neck and having a beach head industry. I'm like that's yeah. So.

    00:36:01

    Yeah.

    00:36:11 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yes, good. Yeah, good, good margin like it.

    00:36:14 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    OK, I will make. So I guess a bit of a bit of a kind of off the cough.

    00:36:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Cough.

    00:36:18 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Question now what do you see as the main challenges trying to grow startups and scale UPS in the current economic climate?

    00:36:26

    For.

    00:36:27 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Tough one.

    00:36:28 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Here we go from what you said just now, right. I see we've done. We've definitely been a victim of this and and it's harmful which is you go super wide, very shallow and the whole mile wide inch deep etcetera, right.

    00:36:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:36:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Find your niche or.

    00:36:41 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Your lane, right. And stick to it. Last year it was twice as hard to do that cause.

    00:36:46 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The economy was so ******, right?

    00:36:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So it was if someone come to you. Go. Hey, I I've got an IT requirement. And you're like, oh, we do cyber, but that's 10 grand we could make. I could do that my own type.

    00:36:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah, right. So so the number one thing is like double down in your niche stay in your lane, build your beach head and, like, take a **** out of it. And that beach head, that's all you're known for. And then maybe go into a different area, but you've got your foundations here that is your kind of revenue model that's consistent. And it's it's your, it's what you're known for. We're really big.

    00:37:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Like when I interview people, it's like hey dude. So you've been doing this for eight years. What are you known for?

    00:37:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Let tell me now if I called up a customer and said hey or see Sir or see and said do you know ex person and that uh yeah yeah. Because they do this, this, this and that might be because of the social media it might because of events might be they recruited for them.

    00:37:33 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And but the biggest.

    00:37:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Problem at the moment or what we.

    00:37:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Face as a start.

    00:37:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Up is you're taking on anything and.

    00:37:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Everything because you need revenue because revenue is.

    00:37:40

    Yes.

    00:37:41 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Is is the key to survival rate? Revenue cures everything. However it needs to be the right revenue that's driving you towards the mission or the kind of the light at the end of the tunnel, which might be an exit acquisition, whatever.

    00:37:53 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Otherwise, you're going to be, you're going to be veering off everywhere. And like you said, you go down and start. We start recruit for these IT roles and like, ****. I'm so now down the rabbit hole with this. I can't now go back to what?

    00:38:04 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I was good at or.

    00:38:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    What I was trying to build, I think another thing around, so that's staying very niche and doubling down when it's twice as hard.

    00:38:12 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:38:12 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    The economy, for example, I think also another thing is money is quite expensive at the moment. So I I think we're gonna see more bootstrap businesses with lower overheads.

    00:38:22 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Not taking funding until the money is a bit cheaper and what I mean. What? What I mean by cheaper is either the interest rates if you're taking almost like a loan or an equity loan or equity, you're gonna be giving away more equity because you're such a bigger risk so.

    00:38:26 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:38:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I think we'll see more.

    00:38:38 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    One or two man companies or two women companies who have low overheads.

    00:38:42 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Who are kind of bootstrapping it for a period of time as opposed to going and taking 800,000 and then growing faster than they really should.

    00:38:49 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    That's not a bad.

    00:38:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Thing what that would do is it will saturate the market because you're gonna have more companies targeting your clients. It's gonna be more competitive.

    00:38:57 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    If and if you try and compete against a one or two person band who's hustling, who's trying to survive at all costs, you either gonna race to the bottom as a commodity into the cost, or you better deliver a very high value just because we're bigger than everybody does not mean you're better. And that two man band will come up your **** very quick and take the business off you.

    00:39:17 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Because they got a different type of hunger, right? So I think you'll see more bootstrap businesses, but I think the main thing as if I was to start trying over again is find your niche double down and stay so in your lane that you're gonna have to turn business away. And that's tough. That's really tough.

    00:39:33

    Yeah.

    00:39:37 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    It's such good advice, like it's it's it's something which, like nobody, prepares you for that when they say you know you like you want to start a business. Yeah. Well, have that conversation. You have to start saying no to things you know and then like this terrifies me because on the one hand I've got you know these these production costs happening at the same time also saying no to to.

    00:39:56

    Yep.

    00:39:56 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Like revenue coming in, it's like this doesn't doesn't compute like blows my mind.

    00:40:00 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But then but then also you say no and you're like ****. When's the next lead?

    00:40:03 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Gonna come in. You're like what?

    00:40:03

    Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    00:40:05 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    If it doesn't mean like this is gone right, see like, I'll take it just cause I need revenue and it's gonna distract the **** out of me for the next period of time and therefore I can't then focus on what I need to look at, which is my market.

    00:40:14

    OK.

    00:40:15

    Yeah.

    00:40:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    But that's a tough conversation to have you yourself, especially if you're so.

    00:40:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Alone now you might.

    00:40:20 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally. It's, it's mental. Well, but I I guess before I before I let you back into work. Any final words of advice, fair startups and scaleups because you're you're experience is, like genuinely the the the growth that you've seen and to where you are now it's it's it's really impressive we've got.

    00:40:36 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    To say.

    00:40:37 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Thank you. Appreciate that.

    00:40:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Advice do more. Do more, right?

    00:40:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I had this conversation with myself. I had this conversation.

    00:40:46 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    With my team.

    00:40:47 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    They're like a a great example is it's just not been my week, you know, it's just. I'm like, look at your stats.

    00:40:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And like you.

    00:40:53 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Didn't do enough. You hit my target and I'm like, but you clearly your target wasn't.

    00:40:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Enough cause you never you didn't get what you wanted out of there.

    00:40:58 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Do more work, more hours, do more. The best performance I've ever seen in any industry, let alone recruitment, is people just work hardest. You don't have to be. I'm not the smartest recruiting world. I'm not the best recruiter, but I will absolutely outwork most people and I have no problem putting in an 18 hour day because I can see the ROI of it.

    00:41:06

    Mm-hmm.

    00:41:15 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And and then like, well, how did you build that Mark and like, because I worked more than you and I made sacrifices and it it I I do appreciate. I own the business, so I probably different slightly different mentality but we're trying to get everybody to think like a business owner and that's where our share scheme comes.

    00:41:29 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    From and other things, right? But.

    00:41:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Do more, we'll create results, right? Yeah. If you do, if you do more.

    00:41:36 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Phone calls. You will have more rejections. You'll you'll.

    00:41:40 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Learn more about how you pitch.

    00:41:41 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You will get more referrals. You will, yeah, every. You're just multiple multiple everything, right?

    00:41:47

    Yeah.

    00:41:48

    And.

    00:41:48 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And then the other thing I'd say is the kind of daily personal branding like go out there and be known for something, but be consistent and whether that's set an alarm clock at 8:00 AM to, say, post on LinkedIn, go find something to post. It's just I need to see.

    00:42:01 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    You share your 19 all.

    00:42:02 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Day, every day talking about how you build your agency, brand or whatever it might be, and then guess what happens when I'm like ****. We need to improve our marketing. I'm like, who's I've got kids posting over and then you go, Oh yeah, it's that. And so you need to go on the edge of people's tongues or.

    00:42:14

    Yes.

    00:42:15 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Like so that.

    00:42:16 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Again, is doing more but more but but consistently as well.

    00:42:19 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    So even if the do more of what you're doing is wrong, just keep doing.

    00:42:24 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It and you'll.

    00:42:25 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Figure it out right, but that's the the biggest piece of advice I give to anyone starting a business or just even in as I tell.

    00:42:34 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Myself everyday, right?

    00:42:35 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    What else can I do today? What more can we do? Because it's not that.

    00:42:39 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    I suppose it's never enough, right?

    00:42:41 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    It's interesting because it's it's actually like a a A documented research mental like neuroscience perspective. It's it's called the law of least mental effort. So if you, if you've got a problem where you you want, I don't know.

    00:42:49

    Yeah.

    00:42:54 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You've got a problem where you need. You need a a sync unblocking or something like that. The the the most well known plumber who is is the easiest one to retrieve and you know cognitively will be the one that you go with first and probably the one you Commission go with the Commission and that's it's actually is it can be actually aligned to marketing effort versus sales output because it's you're always the person to.

    00:43:13 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    To the people's tongues. It means your name gets mentioned in meetings, in boardrooms, in, in the pub, you know, in in these conferences and events. And so there is there is a, you know, a connection between the amount of work and and kind of profile you build just through that sheer volume of work versus what you see at the other.

    00:43:17

    MHM.

    00:43:31 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    And so, yeah, make the law of least mental effort. It's probably one of the biggest. The biggest takeaways I found on this journey was like, I was like, oh, so there's actually connection between how much I work versus the output I see. So, yeah.

    00:43:44 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    And then and.

    00:43:45 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Then and then you can you.

    00:43:46 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Then you partner with someone yourself and you add value like you add the quality.

    00:43:50 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To it to all.

    00:43:50

    Yes.

    00:43:51 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Of the volume I'm doing, you can add the.

    00:43:52 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Quality and you're like it has.

    00:43:54 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    To produce a result if.

    00:43:55 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Yeah.

    00:43:56 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    It doesn't go ship. Can your business and go start something else.

    00:44:04 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    I was talking to the Ben Reader reader, Robert, he said. Even at some, at some point, you'll.

    00:44:07 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:44:09 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    You know whether you want to or you'll end up having the conversation of whether you should be an equity bank for an investor or like it's such a good conversation because there's like a, you know, the the, the pivot, the pivot thoughts, you know something he you know obviously talks about a lot and has to come up with and like it's it's it's such a fascinating insight but also from another veteran as well you know somebody who's on the same path.

    00:44:30 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    Thus, you know and you're something so incredible. So yeah, mate, I'm. I'm not now. Anyway, I'm gonna. I'm gonna stop waffling. I'm gonna leave you to your the rest of your morning. Thanks again so much. And yeah, look forward to following your journey. Where where it leads.

    00:44:31 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Yeah.

    00:44:43 Josh Keeley, a former Royal Marines Commando turned co-founder of Trident search, a cutting-edge Cybersecurity recruitment agency helping companies attract and retain digital defence professionals

    Thank you, mate. Appreciate that meal.

    00:44:46 Chris Shirley, Website Developer, Digital Marketing Specialist and Brand Designer at Haus of Hiatus, website and brand design studio

    It was really great chatting with Josh and hearing how he scaled his company. Want to know more about tribute search? You can find the links to the website in the shows below and I'll see you next time.

Chris Shirley MA FRGS

About the Author: Chris is the founder of Hiatus.Design, a website design and branding studio that works with brands all over the world, a former Royal Marines officer and former risk advisor to the BBC.

Chris has travelled in over 60 countries, is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS), a Guinness World Record holder for rowing over 3500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, a Marathon des Sables finisher, and has worked with Hollywood actors, world–renowned musical artists and TV personalities!

https://www.hiatus.design
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