Jun 4, 2026 · 30 min · 9 segments
Finding the right candidate to fit your business and represent your brand can be stressful, time consuming and expensive. In this episode, I sat down with Dave Lewis, the founder of The Recademy, a…
Anthony DonovanHostSo yeah, we're kind of three, four months into kind of trading and standing on our own feet, I guess.
Okay, so relatively short amount of time, although I have to say you've come a long way in that time.
Any reflecting back lessons? I'm thinking for anyone listening is thinking of setting up their own business.
Any any kind of immediate challenges or lessons learned in setting up a new a new startup?
Firstly, and because we're both from that recruitment background, there's that old recruitment line that, you know, running your own desk is a lot like running a business.
And then when you start running a business and setting up a business, you realize that that's complete nonsense.
And that when you're running a business, there's a lot of stuff which is deeply important.
And so like the invoicing and the getting your payment system set up and invoicing systems and admin and getting VAT registered and the kind of the admin load and the amount of time you're going to spend doing stuff, which is.
not the day job, not the training in my case, not the delivery, not the helping consultants.
I think I underestimated and I think you've got to be prepared to do quite a lot of that.
I also think that as with most or likely most business owners who are planning it for some time, when you're in that planning phase before execution, you also dwell on loads and loads of things and loads of facets and factors of the business, which ultimately are probably not that important.
So everyone will have been there, I think, setting up a business, you know, sweating for months about things like the logo and the company name and, you know, are you going to be a .co.uk or a .com and that kind of thing.
And it's not to say that they're a complete irrelevance, but the danger is that those distractions take your eye off the ball of the stuff that's really important, your product and your market and your route to market and your outreach and your sales and those kind of things.
And so, yeah, to go into it, your eyes open as to the amount of additional work that is going to be involved in running a business and just setting one up is arduous.
And then secondly, I've been working with small and mid-sized business owners for the last 20 years.
And I'm consistently, when I'm coaching them and just chatting to them informally, you know, consistently talking to owners who are running brilliant businesses.
But they often don't look like they're enjoying it much because they're thinking about the next challenge and the next obstacle and how we push on and how we grow from here.
So yeah, we're kind of three, four months into kind of trading and standing on our own feet, I guess.
Okay, so relatively short amount of time, although I have to say you've come a long way in that time.
Any reflecting back lessons? I'm thinking for anyone listening is thinking of setting up their own business.
Any any kind of immediate challenges or lessons learned in setting up a new a new startup?
Firstly, and because we're both from that recruitment background, there's that old recruitment line that, you know, running your own desk is a lot like running a business.
And then when you start running a business and setting up a business, you realize that that's complete nonsense.
And that when you're running a business, there's a lot of stuff which is deeply important.
And so like the invoicing and the getting your payment system set up and invoicing systems and admin and getting VAT registered and the kind of the admin load and the amount of time you're going to spend doing stuff, which is.
not the day job, not the training in my case, not the delivery, not the helping consultants.
I think I underestimated and I think you've got to be prepared to do quite a lot of that.
I also think that as with most or likely most business owners who are planning it for some time, when you're in that planning phase before execution, you also dwell on loads and loads of things and loads of facets and factors of the business, which ultimately are probably not that important.
So everyone will have been there, I think, setting up a business, you know, sweating for months about things like the logo and the company name and, you know, are you going to be a .co.uk or a .com and that kind of thing.
And it's not to say that they're a complete irrelevance, but the danger is that those distractions take your eye off the ball of the stuff that's really important, your product and your market and your route to market and your outreach and your sales and those kind of things.
And so, yeah, to go into it, your eyes open as to the amount of additional work that is going to be involved in running a business and just setting one up is arduous.
And then secondly, I've been working with small and mid-sized business owners for the last 20 years.
And I'm consistently, when I'm coaching them and just chatting to them informally, you know, consistently talking to owners who are running brilliant businesses.
But they often don't look like they're enjoying it much because they're thinking about the next challenge and the next obstacle and how we push on and how we grow from here.
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