Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Welcome to Jazz Shapers, where the pioneers of the business world join the musicians shaping Jazz, Soul and Blues. I am very pleased to say that my guest today is Gary Elden OBE, Founder of Huxley, a recruitment agency specialising in financial services and engineering and he is also Chairperson at the digital recruitment platform, Recbid and the consultancy, Amoria Bond. Gary’s Jamaican father, only the second black cab driver in London, instilled in his children a ferocious work ethic. As Gary says, “Dad wanted my sister, my brother and I to be cab drivers because he liked the idea of us being independent and being our own boss. But back then I wanted to work for a bank, in an office, you’re in a suit, your hands are clean, you earn lots of money.” Despite being in all the top classes at school, Gary says it was ethnically divided and he felt no encouragement from teachers. He was nevertheless ambitious, his role models such as Mohammad Ali were people who went against the flow. His career in recruitment started when he joined SThree as one of its first employees. Within five years the Founders backed Gary to launch his own brand, Huxley, a banking and finance recruitment agency which he grew internationally to become the most profitable SThree brand before going on to become Deputy, then CEO of SThree. Gary is now the Chairperson at Recbid and Amoria Bond and he’s the Trustee of the Aleto Foundation, a non-profit organisation supporting people from disadvantaged backgrounds to be the leaders of tomorrow. Most importantly, above everything else, he’s an Arsenal fan. Hello, nice to see you.
Gary Elden
Thanks for having me.
Elliot Moss
No, it’s an absolute pleasure. You were brought up on a Council estate in Camberwell, Gary, and you’ve gone on to become one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the recruitment world. When you were growing up there, and we heard earlier about your dad instilling a work ethic, strong work ethic, could you have imagined that you would have achieved all the things you have achieved so far?
Gary Elden
I don’t want to sound arrogant but, yes. My philosophy was always, when you look at successful people, you think well why are they successful? Are they from a privileged background? Do they work hard? Are they smart? And I always felt, I don’t know, for some reason and I’m not religious but I’ve always felt that I was going to achieve something. I was always ambitious, I always wanted more and I was never satisfied so, I didn’t picture, you know, working in the corporate world and being a CEO of a listed company but I always felt whatever I put my mind to, I will be successful. Just through hard work and determination.
Elliot Moss
And those first few things that you did in life when you probably weren’t where you wanted to be, at what point did you, was there an epiphany when you said, you know what, I’m going to be my own boss, I’m going to do my own thing? Or was that always the intention regardless?
Gary Elden
So when I was younger, we were always looking at ways of making money. When we went to a youth club, rather than go to the youth club and say right, let’s enjoy ourself, we said right, how can we raise money for the youth club by creating events so, we’d run local discos and stuff like that and as we got older, we were, right, look how can we make money by creating house parties? So, we were always looking at opportunities to make money. I always felt that I wanted to be successful but I also realised that I needed to gain experience so when I was young, I wanted to get into the banking world or the finance world because you read or watch programmes about people being successful in that area so I liked the idea of wearing a suit, looking the part and earning lots of money. So when I was 16 and left school, my first job wasn’t what I dreamed of you know, I wanted to work in insurance or banking and I actually got an office job for a company of architects and I was asked to sweep the yards of the leaves that were out there, doing photocopying and really just being a general dogsbody and I realised, wow, this idea of working in an office is not what exactly I felt it would be but I realised that experience helped me then look at other opportunities so from that moment, I used that as the platform then to apply for jobs in the City and I was lucky to get a job for an insurance brokers back in 1986 and I think the person who interviewed really felt sorry for me, I think he had a son a similar age to me and he thought, ‘right, I’ll give this guy a chance’ and that really opened my eyes to a completely different world, and I loved it, you know I loved that whole atmosphere and environment of, you know, working and you’re out in the City and you’re socialising and I met a different array of people, you know, from my background, you’re brought up at 16 in a sort of a Council type bubble and then you get exposed to middleclass and working class people from different backgrounds so it was my equivalent to University was going to insurance broking.
Elliot Moss
Something struck me as you were talking, Gary and it was the fact that you said, you know from a very young age, we wanted to make money and I mentioned it in the intro and I don’t say it in a gratuitous way but obviously, there was a, I am imagining, a need to make money. Is that right or was it just you liked the idea that with money comes freedom and comes the ability to buy stuff? Where did that come from?
Gary Elden
So, if you think of the environment I was brought up in, your role models are local entrepreneurs, should I say, who drive very nice cars, dress very well and seem to have a lot of money, and I remember thinking, wow. I’m very superficial, right, you’re young and impressionable, right. You have to where the latest clothes and you want to have the nice cars etcetera and I could see a lot of successful people round me but they were doing in a way that’s not a route that I would want to go down. So, I think that sort of culture, the working class culture of, you know, looking good and feeling good is one thing and then my elder sister from my dad’s first marriage, I remember going to visit her in Carshalton and she lived in a house and I think I was 12 or 13 and it’s the first time I remember seeing a house with a garden because we just lived in a Council block with lifts and, you know, urine in the stairs etcetera but she lived in a lovely house, three bed, a semi-detached house, and thinking ‘oh, I’d like this, I’d like the idea of having a house’ and so from that moment, I think it was right, what does it mean to get a house? How do you get a house? And so when I was 20/21, I remember buying my first property, you know, because I liked the idea of having that sort of freedom as well and not being in that sort of Council environment. Now, my upbringing was amazing but I didn’t know any different until I experienced that with my sister so, it was always wanting more and seeing other people achieve and thinking, why can’t I do that? So, that desire really was always in me, I want to do better and I want to achieve more. The money just gives you choices, right? And at the time it was always about the money, right? I’ve got to make money. And as you get older, money is important but then other things become higher in your priority.
Elliot Moss
When you joined SThree, the recruitment business, back in 1990, you went in there as an employee and a few years later, they gave you the space to set up your own shop within it. How did you manage to pull that off?
Gary Elden
So, yeah, so before I joined SThree I was an estate agent for… I joined in 1988, just as the market crashed, and when I joined the estate agency, everyone was leaving but I didn’t know any different so I’d moved from insurance broking where it wasn’t a meritocratic environment and I thought right, I’m going to go into sales so I joined Winkworth’s in Catford and I started as a junior and within a year I was managing the office and I was doing really well and pretty successful and I heard about this recruitment business, in IT recruitment, I didn’t even know what IT meant back then, and I managed to get a job within SThree and I had about 15-16 different interviews, it was hard to get in and I remember them saying to me, well you’re not very well educated are you? And I went, well I’ve got 5 O-Levels, you know I’ve done pretty well in my school, what do you mean I’m not educated? And generally the typical person they’ll take on is a Grad and I remember going into that environment thinking, okay I’m the top of my game when I left estate agency, managing a couple of offices and I joined this as a trainee again so I had to start at the bottom and then I realised, whoa, they are a lot smarter than the environment I’ve been in before, they do work hard. How am I going to shine in an environment like this? And in the first two or three months I struggled and I was thinking what am I doing here and luckily a few people put their arm around me and said look, you can do this, and then it took me a year for the penny to drop, to realise that okay, how am I going to beat people that are smarter than me, more articulate than me? How am I going to beat them? And I realised I’d got to work harder than they do so, if they were doing 10 hours a day, I would be doing 16 hours a day. If they were sending 5 CVs out per day, I was sending 20 CVs out. So, I worked out very early to play the numbers game so I think I worked harder than everyone else, luckily I had a lot of common sense so I worked, I could read people very well from my upbringing, you know if you’re brought up in the environment you are, you have to read situations pretty well so, I could judge people pretty well. When someone says yes, they are going to take a job, does that really mean yes? And you sometimes, it’s difficult to train people to understand someone’s buying signals. So, I had good common sense, I worked really hard and through that, I became the top salesperson for a period, I became the top manager and the Founders, who were very entrepreneurial and you know created a really great environment, backed me to start my own brand which was an amazing achievement and I did that within 5 years and I think, in my business world, it’s one of my proudest moments.
Elliot Moss
A brave new world that has such things and such people in it. I think Aldous Huxley, and we’ll come to why you named it Huxley in a moment. Much more from my guest, Gary Elden, coming up in a couple of minutes and lots more common sense and some really good words of advice about work harder, and I do remember actually a cabbie said to me, ‘well the reason why I do better than my mates is because I work longer hours’, and that’s stuck with me too. Right now though, we are going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Alexander Rhodes explores how businesses are responding to Covid-19 and the importance that social value will play in success in the post-crisis world.
You can enjoy all our former Jazz Shapers and hear this very programme again with Gary by popping Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or, if you have got a smart speaker, you can ask it to play Jazz Shapers and there you’ll find many of our recent shows. But back to today, Gary Elden, Chairperson of both Recbid, a digital recruitment platform, and Amoria Bond, a recruitment consultancy, and also the Founder of Huxley, as you were hearing just earlier, a recruitment agency specialising in financial services and engineering and part of the SThree group. So, you set this business up, you called it Huxley I read somewhere because it sounded kind of interesting and sort of, I don’t know, posh is the wrong word but, there was something about it wasn’t there and anyone that heard of Aldous Huxley, of the Huxley family, went “oh well, that’s obviously a proper business.” It did remarkably well, Gary. How did you learn what it took, not just to be recognised for your graft and your intelligence and your, I love the way you said reading situations? How did you build the team? How have you gone on to actually realise proper value? Because it’s one thing making it to the first step of management, it’s another thing catapulting yourself the way you did.
Gary Elden
Yeah, I’d love to claim that I came up with the name Huxley but my colleague, Eleanor Collins, at the time, she came up with the name Huxley from Brave New World and I came up with the word Associates, so we were called Huxley Associates back then and you’re right, people… we used to ring companies up and they’d go “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of you, yes, yes” and then when I used to turn up saying look, I’m the Founder of Huxley, they’d look like, really? So, yeah, the name, we wanted to present a name that sounded very old English I suppose and the other names in the brand were Computer Futures and Progressive and Pathway, so we wanted to sound like a law firm maybe or a consultancy. I learnt very, very early on that in order to be successful, you need to have great people around you and I’ve never been the best in any of the sports that I’ve played but I was always captain, you know, captain of the basketball team, football team, cricket team at school so I think I had those leadership qualities but I also had people that believed in me and trusted me, I think trust is an important factor I think and I created very early on an amazing group of people around me that were better than me in so many aspects. I created that environment of loyalty, we were all in it together, we build it together and we have fun together, and if I look back in those year, we had so much fun, you know, it’s an environment where if you do well, you get rewarded and we did so many incentives, you know you go to the restaurants that you’d never dream of going, like Michelin star restaurants, you’d have incentives to countries that you had never been to before so, my life in recruitment exposed me to so many different things and the Founders of SThree, Bill Bottriell and Simon Arber, introduced me to that world and you just pass the baton on, right, you create that environment where when you bring people on from typically working class background, went to University and it’s like an extension of University for them and you create that loyalty, you give people chances, if they fail, you know, you back them but if they don’t put the effort in, you understand that you’re not going to make it here so, we had an environment that was very sales orientated, the best survived and if you can’t keep up, you’d end up leaving but that’s what, you know, we had a band of, I’ll say brothers but to be politically correct, a band of people that basically we thought we could take on the world and that’s what we tried to do.
Elliot Moss
And do you think, you mentioned you were captain, and I read that as local teams and then, as you said, you know, the sort of the natural leader emerged. What do you think is your super skill, your superpower as a leader, if there was just one, and you had to pick just one, and you walk into that room? Why are they looking at you when you say well they’re smarter than me, they’re better than me and all this other stuff? What is it about you that they go, ‘no I’ll follow you Gary’?
Gary Elden
Ooh, good question. Determination. Or I’ll say maybe resilience. Resilience. Because there’s lots of failings in everything that you do and it’s how you handle that. It’s hard to put one word to it because I could say trust and visionary but maybe resilience right, because I think they know that when you are with me that we are going to go through it together and I’m not going to give up, I’m going to persevere.
Elliot Moss
Life has changed dramatically hasn’t it? When you were growing up, I’ve read that you talked about the fact that your dad was black and your mum was white and there was a lot of racism, right in your face and some awful stuff and as you were talking about resilience, I wondered if some of that resilience came from your lived experience as you were a kid and obviously from a financial point of view and where you grew up but also from a racial and a social point of view. What about from your point of view as a leader now as you look at the world where there’s more and more push for proper equality around gender and around colour, how important are those things to you in your role as a leader now?
Gary Elden
Yeah, this is something I’m obviously passionate about. You’re seeing a lot of racial injustice. I was on a webinar recently about how do you change the boardroom in relation to more diversity and very little has changed really in the last ten years, there’s a lot of data and stats talking about how we need to change but a lot of it is people just talking a great shot and not actually doing anything so, yeah, I am passionate about it. I’m involved in rolling out what’s called a Race Code with a colleague of mine, Carl George, who came up with this governance of how to make a difference and I believe we’re at this stage now where need to hold companies and people accountable to create a truly diverse environment and race is just one of the things, right, obviously gender and other factors. So, yeah, this is something I’ve always been passionate about. Anyone who will sometimes think, ‘oh here he goes again about it’ but, you know my dad taught me about issues when you are going for a job, you know, he always said ‘it doesn’t matter if you are half black when you go for a job, they’re going to look at you and you’re going to be seen as non-white and therefore you’re going to have to be that much harder, work that much harder, and be that more determined’ so I think my upbringing and my environment has obviously shaped the way I feel about it. I remember Bill, the Founder, used to say, “You’re quite chippy aren’t you?” and I’m thinking yeah, I am quite chippy because I don’t think a lot of people really see or experience things from a black person’s perspective and someone who is of colour and some of my friends who are, you know, black, 100% black, and you can see even the racism associated to someone’s darkness, if someone is of dark skin and we used to, when we used to go out, my friend who was, you know, quite dark, he’d go up to the club and “No, you can’t come in, it’s a members’ club”, I’d go up to the club and they’d ask me a few questions first and then they might let me in and then a white friend would go up to the club and they’d let them straight in without asking any questions so I’ve experienced that, not just as a youngster growing up where we’ve got a split in our school, when you’ve got National Front outside but also, as a man, right, you know as Director or CEO of a company, I’ve still experienced that so, yeah, I feel quite passionate about it and I think what’s happened recently with George Floyd has obviously, you know, brought that to people’s attention but I experienced that as a youngster all my time, I used to get stopped, I used to run a Caribbean takeaway many years ago and every time I left, I used to get stopped by the Police, it became a running joke, I was like really? Are you going to keep stopping me? So, I think people don’t realise what’s going on and from what I’m, you know I’m not in that world at the moment, right, because I am living in suburbia and I’m not getting stopped but from speaking to my friends and colleagues, right, this still happens so, yeah, it’s something I’m really passionate about.
Elliot Moss
And it feels like to me there’s been a move from the kid who was 20, and I say this as a, I’m almost the same as you so I’m not going to patronise away at all but you know we thought we were old and adult but we were much younger, the kid who was 20 who wanted the BMW to the person now in real positions of authority and a number of them, and you are being asked to come and chair this company and chair that company and the Amoria Bond, a big company, these are not small little outfits, these are proper, significant businesses. The money isn’t going to drive you as much, of course you’ve now got the house, you’ve got you know you’re comfortable in that way, I imagine now you are able to focus on these issues in a much more deliberate way?
Gary Elden
Yeah, totally, I think your priorities change, right? We work with a charity at the moment, it’s about creating leaders for tomorrow, for example and the reason why we want leaders for tomorrow because if you at the top, you’ve got a voice, right, I’m talking to you know right because of my success, people want me to become advisors or chairman because of what I’ve achieved so if I am in a position of power, you can do things and I’m now at that stage where your priorities are about your wellbeing, you know I became a vegan three years ago because I’m worrying about different things, now if you’d spoke to me in my 20s and 30s about being a vegan and the environment and everything else, I’d have said ‘yeah, whatever’ so, when you have children, you become wiser, you mature, you start to have different priorities and thankfully I am financially secure and now it gives me time to do things that I want to do, not what I have to do, and when you are in a corporate world and I’ve been a corporate world for a while, sometimes you are like ‘oh my gosh, I have to play the game’, I’m out of the game now and I can just be myself 100% and I think I love that idea of having that freedom to do that. I’m in a fortunate position and not many people are so, you know, that’s why you strive to be successful so you can do things like that.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with my great guest today, it’s Gary Elden, plus we’ll be playing a track from Joe Henderson, that’s coming up in just a moment here on Jazz FM.
Gary Elden is with me just for a few minutes. Gary, we’ve talked about the fact that you’ve reached this point in your career where you are obviously now being asked to be an advisor and you are Chairperson of this interesting business called Recbid, you are involved also as a Chair of Amoria Bond, you are involved with Aleto Foundation. As you look at these things, do you find your mind is much clearer, much more it’s easier to see what needs to be done because you’ve got a bit of distance and if so, what are the one or two things that are generally always there that are issues that need to be fixed or visions that need to be realised?
Gary Elden
I wish I could say yes, and I’m smirking because I’m in my office now and I’m actually working on a project about rolling out a blockchain cryptocurrency brokerage company so, I spent the last eighteen months when I stepped down from SThree just you know, finding yourself, spending time with your kids and basically just doing a lot of things, right, trying to help out and then I realised I want to get my teeth into something so, the idea of sitting back and relaxing in the garden hasn’t quite happened, my wife just said, “Look, can you just make yourself busy, please, right, otherwise you’re driving me mad” but I was enjoying picking the kids up from school, watching them play sport but when you are in lockdown, right, you are in a different situation so, I do keep myself busy to be honest, I am building a recruitment platform, a training platform, a company… Bidmology, so it’s to help everyone in recruitment should gain access to training. I’m building a marketing platform at the moment with my business partner and, as I said, I’m involved in some cryptocurrency blockchain based technology as well. So, I’m still keeping myself busy but I’m not, it’s not a full-time job.
Elliot Moss
And is it a different stress? I mean, do you… are you able to think more clearly with all the experience that you’ve got and are you able to be a bit more relaxed because, and maybe this is wrong, but the financial imperative is less powerful?
Gary Elden
Yeah, but it’s not about the money anymore, right, it’s about proving to yourself that you can do other things, you know, you’ve spent 30 years in an environment where you’ve been really successful and are you a one trick pony, right? That sometimes you ask yourself, are you a one trick pony? And maybe I am, who knows. I have to be stimulated and I think I’m in a stage in my journey where, you’re right, it’s not about the money, it’s more about pushing yourself and achieving and I still wake up 4.00 o’clock, 5.00 o’clock in the morning and thinking of ideas. I still wake up going, right, what can we do? I still sometimes put those hours in but it’s because I want to now, right, not because I have to and that’s different and it’s a different type of stress but I think you always want to push yourself to succeed and I think the next phase of my journey for the next ten years is to push myself into something that I want to do not because I have to do it and that’s the difference, that’s what I love more.
Elliot Moss
Enjoy the next ten years, enjoy the next twenty, enjoy the rest of your life, Gary. It’s been lovely talking to you.
Gary Elden
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
And I hope you achieve all those things. I’m sure you’re not a one trick pony but if you are, it was a pretty good trick so who cares. Just before I let you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Gary Elden
It’s Everybody Loves the Sunshine by Roy Ayers and the reason why I chose this song is, when I was 17, we had this youth leader that looked after kids from certain backgrounds, our background, and took us to an island called Spetses in Greece for three weeks, right, that’s 20 of us in Greece, let loose and every evening we’d come back to the villa we were staying in and he would be playing us Roy Ayers and I thought, who’s Roy Ayers? And he’d play the Roy Ayers album live, he’s play Everybody Loves the Sunshine, Poo Poo La La etcetera, etcetera.
Elliot Moss
Poo Poo La La…
Gary Elden
Yeah, yeah, and it just, from that moment, those memories were great and so, Roy Ayers is that’s when I got introduced to Roy Ayers when I was 17 and then when I met my wife, my second wife I should say, when the sun was out, we would be in a car, the roof down and we’d always be playing Everybody Loves the Sunshine.
Elliot Moss
That was Roy Ayers with Everybody Loves the Sunshine, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Gary Elden. He said the money gives you choices, that’s why he was so focussed on making it based on where he had been brought up. “I realised I had to work harder”, he said of how he has done so well. Very simple mantra. He’s brilliant at reading situations, such an important skill for anybody in business in regard to the way that people are behaving. And finally, as he looks towards the next ten years of his life and what he’s going to be doing, he’s asking himself the question which many successful people do, “Is he a one trick pony?” I’m sure he’s not. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers. Have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You will find hundreds of more guests available to listen to in our archive, just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.