My Business Journey - 5 Years Later

My name is Paul Evans, and I am the Managing Director of an award-winning and accredited temporary staffing agency specializing in event and festival staffing. 

 

5 Years ago, I stepped into the business owner world, today, I stand here proud with opening up about my 5 key lessons learnt. 

 

1. Accepting it is OK to fail, on the provisor you learn from it and move forward, one of Steven Bartlett quotes is ‘fail forward’ 

2. Be around positive people and rule out negative people 

3. Invest in personal learning and development and continue to grow. 

4. It is okey not to be perfect, but there is perfect in practise. 

5. Think towards the future and commit to my own personal goals. 

 

But how did it all begin? I have always worked in hospitality from a very young age. I even spent some time as a flight attendant before moving to Leeds and joining Blue Arrow. It was there that I discovered my true calling as a Recruitment business owner. The training and development programs at Blue Arrow were invaluable to my future successes. However, I wanted to pursue my own vision, so I made the difficult decision to leave and founded CP Staffing. 

 

Starting a business is not easy. Even with the strategies I learned at Blue Arrow, I no longer had the support of a large corporation filled with industry experts. I had to familiarize myself with everything—legislation, employment law, market analysis, candidate culture, payroll, invoicing, running costs, staff management—the list goes on! 

 

Then, almost immediately, the unthinkable happened: COVID-19. The pandemic halted my plans before I even got started. What did I do? I quickly adapted, retrained, stocked up on deep cleaning equipment, and set out to provide essential cleaning services to help keep the economy running and the business afloat. 

 

Just as we were starting to recover from COVID, I had the pleasure of working with three industry experts on my team. Together, we aimed to deliver a unique, comprehensive service to our clients, from singular event staffing to high-volume hiring. However, we faced some challenges along the way. 

 

Our first Irish festival experience was quite interesting! We sent 30 staff members to Ireland for litter picking at Ireland's largest festival, Electric Picnic. Unfortunately, the weather had a different mind! Our staff were camping in thick, muddy water, making it challenging and impossible for them to move or sleep. Despite the conditions, they still got the job done. So, Pippa and I jumped on a plane, gathered our team, and took them to a hostel in Dublin for the night. With 15 pizzas, a hot tub, and a few beers, what could have been a disaster turned into one of our biggest success stories and a key reason why we retain our staff. Staff welfare remains our highest priority. Pippa keeps a permanent overnight bag in the trunk of her car so we can quickly manage staff welfare on-site whenever needed. 

 

Two years ago, I faced my greatest challenge in life so far. The detrimental effects COVID had on the hospitality and events industry and a significant increase in employment costs brought me to brink, where I had to take a step back and rethink what I truly wanted for business, myself and the team and starting over again, It was a truly emotional and a challenging time, but with the unwavering support of my team and clients, I decided to seize the opportunity to rebrand, which led to the birth of PJ Staffing Ltd. I streamlined our operations and retrained our team yet never compromised on service for clients and candidates and have grown exponentially from there. 

 

So here I am today—now a successful, multi award-winning, fully accredited recruitment partner with over 500 loyal staff members, serving some of the well-known and Awarding Winning Events & Festivals across the UK, take a look at some of our testimonials on our website; Client Journey - PJ Staffing - Leeds