Page 78 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

father had never benefited from his savings, and I wasn’t about to
repeat what I saw as his mistake. So I spent it.
Where previously I might have spent £500 on a watch, now I
spent £5000; I spent £13k on a Mercedes; I went from spending
£100 on a suit to £400; and in a restaurant the bill doubled as I
discovered better and better places.
I moved out of the flat in Kensington because the commute to
Reid Trevena’soffices in Farringdon was a bit of a schlep. A friend
was moving out of a two-bedroom flat nearer the office. Although
it was more in rent – £18 a week, I seem to remember – I sublet
the other room, which covered my share of the rent.
Although the new place was bigger and had a proper kitchen, I
still didn’t spend very much time there. After work I would go for
a drink with colleagues – I had recruited most of them so I had a
very good relationship with pretty much everyone in the company
– and then we’d go on to dinner, and then maybe to a club. I think
we were all earning so much money that we were naturally drifting
away from our old friends and towards each other. Some of the
people I met at Reid Trevena are still great friends today.
I said earlier that working at Reid Trevena changed my life, and
I really mean it. Working in such a dynamic environment inspired
and moulded me and gave me the confidence really to believe in
myself. I now knew about recruitment from the agency side and
the client side, and I was really laying the foundations for what
would come next.
I continued to deal with outside agencies as I couldn’t always
meet our demand for new members of staff, and I maintained good
relationships with them. When I went to visit their offices I
couldn’t help but be struck by the difference in atmosphere
between Reid Trevena and pretty much everywhere else. Their
offices were all so dull, with no buzz and no atmosphere, and it
got me thinking that, by and large, the recruitment industry was
seriously lacking in sales skills. If the team at Reid Trevena

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