My Biggest Mistake: Alan Rundle, chairman of Rundle Brownswood, the search and selection he founded in the 1980s, says he had a lot to learn despite his earlier work with Cadbury Schweppes, Procter & Gamble, L'Oreal and Estee Lauder

MY BIG mistake was in being naive. Had I not ingenuously believed this would be an easy business to set up, I doubt now, some six years on, that I would have taken the plunge.

No amount of training, even at a leading European business school, really equips you to be fully competent to deal with all the marketing, financial and operational mistakes that are almost inevitable in the early days.

Just as in the cosmetics industry, behind the glitz and glamour is a serious and very competitive business. So it is with the headhunting world of search and selection.

Forget the trips and top restaurants - the working day is too busy - and many of your evenings are spent on the telephone with clients and candidates.

My corporate career had equipped me to understand a variety of cultures: British, French, American. All I needed, I thought, was to 'set up stall' and the assignments, revenue and profit would flow in. How wrong I was.

After the first flush of success, recession stopped the flow like a frozen tap in winter. Survival was going to depend on doing the right things, doing them right and making as few mistakes as possible. And I made plenty.

On one occasion a client, desperate to attract a manufacturing director, begged me to postpone my invoice three months, to the start of his financial year. By the time the financial year arrived he was in liquidation.

Another client, a multinational company, asked me to find a marketing manager and a potential sales director but wanted to pay on a contingency basis. After two months' work, the parent company decided to reorganise and run the business from Paris. Again wasted time and effort for no return.

Another mistake was in underestimating the subtleties required in this business of attracting and selecting people, particularly where there are shifting agendas. What the managing director of a division requires in a financial director may be quite different from the view of corporate headquarters.

If I have a lesson for any budding entrepreneur, it would be certainly to take lessons from the management gurus and adapt them. So, yes, an obsession with the customer is important. So are speed, simplicity, self-confidence and, of course, flexibility.

I thought it would be easy to sell 'small is beautiful' but people often underestimate the independent organisation, believing it to be short on resources. The advantages of the 'small' operator are particularly valid in this business, where you need to ensure that your consultant has a wide field in which to operate and a limited number of clients. If the consultant is working on a great number of assignments, are you going to get the best candidate available - especially if the consultant is working on similar assignments at the same time for a competitor?

Despite the early mistakes, this business has survived the recession by being customer and quality obsessed. My biggest mistake was to believe it could all be done easily and quickly.

This is not a business that can be rushed. Finding outstanding individuals requires enormous patience, a degree of humility, the ability to listen and question, but also sensitivity and tenacity.

(Photograph omitted)