[Ep 30] Founder CEO of Growth&Co - How AI Is Reshaping Recruitment

Joseph Fitzgibbon, Founder and CEO of Growth and Company, has advised over 300 startups including Attio, Granola and Fyxer AI. We cover the brutal truth about why most CMO hires fail, how to ask the right questions when joining a new company, why "comparison is the thief of joy," and how AI is reshaping recruitment from the bottom up.🎙️ Master Your Mistakes - the podcast where founders, CEOs and creators break down what went wrong on the way up.00:00 — Intro: Joseph Fitzgibbon, founder of Growth and Company00:58 — From wanting to be a diplomat to consulting to Diageo03:00 — The first firing: Diageo, ADHD, and a dream job that wasn't06:51 — Six weeks before the wedding: getting put on a performance plan09:45 — Gardening leave, the Grays offer, and being thrown in the deep end13:18 — Why coming in knowing nothing actually worked in his favour16:33 — The Grays adjustment: from £50M strategy projects to £100 marketing costs19:57 — The lesson: stop guessing, just ask what your manager actually wants22:00 — Firing number two and joining Cluno Mechanic: a job radically different from advertised25:00 — The "bull in a china shop" mistake and over-correcting after Graze27:00 — Firing number three and the blessing in disguise that launched Growth and Company30:00 — Why most CMO hires fail and the broken state of recruitment32:20 — The first deals, the pandemic boom, and stumbling into recruitment35:00 — Building a 100% inbound recruitment business by controlling supply37:30 — How AI is decimating junior and middle-management roles40:30 — Final advice: comparison is the thief of joy43:00 — Joseph's favourite quotation