The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast

Hosted by Sean Anderson

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Aug 2026

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About the show

We’re having real and raw conversations with successful recruitment entrepreneurs about what is happening in their businesses right now and their plans to navigate market changes.

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60 recent

August 4, 20261 hr 16 min

Season 9 | Ep40 Max Learmonth: From Kitchen Table to £2.4m in Three Years

Max Learmonth was a professional rugby player who fell into recruitment by accident. He answered one trainee ad at Robert Half, started two weeks later, and never looked back. He climbed fast. £180,000 in his first year, £300,000 in his second, then off the tools rebuilding offices for a global giant. But somewhere in the grind, he lost himself. 'I'd become an arsehole,' he says. 'A typical Wolf of Wall Street recruitment dickhead. All I cared about was what my P&L looked like.' In May 2023, with a young daughter at home, he finally made the move and started again from his kitchen table. He turned down over £500,000 of investment to keep it 100% his. The plan was narrow on purpose: finance and accounting recruitment in the North West, and nothing else. Three years on, Forge Talent is a team of 16 that did £2.4 million in net fee income last year, entirely bootstrapped, built on a single stubborn belief: relationships, not transactions. On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Max breaks down exactly how he did it, the one KPI his whole business runs on each week, and why he thinks the average recruiter is finished while the specialist is only getting started. Max is not building the biggest recruitment business in the country. He is building the most dominant finance and accounting firm the North West has ever seen, and he already has a date on the exit. The difference is that he is doing it in the open, on his own terms, with a team of 16 who all know exactly what the 10-year goal is. If you have ever wondered whether going smaller and more specific is actually the smartest way to grow in the age of AI, this episode is evidence of that idea working right now. The Season 9 finale with Max Learmonth of Forge Talent is available now. ---------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take. So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about. Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you. This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas. So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead. Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more. ---------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

July 28, 20261 hr 16 min

Season 9 | Ep39 Scott Lechley: How a Solo Founder Went 100% Retained and Had His Best Year Yet

Scott Lechley started Lechley Associates with £10,000, a new baby at home, and six months of recruitment experience. Twenty four years later he is still the only person in the business, and he is on track for the best year he has ever had. Lechley Associates places the people who run the UK's biggest construction and infrastructure programmes. Framework directors, board level hires, the leaders behind HS2 scale rail and new hospital builds. Clients like Laing O'Rourke, Balfour Beatty and Hochtief. One retained search at a time. Six months into this year Scott had already cleared £300,000, with another £150,000 confirmed. He did it by doing something most recruiters never attempt: going fully retained, staying completely solo, and building an AI stack that means he now wakes up to a BD intelligence report, an automated outreach system, and a dashboard of ranked opportunities before most people have made their first coffee. He also did something almost no recruiter would admit to. This year he deliberately lost £40,000 in fees by talking a client out of a hire he did not believe in, and it does not cost him a minute of sleep. On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Scott breaks down exactly how the stack works, why 24 years of saying no to the wrong things is the real engine behind the numbers, and what a solo business actually makes possible when you stop trying to grow headcount. Scott is 54, having the best year of his career, and building a community for the next generation of construction professionals on the side. He is not slowing down. If you have ever wondered whether the pressure to build a team, hire more people and grow headcount is actually the only way, this episode is your answer. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take. So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about. Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you. This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas. So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead. Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

July 21, 20261 hr 9 min

Season 9 | Ep38 Louise Archer: From Zero Retained Revenue to £12M and 1,500 Recruiters Trained

Louise Archer spent more than twenty years as a contingent recruiter. She believed retained was probably smoke and mirrors, something dressed up to justify a bigger fee, and definitely not a pool she was ever going to swim in. Then her employer handed her a project called Most Money Soonest, with a brief to make the permanent division's revenue predictable enough to survive a major acquisition. She and one colleague started visiting clients, asking better questions, and converting them to retained one conversation at a time. The division went from five million pounds in annual revenue to twelve million, all of it retained, from a standing start of zero retained revenue. Then Louise walked away and set out to teach the rest of the industry how to do the same. Since founding Retrained Search in 2018, she has trained more than fifteen hundred recruiters across thirty-one countries. In December 2024 she completed a management buyout with her three directors, and the target now is three point four million pounds in revenue by the close of 2027. On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Louise breaks down how the retained conversation actually works, why exclusivity is the worst model of all, and why the industry is now splitting in two. Louise Archer did not just theorise about retained search. She built the proof of concept inside someone else's business, walked away, and has spent the last eight years showing thousands of recruiters around the world how to do the same. The numbers do not lie. The contingent model is under pressure, the industry is splitting into trusted advisors and commodity suppliers, and the window to move is still open. If you have ever looked at your fill rate and thought something feels wrong, this episode has the blueprint. ----------------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context. Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take. So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about. Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you. This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas. So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead. Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more. ----------------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

July 14, 20261 hr 21 min

Season 9 | Ep37 Tom Kelly: £10M NFI in Space Recruitment With 35 People

In 2022, EVONA had eighty staff, a Manchester office, a six-hundred-thousand-pound monthly cost base, and had just spent three hundred thousand pounds flying the whole company to Monaco. Tom Kelly calls it the moment four first-time founders lost perspective. What followed was one of the more honest rebuilds you will hear in recruitment. Contract team gone. Marketing team gone. Management team restructured. Tom moved to the US, took the wheel as sole decision-maker, and rebuilt around two metrics: twenty-five interviews per person per rolling four weeks, and a thirty-day close on every job. Three years on, EVONA is projecting ten million pounds net fee income this year. Three and a half million EBITDA. Thirty-five people. Two inbound client enquiries arrive every single day. Tom Kelly has been in the space sector since 2018. He has never taken outside investment. And last month was the largest in the company's history. On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Tom breaks down exactly how they got there. EVONA is now the dominant name in space sector recruitment. Ninety-five percent US clients. No cold outreach. No single client above nine percent of revenue. A thirty-two day average time to fill on roles that take competitors sixty. Tom Kelly is thirty-nine. He does not have a rigid three-year exit plan, but he does think there is a short window, and he does believe AGI changes the calculus for anyone thinking about an acquisition in this space. What he is building now is the version of the business that is worth something, the lean, high-output, brand-trusted version that took cutting fifty people to find. If you have ever wondered what it actually looks like to rebuild a recruitment business properly after it nearly breaks, this episode has the blueprint. Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply look for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

June 30, 20261 hr 14 min

Season 9 | Ep36 Mike Ames: £39M in Exits. The Life He Almost Missed Building It.

Mike Ames built his first recruitment business from scratch in 1989 with six months of industry experience and two partners. One of them died in a car accident after 18 months. He became MD. He had a breakdown. He rebuilt the business entirely around scalability, removed himself from the centre of it, and sold to a NYSE-listed company for £24 million at the age of 38. He thought that would feel like the finish line. It didn't. Within six months he was so low he could only manage one task a day. His therapist's parting advice: "Well, Michael, just get a job and you'll be fine." So he started again at 38, built a second business, sold that to Harvey Nash in 2017, and spent the next fifteen years working out why most recruitment founders never build something that truly works for them. "I'm having to live a lot of my life through my grandchildren because I miss my children. Don't be that guy, right?" This week on The RAG Podcast, Mike Ames breaks down the PLW model: what a Profit, Lifestyle, Wealth recruitment business actually looks like, why the 360 model is structurally flawed, and what the "magic number" is that every founder should know before they spend another year grinding for a goal they have never properly calculated. Mike Ames is not selling a formula for a nine-figure exit. He is arguing for something harder and rarer: a business that runs well, pays you properly, and leaves room for the life you are actually trying to live. If you have ever wondered whether the business you are building is working for you or the other way around, this episode is the one. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn. Most can't answer this: how much revenue is it actually bringing in? At Hoxo, we help recruitment founders build predictable revenue systems on LinkedIn. Our clients are turning LinkedIn into £100K-£300K in new billings within months. Fill in the form today at https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

June 23, 20261 hr 9 min

Season 9 | Ep35 Oliver Paull: £800K in 3 Years, Solo, From a London Flat

At 28, Oliver Paull runs Rec Gen completely alone from his flat in London. £209K in year one at an 81% profit margin. £298K in year two. Past £270K already this year. Close to £800K in under three years, with no staff, no office and no cold client outreach. It did not start that way. In his first recruitment role he was on target to bill £650K and leaving the office to have panic attacks three times a week. He quit to join his best mate Jez Heard's startup, Scale Genesis. Two years later, in a phone call just before Christmas, Jez closed the company down and told him to start his own. His dad, a jeweller, refused to lend him the £3,000 he asked for. "Do you believe enough in yourself to invest your own money to allow you to be successful?" He did. First deal: £27,000 in month one, closed standing at his breakfast bar. On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Ollie breaks down exactly how one recruiter, a podcast and an AI stack replaced an entire agency. Olly is not building headcount. He is building a brand, a system and a lifestyle, and the numbers say it is working. If you have ever wondered whether you could build a serious recruitment business completely alone, this episode has the blueprint. -------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply look for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ -------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

June 16, 20261 hr 12 min

Season 9 | Ep34 Mathew Gollop: 7 to 85 People, a Near Collapse, and the Free Idea That Paid Him Back

Mathew Gollop found Hong Kong in the back of Recruiter magazine. A glossy advert, a Chinese temple, a palm tree. He flew out, signed the contract, and landed in February 2001. The dot-com bubble had just burst. Then 9/11. Then SARS. Within a year the founder wanted out, and Mathew took the business over. It was the only way to keep his job. When the market finally turned, it turned hard. Connected Group went from 7 people to 85, across 5 offices inside 5 years. Then the financial crisis hit. £800k gone in little over a year. Six months of runway. An investor brought in, his shares diluted, offices closed one by one. “I had dumb confidence, I think, at that time.” On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Mathew Gollop breaks down the full arc. The scale, the near collapse, and the decision that rebuilt the business: giving recruitment away for free. Mathew is the first to admit he loved running 85 people across five offices, and wasn't actually good at it. If you have ever wondered whether purpose can survive a brutal market, this episode has the blueprint. ------------------------------------------ Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply look for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ ------------------------------------------ Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

June 9, 20261 hr 15 min

Season 9 | Ep33 Greg Fischer: $4.2M Revenue, $1.4M Net - Then He Left With Nothing but a Handshake

Greg Fischer did not plan to spend ten years in recruitment. He joined a solo healthcare practice in LA as employee number one, figured it would pay the bills, and planned to open a gym someday. He never left. Instead he built one of the most profitable staffing businesses in the US. $4.2 million in NFI, $1.4 million net profit. 38 people and a seven-figure equity stake with a $50 million exit on the horizon. But he walked away with nothing! The push toward the exit had quietly changed how the business ran. “I think we started looking at people as much more like resources and just a means to an end than actually people.” Greg had spent a decade building his career on the opposite belief. But the drift was so gradual he hadn’t noticed it. “I couldn’t be the person I wanted to be and be in a good, healthy working dynamic. It was going to be one or the other.” On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Greg Fischer, founder of Well Oiled Machine, tells the full story. The gym that cost him $150,000. The 10 years building someone else’s company. The walk away. And how he built a lean, profitable rec-to-rec from a mountain town in Colorado with no cold outbound and twenty clients in year one. Greg Fischer is not chasing the big exit this time. He is building something small, profitable, and built entirely around the person he decided he wanted to be. If you have ever wondered what it actually costs to chase a number, and whether the person collecting it is still someone you recognise, this episode has the blueprint. ---------- Episode Sponsor: Atlas Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply look for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow. Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts. At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

June 2, 20261 hr 11 min

Season 9 | Ep32 Paul Strouts: When Growing Headcount Is a Strategy and When It Is Just a Cost

Paul Strouts has run a business of four people. His first business, James Harvard, quickly grew beyond 100 people and sold to Hays for approximately £20 million at 32. He then spent a decade running Hays Life Sciences globally. Got headhunted to PE Backed Acacium and quickly made two strategic acquisitions. He now runs: 3 brands. 250 people. 12 countries. Contingent, SOW, RPO and Solutions revenue Predicted £45 million GM in 2026. £12 million EBITDA target. He has seen every stage of headcount growth. The good version and the expensive version. This week on The RAG Podcast, Paul Strouts gives the most direct answer we have had on this show about when headcount creates value and when it just creates cost. We cover: - The first question Paul asks any founder who wants to grow from 5 to 20 people - Why you need a minimum of £500K to grow headcount properly, and what happens if you don't have it - When headcount genuinely creates value in a recruitment business, and when it becomes a cost - The ceiling Paul believes exists in life sciences, and why going beyond it risks diluting everything you built - How Acacium Life Sciences grew from 160 people to a £45 million GM operation through two targeted acquisitions - Why Paul sold James Harvard to Hays three years ahead of plan, and whether it was the right call - What working inside a global corporate taught Paul that founding a business never could - Why AI will not kill specialist boutique recruitment, but will change the lower end of the market permanently Growing headcount is not the right move for every recruitment business. Paul is the first to say that. But if you are building a people-based business and you want to know exactly what it takes to do it properly, what it costs, when to bring in outside funding, and where the ceiling actually is, this is the episode. If you've ever wondered when headcount creates value and when it becomes a cost... this episode has the answer. ------------------------------------------------------------- __________________________________________ Episode Sponsor: Remote Recruitment Hiring shouldn’t be slow, stressful, or expensive. That’s why there’s Remote Recruitment — the smart hiring partner for modern businesses. They don’t just help you find great people. They help you access elite South African talent that’s ready to deliver. No PAYE. No NI. No bloated overheads. Just trained, remote professionals who integrate seamlessly into your team. Their process handles everything: sourcing, shortlisting, onboarding, and retention. Fully managed. Fully supported. Fully remote. And now, Remote Recruitments has entered a new chapter. From ops to admin, sales to strategy, we’re helping businesses scale smarter with people they trust, at a cost they can afford. Clients have seen: * Up to **60% productivity boosts** * **300% ROI** on BD roles * **30% faster completion** of operational tasks No overhead burden. No talent shortage panic. Just growth-focused hiring that makes business sense. Remote Recruitment is your flexible hiring solution for the modern era. **RAG Listeners:** Get 5% off your first hire + a free strategy session at www.remoterecruitment.co.uk/rag ------------------------------------------------------------- Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn. Spending thousands on Recruiter licences. Building connections. Posting content. Sending outreach. But here's the problem. AI has turned all of that into a commodity. The same templated messages. The same AI-written posts. The same automated outreach landing in the same inboxes. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning right now are not the ones shouting the loudest. They are the ones the market actually trusts. That's what we build at Hoxo. We help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche. A niche audience that knows you, respects you, and comes to you when they need someone in your market. We use AI to multiply your output. Faster content, smarter research, better engagement. But trust is the product, and trust cannot be automated. Our clients are turning their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Not through volume. By becoming the recruiter their market comes to first. To show you how it works, we've made a short training video exclusively for RAG listeners. In less than 10 minutes, you'll learn why most recruiters are getting zero measurable ROI from LinkedIn, how small, niche teams build the kind of trust that generates consistent inbound, and how to turn LinkedIn from a commodity channel into your most profitable one. Fill in the form today to see how this could become your agency's most profitable channel: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

May 26, 20261 hr 12 min

Season 9 | Ep31 Nathan O'Connell: Building a £1M R2R business on 4 x Retained Clients

Nathan O'Connell spent nine years as a British military officer. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. He finished on the withdrawal with 16 Air Assault Brigade and left the forces two weeks before his 30th birthday with no sales background, no LinkedIn profile, and no recruitment experience of any kind. He got into rec-to-rec by accident. Spotted an advert on his wife’s Instagram, joined R2R Global, and was given a cold desk focused on energy and renewable energy recruitment companies in London. Within 12 months he was their top biller in London. By year two, he was number one globally. Then he left. And instead of replicating what he’d done, he built the opposite. O’Connell Search Partners runs retained mandates with a maximum of four clients per geographic region. A team of four billing from Liverpool, covering London, New York, and Texas. In four months they invoiced £427,000. “I had nothing to sell at the time. So it was truly just a genuine interest.” This week on The RAG Podcast, Nathan breaks down how a military background shaped the most deliberate rec-to-rec model you will hear about this year. We cover: How a British military officer with zero sales experience became a global top biller in rec-to-rec within two years Why Nathan limits his client base to four per region and how he selects between startups, scale-ups, and executive search boutiques The retained model in a space where most rec-to-recs work contingently, and what happens when mandates stay open for months How he reconciles being anti-headcount whilst running a business that depends on agencies wanting to grow headcount Why he gives clients 12 to 18 months grace before considering headhunting from businesses he has placed into The Atlas CRM and Device integration that he says saves a week of work per retained search What he sees across dozens of agencies about which ones attract top talent and which ones struggle His plan to personally bill £1m across three international locations with one researcher Why he wants to be financially free by 45 and has no intention of building a big team Nathan O’Connell is not building a rec-to-rec empire. He is building a business designed around financial freedom, genuine relationships, and a small team where everyone bills. If you run a recruitment agency and you have ever wondered what a rec-to-rec headhunter actually thinks about your business, your culture, and your ability to attract talent, this episode will tell you. __________________________________________ Episode Sponsor: Remote Recruitment Hiring shouldn’t be slow, stressful, or expensive. That’s why there’s Remote Recruitment — the smart hiring partner for modern businesses. They don’t just help you find great people. They help you access elite South African talent that’s ready to deliver. No PAYE. No NI. No bloated overheads. Just trained, remote professionals who integrate seamlessly into your team. Their process handles everything: sourcing, shortlisting, onboarding, and retention. Fully managed. Fully supported. Fully remote. And now, Remote Recruitments has entered a new chapter. From ops to admin, sales to strategy, we’re helping businesses scale smarter with people they trust, at a cost they can afford. Clients have seen: * Up to **60% productivity boosts** * **300% ROI** on BD roles * **30% faster completion** of operational tasks No overhead burden. No talent shortage panic. Just growth-focused hiring that makes business sense. Remote Recruitment is your flexible hiring solution for the modern era. **RAG Listeners:** Get 5% off your first hire + a free strategy session at www.remoterecruitment.co.uk/rag __________________________________________ Episode Sponsor: Hoxo Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn. Spending thousands on Recruiter licences. Building connections. Posting content. Growing networks. But here’s the question almost no one can answer: How much revenue is LinkedIn actually bringing into your business? Most founders have thousands of connections but no clear process to turn that attention into cash. That’s the problem we solve. At Hoxo, we help recruitment founders build predictable revenue systems on LinkedIn, not just noise or vanity metrics. Our clients are turning LinkedIn into £100K–£300K in new billings within months, using their existing networks and a simple repeatable process. To show you how it works, we’ve created a short training video exclusively for RAG listeners. In less than 10 minutes, you’ll learn: - Why most recruiters are getting zero measurable ROI from LinkedIn - How small, niche teams are generating consistent inbound demand - The 3X Revenue System we use to turn LinkedIn into a predictable cash-generating channel So fill in the form today to see how this system could transform LinkedIn into your agency’s most profitable channel: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0