The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast

Dom Khedun landed in Sydney in 2007 on a sponsored visa with Michael Page. Ten months later he moved companies, and then the financial crisis arrived. He was made redundant and worried he'd have to go back home.

Years later he was building a legal team inside another agency when the MD called him out at a breakfast meeting in front of the whole business, 35 to 40 people.

After that day, Dom went to the bank and applied to remortgage his apartment. When the money came through, he resigned and started Mizzen Search.

Mizzen started...

Mike Williams was handed a cold desk in a rural US town and told to place accountants. There weren't any. So he placed an engineer instead, and kept going, until his boss's boss rang to tell him the whole thing was going to fail and he'd be fired when it did.

He became Rookie of the Year and made President's Club all 5 years. Then he quit, moved from Massachusetts to Charlotte, North Carolina, and billed over $900,000 in his first year on his own, from a spare room in his house.

4 years on, Carnegie Search is...

Three years ago Jordan Shlosberg walked up to me at an expo and asked to sponsor this show. I said no. I'd had enough of CRM companies.

Two years on from our first conversation in a Sheffield hotel, Atlas is in the multiple thousands of users, with 60 staff spread across Greece, Bosnia, Italy, India, Colombia and Liverpool. He still won't disclose revenue. He's aiming at Vincere and Loxo first, then Bullhorn.

Last November on this podcast he predicted a renaissance for agency recruiters and told internal talent teams they had a lot to worry about...

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 th...

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, wi...

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...

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...

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 g...

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...

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. S...

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 lo...

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 see...

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.

Emily Angeloni co-founded WOW Recruitment in Sydney at 22. No salary for six months. Just her laptop, working from a building set for demolition. Nine years later: a team of 18 across every major Australian state, New Zealand, and the United States. One of the most respected boutique sales and marketing agencies in the country.

The year she became a mother, her co-founder told her he was leaving. She came back from maternity leave to a business that had saved every problem for her return, hit a serious road block, and stood in a strategy offsite thinking...

Charlie Saffro started CS Recruiting by accident. Pregnant with her third child, out of a job overnight, doing free matchmaking from the school carpool line in Chicago. Her first placement fee was $1,200 with a year-long guarantee.

Sixteen years later, she had built a $5 million logistics and supply chain recruitment firm with 48 employees at its peak. Inc. Best Workplaces honouree. TEDx speaker. A brand built entirely on the idea that business is personal.

Then the market turned. Three brutal years, 2022 to 2024, forced her to halve the team. On Thanksgiving 2024, she took a walk with her husband...

Blaine Daws started in data centres in 2008 with a stack of papers and a wired phone. By 25, he was billing £475k a year as a solo 360 recruiter. At a family Christmas party in December 2019, he met Karl Chatterjee, a man who had already sold two recruitment businesses for multi-millions. Karl said: "Why are you going to line someone else's pockets?" Four weeks later, WNTD was incorporated. Two weeks after that, the world went into lockdown.

Like so many other founders back then, he dropped his niche, went after every market he could find, and started to make m...

Andy Strong spent 10 years in retail selling mobile phones. Then 17 years building the biggest delivery team at a SaaS recruitment firm in Dorset. He became one of four divisional directors. His team placed 82% of the company's US hires from Poole. He drove 400% growth in North American placements.

And then he went to therapy.

Eight sessions later, he ended an eight-year relationship, resigned from the only recruitment business he had ever known, and started a company from a shed at the bottom of his garden.

Strong Search launched with no brand, no pipeline, and...

Jon Woolley spent nearly a decade at Vantage Consulting. He opened their US arm, built a team of eight, and scaled it to $1.6 million. Then, three weeks before his third child was born, he walked away.

No team. No clients. No pipeline. Just £30,000 in savings and a niche most recruiters have never heard of: industrial automation. The people who programme the machines that make the stuff, from pharmaceuticals to Amazon warehouses. Average fees of $20,000 to $22,000 a placement.

Year one at Candid Talent he billed £112,000. Year two, $500,000. And then Q1 of year three: over $350,000 in a si...

This is not a typical RAG episode.

Christian Mather is not a recruiter. He has never filled a role, run a desk, or managed a team. He is a wealth planner. And since niching into recruitment founders about two and a half years ago, he has become one of the most in-demand advisors in the industry.

Since January alone, he has had over 100 enquiries and spoken to 60 founders about the same thing: how to turn business success into personal financial freedom. Not through selling the business. Not through scaling to 50 heads. Through understanding one number.<...

David Bloxham first appeared on The RAG Podcast in March 2020. That episode was recorded the week before the world went into lockdown. He had 130 staff, a fresh MBO behind him, and a business that was growing.

Six years later, he is back. Same seat. Very different business.

In the years since, David has navigated a pandemic, a post-COVID hiring boom, a brutal tech slump, and the rise of AI. Each time, his response was the same: strip the model apart and rebuild it stronger.

GCS is now 100 people across 10 global offices, generating over 12...

Ben Richardson & Mike Bott: Why LHi Group appointed two CEOs

For 25 years, LHi Group had one CEO.

Founder Tom Glanfield built the business from scratch with Jim Denning taking over in 2020 and leading it it through COVID.

A global recruitment group, LHi has

5 brands.

300 people.

9Offices across the US and Europe

Ben Richardson and Mike Bott had both spent their careers inside LHi.

Both joined as entry level recruiters

Both built desks, teams and international offices from the ground up.

Lucy Robinson: Fired from her job, now running a £650k global search firm

Lucy Robinson runs LCR International, a global executive search firm specialising in fresh produce across six continents.

Today, the business is doing around £650k in revenue, but the story really started in December 2019 when Lucy was fired from her job for not hitting targets.

At the time, she had no savings, a three-year-old at home, and had just spent months trying to build a new desk for an agency she’d previously worked for.

Two weeks before she got...

In June 2023, Jory Humphreys and Sam Hope launched H People with limited capital but an insane energy to work hard.

Within 25 months, they'd built a $25 million business. $8.2 million in year one, $15.5 million revenue and $1 million in EBITDA in their second full year. They're now Australia's number two fastest-growing company.

But what makes their story different isn't the revenue. It's the model they built to get there.

Most founders choose between growth and sanity. Jory and Sam chose leverage.

From day one, they integrated an offshore team from the...

Emma Storey: How 2 part-time working mums billed £500K in their first 2 years!

Emma Storey never thought she'd still be in recruitment after having kids.

She'd never worked with a mum in the industry. Never had a role model who'd done it. The assumption was always the same: have a baby, and your recruitment career is over.

But after successfully juggling recruitment and becoming a mum inside the pandemic, in 2023 she launched her own agency with colleague Nicola Morse, a fellow working mum.

They launched Hera with the plan to both work p...

In 2022, Avetis Antaplyan was absolutely flying...

HIRECLOUT, his global recruiting firm with 30 employees across the US, Colombia, Armenia, and India was breaking record after record.

Two-time Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company, his best year ever and he felt everything was working.

Then when the market hit hard in 2023-2024 and every other founder was doing layoffs, Avetis refused to cut people.

Instead, he took most of his profits out of the business to keep his team employed through the downturn.

He genuinely believed loyalty would be returned. That when things...

Peter Kornberg: How a Non-Recruiter Built $1M+ Revenue 15 years in a row (with Just 6 People)

Peter Kornberg never worked a day as an agency recruiter.

He worked in Advertising and Marketing and became a Chief Digital Officer.

He ran a product design agency in New York City. Clients started asking for talent they couldn't afford to engage the agency for. So Peter said: "We can provide you some people."

That was 15 years ago.

What started as an ad hoc favour became UX Hires -a staffing and recruitment firm that's...

At 21 years old, Alex Hashash was managing 15 people and 18,000 hours of temporary nurses every single week.

By his early thirties, he had 120 staff. Most of them offshore.

But it didn't start with a playbook. It started with 3 am phone calls, traumatic Blackberry ringtones, and weekend rotas that never seemed to end.

When his company decided to build an offshore capability, Alex didn't manage it from a distance.

He moved to India for eight months to build the team from scratch.

Night shifts. Culture clashes. Teaching people who'd never worked...

Logan Naidu runs Kernel Global-a multi-brand recruitment group with 200 people across London, Hong Kong, Charlotte and New York.

We first spoke in April 2021. He had 180 people. The market was about to explode.

2021: £7 million EBITDA. 2022: £10 million EBITDA. Headcount doubled to 300.

Then March 2023 hit. Logan closed a second PE deal. Paid out over £30 million to staff. The biggest individual payout? Multiple millions.

One month later, he started making cuts.

"I remember talking to my father-in-law saying I'm really embarrassed by this. I've just taken on a load of money from new inv...

Ryan Gorman: How He Built £250k in Fees Without Making a Single Cold Call

Ryan Gorman launched Lofthouse Group in January 2021 with a newborn daughter at home.

His wife asked him one question: "What sort of person do you want Isla seeing? Do you want her growing up seeing work as something you love, or just something you do to earn money?"

Year one, solo, working part-time around his newborn: £93k invoiced. £60k profit. Home for every bath time.

"Everything has been warm. I've never had to sit down and just col...

Stuart Mitchell: How he built $3M in 3 years (then realised he hated his own job)

Stuart Mitchell launched Hampton North in September 2022.

$1.6 million year one. $2.5 million year two. On track for $3 million plus in year three.

Now 10 staff and projects $1m profit for next year.

I interviewed him on the show in the middle of 2023, and things were flying.

But over the following 18 months, he nearly broke.

His dad died. His wife fell pregnant. And the VP he'd promised her-the guy who was supposed to take the...

Pete Watson: 22 years as a solo Rec2Rec in Australia (and why he'd never do it again)

Pete Watson is the longest-serving boots-on-the-ground Rec2Rec in Australia.

22 years running Mint R2R. Thousands of placements. A recognisable name across the entire Australian recruitment market.

But 18 months ago, he was at the gym when he asked himself one question:

"Would I do it all again?"

His answer was immediate: "A fast no."

Not because he failed. But because of what success actually cost him.

"Even though...

Michael Green: How he made $700K in year one (after not billing for 6 years)

Michael Green spent six years running teams of 100+ recruiters.

Building offices. Managing people. Zero placements.

When he launched Unico in April 2024, he had to go back to basics.

"I had to do role plays to myself. I hadn't qualified a candidate in six years."

Day one was brutal. Just him, his house and a dog.

But Michael had...

Jen Gaster: How she sold her business to her team (and kept the tax bill at zero)

Jen Gaster launched HR Heads in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis with a six-month-old baby and zero income security.

17 years later, she runs three brands, 22 people, and just completed an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) transaction.

Tax-free exit, 5-year payout. The employees own the business when the mortgage is paid off.

One week after they completed the deal, Rachel Reeves changed the rules.

EOT payments are now taxable for anyone doing...

Helen Buchan-Connor on why she's building offshore teams and hitting $600K revenue

"All I wanted to do was make £100,000. That's it"

Helen Buchan Connor started her recruitment business in September 2020.

Her husband had just been diagnosed with lymphoma.

COVID had locked down Singapore a week earlier.

She was working from her lift lobby because there was no space for an office.

Most people would've waited for a "better time."

Emily Van Eyssen on why she's firing staff and replacing them with AI

"I automated someone's entire job out of my business."

"They're gone. That role doesn't exist anymore."

Emily Van Eyssen isn't talking about the future.

She's talking about last month.

She had no recruitment experience when she started.

Zero training. Never worked for an agency. Stumbled into it during the pandemic through a government contract she still doesn't understand why she won.

Most people would have crashed and burned.

Emily placed 200...

Mark Thomas walked away from a six-figure salary without a concrete plan.

Three co-founders. One investment. Strict 9-month covenants.

Then came March: dozens of pitches, everyone loved the vision, but almost no one was buying. 

The retained leadership search model wasn't landing. They started questioning everything.

One week later, four retained searches landed. Revenue hasn't stopped climbing since.

12 months in: £1M+ revenue, 75% retained work, and a business model nobody else in insurance recruitment is executing at this level.

In this episode:

Chris & Gemma built a 7-figure agency by saying NO to 90% of clients

Chris walked into a client meeting. Got the job brief. Then said "No way."

The client looked at him like he was insane.

"You haven't shown me the office. I don't know your team. I can't work on this job."

She'd just told him they were more expensive than every other agency.

He didn't care.

This is how Chris and Gemma built Mixos - a husband-and-wife recruitment agency that operates completely backwards.

They...

Mick Donaghy: How he built $1.4M from $7K (after his partnership collapsed)

Mick Donaghy's mother died when he was in his twenties.

Life's too short became his operating system.

He left Ireland. Moved to New Zealand. Became a top-billing recruiter! 

A few years later, he got his shot at ownership. A partnership to launch an Australian business for the agency he worked. 

For many reasons, this partnership didn’t work, so Mick paid back his business partner and walked away with $7,000 in his bank account.

No business. No p...

Jordan Shlosberg: Why agency recruiters will win (and internal TA won't)

Jordan Shlosberg runs Atlas CRM—the fastest-growing, AI-native recruitment platform in the world.

Thousands of recruiters use his technology every day. Real-time data. Real billings. Real problems being solved.

If anyone knows what's actually working with AI in recruitment, it's him.

"Internal talent teams have a lot to worry about. Agency recruiters? There's a renaissance coming."

Here's why:

Agency recruiters have years of candidate conversations. Reference calls. Market knowledge built through relationships. The ability to cut th...

Ricky Burns: How to build £1.1M profit in year one (after losing it all at 32)

Ricky Burns made incredible money at 28

Then he drank it all away.

Partied it into oblivion and got hit with a massive VAT bill he couldn't pay.

Most people never recover from that kind of failure, but at 32, he decided to shut the business down and start again.

He went back into employment for 11 years.

Ran European divisions. Watched. Learned. Took notes on what actually works.

Then in September 2024 he lau...