The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast

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 mortg...

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'...

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 gov...

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 climbi...

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 Mi...

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,...

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...

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 E...

Matt Fox achieved a life-changing exit and walked away in 90 days! Matt Fox was 72 hours from a multi-seven-figure exit when COVID killed the deal. What followed: a complete breakdown, 2 years of therapy, and a total rebuild. But he did it differently the second time. Cut from 30 stressed employees to 10 people he loved. Stripped costs. Turned it into a cash machine. By 40, he'd cleared his mortga...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Nick Hoadley, founder of Insurance Search, a specialist executive search practice in the global insurance market. Nick quit a successful broking career nine years ago and launched a recruitment business with zero agency experience. Since then, he has shifted from 100% contingent to 100% retained, built a lean team, and maxed out a seven-figure practice w...

This week, on episode 1 of season 9 of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Samm Green, co-founder of Few & Far, a UK-based product management recruitment business with 22 people and a powerful story of resilience. Samm was the very first guest I ever recorded on The RAG back in 2019, and at that time, he had big plans to scale to 40 staff and eventually exit. While some of that came true, the road...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I am revisiting my episode with Anthony Webster, Managing Director of DVF Recruitment and board member at Career Legal. Anthony and I go way back - we worked together for five years and even planned to launch Hoxo together before his journey took a different turn. At that point, Anthony made a life-changing decision: he came out as gay after years of hiding his true s...

This week on The RAG Podcast, we are revisiting my episode with Laura Clark, CEO of OA Group. Laura’s journey is one of the most unique I’ve ever shared on the show. She grew up watching her mum build Osborne Appointments (now OA Group), joined the business at 19, and earlier this year bought it from her mother to take over as CEO. We talk about: What it was like growing up with an entrepreneurial...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I’m revisiting my episode with Ben Wallin and Dan Cox, founders of Edison Smart. When I spoke to them in August 2022, they’d already hit £1.7m revenue and built a team of nearly 20 in just over a year. One year later, they scaled to 31 employees, expanded into the US, put boots on the ground in Dubai, and built a structure that no longer relies on their own billing. W...

This week on The RAG Podcast, we are revisiting Episode 1 from Season 7 with Kevin Frater, Director at Stable10 and a recruitment leader with over 18 years of experience across Allegis and Frank Group. Kevin built his reputation as a fixer, turning underperforming offices into high-performing teams. Most notably, he grew a team in Germany from 12 to 180 recruiters over six years, creating one of t...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I’m revisiting my episode with Joe Jani, founder and CEO of Metric Search, one of the fastest growing recruitment firms in the world. Joe launched Metric in 2019 and in just six years has scaled to 90 heads across the US and UK. At only 31 years old, he’s already closed a private equity deal, taking seven figures off the table while setting the business on course for...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I’m revisiting my chat with Jordan Shlosberg, founder of Atlas, the first AI-first CRM built for the recruitment market. Jordan’s no stranger to scale. Before Atlas, he founded Prosapien, growing it to $40 million in revenue in just five years before exiting. He’s now bringing the same disruptive approach to recruitment technology. We talk about: How Atlas uses AI to...

This week on The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Stuart Mitchell, the founder of Hampton North, a specialist cybersecurity search firm based in the US. Stuart launched his business, and in just nine months, he had already surpassed the seven-figure mark. There were no cold calls, no marketing spend, just LinkedIn and a consistent commitment to personal branding. We talk about: How he’s built a brand th...

Chris Redmond is back on The RAG for the third time and his story keeps getting better. When I first interviewed Chris in 2019, he’d just gone fully remote and was chasing a digital nomad lifestyle with no fixed office. At the time, I thought he was mad. Then COVID hit, and while the rest of the industry scrambled, Chris and his team were already built for the new world. Fast forward to now, Redho...

What I’ve learned from 40 recruitment founder interviews in a year This week’s episode of The RAG is a little different - it’s just me After 40 in-person interviews across the UK, Dubai and Sydney, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned in season 8 and what’s next for the show. Here’s 3 key learnings that I cover in this solo episode: Why headcount is no longer the main measure...

Would you walk away from recurring revenue to chase a bigger opportunity overseas? On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Jamie Trevett, founder of Just Construction. Jamie was last on the show in 2022 when his UK construction recruitment firm had 25 staff and a growing contract book. Fast forward to today and Jamie has completely transformed the business. He shut down the contra...

What’s the point in building a business if you lose everything at home? On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Matt Tyson, founder of Knockout Consulting and former owner of two successful payroll companies. Matt has achieved what many founders dream of—two life-changing exits in 15 years. But behind the success was a personal cost he never expected. In his pursuit of business gr...

Why most recruitment businesses fail to attract top-tier leadership talent On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Dan Grim, founder of Inside Recruitment. With 25 years in the industry and two previous equity partnerships under his belt, Dan now runs a solo rec-to-rec firm helping recruitment businesses hire the kind of leadership talent that drives real scale. In this episode, D...

Most recruitment founders try to do it all and burn out in the process. On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Martin Smith, founder of Talent Group, who shares how he's structured his business to double down on what he's best at and handed over the rest. Martin runs TalentDrive and Talent Finance, with a 12-person team across the UK. In this episode, we talk about: His journey f...

What happens when your 15-person agency runs out of cash and you have to start over from scratch? On this week's episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by Philippa Smith, founder of Silver Swan Recruitment, a luxury staffing agency for ultra-high net worth individuals. After growing her team to 15, COVID and poor cash flow caught up with her. In August 2024, she made the entire team redundant and...