James Waissel set a modest goal of £125K in year 1 of launching his own agency. Instead, he ended up billing over £300K in revenue in just seven months. On this week’s episode of The RAG Podcast, I’m joined by James Waissel, founder and CEO of Huntsman Consult, a construction and real estate recruitment business based in London. James started the business in June 2024, backed by a couple of key clients, and has built a small but growing team of three. In this conversation, he shares what it’s really like in the first nine months of running a recruitment agency: the wins, the lessons, and the pressure of getting it right. In this episode, we discuss: What helped him smash his first-year revenue goal in just seven months The financial, emotional, and operational challenges of early-stage growth How he’s building the foundation for long-term success If you're in the early stages of launching a recruitment business (or thinking about it), this is a must-listen. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to The RAG Podcast and James Waissel 02:31 James Waissel's journey into recruitment 10:02 The decision to start a business 16:54 Building a recruitment business from scratch 25:29 First steps and early successes 33:23 Achieving growth in a challenging market 34:27 Transitioning to a 360 role in recruitment 37:30 Leveraging LinkedIn for business growth 41:34 Exploring new business verticals 44:16 Building a partner network for growth 46:47 The role of AI in recruitment 49:44 The importance of quality over quantity 52:45 Understanding client needs for business success 56:35 Lessons learned from past experiences 01:00:06 The importance of financial management 01:03:36 Combining sales, AI, and brand for success __________________________________________ Episode Sponsor: Atlas Your memory isn’t perfect. So Atlas remembers everything for you. Atlas is an end-to-end recruitment platform built for the AI generation. It automates your admin so you can focus on the business tasks that matter. How many conversations do you have every day? With clients. Candidates. Your team. Service providers. Now how many of those conversations can you recall with 100% accuracy? How many hours a week do you spend making notes to try and retain as much as possible? And how much is still getting lost along the way? Traditional CRM systems weren’t built for the type of recruitment business you’re running right now. They were built to rely on the structured, tagged, categorised, and formal data you could feed it. Manual processes that needed you to input specific information, based on specific questions and answers. But what about all the other conversations you’re having every single day? Atlas isn’t an ATS or a CRM. It’s an Intelligent Business Platform that helps you perform 10X better than you could on your own. How? By removing all your low value tasks, acting as your perfect memory, and providing highly relevant recommendations to impact your performance. Learn more about the power of Atlas – and take advantage of the exclusive offer for The RAG listeners – by visiting https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ __________________________________________ Episode sponsor: Hoxo Recruiters: are you sitting on a goldmine of LinkedIn connections without knowing how to turn them into real opportunities? Most recruiters spend hours every day on cold outreach and endless scrolling, hoping for replies that never come. But what if LinkedIn could work for you instead? The Hoxo 7-Day LinkedIn Challenge is a...
