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." Helen didn't have that luxury. First year: $350K revenue, $50K profit. But then 2023 hit. The market turned. She lost $200K. She'd taken investment. Signed a JV with a well-known player in the industry. The advice she got? "Work harder. Do more calls." But you can't bring UK-style metrics into Southeast Asia and expect them to land. "In Southeast Asia, trust is built off relationships. In the West, it's built off performance." So Helen stripped it back. Looked at what the big tech companies were actually doing. Amazon. Google. The major media agencies. They were all offshoring. Quietly. She decided to do it loudly. Today: - Three-person team - $600K revenue - Phone off at 7 pm - Present mother and wife - Building offshore hubs for ad tech clients across Southeast Asia This week on The RAG Podcast, Helen breaks down exactly how she built it. We cover: - Why she started in the middle of a pandemic with a seriously ill husband - How she turned $350K Year 1 into a $200K loss in Year 3 - Why the JV investment model failed her (and what she learned) - The Southeast Asia + Philippines combination that changed everything - How she's consulting clients OUT of hiring decisions (and still growing revenue) - Why "surviving is thriving" when you're a working parent building a business This isn't about grinding harder or scaling to 50 headcount. This is about building a recruitment business that fits your life. Not the other way around. "Surviving is thriving. If you've got it together at the end of the week, you're good. If your kids like you, you're good. If you've got a couple of clients and you can invoice them, you're good." If you want to understand how to build profitably without sacrificing everything else, this episode is essential. __________________________________________ 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...
