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: Why he nearly pivoted to golf (and why recruitment pays better) The £150k-£350k leadership gap nobody was serving properly Turning down every role under £120k to protect the brand Building the "Real Madrid of recruiters" with 10-15 elite billers How retained search gives you three-month revenue visibility The profit share model that creates a partnership without equity This isn't a scale-to-50-people story. This is about building a boutique firm where being the worst recruiter in the room means you've hired brilliantly. For recruitment founders who want quality over quantity and believe 10 great people beats 50 average ones. __________________________________________ 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. 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...
