The RAG Podcast - Recruitment Agency Growth Podcast

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 the move and started again from his kitchen table. He turned down over £500,000 of investment to keep it 100% his. The plan was narrow on purpose: finance and accounting recruitment in the North West, and nothing else.
Three years on, Forge Talent is a team of 16 that did £2.4 million in net fee income last year, entirely bootstrapped, built on a single stubborn belief: relationships, not transactions.
On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Max breaks down exactly how he did it, the one KPI his whole business runs on each week, and why he thinks the average recruiter is finished while the specialist is only getting started.
Max is not building the biggest recruitment business in the country. He is building the most dominant finance and accounting firm the North West has ever seen, and he already has a date on the exit.
The difference is that he is doing it in the open, on his own terms, with a team of 16 who all know exactly what the 10-year goal is.
If you have ever wondered whether going smaller and more specific is actually the smartest way to grow in the age of AI, this episode is evidence of that idea working right now.
The Season 9 finale with Max Learmonth of Forge Talent is available now.
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Episode Sponsor: Atlas
Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context.
Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take.
So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about.
Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you.
This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas.
So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead.
Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more.
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Episode Sponsor: Hoxo
Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts.
At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

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, with another £150,000 confirmed. He did it by doing something most recruiters never attempt: going fully retained, staying completely solo, and building an AI stack that means he now wakes up to a BD intelligence report, an automated outreach system, and a dashboard of ranked opportunities before most people have made their first coffee.
He also did something almost no recruiter would admit to. This year he deliberately lost £40,000 in fees by talking a client out of a hire he did not believe in, and it does not cost him a minute of sleep.
On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Scott breaks down exactly how the stack works, why 24 years of saying no to the wrong things is the real engine behind the numbers, and what a solo business actually makes possible when you stop trying to grow headcount.
Scott is 54, having the best year of his career, and building a community for the next generation of construction professionals on the side. He is not slowing down.
If you have ever wondered whether the pressure to build a team, hire more people and grow headcount is actually the only way, this episode is your answer.
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Episode Sponsor: Atlas
Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context.
Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take.
So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about.
Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you.
This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas.
So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead.
Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Episode Sponsor: Hoxo
Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts.
At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

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 revenue to twelve million, all of it retained, from a standing start of zero retained revenue. Then Louise walked away and set out to teach the rest of the industry how to do the same.
Since founding Retrained Search in 2018, she has trained more than fifteen hundred recruiters across thirty-one countries. In December 2024 she completed a management buyout with her three directors, and the target now is three point four million pounds in revenue by the close of 2027.
On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Louise breaks down how the retained conversation actually works, why exclusivity is the worst model of all, and why the industry is now splitting in two.
Louise Archer did not just theorise about retained search. She built the proof of concept inside someone else's business, walked away, and has spent the last eight years showing thousands of recruiters around the world how to do the same.
The numbers do not lie. The contingent model is under pressure, the industry is splitting into trusted advisors and commodity suppliers, and the window to move is still open.
If you have ever looked at your fill rate and thought something feels wrong, this episode has the blueprint.

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Episode Sponsor: Atlas
Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, a CRM that actually understands context.
Atlas captures everything you say, hear, read and write. Every interview, every client call, every LinkedIn message, email and WhatsApp, automatically. Not because you typed it up, but because Atlas was listening. Then it goes one step further and tells you the next action to take.
So when you need to fill a role, People Search ranks your best candidates and tells you why, no digging required. That same memory turns your BD into a shortlist of exactly who to chase and why, so you win more clients. And when you want to see your pipeline, you just speak to your dashboards and Atlas builds the view for you in real time, tracking only what you care about.
Whether you place permanent or contract, Atlas covers both. Its Contract Suite means you never chase a timesheet again, with live margin visibility across every placement. And with its new MCP and API, Atlas plugs straight into your LLMs and the rest of your stack, so the low-value admin that keeps you from billing gets done for you.
This is not theory. Atlas customers are seeing 50% higher candidate response rates, a 35% increase in new clients won, 15+ hours saved every week, and monthly billings jumping by 85%. Some agencies are hitting 130% of their annual revenue target after building their business around Atlas.
So if you're thinking you need to bolt AI onto your CRM, don't bother. Take a look at Atlas instead.
Head to https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/ to find out more.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Episode Sponsor: Hoxo
Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts.
At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

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, EVONA is projecting ten million pounds net fee income this year. Three and a half million EBITDA. Thirty-five people. Two inbound client enquiries arrive every single day.
Tom Kelly has been in the space sector since 2018. He has never taken outside investment. And last month was the largest in the company's history.
On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Tom breaks down exactly how they got there.
EVONA is now the dominant name in space sector recruitment. Ninety-five percent US clients. No cold outreach. No single client above nine percent of revenue. A thirty-two day average time to fill on roles that take competitors sixty.
Tom Kelly is thirty-nine. He does not have a rigid three-year exit plan, but he does think there is a short window, and he does believe AGI changes the calculus for anyone thinking about an acquisition in this space. What he is building now is the version of the business that is worth something, the lean, high-output, brand-trusted version that took cutting fifty people to find.
If you have ever wondered what it actually looks like to rebuild a recruitment business properly after it nearly breaks, this episode has the blueprint.

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, but AI has turned templated posts and outreach into a commodity. When everyone sounds the same, the market stops listening. The recruiters winning now are the ones the market trusts.
At Hoxo we help recruitment founders become the most influential name in their niche, using AI to multiply output while trust stays the product. Our clients turn their existing networks into £100K to £300K in new billings within months. Watch the free RAG listener training to see how: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0

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 get a job and you'll be fine." So he started again at 38, built a second business, sold that to Harvey Nash in 2017, and spent the next fifteen years working out why most recruitment founders never build something that truly works for them.

"I'm having to live a lot of my life through my grandchildren because I miss my children. Don't be that guy, right?"

This week on The RAG Podcast, Mike Ames breaks down the PLW model: what a Profit, Lifestyle, Wealth recruitment business actually looks like, why the 360 model is structurally flawed, and what the "magic number" is that every founder should know before they spend another year grinding for a goal they have never properly calculated.
Mike Ames is not selling a formula for a nine-figure exit. He is arguing for something harder and rarer: a business that runs well, pays you properly, and leaves room for the life you are actually trying to live.

If you have ever wondered whether the business you are building is working for you or the other way around, this episode is the one.
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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 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. Most can't answer this: how much revenue is it actually bringing in? At Hoxo, we help recruitment founders build predictable revenue systems on LinkedIn. Our clients are turning LinkedIn into £100K-£300K in new billings within months. Fill in the form today at https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0