Show notes
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.----------------------------------------------Episode Sponsor: AtlasAdmin 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: HoxoEvery 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