How I Grew My Recruitment Agency Into the Mid-$50Ks in Recurring Revenue

I'm Kyle. I run a recruitment agency placing talent with clients. When I joined Client Ascension, I was around $17,000–$20,000 a month in recurring revenue. At this interview, I described the recurring figure as being in the mid-$50,000s.

There were also starting fees in the business. Getting close to $70,000 was an expectation if the month went as planned, not a completed result. The useful changes I discussed were getting leads through several channels and making the sales conversation warmer before the prospect arrived.

The service had clients and candidates to look after

I had lived in Ukraine and wanted to help good people find good jobs while helping clients in the West access talent. It was not simply a matter of finding a buyer: I also had candidates on the other side of the arrangement.

That made the business demanding to run. I wanted to get out of the operational weeds, but I had not committed to an exit plan. A future sale or less day-to-day involvement was something I was considering, not something already achieved.

The leads did not all come from the same place

Clients came through word of mouth and referrals, Twitter ads and cold email. I was also testing another advertising channel with a friend, but did not disclose that platform in the interview.

I liked the quality of the prospects coming through Twitter, but tracking was a limitation. I described the measurement as a manual process. That is why a reported advertising return should not be read as audited profit or a benchmark for another recruitment business.

Client Ascension related reading: the acquisition guide covers the broader channel and sales decisions around bringing prospects into a pipeline.

Retail sales had taught me a different kind of call

I had sold high-end headphones at Bose and assumed the same approach would carry over. Looking back, I realized that the retail customer already knew the brand and had much of the buying context before speaking with me.

My recruitment prospects were colder. Instead of treating that as only a sales-script problem, I asked why I was making the call harder than it needed to be. I wanted people to know more about the offer before they got on the phone.

I paid for a VSL rather than building it myself

I added a VSL and thought about daily emails after an opt-in as ways to make the conversation warmer. I hired someone to produce the VSL rather than doing the whole project myself, and I described prospects arriving with fewer objections.

That was my experience of the change, not a measured conversion experiment. I also discussed bringing on a closer the following week; that hire was still ahead of me at the interview.

Client Ascension related reading: the VSL breakdown explains how a sales presentation can make the offer, mechanism and next step easier to understand.

Growth still left me with operational work

I was working long days and planning to bring on more team members. The team was taking on more responsibility, but getting me out of day-to-day work was a goal, not a completed handoff.

What I valued in the support was being able to ask a specific sales or cold-email question, get a direct answer and return to the work. It helped me connect the larger picture with the immediate issue I needed to solve.

Adapted by Client Ascension with AI assistance from Kyle's interview. The first-person narrative follows the source speaker’s account. Watch the original video