For owners and MDs with a floor.

Three desks are carrying the building. The other seventeen are running a different firm.

You think the problem is the CRM, or the sales director you have not hired yet, or a training day that finally lands. It is not. Three desks carry this building. Seventeen walk in every morning and run a firm of their own, each one improvising a sequence nobody wrote down, and the averages in your board pack are polished enough to hide it.

30 minutes with Andy Watch the owner webinar first For owners and managing directors, not job-seekers.
15Years inside recruitment and executive search
2,000+Recruitment and executive search firms

Your next step

Grab a time with me.

We put the firm, your desks and your last twelve months on the table, find where the retained, repeat, higher-fee work is being left on the table, and map how the firm becomes the one name your market calls. No pitch. You leave with the plan either way.

  • A straight, outside read on the firm
  • Where retained and repeat revenue is being left on the table
  • The plan to make your firm the name your market calls first

Owners who stopped being one of five

Brandt Handley

“Took ROI Executive Search to seven figures, 3.5x the year before, working remotely.”

Brandt Handley · ROI Executive Search, client

Ken McCarthy

“From one of five names on every brief to retained and exclusive, the only firm the client would call.” £30k to £100k a month.

Ken McCarthy · Solo search firm owner, client

Where this usually starts

You have been sold three fixes. None of them touch the problem.

The tidy-up

A CRM migration

You move the same twenty sequences into a cleaner system. Now they are wrong in a nicer interface, and the report still cannot tell you which desk actually pays.

The hire

A sales director

You bring in a biller with a title. Six months on you have paid a premium for one more good desk, not a floor that runs without you standing over it.

The event

A training day

A consultant runs a room for a day and leaves a slide deck. Monday morning the floor runs exactly as it ran on Friday, because nothing was written down to hold anyone to.

The real problem is quieter than any of that. Three desks carry the building. Seventeen run a different firm every morning, and your averages do not expose it. They protect it.

What the averages hide

On a floor this size, the average is not misleading. It is protective.

Three desks lit. Seventeen running their own firm.

Split the last twelve months by desk, by sector, by retained versus contingent, and the board pack stops looking reassuring. One handful of desks is the firm. The rest are quietly carried by them, and every dashboard in the Monday meeting still reads acceptable. Volume hides that. Averages hide it better. You do not have a reporting problem. Nobody has ever put the question to the numbers.

What is actually missing

A written standard the managers can hold. Run across every desk.

Performance on your floor depends on three people who found the better way of working by accident, years ago, and never wrote it down. The other seventeen are still running the first way at full effort. Nothing on the floor is broken. There is simply no standard, so there is nothing for a manager to hold a consultant to, and nothing that survives the day your best biller walks.

The work is not more marketing, more tools, or more hours. It is one written standard for how a desk gets retained, runs a scoping conversation, and holds a fee. Built with your leadership, trained into your consultants and managers, and held there, so performance stops depending on three heroes.

The floor is a firm. Not three heroes.

The heroes are not the plan. The standard is. When it is written down and held, the floor stops depending on who happened to work it out alone.

Proof · 10 to 50 person contract and perm firm

A new desk, built from nothing, and he came back five years later.

In the middle of Covid we did the impossible. We started a brand new desk from nothing and had it running at around £30,000 a month in margin inside a few months, held for the best part of a year. Andy gave us the market mapping and the outreach that built it. Five years on we are opening another desk and I have come straight back to him.
Alan Derry Technical Resources
30 minutes with Andy Bring your floor and your last twelve months.

How the work runs

Built with you. Held by your managers. It does not leave when I leave.

None of this is done for you. I do not run your outreach, write your emails, or speak to your clients. The name and the floor have to be yours. We build the standard together, and your firm keeps it.

One to one

With you and your leadership

On site or remote, with the MD and the leadership team. Your market on the table, your last twelve months, your fee conversations, your desks. We find where the floor leaks, build the fix in the room, and write it down as a standard your managers can hold to.

The floor

Consultants and managers, trained to the standard

The desk taught to the whole floor, not left to the three who worked it out alone. Consultants trained to run the retained sequence, managers trained to hold them to it, written down so admin and compliance can hold the line. A fix that leaves when I leave is not a fix.

Optional · owner or MD only

The Search Firm Boardroom

Where you work on the firm with me directly, as the owner or the managing director. It is optional, and it is for you, not the floor. It is never a desk product bolted onto a forty-person team.

A lower first step. Not ready to talk yet. Watch the owner webinar, free, and see the retained sequence laid out end to end.

Watch the webinar

The people who shaped this industry back us

What the leaders say.

Lou Adler

“The ‘Built to Sell’ for the search industry.”

Lou Adler
Search Legend, USA
Roy Ripper

“30 years in this industry, and Andy found the missing link.”

Roy Ripper
30+ years in recruitment
James Blackwell

“If you want to stop grinding and start scaling, Andy is the only choice.”

James Blackwell
Founder, Recruitment Entrepreneur

The Search Firm Boardroom

You run a floor. We turn it into a firm.

In the Boardroom we install the standard your managers can hold and the market map your whole desk works from, so the firm bills like one operation, not seventeen.

The Search Firm Boardroom: every decision maker, the top 5% of candidates and the authority that makes them call you first, retained and embedded. Grab a time with me

Start here

Find the three desks carrying it. Build the standard that lifts the other seventeen.

Bring your floor and your last twelve months. We will put the numbers on the table, find where the firm actually leaks, and build the written standard your managers can hold.

30 minutes with Andy For owners and managing directors. On site or remote.