Season 9 | Ep31 Nathan O'Connell: Building a £1M R2R business on 4 x Retained Clients

Episode notes

Nathan O'Connell spent nine years as a British military officer. Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan. He finished on the withdrawal with 16 Air Assault Brigade and left the forces two weeks before his 30th birthday with no sales background, no LinkedIn profile, and no recruitment experience of any kind. He got into rec-to-rec by accident. Spotted an advert on his wife’s Instagram, joined R2R Global, and was given a cold desk focused on energy and renewable energy recruitment companies in London. Within 12 months he was their top biller in London. By year two, he was number one globally. Then he left. And instead of replicating what he’d done, he built the opposite. O’Connell Search Partners runs retained mandates with a maximum of four clients per geographic region. A team of four billing from Liverpool, covering London, New York, and Texas. In four months they invoiced £427,000. “I had nothing to sell at the time. So it was truly just a genuine interest.” This week on The RAG Podcast, Nathan breaks down how a military background shaped the most deliberate rec-to-rec model you will hear about this year.

• Season 9 | Ep35 Oliver Paull: £800K in 3 Years, Solo, From a London Flat59 / 100
• Season 9 | Ep34 Mathew Gollop: 7 to 85 People, a Near Collapse, and the Free Idea That Paid Him Back59 / 100
• Season 9 | Ep33 Greg Fischer: $4.2M Revenue, $1.4M Net - Then He Left With Nothing but a Handshake52 / 100
• Season 9 | Ep32 Paul Strouts: When Growing Headcount Is a Strategy and When It Is Just a Cost
• Season 9 | Ep30 Emily Angeloni: Why She Nearly Walked Away From WOW After 9 Years of growth