Scaling: How to Build a $65M Recruiting Business That is Sellable, with Mike Kelly

For the first five to six years of his first recruiting business, Mike Kelly did everything himself. Cold calls, interviews, client meetings, even payroll. He began handing off the work when he asked himself: what's the highest and best use of my time? Mike is the Founder and CEO of Conexus Advisors and has grown and exited three professional services businesses. In this conversation, he shares how Conexus reached $65M in revenue, with 50 internal team members and 230 consultants working on client projects. The firm generates over $750,000 in gross profit per desk, including researchers. About 85% of the business is project consulting and interim advisory. Mike explains how that revenue supports growth and walks through the division of work between researchers, screeners, recruiters, and account executives. Two people work on the database all year so fee earners can spend their time talking to clients and candidates. Mike also explains how he develops managers who can take over coaching and grow their own teams. He shares why top billers don't always make good managers, how overrides and equity reward leadership, and what allowed him to hand over his own book of business for the first time in 28 years. In this episode: How to identify the work you should hand off first Why Mike and his partners went nine months without a paycheck How a split desk works from research through to offer Why account executives personally prepare candidates for interviews How staying within a clear niche improves desk productivity The conversion targets Mike uses to assess recruiting performance How to develop and reward team leaders What makes a recruiting firm sellable Episode highlights: [09:24] Building a business instead of owning a job [12:15] Protecting recruiter time and generating $750K GP per desk [14:20] The fear that keeps owners doing everything [16:33] Funding the team before paying yourself [19:24] How the split desk works [38:25] Conversion targets and the daily call report [48:54] What makes a recruiting firm sellable [54:49] Developing managers who take over coaching About Mike Kelly: Mike Kelly is the Founder and CEO of Conexus Advisors, an advisory, interim and executive search firm focused on the Office of the CFO. A former CPA, Mike began his career at Ernst & Young. Over the course of his career, he has founded, scaled and sold three professional services firms, including Spinnaker Financial Resources, Beacon Resources and Tactical Cloud. Connect with Conexus: https://conexusadvisors.com/ Podcast Partners: This episode is brought to you by Recruiterflow, an AI-native ATS and CRM built for serious recruiting businesses. Learn more: https://recruitmentcoach.com/recruiterflow It is also brought to you by Juicebox, the modern AI platform for recruiting. Juicebox combines more than 30 datasets with AI models to support search, outreach and pipeline management in one workflow. Learn more: https://recruitmentcoach.com/juicebox Free Resources: Book your FREE 30-minute strategy call: https://www.recruitmentcoach.com/strategy-session/ Take the Recruitment Business Scorecard: https://recruitmentcoach.com/scorecard Listen to more episodes: https://recruitmentcoach.com/podcast/ Connect with Mark Whitby: Mark on LinkedIn Mark on Twitter: @MarkWhitby Mark on Facebook Mark on Instagram: @RecruitmentCoach Subscribe to The Resilient Recruiter so you never miss an episode.