COVID collapse and a broken sale

Matt Fox achieved a life-changing exit and walked away in 90 days!

Matt Fox was 72 hours from a multi-seven-figure exit when COVID killed the deal.

What followed: a complete breakdown, 2 years of therapy, and a total rebuild.

But he did it differently the second time.

Cut from 30 stressed employees to 10 people he loved. Stripped costs. Turned it into a cash machine. By 40, he'd cleared his mortgage and bought Spanish properties with cash.

Then, in November 2024, he sold the business and walked away in 3 months.

In this episode:

• Why scaling to 30 people nearly destroyed him
• The "cash cow" strategy that made him wealthy before the exit
• How to build a team that doesn't need you
• What selling a business actually feels like (the bit nobody warns you about)
• Why 80% of recruitment founders get exits wrong

This isn't your typical scale-and-sell story. This is what it really takes to lose everything, rebuild on your terms, and exit with your sanity intact.

For recruitment founders running 5-30 person agencies, wondering what happens next.

Chapters

• 00:03:00 Building Dynamite Recruitment
• 00:09:00 Challenges and Resilience
• 00:15:00 Restructuring for Profitability
• 00:21:00 The Sale Process
• 00:27:00 Lessons Learned and Future Plans

__________________________________________

Episode Sponsor: Atlas

Admin is a massive waste of time. That’s why there’s Atlas, the AI-first recruitment platform built for modern agencies.

It doesn’t only track CVs and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now, it’s entering a whole new era.

With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With Magic Search, you speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply look for keywords.

Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With Opportunities, you can track, manage and grow client relationships, powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow.

Need insights? Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that’s not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform.

No admin. No silos. No lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue.

Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting.

Don’t miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive RAG listener offer at https://recruitwithatlas.com/therag/

__________________________________________

Episode Sponsor: Hoxo

Every recruitment founder is investing in LinkedIn.

Spending thousands on Recruiter licences.

Building connections. Posting content. Growing networks.

But here’s the question almost no one can answer:

How much revenue is LinkedIn actually bringing into your business?

Most founders have thousands of connections but no clear process to turn that attention into cash.

That’s the problem we solve.

At Hoxo, we help recruitment founders build predictable revenue systems on LinkedIn, not just noise or vanity metrics.

Our clients are turning LinkedIn into £100K–£300K in new billings within months, using their existing networks and a simple repeatable process.

To show you how it works, we’ve created a short training video exclusively for RAG listeners.

In less than 10 minutes, you’ll learn:

- Why most recruiters are getting zero measurable ROI from LinkedIn

- How small, niche teams are generating consistent inbound demand

- The 3X Revenue System we use to turn LinkedIn into a predictable cash-generating channel

So fill in the form today to see how this system could transform LinkedIn into your agency’s most profitable channel: https://hubs.ly/Q03lBpYC0