Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com

Atlas, the CRM that actually understands context: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

Well Oiled Machine, proven offshore recruiters you pay directly, no middleman: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/

Part 1 of 2. I lost thousands trying to offshore. Did every single thing wrong, swore it off, and avoided this topic for two years. Then I sat down with Greg Fischer, who built an 18-person international team inside his own firm while scaling it from $1 million to $4.2 million, and recorded the conversation I wish I had before I spent a dollar.

Greg says 7 out of 10 firms that try offshoring end up worse off than if they had never started. Not because the talent is not there. Because they skip the playbook. This is the first half of that playbook, and it covers the first three steps: function, region, and compensation.

We get into why "I want a cheap recruiter" is already the failure, and what to hire for instead. Greg breaks down the full menu, sourcers, researchers, 180s, 360s, and SDRs, and why a dedicated sourcer behind a solo biller doing $400K to $600K has produced a 30 to 50 percent revenue lift within a year, as Greg tells it. He also shares why a sourcer hire works about 8 out of 10 times while the admin assistant hire most owners start with works about 3 out of 10.

Then the part nobody says out loud: the big firms are already doing this. Greg estimates 80 to 90 percent of the major players have international practices, and about half of boutique firms in the $1M to $3M range have at least one international team member. You just do not see it on LinkedIn.

The compensation section alone is worth the download. Real 2026 numbers, not vendor markup numbers. What a sourcer in the Philippines actually earns. What a LATAM associate recruiter costs. What a true A player who closes $500K a year expects in base and commission. Plus the PTO mistake that insults candidates before they start, and the payment platforms Greg recommends and the two he would avoid.

What You'll Learn:

• Why 7 out of 10 firms fail at offshoring and the one word that separates the 3 that succeed
• The five-role menu and which role a first-timer should never start with
• The rainmaker math: what a dedicated sourcer does to a solo biller's revenue
• Greg's region cheat sheet: Philippines, LATAM, and South Africa, and which jobs go where
• The 50 percent overlap rule for time zones and why 4 hours is the floor
• Real 2026 salary bands for offshore sourcers and recruiters, base and commission
• How to structure commission, PTO, and payment setup without getting burned

Part 2 drops right after this one: headhunting the person, interviewing them, managing them, and the case study of a burnt out $650K solo biller whose offshore hires changed his firm.

Connect with Greg Fischer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/offshoreisasuperpower/

Well Oiled Machine: https://www.welloiledmachine.co/

Firm Leaders Summit (November 16-18): https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com

Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

Newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

🎟️ Tom Kosnik is speaking at the Firm Leaders Summit presented by Crelate, November 16 to 18. Every live session is free: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/

🚀 This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every conversation and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

We recorded this conversation with Tom Kosnik in 2024, during one of the longest down stretches the recruiting and staffing industry has seen. We're bringing it back because Tom is joining us at the Firm Leaders Summit, and the questions he raised then are the same ones firm owners are working through right now.

Tom is the founder and president of the Visus Group, a growth strategy and organizational development firm that works only with staffing and recruiting companies. As he tells it, close to 100 C-suite executives sit in his peer roundtables, which means he hears every few months what's working and what isn't inside firms from startup size to billions in revenue. He also got into the industry by an unusual route. He was studying for the Catholic priesthood, realized it wasn't his calling, and ended up building roundtables for staffing executives because it was the only industry left on the table.

The heart of this episode is Tom's stage-by-stage breakdown of what it takes to grow a firm, and how the owner's job changes at every step. From $1M to $5M, the stakes are your next few hires and running out of cash. From $5M to $10M, you need a real sales plan, a recruiting manager who frees you to work on the business, and an owner who keeps selling. From $10M to $25M, it's an operating system, quarterly initiatives, weekly business KPIs, and getting off factoring. Past $25M, your job becomes building and running a management team.

He also makes the case that hiring more salespeople and making more dials no longer grows a firm. Recruiting in places a client can't reach is now table stakes. The firms that are winning bring their clients market data and talk with them about human capital strategy, and that conversation positions them as advisors instead of a source of bodies. He explains why offshore sourcing is about to be automated away, why technology spend that doesn't raise gross profit per person is wasted, and why marketing and personal brands now carry most of the sales load.

Tom also covers the personality traits that predict great recruiters, how to keep A-players from leaving to start their own firms, and the story of an operator with no staffing background who took a firm from $1M to $3.5M in EBITDA in three years, as Tom tells it.

What You'll Learn

• What changes at $1M, $5M, $10M, and $25M
• Why your sales plan matters more than your business plan below $10M
• Why "more dials" is the wrong answer to a slow market
• The traits that separate top billers from friendly extroverts
• How to keep your best producers from going out on their own
• Why every firm owner needs a peer group that tells them what they don't want to hear

Books mentioned: First, Break All the Rules and The Power to See Ourselves.

🔗 Connect with Tom Kosnik: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tkosnik/

🌐 Visus Group: https://www.visusgroup.com/

💬 Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

📩 Get the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Registration is open for the Firm Leaders Summit, three days built for recruiting firm owners and leaders, November 16 to 18. Hiring and training recruiters, growth, BD, and becoming the rainmaker for your firm: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com

This episode is brought to you by Atlas, the CRMx that captures every call, email, and message automatically and tells you the next action to take: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

Most agency owners chase clients every single month. Matthieu "Matt" Beaurain built a $50M a year search group by doing the opposite.

Matt has led Lincoln for 26 years, taking over the firm when it was four people and growing it to roughly 230 people across more than 10 countries and four brands, with about €50M in annual revenue, as he tells it. His model is simple and radical: every consultant is a talent agent. Lincoln follows people, not companies, and the business follows the talent.

In this conversation, Matt breaks news he held back from our pregame. In 2020, Lincoln sold 55% of the firm to join a larger European talent representation project. At the end of July, they bought it all back. Lincoln is 100% independently owned again, and Matt explains what that means for the next chapter.

He also introduces a metric most firm owners have never heard of: Talent Lifetime Value. Lincoln measures each consultant's portfolio of talent over five years, the way a SaaS company measures customer lifetime value. Build it well and you stop starting every month from zero.

Matt shares how he started in recruiting part-time at Robert Half while running a bar with his wife, why he moved his family to Shanghai after visiting a struggling office, and how he built trust in China for six years without speaking Mandarin. He walks through Lincoln's international expansion, from a small acquisition in Belgium right before the 2008 crash to Cooper Fitch in the Middle East, and why one rebrand after an acquisition probably destroyed value. He also explains why he brought in an outside CEO so he could keep doing the work he loves, how Lincoln holds fees at 25 to 28% on a fully retained model, and why the US may finally be on the map.

What You'll Learn:

• How the talent agent model replaces traditional BD
• What Talent Lifetime Value is and how to measure it
• Why Lincoln keeps acquired brands instead of rebranding
• How to defend retained fees when clients push for contingency
• What it takes to hand your firm to an outside CEO
• Why Matt believes AI won't replace the trust you build with talent

Connect with Matthieu Beaurain:

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthieu-beaurain-743609/

🌐 Lincoln: https://lincoln-group.com

🚀 Firm Leaders Summit: https://firm-leaders-and-owners-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com

⚙️ Atlas: https://recruitwithatlas.com/

🎯 Join the Elite Recruiter Community: https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community

📬 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe