Season 9 | Ep39 Scott Lechley: How a Solo Founder Went 100% Retained and Had His Best Year Yet

Scott Lechley started Lechley Associates with £10,000, a new baby at home, and six months of recruitment experience. Twenty four years later he is still the only person in the business, and he is on track for the best year he has ever had.

Lechley Associates places the people who run the UK's biggest construction and infrastructure programmes. Framework directors, board level hires, the leaders behind HS2 scale rail and new hospital builds. Clients like Laing O'Rourke, Balfour Beatty and Hochtief. One retained search at a time.

Six months into this year Scott had already cleared £300,000, with another £150,000 confirmed. He did it by doing something most recruiters never attempt: going fully retained, staying completely solo, and building an AI stack that means he now wakes up to a BD intelligence report, an automated outreach system, and a dashboard of ranked opportunities before most people have made their first coffee.

He also did something almost no recruiter would admit to. This year he deliberately lost £40,000 in fees by talking a client out of a hire he did not believe in, and it does not cost him a minute of sleep.

On this episode of The RAG Podcast, Scott breaks down exactly how the stack works, why 24 years of saying no to the wrong things is the real engine behind the numbers, and what a solo business actually makes possible when you stop trying to grow headcount.

Scott is 54, having the best year of his career, and building a community for the next generation of construction professionals on the side. He is not slowing down.

If you have ever wondered whether the pressure to build a team, hire more people and grow headcount is actually the only way, this episode is your answer.

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