Tom Kelly scaled EVONA from 4 founders to 80 recruiters in 3 years. Then he made the hardest call of his career — he cut the team back to 30. And in doing it, per-head revenue doubled.

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation on The Elite Recruiter Podcast.

Tom co-founded EVONA in 2018 with three other recruiters around a whiteboard at his place in Bristol. Eight years and $40 million in fees later, they've stuck to every line of what they wrote down — no KPIs, no fixed hours, no fixed location, brand first.

But the road to here wasn't clean. They tripled in COVID. Flew the whole company to Monaco. Built infrastructure for a planned scale to 300 people that never came. And then 2022 hit.

In this episode, Tom walks through the whiteboard founding, the second hire that every advisor said was crazy, the COVID surge, the Monaco trip he now calls a warning sign, the contraction from 80 to 30, the six months he didn't pay himself, and the moment four founders agreed one of them had to take the wheel.

Part 2 drops Wednesday — the 25-interview rule that defines elite at EVONA, and the segmentation framework that explains why most agency owners are quietly losing 60% of their team.

⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 The agency that cut 50 recruiters and doubled revenue per head
03:00 Why scaling to 80 was the wrong goal
06:00 Running a UK team on US hours
08:00 Why cold email is dead and what replaces it
12:00 From a music degree to spotting the space industry
14:00 Pitching space at SThree and getting shut down
16:00 How the four EVONA founders found each other
17:00 The whiteboard fantasy that became a $40M company
21:00 The first hire decision every advisor called crazy
24:00 Why space tripled during COVID
28:00 The Monaco trip Tom now calls a warning sign
33:00 What 80 people actually looked like at the peak
37:00 Cutting 50 people — contracts first, then perm, then ops
40:00 Six months without a salary, moving to the US mid-cut
42:00 The conversation where four founders chose one to lead

🎙️ CONNECT WITH TOM KELLY

LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/evonatom/
EVONA — https://evona.com

📌 RESOURCES

Atlas (episode sponsor) — recruitwithatlas.com
Elite Recruiter Community — https://elite-recruiters.circle.so/checkout/elite-recruiter-community
AI Recruiting Summit 2026 — https://ai-recruiting-summit-2026.heysummit.com/
Newsletter — https://eliterecruiterpodcast.beehiiv.com/subscribe

🎧 LISTEN ON YOUR FAVORITE PLATFORM

Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scaled-to-80-cut-to-30-per-head-revenue-doubled-part-1/id1547241660?i=1000771838139
Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/episode/32OPrzFNJ4SZIcihxIChH8?si=O48tn4tRSdatGLLOAmCwKA

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