Season 9 | Ep24 How David Bloxham Flipped a 130-Person Agency to 95% Contract Revenue

David Bloxham first appeared on The RAG Podcast in March 2020. That episode was recorded the week before the world went into lockdown. He had 130 staff, a fresh MBO behind him, and a business that was growing.

Six years later, he is back. Same seat. Very different business.

In the years since, David has navigated a pandemic, a post-COVID hiring boom, a brutal tech slump, and the rise of AI. Each time, his response was the same: strip the model apart and rebuild it stronger.

GCS is now 100 people across 10 global offices, generating over 12 million in revenue with 95% coming from contract. 50% of the team now operates from offshore delivery centres in Cape Town, Mumbai, and Delhi. The permanent division that drove record numbers in 2022 has been deliberately wound down.

"Year on year, since 2019, our contract number has grown year on year. The perm has gone up and down, but the contracts kept rising."

But perhaps the most striking part of this conversation is what comes next. David is building an AI-enabled recruitment tool designed to sit alongside his traditional business, one that could eventually generate the same revenue as his human team. He is not waiting for disruption. He is building it himself.

WE COVER:

• How GCS went from 60/40 perm-contract split to 95% contract in under three years
• The board-level conversation with nGAGE CEO Tim Cook that changed everything
• Why David cut his highest-performing permanent teams at their peak
• How 50% of the workforce moved offshore and what the 120-120-120 delivery model looks like in practice
• The pivot from software development (47% of vacancies) to AI, cyber, and cloud (after coding roles dropped to 13%)
• Why fill rate matters more than job volume and the metrics David tracks at CEO level
• The GCS Leaders Series podcast and how 100+ episodes became a business development machine
• David's plan to build an AI recruitment tool that could cannibalise his own business

If you have ever wondered whether resilience is a strategy or just a word people put on their LinkedIn profile, this episode has the answer. David Bloxham has been at the same company for nearly 30 years. He has rebuilt it three times. And he is about to do it again.

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