Build a High-Performance Executive Search Firm, From the Inside Out
I started as a solo recruiter. Over time, I scaled my firm to 35 employees and millions in recurring revenue. Then I exited, making a multimillion-dollar sale to my own practice leaders.
Now I help executive search firm owners do the same.
We help executive search firm owners build firms that run without them.
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WHO WE ARE
Executive search firm growth is based on one truth: the right people must operate in the right roles.
PEOPLE SOLVED is a strategic advisory firm that helps recruiting firm owners scale to high-performance organizations by putting the right people in the right seats. When a role doesn't align with how someone is naturally wired to work, even the most talented professionals will underperform, and the pressure consequently flows back to the founder.
But when people are in the right seats:
Producers produce more consistently
Turnover drops dramatically
Practice groups scale faster
Leaders emerge internally
Owners regain strategic control of the firm
Employees are empowered to succeed
PEOPLE SOLVED combines powerful instinct-based assessments with hands-on advisory support to help firm owners clarify roles, structure teams, and hire more intelligently. Through this distinct approach, we optimize the environment to make peak performance an inevitability.
The RIGHT SEAT
When each employee is operating within the area of their greatest strength and passion, because the role is designed to fit their unique way of thinking.
HOW WE HELP EXECUTIVE SEARCH FIRM OWNERS
Our work focuses on helping firm owners:
Define the instinctive DNA required for key roles across the firm, including practice leaders, recruiters, and researchers
Design team structures that support scalable practice growth
Develop internal leadership pipelines and succession pathways
Evaluate whether current team members are truly operating in the right seats and make an action plan
Align compensation and accountability with production architecture
Exit through selling your practice to team leaders
When your structure aligns with how people naturally work, performance becomes more consistent, teams operate with less friction, and growth no longer depends on constant pressure from—or on—the firm owner.
WHO YOU ARE
Building Your Firm
You've proven you can produce. Now you're wondering: Who do I hire first? A researcher? Another recruiter? An ops person? The wrong first hire can cost you a year of momentum, and a lot of money. We help solo and early-stage firm owners build with the right blueprint from day one, so you scale on a foundation that actually holds.
Scaling Without the Pain
You've made hires that looked great on paper—and didn't deliver.
You're past the startup phase. You've got a team. But something's off: turnover is too high, production is inconsistent, and you're still the one holding everything together. The issue isn't effort or talent. It's fit. We help scaling firms diagnose exactly where the misalignment is and build a team structure that actually performs.
Scaling Without the Pain
You've made hires that looked great on paper—and didn't deliver.
You're past the startup phase. You've got a team. But something's off: turnover is too high, production is inconsistent, and you're still the one holding everything together. The issue isn't effort or talent. It's fit. We help scaling firms diagnose exactly where the misalignment is and build a team structure that actually performs.
Building Your Exit, Your Legacy
You want a firm that runs—and sells—without you.
You've built something real. But if the business can't operate without you in the middle of it, there's no clean exit. Paul structured a leveraged buyout by his own practice leaders—and that only happened because the right people were already in the right seats. We help established owners build the leadership depth and succession pathways that make an exit actually possible.
THE FOUNDER
MEET PAUL
Paul Allen spent three decades building, leading, and ultimately exiting one of the most decorated executive search firms in its class.
He founded AnswerQuest as a solo recruiter — generating more than $400,000 in placements in his first year. Over the next two decades, he gre w his recruiting firm operations to a staff of 35, developed a practice that scaled from $750K to $4 million in recurring revenue, earned ten consecutive Best Places to Work honors, and ultimately exited through a leveraged buyout by his own long-tenured practice leaders.
Earlier in his career, Paul built and led sales organizations across multiple industries. At ADP, he progressed from entry-level sales to Area Vice President of Sales, earning the Glass Award for Exceptional Sales Leadership. He later led operations at a high-growth firm that scaled from three employees to more than 3,000, and from $7 million to $65 million in revenue.
Across every stage — startup, scale, and enterprise — one principle has held constant: when the right people are in the right seats, and leaders are empowered to lead, performance follows.
STILL NOT SURE?
Frequently Asked Questions
What does People Solved do for executive search firms?
People Solved works directly with executive search firm owners to strengthen the people component of their business. We use instinct-based assessments to define the natural DNA required for each role — practice leaders, full-desk recruiters, split-desk recruiters, and researchers — and then evaluate whether your current team is truly operating in the right seats. The result is a more structured, scalable firm where performance becomes predictable rather than dependent on constant founder pressure.
How is this different from a typical recruiting consultant or business coach?
Most consultants advise from the outside. Paul Allen spent three decades building, scaling, and exiting an executive search firm from the inside. He understands the specific dynamics of a recruiting firm — producer psychology, practice group structure, business development vs. recruiting roles — because he lived them. The assessments we use go beyond personality and IQ to measure conation: the instinctive way someone takes action. That's what determines whether a person truly belongs in a seat.
Can you help me figure out if my current team is in the right roles?
Yes. A team evaluation is one of the core services we offer. We assess each team member's instinctive DNA, map it against the demands of their current role, and give you a clear picture of where there's alignment — and where there isn't. From there, we work with you on an action plan, which may include role redesign, internal moves, or a more targeted hiring approach going forward—or all of the above.
I want to eventually exit my firm. Can People Solved help with that?
Absolutely — and this is an area where Paul's experience is uniquely valuable. He structured a leveraged buyout in which his own long-tenured practice leaders purchased the firm. That kind of exit is only possible when you've built the right people into the right seats over time. We help firm owners build the internal leadership depth and succession pathways that make an owner-independent firm — and a future exit — actually achievable.
PAUL'S STORY
I started my own executive search firm, AnswerQuest, as a solo recruiter. In my first year, I generated more than $400,000 in placements on my own. The business was working — so it was time to expand. But when I began hiring, I struggled. I hired smart people. Motivated people. Experienced people. Yet one by one, I kept losing them. The problem wasn't leadership, training, or effort. Simply put: I was hiring the wrong people for the wrong roles.
Then I discovered a specific type of assessment that measures something most hiring processes miss entirely: the instinctive way a person takes action. Not personality. Not intelligence. Not talent. The natural, intuitive, born-in "DNA" that determines how someone initiates work, solves problems, and meets challenges. It was a completely different lens — and I was intrigued.
Once I started hiring people whose natural wiring matched the demands of each role inside a recruiting firm, everything changed. By creating a recruiting team structure where people worked within their natural strengths — across business development, recruiting, and research — we built practice groups that scaled rapidly. One team alone grew from $750K to $4 million in recurring revenue within three years. One of my first hires became a million-dollar producer and stayed with the firm for two decades.
Over time, AnswerQuest grew to 35 employees, earning ten consecutive Best Places to Work awards and becoming one of the largest in our class. When my health took an unexpected turn and I temporarily lost my voice, I had to step back from day-to-day operations. But because the firm was built around the right people in the right seats, the team kept performing. We kept growing.
Ultimately, I structured a leveraged buyout that allowed my own practice leaders to purchase the firm. This path preserved the culture, rewarded the people who built it, and proved the power of my hiring approach. For a long time, I didn't fully appreciate what we had created; I was too busy running it. But when I stepped back, and then stepped away entirely, the picture came into focus.
Every decision I had made that worked — every team that gelled, every practice that scaled, every producer who stayed for twenty years — came back to one thing: the right person in the right seat. And every decision that didn't work? Same reason, in reverse.
I spent thirty years learning this inside one of the most demanding industries there is. I didn't read it in a book. I lived it. Now I want to give that back to you. Not as a consultant who theorizes about recruiting firms from the outside. But as someone who built one, scaled one, and handed one off to his own employees — and who understands, in his bones, exactly what it takes.
That's why I started People Solved. And it's exactly what I now help others build.
