New Episode: He turned a recruiting niche into a $6M practice and a venture fund

Latest Episodes: He turned a recruiting niche into a $6M practice and a venture fund

Author

Benjamin Mena
April 21, 2026

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LATEST EPISODES:

NEW: Turn Your Recruiting Niche Into a $6M Practice + Venture Fund | Norm Volsky

Most recruiters think niching down means doing less.

Norm Volsky is proof it means doing everything.

Norm is Managing Partner at Direct Recruiters Inc., where he built a practice from scratch focused entirely on digital health and employee benefits. He went from averaging $400–500K in billings to nearly $1M in his first year after finding his niche. Then $3M. Then $6M during COVID with a small team — and he's on track to hit $6M again this year.

But that's not even the most interesting part.

Norm realized something most recruiters never see: the intel you accumulate working a niche — who's hiring, who's not, what's selling, what pricing models work, what's coming next — is more valuable than most investors have access to. So he started investing. First as an LP in venture funds. Then directly into early-stage companies. Then he co-founded his own venture firm, MVP Growth Partners.

Two of his early clients? Livongo, which sold for $18.5 billion. And Hinge Health, which IPO'd at $3 billion. He placed dozens of people at both companies before they were household names.

This episode will expand how you think about what your recruiting practice can become.

Key Takeaways:

Use your current searches to get your dream clients. Norm's approach: call someone overqualified for a role, tell them honestly it's not for them, pick their brain — and at the end ask what they're hiring for. It's how he built his client list without cold pitching.

The niche gives you information investors don't have. You see what companies are hiring, what's selling, what pricing models work. That pattern recognition is the edge. Most recruiters ignore it. Norm built a venture fund from it.

Stop telling people you're busy. When someone asks how you're doing — "I'm so busy" is the most boring, forgettable answer you can give. Norm's rule: say something interesting. Start the relationship differently than everyone else does.

Build ops before you burn out. Norm hit a wall in his early thirties — a lucrative hamster wheel where the money kept coming but he was going nowhere. The fix wasn't more hustle. It was a chief of staff, an ops manager, and systems that could run without him.

Word choice matters more than you think. "Role" vs. "opportunity." Two words. Different signal to the person on the other end. The small stuff compounds over thousands of calls.

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