How a 22-year veteran recruiter grew revenue 3–4x and built a team
Nicole Magaddino
Founder, Finance & Accounting Search · SF Bay Area
The starting point
On paper, Nicole's pipeline was consistent. But it was consistent in one narrow way: referrals. After 22 years in recruitment, she was busy filling roles, running "call after call" — yet stuck in the day-to-day with no time to think strategically about the business.
Her outreach was all manual: phone calls, texts, generic emails, the same portals every other recruiter used. "Nothing was exciting about my content. I felt like I was sharing what every other recruiter was sharing out there." She knew she needed to up-level and brand herself — but, in her words, "I had no idea what I didn't know."
Why Nicole came to ORA
A single outreach message caught her eye, because it named the exact thing she was struggling with: Are you thinking strategically? How are you bringing your firm to the market?
That led to what she calls "a very robust call with the founders," where instead of a pitch she got ideas and things to think about. For a tenured recruiter who wanted to grow the firm and prove she was a genuine subject-matter expert, that human, strategic conversation was what made her say yes.
What we built together
The work started with positioning, not posting. Before any content, ORA helped Nicole do the "soul searching" to get clear on who she was as a business owner and what her firm actually stood for — the foundation everything else runs on.
From there, ORA clarified what set her apart in finance and accounting, helped her create content in her real voice, and kept her consistently in front of her audience. This wasn't a fixed playbook handed over once. As Nicole put it: "ORA stretches themselves as much as they stretch me." They kept pivoting and refining as the market responded.
"Since working with ORA, I've grown my team four to five times, and revenue is up three to four times where I was on my own. I'm a better recruiter and a better leader — I just needed to get who I was out into the market."
Nicole MagaddinoThe results
- Revenue up roughly 3x versus what she produced on her own
- Team grew 4x — from a sole proprietor to a full team
- Reaching 7,000–8,000 people with her advice and content
- Dormant relationships reactivated
- A stronger operator — more confident, more streamlined processes, and, in her words, "a better leader"
The takeaway
Nicole didn't win by cold-calling harder. A tenured expert who was invisible online got clear on who she was, showed up consistently as herself — and the market she'd spent decades building started coming back to her.
Your market already needs what you know. Let's make sure they see it.
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