From 6 Months with No Placements to Million-Dollar Biller: Emily Audibert’s Feminine Energy, RPO Strategy & Mindset Shift

Six months, zero placements. Most rookie recruiters would have quit, or been cut after half a year of hustling with nothing to show. Emily Audibert. Emily Audibert lived this dry spell six months into her recruiting career without a single placement. Yet instead of flaming out, she transformed herself into a million-dollar biller and founder of a thriving firm. How? By ditching the hard-charging sales playbook and leaning into a trust-driven, “feminine energy” approach that felt true to her style. Emily’s journey from struggling newbie to seven-figure success holds powerful lessons in authenticity, innovation, and perseverance for recruiters and entrepreneurs alike. (Thank you Atlas - the Recruitment Platform and Recruiters Websites for sponsoring this episode)

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Full Episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2YVeF0hbnPnQS1byjBfTC5?si=rhU3fuXOTdSV16SuxKMECg 

Early Struggles: A Six-Month Dry Spell and a Wake-Up Call

Emily didn’t find instant success in recruiting. Coming from an accounting background, she was no stranger to persistence, she took the CPA exam five times and failed before realizing that path wasn’t for her. Emily entered the recruiting world determined not to fail again. She threw herself into the work at Danny Cahill’s firm, making 100 calls a day when the target was 50, sending double the required outreach, and absorbing all the training she could. Still, no placements. Month after month, despite hitting every KPI, the deals just wouldn’t land.

Most offices would have let a non-billing recruiter go after three months, but Emily’s managers saw her grit and “growth” in skill, and crucially, she refused to quit on herself. Her first placement finally hit at the six-month mark. Year one closed at a modest $80K in billings, far below goal. But year two? $390K – nearly a 5x leap. Once the dam broke, it was off to the races. Emily was proving what dogged hard work, resilience through failure, and a willingness to learn could eventually do. Yet raw hustle wasn’t the only change she made – the real turning point was learning to embrace her own style.

Finding Her Flow: From Hard Sales to Trust-Driven “Feminine Energy”

In those early days, Emily tried to imitate the classic “masculine” sales tactics she saw around her – the pushy scripts, hard closes, rigid qualifying of candidates before a conversation. It didn’t feel natural, and more importantly, it didn’t work for her. So she made an intuitive shift: letting go of the hard sell and leaning into a softer, more relational approach. “I wasn’t pushing for things. I was just letting it happen and letting that flow come in... when I finally let go… it naturally just went so, so well,” Emily says of this mindset change. She stopped demanding resumes up front or interrogating candidates about quotas and metrics. Instead, she’d say, “It’s all right – send me the resume after. Let’s just talk through your experience for now.” The conversations became casual and candid, not combative.

This trust-first tactic immediately built better rapport. Prospects stopped shutting down or ghosting her; instead, they opened up. Emily found that by being authentically herself – friendly, patient, and yes, a bit “woo-woo” with her belief in positivity and the universe – she attracted clients and candidates who vibed with her. Her phone calls stopped feeling like pitched battles. “I got such better reactions and initial trust from people because I wasn’t selling them as much,” she explains. The old masculine-energy grind was replaced with what worked for Emily: a feminine energy of empathy, listening and flow. Importantly, she notes, this doesn’t mean being a pushover or sacrificing results – she still got all the info she needed and made the placements, just without the aggressive edge. The lesson for recruiters? There’s no one-size-fits-all script for success. Lean into your own voice and energy. If you’re naturally more structured and assertive, do that; if you thrive in a laid-back, consultative style, trust that. “Know who you are as a person…then decide which path is better for you,” Emily advises. For her, giving herself permission to recruit her way made all the difference.

Full Episode on Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/from-6-months-with-no-placements-to-million-dollar/id1547241660?i=1000737574673 

The RPO Breakthrough: Turning One Big Client into a New Business

Emily always had an entrepreneurial spark – inspired by watching her mom run a recruiting business while still being a constant presence at home, she knew early on she wanted to own her own firm one day. A few years into her career, that dream collided with opportunity. One of Emily’s happy clients (a high-growth tech company) needed to ramp up hiring fast – dozens of roles – and even tried to poach her in-house. Emily wasn’t ready to become someone’s employee again, but she had a better idea: offer them a Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) contract through her own new company. At the time, she barely knew what “RPO” fully entailed (Recruitment Process Outsourcing, essentially acting as an embedded recruiter on contract). But she knew she could deliver. With her mother’s guidance and prior hints of a large-scale project, Emily pitched a creative solution: she would dedicate herself to filling ~28 sales positions for the client over the next year, for a flat monthly retainer plus a per-hire fee. It was a bold twist on the typical contingent search model – a hybrid that gave the client a committed recruiter and gave Emily guaranteed volume (and income).

They said yes. That first RPO contract yielded 42 hires in 14 months, blew past its targets, and – in Emily’s words – turned into “a year more financially successful than I ever dreamed,” enabling her to officially launch Emily Audibert Associates. Just as valuable, it cemented Emily’s reputation with an entire leadership team. “I made such good relationships with everyone there… I still work with all of them. I’ve been almost 100% referral-based ever since,” she says. By going all-in with great service and results, she planted seeds that keep paying off: that RPO client’s VP of Sales later referred her into another company, leading to another RPO contract, and so on. Today, while Emily still does plenty of contingent and retained searches, RPOs remain a powerful part of her toolkit for partnering with high-growth firms. She’ll often start contingent to prove fit, then say, “If you get a big funding round and need to scale hiring, know that I offer an RPO option where I become your dedicated recruiter.” It’s a longer-game consultative sell, but it positions her as a strategic talent partner rather than just another vendor.

Key takeaway: Don’t miss the boat on RPO. Many recruiters never consider it, but as Emily’s story shows, pitching an RPO solution at the right moment can be a win-win. It deepens client trust, locks in revenue, and if you deliver, you’ll spin one project into a referral engine for your business. Think about clients who might value a “recruiter on demand” – and be ready to raise your hand when they have a big need.

Mindset Matters: Journaling, Visualization & Manifesting Growth

Technique and opportunities aside, Emily is quick to credit her mindset and mental practices for a huge part of her success. She describes herself as a long-time self-improvement junkie – “obsessed with the professional development self-help world before I got into recruiting,” as she puts it. From day one in recruitment, she set big audacious goals and constantly reminded herself why she was doing this (remember that vision of running a business and having family flexibility). One of her lifelong goals was hitting that vaunted seven-figure biller mark. And she literally wrote it into existence. “I would write in my journal every day: ‘I want to be a million-dollar biller. I want to be a million-dollar biller…’ and I can’t believe I get to say I did it,” Emily recounts, now on the verge of crossing that milestone. This daily journaling of goals kept her focused and motivated through the grind. But she didn’t stop at writing affirmations.

Emily also practices what she calls “woo-woo” habits – which are really about priming her mind for success. Every morning she’d jot down a few things she was grateful for, to “put yourself in that high-vibration state and really feel that gratitude”. Then she’d visualize and meditate: sometimes a guided meditation, sometimes a simple quiet envisioning of her future success. She loved a Tony Robbins visualization exercise of vividly imagining achieving a goal – what it feels like, what you’re wearing, every detail. She’d even dedicate half a day each New Year to writing out exactly what she wanted her life and business to look like in the coming year. “So many of them have come true – it’s crazy,” Emily says. By combining this mindset work with relentless action (picking up the phone, making the calls, having the tough conversations), she created a powerful momentum. Whenever the inevitable rejections or lulls hit, her vision and positive routines kept her going. As Emily reflects, the beginning in recruiting is so hard – you don’t know what you’re doing, you get hung up on, you have to fight through so much uncertainty. Having a strong “why” and mental resilience practices was essential to push through those early hurdles.

For anyone building a business or striving for a big goal, Emily’s approach is a blueprint: set clear goals, write them down constantly, visualize the win, and work your tail off in tandem. That mix of mindset and effort is potent. “You can literally achieve anything,” she insists – and her story proves it.

Key Lessons from Emily’s Journey

Emily Audibert’s rise from rookie to record-setter provides a masterclass in growth. Here are a few of the standout lessons for recruiters, leaders, and entrepreneurs:

• Trust Your Authentic Energy: The recruiting styles often get labeled “masculine” (hard-charging, scripted) versus “feminine” (empathetic, fluid). Neither is right or wrong – the key is finding what aligns with you. Emily found her stride by abandoning tactics that felt forced and embracing a relationship-first approach that built trust. Once she leaned into her natural easygoing, consultative vibe, her results skyrocketed. The lesson: Figure out the approach that energizes rather than drains you, and go all-in on that. Clients and candidates can tell when you’re being genuine.
• Pitch Value-Add Solutions (like RPO): When a client has a massive hiring goal or a unique talent challenge, think beyond the standard contingency/retained framework. Emily’s big break came by saying “yes” to an unconventional ask and shaping it into an RPO contract that launched her firm. Offering an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) – essentially acting as an on-demand internal recruiter – can deepen your partnership and secure steady revenue. It’s now a go-to part of her business, fueled entirely by referrals from doing it well. Be consultative and open to customized models; it could set you apart from competitors and massively scale your billings.
• Play the Long Game with Relationships: Emily is living proof that recruiting is a relationships business. That first RPO client turned into a pipeline of other clients because she delivered great results and forged real connections. Even before that, early in her career she resisted the impulse to drop a difficult client, choosing to “keep trying” and learn rather than give up on them – which later led to placing two VP roles there and ultimately landing the RPO. The takeaway: prioritize long-term trust over short-term wins. Do excellent work, be honest, and don’t burn bridges. Referrals and repeat business are the reward. (On a personal level, Emily’s daily gratitude journaling also reflects playing the long game with yourself – staying positive and patient as you grow.)
• Fail Forward: Before finding recruiting, Emily “failed” in other endeavors – and she’s thankful for it. Fizzling out in accounting after five failed CPA exams taught her what wasn’t her passion, and getting fired from her first sales job fueled the fire to succeed on her next try. Rather than seeing these setbacks as a verdict, she viewed them as redirection. In recruiting, she endured six tough months with no placement, but treated it as a learning curve, not a dead end. Every stumble became an opportunity to adapt and grow. The lesson: embrace failures as feedback. If you’re relentlessly improving and refuse to give up, today’s failures can set the stage for tomorrow’s million-dollar success.
• Build a Team that Complements You: As soon as her solo practice began to expand, Emily made a smart move: she hired help to cover her weaknesses. First a sorcerer from her old firm, and then – more unconventionally – she brought in her sister, Amanda. The two sisters turned out to be the perfect yin and yang. Emily is the extroverted “face of the business,” loving to network and talk to people, while Amanda is ultra-organized and meticulous, running operations behind the scenes. “I would not be able to do what we do today without her,” Emily says. This freed Emily to focus on what she does best and ensured the business ran smoothly. The wider point: you don’t have to do it all alone. By hiring or partnering with people whose strengths fill in for yours (and whom you trust deeply – in Emily’s case, literally family), you can scale faster and create a stronger company. Recruiting can be a lonely, grind-it-out profession if you let it – but the top producers build support systems around them, professionally and personally.

Emily’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance and alignment. It’s about finding your groove in an industry that often tries to put everyone in the same box. Her early struggles and eventual triumph show that sometimes the key to breakthrough is a mix of inner work and innovative strategy – the mindset and the model. She flipped the script on traditional recruiting in more ways than one, and the results speak for themselves.

Ready to Level Up? (Call to Action)

To dive deeper into Emily Audibert’s journey and insights, be sure to check out her full episode on the Elite Recruiter Podcast. 🎙️on Apple or Spotify Hear Emily tell her story in her own words, from that six-month drought to the tactics that made her a top biller, and more about how she’s leveraging RPO and mindset to keep growing. It’s a must-listen for any recruiter or entrepreneur looking for inspiration and practical tips. (Search “Elite Recruiter Podcast Emily Audibert” on your podcast platform of choice to find the episode.)

Also, don’t miss the upcoming Recruiter Sales & Business Development Summit (January 26, 2026). 🚀 This virtual conference is the go-to event for recruiters who want to crush their business development and sales goals in the new year. Live sessions are free to attend, with an option to upgrade for replays – or, even better, join the Elite Recruiter Community and get all past and future summit replays included. Mark your calendar and get ready to learn from top billers and industry experts on how to make 2026 your best year yet in recruiting. (Visit the Summit page for details on speakers and registration.) Register Now: https://bd-sales-recruiter-2026.heysummit.com/

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