How She Built a $1M Recruiting Firm in 23 Months (Sales + CEO Mindset)

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
If you have not registered yet for the Sales and BD Summit for Recruiters at the end of January, run to the registration. Get signed up. Registration is free for all the live sessions, but here's what's awesome. This episode of the podcast is from the library from the Elite community. This is a previous speaker that is shared at one of the summits that's going to be sharing at this summit to help you change the game. Help you have the best 2026. So excited for you to hear this episode. Excited for you guys to be at the Sales and BD Recruiter Summit because 2026 is your year.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
Do not miss out. Get registered now. Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena, where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track resumes and calls, it remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:12]:
Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers with magic search. You speak and it listens. It finds the right candidates using real conversations, not simply looking for keywords. Atlas 2.0 also makes business development easier than ever. With opportunities you can track, manage and grow client relationships. Powered by generative AI and built right into your workflow need insights.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:35]:
Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory. Atlas customers have reported up to 41% EBITDA growth and an 85% increase in monthly billings after adopting the platform. No admin, no silos, no lost info. Nothing but faster shortlists, better hires, and more time to focus on what actually drives revenue. Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com I am super stoked to have Julia back to share.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:08]:
For those that know her story, awesome. For those that haven't heard her story, she's going to go into it. Julia, the floor is yours.

Julia Arpag [00:02:15]:
Thank you Benjamin. So happy to be here. Hi everyone. I'm so excited to get to chat with you all today. I am Julia Arpag. I'm the CEO and Founder here at Aligned Recruitment and this is my fifth summit that I've done with Benjamin Mena. The first one I attended and I was like, oh my gosh this is going to change my life as a business owner, as a recruitment founder, and then I've gotten to speak on the last three and I'm getting to join you guys again for this one. So I'm thrilled to be here with all of you.

Julia Arpag [00:02:46]:
So what we're chatting about today is my story. Benjamin said how I went from zero to a million dollars in 23 months. How to sell like a boss. So why am I here talking to you? Why should you listen to me? What do I have to share that could help any of you on your journeys to replicate anything similar to what I've done more than what I've done anything in this realm? Well, let me tell you. So here is my origin story of aligned recruitment. So A little over two years ago in August 2023, I was laid off five weeks postpartum. I had an infant, a toddler, two foster sons, both teenagers, and no idea where my next paycheck was coming from. Luckily, that same month, I got six job offers within those two weeks of being laid off.

Julia Arpag [00:03:38]:
And I actually initially accepted two of them. One was just a regular full time W2 job with a former client of mine. And then one of them was to work part time here at Alliance Recruitment with my former co founder. She had spun up the website but had no clients, no money, no nothing. So asked me to come on board and I was like, sure, I'll do this a couple hours a week. Just a month later, in September, I closed my first client on a monthly retainer. We are an rpo. We do very little contingent.

Julia Arpag [00:04:07]:
So I couldn't believe that someone just sent me money just right off the bat. So my husband was the sweetest and bought me champagne and flowers to celebrate. And then I just kept riding that high into the next month. Closed my second client, realized I loved getting to build my own company. So I nervously told that former client that I would have to rescind my acceptance of the offer and they actually became my third client. It was a blessing and crazy. Fast forward to November. I hired my executive coach, Diane Prince.

Julia Arpag [00:04:37]:
She actually spoke on this summit as well. She started and sold five recruitment businesses, one for $28 million. If you don't already know her and love her, you need to. She is the best in the business. Worked with her as my executive coach because I had literally never done sales before in my life. I've never run a 360 desk, I've never sold anything recruitment solutions, pens, nothing, sold zero things. So I knew that I needed to figure out how to close new business. Then Fast forward to 2024.

Julia Arpag [00:05:06]:
June I offered to buy out my former co founder and she took my offer. So then on June 1st I became the sole owner of Aligned Recruitment. The rest of the summer I spent scaling my internal team which now includes a director of recruitment, a talent partner, a talent sourcer and an operations manager. Then Starting this year, January 2025, I started saying yes to requests for executive coaching. So my first executive coaching client started with me in January, my second in February and that side of the business is still taking off. I am accepting a couple new clients right now. I'm a little bit tapped at the moment, but we'll get into how to book with me later if you'd like to do that. And then in July we hit seven figures.

Julia Arpag [00:05:48]:
We hit that million dollar mark in all time revenue in under two years. So we've worked with 25 companies and counting and now I'm just sharing the wealth. So I love hiring, I love leading my team. I also do a lot of public speaking, I do consulting and coaching. So super excited to get to share everything with you guys today about exactly how this happened. So this presentation, if any of you guys have seen me before, this presentation is something I've never tried before. It's pretty ambitious. I'll be totally honest.

Julia Arpag [00:06:18]:
There's a lot of content that I wanted to share with you today because in the past I've shared just my sales strategies or just some of my mindset strategies. But today I wanted you to have everything that has contributed to me closing 25 clients, over a million in revenue and and a team of four full time employees all in 23 months as a first time founder. So we're going to talk about two different buckets today. One is sales, one is mindset. Before we start though, hear me say this. There are infinite sales and mindset. Mindset tactics that you could use. Okay.

Julia Arpag [00:06:52]:
If you've been in this, in these sessions all week, you've heard people share so many amazingly wise, beautiful ideas for how to scale your business. But you will die a slow, stressful death if you try to do all of them. So everything I'm going to share with you today, I want you to pick one or two. Literally pick one. Let's start with one. Master that, iterate on that and then slowly add others to your tool belt as you grow. Like Benjamin mentioned, my deck is up on the website. You can download these slides and you can refer to them anytime.

Julia Arpag [00:07:25]:
So this is what works for me. We're going to talk about the sales side, which my four tactics that are the most effective are, number one, my warm lead strategy, number two, my LinkedIn content, number three, my Dripify campaigns, and number four, my LinkedIn voice notes and then what I call the CEO mindset. So how do I dial in mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually to be able to lead, sustain and scale my business? We're gonna talk about those two categories, starting with sales. So when you think about warm leads, I want you to be way more exhaustive than you've ever been before in your life. I want you to think about every company you've ever hired for, every candidate you've ever placed. Everyone who went to your college and is now a decision maker, everyone you used to work with and is now a decision maker. And this list is going to grow as you live your life. Like today, you could meet someone at your kid's soccer game who is the CRO of a tech company locally to you.

Julia Arpag [00:08:23]:
Right. Like your warm leads list is always expanding. So what do I do with these people? I send them 100% personalized messages. To this day at the million dollar mark, this is still where the bulk of my leads come from. People who know my work ethic, they know my approach, they know my integrity, my excellence. They've worked with me before, they know me in some way. So I'm not going to disrespect that relationship by sending a templated message or by pitch slapping them or by telling them all the reasons they should pick me to hire for their company. Instead, I'm going to make it mostly about them.

Julia Arpag [00:08:58]:
I'm going to text, email, call dm, whatever's appropriate for our relationship. We're just going to stay in touch regularly. It's going to feel authentic, it's going to feel personal. And then when they need me, they are going to talk to me. And this is what I recommend. This will depend on who you're speaking with. Right? But for someone who graduated from the same college that I did, he's now a CEO. He's paid us 49k in contingent fees so far, so.

Julia Arpag [00:09:22]:
So this is what I pinged him. Hey, name. Love what you're building at the name of his company. How's it going over there? Now, this was a warm lead in that he and I went to the same alma mater, but I didn't know him personally. So that's why I didn't go into like, oh my gosh, you know, so good to reconnect with you. I really loved our good old days at whatever we didn't have that kind of relationship. So this is a message I sent to him. Super short and sweet.

Julia Arpag [00:09:47]:
And I know you're like, wait, what a simple dumb message? Like, that's so annoying. Why did that work? This works. These types of messages, this type of individual reach outs to those warm leads of yours, those work because of my LinkedIn content. So that CEO saw a loom video that I posted on LinkedIn showing exactly how we source candidates. So he responded to that super short message, keep it super sweet or sorry, keep it short and sweet. He responded to that with his personal cell number and asked me to call him to help replace his top sales guy who just left. So LinkedIn content is effective because it keeps your warm leads warm and it heats your cold leads up. So it's going to work for all the sales strategies that we're going to talk about today.

Julia Arpag [00:10:32]:
Why is that? We're all in B2B, we're all recruiters, we're all selling our recruitment services into businesses. So in B2B, only 3% of your potential buyers are ready to buy right now. But if you are already established as a thought leader in your industry, you'll be the first one they think of when they are ready to hire. And honestly, it's super fun. Like, I genuinely love it. Some people who don't love to write, I get it. This will be a discipline that you need to do. I was an English major.

Julia Arpag [00:11:04]:
I still love to communicate, love to write. It's one of my favorite things about this job is getting to communicate with the people that we get to chat with every day. So I would recommend that you make a LinkedIn strategy that's going to work for you. The best discipline is one that you can stick with. And the good news is you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Toby is in no way, shape or form compensating me for affirming him and celebrating him and shouting his name from the rooftops. But he made such a massive impact on my business. We've become really good friends.

Julia Arpag [00:11:34]:
I actually just spoke at his mastermind last week because his frameworks are the most effective thing on the Internet Today about posting on LinkedIn. So again, you'll have access to this deck, you'll have this exact link. This is the exact course that I took. What was that? Two and a half years ago? That taught me everything I know about LinkedIn posting. Okay, take the course, do what he says, guaranteed. Let me show you a couple examples of how this works for me. So I post sometimes for reach, where I'm just trying to get as much traction as possible. So I make it broad, I make it about topics that are relatable to a lot of people and I make it about topics that I care about.

Julia Arpag [00:12:16]:
Like I never post inauthentically. So if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see that I care about work, life balance, I care about people first, companies. I care about optimizing for whatever your values are. Like, I don't think you should always chase the highest paying job. I don't think you should always chase the, I don't know, the fanciest title. I think that you should optimize for what is most important to you. So for me, that is freedom, flexibility, remote flexibility especially is super important to me. So that being said, these are two posts that lean into that.

Julia Arpag [00:12:49]:
So post on the left. As you can see, I have over 77k interactions. Posts on the right, you can see I have over 85k interactions. Now, these are the biggest reaches I've gotten on posts that I've posted. No one should expect this. No one should expect to go viral every single day. Even the best of the best don't go viral every single day. But these are some examples of frameworks that you'll learn from Toby and that you'll implement for your niche.

Julia Arpag [00:13:13]:
Secondly, content for conversion. This is where I'm like, okay, I got a bunch of eyeballs on those posts. Now I want you to understand who I am, what I do and what my success looks like. So these are just totally honest stories. The one on the left is from a software engineering role that we closed a couple months back. The one on the right is about a tech sales role we play in the tech space. And because we're an rpo, we recruit across positions, across teams. So I just talk about our wins.

Julia Arpag [00:13:42]:
Like, this is huge. People love to see people getting hired. They love to see awesome teams getting built, awesome companies growing. So as you can see, the one on the left over 4K, the one on the right over 1.2K. So that's another strategy that's worked really well for me. And then lastly, I post personal content. So I tell stories about crappy bosses. I've had amazing bosses, I've had crappy environments.

Julia Arpag [00:14:07]:
I've worked in amazing environments I've worked in, times I have failed, times I have struggled, things I have told myself to keep going. I post, as you can see on the right, pictures of me, my husband, my friends, like, just the story, right? Like people resonate with stories. You are a human. So what's really cool is you don't have to post anything you're not comfortable posting. If you're not cool posting pictures of you and your friends and your family, great. Don't I never post pictures of my kids. You will not see, except for in this deck here today, you will not see on social media a single picture of my children. I do not do that.

Julia Arpag [00:14:40]:
I'm not comfortable with that. But the consenting adults, my husband, my friends, no problem. If you're not comfortable posting about past failures, that'll be tough because people typically want to see a hero story, to be totally honest. So think of a failure that you're comfortable sharing. Like, maybe it was when you were like 12. Like, one of my failures I posted about was when I was 12 and I was babysitting and the mom was kind of like hovering and I felt super awkward and she clearly didn't trust me. Right. Like, that's just if you're comfortable sharing something like that, just to show people the human side of who you are and what you do.

Julia Arpag [00:15:11]:
But as you can see, this post on the left, over 6k engagements. Post on the right, shoot, the bar won't go away. I think it's like a thousand or something like that. Anyway, my point is. Yeah, There we go. 1.1 K. So this is something that's worked really well as well because it just helps people see the person behind the posting, the person behind the business. Okay, so my content makes people like Lear to respond to my outreach.

Julia Arpag [00:15:35]:
So this brings us in to the other two sales tactics that I want to talk about today. So I get amazing response rates on both my Dripify campaigns and my LinkedIn voice notes. So what I want to talk about first is Dripify. So these are the stats from four of the campaigns that I've run that I've gotten acceptance rates of my connection requests and then responses. This is insane. Over here on the right. If you run an email email marketing campaign, the best response rate I've heard for like a killer email response rate is around 10%. Average is more like 1 to 3%.

Julia Arpag [00:16:10]:
Dripify, again, because in this case, they've already seen my content. They know that I'm not just like a weirdo bot spamming them. I have really, really strong response rates. And what's really cool about this is it allows me to grow my audience not only through what I'm posting, but also through sending these automated connection requests. So what Dripify does, it's highly personalized, bulk LinkedIn outreach. At scale, super affordable, 750 for the whole year. Works best with the LinkedIn Sales NAV license, which again is very affordable. Only a hundred bucks a month.

Julia Arpag [00:16:44]:
And it works because you build your lead list in sales nav or you can do it in the free version of LinkedIn. If 100 bucks a month is like a scary no go for you right now, that's fine, you can still use it, you'll base it on your icp. So for me this is people at director, VP and C suite level within tech startups. That is my icp. So then I create message templates that are hyper personalized and in my voice I talk like me when I'm sending these messages to people because when they get on a call with me, I don't want them to be like, oh my gosh, I just got catfish. Like who is this random girl? I talk to them the same way I talk to gosh, my friends to you guys. Like this is the energy that I bring to those messages so that what they see is what they get when we get on a call together. And what's cool is you can send connection requests, messages, you can view their profile, you can like their posts.

Julia Arpag [00:17:35]:
All of that activity is automated in Dripify. So I am obsessed with Dripify. So they gave me this affiliate link and a 10% off code for all of you. So you can either sign up for the month for the annual, whatever again you'll have this deck so you'll have this access. Highly, highly, highly recommend. I've been using dripify almost the whole time I've run the business. I started it I think right around two years ago. So it's been super effective.

Julia Arpag [00:18:00]:
I absolutely love it. Okay, I know I convinced you, so congrats. Now the best part is so dripify is running this lead gen for you in the background. So now your time is freed up for high touch contact with high potential clients. Because obviously not every potential client is the same level of likelihood to close. So then this is what you're going to do. You're going to send LinkedIn voice notes. This is going to be your manual outbound strategy that you use every single day.

Julia Arpag [00:18:29]:
So quick housekeeping, how to send them in case you don't know, you have to go on your phone to LinkedIn and then go to the person you want to contact. You do have to be first degree connected to them. So that's why dripify is amazing because they're sending out these automated connection requests. You can also manually connect with them if you're not connected with them yet. You'll go to message them and then you'll click on the microphone on the little right hand, right hand corner of the screen and you'll just hold it while you record your voice note. It cuts you off at a minute so you can't go on and on, which is great. So who should you send them to? Those people who accepted your connection requests and are in your icp. People who viewed your profile.

Julia Arpag [00:19:06]:
Oh, let me back up. Sorry. Icp, Ideal Client profile. Just in case people didn't know that. So there you go. Okay. People who viewed your profile and then people who engaged with your LinkedIn content in your ICP. So what should you say in these messages? Number one, like we talked about before, be authentic and energetic.

Julia Arpag [00:19:25]:
So you've got to be yourself. You've got to infuse your personality into these messages. Secondly, people love themselves way more than they love you. So they want you to talk about them. They want you to mention 1, 2, 3, 4, whatever things that you love about them in their background. Then you'll introduce yourself. And then I've played with a couple different calls to actions. Both of these work pretty equally.

Julia Arpag [00:19:49]:
Number one, you ask if they're open to a quick call about hiring. Number two, you tell them you have amazing candidates in your pipeline and ask if they want to see the resumes. Okay. Don't be those scummy recruiters who don't actually have those resumes, but they say they do. Okay. One of my core values here at Alliance Recruitment is integrity. So I only do this if I literally have resumes ready to go that I could actually send to them. So, for example, we hire a lot of software engineers.

Julia Arpag [00:20:17]:
I've got probably 15 software engineers resumes sitting in my documents folder right now that I know that I could pull out at the drop of a hat. I've gotten permission from all of those candidates to shop the resumes around when we're working on closing new clients. I have three in particular that I bookmarked that are the best ones. So I use them pretty often. And so this is something that works really well if you actually can back it up. Okay. Now, the way that I do this, I'm huge into KPIs. They have helped me stay accountable throughout the entirety of my recruitment journey.

Julia Arpag [00:20:48]:
Back when I first started an agency, it was 25 pieces of outreach a day, five phone screens a day, five submits a week, three offers a month. That kept me on the straight and narrow. That got me to president's Club that got me to promotions, that got me to eventually be able to build my team and coach them in the same way. So now that I'm in this sales seat, what I do is my goal is 15 per day. If it's a day where I have a lighter schedule, then I can send up to 30 more than that. And I notice my energy really starts to flag and I'm not showing up as my. As my best self. In these voice notes, I highly recommend that you pay attention to your energy because if you're sacrificing quality for quantity, they're going to hear in your voice, and these are not going to translate.

Julia Arpag [00:21:29]:
You're not going to get the response rates that you're looking for. So I know this is such a good idea. It works so well. But, yeah, none of this works on the right mindset behind it, which is why, for the first time ever, usually I just share those sales tactics that I just shared with you. And obviously we can go into those more during the Q and A, but there is so much more you guys like. The reason that all of that works for me is because of what I have undergirding it. So that is what we are going to go into for the second half of this presentation. So any questions you had about those sales tactics, go ahead and drop them in the Q and A in the Zoom chat and I'll get to those during the Q and A section.

Julia Arpag [00:22:06]:
But I'm going to now pivot and talk about what is behind me being able to A, figure out these strategies and B, execute them every day without burning out. Okay, so we're going to talk about mindset. CEO mindset. And yes, you need to think of yourself as having a CEO mindset. Yes, I run a little tiny recruitment firm. I have a little tiny team. I have a little tiny revenue compared to the giants of the world. But I'm still a CEO and I am still going to have a CEO mindset.

Julia Arpag [00:22:35]:
And that needs to be the way that you think about yourself as well. So you have to dial in mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. So I'm going to share with you what that means for me, okay? I am not you. I am not you Hear me say, I am not you. So what I want you to take from this is what are my values? Who do I want to be? What kind of business do I want to build? What kind of schedule do I want to have? What am I optimizing for? And then you're going to build all of these around that. So let's do mental first four things that have worked for me. Number one Affirmations. I hate most affirmations.

Julia Arpag [00:23:15]:
They're usually corny, cliche, stupid. I don't resonate with them. So what I did is I went out and I listened to a bunch of different affirmations. I looked up a bunch of Bible verses. I'm a Christian, so Jesus is 100% the one who's guiding me on this journey. So I compiled all of the ones that resonated with me, recorded myself saying them, found a guy on Fiverr who could put like nice meditation music in the background. And now I listen to that every single day while I'm getting ready. It's 17 minutes long and it is my own voice affirming the things that I most believe and I'm most working towards.

Julia Arpag [00:23:54]:
Cannot recommend this highly enough. Number two Coaching. Like I said, I hired Diane Prince the day I got my first check because I knew I had to use someone who actually knew how to do what I wanted to do to get where I wanted to go. I've since paid for coaching from multiple sources. Like I told you already, Toby Oluwole, he's the one who taught me how to post on LinkedIn. I just bought Mike Anderson's recruiter bill print Like I am all in on constant education. And as I mentioned earlier, I now am a coach as well because I'm like man, a I get DM'd every single day of my life from fellow recruitment founders who resonate with me specifically in the way that I work, specifically because it's different from all those coaches I just mentioned and B now that I have compiled all these different coaches and candidly they all cost me probably a cumulative 45k, I want to say so now that I have all that wisdom, I want to be able to disseminate it for a much lower price point than 45k. So I got you.

Julia Arpag [00:24:51]:
If you want coaching, we'll get into the end of the Talk. You can DM me on LinkedIn. We'll go from there. Self talk. I actually have a slide and coming up next with some of my favorite quotes, there are a ton of motivational speakers on Spotify. I actually compiled all my favorites and made a motivational mix. So I have a couple pull quotes that I have up on my walls now because they are so grounding for me. So you've got to have those quotes similar to affirmations.

Julia Arpag [00:25:18]:
But basically the idea is what is the tape playing in your head and when you are getting discouraged, what are the quotes that you can pull back to that keep you grounded in who you are and where you're going. And then books you've got to read. It blows my mind when people are like, I'm not a reader. I'm like, oh, do you not want money? Oh, do you not want to be a better person? Oh, do you not want to be a better parent? Like, do you think you know everything there is to know? Like, I'm so confused. I talked to a fellow founder actually a couple years ago. She at the height of her business, Solopreneur, 30k a month, swimming in money, chilling, loving it, loving life. Now $0 in revenue because she never learned. She just never got past what she already knew.

Julia Arpag [00:26:03]:
She was like, I've arrived. There's nothing more to know. Ended up having to take a W2 job. Hates it. My point is there is so much you don't know and infinite books you could be reading. So let me start with that selft talk. These are my favorite quotes. Speaking of what we were just talking about.

Julia Arpag [00:26:18]:
If you refuse to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you. I'm not going to read all of these to you again. You'll have access to this deck. But this is the ethos of those motivational quotes that I lean on because I want these to statements to replace that negative selft talk that says, gosh, your revenue is not as high as other people. Gosh, this is taking you a long time to build. Are you sure you're good at this? Gosh, this is really hard. Shouldn't you just go pack it up and get a W2 job? These are the tapes that I want to replace those tapes.

Julia Arpag [00:26:49]:
So I do the work every single day to get these words in my head. Okay, books. So these are my favorite business books. Again, you'll have access to this list. I recommend you buy every single one. I'm not kidding. Like these all legitimately changed my life in some way or another. And then like I mentioned before, I'm a Christian, so I have leaned heavily on faith based business books.

Julia Arpag [00:27:15]:
Again, if you're also a Christian, these books I can't overstate. Like I'm currently rereading how heaven invades your finances because money and faith often have this like crazy relationship and I'm like, nope, I'm figuring this out. I'm getting to the bottom of this. My point is there is so much education that you can get. There is so much you have to learn and we are so fortunate that we live in the information age and you can be growing and learning every single day. Okay, I'm going to pause there. That's everything I wanted to share on the mental aspect. Now let's talk about physical.

Julia Arpag [00:27:52]:
Your mind is only as strong as the vessel it's in. So if you have your health, you have incredible wealth. So this is what my physical health looks like. Weekdays I wake up at 5:30. I do a 45 minute workout for me at strength training and mobility. After I had kids, my lower back acted like I was like 99 years old. So I literally have to do back mobility every day. It's hilarious.

Julia Arpag [00:28:15]:
Protein shake. I'm literally drinking mine right now. It's 50 grams of protein, 5 servings of fruits and vegetables. Is it delicious? No. Do I drink it every day? Yes. And then my work schedule. So this is what's crazy. People stop me in my tracks when I talk about this.

Julia Arpag [00:28:29]:
I work 30 hours a week. My typical working hours are 10am to 4pm with flexibility, obviously. Why? Because of my values, I am optimizing for freedom. You have heard people, if you've been to all the talks this week, you've heard million dollar billers, you've heard people who run eight figure agencies. That is not me. That is not my story. Because that is not what I am optimizing for. I have two young kids.

Julia Arpag [00:28:58]:
My boys are 2 and 4. They are the light of my life. I have the best husband in the entire world who I want to spend a lot of time with. And I value myself. I value my free time, I value my flexibility. I value being able to take care of myself while building my business, of course, which is why I still spend a lot of time on it. But. But I have been very, very clear on what my values are and what I'm optimizing for.

Julia Arpag [00:29:25]:
That's how I run my weekdays. And then I'm in bed at nine, y', all, I'm not joking. If I'm ever up and it's like 9:30 or 10, I'm like, Julia, what are you doing? And that happens like once every quarter. Like never. My friends, all my friends have told me that they wanted to buy me the sign that's for sale on Amazon that says, thanks for coming, please leave by nine, like even on the weekends, I'm like, okay, guys, love that you came here. See you later. Peace out. Okay, weekends I sleep in as much as my toddlers allow.

Julia Arpag [00:29:53]:
Like I said, they can be up anywhere between five and seven. So it doesn't always work. Out. But my goal is to slow down and my goal is to spend time with my friends and family. So I include both weekdays and weekends. Because you do not exist in a vacuum. Your Monday does not exist in a different world than your Sunday exists. You have to develop rhythms that work for you holistically, not just like, okay, I'll just like go crazy on this day and then relax.

Julia Arpag [00:30:19]:
No, you won't. Your mind, your body, your soul are all out of alignment if you're acting like a fully different person on different days of the week. So that's why I challenge you to come up with a weekly rhythm that works for you. So that's what works for me. Now, how do we maintain that inner health so that you can optimize that external health? Great questions, guys. Love them. Keep them coming. So this is how I take care of myself emotionally.

Julia Arpag [00:30:43]:
Again, this is my CEO mindset. Yours could look different, but this is mine. Number one, I have the greatest therapist in the world. I'm obsessed with her. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida. I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I have offered her a relocation bonus. She hasn't taken it yet, but I'm manifesting secondly time with good friends.

Julia Arpag [00:31:04]:
I'm an extrovert. So that is a huge gift to me. Number three, like I mentioned, I have the greatest husband in the world. We've been married for 10 years now, so grateful. So we do bi weekly date nights and that is a non negotiable. And then journaling is huge for me. I journal almost every single day. And then lastly, fire mode.

Julia Arpag [00:31:22]:
So this is something that allows me to maintain that 30 hours a week of working, which is why it's part of my CEO mindset. I put my phone in a different room. I make my like urgent, you have to get these done today to do list. And I just bang them out. I have no distractions, I have no notifications. And so in two or three hours, I'm able to accomplish what most people accomplish in an eight hour day where they're also checking LinkedIn, they're also checking Facebook, they're also texting their friends, they're also shopping on Amazon. No, I go into fire mode. It's so much more efficient and it allows me to take care of those other aspects of my life because I'm knocking out what I have to knock out right in that moment.

Julia Arpag [00:32:01]:
Okay, these all sound great, but can we get deeper? It's me. So yes, obviously, when I was debating going into recruitment, I also was debating becoming a therapist. I actually got into a master's degree of counseling. So I'm like a low key recruiter, therapist kind of vibe. So yes, we are definitely going to get deeper today. Spiritual. So this is what my spiritual rhythms look like. You are a spiritual being whether you're a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, an atheist, agnostic.

Julia Arpag [00:32:32]:
You have a soul. So you've got to figure out rhythms that serve you. So for me, I have to spend daily time with Jesus. I need to ask the Holy Spirit to fall on me, my business, my family, or else I am screwed. I take a 24 hour Sabbath. So what that means is I play with when it is typically it's Saturday evening to Sunday evening. I do not check my phone 24 hours. I power it off, I put it in a drawer, don't check it.

Julia Arpag [00:32:59]:
I spend a ton of time with friends and family. I bake, I sleep again as much as my kids allow. I try to take a nap, I go to church. I do whatever is restful for me in my life stage in my personality. Which leads me into phone guidelines. So like I mentioned, during fire mode, my phone's off, notifications are off, Sabbath, phone's off, in a drawer. In general, my goal is once I log off work at 4 every day, my goal is to not be on my phone for the rest of the night. I will check it periodically just to see if anything came through that I have to deal with.

Julia Arpag [00:33:36]:
But for the most part, from 4 to 8, when my kids go to bed, I am all in on mom time. Okay? That is how I've made peace with that. I'm a working mom and a mom raising young children at the same time is that I got to create my own schedule and I get to create my own routines. And part of why that works is because I do not allow my phone to take away from my time with my family. And then church and small group are the other two aspects that keep me spiritually grounded and spiritually healthy. Whoa. Okay, girl, you have given us a lot. I know y' all are tired.

Julia Arpag [00:34:11]:
You have a lot of new habits to start. You got to go close some deals. Am I really going to keep talking? One more thing, just my personal favorite, then we're done and y' all can ask me all the questions. I promise. You have got to remember your why. So like I mentioned, these are my gorgeous children, my amazing husband. The reason that I work is because of them. Okay? I care about them, I want to provide for them, I want to prioritize them.

Julia Arpag [00:34:41]:
So again, I'm a values based founder, which means that my business is not going to become my North Star. My family and my faith are my North Stars. So that is what keeps me grounded every day. That is what motivates me to work, and it's also what motivates me to log off of work. So this is radically important that you know your why and then you optimize for your why. Okay, so like I mentioned, I offer consulting in addition to running my recruitment clients. So go ahead and grab that QR code that'll take you to my LinkedIn. So if you want to chat about coaching, you'll have to DM me and then we'll go from there.

Julia Arpag [00:35:20]:
We're scheduling time together, but I would love to work with you. Like I said, if any of this resonated with you again, it's not for everyone, right? Some people are like, nope, I want to work 18 hours a day. I want to build $6 million a year. Love that. Love that for you. Go crazy. I'm not your person. But if you're like, I'm optimizing for freedom and money, like, I do want to make good money.

Julia Arpag [00:35:41]:
I do want to care well for my clients. I do want to grow this business. But I'm also a mom, a wife, a husband, a daughter, a dog mom, a cat mom, a world traveler, whatever. Great. Then we should talk.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:53]:
Julia, once again, thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much for the impact. Thank you so much for pouring into people and helping raise their belief. So we'll see you guys soon, and let's crush this year.

Julia Arpag [00:36:06]:
Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:08]:
The Recruiter Sales and Business Development Summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2024. It is going to be the best, biggest, most focused conference for recruiters to help them grow with business development and sales. Remember, with all the summits, the live sessions are free. If you want to go for the replays, you got two options. You can go VIP on the Summit platform, or you can join the community and have access to all the summits. But this is a summit that you do not want to miss. If you want 2026 to be the absolute best year possible, be there, be ready to learn, and be ready to crush it.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:43]:
I'll see you there. Admin is a massive waste of time. That's why there's Atlas, the AI first recruitment platform built for modern agencies. It doesn't only track resumes and calls. It remembers everything. Every email, every interview, every conversation. Instantly searchable, always available. And now it's entering a whole new era with Atlas 2.0.

Benjamin Mena [00:37:01]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:37:40]:
Atlas is your personal AI partner for modern recruiting. Don't miss the future of recruitment. Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive listener offer at recruit with atlas.com thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.