How Candidate-First Recruiting Built a $1.5M Firm

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.

Sarah Englade [00:00:49]:
We cover it all from sales, marketing.

Benjamin Mena [00:00:52]:
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. 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:19]:
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. 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:47]:
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 one of the biggest things that I have seen when it comes to winners, winners surround themselves with other winners. Winners build a circle around them of people that they want to run with and you know, talking about winners. I've had the chance to to meet Sarah, kind of follow Sarah and just like see some of the things that she's like been doing behind the scenes, what she's been doing recruiting wise. And she's on the desk, you know, day in, day out recruiting just like us. She's going to talk about what she did when she started her firm and if you had not listened to the podcast episode with her or one of the many podcasts she's been on, definitely go check out for her full story.

Benjamin Mena [00:02:39]:
She's been on the Elite Recruiter podcast, but she's been on numerous other podcasts too. I will go ahead and give you the floor you rocket. Full trust in you that you are going to level up every single person here and every single person watching this recording.

Sarah Englade [00:02:53]:
I hope so. Thanks, Benjamin. All right, well, for everyone that doesn't know, I'm Sarah Englade. I own a recruiting firm called Monarch Talent Solutions here in Houston, Texas. I am very niche so I'm going to kind of break into that a little bit. But I'm really excited to be here and this community has been a huge game changer even for myself. Joining summits like this has helped me level up. I think a lot of the time when we see folks like myself and some other speakers that are part of the summit on LinkedIn, we automatically think that they are like overnight successes and they're not doing a 360 desk and all the things.

Sarah Englade [00:03:29]:
And we are. I know I am. I have owned Monarch for four years. This year will be five years. Before I started my own company, I had eight years of experience. I've got about 12 years in total, but I'm running a full 360 desk. I'm hitting activity. I believe in metrics.

Sarah Englade [00:03:47]:
There is no such thing as overnight success. You have to put the work in. No one is going to drop job orders. Just down in your lap with a pretty bow. It doesn't work like that even when you get to a level of success that I feel I've reached, but it still takes tons of work. So my call, I just want to talk about here, how I started my company, what worked for me and the BD side of the business that I had to really learn and pick up because I didn't know what I was doing. So I'm just going to kind of break right into the first piece here. So Monarch Talent Solutions, I am very niched down, so I get this question a lot about when did you decide to niche? Is it really that important? And in my opinion it is.

Sarah Englade [00:04:30]:
So I had a mentor early on and you'll hear me talk about mentors and coaches a lot on this because they are vital in my own success still to this day. I have lots of coaches, but you have to niche in my opinion, if you go off on your own. So I decided to go off on My own. I was laid off during the pandemic, like a lot of us were as recruiters, when there's no jobs, there's nothing for us to do. So after eight years of working in agency, I found myself unemployed. The day after I was laid off, I googled how do you start a recruiting firm? And I didn't know what I was doing, but I did know that from growing up in recruiting. I had my first go at it with Robert Half. I was there for six and a half years as a top producer.

Sarah Englade [00:05:14]:
They pretty much mastered the niche and breaking down into lines of businesses that specialize in what they do. So I knew I was going to niche down. I grew up in the accounting and finance space as a recruiter on the temp side. So I knew when I started Monarch, I was going to do accounting, finance, human resources. I did not want to do temp, I wanted to do direct hire. I only wanted to focus on senior and C level roles. So the six figure salary space, I knew that. I knew I also wanted to just do, like I said, direct hire.

Sarah Englade [00:05:47]:
And I only wanted to work in Houston, Texas. I wanted to work in oil and gas and manufacturing. That is what I chose and that is what I've stuck with. A lot of the times people will come to me and I've had quite a few DMs, even just this year, we were only, you know, 14 days into the year of people asking like, if I've pivoted my niche, if they should pivot their niche because they're not feeling it anymore. Y', all, all of our businesses are going to look different. Whatever works for you is going to work for you. But what works for me is having structure and knowing that I specialize in this space. Because you have to build a personal brand in my opinion too.

Sarah Englade [00:06:22]:
So niche down, pick a niche, stick with it. It's going to be hard. Like I said, building these relationships takes time. So you have to give yourself enough time to be able to do it. So I would always say, like, if you pick a niche, at least give it two years. In my opinion, before you decide to pivot into something completely different. You have to master it. So I niche down.

Sarah Englade [00:06:42]:
The more deep and narrow you go with your niche. I do believe you make a lot more money. So you just have to stick with it. I started building a personal brand on LinkedIn four years ago. Before I started my company, I never used LinkedIn, which is weird because I have eight years of recruiting experience. But my candidates weren't on LinkedIn. They were on. Indeed they were on ZipRecruiter.

Sarah Englade [00:07:00]:
I did transactional accounting. So temp like a P A R. So those candidates aren't necessarily on LinkedIn. So when I decided to start my company, I decided right then and there to build a brand. And it was scary. I think a lot of the times people get super freaked out by building a brand they don't want to post, they're scared that someone's going to not like the post or make fun of them. And all the things, you've got to stop caring what people think. Like that's the biggest thing that I can tell you in building a brand is that you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Sarah Englade [00:07:28]:
But you have to start putting yourself out there to find your voice, to find your people. And you have to create content, in my opinion, for your buyers. So I think a lot of us recruiters kind of fall into building and creating content for other recruiters, but those aren't the people that we, we should be attracting, really. Like for me, my content is for people here in Houston in the accounting, finance and HR space. And it's specifically I make content that is teaching, not telling. And it's for hiring managers, teaching them how to hire for their teams and candidates, how to find a job and how to find a job quicker to stand out in the market that's really just not that friendly. So I really do believe in this. I spent a lot of time building this brand.

Sarah Englade [00:08:10]:
I'm still building my brand. We're on every social media platform and I can tell you that I came out of nowhere. Like I said, I never used LinkedIn before I started my company and so I wanted to be known here in Houston and it required me to actually break out of my comfort zone and make that happen by showing up every single day and bringing the value driven content. So there's that. But I think what we really want to talk about is the business development piece. And I had no book of business when I started Monarch. It was wild when I think about it, I was thinking about it today. It's like, okay, I started my company the day after I got laid off and I had never done business development.

Sarah Englade [00:08:48]:
So as a recruiter, my entire eight years of experience, I think I had one year of doing business development. I did recruiting. So my expertise was finding job seekers and placing them in temp roles. That is what I did. So I did not wine and dine. I did not go and have conversations with controllers or people in the C level or hr, I didn't do that. So I had no book of business, I had no true BD experience, and I was starting a company in a pandemic, so there were no jobs. So it was a really crazy idea and it required me to stay extremely disciplined.

Sarah Englade [00:09:27]:
So what I did know is I had to do MPC emails, I had to do ad calls and all the things. But I think the piece that people forget is how much activity and revenue you can generate from focusing on the candidate side. So I again, was really comfortable talking to job seekers. And when I started my company, I had no book of business, so I had nowhere to place job seekers. And I was building my book, but I was really comfortable talking to job seekers. And at that time, there was a lot of folks that needed support. I spent a lot of the end of 2020, up until my first paycheck, it was six months in of me starting my company before I actually landed a paycheck. I spent a lot of time with people that needed it.

Sarah Englade [00:10:14]:
So a lot of people that needed help with optimizing their LinkedIn or updating their resume, coaching them on how to negotiate an offer or helping them with interview prep. And it sounds so, like, meaningless in some ways because those people aren't paying the bills, per se, right away. But let me tell you how it, like, completely transformed my company. And it was able. I was able to go from $0 to generating, you know, $1.5 million in 18 months. And a lot of that revenue came from these folks that at the time that I spent time with them, weren't working. I spent a lot of time with these folks. And when you give them attention and you're actually showing that you care and you're showing up for them like, the reason why we do this as recruiters, it can't just all be about the revenue and the.

Sarah Englade [00:11:00]:
The money that we make. You've got to care about people. It's relationships over the transaction. Always. You have to keep that mindset. And when you do keep that mindset and you put people first, it does pay off tenfold. Six months in, didn't land my first client. Well, I landed my first client.

Sarah Englade [00:11:16]:
Six months in, was able to close the deal that actually came from an ad call. Rest of my revenue, the majority of my revenue actually came from the people that I helped. Once they found work and they were placed by another recruiter, basically another recruiter found them their first job. When they had to build out their teams, they called me. And one of my clients, you know, he was a Controller that had been laid off during the pandemic. He landed a job here in Greenway Plaza through another recruiting agency, called me. When he had to build up his team, I, I think I placed nine people, made nearly 200 grand just off one client. This is where I think a lot of people really do fall short.

Sarah Englade [00:11:51]:
Like they forget that the other side of business development, it's not just about the clients or the companies that are hiring. It's about the candidates too. And if you can actually really show people that you care about them when they do get placed, they will remember you, they will reach out to you. They always do. And that's where I feel like we need to do better as recruiters because I think a lot of the time the business development piece is really just about going after companies, going after companies, going after companies. So I was able to generate in 2021 with only six months of paychecks. I pretty much tripled my income from my best year at Robert Half, like in six months. And it had tons to do with the candidate side of the business.

Sarah Englade [00:12:31]:
And that's why I really wanted to preach that piece there too is, is, you know, giving someone a phone call back, you know, helping them with a quick update to their resume, coaching them goes a very long way. So 2021, fantastic year. 2022, phenomenal year. Still pretty much really maintained that kind of like 60% candidate driven focus on the BD side. You can get a lot of leads from candidates too. If you're not doing that and paying attention and listening and asking the questions, asking a lot of why questions to even candidates, you're really truly missing out. So I still pretty much run the company as 60% candidate focused on the BD side and then the 40% on traditional BD where I'm going after companies and ad calls and mpcing and doing all the things. But 2024, even though it's been fantastic, 2024 was tough for me and I made less money in 2024 than I did in six months of paychecks in 2021.

Sarah Englade [00:13:25]:
2024 was still better than my best year at Robert Half. I do a lot of comparisons to my best year, but it was a tough year. But what I did was I went back to basics. And what worked for me in 2020 and 2021 was literally staying candidate focused. I spent so much time in 2024 staying very candidate focused and supporting these folks that needed support that were coming to me saying, I have applied to X amount of jobs. I don't Know what's going on. Some of these things are really easy fixes, y'. All.

Sarah Englade [00:13:54]:
You know, you look at a resume and you can see, okay, this is what's going on. You plug into someone's LinkedIn and the folks that are reaching out to me trust me to go into their LinkedIn and make some changes. These are really quick, easy, like five minute fixes that you can completely alter and change the candidates perspective of you and recruiters around knowing that people actually do care about them and we're looking out for them. I spent so much time with these folks and what I'm telling you now, and I mean it with this, is that I already have, I'm not joking about three times the amount of revenue that I've already hit for my Q1. Three times the amount that I made in Q1 of 2024 already hit my account now. So it's already looking like it's going to be a great year. And again, a lot of this I contribute to the candidate side of the business and so don't ever fall short on that piece there. I can't preach it enough.

Sarah Englade [00:14:45]:
People will never forget how you made them feel. And the majority of my company, the reason why my company has continued to really grow has been because I have a very big focus on the candidate side of the business. So that was the biggest piece there. I do want to talk about a little bit because I do get asked a lot of these questions about, you know, starting a company and you know, what I did to really be different. All the things my tech stack, you know what my KPIs are like all of the time, all of those questions. And so what I want to do is kind of hit on those a little bit here just to kind of help people understand that, you know, I'm a very structured human. So I came from, I was raised in Robert half and we were very metrics driven there. So that's what I knew.

Sarah Englade [00:15:22]:
I know metrics, I know you have to actually do activity and track your activity and I believe in that. And so that's the biggest piece there that I think is something that people need to understand is that this does require you to do the work if you want to be successful, if you want to be a high performer, you can't expect again AI and like all these softwares that people are saying like get this entire tech stack, it's going to change your life. Sure. But if you're not optimizing the tech stack and if you're not good at relationship building, you could have tons of leads coming in, but you can't close the deal because no one likes you. So that likability factor is really important. And again, putting people first is number one if you want to really make it big in this business. So you know, for me, my tech stack, because that's usually the question that I get asked a lot, is what is your tech stack look like? So when I first started my company, I had like no money. I was balling on a budget.

Sarah Englade [00:16:11]:
My tech stack back then and how I started and what my tech stack looks like right now is, is different. But again, like having strong relationships and being willing to build relationships with people, listen to people and actually care about them is really what's going to trump and help you really grow your businesses. So my tech stack when I first started, I need a CRM. So if y' all are thinking about going off and just working out of Excel like I would highly like. I would not suggest that. I really do believe in organization. So I use Bullhorn. When I first started, I did invest in Zoom Info as my biggest investment back then to help me to actually build out Bullhorn because again, I didn't have a book of business.

Sarah Englade [00:16:45]:
I knew nobody here in Houston that was a buyer. I had to build relationships. So now I don't have Zoom Info but I did the first year and I was using, excuse me, Recruiter Lite. Now I still use Bullhorn, I use Recruiter Pro. I have sales nav. I do think that if you're a six figure biller, you should be using both. They make sense to me. They do two different things and they benefit each other.

Sarah Englade [00:17:08]:
I have Dripify. I started using Dripify about four months ago. I've generated two jobs off of it, which has been phenomenal for me. So I love Dripify. We do have mailchimp. We started doing light automation, like very light automation within the last like four to five months. We're not heavy on it. I'm still very personalized in what I do.

Sarah Englade [00:17:27]:
Canva and tons of chatgpt. I've demoed a lot of different AI softwares, y'. All. I recently demoed like an AI recruiter. I personally really liked it, but it didn't make sense for me. I'm a boutique firm. You know, the people that I'm actually working with, they are senior and C level professionals in accounting, finance and hr. Like they want to connect with someone and I truly do.

Sarah Englade [00:17:47]:
Headhunt. I don't really post 75% of my roles. So if for high Volume recruiting, definitely. I think it's something that, you know, you can look into. I think it's a huge benefit. You really can't tell the difference from an AI recruiter than, you know, from a normal person. But for me, it just didn't make sense as a small business owner for me to add that. And I did demo Quill and have another software that I'm going to be demoing for recording, which I also think is great.

Sarah Englade [00:18:11]:
If you're going to record interviews and, you know, calls with clients to transcribe to integrate into your CRM, I think it's huge. I was given advice last year in 2024, and I share this advice because it hit me like a ton of bricks. So I'm kind of always been that person that's like, I don't need a heavy tech stack. You know, I can be very basic. I have really strong relationships and a strong network. One of my coach said to me last year, sarah, somebody that has 10 times less talent than you have is going to outwork you because they've mastered AI and you're being stubborn. And I'm like, I will never let that happen. And so as soon as she said that somebody 10 times less talented than than I am that's mastered AI is going to outwork me, I was like, not letting that happen.

Sarah Englade [00:18:54]:
So I really did start to, you know, really try to streamline a lot of my processes in 2024, which I think, again, is. Is huge. One piece I want to go back to is the personal brand piece. So 2024, I stayed very consistent with branding, and that's something that, again, I don't think people should table. I know a lot of people are super fearful of putting themselves out there, but my budget for 2024, I did not skimp on the marketing piece. I create video content, which we're consistent. We do put out videos every single quarter based on, you know, our opinion of what's going to help job seekers and hiring managers. I was in 2024 on every podcast I could get myself on.

Sarah Englade [00:19:41]:
I did tons of free speaking engagements to get practice and get experience to, you know, be able to put myself out there and meet more people. I volunteer a lot, and I did all of this because 2024 was a tough market. I'm a new company, I'm still building, and I needed people to remember me when the market started to get warm. And so I purposely did a lot of these things to make sure that we're expecting 2025 to get warm, not hot. I want people to remember me, my name, my face, the name of my company when they do start to hire. So I do think that it is something that you shouldn't have to think too hard on. I know a lot of folks that are joining here have a brand, and they're spending a lot of time on their brand. Keep doing that.

Sarah Englade [00:20:24]:
It's going to help you stand out. It's going to build credibility with the audience that you're trying to attract. So please don't table that. I think it's so important when you're doing business development. Y', all, we all know that 80% of the business that we make or 80% of the sales that we make is from like 20% of our business. So for me, again, I'm a boutique firm. Like, what's going to work for me is probably going to be very different for some of y' all that have bigger operations than what I have. But I keep mine very simple.

Sarah Englade [00:20:51]:
Like in my CRM, I have 350 companies that I have in the system that are in the oil and gas and manufacturing system space. Out of the 350 companies, I have a top 50. Those top 50 companies are the companies that have previously done business with me, that are currently doing business with me that I know are using the competition because my candidates have told me that, and companies that I really admire. And I check on these companies on a weekly basis. So every single week, what I'm checking on in sales nav is, you know, are they hiring who just recently joined their company and then who's actually like on LinkedIn creating content so that way I can go and I can engage with their content so that they can get familiar with me. So more people within those companies get familiar with me. So it's very strategic. But I actually do work off of metrics still.

Sarah Englade [00:21:38]:
But my metrics are much smaller because I'm a smaller boutique firm. So I kind of run on the 5, 3, 1 method. I was taught this, and it works for me. So what I do is out of the 350 companies, every single day, I pull up five companies out of the 350 and I target them. I go in, I clean up the record, I try to add three new contacts to each one of those records, and then I set an activity for that person. So whether it's a LinkedIn request or it's an email, or it's an MPC email. So every single week, I'm adding 15 new contacts to the system. And then I'm also marketing it out to the people that I know that I'm reaching back out, doing quality control calls.

Sarah Englade [00:22:19]:
So my metrics, I try to hit a week, probably about like 50 to 70. I call them connects, which is including again adding new contacts, reaching out, doing MPCs, doing AD calls. I love ad calls. Ad calls have been a huge piece of building my business. I love ad calls because I think that they're somewhat easy because they're advertising, the company is advertising what they're looking for. I do have a lot of the same lingo, like the MPC and all that good stuff. But you know, I get the PTSD part too. I had to get through that.

Sarah Englade [00:22:50]:
So with the metrics piece, I do find that if you don't have metrics, I worked for a company and you know, kind of being raised around metrics, I do benefit from them. Again, I'm one of those people that needs to have discipline. I need to have a structure, I need to have a plan. I just need that. So I knew I needed to incorporate metrics and I do find that if you don't have them, you just don't do as well. You have to stack your activity, you have to stack small wins. Small wins are going to pay off. If you're not measuring those and you're not paying attention to your activity, I promise you, you'll get lazy.

Sarah Englade [00:23:22]:
I need to be consistent always. And so, you know, for me, I do believe in a strong mindset and that's kind of the next piece that I want to get into here. Is that a big piece of the success y' all as recruiters? It comes from mindset. You know, again, you can have the best tech stack around and you can invest so heavily in that you can have every contact in the system that you know for the entire city that you're focusing on. But if you don't have the right mindset around this and you don't understand that this is a marathon and that this is truly a relationship driven business. Like people will never buy from people they don't like. Like, if you want long term relationships, you really have to care about being a recruiter and you have to care about people. If you can't get that mindset and you don't surround yourself with people that are doing what you do, but do it better, or people that you trust that know that, you know they want you to win, I think that's the hardest piece in our business, y' all is finding other people and that are recruiters that actually want to support you and see you be successful.

Sarah Englade [00:24:27]:
And that's, again, why I love these little summits in these communities, because the people that join, we want each other to win. That's why we're all here trying to teach and coach and mentor each other. This is huge. You have to have. Also I have another coach. I have lots of coaches, honestly, and I've had lots of coaches since 2018, I think, is when I kind of got into my first coaching program. But I was taught the term aggressive patience. And I think a lot of the times what people will do, they'll kind of baby, you know, new business owners and say, you know, just be patient.

Sarah Englade [00:25:00]:
You know, do the work, be patient. And that's fine, but I feel like that's a little soft. Like, I like aggressive patience. Like, I know that this is a marathon, and I believe in the work that I'm doing, and hard work is going to pay off. But I'm going to be very aggressive with my activity. I'm going to keep my foot on the gas. My foot's been on the gas for four years now. It has not come up, and it can't.

Sarah Englade [00:25:19]:
Because once you kind of let up and you get seduced by the success, which when you're compounding your activity and you're doing all the things, you will see the success come through. And you can't let yourself be seduced by that. You have to stay aggressive and patient. And why I. I try to bring up the don't get seduced by success is because I did get seduced by success, and I paid for it. And I was taught not to do that. But when you go off on your own after six months of, you know, for me, it took me six months. I worked my tail off, and I didn't see anything for six months.

Sarah Englade [00:25:58]:
And I was still committed, and I was hungry, and I was not gonna quit. But I had, you know, six months of hard work and almost, you know, within a year and a half, had generated well into the millions. And I'd never seen that kind of money before. And so for me, I did get seduced by it. And for a short window of time, I did take my foot off the gas and I paid for it. You know, I had lost job orders. I had shared this with mentors. You know, the time kills all deals.

Sarah Englade [00:26:29]:
And I moved slow because I just got, you know, I guess, too much of an ego. And that was my biggest mistake. And it was a great learning experience for me, to be honest with you. It really humbled me because you do have to Stay humble in this business. And if you really do want to have a business that thrives and that grows, you cannot allow overnight success. And things that you've never seen before really cloud your judgment and how you really want to operate your business. So from personal experience, if you do the work, you will be rewarded. But if you get distracted by that reward too long, you will have to really start almost all over.

Sarah Englade [00:27:08]:
And in a lot of ways, you have to stay present all the time. Another thing too is when we are kind of building our businesses, it's really easy to start comparing yourself to others that you look up to. We all do it. There's people on LinkedIn that I really do look up to. They seem, and they appear to be doing great things in the recruiting space. And it's admirable. You're just like, oh, my gosh, how are they doing this? I mean, I can name a bunch, honestly, off the top of my head, a lot of folks that, it's just, it seems to be like, really just truly amazing what they're doing. And, and what I can tell you again is this, like, comparison is the thief of all joy.

Sarah Englade [00:27:45]:
You know, starting your own company is really, really hard. You're not gonna know what you're doing. And I think a lot of people, like, they don't start even though they want to. They're like, one day I'm gonna start my own recruiting company. There's never a perfect time. It's never gonna feel perfect. And if you think you have to know everything and you have to, you don't. You have to learn as you go.

Sarah Englade [00:28:06]:
You're gonna make mistakes. Those mistakes you're gonna learn from. It's going to be able to help you later on, really, you know, maximize your business. But you have to go through all of it. It's not pretty all the time. It's ugly. You know, a lot of the time it's up, it's down. That is the truth.

Sarah Englade [00:28:21]:
But if you start comparing yourself to others that are posting up content about how much revenue they've generated, they just started and now they're a millionaire. And also, it's not true. It's inflated and it's filtered. And, you know, really, I think what we would all benefit from is learning from people that are going to be honest about the str and all the steps you have to take and the activity you have to put in and the mindset. And it's. All of it is going to be something if you can actually just focus and get laser focused on Your own goals, what you're trying to do with your company is your company. Do you want to scale your company? Do you want your company to be a lifestyle brand? It doesn't matter. It's your business.

Sarah Englade [00:28:55]:
You figure out what works for you and your lifestyle and then you create your goals and you execute on the activity to be able to crush your goals. It's. It's all about you. And if you keep comparing yourself, you'll never start or you'll quit three feet from gold and you'll have to sit with the regret of the what if I had just kept going? The what if I didn't care? You know, these are the things that I think that, you know, I've seen peers of my own. When I first started my company, you know, shortly after I started my company, lots of folks kind of started their companies too, and sort of like, like the same fashion, a small boutique firm. And a lot of them are not in business anymore. And a lot of them aren't in business because they got distracted by other people appearing to do better than them. It's all takes time.

Sarah Englade [00:29:43]:
Like, there is just no overnight success. So that's the biggest thing that I can tell you there is. Like, you have to have a mindset of, I don't care. I'm going to keep going. I'm not going to quit. I don't have a plan B. This has to work. And that's what kind of keeps me fired up a lot, is that I don't have a plan B.

Sarah Englade [00:30:00]:
Like, when I decided to go into business for myself, it had to work. So that's my fire. That's the burn that I have every day to keep showing up and doing this. You have to be different while you're doing it. You'll find your voice. For me, I'm not a salesy person. It makes me feel really uncomfortable to pitch and sell all the time. Again, I do believe in the marathon.

Sarah Englade [00:30:21]:
I do believe in the compounding the activity. But I believe that, you know, the biggest piece that I think that we as recruiters really are missing is a candidate side of this business. I think if we all really could just focus a little bit more on the candidate side and really, you know, helping these folks and supporting these folks, they will remember you. You will generate lots of business down the road from the folks that you were able to change their lives for. You know, I got a text message yesterday from a candidate that I've been helping for probably a year with optimizing her LinkedIn and all the Things and coaching her, and she falls into a category I don't actually staff for. So I wasn't truly keeping an eye out for her. But anytime she texted, reached out, DM'd or called, I answered that call for her. I took care of her, and she finally found a job.

Sarah Englade [00:31:09]:
And she, you know, called me yesterday and she was just, you know, thanking me for supporting her. And it felt really good. But I knew for her, I mean, she was like, nobody had my back. Like, nobody had my back. And you were the only one that was consistent for a year that actually showed up for me. So. So this goes a long way. And again, reputation is everything.

Sarah Englade [00:31:26]:
And you just can't devalue the relationships that you can build with candidates. The last thing I want to kind of touch on here is we all do this because we're in sales. You know, as recruiters, we're supposed to, you know, do this first because of the. The relationships and the candidate. And you should have that as your number one, because that should drive you is the relationship building. But the number two, if not for some folks, number one reason that we stay in recruiting is because of the money. And we do make a lot of money in this industry. It's an amazing industry that's been able to just do incredible things for a lot of us.

Sarah Englade [00:32:02]:
I think a lot of people don't understand the recruiter lifestyle. This is a lifestyle. When you get into this, this is something that we eat, breathe and sleep. We love it. And I truly do love this industry. But going back to the money, if you are going off on your own, starting a firm, like I said, the seduction. Don't get seduced by success. You have to be savvy with the money.

Sarah Englade [00:32:26]:
And books that have helped me, like Profit First, I read that book when I first started the company. It made no sense because I didn't have any money. When I started, you know, reading this book, I really wasn't making any money. Read that book a second time. Once some revenue started coming in again, Profit First. It's really made a huge difference in how I look at money. And I've really, truly been able to finance this company. Like I can float monarch for three years.

Sarah Englade [00:32:53]:
I was very, very savvy, especially in 2023. I knew 2024 was going to be a really difficult year because of the election. I stockpiled and I was very savvy. But what I mean by that is I'm not saying I'm savvy and all I do is save the money. I do Believe that you have to spend money to make money. Like scared money don't make money. And you have to reinvest into the company before you, like, go and, you know, buy like a 40 grand vacation. So for me, I definitely suggest reading that book if you're thinking about going off on your own.

Sarah Englade [00:33:23]:
It was a game changer for me. It really did help me to just build this account up and reinvest the way that you're supposed to reinvest to really grow your company. So that's something that's made a huge, huge difference. And you know, how I've been able to really kind of stay afloat and get things done versus other companies that again, they see these, these, you know, big checks coming in. You know you're making 100 grand a month and you know you're spending like 60 of it on, you know, crazy things. So just kind of understand how it works. Like that seduction of success, it hits people all differently. And it hit me too, but you can't.

Sarah Englade [00:33:58]:
It's going to set people back if you take your foot off the gas too much. But that's really kind of my chat. You know, I really wanted to make sure that what I talked about was real stuff. Like, none of this came overnight for me. You know, every time I talk to a new candidate or even, you know, other recruiters that have heard me on podcasts or have seen me speak, when we talk, they'll say, like, I feel like I know you from, like you're like a LinkedIn celebrity or something. And that still kind of blows my mind. I am just like everybody else, figuring it out, trying every single day, waking up, maximizing my day, doing a lot of self education, surrounding myself with the right people, listening to the right, right things, consuming the right content. All of it matters.

Sarah Englade [00:34:41]:
And I think that, you know, if you can actually really focus on what you're trying to do as a recruiter and as a business owner and tune out all the noise and just set yourself up with a structured plan and having the why be, you know, what it is that drives your business. And again, like, you know, I don't have a plan B. My why. My burn is that this has to work. I'm showing up every day for this. A lot of people are depending on me too, to do it. You know, everybody will be successful. So I hope this helped people.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:11]:
Sarah, you hit it out of the park. What's been cool to watch is, like, how much better you've gotten since our initial interview that we had. I think, like less than a year ago. So huge bouts on that. Make sure that you follow Sarah on LinkedIn. You know, feel free to connect with her. I'm actually going to drop her link in profile real quick before we jump off. So once again Sarah, thank you so much.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:36]:
Keep crushing. Thanks for having me and talk to see you guys later. The Recruiter, Sales and Business Development Summit is coming back. It is kicking off January 26, 2026. 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 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:05]:
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. 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.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:28]:
Instantly searchable, always available and now it' entering a whole new era. With Atlas 2.0, you can ask anything and it delivers. With MagicSearch, 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. Custom dashboards give you total visibility over your pipeline. And that's not theory.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:56]:
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@reruitwithatlas.com thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena.

Sarah Englade [00:37:28]:
If you enjoy, enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.