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  • 3 New Episodes: Building a 6-Figure Recruiting Business While Your Life Falls Apart, GTM Is Coming for Recruiting — Here's What You Need to Know, and From Michelin Stars to Top Billing

3 New Episodes: Building a 6-Figure Recruiting Business While Your Life Falls Apart, GTM Is Coming for Recruiting — Here's What You Need to Know, and From Michelin Stars to Top Billing

Latest Episodes: Building a 6-Figure Recruiting Business While Your Life Falls Apart, GTM Is Coming for Recruiting — Here's What You Need to Know, and From Michelin Stars to Top Billing

Author

Benjamin Mena
March 30, 2026

This IS Your Year Recruiter Summit - Register NOW! 

e This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit kicks off on April 27th and it’s 100% free to attend live. Join 30+ expert speakers as they reveal the exact tactics behind landing more clients, closing bigger deals, and scaling faster in 2026. If you’re serious about increasing billings, this is your blueprint. - https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ 
Special Guests: Mark Whitby, Mike Williams, Sharon Hulce, Brianna Rooney, and many more

LATEST EPISODES:

NEW: From 5-Star Hotels to Top Billing: The French Recruiter Who Brought Luxury Service Standards to Recruiting

Hey Elite Recruiters,

Top billers are everywhere in the world — and this week I sit down with one of France's elite, JLP (Jean-Louis-Philippe Girardet), who went from managing a Michelin-star restaurant at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA to becoming one of the top billing recruiters at his firm and now leading a high-performing team. His story proves that the fundamentals of winning are universal — and that luxury service standards translate perfectly to recruitment.

Highlights & Key Takeaways

  • Work with People, Not Numbers JLP's core philosophy: yes, recruiting is a sales job, but the moment you forget you're working with human beings, you start losing. His roots in high-end hospitality wired this into him from day one — and it's the single biggest thing that set him apart.

  • Your Best Year Might Already Be in Your Database In his highest-billing year, 60% of JLP's revenue came from previous clients. While most recruiters obsess over new top-of-funnel activity, the real gold is often in the relationships you've already built.

  • The "Worst" Client Can Become Your Best JLP built €60K–€80K per year from one client who seemed like a nightmare at first meeting. He stuck with it, built the relationship over time, and now they call each other on personal numbers. Don't write off difficult clients — invest in them.

  • BD Hours That Nobody Else Is Working His commercial outreach ran 8–9AM, 12–2PM, and 6:30–8PM. Never during the typical morning or afternoon windows when everyone else was doing it. Being different on purpose is a strategy, not an accident.

  • Transitioning from Biller to Leader Is Harder Than It Looks The three hardest parts: stepping away from the desk (and missing it), letting your team find their own way without micromanaging, and making the differentiation calls — the top 20%, the core 70%, and the bottom 10% who need a hard decision.

  • What Trail Running Taught Him About Recruiting HYROX and Ironman training gave JLP the framework he runs on: embrace the unknown, manage energy over the long haul, and process frustration fast. "This is a marathon, not a sprint" isn't a cliché for him — it's a race plan.

Atlas combines your ATS and CRM in a single, AI-powered platform. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com/

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.

Episode Sponsors!

Atlas combines your ATS and CRM in a single, AI-powered platform. Try it free or book a demo →https://recruitwithatlas.com/

NEW: What the Highlight Reel Doesn't Show: Building a 6-Figure Recruiting Business Through the Hardest Chapter of Your Life

Behind every polished LinkedIn profile is a real story — and Stephanie Lowenstern's is one of the most powerful I've had on this show. She runs a GTM recruiting firm focused on startups and tech companies out of South Florida. She made $170K in her first year. And she ran her business through a breakup with a 5-day-old baby, a complete upheaval of her personal life, and the kind of year that would have broken most people. She kept going. Here's what she learned.

Highlights & Key Takeaways

  • She Closed a Deal in Labor Not a metaphor. The day she gave birth, she took a candidate call mid-labor and the hire went through a few days later. Drive is not always pretty — but it's real.

  • The Recruiting Business Funded the Healing Four simultaneous financial pillars hit at once: postpartum costs, legal costs, moving costs (she moved with a newborn), and the healing work itself. Over $100K in therapy, all funded by her business. Financial resilience built during the good years made the survival years possible.

  • Don't Cut Your Rates — Ever Looking back at year one, her biggest regret is the deals she discounted to "get her foot in the door." Her estimate: $100K in lost revenue from undercharging — in a year when she already made $170K. Charge your worth from day one.

  • How You Show Up Internally Dictates External Results The revenue doesn't shift until you do. Stephanie's billings consistently improved as her internal state improved — not the other way around. Protecting your nervous system isn't soft. It's strategy.

  • LinkedIn Authenticity Is a BD Engine She started posting through the dark times — cryptically, honestly, vulnerably. Recruiters and hiring managers connected with her and referred business. Her InMail response rates are exceptionally high because people know she's a real person. Authenticity built the brand; the brand built the pipeline.

  • Recruiting as Service, Not Hustle "What we do as recruiters is we're actually changing lives. We're building companies. Us not sharing what we do — not coming from a place of service — is actually doing a disservice to that person." If you've been shrinking around BD, reframe it. You're not selling. You're serving.

Atlas combines your ATS and CRM in a single, AI-powered platform. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com/

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.

NEW: What the Hell Is GTM — And Why Recruiters Need to Know It with Reyhan Khan

If you’re “waiting to hear back”… you’ve already lost.

You've been seeing it everywhere on LinkedIn. GTM, GTM, GTM. But what actually is it, why is it showing up in recruiting, and is the first hire you make really better off being a GTM engineer instead of another recruiter? That's the bold claim Reyhan Khan made in our pre-show — and he backs it up. He's a systems and operations expert out of Lisbon who has spent years helping recruiting firms build the technical infrastructure their growth actually requires, including placing the offshore talent to run it.

Highlights & Key Takeaways

  • GTM for Recruiters, Defined Go-to-market isn't just a tech startup concept. For a recruiting firm, it's the intersection of data, automation, sales psychology, and recruiting context — everything that turns a niche into an actionable pipeline and those conversations into revenue. Reyhan calls it "the technical and systems side of sales and marketing."

  • Intent-Based Outreach vs. Spray and Pray The biggest thing recruiters can steal from SaaS GTM teams: only reach out when there's a signal. Stack triggers — company is actively hiring + the decision maker posted about it + they recently changed jobs — and your response rate transforms. You shrink the ocean into a pond you can actually fish.

  • Most Recruiters Don't Know Their ATS Has a CRM On a recent weekly call with 30 recruiters, 80% of them were still tracking deals in spreadsheets. Their existing systems had a CRM built in. This is how much runway is sitting untouched in most desks.

  • When to Hire Ops vs. GTM Need more clients? GTM engineer. Need better systems on your existing roles? Ops. One recruiter Reyhan mentioned was managing 83 open roles with 8 recruiters manually messaging candidates on LinkedIn — no ATS sync, zero visibility. That firm needed a GTM engineer yesterday.

  • The Offshore Advantage GTM engineers based offshore cost less than half of a local hire, are typically more adaptable across systems, and are building in this space faster than anyone. The winner of the Clay Cup was from Pakistan. The talent pool is there. For systems-heavy roles, offshore isn't a compromise — it's an upgrade.

  • Before You Pay $25K for a Full Funnel System — Talk to Someone There are a lot of people charging top dollar for outreach systems that weren't built for recruiting. Cold email to SaaS companies gets 50 replies per 1,000. To recruiting firms? Getting 5 is a win. Make sure whoever you hire actually understands this market before you write the check.

Atlas combines your ATS and CRM in a single, AI-powered platform. Try it free or book a demo → https://recruitwithatlas.com/

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.

Elite Recruiter Community has launched

Recruiters rarely have a place to learn, share and grow together. That’s why I created the Elite Recruiter Community. As a member, you’ll get:

  • Unlimited replays of our AI Recruiting, Finish the Year Strong and Sales & BD summits.

  • Bi‑weekly live roundtables covering billing strategies, sourcing, business development and more.

  • Access to our Billers’ Club and split board – stay accountable and partner on deals.

  • A trusted network of peers who understand your challenges.

👉 Pricing is $49/month.

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❓Thought of the week - Check out who you guys voted for in The Elite Recruiter Awards - https://www.eliterecruiterpodcast.com/blog/elite-recruiter-awards/ 

Ready to Level Up?

Ready to Grow Your Recruiting Revenue in 2026? - Register NOW! 

The This Is Your Year Recruiter Summit kicks off on April 27th and it’s 100% free to attend live. Join 30+ expert speakers as they reveal the exact tactics behind landing more clients, closing bigger deals, and scaling faster in 2026. If you’re serious about increasing billings, this is your blueprint. - https://this-is-your-year-recruiter-summit.heysummit.com/ 
Special Guests: Mark Whitby, Mike Williams, Sharon Hulce, Brianna Rooney, and many more