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On this episode of Life Intended, host Kelly Berry sits down with Julia Arpag, founder and CEO of Aligned Recruitment, to explore self-trust, intentional living, career transitions, women in leadership, and authenticity in business. From motherhood and entrepreneurship to life design and work life balance, Julia shares a practical, values-first blueprint for building an aligned life.
This conversation is a field guide for intentional living. You’ll walk away with clear ways to practice self-trust, navigate career transitions with confidence, and design work that aligns with your values as a woman entrepreneur, leader, and parent.
Self-trust didn’t arrive overnight. Julia describes moving from people-pleasing to grounded conviction by noticing what actually worked, reflecting daily, and letting her values set the rules. That clarity helped her launch a profitable, bootstrapped firm and make decisions without outsourcing her inner voice.
She also names the trap many women face: consuming endless expert advice and losing touch with what we already know. The fix is simple, not easy. Create space for reflection, then act on what you hear.
Intentional living is built on micro-moments. Julia stacks short rituals into the margins of motherhood and entrepreneurship, like recorded affirmations while brushing teeth and reading to decompress at night.
The goal isn’t a perfect morning routine. It’s honest priorities. Some days that means logging off early for sick kids. Other days it’s deep work. Alignment is the measure.
Julia’s take: design your constraints, then decide. She and her husband set a clear financial runway before she launched Aligned Recruitment, with time-bound checkpoints to continue, pivot, or pause. That structure turned fear into a series of reversible experiments.
If you’re eyeing a leap, start with your numbers, values, and non-negotiables. Give yourself a test window. Confidence grows when decisions are anchored to what matters, not to other people’s timelines.
Best: integration. Julia refused to cut off parts of herself to be more palatable and built a business where being a founder and a present mom coexist.
Hardest: time poverty and reflection deficit. Parenting littles compresses calendars, so she protects small pockets of restoration and accepts tradeoffs. Yes, she’s left revenue on the table to prioritize family. That’s by design, not by accident.
Julia’s “intensity” used to be labeled as a liability. She reframed it as her superpower for focused execution, high standards, and courageous conversations. That same honesty on LinkedIn fueled referral-based growth with mission-driven clients.
The takeaway: identify the traits you’ve been told to mute, place them in rooms where they’re assets, and let your work speak in your own voice.
“I’m just not willing to cut off any parts of myself to be more palatable to people who I don’t really want their approval anyway.” — Julia Arpag
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“But like I said, I have definitely come to believe that my intensity is a superpower and is a gift in that I don’t take no for an answer.” — Julia Arpag
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“you actually get to design your life.” — Julia Arpag
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“I’m just not willing to bend my body into a shape that fits someone else’s parameters.” — Julia Arpag
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“you will never arrive. So stop expecting to arrive.” — Julia Arpag
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00:00 Meet Julia Arpag: Aligned Recruitment and Self-Trust
03:39 From Autopilot to Alignment: A Journey into Intentional Living
06:26 Career Transitions, Motherhood, and Entrepreneurial Realities
09:28 Making Room for Personal Growth and Self-Reflection
12:14 Building an Authentic Business from the Ground Up
15:13 Labels, Intensity, and Women in Leadership
18:09 Redefining Success Through Self-Trust and Autonomy
22:39 Reclaiming Your Inner Voice in a Noisy World
26:53 Life Design: Creating a Career That Aligns With Your Values
32:01 Taking the Leap: Entrepreneurship and Work Life Balance
35:25 Living with Uncertainty and Practicing Intentional Leadership
39:37 The Journey Over the Destination: Staying Aligned
44:29 Final Reflections on Living Life Intended
Kelly Berry (01:04)
Julia Arpag is the founder and CEO of Aligned Recruitment, a tech recruitment firm built on a mission to change the way businesses grow their teams. Since launching in 2023, Julia has scaled her company
with remarkable speed, which we will talk about a little bit today, reaching seven figures in new business, all while remaining bootstrapped and profitable from day one. Her approach is different. She helps mission-driven SaaS startups hire world-class engineering talent through values-based recruiting, referral-based growth, and a people-first philosophy. Beyond her work with clients, Julia is committed to impact, donating a portion of profits to foster and adoptive ministries.
and living her mission at home as a foster mom. As a speaker and storyteller, Julia is known for delivering hard truths with optimism, practicality, and infectious energy. At the core of her journey is a simple but powerful goal to follow Jesus in life and business, build something that makes the world better for her family, community, and clients, and have fun along the way. Welcome, Julia. I'm thrilled to have you here, really.
Julia Arpag (02:12)
Kelly, you're so kind. I'm so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Kelly Berry (02:16)
Yeah. So just a little bit of backstory on Julia. I met her last year. I mentioned she's a recruiter. I was in a hiring process and we had a couple of phone conversations and it was pretty easy to see that Julia is just different than most recruiters. And really when I mentioned she has a different philosophy, she really does. And she'll probably talk about it some, if it comes up, we're not going to focus on recruiting, of course, but.
She just is somebody who cares about getting to know people and getting to know what's important to them. And I think that anybody who has been in a hiring process recently knows that that is not really the norm. So that stood out. then we became LinkedIn Connections. And Julia puts out great content. And I do want to talk about this, the growth of your LinkedIn profile over the past couple of years and what that has been like.
Her content is just so authentic and it is so aligned with life intended and what we do. And so I'm really excited to talk to her. think I'll frame this in a way where I think Julia on her journey is probably we talk to and talk about a lot of transitions in life and a lot of like feeling this friction of not really being where you want to be. And I will say, well, Julia will probably say she's not like
where she wants to be necessarily, that I would say she's well on the other side of waking up out of that autopilot and stop living like somebody else's life and really taking hold of her life and making it what she wants to be. So I'm excited to talk to her about what that has looked like, what that has felt like, what that friction has been like. So before I just keep talking and talking and talking, Julia, welcome.
Tell us anything else we should know about you other than what I read.
Julia Arpag (04:07)
Kelly, this is so
affirming. There's like nothing else to say. This is a very kind introduction. Thank you. One thing I will say about meeting you last year when we were chatting about that role that you were contemplating taking, you were delightful. I do, yes, I do seek to connect with all of my candidates and really understand their background and their story, but you were so easy to talk to. Like you're delightful. You're so fun. You're very authentic, hence life intended.
Kelly Berry (04:11)
Thank
thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (04:33)
So you
made it so easy. So I want you to give yourself a lot of credit for how our relationship has grown. Like a lot of it was you. So thank you for your kind words, but I want to make sure you know that you were a lot of that as well. And yeah, very happy to speak to all of these pieces. It is super important to me that I am authentic in all areas of my life. I've been super transparent, like you said, on LinkedIn. I have grown my LinkedIn following.
Kelly Berry (04:40)
⁓ thank you.
Julia Arpag (04:56)
largely by being so honest and by talking about life as a mom and as a foster mom and as a business owner, I'm just not willing to cut off any parts of myself to be more palatable to people who I don't really want their approval anyway. So that's been a really huge part of how I built the business to be authentic and not to have to be something that is just another job you have, like where you're just kind of putting in the hours and then going back to your real life, quote unquote, I want it to be integrated.
Kelly Berry (04:58)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that's a great point. Have you always been able to kind of be yourself and not be concerned with the approval of others or is that something that you've had to kind of work towards on this journey as well?
Julia Arpag (05:40)
no, I came out of the womb totally self-actualized. I've never struggled with confidence. No, I was actually a super shy little kid. I was very shy. So I'm the oldest of seven kids and I had a very close loving family growing up, but we were homeschooled. And so I was super socially awkward. Like I was totally the stereotype of a homeschooler.
Kelly Berry (05:47)
Mm.
Thank you.
Julia Arpag (06:00)
So my parents had surprise triplets when I was eight years old, which is how we went from four kids to seven kids overnight. And so that meant I had to go to school and not be homeschooled anymore because my mom just couldn't breastfeed seven or three children and homeschool four, understandably. So I went to school for the first time when I was nine and it was a brutal process. Like I very much felt like I had to cut off parts of myself to fit in because I was like,
Kelly Berry (06:04)
⁓ wow.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Julia Arpag (06:26)
I'm so awkward. Like I was not socialized the same way these kids were. I honestly just wanted to play with my siblings and read books. Like that's all I wanted to do. But I was like, that doesn't really make you super popular in public school, it turns out. So there was a long process of kind of navigating who I was, who I wanted to be. And I think a huge formative experience for me was in sixth grade, I basically decided to cultivate a more outgoing personality.
I was like, okay, I've seen what life I can build if I'm quiet and shy and self-conscious. I don't like that life. I'm not enjoying that life. So I'm going to build a life where I am outgoing and confident and speak my mind and hang out with friends and put myself out on a limb and do things I'm scared to do and see what kind of life that creates for me. I like it a lot better. I like that life a lot better. I still love to read. I still love to hang out with my siblings. So I did retain those pieces that were important to me.
Kelly Berry (07:14)
Yeah.
Julia Arpag (07:21)
But a lot of my formative years as a preteen, teenager, and then into college, and even now as a working adult, has been me coming to terms with kind of combining what I want to do with also just what needs to be done. Now that I'm a mom, I was a foster mom for five years, like we talked about. I've been a wife for 10 years. Kind of what it looks like to honor all of those people, honor myself, and honor the goals that I have for me and my family and my business.
Kelly Berry (07:47)
Yeah, so that sounds like a whole lot of awareness for a sixth grader. Do you know where that came from? I mean, I don't know what I was doing, like twiddling my thumbs, watching TGIF on Friday nights. I don't know. Not that.
Julia Arpag (07:58)
That is so funny, Kelly.
So to be candid, I think a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that I wasn't watching TV. My parents were the strictest screen people I've ever met in my life. I could watch one hour of TV per week until I was like in college. I'm not joking. So I had a lot of time to reflect and read, which is honestly why I think I am the way I am today. I'm not even joking. And honestly, a big part of why parenting has been tough for me, my two kids are four and two.
Kelly Berry (08:12)
wow.
Thank you.
Julia Arpag (08:25)
and they just do not leave you a lot of time to reflect. This is the most time poor I have ever been in my life. So I'm really missing those good old sixth grade years when all I had to do was go to school and then like contemplate. That's all I did. It was great.
Kelly Berry (08:28)
No hope.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, I feel you. I have one three-year-old. I know I mentioned this, but I have one child and I just cannot imagine how people have multiple because I feel like she just needs so much. Like she's just everything all the time. So yes, I also don't have any time and I also don't know what I do with all the time. I mean, I won't say that because...
Julia Arpag (08:55)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Kelly Berry (09:05)
I, one of the things that I like about where I am in life and kind of like my intention is that I'm a present parent. So I know that while it feels like I'm time poor, I am like sitting down to eat breakfast with her, playing with her after school. You know, I'm like, actually I'm there. I'm doing the things we're reading, we're doing everything, but it's like my to-do list just grows longer by the minute. of all the things that I just, there's are not enough hours in the day and you know, that's fine.
Julia Arpag (09:11)
I love that.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm
Yes.
Yes. And the biggest thing that I've come to feel time poor about is that reflection piece. Like sometimes I feel like I am the very reflective person. Like that is very life-giving to me to have time to journal and to pray and to read and to meditate. So that's the biggest thing that I'm missing in this season of Parenting Littles. ⁓ And because kids, yes, demand your attention. Like you simply must, like you said, like be there for meal times, be there for bath time, be there to play, be there for like family walks. Like I...
Kelly Berry (09:39)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (10:02)
agree that all of that trumps my own desires for that alone time and that time to kind of be more contemplative. But I do miss it. I would say that's the biggest thing I'm feeling like, man, because there aren't enough hours in the day for all the things I'd like to do, that's the one that's had to kind of become more of a fitted in if and when I can versus like, I've got to run the business, I've got to raise my kids, I've got to date my husband, I've got to see my friends. Like I would say those are my time priorities right now.
Kelly Berry (10:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yeah. Well, I'm going to take just a second and like expand on that for the work that we do in Life Intended because I think it's such a good connection, even though this is kind of like a plug. What we find in talking with a lot of women who are moms who do have careers is that they don't have space. In addition to not having space, we are constantly consuming. So we're listening to podcasts, we're reading books, we're sharing memes with our friends. You know, we have all of these things coming at us.
And the next thing you know, you have a list of 40 things that you would like to be doing in your morning routine to be like healthy and mentally stable, but you don't have two and a half hours in the morning and all this stuff. And so one of the things that we do in all of our programming in Life Intended is create that space. So we provide space to metabolize and digest all of the things that are coming at you. So when we're talking about like
Breath work will help you become more mentally calm or here's some exercises that you can do when you get really stressed. We practice it in our sessions. We have a breath work session. We have visualization sessions. We introduce frameworks and then walk through how you would use this and what this looks like in real time so that you're not just showing up to something.
learning 15 more tools that you then have to go and like figure out when am going to have time to figure this out? How am going to integrate it? And so that is like one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we get is, you know, just how good that space feels for women like us who are just, you know, our, our days are bookend with family and obligations. And then we've got work in the middle and anytime that we can carve out to do those things is really, really important. So
That is one thing that I wanted to say. Another thing that Sadie, my partner and I are working on right now is like journal prompts for women who don't journal. And what this looks like is journaling is like a very aspirational thing. Like everybody wants to do it. Everybody knows the benefits of it, but it's that time that is like, it's so hard to get and the routine is just kind of hard to get down. So what we're putting together are like prompts that you can read and then think about like while you're brushing your teeth or while you're
driving in the car or while you're, you know, walking back to your car after a school drop off, you know, like how can we take these little bites of time and use them for more of those reflective practices just because like I know the value of reflection, you know the value of reflection, like that is truly how you grow as a person. ⁓ So how do we do that for all the people who are like, I would love to journal but I don't have like 20 minutes in the morning or whatever it is and...
Julia Arpag (13:03)
Yeah.
Kelly Berry (13:11)
kind of just make it a little bit more accessible. So I thought those were really good points that you brought up because they're so valuable, truly. Yeah.
Julia Arpag (13:18)
Mm-hmm. And that's
the journey I've been on recently as well, is realizing I can't have my optimal schedule right now because I've chosen the beautiful life of getting to have these two gorgeous little boys. And that just means that's where my focus is in this season when they do need me so much versus on that time intensive journaling and reflection and reading. So for me, I actually love that. So what I do when I'm brushing my teeth is I have a...
Kelly Berry (13:25)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (13:42)
Recorded affirmations and that's kind of my like centering practice that I do before I get into my workday and then at the end of the day my like decompression time is that's when I get to read my books my brain is too fried to like journal and have this like deep reflective time when it's right about to be bedtime, but at least I do get to catch up on you know, Whatever I want to be reading at the time. So yes, I agree. You just kind of have to like be realistic Okay, what kind of time do I have and then what can I slip into those slots so that it's life-giving and not just more?
Kelly Berry (13:56)
Okay.
Thank you.
Julia Arpag (14:10)
consumption because you're so right. We get consumption fatigue from all the podcasts we're listening to, all the ways we're trying to optimize our family, our life, our business, our mind, our health. And then eventually we just can't process it all. And that is overwhelming. The process of self-improvement can be overwhelming if we don't give ourselves enough time to actually reflect on it and figure out what actually fits into our life.
Kelly Berry (14:12)
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes. And the irony is not lost on me that we're talking about this on a podcast that we're hoping that people listen to, but you know.
Julia Arpag (14:41)
we hope that people reflect on it, not just consume it. So that's what's different.
Kelly Berry (14:42)
Yes. Right.
Exactly. Awesome. OK, well, that was kind of a tangent, but great, great conversation. And I think that that's just one of those things that I'd like to continue raise awareness in people about. So back to you and your story. So talk to me a little bit. I know your story, but talk to me and the listeners about like what maybe the last five or six years has looked like for you.
Yeah, start there and then we'll dig in with questions and things like that.
Julia Arpag (15:14)
Let's do
it. Let's do it. So I've been recruiting that whole time. So I've worked for several different companies and agencies and loved it. Recruitment has turned out to be a really good fit for me, which I honestly didn't expect. But to your point, I think because I am very people oriented, I have a genuine curiosity about people's stories and what drives them and what they care about. It's allowed me to be pretty successful in my recruitment career. So I was a top performer at all the companies I worked at before I started the business.
So I started thinking about starting a business about three years ago, but it felt terrifying. It felt like I don't even know how to file an LLC. I don't know how to do business taxes. don't know, gosh, I don't know how to send an invoice. Like I just, I couldn't even imagine all of the things I'd have to learn. So even though knew I knew how to recruit, I was like, there's a whole other skillset that I just don't have. And I had never sold. Like I'd only ever recruited candidates.
Kelly Berry (15:46)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (16:05)
for existing clients. I'd never pitched my services to a client to get them to pay me to go recruit for them. So all of it just felt so terrifying. And then the agency that I was working for at the time did me, honestly, it was a huge gift that they did this, but they did me the favor of laying me off when I was five weeks postpartum with my now two year old. So it basically kicked me out of the nest where I was like, okay, I've been thinking about starting a business for a year now. I can finally just do it.
Kelly Berry (16:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (16:34)
And what was incredible is I got a lot of job offers in the wake of that layoff from clients who had worked with me while I was a recruiter at that agency. They offered me to come on full time. And so I was like, wait, if I start my own agency, I can say yes to all of you and I can just work fractionally for all of you. So that's what I did. And because I struck when the iron was hot, we had a lot of early momentum. Um, I built the business with a baby strapped to my chest. Like I have so many recordings of, of me, just like,
bopping along and chatting with, you know, VCs and founders and CEOs and my two year old or not two year old was just along for the ride, which I I'm grateful for. Right. Like he was a pretty easy baby. So he was like, all right, let's go. But yeah, that was basically that the origin story of my recruitment career and then Alliance Recruitment becoming a business about two years ago.
Kelly Berry (17:13)
home.
Yeah.
Nice. So let's talk about, I know I've seen a lot of posts from you about kind of the way that people treated you early in your career or the things about you that didn't quite fit their own narratives. I think you've got a lot of interesting stories about that. And I think that those are things that women that happened to them a lot, you know, they're told they're too ex, they're
Julia Arpag (17:44)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (17:54)
through to why, you know. So talk a little bit about like all of these labels that you were given kind of earlier in your career and how you use those to fuel this, I'll say like evolution.
Julia Arpag (18:08)
Let's say evolution, I love that. So I would say my number one quality that I now view as a superpower, but I had a lot of bosses who were really critical of it, is my intensity. So I am very driven, I'm very loud. Like if we were in the same room right now, like you just hear like my volume is bizarrely loud. I think it's because I was from this giant family where you had to be yelled, you had to yell to be heard, but whatever. So I had one boss who literally,
Kelly Berry (18:09)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
and
Julia Arpag (18:37)
had me write a post-it that said shh and put it on my computer. She was like, I can hear you down the hall, you need to be quieter. And I was like, okay. So that was one. ⁓ And then that same boss actually was frustrated by me because my intensity perlaid itself into always wanting to be better, always wanting to use better systems and tools and processes and basically be the best I could be.
Kelly Berry (18:46)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (18:59)
She was more old school. She was a couple years away from retirement and she was like, can we just not? Like she would literally print out emails and carry them into my office to discuss them. Like that was kind of her level of tech savvy. So yeah, lots and lots of examples from earlier on in my career when A, I lacked the tact I have now where now I can navigate conversations with a lot more finesse than I could then, that I was literally a bull in a china shop.
Kelly Berry (19:03)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (19:25)
But like I said, I have definitely come to believe that my intensity is a superpower and is a gift in that I don't take no for an answer. I'm very tenacious and all the same things that I was criticized for by bosses like that one have allowed me to be a very good boss of my own where I don't need anyone holding me to a certain standard because I'm going to hold myself to an even higher one. And rather than let myself believe that they were right and that these were criticisms that should be levied against me.
Kelly Berry (19:40)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (19:52)
I truly have cultivated the belief that these are gifts and these are unique ways that I am in the world. And so I get to choose what life I want to lead that best shows them off instead of punching myself into boxes where I have to minimize those natural qualities I have to make myself more palatable to the people around me.
Kelly Berry (20:12)
Yeah. Was there, like, did you feel like you should mute those things or should make a change or did you always kind of know that these were assets instead of liabilities for you?
Julia Arpag (20:29)
I always knew they were assets, but I also knew I needed to do some work to figure out how to make them assets. Like I had to figure out what rooms to get in. I had to figure out what roles to be in. I had to figure out what circles to cultivate so that they could be, I knew they were assets, but I needed to get into rooms where they would function as assets. So that was the work I had to do coming out of conversations like those.
Kelly Berry (20:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's great because that's not, in my experience, that's not what I've seen. I've seen, you know, people, women specifically, take those, that feedback, we'll call it feedback, as truth. And like, they're the ones that need to make the change to fit in or assimilate or, you know, fit the narrative of whatever their manager or boss tells them.
Julia Arpag (21:05)
Hmm.
Kelly Berry (21:14)
their narrative needs to be in that role. So I think that's pretty impressive that you were able to do that.
Julia Arpag (21:24)
always believed that we are the authority. Like I've really never believed. So my authority is Jesus. I'm a Christian. So he's my highest authority. Next to him, I really don't view other people as being right inherently and me needing to fit into what they tell me is right or wrong.
Kelly Berry (21:44)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (21:45)
that works really well when I have a boss who is not intimidated by that confidence. It does not work well when I do have a boss who is intimidated by that confidence. So that's why I've had some phenomenal leaders who to this day, we're still in touch and they've cheered me on at each iteration of my career. And there's other leaders like this woman I mentioned too, who knows where she is today, right? Like we just, we just, so I think that's something that women can understand, like especially we are so.
Kelly Berry (21:52)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (22:11)
privilege that we live in America in 2025. we, my husband and I say to each other all the time, there are big reason we're foster parents is because we were born with such incredible access and such incredible freedom. So the least we can do is share it with people who weren't born into the same situations. So that's my biggest encouragement to give your audience is if they're listening to a podcast like this, they probably have incredible authority and autonomy in their lives that they can step into in a way that most people in the world cannot.
Kelly Berry (22:26)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (22:39)
Like they have
options and they have freedom that most people do not.
Kelly Berry (22:42)
Mm hmm. Yes. Absolutely. And I think, you know, that the recognition of that and the ability to act on it is something that we're trying to, like, help people uncover in themselves because not everybody is as like, you know, what I would say about you is like you have an immense sense of self trust. And a lot of people do not. Whether that's their conditioning, whether that's
Julia Arpag (23:05)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (23:11)
you know, circumstances over time. But a lot of people just doubt their intuition. They doubt that they know. They doubt themselves immensely. And I see your face like it is sad. I mean, I struggle with this still even like doing this work all the time. Just had to do a lot of work to like reconnect with my own like inner knowing that I might know the answer to something. I use this as a
Example all the time and I think that you will really relate well depending upon what your exposure to social media is but May really relate because of the ages of your children, you know now we live in this world where Everybody's an expert in something. We have toddler sleep experts. We have toddler parenting experts food experts what whatever there is you name it they have it and so
as we consume all of this information, it kind of strips away our own self-trust. And as mothers, I don't think there is a more natural form of self-trust out there than what we know for our children. Yet we are inundated with all of these messages from these experts who tell us they know and we don't. And so anytime there is...
Julia Arpag (24:10)
Mm.
Kelly Berry (24:28)
a parenting struggle or a sleep struggle or a food struggle, we're always looking externally. Like, who has this answer? Who can I pay to come in and fix this problem for me? And while we think that we're like being resourceful and problem solvers, we are outsourcing our own knowing that maybe we know what the best thing for our child that we live with, that we, you know, that we gave birth to what they need. We're saying some stranger on the Internet.
Julia Arpag (24:37)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (24:57)
probably knows better than me what I need to do right now. But as women, like we're constantly being conditioned to do this, like with our health, their exercise, with our relationships, with everything. And so what we're trying to do is help people get back in touch with their own sense of self-trust that maybe I do know if I just give myself some space to think about it, if I do some reflection and some of the other things that we talked about. So I think it's incredible.
Julia Arpag (25:06)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (25:25)
like what I'm hearing from you and like your just really, really strong sense of self-trust because from my experience, that's not the norm right now. Yeah.
Julia Arpag (25:38)
Mm-hmm. No, I agree
with you. I definitely think it's not the norm and I think you're right. I think there's two sides to that coin. One side is like what a gift that we do have all this access to information. We're like, like my kids right now today recording this have both have hand foot and mouth, which I'll tell their parents know is like the holy grail of illness. Okay, so weeping and ashing of teeth in my house right now. So I'm so grateful that I have access to experts who can tell me like
Kelly Berry (25:48)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (26:05)
what I could do about it, like what are some medical options that I have before me? Like I'm very grateful for the access to information, but I agree the negative side of that coin is that we're like, we don't have any of the answers and experts out there have all of the answers. I completely agree with you. And it's this super careful, nuanced wisdom that we have to walk as we navigate which things fall on which side of those categories.
Kelly Berry (26:27)
Yep, yep. we, it's truly like we end up outsourcing all of our power to other people when we let them make all of these decisions for us. So I think this is a good kind of like pivot into what you do professionally, because I think you have a lot of experience with women like in careers and who may be struggling with some of these things to talk about like, what are...
Julia Arpag (26:33)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (26:53)
What do you see out of women right now and kind of along the same vein of either self-trust or trying to like stay on the hamster wheel and achieve something that they have kind of been told that they should want to achieve? What do you see from that angle?
Julia Arpag (27:12)
Gosh, I'm a huge fan of getting off the hamster wheel. I'm not pro hamster wheel at all. to your point, I am, typically now, my team is the one actually recruiting people, actually talking to candidates. But when I do occasionally get to chat with candidates, I do still genuinely get to know them. And I really suss out like, what are your motivators? And if they're like, well, I need to maintain this lifestyle, or I need to...
Kelly Berry (27:15)
Thank
Julia Arpag (27:36)
you know, I made this much money at my last job, so I better make more in my next job. But there's they don't want to be doing this. Like they don't enjoy this. I'm like, OK, hold up. Stop. Like, I'm not going to I'm not going to drag you into another role that you hate. Like that has clearly been so much of your story so far, which has resulted in us getting to make some really cool pivots. Like some of my candidates were in process for one client and ended up doing something completely different. Like one girl I talked to for a VP role several months back now.
Kelly Berry (27:41)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (28:04)
she actually through our conversations ended up deciding to launch her own ops agency. And she actually literally became a fractional operator at our company because I just, when I see especially women to your point who have just made themselves tiny to care for everyone else and everyone else around them. they think they have to, a lot of it comes down to money. They think they have to live at a certain income level. And like you actually get to design your life. My favorite book in the world is called that. It's called Designing Your Life.
Kelly Berry (28:18)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (28:31)
And basically you get to decide like you actually don't have to make that amount of money if it's making you miserable and your life would actually probably be that better if you weren't making that amount of money, but you were also weren't doing something you hated every working moment of your day. So I have a lot of those conversations. I see a lot of a lot of companies. I'm very encouraged by this. I see a lot of companies that are increasingly family-friendly. Some are not hear me say ⁓
Kelly Berry (28:56)
Mm-hmm
Julia Arpag (28:57)
But a lot are. I recently was reading about Remote, which is a company that has 40 days of PTO a year, 40, four zero. They have, I think it was a full six months of parental leave, whichever parent you are. So I think they're the outlier. I very much acknowledge that. But I do get to recruit for some companies like that, which I'm so grateful for. And I do get to talk to a lot of awesome candidates who are like, they've done the work and they know that this is a way that they can.
Kelly Berry (29:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Julia Arpag (29:25)
still build a crew that they care about, but also be the parent that they want to be. So I think it takes a lot of legwork or yeah, I think that's the right word for it. A lot of legwork to kind of navigate like what that looks like for you. But those companies are out there and if they're not, then you then you build one. I know that sounds so scary. I was scared too, like I said. But there is just gosh, there's just so
Kelly Berry (29:33)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (29:47)
It's not like a quick fix. Like I'm not trying to say like just fix this today. Like just so all your problems can be solved by the end of this episode. Like what are you doing? Like I said, it took me a long time to make the leap myself. Even now, two years into building Aligned Recruitment, I literally weekly, if not daily, pause and say, is this working for right now? Like I said, I have two sick kids today, so I didn't work yesterday. I'm logging off early this afternoon. Like every day I have to be so intentional and so careful and so...
Kelly Berry (29:54)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (30:15)
clear on what my priorities are for that day. Have I left revenue on the table because of how much time I spend with my kids? Absolutely. 100 % I have. I talk to a lot of agency owners who cannot believe how little I work. I work on average 30 days a week. I just took off the entire month of July. I feel so strongly about prioritizing my family over my business while still honoring our clients and our candidates and our teams, of course.
Kelly Berry (30:41)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (30:41)
But
within that, I'm very aware that sacrifice comes, like you're going to sacrifice something. Either you're going to sacrifice your family life or your career in some way, shape or form. And so I think making peace with that and then proceeding appropriately is what is going to give you the most peace.
Kelly Berry (30:58)
Mm Yeah. So that brings me to another question because I like the example that you use that the woman that you talked to and she ended up going to start her own business because I think there are so many women and we'll say like corporate women, professional women who are showing up to a job that they do not like. They do not like the things that they're doing. They do not like the systems they're having to operate in in their corporate environment.
None of it feels really good or aligned with their values or anything like that. But they can talk about leaving to start something for five years, for 10 years, for 15 years before they will actually take the leap. So as someone who has done it and you've kind of worked in that space where there was a lot of tension between like what you were doing and what you're like being told that you were.
And now being on the other side of it, like what would you say to somebody who is like said forever that they just want to leave and start their own thing?
Julia Arpag (32:01)
So what really helped me make the leap is that my husband and I sat down and we said, financially, because that's probably people's biggest hesitation is the money is very scary. Financially, let's look at our.
safety net as a family. Let's look at how long do I realistically have to try to build this business? How much money do I need to make by X date before we say either like, okay, great, it's working. Let's keep building it. Or, okay, this did not get us to where we wanted to be financially. Let's scrap it and I'll go out and get a W-2 job. So I would say that's your first step is get with your partner, get with yourself and get really clear on what is my runway and how many months or years of risk can I take on without making money?
to give myself enough time to build this thing. So that was step one. That's what gave me the confidence to at least try because I was like, okay, and for us, just to be candid, those numbers were, we gave ourselves a year. I was like, I launched it in August, 2023. I said, if by August, 2024, we're not making, we had a monthly amount that I needed to be making at the business. If we're not making that amount, then I'm gonna throw in the towel, call it a great effort and go get a W-2 job.
Kelly Berry (32:55)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (33:11)
So luckily in my case that didn't happen, but that's a conversation we have day by day, right? Like as finances fluctuate, as the business ebbs and flows, we're always keeping a pulse on the business's finances, my finances, and just getting super honest and clear with myself and my husband about what we need financially to keep going.
Kelly Berry (33:30)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. So how would you describe how differently you feel now than you did, you know, five years ago?
Julia Arpag (33:40)
Oh my gosh, I take way more ownership now. Like five years ago, I was like, oh, I'm a pretty good recruiter. That's nice, whatever. Now I'm like, wait, why am I a good recruiter? Like, what about me is different from other recruiters? Because this agency will only work if I can teach that to the recruiters who work for me. Like if I can't multiply the impact I've been able to have on my candidates, then there's no point and this won't scale.
So I've been way more thoughtful, way more reflective. This is a theme of our conversation today. Way more reflective about what's kind of made me different and what's made me such a good performer at all the companies I've been at before. So that's number one. Number two, I am way more confident. So I fell into recruitment. I kind of randomly picked it after college and I was like, I'm good at this. You get to talk to people all day. I like talking to people. Great. Check. Done. Now I'm, I'm
Kelly Berry (34:09)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Julia Arpag (34:32)
I mean, gosh, it sounds cocky to say, and I'm gonna clarify this, the reason I started the business is because I am a master of my craft. Like I do what I do very well. I do it in a way that most people don't. And I have come to be much more confident in my ability as a recruiter than I was previously because I'm like, no, I actually know it works. And the way I do it actually is better and different than most other people. So I would say those are the two biggest differences between me now and me five years ago.
Kelly Berry (34:40)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Do you like embrace uncertainty any differently? How has like the fear that you had about like all the things that you had to learn, how has that kind of shifted over time? Because these are, I think, are the things that people who are thinking about taking a leap, whether it's a career or not, you know, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's, you know, some other really big life change, but there's like the before.
And then there's the after. And so we can help people think about like, well, it is really scary and it is really hard. And you you can't really just like skate your way through it. But what does it actually feel like to kind of like be on the other side of
Julia Arpag (35:40)
Mm-hmm. That's a good question. And I have to be honest with your audience that I wouldn't say it says black and white. Is it before and after? Like I would say there are definitely still days that I'm scared. There are definitely still days that I'm like, my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this. Like I'm just running a business. I'm just out here running a business and the economy crashes all the time. Right? Like it could crash any day now. And I think what keeps me doing it scared is that I'm like, the alternative is unpalatable.
Kelly Berry (35:48)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (36:08)
Like the alternative
is someone else telling me how to spend my days, someone else telling me what I can and can't do, and I'm just not willing to bend my body into a shape that fits someone else's parameters. I'm just not willing to do that. So I think ultimately every day when I do feel fear, when I do feel nervous, or when I do feel like, man, this business, you know, today is really hard, or I'm not enjoying the specific tasks I'm having to work on today to get the business to where I want it to be.
Kelly Berry (36:19)
Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (36:32)
On those days, I make myself think about, okay, then what's the alternative? And for me, it's just every time I've asked that question, it's been worth it to keep building the business in the midst of the uncertainty, in the midst of the fear, than it is to pretzel myself into someone else's ideal shape.
Kelly Berry (36:37)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I also think you mentioned a couple of things that I think fall in line with like decision making and kind of your decision making process that I think is important for people to think about. Because I think that a lot of us tie our like success or failure on a decision instead of looking at that like, well, this is the decision that I'm making with the information that I have right now.
Julia Arpag (37:15)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (37:15)
And in
a year, if I need to change my mind, I can do that. And that has no implications on this decision that I made a year ago. So your point about like deciding to start the business and giving yourself a year at the end of the year, you were like, I'm just going to throw in the towel. You weren't like at the end of the year, I'm going to make a list of all the ways that I failed at this thing. You know what I mean? Like you, did it, you grew, you you tried and, and now like,
Julia Arpag (37:24)
Yes.
Kelly Berry (37:44)
your decision to either stay or like change paths is made with the set of information that you have now. And so I think if we can think about like our decision making as more fluid rather than more black and white, that is so helpful in not like stopping and beating ourselves up and letting that kind of like narrative just tell us that we, well, we were dumb for even trying or I can't believe we ever thought we could do that or you know, it's like,
Julia Arpag (37:51)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Kelly Berry (38:15)
things change like all the time like you're talking about like daily you can revisit that decision daily make a different one and like the other ones in the rearview mirror like you're not even thinking about it anymore. Yeah.
Julia Arpag (38:16)
Yes. Yes.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And there's no shame in you having made a different decision when you had different amounts of information in the past. Like, we, my gosh, yeah, we've made so many pivots as a business. I've made so many pivots in my personal life. Like I mentioned, my husband and I were foster parents for five years. And then just earlier this summer, we had a really intense heart to heart. We were like, this is not sustainable.
Kelly Berry (38:33)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (38:51)
Like we actually cannot continue to shoulder this burden on top of everything else we have going on. So we made the decision to close our foster care license, pause the placement we had with us at the moment, and really focus on deep healing as a family. And that was a brutally hard decision to make.
But I wasn't mad at the me from five years ago who decided to become a foster parent because that me didn't have the four and a half years of consuming trauma that came from foster parenting, didn't need to take the time to heal and to process, didn't know that I'd be a business owner and a mom of two toddlers. So I think at every new iteration of your life, you know so much and you've experienced so much that you hadn't previously that you've got to always give grace to your past decision maker and give space to your current decision maker.
Kelly Berry (39:37)
Yes, absolutely. I love the way that you just said that. I think that's really an important thing for people, for women to contemplate because I hear a lot of that fear of making the wrong decision and also just this intense punishment that we do to ourselves for things that we think that we made bad decisions. Sure, there are times that we make bad decisions, but
Julia Arpag (39:59)
Mm-hmm.
Kelly Berry (40:04)
I would say the majority of us are out here doing the best that we can with the information that we have and the time that we have to make it. And we should definitely give ourselves a lot more grace about that. And just know that make a decision and don't be married to it. You can change your mind. You can do all kinds of things. yeah. Yeah, this has been awesome. I know we're getting close to time.
Julia Arpag (40:08)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes.
Kelly Berry (40:30)
I love this conversation. love everything you brought. I would encourage people really to go find you on LinkedIn. I don't think they can find you anywhere else, but if you're on LinkedIn.
Julia Arpag (40:39)
Yeah,
you asked earlier about how I deal with the whole toddler parenting experts in every corner of the internet thing. The answer is I don't have social media. So the only place I am is LinkedIn, and I only have LinkedIn because of the business, because I've noticed whenever I have been on Instagram or Facebook, I'm like, ooh, I get sucked in. I get sucked into either the expert crap or I get sucked into the moms that are like...
Kelly Berry (40:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Julia Arpag (41:02)
LOL, I just like laid around and let my kids watch TV all day, which are just two extremes that I don't want to live in either of them. So I just shut it down. And honestly, whenever I need information, I just ask Google or my mom. Or my mom.
Kelly Berry (41:08)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Or my mom. Yeah. Yes,
I know. That's a whole other part of that, experts on the internet. It's like, not only do we stop trusting ourselves, we stop trusting our moms. Like, she doesn't know what you're Okay.
Julia Arpag (41:25)
The good news for me, my mom is a pediatric nurse practitioner, so she's actually the single most helpful person in my life right now.
So I'm very grateful. God dealt me a very gracious hand. It really worked out. But yes, to get back to your point from earlier, I am on LinkedIn. I'm actually the only Julia Arpag on LinkedIn, so you will not be able to miss me. So go ahead and look me up there. You can also find me, our website is just alignedrecruitment.com.
Kelly Berry (41:37)
that really?
Nice.
Yep, and those things will be in the show notes. Yeah, this has been a great conversation. Is there anything else that you want to make sure you leave the audience with or any other like, I don't know, just lesson you've learned or gift you want to give everyone?
Julia Arpag (42:08)
think the best gift I can give to everyone I talk to is you will never arrive. So stop expecting to arrive. Like I think I thought that once I hit a certain revenue marker, I would feel like I'd arrived and I don't, and I don't think I ever will. So we just hit a million in revenue earlier this summer and I thought, my gosh, getting that much revenue in under two years, I'll feel like a freaking champ. And
Kelly Berry (42:23)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Julia Arpag (42:35)
there's always gonna be a massive crowd of people ahead of you who have made more money faster, flashier ways, in different ways, who run different businesses that you wanna emulate some aspect of. And so I think I realized I cannot base my validation externally, no matter what. As a business owner, as a mom, as a wife, I cannot base it externally. So I would say whatever journey you're on, let the whole thing be a journey. Like do not ever expect that there's a...
a cut and dry before and after. For me, know, my validation comes from my faith in Jesus, but for your audience, whatever that validation is, whatever self-searching and reflection they have to do to figure out where that is, you've just gotta stay grounded, and that, way easier said than done. Like I said, I have to recalibrate every single day, but that, I would say, has been way more life-giving to me than any external goals that I've set.
Kelly Berry (43:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yep. I love that. And I think that's a great place to leave it. Yeah, I think it can sound cliche when you're like, the joy is in the journey or like life is not a destination. It's a journey. But when you kind of decide that that's the truth, can really that's when like going back to the decision making and everything like that. It's like when you realize that you're not trying to get to a destination.
like then it doesn't really matter because no matter where you get like you're just gonna pivot or move or continue to go and really the power in that is to be able to stay on the journey that's aligned with your values and your goals and what's important to you. Yeah, that's so so so valuable. So thank you. Thanks for being here. Thanks for all the wisdom and just
Great information that you brought. It's great chatting.
Julia Arpag (44:23)
I agree, Kelly. Thank you for having me. It seriously such a blast.
Kelly Berry (44:26)
Yeah, thanks everyone and we will talk to you again soon.
Kelly Berry (44:30)
Thanks for listening to Life Intended.
Sadie Wackett (44:33)
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Kelly Berry (44:45)
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Sadie Wackett (44:54)
and we're just getting started.
Kelly Berry (44:56)
So keep showing up, keep tuning in. If you're ready for more support on your path, head to LifeIntended.co. We've got tools, community, and programs to meet you where you are. Until next time.
Kelly Berry is a strategic business leader and business coach. She is known for her operational excellence and her ability to drive growth and results across multiple industries.
She is also hosting her own podcast, Life Intended.
