Sarah Green

I attribute my drive for success to being the underdog, coupled with a very clear financial vision for my future. Throughout my life, I've often been overlooked or not taken entirely seriously, but I've learned to thrive off that. When expectations from others are low, it gives you the quiet space to build momentum without unnecessary scrutiny, and proving people wrong is an incredible motivator. I think hardships have made me really successful. I don't want to say negativity, but I've always been overlooked, I've always been the underdog, no one's ever really sometimes taken me seriously, and it's kind of nice sometimes, because there's not a big expectation, no one's looking at you, so I can kind of build. And I think, again, you know, doing this, people probably think, oh, she's gonna fail, or it's really hard, and I like to prove people wrong. Some people might not be able to come back from something negative, or somebody saying, oh, you can't do that, but I actually drive off it. Now, at 45 years old, my focus for the next 5 years is purely about building wealth and setting myself up to retire early. When you reach this phase of life, you realize you've got no choice, have you, to become successful, or I'm just gonna sit here and rot. I don't think so. I need a goal, I need vision, a vision and a mission to work towards. Life's too short to do the same thing.

My advice to young women entering my industry is to confidently self-promote and treat yourself as a brand, consistently outwork the competition, and embrace mistakes as part of the learning process while focusing on building strong relationships and earning credibility that will carry your career forward.

The biggest challenge in my field is navigating the volatile and hyper-competitive nature of construction recruitment. Much like traditional sales, the industry operates on a constant cycle of feast or famine. It is incredibly busy one minute, and completely quiet the next. This requires you to constantly be on the move, chasing down new leads, checking in on clients, and pipeline-building without letting up. Additionally, a significant hurdle is fee negotiation. Even when companies are desperate for talent, it can be tough to get them to agree to pay your placement fee. Overcoming that resistance requires you to constantly articulate and prove the premium value, time savings, and precision matching you bring to their operations. It's competitive, and you have to constantly be chasing down everybody. It's hard sometimes to get people to agree to pay your fee, and they need somebody, so you have to work through that. It's like sales, it's just constant, you have to constantly be in their face.

My foundational values are fairness, honesty, and mutual respect. I refuse to operate a transactional, pushy, or aggressive business where people feel like all I care about is a paycheck. I'm not pushy, I'm not aggressive in a way where they feel like all I care about is the money, and it's transactional. I genuinely care about how I am perceived and my reputation, and communication as well. Because I pour so much into my work, I expect the exact same level of transparency and open communication in return. It is deeply frustrating when clients or candidates don't communicate or aren't honest with me, because to me, there's got to be something there that they didn't feel like they could trust me. For me, trust is everything. Having that trust from your clients and candidates that they know you're going to do right by them is a huge value, and I expect the same as well. I want to work with good, honest people that have good values and good morals. I won't work with everybody, because if they can't reciprocate that either, then you're not the client or candidate for me. I try to work that way, so people are like, oh, she's not trying to BS me, she actually cares. That's a big one for me.