Season 9 | Ep19 Avetis Antaplyan on how he spent millions protecting his team (they still left anyway)

About this episode

Avetis Antaplyan discusses the costly lessons learned from prioritizing employee loyalty over financial stability during economic downturns.

In 2022, Avetis Antaplyan was absolutely flying... HIRECLOUT, his global recruiting firm with 30 employees across the US, Colombia, Armenia, and India was breaking record after record. Two-time Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company, his best year ever and he felt everything was working. Then when the market hit hard in 2023-2024 and every other founder was doing layoffs, Avetis refused to cut people. Instead, he took most of his profits out of the business to keep his team employed through the downturn. He genuinely believed loyalty would be returned. That when things turned around, they'd kill it together. It didn't work that way. "Those were the first people who resigned when we put some pressure on," he admits. "All it did was burn my profit." For two and a half years, he broke even. The money was gone. The people left anyway. But that failure taught him something most founders never learn: protecting average people doesn't build loyalty. It destroys capital. Now he's building the opposite. His new obsession: take exceptional people (circa $500-600k billers) and use AI, systems, and tools to turn them into $1m producers. He's recently hired a principal on executive search, a…

People in this episode

Host: Sean Anderson

Guest: Avetis Antaplyan

Topics covered

• loyalty in business
• employee retention
• financial decisions
• recruitment strategies
• business growth

Keywords

• employee loyalty
• business downturn
• recruitment firm
• financial strategy
• capital management
• AI in recruitment
• business growth

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: HIRECLOUT, Inc. 5000

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• Season 9 | Ep32 Paul Strouts: When Growing Headcount Is a Strategy and When It Is Just a Cost · June 2, 2026 · 1h 11m
• Season 9 | Ep31 Nathan O'Connell:Building a £1M R2R business on 4 x Retained Clients · May 26, 2026 · 1h 13m
• Season 9 | Ep30 Emily Angeloni: Why She Nearly Walked Away From WOW After 9 Years of growth · May 19, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Season 9 | Ep29 Charlie Saffro: What Nobody Tells You About Selling Your Recruitment Business · May 12, 2026 · 1h 22m
• Season 9 | Ep28 Blaine Daws: £1.5M Year One to £15M Today. Working 7 Days a Week to Get There. · May 5, 2026 · 1h 16m