Smiling, Dialing, and Scaling: Building a Staffing Agency for Call Centers w/ Jule Salem of Salem Solutions

Summary

Jule Salem’s journey into entrepreneurship is rooted in a lifelong desire to help others more than a desire to “be a founder.” From selling homemade bookmarks at the end of a dead-end street as a kid to building a side business, True Ledgers, while working in accounting and finance, her path has always blended practicality with service. She cut her teeth in the homebuilding industry and then at Coca-Cola, all while running her bookkeeping side hustle for small businesses that couldn’t afford full-time financial help but desperately needed clarity in their numbers and guidance in their operations.

Everything shifted when one of her True Ledgers clients—who would later become her husband—invited her to support his portfolio of businesses. That opportunity led to a seemingly simple project: staffing a call center. When an HR manager had to take unexpected leave and the client suddenly needed 200 agents “ASAP,” Jule found herself doing “smiling and dialing,” learning staffing from scratch on the fly. That trial by fire turned into Salem Solutions, a niche staffing firm focused primarily on federal call center operations. Bootstrapped without outside funding, the company relied on strong banking relationships and lines of credit to manage heavy upfront payroll needs, especially when ramping 200–300+ agents at a time.

Over time, Jule embraced niche focus as Salem’s superpower, differentiating the business by going all-in on call center staffing rather than being a generalist firm. She sees call center agents as an underserved talent pool and is passionate about advocating for them in an increasingly complex environment shaped by AI, multi-channel communication, and rising technical expectations. Along the way, she’s navigated scaling decisions, hiring her internal team, supporting large federal programs (including CDC call volumes during COVID), and learning hard lessons about leadership, vulnerability, and staying deeply connected to her team—especially through big moves like buying an office and her husband selling his business. For Jule, entrepreneurship has become a long-haul journey of self-discovery where actions, not ideas, determine destiny and where leaders must bring the same energy and authenticity they hope to receive from others.

Takeaways

1. You don’t have to “feel” like an entrepreneur to build a real business. Jule still identifies more as a helper than a traditional founder, and that service mindset has guided her decisions and culture.
2. Start as a side hustle to de-risk your leap. She built True Ledgers while working full-time in corporate roles, giving her experience, confidence, and a client base before transitioning deeper into entrepreneurship.
3. Niche focus can be your biggest differentiator. Salem Solutions became more defensible once they embraced being all-in on call center staffing—especially for large federal programs—rather than trying to be all things to all clients.
4. Bootstrap creatively with strong bank relationships. Instead of raising outside capital, she used lines of credit and solid banking partnerships to manage huge upfront payroll demands when starting hundreds of agents at once.
5. Treat overlooked talent pools as your advantage. Jule views call center agents as an underserved population and built a business around serving, supporting, and advocating for them, even when their resumes aren’t “perfect.”
6. Before you hire, define what success looks like in the role. Don’t just hire “another set of hands.” Get clear on responsibilities, outcomes, required skills, and the kind of person who will thrive in that seat.
7. Bet on yourself when the workload clearly justifies it. She hired her HR professional when the stack of onboarding paperwork was literally too high to handle alone—growth justified the risk of expanding the team.
8. Stay obsessively focused on filling your pipeline. In staffing, demand can be cyclical; Jule continually plans for downturns and works on new opportunities even when things are going well.
9. Connection is a leadership non-negotiable. As the team grows, she’s doubling down on knowing people beyond their job titles, understanding their strengths, and keeping everyone rooted in the bigger mission.
10. Vulnerability builds stronger teams than “perfect” leadership. One of her biggest recent lessons was realizing that trying to appear like she always had it together actually created distance between her and the team.
11. Entrepreneurship is not automatic freedom—it’s a trade. It can create impact, opportunity, and potential wealth, but it also often means fewer vacations, more responsibility, and a long-term grind that not everyone actually wants.
12. Action beats endless preparation. Jule has read the books and done the learning, but her biggest growth has always come from doing the work, not waiting until she “felt ready.”
13. Your personal energy sets the tone. Her mantra “bring the energy you want to receive” shows up in how she treats cashiers, her team, and her clients—culture often starts with how you show up in small moments.
14. “Actions determine destiny.” Decisions matter, but the follow-through—the calls you make, the candidates you support, the risks you take—are what actually shape the business and your life.

Chapters

• [00:01] From helper at heart to entrepreneurial beginnings
  • Jule shares her early love of reading, making and selling bookmarks as a kid, and how she’s always seen herself more as a helper than a classic entrepreneur.
• [01:16] Accounting, homebuilding, and the True Ledgers side hustle
  • She explains her early career in accounting and finance, working in homebuilding while launching True Ledgers to support small businesses with bookkeeping and financial guidance.
• [04:20] Corporate life at Coca-Cola and balancing entrepreneurship
  • Jule describes transitioning into Coca-Cola while continuing True Ledgers on the side, and how being somewhat risk-averse led her to grow her business without immediately leaving her job.
• [06:54] Meeting her husband and stepping into a portfolio of businesses
  • She talks about how her now-husband started as a client, how she eventually joined his portfolio of companies full time, and the catalyst for leaving Coca-Cola.
• [07:54] Bootstrapping Salem Solutions and managing cash flow
  • Jule outlines how they avoided outside funding, used lines of credit, and managed the heavy upfront payroll demands of staffing hundreds of call center agents at once.
• [09:07] Falling into staffing and discovering a niche
  • She recounts how an urgent client need for 200 agents and an HR manager’s unexpected leave pushed her into call center staffing, where she learned by doing and found she loved the challenge.
• [10:04] Advocating for call center agents as an underserved talent pool
  • Jule explains why she believes call center agents are undervalued, how their work is increasingly technical with AI and multi-channel tools, and how Salem Solutions aims to support them better.
• [12:00] The first big surge and hiring her HR partner
  • She shares the story of hiring an experienced HR professional, handing her a huge stack of paper applications on day one, and how they pulled off onboarding hundreds of people together.
• [15:30] Choosing a niche: federal call center operations
  • Jule walks through her initial hesitation to be a niche firm, how she experimented with commercial work, and why she ultimately doubled down on federal call center staffing as their core competency.
• [19:28] COVID as a pivotal growth moment for Salem Solutions
  • She describes how supporting CDC call volumes during COVID became a major growth inflection point, allowing them to scale while serving an urgent public need.
• [21:23] Culture, connection, and staying aligned as the team grows
  • Jule discusses her focus on growth-oriented people, knowing each team member deeply, and keeping everyone connected to the broader mission of serving veterans, the public, and disaster-impacted communities.
• [24:21] Practical hiring advice for founders growing beyond themselves
  • She offers guidance on defining roles clearly, outlining success criteria before hiring, and understanding both the skills and intangibles needed to set new team members up for success.
• [26:28] Building and leveraging a nationwide candidate pipeline
  • Jule explains how being hyper-focused on call centers has allowed Salem to build a large national pipeline, enabling them to quickly staff large programs without starting from scratch each time.
• [29:39] Gospel truths about leadership and team connection
  • She shares her core belief that maintaining genuine connection with her team—beyond job responsibilities—is one of the most important aspects of leading the business.
• [30:50] A recent failure: office purchase, big changes, and disconnection
  • Jule reflects on a challenging year that included buying an office and her husband selling his business, and how she realized she had become too disconnected from her own team during that season.
• [33:37] The myth of entrepreneurial freedom and the real cost of ownership
  • She talks about the misconception that business owners have endless freedom, contrasting it with her reality of missed vacations, long hours, and the need to truly want the journey.
• [35:01] How hard are you willing to work for your vision?
  • Jule emphasizes that aspiring founders should ask themselves how hard they’re willing to work and how long they’re willing to stay in the game, not just whether they have a good idea.
• [38:58] If she could start over: think less, act more
  • She shares what she’d do differently at the beginning of her career—do the basic homework, get clear on what she wants, and then move quickly into action instead of waiting to feel ready.
• [40:57] Actions determine destiny and bringing the right energy
  • Jule closes with two core mantras: that actions, not just decisions, determine destiny, and that leaders should bring the energy they want to receive from their teams and the world.