Do you remember your first hire? There is so much that goes into building a company, but few things matter as much the quality of the team you assemble. Given the immense importance of team building, we wanted to create a series where we ask entrepreneurs who have been there and done that, to share their stories and lessons with the community.

Kelsey Hogan

The topic of scaling is such a “buzz topic” in my industry of social media marketing, and so many others. The fact is, when you’re running a small business, you’re almost always going to hit that point where you’ve got a decision to make: scale, or cut-back, remain static (which, BTW, is a totally fine choice). Read more>>

Obianuju Obianwu

Let’s start with the fact that I sat on this idea for NINE months. Nine whole months, from when I created the website, to when I finally put it out there to the world. During that time, I was reevaluating my motivations in life, I was moving across multiple states, I was traveling a whole bunch, and the world was seemingly getting back to what life can look like following the biggest pandemic of our lives. Read more>>

Nat C. Jones

For both my non-profit (The CLIC) and my for-profit business (Nat C. Company LLC) I knew that team building was the most important thing that I needed to do in order to succeed. When I first started it was just me, but my very next move was figuring out who I needed on my team. I made this a priority years ago after reading the book, “Good To Great” by James C. Collins. This is why every entrepreneur should read as often as they eat. In that book I learned that the team is actually more important than the vision and mission. That is how I structure business now and it has served me well. I felt exhilarated looking for team members and I selected them based on a problem that needed to be managed in my company’s mission. I posted the jobs on social media instead of career sites because I wanted personable people. That’s my brand: Everything is “personal” when you’re a person. While interviewing them I spent about 25% of the time asking questions about their work experience and the other 75% asking them personal questions that would reveal their character. I want good people working for me no matter what. I can train good people to sharpen certain skills but even if a person is skilled I can’t improve their character. if i was starting today I would have kept an active waiting list and even made connections with the people who didn’t make the cut (maybe because they were a good interview but I only needed to fill one position at the time) that way once a team member has to move on, I could’ve reached into a warm pool of qualified potentials and fill the new void seamlessly. Read more>>

Michael Ahn

Technically it’s just myself, but I have a great team of people who advise me and help me run the classes. The gym wouldn’t be half of what it is without them. They are students but have experience in various fields and often give me business advice on the daily. For example it was one of these team members that first encuraged me to invest in gogle ads and a good CRM and that alone has paid dividends. Read more>>

Whitney LaMonda

Thread Vision is a female owned and operated small business. The ladies that are bringing our products to market all worked together in our past corporate lives! We met back in 2014 at BB Dakota, after a buy out from Steve Madden our offices were shifting to Madden’s NY HQ and we did NOT want to leave sunny so-cal :) In 2021 Thread Vision was founded with the idea of creating a business that could utilize the wonderfully talented and extensive network of fashion savvy individuals that we had come to know and love working with- all while providing a service that was needed in the market. Read more>>

Cheryl Goh

The Copy Brew started back in 2018 after graduating from university as a solopreneur, with me running entire (back then) boutique copywriting studio alone. It was only until mid 2023 that I decided to hire my first team member as I wanted to Pivot our business to a micro agency style model. Read more>>