Overwhelmingly, media coverage of team building, hiring, training, etc. is often geared towards the issues faced by HR at Fortune 500 sized companies. Even when it’s positioned as advice for small business owners it is often coming from an executive or consultant working primarily with giant corporations. We think it’s far more relevant to hear from small and medium business owners who have successfully grown their businesses – and so we asked some very talented folks to tell us the stories of their initial hires and the struggles and lessons they can share.

Betsy Castro

When I started my business it was just me, my laptop, my cellphone, and the dining room table was my office. Little by little I built a small office space (with the help of my fiance at the time… now my husband) in my bedroom. The same year I was starting my business, was also the same year I was planning my wedding. As my wedding date started to approach, I realized I did not want to be working on my honeymoon, so in a way, I was forced to find help. The very first person I hired was only for temporary work. She would only cover me on certain occasions, and I would still pretty much do everything. Read more>>

April Littmann

Our business started off as my husband/business partner and me. We both wore all hats in the business for almost 3 years before we took the leap to hire. I think learning how to do all aspects of your business is essential for success. Learning the not-so-exciting roles and learning what you do not excel at helps you understand where you should hire first within your company. Our first two hires were contract employees – a bookkeeper and a contract interior designer who helps with all aspects of the design process. We still work with those two people today and they both are wonderful. Those interview processes were more casual and over the phone. Read more>>

Kristen Gonzalez

I started from 0, twice. I was actually a third grade teacher when I stared my first health and wellness company in 2015. I had some support from people above me, however, it was up to me to build my own team. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be paid. I was so excited and passionate that I ran like my hair was on fire. I went from A-Z on my Facebook friends list and told them , they should do it with me! I told everyone within 3 feet of me about what I was doing. I posted on social daily. Long story short, I recruited 300 personal people in 5 years and collectively we recruited over 8,000 team members. Read more>>

Courtney Sandora

I left Corporate America to start my business, Go Social, and my family. I wanted more flexibility and less business travel, especially while my children were young. For the first three years of my business I was a soloprenuer, splitting time between my household and my business, which I often dubbed my “third baby”. As my kids grew and my business grew, I became tired of being the only one who could work on the work. It was difficult to ever really take a vacation and to get a break from client requests in the “always on” world of social media. Read more>>

Erika Strassberg

When we first opened our doors in January 2021, it was just myself, my mom & my husband (on nights and weekends since he works a full-time corporate job). We did not anticipate needing to hire so soon – which is a good problem to have I guess! So we started looking for people who represent our brand & who would be a good fit for the environment and interacting with our customers. Our first employee was actually a previous employee of mine at my corporate gig’s younger sister! Read more>>

Eric Amyot

Storytelling. It’s all about the story, when the story is true, transparent and inclusive. Thrijv has been a very large idea from day one. My cofounder, Lea Sisson, and I realized from the moment of conceiving the idea of building a modern day village, a future city, from scratch that it would take a village to build our village. As soon as our vision and mission was identified, we immediately set out to find our own startup tribe. Our tribe was going to have to be stacked with courageous and visionary men and women. Read more>>

Leslie White

Initially the business started as a solo endeavor. I would take bridal parties sometimes but always brides as they were my focus. I would travel all over the state for multiple brides in a day but really didn’t offer services to the wedding parties until I had to keep turning them down. My first logic was to hire out trusted stylists I worked with to help. Once it became a frequent enough request I put out a search on Facebook for artists. I was able to interview stylists and makeup artists. Read more>>

Jessica Armstrong

My vision for my business from the beginning was to create career opportunities for women who needed flexibility in their day, financial stability and the ability to work remotely. In order to do this I wanted to build the foundation and grow to a point where I had enough business to go around, so it was just me for about a year and a half. This was the hardest part about starting my own business from scratch. Working for myself has been and is unbelievably rewarding, however doing the job alone can be extremely challenging. I am in charge of everything and have to be able to focus on the operations, accounting, daily services I am providing my clients and building systems to be scalable. Read more>>