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.

George Edwards

When I started practicing law, I thought I could do it all. The Court hearings, the mediations, the phone calls, the filing, organizing and making notebooks. I learned quickly that this was wishful thinking. For example, in my litigation practice, pre-COVID court hearings in person were always necessary, and it could take an entire morning to organize a single file. That was not going to work if I was going to building a practice with hundreds of cases. Not at all. I needed a team, and I needed one fast. Read more>>

DR Hanson

When my husband, Jamison Sacks, and I first opened Common Ground Games in 2013 it was a passion project. A way for Jamison to leave the IT world that has served it’s purpose, embrace a sense of freedom and empowerment, and use his past experience managing a comic store(s) to his benefit. I was the not so silent partner, investing money and ideas as needed. We were able to steer the ship, with Jamison at the helm, for about a year a half. Read more>>

Jan Smith

Starting out, I was a one-woman operation providing vocal coaching and consultations to those artists who were clients at a rock-n-roll guitar school. Word got out to the music community that someone was catering to the vocal needs of rock. pop, and urban singers (versus strictly classical singers and stylists), and the numbers continued to increase. Read more>>

Joshua Frye

During the first year or so of Maitri Multi-Media, I was our only employee. Beginning with three participants and my car, we drove around exploring the streets of Denver, Boulder, and surrounding areas and dreamed of what equipment and ideas we would fill our space with once we had one. Once we acquired a space, our next focus became finding amazing creative people that could help make this dream a reality. Read more>>

Phuong Nguyen

Did your business have employees from day one? Or was it just you at the start? In either case, tell us the story, and help us understand what it was like being in your shoes. I didn’t start out with employees but I did have an amazing support system made of best friends, family and my significant other to help me late into the nights, early mornings, and especially on the weekends. Read more>>

Stephanie Garza

For the first year, it was just Mark and myself. We had to coordinate grocery shopping, prep days, sales days, clean up, ordering and maintenance all on our own, plus caring for our kids and managing our home. We planned to hire in stages, but when I knew I had to have hip surgery we had to speed up the process. Hiring was nerve-racking, because we didn’t know if we could find people who would be as passionate about our business as we were, not to mention experienced bakers. We decided to be flexible and just see what would happen. Read more>>