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.

Alyssa Boyd

DogTime started as a team of two. We personally did all of our marketing and promoting. We would hang flyers in local businesses and apartments around the neighborhood, hand out business cards, post on social media, wear the DogTime logo on clothing in the area, attend many local events and volunteer at local shelters. Read more>>

Kaleen Canevari

I founded Flexia in 2020 and worked alone and unpaid for the entire first year. I convinced some friends to help me along the way by contributing advice and a few consulting hours here and there. Read more>>

Brandy Emmert

For the first two years my pet sitting company was open, it was just me. I did all of the pet sitting and dog walking visits, I built and managed a website, I went door to door with advertising, and I managed the financials. Read more>>

Carisa Brown

In the beginning my team consisted of family and friends. They believed in my dream and wanted to support me any way they could. This worked out very well due to the fact I had limited capital. Read more>>

Shila Griffith

I didn’t hire employees until I was about 6 years into my business. I got to a point where I was juggling 14 projects at a time and I knew that wasn’t sustainable. Read more>>

Christian Cook

As an author, I don’t have employees that work for me as a bulk of what I do is writing and telling stories to their fullest extent, but once the book is complete the other key element is marketing and promotion. Read more>>