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.

Brad Kolowich Jr

Hiring good staff is without a doubt one of the, if not the, most key components to the continued growth and success of any business. When I first established my personal training business in Atlanta, it was just me. I began working with clients in my Atlanta apartment gym to really get into the rhythm of the routine. I knew in the back my heart that I had aspirations to one day own a fitness studio, although at that time, I focused on my day by day journey to just get better.  Read more>>

Jen Quirk

Mayhem Music Promotions was my brilliant/ not so brilliant idea. After encouragement from several people I asked my best friend Steve to be my partner in this endeavor. So so hasluck would have it, probably against his better judgement he agreed lol. For awhile it was just he and I. We had people helping us create flyers until Our friend Matt offered his talents. He became our third member and the bands were thrilled and always excited to see what brilliance Matt created and produced. As we began to grow and had more and more shows booked we realized that we needed help. Jesse was brought on board to assist us at shows taking in a variety of responsibilities. Jesse interacts with the bands, manages the stage and helps with any other task we ask of him. Very soon after I asked another local promoter, Erica ( The Eerie Siren) if they would like to join us. Read more>>

Kimberly (kim) Muhlenbruch

Initially, my “company” provided services with only me working under the name (and supervision) of another company. Once I opened the doors at our current location and started providing services under our clinic’s name, we had a couple of providers and one student (who was completing her field experience requirements for her degree) within six months. Now, we also have a patient care coordinator and administrative assistant to complete admin work such as billing, scheduling, verifying insurance coverage, etc. Since then, I’ve changed things where we mostly only take in students with the option of remaining at our clinic following their graduation and completion of their field experience if we think that the student is a good fit for our clinic. Read more>>

Urban Racing

Every business has to start somewhere and it takes time to find the right people for the job. There were multiple changes in ownership and employees for several years before really finding our groove and having a steady team working the events. Our business is quite unique in the grand scheme of things and there isn’t a road map for finding success. You have to adopt trial and error and a lot of hustle to continue pounding the pavement until you find something that sticks. As time has gone on, we have refined our hiring and team building and have a full application and interview process to determine if someone is the right fit to add to our culture and crew. Hindsight is 20/20 and you often have to learn the hard way but that’s taught us perseverance and patience and adds to our satisfaction when it finally all works out. We are very blessed by the team that we have now and wouldn’t change a thing! Read more>>