We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Meghan Zeller a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Meghan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Your ability to build a team is often a key determinant of your success as a business owner and so we’d love to get a conversation going with successful entrepreneurs like yourself around what your recruiting process was like -especially early on. How did you build your team?
When JoAnn Ridge and I started Ridge Zeller Therapy (RZT) in 2008, we started with two employees. Today we have 94 employees on staff. At the beginning much of our growth was organic. Word of mouth alone grew our staff quickly, as we peronally had made many connections in the community. Currently, we do pay for ads on employment sites, but our biggest referral source is our own employees. It is critical to hire employees that you feel will be a good fit with your company culture. We would rather have a position open than hire someone that is not a good fit with our company culture or do not align with our core values. Over the last 17 years, we have concluded that connection is the key to building your team. We work on building connections with our staff and the people in our community. While we continue to grow our team, we are commited to retaining the employees we currently have. We have learned that having a strategic retention and growth plan are very important.
Meghan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) and Co-Owner of Ridge Zeller Therapy. I was always interested in working with children, but I didn’t want to be a teacher in a classroom of 30 students. I volunteered as a high school student in a hospital, nursing home and school to see different therapy and education professionals. I observed the SLP with adults and with children and I fell in love with it. I completed my undergraduate degree in Communication Disorders and then I took a year off to work before applying for my master’s program. I worked as a SLP assistant for a year and confirmed my love for the field. I went on to complete my master’s in Speech Pathology and completed my Clinical Fellowship Year. As a SLP, you can work with adults or children in a variety of settings. I have focused much of my career working with children in schools and in our private clinic. After 20 plus years in the field, I am still passionate about it. It is so great to see the student’s progress. At this time, my role is training and teaching our staff who are new to the field. I have really enjoyed coaching and teaching as well. I recommend OT, PT and SLP to anyone interested in helping people in the health field because it is so gratifying to improve people’s quality of life.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
While JoAnn and I have always been frugal when it comes to spending, we agreed early on to make our decisions based on data. This includes our overhead and expenses. When we started RZT, JoAnn and I each put in money as a starting point. We got a line of credit from our bank and decided we would only use it in an emergency to cover payroll if we were in a cash flow situation. Luckily, we rarely had to use it. We kept our overhead very low until we had saved up enough to rent an office space.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
We have worked hard to build our culture and community. Our reputation has helped us build our team and client base. Due to the fact that our staff is well supported and happy at work, they refer prospective colleagues to us. Ridge Zeller Therapy is our name, so it is even more important that we find and retain the right staff members that represent us well. We invest in our staff to ensure they are well-trained and supported, which results in exceptional services for our clients. We are highly recommended by past and current clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://ridgezellertherapy.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ridge_zeller_therapy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ridgezellertherapy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ridge-zeller-therapy-llc
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RZTherapy
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Ridgezellertherapy
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/ridge-zeller-therapy-chandler
