Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Athena Quinones, Co-Founder, and COO of Scale Business Consulting, located in San Francisco, CA, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
I am the founder of Scale Business Consulting, home of recruiting for culture. My clients are online entrepreneurs who are seeking to scale their businesses but know that they need support in doing so. Running a business online can feel isolating, time-consuming, and overwhelming. We CEOs often get stuck in the struggle of trying to wear all the hats in our business but then realize that in order to scale, we need support. Our company is the ideal solution for assessing your unique business needs, identifying your business culture, then matching ideal candidates that match not only the skills you need to help you in obtaining expert support but also a business culture match helping to ensure that your retention rate is optimized. We do all of this in a fraction of the time most recruiters take to obtain talent, and we include and equip the CEO in the process.
Tell us about yourself
Entrepreneurship has always been a way of life for me. It all started as a struggling college student seeking ways to make more income in a short amount of time so that I could balance being a full-time student and working. As I gained more life experience and began in the corporate world, I realized that I had a knack for Human Resources and building out systems and processes. I had always been in some form of a selling position but where I truly excelled and brought value to organizations was in leadership, creating training programs, and building out sustainable systems that led to optimization and increased efficiency.
I truly didn't recognize my talents as gifts until other people sought out my expertise to help them with their small businesses. One day I was approached with an opportunity to help a very successful Real Estate agent who wanted to build a coaching empire. I eagerly said yes and rolled up my sleeves. The business was small; only a few people were contracted in various positions to help this brand-new start-up achieve its massive goals. No systems existed, and no real teams. I quickly built systems and processes, and throughout a two-year timeframe, I developed all of the departments as well as roles needed to take this start-up to massive success generating almost a million in sales each month.
The results of this success and the impact it had sparked the idea to start Scale Business Consulting. At first, I started with a Marketing Business partner, working with dozens of CEOs and hiring well over 120 people into various roles across multiple industries. To see these CEO's flourish and gain the support they need while taking back their time and scaling their business has been a life-changing experience. I'm now taking talent Acquisition to the next level and really focusing on helping to ensure that small online businesses are supported in a massive way. Just knowing that I'm able to help CEO's get some relief from the daily stresses that they have as a business owner while also increasing the quality of business they have is incredibly rewarding.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Hiring is both a science and an art, and like anything you do in your business, you need to be strategic about how you approach hiring, and this is why I do what I do. While I offer quick and painless talent acquisition services, my greatest impact is when I get to privately consult a business owner, helping to uncover the greatest gaps in the business and intimately supporting the CEO to obtain a high level of impact. In doing so, I have helped CEO's who were completely frazzled, overwhelmed, and on the brink of burnout to work with ease and flow. In working together, I've seen these CEO's (who would run a million miles a minute) gain back their life, start to take routine time off, feel supported, and work with a plan and purpose. As a business owner, this is my greatest accomplishment, seeing my clients go from working with tears to working with joy.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Embracing failure. Learning to fail forward can be a hard lesson to learn, but as a CEO, it's critical to your survival and growth. Without failure, we would likely remain stagnant; growth and innovation are often a result of pressing past challenges.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Start getting to know your audience (ideal client) intimately. Survey them and work with them to truly understand their needs. Once you've worked with enough people, you can then begin to create your unique offer or product that will stand the test of time.
- Secondly, make sure you have a sound and clear message. Marketing and content are one of the hardest things to nail in your business but also the most important. You will have a hard time connecting with your audience without a clear message and hook.
- Third, get the right support in your business, and don't try to wear all the hats as a solopreneur. Having the right support and filling the right role in your business can take you from a place of overwhelm and delivering to working in your CEO lane and running a quality business.
Where can people find you and your business?
Website: https://go.letsscale.io/hiring
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ladieswhoscale
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/scale_up_team_support/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/athena-quinones/
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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