Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Natalie Stones, founder, and CEO of Talent Refinery, located in Alameda, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Talent Refinery is a Recruitment Consulting Firm specializing in fractional/interim leadership, embedded recruiting, strategic advisory services, and coaching. We are talent strategists partnering with small businesses, early-stage companies, and talent firms to solve recruiting challenges during times of high growth, deflation, leadership turnover, and/or operational start-up.

Services include:

  • Recruiting Department Audits
  • Embedded Recruiting
  • Fractional Talent Leadership
  • Strategic Planning
  • Program Development
  • Employer Branding
  • Recruitment Marketing
  • Vendor Evaluation and Selection
  • Hiring Manager Training
  • Recruiter Coaching
  • Staffing Agency RevOps

We also have an e-book: 10 Steps to Launching a Recruiting Operation.

Tell us about yourself

For over 5 years I had a passion to start my own company, but I was always too scared to do it alone. I didn't know where to begin, and I was afraid of failing. But after being laid off twice within a three-year timeframe and going through 70+ unsuccessful interviews, I threw in the "full-time" towel and decided it was finally time to be my own boss. I sought to create a place where talent acquisition professionals could come and work "fractionally" with a variety of clients when they wanted. There is so much knowledge capital to share, and I'm here to break the stigma that the only way to successfully share that knowledge is by being "accepted" into a full-time job.

Here is more about me:

  • 15 years of agency and in-house corporate recruiting.
  • 12 years of leading Sales/Biz Ops/Tech Recruiters, Sourcers, and Recruiting Coordinators.
  • In-house experience as Director of Recruiting: Series E startup (500 ee's), Series B startup (125 ee's), and a Fortune 1000 Professional Services (2500 ee's nationally).
  • Executive Level Recruiter for Go-to-Market and G+A requisitions (entry to SVP level).
  • Lead Talent Programs and RecOps.
  • Built recruiting departments from scratch, in addition to revamping existing infrastructures.
  • Employer branding + recruitment marketing.
  • ATS implementations, Data and Analytics.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Designing and launching my website, blog, and e-book on my own (without outsourcing) all within three weeks of getting laid off, I was able to get this company off the ground and secure my first paying client in less than 30 days!

What's one of the hardest things that comes with being a business owner?

Maintaining a work/life balance is challenging enough when you work a full-time corporate role, but it becomes even harder when you have your own company. Surrounding myself with mentors, fractional consultants, and the right referral partners, helped ensure I was focusing my time in the right areas of my business.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Find your superpower, combine it with your passion, and build your company, product, or service around that.
  2. Ensure that you test your market and understand the needs and desires of your target prospects. What you think you should offer may not be what the market wants.
  3. As you begin, your creative ideas may start to run wild. To avoid losing sight of top priorities, compartmentalize your creative ideas into project containers, and set them to the site for the right time. Adding them to your roadmap with a goal date will help you remain focused on the pressing issues at hand.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.talentrefinery.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natalieastones/

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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