Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur | Start and Grow Your Own Business 1255: From 5 to 50 Employees: Your Guide to Scaling People & Culture w/ Melanie Parrish
Tired of thinking of HR as just paperwork and a necessary evil? In this episode, 20-year HR veteran Melanie Parrish flips the script, revealing how to transform your people strategy from a dreaded cost center into a powerful growth driver. She explains that for small businesses, people solutions aren't about bureaucracy; they're about building a customized, intentional foundation that scales culture, retains top talent, and directly fuels your bottom line. This episode is packed with practical, no-fluff advice for entrepreneurs who want to stop avoiding people issues and start leveraging their team as their greatest competitive advantage.
💡 What You'll Take Away For YOUR Business
- 🚀 How to build a "culture of feedback" that drives performance without complex, corporate-style reviews.
- 💰 Why your HR infrastructure is the key to talent retention (and it’s not just about salary bumps).
- 📈 The specific elements of an HR audit that uncover hidden risks and growth opportunities in your small business.
- 🤝 How to create a company culture that reflects your unique vision, even with a remote or global team.
- 🛠️ Why you should quit avoiding HR and how a fractional "people partner" can be a game-changer for lean businesses.
- ⚖️ How to reframe compliance and risk management from a burden into a tool for protecting your business and your team.
📝 About Melanie Parrish
Melanie Parrish is a seasoned HR leader with over two decades of experience helping entrepreneurial CEOs and founders align their people strategy with aggressive business growth. She specializes in building scalable organizations from the ground up, with a focus on companies under 50 employees. As the founder of Strategic People Solutions, Melanie brings a customized, hands-on approach to transforming HR from a source of confusion into a clear driver of revenue, culture, and employee success.
🎯 Melanie’s BEST Piece of Advice for Wantrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs
"Quit avoiding HR because it feels overwhelming… step into the discomfort of dealing with your people."
📢 Memorable Quotes
- “Everything you do with your people is building your culture. How you decide to give PTO… how you decide to pay people… every little policy… and how you handle your business builds your culture, and your culture is unique to you.”
- “I find that owners and entrepreneurs really, generally, so care about the employees, and they carry the burden of these people's paychecks... they also realize how it will impact the 20 people or so that, you know, their livelihood is depending on this owner making good decisions.”
- “Quit avoiding HR because it feels overwhelming… step into the discomfort of dealing with your people… people are complex no matter how you break it down.”
💡 Actionable Takeaways
- ✅ Conduct a simple audit of your people processes. Start by asking: How do we hire? How do we give feedback? Are our i9s and employee classifications correct?
- ✅ Define what a "culture of feedback" looks like for your business. It could be weekly 1-on-1s, quarterly check-ins, or simply making it safe for employees to ask, "How am I doing?"
- ✅ If you have a global team, schedule time to intentionally ask what's important to them to foster a more inclusive culture.
- ✅ Instead of avoiding HR, identify one "people problem" you've been putting off and seek advice from a peer or expert on how to tackle it.
🔗 Links & Resources