Ashley:  Hi I’m Ashley Johnson, this is The BusinessMakers Show.  I’m joined today by Raegan Hill with Raegan Hill Group.  She is the President and Founder, right?

Raegan:  That’s correct, thank you for having me.

Ashley:  Thank you so much for joining me today.  So tell me, Raegan Hill Group, where are you at today?

Raegan:  That’s a great question.  I have been in business for 4 years now as an entrepreneur – an accidental entrepreneur is what I like to call myself – but I think a lot of entrepreneur’s start out that way.  Raegan Hill Group is a recruiting agency that specializes in placing marketers.  I am a marketer, that’s my background; 4 years and going string.  Year over year has been tremendous growth and I don’t know what I’m doing right and whatever I’m doing I’m going to keep doing it.

Ashley:  Well I’ve been following you for a long time on LinkedIn so you are one LinkedIn savvy gal.  So tell me – you’ve won awards from LinkedIn now, you’ve been recognized quite a lot – so tell me has that played a huge part in your success?  How did that all begin?

Raegan: It’s a great story.  It’s either that I’m just on LinkedIn a lot or I really did get recognized, but one day I got a call from LinkedIn Corporate and I’m like you guys have the wrong number.  LinkedIn Corporate?  And they said hey Raegan, we just want to let you know that you have won the top 25 Most Socially Engaged Staffing Agencies award from us and we’ll be sending you some information, but don’t tell anyone, we haven’t announced it yet.  I didn’t even know this existed.  And yes, it’s an award through LinkedIn, there should be an icon on my company page that represents the status.  And it happens every year so this next year I’m hoping – I’m actually going to give it a shot and try at it because I really didn’t.  I just do what I do and was awarded for it.  So yes it has made a difference, I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me and congratulate me on that.

Ashley:  You said you’re an accidental entrepreneur, tell me a little bit about that.

Raegan:  So 4 years ago I was with my last employer and I understand what senior executives go through when you have a changing of the guard at the top usually there’s a changing of the guard in the middle and so forth, so I parted ways abruptly.  We’ll put it that way, I parted ways abruptly with my last company.  Was a little bit taken off guard, which is one of those slap in the faces when you’re a recruiter.  Because as a recruiter you coach professionals don’t ever get caught off guard.  It happens.

It’s a great story of the underdog making it because I had a non-compete.  The non-compete basically was going to keep me from doing anything.  I negotiated out of that and the fun part is they were really more concerned about me going to a competitor, which I understand, but the addendum allowed me to start my own company and I did.  I essentially called all of my clients and said hey, this is what I’m doing and they were like great, let’s go.  It just was outrageously successful and my previous employer closed down in Houston 4 months later and it just was nonstop.

A lot of people ask me how did you grow your book of business and I say it’s really easy, I grew clients by just planting seeds, paying it forward.  Think about the downturn back in 2008, 2009 when a lot of recruiters had no positions open, they were ignoring their executive candidates that were getting laid off.  I wasn’t; I was spending Saturdays with them going over their resume, I was helping them negotiate offers that other recruiters were actually presenting them to.  I built relationships with them and then when they landed they remembered what I did.  When you’ve been doing this – and I’ve been doing this for 13 years – you build those relationships.  Marketers that were Marketing Managers are now VPs and you have that nurture and really build that relationship over time it will return on you.

Ashley:  So tell me, what are your goals with Raegan Hill Group?  What would you like to accomplish?  I know you mentioned you’re really trying now for the LinkedIn award, what other things are you working on?

Raegan:  The goal this year is to grow the agency.  I’ve stayed small on purpose.  My first year it was purely based out of fear; I’ve got to make this work or I’m going to be homeless with 6 pets – yeah, 6 pets – that is what motivated me to be so successful.  Then at the end of the year I looked at my business partner and I saw the money coming through and it was fun to spend and save and so forth, but I looked at him and said how much money have I actually made this year?  Tally it up for me.  He said this is how much you’ve made and I freaked out.  So then year 2 as an entrepreneur it was all about oh my God, how am I going to do this again?  I can’t do it again, there’s no way.  I did it once but there’s no way.

So you go through that mindset, so year 2 you go through that.  Then year 3 you look at year 2 and you’re like hey, I did it.  I did it. I’m an entrepreneur.  I really did it.  And then you start taking it seriously and then it’s about defining processes and scaling and really thinking about how you can automate a lot of your procedures so that you can add staff.  Come year 4 you now have – you’re starting to get a rhythm and that’s where Raegan Hill group is right now.  We’ve got a good rhythm and it’s really leveraging our marketing tools that we’ve got and expanding on our brand and adding people to the Raegan Hill brand; that’s the next step for Raegan Hill.

Ashley:  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Raegan:  In 5 years I see myself working more around the brand of Raegan Hill, more around Raegan Hill Group having a team and that team is really moving forward with my philosophy in recruiting and expanding on some form of coaching.  I don’t know how and I don’t know why and I don’t know when, I just know that it will occur.  And 5 years from now I see the Raegan Hill Group brand going national, expanding to other cities and we’ll wait and see what happens.  A lot can happen in 5 years.

Ashley:  Oh yeah, absolutely.  Well thank you so much for joining me today Raegan, I really appreciate it.

Raegan:  Yes, thank you for having me.

Ashley:  Again this Raegan Hill, the President of Raegan Hill Group and this is The BusinessMakers Show.