As a person who loves people, Alice W. Chin was drawn to a career in human resources. She started her career at an international law firm, followed by a national weekly news magazine, where she learned the intricacies of human resources and how to partner with internal staff and external vendors to deliver quality HR programs. She wanted to diversify her experience and spent three years working as a project manager for small businesses.
Alice W. Chin
"At each company, I discovered a brilliant founder with creative and innovative ideas who was struggling with things I understood intuitively and executed instinctively — hiring, invoicing, bill collection, insurance, government forms — and so my practice expanded to human resources and operations project management. Each time I was compelled to help them. It was my passion and my privilege, and this commitment became the start of Your Other Half," said Chin. "I never set out to be a business owner. In 2014, my father's vicious and brief fight with cancer, and subsequent death, taught me that life is short, which emboldened me. I realized that I wanted to spend my life helping as many people as possible," said Chin, who left her full-time job to follow her dream of creating Your Other Half. "In our first year, the company's challenge was finding ways to partner with the business owners who needed us most — those who are just starting, struggling to manage staff, experiencing rapid growth, clueless about business liability — while continuing to grow Your Other Half.
As a boutique firm, we have the flexibility to work on a retainer, project or hourly basis, allowing us to work with clients of varying sizes and budgets. While this flexibility is critical to our success, it also proved to be a challenge, as many of our cash-strapped clients could only access one hour a month. One hour never felt like enough to empower these clients to become educated and protected business owners. I wanted to give more, but couldn't do so while continuing to grow my own business," said Chin, who understood the growing pains of starting a new business. Chin struggled with the question, "How can we shift our business model to provide access to the thousands of small business owners who need our help, while growing Your Other Half?" She had a conversation with another business owner about simple frameworks and had an "a-ha" moment. "I didn't have to change the hour I was spending with clients; I had to provide a powerful operational context for our conversations," said Chin.
A year later, Chin launched the company's new framework, which includes an in-depth intake, an individualized operational plan and monthly or weekly follow-up. This framework allows brand-new, super-small or money-strapped business owners get a handle on their liability and operations so they can realize their dream, free from risk and fear.
This article was written by Robin D. Everson of Examiner.com for CBS Small Business Pulse.
