Nicole Martin | Founder and Chief Empowerment Officer | HR Boost
Human Resource isn’t the thing we do. It’s the thing that runs our business.
– Steve Wynne
The above quote sums up the entire importance of HR in an organization. What oxygen is to the body, HR is to an organization. One company that helps the HR of an organization function effectively is HR Boost.
Acquaint Yourself With The Booster:
HRBoost specialises in delivering value to small and mid-sized businesses, which, unlike their larger counterparts, typically lack the time and resources to develop infrastructure and procedures that go beyond essential business goals.
In today’s environment, every firm must have a competitive advantage. Small and big businesses alike must attract, develop, and keep the finest employees while adhering to the ever-changing maze of state and federal laws. Compensation, benefits, training, employee retention, talent recruitment, and generational adaptability are all challenges that must be addressed by all businesses according, affirms Nicole Martin, founder and Chief Empowerment Officer of HR Boost.
HRBoost has developed a reputation for working with company leaders to achieve corporate objectives while preserving the integrity and delivering exceptional outcomes. Professional services, non-profit organisations, high-tech, manufacturing, staffing firms, hospitality, and healthcare are just a few of the industries it supports.
“Our clients are typically high-growth businesses with 50-250 employees. Our model is to meet the clients wherever they are, thus we provide full-service embedded HR support,the project to project support, culture design and management training, employee
– Nicole Martin, Founder & Chief Empowerment Officer
programs and assessments, virtual support, and phone support. ”
Acquaint Yourself With The Booster’s Booster:
A dynamic and empowering consultative leader, and a futurist skilled at helping organizations to meet their strategic objectives, Nicole Martin is an internationally renowned speaker and an author. Nicole is the Chief Empowerment Officer and Founder of HRBoost, LLC a Shared Services Consulting firm based in the north suburbs of Chicago.
She serves on the Chicago NAWBO Membership Committee and is a Star Conference Global Speaker (cite all the women’s conferences and came home Best Speaker from Paris 2021. She also mentors some newer female entrepreneurs who reach out to her on an ad hoc basis.
Her other highlights are:
– Graduated Goldman Sachs 10,000 small businesses Chicago Cohort 9 2014.
– Chair Chicago Peer Group Best and Brightest Companies to Work For.
– Advisory Board National Best and Brightest.
– 3 years on OMNI Board of Directors, Chair of Governance
– WBE – Women’s Business Enterprise WBE WBENC Certified (every year)
-Certified Women-Owned Business
– 1 million bucket – 5 million category
– Still growing and possibly franchised as aiming to franchise in 2023
I try to lead by example and I also share for the benefit of all. I have published two books that speak to women, though men have let me know they enjoy them equally as well. The Power of Joy and Purpose is my personal story and I share my 7 Presence Principles as I get asked nearly every day, how do I do it all so joyfully? I don’t do it alone. I also co-authored a book with John Tinghitella last year. We named it, NO FEAR Negotiation for Women, a book where we set forth a process that women can add to their list of abilities for the greater benefit of our country. Men are about results and Women are about effort. We need both in business.
– Nicole Martin
The Genesis Of The Booster:
In 2010, Nicole left her corporate career to establish HRBoost, LLC. Her initial vision was to find leaders who wanted to be the next Best & Brightest® employer while providing support to growing businesses facing a myriad of workforce challenges. By 2012, she realized she needed a team. With 50% growth year over year, it became clear that HR outsourcing was not HR as she knew it and HRBoost had found a niche.
“By 2013, my company had a solid team and when I looked across a table to see all those that worked for me, I became the Chief Empowerment Officer.”
– Nicole Martin
The Booster’s Secret To Their Energy:
It is our Vision at HRBoost® to bring JOY and PURPOSE to PEOPLE through their Work. It is how we serve our clients and the people that choose to join up with their visions. We live it at HRBoost® exclaims Nicole.
It is Nicole’s number one responsibility to empower her team of Boosters and invest in ongoing education, tools and resources to optimize her team. She has faith that they will in turn delight our clients. She was truly humbled when after years of serving on the Advisory Board and being part of a winning organization in her prior roles, her own company took the stage of Best & Brightest ®Companies to Work For in Chicago in 2020. Nicole’s philosophy is that leadership must live at every level in a business. According to her, the hierarchy is a thing of the past, people must be invited to live leadership from wherever they stand. The language of what makes a leader is the creative space where teams can create their reality for shared leadership in their space.
The Genesis Of The Booster’s Journey:
Nicole was lucky to have a great mentor early in life: her mom. “My mother is highly spiritual, and she raised me with the philosophy of being happy,” said Nicole. “She always believed that you are a special person—she ingrained that in me—and you are capable of anything.”
At the age of 18, Nicole was ready to start proving her mom right. She left Montana and moved in with her godmother in Libertyville, Illinois. Right out of high school, Nicole got a job as a receptionist at a pre-Y2K firm where she found her passion quite by accident. “They were hiring all these computer experts from overseas, but when they arrived, the company just put them in the reception area because they didn’t know what to do with them,” recalled Nicole. “It was just inhumane.”
During the same time, Nicole was working on a training program for a college human resources class. “I wanted to help these guys out in the hallway, so I just marched into the director’s office and asked him if he wanted to see the training program I created for school.” When Nicole was finished with her presentation, the director created a human resources department for the site, hired a manager and moved 18-year-old Nicole from reception to human resources.
Nicole has been building HR departments from the ground up ever since. What makes her approach so unique, she says, is that she begins with the business’ vision and creates HR programs that are completely integrated with that vision.
We support employers at every stage of the employee experience and small businesses deserve to compete for talent in today’s market. Our Boosters create programs designed to further the business, boost productivity, and help employees understand why and how their contributions are meaningful.
– Nicole Martin
The Booster’s Mini Boosters:
Nicole credits her team for all the success the business has accomplished. Today, she is proudly a woman that has built a seven-figure business from scratch and knowing only 2% of women-owned businesses do this is alarming. Women remain a business opportunity everywhere.
She feels honoured to lead a high-performance team of HR leaders who partner with business clients to meet them wherever they are on their journey, to being the best place to work.
The company has experienced tremendous growth and, proudly, nearly every client has been sourced through word of mouth.
Nicole shares that she is blessed to have truly conscientious and driven people on her team. Thankfully, her team lives the company’s core values and instead of her recognizing every time a core value is witnessed, they have taken peer reward recognition to be a strong reinforcement.
To date, she is thanked by her Admin Extraordinaire for her shout-outs as she just cashed in on a new car seat for her beautiful child.
What more can I say? It is all about how you make people feel expresses Nicole.
“Our appeal and success are due to our dedication to every client.”
– Nicole Martin
The Booster’s Boom:
We have been able to increase our geographic footprint through our investment in SEO and retargeting. Once we thought we never get business from our website but now we proudly have over 1200 new visitors a month and the average time a visitor spends on our website is 8 minutes. We are proud to solidify our online presence as a go-to resource for professionals across the USA. In the coming year, our next initiative is to franchise and we look forward to expanding across the top five regions seeking us online this past year, shares Nicole.
The Booster’s Services:
The company offers small and midsize businesses HR services on an ala carte, project or retainer basis. They meet their clients wherever they are on their journey to be an employer of choice and they also meet them at their pace and budget.
Their Shared Services approach allows them to build HR departments from scratch and align them to business strategy. While they see great value in the middle market, they do have some larger companies that augment their internal HR teams with strategic project initiatives from their team.
Software is not HR. And HR is more than payroll and benefits. Building a high-performance culture that drives innovation and profitability requires leaders at all levels. HR infrastructure can uphold the Culture Invitation and once it is strategically aligned and reinforced a company can create workforce alignment empowering leaders to innovate amidst even the toughest climate in business, expresses Nicole.
HR Boost delivers skilled talent to its clients. They also believe they need both strategic and tactical resources at the same time. One human is not ideal as there are various cognitive abilities to optimize HR strategically. They believe our shared services approach to the middle market is the PEO Alternative. And yes, the middle market needs an alternative.
The businesses they serve span multiple sectors; these include Professional Services, Non-Profit Organizations, High Tech, Manufacturing, Staffing firms, Hospitality, and Healthcare. The clients are typically from high-growth businesses with 50-250 employees.
The HRBoost model is to meet the clients wherever they are, thus they provide full-service embedded HR support, the project to project support, culture design and management training, employee programs and assessments, virtual support, and phone support.
I am honoured to lead a high-performance team of HR leaders who partner with our business clients to meet them wherever they are on their journey, to be the best place to work.
-Nicole Martin
Boosting Ahead & Boosting The Success:
When asked what initiatives is she taking to stay ahead in the corporate rat race Nicole shares:
We have always trended with growth year after year, however, amidst the pandemic we were hard hit like many. Thankfully, we have successfully returned to pre Covid-19 revenue levels and this is something we are pleased with given the level of uncertainty in the market. We have revealed some new innovative ways to reach our clients and as talent shifts occur, we are ready to help the businesses that seek to retain talent.
Ironically, the biggest threat to the marketplace is talent, even now. Only truly forward-thinking companies will make winning moves even in the downturn of the economy. In 2023, we will be launching new opportunities for seasoned HR practitioners across the nation. Proudly our talent currently spreads across five states and the boundaries no longer apply.
As for excitement, we are launching HRBOOST circle R US. We seek driven entrepreneurs seeking to build their businesses as HRBOOST continues to serve Middle Market America.
– Nicole Martin
The Booster Boosting Others:
While concluding Nicole gives the following message:
I feel it is imperative to get hands-on experience doing what you seek to learn. Make sure it brings you joy before investing time, and energy, and dedicating your life to it. Enjoy the journey and be prepared to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Surround yourself with people who inspire and support you, but also don’t patronize you. Remember, even if it gets harder, or takes longer, stay diligent. Anything you love will be worth it. Overcoming fear and the ASK are key to where I am today. I also feel everyone deserves a coach as accountability to self is paramount in achieving your goals.
I think it is important to be vulnerable and authentic. No one can be good at everything, but everyone can be good at something. Knowing oneself is important because if you don’t know you need others to be successful then it will be hard to build a business. People will always matter, and a good leader knows that.
