A venture without an exceptional leader can’t carve out the path to success for itself. To thrive in today’s fierce atmosphere of the market with extensive services, an apt leader is one who fuels not only the business but also the minds of its team members. Supervisors who know their delivery commitments and are fixated on providing exceptional services in given circumstances are the ones taking the lead in any industry.
Leaders like Nicole Martin—who project an attitude of natural ease and effortlessness while having a sharp vision and objective to provide delegated services to the industry—demonstrate the aforementioned influence of such leaders. With extensive industry experience, Nicole not only empowers her business but also helps create growth opportunities with unmatched expertise.
Nicole Martin is the Chief Empowerment Officer and Founder of HRBoost® LLC. HRBoost transforms companies into talent magnets and—under Nicole’s impeccable leadership—creates a Dedicated HR Team & provides businesses with hands-on support to best practice solutions and overcome a myriad of workplace challenges.
An Asset to the Industry
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. Being the Chief Empowerment Officer and Founder of HRBoost® LLC, a Shared Services Consulting firm based in the north suburbs of Chicago, Nicole has been building HR departments from the ground up ever since she was 18 years old. 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.
Nicole states, “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 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.
Talking about her vision, Nicole says, “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.”
It is her 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 their 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. She expresses that 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 a creative space where teams can create their reality for shared leadership in their space.
An exemplar of Resilience
“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,” says Nicole while revealing how new innovative ways help her reach clients in today’s volatile market. In 2023, she will be launching new opportunities for seasoned HR practitioners across the nation. Proudly, with Nicole’s leadership, HRBoost’s talent currently spreads across five states, and the boundaries no longer apply.
Nicole acknowledges that, ironically, the biggest threat to the marketplace is talent, even now. According to her, only truly forward-thinking companies will make winning moves even in the downturn of the economy.
Nicole loves what she does, and she does it remarkably well. Nicole didn’t set out to create HRBoost. She simply followed her passion for helping clients understand the importance human resources can play in developing a strong business. Today, Nicole is a successful entrepreneur and an HR industry innovator who is dedicated to helping small to mid-size businesses realize their potential through their employees. Because she believes HR expertise is essential to any business as they grow its enterprise.
HRBoost’s Shared Services approach allows businesses to access strategic HR at their pace and budget, all while taking a holistic approach to integrating a culture plan that enables their strategic and/or operational plans as a business. It delivers skilled talent to its clients. Nicole believes HRBoost’s shared services approach to the middle market is the PEO Alternative.
Today it serves businesses spanning multiple sectors; these include Professional Services, Non-Profit Organizations, High Tech, Manufacturing, Staffing firms, Hospitality, and Healthcare. Its clients are typically high-growth businesses with 50-250 employees. The company’s model is to meet the clients wherever they are. Thus, it provides full-service embedded HR support, project-to-project support, culture design and management training, employee programs and assessments, virtual support, and phone support. HRBoost has experienced tremendous growth, and proudly nearly every client has been sourced through word of mouth.
Head of Industry Advancements
HRBoost’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is that it meets the clients at their pace and budget and brings a team with 40 years of aggregate experience from day one. It offers small and mid-size businesses HR services on an ala carte, project, or retainer basis.
“We meet our clients wherever they are on their journey to be an employer of choice, and we also meet them at their pace and budget. Our Shared Services approach allows us to build HR departments from scratch and align them to business strategy,” Nicole states.
With a team of truly conscientious and driven people on our team, Nicole feels blessed to have them by her side. Because they live HRBoost’s core values, and instead of Nicole recognizing every time a core value is witnessed, they have taken peer reward recognition to be a strong reinforcement.
Nicole feels it is imperative to get hands-on experience doing what you seek to learn. She asks others to make sure it brings them joy before investing time and energy and dedicating their 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,” she says while also emphasizing that everyone deserves a coach, as accountability to self is paramount in achieving goals.
Nicole believes women remain an opportunity and can develop teams that foster collaboration, and creating a culture of conversation takes rigor, where a two-way exchange is fostered and upheld.
“Investment in women. The fact that less than 2% of the money is invested in the United States in women-owned businesses is disturbing,” suggests Nicole.
Nicole advocates the importance of being vulnerable and authentic. She exclaims that 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.
Currently, Nicole serves on the Chicago NAWBO Membership Committee and is a Star Conference Global Speaker, citing all the women’s conferences and came home as Best Speaker from Paris 2021. She also mentors some newer female entrepreneurs who reach out to her.
