hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh's most fascinating people and what they do to make our city an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to these galley oney from digi training solutions and later we'll introduce you to jess care believe the founder and c e o of h r t solutions who has also been recognized for a national award find out why coming up in a bit family was drifting apart until we found the connection you have the power to change your child's life the boystown national hotline can help me thanks so much for coming on the show today thank you for inviting me man i'm excited to be here and i had so what can you tell me about what you do tell me a little bit about you well four years ago i started my company solutions incorporated for years i was a corporate trainer working for better companies and i just got tired but one day i decided start my own business so i quit my job full time job and took that jump and became an entrepreneur so how how scared were you at first terrified at first four years later it is scary but i got to the point i thought if i don't do it no i never do it because it was never the right time to do it there's always something going on so i just decided to just do it but i think a lot of i think a lot of people out there like want to do bad and they're just so afraid so i just took one day of you saying that fit i'm doing my own thing what playing for to that's good i didn't just walk in and had to plan for a little bit but what i do is i still basically do the same thing but now i do it for myself and i do some other things so i go to corporations and i help them with any communications issues they have i don't know if you've ever worked in a large company a lot of times there's drama there's conflict right what i think doesn't happen every day so i go in there and help train their employees and how to deal with those types of issues i also do a lot of public workshops and public speaking and professional speaker so that keeps me busy too you also have your a border here yes i had so many people help me along the way well we can entrepreneurs so many wonderful women i decided to start the show and introduce people to those women so they can get information out to help empower the audience to inspire them to live their dreams that's wonderful and so when you go into these companies what do you think it's like the biggest thing that people are that these companies need from you then that they know what they need but sometimes it takes an outsider coming in and saying this is what you need to do bring in that other person that that expert person come into it normally if it's management that you just need to talk to them and talk to their employees better communication and basically communication is at the root of all of it and so what do you find what do you like the most about it i get different companies meeting new people is always in for a someone different i like getting a win for the people and speaking i'm one of those where people enjoy doing that yeah that takes a lot it is us the only reason i ever started doing this and what i've done is because i had terrible stage grades a lot of people did the number one fear and death it's fun to get over your fears it is fun to give your fears and push yourself past that comfort zone yeah and as you can see i'm not as shy many years because what keep that secret but i was there the most quietest girl in high school because i never open my mouth and never said a word that's hard to believe you know friends everybody tells me that people can't believe it and i really just as as a young adult i thought i really have to snap this i need to push myself and really start speaking speaking up because you just get put in the background that happens sure i mean it's i think you you have to have a voice somehow you have to have some way  just found my voice and i went back to my re union and they said what are you doing no and i said hey i'm a professional speaker i get in front of all these people i speak and i have a t v show and they're like really what it would be there were a little surprised so public speaking wise what types of i guess events seminars tell me a little bit about that i do a lot of workshops and the public workshops put them on my website and anyone can attend a lot of networking to teach people how to network people or for that i teach people how to find their why why they're afraid of public speaking that's number one fear worse than death it's crazy it is a proton nope i'm not talking up there i'm going to go i've got to go right right so i teach a lot of those classes i do want to want coaching so if you have an issue maybe a big presentation coming up that i would help you get over some of those fears because public speaking is not about getting in front of a large group like i do public speaking is standing up in a meeting and just talking giving an update on a project you're doing and people don't realize that and if you can't do that that can really hold you back your professional career absolutely it's i mean it's very intimidating it's starts at the interview level it surely does i mean you're pretty much you're you're being a public speaker you're probably sitting down the same way  nerves of talking in front of someone you're afraid you have to articulate yourself so you sound like you know what you're talking about and so you know where do you see your company in the next five years that's a great question mandy i have a lot of new things coming out i've been teasing people on facebook with all these little things i have coming out and working on some online better classes the first one is going to be out this week this week this week ok recorded this week is going to be out there the first one is h to present like a pro and the pros an acronym so you don't have to tune in to see what that means and have a couple other ones coming out and so these are online workshops they're going to be they're going to be online classes yes all right so you're bringing everything in the digital age i love that i am and who can take part in these causes anyone to have it all over my social media and also have it on my facebook page my website we'll give you a list for everybody that people can sign for my and i thought that was great i mean just the fact it's faster everybody we're running out of time somehow everybody's were running running running we're trying to do so many things which is great but where there's been it's you're making it forward so it's nice to have just  life right now less than two years ago and you have anything else coming up i'm teaching a lot of community classes networking for introverts seems to be a real popular one yet if you people had to get out there and speak to people and talk about their actual business you know and it's hard for somebody to say hey this is what you're doing wrong because and you feel like you're you know right they might be more shy after that and sometimes it's easier for an outside person say you need to do you need to say this or what are you trying to say and help them along ye i've been teaching courses my whole career but i've been teaching at c c s in the structure of courses just recently with us although it's all new this year that's you know i think something that everybody of wants to try at least so it's nice to have a different a different audience maybe it is a day for her and looking for education exactly rather than you know having to be like we have this meeting with this person scheduled monday rights is that no i want to do this yes that's great yes and  what types of companies are you looking for for your for your business i'll speak in any company but normally the companies are small to medium size the larger companies have their own people that can come into training so small to m so is there anything else that you'd like to share with us today that you know can help you to expand your business or tell us a little bit more about you know the types of clients who you're really can help i want to encourage people to was like i was lost in the shuffle that anyone could do that so just get out there and just do a little bit every time a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more and find your dreams and find that voice wonderful well thank you so much for coming on today will bring you back out in a little bit with jessica and you be back after this short break with jessica sometimes it's hard to see where you're going but you have the power to change your problems all it takes is cover your life your  the solutions is an organization that's started with a focus of human resources and also talent so we do you him resources consulting for small to medium sized businesses and then we do recruitment for a larger size organizations we're just coming up on our two year anniversary so super super excited about that and we started when we started it was myself and a team of four and it so myself and a team of twelve were out fair really growing in a couple  years yes it's good you have recruitment in there so you know that helps a little bit definitely does well what's your background like where does this all come from so my background is a split so it's between human resources and also recruitment and i knew for a very long time that i wanted to be an entrepreneur or but i just wasn't one hundred percent sure where i wanted it to be and after doing different trials trying to make a determination of do i want to go into retail do i want to have a retail shop i finally realized that my passion was right in front of it with the human resources as well as the recruiting sure i think we all dabble in the retail shopping for a minute agreed and so your passions always been human resources and now you're bringing that to all different companies and different sizes yes so the human resources piece we really focus more on that small to medium sized business and really when you think about it there are a lot of small to medium sized organizations who can afford a full time human resources professional but really need one so they need somebody to tell them this maybe isn't legal or compliant or they might just need it in addition a little bit of additional help and so that's where we see up in help to make sure that they're being compl well i think that's extremely important you know i'm a small business entrepreneur and yeah that's terrifying that first that first employer or employee i should say that's the scariest one because you're not exactly sure  just not so right if that's the hardest step is and making sure as you go along everything else is being checked out and i got the opportunity to actually work with somebody who was in a marketing business and he came to me and said i have too much work i definitely need somebody but i'm scared and so that gave me the opportunity to say ok what is it that you're scared about what do we need to do to make sure that you can hire this person so you can consider to grow your business and sometimes it just asking yourself do i what you've been doing with score absolutely so super super fortunate our organization got chosen as one of the score winners in pennsylvania so really tough competition there were over seventy other competitors just in pennsylvania alone and over a thousand national and got the opportunity to post what we were doing and got the community behind us to get those we were super fortunate to get over fifty thousand votes for  impressive yes it was incredibly exciting and i think getting the community behind us was the part that was most exciting and got the opportunity to go to reno with the other one hundred two winners and we're currently waiting to hear more back we had some assignments that we had to do over the past three months and are currently waiting to hear back if one of the national winners wow so you have not only do you have your own company that's doing very well but you also are working with the word that like that could be really amazing yes so what is can you tell us a little bit about scores and what they do and how you got involved with them absolutely so interesting enough interestingly enough i found the competition on facebook and i looked at it and i thought is this something that we should do and i saw the other competitors and i thought this would be incredible to be with these other competitors so i went through and i wrote up a description told my team hey we're going to go do this competition let's get sharing it let's get people involved let's get people voting and that was how it all started and so i wasn't super familiar with score until that point and then i started to do some additional research and after i went through the training in reno i realized that you can also get score mentor and so score mentors are essentially business executives who have retired and who are donating their time to small businesses to help them learn and grow and from returning from reno i got the opportunity to partner with mark who's my score  mentor and so he has helped me make some decisions on my own and say you know i was kind of back and forth on ironing an additional person and so at that point i needed that person to say to me now you're growing your business you need to add that additional person so really enjoying working with them well i mean i've worked with them square mentors in the past and they're actually wonderful and it's a great service for business owners than anybody in between though the fact you're being recognized by them is pretty it's sort of honor in itself and having the community even you know i like that you said that that the community being behind you or your company that's incredible because an award last for only a moment but you know having the community with you and being able to do stuff with them now makes it all worth it i think absolutely and so what can you tell me about where you see your company in five years so if somebody said to me two years ago where do you see your company i know it wouldn't be where we are we've been incredibly lucky but i see is continuing to build a really strong team so we have a team that works incredibly hard and really puts our clients first so i see as continuing to do that i see is continuing to grow on both the recruitment side as well as the human resources side and then as we look forward we're also looking to put some programs in place to help so at home moms return to work that would be wonderful i mean that's yeah that's pretty much why i started my company as i was ready to go back to work so yes it's great to be a stay at home mom but sometimes time to get out of there about thirty percent of our team are actually stayed home moms who have returned and over fifty percent of our team have children that are under the age of ten and that that comes with you know you have to work with them in their schedules and everything so absolutely that's really great and so what about you professionally where do you see yourself growing yes so continuing to be involved in the community is something that's incredibly important to me continuing i'm very involved in involved in other local chapters and then continuing to mentor small businesses so i currently work with the center for women's entrepreneurship in chatham and we do some work with small businesses there it's completely free so if you're interested you can absolutely anybody who's i have an appointment there on wednesday just saying hey i love it there are huge part of my business success so continuing to work with them and then something else that our team does to give back to the community we work with local charities we're trying to move towards a monthly basis but we've been working on at least a quarterly basis with local charities that's great and so what how can we help but how can we get to win the grand prize because it sounds like you're doing great stuff in the community as well as within your business and to help other people so what can we do to help you grow absolutely so please check out our website so take a look there the score final entry has been in so we're just waiting for that to come back but like our  facebook page is another great place in its entirety solutions ph if you're searching for it and continue to support us would be awesome and if there anything else that i haven't touched base on you would like to talk about today no i think that i think that you covered a lot of it  just want to take a minute to thank our fantastic clients as well as my team for all that they've done to get us to this point and really to get us both moved forward and nominated for pennsylvania and also through to the nationals and so are you going to the nationals is there like i said it or you don't know we don't know yet so we should find out within the next three weeks and then the national competition takes place in washington d c in september  well we're in for you here it's probably don pittsburgh thank you very much i know i will certainly be rooting for just going to win one of the fifty thousand dollars grand prizes when we return we'll have a few quick trivia questions for denise and desk and we'll be right back in a second to hear something we bet you didn't know nearly half of all cancers can be prevented mostly by making changes in your diet controlling your w and of course by not smoking does it prevent fifty dot org and get a free thirty day planner filled with tips recipes and  more hi and welcome back to spotlight on pittsburgh jessica and nice so your interviews are done do you have any questions for each other that you maybe didn't know about each other that you have you know you want to know more about denise i actually got the opportunity to nice interviewed me two months ago i think so yes and my show yes and so we got the opportunity to meet there and it was really interesting for me to learn a lot more about your training company so i knew about the show but i didn't realize all the training that you do yes i did so you're both kind of in types of training for for helping people in small businesses right absolutely in the h r realm right ye on the topics of course right and you have you ever heard of score of you worked with score you i've heard of i've never worked with score because you guys are kind of similar in some ways right but i was so impressed when i heard just a story that's why i want to have a room i should to tell her story and of course wish her luck and yes absolutely edge of my seat waiting to get that e mail well i think we all are you have to keep us posted on that for sure because you know i'll be happy to pass it out and i definitely felt liberating with everybody  well thank you both so much for coming on and hopefully we get to find out more about what you do and get to watch is a long road and we're always talking about our spotlight in pittsburgh guests for the future and keeping up with them thank you for having me and it was fun absolutely yes thank you