We recently connected with Charlene Fitzpatrick and have shared our conversation below.
Charlene, appreciate you joining us today. What’s something crazy on unexpected that’s happened to you or your business
Crazy or Crazy Blessing! My entry as a small business owner began with my former employer needing the services I provided them as an employee to continue as they went through a merger in 1998. As a 5th generation entrepreneur, I was a reluctant small business owner, having grown up in the small business industry. However, the success and impact of assisting organizations in resolving their human capital challenges and elevating people-focused solutions of my first business from 1998 to 2020 gave me the desire to start a second venture with my business partner Sheree Knowles where our focus on providing human capital assistance and solutions is in Government as well as the private sector.
The craziest story related to my business is the beginning of my business owner journey. The first 12 years of business were all referrals with no advertising or website.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As a fifth-generation entrepreneur, the path to business ownership was an inevitable outcome. “Owning your destiny and creating a better way for your family” are my grandparents’ words that still reverberate. Before co-founding H3C, I owned and operated a profitable consulting firm from 1998 to 2016. During those eighteen years, I assisted private sector companies in successfully navigating workplace challenges. My extensive experience as a business owner, combined with three decades of human capital expertise, positioned me to continue building a thriving, sustainable organization. Together with my business partner, Sheree Knowles, we launched H3C out of the desire to respond to the constantly changing employee landscape and pressing human capital needs of Government entities and private-sector companies. Our desire was to provide a superior level of service with a consortium of human capital experts, just as our name describes. The values that guide me – personally and professionally – are a solid commitment to excellence, integrity, and accountability, as well as the fun that I experience in the work that I do and the impact that I have on the people I encounter. As an avid golfer, I invest in my community by serving on the board of The Women in Golf Foundation. This nonprofit organization serves women’s golf teams within Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
One of the many things that sets H3C apart from the competition is our unique capability to leverage our proprietary tools and relevant best practices to develop creative solutions that transform our client’s workplaces and exceed their expectations. We approach every human capital engagement with the client’s desired outcomes in mind. Our unique structure and project management capabilities allow us to quickly scale small- and large-scale projects. We leverage our proprietary systems to deliver outstanding solutions while becoming one of the best places to work for our team. I am most proud when I see the looks of relief on our client’s after assisting them to resolve challenges. They have said ” You have a unique capability of making seemingly complex human capital challenges easy to resolve.”
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
It was understanding the difference between working “on” the business versus “in” the business and putting that understanding to practice. Twelve years of constant flow of clients came at a cost. I was so busy working “in” business, being directly involved in the day-to-day operations and tasks required to run the business and client-facing deliverables. Working in the company became challenging, and I struggled to find time for strategic planning, growth, and long-term vision. Which leads to overwhelm and a bit of burnout. Although some of that is critical in the beginning and for scaling, there has to be a shift to become more strategic, vision-focused and work more “on” the business versus “in” the business, if the business is to have longevity and growth
We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.
Not too long after the valuable lesson of working “on” versus “in” business occurred, a mutual friend of my current business partner and I reconnected. We began having conversations regarding government contracting. And she mentioned that other human capital consultants might be interested in forming a collaboration and teaming partnership to pull our collective human capital expertise together and bid on government opportunities. Our mutual friend introduced me to three other individuals, and we all decided to form a company that would provide the human resources services that we all currently offer to private sector businesses to government entities. Only two people remained after further inquiry and learning all that was required and necessary to become government contractors and do business with the government without even receiving the first contract. Seven years later, those two people remain, me and my current business partner Sheree Knowles.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://h3cllc.com/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlene-fitzpatrick-02917812/