Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Scholley Bubenik. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Scholley, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
Success can mean many things in life. To be truly successful, I believe it involves a balance of your priorities. Many people can be successful in their career and neglect other priorities such as family, community and their well-being.
To be successful, one needs to have a passion that drives them to go above and beyond the norm. When you have passion for your work, or family or community, you will work harder, learn to persevere, and see failure only as a means to victory. But true success means not sacrificing one thing for the other. For example, family or career. In my generation, many women had to pick between their careers and their family. Sometimes women were criticized for having a career instead of being a stay-at-home mom. But I chose to both paths instead.
Early in my career I started a business in the 80’s in Houston. Soon afterwards, the famous Oil Bust occurred and I struggled to keep the business open. After several years of determination and grit, we became profitable and I sold the business to start a new journey in public education administering a federally funded family literacy program. I was passionate about our mission and set high goals for the program. We were successful and selected as one of 12 programs in the US as an exemplary program to participate in a national study for the National Education department. After several years, I set new goals of attaining a Masters Degree in Human Resources and obtaining a corporate HR management position. For the next decade I worked for multiple companies establishing their HR departments and managing their people operations. Then ten years ago, I had another vision to create a consulting business that would provide a high level of HR expertise to smaller businesses. The business has steadily grown over the years and we now serve a multitude of business and nonprofit organizations.
Another goal I had was to publish a book so in 2018, I published my book, “People Power, An Entrepreneurs Guide to Managing Human Capital”. My goal was to document my processes and strategies for managing people and establishing HR practices in small organizations.
During my journey through these various careers, I shared with my children and husband, my vision, goals, and experiences. I made sure though that I was there for the parent teacher conferences, tennis matches, and class functions. I tried hard not to sacrifice losing out on their experiences. It wasn’t always easy to balance everything, but I wanted to make sure at the end of the day, I had no regrets. For women struggling the balance, just do your best and don’t sweat the small stuff. And most of the things you worry about are the small stuff. But most of all make sure you have no regrets.
Scholley, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am the owner of Premier Hr Solutions- www.premierhrsolutions.net. We provide outsourced HR services, HR on Demand, and Recruiting to organizations. We recognize that every business has different HR needs and challenges—and even those may change from one day to the next. That’s why we provide more than 20 HR services to choose from, a fully customized approach, and even a monthly subscription option, so you can decide exactly what type of support your business needs to succeed. We also provide recruiting services that include proven strategies for sourcing, attracting, and vetting top talent.
I started Premier HR Solutions in 2013 with a vision to give small businesses the same advantage as larger corporations who could afford a HR team. We wanted to be the HR Department on a fractional basis which was much more practical and affordable than employing a team of HR professionals. We quickly added recruiting services based on our client request and discovered we could manage all aspects of HR beginning with recruiting. Over the years we have customized and expanded our services to provide ongoing monthly services to manage HR to customize HR projects such as conducting annual compensation analysis, management training and HR audits and assessments. We also specialize in providing HR launch services for new businesses and global companies seeking to establish a workforce in the US.
We now employ a team of HR advisors with a variety of expertise in HR functions and industries.
On a personal note, I have two daughters and a grand daughter. My husband and I have been married for 42 years. We met when I was in first grade and have been friends our entire life. I grew up in a small rural town, [Taylor Texas]moved to Houston after college and then moved back to Taylor to raise our girls. After they left home my husband and I chose lake life and moved to Lago Vista Texas. My husband and I enjoy traveling and day trips to the Hill Country Wineries. We are avid sports fans and love the Texas Longhorns and Houston Astros.
Any advice for managing a team?
Your people are your greatest asset and without them, you risk failure. But beyond this, business owners/leaders need to be authentic with their people. As a manager your role is to help your team be successful, not the other way around. If you adopt this attitude, and dedicate yourself to this mission, you will be successful. Other ways to engage your employees is to have regular conversations with them. I refer to these as stay interviews. The intention is to ask questions and solicit a conversation with the employees. Asking them to share success stories, challenges and discover opportunities for their development are key points here. Integrity and transparency are also important in developing relationships and maintaining high morale. Allowing gossip, toxic work behaviors and ignoring problems cause problems in the workplace and can outweigh your efforts if not addressed.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
Pivoting in business is key. When I started Premier HR Solutions, I had no intention of offering recruiting services, but clients requested our help and we soon pivoted to offer this service. Many of our services were developed from client requests or opportunities we discovered. For example in our early years we only offered HR on Demand and HR Project work, but we discovered to sustain the business we needed reocurring revenue so we developed monthly service plans that could be customized for each organization.
During COVID, we had no recruiting job orders because no one was hiring, but we saw an opportunity to provide education to organization on COVID restrictions and workplace practices, so we conducted free webinars to the public on these subjects. This lead to us become a provider for CE credits for HRCI professionals [this is a HR certification]. In January we will be launching our HR Essentials monthly training service for HR practitioners who seek training on employment compliance and best practices.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.premierhrsolutions.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/premierhrsolutions/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/premierhrsolutions/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/premier-hr-solutions-llc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/premier_hr1
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@premierhrsolutions6405
- Other: Amazon Link to Scholleys Book- https://www.amazon.com/People-Power-Entrepreneurs-Managing-Capital/dp/173228220X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3H1JIN6V9CNOJ&keywords=People+Power+an+entrepreneurs+guide&qid=1697044316&sprefix=people+power+an+entrepreneurs+guide%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-1