PURSUING YOUR D.A.P.P

BY: Amanda Jones AKA Miss Working Masterpiece

Pursuing Your D.A.P.P is a platform for women entrepreneurs, who are interested in sharing their stories with other women like them. This month, I chose to investigate the human resource industry, where I found Coretta Frazier. She is the CEO of her company, Professional Management Solutions, Read along as I discovered how Coretta put the “Human back into Human Resource”.

Coretta got started in this industry in 2006, when she was 24 years old. In April, she had decided to leave her full-time job as a department manager at Walmart. She was already working part-time in the back office of her familyowned janitorial company. After leaving Walmart, her mother became ill. She was then forced to become the HR/ Payroll and Supervisor for her mother's small janitorial company that serviced over 5,000 students along with staff and administrators. After several years of managing a small business, she decided to go back into corporate American and use resources that the company offered to obtain a master's degree in Human resources. Going back to corporate America in 2012 was different; she had to work for a staffing firm before she could be hired directly to the company. Working for the staffing firm two years, while obtaining her MBA birthed a new keen sight on the workforce. After working for Nissan Manufacturing for several years, she decided to create her human resource consulting and recruitment firm Professional Management Solutions, where their solutions address the importance of understanding that both employees and employers are real people and each component of their business is centered around that relationships are the core to what human resource is.

What the world and any aspiring entrepreneur needs to understand about being an entrepreneur is, the fact you have to walk miles in some pretty big shoes before you can get out in this universe and claim to be a 6-figure chic or have billionaires status. This journey is not for the faint of heart. I know what it takes to run a business. I started my entrepreneurship journey as Director of Operations, with a small business that grossed a quarter of million in revenue every year when I was the tender age of 21. I've worked in corporate America, making over $70,000.00 a year just as well as an entry level employee making only 20,0000 a year. I have been the CEO grossing in sales of $1,000,000.00 and more. I understand what it takes in an organization from a Janitors' perspective all the way up to the CEO's perspective. To be an entrepreneur, you must have empathy but be firm at the same time. You have to enjoy what you do; you have to trust your instincts, you have to make decisions and stop waiting on someone else to pat you on your back and say good job. Lastly, you can never give up. Entrepreneurship is not as easy as it looks! You must show up every day. There are no sick days. Your business and your income depend on you and solely on you.

The hardest thing for me to face or learn is knowing what I deserve, understanding my value, and knowing what my target audience can afford. Me being an accomplished woman, I doubted for a long time my deservingness and my worth. We can't continue to confuse it with entitlement. Entitlement is about believing you have a right to something. Deservingness is about how much you believe you are worth. I've realized that doubting your deservingness is saying you're really uncertain whether or not you measure up or if you are good enough? Now that I know my worth, I don't have a problem with pricing my services. A piece of advice I can give is, just know in life, you will always create the results you believe you deserve. If you don't believe you deserve good things, you won't let yourself have them and you will neglect your worth.

What has required the most courage of me in life is not just one thing. I am a risk-taker, and I'll dive in headfirst, but each of these three things has required a little more courage than I admitted to having. They each have needed the same level of courage. Raising children, standing up for myself, and learning how to swim. I had my first child in 2005, about a year after marrying my high school sweetheart and my second child 6 ½ years later. Both were wonderful experiences, but I was worried about their lifestyle, education, and how my husband and I could best provide for them from the day they were conceived up until now. It has taken a lot of courage to raise children in this day and time. Now with them being age 8 and 15, I am grateful God has led us into shaping two beautiful children.

Standing up for myself is something else that required a lot of courage for me. My personality type is defined as introverted. I am usually reserved but overly sensitive to how others feel. One of my weaknesses is having extremely high expectations for everything, which is considered a weakness with this personality type. The big one for me in this personality type is running from confrontation in efforts to try to please others. Please don't take me not standing up for myself as meaning I let others treat me poorly; that's not the case. But it took a lot of courage to say enough is enough or state my case in a given situation, especially when it involved the ones, I love the most. Setting some boundaries was the best decision I could have ever made, and it took a lot of courage. The final thing that has required courage is learning how to swim. I am 37 years old, and for the first time in my life, I took swim lessons and learned to swim. Swimming and the other two things I mentioned above took a great deal of courage for me, and I am grateful to God for giving me the wisdom and the strength to face them and gracefully do it.

What and who motivates and inspires me? Inspiration is something that I feel on the inside, while motivation is from the outside that compels me to do what I do. My grandmother is an inspiration to me. She birthed and raised 17 children. She is 94 years old now, and she still gets up and takes care of herself to the best of her ability. Watching her from an incredibly young age inspires me to do my best no matter what and never give up. What motivates me is my children. Leaving a legacy for them is what drives me daily. My mother is number 14 of my grandmother's children; my mother is also the first one in her family to start her own business. My younger sister is the first to obtain a Doctorate in our family. I think I must continue to build generational wealth for our family, and we all strive for better in our lives and our community. There is also one other person who motivates and inspires me at the same time. Her name is Janice Bryant Howard, who is the CEO of ActOne Group, which is rated as the largest privately owned company by a black woman in the US. Janice is recognized as the first African American Women to own a billion-dollar company. One of my favorite quotes from her recent book is, "It is not your right but your duty to do big things. You have been given gifts. It's your obligation to use them." She is so motivating and inspiring to me.

What I wish I knew when I first started that I know now is that everyone can't go with you. As much and as how many people you want to bring along on the ride. They just can't go. Everyone does not have the same vision as you; everyone does not have the same goals as you; everyone does not have the same tenacity or gift that God granted you. So, some will fall off at the first stop, and that's ok. I think waiting for others and waiting for approval can keep you from achieving your goals. So, if you must go by yourself, go and find some like-minded individuals on your way up. Thus far, my biggest accomplishment is obtaining my master's degree in business after being out of college for over ten years while launching my successful recruitment agency all at the same time.

Something new and exciting is baking in the oven. I am a true entrepreneur. I enjoy creating new opportunities. It's my goal to fully staff Innovative Workforce Development, a non-profit which I am the founder of and is heavily involved in. I will also be sharing my most recent and exciting business venture to launch in 2021.

Any advice that I can give to other women entrepreneurs is to never give up on yourself or your dreams!! Put yourself first so you can better take care of others. A quote by Sam Walton that I love states, "high expectation is the key to everything." Have high expectations and don't accept anything less. If I can leave you with one last thing, always remember to "lead from the front and set an inspiring example for others."