Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Anaba Wachuku, CEO of ClearPoint Human Capital Optimization LLC., located in Windsor Heights, IA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

ClearPoint Human Capital Optimization, LLC provides our clients with a wide range of human resource support, including consulting, training, and coaching services. We are committed to providing professional service that addresses clients’ human resource needs within their budget and desired time frame. Our multi-channel services are designed to work seamlessly with our client's organization(s). Some organizations select our services to supplement an existing human resource department, while others find it advantageous to utilize our services as their formal human resource department. Other organizations leverage us for ad hoc HR project work. We provide onsite and offsite leadership development and executive coaching.

A different division of our organization focuses on individuals with their professional and career growth, including transitioning to higher positions within their current organizations or their quest to secure new employment. We provide highly customized resume writing, interview preparation training, and career coaching to enhance their professional toolbox positively.

Tell us about yourself

As a former executive for several fortune 500 companies, I became disillusioned with these organizations' practice of viewing their most critical assets (their employees) as disposable, thereby disrupting their lives often in a quest to meet boardroom or investor-mandated profit margins. After being impacted by one of the “right-sizing,” I reasoned that the only way to effectively control my destiny is to have total control over my professional life and career. Also, by utilizing my experience gained over several years, I can provide effective HR survival to not just one but several companies who value my skills and are willing to pay for it. Thus I gain some measure of stability and dramatically increase my financial remunerations.

I started the company to provide HR consulting to small and medium size companies. While helping client companies with their lay-offs and outplacement, I realized there was a lucrative market for assisting individuals in their journey to bettering their careers by helping them create their resumes, update their resumes, career coaching and interviewing skills, leadership skills, and more. Thus our career services division grew organically initially to the point where we were able to and decided to reallocate more resources to it.

We are constantly motivated daily by seeing the clients we coached or assisted succeed in their professional careers, as well as the client companies become more aware of and understand the complexities of the human resources issues they face. It is particularly gratifying to see these companies go from viewing and using their people as disposable tools to understanding and optimizing them as valuable human capital assets.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

Working for myself and controlling my destiny! Helping organizations and lots of people accomplish their organizational or career goals. Standing back and being amazed that I, together with my partners, achieved this from our efforts, creativity, leveraging our skills, and hard work tinged with the uncertainty of the unknown.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

Taking on all the financial and legal risks of running a business. This can be very stressful but also rewarding. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how hard you are willing to work and how much confidence you have in your own abilities.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Research and understand the risks and rewards inherent in owning and running the type of business you wish to start.
  2. Assess your skills and motivations, and listen to your heart. If you feel you can do it, go do it. Never allow family and friends to make you doubt your capability to make it happen.
  3. Be agile, resourceful, stay in a learning mode, and have an elastic plan because things will change often, so don’t give up. See past the obstacles and focus on the goal! Remember, everybody makes what people call mistakes. I don't view them as mistakes, I view them as experience and redirection to a different way of doing things. My personal motto is that “sometimes, thinking is the enemy of doing!”

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.clearpointhco.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClearPointHCO
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clearpoint_hco/
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3JKNYpC

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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