Referrals can be a great avenue in building your consulting business. But how can you achieve that? In this episode, Jaime Klein, Founder and CEO of Inspire Human Resources, discusses how thought leadership creates consulting referrals. She shares with Michael Zipursky how these have helped build her business by putting her networks and relationships to work. She explains that the more people you bring to help you in running your consulting business, the more it can flourish and grow. Find out more with Jaime Klein in this informative episode.
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In this episode, I’m joined by Jamie Klein. Jamie, welcome.
It is great to be here. Thank you for having me. I have fun that we get to do this.
Jamie, for those that aren’t familiar with you and your work, you are the Founder and CEO of Inspire Human Resources, where you help Fortune 500 organizations solve HR challenges. You have worked with many well-known organizations, including LinkedIn, and Etsy, in terms of TED Talks, New York Times, Viacom, CBS, and a whole bunch of others. You have also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, ABC News, and the list goes on. We are going to talk about how you built your consulting business for many people and created massive success. Before we do that, we could start off with the early days. What drew you to the world of HR?
I was always fascinated from my early years working on how to motivate and create culture and stickiness. I started my career in DC in the Watergate building at a company called the Corporate Executive Board, which was an HR think tank. I had the pleasure of twenty-something right out of the University of Maryland, being in that dialogue because that is the exact advisory work that we were doing for our clients. I was doing HR for a company that did HR consulting.
Does that come from someplace when you were younger where you always loved people and wanted to inspire and motivate them? Was there an early job, a summer camp, or something that light bulb went off for you, and you thought, “I want to do more of this?”
I grew up at Camp Vermont, which is a summer camp in Upstate New York. Up through my few summers there, I saw that sleepaway camp magic happened. The tone was set at the top. When the director of the camp was like, “It is raining, but no worries, we are going to have a good time with the song session.” I saw how that was contagious.
One summer, I worked in a unit of kids who had developmental and behavioral disabilities. I was a counselor in training for that bunk. Specifically, that summer, I saw that every counselor in the unit led with the heart, no matter the situation they were put in. Those are some of my earlier experiences, but I have always been an extrovert since my parents met me and since the day I arrived, I’m told. I have always rolled this way.
I love that example of the camp. It is true how a true leader can turn any situation into one that people are excited about. I’m in Vancouver, where it does rain quite a bit. I can apply that mindset to playing with my girls outside and getting out when, for much of the year, it doesn’t feel like you necessarily want to go out that much.
There is no such thing as bad weather. It is just bad clothing. If you are ready for the elements, you are ready to go.
That is what I was thinking with my run at 6:00 in the morning. When it is pitch black outside, I’m getting rained on. It is a tropical monsoon, except it is not warm. It is cold. I had to apply that positive mindset when I was running. You have accomplished a lot in terms of building your company to the point that it is now. You mentioned you were the corporate executive. Was that where you were working before you started Inspire, or were you doing something else?
Humans do bold and brave things after experiencing something heartbreaking or heartwarming in their lives. Click To TweetI was in American Express. I had done grad school at Columbia. They do campus recruiting where they come on campus. I was thrilled to be in this campus recruiting program. I worked at America Express for three years. I was there right before I launched Inspire.
In 2007, you started Inspire.
I was at Amex until ‘05, when the doctor surprised my husband and me, saying, “Surprise, I know you wanted to serve a family, but you were due with twins.” In the chapter of I plan, God laughs, I was like, “No worries.” We will have these twins. My husband was working full-time. He was at NYU starting business school at night. I thought, “We can do this.” The twins came to attach early. They were preemies.
Amex is supportive. It is the best place to work by every measure, but I needed to step back for a year and focus on helping our kids set their potential. I left Amex. When our kids were about a year, the doctors said the Klein twins were going to be all sorts of great. I looked up from that chapter, and I thought, “How do I ensure that I am intentional about raising the kids in a hands-on way while still using that cerebral part of myself?”
This is one of these corners of the living room with the Elmo doll and the Thomas the Train stuff all over my floor, two preemie twins crawling around. I thought, “Why don’t I do this thing where I can do intentional work part-time around the schedule of raising them?” Fortunately, at that time, there was no category for that. There was this tech IT part-time consultant. You could hire tech people, but there was nothing that existed for HR. That was the moment.
I shared the story openly because I have been on many panels where other female founders will say, “I started my company because of a confluence in the market and market conditions.” Typically, humans do bold, brave things because of something heartbreaking or heartwarming that has happened to them that makes them reevaluate. I’m honest about my story because it gives other people the courage to speak their truth about what motivates them. Lean in and do the hard thing when there isn’t a roadmap to do. That is my story.
When you made that decision to go out on your own instead of returning to the corporate world, was that exciting or were you terrified? What was going on in your mind when you made that decision, especially in the early few weeks or so?
I was incredibly energized. I only needed four hours of sleep. As long as I could get my hands on a good green smoothie level energized, I felt incredibly energized. I felt mission driven because I wanted to use that cerebral part of myself. I found that as many work experiences or degrees that generation had, it is hard to imagine, but back in ’06, when I had the idea, I launched January 1, ’07. It didn’t exist to work part-time from home.
I know it is crazy because now we do things with Apple Watch, but it didn’t exist. I felt incredibly motivated. I didn’t know I was creating a category. I was incredibly motivated to show up for my family in a way that made sense for what our needs were. I wanted to find a way to recapture that part of myself that was energized by a career. I loved working.
You are energized. You said, “I’m starting my own HR consulting business.” How do you go out and create a business with clients? Where are those first few clients come from?
In Q4 of 2004, I spoke to some generous people. Other people had started businesses and asked them for their pearls of wisdom. I spent a lot of Q4 of 2004 thinking through what the brand would be, what the website would look like, and how I would go to market.
This was even before you launched the consulting business. You are going back several years.
I apologize. Sorry, it was Q4 of 2006. I’m home with my kiddos. I’m like, “I want to do something.” It was then that I started doing some crowdsourcing. I talked to other entrepreneurs who shared their pearls of wisdom, and it gave me ideas to develop. I had $75. I went to Vistaprint.com and got some business cards. I had an old friend I had worked with who was generous enough to build our little website with four pages. I sent a note out on January 1, 2007, to my entire distribution list. It was my college roommate and her parents or anyone I had ever met. I said, “I have hung my own shingle. I’m available for any projects to focus on to hire, train, and retain talent.”
Did you send that manually, one by one, or was it a group email?
I, in a BCC line, had 300 names of every family and friend member that I could think of. It was from that, we got our first client because my cousin’s friend was doing an M&A deal and needed a hand. I always share that story because you never know who at that moment might have a moment when they need whatever product or service you are offering. That is how it started. It was the Vistaprint, box of cards, this website, and this concept that I believe fractional work makes us whole. Whole as human beings to do other things, and I knew I had about twenty hours a week to work. That was how things started.
You got the first client, which is great. I love that example because people overthink that they need to have everything right, the perfect website and materials. Everything is decided before they tell the world. It is about telling the world, like, “Here is what I’m doing.” From that, you start to validate and get feedback. In this case, as you saw, you got your first client but what about the next one? Take me forward to client numbers 2 and 3. Where did they come from? What were you doing in those early few months of the business to try and build the actual business and get those client numbers 2 and 3?
This is going way back, but back in the time when people wrote handwritten thank you notes. In any networking I did and any client that we had, I had a certain playbook. There was a handwritten thank you note on the thickest card stock that Vistaprint offered you. If you pay $1 more, they will give you the thickest one. I was like,” I wanted to have a premium brand.” I had new little note cards. What it looked like was trying to figure out how to deliver delight for that client. The next client was an organization that was a high-growth ad agency. They needed training and an employee handbook. That was something that I developed. How do you create an employee handbook?
How did they find you? How do they even come to you?
This client number two was also from that email distribution list. It was a friend of a person I dated several years ago whom I had met twice. It did end okay. He was generous and made an introduction. It came from there. American Express heard that I was doing some work fractionally. They asked if I could come back and help by covering a parental leave for a former colleague. I said, “I would be delighted to.”
While I was there, there was someone that unfortunately had resigned and had a lot of notice. They said, “Can you now stay on after this parental leave and help with her?” I said, “It would be my pleasure.” That felt like going home. That felt great to be back with many old colleagues and friends that felt great, and things went from there.
When you trust someone, you have them on speed dial or whatever the next thing that might stump you. Click To TweetThe next client was a friend of mine. I was at dinner with someone who was building a company from scratch. It is his third company. He was like, “From companies 1 and 2, I know that from the beginning, you can be a great HR infrastructure.” He had learned from companies 1 and 2 is a serial entrepreneurs. That was a venture-backed client that we worked with.
From there, there was another client that was in that portfolio, like another company that this company had that people had invested in them and knew of another company. It went from there. I know the way I’m telling the story. It sounds like there were no bumps along the road. I can tell you all of them, but this is the neat and tidy story of how we grew.
What I’m hearing from this is you were active. You were sent out emails. There was partly from networking. The initial momentum came through your network and relationships. If we fast forward to now, you are now a company of about 30 or so people. What is your marketing lead generation look like? What is working best for you to bring in more business or new business for the company?
This is going to sound old school, but most of our business comes through referrals. I grew up fishing. I swear to God, every time I catch a fish, I’m like an eight-year-old. I get excited. Every time we have a new client, I get excited as if we have started. I feel this mission is to deliver and delight. That is spread to the way that we work.
I also feel like you are only as good as your last project. Every single time we do a project, I feel like we are always trying to be humble about it. Your question is, how do we do the marketing? We, at this point, do a lot of outreach to everyone we have relationships. For several years, we have been sending out blogs on a periodic basis.
There is no shortage of HR challenges at this moment we find ourselves in. Whatever the hot thing is that is going on that is keeping people up at night, we are trying to always do blogs about that. My favorite blogs are the ones that we are talking about, the things that no one is talking about yet, and the next thing.
At the start of the pandemic, we heard everybody was up late on weekends trying to solve the same problems. We were like, “We need to get people together.” In May 2020, we started a monthly panel called the Inspire Live Series, where we get together budget experts in the field. We try to always have an Inspire Expert, 1 of our 30 people, to talk about whatever that topic is. We host monthly salons for heads of HR, chief people, officers, VPs, and senior-level groups to get together and workshop all the things keeping them up at night. That is not as much of a marketing effort but something I’m focused on these days.
We have had a bit of press. We don’t have a PR company, but I have done a lot of reaching out over time to journalists to say, “I see that you covered this topic in the press. If you ever need a source, please let me know.” It is interesting. It is like, years ago, I helped someone with a story. Someone saw that story, and they asked if we could help with their piece. There have been things that have come up with the press.
It sounds like you are doing a lot of thought leadership in terms of creating content and panels and finding ways to provide valuable information to the community and to those that you serve. It sounds like a lot of that is related or shared with those that you already have a relationship with. Are you sending any of that information, in terms like articles, videos, or anything of that nature, to people that you do not yet have a relationship with, or is it only people that you have a relationship with?
We post on LinkedIn.
I have one other question around that. You said that you get a lot of your business through referrals. That is a big engine. Is there anything that you do as part of your client in project delivery and engagements that you feel is necessary or a critical part of the work that helps to create more referrals? You look at others out there, and you go, “They are providing their service or product, but they are missing such a big opportunity to generate more business.”
What I have learned over time is it is anything. When you trust someone, you have them on speed dial or whatever the next thing that might stump you. That is the way I operate on the home and work front. In the beginning, when we’re speaking to a client about advising them with HR, filling in apprentice, whatever it might be, we spend a lot of time upfront aligning on what it is that their needs are, and we will have them interview 1, 2, sometimes 3 candidates to make sure is that culture fit and if they can vibe with each other. That is key to making sure that we hit the ground running with that chemistry in place.
We do weekly check-ins with our experts to see how things are going, any friction, what is going well, and do you need anything from the inspire toolkit to help out along the way. We will check in with the client multiple times about the engagement to make sure things are on track, and we are exceeding expectations. I don’t know if that is rocket science stuff, but it is the way that we roll. That is part of the DNA, and there is a cost to that.
We have a whole leadership team that makes sure that we can deliver and delight. This isn’t like scotch tape together. A little bit of our secret sauce is being intentional and creating this premium experience where it isn’t like a head hunter that makes a match god of head hunters, but we want to provide our clients with CHRO whisperers. People who can advise that that senior level and that chemistry is key. Your question was, does that lead to goals? I guess because they feel like if they whispered for me, they should whisper for a couple of my friends.
One of the questions I wanted to ask you is, there are a lot of HR consulting firms out there in terms of how you create that competitive vantage or differentiation. You mentioned having a close relationship with the buyer or the client and providing great service, delighting, caring, and having frequent check-ins.
If I put on my outsider’s hat and I listen to that, I go, “Everybody says that. Everybody could do the same thing. They are checking in off.” I’m wondering if you pulled that up a little bit. Is there something else that you feel that’s going on or something that maybe if you look back, you were intentional with or still are intentional with in terms of how you differentiate Inspire from all the other HR consulting firms out there?
This is going to sound cliche also, but here it goes. I’m going to be honest. I feel like we have a rigorous recruiting process where we look for folks who have like been there and done that at senior levels and have no ego. They are in a moment in time where they want to parachute in to do beautiful work, and they don’t want to lead the global HR function or lead the global benefits function. What they want to do is show up for other areas of their life. They are happy to do this work and more on a part-time basis.
What happens is, a lot of times, our clients feel like they have this gift of someone that is a real peer that they can talk shop with. That is a differentiator. The other thing is our experts are crazily seasoned and experienced. They also have access to the Inspire Way. We are constantly sharing information with them about whatever the latest thing is that is stumping HR leaders. It saves them a ton of time. They are not finding that stuff because they can grab it from our research and toolkit.
I saw it on your website in terms of your team and the percentage of people that have corporate experience or the number of years of HR experience. I could see that. I appreciate you sharing that. The other thing I wanted to ask you, Jamie, is you have several different services that your company provides, talent management, talent acquisition, total rewards, and general HR consulting. If you look at your total business, what percentage would each one of those be? Is it an even distribution, or is the one the lines share? How do you look at that?
It has often dependent on whatever is going on with work. In the last couple of years, percentage-wise, almost 50% have been HR business partners because it is like Pilates. It is all about strengthening the core of the people function now with everything that is thrown, and HR leaders are overwhelmed. Under the banner of total rewards, comp and bend are split evenly. Fifty percent evenly covers the other three lines of service.
The more you bring in people to help with various parts of the company, the more your team could grow. Click To TweetWe always approached it with an inclusive lens. I’m not sure that other HR consulting firms like ours do that. For example, if we are going to do a project about benefits to cover asset management in New York City, leave for a few months. When we go in, we try to be intentional about looking for opportunities to bring an inclusive lens. We might ask questions like, “Do your in-network mental health providers have strong BIPOC representation? Do your primary care physicians that are network give annual physicals to transgender colleagues without any hiccups?” We want to bring these things up.
Sometimes, clients appreciate us asking tough questions. They are a little bit like, “That was not in the scope of work.” This is how my mom had taught me. That is how I approach life. When I look at a company, there is always that piece of it. Part of the Inspire Way is being like, “If we are going to HR initiative, it is bringing in that lens of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging.” That is a big piece of what we do.
After the murder of George Floyd here in the US, there was such an overdue racial reckoning. Many clients focused on their DEIB strategy and making sure they were consistent with all of their stakeholders about what that was. It breaks my heart, but I have seen a touch less energy among companies over the last bit of time. I’m always trying to elevate it into the conversation. We keep on as humans trying to strengthen that muscle. It is not about the business case but about the human case of making sure we are always being true to that.
There are two different questions that you pose as examples. What is powerful is that every consultant, it doesn’t matter where you are located in the world or what your industry is, can ask a question that gets the buyer or client to think about things they maybe have not thought about before or they haven’t given it the time and intention that it deserves.
By asking that, not only does that demonstrate your authority, expertise, and knowledge of the domain, but it also typically creates a little bit of source of value because now they need to respond to it and go, “No, we don’t have a good plan for that. What does it look like?” You can have a conversation around that which provides even further opportunity for you to demonstrate value for that client.
Sometimes in the work we do, it is okay that the client doesn’t have the answer. I always want our clients to be like they are the smartest ones in the room. Whenever they are talking to one of our experts, maybe they have learned a couple of things, or it has elevated their thinking. I want them to go to their next meeting with thirst sea level peers at their company, be the smartest ones in the rooms and start raising these questions. It is cool with us that they don’t have the answers. I want to always be planting these seeds.
You are a team of about 30. Take me back to 2007 or even the first year, 2008. Was this the intention and goal from the beginning? Did you know and did you want to select a model for your consulting business where it was going to be a firm team or model? Did you go in thinking, “I’m going to be a solo independent consultant, and it is going be me and 1 or 2 other people?” How has the vision for the business changed?
There was never a business plan. I wanted to raise Benjamin and Anna in a specific way, and I miss working. It was that pure and straight up. From the beginning, my intention was I wanted to work, called 25 hours a week, and the market was like, “That is not a crazy idea. We can do that. Let’s try it.” I would hire other folks to work with me. That is as far as I have gotten.
I had thought I had envisioned having pods in different cities. There would be a network of people in Atlanta and Chicago. What is interesting is that I plan, God laughs, the world of zip code agnostic. As long as you are there, it doesn’t matter. What has been cool is to see, in the last several years, the growth has exceeded what I was thinking because companies want the best talent. It doesn’t matter where they hail from. In my bones, I never thought it was going to be me. This is typically not how I roll.
Once I saw that I was able to show up for my family and work, it became mission-driven. There is a woman on our team. She is a singer. She has a fantastic, gorgeous voice, the likes of Barbara Streisand. That is her thing. We have a breast cancer survivor who is active in breast cancer awareness. We have people of all different things that make them whole.
When I have met fabulous people with no ego who want to show up for that area of their life, I am on a mission to find them awesome clients to work with because I want them to have their cups as full as I have felt. I don’t care how much work it takes to scale the company. I want everyone to be where they want to be and still be doing good work.
We see many different consultants coming into this with different goals, visions, or paths. It is probably the most common where people will leave the corporate world. They are tired of managing people. They want freedom so they start off as a solo independent consultant. After a period of time, if a business is going well, they realize, “In order for me to make a bigger impact or if I want to be able to take a proper holiday and still have a business running, I can’t do this all myself.” They start to find ways to build up a team.
Others do come into it. They are intentional from day one. They were like, “I want this to be bigger than me. I want to have a team from day one if possible.” It is interesting to see. There is no right or wrong. Some continue to be independent solo consultants, and that works for them. It is great when you find a model that works for you. You are intentional around it, and you build towards that.
In my mind, I was like, “I want this to grow.” I have no idea how that was going to happen. What I did know is that I was someone who didn’t eat a ton of sleep. I could function well on a little bit of sleep. What I realized was that I needed help with things like bookkeeping or creating marketing materials. It was probably about a year when I was like, “I can probably get a little bit more sleep if I can find people to help me.”
It was the leadership team infrastructure stuff that was interesting. What I realized is the more that I brought in people around me to help with various parts of the company, the more we could grow. Someone told me that in ‘06 when I was brainstorming on this. No one had mentioned that I had stumbled on it. In terms of the experts, 90% are through a referral network.
I met someone through someone that recommended them. We meet with that person. We look at work samples. We checked with multiple references they have referred and reported directly. We have a rigorous process. Some of our experts might think it is rigorous of a process that is quite involved, but building that, I had no idea how it was going to happen. There wasn’t a private equity person. It was me and these business cards.
The other thing that I did early on was I joined a group called In Good Company, which was a co-working space by the Flatiron building in Manhattan. Way before we worked, these female founders were onto something. I joined their first year, so they were open in. Being in a collective of people that were looking to scale something, there was an attorney, a jewelry maker, a nutritionist, and tons of different folks, but everyone was on a mission to start something. Positive peer pressure was helpful, and having people in the community bounce ideas off like, “How do you price things? What is this thing? Back then, it was like, “What is this thing called social media? What is this new thing called LinkedIn?” Figuring that stuff out and not having to spend a gazillion hours figuring it out on my own was helpful.
Having a community of like-minded people is valuable in whatever industry you are in. You are talking about like building a team, and here you are, both 30 or so people. As the CEO, how do you think about hiring and building a team and the connection to revenue and profitability? Take me through your thought process because, potentially, you could always bring on another person. If you bring on another person, money depends on your mindset around this, but out of your pocket or the profit margin decreases. Walk me through your thought process over the last few years, especially if there have been any changes in how you think about hiring and building the team in connection to revenue and profitability.
Our leadership team members are all full-time. Our 30-plus experts are all fractional, meaning they are all part-time W-2s in the US. We pay for their employer’s portion of the taxes. They accrue for eligibility first 401(k), and we approve for sick time. If they are not on a project, they are not paid. They are paid when they are working. I want to clarify that.
There is a margin that is needed to cover the running of the company, and it has been interesting. The cost of doing business has gone up a tad. Over the last couple of years in this pandemic, it is the moment that we find ourselves. There are always trade-offs around how much infrastructure we need with the leadership team to get things done.
Any CEO who thinks they can sense what the cost will be to run the business next isn't seeing the full picture. Click To TweetWhat I have found is that the folks on our team love the work. They don’t love doing business development. Ninety percent of them don’t have a lot of marking upward up and running if they said, “Jamie, it is not my superpower. What I want to do is the great work. I love doing the work, but I don’t want to come up with a logo and a whole thing.”
The profitability is around figuring out what are the competitive hourly rates that we can pay to our team and what the market will bear in terms of price. We make sure we are always taking in whatever needs to happen for overhead. I feel like any CEO who thinks they can even sense what the cost will be to run the business next isn’t seeing the full picture. It has been interesting the last few years to see all the additional things coming our way. I’m always trying to think about that as well. We make sure the company continues to be sustainable.
In terms of your family, I’m wondering, you have a growing business, you have your core leadership team, you have these 30 or so people that are part-time, but they are working with you and clients. How do you think about creating balance with your business and family in a sustainable way? Anything that you have adjusted over the years or as the company has grown? How do you make sure as best as possible that you are present and available for your family but at the same time oversee and imagine you are running as a CEO of a growing consulting business?
I am obsessed with self-care. If you have ever attended any of our Live Series, we always try to end with the question to the HR leaders, what are you doing for self-care? I feel like if we all can make a moment to put on our own oxygen masks first, we can help others. There is a whole bunch of things that I do. I can share all my hacks with you.
Let’s go to three of your top self-care.
One is a green smoothie. I’m talking banana. There is always some avocado and blueberry. People feel like we are part of a witness protection program. I don’t do a lot on social media. I will share it with you. I have a little folder on my iPhone called Peace. All the social media is in there because I know if I go on them, I lose my productivity.
If you were to like on my phone, click on Instagram, and it will say, “Watch news, username, and password.” I have no idea what that is. It is saying that I hacked. I don’t do that. I tend to have an allergic reaction to people that drain my time, family, or friends. I’m careful with that. I walk about eighteen miles a week. I’m like out there no matter the weather, fleece, all the things like the bank robber with a wool mask.
I always start my day with a power walk of 2 to 3 miles to keep it real. I sleep with my iPhone and a charging station in the living room. It is a powers strip. I keep my phone there. Every morning, I have a certain routine that I do before I touch that because I want to brush my teeth, start my face, and get some oatmeal and my smoothie to start the day.
I’m a spiritual person. I spend as much time as I can in nature. I have a lot of practice that I do that way. I journal, and when I start my day before I do anything with work, I do a quick check-in on what are the needs of my husband. Our two kiddos are applying to twelve colleges. All applications will be in. It is a lot of fun in our house right now. A lot of project management and good stuff going on.
I start with that, and why? I have learned that if those things are in place, my mind, body, and soul are in a good place, and my treasured kid and husband are in a good place. Bring it on. I can take on anything. I can handle the economic downturn of ’08 and the pandemic. I can pivot, but I need those things in place. When they’re not in place, my body tells me because I feel like I lost my sense of humor or I’m not as forgiving. I’m extra hard on myself. I’m like, “You are not walking three miles. You are walking five. You can’t see your inbox until you walk the five.” I have learned over time.
You are not alone in that. I have certainly experienced that myself if there is something happening in the house, a family member is unwell, or something is going on. It is hard to be productive in the business when personal stuff is pulling you away. Treating that stuff first, if that is in a good place, whatever the economy might throw at you, external forces, they can’t stop you. Personal stuff often will have a bigger dent. It is such a good suggestion and idea to make sure you are spending time on those things. If those things are good, it is hard for anything else to stop you.
My sister finds me annoying. I don’t do coffee or alcohol. I’m the most fun designated driver you will ever meet. All these things, I know thy myself. I know what I got to do. Everybody got their thing. Whatever your thing is, lean into that thing.
There is no right or wrong in certain areas as long as people are doing things that might be illegal or whatever, but you find stuff that works for you that helps you to feel good, to be a good person, and to lean into those things. Jamie, I want to thank you so much for coming on here and sharing with us a little bit about your journey, your story, and how you got to where you are and built the business. There are a lot of good ideas that people can extract regardless of where they are in their consulting journey.
I want to make sure that people can learn more about you and about Inspire. Check out your Inspire Live Sessions. Even though they might be in a different industry, that concept is a powerful one. It is something we have done a fair bit in the consulting community with our clarity coaching program or other clients of finding ways to bring other consultants together. Yours is another good example of that. It is not going to be social media, based on what you said. Where is the best place for people to learn more about you and Inspire?
My marketing team is awesome. They post lots of stuff on LinkedIn. I do go on LinkedIn. It is all the other ones that are fun. I feel like I’m not able to get everything done. InspireHumanResources.com is our place. That is where folks can get us. Thank you so much. This was a ton of fun.
It is my pleasure. It is great to have you on. Jamie, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you.
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About Jaime Klein
Jaime Klein is the CEO of Inspire Human Resources, HR leaders’ go-to partner for interim senior experts on strategy and execution for any HR need. A trailblazer in the world of fractional and remote work, Jaime founded Inspire in 2007. Overseeing a team of experts composed of HR executives and mid-level practitioners, she collaborates with senior leaders at Fortune 500 and high-growth companies to access the precise talent they need to fill temporary gaps, upskill teams, and solve their most pressing HR challenges. As a workplace culture expert and HRBP since 1994, Jaime has implemented strategies and programs in workplace culture, talent management, coaching, and talent acquisition, always through the lens of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Prior to founding Inspire, Jaime led a variety of human resources initiatives at American Express. There she developed programs in culture, career development, and employee engagement. In addition, she oversaw numerous department reorganizations that resulted in streamlined workflow and overhead cost reduction. Before American Express, Jaime established and grew the human resources department for Commerce One’s New York office. Her career began at The Corporate Executive Board, where she was a founding associate in the Corporate Leadership Council practice that focused on business best practices for HR executives.
Jaime is a dynamic speaker and contributor on any HR and future of work topic, sharing her insights with: The Today Show, Columbia University School of Business, ABC News, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens more.
Jaime holds a Masters of Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. She received her B.S. in Business with a concentration in Marketing from the University of Maryland. She has been recognized as one of New Jersey’s 2018 Best 50 Women in Business. Jaime previously served on the advisory board of Beyond Celiac and is a member of the Society of Human Resources Management.
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