Tell me about your vision when you started Human Smart.
Yeah, it's pivoted.
I will say that.
We started out, I was really that one man band solopreneur
as a fractional chief HR officer.
And then what I realized was by just doing
that high level work, which they need,
I was forcing my clients to do all the day to day
in the transactions and be the face of HR.
All I was really doing was the strategy and the advising
and the counseling and coaching, whatever that looks like.
I was only doing that part.
And I was kind of expecting them to do the day to day.
And so I think back then, I was coming out
of corporate very burned out.
And I was really only worried about myself.
And so I was really pretty kind of content.
So my vision at that point was like,
no, I'm just going to be a solopreneur,
fractional chief HR officer.
And then when I had this epiphany
that I'm forcing my clients to do something
that that's all I've ever done in my career
is build and lead HR teams.
It was like this huge epiphany, like, why am I
telling them to do it when that's all I've ever done?
And so now the vision is to help as many small business owners
as I can to, as we can, because now it's a team, right?
As we can to navigate all of the problems and the stress
and the pain points that people have with managing and leading
humans and all of the compliance needs that HR and payroll has.
So yeah, as many as we can.
You know, I say wow is because I am, the little bit about me,
I'm a real estate agent full time.
And I'm reading this book.
And there's a book talks about hiring people.
And in my mind, I'm like, OK, I get that one, then I need two.
And then I get that two, then I'm going to need three.
And so with that being said, and I'm
thinking as a solopreneur and an entrepreneur,
we as business owners are so conflicted with where do we go?
How do we hire?
What do we do?
What happens if we hire someone that's not very good
or that aligns with our vision and our goals?
So human smarts is just smarts to no longer
need to hire other humans.
Yeah.
I mean, you need a team.
You need an organizational structure.
But that's what we do.
So that's one of the first things I do is like,
I ask the same question you do.
What's your vision?
Right?
And then we can figure out how are we going to get there?
What kind of people do we need on our team to get there?
And what does that structure look like?
What does the cadence of that hiring look like?
What's it going to cost us?
How expensive are these people?
And what kind of profit do we need off of their time?
And then we have a talent plan.
Right?
And then we get to execution.
Right?
So organizational design is just in my heart.
And I understand.
I'm a business junkie at heart.
So some people think I'm more like a business
person in a fair clothing.
And so I get business.
And I can translate what's in your brain
in terms of vision into people.
So yeah, it's such a fun part of that first.
And I do work with startups on employee number one.
And it's really fun to kind of pick everything out
of their brain and give them a plan.
Well, not even just that.
I'm just thinking, again, my brain
tends to go when I hear things like this because I have not
had a podcast with anyone like this as of yet.
So Ms. Karen, you are my first.
So I'm blown away.
And all these things are going through my head.
And I'm just like, what?
Yeah.
I appreciate that.
Yes.
And so with that being said, sometimes entrepreneurs
or leaders or business owners don't have any clue where to go
or what to do next.
They just have this vision.
So you ask the vision.
And then you get an idea of that vision.
And then it's more like a consultation kind of thing.
And then you guys both decide what
you need to do in order to work.
I mean, so I work with industries across everything
pretty much.
And so I get a sense of, OK, so what roles do you
because they're the subject matter expert.
They've been in this industry for a long time.
I'm like, what kind of roles does that look like?
And then what capacity do those roles look like?
And then how do we build out so you have,
because most business owners, they don't do generally.
They're not financial people.
They're not HR people.
They're not marketing or sales people.
And so how do we have the people that are the subject matter
experts?
That's the client delivery and all the things that you serve.
But also, how do you build people around you
to do the things that's not what you got into business to do?
And there's people like me who are in the sales space,
the marketing space, the accounting and finance kind
of space.
But we do it fractionally.
And it makes a lot of sense for these small businesses that
can't have a whole team of their own.
They don't have the revenue for that.
But can you have people who have deep, deep expertise
at a fraction of the cost?
That's kind of the whole point.
So what field are most of your clients in?
So most of my business is referral.
And I am really terrible about saying no.
So my clients are really, really wide.
So I have everything from two utility companies
to a community college to biotech manufacturers,
cosmetics manufacturers, CPA firms, and insurance agents,
kind of all over the place.
I mean, honestly, if you have a team, then we do it.
So we don't dabble a lot in the union space,
simply because I don't have a lot of experience
in the unionized environments.
But there's a lot of business out there that's not union.
Yeah, so you were a solo entrepreneur.
And now you have a team.
Yes.
How did you get started?
That's a great question.
So I spent 25 years in corporate leading and building HRT.
And the last company I was at was a large Jim Iponder company.
And I was doing leadership in HR and facilities.
And when you get into roles in companies that big,
it ends up being only about legal and risk mitigation.
And that's not why I picked my profession.
They're all things that I have to keep my eye on,
because I'm not going to let my clients get into trouble.
But they aren't things that get me out of.
And so I needed to get back to a version of HR
that lives at the intersection of humans and business,
because I help businesses understand humans,
and I help humans understand business.
That's what I do for a living.
And I had to get back to that, a more authentic style of what
I got into my profession to do.
Obviously, the table stakes are compliance and legal.
Forget that.
But that's not the big stuff for me in HR.
So I needed to do it in a way with businesses
that are much more about the humans and the business
and don't have as much at stake as these Fortune 500 companies
that have publicly traded.
There's just a lot more risk there.
And so, yeah, I've had a blast getting
into the small business space.
Wow.
And so I sort of have this understanding.
When you said you were at the Fortune 500 company,
and it was all about compliance and legal,
well, that was a piece to it.
But as you're doing right now, it's
all of those things that probably end up
with compliance and legal.
And so if you can handle all of the, I wouldn't say minute,
but the things that may not seem like they matter,
you'll never make it to that space.
And so I can see how you felt like, hey, I'm not
doing the whole spectrum of this.
I'm just on the end of this.
Wow.
It was almost more like being on the defense.
I couldn't be proactive.
It wasn't about that.
It was just making sure that we were covered.
Whatever we were doing, whatever we had to do,
we were covered.
It was more of a defense mechanism.
And with small businesses, they're
super easy to work with in terms of culture and people first
and how you lead and how you staff things and role clarity
and performance accountability.
There's things that I can work with on the front end.
In small businesses, you can change them by tomorrow.
These huge organizations are much harder to turn the ship.
And so it's just so much fun to work with employers that are,
we can do work in a nanosecond.
Yeah.
And see, and as you mentioned, when
you do have big companies like that,
it's definitely a bigger challenge
because it's the hierarchy.
It's the staircase of who you have to reach.
You go to the top, what happens to the people at the bottom.
So I totally get that.
Communication is always awful in large organizations.
It just is by default. It's the game of telephone.
There's not great communication.
I've never been with a large organization
that had awesome communication.
It's just part of what it is.
But small businesses have the upper hand
in creating environments for people to thrive.
And we can do things with employees.
And she moves an aisle pretty quickly.
And that will get me up out of bed every day
of the rest of my working days.
What held you back?
25 years.
And now you've found it.
Yeah.
So when you haven't ever done anything
but be someone else's employee,
and there's a paycheck rolling in every two weeks,
well, there's no such thing as job security.
There's that routine and continuous,
specifically on the financial side.
And I had gotten to a pretty big job and a pretty big salary.
And basically, when you quit that and you start your own gig,
you go from that to zero.
And it's one thing if you're not making a lot of money.
But if you're making a lot of money,
that cliff is pretty darn big.
And honestly, I had had a friend put it in my head
a couple of years before that.
But I needed to start my own thing.
And I really resisted pretty heavily for quite some time
because I was like, I can't jump off the cliff now.
No, that's crazy.
And then more and more disenchanted
I got with the big, maybe we can do this.
And I finally got set up enough and burned out enough
and all the things.
And here we are.
Yeah.
And I tell you with how you sound, and I felt that.
I get protruded through the screen because I'm like,
oh, preach, Karen.
Because preach, I'm like, wow.
And what you said was what it felt like and what
it looked like, not knowing that if you jump over the cliff,
that you don't always have to fall.
You can often fly.
And so I love how you're choosing to fly, right?
As scary as it was.
And as so many entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, or businesses
that are starting now, it is scary.
It's very scary.
It is scary.
But you have no clue that on the other side of that cliff,
it may be just a couple of steps, just a step down.
And then you have something else to go to.
And so I super duper love that you said that.
And the passion that you have behind this,
you can definitely tell that you are
where you're supposed to be.
Thank you.
I so appreciate that.
Yeah.
There's a phrase, something to the effect of all your dreams
are on the other side of your fear, something to that effect.
And it's true, right?
You've just got to overcome the fear.
Yeah.
And it's interesting because I don't
think it's the intent, as I'm thinking.
I don't think it's the intent of companies
to keep you there by giving you more money so that you don't
explore your own vision, right?
And your own businesses.
I hope that it's not intentional.
But I tell you, it could keep you there for so long.
It totally does.
Yes.
Totally does.
They call them golden handcuffs for a reason.
Usually, it's so that you don't go to another company,
that you would be leaving too much behind at this company
to go join another one.
That's generally the incentive around that.
But it's not so much about keeping you out
of creating your own business.
But I think that there's definitely
a tide that has changed a lot of people's minds
about being solopreneur consultants, fractionals,
whatever that looks like, and saying goodbye
to all the corporate stuff, for lack of a better term.
And going it on their own and doing it authentically
themselves.
Yes.
It's a whole different ballgame now.
And you said you started in 22.
So even before this, prior to the pandemic,
I don't believe that there were as many entrepreneurs then
as there is today.
And it put us in some kind of place and mindset that says,
hey, we were just sent home from these corporate offices.
Some of us got furloughed, laid off.
They call it laid off.
But when you're not brought back, you're sort of fired
and let go.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
So I think that a lot of people did something completely
different, which I'm sure only helps you to have more business
at HumanSmart.
It does.
I mean, there's a lot of people out there that just want
to be their solopreneurs.
And that's totally cool, too.
There's a lot of that.
There's also people starting legit businesses that are not
saying it's not legit to be a solopreneur.
But it's the team base.
They're scaling something to be bigger.
Yeah, there's a lot of that, too.
So it's so much fun.
There's so much activity.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes
continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.