Build Better Teams with Fractional HR Leadership

00;00;02;16 – 00;00;30;25
Speaker 2
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fractional operator. I’m your host, Mike Nelson from hourglass SaaS. Hourglass SaaS, the only, to my knowledge, operations platform built by fractional for fractional. You know, if you’re tired of having multiple subscriptions for CRM, project management, time tracking, client reporting, client portal, etc., hourglass SaaS is probably a good solution for you, especially if you’re a fractional operator or service firm.

00;00;30;27 – 00;00;37;08
Speaker 2
Really excited about my interview today with my very good friend Katie Tanzi from HR resolved. Katie, how are you?

00;00;37;11 – 00;00;39;27
Speaker 1
I’m good. Thanks for having me.

00;00;40;00 – 00;00;59;16
Speaker 2
You know, Katie, I was thinking about this interview and I was like, I whenever I want to talk about you or showcase you in some portion, I always want to tell people about, like, what a badass you are and the things that you’ve done in the past. As far as the, physical accomplishments, let’s put it that way.

00;00;59;16 – 00;01;02;21
Speaker 2
And I and I was trying to think, is it the Sahara marathon that.

00;01;02;21 – 00;01;07;00
Speaker 1
You ran some marathon to sob? Yeah, but it was in the Sahara.

00;01;07;01 – 00;01;32;22
Speaker 2
It’s in the Sahara. It’s in the Sahara. I actually, I believe, Chris Ryan’s wife, Alex. Okay, I think I think she’s going to be running that next to you. Okay. Yeah. But anyway, not to go off on that tangent, but it was, just an interesting, fun fact that she was going to be running, that I was like, oh, I’m like, I think that’s the one that Katie Tansey ran, which yeah, no bad stuff.

00;01;32;24 – 00;02;00;09
Speaker 1
Well, and it’s sometimes if, if you need to do an intro for me, I’ll let you do it because I hate talking about myself. Yeah, I really do. But, I will say, as somebody who more recently I want to say starting to get getting back into running. Right. I think that the things that you tell yourself in your head about, like what it is that you’re doing in the moment, makes you also second guess all the things you did in your past.

00;02;00;12 – 00;02;26;09
Speaker 1
So, like, as I’m starting to, like, build my base up because I’ve got a goal right now to get to ten miles by the end of August, I feel like that’s something I didn’t have last year when we were doing hyrax, that I wanted to have that base so that I’m going in training that way. And so in my own mind, I’m going through my head as I’m running three miles telling myself, how the heck did I ever run 50 plus plus super multiple days in a row?

00;02;26;11 – 00;02;28;09
Speaker 1
So yeah. Anyway.

00;02;28;11 – 00;02;54;10
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s stuff in your mind. And it’s, you know, and part of the reason why I wanted to bring it up is not to just talk about what a badass you are, but also from a, entrepreneur standpoint, business standpoint of how that mentality kind of pulls into running your own business and dealing with, you know, all the things that you have to deal with on a day to day basis, as well as to your point, the stories that go on inside our heads.

00;02;54;10 – 00;03;19;28
Speaker 2
Yeah. Not just when you’re trying to increase distance and run for a long time, but when you’re also trying to run a business and be successful and do all the things that you have to manage on a daily basis. So I want to get into that a little bit. But before we do, we should probably just spend a couple of minutes talking about who you are and what HR resolved is, and then I’d like to get in a little bit of the because you’ve been doing it for a minute now, right?

00;03;20;01 – 00;03;34;06
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, you know, talk a little bit about how the company has changed over the years and, and kind of attack it from that angle. So if you don’t mind, I’ll shut up now. But if you want to, tell our audience it’s a little bit about you and about HR resolved.

00;03;34;09 – 00;03;54;06
Speaker 1
Yeah. So it was actually interesting. I got one of those annoying, Oh, business a census, things that I needed to fill out in the mail. It was like, if you don’t fill us out, you know, it’s illegal not to do it. And I was like, okay, you know, not that I’m a really a rule follower, but I hate the idea of the government being anywhere near me.

00;03;54;08 – 00;04;21;10
Speaker 1
So I completed the census thing the other day and asked me about how long, who was involved in HR resolved and how long we’ve been involved in it. And, I think formally it’s 2013 as when, Bill and I officially founded the organization and HR resolves an outsourced HR provider. And there’s a couple things that we believe differentiate us from other people who do HR.

00;04;21;10 – 00;04;42;05
Speaker 1
And that’s essentially helping ensure that our clients employees are aligned with the business so that they know what success looks like, so that our clients, the owners of the business, aren’t distracted running in the day to day part of their business, that they can actually focus on the business and not be involved in the day to day.

00;04;42;07 – 00;04;50;17
Speaker 1
So it’s kind of aligning the employees within the business to the intentions of the organization’s leaders.

00;04;50;20 – 00;05;03;18
Speaker 2
And I assume along that path, keeping your clients compliant with all the laws and rules and regulations and policies and procedures that are now required, especially here in New York.

00;05;03;20 – 00;05;34;19
Speaker 1
Precisely, precisely. And that’s like the thing I think that everybody thinks like HR, like I hate being known as like the HR lady. Although one of our clients, one of our clients at a holiday party was like, Bill’s the HR guy. And I was like, oh, by all means, let him. Let him be the HR guy. But there is there’s a there’s a multitude of things, in the day to day of an organization that they have to be aware of from an employee perspective and from a compliance perspective.

00;05;34;19 – 00;06;00;25
Speaker 1
And it only gets increasingly more complicated every year. Specifically based on like the state that you’re in, you’ve got the state laws, you’ve got the federal laws, how many employees you have, and do they cross straight state lines? So yes, we do all that other stuff, but I think the, the biggest pieces is helping that our clients ensure that their employees are inlined and that they’re performing to, you know, their desired intentions.

00;06;00;28 – 00;06;24;26
Speaker 2
So I want to talk a little bit about the process or how you help organizations stay and their employees stay aligned with each other. But before we do, let’s kind of go back. So 2013, you guys started HR resolved. What was the, what was the reason? Like, why did you just like, just woke up one morning and said, I’m going to start an HR company today?

00;06;24;29 – 00;06;27;14
Speaker 2
Like, how did that all come to? Oh.

00;06;27;16 – 00;06;49;07
Speaker 1
Well, the short story, I’m sure the short story is that, my business partner, Bill, who also happens. I always like to say he’s not my brother. We share our last name. He is my life partner. My husband. He always wanted to work for himself. He wanted to find an opportunity there, a way to leave big business.

00;06;49;10 – 00;07;12;19
Speaker 1
And he believed that we both brought something very unique to the table. And very, you know, flattering on my behalf. He always said that he felt as though any time he worked with an HR professional in large organizations, they always sucked. So he very few people in HR that he ever worked with in his manager or leadership capacities.

00;07;12;21 – 00;07;52;24
Speaker 1
Did he ever work with HR people that that really seemed to know what they were doing and bring value. And he felt as though any time that the two of us engaged on anything HR related dialog or conversations or my past experience, that he felt like I was very different there. So, you know, with me coming with a more traditional HR background and experience from, you know, large business to start up organizations, he felt that my background, along with his background and organizational change and leadership, was something that we would be able to bring to to smaller businesses in a fractional way, that would enable them to benefit from the things that big

00;07;52;24 – 00;08;06;19
Speaker 1
business always has around. But because we were doing it on a fractional component, they could afford it by bringing us, billing myself, HR resolved. And then our team at the time, into the organizations.

00;08;06;22 – 00;08;16;13
Speaker 2
Very nice. And how was how was the, the kickoff of the business? I mean, did you you guys launched it and you had all the, all the business in the world that you wanted the next day or.

00;08;16;19 – 00;08;37;12
Speaker 1
Oh, goodness, no. And I would say that even today, we don’t have all the business in the world. I mean, our sales cycle, number one is, has always been very long. It’s always been network based. It didn’t matter what Bill tried. And I’ll be the first person to say that I’m the I’m the HR person. I’m the forward facing client person.

00;08;37;14 – 00;09;01;08
Speaker 1
Bill is a sales person. And I leave that to him. Primarily because I don’t like to talk about myself. And I also I’m not very good at sales. But, our sales cycle is extremely, extremely long. It’s very trust based. It’s become very much more, network based. So people have success with us. They refer us to somebody else and so on and so forth.

00;09;01;08 – 00;09;28;25
Speaker 1
So, in spite of the fact that, you know, our sales cycle is, is and was pretty long for many years, we still managed up till pre-COVID to be growing almost at a new client every quarter. And that’s, that’s, that takes quite a bit because our clients range from anywhere from ten employees to, you know, we always say kind of under 100 employees is a sweet spot for who we engage with.

00;09;28;25 – 00;09;40;11
Speaker 1
That makes sense for those businesses. We were growing pretty quickly all the way up until Covid and, you know, had a pretty substantial size team for an organization like ourselves.

00;09;40;13 – 00;10;11;27
Speaker 2
Yeah. And, you know, I don’t think anybody really wants to hear more Covid conversation, about, you know, the impact. But obviously, that took the wind out of the sails of a lot of businesses, ours included. And so and then so making changes. So as you look to move out of that and move forward, what were some of the, like, changes in the organization that you guys made, dealing with the conditions that were, you know, kind of presented to us, let’s say.

00;10;11;29 – 00;10;33;19
Speaker 1
So I, you know, I think early on, you know, you said, what did it look like when we first started? I mean, it was one client, then to two clients. And at the time you’re trying to grow a business, so you couldn’t. Since I didn’t want to be as picky with who you were bringing on, in terms of who the client was, that the client came to you, they expressed interest in your service.

00;10;33;19 – 00;11;01;12
Speaker 1
They were willing to sign up. You gave it a go, right? And then, you know, through through time, working with that client, you kind of determine whether they’re the kind of client you want or not, the client that you want. So, you know, with respect to Covid and, you know, the trajectory of HR resolved, we, you know, building my vision truly was for us to grow an organization to the point where I’m not client facing anymore.

00;11;01;12 – 00;11;24;24
Speaker 1
I’ve got a team of HR people who are delivering the services, and I’m training and grooming HR people. That’s really what I want to do. I enjoy, you know, mentor. I enjoy coming in to an organization that doesn’t have an HR infrastructure, enjoy kind of cleaning, cleaning it up and fixing it, kind of putting a nice bow on it and helping our team operate.

00;11;24;26 – 00;11;57;23
Speaker 1
When Covid happened, you know, it was basically all hands on deck in terms of understanding the government regulations and how that impacted our clients. And, you know, were there layoffs and, you know, how did that navigate, how that impacts the client along with its employees? And how do we make that? As you know, how do we it wasn’t easy, but how do we help the employee land in a place that worked for them at the time, but also helped the business, if they could continue to operate, operate as best as they could?

00;11;57;25 – 00;12;40;26
Speaker 1
But there was one specific change that happened around Covid that massively impacted our business. And that was a fact that pre-COVID, a lot of organizations wanted HR people in-house. They didn’t they didn’t understand remote work. They felt as though HR people needed to be in the in the office. And basically overnight HR jobs became entirely remote. Which then meant that, you know, HR resolved as a like more local, local business, although we had clients that spanned from New York City up to, you know, Canada, Chicago, Illinois, that area, our talent pool was really coming from this capital region.

00;12;40;28 – 00;13;12;06
Speaker 1
And overnight, those employees had the ability to find global positions that paid them global compensation, not not the compensation specific to the capital region. And so, you know, well, I felt as though we did anything and everything that we could to be flexible, to be great leaders and good employers, people to work for. You know, our, our team was able to find, you know, roles that paid them more than what what we could pay at that time.

00;13;12;07 – 00;13;31;24
Speaker 1
I mean, at that point, many small businesses were saying, what we have to pay our people more. What do you mean? Bill? And I couldn’t go back to them at that same time saying, oh, and by the way, our service also is going to cost you more because we would have been probably one of the first services let go in times of kind of almost like marketing.

00;13;31;24 – 00;13;59;26
Speaker 1
You know, we’re where do people cut budget initially? They think that they know they don’t need marketing. They don’t need HR. Well, really in that time, like they need HR more than anything to navigate all the complexities and to keep them out of to keep them out of trouble. So as our team found opportunities elsewhere, Bill and I had basically a full wall of our office of just, like, kind of like contingency plans, you know, how who works with clients we were going to keep.

00;13;59;26 – 00;14;26;19
Speaker 1
So at that point in time, early and early on, you had to say, you know, we don’t know. We were willing to work with more clients and what maybe we would have wanted to in terms of just fit that one Covid down to it when it became more Bill, myself and a, you know, a part time employee here or there, we could make the decision who we wanted to work with, who were the clients that really did we feel valued.

00;14;26;19 – 00;15;01;15
Speaker 1
What we brought to the table, trusted us, didn’t come to us telling us how to do our job, but basically inquiring what the best way to handle situations were. You know, to this day, I think even if you asked a bill, we have one client that was a little bittersweet to have to let go because they were a great client, but they were just growing at a rate that it was a difficult for us at that time with the, the, the that was difficult for us at the time with our manpower reducing to be able to keep up with them.

00;15;01;15 – 00;15;31;07
Speaker 1
And so and that in that particular case, they had us assist them in trying to hire their HR, replace our, our basically somebody come into the organization to be their VP of HR, which, you know, certainly was they could have done that on their own, but they valued sort of how we operated with them. They valued our values and wanted us to help them find the right fit, both from a HR perspective and our cultural fit for their organization.

00;15;31;09 – 00;15;57;08
Speaker 2
It’s it’s interesting that you say that because I often wonder if that is the biggest trap of being a fractional operator or fractional service based firm is the fact that sooner or later, if you’re really good at what you’re doing, you’re going to work yourself out of a job, right? So like with marketing, like we’ve seen this because we typically work with smaller companies, we’re trying to help them grow.

00;15;57;08 – 00;16;18;21
Speaker 2
They grow, but they if they hit a certain level, then it’s like they really do need an in-house person. And I know I’ve talked with I’m hoping to have Alan Van Tassel on, I think I think, you know, Alan, or maybe you don’t, but, Alan is basically runs a, like a VP sales program. And one of the things that he always says he’s like, ultimately, I’m going to work myself out of a job.

00;16;18;21 – 00;16;47;18
Speaker 2
If I’m successful with my client, then they’re going to need to bring this position in-house at some point in time, in which case our engagement ends. And I, I feel like that is the case in so many fractional industries, right? Whether it’s Cocteau, you know, it’s, HR, you know, you name it, it seems like if the if we’re truly successful in helping the business grow, then at some point we no longer become the solution for them because they need that in-house.

00;16;47;22 – 00;16;53;11
Speaker 2
Is that something that you see at all or or is it more of a one off thing for you guys?

00;16;53;13 – 00;17;16;07
Speaker 1
In that particular case, that was really a one. It was a one off. It was a one off instance, and it probably was a timing type thing. We probably would have stayed with the organization if HR resolved continued. You know, at the Covid timing, it was myself, Bill and eight employees like we I mean, we had a decent sized, a decent sized business at that point.

00;17;16;09 – 00;17;45;17
Speaker 1
It, you know, it’s kind of funny that you say, like working yourself out of a job because, yes, that ultimately, like, depending on what an organization’s growth, if, let’s say an organization’s goal is growth and growth in terms of revenue that, you know, results in needing additional heads and that type of thing. Absolutely. You know, you get a business to the point where you’ve got 100 plus employees with a lot of complexity, maybe across state lines and all that kind of stuff.

00;17;45;19 – 00;18;14;00
Speaker 1
And if they’re if to them, growth is continued in employee size for sure. We’re not always going to be the, the right fit. But the idea behind bringing somebody like HR resolved on is to establish the infrastructure and the operating system so that when a company does hit 100 and then continues to grow beyond, they have people processes in place.

00;18;14;00 – 00;18;21;22
Speaker 1
They’ve got the HR operating system in place that we’re not handing off a huge disaster to the next HR person.

00;18;21;22 – 00;18;22;21
Speaker 2
And yeah.

00;18;22;24 – 00;18;53;11
Speaker 1
I you know, I can tell you from having kind of interviewed for HR jobs in the Capital Region, you know, interviewing for some of those companies that did grow very fast and got to know other HR leaders that inevitably came into those organizations. They were handed just a huge, a huge mess from, you know, companies just believing early on in their infancy that the HR doesn’t matter, that it’s not important, that you don’t need standardization, you don’t need employee files.

00;18;53;13 – 00;19;08;12
Speaker 1
You know, that managers can be writing their own job descriptions and doing their own job postings. I mean, yikes, yikes, and yikes because at some point that will come back to bite the business in the butt, but also just to be a mess for somebody else to clean up.

00;19;08;15 – 00;19;32;19
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, let’s let’s talk about the alignment stuff, right? Getting your team in alignment with your company or your company in alignment with your team and what is you know, obviously we don’t want to get into the, the, the deep trenches on this, but what does it typically look like for HR? Resolve to go into an organization and work to be successful in that alignment?

00;19;32;21 – 00;20;00;12
Speaker 1
Well, number one, it’s it’s meeting our clients where they are. Right. Well, we might believe that they need alignment, that an organization needs alignment with their employees. If that an organization doesn’t value it, we’re not going to be successful achieving that. Oh, I did want to say something. Oh, right. I’m going to make a little note to myself because I want to say something about outgrowing a business.

00;20;00;15 – 00;20;01;06
Speaker 2
Okay.

00;20;01;08 – 00;20;26;09
Speaker 1
And, I so I’m just making a note because we’ll come back to that. So what does that look look like? First and foremost, you know, it’s, it’s if we really went in and kind of said that clients said, you know, we want you to come in, we want you to help us put our the HR system in place to ensure that our employees are aligned with our vision and where we want to go.

00;20;26;16 – 00;20;49;25
Speaker 1
We would start with an organizational design, initiative. And that initiative is going to look like sitting down with a business understanding, you know, who are the key players within that organization? You know, within like, you know, a tiered, for the lack of a better word, you know, you’ve got your leaders, you’ve got your managers, and you have your individual contributors.

00;20;49;25 – 00;21;18;29
Speaker 1
And within any organization, you know, some people are like, well, we don’t really like to see that because we want everybody to be equal. In any in any organization, people aren’t going to be equal. We want to ensure that there’s equity and that’s what we believe in. Organizational design initiative does is ensure equity and then also ensure that the company has certain things from a compliance perspective to help mitigate risk.

00;21;19;02 – 00;21;42;00
Speaker 1
So the first step is going to be to put in an organizational design initiative. The second piece is going to be ensuring that the in that org design and in the org chart that we’ve got job descriptions written for the roles that people are in, in small organizations, it very well may be that, you know, we never say that you want dual or combined roles.

00;21;42;00 – 00;22;11;15
Speaker 1
You want to understand what the business needs, what roles the business needs to be effective. And then in some cases, in organizations, you may have one employee filling a percent FTE within that organizational structure. And so that employee then from an alignment perspective would understand that. Let’s say for example, I’ll just use HR for for example, in an HR organization you may have a leader within HR, you might have an HR manager and you might have an HR coordinator.

00;22;11;17 – 00;22;35;17
Speaker 1
And depending in that business and how large the organization is, you may have one person HR resolved filling the leader, the manager, and the individual contributor position. In some cases that the organization is a little bigger, you might have an HR manager filling 50% time doing managerial tax, but 50% of the time doing transactional HR coordinator tasks.

00;22;35;20 – 00;23;18;16
Speaker 1
And I think it’s really important when you are when you do communicate to an employee what’s expected of them, that they understand that when we’re sitting down for an evaluation and or where we’re when we’re reviewing from a hiring perspective, from a competency, standpoint, that you need somebody to bring in enough knowledge to be able enough, let’s say, strengths to be a manager, but also understanding that this role also requires you to do some of this HR coordinator stuff, such as filling out of I-9, filing documents, you know, the unsexy unemployment claim type stuff that isn’t always fun to do but is part of the job.

00;23;18;22 – 00;23;51;18
Speaker 1
And if somebody just thinks that they’re going to come in doing HR leadership stuff and not understand that the job also requires the transactional components, that person may not ultimately last in that job because they don’t enjoy doing that transactional piece. So when you have an org design, when you have appropriate job descriptions, we ensure alignment by ensuring that the employee understands what’s expected of them based on what the organization needs or what the the owners of that business, based on the org design.

00;23;51;20 – 00;23;53;20
Speaker 1
That makes sense. Was that clear?

00;23;53;22 – 00;24;10;22
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, I think so. And, you know, one question as you were talking that popped into my head that I probably should have started with is when we’re talking about alignment, once you have everything aligned, like, what does that actually look like or what does it mean?

00;24;10;24 – 00;24;25;09
Speaker 1
What does it mean to be aligned it to be aligned from my perspective, to be aligned, to understand what to expect, what what the vision of the business is and how my role contributes to the vision of the business.

00;24;25;12 – 00;24;39;18
Speaker 2
Okay, so if we’re out of alignment, that means that either a your team members do not have a clear idea of what the vision for the business is, what it looks like. Yeah, it looks like and or how they fit into that overall picture.

00;24;39;21 – 00;24;57;17
Speaker 1
100%. I mean, that’s where your ultimate you can get into places where you’ve got an employee looking at you and they’re like, But I’m doing this and I’m doing that and I’m doing this. But it could be that could be seen as vibration. As Bill likes to say, vibration, a rotation that’s not translating into ultimately where the business needs and wants to go.

00;24;57;19 – 00;25;14;12
Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s funny you bring that up because he talks about that on, one of our episodes of Blue Collar vibration versus rotation and vibration is you’re just sitting there and you’re not actually accomplishing anything. You’re not getting your you’re not where the rotation is. You’re actually you have movement and you’re going in where you want to be.

00;25;14;15 – 00;25;31;20
Speaker 2
I always thought that was an interesting way, because I know I constantly find myself vibrating, you know, in that analogy, it’s like I am just I’m really busy and there’s a lot of movement happening, but it’s not movement in the direction that I want it to go in.

00;25;31;23 – 00;25;55;05
Speaker 1
Well, and that’s, you know, I think that and then I be curious where how Bill would interpret that. But when I hear that as somebody, I feel like I can relate as a business owner. Right. I think you’re wearing so many hats and, you know, so many things need to be done. And so sometimes you find yourself in this place of just like, like, like literally vibrating, you know, like, I got to do this, I’ve got to do this.

00;25;55;08 – 00;26;14;06
Speaker 1
And, but you, you know, where you’re trying to go. It’s just almost this moment. Somebody explained it to me like this one time, too. It’s like your brain is like a cup, and it can only hold so much. And as it becomes more full and more full, certain things start to fall over the side than you sometimes just can’t.

00;26;14;12 – 00;26;39;28
Speaker 1
You can’t remember what needs to be done. And I always feel like the same way when you find yourself in this place of like, there’s things that need to be done that need to be done, but I’m just overwhelmed. And that’s where I think to that point of having the org design and the org chart and understanding. Even in a CEO or business owner perspective, we’re probably our own worst enemies, is that we don’t always have a job description for ourselves.

00;26;40;00 – 00;27;15;19
Speaker 1
What are we expected to do to make our business successful? And then who do we need on our team to help us achieve those things? And the more you’re able to articulate that, the less I feel like you find yourselves in these vibration type of moments because you know you’ve got the right people in the right seats on the bus when you know who you need on the on the team at a given point in time to help take some of those things that are occupying your mind and making you feel like there’s a thousand things that need to be done.

00;27;15;21 – 00;27;41;12
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it’s that that cheap cup and bottle washer syndrome. Right? Like I’m, I’m, you know, what’s my job description? Everything. Whatever. You know, whatever it needs to get done right now. Like, it’s that’s my constant conversation with myself is the what’s important now, right? And it’s like, okay, I’ve got seven zillion things and I need to get all these things done, which is impossible, by the way.

00;27;41;12 – 00;28;01;08
Speaker 2
And I and I feel like especially I think every business owner feels that. But I think fractional, especially when you’re a fractional solo entrepreneur, it’s like you got you literally are doing everything right. Like you, you’ve got to run the business, sell the business, you’ve got to do the books, you’ve got to, you know, I, I talk about it all the time with what my day to day looks like right now.

00;28;01;08 – 00;28;20;26
Speaker 2
And I’m like, well, every day I’m on somewhere between 5 and 7. Zoom calls in between those seven zoom calls, I’ve got to answer the constant barrage of emails that are coming in. And then, oh, by the way, I still have to do my actual job, right? And I still have to do all the stuff that the business requires of me.

00;28;21;02 – 00;28;26;03
Speaker 2
And it’s like, and what I that’s when I start vibrating, for sure. I mean.

00;28;26;10 – 00;28;53;21
Speaker 1
It’s funny that you say that too. Yeah. I mean, if you are truly a solopreneur where you have nobody else that’s working alongside of you, for sure, that that’s going to be a constant over, you know, over a while. My it my biggest pet peeve because of the fact that I am I’m a bookkeeper, is when a client doesn’t pay, I don’t write a check for the full amount of the invoice, like they send me less money.

00;28;53;21 – 00;29;11;29
Speaker 1
So that than the next month. Some of that next month’s check goes to the last month’s check like it spends. It takes so much time for me to figure out, like the reconciliation process of making sure that the things are closed. I’m like, Ma, I want to do HR. I don’t want to do bookkeeping.

00;29;12;02 – 00;29;33;29
Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s that’s why anytime I stand up any sort of new business, my first thing is bookkeeper. Yeah, that’s the I like number one. I’m so bad at it. Like legitimately, when I look at my, my strengths and my weaknesses and running a business like the dotting the eyes and crossing the t’s when it comes to bookkeeping is my absolute worst thing.

00;29;33;29 – 00;29;51;08
Speaker 2
So I almost like it’s my first thing, like I like, I’ll just make less money. If I got to pay a bookkeeper right now, I’ll eat some cat food and crackers. But it’s but it’s just, you know, because that’s just one thing I know. If it’s left to me to do it, it’s going to get pushed back, push back, push back.

00;29;51;11 – 00;30;04;29
Speaker 2
I’m going to go. I’m going to take the sales meeting. Instead of doing that reconciliation, I’m going to go to the networking event. Instead of sending those invoices. I’m going to do this instead of marking those invoices back like, yeah, yeah.

00;30;05;01 – 00;30;23;27
Speaker 1
Yeah, I’m not that bad, I do, I like I’ve decided that my new phrases I like a high level of order and that comes in like many face like phases of life, but specifically in more interacting more recently with my brother and his family and my sister and her kids, like, I know not having children than I like a high level order.

00;30;24;00 – 00;30;41;20
Speaker 1
So I do like doing the bookkeeping because I like being able to make sure that the everything I’s are not in the T’s across, but when somebody throws me a wrench outside of my my, my realm of scope, of understanding of QuickBooks, then that definitely, like, frazzled me.

00;30;41;23 – 00;30;46;29
Speaker 2
So you wrote yourself a note. I wanted to come back to that. What, what was the note you wrote?

00;30;47;01 – 00;31;17;28
Speaker 1
Outgrowing businesses? So more recently, thank you for bringing that back up, because you had asked me about outgrowing businesses. You know, from the time that air resolved has started, and this comes back, you know, to my days in a internet startup company that grew massively. We had over 100 employees. I was managing everything. I know every employee information on an Excel spreadsheet, benefits, enrollments, tax stuff, employee details, you know, all that stuff.

00;31;17;28 – 00;31;43;14
Speaker 1
So we engaged with, an S platform that we’ve been using for a very, very long time. And, you know, it gets more than ten years, over ten years of HR resolved, evolving. This platform has also evolved. And more recently, I, I was talking to a gentleman who has referred to me a small organization. Does like handyman type of type of work, five employees.

00;31;43;16 – 00;32;08;29
Speaker 1
And, he was asking me how I would go about, you know, just managing all of his employee information and details in the training capacities. And I shared with him the platform that we used. It’s got a couple different tiers to it. And more recently, this platform also has an AI component in it. And he came back to me and said, he said to me, because I’m really surprised that you even recommended this.

00;32;08;29 – 00;32;34;11
Speaker 1
I feel like it was just taking, taking work or taking the job away from you. Meaning, because of the AI component. And the more I think about his comment, because I was like, wow, like, okay, you can go ahead and try to build this platform out because it’s basically like it’s it’s a software as a service. And, you know, they offer you the ability to, to develop it and build out the way that you’d like to.

00;32;34;13 – 00;33;10;02
Speaker 1
You have to have some understanding of HR expertise in the HR business process to be able to build the system out, which HR resolved does. And then, you know, in terms of like the training and all that type of stuff, yes, you’ve got AI available to you, but in my mind, and correct me if you feel this is different because I know that you have had businesses of all different sizes and have used HCI in some capacities, you have to know how to query AI to make sure that you’re getting a decent response or a correct response back from him.

00;33;10;04 – 00;33;33;12
Speaker 1
And so in that particular, you know, case of like whether it be large organizations outgrowing us or smaller organizations outgrowing us, in my mind, the smaller organizations I’m less worried about, losing even from an AI perspective, because to your point, you’re wearing so many different hats. Is the HR hat one that you want to wear, or is it one that you want to come to?

00;33;33;12 – 00;34;08;15
Speaker 1
Somebody like myself who has all the, you know, has the years of experience, has been able to leverage AI to help in weird employment situations, and help you take that one little piece off. So this goes back to just that fractional component. So somebody saying, I’m surprised that you’re recommending this because of the AI component, and I’m almost in my mindset is like, I’m surprised that you want to continue to even think about HR when there’s so many other pieces of your business that you do need to think about, why not car away?

00;34;08;15 – 00;34;35;15
Speaker 1
This one little piece I included there and not included so that, you know, it’s set up appropriately, that you’re keeping up with trainings the way that they’re supposed to be trained, that you’re being consistent with all your employee hiring or business practice decisions. So I just like it made me think about, you know, outgrowing an organization, outgrowing us and or an Elk or an organization saying, well, why would you use why would you recommend this?

00;34;35;15 – 00;34;59;04
Speaker 1
Because of I, I feel like no matter I included or not, still having somebody that has the years of experience, the business practice and the systems expertise to stand up a business, an HR business system is of greater value than any AI tool could ever be, especially for somebody who’s not coming with an HR with a with an HR background.

00;34;59;06 – 00;35;25;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, I, I agree with you fully. I, I my personal belief, especially for the fractional community, is that I only bolsters the need for us, right? Because all the, the organizations like I can talk about it easily from a marketing standpoint. Anybody can go to ChatGPT or cloud and say, here’s my, ideal client profile, build me a marketing program for it.

00;35;25;05 – 00;35;48;15
Speaker 2
Right. And I is going to build this comprehensive marketing plan for that company. And what this person, if they’re not a marketing professional, is not going to know, is that a bunch of the stuff that’s included in there is simply included, because a bunch of people wrote blogs and articles about why it should be included, not because it should be included.

00;35;48;15 – 00;36;08;29
Speaker 2
And right. It’s going to be waste and wasted effort and wasted money on, especially for smaller business where, yeah, you could do all of those things if you could afford to, but you probably can’t afford to because that’s a lot of money. And instead, if you’re looking to be more strategic and targeted, you need to do this and you need to do this.

00;36;08;29 – 00;36;30;29
Speaker 2
And and outside of the fact that I can often be wrong, but it’s I believe that the expertise that you’re talking about, that fractional is bring to the ability to communicate with an AI tool and get good information out of that tool based on your years of experience. I think I think that’s the real value of fractional, right.

00;36;30;29 – 00;36;52;12
Speaker 2
And it only bolsters us because now I can do a lot more work faster. Like, I was just in the conversation this morning talking about, I had created a marketing of like my typical, process for this is I will create my initial overview of what I think is going to work for an ideal client profile for my clients.

00;36;52;14 – 00;37;11;06
Speaker 2
I then pressure test it using AI, right? So I’ll be like, hey, here, here’s my here’s my ideas about how we’re going to go to market for this client, Steel Man and Straw Man app for me and give me some feedback on if you think I’m right, think I’m wrong, what am I missing? I’m not thinking about. And then I comes back to me.

00;37;11;06 – 00;37;30;21
Speaker 2
So I just recently created a whole program, for one of our clients. I send it over to them for review. They came back to me and their question was like, well, hey, listen, that’s just going to be over our budget, right? Which is exactly it. I’ll just talk them out. This is over our budget. So what’s going to be the one thing that we can do here that’s going to work?

00;37;30;23 – 00;38;08;27
Speaker 2
And so I already knew the answer. But to be able to pull together the information that I needed to help support my argument and put it in the document and get it to a client, normally that would have taken me 3 or 4 hours, right? Right now it takes me about ten minutes. Yeah, using an AI tool. So, you know, the overall point is that it’s it’s helping me be faster, be better, be more efficient, get answers quicker, but also spend less time or less time on like some of the drudgery that we have to do as a as a fractional operator.

00;38;08;27 – 00;38;31;27
Speaker 2
It’s like there’s preparing reports and doing all the stuff. If it’s going to take me hours, just like that bookkeeping thing, I might want to just kind of, you know, there on the back burner. But now these tools, really help. And I think it it keeps us it elevates us as fractions to working on spending the time that we have that our clients are budgeted to pay us for.

00;38;31;27 – 00;38;43;10
Speaker 2
It keeps us on that higher level stuff that they need us as fractions and less on some of that other, you know, junk. That’s just a waste of time, money and effort. I if that makes sense.

00;38;43;12 – 00;39;15;01
Speaker 1
Yeah, I and that’s where I look at, you know if you want and that’s where I think for the right fit for each our resolved like we might be somebody that comes in helps you set up your business process, set up, you know like an HR platform for you. And then you, you go run with it. You know, we’re we’re at least we know that we’re putting you in a place or a position to completely operate from an onboarding, from an off boarding, from a, you know, in an HR tool, any of the trainings that your company needs to do.

00;39;15;08 – 00;39;39;13
Speaker 1
It’s all set up to send you reminders to tell you that this needs to be done, to help you log in, track it. If you want to do that, by all means do it. Just let us help you. Let me let HR resolved help set that up for you. So at least you’ve got a foundation set so that if you do find yourself in a place of needing to grow, that you’ve got all the basics taken care of.

00;39;39;15 – 00;39;44;05
Speaker 2
Yeah, you don’t have to. You have to build it in order to do it. It’s already built. Right.

00;39;44;08 – 00;39;45;26
Speaker 1
Exactly.

00;39;45;29 – 00;39;55;20
Speaker 2
So, Katie, I know we’re getting short on time, but what does what does the future look like for HR resolved? And you as a fractional operator.

00;39;55;23 – 00;39;59;21
Speaker 1
What does that look like? What does that what do I want it to look like or what?

00;39;59;23 – 00;40;02;05
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00;40;02;08 – 00;40;33;29
Speaker 1
You know, we are actively at this point, it’s kind of it’s been interesting post-Covid, it took a lot, many years, I would say 2 or 3 years post-Covid for for people to start to inquire about HR services, why that was, I don’t know, but it was a really slow, ramp up. Our return to HR service needs maybe, we’re in the last two years, I would say that we’re we have more people coming to us saying we need assistance with ECS.

00;40;34;01 – 00;40;55;02
Speaker 1
So in terms of HR resolved in terms of the work that we’re doing, you know, we operate in two different ways. We’ve got the way that we always have operated, which is, and an annual service agreement for comprehensive HR services. So basically we integrate with an organization as an in-house HR team. Would we bring in all our business processes?

00;40;55;02 – 00;41;17;10
Speaker 1
We bring in all the HR tools. And we take that basically off a business owners plate or, you know, somebody else within the organization that HR isn’t their competence. We also have had quite a bit of need for somebody just wanting sort of an air service hotline, you know, somebody to call because they’ve got an HR question or they’ve got some stickiness happening within the business.

00;41;17;10 – 00;41;36;24
Speaker 1
And so it’s basically an ad, we call it ad hoc services. We’ve got an hourly rate that we charge clock goes on when either I’m starting to review an email or that, you know, the phone starts somewhat similar to, you know, a lawyer. Just not at that exorbitant, price tag that opera interacting with a lawyer would cost.

00;41;36;27 – 00;42;00;06
Speaker 1
And then we build monthly. So, you know, it’s been I’ve helped organizations with employee handbooks. They come back just after my interactions and engagement with them on, you know, bits and pieces of what their employee, the handbook says, what it means, are they operating to it? And then, you know, inevitably an employee relations or an employee situation comes up and they know that they need to address it in a specific way, and they’ll come to me.

00;42;00;06 – 00;42;24;12
Speaker 1
And they just they love hearing how I articulate myself in a situation with an employee. So whether I’m writing the email or the correspondence for them or their, I’m giving them coaching and guidance on how to have a conversation. I always think it’s really funny because people are like, oh, that’s really good. Can you repeat that? And I was like, this is just coming off the cuff, like set of the recorder on.

00;42;24;19 – 00;42;43;10
Speaker 1
It’s just part of like my, my normal vocabulary. But, yeah. So the future really looks like, you know, if we find the right client, in the right fit. And I think that that’s the biggest thing for Bill and I today is we’re not going to we’re not going to force a client to work with us in the way that we work.

00;42;43;10 – 00;43;04;02
Speaker 1
This is how we work. If this aligns with you, if this feels good, then great. Let’s explore it. Let’s see if this is the right fit. If you don’t feel as though you need, you know, an annual service agreement and fully comprehensive HR services, let’s figure out what you do need. Does it need that isn’t an initiative. And we basically build out what that initiative looks like and, you know, put a price tag to it.

00;43;04;02 – 00;43;27;15
Speaker 1
Or is it just ad hoc where you’ve got something going on in your business and you want to know that you’ve got somebody that you can pick up the phone and call, we’ll put a sort of service agreement together for ad hoc HR services and, you know, be on speed dial in the event that, you need somebody to consult on whatever’s going on in your business.

00;43;27;17 – 00;43;49;00
Speaker 2
So I just want to I know we got to get going, but I what I hear you saying, and I want to kind of put a spotlight on this. And I think I talked about this with someone on a previous episode, but there when I, when I look at fractional firms and a lot of businesses that exist today, I feel like there’s there’s kind of two kinds of owners, right?

00;43;49;00 – 00;44;19;10
Speaker 2
There’s the lifestyle owner that is like, you know, I, I’m, I want to take on the appropriate amount of work that we can perform, but still have the lifestyle that I want versus someone who’s trying to build and scale a large business. Right. So like, you’re not the that the, the second one, you’re really like you’re hiring employees, you’re trying to grow, you’re trying to scale, you’re doing all these things, which obviously impacts lifestyle impacts.

00;44;19;10 – 00;44;37;17
Speaker 2
Mobility impacts everything. Or there’s a one where it’s like, well, hey, you know, listen like just to throw out some random numbers, but, you know, I want to make 150 grand a year and my average engagements $10,000 a year or so, I’m going to take on 15 clients. I’m going to work those clients. I can do that comfortably.

00;44;37;22 – 00;44;51;11
Speaker 2
And that’s the life that I want. Would you say that you guys are focused on the lifestyle side or, getting back into the growing and scaling and dealing with all that stuff? What what does that look like for you?

00;44;51;13 – 00;45;24;25
Speaker 1
I would definitely say more the lifestyle side at this point. You know, Bill and I had a pretty direct conversation around the Covid timing and, you know, Bill’s background in business and change leadership has been invaluable in my ability to have a business that is, that I can work for myself, right, without his ability to come in and help us put the business system in place on how we operate with our clients, I would not have been nearly nearly.

00;45;24;25 – 00;45;48;10
Speaker 1
It probably wouldn’t have been successful as a solo air pruner. But because of how we’ve built the business out, it makes it very easy for us to take this business system, pick it up, tailor for a client, and kind of plug back in, being client facing and being the one that was training a lot of our staff pre-COVID.

00;45;48;13 – 00;46;12;06
Speaker 1
It took a certain amount of emotional energy, out of me. And I don’t think that I have that, you know, it was eight years by the time Covid had that, I think that I had put time into doing this. Then all of a sudden I found myself kind of like, you know, 180 and I’m doing the same stuff that I did early on in starting the business.

00;46;12;06 – 00;46;39;02
Speaker 1
And it was at that point in time that I had to say to myself, you know, what’s more important to me? Is it working for myself, or is it having to close the business out and go to work for somebody else? And so, you know, I much prefer to work for myself. And so at this point, you know, we take on you know, it’s not to say that I wouldn’t take on a couple more clients and work more hours a week if we found the right clients to work with.

00;46;39;04 – 00;46;58;00
Speaker 1
But right now, I would say that it is it is more, it’s more lifestyle. The amount of time and energy that I put into HR professionals and develop, like developing them and getting them suited for that next point in their career, not to be within HR resolved was kind of like a kick in the pants a little bit.

00;46;58;02 – 00;47;28;25
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, I, I agree, I think it definitely took the wind out of a lot of sales, like I said earlier. And I know, me personally, I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’ve been doing it for so long or if it’s, my age is, starting to have an effect. But I know recently that energy component of the amount of energy it takes to push and pull and and to do all the behaviors and all the things that are needed in order to grow and scale a business and build those systems out like it is a lot.

00;47;28;28 – 00;47;39;05
Speaker 2
It is a lot and has a, there’s a real tax on the rest of your life when you’re doing all those things. And I mean, recently I’m like.

00;47;39;08 – 00;47;42;04
Speaker 2
Lifestyle business sounds really good right now.

00;47;42;06 – 00;48;19;21
Speaker 1
You know? And it’s funny, I like sometimes I hesitate, I feel guilty saying that. I feel guilty saying lifestyle business, especially to any client that is working with me because I don’t it has no reflection on how hard I’m going to work for them or the deliverable that I’m giving to them, but at the same time, sometimes, and this might just come back from baggage I have for like people I worked for in larger businesses that I felt like I was really helped back in a lot of my corporate jobs by people that I had worked for.

00;48;19;24 – 00;48;35;19
Speaker 1
It was almost like, well, it took me this long to make it this far. It’s going to take you this long to get this far. So when it comes to like, operating my own business and servicing my clients, we all make our own choices, and I just. I don’t want there to be, like, an envy or like,

00;48;35;21 – 00;48;54;07
Speaker 1
Well, like a jealousy. Does that make sense? Like I’m not working 80 hours a week. But you are. I’ve got a lifestyle business. You don’t, It take it should take nothing away from what you’ve hired me to do. I’m going to make sure that I’m there. I’m going to make sure that, you know, your business has what it needs.

00;48;54;07 – 00;49;08;11
Speaker 1
If it requires me to work X number of hours one week, I’m going to make sure that it is done. So saying lifestyle business like there’s a little X to me and I don’t know why. Yeah, it’s a guilt. Or maybe it’s a guilt. I don’t know.

00;49;08;13 – 00;49;36;15
Speaker 2
I don’t know, it sounds like there’s some work to do there, Katie that it’s I. Well, I just think, I think for a lot of fractions, I think it really is lifestyle driven. And specifically for the folks that whether they were in a, you know, a large corporation and they have a set of skills, and now they’re realizing that they can go out on their own and not work the grind like they used to do and still live a live the life that they want.

00;49;36;16 – 00;49;58;21
Speaker 2
I to be fair, I think that I don’t think the lifestyle category has any real impact on the work that you do. I think it’s more just more so about how many clients you take on, what clients you take on. You know, to your point, you’re very you’re not to be pickier about it because again, when you’re in that I need to grow in scale.

00;49;58;21 – 00;50;22;06
Speaker 2
That means you need to keep feeding that machine. Right. And so you feed that machine with as many clients as you can, and there’s so much that can be, it’s very hard when you’re trying to do that. It can be very impactful on your life. Right? So I think by choosing a lifestyle and business as opposed to, I’m going to grow it and scale it huge.

00;50;22;08 – 00;50;39;08
Speaker 2
It’s you’re just making a conscious choice that you’re going to be very selective about your client base. You’re going to make sure you’re doing an amazing job for that client base, because it’s a small client base. So I don’t know, I, I don’t I want to assuage you of your, your guilt when it comes to, like, step outside of things.

00;50;39;08 – 00;51;02;07
Speaker 2
Katie. It’s I don’t think it’s a detractor at all. I think if anything, it’s the people that are getting you as far as their HR, fractional HR person. I think that they’re probably luckier to have you because they don’t have to worry about the, the problems that come along with trying to scale with that whole capacity versus output and all that fun stuff.

00;51;02;07 – 00;51;06;05
Speaker 2
So I think it’s I don’t think it’s detractor. I think if anything, it’s a plus.

00;51;06;08 – 00;51;39;06
Speaker 1
Well, and I will say that, you know, as somebody who I feel like is pretty self reflective, the first eight years of HR resolved, as crazy as they were, I don’t know if I would trade them for anything. I learned a lot about myself. I grew a lot. You know, I mean, to your point, like kind of going back to how we started, you know, with some of my personal pursuits of, like, chasing down crazy distances with running and, you know, personal goals and that type of thing.

00;51;39;08 – 00;51;56;08
Speaker 1
Even even yesterday, I was working on something with Bill, and he’s like, can I just show you how? And it was, you get a kick out of this. It was something mechanically related, right? Like, if I used this set of pliers in such a way, it wouldn’t take me using every ounce of force to get it out.

00;51;56;08 – 00;52;17;14
Speaker 1
He’s like, let me show you the mechanics behind this. And he goes, that’s the difference between running through walls and moving walls. He knows you run through walls, I move walls, which is is very much the truth. Like I will, no matter how hard I have to work, whether I’m moving through a wall or running through a wall or learning to move that wall, I’m.

00;52;17;16 – 00;52;27;02
Speaker 1
I’m going to make sure that, you know, whatever it is that I do is done well and done with, you know, my full zeal and effort and heart, no matter what.

00;52;27;02 – 00;52;35;09
Speaker 2
So love it. Katie, if people want to learn more about you, about HR resolved, how do they find you guys?

00;52;35;12 – 00;52;46;04
Speaker 1
HR resolved.com is probably the best way to, like, find contact information for us. Bill, to direct you to his entire to his, to.

00;52;46;06 – 00;52;46;23
Speaker 2
LinkedIn.

00;52;46;23 – 00;53;13;06
Speaker 1
And I will be the first person to say, please don’t reach out to me on LinkedIn. Go find our contact information on HR resolved.com, because that has a better chance of landing in my inbox than me seeing it. There’s too many social platforms I can’t keep up with all of them. So at LinkedIn is not the best place to find me in terms of I mean, go find me, you know, link, connect with me in that type of thing, but don’t send me a message there because I probably won’t see it.

00;53;13;08 – 00;53;29;27
Speaker 2
That’s fair. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for talking to our audience. Appreciate you. You’re always very helpful when I have an HR question. And I’m actually like, hey, can I get some free consulting? So I appreciate it. And I appreciate you coming on the show.

00;53;29;29 – 00;53;33;12
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, thanks for having me. I always enjoy any conversation with you, Mike.

00;53;33;17 – 00;53;56;09
Speaker 2
Well, thanks, Katie, and thanks everybody for listening. Of course, you can find this episode and all of our previous episodes on hourglass, Nasscom that’s hourglass suspect. Com we’ve got, the podcast listings. There’s some blogs that we put, some additional information we think is going to be helpful to the fractional community. And of course, we also have our weekly newsletter that you can sign up for.

00;53;56;15 – 00;54;11;18
Speaker 2
This is curated information specifically for fractional operators from around the internet. We put together each week and send out. It’s meant to be helpful, and not to be a second job trying to read it. So check it out. Check us out. And, thanks everybody. You’ll hear from us next week.