From Corporate COO to Fractional HR Founder with Kerri Roberts

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast. I’m talking to the founder of Salt and Light Advisors, and what she does is she works with small to mid-size businesses, to help their employees to understand their roles and expectations. So I’m excited to be rocking out today with Kerri Roberts.

Hey, Kerri, you ready to rock?

Kerri Roberts: Hey. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We always start off in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so I was in corporate America for about 20 years and, uh, went on my own in 2023. And not only did I go out on my own, I also sold my home and left the city, bought a 140 acre farm in the middle of the country and completely. I would say downshifted, but when you start an entrepreneurial journey, you’re kind of up shifting in some other ways too.

And so treated some stress for a little bit healthier stress, and it’s gone really, really well.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Well that’s good. It’s uh, not everybody that has some success outta the gate. Right.

Kerri Roberts: Right.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. So now along with that, those successes though, [00:01:00] not everything goes as planned. There’s some bad notes and I do like to talk about those because that is usually what keeps people from starting their business in the first place, is that fear of failure.

And so can you tell me something that didn’t go as planned and how you recovered from that?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, a couple things come to mind. Um, one is from being in corporate and being in larger organizations, I did not understand the entrepreneur or solopreneur or the small business tech stacks. So as soon as I got into my business, I was like, oh, I need Microsoft Outlook and what do I need for A CRM? And just started pouring into some larger technologies and it took me almost no time to realize that’s not necessary to spend that kind of money.

When you don’t have that kind of money coming in, and so really starting over, even though I had lots of tenure in being a Chief operating officer and really felt like I understood business, but entrepreneurship is a completely different beast. And so really. Trimming down and understanding how to do things from bare bones and then building as I, as I went, um, was [00:02:00] a big learning.

And then also just understanding, even though I’ve worked in HR for 20 years, when do you actually hire employees? When you’re a tiny, tiny business, when you’re just starting out and some bumps along the road for me.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Those are both awesome things to talk about, really. Like the first one is like the The tech stack. Yeah. Because I think a lot of people get distracted by all the things that they think they need to buy in order to be. A legitimate business. Right. And sometimes some of those things are needed, some of those things are not needed.

What did you end up settling on as your initial kind of, these are the things that I actually do need to spend money on?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. One of the biggest, um, things that I spent money on that I needed to was QuickBooks, and I’m not like. Promoting them or anything, but I needed that to do, to track my expenses and then also to invoice my clients. It’s very simple, pretty bare bones. They have a bunch of small plans for small entrepreneurs and so that was one that was a good investment.

Um, and then I’ve been able to grow with, I’ve added [00:03:00] modules and like the AI pieces in the budgeting as I’ve grown. Over the last three years. And then the other one was around email marketing, growing an email list. So that way we’re not kind of a, a slave to social media if social media goes down and that’s the only way we’re connecting with people.

And so really building an email list has been huge for me and I got a really affordable tool. I personally use flow desks and it’s very, very affordable and it sends out beautiful emails every week. It’s got kind of the bare bones analytics that I need. I think eventually I’ll ex. Expand on that tool as I get bigger, but maybe not, you know, it’s, I don’t need something that’s, I don’t need a HubSpot when I’m this small.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well that’s, that’s really cool. Those are, and those are great tools too, by the way. Uh, now, ’cause a lot of people do, do, you know, spreadsheets or whatever to manage all their finances. And I mean, that can be overwhelming even for a nerd like me. Right. So, so, uh, that’s really cool that you found those, those great tools.

Uh, what was one that [00:04:00] you absolutely didn’t need then that, that you thought you might have needed?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so when I worked in corporate hr, we did, um, we did skills assessment on a lot of people. And so I’ve been certified in a couple of different of those tools and I thought, well, as soon as I launch my business, I’m going to need those because I’m going to be recommending those to these small clients.

And the reality of it was. That was overblown. Like I did not need that. A lot of me marketing toward micro and small and mid-size businesses, they don’t, they don’t want all of the complications. They many times don’t even see the need for HR or really understand HR at all. So for me, trying to sell like, oh, you can do predictive index with me, you can do skills survey, you know, all these things.

They’re like. Right. I don’t understand that. And also, I don’t even know if I’m paying my people correctly. You know, it was kind of, um, tone deaf and so I af year two. I did not renew a few of my technology pieces in that way, and really made sure that I focused on [00:05:00] those bare basics.

Tim Melanson: Wow. I love that. Awesome. So let’s talk a little bit about the jam room and the office and all that stuff. So tell me what, what do you see as a successful home office?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Number one, a dedicated space. I see a lot of people who, you know, pop up on their table or in their, you know, their bar or their kitchen island, and a couple of things, like one, I’m 43 years old, so my back needs like a good functional chair. I, I can’t be sitting on a bar stool all day. And I really need to be able to have my mind recognize, like I’m walking into my productive space, my focus space when I’m out, where my dogs are at, or you know, hanging out in the kitchen, I find myself wanting to feed my sourdough starter or maybe start a little laundry.

And so having a dedicated space is big, but I’ve also found an aesthetically pleasing organized space is really helpful for me and my brain, so that way I can focus on work and I’m not like distracted by the clutter.

Tim Melanson: Well, it’s funny how, when. People think about starting a [00:06:00] business, the things that they think that they need are like complicated tech stacks and the things that they think that they don’t need is a nice chair, right? You find like, I just find that really interesting that when I speak to a lot of people on this podcast, their home office is like something inspiring to them.

They have some sort of self-care routine that that’s going on actually. Do you have a sort of self-care routine that you have?

Kerri Roberts: Yes. I actually just posted a picture of my breakfast this morning and was like, I, I don’t know if I could ever go back to work in an office because at nine 30 every morning I make myself eight fabulous breakfast, and that’s just part of my work from home routine. But when I get up in the morning, I have, I do time blocking on my calendar.

So that way it kind of free me up that guilt of sitting down at my office and needing to start cranking out emails or projects or whatever that guilt’s removed, because I know the first thing I’m gonna do is tend to myself and do a home reset. And then I’m gonna read my devotional and then I’m gonna move my body, and then I’m going to eat.

[00:07:00] Then I’m going to sit down at my desk and I don’t come into my office until 10 o’clock in the morning and I just don’t, don’t sacrifice that.

Tim Melanson: Wow. How do you handle clients that might want you outside of those times? Like how do you handle those boundaries?

Kerri Roberts: That definitely does happen. I mean, there’s certainly times where a client’s like, Hey, you know, can you hop on a call at 7:00 AM because we’re trying to terminate a person today. And usually I say like, would tomorrow work? You know, can we hop on later today? What’s the rush? If it’s an egregious issue or you know, like someone’s in danger.

That’s one thing, but so many people feel like everything is an emergency, and I understand that it’s stressful. I’m not saying that it’s not a stressful situation, but you should probably calm down and take some breaths and let’s think through this. Maybe a good night’s rest would be helpful in the process.

So I usually don’t say, I’m not available until 10:00 AM I usually ask them why. Uh, can we talk about it later? Um, but I set that expectation [00:08:00] from the very beginning of when I’m going to be available to them. One of the big things that I’ve learned is time does not equal my value. And I know that probably sounds like a little conceptual, but the amount of hours that I work for a client or when I clock in for a client and when I clock out for the day does not equal the value that I bring to them.

So if I start working for them at 10:00 AM versus 7:30 AM that doesn’t mean that I’m bringing less value.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Especially if you spend the same amount of time, but even if you don’t, right. I mean there, that’s one of the things that I think comes up a fair bit is the hourly versus package type conversation. Like do you, uh, and actually, do you tell them how many hours you spend on them or no.

Kerri Roberts: No, my first year in business I did for sure I, the way I do fractional. HR leadership. And so when I first started, I didn’t know how else to do it. And so I was like, okay, we’ll either have one call a [00:09:00] month or I will work with your business a half day a week, or I will work with your business one day a week.

And that’s really how I was marketing it. And what I saw was clients saying essentially like, what will you fill your eight hours with? I mean, they weren’t even saying exactly that, but that was the tone that I was setting, and then they were following. And so after my first year, I switched everything to project based.

So now I have a retainer and then one strategic project a month for them that I do, or one strategic project a month, plus all HR escalation, like personal. Personnel escalation. And so now those are packaged based and project based and not time based. And I feel better about that. And honestly, I think my clients do too, because they still know what to expect.

It’s just not anchored by a number of minutes.

Tim Melanson: I love that. I love that. How did you make that transition with your clients? Like what was, did you send ’em an email, like how did it work?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, I would say, you [00:10:00] know, for the clients who were getting the half day or a full day, I had to massage that a little bit because they had this expectation. But the way I did that was like, let’s set up a standing call so you feel comfortable with the progress that’s being made. And only one client kept the standing call.

Everyone else saw the progress being made. I do end of month project recap emails, and so I’m like, Hey, here’s what we accomplish. And usually we’re in communication things going back and forth, and so they see what’s happening and they were actually relieved by not having that scheduled standing meeting with me anyway.

Tim Melanson: Oh, that’s great. Yeah. Uh, the standing meetings. Yeah. I mean, everybody’s got too many meetings, so, so I mean, taking a meeting off the table isn’t necessarily gonna be a bad thing for most clients,

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, one client who was just hell bent on having the standing meeting, I said to her regularly, you’re paying me a lot for my brain, but you’re not allowing me to access it because we’re constantly on meetings. And I had that client for a little over two years, and then I, [00:11:00] um, I. Graduated her to friend because it just wasn’t a very good fit.

Tim Melanson: Oh, very good wording. You’re in hr, right?

Kerri Roberts: Yes.

Tim Melanson: Oh dear. So that’s, that’s awesome. And I think that, uh, like what I’ve noticed as well, and even from both sides of it, is that people like to know what they’re paying as well. And when you’re doing packages, it’s very like. It, it, it’s cut and dry. This is what we’re paying and this is what we’re paying for it.

Whereas this by the hour now, it’s like, okay, are you gonna charge by the hour? You know, how much, how much is this gonna cost? Is this gonna balloon up? Like, there’s a lot of like disadvantages to doing the hourly work too, right?

Kerri Roberts: There really is, and even when I was saying like, okay, I’m doing one day a week for you, it was really easy for me to creep out of that time span because I would want to work. I’d block off my calendar like Wednesday is this client’s day? But things would come up on a Monday or a Thursday, and because of what they were paying me, I felt [00:12:00] obligated to take the call.

And so even if I would try to pare down the hours on that Wednesday, let’s say, I would end up working way more. And so I was blocking on my calendar. Here’s, you know, when I would take a call with them, here’s when I would do thought work for them, answer emails, whatever. And I was usually going over, it was usually not to my benefit.

And so I just realized like. I’m an honest person. I’m not trying to cheat anybody out of anything. They’re gonna have to trust me, and if they don’t, I’m not the right fit.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think I, I think also as you get better at what you do, you take, it takes less time to do it. So then you end up reaping the rewards of that. Um, yeah. There’s so many benefits to doing it in package time, so I I love that. Uh, tell me a little bit more about how you get fans, though, like how you get people in the door.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, so my first year I relied solely on my network. Um, I’d worked in corporate for 20 years. About every four to five years, I changed roles and I’ve been on several boards. So when I announced that I was going out on my own, I [00:13:00] know this isn’t the case for everyone and I don’t take that for granted, but I filled my pipeline.

I launched April 1st, and I was full through the end of the year, and I’m, I’m grateful for that. Um, but I saw pretty quickly that. You’re gonna exhaust your personal network, even though I’ve got a pretty, pretty good one. Um, I realized like, okay, that was really great, but I’m going to have to focus on email marketing.

Like I said, being present on social media. I wrote my first book, you know, doing some things in the thought leadership space so that way people could trust me that don’t know me personally because I have a great professional reputation, but. You don’t really have much of anything with people that you don’t know.

You know, that like no trust factor from a marketing perspective. And so I really had to get active from, um, a social media and a marketing perspective. And I’ve never done any paid ads or anything like that, but I really had to reach. And year two, I saw, you know, connections of my network. And now I’m in a place in year three where I’m working with people I’ve never heard of before.

Tim Melanson: Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah, [00:14:00] and I think that because depending on who you are, some people will start out of the gate and have nothing and start from nothing and build that. And then some people do have a big boom because they’ve got a good network. But then eventually it just, it just kind of fizzles out.

Now, did you know that that was going to happen or did it fizzle out and then you went, uh oh.

Kerri Roberts: No. So, and I should say from the very beginning when I launched my business. The way I launched it was I asked my current employer if I could go 10 99 for them, and. Here’s something that most people that don’t have HR experience wouldn’t do. But I have a lot of confidence in this because I’ve been in HR for 20 years and I know the way that I would look at employees versus contractors and the expense associated.

And so I went to my employer, it was a startup. They’d been around for three years and I said, Hey, I’m seeing some inefficiencies in my department and I personally think that I could work for you. In about half the amount of time I could bill you hourly, you could [00:15:00] remove my employee benefits and all of my perks.

Therefore, you’d be paying me probably less than half of what you’re paying me right now, and you could be my first client and I could be a contractor. And I pitched that to them. I was on vacation. I had this call scheduled and um, I was shocked. Within 24 hours, they were like, yeah, let’s do it. And this was the end of March in 2023.

I launched on April 1st while I was still on vacation. Now, unfortunately, because of what I brought to light, they fired my two counterparts because they were like, yeah, we actually don’t need it the way that it is. But somebody needed to tell the truth. And working in HR for all of these years. I hate to see inefficiencies and time and money wasted because then trust is low and um, it’s not fulfilling because people are scrutinizing on the role.

I could see all of these things happen. They had prematurely hired my department. It was an operations department, and so by me offering that, they kind of saw the light. I took them on as my first client and I had them, they filled about. 40 to 45% of all of my time in the first [00:16:00] year. And then eventually I said, Hey, I’m billing you by the hour.

This isn’t the structure that I wanna have in my business. So I either want to go project based with you or we can part ways. And I’m so grateful that you’ve been my beginning. And they essentially said, yeah, let’s phase out, which was fine with me. Um, so. I saw it coming. You know, I saw my need to go from the hourly perspective or the time-based perspective to project-based pretty quickly.

I’d say within the first six months I was like, oh, this isn’t very fun. I’ve created a job for myself. You know what I mean? Like, I’ve launched my own business, but now I’m just a kind of a slave to the time clock. And so I saw it coming and started working toward project based assignments, you know, within the first couple of months.

Tim Melanson: Okay, so that leads to another one. Now, when you switch, and I don’t know if you’re comfortable talking numbers, maybe you can talk percentages,

Kerri Roberts: I’m totally fine talking

Tim Melanson: okay.

Kerri Roberts: I think it’s helpful for people to know, you

Tim Melanson: So, so you, you’re working a job and now you basically get outta that job and do pretty [00:17:00] like similar things for them, but now you’re a contractor. What did that do to your hourly rate?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. So I was making about $300,000 a year for this. As an employee, and that’s not counting what they were putting toward my retirement and my benefits. So, you know, I was making a good clip. I, I was a VP of operations and so when I said, okay, I want to do this, I took my hourly rate and divided it in half and said, that’s what I would bill them hourly.

Shouldn’t have done that because really I’m removing benefits and everything else. But I was looking at it as, I wanna make this so easy for them to say yes. You know, like I, I want this to be a no-brainer, huge cost savings. And if, if you’re saving an organization, um, this company was like 60 million in revenue.

If you’re saving them $10,000 a year, that might not be appealing to them. But if you’re saving them a hundred thousand, 150,000. $200,000 a year, then they’re gonna recognize that and they’re gonna be able to make [00:18:00] investments in another area. And so I wanted them to be able to say yes. And so I kind of went big

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, definitely.

Kerri Roberts: went from about. Um, quarter of a mill base to about $80,000. I don’t wanna say base ’cause I was billing them hourly. Could I have billed them more and fluff that? Yeah. ’cause they didn’t understand how much time the work took, but I was really trying to build other clients at the same time and so I treated them fairly.

And that was, I upped my hourly rate with them after about three months. ’cause I was like, Hey, you guys, I’m learning some things here. And they followed it. They went along with that. But, um, ultimately I wish I wouldn’t have undercut myself to that level, but I really wanted them to say yes. And the data shows that that’s exactly what women do.

I mean, men do it too. But, um, that is very, very common for a woman to say. I’m really good at this, but I’ve never done it in this exact way, so I’ll take less money and shouldn’t have done that. Lesson learned, and [00:19:00] I’ve priced myself appropriately moving forward.

Tim Melanson: Good. Well, that’s good. Well, well, because that’s what I wanted to kind of address a little bit because I think that people don’t see the things that they’re, that the company is gaining by hiring you as a contractor rather than as an employee. And I think a lot of people will go with. F probably the same amount of money, which is still bad, right?

I mean, if you’re making whatever it is, you know, 50 bucks an hour in a company doing whatever it is now you, you move to a contractor, 50 bucks an hour is not the same anymore. Now you have to pay all your overhead. Right?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, and luckily for

Tim Melanson: you be charging?

Kerri Roberts: at least your same hourly rate, I mean at least, but I would say. I was working about half the time for them as I, as I was, and that going from like a quarter of a mill base. My first year I, my top line revenue was about 190,000 in my consulting firm, and so I wasn’t [00:20:00] that far off.

I mean, I had spent some money on tech and some things like that, but I was like, okay, I had to, I took a little step back and that’s okay. The next year I closed two 40. This last year I’ve closed 2 75, so I’m moving my way back up. But, um, probably didn’t need to take that same level of step back because when you look at benefits, any benefits, whether they’re a 3% match on your retirement that you put in, or medical or any ancillary, any perks.

Like I had several perks. I was traveling all the time. They paid my flights, my hotels, you know, all of that. And then on top of that, the taxes that they have to pay on you, like it is a major cost savings to an organization to go contractor now. From a legal perspective, they can’t tell you exactly how to do your work or what time to do your work or all of that, or you’re actually being treated as an employee, and that’s an HR law thing.

I knew enough to be able to tell them how to get out of that, but you can’t just say, I’m gonna do the exact same thing and become a contractor for you. Legally, an employer should not [00:21:00] allow you to do that.

Tim Melanson: Wow. Okay. Interesting. Well, so now talking a little bit about, you know, the financials of it, making sure that, that you’re making as much as you should be making. I’m wondering, did you have any, uh, like other than your QuickBooks, like how do you keep track of all that stuff?

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, I was mainly doing it in QuickBooks. I started out in Excel for my first like two months and was like, this is gonna be a train wreck. Um, and so I immediately moved into QuickBooks and the reason for that is I saw pretty quickly that I was going to be making. Over a hundred thousand, $150,000. And so I moved from an LLC filing as an LLC to an LLC filing as an S corp because the tax advantages were better.

And again, that’s just research that I had done and I had a CPA that I had already done tax planning with before. So I asked her opinion on how I should be setting it up. So. In QuickBooks. I then was bringing bus money into the business to salt my [00:22:00] advisors and then paying myself as an employee, set up a simple IRA for myself.

So I’m doing contributions. So there’s several different things that I did, and QuickBooks makes that all automated. You know, you can set it up as reoccurring, you can pay your taxes through that, and all of that kind of stuff. And so it made it much easier than trying to manage all of that myself.

Tim Melanson: Wow. How’d you figure all that stuff out?

Kerri Roberts: Well, I’ve been in business for over 20 years before I started my own business, and so I had a, a general understanding and um, I’ve also got a real estate investment firm, but really I came from a farm, a very simple upbringing, and I’ve just studied it and learned. I’ve got a business undergrad, I’ve got an MBA, um, my husband has his MBA as well.

And so we just did the research and honestly, with AI now. I’m not saying that it’ll tell you everything perfectly, but good prompts in is good data out, and so I would learn as much as I possibly could. And then if I had to pay an attorney an hourly rate or you know, phone a [00:23:00] friend through my CPA, I would do that.

And I would say like, here’s what I think is this. Am I on the right track? You know, but I ask all the AI all the time, like, what questions should you be asking me to help make good decisions?

Tim Melanson: Yeah, I, I use AI quite a bit now too, and especially like, ’cause I, I used to do, just do regular Google and, and mainly what would happen is that I would have a conversation with somebody who would say stuff like what you just said. And I’d go, oh, that sounds interesting. And then go research it and figure out what they actually meant by that.

And now it’s just so much easier with the chat. Like, you can understand all the business structures and decide where you are. And it’s, it’s great for that kind of stuff. So I think that we’re gonna see a lot more, uh, it’s, it has such a great benefit to the self-employed people who are working from home.

Now. You don’t need to have an MBA technically to, to be able to know this stuff. Right.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, and I think, did I learn it in my MBA? Not necessarily, but I, it gave me the confidence to navigate inside of business and kind of remove that fear. [00:24:00] I have a good baseline, but so much has changed. And when I was in my MBA program, I was a chief operating Officer, so. My mindset was different. I was operating inside of a, you know, $85 million company.

Now I’m operating inside of a little micro company. And so it all applies differently and tax law looks different and everything like that. And so, um, I went from a W2 employee to a K one employee before I went to, you know, self-employed. And so that progression also helped me to see like. I can do tax planning.

You know, I can figure this out. It’s not that complicated. I’m mailing a check once a quarter. I just have to stay on top of it, whether it’s through calendar reminders in my Outlook inbox or whatever that, you know, whatever a person’s system is to make sure that you’re not falling behind on your obligations.

Tim Melanson: I’m wondering if we go back to the beginning, what, like what was the reason why you decided you wanted to leave a, you know, $300,000 a year job?

Kerri Roberts: You know, I, before I had that role, um, I was a [00:25:00] shareholder in an organization, and that’s when I was a K one employee and I realized I had never, I never had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur. My, my dad has been an entrepreneur since I was five and. My perspective of him was, you have to sacrifice family.

You work all the time. You know you’re not present. And so I had this incorrect perspective and so that told me, you know, as a mother, that’s not something I ever wanna do. I wanna, I wanna be a good wife, I wanna be a good mom. You know, I’m not going to be an entrepreneur. And what I realized was if you’re a driven person, you’ll get upside down in other people’s businesses just as easy as you will on your own.

And I did. I a hundred percent did. I, I was completely upside down working all of the time. And it took a some pain in business for me to realize like, I can either fill this pain in somebody else’s business where they bestow upon me a 4% increase every year. Or I can go out and do this on my own. And some people don’t have the guts to bet on themselves, and some people do.

You know, entrepreneurship isn’t [00:26:00] for everyone. But if you’ve even got an inkling of that, it’s worth a shot. What’s the worst case scenario? You go back. It’s not a prison sentence, you know, you can always go back.

Tim Melanson: I love that. I love that. It’s such a great perspective. And, and then back to another thing that we talked about, which is like the packaging stuff instead of the hourly rate. I mean, the really, if you’re that type of person, you want to get that job done and you want to get it done right, they don’t have enough hours in their hour block or whatever it happens to be that they can’t afford, that doesn’t look good on you because, I mean, you want to deliver exactly what you said you were gonna deliver.

You want to get a good referral because isn’t that gonna help you in the, in the long run too, right.

Kerri Roberts: Absolutely. Referrals are everything and yeah, I. I can’t imagine underdelivering for a client. That’s not something that I ever want to do. Um, but I also, I’ve got two big Labradors and all of this. I live on this 140 acres. I walk every day. I’ve got all of this time and space. I meal prep for our dinners, like I am so more well [00:27:00] balanced and calm.

My central nervous system is regulated and I don’t have to feel guilty about. Taking two hours in the middle of the day to do whatever I wanna do. I, I do that all of the time. That’s an expectation that I’ve set for myself.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. I love that. For people who are very, very driven, this is definitely a great place to be because now you actually are a little bit more in control. Of, because I mean, we, we like to work. It’s not that we, because I think that that’s the difference between, you know, the employee gets, kind of told what they need to do, and if they don’t do it, they get fired.

Whereas when you’re self-employed, no one’s telling you what to do. So if you’re not the type that just loves to do it, you’re, you might have a hard time, right?

Kerri Roberts: if you’re an employee who is constantly trying to bring value or, um, you fill in the gaps or you’re looking to bring value or you see process improvement, that, those are pretty good indicators that entrepreneurship would look good on you.

Tim Melanson: Yep. When I was, uh, just quick story. When I was in the corporate, you [00:28:00] know, more than 20 years ago, the, the straw that broke the camel’s back in my situation was that I was working in this. Giant company and they had a bunch of different departments and, uh, every, all the departments were like fighting over who was gonna do this work piece and whatever it was, it was easier to get done and faster to get done.

If it was someone, if it was the other department that did it, I did it for the other department and I got in trouble. So I was like. This is not where I want to be. I wanted, I want the best scenario for the company, which is what I delivered, and I got in trouble because it made us look bad. It made and made them look good.

I’m like, this is just

Kerri Roberts: Yeah, once, once you get away from the politics, it’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t, for me. I’ve had a few clients say like, what would it take for you to come on board? I’m like, you’re first born. I don’t, there’s nothing I, it’s priceless. I, I don’t wanna come on board full time. That’s not a good fit for me. You wouldn’t even like me there because I would be disruptive.[00:29:00]

I mean, like, I’m unemployable. That’s just what I’ve come to learn, and I’m very comfortable with that.

Tim Melanson: Uh, I love that. So tell me it’s your time for your guest solo. What’s exciting in your business? I mean, everything right?

Kerri Roberts: Every, everything. Yes. Gosh, I’m, I’m having a blast. Um, but I would say, I’m really taking a look at my language. Um, you know, when you first start a bank, a business from a marketing perspective, you’re trying to appeal, you know, you’re trying to appeal maybe to everybody, maybe to too many people. And I’ve gotten to where.

I recognize I’ve increased my prices this year, which was exci scary, but then exciting. Nobody even balked at it. It was, I was like, oh gosh, what a blessing. You know, I’ve brought enough value that no one said I’m out. Um, everybody was like, okay, yeah, just send it to accounting or whatever. Um, so that part’s been fun to really analyze, but changing the language around.

Every, every way that I show up, whether it’s the content that I’m writing through my blog posts, my [00:30:00] email marketing, my social media, getting really clear on who I’m trying to reach, because I, I’ve recognized what happens when I draw in the wrong people. They’re either not ready to make the investment or the, uh, partnership is difficult, and so that part’s.

Really fun to, the refinement part is really, really fun because I know the next layer of clients that I bring in, they’re gonna be even more well aligned than anybody ever has.

Tim Melanson: I love the excitement that you have towards your business. It’s so infectious. I love it.

Kerri Roberts: Thank you. Yeah, it’s, it’s a good time. I mean, you know when you’re aligned, you know what I mean? Like, if you are completely drained and it takes life away, you need to reevaluate.

Tim Melanson: Yeah,

Kerri Roberts: Because this is what it should feel like. This is like using your skills, your gifts, and your abilities, and if that feels draining, like there’s something going on that you need to assess and reflect.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. So how do people get in touch with you?

Kerri Roberts: Uh, I’m pretty active on the social, so, um, my Instagram handle is [00:31:00] Kerry m Roberts and Kerry’s, K-E-R-R-I and, uh, LinkedIn, Kerry m Roberts as well. And I’m accessible on both of those. And then if you, my website’s kerry m roberts.com or salt knight advisors.com, both of those have a contact page where people can reach out to me.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. And who would be the type of person that would get the most outta working with you?

Kerri Roberts: So typically I’m working with clients anywhere from, let’s say, 10 to 60 employees. Um, and usually that’s anywhere from 250,000 to 85 million in revenue.

Tim Melanson: Okay. Awesome. So now one more question. Let’s talk a little bit about music. Who’s your favorite rock star?

Kerri Roberts: Oh gosh. First of all, uh, I’m not big on, I’m not big on tv, but did you watch Post Malone cover Ozzy Osborne the other night?

Tim Melanson: no. When did that happen? Oh, the Grammys

Kerri Roberts: have to go watch it. Grant, was it the Grammys? Um, it’s all over social

Tim Melanson: of them.

Kerri Roberts: It’s, it’s all over. It’s whatever was two nights ago. Um, oh. I mean, people were crying, like, [00:32:00] of course Sharon was crying.

You know, that was pretty beautiful. Um, I love the Black Crows, um, as far as rock goes, but I am, I was born in the early eighties and so I, I’m the eighties and nineties music girl.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, me too. Right on. Well, thank you so much for rocking out with me today, Kerri. This has been a ton of fun.

Kerri Roberts: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Tim Melanson: Great. And to the listeners, make

sure you go to workathomerockstar.com for

more information and we’ll see you next time on the Work At Home Rockstar Podcast. I.