80 | From Corporate HR To Salt And Light Advisors: A Founder’s Playbook with |Kerri Roberts

What if HR stopped feeling like red tape and started working like a confidence engine for your business? We sit down with Carrie Roberts, author of The HR Easy Button and founder of Salt and Light Advisors, to unpack a grounded, step-by-step approach to people operations that small and mid-sized businesses can actually use. Carrie shares how she left the C-suite, turned her employer into her first client, and built a lean, faith-centered firm that helps owners sleep better by getting the fundamentals right.

We dig into the real reasons entrepreneurs avoid HR and the hidden costs of skipping basics like job descriptions, clean employee files, proper classification, and pay bands. Carrie shows how to map risk clearly, legal, financial, culture, and insurance, so you can choose what to tackle now and what to watch. She also opens up about therapy-informed boundary setting, designing an ideal calendar that honors family and focus, and the surprising revenue growth that followed saying no to a misaligned client. The playbook is practical: build the foundation, simplify your tools, and iterate with data and integrity.

You’ll also hear why AI belongs in your HR toolkit. From turning annual objectives into weekly tasks to drafting onboarding flows and interview guides, AI can boost speed without replacing human judgment. Carrie’s “HR in a Box” membership makes expert guidance accessible with monthly teaching, live Q&A, and ready-to-use templates at a small-business-friendly price point. We close with a self-trust framework—integrity, intent, capabilities, results, that helps leaders keep promises to themselves and lead with steady confidence.

If you’re ready to replace HR anxiety with clarity and momentum, hit play. Subscribe, share with a fellow founder, and leave a review with your top takeaway so we can keep bringing you practical strategies that move the needle.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Carrie’s Mission
• 1:12 From Corporate To Founder
• 3:40 The Leap To Fractional HR
• 6:20 Entrepreneur Lessons And Iteration
• 9:30 Mindset Shifts And Lean Tech
• 13:42 Hiring Help And Paying Yourself
• 17:27 Calendar Design And Ideal Week
• 21:37 Therapy, Boundaries, And Self-Priority
• 25:32 Saying No And Rapid Growth
• 29:02 A Disarming Approach To HR Risk
• 33:52 The HR Easy Button Foundation

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

You're listening to the Off Balance Podcast, where faith, family, and business collide. Hosted by Brooks Deming, Doctor of Business Administration, Business Coach, and Resilience Expert. Each episode features real-life conversations to help entrepreneurs like you build resilience and lead with confidence.

SPEAKER_01: 0:32

Welcome back to Off Balance. I'm your host, Dr. Brooks. Many leaders find themselves pulled in multiple directions, trying to build successful businesses, lead with integrity, and stay grounded in faith and family. Our guest today, Carrie Roberts, understands attention all too well. She's the author of the HR Easy Button and the founder of Saw and Light Advisors, where she helps small to mid-sized businesses create people-centered workplaces that work. Carrie, welcome to Off Balance.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03

Thank you so much for joining us today. So I told the listeners a little bit about who you are and what it is that you do, but can you give them more information about yourself?

SPEAKER_02: 1:12

Yeah. So I spent about the first 20 years of my career in corporate in a number of different industries from distribution to finance to higher education and then to insurance and ended up launching my own firm in April of 2023, Salt and Light Advisors. And we focus on setting the foundation for small to mid-sized businesses when it comes to human resources. Most of these organizations are too small to really dedicate resources to hiring a full-time HR person. And so we come alongside them either from a fractional perspective or a membership perspective and give them the support they need. So we have several different offerings, whether it's group settings, I do an HR-specific focused teaching each month and then give resources like templates and checklists and downloadable options for them, or I can do one-on-one with them and their organization. So it's really fulfilling because most of these small to mid-sized business owners have employees and they have needs, but they don't really have the financial means to hire a full-time person. So I'm able to come alongside and really make an impact.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

What moment in your career prompted you to start your business?

SPEAKER_02: 2:32

I had never really had a dream to be an entrepreneur. My father went out on his own when I was five. And as I was growing up, my mom would always say things like, Oh, your dad has a client here, or dinner's going to be cold. And so I had always thought I would work in somebody else's organization. And I did that for 20 years and really didn't find myself any more balanced in someone else's organization than my father did running his own. And so when I was working in the insurance industry, I saw an opportunity that essentially my role I felt could have been a contractor. And being an HR person, I know what all of that looks like as far as the difference between W-2 and contracting work. And so I reached out to the leader of that organization and said, I think you could save some money if you would have me be a contractor instead of a W-2 employee. So you could nix my benefits and I could charge you hourly. And I could go out on my own and you could be my first client. And I was like, just think it over something that I've been thinking about for about six months. And I just think it's a better fit for the organization. And maybe I would go out on my own and you could be my first client. And I was on vacation when we had this phone call. And within 24 hours, the CEO, the person that I was talking to, and the head of HR called me back and said, Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. So I remember I walked into the other room in our VRBO with my husband, and I was like, I have to pick up a website and a business name and an LLC and get all of that situated. So by the time we got home from our vacation, we had set all of that up and started a bank account and was ready to roll. So really it was that opportunity intersecting with the desire and the timing was right. And I feel like God just opened the door and I stepped through it and it felt pretty wild because I had this impression on my heart that Salt and Light Advisors or Salt and Light was going to be something for me, whether it was going to be a women's group or something in my life. But I hadn't really thought it was going to be an HR consulting firm. That wasn't in my mind. I just knew it was going to be something. And so I knew immediately, okay, I've got to have a business name that's going to be Salt and Light something. And we started looking what web domains were available. Salt and Light Advisors was, and I was like, all right, that's it. And it's just stuck. So it's been a really fun two and a half years ever since.

SPEAKER_01: 4:54

I can imagine that starting your own business can be scary. What have you learned about yourself on your journey as an entrepreneur?

SPEAKER_02: 5:01

Oh, it is wild. I was a chief operating officer before, and that comes with a lot of pressure being a C-suite executive. And I was a partner at my firm and a shareholder and all of that. But that pressure when you're inside of an ecosystem is very different than when it's you. And this has been a very humbling, raw, vulnerable experience because while I felt very confident in my abilities inside of someone else's business, the level of agility that it takes to run your own business and being okay with changing your mind and realizing that's not flaky and you're still professional. You're just learning, you're learning what the market wants, you're learning what works with clients, you're learning what works with marketing, you're learning what works with billing, all of those things is just this constant learning opportunity. You either stay stuck and are stagnant, or you say, Oh, looks like I need to pivot, I need to change some things. And so over time, that's what I've done. But it's been very different because in large corporations, you've got a strategic plan, you've got your one, your three, your five, your goals. And it's like right now, every time I open up Chat GPT, I'm like, so I'm doing it this way, but maybe I need to do it this other way. Can you help me ask me some questions to help me think through this? And it's just been this constant iteration. And I know I haven't nearly arrived. It's gonna continue down this path.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

So you mentioned that you held executive level roles. What mindset shifts did you have to make to go from that level of leadership to now running your own business?

SPEAKER_02: 6:38

Yeah, it has been a huge mindset shift. Everything from the way I utilize technology to when it was time to hire somebody to be an assistant. For example, on the tech side of things, being in large organizations, when I started my own business, I immediately was like, okay, I need to use Outlook 365 and I need a CRM and I need to set up my billing. And what I learned is all of the big tech that I knew for 20 years, some of it's relevant, but a lot of it's not. There's so many more small business options out there that I was just pretty ignorant to. I'd never used anything like that. And so really calling on other friends that ran small businesses and saying, what are you using for billing and invoicing? And when did you implement a CRM? And do you use email marketing and what tools do you use for that? And like really getting down to the nitty-gritty because when you've got a large corporation that's working on a multi-million dollar budget, and then you start your own firm. And for me, I didn't get funding. I just started everything from scratch and added new tools as I could afford them. It is a completely mindset, a complete mindset shift versus well, how much is allocated in the budget? And can I spend it this year or do I need to wait till next year? It's like, all right, we're looking month to month right now as we grow. And we're not looking year to year at this point. We're really building.

SPEAKER_01: 8:03

That is so interesting. So looking back on your entrepreneur journey, what lesson do you wish you would have learned sooner that you could have saved yourself like a lot of time and money?

SPEAKER_02: 8:14

Yeah. So I launched in April of 23, and a young woman reached out to me in July of that year and said, I'm a realtor, I own a little clothing boutique, and I'd like to learn more about business. I had picked up the book Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell and had read it on a flight. And this female had reached out to me as soon as I had landed. And so I started thinking through what I could pull off of my plate and give it to her. And she was 1099. It was a great fit. And she started taking like 10 to 15 hours a week off my plate. I should have left it there, but I got really excited about giving other people the opportunity to work in a business where you can work remotely, where you don't have to have childcare. You can balance being a stay-at-home and work on my team. These are things that in the corporate setting, I wasn't able to give these opportunities to other people. It was more of a rigid environment. And so I got really excited and I hired a marketing person, part-time, but that person wanted to be W 2. And so I was like, okay, I can figure that out. Like we can make this W-2. Things just snowballed. And before I knew it, I was creating really great part-time W-2 employment for other people, but wasn't really paying myself very much at all. And so I went down that path. And it took me a couple of years to really think, okay, am I running this? I'm running it like a nonprofit, even though it's a for-profit business. I'm running it like it's a purpose-driven organization, which it is, but I also need to run it and make some money for myself. And so I had to reevaluate and go back to, all right, individuals can be contractors. It needs to be part-time. Even if a person's desire is to grow with me, while that's flattering, that doesn't mean that I have to go down that path.

SPEAKER_01: 10:55

Yeah, that's very interesting because sometimes we can take those things that were missing in corporate and we can bring them into our business and not realizing a lot of those things that are missing in corporate is because it does affect the bottom line. And so I'm glad that you caught it earlier. So now what strategies do you have in place to keep yourself balanced because you are a mom, you're a business owner, and you are a leader.

SPEAKER_02: 11:20

So I have really taken a look at my calendar and in corporate, I always lived by my calendar as well, but everything was booked so minute to minute. And part of the beauty of entrepreneurship is it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to sit down at your desk at 8 a.m. and get up at 5 p.m. and take a set lunch. I really had to get out of that mindset to stop going into my office and sitting down all day and forgetting to eat. I don't have to run my life like this anymore. It's taken me a while to get to my ideal day and my ideal work week, but I don't step into my office before nine o'clock in the morning. I take care of my moming first, whether that's packing lunch or running my son to school, starting a load of laundry, thinking about dinner for the evening, doing the things that make me feel really good and secure as a wife and as a mother. So I do that first and foremost. And sometimes that includes me hopping. I've got a sauna at home. So me hopping in the sauna and then the shower or going outside and taking a quick walk with my dog. So really starting my day, not as a professional. And then I don't schedule anything before 9 a.m. But the very first thing I schedule on my calendar is admin work for me. So I can get caught up on emails. And so I make sure that I've got all my billing in check and all of my contracting and everything's in order for the day. I used to allow people to dictate my schedule. So if someone wanted me at 9 a.m., the answer was yes. If someone wanted me at 8 a.m., the answer would be yes. Even though I'd rather not sit down in my office until nine, sure, if that works best for you, then I'll do it. And I don't do that anymore. I make sure that I've got my time blocked. So I started with my admin work and then I move into marketing and business development. And then I block time for myself for lunch, which usually is a walk with my dogs and something nourishing for my body. In the afternoons, I have my focused client time. And so I have got time for deep work and then client meetings after that and really blocking my day. And that's what works for me. I am really focused mid-morning. And so I want to do work on my business during mid-morning. And then in the afternoon, when I'm refreshed, I can come back after my work and really focus on clients and learning what works for me and what's life-giving and what makes me feel balanced between being a wife and a and a professional. I'm thrilled that I'm finally there. It's a learning process.

SPEAKER_01: 13:45

Yeah. Was there like a specific moment that made you realize that you needed to put yourself first in order for you to be the best mom, the best leader, the best wife?

SPEAKER_02: 13:54

It was really a moment with my therapist that I was working through. And I'm going to jump off the deep end a little bit here, but you asked the question. So here we go. Essentially, I was talking through some things with my therapist, and I was talking through professionalism and what I felt like being a professional looked like. And she was asking me some questions about what I feel like that is, and it's honoring commitments, it's staying true to my word, it's being very reliable, it's doing what I say I'm going to do. And so she was asking me sometimes that people haven't done that. And so I was talking her through a time when a client had signed a contract with me, but based off of the declining revenue in her business, she wanted to back down the contract with me and I allowed it to happen. And then a couple of months later, the same thing had happened in her business. And so she wanted to back down the contract with me again. And I paused and thought, maybe we're not aligned. I'm allowing and I'm loyal and so committed that I wouldn't do that to someone else. And I started thinking through times that maybe I've had personal commitments and maybe I haven't felt the best, but I told someone I was going to do it. So gosh dang, I'll take a pain pill or whatever and go do it, even if I've got a headache or if I'm not feeling like it, and even if my body's telling me that I need rest. And what I realized was other people, I'm allowing them to be flexible and honoring their time, their finances, their body, but I don't do it for myself. And it was a huge wake-up call to me that I feel like I'm serving God by being committed, but really I'm turning other people into God and being overly loyal and committed to people and not being loyal and committed to this vessel that God gave me. And that those intuitive pings that I feel in my gut that I need to listen to. And so that's been a hard shift and something that I continue to work through, but it's opened my eyes to times where I've done things for other people that are inconvenient for me, or maybe something I don't really want to do. But someone needs me to do it, so I do it. And so really learning boundaries and putting those into place and honoring myself, I still want to be a woman of my word, but balancing the needs of myself and my family and really making sure that I show up in business in a way that's honoring to the commitments that I've made to my clients.

SPEAKER_01: 16:16

Thank you so much for sharing that. Because I know a lot of my listeners, they struggle with creating boundaries. When I speak to many of them, they feel that they're gonna miss out on something. So can you share how creating those boundaries have just changed your life in such a great way?

SPEAKER_02: 16:32

Yeah. So that one client example that I gave of when for the second time she wanted to back down a contract, I was like, oh, and I was thinking about the revenue. So she was a fractional client, so it was a decent amount of revenue, but she was backing down her revenue with me because of her financial situation and her needs. And so I was like, gosh, I better go recoup that revenue. Like, I need to go out there and find a client to fill that. But the very next week, I had a couple of speaking engagements set up. And so I was like, I'm gonna get through these speaking engagements. I had two speaking engagements in two days. And one of them was around a hundred people, and the next one was around 150 people. So they were sizable. And so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna focus on this. And then once I get back from those, then I'm gonna hit the ground running and I'll recoup the clients that I need to backfill for that revenue. And so I gave it my all for both of those sessions on the way down, just rehearsing what I was going through. And for one of them, I listened to a podcast to inspire me on the topic, just praying, Lord, give me the words, let me reflect you, let me deliver here, let me bring them value. And after both of those, within four days, not only had I recouped the revenue that I had lost from that client, but I've added four new clients since then. And that's blown the revenue out of the water. And so really removing what wasn't aligned with me gave me the opportunity to draw in clients that are more aligned. And with that learning that I had from setting that boundary and saying this isn't the right thing, I've showed up differently for the next clients. And so I know that I won't have that issue because I'm being more clear on expectations and what I will deliver and what I expect out of a client. It's that leap of faith, it's that trust that, okay, this isn't right for me. And it's taking more time or it's making the wheels wobbly in my business. So I need to let it go and then just let the abundance come in. Let God do his thing. He's not in a shortage of blessings. And so, really allowing that opportunity to come through, I've just seen time and time again that pay off.

SPEAKER_01: 18:43

That is really interesting because sometimes we try to hold on to something, and if we let go, it'll allow God to put other things in our hand because he can't put anything in a closed hand. And so I am so glad that he showed you quickly that your business is a sod in the light and your business is founded on me, and so I am going to take care of you. So that is beautiful. And so when it comes to operating your business, what strategies or tools that do you use that kind of set you apart from other HR firms?

SPEAKER_02: 19:16

Yeah. So I, after being in HR for 20 years, I wouldn't say I've seen it all because people continue to surprise me. You know what I mean? People. They show up in life. And and so I'm I still feel like I'm learning something new every day. But the message that I get across to small to mid-sized business owners is I am not surprised. I don't want you to feel ashamed. Like you are good at your thing. Let's say it's construction company or it's a law firm or it's an accounting firm. That's your thing. I do HR. So when you come to me, I don't want you to feel ashamed. Oh my gosh, I'm embarrassed to say this, but I don't have X, Y, and Z, or here's an issue, or this person's not performing, and I've just been letting it go. I've seen a lot of that. And none of that is a huge shocker. When we're running businesses, a lot of times we're trying to do client acquisition, we're trying to pay the bills, and we're letting some of the people stuff slide, and we're just hoping it doesn't rear its head, and we're just hoping we don't get sued in many cases. And so we've let it slide and hoping that we've just hired the right people. But every once in a while we make mistakes or the people that work for us show up as humans and stuff gets messy. I try to be very clear that I am going to help you understand what the risks are, but it's your business. How many times people get afraid of HR people because they think they're going to come in and meet the compliance police and the policy police? But to me, it's my job to hear you out, to listen first, and then say, okay, based on what you've Told me, here are your potential risk areas. And when I map out risk, I'm talking, is it financial risk? Is it culture risk? Is it legal risk? Is it insurance risk? I try to be very specific on where the risk is at. And then I let them make the choice because it's their business. So how much risk do you want to manage? What are your priorities? And then we will prioritize together what we need to put in place to address your issues if you want to address them. Or maybe you've got some other passion project that you want me to tackle when it comes to your people. But I lay it all out there, but let them know you're still the boss. I'm the guide, but you're the hero. Like you're the one running this business. I'm just trying to guide you in this way and really be disarming because I don't want them to feel afraid or that I'm disappointed in them in some way. Just because I've made this my life's work doesn't mean that I know how to run their business. All I'm here to do is help and to come alongside and really to make it easier for them to sleep at night because the HR piece isn't sitting in the back of their mind, like, ugh, I haven't really done anything with that. They know they have a person now.

SPEAKER_01: 21:50

I love that you do that for them because I know sometimes when I work with clients, they can be very embarrassed that they don't have policies, procedures, that they don't have things in place to effectively run their business. So in your book, The HR Easy Button, you suggest that HR doesn't have to be overwhelming. What inspired you to write your book?

SPEAKER_02: 22:09

Yeah, it's like any other specialty career that people get into. We decide that because we don't understand it, it must be wildly complicated. It's too hard for me to comprehend or it's too complex. And really, you can become educated and intelligent in any area if you focus on it. I've happened to focus on HR. Everybody chooses their lane and then they go deep, or sometimes they go wide, and whatever that looks like. And so I try to make it as easy as possible. I say in my firm, press the HR easy button with me because there are foundational areas of HR that should be covered. But depending on your business size, let's start here. You know what I mean? Let's make sure you've got your policies locked down. Let's make sure you understand your hiring process. Let's make that easier. Let's map out an onboarding procedure. Let's make that easier for you. One thing at a time. Right now I'm working with a client and they have acquired a lot of businesses. So they were a small business and then they've purchased a lot of businesses in their lane. And all of those businesses are running a little bit differently and they're wanting to streamline and really they need to from a legal perspective and from a risk perspective. And their HR person, I'm having her do a job title and a job description audit. And I'm like, I need you to do it a job title and a job description audit to start out with. Let's make sure everyone has a job description that is tied to what they actually do and rolls up to the company objectives. After we do that, then we're going to get into every single employee file and we're going to make sure we've got an I-9 with supporting documentation, tax documents, a signed offer letter, that they've executed an acknowledgement for the handbook. We're going to do an audit on the file. Once we do that, I'm going to do a compensation data study looking at making sure everyone's classified correctly, whether exempt or non-exempt, contract contract or W-2. And then I'm going to plot everyone on a pay scale and create pay bans. From there, we can get into performance management and decide are people paid appropriately and do we want to tie finances raises to performance reviews. That foundation needs to be built. I want to do an engagement survey. I want to start a newsletter. Let's get into manager training. Like all of that needs to happen. But if we don't have that foundation built out first, then we're going to have managers saying, My employees are not performing. Well, have we been very clear about their role and their responsibilities and how they're performing? Probably not. If we haven't done these audits and put these things in place. So it all links back to this foundation that most people skip. We feel like I'm not a big enough business to do all of that stuff. And I would just push back and say, if you have one employee, you're not too small of a business to set that foundation up. That person wants to know how to succeed. They've maybe worked somewhere else. They've had clarity when their job before. And yeah, maybe they started with you because they want to help a small business, but they still want to understand what success looks like and how do I make more money eventually? Everyone wants to know. That's just like basic human needs when it comes to their career.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

So if an entrepreneur is listening and they are really excited and they're like, Kiri, I want to work with you. How can they contact you?

SPEAKER_02: 25:21

Yeah, they can either email hi at salt and advisors.com or they can just go to saltnightadvisors.com forward slash work with us or forward slash contact. All of those will get them to me. It's CarrieM Roberts.com and they can book me for speaking engagements and learn more about where I've been published and some additional information. But I would love to talk to a small to mid-sized business owner about this because most generally it's something that's bugging them. One quick call can get us pointed in the right direction. I work with small and mid-sized business owners, so I make sure that I'm priced appropriately. This is a passion of my heart to work with these small to mid-sized business owners. And so I try to make sure that I stay relevant in that space.

SPEAKER_01: 26:05

That's really good. So what would be a practice that you believe every business owner should have in their toolbox?

SPEAKER_02: 26:14

Gosh, I would say the first thing that I would do as a business owner is to determine what your annual objectives are. Maybe pick three. What are you trying to accomplish this year? I want to hit this revenue goal or I want to impact this many clients or I want to sell this many products, whatever that looks like. So determine those three things for you. And then use AI and the tools available to you to say, how do I break down these objectives to quarterly rocks and then monthly goals and weekly tasks so I can accomplish these? And if I have these three employees, how do I include them in this whole process to make sure that they know what they need to do every day when they show up to work? That's a fairly simple exercise that I recommend everyone runs through and use AI to bounce ideas off of. Push your goals in there. Or if you don't know what your goals or objectives are, say, help me think through what my three business objectives are for 2026. Ask me the questions that I need to be thinking through to get there, and AI can help you walk you through them.

SPEAKER_01: 27:18

How do you see your work impacting people in the future?

SPEAKER_02: 27:22

Yeah, my goal is to keep my books full, but my number one goal is to add more small businesses to my most affordable option, which is called HR in a box. It's a monthly group call where I get on and I teach on a different foundational HR topic every single month. And then afterward, I gave them an employer responsibility checklist and an audit checklist to run through. Two months ago, I did it on hiring, same deal. Gave them a job description template, a classic job analysis checklist, some tools that they could take and apply in their business immediately. This month I did it on onboarding, same deal. I wrote onboarding templated emails, gave them onboarding checklists. And so I do the teaching portion and then I open it up to live QA. So these small to mid-sized business owners can ask me specific questions about their businesses. And so the charge for that is$450 a month. It is very affordable, but I want small business owners to have access to this. So they've got the group setting, they've got the QA with me, the resources available to them, and then email access with me in between. I price that very intentionally to make sure it's accessible to small to mid-sized business owners. And I want to see that group explode. I've got a good core group in it already, but I want to see more small business owners join that and get that value.

SPEAKER_01: 28:39

And that price that you have that price at, that's an amazing price. 450, that's like nothing because the things that you're giving, that is going to allow them to really increase their revenue. Wow. That's very affordable. So if you are a small to mid-sized business owner and you are listening, I would definitely say jump on that because that is so affordable.

SPEAKER_02: 29:05

My goal is to keep it affordable. No, you know what? I was raised on a farm in Northeast Missouri and a very humble upbringing. And while I've got my undergrad and my master's and I've done the things, I still have a huge heart for the small to business, mid-sized business owner that's trying to get going. Like I want to help support them.

SPEAKER_01: 29:26

Yeah, that's a really good price. Because I also work at HR and I do it on the federal RAM. And when you said onboarding, how all of that's like a lot of effort that goes into that. And so the fact that you package it so well and you make it affordable, yeah, that's definitely a good investment for small to mid-sized business to make. So I thank you for doing that because that's really, really good. So, what do you believe is going to be one of the biggest shifts that we see in HR within probably the next five years?

SPEAKER_02: 29:54

I think the utilization of AI, I've seen a lot of people get really timid around AI and worried about their jobs being lost. But the interesting thing is our society is so cyclical. So while we got really upside down in tech from a social media perspective, now we're a little bit critical of that, right? We all are aware like screen time isn't the best for us and it's not the healthiest for us, and it causes anxiety and all of these different things. It's addiction. And so we're adding AI, but we've got, I think, more critical thinking coming up where people are like, oh, I can't believe everything that I'm told. And so I really think we're gonna have a good blend, or at least that's my hope, on okay, here's the information and the access to information that I have through AI. What's a human say about that? How does the human element weigh in on that? I'm not afraid of AI. I want to see companies integrate it and not act like it's taboo and not make their employees hide the fact they're using it. This is what's acceptable for AI utilization in our organization. Here's how we can all upskill when it comes to it. But then here's what's still special and valuable about you as a person. And so I really would like to see HR dig into that and help organizations implement them.

SPEAKER_01: 31:09

Yeah, that's very important. I think AI can help with some of the job analysis, with a lot of the tasks that HR do on a day-to-day base. I think AI can make it easier and even for other industries as well. So, as an entrepreneur, if you're listening, I would say embrace it. Don't allow it to make you lazy in a sense, but definitely embrace it to make some of those tasks that you do day-to-day more easier for you. Carrie, you have brought so much wisdom to the table as it relates to HR and just, you know, trusting yourself as a leader, which is very important. What does self-trust look like for you in your day-to-day operations or running your life?

SPEAKER_02: 31:48

Yeah, I love speaking on self-trust. Really, so many of us can recognize if we feel like we don't trust another person, but we aren't necessarily reflecting on ourselves and if we're really trusting ourselves. I think in general, most people would say, oh yeah, I trust myself. But there's a couple of different things that I would recommend. One, there's a book called Steve by Stephen M. R. Covey called The Speed of Trust. And it has a self-analysis in it where you can measure your own four cores of credibility. So I highly recommend. It's not the most titillating read. It reads textbookish, but it's good. But really, it's digging in what are your, what's your level of integrity? Like, do you live the way that's in alignment with your values, in alignment with your faith, in alignment with what you say? So it measures integrity, then it means measures intention. So why are you wanting to make the money that you make? Why do you live in the house that you live in? Why are you seeking out to purchase X, Y, and Z? What are your intentions and your motives? And then what are your capabilities? So what have you, what are your skills and abilities? What's your education? And so, how would you measure up in your capabilities, whether in your professional career or the business you're trying to develop? And then lastly, what are your results? So, what numbers have you put up on the board? What have you accomplished already? What goals have you hit? What milestones have you hit? And so when you look at integrity, intent, capabilities, and then results, that's really how we measure self-trust. And I would challenge people that if you don't wake up when you set your alarm in the morning, you're starting your day not trusting yourself, that you can't honor the commitments that you make to your own self. And that means that you don't trust yourself. And so you're damaging your confidence for the rest of the day. You're not honoring a commitment to yourself. Did you say you're gonna work out three times this week, but you didn't do it? You're not uttering commitments to yourself. So that's really how we build self-trust.

SPEAKER_01: 33:46

Carrie, that's an entire TED talk. I know. I don't think that we recognize that we're letting ourselves down when we hit snooze or when we say, I don't feel like working out, even though we previously committed to it. I don't think we really track stuff like that because it's for us, right? But we'll rather disappoint ourselves than someone else.

SPEAKER_02: 34:09

If someone asks me, like, how are you such a confident person? It's twofold. One, my reputation's in the Lord. So like he's the boss of that situation. But two, I do what I say I'm gonna do. I honor commitments to myself. And it's like building a muscle. The more you honor those commitments to yourself, the more you're like, I can do hard things, I can show up, I can be consistent.

SPEAKER_01: 34:31

Yeah, one of my favorite scriptures, yes, you're yes-be yes, and your no be no. And so that is so true. Oh, thank you for sharing that. So, as we wrap up, what's one message or a piece of advice that you want to leave with our listeners who may be navigating their own entrepreneurial?

SPEAKER_02: 34:49

Yeah, you can change it at any second, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or does or says, you are in charge of this one short, precious life, and you can pivot at any second. And if there's someone in your life that would judge you for that, then you need to set a boundary in that area because that person's not really here for you. It's between you and God. And I would say make the next right step. That's all you can do is do the next best thing.

SPEAKER_01: 35:17

So Lissy, you heard her. She has left you with such great advice. But where can they purchase your book?

SPEAKER_02: 35:22

Yeah, you can find my book, the HR Easy Button book on Amazon. And it's paperback, hardback, Kindle. You can find all of that on there, or you can always go to my website, saltlightadvisors.com forward slash book one and pick it up there.

SPEAKER_01: 35:37

Okay, so I'll make sure I have all of that information in the show description. So again, Carrie, thank you so much for joining us, and I am so excited to see where Salt and Light Advisors is going to go because you are faith-based and God say that we are the Saw and Light of the Earth. So I was just enjoying the name of your company. And so I can't wait to see where your company is going to transition in the next couple of years. So again, thank you so much. You have been great.

SPEAKER_00: 36:07

Thanks for listening. Please rate this episode and share it with your family and friends. To learn more about your host or to book a coaching session, visit www.brooksdeming.com. Until next time, rise.