[ 00:00:00,790 ]Let’s go!

 

[ 00:00:21,680 ]Welcome into Behind the Brand Podcast. I’m host Adam Hayes with my co-host Bob Payton to my right. Good afternoon. And our guest today, Shauna Lake with T-Pen Talent Strategies. Thank you for having me. Welcome. We finally made it. Thanks, I’m excited to hear. Fifth time’s the charm. Sorry for the reschedules, but I’m excited to be here. Yeah, we’re excited to hear. That means you’re busy. Tell us about Deepak. Well, we’re a human resources and learning and development consulting firm. We’re a woman-owned business based in central Indiana, and we provide HR solutions for companies who otherwise would not need or want in-house HR. But we are there whenever they have employee relations issues or learning and development challenges. So how do they come to have those challenges, and then how do they come to find you?

 

[ 00:01:01,560 ]Well, hopefully they find us in a lot of different ways, but usually from referrals. Okay. But when they have those challenges, sometimes it’s growth. It’s exciting things that are happening. Sometimes they’re. they have to make some difficult decisions. It might be downsizing. It might be somebody making some poor choices and decisions. It could be employee relations issues. Sometimes recruiting could be a learning and development issue, a retraining issue, or just wanting to upskill their talent. Sure. Sometimes they are— I had an email this morning of, ‘I want to know how I can make sure that my team is, that their workload is distributed equally, and that they have the right roles and responsibilities. And when do I need to hire someone else before they get burned out, but using my resources appropriately.

 

[ 00:01:49,480 ]So those are fun. That’s a small challenge. That’s a small question to ask. Right. Right. Just on the phone. Right. Right. It’s a good juicy project for an HR team. It’s a nonprofit that’s willing to invest in their team if they need to, but they want to obviously have as few headcount as they need to. And you just need to know when do I need to hire that next person? And if I did, what would that position be? Then what should we budget for exactly yeah because then we then create the job description and then we help them decide, in this market, what would that compensation yeah. And then we’ll help them recruit for it. So tell us. Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask.

 

[ 00:02:26,250 ]So you’re literally what I’ll call a bit of the full life cycle from recruitment to exit, right? In a certain way. Yes. We love to be that full life cycle. Sure. If they only need pieces and parts, we’re willing to do that too. Sure. Nice. Tell us about your story. How did you come to find the company? Do you want the short version or the long version? This is a great story. We want the whole story. Can I tell you? And I’ll tell the audience as well. She shared this story. A month ago, yeah, with my Purdue class. I have two classes and I’d heard pieces of it but never the whole thing. I i i mean I sat there, I had chills, it was really cool and so I’ll let you tell us.

 

[ 00:03:04,890 ]It’s a really nice story. Okay, so I’ve been in human resources my whole career. And I was working for a company. Not too far from here, built their HR model. And they, after about three years, said, ‘Can you move into our external affairs division? and take your change management experience and revamp this process for us.’ And I was like, that actually sounds like a nice breakaway from human resources for a couple of years. And I was consulting in HR, but not doing day-to-day. And actually that was kind of fun because if somebody didn’t like their boss, it wasn’t actually my problem, but I still did project work. And I did that for two years. It was a really successful project.

 

[ 00:03:46,490 ]And then I went back to the leadership and said, ‘Okay, that was fun.’ Now I’m ready to go back to HR. And they said, ‘Oh, wait, we actually want you to do something else.’ So another two years went by and I said, ‘All right, now I really need to know what the path is back to HR.’ I was still doing a lot of HR projects, but I’m an HR person at heart. I needed to be back into HR full-time. And the path originally had been that I would take over as the VP of HR. A succession plan. And so they said, ‘Okay, look we’re working on it. We’re working on it.’ So we sat down to figure out what ‘working on it’ meant.

 

[ 00:04:20,220 ]And it was: ‘Congratulations, you’re moving to Arkansas.’ and is that where they’re headquartered? No, no, no. Of course not. Arkansas is lovely and the people are lovely, but for a lot of reasons, that was not the right time for my family to move. I had well-adjusted middle schoolers, which I always joke is an oxymoron. And my husband also owns a business in Indianapolis, and it just wasn’t the right time. He didn’t want to pick it up and move it to Arkansas. No, no. After we left your class, we were walking back to the car, and my son attends Purdue, and actually just kind of popped in and listened to me speak, which I was, it was very cool to have him there. And I didn’t actually expect him to show up.

 

[ 00:05:01,330 ]And he said, ‘You know,’ mom, I’m glad we didn’t go, but it probably would have turned out okay. Which I thought was really nice. But as we were having this conversation, they were telling me that I’m moving to Arkansas. I realize they’ve gone far down this path. This wasn’t an invitation. This was your going, and we’ve decided where you’re going to live. We know what church we’d like you to attend and what school we’d like you to send your kids to. And they’ve essentially redesigned my life. Was this a job or a political appointment? I’ll let you decide. It was towards the end of the day. So I got in my car. And I honestly couldn’t breathe. And I thought, how did I go from being a high-performance, high-potential individual on a succession plan?

 

[ 00:05:56,110 ]to not having the ability to control where I live, where I worship, and where my kids go to school. Nor even be asked. Exactly. And have no say in this. And I felt like I literally couldn’t fill my lungs. The only other time that I could remember not being able to breathe was when I was about seven and I was at a hotel swimming pool. And I was in the shallow end hanging out with my siblings. And my stepdad said, ‘Get out there, get out there and swim. You can do it.’ I’ve been paying for swimming lessons. And to teach me a lesson, he picked me up and threw me in the deep end of the pool to prove to me that I could swim. And I remember thinking.

 

[ 00:06:37,330 ]You know, what a jerk being, being mad, you know, being scared, feeling betrayed. And giving my seven-year-old self a pep talk about ‘Just get your head above water. Take a breath. Find the nearest edge. Get yourself out of the water. And then you can process your feelings.’ So I gave my 40-something self that pep talk in the car. And on my 20-minute drive home, I decided that my ‘what’s next’ is going to be helping other people when they feel like they’ve been thrown into the deep end. As it relates to business and life and career. I designed a business with a name and a slogan, and I kind of had a logo in my mind. All on the drive home. All on the drive home.

 

[ 00:07:21,410 ]And I walked into the door and walked into the house, and I looked at my husband, and he said, ‘Hi.’ And I said, ‘We’re not moving to Arkansas.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to start a business.’ And I told him everything that I had thought about. And he said, ‘Cool.’ What time do you want to have dinner? Wow. Yeah. So some people think about a business for, you know, for years and they put together a business plan. That’s how I did it. That’s really cool. I would call it a crystallizing moment. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Just all those pieces, you know, probably maybe subliminally over time, you would rack up this kind of list of things. And then, all at one point, just ‘wham,’ right?

 

[ 00:08:03,800 ]Yeah. Yeah. So with the whole pool thing, by the way, my dad did that too. He did. Yeah. Yeah. How old were you? Oh, probably the same age, you know, done in fun. Right, but you know, we didn’t ever you know we didn’t take swimming. We didn’t have swimming lessons. Right, but well, that was back in the time when you didn’t have time for feelings. That’s correct. Yeah, oh yeah, I was like, you know, just—I remember him doing it. I remember. I don’t remember the people’s names because somebody in our church, I forget, but I do remember that feeling. It’s not good feeling. No, and it wears on you. Oh, yeah. Well, I forgave him later. Back then, they wouldn’t have been acknowledged that you had a feeling about it.

 

[ 00:08:40,309 ]No. So. So, if we’re allowed to give parenting advice on the podcast, I would say let’s not throw our kids into the deep end of a pool. That’s a great idea. Let’s start there. Maybe just have one little backup plan. You don’t have to go to the deep end of a pool to start a company. Correct. Right? Right. No, no, no. No, for sure. So, what are some of the challenges currently facing the HR industry as a whole? So it’s an interesting time with the fluctuating job markets. We had the great resignation, and now the job market’s flooded, and it’s finding the right person for positions. I posted a position this morning for an HR director. And I had 202 applications in the first 10 minutes. Oh my goodness.

 

[ 00:09:23,060 ]And I just checked. 10 minutes. 10 minutes. And I just checked my email when I got here. Fortunately, they go into, thank goodness for Microsoft, they go into that other column. But I have 600. And since the time that I went to lunch and then came here. I don’t know if they’re good. And the problem is that a lot of them will, will not be qualified and it’s taking the time to sort through those. And so it’s, it’s. finding the needle in the haystack to fill those positions. But a lot of people are in the job market and it’s fine. It’s always about finding the right person for a position, but it’s about. through more people to find the right position. Also about being, oh, sorry, go ahead.

 

[ 00:10:04,140 ]No, you and I had talked about it, I think last week in a conversation that, you know, the pendulum has swung. Now the swung or the swing, whichever the one is, is a little bit back on the employer side now because of that. And so that’s changing the whole dynamic. But I would say even some people are not used to, you know, it’s been a while. I think they’re trying to adjust to that and that reality. And some people are adjusting better to it than others. There are just some people that are just totally caught flat footed and almost you kind of just can tell they’re not quite sure what to do because they’ve never been alive long enough and been in the workforce long enough to go through that cycle yet.

 

[ 00:10:43,060 ]So just curious if you see that or not. Yes, yes. With the with the fact that it’s kind of a buyer’s market again. Salaries are coming down. Right. And people have adjusted their standard of living to their higher salaries. And some people are holding, you know, how we used to joke about how people are holding out for management. Now people are holding out for their six-figure jobs that people want to pay $80,000 again for, that probably were valued at $80,000 to begin with. Demand more over the past five years. And so people are having to reset expectations all around. And also benefits are really difficult to offer to your employees at an increasing level. The cost of health insurance is rising. Yep.

 

[ 00:11:28,959 ]So we could have a whole other podcast about benefits, but a lot of people put off health care, seeking health care during the pandemic for a lot of reasons, a lot of good reasons. And then, when they started getting that care again, healthcare costs started to go up. And then, in the past two years, doctors and hospitals were renegotiating their contracts with these carriers. So now those costs are adjusting for the increased care. Now those costs are being passed on to employers who are having to make some difficult decisions: do I continue to offer the rich benefits that I did before, do I stop offering insurance, give people a stipend, let them go get health insurance on the exchange?

 

[ 00:12:10,530 ]So some people are finding that their starting salaries are also cooling off and their benefit packages may not be as rich as they used to be. And so, for HR professionals, to think about how do I still maintain a positive culture? How do I be a strategic business partner to owners, to give them these kinds of advice? How do I attract and retain people amongst all of these changes? For just another day at the office. Yeah, I mean, it’s like the foundation is resetting. Like when you were talking there, what I’m thinking of is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Exactly. And safety and security is the foundation. And part of that is benefits and pay. So yeah, that’s a big challenge to, how do you? continue to build a culture on top of that when that feels rocky.

 

[ 00:13:00,050 ]It’s a challenge and I think you have to have, as an HR person, you have to really get down to the employee level. And you have to educate and you have to show that you care about them. So from an education perspective, for example, it might mean. I can’t tell you to go to Anthem about our fully insured health care plan and get this concierge level of care. But. I can show you how to go get it, go get insurance off of the exchange, and it’s still the same insurance right. I just need to hold your hand and walk you through how to go healthcare. Gov and select the best plan for you. And it’s taking more time at the individual level, but you’ve got to take the time and you’ve got to be an HR person who actually cares and recognizes that the employees need that level of care and support.

 

[ 00:13:44,640 ]Awesome. And do you feel like larger organizations are doing that? I think that the HR people who are going to be successful and are going to um be the ones that people want to work with. Over the next few years, are the ones who are going to get that. But also understand how business works and be strategic business partners. I’ve had some people over the last few years in some HR Facebook groups, when they say, ‘How do you become an HR business partner? How do I advance to the next level?’ I’ve said, ‘You need to understand how the business makes money and how the business works.’ I’ve had them argue with me about why that should matter if you’re a certified HR professional.

 

[ 00:14:28,420 ]And like, ‘If you don’t understand yourself, irrelevant, if you don’t understand why that matters, then you, yeah, you are making yourself less relevant.’ I’ll put it that way. Yeah, exactly. It’s all interconnected. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, if you look out through your crystal ball, as you head into the rest of, you know, we’re almost, almost in the middle of Q2, 25, what do you, what do you see in that 25, 26 timeframe happening from your end? And what are you hearing, seeing? That’s a great question. I think we’re going to have to watch it really carefully to see what evolves. market is going to continue to be tight. The US Census Bureau estimates to meet our demand or to meet our requirements for labor.

 

[ 00:15:17,690 ]Said by 2030 that it would be dependent on immigration. Wow. So changing immigration laws and views on immigration are going to make it more difficult to meet demand to fill jobs. Now, people losing their jobs and flooding the job market. Does make people available. Does it make the right people available for the jobs that we need to fill? Right. That’s to be determined. Then does that lend itself to training? Retraining? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Could lend itself to retraining needs, upskilling, reskilling. As being able to pivot and find those opportunities is going to be important. I think we’re going to have to really pay attention to the human aspect of HR. We sometimes do it. It sounds cliché, but talk about putting the human back in human resources.

 

[ 00:16:10,136 ]There was, there has been, it probably still is, a trend of calling it ‘people operations’ and changing the name of the function. It’s still about the human, right? Yeah. It’s still always going to be HR to me. We are humans that are at work. I remember with human research, I remember, and I don’t know. There may have been a certain superintendent that called people ‘humans.’ And it’s a little, I understand, humans as a general term, but when I’m speaking to you, you’re calling you just a human— is a little straight. You’re a person, yeah, right? It’s i don’t know. It’s just maybe it’s just tone. I don’t know. But yeah, but I agree. Having having someone just to actually listen.

 

[ 00:16:50,690 ]And I’ve had some really awful HR people in my past, and some really good ones, and the ones that stick out. Or the ones that listened. All they did was probably rolling their eyes or grabbing the chair along the way. They care. Correct, yeah— or they wouldn’t listen. May have not changed a thing that happened, but the fact that you were actually just listened to was pretty nice. It really was. Yeah. I think we have, am I? My observation, I think we’ve settled into the remote hybrid. On-site. I think people have decided, businesses have decided what jobs are which now. And we’re clear when we post positions, which it is. And so we don’t see as many people now.

 

[ 00:17:36,250 ]Having their status change, that most of that is in the past now, so do you think the pool of available people now is a little skewed to the i had my remote job now i don’t anymore? Yet the supply of those jobs is no longer in their favor? Do you see that or not? I see, there are some positions that are remote now that didn’t used to be, because some businesses have said, ‘I can save a lot of money if I don’t pay for real estate.’ And then there are a lot of people who have said, we miss a big part of our culture when we’re not together, at least some of the time. So it probably normalized. You know, I don’t know the actual. That might be the best situation possible.

 

[ 00:18:16,300 ]Yeah. Yeah. Because then everybody gets what they need. You get time together and you get time away to work and take care of other things. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of employees have also said, ‘I realize that while it might be convenient to wear my yoga pants all day, I am a better employee when I also am in the office or I also do when I show up interaction So what do you recommend to a, you know, let’s say, 50-person business, right? Maybe, maybe a trade base, but let’s just pick one. Right, white collar is a little different, but let’s pick trade-based. Where you have what I would call the split between the office folk—right, the people in the field— people in the field don’t get the option of staying home in their jammies.

 

[ 00:18:59,100 ]Right, and so you know, as you look up, you know, like we talked about, what’s happening right now in 25 job market. You know, how’s an owner supposed to start thinking, in terms of the split, because there’s, you know, in a corporate world, there was always the upstairs, downstairs. Well, I see it happening in smaller businesses now, that some people, were able, over the course of COVID and beyond, to not show up at the office, but yet it causes some challenges that didn’t have to be over. So I’m just kind of curious, you’re seeing that, what do you recommend to an owner? Yeah. Phew! Remember, maybe this didn’t happen to you, but when you were a child, if your parents ever said, ‘Because I said so,’ it’s not, it’s not very satisfying, right?

 

[ 00:19:41,880 ]Like you really want to understand why something is a rule, is or isn’t. So, as a business owner, you have the prerogative to say why, or just to say yes or no, and just decide. But my advice is have a good reason. So, if you say that everybody has to be in the office because some people don’t have a choice, fine. That’s your prerogative as a business owner. But I would recommend. Articulating why that is important for your culture, that you tried it and you saw a decline in team engagement or morale, or something. Have a reason. You don’t have to have a reason because you’re the owner. But do you want to keep your good mood? Exactly. I think it helps. I think it helps.

 

[ 00:20:26,500 ]Ideally, I would say have it be based on the needs of the position. And say, yes, we realize that some jobs—you cannot do remotely. You could not be— field salesperson without being in the field or an HVAC tech from home. Now, maybe the the technology will get there where you could do that from your drone, but that may be a while. Still, yeah. But there are some positions where perhaps your AP clerk could do that from home. And at the end of the day, do we care? Where they do it, if they’re productive and efficient. And if you care, why do you care? And if you care, articulate why you care. That would be my advice. And then do you use that as an example?

 

[ 00:21:15,820 ]Do you think there’s also a shift in mindset around? I’ll call it ‘button seat’ for hours versus productivity. Absolutely. Yes. You still see that as a challenge? And if someone is an hourly employee, then it does matter. Yeah, absolutely. If someone is truly exempt and salaried, then why does it matter? Then we should just be glad that the work is getting done. Sure, if it’s a beautiful day and all the work is done, let them leave at three o’clock right because they might have worked 50 hours last week. Right. But it should be about the work. Yeah, getting so do you see that? If they’re salaried, do you still see the mindset of 40 hours a week? Button seat type of thing. And I usually coach leaders that if that is your mindset.

 

[ 00:22:05,530 ]Let’s evaluate whether this really is an exempt salary position. Right. Because if you have the mentality of docking someone’s pay, you pay them salary, but you have the mentality of not wanting to dock their pay when they don’t work a full 40 hours. Then they probably are not exempt. That’s a good point. Because if you’re paying them salary just to avoid paying them overtime, you are making a commitment to pay them whether they work one hour or 100 hours that week. It has to go both ways. Exactly. So if you can’t wrap your brain around that, you just better make them hourly. Because you can never go wrong making somebody eligible for overtime and paying them by the hour. Right. It becomes problematic if you do the reverse and they’re working overtime.

 

[ 00:22:47,430 ]But they really are non-exempt and you’re not paying them over time. So, I mean, is this a little bit of what I call the vestige leftovers of previous job descriptions, those kinds of things in what I call the past now kind of bumping in to current world where they may just be insufficient. Given the new world we’re finding ourselves in. I would bet that 95% of job descriptions haven’t changed in five years, but yet the whole world’s changed. Yeah. So just curious. I would hope it was, I would like to say it’s just about the outdated job descriptions, but I think it’s more of a mindset. Okay. Of some people saying, if some of it is if I don’t see you working, I don’t believe you’re working. Right.

 

[ 00:23:29,880 ]And some of it is, I don’t want to pay you if I don’t think you’re working. And so that would be that difference. Okay, an hourly mindset, but there are there definitely some outdated job descriptions or some people when I say, ‘Do you have job descriptions and they laugh at me, and that’s fine. I say, ‘Well, we’ll just do that first.’ Here we are, right? Yeah, yeah. Because I find a lot of, especially smaller businesses, they don’t have an org chart. They don’t have names in boxes. Or if they did, it’s like three years out of date. And half the people are gone. And then they look at the actual description and it’s wrong, right? And so they just kind of give up, right? But it’s really important.

 

[ 00:24:10,030 ]So people know what they’re supposed to be doing, what they’re accountable for, i. e., what you’re paying them for. It seems, I don’t know. I know it’s a To a smaller business, maybe it feels like you’re being too corporate-y, but there’s just some things that, you know. When you hire, why are you hiring them? Why do you need them for? Well, because I feel it. I feel I do. Yeah. Oh, no. There has to be a reason, right? And then you’re trying to fill a hole for something that needs to be defined so that you know whether you’re not. employees productive enough to pay for itself. One of the things that I am proud of, how we serve clients, is not changing their culture, not making them feel corporate, if that’s not their culture.

 

[ 00:24:56,520 ]And some people left the corporate world to start their own business because of HR, because of the environment that HR created in that. Company and I wouldn’t want to create something that they left create the kind of environment they left. We would want to come in and and still protect the things that work well in their culture, and also make sure they’re being compliant, and help take them to the next level, and help them grow their business. What do you see— maybe the top two or three things that are just true? Real problems you get from all of your clients—the silliest thing is just make sure you have labor law posters. It seems like the most outdated law. It really is outdated, but it’s still a thing.

 

[ 00:25:43,080 ]You’ve got to have it hanging somewhere. If you have a physical office, you need to have labor law posters. They’re not in a closet. If you have all remote employees, you’re supposed to have a digital set of labor law posters. Hey, there’s a company drive or something like that. Where all your employees know how to find them. Sure. So again, it seems silly. Um, that’s kind of the, we go, we do an assessment with all of our clients to start and hit some of those compliance things first. And then we shore up the, any compliance gaps and employee handbook that either doesn’t exist or hasn’t been reviewed in five years or one that they downloaded off the internet. They didn’t actually take time to read, to see if it applies to them or their industry.

 

[ 00:26:25,550 ]Is something that we do to close up gaps really quickly. Um, There are a lot of other things that we find. Try to think of what’s common across a lot of other companies. The difference between salaried and exempt versus non-exempt. Is really complicated. And there was a lot of talk in 2024 about the minimum salary threshold increasing. And people get very confused about that because you have to earn $35,564,000, I think. and meet a duties test by the Department of Labor. both things have to be true so it has to be about the nature of the job and the minimum salary. Okay. Some people got very confused and thought that was a new minimum wage. which was not true. It’s a threshold. Yeah.

 

[ 00:27:22,870 ]And then there was an increase on July 1st, 2024 of that minimum salary threshold. And there was going to be another increase on January 1st, 2025, that didn’t happen. And then actually reversed the July increase. And now that we’re back to the 35,000 and some change. And I think it’s going to stay there for quite some time. But some people think, as long as I pay them $35,000, it doesn’t actually matter what they do. I just don’t have to pay them overtime. I can just make them salaried. And so we see that a lot. So we try to educate people to make sure they’re being compliant. So what is the duties test? So the duties test, there are a few different ways that people have to pass the exemption.

 

[ 00:28:01,810 ]So it can be about being an administrative, a professional which is not like a secretary, but having the ability to hire and fire, having budgetary authority. You can have a professional exemption. So being like an engineer. A doctor, an architect, not an RN does actually not qualify. So you have to read it carefully. Some high-level technical IT positions count, but like not help desk kind of rules. So it’s really about your level of discretion or degrees and special specialties or some executive positions. There are a few different kinds. And in terms of government websites, the Department of Labor’s, as it relates to the Fair Labor Standards Act, is actually not terrible. Is it understandable, digestible, decently yes, definitely not terrible. But we should still call you. Yes. There’s a lot of gray area.

 

[ 00:28:57,350 ]And when in doubt, like I said, you can’t go wrong making someone eligible for overtime. Yeah. Can we talk about you a little bit? Please, yeah. Tell us about your family. I’ve been married to my husband Chris for almost 24 years. And we have two children. They’re both going to be at Purdue in the fall. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Thank you. Almost 20 and 17. Yeah. Is that where you guys went? Did you go to Purdue? No, we both went to Ball State. Okay. That’s where I went to. Yeah. So we are cardinals and have no idea how we got these Boilermakers. They just found their own school, I’m just saying. Our son is an econ major and has a psychology minor and actually called us last week and said, ‘I don’t know how this happened, but I think I can graduate in three years.’ So I said, ‘You have my full support.’ Fantastic.

 

[ 00:29:46,930 ]Where do I sign up? Exactly. And then probably stay a fourth year and get his master’s. So that would be fantastic. And then our daughter is going to be a math teacher. Awesome. Oh, nice. Which we need great teachers. Right? We do. Yeah. Especially math. Yeah. Yeah, it’s great. So what do you like to do for fun? I love to travel. So you’ve got a checklist, I think. I am trying to see all 50 states before I turn 50. I have one state left to go. And which state is that? Alaska. Okay. Is it planned or is there something happening there? We are going spring of 2026. Okay. And we didn’t think we had to be careful about when, but now we might have to plan it around at graduation. Okay.

 

[ 00:30:29,550 ]If my son’s graduating next year. That’s a good problem. It is. Yeah. But we will. It was actually going to be the first vacation that we planned without having to think about our kids’ schedule because they were both going to be in college. Yeah. So this is going to be a vacation instead of a trip. It is, yeah. Yeah. So Alaska and then I’ll have been to all 50 states. And then we’re going to Europe this summer for my daughter’s graduation celebration. That’s what she wanted as a gift. And then I think that’ll be 17 or 18 countries. So I love, I love to travel. I work to travel. So what is it about travel? Is it the study of the place and the culture of the place and the people of the place?

 

[ 00:31:09,220 ]Is it also about food? What is it for you? It’s really about learning about people. I think probably because I’m in HR and I like to study people, but seeing how they live, but also a chance to see my family in a different place. I love to travel with my family and just have time to talk about them. When we’re on vacation, we plan our next vacation. Because we have time to talk to each other and just connect. Me? Yeah. Yeah. Any opportunity for kids to either be or live outside the country, I think, is really important. We got to experience that as stressful as it can be for them. Man, do they learn a lot of things that they don’t learn otherwise, right? Get outside their bubble a little bit.

 

[ 00:31:51,950 ]I think you learn how good you have things when you see how other people live. Yep. They also, I think, learn how to be in different and not be so stressed in different situations. So they’ve been able to jump on a subway in Rome. So I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable having them go to New York or Chicago or LA. I mean, I might because I’m mom, but I know they can navigate that because they’ve been in other cities. I wouldn’t have my son go to be in Columbia, not at Columbia, but in Columbia studying abroad this summer. And of course I’m nervous, but he has been in other countries. He knows how to. How to get his head a bit. Yeah, yeah. And he knows, yeah, he knows, he knows to look for things that might seem odd.

 

[ 00:32:36,140 ]He knows how to put his hand over his wallet and he’ll be. Hopefully fine, but it’ll be all right. That exposure is just helpful. Sure. Did you ever think about anthropology as a degree? Never. Never? No. I always knew I wanted to be a business major. I couldn’t imagine not being a business major. I chose Ball State for international business. It was between Franklin or Ball State. Right. Because they had international business. And then my first month or so, Ball State canceled their international business program. But you were there? I was there. And so I thought, well, what am I going to do now? So I thought, well, I’m good at math, so I’ll be an accounting major. So I took an accounting class, and I still think debit and credit are backwards.

 

[ 00:33:21,660 ]Yes. And so I’m like, well, I cheated my way through accounting 101. I’m definitely not an accountant. When I started my business, even though it was bootstrapping everything, the very first thing I outsourced was hiring a CPA. Absolutely. Best decision I ever made. So I. I was like, well, I’m definitely not an accounting major. So then I thought, well, what should I do next? And so then I switched to finance because I’m like, well, it’s also numbers, but it’s just not accounting. I took a finance class and the professor was a jerk. And I was like, well, I would have to have him several other times. So I’m like, well, definitely not going to do finance. So I was sitting, I was talking to a friend of mine who was an RA, and at this point, It was, I’m in my second year.

 

[ 00:34:00,170 ]But I’m taking, I’m taking all the business classes. Yeah. I’m feeling all this pressure. And so I was an RA, and I was talking to one of my, my friends, and he was also a business major. He was a marketing major. And I was like, marketing is cool, but I’m not that cool. So I’m like, I don’t think I could be a marketer. Yeah, I definitely can’t hang with the Adams of the world. So I don’t think I can be a marketing major. So I was like, help me. What am I going to do? Because I feel like in my heart, I’m a business major. And so I was going through the course catalog, and this, if it wasn’t obvious, that I’m not young. You know that you’re old when you had a printed course catalog.

 

[ 00:34:37,290 ]Yeah. So I was going through the course catalog with the paper-thin pages, like phone book pages, which obviously some people would never even know what a phone book is. But I had gone through that so many times. And it turns out, I said, too bad you just can’t be an actual management major. And he was like, yes, you can. It’s right here. Those pages were stuck together. Really? Oh, no. When I separated those, it was like the heavens opened and the angels opened. And I was like, you can be a management major. And then there were these concentrations, and HR was one of them. And I read the description. I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s me.’ And it was amazing. Now there is an actual HR management major at Ball State.

 

[ 00:35:22,340 ]Oh, cool. There wasn’t at the time. So that was it. So all the classes were still in line. I’m taking all the business classes. So I did a couple summers, but I still was able to graduate in four years. Four different majors later. Yeah, but you found it. Yeah, I found it. And then there was an organizational communication minor that they had said pairs very nicely because they were interviewing classes and there were a lot of other classes that were very helpful. And it did. So those two were a really nice combination for human resources. But no, nothing in anthropology. I did take psychology and sociology. I do like to study people, yeah, that’s why I thought anthropology, yeah, culture and people, and I’ve always thought that was fascinating.

 

[ 00:36:10,190 ]If I went back to school and wanted to get a degree, right, totally different, I would get that. Yeah. Um, if I didn’t have to worry about making money and you know, doing that kind of stuff, if I was independently wealthy, I would just go study cultures and people and travel around the world. Yeah, how can you monetize that? Yeah, I don’t know. Try to figure it out. Let me know. Gotta be a way. You can pay to travel. There you go. Yeah. I just think about being an English teacher, like a high school English teacher, briefly. And then I did what was the deciding factor on that one. I did when I turned 18. I did a um I got my student teaching license, not student teaching, substitute teaching license.

 

[ 00:36:50,940 ]And I did some substitute teaching. I had a migraine every day. Oh my gosh. I was like, these kids are terrible. Forget it. Yeah. But funny story. Um, one of the little kids—I don’t know why or what they were doing, watching daytime television. But one of the kids said, ‘You look like Ricky Lake.’ So they started calling me Mrs. Lake. But I had never even met my husband. That was not my name. And you do look like Ricky Lake. Yeah. They foreshadowed what was going to happen, right? They did. They did. And then one of— and so I let them call me Mrs. Lake because I didn’t know how to discipline kids. I was only 18. Right. Were you guys dating at that point? No, I didn’t even know him.

 

[ 00:37:26,860 ]No, hadn’t even met him. And so one of the other teachers, like, ‘You need to discipline them. You can’t let them call you something that isn’t your name.’ I’m like, ‘If that’s the worst thing they do. That’s correct.’ I’m winning. Yes, exactly. Because these kids are terrible and I’m never going to be a teacher. They think that gives them a little power. Go for it. Exactly. So we were talking a little before we started up here. So were you born in Cicero or were you born in Spencer? I was born in Kokomo. My parents lived in Cicero. So tell us what all happened there. So was it Kokomo, then Cicero, then Spencer? I was born at a hospital in Kokomo, but I lived in Cicero.

 

[ 00:38:05,830 ]And then, when I was, was it Howard Hospital? It was Saint Joe’s, Saint Joe, okay. Yeah. And then they moved to Spencer to be closer. Both of my parents are from Spencer. So they moved to Spencer to be closer to family. My dad was a salesman for Nabisco. So he traveled a lot. And my mom was a baton twirler teacher. Oh, cool. Wow. I know, right? That’s snitchy. I know. Is that marching band related? Yes. Okay. And she was a national judge. She was very good. Oh, wow. She could do like the multiple— like throw them up and like spin around. So she, she would do that like nights and weekends and things. So basically a stay-at-home mom for the first few years. So she wanted to be closer to family.

 

[ 00:38:48,890 ]So they moved back to Spencer and, um, that’s where I lived the first few years. Did you live in Cicero at all? Just as a baby. Do you know where? I’m just curious. No. I could ask. I would. It’d be ranch stream. We live both downtown and then north on the north end. We moved in the middle, but I drive through every once in a while just to reminisce. Do you remember where it was? Oh, I know specifics. I mean, that was our playground. Oh, yeah. Morse Reservoir before all the development really came. I mean, we played in the lake. Were you skipping rocks and all that? Oh, we were killing fish. We were, I mean. You name it.

 

[ 00:39:26,290 ]We did all the things that all the things your parents now would just totally freak out and think, ‘My God, they’re going to die.’ That’s what we were being kids. BMX bikes off, you know, dirt mounds into the lake and that kind of stuff. So, yeah. That’s funny. If our kids did that today, we’d, you know. Correct. You’d kind of flash them. Guys, you can’t jump in. Or the police would bring them home, right? Yes. The police would probably arrest the parents for allowing that. Or both, yes. I will ask where they lived when I was a baby. Yeah, so Grip and Spencer. Uh, For most of my, well, really all of my childhood, my mom, my parents got divorced. My mom moved to Connecticut for a few years.

 

[ 00:40:07,260 ]And so I would spend a few months there, a year visiting. But Spencer was always my home base. And then I went to Ball State. And then I graduated two years before my husband because I’m a year older in school. We were born in the same calendar year. I always like to remind him of that. But I was a year older in school, and he’s an architect, so it was a five-year program. So when I met him, he’s from West Virginia, he said, ‘just so you know, I will never live in Indiana. It’s too flat.’ And where do you guys live? Oh, we live in Indiana. So you can see how that turned out. But I said, ‘fine.’ I’ve been here my whole life. I’ll go anywhere.

 

[ 00:40:44,170 ]Because he grew up in the mountains. So that’s what he wanted. I said, when I graduate, I’m just going to get a job in Indianapolis. When you graduate, we’ll figure out where we really want to live. But he did an internship in Indianapolis that never ended. So he was on a project at Ball Memorial Hospital. During his internship, he just kept working on it when he went back to finish his fifth year in college and then when he graduated, they said, ‘We’ll see you Monday.’ And there was like never any formal like offer or conversation. He just kept working. And, 13 years later, I looked at him and said, ‘Oh yeah, we weren’t going to live here.’ Right, he’s like, yeah, I forgot about that, yeah, you’re right, yeah.

 

[ 00:41:22,910 ]So now his parents actually moved, and they live five minutes from us. Some of my siblings have moved and live in Boone County, closer to us. And we had some children that said, ‘I’ll never live here again.’ Right. Yeah. They’re even so close. We won’t go there. She knows. So it sticks. It can stick with you. It does. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Well, how should people reach out to you if they need some HR help? Yeah. So they can personally connect with me on LinkedIn. So Shauna Lake, S-H-A-W-N-A Lake, L-A-K-E. It’s amazing how I have to spell ‘lake’. It’s people try to make it more complicated than it is. What’s the strangest spelling of that Blake? People try to put a ‘B’ on it. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that’s different. Yeah. No ‘B’ in late. No. Yeah. And then, deep in talent strategies. So we’re on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Don’t you? Woo! Well, thank you for finally arriving after all the times we rescheduled and all that kind of stuff. So it’s been a great journey. I’m glad it finally happened. It’s a great conversation. Thanks for having me. You’re welcome. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. All right. Thanks all. Let’s go!