Episode 15 - Service, Joy, And The Swift Way

Join host Aaron Burnett as he sits down with Shannon Swift, founder of Swift HR Solutions, to talk about building a business rooted in service, the fear of success many entrepreneurs quietly carry, and how EO gave her the courage to think bigger. From an unconventional childhood in Olympic National Park to scaling a nationally recognized HR company through trust, joy, and intentional culture, Shannon shares the leadership lessons that shaped both her business and her life.

About Shannon Swift: Founder and CEO of Swift HR Solutions, a fractional HR and recruiting firm serving companies across the United States. Since launching Swift in 2004, Shannon has grown the company through a people-first approach centered on service, integrity, and long-term relationships. A longtime EO member and former chapter leader, she is passionate about leadership, culture-building, and creating meaningful experiences for teams, clients, and communities.

Note, this podcast features real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. No pitches, no sales - just honest conversations about the moments that shape successful businesses.

Born at the Grand Canyon: An Unusual and Formative Childhood

Aaron: Tell me about your story — especially your childhood, which sounds so unusual.

Shannon: I had a very unusual start. I was born at the Grand Canyon — my dad was in the National Park Service and was stationed there for three months. I was supposed to be born back in Lake Mead, or probably Las Vegas. But I came early. My mom says I came out quickly and have been in a hurry ever since. It was very apropos that I eventually married a Swift.I grew up at the Elwha Ranger Station in Olympic National Park. It was a remarkable childhood. The whole world came through our front yard — we were hosts, helpers, there to make amazing experiences happen for visitors. I think that's where my value of service was instilled. We kept our front door locked because tourists would walk right in. We were right in the middle of the Ranger Station.My dad was a government employee, but he ran his operation like an entrepreneur. Every year he'd recruit his seasonal rangers, bring them to Elwha, train them — including firearm training because they were actually law enforcement. We'd have our own little village through the summer season. Then Labor Day weekend, everybody packed up and left. Just us for the winter. School was 35 miles away in a town of 3,000 people. A very different world, but a really wonderful one.

Aaron: I imagine that life was a lot about connecting with people — new people arriving constantly, and a close-knit community in between.

Shannon: Absolutely. Every year, a few rangers came back — there was a family from Reno whose green station wagon we'd watch for eagerly. But every year there were also new people from all over the country, just for the season. A fire control officer, a naturalist leading beach talks and nature walks. We'd quickly build a community, that community would dissipate, and then the next spring we'd create a new one. It was a constant practice of connecting with people and letting go.

From Psychology to Payroll: Building a Career in HR

Aaron: Tell me about your professional history.

Shannon: I went to the University of Washington, which brought me to Seattle, and I never left. I majored in psychology and discovered business my junior year — added about 30 credits of business coursework. After graduation, I was working at Children's Hospital during the summers and they introduced me to a home infusion therapy company that was decentralizing its HR and payroll function. I came on as employee number eight, trained with their team in Newport Beach, and that began my career.I was told that if I wanted to stay in HR full-time with the company, I'd have to move to the corporate office. I didn't want to do that. Three months later, the national company was acquired by Baxter, all 70 branches were being integrated, and I was told to find another job. I thought: if I leave, who's going to handle terminations and process payroll? So I stayed until I was forced to go. That moment never came. Children's Hospital's for-profit arm stepped in and acquired us, and I was there for eight years. By the time I left, I was one of five people running the company. We'd opened three branches of our own and grown from eight employees to 110.I still think about the fax machine sales job I was offered when I was told to look elsewhere. What would my life look like today if I'd taken it? Staying turned out to be the right call.

The Road to Swift: From In-House HR to Entrepreneurship

Aaron: Was that your springboard to entrepreneurship?

Shannon: Not directly. That was my springboard to understanding the value of outsourced HR. My husband's company had 35 people and they called me constantly for routine HR questions. I thought: there are probably a lot of other companies with exactly this need. But I was still in my twenties and thought it sounded lonely to go out alone.I had the idea, but sat on it. I was on the board of the HR Association when a friend mentioned she'd joined a company providing outsourced HR services. That sounded like exactly what I'd been imagining. At the same time, managed care was squeezing our profits, things felt stable, and I thought: this is actually a good moment to go do something else.I went into a sales role at an outsourced HR firm and walked in my first day with a signed contract — my previous employer had outsourced my role the moment I announced I was leaving. First sale before I'd even started. That gave me some real confidence.Two years later, we had tripled the company. I was bringing in software, telecom, and internet companies — fast-paced, smart people doing cool things. That energy was my passion. The growth created tension with the owner, who hadn't expected that kind of scale. So when a professional employer organization in the Bay Area approached me about opening their Seattle office, I took the meeting. I ended up launching the TriNet office here. F5 Networks was my first client — 10 employees at the time.From there, I moved into managing branches and supporting TriNet's expansion nationally. Eventually I went back in-house as VP of HR with one of our clients — a software company, employee number 12, Series A funding. The most enjoyable in-house HR experience I could have imagined. We built the culture from the ground up — I worked directly with the CEO to pull the values and principles out of the team. Everything from day one was intentional. We knew exactly who we were and who we weren't. We grew to 150 employees and I was a peer to the CFO on the leadership team from the very beginning.All of those experiences — combined — told me I was going to start my own business at some point. I started Swift six weeks before I left that role. I didn't yet have a business plan, a name, or a website. But I got a call from an entrepreneur who said, "I heard you're hanging your shingle. I just took over as CEO of a 70-person company, I don't see any sign of HR, and I'm scared about what I don't know. Can you help?" I told him I wasn't available for six weeks. He said, "That's okay — it's been like this for three or four years. I can wait." I had my first client before I had a company.

Aaron: And that was 2004?

Shannon: That was 2004. We're coming up on our 22nd anniversary.He also set our model from the very beginning. He said, "What if you give me every Monday, and take my calls and emails throughout the week — I'll pay you a flat monthly rate." I loved that model. No billable hours, no timesheets. From there we grew entirely by word of mouth. My second client came in month two. By month four, my days were full. It felt like it was supposed to happen exactly when it did.

Swift HR Solutions: Who We Are, Who We're Not

Aaron: Tell me about Swift — who you are, who you're not, and the mission behind it.

Shannon: Our values are built into the name SWIFT: Service, Win-win-win, Integrity, Fun, and Trusted.What we're about is creating a holistic approach to fractional HR. Fractional HR has become a major trend in the last couple of years, and my team tells me constantly that we were so far ahead of our time when we started. Our goal is to look and feel like part of each client's team — just doing that for multiple companies simultaneously. That means dedicated time in meetings, solving problems, building programs, sitting in on open enrollment, coaching managers through performance conversations. We show up as insiders, not advisors.We think of ourselves as business people who accomplish things through the HR function. Service is core — we don't come in with boilerplate. We meet clients where they are and build as if we were their full-time internal hire.Who we are not is a project shop or arms-length consultants. We roll up our sleeves. We're also very careful about who we work with and who we bring onto our team — we want people who are seasoned, service-minded, and genuinely focused on win-win outcomes.The win-win-win is literal: our clients get exceptional HR talent they couldn't justify hiring full-time; our team gets to choose who they work with; and the match benefits everyone. Integrity means our clients can predict what we'd do in any situation. Fun means we don't take ourselves too seriously — I've actually passed on candidates who couldn't laugh at a joke. And Trusted means we deliver on what we say. We've built entire referral networks of vendors for our clients and never take a financial benefit from it — we always direct the value back to the client.Before COVID, we were in Seattle and Portland with about 25 people. Now we're across the country — four people on East Coast time, a Colorado acquisition in 2021, our Swift Talent Group providing full-service in-house recruiting, and a leadership development group running new manager workshops, communication training, DISC assessments, and custom programs. We're about 46 people now, and having a great time.

Aaron: We've been a client multiple times — both on the HR side and recruiting side — and can speak to the quality of the people and the service. Very high capacity, high integrity, culturally aligned. The benefits broker you connected us with is exactly the same.

Shannon: Thank you. The vendor relationships are just as important to us. We only refer people who share our values and the way we operate.

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Before we continue, I want to tell you about the community that made this podcast possible. The Seattle chapter of EO — that's Entrepreneurs' Organization. It's not networking, it's not selling to each other. It's real entrepreneurs sharing real challenges and solutions. If you have a business that does at least a million a year in revenue and you're curious about joining a community that gets what you're going through, check out EO Seattle.

Joy as a Daily Ingredient

Aaron: You mentioned fun as a core value. Tell me about the importance of joy in your life.

Shannon: I live on Lake Joy. My daughter's middle name is Joy. It goes back to my childhood — no television reception at the ranger station meant we got really creative in how we entertained ourselves. Lots of outdoor games, indoor games, reading. Joy and fun became foundational.There's so much serious in the world. For me, it's always about asking: how can we make someone's experience a little better, even in a difficult moment?I plan three team events a year entirely myself. Our anniversary celebration — now that the team is spread across the country, we send fun in the mail. The summer picnic is at our house on the lake, and I love building scavenger hunts where every clue uses our clients' names. Last year we did a team competition with game stations and prizes. And we do a holiday lunch — this past year it was the Hot Stoves Society with Tom Douglas.Watching our team have that kind of joy together — people who are so like-minded, sharing stories about their clients, genuinely enjoying each other — that's what it's all for. Joy isn't a perk. It's a daily ingredient.

Finding EO: Courage, Confidence, and Aiming Higher

Aaron: What brought you to EO?

Shannon: I never intended to grow a company. It was just going to be me — a quality-of-life thing, working with a handful of interesting startups. When we started adding people and revenue started climbing and new service lines emerged, I thought: I don't actually know what I'm doing as a business owner. I never went back for an MBA. I felt like I was out over my skis.Other groups like Vistage had been recruiting me. Then a colleague — a former client who had become a close friend — joined EO in 2011. She said, "Shannon, I've joined EO." I said I wasn't sure it was right for me. She said, "Let's get together in six months." When we did, she said, "Okay. You need to join EO."My first hesitation was practical: how could I possibly turn off my phone for half a day a month? I was too essential. Everything would fall apart. I thought, fine — I'll just do my forum and see.Then a few months in, there was a lunch and learn at Daniel's Broiler on a topic I found genuinely interesting. I walked into the room and it was like a reunion I didn't know I was attending. 'Shannon!' 'I didn't know you were in EO.' 'Finally — yes!' I already knew so many people, and hadn't realized they were in EO.That lunch and learn was excellent. I implemented things I learned within days. I started finding more events, then became the moderator of my forum, then went to the moderator breakfast, heard what was happening across the chapter, was asked to be forum chair, came onto the board. Every investment into EO came back to me twofold.Over time, my forum gave me something I hadn't expected: courage. I would hear someone present an issue I thought was enormous — and then hear, "I went through that, here's what happened" — and realize the person who went through it was still standing, still successful, still whole. That gave me courage to do things I'd been afraid to do. I got confidence. I started aiming higher.I realize now that I had a fear of success. I wasn't trying to boldly grow. We were on the Inc. 5000 list three years in a row, but I wasn't really leaning into what that could mean. Seeing other EO members take big swings — aiming for a much higher ring than I was — changed that. Eventually I found myself spending as much time working on the business through EO as I was working in the business. And that shift changed everything.

Aaron: I share that fear of success. I haven't fully overcome it. How did you begin to work through it?

Shannon: I wouldn't say I've fully overcome it either. Part of me still thinks: the higher you climb, the further you fall. But there were a few things that helped.One was a conversation with a forum mate while I was preparing for a presentation about growth goals. He looked at the number I'd written down and said, "Shannon, how much more per month is that, really?" I did the math out loud and thought: that's not very much, is it? He helped me see that I wasn't thinking in ambitious enough increments.But more than goal-setting, it was shifting my framing entirely. My mission in life is to create amazing experiences for people. When I think about limiting my growth, I'm also limiting the number of people I can impact. I've had employees come back to me years after I fired them to say thank you — because they were miserable and would never have left on their own, and the next job was the right fit. I've had a QA engineer track me down five years later to thank me for telling her to contribute to her 401(k) so her employer would match it. Small moments, lasting impact.Overcoming the fear of success, for me, is about looking outward — who benefits if we grow? Not just me. Our team, our families, our clients, our community. That external perspective helps loosen the grip of the internal fear.

A Life in Books

Aaron: Thinking about your upbringing — no television, long winters, a long bus ride to school — I'm guessing reading is still central to who you are.

Shannon: Very much. All winter at the ranger station with the power out regularly, we'd have candles and propane lanterns. My mom in her chair reading, my dad in his, me on the couch. We'd go to the library 75 miles away every two weeks when we got groceries, come back with a big stack, and work through them. I read every Nancy Drew book by fifth grade. Still a voracious reader.I read more for pleasure than for business. When I pick up a business book I tend to skim for the key ideas rather than read straight through. But I always have something going for enjoyment. Right now I'm reading Dan Brown's The Secret. And I keep several business books on the nightstand — I read at night and early in the morning. I love a physical book. My husband is a Kindle person, but I need the feel and the smell of it.

Aaron: It activates a different part of my brain, too. What are a couple of the most important books you've read — as a child and as an adult?

Shannon: As a child, Watership Down. I don't know exactly why it came to mind first, but it was a big, thick, serious book and nobody else at my school was reading it. I had an hour-long bus ride — plenty of time. It stuck with me.As an adult — and this might sound unexpected — the Harry Potter series. My daughter was born in 2000. I remember being on maternity leave, holding her, and reading an entire book in a single day. I just sat there all day. I love that series unreservedly.For business — Tom Peters. I keep coming back to Thriving on Chaos. It's about customer care, brand, the idea that everything you do is everything you do. It was a business primer for me at a time when a lot of HR people weren't thinking about the business itself. That book shaped how I've always operated.Good to Great by Jim Collins was also profound. He described himself as a lone ranger — running and rock climbing, not needing others around him — and said he was ejected from HP like a virus. I love that concept. I've seen it play out in every strong culture I've been part of: when someone is introduced who doesn't genuinely fit, the culture ejects them naturally.Also The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack — total transparency about how the business runs, everyone understanding the numbers — and The Art of Leadership by Max De Pree, which is all about servant leadership, the style I've tried to embody over the years.

Aaron: We have an extensive reading list at Wheelhouse and a book club we run periodically. New hires are sent books before their first day — The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni, The Go-Giver, and The Art of Possibility. Our culture is so different from a typical agency that the books help people arrive with the right mindset.

Shannon: I love that. Unlearn, then reset.

Aaron: Exactly. Like you, we want our culture to be strong enough that in the interview process there's either real attraction or a clear allergic reaction.

Shannon: Yes. And you want people's eyes wide open so they make that choice themselves.

The Culture of EO: Intimacy, Candor, and Connection Anywhere in the World

Aaron: Tell me about the culture of EO.

Shannon: I've had the honor of experiencing EO across the globe, and there is a universal quality that's very hard to explain to people who haven't been inside it: intimacy.I attended a Regional Leadership Academy in Peru in 2018 — 30 people, less than a week together. Years later, I reached out to my RLA colleague Esteban in Quito, Ecuador, and told him I was coming to the Galápagos. He put together an entire weekend for us — his wife, his son, a trip to his mountain home, up to Cotopaxi. We had spent less than a week together five or six years earlier. That's the relationship. Any of my RLA peers who come to Seattle — I drop everything.EO is a group of people who genuinely want to hear the things nobody else will tell them. We have a culture of transparency, candor, and vulnerability. As entrepreneurs, nearly everyone around us tells us what we want to hear. EO creates a space where people aren't afraid to give honest feedback, where — as Brené Brown says — being clear is being kind. We can have hard conversations with no personal residue.And it's a culture of constant learning. Every interaction, I walk away with something.One of the best illustrations I've seen: on an EO trip to the Galápagos, there were seven or eight boys around 12 or 13 who stuck together the whole voyage — same table every meal. But the EOers rotated constantly, sitting with whoever was there, every meal different. On day two, one of the ship's crew went up to a forum mate and said, "How do you all know each other?" He said, "We don't know each other." They said, "We've never seen this before — everyone else stays with their family, but we can't keep track of you." He said, "That's EO."That's it, really. You can take any group of EOers, put them in the Galápagos or Peru or the middle of Seattle, and there will be connection, support, inspiration, laughter, and fun. Any group of non-competing members from different chapters will generate real value for one another almost immediately. It's one of the most remarkable things I've ever been part of.

Aaron: That's exceptionally well said. And a wonderful way to close. Thank you, Shannon.

Shannon: Thank you. This has been a real pleasure.

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