From Layoff to CEO: Kim Pollok's Journey on Rock Solid Podcast

Episode 79 of Rock Solid: Round Rock Business Leaders Podcast, titled "Kim Pollok | From Layoff to CEO," hosted by Bryan Eisenberg, traces an unlikely climb from a December 31 call-center shutdown to the corner office at SWBC Payroll & HR. Published June 23, 2026, the conversation arrives as employers wrestle with hybrid work, multigenerational teams, and the breakneck arrival of AI inside HR and payroll systems. Pollok, who advanced her career without a college degree, provides a candid guide for leaders on developing talent, keeping clients, and ensuring compliance in an ever-changing environment.

Across roughly an hour, Pollok and Eisenberg unpack several threads pulled directly from her 16-year run in the industry. Key topics include saying "yes" through the SWBC PEO acquisition, when no one on the team knew what a PEO was; finding and asking for mentors, including SWBC Mortgage CEO Susan Stewart and FI division CEO Mark Hine; managing baby boomers, Gen X, and Gen Z under one roof without abandoning fairness; implementing a secure, private AI system for research and workflows, ensuring client and financial data remain protected; and why SWBC sponsored the Round Rock Chamber's Women Who Mean Business event featuring Olympian Cat Osterman. Pollok's voice is plainspoken and practitioner-first. On the mentor lesson that reshaped how she leads, she tells Eisenberg: "Stop letting people give you dead birds. Don't allow people to just give you their problem and then you are taking on everybody's problem without some solutions, because you're collecting everyone's dead birds and you can't do anything with it." She credits Susan Stewart with the framing, and now uses it with her own team alongside a second mandate: "You have a seat at the table, you've earned a seat at the table, use your voice."

The deeper context is a company built on relationships. SWBC Payroll & HR, privately held by Charlie Amato and Gary Dudley, serves clients from five employees to 7,000 across roughly 42 states, with a typical book between 40 and 300 employees and industries ranging from hospitals and urgent cares to construction, property management, nonprofits, train-car refurbishers, and pig farms. Pollok describes the firm as an essential back-office partner for small and mid-sized businesses, providing over 70 specialists at a cost-effective rate. She joined after her prior call-center employer, with over 2,000 workers, gave staff the choice to relocate to El Paso or be laid off; SWBC ran the closing job fair, then offered her an entry-level benefits coordinator role at $10,000 less than her HR-manager salary. Pollok accepted the offer that very afternoon. Produced by Round Rock Studio and hosted by bestselling author and keynote speaker Bryan Eisenberg, Rock Solid spotlights the entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and large employers shaping Round Rock, Texas. Episode 79 with Kim Pollok is available now wherever podcasts are heard.