The busy mother-of-three manages to juggle running a business with the demands of raising a family - Max (9), Joe (7) and Lucy (5) - while also living on a farm.
Mrs Robertson and her husband Antony farm a 333ha sheep, beef and cropping property in West Otago.
The couple are also in partnership in Idealprint and Design, which is run by Mrs Robertson, while her husband takes care of the farm.
Mrs Robertson (41) is the only entrant from Otago-Southland for Rural Women New Zealand's Enterprising Rural Woman Award.
The award celebrates rural businesswomen and promotes their achievements. Entrants must own and operate a small business, with fewer than 10 full-time equivalent staff, and be based in a rural area.
A North Island and a South Island finalist will be chosen and will attend the awards in Auckland in May, in conjunction with the RWNZ national conference, where the supreme winner will be announced.
The North and South Island finalists will receive $1000 prize money and a trophy, while the supreme winner will receive a further $1000.
Idealprint was first bought as an existing printing business by Lawrence couple Peter and Maureen Cummings. Mrs Robertson was invited to buy into the business in 1998.
It was run from a spare house on the Cummings' farm in Lawrence, which worked very well, but the main disadvantage was lack of foot traffic.
In 2001, it was decided to relocate Idealprint to a main-street building in Tapanui, which had been bought by Mr and Mrs Robertson, to take advantage of the location and to cut back on the travelling she was doing from Tapanui to Lawrence each week.
In 2004, it was decided the couple would buy out Mr and Mrs Cummings' shares of the company.
The company structure was changed to Mr and Mrs Robertson as directors with a 50% shareholding each.
Idealprint specialises in the printing of all paper material, including being an outlet for promotional products and a copy-shop service.
Also under the Idealprint umbrella is The Blue Mountain Express - West Otago's local weekly newspaper - and Vintage Scene magazine.
Vintage Scene is New Zealand's vintage machinery magazine and is published quarterly and delivered to more than 600 subscribers throughout New Zealand and worldwide.
Mrs Robertson gained a grounding in the industry when she lived in Auckland for a while and worked as a desktop publisher. After she got married, she worked in a printing business in Gore.
Moving Idealprint from Lawrence to Tapanui was a big decision but being more visible had made the business grow, she said.
Being based on a farm, there was no street traffic so it was "completely different" moving into a town, with people "popping in all the time".
The West Otago community had been very supportive of the business venture and appreciated any businesses that were in the town.
Thanks to modern technology and couriers, being based in a small, rural town was not a disadvantage, she said.
The business employed a full-time staff member and Mrs Robertson usually worked about three and-a-half to four days a week. She worked until 3pm to fit in with her children.
Asked how she managed to juggle motherhood, work and farm life, Mrs Robertson said it was a matter of being organised.
"That's what crock pots are for."
If she was not at work, then she was always available on the phone and it all seemed to work in. Occasionally, she could pop back to work at night if necessary.
A customer encouraged Mrs Robertson to enter the Enterprising Rural Woman Award. While she did not usually like to put herself "out there", she thought it would be good promotion for the business.
Just over 1000 copies of The Blue Mountain Express were printed each week, usually with eight pages. A new initiative this year was printing in colour which had been well received.
Many people did not realise that small communities often had a local community paper and The Blue Mountain Express was a "great little paper", Mrs Robertson said.
Vintage Scene continued to get subscriptions while Idealprint "chugs along" and continued to grow.
Her goals for the future included seeing continued growth for both publications. Ideally, she would like to be able to employ more staff so she could concentrate on working on the business instead of in it.
