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BRX Pro Tip: Never Stop Prospecting

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BRX Pro Tip: Never Stop Prospecting

Stone Payton : And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you know, we talk a lot about perseverance, consistency, but one of the ways that manifest itself or should come to life is this, man, never stop prospecting.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. If you’re not prospecting every day, it’s one of those things where if you’re not every day prospecting in some form or fashion, it’s not like you’re going to notice it today or tomorrow. But when you start noticing it, you’re going to have to rebuild that pipeline from scratch again. So, it’s one of those things where a little bit every day is a lot better than a little bit every month or every few weeks because you need to always have people in your pipeline at all different parts of the pipeline. And, again, it’s not like if you stop today, oh, all your business falls apart. But if you stop and stay stopped, your business will fall apart because you’re going to have to then kind of rebuild the whole thing from scratch. And that is a nightmare and it takes a long time.

Lee Kantor: One of the benefits of partnering with Business RadioX or working with Business RadioX, the activity we do every day, inviting guests on shows, is a prospecting activity. That’s the activity that should be done relentlessly. And anybody who has a show with us knows that as long as the guest flow is good and the right people are coming on to the show, you’re prospecting. You know, the whole reason we do what we do is that by serving the community and helping the people that are important to us, we know over time that we’re going to pick off a few of those people and those people are going to be enamored with what we do and see the value in it, and they’ll become our clients.

Lee Kantor: So, we have a system that keeps the pipeline full just by doing the daily activity that we have to do in order to produce shows like we do. So, if you don’t have that, you better figure out a way to create a prospecting machine so you can always be staying in front of the people that matter most to you.

BRX Pro Tip: A Simple Way to Think About Marketing

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BRX Pro Tip: A Simple Way to Think About Marketing

Stone Payton : [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you’ve got a perspective on kind of a simple way to think about marketing.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Yeah. If you look at your marketing and you look at the folks that are important to you and the people you want to serve, you can put them in kind of four buckets. You have first strangers. Those are people who don’t know you. You have acquaintances, people who know you a little bit. You have friends, people who care about you a little bit. And then, you have buyers, people who have bought something from you and seen you deliver a result.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] So, if you kind of can put all of the possible people that can use your service in those four buckets, you should be marketing to each of those groups slightly differently, but you should be marketing in a way that everything works together and everybody should be receiving some type of thought leadership from you regularly or some type of communication regularly.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] Strangers should probably get, you know, your blog, your podcasts, your newsletters, things like that. Acquaintances should also get kind of a reminder when you have a new product or a new service out there, and also some testimonials and social proof of, “Hey, this thing is working for other people.” The friends that you have should be getting on top of all that. They should be getting some case studies and some success stories because they’re closer to buying, so they’re at the edge. So, the more kind of proof they have that this service works, the more inclined they’re going to be to buy it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] And, your buyers should be getting best practices, upsells, and reminders to refer you to other people. But all in all, they should be getting some type of thought leadership that kind of enhances your brand and your expertise and just individually try to communicate to them where they are in that buyer’s journey so you can move them through that funnel.

Sergio DeCesare with Max Business Profits

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Max-Business-Profits-logo

Sergio-DeCesare-Max-Business-ProfitsIn 2015 Sergio DeCesare founded a business coaching firm that grew to six figures in only a few years. He assisted and facilitated development of local marketing strategies, implemented CRM systems, developed and rolled out ancillary product lines, created and innovated fulfillment processes, and delivered accountability to his clients resulting in revenue increases from anywhere from 2 x to 10 x.

He has been an active Licensed Business Real Estate Broker since 1988 and well as Certified Valuebuilder, and Certified Profit and Growth Expert Sergio is also a Certified Mastermind Facilitator, Certified Marketing Manager and real estate investment trainer.

During his career in the IT business, Sergio consulted for a computer service franchise and trained it’s members on upselling cross selling products, pricing, and serving “best practices” as well as his timely innovation acquiring long term business customers through subscription based services which boosted and revenues at all time highs. One particular business experienced a 10 x revenue increase in under 3 years.

He’s a #1 Best Selling Author on Amazon.com, awarded 1 Amazon Best Selling Author for his co authored book, “Elite Business Leaders An Introduction to Elite Business Leaders”, which had hit 1 for two different categories on Amazons bestseller list. Sergio authored the chapter titled “Are Leaders Born or Made? The Courage To Lead” and it’s a vital and valuable contribution to the success of the book according to publisher, TC Bradley of New Life Vision, LLC.

Sergio served with distinction in the elite 82nd Airborne Paratrooper Division for 3 years. His duties and credentials included criminal investigation, VIP security, small weapons expert marksman and combat operations in urban terrain. Sergio was honorably discharged due to injuries sustained during his tour of duty.

Connect with Sergio on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Preparing to sell your business
  • Valuation Methods and why you need a valuation
  • How long should you prepare before you sell
  • Should you consider buying a business if you want growth

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me, brought to you by the Business Radio X Ambassador program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Max Business Profits. Sergio DeCesare. How are you, man?

Sergio DeCesare: Hey, good morning, Stone. I’m doing great. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing well and I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions, man. I know we’re not going to get to to them all, but maybe a great place to start is if you could share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are what are you in your organization really out there trying to do for folks?

Sergio DeCesare: Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, I have a great company and the way I do things are I start with the business center, not not at the end where they’re trying to sell a business like most brokers do. But I also have a consulting firm, which I work with business owners, to help them increase their revenue, increase their profit. We do that a number of ways through marketing innovations in their business, helping them understand financial numbers in their business. But it’s a consulting firm and I’ve had many of my clients down the road two, three, four years, five years, even down the road to say, okay, now I’m ready to sell. Well, who knows your business better than I do because I help them make it sellable. So that’s really my model and I love my work. I’m inspired every day to get up and help my clients make more money and then build an asset they can cash out at a time of their choosing.

Stone Payton: So let’s go a little further back the back story of how you got into the coaching and the coaching line.

Sergio DeCesare: Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a great story too. I actually come from the perspective of I’ve been a business owner. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of business brokers out there, even coaches who they’ve never actually owned, operated and sold a business. I’ve sold a few. My last business was a computer company. I had a computer service company locally. I had a location, employees, the whole works. And back in 2005, I felt like, you know what? I’m burned out on this. I need to sell. So I called the broker in broker, came in, reviewed everything, inventory money, we make everything employees. And then he scribbled a number on a piece of paper and slid it over to me. And I opened up that piece of paper stone. And I looked at it and I. And my jaw was dropped. I, you know, very tersely asked the gentleman to leave my office. And the number I was looking at was less than my own benefit when I was making every year. And I didn’t understand why at the time. So I spent the next year researching, talking to everybody who’s ever sold a business so I can get my hands on anybody who had an IT company and sold it. And I changed my model and I made some changes inside my business and that next year I actually placed the business for sale and I sold it for five times more than what he wrote on that piece of paper. And that’s that’s a pretty significant difference, right? So I learned. Basically, I figured out the keys to the kingdom. On that.

Stone Payton: One. Yeah. So let’s talk about getting your business ready to ready to sell. Speak to that a little bit about what we should be doing, what we should be thinking about, maybe what we should not be doing.

Sergio DeCesare: Sure. Well, and this is this is important stuff. So if you’re thinking about selling a business and the problem is a lot of times business owners get up one morning and they go, you know what? I don’t feel that good. I’m burned out, or maybe my wife is sick. I got to spend time with her. And that’s when they decide, Well, it’s time to sell the business. That’s about the worst time. Excuse me? You can decide to sell a business, you know, So first and foremost, you have to ask yourself, Am I selling a business or my selling a job? When I first got into the brokering business, which was a couple of years ago, at the urging of a fellow business broker, we said, Hey, look, I see what you’re doing and we need some help here because a lot of these businesses are not ready to sell and said, okay, I can do that. I was I’m a licensed broker in real estate for 30 years in the state of Florida. That’s really all you need to become a business broker. So I said, okay, I’ll bite. But the problem is you have to plan. You’ve got to have some time to put the things in place that make the business valuable to a buyer. Buyers don’t want to buy jobs. They want to buy businesses, you know, and for lack of a better term, maybe they’re looking to buy more of an annuity. Where the business runs, whether the owners are or not. And that’s like one of the big deals in selling their businesses. If I take the owner out of the mix, does that business still survive? Does that business run week after week without the owner being there? And if the answer is no, then you got a job, not a business.

Stone Payton: Isn’t that the truth? So you obviously were not very happy with the cocktail napkin valuation that you received and that one experience you described. But yeah. Talk to us a little bit about valuation, why it’s so important. Best way to go about it. I’m operating under the impression maybe there’s more than more than one way to go about that.

Sergio DeCesare: There’s a couple of different valuation methods, but the problem is people who are who are business owners, who are looking to sell, let’s say, let’s say stone, you want to sell in three years, wouldn’t it be kind of helpful to know where you stand right now in the valuation of your business in order to get to the point you want to get that makes it worth selling? Yeah, it’s going to make more sense. Well, the problem is nobody nobody gets a valuation done until they’re on the doorstep of selling. And by then it’s kind of like, okay, whatever the number is, guess what? You’re stuck with it. Unless you want to spend the next two or three years making that valuation higher. But unfortunately, on the Internet, there are a lot of places where you can plug in some numbers and get a valuation. And those, they’re not very effective. They’re not very accurate. There’s a lot that goes into doing a valuation, and I have two or three different software packages that I run on any given business that I’m paid to do a valuation for.

Stone Payton: So, yeah, what about timeline? I own 40% of a pretty successful media company and you know, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, but I do have kind of some sort of exit in my sights. What how how far out in advance do you need to start having conversations with somebody like you?

Sergio DeCesare: Well, I have practical experience in that. I’m also a certified exit strategist business exit strategies. So one of the things I would ask you, Stone, is practically, when would you like to exit your business? Right. We got to know kind of what you’re thinking about, because if you’re telling me, wow, I’d like to do in the next year or two, I’d like to do then, brother, you know, But if you’re telling me, you know, I’m thinking about five years out, I’m getting a little older. I want to travel with the wife, whatever. Okay, fine. That gives us some time. But what I tell my clients is, if you’re thinking about selling, you’ve got to start that preparation minimally 2 to 3 years before you’re thinking about exiting. Wow. Minimally. Because there are things. Look, you get a valuation, right? You’re thinking about selling. You want to sell in three years. So you call me and say, Hey, do evaluation on my business. Here’s the fee, do the valuation, tell me where I’m at right now. So here’s where you’re at. Oh, wow. So that’s all my business is worth. I need to get more than that to retire. Let’s put you through the program. Let’s figure out how much more you need and how we’re going to get there. Right.

Stone Payton: Well, what I’m finding attractive about this conversation is that you feel like, Hey, we can probably help you get there. We’ve got this, this, this discipline, this rigor, this structure, this methodology to help you get where you need and want to be before you do exit. It sounds like you got you’re the whole package, man.

Sergio DeCesare: Oh, most certainly. Well, look, if I’m going to do what I’m going to do, I almost feel like I have to be the whole package. I mean, every year I get different certifications and try to fill in blanks that I see, you know, talking about the exit strategy. Yeah, I’m a certified exit strategist. I’m also a certified value builder under John Waldo’s program, which is a great program. It’s a great discipline to put my business owners through and it’s very effective. So I have different tools for different things, depending where that business is on that timeline, because everybody’s in the same place.

Stone Payton: So I can hear it in your voice and I know our listeners can hear it on the airways as well. You obviously find this work incredibly rewarding. What what are you enjoying the most, man? What’s the most fun for you?

Sergio DeCesare: Well, I’ll tell you, I love the day to day work where I’m actually helping my clients make more money, but more importantly, keep more profit. I had a phone call with a client yesterday, and believe it or not, she owns a marketing company and she comes to me for marketing advice, if you can believe that. But I’ve got so many years in that in that area, as you know, in the real estate arena for marketing. But she calls me and she goes, you know, I’m noticing a weird phenomena. I said, Well, what’s that? Talking to my accountant, I see that this year was a little bit slower than last year. I made less money. Overall, the company made less money overall. Profit. I went from a negative profit last year to a very, very strong positive profit this year. And she goes, I’m just trying to figure out how that happened. And I’m looking at it on the phone. I’m like, not looking at her, but I’m looking at the phone going, What do you mean you don’t know how that happened? You know, we spent a lot of work together, you know, working on the innovations of your business and the pricing model. I mean, most business owners get their pricing wrong to begin with, but we worked on all that stuff. So she was in positive territory and she was a static, even though she made less the business made less money. She was ecstatic as finally she was in the black.

Stone Payton: As she should be, Right? When it comes to sales and marketing, I know there’s this this whole area of your business where you’re helping me sell my business. But with respect to you, how do you get the the new business? Do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit for your own sales and marketing?

Sergio DeCesare: Yes, I think, you know, any business owner, it’s just I don’t have a team in house to do that kind of thing. I have to do it, which I really enjoy because I get to meet a lot of business owners. I do a lot of networking and I’ve gotten referrals from people. I have clients in three different states. So the ones that are outside of the state of Florida, we’re all referrals to me and they’ve been with me sometimes. So yeah, you know, you have to kind of you got to you’ve got to talk. Look, any business, you’re in stone. You’re ultimately you’re in the people business, right? We’re not selling widgets online here for the lowest price.

Stone Payton: So I saw in my notes that you’re a veteran, you were an airborne paratrooper. Do you feel like that military experience has had any impact on on your ability to run a successful business and help other people acquire and exit from businesses?

Sergio DeCesare: Yes and no. Being in a combat unit, there’s certain disciplines that that come with the job. But I think the positive side of something like that is that I’m a very driven, mission orientated person and my mission are my clients. So I’m very, very much in your corner. I mean, I have I was I had a client call me 5 minutes before this interview to ask me some questions. I’m very accessible. Now. The flip side of that is, okay, what’s the detriment of that? Well, the detriment of that is being in the military, being in a combat unit, you know, orders are just orders. We follow them. And I had to really change my leadership style from from eight, nine years ago when I started this firm to now, where I’ve become less of a dominant personality and more of an intuitive personality where I actually have to read body language and facial expressions. I’m a certified mastermind facilitator, and I’m very good at that job because in the military I was I was a investigator, criminal investigator. So, you know, the great part about that, it translates into being a coach and a broker very, very well, because the the quality of the experience. And for me to figure out what is wrong and what’s going on, you have to be you have to be really good at asking the right questions to be successful in this business.

Stone Payton: Well, you bring up an excellent point. One of the things that I’m coming to realize as a result of hosting this series, your work is so much more grounded in relationship. It has such a much stronger human element to it. I guess going into this, I viewed your work, your arena, as far more transactional, and I know there’s a transactional, but it is really a relationship people business, isn’t it?

Sergio DeCesare: It most certainly is. It most certainly is. I spend a lot of time reading about IQ, which is emotional quotient versus IQ. I think there’s some great work done and and you have to understand people, you have to understand yourself, right? So those relationships are based on compassion and understanding and being able to relate. I think in this right now in our time, there’s a lot of people out there that that lack empathy for other people. I think empathy is in short demand. But going back to your original statement, well, in the beginning, 80%, 85% of everything I was doing for my clients was on a skill set level, right, helping them understand their messaging. Who are we? Who we sending our message to innovations in their own business? Financial aspects of the business is understanding what you can control and what you can control. But I’m telling you, as as as the truth is, as time goes on, it’s switching from 80 to 85% skill set and 15% 20% psychological. It’s reversing. I’m spending way more time on the on the psychological aspects, the belief system of some of my my clients, because, look, I’m a firm believer that most people bring their personal problems to their business. They may be perceived as a business problem, but I’m here to tell you that a lot of those business problems, so to speak, really stem from emotional or psychological things inside my client’s heads, if that makes any sense to, you.

Stone Payton: Know, it makes perfect sense to me and it helps me understand something else that I saw in reading through my notes. But you have a bestselling book about elite business leaders. I’d love to hear a little bit about the book, the structure of it, how people can get the most out of it. But my first question around the book is what was it like writing a book? What was that experience like?

Sergio DeCesare: I got to tell you, that was not that big of a deal for me. There’s several authors in that book, and my publisher at the time came to me and said, Look, I think you’re as qualified as anybody to talk about this. In my particular section of the book is about leaders. Are they born, are they born or are they trained over time to be leaders? And I wrote that section of the book in a weekend.

Stone Payton: Wow, that’s impressive.

Sergio DeCesare: Because I knew exactly. And a lot of it stems around the book, which at the time I hadn’t read, you know, I hadn’t read. E-myth But there’s I’ve been told there’s very there’s a lot of similarities between what I wrote about how business owners are in that book and and what was written in email. And then I ended up reading you think Well, yeah.

Stone Payton: All right, so back to this, this business of brokering businesses say a little bit about deal structure because there’s a lot of different ways. To piece the deal together in her.

Sergio DeCesare: Well, there are, depending on the size of the business, will really dictate the structure of the transaction. I mean, you start getting over $5 million, $10 million. There are earn outs there. There are different things that come into play. My area of the of the brokerage is really focused on the small business owner, which is probably $5 million or less. So to me, those are just straight up asset sales. There’s no need to get cute. There’s no need to get fancy. My job is to get my seller as much money as possible. Now, if that means that they have to hold some sort of financing, which is almost in every single deal, regardless of size. Well, so be it. But they’re going to get a good rate and they’re going to have that that note secured by something. So, yeah, there’s a lot of creative ways to do deal structures. But I think when when you’re at the lower end of the scale, my sellers just want to cash out and get on with their life.

Stone Payton: Is it a little tricky or I got to believe it would definitely be tricky to try to do this without the benefit of someone with your experience and expertise. But still, I mean, it’s got to be a subtle dance or some structured methodology to be able to put a business on the market without jeopardizing the business, having competitors try to sweep in and take advantage or employees get wind of it and want to leave. Yeah. Speak to that a little bit.

Sergio DeCesare: Well, what’s the question specifically? Because you covered about 60.

Stone Payton: Well, I’ll tell you where the question comes from. If Lee and I decided that we wanted to sell the business, one of our concerns would be, you know, some of the folks who are really important to our business right now. Would they want to would they want to bail? Right. Would they would they get wind of the fact that we were selling and want to bail? And would competitors somehow find a way to take advantage of the fact that we’re that we’re trying to be on the market? So is there I don’t know. Is there some there’s got to be some I don’t know. That’s my question.

Sergio DeCesare: Delegate. You’re very you’re very right. It’s a delicate situation now as far as confidentiality, You know, it’s a broker’s responsibility to keep the sale or the marketing of the business as confidential as possible. So it’s kind of a double edged sword for us because we want to tell everybody in the world that we got something to sell. Right? Right. We can’t tell everybody in the world because a lot of times, like you said, employees get wind of that. They’re thinking, okay, we’ve got to jump ship or something because we’re going to be out of a job or some nonsense like that. But I have found that you don’t really tell the employees till after the sales kind of consummated, understanding that the new owner has no intention of changing what’s there now. Now, is that a guarantee? No, it’s not a guarantee, but I just went through a deal in in April of May where it was very, very important for us to keep it quiet long enough to be able to get in front of them and say, hey, we’re bringing in these new owners right now. We’re working both together. Right? I don’t you never know. Never want to make it sound like it’s like, okay, I’m here today and gone tomorrow. No, nobody likes that. So there’s a there’s a you try to soften the blow by by introducing them gradually and saying they’re going to work together. But it was very important that he keep his staff. That was that was very important to the buyer because they were good at what they did. And they did it they did it in a way that the buyer, the new buyer was introduced to each and every single employee. They got to know him. They got to see how he was. And to my knowledge, even to this day, he has the loss of single employee after that sale. And it’s been some six months, seven months now. So it is a delicate dance.

Stone Payton: Well, here again, I mean, all the more reason to work with someone that has the credentials, has the experience, understands both sides of the equation, and can help somebody, you know, like me and Lee navigate this this terrain. And to try to go out and pull this off on your own would just would seem foolhardy to me.

Sergio DeCesare: Well, here’s the real danger. The real danger is and I have clients who come to me exactly after this situation has happened. You know, if you’re a buyer and you don’t have some sort of representation that can guide you and help you see if there’s value in the company and if it’s worth the price you’re paying, you’re really just taking the word of a seller who may or may not be completely forthright in what they’re telling you. So I have a couple of clients who have bought businesses and they’re like, This isn’t what we thought we were buying. So they call me in. I say, Well, then let’s turn it into what you thought you were buying. If that’s the case, you know, on the flip side of seller, you know, he doesn’t really know how to prepare. 80 to 85% of business is stone placed on the market. Don’t sell. Wow. That’s a big number. Yeah. Well, and considering 90% of a seller’s net worth is wrapped up in their business. That’s. That’s brutal. That’s a brutal number now. So why don’t they sell? Right. Why don’t they sell? Because they didn’t prepare. And what did they need to prepare? Well, they needed to show that the business was less dependent on the owner. They needed to show clean books. A lot of times business owners say, oh, well, you know, the books are you know, I have a whole nother set of books for cash and. Oh, okay. All right. You know, we need to take a look at that. Well, you know, I don’t want to show anybody that because the IRS. Well, guess what? I don’t work for the IRS. Neither does the buyer. But he needs to understand what he’s buying.

Stone Payton: Amen. Right. Yeah. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and have a conversation with you or somebody on your team maybe tap into to to some of your work. Let’s leave them with an easy path to get to you, man.

Sergio DeCesare: Well, the easy path is you can just go to the website, which is Mac’s business profits dot com. Pretty simple company name. I can be reached at the email address for that website which is Sergio Gio at Mac’s business profits dot com. And of course I do accept phone calls still. And that number is 2395807408.

Stone Payton: Well, Sergio, it has been a real pleasure having you on the program, man. Informative, inspiring. A little scary there, but just the right kind of scary, right? Like talk talk with Sergio if you’re thinking about buying or selling. You’re doing such important work, man. And we really appreciate you. Invest in the time to visit with us today.

Sergio DeCesare: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.

Stone Payton: Stone mine as well. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sergio de Cesar with Mac’s business profits and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Buy a business near me.

 

Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA with Tax Goddess Business Services

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Shauna-Wekherlien-Tax-Goddess-Business-ServicesShauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTS, Tax Goddess is a highly sought-after Certified Public Accountant and founder of Tax Goddess Business Services, PC, established in 2004.

Tax Goddess is a global team of 76+ specialists that uses plain language (not tax code) to help business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs create plans of action to increase the business owner’s bottom line, reduce costs, significantly reduce taxes, increase cash flow, and perform what-if scenario options so that owners know what decisions to make and which paths are best suited to their particular situation.

Shauna is a Certified Public Accountant (AZ) with a master’s degree in Taxation. She is ranked in the top 1% of Tax Strategists in the entire country (per AICTC). Before starting her own company, Shauna had garnered experience and sharpened her skills working with different leading corporations such as KPMG and American Express.

With over 24+ years of experience in implementing innovative tax solutions, Shauna has continued to actively create tax strategies that, so far, have saved businesses and individuals to the tune of over $740 million.

Her resourcefulness and mastery in her field have led her to be featured by numerous top broadcast media platforms such as Forbes, CNN, Money, Daily Herald, Big News Network, Entrepreneur, Today’s Practitioner, Stitcher, Advisor Magazine, WorldClassPerformer, Journal, The American Reporter, Entrepreneurs Break, Influencive, many more! Tax-Goddess-Business-Services-logo

Shauna’s passion and enthusiasm for helping business owners is tangible. Her clients rave about working with “The Goddess” in a wide variety of areas including, but not limited to, tax strategy creation, planning, coaching, IRS representation, tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll processing, C-Suite consulting, enterprise digitization & remote models, and entity formation.

She is a recipient of several awards for ingenuity, business intelligence, and leadership in her professional community.

Follow Tax Goddess on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Tax Goddess Business Services, the tax goddess herself, Shauna Wekherlien, how are you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Fantastic. Thank you so much for asking. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing well and really been looking forward to this conversation. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start is if you could share with me and our listening audience. Mission purpose. What are you what are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Shauna Wekherlien: Seana You got it. So specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs, reduce their taxes to the bare legal minimum, and our current average is 6.92%. So if you’re paying more in taxes than 6.92%, that’s what we do.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like a noble pursuit to me and certainly close enough to my heart as an entrepreneur. I got to know, how did you get started? What’s the what’s the back story? How did you find yourself in this line of work you are?

Shauna Wekherlien: I love this story. So great question. So I actually started off in astrophysics of all things. Yeah. Not a tax goddess, not even close, completely separate industry. Very long story short, I was at the breakfast table with my mother and she is my goddess, Right? And she was open in the mail and she pushed back from the table, kind of jolted back. And normally she’s a very stoic and a woman pushed back, pulled back from the table through the mail down on the table. This is unacceptable. This is absolutely insane. If she’d gotten a letter from the IRS and they wanted more money. And when your goddess is a daughter of a mother, right, when your goddess is upset, what do you do? You try to help. So, very long story short, ended up completely changing what I do. I found out that taxes is very much a game of chess, so still problem solving with numbers so very close to astrophysics from that standpoint and ended up going down the path of becoming a tax status. So taxes, specialty accounting, finance under major master’s degree in taxation, then certified tax coach, certified tax strategist. So specialty specialty, specialty specialty. And now I get to do what I absolutely love. And yes, my mother is also part of the 6.92% club. So.

Stone Payton: Well, and it’s my understanding that you’re getting to do this all over the planet. You have cracked the code apparently on expanding your team digitally. Can can you speak to that a little bit?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Well, I don’t know how long of a story you want, but yeah, the very long story short is we are now at 89 people in 20 different countries around the globe, all specializing in US tax strategy. So it should be clear about that. We definitely focus on the US tax system. But yeah, going digital was one of the best things we ever did. Started going digital about eight years ago now, so long before the big push, COVID and everything else. It’s definitely been a journey trying to manage cultures from 20 different countries, holiday schedules, management, all all of these things is definitely something new and not something a lot of CPAs even look at, to be honest.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, what what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, you know, absolutely My favorite bit. I get to feel like a superhero basically every day when we deliver a tax plan, right? When we finally get to deliver the results to a client, I have helped a single mother pay 50,000 for her son’s cancer surgery, which was huge for me. It almost makes me tear up even just thinking about it, you know, getting getting to help families That way I’ve been able to help a couple husband and wife put their kids through college when they thought they would have zero money from that standpoint, been able to help turn around businesses, cash flow reviews. And of course, when you’re not paying 37 or 50 or 63% tax, which is the highest tax rate in the country right now in California, and you’re not paying 63 and you’re only paying six, what can you do with that kind of money? Right. I’ve helped people meet their dreams. I helped one guy buy a $1.8 million yacht. That’s what he wanted since he was five. So I’m basically a dream weaver from that standpoint. And it makes me really, really, really happy that I get to get people what they want. So.

Stone Payton: So you strike me as someone who may very well keep count. Do you have any idea? You know how.

Shauna Wekherlien: Much? Really, I do. Really? Yeah. Our last. Our last count was about two months ago. We’re a little over 740 million in savings for our clients. Wow. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. So, yes, very happy with what we get to do for people.

Stone Payton: So what do you think is the differentiator? And maybe it’s more than one that sort of sets you apart from from other people in your domain?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Yeah. Two, two primary things. The first one is I don’t think a lot of people realize that there’s a big difference between a regular tax CPA, you know, somebody that you gather your paperwork and you bring them their documents and they prepare a tax return for you based on what you did and a tax strategist. So I am both. I am a CPA. We do prepare taxes, but my specialty obviously, is strategy. So the way that we look at the world, we look at what you can do before the end of the year, Right. Because once the year is over, whatever you’ve done is what you’ve done according to the eyes of the IRS. Right. So we look at things before the year is over. What kind of changes can you make? What are your goals? What changes are going to work within your goals? Right. Because, for example, some people have kids. Putting their kids through college is really important. Some people don’t. Some people have charities. Some people building their business to go global is important. It’s a very, very, very specific focusing on what strategies are going to work for you and your goals particularly. So it’s a big mindset shift for a lot of people because they don’t even know that somebody like me exists. There’s only 607 certified tax coaches Etsy in the entire US. Where are the people? That’s like the first rank of people that are specialized in tax strategy. There’s according to Google, 660,000 CPAs. So I’m never shocked when somebody says, Yeah, I didn’t even know that you existed, right? There’s not that many. And then the second oh, I’m so sorry. The second piece, besides the passion and being able to go towards people’s goals. The second piece, to be honest with you, is I have a personality. I’m a crazy redhead. If you can’t see me, if this is audio, you know, I am an absolute crazy redhead. And love, love, love. Very passion, right? This is for a lot of people. Taxes is something they do. And for me, this is this is my life. This is my love, baby. So I’ll look at this.

Stone Payton: So I know part of the answer to this next question is going to be mom goddess, who you mentioned earlier in the conversation. But I always like to ask and I really am curious, in your situation, have you had the benefit of of one or more mentors that sort of helped you navigate this terrain of either running the business or expanding globally or any other aspect of this?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. I’m a firm believer that you get a lot further if you listen to people smarter than you. Right. And I’m very blessed to be surrounded by many of those people. So I had a very good friend that I met in my master’s program, and he opened his firm, his CPA firm, ten years before me. So I was very lucky to be able to kind of dodge some potholes with his advice. One of my favorite business coaches. Absolutely. Of all time. The one phrase that he said to me that absolutely I now use in everything and every piece of my life is hope is not a strategy. And that just makes such a difference. Because when you every time you say, well, I hope it’s going to work out, I hope this plan is going to go, Yeah. Hope is not a strategy. So how are you going to fix it? Right. That’s that’s huge for me. And yeah, of course, of course. My mom, you know, actually, very long story short, she was a CPA when she was in her twenties, so I am definitely following along the family footsteps there. So.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a firm like yours? How do you get the get the new clients?

Shauna Wekherlien: Well, you know, the easy. That is right. It’s such a good question because when you look at sales, right, there’s really three components to getting a sale trust, credibility and interest. So interest who is not interested in reducing their tax to 6%? Pretty much no way. So that one’s really easy from that standpoint. And then you have trust and credibility. So credibility. I’ve been lucky enough. I’ve been featured in Forbes, in Entrepreneur, I’ve podcast television. I mean, I’ve written a book and I’m working on book number two. So I’m definitely known in my field. I’m known for what I do. So there’s your credibility and and so trust. I’ll be honest with you, this is kind of the hardest piece because when we meet, when we speak with somebody and we tell them, listen, we know that right now you’re paying 150,000 in tax, we can reduce that. I 130. Right. You’re going to only pay 20,000, whatever that number is, to be honest with you. People think we’re not telling the truth, right? So that’s the third piece. And really, that’s where. Referrals of referrals of referrals come in. Because if I say to you down to 6.92%, you’re not going to tell your friends that they can also get from 63 to 6. Of course you are. So a lot of our stuff is word of mouth from that standpoint.

Stone Payton: Okay. You got to tell me about this book. Let’s start with the title, but I want to hear more about the structure of it and and actually what it was like to sit down and commit your ideas to paper and the experience of authoring a book.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, you were so sweet. All right, Well, so one book is in progress. So working title, I suppose the other book is done. Done. So the first book I wrote was 2014 The Tax Goddess Guide to Starting a Small Business. Of course, for a lot of our clients, they I’m ex KPMG, right? So which is one of the four remaining big accounting firms we used to work on Coca Cola and Pfizer like huge type companies because of my mother, right? I’ve always kind of had more of a pension for the little guy, right? I really like helping out the little guy. So businesses that are making 50 million and less, right? So for a lot of little tiny business owners when they very first start, they have no idea. I mean, I remember when I very first started, I didn’t know how to run a fax machine. I had no idea how to get the paper in the fax machine. It was, you know, little tiny things cause big problems. So especially when you have to start dealing with taxes and accounting and finance, if that’s not your field, it can be very, very scary. So that’s the first book. And then now we have the second book coming out, which is called The 6% Life. And that one, it’s about five chapters in out of eight. So I’m hoping it’ll come out early next year. And that one is very specifically now looking at tax strategy for people that are paying more than 100,000 a year in taxes. So you’ve got your small business now, you’re successful, you’re paying out through the nose. Now what now what can you do to reduce your tax burden?

Stone Payton: So so in either case, did you find that some parts of the book came together pretty quickly and easily and others you struggled with a little bit and had to really think it through and approach it from different angles.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, that’s a great question. Good or bad, the crazy redhead likes to talk. So it was it was very easy for me to to get everything down. But you bring up a very good point. It was easy for me to get it down. There were definitely sections where I thought it was clear, but when a good friend or mentor somebody read it, they’re like, We have no idea what you’re talking about. So there were definitely pieces that needed to be tweaked and loved on and kind of massaged to make it, because this is a big thing for me. Making things human English, not tax code, right? So yeah, that, that definitely took a little bit of love because unfortunately, I’ve got so much tax code swimming around in this redhead head of mine that sometimes it comes out as tax code and not English. So.

Stone Payton: Well, I’m sure they’ll both be wildly successful. But even if they weren’t, I wonder if just going through that process of finding a way to articulate principles and beliefs and experience, I bet it’s had some impact on on maybe crystallizing your own thinking and preparing you to communicate to lay people like me in a way that we can really hear. Did you find it that it really helped you in your practice?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because especially with what we do, people are terrified. They’re terrified of the IRS. They don’t want to make a mistake. They want to make sure that everything is right, crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s, and by getting it down on paper and by discussing it over and over and over. Right. When you become a teacher, you learn how to say things in a way that somebody else understands what it is that you’re saying. So absolutely it helps solidify and clarify. And it gave me a lot of really good examples. Let’s phrase it this way. So, for example, crossing t’s and dotting I’s, everybody knows what that means. So when you’re saying that in the context of using tax strategy and complex tax rules, most people understand, crossing your T’s and dotting your eyes means doing everything legal, but you’re still taking the full letter of the law, right? So, yeah, those those kinds of things, those kind of analogies really popped out. So.

Stone Payton: So I want to swing back to to your days with well, I’m old enough to remember the big eight. I think maybe it was announced, the big four, whatever.

Shauna Wekherlien: Now it’s the big four. Yeah. Yeah.

Stone Payton: But making that transition, I mean, that had to be at least a little bit daunting, right? I mean that was what was making that shift to now you’re, you know, you’re hanging out your shingle, you’re doing your own thing. What was that?

Shauna Wekherlien: Like I’m smiling. It does come back to being a redhead. I have real problems with authority. So, you know, working in the big firm was great. Don’t get me wrong, KPMG was definitely an experience, learned a ton, learned some of the big politics, that kind of thing. But I’m a very direct person to person. I’m going to tell you the truth. I don’t really do politics. I don’t play games. I don’t I don’t do any of that stuff. And so what ended up happening, education was great, but what ended up happening, I call it the Goldilocks effect, right? I went with the big bear firm to learn. Learn some amazing things, went down to a medium size firm, learned an entirely different set of amazing things, and in structuring and trust formation went down to a small firm. Big medium small, went down to a small firm, really learned the human face to face, personal relationship type aspect of what we do in tax. Because again, it can be very scary. And then when I went out on my own, you know, for me it was the perfect world because the authority was me saying, No, you can’t go home right now. I know it’s 10:00, but guess what? You got stuff to do, get on it, you know? So, yeah, it worked out really, really well for me.

Stone Payton: So I’m trying to envision you running out of gas, getting a little bit low on energy. I got to believe that it happened. I can’t see it right now.

Shauna Wekherlien: It does happen. Okay, But it does happen.

Stone Payton: I’ll take your word for when it does. Where do you go? And I don’t necessarily mean a place, but like, how do you recharge and get ready to jump back in there and serve? What does the trick for you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. I’m going to say three pieces to it. The first one is I have three dogs and I absolutely love my dogs. So I go outside, I play fetch, I rub tummies, I do some training, like whatever it is for me that gives me away time. So my brain gets a break and I get to love on fluffy fuzzies, which is really hard to German Shepherds and a boxer bug of all things. And so that’s that’s really nice. I love gardening, so I like being out, hands in the soil, planting tomatoes, whatever it is that helps me a ton. Just kind of, again, kind of get reconnected with my self versus I talk to people a lot, right? So I’m a little bit more of an internal list, I guess, from that standpoint. And the third one is when we really, really, really do a good job for somebody like really, really, really. I do those, those cases come up in my mind and I go, Yeah, you know, Shauna, you got to put in those extra 2 hours. You have to because this is really important for this person or that family or whatever it is. I’m very much tied to helping people from that standpoint.

Stone Payton: Well, I suspect you find I know I do personally that it’s important to build in that space the time to do that. And I feel like when we don’t we’re not we’re not serving ourselves and we’re not serving our clients as well as we could. We we got to we got to build that in. And I would like. But before we wrap, if we could, I’d love to leave our listeners with a couple of I’ll call them Pro Tips, a couple of actionable items, things to be thinking about, reading, doing, not doing, just some things that they can begin to act on and saying, look, the the best pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Shauna, the tax goddess. But between now and that step, maybe there’s some things that they can be thinking about to kind of going down this down this path.

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. You know, to two big things come to mind, Right? Education is key. Absolutely. And you named it right. What can you read? What can you watch? What can you do in the tax world? Learning about as many strategies as you can and then figuring out what you think might work for you? Okay. So for example, do you really want to move to Puerto Rico? Do you really want to have a trust that owns all your stuff? Right. There’s there’s not only tax benefits to some of these things, but there’s also human psychology, right? If all of your family is in Texas and you move to Puerto Rico, are you going to be happy? You know, so learning about the different strategies which, to be honest, books these days go out of out of knowledge so quickly. To be very honest with you, YouTube is amazing from that standpoint because you’re always getting the newest strategy. The newest thing. However, don’t just jump on something because you just heard about it, right? Make sure you’re working with a professional, somebody who knows what they’re doing, who can warn you about the pitfalls, Right? The potholes in whatever argument that somebody is producing on YouTube. So definitely learning and reading and watching those kinds of things. Podcasts are amazing for things like that. Same thing. And number two, I think the next best thing is to actually put aside I’m a big fan of. Cash is king. So with a lot of tax strategies, you need to have cash to actually be able to move money, right? So I’m moving money from this pocket to this pocket.

Shauna Wekherlien: They’re both still in my pockets. I still own them. Right. But you need to be able to move money. And so often what happens is we get telephone calls at the end of the year saying, okay, I want to do a strategy. What can I do? Well, you’ve got two things working against you, right? One is time, right? The more time you have to implement strategies, the better. And the second one is cash. So if I tell you, yes, we can do that for you. This strategy, you need 2000 with cash. For this strategy, you need to $100,000 worth cash for. If you don’t have the cash, there are things we can still do. But right. Cash is king. So I am a big fan. If your listeners have heard of something called Profit First, I am a huge fan of taking 30%, three zero, 30% of your gross income. So not not after expenses, not after you’ve paid your bills. 30% of gross every dollar that hits your bank account and putting that in a side account, that money is meant for you, in my opinion, to invest, to be able to do tax strategies, to move money around, to do whatever it is you need to do. And if you can build that habit, especially when you’re young, 30% of gross is just normal. Now. It’s just money that you don’t even look at, that you don’t even touch. It’s just there specifically for investing your strategy or whatever else it is that you want to do. You can build that habit. That’s that’s how I see millionaires, billionaires made at this point.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. We we ought to probably carve out just that question and answer and get that out there for folks to for folks to hear. Quick side note, incidentally, although I still to this day cannot properly pronounce his last name, we interviewed the gentleman who wrote that book and and we run our business accordingly here at the Business Radio X Network. So we yeah, we’re huge fans.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, I love it. It’s a great model and I do really enjoy especially that you can tweak it for yourself, right? That it’s very customizable to again, what are your goals, your dreams? What is it that you are trying to reach that fits in with my world really, really well? So I love it. That’s so cool.

Stone Payton: All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and tap into your work?

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, absolutely. The easiest place to find us is tax goddess dot com. That’s our website. And you’ll see me crazy red head right Right on the home page I think but yeah ex got us dot com. We do have Tik tok and Instagram and Facebook and all the other things but the website’s probably the easiest. You can reach out if you want to chat. Of course you can book an appointment with my team and I and we’d love to chat with you so.

Stone Payton: Well, Seana, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program today. Thank you for investing the time and energy to share your insight and your perspective. This has been an informative, inspiring conversation. I love your enthusiasm. I love your passion for the work. Keep up the good work. And again, thank you so much.

Shauna Wekherlien: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute joy.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Seana, the tax goddess and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Donna Vallese with Inspiring Leaders

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Inspiring-Leaders-logo

Donna-Vallese-Inspiring-LeadersDr. Donna Vallese has been an educator for over 2 decades. She is currently the Director of Learning & Continuous Improvement of Greene Central School District. Inspiring Leaders LLC is your part time business where she facilitates a global network of educational leaders and coaches instructional leaders.

She has experience working at the classroom, school, district, state and university levels in education. Her professional experiences in education have been mostly around urban and rural public education along with innovative public charter schools. Work for Dr. Donna has always been focused on creating equity for children in schools so that they can reach their fullest potential.

Colleagues have often called her the teacher whisperer because she has a way of turning challenges into opportunities and provides support for continuous growth to get teachers on board with transformative practices. She is passionate about effective and research-based teaching and learning practices that hone in on how students learn rather than just implementing what is easy.

Education is not the only thing that Dr. Donna is passionate about. Music has always played a critical role in Dr. Donna’s life. She minored in music for her undergrad and even considered becoming a music teacher at one point. As a professional adult, the love of performing music never left her and when she discovered the first community activist street band she had ever seen, she immediately became hooked when she joined. She now is part of a global community of street bands who all perform for the love of music and to bring attention to important social causes.

When she moved from the Connecticut and Rhode Island Area back to New York State in the Syracuse area, there were no street bands to be found. So, when you are a determined person like Dr. Donna, you find a way to start a band. This past year, Dr. Donna has become a TEDx Speaker, an International Bestselling Author of The Art of Risk and Reward, an International Speaker, and an awardee of the Education 2.0 Outstanding Leadership Award.  To learn more about the work she has been engaged in, you can visit: https://www.inspiringleadersnetwork.com/drdonnav_tedx.

In addition to her passion for teaching and learning, she is also passionate about the uniting force of music. Dr. Donna co-founded UNiTY Street Band, a non-profit, community activist street band in Syracuse, NY. This band’s mission is to put UNiTY back in the CommUNiTY through the joy of music. The band performs at all sorts of local and community events that bring people together. They even founded their own Honk! Festival called Salt City Honk!

Salt City Honk! Has become an annual event that brings other community activist street bands from around the country to Central New York for free performances that break the barriers between the audience and performers, that bring a sense of pure joy, and put music into open spaces where you would least expect to find music.

Connect with Dr. Donna on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Key shifts needed in education
  • Complexities of teaching
  • How people learn best
  • Power of networking educational leaders
  • School turnaround
  • Maintaining work-life balance

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast author, speaker, educator with Inspiring Leaders, Dr. Donna Vallese. How are you?

Donna Vallese: I’m doing great. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing well. I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a lot of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but but I think a good place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners alike. Mission, purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks, Dr. Donna?

Donna Vallese: Well, I am really out there. I’ve been an educator for over 20 years and been an educator, leader, educational leader for over a decade. But I’m one of those people that knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was in kindergarten. And I there’s a few pivotal moments in in my life and people in my life who. Shaped me to become the educator that I am to really wrap around the fact that education doesn’t have to look the same all the time for everyone everywhere. That we really need more experiential education. We need to be able to really identify talents in our students. We need to get engagement, not compliance, to really help our students be able to learn and succeed. And so really, I’ve been I’ve been able to be in places that have allowed me to lead really innovative things, things like year round schooling, flexible learning spaces and flexible scheduling, which allow students to take a course in five months or a course in 14 months and graduate any day of the year. So I’m really looking at the needs that we have in front of us and seeing that our educational systems are just really outdated. And and I’m a teacher, right? I’m a teacher through and through. It is a really, really hard job. And but our systems that we have in place are not supporting our teachers and they’re not supporting our kids learning. And so I know that there are places out there that have been able to break some of these systems and get and overcome them. And so I’m really seeking to. Be able to just change the system at large and rather than in these little pockets.

Stone Payton: You bring up a very interesting point, because teaching strikes me as one of those professions, one of those callings that can look a lot easier than it really is. There’s got to be a great deal of complexity and nuance and intricacy to teaching and teaching. Well, that that the layperson just really doesn’t get. Yeah.

Donna Vallese: Absolutely. If you think of the number of people you interact with every single day and the number of things that you do in a day. Everybody has different experiences. They they they retain different amounts of information. And so they’re all in a different place. Our kids are not any different. Right? They all have different experiences. They’re all in a different place. They all learn differently. They have different interests and teachers have to wrap around that. And then to top top that on. So so teachers not only have to understand how each of their students learn, they have to understand in general best practices, but they also end up being the nurse and the mom and the psychologist and the counselor and and and and and then they have to do all this paperwork and we just we just layer and layer and layer things on our teachers that aren’t helping kids and making the job much harder than it really is. But I also like to I like to point out to people that. Trying to understand and get students to learn is really understanding the mind. Right? And so when you when you put that in perspective, the only other profession that really understands the mind would be a brain surgeon. Right? And so a brain surgeon has to be super precise. Well, there is nothing precise about the social science of teaching. Right. And so that makes it even harder.

Donna Vallese: So. Because every single day is going to be different and every single year you’re going to have different students in front of you. So you can’t even completely replicate exactly what you did over and over again. So that is what makes it really challenging. It also is what makes it kind of a calling and makes it really interesting because you’re always trying to figure out what it is that makes a student tick and what it is that’s going to help you get through to every one of your students. I have yet to come across a teacher who does not want to make a difference in a kid’s life, right? Every person I know wakes up in the morning and they’re like, I hope I have a good day. No one ever wakes up and says, I want to go to work and just make sure everybody has a bad day, right? I want to make sure that we’re doing our job well and we pride ourselves on that and and to make things more challenging. The other piece of it is so you go into your if you picture this, you go into your classroom and you have the teacher and you have these students in front of you and you shut the door and that’s it, like it’s you in the students and that’s it. And so when you think about it, a brand new teacher coming out of the classroom or coming out of college and going into the classroom, teaching is the only profession where you are expected to leave college and be just as good as a 15 year veteran.

Donna Vallese: The first day that you enter that classroom and every single day counts. So, for instance, what I mean by this is if you are an electrician or a plumber or a doctor or a nurse, you have to work side by side with someone for a very long time before you actually get get your own reins to to take the lead in the classroom setting. You might get 16 weeks of student teaching. If you’re lucky, some some schools are eight weeks and if you’re really lucky, you might get a year. And then you’re off on your own. You’re expected to get the same results as someone who’s been doing it for a very long time, teaching for a very long time. And so it’s really an interesting thing to try to provide the support that’s needed for teachers when they’re also given. Can you imagine an elementary teacher trying to prepare for six or seven different subjects in a day, but preparing for those six or seven different subjects with 45 minutes of planning time? So you’re planning for 6 hours of instruction with only 45 minutes of planning time. Who can really do that well.

Stone Payton: So where is the lever for your work? Is it at the district level? Is it in-service training at the classroom teacher level? Where do you get to apply the craft?

Donna Vallese: So that’s a really great question. So one of the things I used to always say, I am never going to be a principal. And then I started getting some insight into leadership and I became a principal. So I really want to be able to I’ve been and I’ve been doing this work, working with educational leaders, the leaders. It’s their job to clear the way for teachers, to lay the foundation, to lay the groundwork so that teachers can really succeed. Because if we can do that and support our teachers, our teachers will then support their students. If you’ve ever heard about the Wegmans model, the supermarkets up here in New York State, the Wegmans model is we take care of our employees and our employees take care of our clients. And so if we start applying that model to schools where our district leaders and our school leaders are taking care of our teachers, then our teachers will be better able to take care of our kids.

Stone Payton: What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Donna Vallese: I my favorite thing to do is to problem solve. When someone brings a challenge to me and all I do is I start posing questions. Well, why do you think that is? What are the other perspectives that are happening? How else can we look at this? What would happen if I know this sounds like a crazy idea, but what would happen if we tried X, Y, and Z? And then usually those conversations lead into other ideas and then those ideas. Usually something will land with that leader that they can then walk away with an action step, put it in place and come back and say, Oh my gosh, that really worked. All right, so now what’s the next step? And they get really excited because now they’re starting to feel some level of success. And so one of the challenges of our leaders is they’re also getting all this pressure from these broken systems that are above them. And so it’s hard for them to clear the way for the teachers. And so when they’re actually able to do that and to see the results from the teachers down to the students, it just it makes them feel successful. Otherwise, when they’re not seeing the results from teachers and students, they just feel like they’re spinning their wheels. And so I just just like when I was in the classroom, when a student had that aha moment, it’s it’s that same feeling working with leaders when they get that like that moment of, Oh my goodness, this was so great. I’ve got to figure out how to keep replicating and how to keep going on this momentum.

Stone Payton: Now, you have been a TEDx speaker. Tell us a little bit about that experience. What was that like? What do you feel like you learned from it? And yeah, what kind of impact do you think maybe that that might have?

Donna Vallese: Oh, so I did a TEDx talk. So the interesting thing was I had met a TEDx coach and I kept saying, I really want to do a Ted Ted talk, but I don’t know what it’s going to be about. And then I was delivering some professional development that I I’ve delivered multiple times and spun it different ways. And it was really all about student engagement, best practices, how and how we learn and why, like we really need to focus on critical thinking. And so as I was doing this professional development, I was finding myself getting so emphatic and so excited about talking about this topic. So I was like, That’s it. That’s my TED talk. So I contacted the coach. I said, I really want to work with you. I’ve no idea how to land a stage. Can you help me? And so I hired her. She I enrolled in one of her three month courses with a couple of other people. She walked us through the process, taught us how to find stages, taught us how to, and actually gave us feedback along the way on applications and the application process and the interview process and and then putting your talk together. So I was able to land a stage. It took me a few weeks. I think it was like three weeks when I before I landed a stage in a SUNY Geneseo. For those of you that don’t know what a Ted is, Ted is TED talks, but the X part is independent. So they these different locations can license TED and then do an independent Ted TED event. So I did this at SUNY Geneseo up here in New York State and I would I totally I’m already starting to plan and trying to figure out what my next TED talk is going to be because it was an awesome experience.

Donna Vallese: I spent more time planning my TED talk then for a 10 to 15 minute talk, which ended up being 18 minutes, but who’s counting? I spent more time planning that than I typically do, planning an entire five day professional development because I had to memorize, I had to memorize it and hone it in and just make sure it was keyed in on one key idea. And that key idea is the one thing that could really shift education, the one shift that’s really needed in education and that. Is a bigger focus on critical thinking. So learning really should look a whole lot more and feel a whole lot more like the process of learning how to ride a bicycle than it does now. We should not be having hours upon hours upon hours of kids sitting in chairs and listening to teachers lecture at them. That is the easy way, but it is not the way that people learn best. And we have decades upon decades upon decades of research over a century, actually, of research that shows us that that is not how the majority of the population learns, but that is still how we tend to do school. So that is what the TED talk is about. So if you if you were to Google my name, Donna Willis, Ted X or Donna Lee SUNY Geneseo, it you’ll find it. It’ll come up right there.

Stone Payton: Well, that sounds like a marvelous activity for the for the long weekend. So I will make sure that.

Donna Vallese: Yes, there you go. That’s all your homework assignment.

Stone Payton: I do not know where you find the time, but I saw in my notes that you’re also a bestselling author. The book is The Art of Risk and Reward. What was that experience like putting the book together? What have you learned from that?

Donna Vallese: Oh, so I am with my business. I am part of this executive networking group. Executive networking events is what it’s called. And we meet weekly and there’s people in it across the world from all different countries. And so a bunch of us actually authored a book together. I think there were 26 of us we met in Ireland. So we had been talking for well over a year, every single week. We met in Ireland, in Dublin, and then stayed at Crome Castle for five weeks or five days, not five weeks. I wish five days just did it like this awesome mastermind and networking and stuff together and we launched our book there. But so the book, The Art of Risk and Reward, every person, every author has a different chapter, and the chapter is really about a risk that they took on themselves and the reward that it gave them. And so. That some of them are based on business like mine was based more on my business, but others have personal stories in there. It’s really there’s some really heartwarming stories in there. And the people who have written these stories are fantastic and they are all people who are entrepreneurs like me. They have their own businesses. Some of them are also employed full time doing other things like me as well. And they’re just phenomenal people really trying to help people in the world and trying to make a difference in the world. So I have learned so much from these people and created really great relationships. We also got to present our chapters, so we became international speakers and we presented there were eight countries represented in the room at Chrome Castles. So we had I don’t even know if I can list them all but Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, the United States.

Donna Vallese: I want to say Greece. And I don’t know where the eighth. I can’t remember where the eighth country was. I will think of it. But yeah, so it was an incredible experience. It was there that I actually I’ve met two people that I am doing some collaborations with one. One is a counselor and she has a coaching business and we’re going to be doing some webinars together called Leading Through the Messy Middle. It’s about it’s for middle level leaders who are trying to lead up and lead down, and it’s always a big mess. But they’re also in the middle of leading all of these all of these big projects that also get messy. And so being in that middle level leadership is a really stressful place to be. And so we’re focused on those leaders in that. And then I also met a publisher. She’s a special ed director in Texas and has a publishing business, and she is going to be publishing a series of books that I’m in the process of writing called The Teacher Whisperer, because that used to be my nickname, believe it or not. So I’m working on that series, and we’re also working on a series where other educational leaders can can also write chapters like an anthology so that they can share how they have overcome some of the systemic challenges in education. And so that series is going to be called the Educational Matadors, and we’ll end up doing some conferences and and things around that as well. So there’s a lot of things coming up the pike. I’m super excited and thank you for allowing me to share all of that, by the way.

Stone Payton: Absolutely. No, I think it’s fascinating. And one of the things that would be helpful for me and certainly our listeners, many of whom are practitioners of one sort or another, and they have to you know, it’s not just practicing your craft. They we also have to run a business and we have to to sell the work to get it. We have to go to market effectively. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a person like you, a practice like yours? How do you get the get the chance to get to do the work?

Donna Vallese: Oh, my gosh. This is the one area that I struggle the most with because as an educator, I was never trained in business. I was never trained in marketing. So I have the past three years or so, I’ve spent a lot of money learning how to market from other people. It is part of the reason I’m in the Executive Networking Events group, because there’s a lot of people where I can. I built relationships where I can reach out to someone to ask questions. I’ve learned how to use Facebook ads, which is a whole process. I’ve learned how to build audiences in LinkedIn and in Facebook and social media. I’ve learned how to use programs like Canva to just develop simple, simple graphics to be able to put out there. Love that program. Being able to create sales, funnels and stuff. I didn’t even know what a funnel was. I was like a funnel like the thing that’s in your kitchen. When I when I first started this, I was like, Well, I didn’t even know. I was like, I’ve never heard of a sales funnel. What the heck are you talking about? So now I know what a sales funnel is and you know, being able to use different technology platforms and and calendar invites and it’s just there’s a lot of networking. I’m going to be going to a conference in a couple of weeks out in Las Vegas and Global Education 2.0 conference am accepting an educational leadership award there. I bought a marketing package there so that I can market my stuff as well.

Donna Vallese: One of the people I also met over in Ireland at the Castle through this executive networking event, she’s also an author in the book. She has a speakers bureau and she is now my speaker’s speaking agent, so she’s working on getting me on some stages. So it’s really like building a team networking. And eventually when I’m able to, once I’m able to transition to doing my business full time and bringing in enough money that I’m hoping that I can hire some really great marketer to do my marketing for me because it’s not my favorite part to be honest. But you have to you just have to bite the bullet and learn how to do it. Because what I’ve decided, what I had learned and decided was if you hire someone to do it for you, you really don’t know what to tell them to do or what you want or anything. So you really have to find resources to learn how to do it and to play with it. And it does take time. But I think because I’m learning the language and learning some of the strategies and and learning a little bit of copyright secrets and things like that. That is going to that is really setting me up so that when the time comes for me to hire someone, I’m going to be able to be really clear, crystal clear in what I want. So I mean, that’s leadership 101, right? Clear communication.

Stone Payton: Well, before we wrap, let’s leave our educational leaders, if we could. I’ll call them pro tips. Right. A couple of actionable ideas, maybe something to be reading, something to be doing, not doing some topics, some things to consider if if maybe we’ve opened their mind to to learn a little bit more about this set of topics.

Donna Vallese: I think I think my top two tips. The first one is for leaders to get some coaching training. When you become an educational leader, they do not provide you training in how to coach people. And what you experience often is kind of a top down approach. And real leadership can’t always be that way. It can’t always be top down. You have to. You have to know how to. Build your people up and build them into leaders as well so that they can share the the burden of leadership. It’s really there’s always just so much to do, but it takes coaching to be able to coach them up to do that. And so there’s a transformative coaching. It’s a I can’t think of the name of the author right now. I should have had it right here in front of me. It’s a big black book on Amazon. It’s a little pricey, but it has some really great it goes it goes through why coaching works. It gives you strategies for coaching, it gives you coaching language. It’s kind of like it’s almost like a great coaching Bible. I love to go back and refer to that, but getting the training would be a number one thing and also make sure that you are if you’re going to be working with teachers. Please, please, please become an expert in how people learn. Not just how kids learn, but how adults learn as well. Know what Andrea Goji is? Know how we acquire and remember information. Know what instructional strategies look like and sound like. And feel like. Be able to demonstrate them if you need to and model them in your when you’re delivering professional development to teachers so that you can literally turn around and say let’s debrief that strategy we just use to learn that so that you can use that with your students.

Donna Vallese: And there’s. There’s a great book it was put out I think in the ninety’s it’s a great collection of research that I actually used in my dissertation years ago. It’s called How we Think or how we learn one of one or the other. It’s it’s a pretty thick book but it has a huge collection of research and resources going back to John Dewey and Bruner and Bronfenbrenner and all your major theorists that. You kind of brushed over them in Psychology 101. Or educational psychology. But you really didn’t learn the depth of what they were or maybe even bloom. You didn’t really learn the depth like the first chapter of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which in my TED talk, I talk about we we always learn the taxonomy as a step by step process. But the first chapter in that actual book is the taxonomy is not a step by step process for thinking. All it is is is defining the different levels of thinking that we engage in. That thinking happens in any order at any time. So. So just make sure that you have a really sound understanding of what really great practice looks like and feels like. Make sure that you’ve seen it, that you can describe it, that you can help teachers visualize it and implement it. So those are my top two things. Long winded, but the top two things.

Stone Payton: Fantastic know, and I think it’s incredibly valuable. Thank you for sharing those resources. Okay. What is the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and start tapping into your work?

Donna Vallese: Yeah, so I do have a website w w w dot Inspiring Leaders LLC. I also you can email me Dr. Dot Donna V at Inspiring Leaders LLC and I’m easy to find on LinkedIn or on Facebook as well. If you just type in my name or my company, my company name, I will pop up or just Google me. I’ll pop up to there too. So lots of ways to get in touch with me.

Stone Payton: Well, Dr. Donna, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program today. Thank you for investing the time and energy to hang out with us and share your perspective and keep up the good work.

Donna Vallese: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on here. And and just everyone out there. Just if you’re not an educator, I just hope that you continue that this has helped you have a little bit of understanding in education that that you can really help support the changes that need to come in education.

Stone Payton: Amen. And it’s been my pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Dr. Donna Valise and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Kevin Hein with Konectd Company

by

Kevin-Hein-KonectdKevin Hein started Konectd back in 2013 helping business owners transition to mobile websites. Today, he has focused on helping business owners of all verticals and sizes maximize opportunities for them.

Working with companies from start-ups to established ones, he has a solution for you.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Changing marketplace for small business owners
  • Understanding the needs of business owners and not just chasing a sale
  • How business owners are keeping employees today
  • How to work with local in mind
  • Tools that you are using today
  • Tips and tricks for business owners

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Konectd, Mr. Kevin Hein. Good afternoon, sir.

Kevin Hein: How are we doing today, Stone?

Stone Payton: I am doing well and I have been so looking forward to having this conversation. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think. I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Kevin Hein: Amazing. Well, first off, I want to thank you for bringing me on and looking forward to sharing a little bit with your listeners about what we do today. You know, our focus, our premise is really focusing around the customer needs. We’re not going in and working with these large, large companies on a day to day basis without considering those small local businesses to they have their needs. They’re looking for just help. They have questions. They don’t know who to go to. They’re looking at their day to day marketing or lack thereof. Don’t know where to start and are overwhelmed. Right. Is something as simple as building a Facebook page, a business page, and starting a website, right? So our focus in our team is really coming around as a support staff to their business. And that’s really where our focus and energy has been from the get go.

Stone Payton: Well, and I suspect it’s a moving target or a moving set of targets. Are you finding that there are changes in the marketplace for particularly for those small business owners that you have to help them adapt to and live into?

Kevin Hein: Absolutely. So when I started this business back in 2013, there was a huge shift from going to desk, from desktop to mobile. So that was our primary focus when we started out is getting people to the mobile websites. We’ve since obviously seen that shift go well into the mobile world and we’ve expanded since on what we’re offering from social media SEO websites. But what I’m finding now, just beyond the digital side of things is business owners are starting to age, right? And there are new entrepreneurs coming into the market. And I think that’s amazing. And there’s a lot of tools that they can use out there today. But these aging entrepreneurs are really looking for just a little bit of help to get them to the end of the stretch where they can retire and step back. Right. So understanding what digital presents actually means and where to put their energy and focus, right. We can compare against whether it’s competitors locally or competitors across the nation where they should spend their energy in going forward, whether it be social media or a website, or it might be something as simple as just a one pager explaining what they do and they offer. They don’t need a huge portfolio of pages within a website, but really just a simple explanation of, Hey, we’re here, this is what we offer, here’s how we can help. And that’s really been eye opening, putting that customer view first versus just trying to sell, sell, sell. And that’s not how we bend. That’s not how we’ve started is we’re not out knocking down doors and trying to sell everybody everything that we offer. It’s really focusing and tailoring into what they want and what they’re looking for.

Stone Payton: Well, it strikes me, as you’re speaking, that it’s really important that you genuinely listen to what the customer has to say, what the prospective client has to say, what may be some assumptions, some of which might be a little bit flawed maybe, And you may have to kind of log that and know that you’re going to need to educate and inform, but to in your pursuit to genuinely serve. It sounds like genuinely listening is is a gosh, not just a working discipline. I mean, it sounds like it’s a core value for you guys.

Kevin Hein: Absolutely it is. And the better piece of it, too, And what I’ve really instilled with my employees and my team is first, we’re a family, We work together, we take care of each other. We understand each other’s needs. I have kids. I have a few employees that have kids, you know, and really families first. And I want to instill that into our customer base as well to understand that it’s not straight business all the time. Tell me what’s going on. What are your other struggles? And I’m not necessarily saying personal, but are you having issues? Are you looking for funding? Are you having trouble finding employees or outside of just the digital world, what what can we help with? Because it may not be something that we offer, but we have a huge connection across multiple platforms, whether it be social media or personal throwback, an old phrase Rolodex. Right? And we can we can find those and connect those people to help them out, whether it’s local or regional or national. We can we can get down that path where we’re really just trying to be a resource to help them get down the path that they’re trying to get to. Right. So again, it may not be something we offer, but we listen and try and help where we can. Right. And we may not be the experts, but I know certainly that we can we can connect them with some experts that would get on the path. And in the long term, it just helps our case on what we’re offering as well. Right?

Stone Payton: Yeah. So so what’s the back story, man? How didn’t how in the world did you find yourself in in this line of work?

Kevin Hein: You know, I hopped out of college marketing degree, young and spry and excited, got into the marketing world, work for a very, very large corporation, realized it wasn’t for me. I got sucked into the sales side, did very well, ran a sale work for another organization, actually ran their sales team as a director and enjoyed it. But again, it was the big corporation. It wasn’t a fit for me. So I’ve been able to really marry this sales and marketing viewpoint, which brings again, a lot of value to my customers, I believe as well, because you can write a good marketing strategy, but having any sales perspective behind it is important too. On how the customer thinks, how they’re going to react to certain things. Being able to write copy, that’s correct as well is very important. But again, realizing back a few years I started this in 2013, it’s the the age old started in the garage and now I’m doing this full time type deal. Right. And it’s been fun. It’s been a fun ride. And we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, but really being able to get down to the nitty gritty with the customers and focus on what their needs are is really the fun part because at the end of the day, I get to go to the customers, whether it’s again via Zoom or I get to go on site, I get to see what they’re doing, I get to learn new things. I get to touch, feel right. I understand manufacturing operations. I understand, you know, the building operations or again, the digital operations that people are running to. And that is really what excites me is I get to interact and create a relationship and help grow with them and watch them grow. That’s really what’s important to us.

Stone Payton: So you spoke earlier in the conversation. You touched on sort of your ethos, your mindset, your value system around selling someone, serving someone versus just trying to to chase a sale. And at the same time, you’ve got to get into that conversation first, right? You have to have that conversation. So have you sort of landed on some sort of discipline process? Have you cracked the code on on getting a chance to have the conversation in the first place? I don’t know. Maybe we put that in the marketing bucket. Do you have a process for for meeting your market? I guess.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. You know, it’s I can’t say that I’ve cracked the code. I don’t know that there is a real code out there because every person is unique, everyone’s different. Although we see with a lot of business owners, they have similarities in problems that they’re running into. Sure, we can create a workflow or something like that that would that would drive some success. But really it’s focusing down and just being a people person again, understanding it as you iterated before, listening intently, providing value to them, whether it’s at a cost or not. At the end of the day, again, if I can help you find a better spark plug for your vehicle or a spark plug for your vehicle, I would be happy to do it again. I think provides no value for me, but it helps them. And at the end of the day, that’s what’s important. But as far as again, that marketing first or sales first, I think it’s so intertwined in my brain, I don’t know which ones coming out at which time. But again, going back to the cracking the code, I think it’s just being genuine, being authentic, being who you are. Right? This isn’t this is who I am.

Kevin Hein: I have three little beautiful babies. I got a gorgeous wife and we make it work. We’re we’re we’re a busy family. And there’s a lot of people, a lot of owners out there that are in the same situation. And you make it work and you understand that not everyone’s out to get you. And that’s where sometimes we run into the roadblock of saying, Oh, you’re just another marketing agency. And I was like, Well, no, actually we do a lot more. And sometimes I feel like we adopt our our clients and I get a text on Wednesday night before before Thanksgiving, and they’re going to they’re going to need something. Something’s going to come up and it’s okay. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help out. And and that’s where really focusing on your culture internally will exponentially show the value that you bring and the support and the familiarity that you bring to these owners, too, because they’ll they’ll understand and they’ll feel the culture that’s coming within. And they can really, over time, will be able to detect if there’s a negative or a bad feel about it. And that’s definitely what we don’t want to instill, right?

Stone Payton: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about culture a little bit, because it’s one thing for you, Kevin Hine, to have this mindset. This ethos, this approach to genuinely serving and helping the client get what they need and want, whether it’s you who provides it or not, it’s clearly yet another to build a team of people who will help you achieve those ends and live into that that value system. Talk a little bit about your own recruiting, developing, retaining and I don’t know, maybe you’re even helping some of your clients on this very issue.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. You know, and I appreciate you pointing that out. It’s something that we sit down through the interview process, you know, like a lot of other people will put an application out there or an opening out there and we’ll get applicants. But what I really focus on is sitting down and speaking with them. I’m not here to ask you, what are your three strengths and three weaknesses? Right? I can look at your resume. I can understand what your what your capabilities are. I may ask a few questions about you. Tell me about working with a client that comes at you negatively or whatnot. And and that’s fine. But really, again, understanding you get that feel with speaking with them and understand what their core values are, too. And look, at the end of the day, I don’t expect my client or my employees to work around the clock. I don’t have that expectation. They shouldn’t have that expectation of me, even though sometimes I feel like I’m doing that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have that expectation for them. So really what I’ve instilled with them are a few different values. But the biggest piece being that you listen and you help them out on whatever need that they may have or again point them in the right direction. I’m not saying you have to know how to change a spark plug in a car, but hey, hey, here’s your local whatever auto body shop. Here’s who can help you out or have a connection with. And so but the other piece, too, is I’m not here to keep you forever. I understand that you need to move up in your career, and maybe that’s internally, maybe it’s not right. And that’s an okay thing. I want to provide you with all the tools, all the knowledge, all the capabilities that I have, the ability to share with you or our team has to share with you.

Kevin Hein: And if you go and better yourself in a different organization or create your own organization, I fully support it. I want you to understand that. I understand that. I’m asking a lot of what you’re doing on your day to day. It’s time is money, right? I’m asking you as an as an employer to take time away from your family. I’m asking you to maybe work some extra hours because we’re buried in a project. I’m asking you to possibly travel depending on the type of client where we’re going. Right. And I take that all into consideration, and as I said in the beginning, is I consider my employees family. Right. I will do anything for them and I don’t expect anything in return. And that’s the biggest key is I’m not out to. You know, accept anything back to me. Right. And that’s really what I focus on with my employees, is how can I help you? Because if you have the right mindset, the right, whatever it might be, that may be a struggle at home or with family or whatever it might be, if there’s anything I can do to help you out or if you need some extra time off or something happened, I’m here to support you. I’m your cheerleader, and I will back you up all the way. And I think that having that feel versus again, I’ve worked in a few large organizations that you really are a number. My employees are not a number. We have daily communications. We work on a lot of projects together. We have a lot of fun together too. So that’s really my focus around all of that.

Stone Payton: When you stepped out on your own a decade ago, was it at least a little bit scary for you, man? What was that like?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, so I ended up not stepping out right in 2013. I did it a bit on the side just for clarity, but I’ve been out on my own now for I’ve got to be over six years now, which is still a fair amount of time. And I was scared out of my mind. If I’m not, you know, if I’m being honest, it’s and I am not I am being honest. But it was it was terrifying. Right. And my wife looked at me and said, Are you sure this is the route we need to go? And I said, You know what? I have to do it. I can’t be one foot in and one foot out. Right? It’s not going to do anything if I don’t if I don’t take that leap. And I wouldn’t change. Change it for the world, right? Yeah, I work all hours. But you know what? Kids have a Christmas party at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Guess what? I’m going to go disappear at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday for an hour, and then I’ll be back at work. Right.

Stone Payton: So when the when the batteries do run a little bit low and and you need to recharge, where do you go? And I don’t necessarily mean like a physical place, but but how do you sort of get re-inspired get get, get built back up to go back out and try to serve and live into this purpose of yours.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. So my, my quiet place or my place to go to is actually running. As weird as that sounds. I go out and I go for a run and I’ll turn on some music on in the background. But I’ll went on my runs, I turn my music pretty low, just it’s just sent back round noises. I’m huffing and puffing down this down the street or down the sidewalk, but it really clears my mind and gives me a few moments to really soak in everything that maybe I’m a bit overwhelmed on a few projects that are going on. We’re taking on new clients. We have some clients that may be off boarding, which is it happens with everybody and really kind of decompress and then build a plan moving forward. That’s kind of my I’ll call it sacred space, right? And when I go out for a run and I don’t usually go running with anybody, it’s usually just by myself. And that’s my time away to really just process everything. And I come back and I’ll be maybe a bit tired from the run. Physically, mentally, I feel so much clearer and ready to hit the ground running, like you mentioned before, is is that that’s where I really start feeling a lot better and hitting that groove again.

Stone Payton: Well, and it really is so important to make that space for ourselves and for those of us leading organizations to to make that space or the room for it for the people who who we’re trying to generate results with. And and through I mean, it’s it’s critical, man. If you neglect that, you are really putting some things in jeopardy, don’t you think?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree with that.

Stone Payton: So before we went on air, you were sharing with me what I can only describe as as a fervent commitment to a genuine affinity for serving local. Can you speak more to that?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, certainly. So when focusing on yourself, right in talking with the running that I do, and that’s kind of my time away to decompress and breathe and think, you also need to, in lieu of serving yourself, you need to serve your community, really focusing on the growth and value that you bring to your community, whether it be local or regional, because that will in turn better where you live. It’ll better your community, it’ll better your neighbors, it’ll better your schools, it’ll better. Pretty much everything that’s out there, right? So if you focus on local and provide that value again, at times it’s that no cost, right? I’m helping out with the, let’s say the local chamber. Right. Or helping out with even I live in a really small town. Right. So everybody knows everybody and going down to city Hall and helping them because they got a broken page on their website. I’m not charging for that. It’s we’re so small, there’s really only one board. There’s no money there. Right. And they’re doing all the volunteering for sitting on boards and whatnot, part of the park board or part of the Economic Board or anything like that. So it’s going down and doing that. Really focusing on growing and intertwining that community piece is only going to help you in your business in the long run. Again, it just is another layer of. Really taking care of yourself and your community. That’s really a focus of ours because a few of our employees are not local to us. To. To connected. Right. So I instill in them to make sure that they’re getting out and helping their community to as a part of what they’re doing on their day to day as well.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of pro tips, some tangible, actionable things they can be thinking about, reading, doing, not doing around some of these topics. I don’t know, maybe share with them some of the some of the tools that you yourself are using or helping your clients with just something to help them begin to. To move in this direction on some of these key topics.

Kevin Hein: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say first and foremost, working within and going to your chamber meetings, your community meetings, supporting those groups doesn’t necessarily have to be networking and you can sit in a corner. It doesn’t mean you necessarily need to speak, don’t feel like you’re totally obligated to present what you do or who you are or even. But just being a part and understanding what’s going on, I think is the biggest tool that you have out there. Something that I’ve focused on early on in my business kind of got away from because we got really busy but is a focus for me, 2023 is it’s not necessarily a tool as much as I’ve focused on getting out and traveling more and meeting new clients face to face, getting out and shaking hands again. Right? We were shut down here for a bit, but coming back and and again physically seeing people going out on site, seeing clients shaking hands, don’t be afraid that people are going to welcome you in. As far as digital tools. There’s a million out there, right? We offer a business app that people can log in to monitor their digital presence and so on and so forth. So that’s a tool of ours through connected. And you can reach out to me any time if anybody like a demo on that. Other tools we use for social media, we’re big partners with cloud campaign, simple tool for posting, scheduling, anything like that.

Kevin Hein: We’re big WordPress website people. We like to use those tools that are out there to very simple builders, so on and so forth. So those are a few of the tools. But the biggest piece I would say out of all the tools or all the needs that you have out there is just go do something. That’s what I ask people. People get overwhelmed with, Well, I can go to this or I can do that, or I need to learn how to do Photoshop, or I need to learn how to just go do it. Just go create a website. Go go post something out on social media. You know what? When I post it on social media, I got zero likes, did it for a long time, got zero likes. Then I got one follower, then I got two followers. You know, at the end of the day, I don’t think I have that many followers on our on our business page right now as it is, But we’re focused on just doing it, put in, put in the post, put in the time, because it will long term it’s a it’s a time game. You keep doing it, you keep pushing forward, don’t quit. You’re going to be success in your own eyes. And success is measure based on what you feel. It’s not monetary, it’s not a certain threshold that you have to hit. It’s whatever you feel is successful is successful to you.

Stone Payton: A man. All right. What is the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and tap into your work? Man? Whatever you feel like is appropriate? Email, LinkedIn, key URLs. I want to make sure that they can. I want to make it easy for them to connect with you.

Kevin Hein: Yeah, absolutely you can. And I may regret this, but I’ll just put my email out there. You can reach out to me. Kevin at Connected dot com it’s Kevin. Kevin at Connected K on E, C TED.com. They can reach out to me via LinkedIn. I believe it’s LinkedIn backslash k r hine Accion so they can reach out to me. There are probably the two spots that I’m most active that they can reach out to me directly. And again, any questions people have, we’re always happy to help out. And I know there’s always a lot of questions about marketing where they should spend money, where they should spend their energy. Is this working? Is that working? And some of it is testing, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean we have the right answer, but we can walk through their process and see what that looks like.

Stone Payton: Kevin, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for investing the time and energy to share your insight and your perspective. This is been a marvelous conversation and you’re doing really important work, man. Keep up the good work and and know that we sincerely appreciate you, man.

Kevin Hein: Thank you, Stone. I appreciate your time and I appreciate everyone listening today.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Kevin Hein with Connected and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Test Your Subject Line

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BRX Pro Tip: Test Your Subject Line

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, here’s a good solid piece of tactical counsel, test your subject line.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] Yeah. If you’re doing any type of email marketing or any type of emailing, really, you really have to hone in on a good subject line because you don’t want your message to hit the spam folder if you can help it. And I use this tool. It’s a free tool that kind of gives you a ranking on how well your subject line is being perceived and if it’s going to be targeted in spam filters. And that website is omnisend.com/subject-line-tester, omnisend.com/subject-line-tester. And if you go to that website, it’ll have a place for you to just put your subject line in, and then it’ll tell you, it’ll say, “Hey, this was good,” or, “this has a good persuasive – you know, it’s persuasive,” or “this is too complicated. Here are some suggestions.” It’ll say this is using words that tend to be – we’ll put it in a spam folder. So, it’s really useful to at least kind of get an idea if you’re on the right track. I mean, obviously, you don’t have to take their advice exactly, but I would use it as at least a ballpark to say, “Okay, I’m in the right area here,” and then maybe you play around with some of their suggestions on how to add a word here or get rid of a word there that makes your subject line that much more powerful to help you get your open rate a little better and hopefully get more deals closed.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:44] So, that’s omnisend.com/subject-line-tester. If you go to that website, you will find it there. It’s a free tool and I highly recommend it.

WBENC 2022: Cheryl McCants with Impact Consulting Enterprises

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Cheryl-McCants-GWBC-WBENC-National-ConferenceCheryl McCants, Impact Consulting Enterprises

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from the WBENC National Conference 2022, inside the Georgia World Congress Center, inside the GWBC booth, Booth 1812. So, stop by and see us if you want to catch up and tell your story. And right now, we’re excited to talk to Cheryl McCants, and she is with Impact Consulting Enterprises. Welcome, Cheryl.

Cheryl McCants: [00:00:40] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about Impact Consulting Enterprises. How are you serving folks?

Cheryl McCants: [00:00:49] So, Impact is a communications company that I founded 33 years ago, back in 1989. And we specialize in telling stories that inspire smiles, trust, and confidence.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] And so, 33 years overnight success kind of story.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:07] Yeah. A long 33 year overnight success. Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So, how has the business evolved over the years?

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:14] Well, as most people would guess, the business started before things like what we’re doing now existed.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Like, before the internet.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:24] Before the internet. So, what’s very interesting is I moved our offices not too long ago, and so I had an old pile of business cards that didn’t have email addresses on it, that didn’t have cell phone numbers on it. And my daughter says, “Mom, these cards, why do you have them? They’re not complete.” So, things have evolved.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:45] What I would say, however, is, as much things change, they still stay the same. So, it’s all about communicating. And we now have different channels of communication. So, we’ve got our podcast, we’ve got our internet, and it’s really all about connecting with people.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] So, that part hasn’t changed. The storytelling part is the same. It’s just the way you do it might have changed a bit.

Cheryl McCants: [00:02:06] Absolutely. It’s the channel of communication.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] So, now, who is the ideal client for you?

Cheryl McCants: [00:02:13] So, ideally, we work with organizations, for profits, not-for profits, government agencies that need to connect and communicate with diverse audiences. It used to be called multicultural marketing. You know, it’s been called a lot of other things. Since the unfortunate murder of George Floyd, lots of corporations have stepped up their commitments to work with businesses that are black-owned or business owners of color. And we work with them to help make sure that their messages are respectful, to make sure that the imagery that they use is not offensive, to make sure that there’s culturally competent communication in all that they do.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:54] So, what is kind of the pain that they’re having where they should be calling Cheryl and her team? Like, what’s a symptom that you’re the solution to?

Cheryl McCants: [00:03:03] So, anybody that’s looking to connect with diverse audiences, if you’ve got a product that you want to sell and you realize that you want to connect with the African-American community, or the Latino community, or the Asian, or the LGBTQ+, or the female audience, and you want to ensure that you don’t have faux pas that we’ve seen in some advertising campaigns that have taken place recently, my team comes on as added bench to your ad agencies. We come on as added bench to your internal comms team. And then, we come on as strategists for those organizations that are really looking to fulfill their commitments 100 percent.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:45] Now, are you looking for more kind of enterprise level companies as a client, or are you looking for more agencies for you to kind of take that bench role for them or a combination?

Cheryl McCants: [00:03:57] We are really looking for more enterprise, like in industries or agencies. We’re currently doing some work with Bristol-Myers Squibb. That’s one of the reasons why we’re here today. And we’re working with them on helping to tell the story about the impact that their investment in diverse suppliers has, not just on that women-owned business or on that minority-owned business, but the communities that the employees and the other partners of those businesses live, work, and play in. So, really looking for other organizations that either need help telling that story, don’t know how to get it together, we can work with them as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] And that’s something important for the corporates to realize that their budgets in some ways are so huge to throw some money at these groups. It’s pocket change for a lot of these folks. But the impact is dramatic.

Cheryl McCants: [00:04:51] The impact is huge.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:52] And I don’t think they really can empathize to the level to understand that that’s the case.

Cheryl McCants: [00:04:57] Right. No, absolutely. So, we also have an initiative called The Great Football Sunday. And the idea is that, if one-tenth of a percent of the Super Bowl campaign budget could be put towards a nonprofit or for-profit, but an organization that works to end homelessness in the city that the Super Bowl is taking place, if we turnkey that around, then I call it the Great Football Sunday, because then everybody would be able to watch the Super Bowl. And in order to watch the Super Bowl, you got to have a T.V. And, hopefully, the T.V. is in a home. So, yes, one-tenth of a percent goes a long way when you’re talking about billions of dollars.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:41] Right. And it’s so important for the corporates to really let that sink in. And then, you help them tell those stories and help them reach the people that need to be reached.

Cheryl McCants: [00:05:50] Right. We help them tell those stories internally and externally. During my work with Nike, for example, we know that your strongest and largest pool of advocates are your employees. So, you want to make sure that when people go home and they’ve got Thanksgiving dinners or they’ve got Mother’s Day celebrations and people say, “Oh, so how’s work?” You hopefully want them to say work is grand, work is great, and here is why.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:14] It’s a story they tell about.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:15] Exactly. So, we work on preparing internal communication support, key messages, video productions, social media management, the media buying, the full spectrum. However, it all ties back to making sure that people know who they should be talking to, when they should be talking to them, and what they should be saying.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:39] So, how is this show working for you? You said you’re here for Bristol.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:42] Here with Bristol-Myers Squibb. I’ve set up an appointment with Amazon for the week after next when I get back to New York.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:50] There you go.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:51] I’m going to be connecting with Target, 1:00 tomorrow. So, so far, so good. And I’m also really excited about the new energy trends that are coming. And I do believe that offshore wind technology is the next big it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:10] You heard it here first.

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:10] And so, I’ll put it out there. There you go, offshore wind.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:15] So, if somebody wants to learn more and get a hold of you, what’s the website?

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:18] So, you can reach us online at eimpactconsulting.com. I’ve got a podcast, Marketing McCants. You can get some marketing tips. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Instagram. We’re on Twitter. We’re out there. Just look for Impact Consulting Enterprises and Cheryl McCants.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:37] All right. Cheryl, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:41] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:42] All right. This is Lee Kantor broadcasting live from the WBENC National Conference 2022 inside GWBC Booth 1812. We’ll be back in a few.

 

About WBENC

The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping women-owned businesses thrive.WBENC-Logo

We believe diversity promotes innovation, opens doors, and creates partnerships that fuel the economy. That’s why we not only provide the most relied upon certification standard for women-owned businesses, but we also offer the tools to help them succeed.

About GWBC

The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. GWBC-Logo

GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

BRX Pro Tip: The Awful First Draft

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BRX Pro Tip: The Awful First Draft

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today’s topic, the awful first draft.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:10] Yeah. A lot of people are procrastinating writing because they’re afraid their writing’s not very good. And that’s totally normal. A lot of people have insecurities around their writing ability, but I think what they don’t realize that most good writers have the same problem. The first draft of anything that anybody writes usually isn’t that great. And once you kind of reframe that in your head and know, “Oh, it’s normal to have an awful first draft so let me just knock that out as quickly as possible,” then it gives you freedom to just write and don’t judge, just get it all down on paper and then go back and then edit it. And that’s what good writers do. They’re not – the writing isn’t really the hardest part. It’s the editing that is the hardest part to take kind of raw concepts and words and then put them into a cohesive story or a cohesive post or article. That’s really where the rubber hits the road.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:12] So, if you know ahead of time that you’re going to go back over something and you’re going to make it better, then that takes a lot of the pressure off and it should make it less a chore and less something that you’re going to procrastinate around, knowing that, “Hey, today I’m just going to write my awful first draft. I’ll get that down. Then tomorrow I’ll come back and I’ll edit that.” And then, it just takes a lot of the pressure off yourself and you don’t have to make it perfect and you know it’s not going to be perfect. And you just want to get those ideas out of your head and you know that you’re going to make it better after editing it a couple of times.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:48] And then, now, there are so many, so much software out there where you can – you don’t even have to write it. You can just talk off the top of your head into a Google doc and it’ll record it and transcribe it for you and you can edit off of that. So, don’t be afraid of the first draft. It’s going to be bad. Just accept it. That’s the way it is. And then, just know that you’re going to make it better over time.

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