Business RadioX ®

DuckPunk Productions: Unleashing the Power of Storytelling in Business

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On today’s Women in Motion, Lee Kantor is joined by Mellissa Tong, founder of DuckPunk Productions. They discuss the power of authentic storytelling in business, emphasizing how genuine narratives help brands connect with audiences. Mellissa shares her journey in establishing DuckPunk, the inspiration behind its name, and her methods for uncovering clients’ unique stories. She highlights the evolving expectations of audiences for authenticity and the importance of community support among women entrepreneurs. Mellissa also introduces a new course aimed at teaching storytelling techniques to attract customers, underscoring the significance of authenticity in brand narratives.

DuckPunk-Productions

Mellissa-TongMellissa Tong is a speaker, three-time #1 Best Selling Author on Amazon and Founder/CCO of an award-winning Storytelling agency and content production company, DuckPunk Productions, Inc.

Ms. Tong works with B2B organizations to solve the disconnect between them and their customers by creating authentic brand storylines that are relevant and relatable to their target audience across all delivery mediums. DuckPunk’s services are branding and marketing, TV commercials and branded content (includes live action, animation, drones and still photography,) as well as media and communication trainings. Celebrities Mellissa has worked with include Shaquille O’Neal, Bryan Cranston, Keke Palmer, Arsenial Hall, to name a few.

DuckPunk has worked with Nissan, Verizon, Wells Fargo, CBS, Old Navy, Westin LAX, California Department of Health, California Lottery, just to name a few. Some of their clients have enjoyed sales increase up to 110% and engagement up to 70%. Awards they won include Clio, Addy, Telly, Best of Business in Video Production for ten consecutive years starting in 2012, and a dozen more from film festivals across the country.

Mellissa began her career as a TV Newscaster and has thirty years of both in-front-of and behind-the-camera experience as a storyteller. Before founding DuckPunk, she worked on a primetime CBS scripted show called Martial Law, starring Arsenial Hall and Sammo Hung.

Aside from running DuckPunk, Mellissa is also a sought-after speaker and trainer, speaking frequently at national conferences and trade events. One of the highlights was speaking at the Los Angeles Mayor’s Office in October 2019. She has held trainings and workshops for Westin LAX, SoCalGas, San Diego Gas & Electric, WBENC, NAWBO, NLBWA, e-Women Network, various chambers of commerce, and many other professional organizations.

Ms. Tong is very passionate about women and social justice issues. In her leisure time, she sits on various non-profit boards, including the CalArts alumni board and Wells Bring Hope, a non-profit organization that drills wells in Niger, West Africa. Previously she was on the board for Vision of Health, a non-profit mobile mammogram program for underprivileged women.

Ms. Tong is a MFA (Master of Fine Arts) graduate from the California Institute of the Arts. She was born and raised in Hong Kong before moving to the US in 1991. She majored in Music Composition and minored in English Literature for her bachelor’s degree. Before moving to the US, she worked briefly in broadcasting at RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong.) She firmly believes in this mantra, a quote by Pablo Picasso, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.”

Connect with Mellissa on LinkedIn.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WEBC West. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women in Motion, we have Mellissa Tong with DuckPunk Productions. Welcome.

Mellissa Tong: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about DuckPunk Productions. How are you serving folks?

Mellissa Tong: Well, DuckPunk is an award winning storytelling agency and content production company. We have three different kinds of customers. We service corporations, mid-size as well as small business owners, and we create authentic brand storylines that are relevant and relatable to your target audience across all delivery mediums, including TV commercials, broadcasts, social media content, websites, verbal pitching, a presentation deck, a written statement. I mean, anything that will serve, you know, your audience. And that’s kind of and we have been around for 24 years now.

Lee Kantor: Is there a story behind the name?

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, absolutely. So I get asked that a lot. So the story behind the name is back in 2000, I was trying to find a name for the company, and I was at this lake feeding a bunch of ducks with breadcrumbs. And there came this dog with a mohawk, just like my logo. And after 45 minutes, you know, my back was getting empty and I was throwing the last breadcrumbs into the lake. And this Mohawk duck was still charge over to get to the food. So I kept looking at him, thinking, wow, you’re one tiny dog. All the other dogs were like, done, you know? They were like, I’m full, I’m just hanging out. And this dog, he would not give up. He kept trying to eat. So I thought, wow, how can you be eating so much? You just one tiny dog? How much more can you eat? So that night I went home. I just couldn’t shake that image off my head. So I started playing with the word punk. Punk rock and mohawk. And six weeks later I decided to name my company Dog Punk. But that’s half of the story. So at the time, my justification was because my last name is Tom. So by alphabetical order, I’m always on the last or second last page. So I thought if I have a company name I don’t want to be on at the very end. So instead of calling it, you know, Punk Dog, I flipped it and call it Dog Punk, but that’s really half of the story. Years later, as a minority woman working in advertising entertainment, I cannot tell you how many hurdles I have to jump through. And every time I fall, I have to jump through a hurdle. I have to remind myself to be like him and never give up. So that’s my deathpunk story.

Lee Kantor: There you go. Very inspirational. And on brand. That sounds on brand too. Very, very congruent. Congruent messaging and congruent. You know intention. So. And is that part of kind of the secret to storytelling to be authentic like that and to have the ability to really get clarity and simplicity when it comes to sharing a message?

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, absolutely. I cannot tell you. I mean, I, you know, we do TV commercials, right? So oftentimes, um, you know, TV commercials, you know, I mean, I do TV commercials, don’t get me wrong, but but not every single TV commercial comes from a real, authentic story, right? Some do, some don’t. And when it comes, you know, and construct from an authentic idea that that spot will really, you know, um, just, just, you know, it will just become so much more popular because at the end of the day, right, We gravitate towards, you know, real, authentic stories. So that’s why, you know, my brand is about crafting authentic brand storylines that are relevant and relatable. You can make up stories, you know, there’s nothing wrong with it. But in order to really capture people’s attention and get people’s, you know, buy in to your brand and be able to connect with people on an emotional level. Nothing beats authentic.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients, how do you kind of bubble up those kind of stories that will resonate with an audience? Do you have some way of onboarding them or some questions you ask to help to get to the heart of what they’re trying to accomplish?

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, absolutely. So before I started my company, I actually began my career as a TV newscaster. And at the time, besides anchoring the news, they also put me in charge of a daily five minute human interest segment where I could cover anything but hot news. So in those four years, I interviewed thousands. I mean, you know, um, you know, thousands of people from all walks of life and crafted over 1200 on air stories. So now when I do storytelling, I bring all that interviewing skills to my clients, and I have a set of questions that I ask them in order to really find out what their brand is about, who they are, what makes them different, and why people should buy from them, versus, you know, their competitors. So I dig deep. You know, sometimes we sometimes we go way back to people’s childhood in order to really find out why they wanted to do the business, why did they start the business now?

Lee Kantor: Do you find that today’s audience is a little more sophisticated and maybe a little more cynical when it comes to stories that they are kind of looking to gravitate to the truth, to something that’s authentic, and they’re getting a little tired of things that are too slick and too, you know, perfect.

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, I would agree with you. I think, you know, with with such a crowded marketplace, right? People definitely, you know, gravitate toward more, um, on authentic storytelling because, you know, like, you know, when when a brand is trying too hard, um, when when it’s like, it’s like you have to be transparent these days because with social media and everything, it’s very, very easy to find out what you’re about. You know, if you say one thing and then on your website, you say something else, or you say one thing and then you’re in your written materials, you say something else. It’s just very, very easy to spot. So obviously, if you want to be on brand, um, you have to stay true to your voice and you have to stay true to, to your basically to your brand, because otherwise it’s not going to resonate.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, when when you’re working with clients, do you tend to work with B2C, B2B, or are you kind of industry agnostic?

Speaker4: No, we.

Mellissa Tong: We do all kinds of industries, but we are pretty much, I would say 95% B2B, uh, from time to time, we may have a client, you know, that is B2C. So I’ll give you an example. Um, so last year we did have a B2C client, and she’s a very seasoned CFO. And she came to me because she said, okay, I’m looking, I’m looking to jump ship. And I’ve been getting a ton of, you know, interviews, but I wasn’t getting callbacks, so I don’t know what I’m doing, you know, wrong. But I want to in order to, you know, land the job, I have to be able to get more callbacks. So we started working together and I helped her reframe the way she asked, you know, she answered her questions, and eventually she started getting callbacks and she landed, you know, her, um, quarter of $1 million job. So she’s very happy. So once in a while we’ll get a client like that. But mostly we’re B2B.

Lee Kantor: And where do they come? What problem are they coming to you with? Are they just coming to you with, hey, we want to do a commercial or we want to do some video, or are they is it more kind of a strategic problem of like, we have to increase sales or we want to. Increase brand awareness more of.

Mellissa Tong: More of more of a more of a strategy for sure. Because we. Like I said, we’re not limited to just doing videos anymore. So before Covid, we were primarily. Doing storytelling on video. But now we have opened it up. So now you don’t have to do a store. You don’t have to do it on a video. You can, like I said, we can help you do your pitch. We can help you. Do a presentation deck. We can help you, you know, tell your story on your capability statement, I mean. You know, now we across different mediums. So usually people recognize that. Oh, you know, our sales is getting. A little stagnant or we really want to grow. But how do we get there. Yeah. So it’s more of a strategy. Thing when they come to us and they really want to, you know, utilize the power of storytelling. And use storytelling to really drive sales and get the results that they’re looking for and storytelling.

Lee Kantor: Kind of can go across channels, right. Like you probably help them craft a message for, you know. That that classic elevator pitch, all the way to a message if they were keynoting a speech.

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve we have helped, you know, quite a number of people, you know, um, uh, you know, basically put a storytelling spin on the keynote speeches so they can, you know, get, um, so they can be a little bit more engaging because sometimes, you know, when you talk, it’s very easy if you’re not aware of, of of doing it in a storytelling format, you can it’s very easy to get into, into the mode of, oh, I’m just giving you facts, right? I’m just giving you data. I’m giving you facts. But without the stories, you know, our brains are not wired to just capture data and facts. Our brain eventually will tune out. So that’s why, you know, doing, getting the facts out, getting the data out in a storytelling format will help people absorb, you know, the information so much better and easier.

Lee Kantor: Is there any kind of do’s and don’ts you can share with our audience when it comes to storytelling? Are there things you should do and things you shouldn’t do.

Mellissa Tong: Um, I guess I guess in storytelling, my, my number one thing is always, you know, be authentic because nothing beats real. So even I mean, I’ve heard some crazy stories over the years, and even if the story is crazy, but as long as it’s real, then it’s fine because it’s real, right? You can’t you can’t argue that. So I would say the number one thing is be authentic. And then I would say the number two thing is really make it relevant for your audience. I have actually seen, you know, very, very established, you know, speakers speaking on stage. And then they they were doing okay with the stories, but the stories don’t really have any relevance to the target audience. So the audience was sitting there thinking, okay, why, why, why are we listening to this? So really make sure that whatever story you’re using and telling it is relevant and relatable to your target audience, because otherwise it’s not going to have any effect. And then I think the third piece is really, you know.

Speaker4: I mean.

Mellissa Tong: Obviously, you know, in the B2B world, you’re using storytelling to drive sales and get more customers. So really, really spend time on finding, you know, what sets you apart. And I think this is a very, very common challenge for a lot of businesses. I mean, sometimes I work with businesses who are over 30 years, over 30 years old, and they still can’t really articulate what sets them apart. So I think this is the key point. You know, a differentiator should be something that you can claim and nobody else can claim. So I think, you know, if you have those three things lined up, it will definitely help you, you know, um, get further with your story.

Lee Kantor: And something that I find at least it doesn’t resonate with me is when they they’re telling a story, but it gets too salesy. Like all of a sudden it became a sales pitch. And it’s not a story anymore. Like, how do you kind of help your client not kind of go into buy my stuff mode, you know, when you’re trying to. Really share a story that’s going to articulate that point of differentiation or what makes you special, but you don’t want it to be like a sales pitch, like it’s kind of art and science.

Mellissa Tong: It is definitely an art and science. So I would say, I would say if you come from a place of serving, like, okay, how am I serving my clients with my service or products, then it will automatically not become salesy. But if you’re trying to sell something, then immediately your brain will go to the sales mode and then you will become a salesman. So I think you just have to kind of maybe set your intention and really figure out, okay, am I here to sell or am I here to serve? I think if you get clear on on serving versus selling, then then you should be able to stay away from, you know, the salesy mode.

Lee Kantor: And I would think that this is where having an expert like you come in and listen and and share your best practices, you can help a client kind of avoid those kind of big missteps.

Mellissa Tong: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve done a lot of, um, you know, sales and communication trainings and, um, that’s where you kind of learn how to differentiate and then and then practice so that you don’t go into the sales mode too often.

Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you and your firm to become part of the WebEx community? What were you hoping to get out of it?

Mellissa Tong: I love Webank, you know, I, I have been certified as a minority business owner for years. Um, since 2005. And over the years, people have asked me, oh, how come you don’t, you know, how come you don’t get certified as a woman owner? And I and, you know, my my excuse was, oh, I don’t need I don’t need both. You know, one is enough. And it’s true. You know, I don’t really need both. But at the same time, you know, I was totally missing out until, you know, several years ago, I finally, um, I finally, you know, did my read my certification, and and I cannot tell you it’s a world of difference for me. Um, I, you know, I love, you know, having a, um, a close circle of women owned, um, you know, of women business owners because we share the same struggles, right? We regardless of how big or how small business is, we, we we share the same struggle. We we have to hustle. We have to get it together. We have to, you know, we have to make sales. We have to, you know, um, do all these things that, you know, any, any business owners have to do. So just having that camaraderie and having a close group of women that I can, you know, call upon, you know, when I have, you know, when I have a challenge, you know, when I want to get a simple opinion about certain things, you know, and it’s been great. Um, and, um, and I really liked sort of that the supportive environment, that camaraderie that I get from being part of the whole, you know, band network. So I love KeyBank, and everywhere I go, I keep asking people, hey, have you, have you, have you, you know, certified as a woman owned.

Lee Kantor: Now for you? Um, what who is that ideal client that you’re looking to have a conversation with next? Like, um, who’s who is the ideal client for DuckPunk productions?

Speaker4: So we sort.

Mellissa Tong: Of have, um, we sort of have three tracks. Um, so we continue to shoot TV commercials and branded content, you know, for our corporate clients like Nissan and Verizon and Wells Fargo. Um, and then for the mid-sized businesses, we function as the fractional CMO. But something new that we just started to do is, um, over the years, people have asked me, oh, so I do a lot of workshops, you know, I’ve done it for, you know, KeyBank, National, Navajo, National, um, L.A. mayor’s office, um, SoCal gas, San Diego Gas and Electric. So over the years, people have asked me, oh, how can you? How come you don’t do any workshops on your own? And I did it a few times at the very beginning, but I stopped doing it because, you know, I, I didn’t want to spend too much energy trying to get, you know, people to sign up and do all that. But, um. Um, people were saying, okay, you should have something that is self-paced so that we can, you know, learn, learn on our own. You don’t have to worry about, you know, who’s showing up. So I finally listened. And now, um, next month, we are launching a course called Story Selling. And it is mastering the Art of storytelling to attract more customers. Um, and we have three parts. Part one is, um, crafting an impactful elevator pitch to close more sales. Part two is crafting a buzzworthy brand story to stand out from your competitors. And part three is how to be a rockstar on camera and tell your story on video. So I believe this is, you know, um, a very comprehensive course for people who want to further their storytelling skills, who want to get more customers and who want to get very clear on their differentiators so they can use it to attract more customers and win more business.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wanted to learn more about the firm or have a more substantive conversation with you, or learn about that course, what is the website?

Mellissa Tong: The website is very easy to find. Is DuckPunk Dot net. So it’s DuckPunk dot net.

Lee Kantor: Well, Mellissa, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Speaker4: Sure.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.

Oh, no. Don’t kick me when I’m down. Oh, me. Oh!

 

BRX Pro Tip: Benefits of a Beginner’s Mind

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BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Benefits of a Beginner’s Mind

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about the distinct benefits of having a beginner’s mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Yeah. I think it’s funny that as you lead an organization or you lead any group of people, you want to come across as somebody who knows everything and you’re the place where all the information is stored. But as a leader, it’s really important to approach decisions, any new information, opportunities with a beginner’s mind. And that, to me, is a combination of a lot of curiosity, a lot of humility, and a true understanding that facts might have changed since the last time you saw something like what you’re dealing with right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] And when you can look at things through that lens of the beginner’s mind, it helps you make decisions and look at things with kind of a dispassionate pursuit of the truth rather than, “Oh, I’ve seen this before, do this.” Because every situation is different and things do change. And you have to kind of have an understanding that in life, things are a lot different today than they were yesterday. And just because you did something this way yesterday doesn’t mean that’s how you’re going to do it tomorrow.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] And then, when you go down the wrong path, it’s important to kind of acknowledge, “Hey, I made a mistake. This worked before, but it’s definitely not working now,” and accept it, move forward, apologize, make amends. This keeps you accountable. This keeps you from blaming too much to your team. And it’s just a more effective way of leadership, in my opinion.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:47] So, that beginner’s mind way to look at things through that lens of this is new because it truly is new, even though it might look like it’s something you’ve seen before. So, if you can keep that humility, I think you’re going to be a lot less stressed and a lot more effective.

Cooking with Heart: Ms. C’s Commitment to Inclusivity and Community Support

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In this episode of Women in Motion, host Lee Kantor interviews Pamela Coleman, owner of Ms. C’s Home-Style, a catering and private chef service in Arizona, Nevada, and California. Pamela shares her culinary journey, emphasizing her business’s evolution during the COVID-19 pandemic and her dedication to using fresh, local ingredients. She discusses adapting to client needs, managing a multi-location business, and the importance of building strong customer relationships. Pamela also highlights her community involvement, challenges in securing funding, and aspirations for expanding into the corporate sector, all while maintaining a focus on inclusivity and exceptional service.

Ms-Cs-Home-Style

Pamela-ColemanPamela Coleman is CEO/Chef of Ms. C’s Home-Style. The services we offer are private chef and catering services for both the private and corporate sectors. Our service areas are the metro areas of Arizona, Nevada and California.

We are a National Certified Woman Own Business, WBEC-West, National Certified Food Manager, ServSafe and a Certified ASU Supplier. Through continued education we are in support of sustainable food systems, supporting local farmers and ranchers and using bio degradable packaging and composting.

We are part of the community, working with local non-profits in support of healthy eating and education. We are solid in our commitment to make a difference and impact the lives in the communities that we serve.

Pamela enjoys family, traveling, reading, and living her best life.

Connect with Pamela on LinkedIn and follow Ms. C’s Home-Style on Facebook.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women In Motion and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women In Motion, we have Ms. C, and she is with Ms. C’s Home-Style. Welcome.

Pamela Coleman: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Ms. C’s Home-Style. How are you serving folks?

Pamela Coleman: Well, yes. Ms. C’s Home-Style, the services we provide are private chef services and catering in both the private and corporate sectors. Service areas are the metropolitan areas of Arizona, Nevada, and California. We travel a little bit.

Lee Kantor: So, what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Pamela Coleman: You know what? It all began, I guess, it was a hidden gift inside. Of course, I’ve had other businesses along the way, but at some point, just my need to deliver good food to the world came to the front, and I’ve been doing this for several years now, but that is my love language. I want to be able to share, and we know that food is a universal language, so I get to talk to everyone.

Lee Kantor: But how did the business start? Did you just started as a private chef or how did it evolve?

Pamela Coleman: No, actually, I started out in the catering business. A lot of my book of business at that time was in the nonprofit arena. However, COVID hit, so I had to reinvent myself, if you will, because you could no longer gather in large groups, so this is where the private chef and catering came about. So, I cater more on a smaller realm now along with the private chef services.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you notice that people, kind of what they were looking for someone with your skillset, it kind of evolved through the pandemic? Like, there was a big push for meal prepping for a while, is that still a thing?

Pamela Coleman: It is still a thing. And, yes, that’s kind of where it began, because of course, you had that no contact. I wasn’t very busy, obviously, at that time. However, I began to realize how we could help people by being able to have food provided for them. And of course, that evolved once we were able to gather again to be able to go in someone’s home or Airbnb. And it just became something that I felt really comfortable with, so this is where we are now.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you manage clients in multiple locations like you do?

Pamela Coleman: Well, the locations outside of the Arizona area are few and far between. But even in that situation, though, we’ve done some gigs in Las Vegas, we’ve done some just outside the LA area. So, you know, when that opportunity arises, we see if we can step to the challenge.

Lee Kantor: So, do you physically go with your team there or do you hire people locally in the markets?

Pamela Coleman: No. I take my team with me. We would travel. Depending on the situation, we’ll secure a place to prepare the food, and then of course, continue on with the event.

Lee Kantor: So, any advice for other entrepreneurs out there when it comes to kind of building the relationships that your business needs to be successful?

Pamela Coleman: Well, I guess the advice would be, and that was a big point in growing the business, was forming those business relationships, staying in touch with your client, making sure that you have things taken care of. Something that is important to me is customer care. It is different from customer service, in that I do, I take a personal touch to each and every one of my events.

Lee Kantor: So, you’re trying to kind of elevate the level of service to really make sure that they’re being cared for and they’re getting maybe even more than they asked for?

Pamela Coleman: No, absolutely. I want to make sure that when we do an event, it is a memorable event. We want you to call us back, and we want to make sure, because a lot of events that go on – and you would agree with me too – food is a major factor in the success of that event. So, we just want to make sure that when you call upon us to provide our services that we come with our A-game every time.

Lee Kantor: So, when someone contacts you, what does that initial conversation look like? How do you help them kind of understand all that you can deliver? Because sometimes people don’t know what they don’t know, so they’ll come in here asking for X, but you know that they’d be better served with A, B, C, and D.

Pamela Coleman: No, absolutely. One of the things that I feel kind of separates me from the rest of the crowd is that I do work with the client in a customized menu. I talk to you. I want to find out what you like. Or, you know, if you’re doing a birthday party for your husband, what is his favorite food? So, we want to make sure that the foods that you choose and the ones we prepare are the ones that you enjoy. So, we work with that.

Pamela Coleman: Also, I have a little saying that everybody has a seat at the table in my house because we offer vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options. That’s important to us. We want everyone at the table.

Lee Kantor: So, you really kind of scrutinize who’s attending. I want to make sure that they feel welcome, too, and they’re going to get something that they’re going to be happy with.

Pamela Coleman: No, absolutely. And I think part of me comes through in that business. You know, family is important to me. So, these events that I have, they have that vibe to them, they have that feel. That feel of family where everyone gathers.

Lee Kantor: So, when you started this business, was it difficult to get funding?

Pamela Coleman: Absolutely. A majority of the funding came from me and my other businesses in getting the company started. But that has always been a hurdle. I’m at a point now where I’m looking to scale. So, definitely funding is very important. And just as important as a business, you have to prepare yourself financially. Take a look at it and see if you’re ready to make that move to get there, you know, to expand the business and serve even a broader audience.

Lee Kantor: So, right now you’re bootstrapping the business with customer funds or helping you grow kind of organically?

Pamela Coleman: I have. I have grown organically. But like I said, at this point in time, we are ready to take things to the next level, so we’re looking at some other funding options to accomplish our goals.

Lee Kantor: Now, why was it important for you to become part of the WBEC-West community?

Pamela Coleman: Well, it was really important. I’ve known about that organization for a very long time. And I’m in the food industry, and in the beginning I’m going, “Oh, my God,” you know, they’re looking for widgets and gadgets and intellectual property. But I decided to go ahead and become part of that organization, and it has been game changing. It has taught me a lot about building business relationships. It’s given me opportunities to showcase what I do which, of course, has turned into other opportunities. So, it’s been a very, very important piece in the history and the story that I tell of Miss C’s Home-Style.

Lee Kantor: Now, another community that’s important to you is local farmers, how do you work with those organizations?

Pamela Coleman: Definitely. My approach to bringing food to the public, part of that was to mimic what I grew up on. You know, grandma used to send me out in the back to get the tomatoes or onions, or whatever we had growing at the time, and I just wanted to continue with that and bring the freshest possible ingredients that I could to the table. So, as a result, being able to make those connections and those relationships with local farmers and ranchers has been a very important part of Ms. C’s Home-Style.

Lee Kantor: And I think that something that folks who aren’t familiar and haven’t had the opportunity to partake in some local farm fresh ingredients, those are different foods than what you get kind of on the food industrial grocery store. Some of those fruits and vegetables could be sitting in freezers for months, you’re not getting the freshest stuff. But when you’re dealing straight from a local farm, you’re getting it right from the hands of the farmer.

Pamela Coleman: No, absolutely. And it is clear that just as I have a passion for what I do and a love for what I do, the same is in the vegetables that I would get from them. And you’re absolutely right, I’m also a student of sustainable food systems. And when you kind of get an idea of what happens behind the scenes before you see that fruit in the grocery store, it really makes you want to definitely either grow your own or purchase from local farmers.

Lee Kantor: Right. I remember the first time I had a farm fresh egg, and I cracked it open, it was a different food than the egg from the grocery store. It didn’t even look the same. It didn’t taste the same. They were both called eggs, but the fresh one tasted a hundred times better.

Pamela Coleman: There is a clear difference.

Lee Kantor: So, what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Pamela Coleman: Well, of course, as we continue to grow, just the support of the community. And of course, being part of WBEC, because that’s one of the things that we are looking to do as we plan for the coming year, I really want to make a bigger footprint in the corporate arena. So, just continuing to tap into the resources offered by WBEC-West will definitely allow us to do that. So, just let me feed you and it’ll be all right.

Lee Kantor: So, you’re looking for more opportunities in corporate and maybe to cater more of events?

Pamela Coleman: No, absolutely. I mean, in that corporate arena, you’ve got networking meetings, board meetings, department meetings, so there’s always an opportunity to provide a lunch or d’oeuvres at the networking meeting, or things like that. So, the opportunities are there.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Big or small, food is part of the business world every day. So, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the website? What is the best way to connect?

Pamela Coleman: Oh, absolutely. Please go to tastemscs.com, and of course, you get an opportunity to kind of see what we do. We’re on Instagram as well under that same handle, and just see what we’re doing in the community. And as a small business, I think it’s important that we work within the community. So, I do a lot of work with nonprofits, working with children and food, and things like that. So, we want to be a company that is impacting and making a difference in the communities that we serve.

Lee Kantor: Is there a story you can share, a memorable event you were involved with?

Pamela Coleman: Oh, absolutely. There’s an organization locally here in Arizona, it’s the Blue Watermelon Project. And we actually go into the schools, we come up with recipes, and the children participate. So, we make sure that they are part of that, and we educate them on the dish or the fruits or the ingredients that are being used. So, it’s a great experience to watch them be interested in cooking and always tell the kids they’re absolutely amazing. And I asked them what they’re going to be when they grow up, and you can only imagine how many chefs are coming your way. It is quite a joy.

Lee Kantor: I’m sure there’s a lot more chefs. The Food Network, people pay attention to that channel. Now, one more time, the website.

Pamela Coleman: The website is tastemscs.com, and that’s the word taste-m-s-c-s-.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, Ms. C, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Pamela Coleman: Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.

 

Dennis Price with Heroes for Humanity

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Dennis-PriceDennis Price is the Founder and CEO of Heroes for Humanity, an organization dedicated to leveraging the skills and expertise of veteran special operators to make a global impact.

With over 17 years of service in the United States Marine Corps and Special Operations, Dennis is a Special Reconnaissance Operations Professional with a Top-Secret Security Clearance.

His extensive experience includes team building, leadership, and training, managing assets valued at over $1.6 million, and receiving multiple awards for outstanding performance.

Heroes for Humanity: 

https://buff.ly/3UCKLPw
https://buff.ly/3YRkgsi

Upcoming Event: A Call to Action at Warehouse 72

Join Dennis and Heroes for Humanity on Saturday, November 9, 2024, at Warehouse 72 for “A Call to Action”—an evening where purpose meets passion. Enjoy a 4-course dinner by Chef Jaime Salazar, bourbon pairings by Garrison Brothers, and inspiring stories of resilience.

Why Attend?

Make an Impact: Support those in need.
Get Inspired: Hear uplifting stories.
Connect: Network with like-minded leaders.

Seats are limited—secure yours now and be part of this transformative event. Let’s create change together.   https://buff.ly/3C9CKeC

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio Serving the Community. Series. I have the special privilege of this amazing guest on the show today, who was introduced to me by Jason Mitrione. He’s such a great connector and I’m so excited to meet and have on the show. Dennis Price, who is the founder and CEO of Heroes for Humanity. He spent 17 years in the United States Marine Corps and also served in special ops. So, Dennis, I’m so excited to have you on the show and talk about this great event that you have coming up this weekend. Welcome.

Dennis Price: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. Um, it’s a massive honor to to be here and to just share the word of God and. And what? We’re, uh, not just what I’m doing here, but what we’re all doing. You know, so, uh, on November 9th at 5:45 p.m. down in Katy, Texas, we’re having a massive fundraiser banquet. Um, we would like to invite everyone, everyone to be a part of of what we’re doing and invite them to the family to, to hopefully encourage others to use the gifts and talents of the Lord to be his hands and feet with us. You know we can’t do this alone. Um, uh, one of the things I was, I, I joke around about, I say, man, the sphere of influence that I have, I get operators all day, day, day and night saying, hey, send me. Let’s go on. Let’s go on rescue operations for traffic, children. Let’s do all this stuff that we do. But I don’t attract, like, you know, um, people like, let’s check out your financial plan. How is your marketing doing? Like, I don’t. So, um. Yeah, we’re gonna we’re we just we want to encourage everyone to to come with the fundraiser banquet. So, so we can help finish out 2024. Um, uh, missions and budget and then reset for 2025. In the nine countries we’re in into this year into next year.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. You were sharing with me before we started the show so many things that you’ve done just in the month of October, which is why we have such a hard push for this event that’s coming up this weekend. We really need to sell every single ticket to this dinner. We’ve got 160 seats. There’s still a big portion of that open and available. We’re welcoming everyone. And this is not just for people who are in the military. This is open to the public to help support heroes for humanity. So, Dennis, you know, I’m going to put this in the show notes. All of the things that you guys have been doing along with your background so that people can go and immerse themselves in that. But can you just tell us a little bit of what you did in the month of October with heroes for humanity.

Dennis Price: Yeah. Well, um, you know, God’s been good, and that’s to say the least. Uh, I joke around, I say, hey, when you pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud. When you pray that God uses you to your maximum capacity, you cannot complain that he’s using you to your maximum. Maximum capacity. So we’ve been really blessed by the Lord to to be used like that. So in October alone, if you guys saw on the news two natural disasters happened, uh, Hurricane Helene and, uh, hit North Carolina and Florida, and then another hurricane hit Florida at the exact same time. We we branched out from the moment it hit the ground, uh, the hurricane, we had, uh, volunteers from heroes for humanity the moment the hurricane went, uh, so we’ve been in North Carolina the whole time running up. And same with Florida running up and down the mountains, doing massive amounts of operations of search and rescue tremendous amount of humanitarian and medical aid. We’ve we’ve done so much. We’ve gathered like probably 5 or 6 new editions of nurse practitioners and Pas and doctors to the team. So it’s such a blessing. And we’ve been opening up medical clinics for people in stranded areas and all through North Carolina. Um, so we’ve been running up and down the mountains of North Carolina.

Dennis Price: Um, and we did we covered down in Florida as well. But it’s it’s still so bad there because then winter was coming. So I just got back two days ago. Uh, and I still have teams out there who are preparing them for winter, setting up, uh, propane generators because they’re still without power. We handed out massive amounts of blankets, um, uh, sleeping bags, warming layers, propane heaters for their house. We set them up. And not just that, we are treating the the physical being and we provide most of us are EMTs and above, tons of nurse practitioners and everyone we’re providing, um, medical, uh, aid and assistance and as well as spiritual, uh, resiliency and spiritual hope, you know, hope that this will pass, that this there will be better times and and just a hope for the future and closure to their families, as we did search and rescue to find remains of their lost ones to to provide closure for that. That’s just in North Carolina at the exact same time as we did Florida. And we just came back from a mission in Cuba this past month, building a soup kitchen for the poor with Assemblies of God out there and Lone Star Cowboy Church, and here in Texas and, um, and at the exact same time, we were able to rescue five trafficked children, two in Texas and three in Louisiana.

Dennis Price: That led to five federal arrests in human trafficking. Like, it’s been so tremendous and so awesome. And I’m just so happy that to be a part of it, and it’s not something I’m doing or what God’s doing in my life, it’s what he’s all doing. Once we just stand up and say, just like Isaiah said, uh, six eight in the Bible says, here I am, send me. Use the gifts and talents of the Lord to be his hands and feet in this fallen world. You know, so, um, I just I really encourage everyone to, to to show up on November 6th, uh, at warehouse 72 for, um, for our fundraiser banquet and just see what how they could be a part of the team. And one of the things you you mentioned, and you hit it right on a lot of people self-select and say, I was in the military, I can’t do this. I can’t do that. Well, first of all, I say I weigh hearts, not resumes. I, you know, um, in Scripture it tells us that God knows our hearts. He judges our mind and he way, and he he judges us by the fruits that we bear, you know, so he knows our intentions of our true heart and how we serve.

Dennis Price: And he judges us the fruits that we bear. What are we doing with the gifts and talents of the Lord in this fallen world? We always say, God, how can you let this happen? How can you let this do? And instead know, how did you let this happen? I equipped you with a voice. You have a podcast. You have a voice. I’ve equipped you with a military background. I’ve equipped you with marketing skills. I’ve equipped you with an MBA in business. I’ve equipped you with a great network, uh, through entrepreneurs, because we need openly need corporate sponsorships. Because we can’t just work off the. We’ve been working off the widow’s might alone and our faith. And but like I told you before, we’re in nine countries this year and the next year. So we openly need people to, to be a part of the team. See how they can contribute. Show up at the fundraiser. And if you can’t show up then then awesome. Uh, spread the word to everyone and anyone about the tickets. And then if you can’t do that because each $50 of each ticket goes directly to heroes for Manatee, and the rest covers the event, the dinner. Um, but if you can’t make it there, then go on and donate to our cause.

Dennis Price: We’re 500 and 1C3, um, federally tax exempt. So we can we we offer um, uh, tax breaks and everything like that. And, and ultimately like our third pillar is evangelism. If you want a place to tithe. If you want a place to sow your seed and know that it’s not just going to a place that gets up and sings songs about the Lord, but who who is the action arm and using the gifts and talents to be the Lord’s hand and feet in this fallen world. If you are sick of flipping through the TV and saying, I’ve had enough of this, this world like, man, this stinks so bad, what is that glimmering hope? I’ll tell you, it’s not heroes for America. It’s not. It’s not veterans for America. It’s not any of that. It’s heroes for humanity that we are. We’re agnostic to whatever country, agnostic to what? Anything like that. And just and like ultimately I yeah, I care if you’re a Christian, like I would like for you to come to Christ, but but ultimately it’s just people, people being doing the right thing for the right reason. And it doesn’t have to be worth it to do the right thing. It’s just people helping people, that’s all.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And, uh, heroes for humanity cannot operate without support. And you’ve got lots of boots on the ground and I’m sure that there are people listening to the show today that might like to be a part of the operations team, so please reach out to Dennis. He would love to have you on the team. But more importantly, more importantly is the support, the financial support of this organization. Y’all, listen, Dennis may not tell you this, but I know he’s working three jobs so that he can keep this nonprofit running and get to the event. If you can’t get to the event, buy a ticket. Spread the word. The link to order your tickets is going to be in the show notes, so please do that also. Dennis, I heard you say that you need corporate sponsors. That is another way that bigger organizations can give back to this beautiful work that your team is doing through heroes for humanity, and without those corporate sponsors, there is no nonprofit. We have to have the support out there. You guys can be boots on the ground all day long, but you’ve got to have that financial support as well. So if you’re listening to the show and you want to give to an organization that is really boots on the ground, really helping people all over the planet, then this is the place that you should land. Um, so, Dennis, I know you have a very, very long backstory, and I really want folks to understand what that is. So I will, as I mentioned earlier, put all of those videos and the appearances that you’ve made in the show notes so that they can go back and look at all of the amazing work that you’ve been doing. Um, I understand we’re really pushing for this event this weekend because you’ve been so busy all over the place doing so many amazing things. So, uh, Dennis, what is one thing that you would really like for folks to take away from our conversation today?

Dennis Price: Um, ultimately, uh, so I’ll first go over our three pillars of what we are, because then it’s going to tie into that last one and answer that question. So our three pillars that heroes for Humanity. Um, they’re all equally weighted and none over the other. But it’s precision personnel rescue. We’ve rescued people, uh, the Americans who we left behind in Afghanistan. That’s where we all started. I pulled out 77 Americans and vet interpreters. Afghanistan by swimming across the Panjshir Valley. That’s when I came to Christ, and I realized, you know, as a alone, I was a broken man. But look what God did with the pieces. So I then submitted my life to Christ. And and going from taking lives to saving lives. That’s what God had this whole time. If you guys watch my testimony in that video, you will see that it’s it’s not just, uh, there’s a lot of similarities that maybe a lot of people can relate to, but, um, it’s when we focus inward that we start, we start decaying, and it’s something greater than us. And and we that was the trials and tribulations that led me to be qualified to the guy to go into Afghanistan behind enemy lines, swim across and pull out 77 Americans, embedded interpreters who we left behind. And then when Ukraine kicked off in the initial invasion, and I did the first nine months out there doing humanitarian and medical aid and doing precision personnel rescues out there before any American was allowed to go or any, any, any dollar support of America because they thought Russia would start World War three.

Dennis Price: So we’re out there serving those, you know, being the like I said, the hands and feet of the Lord. And then doing it in within the United States and globally is rescuing trafficked children. You know, that that movie Sound of Freedom really opened eyes to the one of the problems, uh, not one of the the largest business in the world is human trafficking. The number one largest consumer is America. So we’re we’re just so busy with that. So precision personnel rescue, we we rescue, um, displaced, um, refugees of all who are suffering from, uh, human rights violations all around the world, we rescue trafficked children. Anyone who who has a call to help. We are that glimmering hope for them. And so our second one is humanitarian and medical aid, just like our humanitarian missions in Ukraine to, uh, I said North Carolina, Florida. We’ve covered so many tremendous ones in Louisiana, the hurricanes in, uh, Beryl in in Texas, all over the world, we are covering down actively, um, and all of our, our, our deployed team, uh, or almost all of them are EMTs and above.

Dennis Price: We have a tremendous amount of doctors, nurse practitioners, Pas, and I encourage more to, um, to be there. We’re very heavily in South America in 2025 to include, um, Africa and, uh, and some places in Southeast Asia. And then our third pillar, after humanitarian medical aid is evangelism. I tried so hard to to hold this part out because I was like, what do people think? I know that, um, you know, it’s it’s illegal for in 26 countries to have a Bible or talk about Christ or be a Christian. 26 countries, it’s punishable by death or arrest. So I was like, well, I still want to help people in these ones. How do I do this? And then all ultimately came down to a few scriptures in the Bible. And, um, and if I didn’t have that third pillar, who gets the glory, is it? This is not the Dennis Price Foundation. This has nothing to do with me. I gave away this nonprofit before, and I might do it again, because this has nothing to do with me. You know, Mother Teresa said it best. I alone cannot change the world. But I can cast a stone that causes many ripples. So this is not. This is not the Dennis Price Foundation. This is what God is doing in all, all of our lives and how we can be a part of it.

Dennis Price: So evangelism, Christ said that if you deny me before man, I will deny you before my father. So who gets the glory in this? This if if God orchestrated this massive miracle of Afghanistan, evacuations and all this stuff that he’s actively doing and I didn’t mention who gets the glory in that? And so, um, when it comes down to revelations in the Bible, it says that we will conquer over the enemy by the blood of the lamb. That’s Jesus Christ, by the blood of the lamb and the power of our testimony. What is God doing in your life? You know, so that is how we we make a difference in this world is what is he doing in your life and what are you doing with those skills to conquer over the enemy in this fallen world? You know, um, so I just really want to, uh, to, uh, to say the biggest takeaway in this, man, if we don’t get a single dollar, like, uh, you know, hey, that that that stinks. But I can’t, I can’t, like, just like what you mentioned. I worked three jobs so I could do this for free, so, um, I can’t help that people don’t donate. I can’t help that. Maybe a corporate sponsor doesn’t bite off or anything like that, but I will.

Dennis Price: I can help that. Anytime someone hears my voice, they will hear the voice of sowing seeds of the Lord. They will hear me share the gospel. They. What is evangelism? It just means sharing the good news. Like, hey man, we could fully flip on TV all day long. We see garbage. We see. We see, uh, sowing seeds of hate and discontent. We flip, we scroll through social media. We see that divide, man, I tell everyone, unplug all of that. We know we live in a fallen world. What are you doing to actively change that? What are you doing to step into prayer? What are you doing to to make a difference in this world? And that? And I’ll tell you one thing. There’s many awesome organizations out there. You know, I, uh, but I know exactly what we’re doing and that we’re trying to keep it pure and authentic and using that and being that true answer and glimmering hope for people in need. And we’re trying to be those heroes for many, and use the gifts and talents of the Lord to be his hands and feet. So please, I invite all of you to the fundraiser dinner. Please push our ticket sales for that. Just help, um, spread the word of who we are, help with the corporate sponsorships. We’re openly trying to do and advocate for this, and we do it all for the right reason.

Dennis Price: And like I said, ultimately, I do. I do care if you’re Christian because you know that that is one of our, our jobs as a Christian organization and and as a, um, my personal beliefs. However, I don’t care if you if you’re a Christian or not. It’s at the end of the day. What here is for many is, is people helping people doing the right thing for the right reason. And the biggest thing is it doesn’t have to be worth it to do the right thing. There’s no return on investment. There’s just do the right thing. Where would this world be at if we led with our hearts and not with our wallets? You know, people always say, oh, but I have a family to provide. I have four kids. That’s why I work three jobs to do this all. And I’m still married. And then like, you know, I have such a strong, amazing wife, Charlotte, who who helps be my anchor for this. And, um, but, you know, ultimately, you know, this world will not be changed by by childless men and childless women. We all have to. It takes a village to raise a family. And if we’re all worried about our own backyards, we as a village will fail.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. And, you know, I heard you say some really profound things that resonated with me. And, you know, it’s it’s what is your gift? And I was just thinking about, you know, my gift is being able to have you on the show and get the word out. And those who are listening, if you can’t do anything else but share this word, share this show, and share the event, then you’ve done good, right? Um, you’ve done good. So please be, um, be open and share this event. To be open and share, uh, the information about heroes for humanity. And gosh, Dennis, you are doing so much good in the world by just opening your heart, right? And leading with that. And I think that that is so important to hear, especially right now with the way things are in the world.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, Absolutely. All right, my friend. I’m so, so just blessed that you came on the show today. You’ve said so many amazing, profound things that are really going to sit with me for the rest of the week. I hope we can get some more folks into the room for Saturday’s event and tell me, is there a particular place where people can just go and find you? Do you have a website for heroes for humanity? What is it?

Dennis Price: Yeah, so our website is the heroes for humanity. Org so, um, and just just to throw it out there for people. I know some people might misspell it, but heroes is h e r o e s. And then spelling out for.org the heroes for humanity.org.

Trisha Stetzel: Perfect. Thank you. And thank you for the spelling because I do see it misspelled quite often.

Dennis Price: Yes. Yeah. And and people always tell me they’re like, I can’t find your website or anything like that. And then I see it, I’m like, hey, just throwing up. I had to Google it late also. So, you know, when we first started. At what point does it does it rate the E or does it rate the V?

Trisha Stetzel: You know the heroes for humanity.org. Go visit the site. All of the information. If you want to take a deeper dive into the details behind this organization are going to be in the show notes. So please share. Please show up for the event if you can’t. Giving goes a long way in order for heroes, for humanity to continue to operate and do the amazing things that they have been doing. Dennis, thanks so much for being on the show today.

Dennis Price: Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Building a Referral Network

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BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Building a Referral Network

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, everybody’s dream in the small business arena anyway is to have a strong referral network. How do you go about building a referral network?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Everybody, like you said, dreams of this. Everybody’s been to networking meetings where there’s a few people that are all in there and they’re all working together, and they’re all kind of helping each other be successful. So, how do you do that for yourself?

Lee Kantor: The first thing you should do is identify potential referral partners. These people, ideally, would be complementary service providers in your industry. They could be current clients or service providers you use. They can even be your competition. I would cast a wide net when it comes to this. And once you’ve identified these referral partners, it’s important to get together as a group and think about ways you can all work together.

Lee Kantor: There is strength in numbers, and especially if part of your methodology is to go to association and business group meetings and networking meetings. If you’re all in there working together, you’re going to get a better result. In fact, you can even divide and conquer. You can go to different networking groups and then kind of bring along your referral partners on their behalf when you’re there, and they will be on your behalf when they’re there.

Lee Kantor: Another thing to think about when it comes to referral partners is grab your referral partners, sit down and host your own events. Host your own workshops. That’s a great way to kind of lean on each other’s network and databases and your people to kind of, again, get more bang for your buck because you’re all working together. And don’t forget developing co-marketing initiatives. If you pull your funds and invest in joint marketing efforts, again, you’re going to get a better return.

Lee Kantor: But it’s important to identify a handful of other business people that kind of are on the same page to work together, because when you’re a small business person in a local market, you don’t have infinite resources, and this gives you a way to kind of access more resources and work together with other people who aren’t really in competition with you, but all of you will benefit by working together. So, identify a handful of those complimentary service providers in your community and work together.

Alane Boyd with Workday Ninja

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Alane-BoydAlane Boyd is the Co-Founder of Workday Ninja, a systems and operations growth strategy agency that utilizes AI and automation to improve efficiency for its clients.

She has been in the tech industry for two decades and has had two successful SaaS exits.

Connect with Alane on LinkedIn and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode Workday-Ninja

  • Why Alane has chosen to bootstrap her companies versus raising money
  • How she decided to focus on systems and operations in her new company
  • The impact on company culture after implementing systems
  • How Alane uses a project management system and knowledge base to ensure intellectual property doesn’t sit in her head but inside systems

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Nashville, Tennessee. It’s time for Nashville Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Nashville Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast co-founder with Workday Ninja, Alane Boyd. How are you?

Alane Boyd: Oh, I am great, Stone, and I’m so excited to be here.

Stone Payton: Well, I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions. Elaine, we probably won’t get to them all, but I think maybe a good place to start is if you could articulate for me in our listeners a little bit of a broad overview, mission, purpose. What what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks.

Alane Boyd: Man our mission and it’s been the same since we started. And it’s to make work days easier for people because we’re burnt out. We have so many things on our plate, how can we enjoy work and be done with work at the end of the day? So that’s what our core mission is. And you know, I really that’s our purpose. And that’s why I started this company, was because I saw what the workday was doing to people and just wanted them to have an easier day so that they can go and do the things that they really want to do and enjoy.

Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory? How did you get into this line of work, doing this, kind of providing this kind of service for these folks?

Alane Boyd: Such a roller coaster. But I sold my first company in 2018, and I built that company for about ten years, and we were a social media and reputation agency. I built two software platforms, and our niche was with car dealerships. So we did all of this stuff for car dealerships. And the reason I got acquired was because I was such a well-oiled machine with our team and we, the private equity companies and companies looking at us, we’re thinking, you’ve got a skeleton team doing this much work, and I’m going, this isn’t a skeleton team. Like they’re they just get their work done. And when we sold, I realized we were unique, that what I built with my business partner and the systems that we had was something special that not every company did. And I thought maybe other companies need it.

Stone Payton: Now, if I remember from my notes, you have had two successful exits and you bootstrapped both companies as opposed to going and getting external funding.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I did, and, you know, and there’s of course like a whole bunch of ifs and thens and buts in that. But I was bootstrapped. We did take on an early seed round and it was such a terrible relationship after two years of trying to. To work with that investor that we actually bought him out. And so we went back to. Being bootstrapped.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, helping others and replicating your success and providing that rigor and discipline and structure and repeatable processes and all that. What’s the most rewarding about the about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh. I mean, you know, you you start working with a team and you can just tell the energy is being sucked out of them. And they they really they want things to work better. And they’re at a point where they’re just like, we’re going to try anything because I’m I’m exhausted. And then after, you know, some projects are longer. It depends on how many moving pieces there are, how big of a team there is. But when we start getting closer to Implementation. You can see the excitement and relief that these team members have, and they always write us. I mean, we keep a log of all the the sweet emails that we get written and of course like testimonials and things, but these people genuinely are just so excited to have something that they can be proud of and get through their day without being tasked with tedious work, having to put out more fires. And so that’s the best reward, is just seeing how we do make a difference, and that it’s making people’s days better.

Stone Payton: I’ll bet. So have you found yourself gravitating more toward a certain type of business, an industry, a sector, or have you found that you can be pretty agnostic and serve a lot of people in several different arenas?

Alane Boyd: Well, that’s been a learning curve in this business. In in my early days of starting my business partner and I were, you know, we were coming out of an exit. And so we were just kind of consulting. We were getting bored not having anything to do. And so we were working with all types of companies, and it really revolved around our expertise. And of course that’s evolved over time. And now we’ve got a full team. And yes, we have niche down, because when you can, when you can do everything for everybody, you know, you’re not serving anybody really. You’re too much of a generalist. So we really narrowed that down. And there is a little bit of a team size revenue scale that plays into it. But a lot of times it’s mature businesses because they have systems, they’ve got team members, they’ve got already workflows that they’ve been doing, even if they are strenuous to the team, you know. So they know the value of if if it could improve that, how much of an impact that would be. So that’s typically the the client type. Now industry Does. We’re in a bunch of different industries. And so the biggest thing that we have found is that at a core, they use specific project management systems like Clickup, Asana or Monday, and they use a CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive. And these are just examples. There’s others that we do, but that’s the core pieces. Like they need to have some some software platforms and that we are experts in those platforms.

Stone Payton: All right. Let’s dive into the work a little bit. Maybe if you could walk us through the process. I’m particularly personally interested in the early stages of, I guess I’ll call it an engagement. And maybe you want to apply it to a to a use case. Of course, you probably don’t want to name names or, but yeah, let’s help us get our arms around what it might look to look like to to work with you guys.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So that’s perfect. And I can this is a very common workflow that we do with a lot of businesses. So it’s not calling any particular company out of. Out. And it’s the idea of you start with a client, a potential client, and you have to create a proposal for them. Well, we do AI and and automation so that when it moves to proposal stage in your CRM, it’ll auto generate a proposal based off a template and use AI in the call notes to generate that proposal so that you’re only having to edit, you know, 10 to 15% of the proposal instead of trying to create it from scratch. So that would be the first step of the customer journey. Then if the customer signs the proposal, the next piece of the automation would then kick off automatically. New client onboarding. You know what needs to happen? A welcome email needs to get sent. Um, maybe if you’re using a project management system, tasks automatically get created for that client for what needs to have happen after that. Maybe an asset folder in Dropbox gets created. And let’s see, I love that. I love a task. We have this set up for our clients to connect with them on LinkedIn automatically if, you know in that automation. And so and then the last piece and you’d be surprised how often people forget to invoice their clients, but it automatically creates a customer in QuickBooks with a draft invoice. So, you know, these pieces that we don’t have to memorize for everything, this can automatically be done. So it takes two hours of work that would be done manually down to about five minutes in an automated sequence.

Stone Payton: Wow. And everything you’re describing that that you bring to your client systems and help them implement. I’m operating under the impression you’re probably eating your own cooking too, right? Like you’re you’re probably doing this for your own practice. Yes.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. We drink our Kool-Aid and it’s, you know, and and to be honest, I’m glad that you said that. Yes we do. We do eat our cookies, drink our kool aid. And we were doing this for ourselves. I started writing our very first automations in 2016 with my previous company, because I was getting so frustrated. You know, the sales team, they just want to move on and get their next sale. And so their attention to detail can sometimes be missing. Then I’m seeing this long transition between sales to account management to do all the knowledge transfer. I’m paying an admin to go and manually set up all the things that need to happen. And I was just like, you know what? I’m really frustrated today about all this money I’m seeing. Just go out the door for my company. And I wrote our first automations and it just transformed, you know, it would take us, on average, two weeks to onboard a new client back then because of we’re we’re waiting on people to do each step. Right. And then we got it down to. They’d be on boarded almost immediately. And I’m like, wow, I could save that time for my team members. Plus the admin that was doing that, I repurposed her on a more valuable position within the company. So not only did I save her salary, but I’m making money in her new position that she was in. And I just thought, you know, that’s what I want to focus on. And so I’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid for a while to answer your question.

Stone Payton: And I have to believe when you can tighten up and button down systems like that, get them humming, it would have to have a really strong impact on the on the culture, which then could turn around and strengthen things across the board. Is that accurate?

Alane Boyd: Yeah, you nailed it. And the culture piece is what I didn’t even think would be a result early on. You know, I’m looking at it as a business expense and advantage Vantage for us to save that money. But the culture change and I’ll I’ll tell you what I saw in 2016 when I started to implement this, that our team went from staying on board for about six months to where they were staying on for years because they weren’t so burnt out, they didn’t feel like they were being pulled in so many directions. Our lifetime value of our client went up, so we weren’t losing clients, you know, on, you know, let’s say that they were staying on for a year. They were staying on indefinitely at that point. And then one of the most interesting pieces is because our employee turnover was reduced and our lifetime value was increasing. The amount of money the client was spending with us was also increasing. And so you just felt this energy in the company that we didn’t have before, where things just felt like a drag and we were being, you know, wrung through the wringer all the time and, and chaos. And then we just saw it flip flop, where people were so excited they were cheering each other on whenever we, you know, kept clients on longer and, you know, celebrating anniversaries and people just got to build longer relationships with each other. The culture really started to thrive.

Stone Payton: I gotta confess, Elaine, I feel like you’ve been reading my mail, and here’s why. Yeah. Lee Kantor my business partner and I, we own the business radio X network. We’ve been incredibly blessed. We’ve made a comfortable living. We’ve impacted some lives. And just to be perfectly candid, you know, our onboarding is is clunky. We have a, you know, 21 years plus of best practices. And I’m sure, you know, buried in there somewhere is some genuine in some ways is some genuine intellectual property. A lot of it’s in Stone’s head, a lot of it’s in Lee’s head. Some of it is in the 19 studio partners heads. Um, and yeah, I, uh, I feel like I’m getting a. Hey, gang, if you want to get some free consulting and talk to some smart people, get yourself a radio show. Uh.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So do some interviews.

Stone Payton: But. And, you know, I’m sure as people begin to have this kind of conversation with you, the light bulb starts to go off a little bit. And you, you probably have some coachable moments and can probably get a lot of, uh, a lot of good done pretty quickly, huh?

Alane Boyd: Yeah. And that’s been the fun part is, you know, we bring on a client and they have a very specific need right then. And they want to solve that problem in their in their workflow or in their team. And it typically does not end at that once we get there, because then they can see the possibilities. They’ve now had the time to take away some of the layers of the onion and say, hey, you know, could we improve this operation or this workflow? Could we be using technology for this? And so it does grow. And this instant institutional knowledge piece that you just mentioned, between stone or between yourself and your business partner is a huge piece. Because when you have knowledge in people’s heads, they are the workflow. You have to go to them because they have all the knowledge in them. And so part of what we do is start getting that knowledge out of their head, to start getting into a process that people can delegate and have some accountability with, instead of that person always having to be it. And then that’s where you I don’t know if you use slack internally, but you see slack messages start to decrease because people don’t have to ask you as many questions anymore.

Stone Payton: That would be nice, I think. So on the front end of things, and it’s a question I often ask the people that have a chance to have a conversation with how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Like to have that to even get a chance to have this conversation. Is it all referrals now that you’ve been at this as long as you have, or do you do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit like some of the rest of us?

Alane Boyd: Well, I you know, I don’t like sitting back and doing anything, waiting around for anything so early in our business. It was very referral based and, and that was comfortable at first. And then once I was tired after I sold my company and I really just needed a break for a while. And so, you know, when we were just consulting and early days, you know, we were 100% referral based. But now I have, you know, we’re talking about operational automation in this conversation so far, but I have a whole nother side of the company where we focus on sales, outreach, automation. And I do a huge piece of that myself, drinking my own Kool-Aid. And then I also train companies on that. And, and it’s, you know, how do you find your target market? And I love using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for this. To find your exact target market, find the contacts that you need. And then I use tools like Lemlist or Apollo to do cold outreach to them. And I have a whole automated sequence. So it’s not just like one email or one LinkedIn message where they’re receiving a number of them. And, you know, there’s a there’s a lot more to the sales outreach part, but it’s actually my favorite part of the company that that I lead and enjoy. And then I also do a lot of speaking engagements, and I’m in a few niche industries that I do speaking engagements at, and I see that as a lead generator as well, because people in the audience are my potential customers. And so we’ve brought in clients from that.

Stone Payton: So I know in my world anyway, business talk radio, digital media in on some channels, if you will. There’s, uh, I’ll call it misinformation. There are some preconceived notions. There’s some just downright, downright just off the mark information. So sometimes early in a conversation in our work, we’ll have to we’ll have to educate before we can even really consult. Do you find with regards to AI and automation and processes and systems and tools and all these wonderful things that you’re describing, that sometimes at least early in the conversation, people come in with a little less than accurate lens on things, and you are kind of in education mode early on.

Alane Boyd: Yes. Oh my gosh, an AI just made it even worse. You I can there are so many conversations now that we have with a potential client where they are 1,000% convinced that I can just do everything in their business. And I’m going, no, if that were the case, none of us would work. That is not possible. And so there is an education piece. What could I alleviate? And and also there’s a missed understanding of what not only what I can do but where I can’t do everything. But automation can be a big piece to do things that you don’t even need AI for. And so that’s a part of the education is like you are going to overcomplicate your process by trying to use AI here. You just really need automation. And those two things are different. And we’ve started creating free tools that companies can go and use to try to start to distill down. What could I do in the beginning? And so automation is a big one. Like what could you automate if you’re using Calendly and zoom And Pipedrive CRM and Monday.com, you know, where we’ve started is like, let’s have a tool that gives the education first. And so we have a free tool. You answer eight questions, it takes less than 30s, and it’ll send you a custom report within about two minutes to your email with 25 automation ideas that you could put in your business right now based on your software that you use. And so that’s been a great just initial piece to the conversation, because they get that report, they get real ideas of what could be automated in their company instead of these bizarre out of like, you know, what they want to want to do would be $1 million investment. You know, what could you put in that you could actually afford and get value from in your business? And that’s been a big change for us that we’ve seen in that initial conversation.

Stone Payton: So this next question, 100% ulterior motive and I’ll share it with you before I even ask the question. Business RadioX network. Stone and Lee and team uh, on the short list. We we want to put a physical studio in Nashville, and we have some hypotheses around why we want to do that. But I wanted to ask you why Nashville. For you, what’s the business climate like? Or is it just you were there in Nashville and that’s just where you are anyway?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh, Nashville was actually so I’ve been in in Nashville for almost 11 years. And I’ll tell you why. I moved my company there. I started my first company in San Diego, and that’s where we were based. We were working with car dealerships all over the country, and my team was getting burnt out with the time zone change. And so I had two things on my mind. One, I wanted to open a central office that team member I could hire from, I could hire a little like less expensive than California costs. And that I could buy a second house as like a getaway house on buy some land. You know, in San Diego, you can’t buy any land unless you’re way out in the outskirts. So I wanted some land and I wanted some water on the property. And I just had these visions. And Nashville hit all the spots. And there’s. We’ve hired the very best people in Tennessee and the Nashville area. And, you know, I sold that company and I chose to start the next company there because of the environment. People are just so kind. They connections. You’re, you know, you’re one introduction away from pretty much anybody you want to meet. And I also joined EOE Nashville. It stands for Entrepreneurs Organization Nashville. And that that CEO environment has been such a good client like just investment for me to be in that, and I just would not want to leave that group of people.

Stone Payton: Well that’s encouraging. Thank you for that. And I’m sure Nashville appreciate you as well. We’ll have to send it to Chamber of Commerce and invoice or something.

Alane Boyd: Yeah I know right.

Alane Boyd: And you know, when I moved, we moved the office. We opened the office in Tennessee, and we offered any San Diego employee we offered to move them for free to our office in Tennessee. And we had two employees that did it. And they’ve now moved their entire family. Their parents now live there. Their siblings now live there. So it has been a good economic boost for for us to be in their small, small scale, but definitely a benefit.

Stone Payton: Oh that’s fantastic. I’d like to switch gears on you for just a moment. If we could interest hobbies, pursuits, passions outside the the scope of this work, a lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. How about you? Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about other than this kind of work.

Alane Boyd: Man, I’m the biggest nerd, and when it comes to hobbies, I’ve probably oversaturated myself. But I love traveling. You and I could talk forever on that one. It sounds like. So travel. I do leather working, so I make my own leather bags and I come up with all kinds of stuff I made myself and my my brother a firewood carrier out of leather. So I, I do that, and I love hiking and mountain biking. I love being outdoors. So I’m just. And I always try because I’m, I’m doing technology. I’m in front of my computer so much. I’ve just found that being outside and being active outside is so important for mental health. And so I try to push that on everybody in my family too.

Stone Payton: But at least my experience is similar to yours in that yes, it’s good for me and I enjoy it, and I feel like I do get a chance to recharge. But I think everybody wins because I genuinely believe with all my heart an afternoon in the woods. It equips me to be of that much better and more service to the people I’m trying to help. And it sounds like you feel the same way.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we need to give our brains a break and be bored in the outdoors. Let our mind wander. And, you know, I’ve. And I’m sure you’ve noticed this, too, when you’re out hunting and you’re you’re just sitting around waiting is that’s when like, ideas pop up. So I always have either a little notebook with me or even just taking notes on my phone if I’ve if I brought my phone with me, it’s like, that’s where your ideas and your good ideas start to bubble up because you gave your mind to rest. And so I found that that’s just really important for me to take that break.

Stone Payton: Amen. All right. Before we wrap, I think it would be great if you’re up for it, if we could leave our listeners with a couple pro tips, something to chew on just to be thinking about and look, gang. The number one pro tip here is if any of this interests you, if you recognize any of the symptoms in your organization that these kinds of solutions might address. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Elaine or somebody on her team. But let’s see if we can tide them over with a little something to chew on between now and then. Elaine.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I think two things that have really just impacted me in business is listening to podcasts and listening to a different perspective, and I’ve found that I’ve had to listen to things that aren’t in my wheelhouse, because if I listen to things that are in my wheelhouse, I already know those things. I need to push myself to be listening to things outside of it and reading, reading, reading, reading. I read so often. I’ve got Libby the free. It’s from the library. Every county has Libby and Tennessee, and I put on audiobooks on it. So I’ve always got an audiobook downloaded, and so it’s free, you know. It’s by the public library so you can access it. So if money is a barrier, you know, these things are free on Libby. So I’ve always got an audiobook and I’m always reading, um, books. And right now I’m reading one of Nick Saban’s books because even though I’m an avid LSU fan and he left and went to Alabama, what he did in football is incredible. And his players love and adore him. And I’m, you know, for as a leader and wanting to be a leader, you know, am I that into football to know everything about football. No, but I am I love him as a leader and I think that there could be things that I learn. So I’m reading his book right now. And, you know, I think us, you know, whether you’re running a business or you want to grow, I think those things and expanding our knowledge is so important.

Stone Payton: I agree 110%, and I’m so glad that I asked. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners To learn more, tap into your work. Maybe have that conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So first way is on LinkedIn. I’m very active, so connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Elaine Boyd and shoot me a message. I love connecting with people. And then the next thing would be you can visit our website, Workday ninja.com. And we’ve got two free resources. So the one that I mentioned with the 25 free automation ideas that you could put in your business. And then we have a second one for project management tools. A lot of time companies, they feel like maybe I’m in the wrong project management system or I don’t even know where to start. And again, it’s super quick. It’s just a few questions and it’ll tell you immediately which project management system would be best for you.

Stone Payton: Elaine, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. It’s been a real shot of fresh air for me. I feel like I’ve personally learned a ton. I know our listeners have, and clearly you are doing important work and having a great deal of impact on so many. That, in turn will have impact on others and it will just keep going forward. Thank you for investing the time to visit with us this afternoon.

Alane Boyd: Thank you. Stone. This was a lot of fun for me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Elaine Boyd with Workday Ninja and everyone here at the Business RadioX family. Satan. We’ll see you next time on Nashville Business Radio.

 

Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics

by

Andrew-Van-BreugelAndrew Van Breugel brings leadership and business transformation experience to Rock Creek Informatics. Up until 2018, Andrew was the general manager and operations director of an Australian pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply organization based out of Adelaide, Australia.

Andrew’s passion is business excellence, helping organizations combine the elements of leadership, customers, strategy, people, processes, knowledge, and results into management standards that work for them. Andrew is energized and fascinated with the cause-and-effect relationships between these drivers of organization performance and the results achieved.

With over 25 years in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, Andrew has a keen eye for detail and an astute mind for excellence. He has worked abroad for much of his career, calling Australia, Singapore, Fiji, and Cyprus home at various points in his life. Rock-Creek-Informatics-logo

With decades of experience as an executive, Andrew has played a key role in the development and implementation of Good Manufacturing Practices, new product development, broad lean deployment, and much more. Andrew is currently a certified Assessor of Business Excellence for the Singapore Quality Awards and Evaluator for the Australian Business Excellence Awards.

His interests outside of the manufacturing arena include family, share trading, photography, business management theory and practice, travel, property investment and home maintenance.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How RCI supports small to medium enterprises in the SE TN region
  • The advantages of using a smaller, local business consultancy over large, national groups
  • How RCI has helped smaller firms
  • Fractional management: what it is and why it’s emerging as a viable solution for smaller companies

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s time for Chattanooga Business Radio now. Here are your Business RadioX hosts.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Chattanooga Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Rock Creek Informatics, Mr. Andrew van Breugel. How are you, man?

Andrew Van Breugel: Doing well. Stone. Great to be here and looking forward to, uh, to sharing some time with you and your listeners this afternoon.

Stone Payton: What a delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions, Andrew. We may not get to them all, but what I think would be a great place to start, just maybe if you could share with us a little bit about Rock Creek, what mission, purpose? What are you guys really out there trying to do for folks?

Andrew Van Breugel: Sure. So, sir. Look, we’re a small business consultancy based here out of Chattanooga. Um, we try to do most of our work in this south east Tennessee. But it doesn’t work out that way. Typically, we do work all over the country, and what we’re trying to do is help small to medium enterprises, uh, with their process efficiency and their business performance, um, particularly on the operational side. Uh, we have a, um, a bunch of consultants that that work with small businesses. They’re all highly experienced with a lot of, a lot of work background. Um, and we’d like to get into the nitty gritty, uh, down low and dirty, uh, with organizations and really get into what they’re doing and see if we can assist them with their with their efficiency.

Stone Payton: What’s the backstory, man? How’d you get into this line of work?

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, how long has this guy for this? Uh, look. A long story, so I did a lot of my work overseas. You can probably hear I’m not, uh, from the US. I’m Australian. Uh, I spent a lot of time in Asia working for some large corporates over there, and I met my current business partner over there. He was bringing students over from Lee University up in Cleveland. Here, um, he teaches the MBA program there, and they would come to Singapore, uh, you know, to get some experience and do some projects in my plants that I was running over there. And as time went by, you know, we talked and we decided, hey, look, why don’t we do this, uh, on a more serious basis and run this consultancy and do some work down here in Tennessee. So I came over to to run the consultancy because my business partner, guy, he has a passion for teaching. So he’s a professor there at Lee University teaching the business school.

Stone Payton: So now that you guys have have gone out and started to, to do this, what what are you finding the most rewarding and what’s the most fun about the work these days for you?

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, it’s always a similar sort of thing. So most organizations, you know, particularly smaller ones, they either have the founder and the family, or maybe some employees trying to run the business, and they really don’t have all of the skills and capabilities and expertise, and certainly not all of the experience that’s necessary to really do well. So that’s where we come in. Um, and to see them improve their business, to teach them, especially because we don’t just like to go in and leave, you know, we like to go in and leave something behind. And what we leave behind is, is as much knowledge as we can, and the tools and techniques that we feel will help them run their business better. So that’s always very rewarding for us and the part that we certainly enjoy the most.

Stone Payton: So you touched on something that suggests to me that smaller and midsize businesses, maybe they do have some unique challenges and opportunities that really are a little different from your large organization, where previously. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Oh, absolutely. So large organizations typically have all the capabilities and experience and skills that they need, not only to run the business, but to improve it on an on going basis. Smaller businesses tend to obviously have what they need to run the business and to remain, uh, you know, successful or survive, let’s say. Um, but they rarely have the resource to actually improve the business, to actually look at how we’re doing things, map out the processes, see where the waste is, figure out why things aren’t flowing better. Uh, you know, that’s a job in itself. That’s a that’s a vocation in itself. And, uh, very rare that a small or even a medium business is doing that. It’s something that everyone’s doing part time, and as a result, they don’t do it particularly well.

Stone Payton: Well, let’s dive into the work a little bit. The, the process. And maybe it would be helpful if you wanted to use a use case or something. Of course, you may not want to share names just to help us get our arms around. What what this process might look like.

Andrew Van Breugel: So it is different for different businesses in in many respects, but in some ways it’s also very similar. So, so most businesses, um, whether they’re involved in producing a physical good or a service, they have people, they have facilities, they sometimes have materials, they’ve got a bunch of things. And what they’re trying to do is, is, is convert those things into either a physical product or a service. That means there’s a process behind it. In fact, there’s usually several processes behind it. That means to say people have to do certain things with certain things, convert the materials or whatever it might be, whether it’s making a bed in a hotel or producing a piece of ammunition in a factory, you know, um, there’s a process behind that. And if I know what that process is and I put all the steps together properly, and I start to examine and see things from the perspective of waste, um, now I can change my process and reorganize it a little bit, uh, to drive out that waste and to make the thing flow better. To give you a quick example, we do some work with a company out west. Um, they make recreational, um, uh, equipment. High end recreational equipment. Um, now, if you look at how long does it take to make one of these items? It’s around about ten hours. Okay. If I if I have nothing else to do and all I do is work on this thing. Ten hours to make. But when I look at the value stream map, I see it take, uh, 7 or 8 months to get through the plant. So you see the inherent waste there? Uh, seven months to ten hours of work. And that’s very typical. Nothing unusual about that at all, because people think as long as I’m busy, it must be good, right? But no, you can be busy doing the wrong thing, or you can be busy doing things that don’t add value. And that’s what we try to help companies see and then address.

Stone Payton: Well, I have to believe that to have a set of objective eyes that are not weighed down with sentiment and emotion, they’re looking at the processes that has to be incredibly valuable. And I guess I’m, I guess I’m you’re already winning me over to this idea of working with a smaller, focused boutique consultancy that’s going to roll their sleeves up and get in there and see what’s really happening in my business. But there really are some advantages in working with a with a smaller consultancy for this particular constituency in there.

Andrew Van Breugel: I think I think for sure. So first of all, and you know, to get the nitty gritty, but we don’t have any overheads, right. We don’t have an office somewhere. We don’t have uh, you know, a buildings to maintain. There really is just the consultants fee and that’s it. So that means we’re inherently less costly than, than many of the larger consultancies. But more important than that, we can come and see you and interface with you and your managers. We can go to where the work is done and actually see what is happening and how it’s done. And obviously for local, we can do that on a daily basis. And all this travel and accommodation and meals, whatever is all cost, which you don’t have to incur. And you’d be surprised how much that is. For some companies, it could be, um, a half or even more of their total cost, and it’s really doesn’t add value to them. Um, so we can go and see where the work is done. We can go and talk to the operators on the shop floor. Let’s say if it’s a factory, we can map with them the value stream. Uh, and as we’re doing that, we’re teaching them, you see. So all of this is intense and all of it takes time. And if you’re paying one of the big consultancies, you know, the sort of fees they charge, you’re just not going to be able to do it. So it’s a much more affordable and much more, uh, I would say friendly relationship that we create. And I think that’s why we have so much repeat business, because once people see it and experience it, they say, yeah, that works for me. It’s effective. Um, it’s personable. And on top of all that, it’s cost. It would cost me less than if I were to use one of the big companies out of one of the big cities.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So do you ever find yourselves filling or maybe coordinating someone else to fill some sort of fractional management role for a period of time in some of these client systems?

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. Stone. That’s becoming very popular because like we said earlier, a lot of the smaller to medium sized organizations, they don’t have the skills in house. So now they have a choice. Or maybe I should employ somebody, but now I end up having to employ somebody to do more or for more hours than what’s really needed for that skill set. Um, fairly expensive probably. And I may have to get someone from out of state and pay all of their relocation. So there’s a lot of risk there. And then after 6 or 8 months, I find there’s didn’t really work out. You know, we find that a lot. Now, on the other hand, I could do the fractional way and say, here’s a person with 30 years of manufacturing experience, Um, maybe I need them two days a week. Whatever, three days a week. But for the long haul, meaning to say, you know, six, 12, 18, 24 months, we’re not there to do a project. We’re there to be your, for example, operations manager. So we expect a seat at the table, but we don’t need to be there five days a week, and you don’t need to be paying us five days a week.

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, a lot of smaller companies are finding that really attractive because it’s cost effective. They really don’t have any other way of getting that experience and those capabilities and those skills into their business. Uh, and it’s risk free. Because, you know what? If I don’t like you, after a couple of weeks, I’ll just politely ask you to leave. Um, which is hard to do with an employee, you know? So fractional management or fractional leadership, as we call it, um, becoming very popular. And we have we have some of our consultants working for more than, uh, more than several years in some businesses, um, on the plant side or on the quality management side, uh, or on the financial side. Um, so for small family businesses or even medium sized ones that that that are not family businesses, they know they’re finding this a very, a very suitable alternative to the traditional find an employee, get them in on board them, hope for the best, pay them a lot of money. Find something else for them to do because they don’t really need their skill set for 40 hours a week. So that’s the solution there. Stone.

Stone Payton: You know what? You just you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. The family businesses, I bet they have their own set of challenges above and beyond all the challenges that that a small and medium sized businesses face. I bet there are some unique dynamics when you’re working with a with a family owned business, aren’t there?

Andrew Van Breugel: Very much so. Very much so. And there are quite a few of them around here, uh, in the South. And, uh, you know, some of them are into their first generation of, of, of handover and some of them may be into their second, But you know, the success rate of family businesses beyond the second generation is very, very low. It’s very small. Um, and we find a lot of family businesses are still being run by the founder, who may be in their 60s or even 70s now, and sometimes the children are not interested in the family. So obviously their only choice is to sell. And they find that their business is severely undervalued because they’ve, you know, they’ve never they’ve never bothered to. It’s a bit like if I want to sell my car, I should at least wash it and tune it and get it a little bit fixed before I sell it, you know. But a lot of family businesses aren’t like that. Um, so they’re leaving a lot of value on the table because, as you know, there’s a multiplier on your earnings in terms of what you charge for the business. So every $100,000 of earnings that you can secure might be worth 7 or $800,000 or more to you in terms of the selling price of the business. So a lot of a lot of businesses are asking us to help them with that aspect, I’ll bet.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a consultancy like yours? Is it is it almost all referral based, or do you find yourself having to shake the trees a little bit and do some actual marketing? How do you get the new business man?

Andrew Van Breugel: So honestly, we do both, but I can tell you the relationship based, um, marketing or representation is by far and away the most successful. I mean, probably probably I mean, virtually all of our business comes from referral or repeat from existing clients. It’s very hard to attract. It’s very hard to get the story across in a way like I’m communicating it to you now. You can’t really do it by on a leaflet or you can’t really, you know, put an ad in the, in a, in a periodical. You’ve got to sit down with someone for a good 45 minutes, 60 minutes to convince them that, you know what, you’re hitting all the things that bother me. All the reasons I can’t sleep properly, all the reasons I’m working 65 hours a week. And now finally, someone is coming with a solution that is affordable and plausible. You know, to have that conversation really, really requires you to be face to face and probably have some relationship with that person.

Stone Payton: Well, relationship strikes me as the right word as you’re describing the work and the people that you’re that you’re serving the the level of trust that you must have to cultivate with these people must be incredible. Because, I mean, you’re getting in there with them, rolling your sleeves up, learning about their business, providing counsel, maybe not always telling them exactly what they want to hear initially. So the you must be in your team must be really good at cultivating and sustaining that that trust and that relationship.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, we find, uh, like any business like ours or probably, um, any service oriented business. It’s it’s hard to get the door opened. You know, it’s hard to it’s hard to get people to open the door. But we find that once we once we’re in, it’s really quite easy to, uh, to get the job done and for them to find more things that they want you to help them with. And then they start telling their, um, their friends or their other business associates. And that’s how we get referrals. And being a small boutique consultancy, we’re not looking for a lot of work, to be honest with you. I mean, we’ll take as much as we can find and grow the the bench accordingly. But honestly, and this is going to sound very corny and very hard to believe. But the bottom line is me and my partner, my business partner, we really are just more interested in helping local businesses. Um, you know, we neither of us do this because it’s necessary for income. We do it because, you know what? We’ve got something to offer between the two of us. We’ve probably got, you know, 80 years of work Experience, um, right across the gambit of small to large companies, private, public family. Um, right. Covering everything from leadership development, coaching and support, strategy development, you know, management of information and how to use that in decision making, you know, people and human resource processes, uh, how to define the customer value and drive that through processes to delivery operations and vendor management. You know, there’s a lot of experience there. And we know that most businesses can benefit from that experience. It’s a question of how open they are to it.

Stone Payton: You mentioned a term earlier in the conversation that I would love to learn a little bit more about, if you’re up for it. And look, gang, if you want to learn a lot, meet some brilliant people and get a little bit of free counsel. Get yourself a radio show. You get to talk to some really smart people.

Andrew Van Breugel: Okay, I’ll try that. I hadn’t thought of that.

Stone Payton: But the yeah, the, the term that I think you mentioned a couple of times is this value stream map. Can you speak to that a little more?

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly, certainly. So, uh, particularly in manufacturing environments, but actually it applies to any environment. Um, what a company is trying to do is assemble. Let’s we’ll use a manufacturing example because it’s easier. Okay. I’m going to buy some materials. Right. And I’m going to get some people and maybe a couple of machines and a building, and I’m going to convert these materials into something else that people find value in. And they’ll pay me more than it cost me to produce. That’s the whole point of of business, correct? Yeah. Now, doing that is a series of processes, as we discussed earlier, and there’s a flow of those materials through that process. It could be through a series of machines, or it could be to different facilities or there’s something coming from my supplier and maybe I send it to somebody else and they do some more processing. Maybe they paint the thing or whatever, and they send it back to me. If I map this process and I take a look at where is the physical item going, how does it move? Right. Not, not not like a geographical map or not like a spatial map, but just conceptually, how does it flow through the process? What’s the capacity utilization of each process? How many people are there? You know, where’s the inventory sitting? Why is there work in progress between the steps and also the information? Where does the information come from? How does it get aggregated, and how does the person on the shop floor know what to do each day? And how does that come from the customer or the distributor or wherever the the end customer is? So if you can imagine on a wall covering it with butcher’s paper, you call it butcher’s paper here.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Covering it with butcher’s paper at brown paper. Having a bunch of people in the room who know the process, or typically going and having a look as well, and starting to measure cycle times, starting to measure downtime, starting to measure defect rates. Having a look at who’s working at this equipment, taking a look at the, you know, the work in progress on either side of the of the work unit. If you if you map that out and draw it on the wall using symbols that we used is a classic lean technique, by the way, our value stream mapping. And then I overlay that with the the information flow. Like how does information come from the customer to the shop floor through who and through what systems. If they’re using any kind of computerized system. And then down the bottom I’ve got this process cycle efficiency sort of diagram that’s going to show me, okay, when am I adding value to this product through this value stream map.

Andrew Van Breugel: When am I adding value. So envisage if you will, stone on this wall inside a large room, a map that shows a bunch of processes and a whole bunch of data around each process. It shows me where the inventory is and down the bottom I have the lead time. Let’s say it’s five days, but how much of that five days was I actually working on the product and how much was it sitting around? Now I’ve got my process cycle efficiency and boom, right there. I have a very valuable piece of information that I can start to assign improvement around. Okay. I can start to see the waste and I can start going attack that waste. I can start to see where the flow is or where the flow is being retarded. And how do I how do I stop that, that that flow from stopping? How do I make it flow better? Um, and this is how you make value flow and how you reduce waste and drive process efficiency that way. That’s a very convoluted answer. I should have just shown you one. If this was if we were doing a video, uh, sort of thing, I could just show show one on the screen. Well, and since radio, I have to try and describe it.

Stone Payton: Well, when we get that studio in Chattanooga that I was telling you about before we come on air. Then you can. You can show it to me. You can show it to me in purpose. But no, I didn’t find it convoluted at all. It makes all the sense in the world. I think it would be incredibly valuable. And I see the use case and application for manufacturing. But, you know, I’ve been in the professional services arena for 35 plus years. I think there’s plenty of application in our world to man, I think that seems powerful.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. We’ve used it in the healthcare setting as well, um, where we try to expedite the processing of, uh, of of healthcare providers fees from insurers. Um, the only challenge with, with non-production processes is everything is done sitting down at a computer. So, you know, there’s no physical product to follow. There’s no sheet of paper, there’s no, uh, folder. You know, it’s all happening electronically. And so it’s it’s exactly the same concept, though. You’re going to map it out, um, and you’re going to see where does the information stop. So I give Stone something to approve, and he sits on it for five days on the average. Well, there’s five days lost. Okay. Now, if it’s a if it’s a physical item sitting on the shop floor, you can actually see it there. And you can say, why are there ten of these sitting over there? Are they waiting for machine A to be repaired or whatever? You know, it’s harder to see. Or if I’m making beds in a hotel or if I’m servicing animals in a veterinary clinic, you know, a lot of it is, um, it’s harder to map, but the concept is exactly the same.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Hey, I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute, if we could. Hobbies, interests, pursuits, passions outside the scope of this consultancy work. You know, a lot of listeners, uh, for us, anything that I’m producing or hosting or co-hosting, they know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you kind of nerd out about that is outside the scope of this conversation.

Andrew Van Breugel: You know, that’s the that’s a that’s a that’s not a good question to ask because, uh, I’m really quite boring and I try to figure out why I’ve got no time. But no, look, I’m not into anything that takes time. I don’t do hunting, fishing, golf all off the off the agenda. None of those things are ever going to make it onto my onto my, um, I think although, having said that, you know, I probably spend too much time, uh, watching sport, uh, like, at the moment, uh, you know, my sons go to UTC here in Chattanooga. Oh. So, um, yeah, right now, of course, we go to every home game there for the mocs. Uh, who are doing okay, by the way, if you’re interested. Um, unfortunately, I also watched the Titans. Um, but this year, that’s proving to be a waste of time. Um, so to answer your question, I like, look, I like documentaries, I like movies, I like hanging around at home. I don’t mind doing home repairs, which nobody likes, but I like doing it. Um, trying to figure out why how things work. I’m not a builder, obviously. So, you know, if something’s broken, I like to figure out how to fix it myself, if I can. Uh, so, look, it’s a really boring stone. Uh, that gave me no listeners out there that are going to be enthusiastic about my extracurricular activities. I thought.

Stone Payton: Hey, I would love to leave our listeners if we could, with a couple of actionable items, something to chew on, maybe something to read or do or a don’t. And maybe it has to do with looking, you know, inside their organization. But just, you know, you’ve been at this a long time. You’ve seen it all. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Andrew or somebody on his team. But yeah, Andrew, maybe just to tide him over between now and then, let’s give them a little something to to noodle on and think about. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, the thing I want people to learn to do better is to keep an open mind, uh, to not be afraid of outside. Um. Oh, let’s not call it advice, but just outside experience and outside thoughts. Um, now we we we peddle something called inclusion. I know we’re using inclusion all the time now, and I don’t use it the way that most people are. Inclusion just simply means everybody. Everybody in your factory or at your workplace, whatever it is, nearly all of them are working below their potential. I guarantee it, right? Just about everyone. Now, why is that? Well, it’s because they’re not included in the important stuff of decision making analysis, idea generation, idea assessment, and then finally choosing to do something. So so my my nugget, if I can call it that, is learn how to involve your people in the stuff that you think for some reason is only yours to do, and that is decision making. Learn to teach your people how to be involved, and you open your eyes and you open your mind, and you open your ears and stop trying to be the one who does all the decisions. And I don’t have a book for you to read. There’s probably thousands of books on this. Um, but but, you know, for me, and it has been since I learned it myself back in the early 2000. Inclusion is about including everybody at work. It’s got nothing to do with race or gender or anything else. It has to do with a person is going to have something to offer to your problems, to your and therefore to your solutions and the skill. The one skill that leaders don’t have and never have had is how do I spend my day doing that with my people? Come and tell me. Come and show me. Teach me how to engage my people and to include and involve them in the running of my business in a way that doesn’t threaten me or make me feel as if I’m losing my authority. Teach me. How can I turn that corner?

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That feels and sounds like marvelous counsel. Thank you for that. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly they can visit our website. It’s think rci.com, or they can write to us at info at think rci.com. Or if they want to reach me directly they can write to a Van Bruegel. That’s a v a n b r e u g.

Speaker4: E l.

Andrew Van Breugel: At think RCA. Com. That’s the way to go about it. Stone.

Stone Payton: Andrew. It has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You and your team are doing such important work and having such an incredible impact on so many. Keep up the good work and know that we appreciate you, man.

Andrew Van Breugel: I appreciate that. Thank you Stone. And again, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Chattanooga Business Radio.

 

Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: Marci Klein on Storytelling and Work-Life Balance

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In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor interviews Marci Klein, founder of Klein Creative Media. Marci shares her transition from a 20-year career as a television director in the reality genre to starting her own video production company. She discusses the challenges of balancing work and motherhood, the importance of storytelling in business, and her initial struggles with pricing and establishing her business.

Marci highlights the impact of organizations like WBEC-West on her professional growth and emphasizes the unique challenges women face in entrepreneurship, particularly in valuing their work and navigating business complexities.

Klein-Creative-Media-logo

Marci-KleinAfter spending 20 years as a Hollywood director in the reality/documentary genre, Marci Klein, CEO of Klein Creative Media, has dedicated her life to bringing stories to life for business owners. She creates high quality video content with video, stills and drones that create an impact while promoting brand recognition for her clients.

She’s both an Emmy and Cable Ace winner, and very active in her community as a Public arts commissioner and Board Chairman for the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce. She’s incredibly collaborative and generous with her insight and creativity, and loves to help business owners walk away with the best video content she can deliver to help her clients succeed.

When they succeed, she has succeeded. Through her best-selling books, Women in Business Leading the Way, her training courses, and fully equipped video production studio in Redondo Beach, Marci has inspired hundreds of business owners to to both learn, and create impactful video content and still make the experience as fun and exciting as her deliverables.

Connect with Marci on LinkedIn and X.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women in Motion, we have Marci Klein with Klein Creative Media. Welcome.

Marci Klein: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Klein Creative Media.

Marci Klein: Well, Klein Creative Media is a video production company, and we work with other small business owners, medium business owners, and corporate business as well as government to help create branded video content that they can use to expand and grow their business and get brand recognition.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in the video game?

Marci Klein: Actually, yes, I have always been. I was a television director for 20 years in the reality genre and loved working in television. Crazy at times. It’s definitely a different lifestyle than your traditional 9 to 5 job, but I loved every minute of it.

Marci Klein: We were telling stories with video. I was doing news magazine shows, like things like Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, lots of shows on E! Entertainment, and it was a really great career. But I did end up leaving television to have kids in about – I was working at the Dr. Phil show at the time and that was about, well, I can’t remember exactly. Oh, my gosh, my dates. You know, when you get so old, you can’t remember those dates anymore. But I’ve been doing business videos for about ten years now.

Lee Kantor: So when you decided to get back into kind of the working world, why did you not just go back into the, you know, storytelling via television rather than kind of going into your own private practice, going for a more business side of things?

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a great question because I did say that I loved every minute of television, and that might have been a little bit of an exaggeration.

Marci Klein: What I didn’t love about it was the long hours. There’s so much commitment you have to – there’s so much time commitment that you have to put into being a television producer and director that I just didn’t feel like it was a good match while also being a parent. I really wanted to be a hands-on mom and I didn’t see that balance playing out if I went back to television, so I thought I would do something that I could have a little bit more control over, which was having clients and working with them and working around my kids’ schedule.

Marci Klein: And I’ve been very successful in being able to do that. I have a really great work-life balance now, and – I mean, sometimes it gets crazy in this business as well. You’ve got clients that are on a deadline that needs a video right away, and it’s not – but it’s – I don’t think it ever has gotten to the level that television got to.

Marci Klein: I mean, television was, you know, your video is going to be on the air. You need to get your, you know, your video done within minutes or seconds. And it’s just the intensity is, it’s different than working in business videos. It’s definitely different than working with clients.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And especially in that kind of reality TV and that kind of world where it’s everything is hurry up and wait, and hurry up is kind of a thread that runs around everything. Everything has to be done today, yesterday. And they don’t care. You know, the show must go on, they say, so you got to make it happen somehow.

Marci Klein: That is so 100% true. Yes.

Lee Kantor: So now when you were kind of, said, “Okay, I’m going to go into business here for myself and I’m going to target business clients,” was that a difficult transition to kind of educate the business consumer of, hey, I have this background in TV and it’s going to transfer to business because it’s the same type of storytelling – I’m just storytelling in a different manner?

Marci Klein: You know, that’s actually really funny. It is – it was very hard for me at first to get clients to understand my skill level. What – and I have a funny story. My kids went to preschool, and this was before I had really dived back in completely. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really know how to get back, started back into the business. And so I started doing keepsake videos, and my clients were moms from my kids’ preschool. Now, these moms from the kids’ preschool, they did not – they had very low budgets to work with. Yet they had expectations that I think were higher than some of the biggest executive producers I’ve worked with in Hollywood. And I thought that was really funny because I always had to prove myself that I was capable of editing their kids’ first five years together.

Marci Klein: And yeah, here I was, having television, half-hour shows, hour shows, segments on the air, broadcasting to, you know, the whole world on a nightly basis for many, many years. And then you have these moms that are really concerned about my ability to edit their kids’ home videos together. So it was quite interesting at first.

Marci Klein: And I did realize that that’s probably not the right space for me to be in. And I did move on to start doing business videos. But that was my starting point. I needed someplace to start, and it was the keepsakes that got my foot back in the door to telling stories with video again.

Lee Kantor: And it’s interesting because like in the reality TV world, like you said, you’re doing this every day. So in some ways, it’s super important that day, but it’s not very important the next day. But a keepsake video is important every day because that’s the one video they’re going to have. They’re not going to produce another video next week. This is going to be the video that is, you know, kind of forever.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a good way to look at it. I never really looked at it that way. But yeah, maybe that’s why they were very, very detail-oriented and so perfectionistic about what they wanted. And maybe I just needed to learn to price it better.

Lee Kantor: There you go.

Marci Klein: And that’s – I think that’s an issue with women and that’s what I – you know, I’m a member of WBEC and WBENC and I think that’s one of the things that I like about this organization is they really help you to try to learn to price your services better. And I really learned a lot from working with an organization like this and being part of it about how you create value and how you value yourself. And I think it’s a – I don’t think all women have an issue with it, but I think probably more women have an issue with it than men in my humble opinion.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’ve interviewed a lot of people that coach in this area and they agree with you that women – guys tend to price on what it could be, and women tend to price on either what it is or what. For sure, they feel like they can deliver. They’re not as willing to kind of fudge upward. They’d rather fudge downward and know for sure they’re going to be able to deliver.

Marci Klein: That’s an interesting way to put it. And I mean, I like the way that you put it. I don’t like the way that it’s true, because I do think it is true. And I wish that that wasn’t the case. And I need to learn every day. I need to learn something new. And, pricing is something that I keep trying to learn and get really solid with.

Marci Klein: But it’s always a struggle. It’s always a struggle. I think the maternal instinct kicks in and you just want to please your client, you know? It’s like one of those things you’d rather be, the, you know, concerned and compassionate person than that, you know, I don’t know, a bulldog that’s like, “Oh, this is my price. This is what I go. You know, this is what I’m valued at.” It’s a hard thing to – it’s a hard balance to get as a female, I believe.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Well, pricing, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got regarding pricing was through a guy named Seth Godin. I don’t know if you read his blog, but he’s a marketer and he says pricing is a story. There is no price that’s the right price. Like any, any price can be the right price with the right story attached to it. So, I think a lot of times people price on, you know, just whatever the tangible value of something is. But the value of something is so much more than that. You know, that’s why a piece of art can, you know, cost millions of dollars on the same canvas and paint could cost, you know, tens of dollars. So it’s just the story that’s associated with it.

Marci Klein: Very good point. Love that.

Lee Kantor: Now, when it came to building out your business, how did you go about doing that? Because having a team and building a company around a vision, it’s one of those things where in your head, maybe it seems easy, but in reality, it’s hard to get a bunch of like-minded people on board, you know, delivering what the vision you have in your head.

Marci Klein: That is so true. My company is a bootstrap business. So I started it with a computer with my own money, well, my husband and my money. We – I said, hey, – I said to my husband, “Hey, Ken, I want to, I want to start a business. I need to buy a computer.” So I took some money out of the bank, bought a computer, and started going to work, and then I bought a camera, and then I bought some lights, and then I bought, you know, and it went on and on and on.

Marci Klein: And what happened is my children, they were I think nine and 11 years old, and they decided that they didn’t want to share a room with each other anymore. And so they said, “Mom, can you – instead of working in the office, can we use the office as our bedroom?” And then I was like, “Oh, my goodness. Okay, what am I going to do now?”

Marci Klein: So I set out to look for office space, and I accidentally came upon this office where I’m sitting right now, which I absolutely love. I have a studio and an office now, and I ended up going to a meeting at this location, and the landlord mentioned that they have, that they have office space available. I took a look at the space. I fell in love with it and decided to open a business.

Marci Klein: And that was a big, scary step to actually move out of my house where I was just working remotely and create a real place of business. So I found a place to rent. I moved in immediately and my business tripled. It was amazing, but so did all the things that I needed to do to run a business.

Marci Klein: I did not know of all the different hurdles I’d have to jump through to actually have a legit business, from workman’s comp to HR, to hiring, and just so many different things that I didn’t know about, even becoming a WBE, a women-business enterprise. I had no idea that the steps that would take to get that far.

Marci Klein: And I’m still learning new things all the time. I still have to get audits by workman’s comp every year, and I have to have an accountant and a bookkeeper. And wow, I didn’t realize. You know, it’s not just all fun and games and telling stories with video, which is the part that I love. It’s all the business stuff that goes along with it, which I feel like I’m not an expert at, but I’m definitely getting a lot better at it. And I know so much more than when I started ten years ago.

Lee Kantor: Now, when did you have that first client where you were able to deliver something and go, man, that really worked for them, and this is something I’m going to really be able to help a lot of folks.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s funny. That was my one – one of my very first clients stemmed from something I did in television. So I would – picture me. I’m still a stay-at-home mom at this point. I don’t have my office yet, and I actually went to the plastic surgeon’s office because I had this horrible C-section scar that I needed to get rid of. It made me look ridiculous in a bikini. And I live at the beach, and I play volleyball and wear a bikini all the time, and I needed to fix that.

Marci Klein: So I’m sitting in the plastic surgeon’s office, and I get brought into the office and the nurse comes in and the nurse is one of my clients. She was one of my mother’s who hired me to do her kid’s first five-year keepsake video. And I’m completely confused. You know, that this woman’s in here because I didn’t have – I had no idea. She worked in a plastic surgery office, and she started bragging about what an amazing video I did for her child. Meanwhile, the plastic surgeon is talking about a project that he has. He’s doing a mommy makeover project where he is doing a contest where one woman in the community was going to get a full-on plastic surgery makeover from head to toe.

Marci Klein: Now, ironically, I worked on a TV show called The Swan. It’s actually a very controversial TV show. But The Swan was about these – all these women they called themselves, or they were called ugly ducklings. They weren’t really ugly ducklings, but these women went through complete makeovers, body makeovers, head-to-toe and psychological makeovers, and diets, everything. And I was a producer and director on that show for two seasons, and so I had so much experience working on plastic surgery shows that the combination between, you know, the keepsake videos, doing those myself and the professional mommy makeover shows that I did for television, I was able to work on this mommy makeover for this plastic surgeon.

Marci Klein: I did 12 segments, which turned into a half-an-hour television show that I did all by myself. I shot it, I edited it, I interviewed everybody, like from soup to nuts. I did this whole program and that was very, very rewarding and made me realize that keepsake videos are not really where I need to be. I needed to be doing real stories for real businesses, and that was a big transition for me.

Lee Kantor: And what a wonderful bridge for you, because that made it seamless. Like you went into the business world kind of leveraging all you would learn from the reality TV world through this keepsake thing that you were just trying to do to keep, you know, stay involved in the business, you know, at the beginning. So it was a perfect bridge into the business community.

Marci Klein: It really was. You know, it’s so interesting the path that we go down. You know, I think there must be some sort of master plan somewhere because, you know, I do feel very blessed and very lucky because things do fall into place for me. I do feel like my, you know, life’s been – I mean, yes, I have ups and downs. Everybody has ups and downs, and I have had plenty of downs. But I feel, for the most part, I’m a very fortunate person. I’ve had so many positive things in my life and the direction that I’ve been led on just sort of serendipitously happens for me, and I feel so fortunate about it.

Lee Kantor: Well, when you do good work and you’re passionate about it and you put out kind of these good vibes, I think that you have better chances of finding the success that you’re finding.

Marci Klein: Well, thank you. I hope you’re right. I hope that that success continues because I’m looking forward to having my business keep growing and making a mark and and satisfying a bunch of happy clients. That’s my goal all the time.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned a little bit about the impact of WBEC-West and those types of organizations, but can you share – is there anything that being part of that WBEC community has tangibly helped you kind of grow your business or you’ve gotten business from it, or just learned or found a collaborator through it? Has there something happened through that relationship that you can talk about?

Marci Klein: Oh, so many amazing things. I don’t even know where to begin. One of the things that I loved about WBENC and WBC is they have a thing called a Platinum Supplier Program. That was the beginning. So I’ll talk about that first.

Marci Klein: It’s a training program that teaches you how to come up with your own capability statement and your elevator pitch. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even know what a capability statement was prior to the Platinum Supplier Program. So I cannot give kudos enough to Marianne Ellis, the teacher, and Jaymee Lomax, who throws the program through WBEC. Amazing program. And it changed my business and just changed the direction, the trajectory of everything. They opened my eyes to the fact that I could actually do work with corporations. I never knew that I could do that. I never knew how that was happening for other businesses. And they opened my eyes and they’re still helping me make strides every day with that program.

Marci Klein: And let me talk about the second thing that, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of business from WBE, so much business I can’t even tell you with a lot of fellow women business owners. But one of the best things that happened to me was I was at a WBE National conference in Nashville and in the Uber line, I met an amazing woman.

Marci Klein: Her name is Elin Barton, and she owned a company called Riveo Creative, and we just met in the Uber line, and we were chatting and we liked each other. Next thing you know, we’re collaborating with each other over the phone a few weeks later. And next thing I know, her client, Black Angus, had a corporate commercial, a national corporate commercial that they need produced, and she’s not able to come to California to do it. So she brought me into her loop and introduced me to her client, and we did a collaborative shoot for Black Angus and did a commercial that Black Angus loved so much that they hired us to do a second commercial.

Marci Klein: And I just have to attribute all of that goes back to WBENC for having the conference and for having the most amazing women at the conference, and for them encouraging collaboration and set of competition, because it’d be real easy for me to compete with another video production company and think that they’re a threat to me, but I don’t look at it that way. I look at every company, whether they do the exact same thing that I do or something different, as an opportunity to collaborate and grow. And I think this was a perfect example of that.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a great lesson for the listeners when it comes to going to events like this or joining communities like WBEC-West. You don’t just join and pay dues and think you’re done. Like, you have to go and be part of it and be active and open and reach out and look for those opportunities because they don’t happen by themselves. You have to be proactive if you’re going to get anything out of these either events or joining these organizations.

Marci Klein: I agree 100%. The more I go to these events, the more the most amazing people I can continue to meet. And the more times that you meet these same people, you start forming relationships and they start trusting you and referring you. It’s really amazing. And the whole networking and being able to do it in person with all these amazing women and amazing corporations, it’s been very rewarding for me.

Lee Kantor: So who is that ideal client for you today and how can we help you meet more of them?

Marci Klein: Well, it’s still a combination for me. I love the Black Angus of the world. Those are amazing. Those are corporate clients. I’m definitely looking for more corporate clients who want to put their trust in us. I feel like we can do a great job at any level. I still have all my television crews and talent that I work with that I bring in on shoots.

Marci Klein: But then I also really enjoy working with other women business owners and minority business women – and minority business owners as well. I really feel like there’s a connection, especially with the other women business owners. I feel like there’s a shorthand with women. We just get along. We’re able to communicate so clearly. I mean, I get along with men, too, don’t get me wrong, but I just love helping other women. I’ve always been a proponent of supporting women, even as far – even when I was in college. And I’m just going to divert here for a second.

Marci Klein: I just went online the other day and was able to find a documentary that I made in 1987, my college, my senior college project, which I got an A on, by the way. But PBS in Chicago purchased my documentary from me. It was called Breaking the Boys Network, and it was an empowering video about how women are making strides in the film and television business.

Marci Klein: Yes, it looks at where there, you know, that the issues lie, but it also looks at a positive stepping forward and how we’re going to change that and how we’re going to, you know, make strides. So I’ve always been into supporting women and empowering women and bringing up stories of inequality that we can work on to make better. And I think that – I’m kind of losing a little bit my train of thought. I forgot where the question started. But supporting women is something that’s really important to me and empowering women.

Lee Kantor: Now, the organizations that you’re working with as clients, are they coming to you because they’ve never done video before, or are they coming to you to solve a marketing problem?

Marci Klein: That’s a good question. A lot of – a lot of businesses – there’s both actually. A lot of people have, you know, homemade videos on their website that just don’t show the quality of work that they really do. And so, they come to me for an upgrade because they want something more of a higher quality. And, you know, sometimes people have nothing on their website and they don’t have any video at all. And video is the most powerful tool to bring in an audience. And we all know that by just by, you know, looking at Instagram or any kind of social media where you post videos. The stats are so much higher for viewership when you bring video versus still photographs. It’s just much, much more – brings much more of a –

Lee Kantor: It’s more – right. It’s more impactful.

Marci Klein: Yes, it is much more impactful. I have a bunch of stats about it too. I just didn’t bring them up on my computer screen prior to this phone call. I should have.

Lee Kantor: But yeah. So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the best way to connect? Is there a website?

Marci Klein: Yes, kleincreativeMedia.com. And you spell Klein just the same way that you spell Calvin Klein. That would be K-L-E-I-N. So kleincreativemedia.com. And we have a contact page on there, and all you have to do is there’s a button, you can book a consult, and we do a free 30-minute consultation and get your ideas flowing. And even if you have your – if you have your idea already set or if you don’t have any idea at all, we can work with clients.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Marci, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Marci Klein: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you doing this.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.

 

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