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How We Can Bridge the Gap in Tech Workforce Diversity with Dr. Loretta Daniels
In this episode of High Velocity Careers, Stone Payton has a conversation with Dr. Loretta Daniels, a key figure at the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and founder of Kindle and Kendrick. Dr. Daniels shares her extensive background in communication, conflict management, and organizational leadership. The discussion highlights her career journey, the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the tech sector, and innovative workforce development initiatives. Key topics include TAG’s Bridge Builders Program, challenges for entrepreneurs, and actionable career advice, emphasizing networking, mentorship, and strategic inclusion to foster a diverse and skilled tech workforce.
Dr. Loretta Daniels, Interim Executive Director, Technology Association of Georgia’, TAG-Ed and CEO and Managing Partner at Kendall and Kendrick Consulting Group, is an expert in organizational Leadership, DEI, conflict management, and communication. As an executive leader in the corporate arena, she has served in executive leadership roles such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operations Officer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Executive Director of Sales Operations, and General Manager. In addition, she has written corporate training manuals Leading by Example and Fast Track to Excellence. As the former Executive Director of Corporate Relations of Kennesaw State University (KSU), she worked with medium and large organizations to define and deliver leadership growth certificate programs aligned with the company’s vision and objectives.
Dr. Daniels has recently created TAG Bridge Builders, a social justice and equity initiative to promote Georgia’s underrepresented tech professionals advance from mid-level positions to senior-level leadership roles, providing access to funding and customer acquisition for tech entrepreneurs.
Dr. Daniels partnered with C-level Leadership and HR to determine leadership development goals, identify training gaps, enable cultural workplace initiatives, and implement gender pay equality and equitable hiring practices. In addition, she served as the University Office of Diversity and Inclusion CoChair and Presidential Commission on Gender & Work-Life Issues. Also, she advised executive teams, including the President and Chief Diversity Officer, consulted as a subject matter expert on DEI challenges and solutions, and supported DEI’s continuous improvement efforts.
As an adjunct leadership instructor at KSU since 2002, Dr. Daniels delivered in-class and online lectures encouraging students to think strategically by applying fundamentals to real-world problems. Courses taught included Corporate Communication and Conflict Resolution, Human Communications, Public Speaking, Writing for Public Communication, and Foundations of Leadership. Additionally, she has designed a Coursera Specialty Certificate program, Advanced Leadership Skills for the 21st Century Specialization Certificate.
Dr. Daniels received a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Organizational Leadership from Johnson University, a Master of Science (MS) in Conflict Management, a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Communication from Bradley University, and a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Mass Communication/Media Studies from KSU. She is a Certified Diversity Professional and the author of two books, For Women Only, Women Mean Business (J & W Publishers, 1992), and Unlock Your Success, a Comprehensive Guide for Starting a Successful Business (J & W Publishers, 2006). Dr. Daniels’ upcoming book, Organizational Leadership, published by SAGE Publications, will be available in January 2025 This textbook will offer a new and comprehensive approach to organizational leadership to address the paradigm shift in our global business community.
Connect with Dr. Daniels on LinkedIn.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for High Velocity Careers. Brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA Program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. For more information, go to kennesaw.edu/emba. Now, here’s your host.
Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of High Velocity Careers. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Technology Association of Georgia, Dr. Loretta Daniels. How are you?
Loretta Daniels: Hi, there. Thanks for having me.
Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the program. And we did get a chance to visit just a little bit at Fintech South 2024, so I guess I should say welcome back to the Business RadioX microphone. I got a ton of questions, Loretta, and probably won’t get to them all, but I think a good foundation for this conversation would be could you recap a little bit your general career path and how you kind of landed where you are now.
Loretta Daniels: Sure, sure. You know, I always try to start off when people ask me that question, how do you do what you do and why you decide to do it? I always say, Nike stole my motto, just do it. And so, I started off, I received a Bachelor’s in Communication, and got a Master’s in Conflict Management, and then a PhD in Organizational Leadership. While I was getting those degrees, I was working. And so, working fulltime, owning a company, and so I just kind of basically started right out of college in radio and television.
Loretta Daniels: I remember starting my first radio job as a news reporter, it was in Niles, Michigan. I was going everywhere to find a news story. And I kind of transitioned into working in the corporate environment for a while, decided to start my own business, had a pretty successful business for about ten years in the home health care industry, and then was recruited into medical device. There, I was blessed enough to move up the ladder and become a C-suite executive in the medical device industry.
Loretta Daniels: And that time I was also teaching as an adjunct professor at Kennesaw State. As soon as I finished my master’s degree, I was invited to come and teach. So, I started off teaching radio and television broadcast courses, and then I also taught public speaking and conflict management. And my last courses that I taught there were on leadership. And so, I was an adjunct professor, and then I moved on to an administrative role, where I was the Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Graduate College, University College, and then moved over to professional education.
Stone Payton: And you are within a consulting firm now. Tell us a little bit about that work. It’s Kendall and Kendrick is that right?
Loretta Daniels: Yeah, I founded Kendall and Kendrick. We have consultants that work with organizations to help them with leadership development, conflict management, issues that would affect productivity. And so, the consultants are educators as well as corporate executives.
Stone Payton: And then, since you don’t have enough on your plate, you decided to go over and help them out over at TAG, Technology Association of Georgia. Tell us about your role over there.
Loretta Daniels: Yeah, that’s my real gig there. So, with TAG, it’s awesome, I’m with the nonprofit side of TAG, the 501(c)(3). It’s called TAG Education Collaborative. And what we do there, we are really focused on helping Georgia to increase its economy by making sure that the workforce, the tech workforce is in full bloom. And what we do is, you know, when we take a look at our workforce industry, especially in technology, we look at the trends. And right now the trends are great for jobs. Over the next eight years, there’s going to be three million new tech jobs. And if you break that down, Stone, that’s about almost 400,000 jobs a year that’s going to be open. And this is between now and 2032.
Loretta Daniels: And so, there’s challenges there. So, what we do is we try to recognize those challenges and help organizations recognize it as well. There’s not going to be enough IT graduates to fill those positions. There’s just not enough people graduating from college with IT degrees to fill those positions at that pace. And so, what we encourage employers to do is to take a nontraditional approach. They’ve got to be more innovative in how they hire for tech talent pipeline.
Loretta Daniels: And so, one of the solutions that we have is a Registered Apprenticeship Program. And so, that Registered Apprenticeship Program is really geared towards let’s take people who would not typically be in a tech job, like veterans or minorities or women. They don’t have to have a degree. They don’t have to have tech experience. Some will have a degree, like some may have a marketing degree or history or English, but they’re wanting to transition into a tech career. This particular program will allow them to be hired by an employer.
Loretta Daniels: And it’s very different, Stone, from an internship program. An internship program is when someone’s in college and they go through the program, and then they’re back, going back to college, and they may or may not get hired once they graduate.
Loretta Daniels: But a Registered Tech Apprenticeship Program is you are an employee. And so, a company will hire you, allow you to go through training, like for cybersecurity software developer, those kind of tech positions. And the minute that they hire you, you go through your 13 weeks training and you are receiving full benefits. You are paid an apprenticeship wage. After one year of the on-the-job training, as soon as you’re finished with the technical training, they may or may not offer you a permanent position. If they do, you get full market rate for that position.
Loretta Daniels: And this has proven to be so successful. To give you an example, 92 percent of all representatives that are considered apprentices, they come from those categories that I just talked about, you know, the veterans, the women, the minorities. And an employer will retain these apprentices, like, at 88 percent, where you don’t see that retention rate in the industry. And 93 percent of everyone that goes through the program graduates, so we do a great job of selecting the right candidates.
Stone Payton: That is such an impressive stat. I had no idea. And I got to believe there must be so many tremendous advantages for the organization, I mean, you get to custom build your own people, don’t you?
Loretta Daniels: Yeah, yeah. They do. They get to do that because not only do they go through the tech training, but when they start the on-the-job- training, they absorb their culture, right? I mean, they get to mentor them, to coach them, so they’re bringing them in and this is why the retention rate is so high.
Stone Payton: Yeah. And you’re bringing in people with diverse perspectives and different experience bases, which we are now learning that aside from just being good mojo for the planet, that has some genuine bottom line impact on the success of the company, doesn’t it?
Loretta Daniels: It does. You know, we have to have that strategic thought. I have a certification as a diversity professional, and what I’ve learned in my experience is we have to have different people around the table. That’s what helps us to be good at what we do. That helps us to reach out to areas that we may not have reached out to before, because we need different thought. We need different thought in leadership, different thought in perspectives. That’s how it works.
Stone Payton: So, at this point in your career, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?
Loretta Daniels: You know, I love seeing people succeed. That’s just been what I’ve loved all my life. I’ve written a couple of books about how to start a business. And as you know, I’m writing the textbook now about organizational leadership. It just does my heart good to see people who work hard, who are very strategic, and have a clear pathway to meet their goals.
Stone Payton: Yeah, I did know that you had a book that you’re going to be releasing within a few months, I think. Tell us a little bit more about that one, if you would.
Loretta Daniels: Fingers crossed, it’s a college textbook. It’s for undergraduate, graduate students as well. And it focuses on organizational leadership, taking an approach of how leaders lead in different areas, exploring how leaders led in the past and how they lead today, because there’s been a paradigm shift in leadership, and how to incorporate organizational leadership throughout the entire organization, not just at the head. And so, that’s what it’s about and, hopefully, we’ll be able to get it out on time in January.
Stone Payton: Oh, fantastic. Well, some of our listeners are aspiring authors. You’re now on book number three. Tell us a little bit about that experience. Did some of the chapters come together easier than others or did it fall into place pretty easily for you? What was it like?
Loretta Daniels: You know, writing a book is never easy, especially when you work fulltime and do everything else. My first book I wrote while I was living in France. I was thinking about writing a book, and I had the time because I didn’t really speak the language and couldn’t work there. And so, I spent my time thinking, as a woman having a small business, how do I help other women? So, I created a step by step kind of process book and included those challenges that women have when they’re starting businesses back then, and I’m dating myself.
Loretta Daniels: Women, when they started their business, they thought they had to kind of mimic men. They wore suits and ties even. They didn’t exercise that natural thing that women have, like empathy. And so, the book really does talk about here’s what you need to start a business, operate a business, but here’s what makes you unique. So, that process wasn’t that difficult for me. I enjoyed it.
Stone Payton: So, I want to go back to this diversity, equity, inclusion, if I’m using the the right words. Tell me more, I mean, I’m operating under the impression here’s my uneducated observation from the outside looking in a little bit. It seems to me like we’re making some great strides in that direction, but it’s not like we’ve totally cracked the code and got everybody on board just yet, do we?
Loretta Daniels: Right, yeah. You’re right. And it should be a given. It should be the fact that diversity should be welcomed. That D is that diversity, right? It should be welcomed. Because as I said, diversity will help you as a business to increase your profits. It gives you different strategies. That equity part is just simply wanting to make sure the pie is there for everyone who needs to be a part of that. And you need to be inclusive because the work environment is not the way it used to be. Individuals are graduating now and they want to work next to someone who doesn’t look like them. They want to integrate.
Loretta Daniels: And so, it’s really important that we don’t politicize DEI, but we see it as a strategy. Because I call it in my organizational leadership textbook as strategic inclusion, because that’s what it is. It should be just very strategic that you understand you need to have diversity with your employees and you need to be inclusive.
Stone Payton: And I agree, and of course, I would follow your counsel anyway to not politicize it. I wonder if one of the challenges is – well, you know what? Let’s talk about me. It’s my show. I’m a reasonably comfortable, reasonably successful middle-aged white guy, and so I would not intentionally not do a good job. And I recognize, and I’m seeing the data, too, from sources, just how powerful it is for the business.
Stone Payton: But I know one of my shortcomings or where I’m a little short on the skills, I mean, I’ll just admit it, I have had a tendency over the years to kind of hire in my own image. And I don’t think it was like blatant prejudice against a certain constituency. It’s just, I don’t know, I guess we just kind of like people that talk and think and look like us. Is that part of the challenge, like this unintentional bias or not having – I don’t know.
Loretta Daniels: You’re exactly right, it’s an unconscious bias, unintentional bias, and it’s social bias. We all face that. And so, it’s really important that companies recognize that with their hiring process. To give you an example, with TAG, we’ve created a succession planning. Only 25 percent of companies in the United States have a succession plan, which means that we’re ready to promote individuals into senior level roles.
Loretta Daniels: And so, what most succession plans have is it is just full of bias. And so, that bias is when you’re looking to hire and promote someone in a leadership role, you typically promote someone that looks like you. And so, you see a lot of companies, they’ll have a lot of diverse individuals on the entry level, they’ll have some diversity on mid level. But when you get to the senior level, if you look on most websites, you see a lot of white men and some white women in sprinkled minorities here and there. And so, that means that they don’t have a very unbiased strategic kind of succession plan.
Loretta Daniels: And so, our plan removes that social bias capital. It removes that bias so that companies now really are putting the right people in that succession plan. Because stats will show you that individuals will stay with the company if they know they can be advanced. And so, we created this plan. A couple of companies have already started implementing it. And that means that now you have more candidates in the pipeline, more diverse thought, and it’s truly removing the social capital and bias.
Stone Payton: So, in your work there’s the messaging, there’s the communication, there’s the speaking, the writing, but I’m getting the idea that you have some some discipline, some rigor, some structure, some methodology around this to bring to companies large and small.
Loretta Daniels: Yes, you have to. You have to use the data. You have to be able to understand. My experience has given me a unique perspective. As an entrepreneur, I know that we have to struggle and wear all these hats. But as a C-suite executive, I know how important it is to look at that profit margin and to see who’s coming up next, and to make sure those goals are there.
Loretta Daniels: And, again, education. I taught the student to be able to go in and to look for a job and how to get promoted. So, I take that comprehensive approach when I work with TAG to build out these professional development and leadership development programs, and help to manage them to make sure that the workforce is truly meeting their goals.
Stone Payton: So, as you were describing your career path earlier in the conversation, you definitely have what the kids call street cred, Loretta. You’ve been there. I don’t know when or where or how you would find the time, but interests, hobbies, pursuits outside the scope of your work, anything you have a tendency to nerd out about or like to do outside this? A lot of our listeners know that I like to hunt, fish, and travel. Anything you do to kind of recharge the batteries and step away periodically.
Loretta Daniels: Yeah. You know what? I love just spending time with family. I have a deck that I’ve kind of built that my husband and I love going out to. We got a little television out there, sofa. I just love chilling out there sometimes. And I like to travel. You know, I’ve lived internationally. I’ve lived abroad. I like to travel. I love to just spend some time chilling on the deck.
Stone Payton: My late father-in-law, he said it before I got a chance to live it. But he always said that travel really broadened you and you gain those additional perspectives. And getting to know you a little bit, I’m sure the travel that you’ve done has influenced your work as well and that appreciation for different perspectives and capitalizing on the value of people who can see things through a different lens.
Loretta Daniels: It really has. When I was writing the book, that first book in France, I realized in doing my research, in America, it doesn’t take very much for us to start a business, but it’s not the same in other countries. Other countries, you have to go through so many licenses and you have to have so much money to get started. I mean, I started my first one with $500. So, it’s just not the same. We don’t realize until we travel or do research about how good we have it when it comes to being able to start businesses here in America.
Stone Payton: I mentioned earlier in the conversation, I shared with our listeners that we saw each other at Fintech South 2024. How did that event go for you? Did you feel like it was worth your time and effort to be there and hang out with folks?
Loretta Daniels: It was so successful. You know, TAG does a great job connecting people, bringing in industry together to learn and to connect. So, yes, it was a great opportunity.
Stone Payton: Before we wrap, I’m going to ask you maybe to share a couple of ideas on just general career advice and all that, but I want to get a little more tactical and specific with regard to TAG. I mean, we have this jewel right here in our backyard in the Metro Atlanta area. What should people know and what can and should we be doing? Small business, mid-sized business, large corporations, and the aspiring entrepreneur, what are some some of the best ways to tap into TAG, contribute, and receive the benefits?
Loretta Daniels: I’m so glad you asked. All of the above. From the corporations to get corporate memberships, when they have corporate memberships, their employees have the ability to attend the events, connect, whether you’re in sales, whether you’re in other areas, marketing, you have the ability to connect with other industry leaders. Also, as an entrepreneur, you get a chance to speak with others.
Loretta Daniels: To give you an example, our Bridge Builders Program, we have two programs that are really designed for the underserved community, those tech leaders. TAG Connect helps employers – I mean, I’m sorry – helps founders to have this Shark Tank environment and present their businesses to industry leaders, like Honeywell and UPS. They would never get this opportunity. And they have an opportunity to say, “Here, listen to my business, what I can offer you.” And to get a contract, because as a business owner, I know there’s two major challenges. There’s customer acquisition and there’s getting capital. And so, TAG Connect helps those entrepreneurs to have an access to customer acquisition.
Loretta Daniels: And our Invest Connect is a pitch competition. It gives these entrepreneurs a chance to go in and pitch to win $10,000 first prize or $5,000 second prize. But more importantly, it’s designed, Stone, where half of the audience are investors who are interested in minority and underserved tech businesses, and they have access to those individuals.
Stone Payton: What a marvelous opportunity. I know there was some type of pitch competition during Fintech South 2024. And we interviewed the leader, and the winner, and the second place. But, you know, everyone who participated in that found tremendous benefit. So, even if you don’t win first prize in something like that, you learn so much and make so many valuable connections that will serve you for a lifetime, don’t you?
Loretta Daniels: Exactly. Exactly. And we have one coming up, Invest Connect, on October 24th.
Stone Payton: Okay. And, again, just start tapping into the TAG world and there’s all kind of little paths to follow and enrich yourself and help the next person, too, while you’re there.
Loretta Daniels: Exactly. It’s that connection that we make. That pathway and connection through our societies. It’s just a great way to connect. I would encourage anyone, whether you’re a large corporation or business owner, or even just someone in the tech space and you want to connect to advance your career, getting a membership at TAG is extremely beneficial.
Stone Payton: All right. Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of actionable items. I call them pro tips. Just something they could begin to chew on, maybe something to read, maybe a do or a don’t. And look, guys, it sounds to me like your best pro tip out of today is join TAG if you’re not a part of it. And if you are a part of it, get more involved.
Loretta Daniels: Exactly. That’s number one. And since Kennesaw State is sponsoring this, I would say for those students who are juniors and seniors, make sure that you, in your career path, get at least three internships if you can. Look for a mentor and try to make that mentorship turn into sponsorship, that’s what you need to be able to get the best jobs out there.
Stone Payton: Fantastic. Well, Loretta, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, your wisdom. I can’t wait for this next book to come out. We’re going to continue to follow your story and TAG, you guys are doing such important work and we sure appreciate you.
Loretta Daniels: Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate you allowing me to share this opportunity with everybody else.
Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Dr. Loretta Daniels with Technology Association of Georgia, and the entire Business RadioX family, saying we’ll see you again on High Velocity Careers.
From Passion to Purpose: Inspiring a New Generation of Animal Advocates
In this episode of Women in Motion, host Lee Kantor is joined by Jenny Curtis, an advocate for animal welfare and conservation. Jenny shares her journey from a childhood fascination with animals to creating educational subscription boxes for children. These boxes, filled with stuffed animals, books, and activity kits, aim to teach kids about zoology and conservation. Jenny discusses the challenges of running a small business, especially supply chain issues, and emphasizes the importance of community engagement. Her company donates 50% of profits to wildlife conservation, highlighting her commitment to fostering a love for animals and environmental stewardship among children.
Jenny Curtis is a dedicated conservationist and entrepreneur, leading edZOOcation with a passion for wildlife and education.
With extensive experience in exotic animal care and education, Jenny founded edZOOcation to inspire the next generation of conservationists. She holds a B.S. in Organismal Biology and multiple associate degrees in exotic animal care, wildlife education, and animal behavior management.
Under her leadership, edZOOcation has donated over $44,000 to wildlife conservation, making a significant impact on protecting endangered species and supporting educational initiatives.
Connect wtih Jenny on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This 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 Jenny Curtis with edZOOcation. Welcome.
Jenny Curtis: Thank you so much. I’m very excited to be here. Thank you.
Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about edZOOcation. How are you serving folks?
Jenny Curtis: Oh, my goodness. Yeah. So, edZOOcation kind of came about just through different avenues. But my background is all exotic animals and animal welfare and animal education, in that space, and so we wanted to do like a physical product for kids where they could shift gears and learn at home. You know, kind of throwbacks to when I was younger, we had zoo books and things like that, but a little bit more, a little bit more than just a book. We wanted a whole experience, a whole 360 degree experience for the kids.
Jenny Curtis: So, we have our edZOOcation subscription boxes and they teach kids all about animals, zoology. We go into different biology, touch points, anatomy, all sorts of fun stuff. We always include some kind of STEM in there. And we have it geared for three different age groups, so we have 3 to 5, 6 to 8, and 9 to 12, so we’re really touching on their developmental point in their life and, obviously, their love for animals, that’s why they find us and that’s who we serve.
Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk about your personal journey? I would imagine most kids love animals when they’re little. You know, what kind of compelled you to stay connected with animals throughout your whole career?
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. Well, it’s not a choice, I’ll say that.
Lee Kantor: It’s not a choice.
Jenny Curtis: I had no control over it. I’ve just been obsessed since I was little. I mean, I was the one out there with caterpillars and baby birds, and anything I could find. And it just continued into my adulthood. I just didn’t lose interest in it. As kids go through tons of interests while they’re young, that was the one that, for me, just stuck. And it was evident all through even middle school, high school. I wanted to be a zookeeper. College, I went for zoology and ended up going to a vocational, you know, animal training and education college. And so, I mean, it really has been my entire life. I just never grew out of it.
Lee Kantor: But as you were going through it, you were obsessed and you were kind of nerding out on this whole kind of zoology path, were your friends, solely dropping off? They were like, “Jenny, okay, we get it. You like caterpillars.”
Jenny Curtis: Yes and no. I mean, I had a couple close friends that were definitely like, you know, we shared toads and stuff. But for the most part, yeah, I definitely got a little more sparse as I got through high school and whatnot, because definitely people do not have that same very niche interest as I did. But, you know, it’s still a positive thing. People were never mean about it or anything like that for me.
Jenny Curtis: But it definitely was really nice going to college and just seeing another group of people who were as dedicated as I was to this interest and to preserving these animals, because that was not my day-to-day experience. So, finding a group of people and learning that people really do care about this in larger groups outside of myself was huge for me.
Jenny Curtis: And that’s what I want kids to know. I want them to know that they’re not alone in this interest. They can take their love of animals and go into any field. They don’t have to go into zoology or conservation or be a zookeeper or a veterinarian. They could be conserving animals doing IT work. They can be conserving animals doing medical field work, doing public relations. I mean, the possibilities are endless with making an impact in conservation.
Lee Kantor: So, when you have the idea of we’re going to make this learning kind of three dimensional. We want to build a box where there are stuff in it that they can touch and play with and educate them. How did that kind of come about? Were you kind of modeling it after other things you’ve seen? Or was this kind of something that you were thinking about kind of from a blank slate?
Jenny Curtis: Well, so part of my college vocational training was doing wildlife education, live presentations with animals, you know, teaching kids about animals in person, holding a snake or cockroaches or whatnot. And so, after college, I actually started my own rescue and outreach, and we successfully placed and took in over 250 animals during just four years doing this. This was in Florida and, obviously, they have a much larger exotic animal problem and there are a ton of pets, so it’s, you know, improper housing and all that.
Jenny Curtis: So, we were able to take them in, either place them with appropriate zoo or facility homes or use them in our educational programs where we did the same thing. We went to schools and birthday parties and Girl Scouts and community events, and just taught kids and the public about animals in general. So, for me, turning this from a live presentation with animals into a physical presentation with toys and reading materials and curriculum that they can learn at home, it was kind of just the next step.
Jenny Curtis: And obviously for my family, it worked out a lot better than having a ton of animals around all the time. At the time we had two small kids, so it was a lot to manage, and that’s kind of one of the reasons we switched gears, my husband and I, and kind of closed the live animal portion of it down. There’s people who are doing it fantastically, and you can go to zoos and aquariums and see these animals and get that live presentation. But what we didn’t see was the at-home learning and that’s where we wanted to connect the dots.
Lee Kantor: So, walk me through, like I get the box, what is inside of the box? You mentioned stuffed animals and there’s learning. Is there ways for me to kind of explore my environment where I can look for certain things that might be around my geography?
Jenny Curtis: Yes and no. So, ours is kind of like animal of the month style. So, each month is a brand new endangered animal. Our core items are the stuffed animal, full size stuffed animal, super snuggly, a great reading buddy for kids who are struggling to learn to read. It really helps make that emotional connection for them. We do have an age appropriate book based on, again, the ages and their reading levels. We have an activity magazine, kind of going back to highlights from a couple decades back where it’s like fun games and activities. It could be scavenger hunts. It could be crafts. There’s always a recipe either from the region that the animal natively lives or something kind of fun and featuring the animal.
Jenny Curtis: We have an ecosystem poster where it’s interactive. The kids get to fill in the ecosystem with the stickers to see kind of how everything works together. The web of life that the animal lives in. We do dive into anatomy. We have a paper dissection kit where they get to do kind of crafty cuts and make a layered paper dissection kit so they can kind of see what the internal anatomy looks like. And, again, over the many months, they’re getting these comparisons and they’re getting to see the differences between some of these very different animals. And then, we also have some kind of game or craft activity for each box as well.
Jenny Curtis: So, it’s really fully hands on. People do the video side of it. We didn’t need to redo that. There’s so many great videos out there, so many great educational channels and content producers that, for us, we needed the physical, in-person products. That was kind of, again, the missing piece for they can see the animals live at a zoo. They can watch the animals on Netflix. And then, now, they can read about them, they can cuddle them, and they can learn more about every other aspect of their life.
Lee Kantor: So then, there isn’t a component where there is community building where you’re trying to, you know, tune in to this live stream of Jenny doing something with an animal where all the members —
Jenny Curtis: Right. We don’t have a live animal component anymore. We’d love to bring that back. Just right now with where we’re at, we call ourselves the startup within a startup. We only started the subscription model a couple years back. And before that, we were mainly stuffed animals and just general animal products. So, we’re still gearing all of that up. We do have digital books and things like that. And we’d love to introduce a live animal component again, probably like a zookeeper Q&A type of thing or just a live animal program in that sense, but we don’t have that quite yet.
Lee Kantor: So, you’re physically building these boxes, like, is that part of the challenge of a business like this that you have to take all the components? Or is that something you’ve outsourced to another group that is handling kind of the building and the distribution of the boxes?
Jenny Curtis: No. We’re really small. We do all of it in-house. I mean, we don’t manufacture the products directly. But everything else, we do in-house. We source the products. We work with the manufacturers. We have them shipped in. We build the physical boxes here at our warehouse in Southern California. We ideate the entire curation of the box from start to finish. Everything is completely handmade and curated, again, for these different ages and, basically, different learning methods for each of the ages.
Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, this sounds like a pretty big challenge just from a supply chain standpoint because all those disparate objects have to get to you at the right time.
Jenny Curtis: That has been such a learning curve. As we’ve moved from single item orders to, I mean, our boxes, you know, they contain 12 to 15 components each and at three different ages, and then we change them out every month, so it is a lot to manage and coordinate. We have delays just like every other small company. And we just had an entire shipment go missing due to the Microsoft outages, so it’s somewhere in the U.S. We don’t know where it is. So, all of our boxes this month are going out in plain craft boxes. So, we have our challenges for sure.
Jenny Curtis: And just coming into business with a passion compared to coming into business with a business background, there has been the largest learning curve. I’m so grateful that we are still here, still standing and making a positive influence because it has just been a whirlwind of mistakes. And looking at it again, how can we improve this? Who can we bring on to help us make this better so we don’t make this mistake again? It’s just been an amazing experience learning how to work with so many different, amazing people, and bringing the right people on to help us out, because I don’t come from a business background. I come from a zoology background.
Lee Kantor: Right. That’s why when you were telling me that and then you were listing how many items were in there, in my head, I’m like, that is not for the faint of heart there, because that is a lot of disparate things that have their own timeline to arrive in a box that’s supposed to go out the first of the month.
Jenny Curtis: It’s definitely been a challenge. Supply chain has been interesting ever since COVID. I mean, COVID shut things down for a bit and then it was so expensive to get things back on track. And, now, it’s just getting everything on time and hopefully not losing things along the way.
Lee Kantor: And then, this business, there’s a cause behind it, right? You’re donating a lot of the proceeds.
Jenny Curtis: We do. We donate 50 percent of profits back to wildlife conservation. So, each month, we either partner with or donate to a wildlife conservation that’s related to the animal of the month. So, for instance, this month it was sea otter. We already sold out. So, those boxes are completely sold out. And our paired conservation partner is the Marine Conservation Institute, working to protect sea otter habitat. And what we found is that’s, first of all, a great impact we can make in donating financially to them. Every company needs money. Every nonprofit needs money. But not just that, we are sharing their story. We’re creating more awareness for them.
Jenny Curtis: And what I’ve found when I was working at Moorpark College as a professor teaching the conservation course, one of the big problems that conservations are having is they are having financial troubles, but there’s also a lot of awareness troubles. They’re not set up for, you know, social media and public relations in that way necessarily. So, anything we can do to get eyeballs on them is going to help them in the long run.
Jenny Curtis: Not to mention that our shoppers are also like micro donors to them as well. So, it’s a wonderful win-win. We’re helping the conservation out, we’re saving animals, and we’re teaching kids about empathy and animals at an early age and, hopefully, into their hopeful career desire of working with animals.
Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned some partners that are obviously conservation partners, are you also partnering with schools and elementary schools and folks that are kind of dealing with young children?
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. So, that’s an area that we definitely have opportunity for growth in. Right now, what we’ve done so far is we’ve done a lot of charter schools and homeschool organizations, that type of thing. But we haven’t really broken into the public school zone yet, and that’s just, again, due to our small team. We’re working on getting there every day, but at this point we’re only about four or five employees. And we just brought on a new operations manager, an integrator, actually, and we’re very excited because she’s going to be able to help us scale the way that we know we need to go. And schools and PTAs, and organizations like that are just definitely the next step for us.
Lee Kantor: So, when you take this leap into this world and then you start building the boxes and you start sending them out, when did you kind of have that moment where you’re like, “You know what? I think we’re on to something. I think this is something that’s going to eventually turn into the thing we want it to.”
Jenny Curtis: It’s funny because it’s always been the thing. It was just figuring out how to get it out, how to produce it and get it to the masses. I knew this is what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go with it. It was just logistically a nightmare to try to switch gears. I mean, we started out selling on Amazon, and then getting some bundle ideas from what people were buying together on Amazon. And then from there, making our own website. And then, it was just so many steps to get to where we’re at now.
Jenny Curtis: But I always knew I wanted to continue the wildlife education journey. I want to help kids who were like me, and maybe a little lost with what they love about animals, or why they love them, or what they can do with that, and take it into something that they understand they can go into a successful career with. There’s no shortage of jobs in conservation. There’s no shortage of jobs in science. And getting kids on that path is really the whole goal behind this.
Lee Kantor: So, what was the reason you decided to become part of the WBEC-West community? What were you looking to get from that relationship?
Jenny Curtis: Yeah. So, we wanted to get women-owned and certified just because there’s a lot of people who say they are, but maybe they aren’t really. And we just wanted the certification to really show like, “Hey, we’ve gone through the wringer on this. We really are women-owned and women certified and completely legit.” It was important for me, especially as an advocate for conservation, because in the world of wildlife conservation, oftentimes the greatest impact that they can have on protecting the species is working with the local communities and working with the women in those communities to make that impact.
Jenny Curtis: So, I wanted to be here in solidarity and be like I’m here working as a woman-owned business to help create jobs and improve communities for all of these countries that are facing difficulties. And, obviously, it transfers into the animals having troubles and becoming endangered in one way from habitat loss or even poaching. So, to me, being women-owned certified was just really important to kind of have it come full circle and really show that we’re here doing what we say we’re doing.
Lee Kantor: So, what do you need more of? How can we be helping you?
Jenny Curtis: Subscribers are always lovely. We do have a subscription service. You can prepay, you can subscribe monthly. But another thing I just like to talk about is encourage kids to go into a science career. Encourage kids to just follow whatever interests they have. I mean, if they’re not interested in science, don’t push them in that direction. But if they are, there’s resources out there.
Jenny Curtis: When I was in high school, I remember going to the career center, you know, the career room and being like, I want to be a zookeeper. And they had nothing for me. Absolutely nothing. So, I mean, just the more information that’s out there now, help your kids find resources for things that they’re interested in, things they might want to do continued education for, help them get involved. It’s so vital at an early age to support their path and to have them be confident and kind of ahead of the game when able in these careers.
Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to learn more and connect with you, what’s a website or what’s the best way to connect on socials?
Jenny Curtis: Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s just edzoocation.com and most of our socials are @edzoocation_boxes and you can find us there. We kind of are a little bit of everywhere right now. We’re on Facebook and TikTok and Instagram. You can find us on YouTube with some of our videos. And obviously our website has all of our current product offerings. But we do have a new animal every month and it’s a really fun deep dive into that animal.
Lee Kantor: And that’s E-D-Z-O-O-C-A-T-I-O-N -.com?
Jenny Curtis: That’s right.
Lee Kantor: Well, Jenny, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Jenny Curtis: Thank you so much. We really appreciate being here. Thank you again.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.
Robert Wilson with Culture Shift Team
Culture Shift Team founding partner, Robert Lawrence Wilson, leads CST’s Diversity, Inclusion and Equity division. With more than 15 years of experience in diversity management, multicultural marketing, customer experience strategy, and leadership development, Robert develops comprehensive strategy and training for corporations, non-profit organizations, higher education, and government agencies. In addition to overall inclusion strategy,
Robert served in executive roles at Nissan North America, including Nissan’s director of Customer Experience and Nissan’s first director of Diversity and Inclusion where he developed and led Nissan’s diversity practice, spanning Nissan’s operations in North and South America, as well as a multicultural marketing strategy.
Robert has served on the leadership boards of non-profit organizations promoting greater access to quality education for our nation’s most at-risk student populations. Robert is the co-founder and executive director of the Tennessee Diversity Consortium and serves as an adjunct professor in Vanderbilt University’s graduate program. Robert holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in business administration from Duke University.
Follow Culture Shift Team on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode
- The story behind Culture Shift Team
- The role Culture Shift Team is playing within the Nashville community
- How the recent attacks on diversity and inclusion work impacted Culture Shift Team’s work
This 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. This is going to be a good one. Guys, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Culture Shift Team. Mr. Robert Wilson. How are you, man?
Robert Wilson: I’m doing well, Stone, and thank you so much for having me and thinking about us and, uh, looking forward to a conversation.
Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the broadcast. I got a ton of questions, Robert. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but I do think a great place to start would be if you could paint a little bit of a picture for me and our listeners, mission, purpose. What is it that you and your team are, are really out there trying to do for folks, man?
Robert Wilson: Yeah. So Culture Shift Team. Um, we’ve kind of got a two pronged approach to how we support organizations, both large and small. Um, the way we like to look at it is we like to talk about our work in terms of demographic shifts. So we help organizations navigate and leverage demographic shifts that are happening, happening in the market. Um, and so that might be, um, if you are trying to reach, uh, customers, uh, consumers, maybe that you have not been able to effectively reach in the past. Um, we can help you do that across a multitude of different demographics. Um, but then we also support organizations internally, um, with, uh, demographic shifts that are happening within our workplaces. So, you know, we have a real emphasis on people and culture, um, and helping organizations build really, really productive workplaces. Given that the reality is that, um, in our workplaces today are a lot of people who have not worked together before. Um, there’s multi-generations working in the workplace as well as, um, you know, different, um, cultures and genders in some cases. And so we help organizations navigate that and produce productive workspaces. Well, I.
Stone Payton: Got to tell you, it sounds like really rewarding work. Good work, if you can get it. I got to know the backstory. How in the world did you land here? How did you find yourself doing this kind of work for these people?
Robert Wilson: You know, it’s actually a really good question. My background, actually, I’m a mechanical engineer, believe it or not, which probably really throws you off from what I just said as far as our introduction. Um, but I was. I’m a mechanical engineer. I’m from Detroit, Michigan, actually. Um, and I spent many years in corporate environments working in engineering. Um, in 2010, I was asked to lead Nissan, North America’s first diversity and inclusion initiative, and help set that up for North and South America. Um, and so that’s really was really my serious entry into the work. Um, so we were doing some fantastic work, uh, in reaching some markets, uh, and going deeper with some communities and building some trust and maybe selling, selling a few cars along the way. Um, that was really important to the, to the company. And I needed some help. And so I identified and found two local consultants, and Gillespie and Marcella Gomez, both of them leaders in the Nashville market. Um, and they ended up doing some work with us, very similar to the work we do as Culture Shift team. Now in reaching hearts and connecting with and building trust with hard to reach audiences. We had so much success doing this work at Nissan that when I departed Nissan. The three of us decided to take our work to the next level. Um, and to form Culture shift team. So they like to joke that the irony there is that, you know, that they recruited one of their clients from the from the client into the company. So I was in some ways, I kind of consider myself employee number one for that reason.
Stone Payton: What a marvelous origin story. So now that you’ve been at it a little bit, uh, for a little while, what are you finding most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?
Robert Wilson: You know what we’re about building trust, right? We’re about building trust. Um, both with, again, externally and internally. So externally, building trust is, you know, how do you get these communities that have been that haven’t felt a part, um, that maybe have been, um, not invited or maybe in some cases intentionally excluded, right? How do you build trust between that community and a brand or an organization? Um, because we work with small nonprofits, uh, in much the same way we work with large corporations now. So how do you build that trust and what does that process look like, and how do you create something that’s a sustainable relationship? Um, so that over a period of time people begin to, uh, kind of see themselves with that particular in that particular brand and really develop a connection with that brand. And then internally again, same thing. What are the triggers and what are the levers to building trust internally with your workforce? The workforce now is just so different than it was, um, when I was first starting out, um, in corporate America, for instance. And, you know, when I was starting out, um, Stone, um, you know, as an employee, you just kind of you came in there and whatever was going on on the outside, you just kept that to yourself.
Robert Wilson: And, you know, you kind of suffered in silence and, um, you know, that relationship with your employer, it was really very surface level. Well, now there’s a recognition that people need connection, um, and that both connection with the with the brand connection with their employers, connection with their bosses and coworkers. And there’s an expectation amongst particular millennials and Gen Zs that that’s part of the work experience. And, you know, I think that’s a good thing. I think that, you know, in the old days, we used to have our bowling teams, if you remember, you know, I was on a bowling team or, you know, if you were in the military, you’re part of a veterans organization that you’re really active in, and people were involved in their church. We’ve seen less connection, you know, in this in the last generation. And so there’s an expectation that work provide that connection for people. And the best part is we’re seeing really good statistical evidence that that also leads to more productivity in the workplace and that, you know, organizations are better able to fulfill their missions. When people really feel connected to the work and to the people that they work with.
Stone Payton: So I have an observation and I don’t have a conclusion, and I’m glad I’m getting a chance to have this conversation with you. One part of the observation is I see a great deal more activity and some really positive outcomes from individuals and associations and corporations and small and medium sized businesses, like leaning into this whole idea of diversity, equity and inclusion. And then but parallel to that, and maybe it’s because, you know, I’m a reasonably well-off, middle aged white guy. Maybe people are willing to say this, but I’ll occasionally hear what I would characterize as a little bit of backlash or like, you know, the whole idea gets a little bit under attack. Are you seeing that and what impact, if any, is that having on on your work?
Robert Wilson: It’s a great question. Great question. I’ll start by saying that all of us contribute to creating a diverse workplace. Um, all of us have some part of ourselves, um, that, you know, maybe is not part of the norm or maybe not part of the majority. You might have you might be neurodiverse, right? You might have your own mental health struggles. Um, you might be from a generation that is not highly represented in your workplace. Um, you might have come from a background where you didn’t have a lot, grew up with a lot of wealth, um, and a lot of opportunities. So from a socioeconomic level, you might be different, um, or have had some challenges that other people that you work with haven’t had. And so when we talk about diversity, specifically in the workplace, we really are inclusive of everyone. Um, because all of us have a story and we want to recognize those stories and understand that you collect all those stories, they give you a lot of insight to the customers that you’re trying to reach. Yeah. So I always like to start there with respect to the backlash. Yeah. You know, I think that those of us who do this work maybe haven’t done a good enough job in explaining what the work is, um, and that really we’re trying to create connection within the workplace so that people have what we call psychological safety to be themselves. Um, and as a result of being yourself to share insights that you bring to the table, because as we know, our employees represent the people we’re going to sell to the people that we’re doing business with.
Robert Wilson: Right. And so how do we get employees to feel better about that and to do that? And how do we create these psychologically safe environments that allow us to connect with customers and grow our mission or grow our our market, our market penetration? Um, and so we haven’t done a good enough job in explaining that. And yes, there’s been some backlash, I think, as a result. But, you know, the, the the interesting thing is there are some there have been some maybe some big name brands that have come out and said that they are retreating or they’re stepping back from their work in this space. But overall, when you actually look at the data, what we see is that a lot of companies are going deeper, um, in the work, um, that a lot of companies, um, understand how their work in the inclusion space is driving the business and preparing them for the demographics of tomorrow. Um, and perhaps those companies, some of these companies are not as visible or vocal as maybe they were in 2020 when, for instance, when when the horrible tragedy with George Floyd occurred. Um, but we do see when you look at the data and you kind of peel back a little bit, the reality is that the companies are going deeper, not less. Um, even though there have been some high profile companies that, for whatever reasons, have decided to to step back a little bit.
Stone Payton: So speaking of data, I mean, to me, your work strikes me as something that would be personally fulfilling your your you’re making a dent in the universe. You’re you’re serving your fellow person. You’re involving people. So all that good, you know, fuzzy warm stuff. But there is quite a bit of data, as I understand it, that suggests that a diverse, um, working environment and having people with different perspectives and backgrounds, there’s some real bottom line benefit to that. I mean, it’s it’s good business, isn’t it? Yeah.
Robert Wilson: I, you know, it’s it’s almost to the point now where, you know, that isn’t even contested amongst corporations. Now, um, there’s been studies done by big organizations like McKinsey. Um, has studied this for, I think, well over a decade. And there have been some other really high profile studies that have shown that, you know, organizations that have diversity, that are leveraging their diversity are more profitable, um, organizations that have diverse board of directors are. They see a significant impact to their positive impact to their shareholder price over and over again. We see data points that suggest that that this has a significant impact to business, which is why so many organizations are not backtracking from the work, even though there’s some external pressure, um, to rethink how the work is done and what it means. Um, and that’s okay. It’s okay to say, you know, how are we how are we executing our work in this inclusion space, both internally and externally? That’s that’s a good conversation to have. But I think we’ve reached the point, at least from a business perspective, where questions around, you know, should we be even doing this work? Well, I think we’re past that at this point. Um, and I think it’s just a matter of I think, you know, as we talk more about what this means outside of the, of the office, um, that, you know, making sure that we articulate to everybody else the huge benefit that we see from from doing this work?
Stone Payton: Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. And as I think through it, it just makes all the sense in the world what my daddy would call walking around sense, you know, and you know, if everybody at the table is looking through the exact same lens, you just don’t get the richness of experience and depth and access to markets and all those things that that you do with a truly diverse workforce. I know personally and I have several, Robert, but one of my failings, particularly early in my career in building this organization, the Business RadioX network, I had a tendency to hire in my own image, and not so much along racial or gender lines, that that really never was much of a hill for me, but someone who who saw the world a lot like I did, or kind of had my language patterned or had my sales style. And man, we have been so much more productive since we’ve intentionally tried to get different types of folks to the table.
Robert Wilson: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting because, uh, humans are attracted to people most like ourselves. Yeah. Um, when I, you know, do different education sessions on this topic, one of the things I talk about is that a lot of our challenges around inclusion are head related and that heart related, which simply means that as humans, again, we’re attracted to people most like ourselves. We have these, um, uh, self protection mechanisms, right, that create opportunities for things like bias, which you were just describing. Um, and so the hope is that awareness of these things and some presentation of tools to be able to overcome them, um, will lead us, you know, advance us as organizations, as people, and really create more inclusive leaders, which is, I think, what we want. I can tell you I can tell you two Stone as an engineer, the worst thing you can have is a bunch of engineers who went to the same school, got studied, studied under the same professors. We’re all trying to solve problems the same way. Right. Because you know, when you’re going to come up against a problem that maybe you didn’t see. And if everybody’s looking at the same way, you can cause yourself a lot of trouble. I mean, that can become very dangerous as an engineer. So I get what you’re saying, and I’ve lived it and know that, you know, this is really a basic tenet of problem solving.
Stone Payton: So let’s dive into the work a little bit. I don’t know, maybe even walk through a use case. You don’t have to name any names if you don’t want to, but I’d love to get a picture of what the work looks like. I’m particularly interested in the in the early stages. I guess you’d call it like an engagement cycle, like what happens early on, but walk us through a use case or an example of the interaction you have. You mentioned education, but yeah, talk that through a little bit.
Robert Wilson: You know what I’ll. The example I’ll give you is something that some really great hard work that our organization has been doing now and with a lot of depth since 2020. Um, and so we, uh, have been working with a number of major hospital research organizations around the country. Um, after Covid, a lot of people started to understand that, you know, maybe our research samples, um, within the within the research industry, were not very diverse. So, in other words, when we were doing research and we were doing, um, you know, looking at the, the efficacy of different drugs and different research methods, um, to treat different types of illnesses. Um, the population that we’re pulling from was not representative of US population. In some cases, it was a representative of the population that would tend to get sick or tend to have this particular illness. Um, and so what we’ve been doing, um, for a number of different groups over the last five years is helping to recruit people to participate in different research studies. And we’ve got a method, a methodology of doing that where we build trust between that, organization and the community. We rely on trusted people that have some influence within that community. Um, preparing them and giving them information that they can use to share the information about different clinical trials that we’re participating in. Um, and we do it with an understanding that there are communities out there, um, across racial lines, across socio economic lines, that are really hesitant and don’t have trust with some of these institutions. And so how do you build that relationship so that these folks can participate in some of these trials? Um, and, and do so in a way that allows these research institutions to make better decisions about drugs, about treatments, um, that save lives. And so that’s something that we’re really, really proud of coming out of Covid that we’re a part of. And, um, looking to grow and expand, um, because it’s making a big difference out there in the world with respect to health care.
Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a firm like yours? Like, how do you get the the new businesses? Is it mostly referral, or do you find yourself out there shaking the trees a little bit and having to meet the market?
Robert Wilson: We meet the market. You know, we go out, we, you know, go. We try to get ourselves in rooms, um, where there are people, um, who are decision makers, um, who can, who we can tell our story to and who we can hear more about what they’re challenged with. Um, and so we, we try to kind of kind of marry those two things up. What are some of your challenges that you’re facing, and how could some of our tools and some of our solutions help you solve those issues? Um, we’re very data focused, which I will I’m happy to say. I’m very proud to say even though I’m an engineer and my, my, our other two founders are not. They really, really drive the data emphasis, believe it or not, like sometimes for me, I’m like, oh, you know, maybe this one. I think I can kind of use my a little bit of intuition for like nope, nope nope nope. We got to get to collect the data. Um, and so we like to do that so that we are making informed decisions, um, and helping that client make informed decisions about policy, um, about strategy. Uh, and so we go out and we, we ask those questions of stakeholders so that, um, we’re able to make really good decisions, come up with really good solutions.
Stone Payton: You mentioned a little earlier in the conversation that you are serving people nationally. I don’t know, maybe even internationally. And you’re there in Nashville. Have you have you gotten, um, really close to the Nashville community? What can you tell us about about Nashville?
Robert Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. Nashville is just a fascinating place with a great story. Um, of course, people know Nashville from, um, music and country music in particular. Um, but also Nashville is also one of the health care capitals, um, within the United States. I did not realize that. Yeah, yeah. So that’s a big industry here as well. And there’s a lot of it has become a lot of automotive and manufacturing, which actually brought me to Nashville some years ago. Um, but it’s a growing city. It’s a diverse city. Um, and it’s a city I’m proud to say is is really putting in the work to figure out how you take people in Nashville’s case, because I think the last I checked, it’s like 105 new people moved to Nashville per day. So some astronomical number like that. And so you’re taking people who come from very different places, um, both immigrants from outside of the United States, but also people who are making a decision to settle in Nashville, um, who come from different cities and communities across the country. And so how do you take all those people and try to create a sense of belonging, um, for all these folks. And so as a result of that, it’s work that I’m happy to say Nashville is doing the work and putting in the work to to try to get better at as it relates to diversity and inclusion.
Robert Wilson: I serve as executive director and one of the founders of an organization called the Tennessee Diversity Consortium. Um, and we are a consortium of people who are in leadership positions, whether they be within the corporate space, the higher ed space K through 12 nonprofit. But people who are in leadership positions doing work, some in some capacity, around diversity, equity and inclusion. Um, and the idea there is that bring these folks together because you probably never thought about this stone, but there’s no such thing as a degree in diversity, equity, inclusion. There still isn’t. One day I hope there will be, but right now there’s not. And so we bring these folks together to help us skill up and help us be better stewards of the work. Um, for the organizations and communities that we serve. And so I’m really proud of that work, because it’s really work that hopefully is impacting that sense of belonging, that these folks coming into Nashville for the first time and trying to blend yet maintain Nashville’s culture, um, doing the work. This helps us do the work to to be able to pull that off more effectively.
Stone Payton: So I don’t know when or where you would find the time. It sounds to me like you got a lot of irons in the fire and a lot going on, but I’m going to ask anyway interests, hobbies, pursuits, passions outside the scope of your of your work. But my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you nerd out about when you’re not doing the work.
Robert Wilson: Hey look, this is my time of the year because people that know me know I’m a huge college football fan. Um, and so I’m a Michigan alumni and a Michigan fan. We’re having a tough year, but you can’t win them all, I guess. Um, but I am a bit of a college football historian, so I’m going to guess I probably know more about your team, uh, than you know about your team. Uh, you know, so it really, you know, it’s exciting time of the year. It’s really fun, um, to engage around engage around that.
Stone Payton: So what’s next for Culture Shift Team? Are you going to continue to try to scale serve more, bigger? What are you seeing on the horizon? I don’t know, maybe even as much as 3 to 5 years out.
Robert Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we want to um, the reality is that the US demographics are continuing to evolve, um, in particular, over the next 15 years, we’ll see even faster demographic change across generation and ethnicity, buying power, um, many different dimensions of identity. We’ll see even faster change in what we’ve seen over the last 15 years. Um, and so in that respect, we have a lot of tailwinds for our work. Uh, we’ve got some headwinds that which you’ve called out, some of the lack of understanding of what the work is, um, and some folks, you know, even in some cases trying to prevent the work from happening. Um, and so we’re leaning in. Um, we want to reach more companies, More organizations. Again, we work with nonprofits for profits. Um, and so we want to grow and continue to do the work. Um, because what we see is that there’s a big impact to the experiences that people have at work and the experiences and the relationships that people build with brands. And so, you know, we want to continue to expand. We do work, as you describe, all over the United States. Um, and so we have our tentacles in many markets outside of Nashville, even though we were started here. Um, and we want to continue to make that kind of difference. It’s great to be able to to start and grow a business where you see the impact it’s having to society. Um, I think that’s something that all of us aspire to. And within Cultureshift team, we’ve got a plan and we’ve got a business model that allows us to do that.
Stone Payton: Well, congratulations on the momentum, man. I think it’s absolutely terrific. Before we wrap, I’d love to leave our listeners with a couple of actionable items. I call them Pro Tips and look, guys. The number one pro tip if you really want to start getting your arms around Dei diversity, equity and inclusion, reach out and have a conversation with Robert or somebody on the on his team. But let’s leave them with something to chew on, something to read or do or don’t. I don’t know. Just something to give them to, something for them to start noodling on.
Robert Wilson: You know, here’s one tip. You know, when it comes to inclusive leadership, because I know a lot of our listeners are business leaders and business people. Um, the tip I’ll leave you is what I always tell folks that all of us have the same capacity to commit a harm as we do to be the recipient of a harm. And so that little piece of humility, if you remember that piece of humility, it really allows you, um, to be humble, um, in this process of becoming an inclusive leader. Um, and so remember that I, I’m just as capable of committing a harm as I am of being a recipient of one. And if you want to reach out to us, you can do so by going to Cultureshift team.com. Um, and you can look at our offerings and our tools and services there. Um, we offer microlearning, uh, individual microlearning courses for people who just want to go out and, um, learn a little bit more about this topic on their own. Um, and obviously, we have the ability to scale that to organizations that are, that are large organizations as well. Um, and if you want to, um, see more and hear more about what I’m doing in this space, um, and also get access to other resources that I make available through Cultureshift team. You can follow me on LinkedIn. Um, it’s just Robert Lawrence Wilson is how you find me, um, on LinkedIn. Um, and I’m happy to engage with people and continue to have these conversations because this is where we’re going in the future. Um, and so it can be it can be a fun journey. And I want to I want to be part of helping it be helping to it become that.
Stone Payton: Well, Robert, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon, man. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You and your team are doing such important work and we sure appreciate you, man.
Robert Wilson: Awesome. Thanks for having us and look forward to the work that you all are doing as well.
Stone Payton: My pleasure. Alright, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Robert Wilson with Culture Shift Team and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Nashville Business Radio.
Jackson Griffeth with Cherokee Family Orthodontics and Josh Nelson with Nelson Elder Care Law
Brought to you by Diesel David and Main Street Warriors
Dr. Jackson Griffeth, aka “Dr. Jackson”, with Cherokee Family Orthodontics, believes orthodontic treatment can be a life-changing experience and is intentional about keeping it fun, exciting and always positive. He recognizes the trust his patients put in him and that motivates him to provide the best possible care.
Originally from Gainesville, Georgia, Dr. Jackson was a walk-on football player at UGA, finished co-valedictorian at the Dental College of Georgia, and attended Virginia Commonwealth University for Orthodontic residency. After graduating residency in 2021, he achieved board-certification while working in private practice. 
Dr. Jackson competed on American Ninja Warrior in 2017 and hopes to make it back for another shot. In the meantime, he’s competing for Best Dad of his three kiddos Rebecca, Bear and Maggie. He and his wife Katherine love outdoor adventures and you can often find them at Olde Rope and Blankets Creek mountain biking and running.
Josh Nelson is passionate about helping families protect their assets through effective legal, tax, and financial strategies.
In addition to his Juris Doctorate, Josh has a Master of Accounting Degree in Taxation. This education empowers him to navigate the complex integration of laws surrounding taxation, asset protection, and securing the future for the people you love.
Josh is active in the community, building relationships with people, organizations, and key businesses. He has developed strong alliances in the senior industry to provide holistic solutions to his clients. Since 2014, Nelson Elder Care Law has helped more than 5,000 families protect their loved ones.
Josh is a sought-after speaker for professionals like Certified Public Accountants, Certified Senior Advisors, real estate agents, social workers, and financial planners, in addition to civic organizations like Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs, and churches.
Follow Nelson Elder Care Law on LinkedIn and Facebook.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, go to. Main Street warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc. please go check them out at diesel. David. Dot com you guys are in for a real treat this morning. First up on Cherokee Business Radio, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Cherokee Family Orthodontics. Mr. Jackson Griffeth. How are you, man?
Jackson Griffeth: Stone I am good. I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.
Stone Payton: Well, we’re excited to have you in studio. You and I have come across each other at a couple of these networking gatherings. Anywhere. There’s free food and beer, you know, color me there. Right? That’s it. But it’s good to have you in studio. What brings you to to Cherokee? Why? Open office here, man?
Jackson Griffeth: Man, we were living a beautiful life in Asheville, North Carolina before this up in the mountains, and we thought we were going to be there forever, you know? Um, and then my wife and I really started having some, um, some direction from the Lord last year. We were knowing that we were going to start a practice somewhere. So I finished residency. I’m an orthodontist, finished residency three years ago now, and we went to Asheville, North Carolina, worked there, and I was an associate in a great practice there and really wanted to start my own practice, had a vision for how I wanted to run a practice and wanted to do that. And we really started looking around for where is that going to be? And we were paralyzed. I mean, I have a tendency for analysis paralysis. I’ll maybe get into that later. But we were paralyzed not knowing where we would do it. And then when we really started taking the pressure off of figuring out, all right, where are we going to do this startup for the rest of and B for the rest of our lives? And thought, you know, where is this next season? Where does God have us in this next season? Woodstock really started coming to come into light in so many ways.
Jackson Griffeth: There are a couple of things that really drove that one is that it was an area that we felt like, hey, this this place needs a new orthodontic practice where we’re posting up. There’s really not one, right, really close to it. And there’s all kinds of kiddos and adults around who could use help and use some treatment. It had a vibe that we really liked. We loved the connectivity of Woodstock and the just promotion of togetherness and how physically it’s connected very well. We live just down the street from our practice and from downtown, and we just love the connectivity of that. And then thirdly, my wife’s from Marietta and I’m from Gainesville, and it’s a great central spot in between where our parents still are. And we have a five, four and a two year old. Oh, my. And um, and so we wanted them to be around their grandparents. And so this is a great spot for us to be able to share them with each of them.
Stone Payton: So are we living up to our advanced press? Are you finding the business community and the community in general is embracing you guys.
Jackson Griffeth: Absolutely. It’s been robust. The networking events, as we have we have met at have been awesome. Haven’t even touched the surface there, I would say. And as we meet more and more people, everybody’s just been really supportive. So it’s been good. It’s been a wilderness year for year for us, uh, in the sense that we left and we bought this building last year and had just ever so slowly made our way to opening next month. And we’ve had so much support along the way.
Stone Payton: So where are you going to be?
Jackson Griffeth: So it is on Main Street in about a mile and a half north of downtown Woodstock. It’s on the corner of JJ blow, which is technically Brooke Boulevard, but the road that J.J. Biello Park is on and on Main Street. So just as you pass the Ace Hardware heading north from downtown, it’s the next building on the right.
Stone Payton: Oh, fantastic. I mean, my hat is off to to you, for it’s my impression that there’s a tremendous amount of forget about the heartache and the mental and all that, but just the capital investment to go into an orthodontic practice. I mean, if the bottom falls out of my business, guys, everything you see in this room, I can have in the cab of my truck and be at the house in a half hour, you know. But that must. I mean, surely these were you and your wife had to have a lot of really heart to heart conversations before investing that kind of capital and time and energy and resource. What was that like? Because you you mentioned you were already in a practice at that time, right?
Jackson Griffeth: That’s right. Wow. So it’s a it’s a very true statement. I mean, we are in we are heavily invested in Woodstock, Georgia right now. I mean, heavily and and that feels good. It feels like that’s the way it should be. Um, I’m a big believer in having skin in the game and whatever you’re doing, and we, we have even more than skin. We got. We got the whole body in the game here. Um, but it was a big move. It was a big move. We were living in Asheville when we bought this building. We we knew we wanted to be right around this pocket of Woodstock that we’re going to be located in and looked at some, some different lease options. And then this building was for sale and we thought, gosh, what a what a fun spot that would be to be able to practice out of. And so we, um, you know, we don’t we have no experience at real estate. We have no experience in anything. We bought this building in the last year. We have learned a lot about real estate and and development and and yes, we are we are investing a ton into it. And so yeah, you’re right. It’s it’s not something that we plan to just close up shop in a couple days.
Stone Payton: Well, we’re all pulling for you. We’re going to continue to follow your story. You mentioned early in the conversation running an orthodontic practice your way, the way you want to say more about that? What is your way or your vision of how you want this to be done?
Jackson Griffeth: Yeah, well, first thing I’ll touch on is just is just that ownership piece. And so being an owner of a practice, there’s so many, um, so many practices now are corporate owned and some corporations do things really well. Some don’t. And so I won’t say that’s a negative thing, but I do believe the right move for me right now was to own a practice and to build a culture in a practice. Culture is a big piece of what drew me to orthodontics. I think you can have an environment and an atmosphere that is fun and encouraging, and that starts with the team that you build. And so, um, owning that practice we were going to people often ask us, oh, who’s your partners? Who’s your are you, what company are you with? And it’s it is literally just us. And we just hired our first couple of assistants and they are going to be just an awesome beginning to the the business family. So so that’s one piece of it, that vision of creating a great employee and ownership culture. And then two, I really believe that we as orthodontists have a great opportunity to be a part of someone’s transformation. So if they come to us, sometimes it’s parents bringing their kids, and the kids don’t know what what’s going on. But a lot of times it’s adults and they’re saying, you know, I’ve always wanted to have a nice smile and and now is my chance. Or even for kids, there’s this there’s this total transformation that people go through when they are changing from a seven, eight, nine, ten, 12 year old to a 14 year old.
Jackson Griffeth: And to be a part of that is a real opportunity. And so my vision is to have a practice that uniquely encourages the the heart, not just taking care of the teeth and giving a nice smile. Our practice tagline is let your soul shine. And and I think that in orthodontics or excuse me, the smile is a is in my mind the window for the for someone’s personality or for their soul to shine through. And when you have a confident smile, it just it just shines through brighter and easier and someone feels more willing to let that shine through. And so directly speaking, we’re going to we’re going to treat them well and encourage them and just treat people like people and not just another mouth in the in the chair. And then indirectly, one thing that’s going to be unique about our practice is that we have a library of resources, an actual physical little library bookshelf in the reception room, but also a collection of resources, summer camps, um counselors, various various businesses and individuals that we’re just going to put before our patients and their families and say, hey, if you’re interested in any of these, these are just some awesome people that we believe can help change your life while you’re going through treatment. And and some of those are giving us discounts on their products things like that. But but yeah, that’s that’s I would say I’ve never heard of anybody else doing that. And that’s something that I’m really excited to, to provide.
Stone Payton: I think it’s great. Now when it comes to hiring, you have to take into account this different climate culture that you want to build. What was the hiring like? Did you I mean.
Jackson Griffeth: Yeah, we I mean, I leaned heavily into Patrick Lencioni, who’s a management consultant for learning how to to build a good culture. He’s got some great books and, and some other resources. But but here’s the thing. I, I, from the get go, established some core values in the practice and really spent an inordinate amount of time on developing these core values and, um, And what they are right now. And I know that may change as our team grows, but what they are is it’s the it’s the acronym is Shaka Little. The little Hawaiian Shaka hand symbol. But what it stands for is serve like a ninja. So we’re looking on the prowl for ways to make people’s day. It’s to have fun. So enthusiasm is a big is a big maker of a good culture. It’s to act like you own the place. And so it’s, hey, if you got an if you got a challenge or an opportunity to to make the place around you better to make somebody’s day better, that’s what we’re going to do is to keep it simple. Because I believe whenever business is done simply and techniques and procedures are done simply, it gives us more margin to look that person in the eye and treat them like a human being, instead of just being stressed about whatever procedure we’re doing. And then it’s to always improve. So just enjoy work and just always get better. So anyways, so we, my wife and I sent out a video of ourselves to various candidates who we found through various means, asking them to send us a video back.
Stone Payton: Oh, that’s an interesting idea. Yeah.
Jackson Griffeth: And so they sent us a video back answering certain questions that we asked them. And in that way, we really just found some gems. And I think some people were even interested in working for us. That wouldn’t have been otherwise if we hadn’t approached them with that creative method. And, and then from interviewed from there and, and honestly, just God’s provision in bringing some good people and good timing into our lives that we couldn’t have orchestrated. So we’re really excited about our first two team members.
Stone Payton: So how do you get new patients? Is there a sales and marketing aspect to an orthodontic practice, or is it all referral, or do you have to get out there and shake the trees like me and Josh?
Jackson Griffeth: Yeah, there’s a lot of that. Orthodontics is unique because you it’s not like a dental office where you go a patient goes to a dentist, and that may be the dentist for the rest of their life. Inherently an orthodontic process is finite. And so people want it to be as finite as it can be, you know. So you start treatment and then you’re done with treatment. And so it’s an always, um, it’s an always going, uh, need to find new patients. And so yes, traditionally that’s it used to be only by referrals. And so dentists would send patients to the orthodontist and say, hey, yeah, we, we respect Doctor Griffith down the street. You should go see him. And that’s how patients would find us. It used to be only that way. And you weren’t even allowed. It was illegal to advertise. Yeah. And so that has flipped quite a bit. Now, there are the majority of our patients find us through just direct promotion, advertising, getting our name out there. And then it depends on the community for sure. And we’ll we’ll discover what Woodstock is like in terms of dentists. A lot of dentists choose to do their own treatment in-house, like Invisalign or something like that. And, and, and don’t refer as much. And then some say, hey, you know what? We’re going to leave that to the professionals. We’re going to send everybody. And so it depends. But yes, the biggest thing I would say that we’re focusing on is relationships and being a part of community events, getting to know our dental neighbors and and then investing in our patients and asking them to bring people, more people like them to us.
Stone Payton: Sure. So I guess I didn’t think about that when I asked the questions. But dentist, those are very important relationships that you need and want to cultivate. I hadn’t thought about that. I was I was thinking in my mind, like reaching the, you know, the end user consumer with kids that are that are that age. But you do you need and want to cultivate those relationships. That’s right. With other practitioners.
Jackson Griffeth: And so that’s what we’ve started with from a, from a marketing perspective, is we’ve been going to go visit the dental offices.
Stone Payton: Yeah. And now I’ve hooked you up with Josh. So you’re you’re awareness marketing credibility authority. We’ve checked that box, baby. Boom. We’re going to. We got Josh Nelson in the studio as well, and he’s coming back to the Business RadioX microphone to share some ideas with us and get us caught up on on his work. But I’ll, uh, I’ll send you a bill.
Jackson Griffeth: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.
Jackson Griffeth: Uh, right now, it just would be on a big pile so I wouldn’t even notice.
Jackson Griffeth: That’s right.
Stone Payton: Oh my goodness. I don’t know when you’d find the time trying to get this thing off the ground, but, uh, interests, passions, hobbies, pursuits outside the scope of your of your work. My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Yeah. Anything you nerd out about other than other than orthodontics.
Jackson Griffeth: That’s right. Well, it’ll sound boring, but the biggest thing right now is just trying to be a good dad and a good husband. I got my little ones and. Oh, yeah, and my wife, we just had our ten year anniversary on Friday. And so investing in those relationships is, um, is very time consuming. But there’s I mean, there’s things I love doing. I love being outside. Um, it’s been seven years ago now, but I was on American Ninja Warrior in 2017. And those that style of just getting out and and, you know, finding fun things to play on it is still my jam. Um, here in Woodstock, I love to mountain bike, so I’m thankful for our blankets and rope systems. Uh, and so those are the those are the big things.
Stone Payton: You just never know, do you? American ninja warrior. How cool is that?
Jackson Griffeth: It was awesome.
Stone Payton: That is fantastic. All right, man, let’s make sure that our listeners have the coordinates where the where the shop is going to be and and when and how they can reach out to you. Whatever is appropriate and helpful for you.
Jackson Griffeth: Yeah. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to. Yeah. Spread the word. And the details are again, our location is and our name actually I’ll start with that is Cherokee Family Orthodontics. There’s a lot of Cherokee around. There’s Cherokee Dental, there’s Cherokee Orthodontics, various things. Sorry for the confusion. We go by CFO for short. So our building is located on Main Street in between Ace Hardware and Pampered Beauty Bar and Spa. It’s right across the street from the Bell Industrial Park on Main Street. You know, a lot of people have been noticing it’s been under renovation. We just painted it a dark blackish grayish color. And so that’s where it is. Our website is Cherokee Family orthodontics.com. We have Instagram CFO smile. We’re doing fun stuff on there. And we are currently scheduling patients. And so whether that be coming to me in that office over in Acworth, that in Kennesaw that I’m able to see people at now or in our building. Late October appointments can be scheduled by calling, texting and going online. And and then again, just unique factors. What we got going on right now is that we have we’re a family owned practice. We are. Absolutely, like I said, heavily invested in. You’re all in in your success as a patient. Uh, our results are going to the dentists, and the dentists are going to say, yeah, I like that work or no, I don’t like that work. I’m not going to send any more. So we’re very invested in great results and a great experience. And um, and we do a lifetime guarantee on our treatment also. Oh, wow. And so that’s something that I saw happen. People would have a kid would not recognize the value of their treatment. They’d come back six months later, never wore their retainer. Boom. And moms, faced with a mom and dad are faced with $3,000 to fix it. Um, we’ll retreat that kid for free. So, um, that’s those are our. Those are kind of our our two big things that we want everybody to to know. And the space is going to be beautiful. So excited to invite people into it.
Stone Payton: Well, they are two big things and really looking forward to seeing the space. Congratulations on the momentum man. We’re going to keep following your story.
Jackson Griffeth: Thank you. Thanks so much for for letting me spread the word. We’re very excited about it and confident it’s going to be a good, good, good service for folks.
Stone Payton: My pleasure man. Hey, how about hanging out with us while we visit with our next guest?
Jackson Griffeth: I would love to learn more about Josh.
Stone Payton: All right, next up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning, please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with Nelson Elder Care Law, the man himself. Josh Nelson, how have you been, man?
Josh Nelson: Absolutely amazing stuff. I appreciate you having me on. So excited to be with Jackson here. You know, we just celebrated ten years here on Town Lake. And so to see somebody that’s just getting off to a good start and sounds like he has such a good foundation. You know, funny enough, we use core values in our hiring. We use the entrepreneurial operating system. And it’s a real big impact to make sure you have the right team. So I’m really excited to see what Jackson does over here at, you know, Cherokee Family Orthodontics. But even more importantly, I got a 12 year old that just got that referral. So we’re definitely going to have to connect after this.
Stone Payton: That’s great. I’ll be there. See you there. I’m the mega connector. I’m that guy in Cherokee. No, I’m glad you guys are going to going to get together. So I’ve got new questions around trust and estate planning and all that stuff. But let’s just for, you know, anybody that the two people in Cherokee County that don’t know about you guys, just give them a little bit of an overview, mission, purpose, that kind of thing.
Josh Nelson: Yeah. The biggest thing we do at Nelson Elder Care Law is help people plan for their senior years. You know, elder law is a little bit of a misnomer. I have plenty of clients, over 97, clients over 100, and they still tell me they aren’t old. So I get that. Nobody’s ever going to be like, I’m elder. But really, where our focus is, is people traditionally 45 to 55 and up that are trying to make sure that as they go into retirement, they have all their ducks in a row. A lot of times our kids look to us as the ones that should just have everything taken care of, because we taught them so much. We want to make sure that you can kind of live out that responsibility for your children. And then unfortunately, a big part of our practice is people that haven’t prepared. You go talk to your parents or your grandparents, and you think that they got all the ducks in a row and all of a sudden they get hit by a diagnosis like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s or a stroke. That’s what we call crisis cases. And unfortunately, that does make up a significant part of our business. But we got ten years experience handling those things. We treat it sort of like Jackson is talking about from that holistic, expert like experience. It’s not just about coming in and getting legal paperwork. We want to make sure you have the right tools, and a lot of times the right tools is a budget, a plan, a referral to a placement agency, working with what your options are for care, knowing how the state government can help support caregivers coming into your home. Because we acknowledge that most people want to stay at home. But if you get so sick that you can’t. We’re happy to help you transition to.
Stone Payton: So this is a very right in my field of vision right now. My folks I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. Mom and dad moved up about nine months ago. They lived two minutes away, right down here off of Dupree, 82 and 84. Um, and I, you know, my brother’s coming up this weekend to hunt, but we also are going to have some conversations about things that we should be mentioning to mom and dad. You know, do we need to have that family meeting? You know. You know, is there a three ring binder in dad’s office desk drawer? Do we need to talk to somebody? And I gotta believe we’re not the only ones that have probably already put it off longer than we should have. So any counsel advice you have about how to approach the conversation? Misconceptions that because rusty and I may have some preconceived notions about what? Yeah. Lay it on us.
Josh Nelson: Yeah, absolutely. Um, that’s kind of the normal avatar, or kind of what our clients are going through. What a lot of people don’t realize is that often we’ll meet with, like you and your brother or just you, and then you kind of relay to your brother. That’s why we offer free visits with our legal team, because we understand getting mom and dad on the ball might be a very serious conversation. I would argue that instead of you just barging into that, you get some help from us to be able to say, how do we phrase that conversation? How do we structure that conversation? Because your parents are going to be somewhat a little blown away whenever, you know, we don’t want them feeling ambushed whenever all of a sudden you and your brother sit down after hunting and they’re like, hey, Mom and Dad, we need to do this, or I want to. I want to handle your bills. No dad and no mom are really going to love that kind of conversation. So how do we ease into it? How do we make sure that they know that we’re not taking any power away from them? We’re just helping them get everything structured.
Josh Nelson: So in case something does, you know, kind of come their way, you guys know where it is, you know how to step in. And so a good portion of our clients actually come from their kids stepping up whenever somebody has it. And like I said, the problem is you’ve seen somebody at work, you’ve talked to somebody at church who they thought their parents had this stuff in a row. They thought they had that three ring binder buried somewhere. And then unfortunately, something happened and we couldn’t find it. So, like, even with us, whenever we do a plan for somebody, we give everybody PDFs they can keep on their phone that are actually just as legally valid as like the formal paperwork in that binder. So say that even though your parents live two miles away, you get that call that dad was in a car accident, or he went up to North Side for some reason, rather than you having to drive over to his office and find that paperwork, you can go straight to the hospital, have it on your phone, have full authority just from that PDF.
Stone Payton: So I got to believe that there are more than a few misconceptions, preconceived notions that are just off track, that just people walk in and they don’t quite have the right frame for this. Do you run into that?
Josh Nelson: I think there’s a lot of misconceptions out there, and part of it is because the rules change state by state. So especially if you moved from like North Carolina, like Jackson did. Asheville is beautiful. I love it over there. But their rules are a lot different than they are here in Georgia. And so you get somebody that moves from a different state and they assume those rules moved with them. And Georgia can be very different. A lot of our rules are super beneficial. You just got to play by what our guidelines are. And so like just as recently as July here in Georgia, we changed a really cool thing for homeowners that allows them to be able to skip probate, which is the legal process of transferring stuff from somebody who passed away to their loved ones without a trust, without doing any kind of like, weird stuff. The big advantage of that is it lowers the cost of estate planning significantly. So a lot of people are scared to even talk about a trust because they know it’s expensive. It is. But now our legislature has this really cool thing called a transfer on death deed that allows for you to be 100% owner of your property.
Josh Nelson: And if something happens where you pass, you can designate who it goes to. So think of it sort of like a beneficiary on your IRA or a beneficiary on your bank account. Those people don’t own anything while you’re alive. But then whenever you pass now all of a sudden they own it without having to go through a court. This is really cool because what we see a lot of people do that’s really uncool. Really silly, if you think about it, is add their kids to their deed. And that’s a big mistake. Not only do you have to get them to sign off if you ever want to move or refi, but if they ever get divorced, they ever get creditors because of hospital bills. Now all of a sudden they’re a part owner in your house. And so this allows our legislature to say, hey, if something happens to you, let’s give it to your kids without having to have those complications during their life.
Stone Payton: So you’ve been at this a minute? You’ve what are you at this point in your career? What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the work for you these days?
Josh Nelson: Um, I think growing the team. So I think Jackson’s off to an amazing start by making sure that he’s cultivating that right away. You know, last time I was on here, we kind of spoke about, you know, I’ve been doing this for ten years now. And whenever I first started, I probably didn’t have the team right. I came from more of a logistics background. So it was kind of like, get the systems, get the processes down, and then just get people to work the systems. And what I found was we get a lot better results if we get really, really qualified people in the way that we say qualified is that they meet our core values and that they really, really care about the individual across from them. So making sure that the schedule is open enough that we don’t need to charge billable hours. Whenever you come in, you don’t get charged for the time you play a flat rate that you know up front before you even get started. And then if it takes more time, it takes more time. And we want to make sure that you’re really comfortable. We expect that this is the kind of thing that’s really only done once in your lifetime. This isn’t the kind of thing you need to come in every three years, five years, something like that. Once you get into your 50s, this stuff’s pretty much sorted. Your decisions aren’t going to change drastically. We can always adjust things and make changes, but for the majority of our families that we help, they’re going to come in, do this once. We want to make sure that it’s a relationship and not just a transaction.
Josh Nelson: And so I think just like Houston, the part I love most about my job is meeting people, learning about them, being able to solve their problems. You know, for so many attorneys, whenever somebody comes in, they kind of have this curse of knowledge. They’re saying, you know, oh, you have a problem with a nail, let me hit it with a hammer. And what we like to say is like, what are you really trying to fasten together? What are you building with that nail? How do we make sure that if something goes right in your life, you’re prepared? But also if something goes wrong, if life throws you a curve ball, how do we make sure that that’s not impacting your relationships? You know, thinking about an adult caregiver for their dad or their mom. How do we make sure that that caregiver has a reprieve or relief so that they’re still seen as a wife, a husband, a son, a daughter, and not just a caregiver? The most depressing parts of my role are whenever you get somebody that comes in and they’ve been a caregiver for their parent because we feel like we have that duty, but it becomes a burden and all of a sudden our parent or our spouse starts looking at us like the help rather than as a kid or a spouse. And really, over the years, we’ve been able to fine tune how we make sure that the money’s there, that the resources are there, and that the caregivers setting the right boundaries before it gets to that point.
Stone Payton: And you’re part of a group of professionals in this whole arena, acap adult children of aging parents, parents. And I’ve talked to some other folks like in the in the leadership of that effort, but speak to that the mission. What compelled you guys to to get involved?
Josh Nelson: Yeah. Like I said, we’re always out here trying to build relationships. And so that is definitely a non-profitable venture for us, but it feels like it fills our heart. Right? So like Jackson was saying, you know, let your soul shine. How do we make sure that at the end of the day, we’re sleeping? Amazing. We go home and we can tell our families, like true families, we did great work today. And part of that is making sure that people are equipped with the tools. Most people that are an adult caregiver, they don’t have time. And like the reason that it’s as late as it is, is because we know you got to get off work, you got to get the kids fed. You got to make sure that your parents are taken care of, and then you can run over and spend some time for us. And the coolest thing about Acap right now is it is just 100% actionable tools. So a lot of times you go to like a seminar or a speaking event and you get kind of riled up and you’re like, oh, this is going to be awesome. And then you like on your way home or thinking like, well, what did what? What am I actually going to do different? What’s what can I take from this? Um, and acap right now is just tool after tool after tool that you can go execute on. So really cool.
Stone Payton: And you guys don’t have like Margarita Mondays or Taco Tuesdays I don’t guess. But but you do have a regular gathering and it’s for people like me and Russ. Is that accurate to go and learn stuff?
Josh Nelson: Absolutely. So it’s on Thursday evenings. Um, it’s not every Thursday. It’s about every other Thursday. Sometimes it’s only once a month, depending on who’s coming in. It’s over the church kind of on where Barrett and Canton Road run into each other. And the biggest part about it is that it helps people come in, get the information and get out. We do have, you know, little food and drinks and stuff like that, but that’s not why you’re spending your time with us. You know, we don’t have the Jimmy Buffett margarita margarita machine in the back. Um, we’re just trying to make sure that you’re comfortable enough to focus, that you aren’t coming in hungry, that you’re not drowning, you know, coming dehydrated while you’re out there. Um, during the summer, that church is warm, so definitely water. But the biggest thing is making sure that people have the tools they need and that they can go execute, even with a lot of like support giver groups or caregiver groups, or especially with like cognitive impairment support groups, it turns into a good way to counsel each other. Sometimes it turns into like a complaining session if it’s not moderated, well, yeah, but even the best ones, unfortunately don’t really walk out with like, here’s the thing you can do today to get yourself four hours of caregiving for free. Here’s the thing you can do today to make sure that you’re prepared for getting the hospital bed in. If your spouse is immobile. Here’s how you actually get practical training on how to lift somebody heavier than you off the floor. Here’s how you have the conversation about you falling 11 times this week. And the fire department said they’re calling Adult Protective services if you do it again. Like, these are the things that we’re going to cover and make sure that you’re super equipped with. Nobody’s allowed to sell you anything whenever you go to these meetings. And so it’s just like a Q&A kind of being able to say, how do we get the information? You bring your problems. And we got to 12 people in there in the industry. They’ll give you solutions. It’s really cool.
Stone Payton: It seems like a marvelous resource. It really it really does. All right. Let’s talk about me for a minute. It’s my show. No, no, I’m thinking because we sort of are there. And I’m trying to get, you know, if you want to get some free coaching and consulting guys, get yourself a radio show, because that’s what I’m about to do right here. Uh, but but no, all kidding aside, just kind of walk us through, like Russ and I. One of the early steps might be to go to 1 or 2 of these meetings. Uh, have a conversation with you, just walk us through, like, if you could paint the ideal journey for me and Russ to get mom and dad and us set for the next few years, walk us through that.
Josh Nelson: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is because they’re not under care right now, because they’re not sick or diagnosed with something right now. It’s information gathering at this stage. And that’s where most people should start, because then it’s a lot easier to do any legwork you need to. It’s a lot easier to get the facts straight. And so anybody can come in. And Nelson Auto Care law, we have an office right here over off Town Lake, as well as one over off Dallas Highway in Cobb Tom. And what we’ll do is sit down with you for an hour with a member of our legal team, and make sure that you at least have the facts. We’re not trying to make any decisions for you. We’re trying to educate you well enough that you can make your own decisions. And especially for you and Russ, it probably starts with how do we talk to Mom and Dad about this? Yeah. How do I approach dad and say, you’re doing great, man, but let’s just go ahead and get something in place that it’s not a burden on. Mom, if something happened to you. That’s usually a resounding conversation for dad.
Stone Payton: What a great friend. That’s the right frame for my dad. I guarantee you it is.
Josh Nelson: Compared to going and saying, dad, I want to be able to pay your bills. Put me on your bank account. Something like that. Like he’s going to be like, heck no. Right. And so that’s really where it starts. There’s so much misinformation, especially like in Georgia. A will doesn’t even skip probate, which is very mind blowing to people, you know. Whoa. Tonight I’ll speak to over 150 people for a senior center seminar. And at that seminar, one of the questions I always love to ask is who has a will? Raise your hand. And then what does a will do. And you’ll just see hands drop so fast. You know we’re we spend our whole lives being told we need this thing. None of us really know what it’s doing. And then you don’t find out that now you got to go through this crazy court process. Probate. Just as a general ballpark, guys, costs about 3% of your stuff. So, like, if you have a $300,000 house, probate costs nine grand. That’s kind of crazy, man.
Stone Payton: And a bunch of time, too, right?
Josh Nelson: It takes at least six months in Georgia, usually 9 to 12. The biggest thing is the information. And so I would say for you and your brother making sure that you get educated. A lot of this stuff is very inexpensive to do. So like our legislature does some really cool things with powers of attorney and medical power of attorney that we call advanced health care directive that you can get for very, very inexpensive. And that makes a world of difference so that even if your parents aren’t on board for doing like a full plan right now, they at least have the things in place that if they get hit by a curveball of life, you have the legal authority to come in and help, and that makes a world of difference. Can you imagine if something happened to like, you know, your mom and your dad is just devastated after being with her for so many years? Maybe he’s not the right one to be the decision maker because it just hits us emotionally, right? I mean, if she’s going through something nuts, is he under so much stress that being the caregiver, being the spouse, and being the decision maker is too much? It’s worth having a conversation. Or maybe it’s something where, you know, one of your parents is starting to get a little soft cognitively. Like, we’re not saying that they have to move somewhere. Like we’re not saying they can’t drive anymore, but maybe it’s that their, you know, decision making isn’t quite what it was whenever they were in their 50s.
Josh Nelson: Maybe it’s starting to get a little soft. How do we step in and say, you know, dad, you’re going to be 100% the decision maker for mom, but let me be Co with you. Let me let me just say that the two of us together are going to help. I want to do this as a way to allow you to be the great husband that you committed to being, rather than saying, let’s go in. And I want to be the decision maker for mom. Like, those conversations are so nuanced, and a lot of people, I would argue, need help before they do it well. And the problem is, if you jump in and try and do it on your own before you have some guidance, you can really burn bridges. You know, there’s so many fears as we get older of they’re going to put me in a home, they’re going to try and steal money. They want their inheritance early. It’s all about the money. And it’s really not for most kids, but just the way they phrase it comes off as that. And so we want to make sure that everybody is really well equipped to have those conversations in a way that has a positive outcome, because once the parents kind of shriek back, once, they’re like, no, we ain’t doing this. Reviving that conversation can be pretty hard, I’ll bet.
Stone Payton: Man, I’m so glad that I asked. Thank you. And Russ and I are going to try to follow your counsel. I’d love to. Yeah. Uh, so.
Josh Nelson: We’ll do the whole thing on the radio show.
Stone Payton: Yeah, we’ll just do a live. That’s actually a cool idea if you’re up for it, I love it.
Josh Nelson: It’s awesome.
Stone Payton: Uh, I asked Jackson a little earlier, and I’ll ask you. And you’re at a little different point in your life. Probably. So maybe you don’t have a house full of kids. You’re having to tend to, uh, outside the scope of your work, man. Anything you nerd out about, what do you like to do?
Josh Nelson: Um, so funny enough, I’ve been trying to lose some weight, so I’m down over 60 pounds for the year.
Stone Payton: Wow. Congratulations.
Josh Nelson: The big thing has been so not Ninja Warrior for sure, but I met John Cena, the guy that runs Spartan Races, which are like these like five 10-K or 21 K events that have like rope climbs and wall climbs and stuff like that. And he was nice enough to allow me to go run as many events as I want. And so he said, I want to support your weight loss journey. Uh, really, really cool guy. I mean, his business does over $50 million a year to run those races. And he was like, if you’re willing to put in the time. At the time I was 350 pounds and he was like, you and any of your buddies want to come? So last November, the firm actually got over 100 people to sign up and go run the one down in Conyers. Amazing. I love it. On October 5th I’m going to go run in one in Nashville, which is really cool. And so that’s been taken up a decent bit of my time. It needs to take up more. But then the other thing for me is I love restoring old cars. So like pre-World War two cars, I love going on the weekends or the nights and getting my hands dirty. I got a little shop that I work on. I got a 1937 Cadillac that I’m putting back together right now. That was just a rust bucket. And those things are actually really out of style right now in cars, because most of the people from that generation are kind of aging out of driving. And so I love being able to do that kind of stuff. And I will give 100% credit to my daughter’s mom. She does all the hard parenting. I just get to helicopter in and do the fun stuff. So like it’s Saturdays, go to the jumpy place or doing fun things like that. That’s, uh, her mom is an angel, so I appreciate her covering most of that for me, where I just get to come do the fun stuff.
Stone Payton: So, uh, restoring the cars. Is this something you’ve been doing for years and years? Is it a new passion?
Josh Nelson: Yeah, I’ve done it for over 20 years now. Oh, wow. And, uh.
Stone Payton: Isn’t that isn’t that what is it? A car that’s 20 years old is a classic.
Josh Nelson: Oh, let’s not go into that. That means things like the 2000 are like classics. I want to feel really old.
Stone Payton: I was going to say now you’re a classic.
Josh Nelson: What’s funny, though, is a lot of the, you know, car prices kind of follow the cycle of whenever the car gets to be, like, old enough where the guys that wanted it at 16 are in their 40s now, right? They go to ridiculous prices. So a lot of those like Japanese little sports cars, like, um, there was like a 99 Honda Civic that just sold on bring a trailer for like $60,000. And that was probably a $15,000 car, brand new. So like some of that’s just wild. I’m in luck because I like the pre-World War Two stuff and those cars are getting cheap. You know, a couple of years ago, all those muscle cars that were super expensive, like an old Camaro or an old GTO. And just because those guys are now getting to where they’re not driving cars without AC anymore. Those things are starting to get cheap. But those old World War two like pre cars, you know, they don’t have AC. They’re small. So I’m a big guy. Don’t fit in them well. Like, even my daughter can’t ride in the 37 because it doesn’t have safety glass. So like, you don’t think about it, but if you’re ever in an accident, that glass just turns into knives. Like it’s. Wow. So we don’t let her ride in some of the old stuff, but I got, like a 46 Jeep Willys that’s, you know, and you go.
Stone Payton: Show them off after you get them all dolled up. Do you go show them what.
Josh Nelson: A big car show guy. But I love to go use them. So we’ll actually go up um, like over in Asheville, there’s an amazing hotel called the Grand Something. It’s the Grove Park inn. Grove park inn. Yeah. Close enough.
Stone Payton: It’s a grand place.
Jackson Griffeth: That’s a good one. That’s a grand place for sure.
Josh Nelson: So I love driving up there through the mountains and stuff. There’s a bunch of groups that you can find through different, like online things where you’ll get together on a Saturday, wake up at like 536, and then just go roll these cool old cars through the mountains. Um, you know, especially this time of year. Man, it’s so crisp and beautiful in the mornings. North Georgia has so much to offer us. Um, that if you just get out there and enjoy it, man, it’s just an amazing way to spend a weekend.
Stone Payton: Yeah, I’m so glad I asked.
Stone Payton: And you’ve covered a ton of information, but just to kind of wrap it up, maybe a couple of like the really important pro tips for the stones and Rusty’s out there. Just things to be thinking about. Do don’t do the first couple of steps. And look guys, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Josh or somebody on his team. But let’s leave a little something to chew on.
Josh Nelson: I think, especially for your listeners on Business RadioX. The biggest thing I would say is a little different than our primary practice area, but it plays right in make sure that if you’re a small business owner, if you have something going on where you’re the sole person, or especially if you have a team that relies on you, that you’re operating agreement, your articles of incorporation, something has a succession plan in it. It doesn’t need to be some like crazy thing. It can just be a paragraph that you add into those membership articles that says, if I get hit by a bus, my wife, my partner, somebody can step in and still have access to the bank account. What we’re seeing a lot is a lot of people will register their LLC or their company with the secretary of state, and that’s all they do. There’s no actual like articles or membership agreement or anything anywhere. And the problem then is if you pass suddenly or you get sick, suddenly your whole business stops because somebody has to be able to access the checking account. Somebody has to be able to access cash flow. Somebody has to be able to run things. Just making sure that you have that paragraph in your LLC or your articles of incorporation to make sure that somebody can do it, whether that be your spouse, your brother, whoever.
Josh Nelson: That’s where we’re seeing people even with, you know, good sized small businesses come up short right now. And whenever that gets stuff gets stuck in probate, it’s really expensive because trying to cash flow that thing while it’s going through the court system is nearly impossible for most companies. You know, you think about like the run rate even on like Jackson’s business for, you know, the mortgage payment on the building, keeping the staff going, who’s going to be his coverage orthodontist. I’m sure that somebody has to be licensed to come in. Like, who is that person? Right? Like just sitting down for an hour and making that plan on the back of a sheet of paper is going to change your family’s life if something ever happens to you. And that’s really where on the probate side of my business, we’ve been seeing people just get hit with a hammer. You know, we just had a lady who had a small Airbnb business, but it grew to over $1.3 million and stuff, and then nobody could find the paperwork. Oh, geez. It’s like, uh oh, you know, for one little paragraph, one little, like, five page membership agreement would have cost her less than 500 bucks. Box. She could have saved a bunch of money because again, whenever that goes through probate, you’re looking at like 3%. Wow.
Stone Payton: There’s a blue three ring binder in my office closet at the house. As soon as we go off the air, I’m headed. I got to go take a look at that thing. Oh my goodness.
Josh Nelson: So, like I said, for the normal stuff that we do, if you’re thinking about your spouse, your parents, stuff like that definitely reach out. But just as a nugget there, guys, especially for small business owners, we are just seeing a lot more people with everything planned for because they usually have like a financial advisor and estate planning attorney, stuff like that. That part’s golden and they forget about the business.
Stone Payton: All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap in whatever coordinates makes sense? I just want to be able to connect with you guys.
Josh Nelson: Absolutely. Nelson Autocare. Com is always a good one for us. You can Google us. We’ll pop up (678) 250-9355. However you want to reach out. We’re here to help.
Stone Payton: Well Josh thanks for coming back, man, and thank you for all the terrific information. Gentlemen. It has been an absolute pleasure having you both in the studio. Don’t be a stranger. I’m quite sincere. Josh will tell you when I say Jackson. You’re welcome to come back. And we want to continue to follow your story. But what a marvelous way to to invest a Tuesday morning. You guys are doing important work, and we we sure appreciate you.
Speaker4:
Josh Nelson: Thank you, Stone. Thanks so much. Really excited to see where Jackson grows. I remember ten years ago kind of being in that spot. And it’s scary as all get out now on the other side of it. It just feels so cool. Whenever you look back at all the families you’ve been able to help.
Stone Payton: That’s awesome. Alright,until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guests today and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.
BRX Pro Tip: 6 Playbooks Your Professional Service Business Should Have
BRX Pro Tip: 6 Playbooks Your Professional Service Business Should Have
Stone Payton : Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, just the other day here in my local studio in Woodstock, Georgia, I had someone, who’s been helping me out, ask me how I go about turning relationships into clients. And they were – and actually, they said, you know, “Do you have a playbook?” And I do. But you know what? It’s maybe a little bit more in my head than it should be. What’s your take on investing the time and energy to commit this stuff to paper? And I guess playbooks are as good a moniker for that kind of thing as any.
Lee Kantor: I think having playbooks for your business is critically important, especially if you ever at some point want to sell your business or hire somebody else. It’s great to have playbooks that explain kind of the key pillars of your organization and how to do them.
Lee Kantor: I think six playbooks that a professional service business should have, number one is a business development playbook. How do you identify and get a client? Capturing that. How do you do that? Kind of get into the weeds on the how is super important.
Lee Kantor: Number two is a client onboarding playbook. How do you welcome and manage the expectations of a new client? What does that look like? What are the first 30, 60, 90 days look like?
Lee Kantor: Number three is service delivery. How do you project manage and quality control your deliverables? You know, how do you go about delivering all of the service that you promise?
Lee Kantor: Number four, client communication. How do you gather feedback? How do you bubble up concerns? How do you uncover opportunities and get referrals? All that type of communication would be great if there was a playbook that explained how to do that.
Lee Kantor: Number five, team management. How do you onboard somebody and train a new team member, and how do you evaluate their progress? That’s super important.
Lee Kantor: And number six, you know, kind of a catch-all knowledge library. How do you document some of these best practices and capture use cases and share those lessons learned?
Lee Kantor: If you can kind of create these six playbooks, you’re going to be well on your way to having a business. Number one can be sold. And then the knowledge transferred, and it’ll make your life a lot easier when you have a new person come on board the team and now you can just hand them the playbook and say, “Okay, this is where what we use to get you started.”
Celi Arias with Grown Ass Business
Celi Arias is an Expert Scale Strategist who has revolutionized the way small and medium-sized businesses approach growth.
As the Founder of The GAB (Get Ahead in Business) proprietary software and methodology, she has developed a groundbreaking system that simplifies business operations, bringing ease and organization to systems, processes, and data management in one powerful dashboard.
Recognized as a top coach by The Upside in 2024, Celi is known for her no-nonsense approach to breaking through revenue plateaus. She guides entrepreneurs beyond the common pitfalls of quick fixes, instead focusing on core business principles that build solid foundations for scaling to seven figures and beyond.
Connect with Celi on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast expert scale strategist with Grown Ass Business, Celi Arias. How are you?
Celi Arias: Oh my gosh I am great and thanks for having me.
Stone Payton: I am so excited about having this conversation. I got a ton of questions, Celi. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for for me and our listeners, mission, purpose. What is it that that you and your team are, are really out there trying to do for folks.
Celi Arias: Oh my gosh. Um, well, I am a lifelong entrepreneur and I’ve definitely made all the mistakes and been there. And my ultimate mission and purpose is to shorten the amount of time that it gets, that it takes an entrepreneur to learn the rules of the game and to grow a scalable business. Because I always say you, you are already smart. You’re already very capable. If you even have the desire to be an entrepreneur, that means you’re bold and brave and intelligent, but on your own, without knowing all the rules of the trade, it’ll take you ten years. I’d like to shorten that to 2 to 3 years. That’s my mission.
Stone Payton: Well, it’s a noble purpose, and it sounds like good work if you can get it. But I got to know the backstory. What was the career path that landed you doing this kind of work?
Celi Arias: Oh my God. Um, so I started my first business when I was about 11 because I really wanted to take ballet classes, and my parents were immigrants and, um, couldn’t afford it. So I started my own little business, and I paid for ballet school all through middle school and high school, and I became a professional dancer. Wow. And then after college, as a dancer, I decided to study fashion design. So I got a second BA in fashion design, and I started a clothing line, and I ran a clothing line out of South America for about nine years. And I always say that business ran me. It ran me into the ground. I always joke that I didn’t party or drink in my 20s because I was just too busy running my business, so I’ve really kind of sat in all the seats as a founder. I then worked in tech startups as a COO. I’ve worked in, um, luxury sales for corporates, I’ve worked in brand partnerships. I’ve gotten to sit around the table and kind of sitting in every single seat of business. And I’ve learned over the years what it looks like to run a business from a holistic point of view.
Celi Arias: And then I realized like, oh, I even have an MBA. But I always joke, if you’re a business owner or entrepreneur, don’t go get an MBA because it’s not going to give you what you need. Um, but I learned all the piece that there’s a lot of pieces that you just need to understand in order to grow a healthy business, and it’s very doable. And you don’t have to make all the mistakes that I did. Um, so, yeah, I’ve kind of, like, sat in every seat of every type of business. I’ve coached over 300 businesses now in different industries. And and there is a game. There are rules you need to learn, the skills, you need to learn the rules, and then you can break the rules later, which is when it gets really fun. Um, but I get a lot of pleasure teaching these rules and these systems earlier on to people and just seeing them succeed much faster than I did, because it took me a very, very long and painful journey to to get where I am today. Yeah.
Stone Payton: So 300 plus businesses in. What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about to work these days for you?
Celi Arias: Um, well, most fun is client wins. Obviously, in one of my communities, we share weekly client wins. And that is definitely the most satisfying. Oh, we have this joke that we we just say, Holy shit, Sally, it worked. Holy shit. This worked. That’s like our our joke catchphrase inside my programs. Because sometimes the easier, simpler path, the the thing that people go, no, Sally, that’s not going to work or. No, I’ve done that or I’ve tried that or but sometimes it’s the very, very focused, intentional, simple path does work, and so it’s the most fun when people go, I get texts or messages from people, and the catch phrase is always, Holy shit, this worked and we always laugh about that.
Stone Payton: So okay, let’s dive into the work a little bit. What does it look like? I’m particularly interested in, I guess, the early stages of an engagement or the work, but I’d love to hear a little bit about about all of it.
Celi Arias: Yeah. So what I do is, um, I teach the five key growth systems that every business needs to have. Now, the five key growth systems are imagine if you could, in early stages, if you could afford to hire your five key executives to run your five departments, that would be the dream, right? If you could be the CEO and founder, but you could afford to hire a CMO, a CFO, a CRO, a COO, you’d be crushing the game, right? The truth is, we often can’t afford to hire those roles. So what we actually have to do is we have to learn what are the minimum things that each of those roles would be in charge of. And that’s what I teach, um, early stages. What I find here’s what I always find funny about my program is, of course, we go. We dive in deep into each of those key roles and what you have to master in each role. Everyone’s always scared of the numbers. Everyone’s always scared when we’re going to get into pricing strategy and profitability and sales forecasting and cash flow. Everyone gets really nervous around the numbers and they avoid it. But it’s always the easiest module, which I find really interesting. And I’m a creative. My background is in creative too, so I understand that the visionary founder doesn’t necessarily like being in the numbers, but we always have such a good laugh at this because the numbers are easy, because they’re black and white, they’re very direct.
Celi Arias: They tell you what’s working, what’s not working, what to look at, what not to look at. They don’t lie, right? Um, but what I think is really important in a dream world. I wish that entrepreneurs earlier on would focus on product market fit. So what happens in my program is all my clients end up kind of going, Holy shit, this product market fit work. This is the real pain. I’m like, yep, welcome to the game. Because everyone avoids the numbers thinking they’re going to be hard because we have some kind of belief around either we have some kind of beliefs that we’re holding onto around money, or we have some beliefs about math and that we’re bad at math. Right? But business math is super easy and straightforward. I mean, if I can do it, you can do it. Um, but product market fit. If I wish I could get more entrepreneurs to focus on product market fit early on. Because if you focus on what your product market fit is, early on, the way that I like to think about it as imagine that you know you’re a business owner. Imagine that your business is a building, right? It’s your building. So you naturally, you get there before everybody else in the morning.
Celi Arias: You go to, you go up to your building, you unlock, you turn the alarms off, you unlock the store, and you walk in and you go into your marketing department, and the lights are all off, right? And you can’t remember where the light switch is. So going to your marketing department and trying to do marketing and content and trying to come even come up with a marketing campaign or strategy, it’s like walking into this dark department that’s pitch black and fumbling around for the light switch. Now, if you have product market fit, you walk into that department. You walk into the dark. You know exactly where that light switch on is. You turn that switch on, and having product market fit actually turns on your marketing department turns on the switch makes the marketing work. So I feel like we’re always kind of skipping over that step and just going straight to more content, more channels, more reels, more, you know, like, what’s the next thing? Write a book, have a YouTube channel, start a podcast, do all these things. But we’re skipping the light switch, which is product market fit. And so that’s something that I harp a lot on, on my clients and my programs, and I just wish more people would be willing to pay attention to that because it does make everything else work.
Stone Payton: I love that mental model that really, to me, it really brings it home for me. So there are these facilitated conversations. There’s also you’ve got programs. You’ve got you even have software to assist with some of these efforts. Right?
Celi Arias: Yeah. In in my main accelerator program, we are actually turning the methodology into a software so that more people can access these tools and these exercises. So yeah, absolutely. Um, product market fit is a pre-step to marketing, and it’s a five step process. So you in order to have product market fit, you really need to know that you are speaking to the right people, that you have the right product for them, that actually solves their problem, right. So the product can’t just be something that you came up with that you’d like to create in the world, but it actually has to solve someone’s problem at the right price for the people and your business model with the right messaging and promotion. That’s step four. And in a business model that can scale, that’s product market fit. It’s those five pieces and we work through those.
Stone Payton: So I know the answer to this is yes. So maybe I’ll ask it a different way. Instead of asking if I’ll say tell us about uh, any uh, mentors that maybe helped you navigate this, this new terrain as you, as you came into doing, working this practice or did you is it all just built on your own scar tissue and trial and error. Did you get a little guidance?
Celi Arias: Um, well, when I was younger, when I was in my 20s and I was running a fashion line, I did have I lived in South America and, um, a friend of my mother’s who was an entrepreneur would have a weekly coffee with me to mentor me. And I always joke that he, you know, poor guy would have his head in his hands every week because I refused to look at my numbers. So this is why I always teach numbers is because, um, I would say I’m a creative. I don’t need to know my profit margin. My dresses are the best, right? I’m just going to lean on my creative skill. And he would just be like, oh no, little girl. Like, what are you talking about? Um, so I had a mentor, I didn’t listen, and I’m pretty stubborn. Um, so I always joke with him now, like, can you believe that? I actually teach entrepreneurs business numbers and business math? And he’s like, that’s your karma. That’s what you get. Um, so that was an early on experience. I’ve kind of I’ve read all the books, but really my other than him, who I’ve always talked to, my biggest mentors have been sitting in startups and either being the director of marketing or director of ops and then the COO, um, to different startups and sitting in those seats and watching watching how certain startups crumble. Honestly, watching how certain startups misuse VC funds and the funds ran out really fast.
Celi Arias: Um, watching how sales happen and how sales don’t happen. I really, over the years, got to sit in a lot of different opportunities and different companies and different businesses. And I’m I am an engineer at heart. So I think my superpower is to kind of sit back and watch and learn what works and what doesn’t work. And over time, That’s how I developed a lot of these methods. I’m also a total book nerd, and I can always recommend, like my favorite business books, but I do genuinely think you learn from doing so. My program is really oriented to like, here we go. I’m going to give you the rules hard and fast. I’m going to give you the theory hard and fast. But then we’re going to go. We’re going to move. We’re going to take action because the learning happens in the taking action. The making money happens in the taking action, the figuring out what our product market fit is. It happens in the taking action. So I’m really action oriented. Um, I think that has to do with also being an athlete as a younger person, a professional athlete, basically. Um, so as much as I love theory, that’s what I didn’t love about my MBA is like it was all kind of theoretical. We never, like, got our hands dirty, you know, and entrepreneurs have to get their hands dirty. So I think you really learn by doing.
Stone Payton: So do you ever come across clients, or maybe even just people who you think should be a client? And from the outside looking in, it looks like they’ve achieved some things and they have they have scaled, but they also it’s almost like they were, as my daddy would say, rode hard and put up wet. Like they’re they’re burned out and they’re. I mean, do you, do you see that sometimes in the folks that you’re working with initially?
Celi Arias: Oh my gosh, all the time. All the time. I always say that each. So the way I think business works is each of us has an invisible ceiling, right. Um, we can lean on our strengths. What usually happens is we lean into our strengths and our natural, God given gifts. Um, and the skills that we’ve accrued over life, we lean into those hard in the beginning. And those gifts will take some of us to five figures, some of us to six figures, and some of us to seven figures and even multi seven figures. And then there’s a point where you hit the glass ceiling of your own skills and your own perspective and what we often do as because we are, we tend to be overachievers, right? And we, we tend to have something to prove. So what we do is we burn harder on that skill. We’re like, well, I’m just going to push harder. I’m just going to go harder. And what I try to get people to do is actually not push harder. I try to get them to remove the blinders and broaden their awareness and their knowledge base. Because the glass ceiling doesn’t get broken by pushing harder, it now gets broken by broadening my skills and my awareness and my knowledge as a CEO. Does that make sense?
Stone Payton: It does. It makes all the sense in the world. And I’m it’s like you’re reading my mail or spying on me because I’m thinking I just lean into the 1 or 2 things I’m pretty good at. I just push the pedal harder.
Celi Arias: Yeah, yeah. And I don’t think that you as a CEO need to do all the things, but I do think you, as a great CEO, need to understand all the things so that you can then find the right person to delegate to, or so that you can keep driving the ship. Right? Because sometimes even when we hire a team, what will happen is we have a new team member that comes in that’s maybe also really skilled in one area says, we have to do this, we have to do this, we have to do this. It is your job as the CEO to have a really broad, open view of everything that’s going on so that you can discern, do we have to do that? Is is that true? Is that the problem right now to solve that gets us to our bigger goal. So that’s why I always think there’s a point as a leader and CEO, that you need to understand all the key growth systems and how they all work and how they work together in order to, in those moments, be the leader you need to be.
Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours at this point? Is it all referral based or Are you still out there shaking the trees a little bit with your own marketing processes?
Celi Arias: Um, a lot of my business, my current program is referral based for sure. Believe it or not, clever content works for me, but I don’t recommend that. I think that there is an order to building a business, and I think step one is build an amazing reputation. So step one, whether you have a physical product or you’re a service provider or you’re a coach like me, make sure you deliver on your result. That to me is a marketing strategy, right? Deliver on your results. Have people say, oh yeah, she tripled my revenue. Oh, yeah. In six months I did this. Oh, yeah. Sally is straight up legit. Her method works, right? That’s step one. Then referrals, then, of course testimonials, case studies and then marketing campaign. Now I know this is like the opposite of what you hear a lot of people say, because there’s a lot of marketing gurus just saying marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing, marketing content content content content ads, ads, ads, ads. Um, but the thing is that if you’re running ads on shoddy foundations, right, you’re throwing away a lot of money. If you’re running ads but you don’t know what your product market fit is, you’re spending a lot more money than you should than you could be. Um, so I say, like, build the reputation, build a solid product, build a referral based business first, not because I’m against content and ads. Then you turn those pieces on, right? Remember the marketing department when you have the solid foundations, then you turn on the marketing department and it works. Um, so clients come to me referral based for sure. Um, community collaborations. I speak a lot in different entrepreneurial communities. I guest teach in different communities. I collaborate with other coaches and service providers who are complementary to me. Um, and then sometimes my funny content gets people to go, oh, I love your style. I want to talk to you. But content is probably the smallest amount of client flow for me right now.
Stone Payton: So what’s next? Is there a book in you, or are you going to continue to dive into this software and tech side of things or. Yeah. What’s the what’s on the horizon?
Celi Arias: Yeah, I’m actually writing a tiny book right now, and I probably will be done with it next month because it’s intentionally a tiny book. It’s intentionally that you could sit and read it in one sitting and go, oh shit, I need to think about things in this way. And it’s basically called stop that, do this instead. Um, so I am writing a tiny book, and I am working with a development company to turn the the method into software. So you could go through these processes and systems without necessarily needing me to coach you through it. And that’s always my goal is my goal as a coach is to not make you codependent on me. My goal is to make you an amazing business owner, and I know that’s a little bit different than a lot of coaches. I always tell my clients, like, I want to get rid of you. Like, after a year, I want you to be soaring. I want you to send me other people, but I don’t want you to be in my world for years and years and years. Right? So that’s my goal with the software, is to get it into more people’s hands without necessarily. I think there’s a lot of entrepreneurs who are very self motivated the way that I was, and if I had just been told, do these things in this order, learn these skills, I would have soared a lot faster. It would have taken me much less time to get to my revenue numbers. So that’s what I hope to do for other people with the software.
Stone Payton: So interest, pursuits, hobbies, passions outside the scope of your of your work. My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Uh, anything you nerd out about, that’s not this.
Celi Arias: Oh my gosh. Um, well, I did go to seminary. So. And that’s something that I didn’t end up practicing because to me, my service in the world is helping business owners. Honestly. So in my free time, I’m probably reading some really weird spirituality book or something about, you know, the intersection of quantum physics and God. Um, I still dance. Now I have a newborn. So now I dance around the house with a newborn in my hands. That’s been. That’s my workout. Now, I used to be really into working out. Now I work out with a baby in my hands. It’s like, you know, you got 12 pounds in your arms as you’re trying to dance around. It’s a good workout. Um, yeah. And I’m very fortunate that I live close to the ocean, so I like to take long walks and actually enjoy sitting on the ocean and listening to what God has to say to me. Honestly, that’s what I spend my time doing.
Stone Payton: I love it, and I’m so glad that I asked. All right, let’s leave our listeners if we could, with a couple of actionable, I call them pro tips. Something to be thinking about reading, doing, not doing. And look, gang. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Sally or someone on her team and start tapping into her work. But let’s leave them with a couple of items to be thinking on.
Celi Arias: Yeah, look, if you’re like, oh, she’s talking about this product market fit thing and I’m not sure I got it. Here’s here’s one of the easiest ways to start going out and hunting for your product market fit is ask your people. Don’t do a survey. Don’t do a survey on Instagram. Don’t do a poll. Get on a convert. Get on a call with your ideal client or your ideal customer. Get on a call with them and say, hey, what do you dream about? What is your biggest desire? Like what do you like daydream about and wish that you had? And what is the biggest obstacle getting in the way of that? Right. And then number three, what have you tried to do to fix that obstacle? If you ask those three questions like what is your deepest desire? What is your biggest pain or obstacle that gets in the way of that? What have you tried? You’re going to start getting real time feedback from your people about what they really need and what they really want for you, from you, and what they would be willing to pay for. And that’s product market fit. I think one of the hardest things for my clients is to even ask for those conversations, because we get so uncomfortable about taking other people’s time for our own market research.
Celi Arias: And I’m like, well, I don’t care. Send them a coupon, buy them a coffee, buy them a meal, but get into A conversation with your people and start learning how they tick. What words do they use to describe their desires? Their pains? What have they tried? What do they wish was out there in the world? You know, like my a lot of my ideal clients. Go, go. Oh, I just wish there was somebody who would tell me exactly what to do. Because I’m tired of the frustration of running my small business, and I’m tired of not knowing the answer. So I was like, okay, coming right up. I’m going to tell you exactly what to do, right? My methodology is based on yep, I’m going to teach you all the things you have to know and in what order, because I want you to crush it. But I’ve developed that from talking to a lot of people and hearing their frustration. So if there’s one thing that I would say is like going to be the most valuable is go talk to your people and learn what is really frustrating them and how you can help.
Stone Payton: Well, that is marvelous, counsel. And I too. While you first said it, my initial reaction was, um, Mhm. You know, I hate to ask, but then I got to thinking if someone called me and asked my opinion on that and like what I was feeling, I would be honored and appreciate the, the the exercise. Right.
Celi Arias: Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I think I really believe in transparency. Um, and I believe in honesty. And that is also one of my marketing strategies, by the way, speaking of marketing, I always tell, like I run a monthly roundtable and I always tell people, I’m not going to sell you anything. I know, that’s weird. We’re literally going to do a high value one hour roundtable once a month, and I’m going to teach and we’re going to share, and that’s my strategy. So I would do the same thing for these conversations and say, hey, I’m cooking up something really cool and really special, and I’m doing market research because I want to make sure it like, hits the spot for you. And I think you’re a person who would love this product. I’m not going to sell anything to you right now. I promise I will not sell you on this call. I just want to ask you three questions. Is that cool? And people really appreciate that. And I mean this. Do not sell them. Do not sell them anything. Even if they’re like, I’m kind of curious now I would actually say, oh, well, let’s create a separate time or a separate call to talk about that. Right. Um, so that you’re keeping your word as well and, and really saying, I am trying to do something really powerful and beautiful in this world, and I’m doing some market research. Are you interested in helping me out for 10 or 15 minutes? That’s all you need?
Speaker4: Yeah. All right.
Stone Payton: What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work website, LinkedIn, whatever is appropriate. But let’s make sure they have some coordinates.
Celi Arias: Yeah, I’m really easy to find on the socials. Um, pretty much Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It’s Sally gross business. So that’s c e l I gross business and my website. If you ever want to come to a roundtable, it’s up at the top of my website. My website is called Grown Ass Business. Com so super easy to find.
Stone Payton: Well, silly. It has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you so much for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You you’re doing really important work and we we sure appreciate you. Thank you.
Celi Arias: So much. This has been a pleasure.
Stone Payton: Well, I’ve had fun. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sally Arias with grown ass business and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.
BRX Stories: Amy Otto
BRX Stories: Amy Otto
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, tell the folks the Amy Otto story.
Lee Kantor: The Amy Otto story is really the genesis of Business RadioX. It’s the decision that helped take Business RadioX to a new level. For me, as we’ve told this story a million times, I’m an introvert. I do not like to do kind of that networking, that BNI type networking. And I was doing that and I was dreading it every week.
Lee Kantor: And so, I had opened up Business RadioX and I had started, conceptually, the idea of an Atlanta business radio show where I interviewed business people in the Atlanta area, and invited them on the show, and really working the process, that was really in its infancy at this point of interviewing people and moving the relationship to clients.
Lee Kantor: So, I had met Amy at one of these networking things. We became friendly and she loved networking, she was a people person. And she worked for Aflac and she was their salesperson. The way they go to market is they have to meet business owners, and the service doesn’t cost the business anything, and she just gets in front of their employees and then tries to sell them supplemental insurance. So, Aflac has a methodology, and their methodology was go to these networking meetings, meeting a lot of people, get appointments, and then work your way into the businesses. So, she was getting frustrated. She was getting some level of success, but she wasn’t getting as many people in relationships as she wanted.
Lee Kantor: So, I was begging her, please, Amy, be my co-host. You invite the guests. I’ll do every aspect of this thing. You just are the co-host. You just invite the guest. I will take care of every other aspect of this interview. I’ll be your co-host. I’ll handle all the production and distribution and all this stuff. You don’t have to do anything other than literally invite people on the show.
Lee Kantor: So, she didn’t want to do it. It took forever to convince her to do this. So, ultimately, she decided to give it a shot because she was so frustrated in the way that things were going for her. And so, she started going at the networking meetings, instead of saying, “Hey, I’m Amy with Aflac,” she would say, “Hey, I’m Amy, co-host of Atlanta Business Radio. Do you know anybody who would be an interesting guest?”
Lee Kantor: So, that shift, that reframing of who she was, and what she does, and who she’s looking for changed everything. Now, people weren’t kind of avoiding her at networking meetings. They were wanting to come up to her and they’re saying, “Hey, I know somebody who would be a good guest. Me. Why don’t you invite me on to guest?” Or, “Why do you have Bill on the show and you didn’t invite me?” All these people that she was having a difficult time getting in front of, all now wanted to kind of get on the show.
Lee Kantor: So, she was building all of the relationships at a speed that she wasn’t experiencing when she was doing it the more traditional way, and so she was just loving it. We were doing shows. There were three, four, five guests at a time on shows because they were so interested in coming on the show. It literally changed her whole business. People were coming up to her and they were just asking her to do shows just on certain niches. She did a City of Dunwoody show where she had the mayor of Dunwoody, she had all kinds of business leaders, all kinds of CEOs. All the people that she wanted to reach, she was now able to reach them, and it really just changed the whole trajectory of her business.
Lee Kantor: And the key was just simple. It was just invite people on the show, give them a good interview, get to know them. And then, she didn’t mention Aflac at all until after the fact. She was always investing in them, supporting and celebrating their work, and then betting that she would get to do business with them down the road and they’d be open to a conversation down the road, and it worked wonders for her.
Stone Payton: I don’t know if you remember this or not, Lee, but that is how I met you and got into your circle at Business RadioX. I was referred to Amy Otto to come and talk about my book, and of course, the rest is history and probably another two or three stories, but it was just such a marvelous experience. But when Amy did that, did she actually did turn some of those relationships into some pretty lucrative business, didn’t she?
Lee Kantor: Absolutely. It got her into the City of Dunwoody. We did a City of Dunwoody special. She met the mayor, city manager, another city person, they all came in the studio, it was only about them. She got an opportunity to let them know that, “Hey, I sell Aflac,” and they were open to it. She got in there and then she was able to leverage that and get more municipalities. It really took her business to a new level. It opened so many doors for her.
Lee Kantor: And she liked the whole experience better because she wasn’t trying to sell anybody anything. All she was doing is giving them an opportunity to tell their story. And that is such an easier way to meet someone and build a relationship when that’s kind of the foundation rather than trying to sell them something or pitch somebody. You’re not worried about that. All you’re doing is trying to help them and serve them. So, yeah, it was a game changer for her.
Lee Kantor: It was a game changer for me, too, because, because of that, there were so many people that were like, “How did Amy get a show? Can I have a show?” And I was able to get a lot of clients myself because of her opening the door and inviting these people in. And I didn’t have to do the thing I didn’t like, which was going to these networking meetings. So, it was a win-win-win all the way around. It showed how the business could work. It worked for the business and for the people that were using the service. And it brought you into the loop. And then, now, we’re trying to take this and leverage this and take this to people all over the place.
John Brucato with Team Ignite
John Brucato was born and raised in New Jersey but has lived in Houston, Texas since 2014. He went to the University of Houston, graduated with a bachelor’s in economics. He worked as a market research analyst and sales professional in college.
Upon graduation in 2017, he got involved in the financial services industry part-time. In April 2018, after learning that his parent’s financial advisor had depleted their retirement with bad insurance products and a serious disagreement with his 9 to 5 boss, John left corporate America and went full-time in the financial services industry.
In 2020, during the pandemic, John became a Regional Vice President and founded Team Ignite in the Houston-Katy area. In 2021, he married his beautiful wife, Erin, who is the hottest teacher in Katy ISD. She actively supports him in business by helping with back-office work and with the home. In August 2023, they had their first child and beautiful daughter, Gianna Collette.
John’s biggest vision is to give his wife and daughter a dream life. Currently, Team Ignite has 39 licensed financial representatives and is growing. His goal is to have 10 offices in the next 10 years in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and in his hometown of Lincroft, New Jersey.
John believes in helping people learn how money works and become the best version of themselves personally & professionally. His favorite book is What To Say When You Talk To Yourself by Dr. Shad Helmsetter which he commits to reading every quarter.
In his spare time, John enjoys spending time with Erin and Gianna as well as traveling to see his family in New Jersey.
This 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: Trisha Stetzel here, bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. I’m so excited about the guest I have on today. He was born and raised in new Jersey, but he got to Texas as fast as he could. He’s a new dad. He and I have known each other for many, many years, and the beginning of that story is I drove all the way across town to catch him for coffee, and we continue to connect and help each other grow our businesses. John Brucato, welcome to the show.
John Brucato : Trisha, how are you doing? I’m so glad I’m here. Thank you for having me.
Trisha Stetzel: I’m fantastic. I would love to dive into a little bit of the personal side, if that’s okay with you. And, um. Really tell us, why did you get into business for yourself in the first place?
John Brucato : Yeah. So I, um, you know, my family has a history of being employees, right? And my dad had tried to start a business, you know, and things didn’t work out. Same thing with my mom. But, you know, they they really largely made their careers, you know, and as employees and, you know, that was good. And in terms of, you know, they had a little bit of stability, you know, but at the same time, they missed a lot of things. Right. And I don’t hold that against them. They had to do what they could for my sister and I, you know. But, you know, I landed my dream job when I was in college, right? So people don’t even sometimes don’t even find their dream job after college. Right. And I had it, and I loved what I was doing, but I did not like having a boss. He was the kind of boss. And I’m sure, I’m sure you can relate to this that, um, took credit for everything that I did, um, you know, made as much money as he could off of the work that I was doing paid me very little and then treated me very poorly. You know, and what ended up happening was I wanted to, you know, visit my family for Christmas holidays. This was a couple of years ago. Um, you know, they’re still up here in new Jersey. You know, where I am physically right now. And I hadn’t seen them in about 18 months, you know, and the Skype back then, it was Skype, right? Skype calls and phone calls wasn’t doing it anymore. And so I wanted to go see him.
John Brucato : I bought tickets, I didn’t tell him I was coming, I was going to surprise him. You know, the December 23rd, 24th, 25th, 26th, you know, that was when I was going to go. And, you know, we don’t normally work those days at the job that I had. And so I went to my boss and said, hey, hey, Jack, listen, um, I just want to let you know I’m taking the trip these days. I’m going straight over the Christmas holiday when I’m supposed to be here. Anyway, um, just giving you a heads up, because, John, that sounds great. But I said, okay. He goes, John, listen, we’re having a multi-million dollar client come in. The only time he can meet is on Christmas Eve. And I need you here because this is what he said, Trisha. This is what he said. He said if you work really hard on Christmas Eve, I’ll take my wife on a cruise for New Year’s Eve. That’s. That. That. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I thought he was like. I thought he was joking. I almost started to smile. He was dead serious. If, John, if you work really hard, I’ll take my. I’m like, really? Okay. And something in me shifted at that moment and said, all right, I, I’m not doing this for the next 40 years. And I got a, I became a fanatic about finding something else I could do. You know, I got into sales part time and eventually got into running my own deal. And it’s been a, you know, an amazing experience the last seven years.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, that’s that’s awesome. And I’ve known you almost that long, almost that long. And since then and along the way, you’ve gotten married to a beautiful woman, Erin, and you’ve had a beautiful daughter, Gianna, who’s going to be a year or just turned a year, actually a year. How has that changed the way you think about being a business owner?
John Brucato : Yeah. So I had, um, gotten maybe I was in business about a year or so, year and a half before I met Aaron. And, you know, I, you know, you could say, you know, I was I was, you know, single living life, but I, I really wasn’t I was so driven to, to be in business for myself. Right. Because, you know, you hear stories of people that, that, you know, they sacrificed the first couple of years and they build something. And then when they do have families, they can take their foot off the gas if they want to. They can enjoy some of that stuff. Right. And so that that was very motivating to me. I had just gotten out of a really long relationship, so I wasn’t really looking for something else. I just got married to my business, you know, I stopped dating and got married to my business, you know, and then. Yeah. And then when I, when I met Aaron, by the way, she’s the, she’s the hottest teacher in Katy ISD. Uh, and I know someone. Katy’s going to hear this, and that’s okay. You can be wrong. I’m going to be right. So that’s the jersey in me, right? Um, but no, um, I’ll tell you when we’re not on recording, I’ll tell you a really funny story about that later. But, um, anyway, when I met her and she we were.
John Brucato : We’re on our first date, and she asked, so what do you what do you do? You know, work wise? I said, well, you know, I help people with this, this, this and this. And she goes, great, you know, or I’ve never, you know, met somebody that’s a business owner before other than some, some of my family members. She says, are you you’re making money. I said, I’m making enough right now. I’m not really, you know, profitable, but I’m keeping the lights on, right. And we’re working through it. And she just bought into my vision. Day one. We weren’t even like we had our first date. And she was like, cool. This is this is great. I have no doubt, you know, you’re going to have success, you know, and and, you know, a year and change later. A year and a half later, we were engaged, you know. And you know, she doesn’t work alongside me in the business, really. You know, she does some, you know, back end things every once in a while. But she’s been my biggest cheerleader from the moment we met, you know, and and you know, we had talked about how, you know, 3 to 5 years, you know, we you know, we start our family, you know, and that’s that’s what happened. We got married.
John Brucato : And, you know, three years later we have or two and two in a, you know, three, three fourths later we have our daughter. And let me tell you something, when I when Gianna was born, I looked at my business. I said, you know what? I’m definitely not where I want to be. Thank God I’m not where I was, because I wouldn’t be able to do half the stuff that I’ve been doing. Listen, I took the whole week off before she came and like, and like three weeks after she was born, I did not work, didn’t make a single phone call, text whatever, didn’t do none of that stuff. I just got to hang out with with Aaron and my newborn daughter, and I couldn’t do that as a job. There’s no way. Um, I know there’s some places that do. Well, what do you. Um. Paternity leave. But that’s a new thing, right? And most places don’t do that. She had her maternity, you know, but there was no way I could have stayed there and did everything that I did if I had a job. Still, it was that that alone, even though our business is not exactly where we wanted it to be, that alone was priceless, you know. And. And, Trisha, you’ve known me for a long time. So you know how I work. You know I like to get after it.
John Brucato : Yeah. I haven’t worked half as hard. Honestly. It’s funny. My income has grown, but I haven’t worked. That’s not an income claim, but my income has grown. But but I haven’t. I haven’t even worked half as hard as I did before she was born. And I. I get to enjoy every. I’m the first person she sees every morning I wake her up, every single morning I wake her up and and, you know, we hang out together for a little while, you know, and then in the evening, Almost every night. Almost every night. I’m the one that puts her to bed. And you’re going to get a kick out of this. I have negative self-talk and how to Avoid It by doctor Shad Helmstetter. It’s like this thick is a small book, but it’s in her, um, her little bookcase in her nursery. I read that to her when I put her to bed. Um, because I’m going to be. I’m talking positivity into her life. No, I’m talking positivity into her life. Because think about how many times a week we get negativity, even as adults. Imagine that as kids you hear no no no no no no no no no no. I’m going to tell her yes yes yes yes yes yes yes until I have to tell her no. Yeah.
Trisha Stetzel: So you got to open up the possibilities for your kiddos, right? Just like you did for yourself. And you’re such a driven person. And I think that’s what, um, attracts people to you. And they want to be part of your team, and they want to be part of your room, if you will. You know who’s in your room? Who are you hanging out with because you are so driven? But I have to tell you, my heart grew like ten times when you said you took three weeks off, I was like, wow, John, I just got goosebumps. Like, you did it. You’re a dad and you get to be your best self for your daughter. And I know that Gianna will appreciate what you’ve given to her and her first year, and even into her second, third and all.
John Brucato : The forces me to get better every day. Let me tell you. Let me tell you already. She forces me to get better every day. I’ve really learned patience in the last, you know, Aaron Aaron said that. She said. She said this was, I think, about a month ago or so. She says. You have learned so much humility, so much kindness. And she’s like she said, because she didn’t want to want to, you know, like, get me angry or something. She’s like, you’re so soft, not soft, like weak, but so soft, you know, with with her and everything like that. So it’s it’s been great. Like I’m going to be the dad. Listen, I’m going to be the dad with my nails painted in a tutu with probably some of my hair cut off or in bows and ribbons and stuff. Whatever it is, I don’t care. Whatever she wants to do, we’re doing it.
Trisha Stetzel: Totally see it. Well, and just as a sneak peek to what John said about his beautiful wife and her being the hottest teacher in Katy ISD. It’s in his bio, so please take a look at John’s bio. You’ll get the full story there. Or at least part of it. Uh, so we’ve talked a lot about business ownership and the freedom that that brings. And, um, kind of the why you left the job. The job went into business for yourself. But that why oftentimes is deeper. So is your why still the same now as it was seven years ago?
John Brucato : Yeah. So I you know, I’ve been really mulling over that for the last, you know, last 12 months since Gianna was born. You know, we you know, me and and Robert, you know, a mutual friend of ours. We talk a lot about that to some people that were in business with about, you know, your why has got to be important. What’s your why. What’s your why. What’s your why. And and I think that’s a commonality amongst all business owners for the most part. Right. But the root of my my, why really was that? I wanted to be the one in my family that became the go to person, right? You know where if mom needs a check, I can write the check. If if you know, if dad can’t do it anymore, great. I’ll hire five people to go out to the lawn and cut the lawn and do the plant and take care of the house. Right. You know, if if my grandma and grandpa need, need staying care, maybe, you know, I want to be the one that writes the check for that stuff, right? Um, you know, where you know Aaron and and, you know, now, Gianna and I can just pick up and go and do whatever we want to do when we want to do it and still have money coming in, right? I want it to be the go to person.
John Brucato : And I wanted to have that. And so I was thinking about has my why really changed? I don’t think the why has changed, but the people in the why have just grown. Does that make more sense? Like because that was I didn’t even have a relationship when I got started, right? So I didn’t have a life that I was thinking about or a daughter. Um, but so the why is the why is the same. But the people in the why I think have have grown tremendously even even some of my friends that I know, you know, go through hard times. You know, I, you know, it’s that I didn’t have when I got into business for myself. Those they just got, they just the why got bigger. I don’t think it changed. But the people in the why uh, grew.
Trisha Stetzel: That makes so much sense. Thanks for sharing that. I’ve never heard anyone really articulate their why that way, but I think that’s true for many of us. It’s not that your why changes. It may shift or take on a different name, uh, with the people that are growing in your life. So you you’re a goals guy, you’re a growth guy. You’re all in, whether it’s family or work. And like, you’re just so driven. I want to circle back to the mindset that you were talking about reading this book with Gianna. Right? You’re already giving her this growth mindset or this positive mindset at a year old. So John, what do you do to keep yourself in that positive mindset of growing and reaching your goals and getting better every day?
John Brucato : Yeah, well, the truth, Trisha, is that and this is just me again, being a business owner, it’s not perfect. All day, every day. Like I wake up in the morning, I’m fired up. I’m excited. I’m like, I’m gonna make this day, you know? My, you know what? I’m gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna kill it today. And then about the time I look at my phone, I’m like, oh, those are a lot of fires I got to put out. And this is not good thing. The ship is. The ship is sinking. And then an hour later, something awesome happens. I’m like, I’m on the top of the world. This is amazing, I love it. And then three hours later, something really bad happens. I’m like, why does this happen to me? This doesn’t happen to people that have jobs. It’s only a business thing. And then and then, you know, an hour or two later, I’m I’m realizing, wait a minute, I can just leave when I want to go surprise my wife for lunch. Thank God I can do that. I can bring you some Starbucks. Um, I can, I can, you know, hang out with some people at her school and then I, you know, when I, when I get halfway there, I’m like, oh, problem came up and, you know, so every second of the day I’m not that way. Right. And I don’t think most people are that way.
John Brucato : Even some of the most positive people I don’t think are that way. But what really helps me is the bookends of my day, uh, the way you start the day and the way you end the day. Um, I’m really, really, really intentional about starting my day. Positive. I don’t always look, I don’t, and Robert’s going to yell at me for this, but I don’t always because I know he’ll listen to this. I don’t always write out my affirmations or write out my goals. I have a notepad by my my nightstand, but I don’t always do it. Sometimes Joanna wakes up, she’s crying, and I don’t remember to get back to do that right. But I always start the day off with, Thank God I’m here, and thank God I’ve got my wife and my daughter and thank God I have a I have the ability to to run my own deal, you know, so I start off with that positivity every every morning. Even if I know that there is fires waiting for me. Um, I just start off with that attitude of gratitude because I could be going to the journey of the broke. You know, I could be. I could be a slave to my 9 to 5. I could be in that in those shackles. And I’m not right. And I think that’s what keeps me so driven is because if I’m not, that’s where I’m going to end up.
John Brucato : And that’s not an option for me. Right. And then on the back end of my day, it’s like, I think, I think I want to give the right credit where credit was due. I think it was Alex Hormozi who said this, um, and that your day really wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. It? It could be chaos. It could be the most unbelievably bad experience you could have ever had in your life. But your day still wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. And when we get to the end and we put our head down on the pillow. Hey, I made it another day, I made it another. I get to put my head down on the pillow tonight. I still have that. And then. And then tomorrow I get to wake up and get back after it. So my bookends are really what keeps me going, you know, because I can choose how I start the day, how I end the day. I can’t control always what happens during the day, but I can control the start and I can control the finish. Um, you know, and then I like to read, I like to listen to podcasts. And sometimes when I’m having a bad moment, I don’t have bad days, I have bad moments. I’ll pop it, pop on some art Williams, and he lights a fire under my butt.
John Brucato : Um, you know, I love listening to Art Williams. Um, if I, if I want to get if I want to have an aggressive conversation with myself, I’ll put on some David Goggins and realize I’m just being a little. You know, I’m not going to say his expletives. I mean, I normally would, but I want to respect your show. Right. Um, you know, but I I’ll plug in to what I need to plug in to, to keep me moving through the day. But it’s really controlling your bookends. The start and the end of your day really help me stay in that, in that, that mindset. Um, and I think one last thing about that. Trisha and Robert and I have been really, really conscious about this. He I mean, he’s been this way for for a couple of years now. Only me, I want to I don’t even want to embellish. I think the last, last month, maybe I’ve been catching myself speaking things and then I will outloud say, wait, that’s not what I’m thinking. That is not what I believe. I don’t accept that. I rebuke that, and I’ll even I even check my people, um, when they say, hey, you don’t you don’t believe that that is not true about you. Um, don’t wear that. That’s not yours to wear. Um, those little catching, those little things.
Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that, John. I love the bookends. I think that’s fantastic. And I love the idea of of going to bed with the, the thought of it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was. Right? It’s not as bad as you thought it was. It’s also important that we realize when we go below the line. So I like to refer to it as a victim. Right. So in the middle of the day, I start my day as a victor, and then at some point I fall below the line and I become the victim. But when I realize it, I got to figure a way out. Right. I, like you said, it’s not minutes, it’s moments. It’s not hours. It’s moments when you realize you got to pull yourself out of that. So as we get to the back end of our conversation today, your story is amazing. You’re so driven. It’s all about growth. It’s all about family. You’re the family. You come from, the family that you’re building. But I know that you connect so many people and you work with so many people. Do you have a favorite story that you can share?
John Brucato : Ooh. That’s good. Um, you know what? It actually, it actually involves you, so. Yeah, yeah, I do, um, because thinking back to not the immediate origin of my business, but I want to say about about two years in so I, you know, you know, Aaron and I had had maybe we had been dating maybe six months, and you and I had met relatively recently and, um, at a at a networking event. And, you know, I had heard your, your commercial and I, you know, you know, you had mentioned just just, um, I don’t remember the specifics, but you had mentioned this and about dealing with people, and I flagged you down afterwards and say, hey, I’ve got a big problem, okay? And I want to talk to you about it. And at the time, I had an associate, you know, and her and I were absolute best friends before business. And even in the, in the early part of, of the business, we were really, really, really, really close friends. And something happened where, you know, she has a strong personality. I’ve got a very strong personality. And like little things started to pile up and we were really butting heads, really, really butting heads. And, um, it caused caused a huge rift, I would say, in our in our business. And when I had met with you, you had talked about different personality types. And that was really the first time I heard anything like that. I mean, I understand that I would always say, okay, that’s your problem, not my problem, right? I am who I am, right? And that’s so wrong.
John Brucato : I am who I am. And yes, you’re a problem that you don’t like me, right? And and, um, you know, just just by you and I talking together, I learned about the different personality types, and I learned, wow, I should probably communicate this way to this type of person, and that might either defuze or repair a situation. And you gave me some great advice. You said, look, it’s you know, one relationship can make or break your business. You just say, hey, it’s not worth losing your business. No, no, no, I’m paraphrasing, but it’s pretty close to, um. You can either lose your pride or lose your business. It was one of one of those, more or less. That’s what you said. And I and I really thought about it for a second because this person was was pivotal at that time in my business and said, you know what, I’m going to throw the olive branch out there. And and it took us some time and we repaired that relationship and we’re now best friends. But the reason why I bring that up is because before we had that falling out, Trisha, um, when I got in business for myself, I was looking to do some hiring, and through a mutual friend of her and I, he introduced us again. I knew who she was.
John Brucato : I just didn’t think, wow, this person should come work with me. I didn’t even think that. And he reintroduced us, hired her. We started building our business together. And, um, you know, in, in the fact that we became really good friends, she pushed me and pushed me and pushed me and pushed me to start dating again when I was not ready to do it, per se. But she was being coachable to me in business. So I said, all right, I’ll be coachable to you somewhere else, right? And, you know, through push and shove, it’s that’s how I met her. I would never have I would never have met Aaron if I didn’t listen, if I wasn’t coachable to her in that area of my life and, um, even after things had fallen out, if if I had never listened to you, if I had never met you and listened to you and tried to repair that relationship, a she would have exited the business, probably, and that would have been a disaster on its own. But here’s, here’s here’s the trickle effect from that. Um, she found her spouse a week and a half after you and I had that conversation, and her and I started to make amends. And her spouse is in our business. So if she had exited the business, she would not have met her spouse, who she’s now married to. And just a week ago, they announced that they were expecting.
Speaker4: Oh my God. Yeah. And what are you saying?
John Brucato : And when Aaron and I found out we were pregnant, they were the first people that knew about it. You know, they were with us. They were the first people, other than immediate family to come check on us and meet Gianna. Um, you know, her and I have risen to great heights together as friends and and business partners. And so coming full circle, if I didn’t trust my friend Robert, who’s also your friend, enough to come, you know, meet some of his friends you and I never would have met.
Speaker4: That’s absolutely true.
John Brucato : Yeah. And if I didn’t trust my friend from college enough, I never would have reached out to her and then given her a shot in business. And if I, you know, didn’t trust you enough, I never would have repaired that relationship. And if I never had repaired that relationship, a, you know, she would have exited business and not had the income and the life that she already has. She would never have met her spouse. This this baby wouldn’t be the blessing that it is. You know, I don’t even know if Aaron and I would have worked out because she’s played guidance counselor multiple times and we had our discussions of purpose, right? Or intense fellowship. Right? Um, so many things happened from that one that that one relationship, you know, so many things and thinking about clients that have been helped. Thinking about everything you and I have done together. Thinking about all the people that that you’ve introduced me to. I’ve introduced you to think about the the domino effect of that relationship. You know, thinking about this coming full circle, how you and I both know our good friend Tony. And how did that happen? Right. It’s because you’re involved in one area. I’m involved in another. And we we we we have that mutual friend. Right? Um, you know, just think about the connections for a second. People don’t understand that. I don’t really I really believe people don’t understand the value of a relationship. And when when I say to you, you never know how your one decision to connect with the person could change their life. Your life and then everyone in your contacts fears lives too. It’s huge that just that alone. I get goosebumps about, you know. So, Trisha, I don’t know if that answers your question, but. Oh, yeah. I want to say I feel like the most, the most notable thing.
Trisha Stetzel: I feel like I paid you to make me feel good today, John. I’m kidding.
John Brucato : No, no, no, but but, Trisha, it’s so true. I referenced that moment when I talk about pivotal moments in business and relationships. I talk about that story between the two of us all the time. When people ask me what was the what was a decisive moment in your business? What was a pivotal moment in your business? And we were sitting in a Kroger, Starbucks. We were having a conversation and you gave me the little disk sheet and we talked about it. That was a pivotal moment. It’s not just because it’s I’m interviewing here with you. That was a pivotal moment of connection in my business, where if I had never met you and never had that conversation, I don’t know that I would still be in business the way I am now. I don’t know that I’d I’d have the relationship with my spouse or even my daughter that I have now. I don’t know that, you know, my, my, my other associate would have the same like I just I don’t know if you know how special that moment was to all of us, and we’re very grateful for that.
Speaker4: Thank you. I appreciate that so much, John.
Trisha Stetzel: And, um, I appreciate all of the connections that you’ve made for me over the years. And I like to think of it as and when you were talking about it reminded me of the pebble on the pond and the ripple effect that that one connection or that one stone into the water can make and all of those ripple effects. And it’s not just about business. It’s about the people in the business and their families and their families and the effect that we can have. I just got goosebumps all over. John, thank you so much for being on the show today. I’m so grateful that you took the time. I look forward to coming and talking to you and Robert soon. Uh, and having that conversation as well. I will put all of your contact information that you provided in the show notes. So if folks want to reach out and get in touch with you. And by the way, if you’re listening, uh, check out the show notes because Jon’s full bio is in there. And so is the little story about his gorgeous wife, Aaron. Um, thank you, John, again.
John Brucato : I appreciate you very much, Trisha. I’m honored. I’m humbled, and I’m privileged to be here. Thank you so much.
Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. 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.
