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Stacie Roby with Healing House

August 21, 2023 by angishields

Stacie-Roby-FEATURE
Charitable Georgia
Stacie Roby with Healing House
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Stacie-Roby-bwStacie Roby is getting her board certification as a Doctor of Functional Health and a Naturopath. She has worked in brain injury rehab, family practice, pediatrics, women’s health, and some cancer care.

In brain injury, she saw teams of doctors that would collaborate for patients’ care. As she went to other areas, this would be great but is not done.

It is a detriment to healthcare and another way the health system is broken. She realized this as she experienced her own family’s health searching for answers from various experts. No answers were found to help her children or her ex-husband. She had to do the research to find answers herself.

She learned from rehabilitating her ex from a vegetative state to walking, talking, self-care, and being an active part of the community again to the issues her kids had faced. She was being given referrals from the doctors looking over the care of these family members for things such as Inflammation concerns, migraines, and mental health. From these referrals, she was encouraged to get a license as a health coach to cover her guiding health.

She had been doing functional health alongside doctors which made it her goal to go get her doctorate as well, however, she suffered a concussion and wasn’t certain she could finish. She got back to it, networking and sharing her vision to create a collaborative team of Healing House Mind & Body.

Finding root causes and helping the foundations of health by bringing in chiropractors, psychologists, nutritionists, individualized bloodwork, and more as well as modalities that are leading edge that help regenerate or retrain either body or to promote healing that practitioners simply cannot alone. Today she is hunting for a location to open with over a dozen people she has found to create this team!

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia. Brought to you by B’s Charitable Pursuits and Resources. We put the fun in fund raising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits. Dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Pruett.

Brian Pruett: Good, fabulous Friday morning. It’s another fabulous Friday morning. And normally I have three fabulous guests. But this morning I’ve got one fabulous guest. We had some folks that had some unexpected things pop up this morning. So we have a star of the show this morning. So if this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia, this is all about positive things happening in the community. So we are going to get started this morning and talk to Stacie Roby from Healing House. All right, Stacie, welcome this morning.

Stacie Roby: Good morning.

Brian Pruett: So you and I sat down. It’s been actually several months ago and you shared your story with me. And it leads into what you’re doing with Healing House. So if you don’t mind, just share your story and then we’ll talk about Healing House.

Stacie Roby: Sure. So I’ve always been taking care of different family or friends. My aunt, when I was young, had some surgery go wrong, and so when I was ten, I was actually taking care of her. She had hospice coming in sometimes and I started helping with her central line, so her IVs and stuff, and I didn’t really think much of it. Then when I actually realized that that might be different was when my first husband was in a coma and I realized my son was 11 and he probably would never have touched the machines that ran, you know, that kind of stuff. So I thought I was just a girl and girls care. And then I realized, Oh, no, there’s actually different people that can do certain things. And so maybe that was something I should have took note of earlier. But but yeah, so I’ve kind of gone on a journey of seeing different things there and then working in the medical system and because I cared and people just want to help. And so I was there and finding some things that were just not flowing the way I thought and we weren’t getting some answers. So looking deeper into why the body was the way it was, that’s where I’ve been Good. I always excelled at anatomy and physiology and physiology was just how your body works and why. And that’s kind of what I continue to do now for different people. And it’s through the journeys of all from my aunt to my ex-husband and my kids having different health things and working in that field, finding it for different patients that we had led me to understand. I have kind of a gift that I can dig deeper and really just feel good when I give somebody an answer. So just trying to do that in multiple ways and partnering with others that can do the areas that I don’t so that we can help them feel better and feel happier.

Brian Pruett: So can you share a little bit about what you did as far as the medical side because you just finished up your schooling, right? And you’re going to be doing your healing house is going to be a medical clinic, but share a little bit about that experience and then explain about Healing House.

Stacie Roby: So healing, it’s called Healing House Mind and Body and and we will have various types of practitioners. So there will be chiropractors, but they’ll be psychologist, they’ll be different types of people and different fields so that we really are well rounded care. And you know, I did work in brain injury for some time. I worked at a brain injury recovery program and hospital and facility and then family practice and pediatrics. So I have a wide spectrum of things. And then. From there. So I’m not a medical doctor, so I won’t prescribe anything and stuff like that. I could go further, but really I’ve been doing functional health for a long time and so I was just advised by the doctors and things I used to work with just to go get, first of all, a health coaching certificate so that I had something to stand on while I was guiding people with those answers and then go to school for functional health. So. So I have a doctorate of functional health and I’m also a naturopath in that schooling. You can pick a whole bunch of other titles as well, which some of them I consider. But sometimes I’m like, How much schooling do I keep on doing? I can get addicted to learning. So it’s a problem. But a.

Brian Pruett: Career student.

Stacie Roby: Yeah, exactly. But it’s things that help. Like while I went to this, we had to study Iridology So you study the eyes, you look at it really closely and your eyes are made from brain matter and it has nerves that go to every organ in your body. So it actually can tell you what systems need support. But it’s very, you know, and so, yes, I can go and become a master Iranologist but I know Iridology And so it does help me, though, in a way that I, you know, went in learning like, okay, this is cool. But when I realized I also had to study Chinese medicine. So when I look at the face and I see the signs that are displaying like from kidneys or colon issues or stuff like that, then the eyes are telling me the same thing. Then I test urine and I see the same thing. Okay, well now your body is screaming at me in three different areas, telling me these organs need support. So I do love it and I do use it because now I know exactly what the body needs more than just one one way. So it’s pretty interesting. But so yeah, so healing house, it won’t be medical.

Stacie Roby: It will have some MDs in there, but there kind of different like me where they were just working in their field and they started to see where there is just a wall that you hit with what you’re doing because a lot of them don’t go into how the prevention part. So a lot of them went functional in their field so that they can go to the wise. And then when you look at what’s happening, the root cause, you can actually work on reparative and then preventative. So everybody’s body is actually made to heal. It just needs to be given the right things and that’s across the board for anything you come across. So the other day, I don’t know. I don’t know if I like this. I don’t have a tag or anything like that. But I thought, Oh, I bring out the heal and healthy because everybody wants to be healthy. But if you really are healthy, your body should be always healing different things, right? So it’s bringing out the tools that people need that they can totally do on their own. That’s what I really love. If I can just tell people, you know, Hey, you can test yourself every time you go to the bathroom and you can know if you’re drinking enough water or not.

Stacie Roby: And then you know how your kidneys are functioning. You know how you’re processing food or not. And then they are like, Wait, what? So I showed them a chart and I said, Yeah, it should be like this. Now, this is when you didn’t drink enough and this is when you drank too little. I mean, you drank too little and this is when you drank too much. Well, then they can do that on their own. Every day. They can go, Oh, I kind of didn’t drink enough. I need to drink more. And they know that they’re pushing their bodies, their organs to be functioning just to do what it needs to do. So those little tidbits that you just guide people with, they can carry that for the rest of their life. They don’t need me or anyone else. So but it’s critical to their functioning. It’s critical to their cognition, their you know, when they have digestive issues, maybe there’s little things that they just didn’t know and helps it. So that’s what I like to do, is just drop the nuggets that they need and send them on their way. All right.

Brian Pruett: So we’ll get more into the healing house and mind, body and spirit here in just a minute. But a couple of questions for you. So we had Jenny Cantrell on a few months ago, who was also a naturopathic doctor. But for those of you who may not or listening who may not know what that is, explain what you can do and what the what what you can’t do and just what you do as a naturopath.

Stacie Roby: So naturopaths look at the foundations of health. So it’ll be hydration movement, nutrition, rest and stress and those kind of building blocks. That is what your health is built upon. So they don’t go and prescribe things, but they do guide you with the changes that you need to make in your life. And they can look at chronic things. They we study herbs, we study. A lot of us know homeopathy as well, which is a different kind of medicine, but it’s, it’s, it’s different. But anyway, so there’s different types of things that you can use to heal. And so we put in those pieces together. So I do know Jenny and we talked and she is a great lady. She might be a part of Healing House. It’s just, you know, I would like to have more of me and more of others out there. And it’s amazing because the healing house came to me years ago and I was like, okay, I’ve got to finish school. I’ve got to do this. But in the meantime, I want to find those people that are aligned with me. And I kept on looking and looking and some of them I did fine, but a lot of them, I think. I believe in God. And he just knew the timing. And really it was when I was maybe he was telling me, don’t worry about that now, you’re not there yet.

Stacie Roby: And so I had a concussion, so I had to kind of go to cognitive therapy. Working in brain injury. It is a whole new world when you experience everything that you’ve done and it just doesn’t feel the way you thought it felt, you know? And it’s kind of frustrating because I just wanted to get through school and get it done. But I had to be patient with myself and my brain and just get through. So when I got through, though, I think he used that time to like, show me different ideas. Like Healing House became more than I ever thought, and the right people just started flowing and being introduced to me and we just really connected and they were like, Yes, I so want to be a part of this. So while I thought that that and it is still hard, there’s still some other people that I really want. I don’t know where they’re going to come from, but I kind of feel like everything has fallen as it should and happened the way it should. And I kind of just I’m going to go with that, that the rest of it will fall in place. And so it’s just a great thing. But yeah. Naturopaths They are not an MD and but they do know those tools that you need and that most people don’t understand.

Stacie Roby: And so a lot of people, once they start talking to one and they see all the tools that we have and they get really comfortable with that because we’re listening and there are certain areas that we’re trained in just to listen. And it’s kind of like a mental health side to hear what the underlying is it a fear? Is it a confusion and uncertainty? And then you kind of guide them that way. So it’s it’s both sides as well. But and it’s it’s just interesting because you can keep on learning and getting better at it the more that you practice. And that’s just being with people and listening. And so, yeah, I just want to have more of those people, any type of those, it doesn’t, you know, like I said, there’s a hormone doctor that I’m talking with, you know, and other people that were in that field, and then they decided, Oh, there’s other ways to do this. That’s great because it’s the people that start looking at what they’ve been taught, taught and then going, there’s there’s more behind it and then they bring extra to what they do. They take what they do to a different level and they reach so many people and they find so many answers that just don’t go explained in the typical medical world.

Brian Pruett: Right. Well, I liked how you talked about God’s timing, because I’m a believer as well. And it’s definitely true. It’s never our timing. It’s his. And you always wonder why is it not now? And you were talking about your concussion and, you know, having to wait and stuff, but all the experiences you’ve had from your own experiences to helping others, you are in that place where you can help all these people. And we were talking before we got on the air about people in different nonprofits who have lived, you know, their story. Kevin Harris He’s one of my favorite people now who all in and all out. He was an addict, sober now 11 years, and he’s helping men with addiction. Well, I could go do that and just talk to him, but I’ve never lived that. But he can. And so it’s more powerful when somebody’s been in that situation. I think it’s the same thing for you. So, yeah, I’m curious. You said you could tell by looking at people’s skin whether it’s a kidney issue or a colon issue. Walk us through that.

Stacie Roby: Well, so sometimes even from one side of the face to the other can be totally different. And it’s interesting because they taught us, take a picture of their face now, take it and edit it to where you mirror the left side of their face and move it to the right side. It will look totally different. And then you do it for the right. But it helps you to see what’s really being displayed in the face. And sometimes when you’re just looking at both sides, you don’t you see it. But then it’s it’s highlighted even more. And so there might be puffiness under their eyes or different lines, different places. There’s like a liver area by the bridge of your nose. And so you can see lines there. It also can tell you if they’ve carried lots of burdens or they haven’t been able to express frustrations or different things that they hold in. So it can tell you personality and how they work, but it also will tell you areas like their liver needs more support. With Chinese medicine, the liver usually holds it, the emotion goes with it as anger. So so you see that. But and so it makes sense when they talk about the personality. If you look at the Chinese medicine, you’re like, Oh, those two organs are related. And it’s just weird because you start learning other things and then you go, Oh, that’s why Chinese medicine says this or that. But the face that is part of that and, and then like your colon and digestion, it goes from one side of your, your colon goes up one side of your body across the top of your stomach and then down. And so it does that on your forehead as well. So you can you can just see because one part of your colon. The ascending part does certain things, the transcending does certain things, the descending does certain things. And it doesn’t mean the whole track has to be struggling. Only one area can be struggling. So you can see it on their on their head and their face and different things. So it does display in different ways. It’s really interesting.

Brian Pruett: Well, you talk about learning something every time on my show,Stone. I just learned some amazing stuff. So I’m going to ask you a question because you could give a testimony about Stacey, right?

Stone Payton: Yeah, but she’s scaring me now because now she can just look at me. She can definitely tell if I’m lying. I know.

Brian Pruett: Well, go ahead and share.

Stone Payton: Well, Stacie Roby is one of my most favorite people in the world, and she would be anyway because I’ve seen the impact she’s had on the community. But I met Stacie 55 pounds ago and I shared with her and we were just meeting kind of like a one on one. It wasn’t an interview. We were just chatting. And I shared with her that I had been to the doctor with the with the PA, actually. Is that the. Yeah, the PA rather than the doctor. And her words were, if you would lose 15 pounds, I won’t have to pollute your body with drugs because my blood pressure was too high. And I told her I think I can do that. So I confided in Stacie and I told her that. And I said, Well, what do you think I ought to do? You know, diet and all that and exercise. And her recommendation was so simple and so powerful. She said, you just you ought to really think about eating whole foods. And I said, Well, I like that idea and I like I like pizza, ice cream and hot dogs, but I also like broccoli, cauliflower, you know, all that kind of stuff. I said, I really think I can do that. And I said, But I don’t really help me understand what Whole Foods is so that I get it right. And I shared this.

Brian Pruett: It’s a grocery store.

Stone Payton: Well, yes, but what she shared with me that helped me so much, she said if it doesn’t come out of the ground or have a mother, don’t eat it. And she said, for now, don’t even worry about how much just start eating real food was basically, I did that. I didn’t pay any attention to how much I just and then I was kind of reading books and watching YouTubes and all that. And I did start once I got that habit in there of just eating. I didn’t eat anything out of a box or a bag or anything. I’m talking about for months. And and the other thing I started doing now, I experienced some success. The, the 15 came off real quick. Well, now I had some momentum and some confidence. And so I’m looking at other resources, reading about people who live longer and all that stuff. And another little discipline I adopted was Don’t eat until you’re just absolutely chock full because you feel awful afterwards. And then I got to the point where I really felt like I actually like feeling a little bit empty, not hungry. I never went hungry. I never like willpower, never entered into it. And seriously, that was 55 pounds ago. And that is my core main discipline. And I honestly think and I don’t know enough about the science, Stacey could say honestly think that my body has reset a little bit to the point that even if I do have a beer this afternoon, which is very likely to happen, I was.

Brian Pruett: Going to say it’s very.

Stone Payton: Likely. I think my body probably treats a beer differently than it did the day that we had that conversation. Is that would that be accurate?

Stacie Roby: Yeah, because your processing is healthier and things like that. So yeah. And I like people will say, oh well I eat healthy and stuff and when I tell them about processed, like I told them, it doesn’t have a mama, does it come from the ground then you’re doing wrong. But I tell people it doesn’t mean that you can’t go have a pizza. And I told them that. It doesn’t mean that you can’t. But like do 85% or 80% like just start doing most of what it is. And I also tell people know your blood type, like your blood fortifies everything, know your blood type. Look at all the foods that are good for your blood type. And any time you could snack on that stuff, you’re doing good for you. Right? But like, you go to a birthday party, okay, eat some cake if you like it, eventually your taste starts to change as well. And I didn’t necessarily want that to happen, but it’s like I can’t eat a lot of cookies or so people will be like, Oh. And they’re like, Oh, we brought these pastries. I’m like, I really want one, but I’ll probably take a bite or two. And then my stomach will just be like, No, don’t want that. So or it doesn’t taste the way I remember like, Oh, I used to like Reese’s peanut butter cups. Well, it don’t taste like it. I like, I think, Oh, okay, it’s going to be good. And when I taste it, it’s not close to what I remember it tasting like at all. It’s kind of disappointing. But on the other hand, I’m healthier, you know, it’s it’s not a.

Stone Payton: Will you change my life? You absolutely changed my life. And then losing that 15 gave me confidence to continue. And then I felt better and better and better. And now I probably am more like an 80 over 20. You know, I’m going to I’m going to have a shot of whiskey or a piece of birthday cake or whatever, but same thing for me. I don’t want like three big pieces of cake. I want, like, a little half a piece of cake. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you.

Brian Pruett: Thank you. So this week’s been really bad because my birthday was Tuesday, so I put on 3 pounds this week just because of everybody putting food in front of me. Right. So but it’s funny because you talk about like in pizza. So my mom is gluten intolerant and she. Founded Aldi’s, this cauliflower pizza. It’s good. And it it’s better than Domino’s. It is less. And I can eat a whole one. And it’s less calories than two pieces of pizza from Domino’s.

Stone Payton: There goes my Domino’s sponsorship. Very much. I’m going to reach out to Aldi’s.

Brian Pruett: There you go. There you go. So I’m curious. So my mom has shared with me one time she knew a young lady that was told to eat the six meals a day. Right. And she took that too, literally. And she literally ate six meals a day and gained 300 pounds. Okay. So it’s it’s not literally six meals. Right. Can you talk about somebody who needs to.

Stacie Roby: Okay. So this really is up to each individual. But my whole thing is I tell people, your body needs the main nutrition, vitamins, minerals, protein to function. That is just to digest, think sleep. I’m not talking anything else other than that. If it’s not getting that, then you’re at a loss. So if something does come into play and you want to heal, you’re already at a deficit. When I look, I test people’s urine and saliva. So the saliva tells me their upper digestion from their stomach all the way up. So if I know it’s too acidic, they I hate antacid and anti acids because you don’t want your stomach to stop producing acid. And if you keep on doing that, that’s what happens. Then people have the opposite when they’re older, they’re like, My stomach doesn’t produce acid. Well, that’s what you’ve been trying to tell it to do, which really we should have just brought down the acidity. So, you know, but I’m looking at what they intake and all that’s important is can they assimilate it properly? Can they expel it properly? Is that happening? Because if not, you can give them as many supplements like their doctor will be like, oh, you need more calcium, you need more.

Stacie Roby: Well, if your body doesn’t take that in, then what’s what are we doing? We’re not helping you in any form. So it’s just like or people take different supplements, right? And they’re like, Yeah, I feel so good when I take it. Okay, now you’ve just replaced the medicine with a supplement. The goal is to get the body to function and get inflammation or whatever it is running smoothly or not there. And so you don’t need these additional things. Then your food just carries you. So when Stone came to me, I was like, I don’t believe in any diets. And he just like what I was like, no diets, those don’t. But what I was getting him to understand is, yeah, I believe in eating more for your blood type to help your blood more real foods. And then when you’re looking at that assimilation process, some people like even your eye type, your eye color tells me different issues that genetically go with that. Wow. So can you.

Brian Pruett: Give me an example?

Stacie Roby: Okay. So like blue eyes are called lymphatic. And so they usually have trouble with their lymph and their lymphatic systems. And so it drives their digestion a certain way, whereas is the other types, the biliary and stuff, they will have other nutritional and organ that you can see. It just goes along with certain things that are going to have struggles so you know that you want them to support it by food or by supplements in general, knowing that certain people are better at eating six small meals a day because their body cannot break down that food of a large meal and then it’s stuck there. So when food just sits and rots, then you have parasites, bacteria, all this other stuff happening. You don’t want that to happen. So for those people, big meal, three big meals is not better for them. Six small meals would be better because they still need that same nutrient. You know, they need that amount every day. But if they can’t break it down, you’re doing more harm than good. So smaller meals are better for them. On the other hand, more people burn through things and their their system passes it through quickly. Well, then they could eat more because now they’re going to.

Stacie Roby: So for some people I’m slowing down that digestion because if it goes through too quickly, they didn’t have time to absorb the nutrients needed. It just passed through. And I tell people like, one easy thing is most people don’t drink half their body weight in water. But if your brain is 80, 87% water, 90% water, then you need water. Water will help carry those nutrients through you. It also helps the oxygen get to all the places it needs to go. So an oxygen is a medicine all on its own, but in the same sentence. I was messing up myself. So I always tell people I’m not perfect. Everybody struggles with something and that’s just true. So I’m not perfect. I struggle to get my water in every day. I usually put a timer on. It reminds me. So 4 or 5, six ounces every hour is all you need, but at the same time, don’t drink water with your lunch because it will pull those nutrition. It pulls it. Very too quickly. So you want something that has substance that’s heavier so that it gives your body time to bring in those nutrients needed.

Brian Pruett: So that’s why Stone likes beer with his lunch. Well, that explains a lot because I’m blue eyed, so that can explain it. So I’m curious. Well, a couple of things. So when we talk about six small meals, you’re not actually talking about it could be just a granola bar. It could be an apple. Right?

Stacie Roby: Well, okay. So I don’t like anybody skipping any meals. Well, here’s one thing. Our body makes enzymes that help break down food so that we absorb nutrition. Our food also has enzymes in it. However, as we’ve groomed food to be more for taste, we have lost some of the nutritional value, and that includes enzymes. So I tell people, take enzymes, you need to take enzymes. You should just be taking that in general. It helps it break it down to where it’s small enough to get the nutrients needed and then anything toxic can pass through. And it doesn’t have to be harmful. It doesn’t have to be a preservative. It could just be toxic for your body. Like my mom struggles with any kind of roughage. Her body, it’s just harder to break that down. Does that mean she doesn’t need it? No, she needs it. But the enzymes. So if you have people that have celiac or they are gluten sensitive or they’re lactose intolerant, well, if they have enzymes and they they can still eat that, but it breaks it down to where it’s not tearing up their stomach and doing as much harm. I mean, they still should do that less. But people need the proteins at each meal. They need vegetables or fruit at each meal. And you ever hear I hate that Skittles took Eat the Rainbow because the rainbow was the rainbow of fruit and vegetables because your body needs six basic calciums just to function and get all the thriving in there. And they come from different colors of different plants. So that’s where Eat the Rainbow came from. Not that you can’t have a skittle or something.

Brian Pruett: But that’s a good trivia question.

Stacie Roby: Yeah, so that’s just the thing. But so when when you’re looking all those things, you’re just guiding people to know what they need nutritionally at each meal. So and then the order that they eat, most people don’t even know that there’s like you just eat what you eat. But really, if you eat when you go to a restaurant, they bring out the bread. Don’t eat that bread first. Put that aside. What else do they bring out first? They typically bring you out a salad. First, eat the salad so those fibers will lay down in your gut like they’ll lay down in your stomach. Then when you put your protein on top of that, you have the enzymes to start helping break down protein, which is harder for your body to break down. You need the protein, but those enzymes are going to help break it down so that you can absorb that protein that you need. Then you put the carbs on top. And then because people that have blood sugar issues, well, if they’re eating the bread first, it’s going to dump into their bloodstream. That sugar is going to change really quickly. But if it’s on top of the other things, it’ll break down slower and then it doesn’t affect their bloodstream as quickly. So just different things, man.

Brian Pruett: So that explains a lot. So I was growing up, I always got picked on because I always ate my sandwich last, but I ate the potato chips first and then the sandwich. So, um, I’m curious though, on when you say drink half of the body of the water, I’m half your body weight. That’s a lot of water for me. Apparently so. But can you give us an example of what one small meal might look like of the six? Just can you you know, it’s different for everybody. But what can what would one look like?

Stacie Roby: So in general, I would say six ounces of some kind of clean protein. So realizing that when I tell men that they need protein, they’re like steak, which you could eat, right? But it’s harder to break down. And pork is, you know, if you look at it, it’s not as clean pork protein. Right? So some people, when I look at their urine, I’m like, no pork right now. Your body cannot it’s struggling with protein. Your kidneys, your liver are struggling. So no, no pork. And we need to cut back your protein for right now until your body gets better at the processing, then we’re going to bring it back in. And so with them, I might tell them a protein shake would be beneficial for you because you still at every meal should get that protein. If not, your body doesn’t have the fuel that it needs. So you need the six ounces of a protein, six ounces of fruit or vegetables. And when I tell people you can go on a diet, but you’re not going to starve when they get out of food scale and they measure that, it is a lot, it is hard to get that down. So my brother was laughing. Me and my mom did well. I did it longer than her.

Stacie Roby: We did 100 days of no sugar, no flour, and I mean no flour substitutes and no almond flour, no nothing, nothing processed that way. And then I continue to do it. And my mom’s like, Yeah, it wasn’t that hard. After a while, it didn’t even notice. And my husband didn’t either. He didn’t do it with me during the day, but we ate every dinner together and he did not and he was cooking and he didn’t even realize that we weren’t having the flour in there and sugar. So we went through that. But we also had our eyes open to how many things have sugar. And the doctor that was behind this, there’s a book called Bright Lines Eating. She wrote that and she was saying, this is a chemical. It is a drug. Flour and sugar is literally a drug. They put it in more things. So you you want it more, you want more chips, you want more. This like, why does chips have sugar? You think it’s a salty thing? Why would they add sugar? Well, that’s what it’s doing. You know, it’s making you want these other things. So anyway, we did that. Then I ended up doing it for 300 days and I just my body just wanted to keep doing that.

Stacie Roby: Now I’ve added it back and she tells you how to add those things back in there and how to do it healthy. But she laid out the six ounces of protein, six ounces of vegetables, and then she taught you. And Apple has way more sugar than, say, blueberries or something like that. So do you want half an apple or do you want, like all of these blueberries? Well, then you’re making other choices and you’re realizing, you know, and for certain people that watch sugar, that’s important to them. That’s their life. So then they make better choices or, you know, things like that. So we just started realizing even in our natural food, there’s better choices that you can make and how much sugar and Apple has and stuff like that. So we just started in some of the things my kids picked up on and they were just like, This is funny, mom. Like, I actually want that. Or my mom’s like, Oh, that’s gross. And I was like, But did you try it? And then she’s like, Oh, I’m going to go home and make that. That was really good. But my brother laughed because we had him come to my mom’s house. I said, We’re going to eat this salad and I want to.

Stacie Roby: And he’s he’s six foot 3 or 4 and he’s a bigger guy. And I said, I’m going to see if you could eat this whole thing. And then when we measured the six ounces, put it in the salad and we had strawberries in there and we had blueberries and almonds and all this other stuff and garlic and all, and he was like, This is so good. And then we were just talking everything. At the end, he’s like, Man, I’m full. I said, Oh, no, that’s six ounces that you need. Keep on eating. And he was like, I don’t think I can. I said, Yeah, you thought we were starving ourselves, but this is what it’s like. So when your body gets that fullness, like like Stone was saying, he never did starve. But you’re feeding it what it needs to fuel itself. So. So that would that would be an example. I would cut up like, six ounces of chicken and put it into salad. And I measured the whatever you’re putting in there. So I put cucumbers or tomatoes or kale or whatever I was getting and put it on a scale. It was six ounces. And man, it’s way more than you think. So.

Brian Pruett: Wow. So have you heard of Shibboleth? No. So we joined Shibboleth, I guess it was last year. And it’s not a diet, but it’s a it’s a Christian or gentleman that started it. And it’s teaching you the foods to eat right together. So you should look into that. I can connect you to, you know, who Kim Dankey is. Yes. So Kim is into that. You need to talk to Kim.

Stacie Roby: Okay. I would love.

Brian Pruett: That. Yeah. So. All right, so let’s go back to the. The healing house mind and body and spirit. You talked about wanting to find some more folks. Can you share what you’re looking for? So maybe we can put that out there?

Stacie Roby: Yeah. So I want to hire some other psychologists out. The thing is, my daughter had a rare inflammation disease and so we tested for all these known ones and it wasn’t any of that. But they knew she had inflammation in her body in the process of me helping her get better. And so I watched us, you know, go through that. There wasn’t just an easy answer. So we had to dig deep and I had to do some research and find what would help her. But the key was helping her organs function better, helping those filtering organs, helping her gut. A lot of people do gut cleanses, but if you’re not doing anything for your filtering organs, then you’re not going to improve your gut. That’s how they all work together. So we were doing that and she was getting better. However, your emotions also start in your gut and then they send signals to your brain. So her emotional well-being, she already had anxiety, but anxiety, depression, everything got heightened and she became suicidal and she went to a mental hospital. So I started digging in. Well, I was in some functional nutrition classes and they said, okay, you’re already doing all this. But did you know for mental health there’s plenty of adaptogens and there’s oils that help, like for the short term, like just to help her feel steady and healthy and, you know, better uplift her. And so I was like, no.

Stacie Roby: And they’re like, okay, well, we know you want to research. Here’s some research. So I went back to the hospital and said, Hey, have you I know we’re already doing all this, but have you heard of that? And they said, Yeah, we actually recommend people use Adaptogens. That’s going to be the best thing. And then they said, Oh, there’s tons of research on oils, but we don’t use it. But you’re welcome to bring it in. But they saw by the time she left, they were just telling me the ones that are doing this and using the natural we worked here 25 to 35 years. We’ve just never seen them process and get better. Like the ones that are doing natural. It really does help. You should talk to the director over and over. So just seeing my daughter struggle. Is why I understand that mental health is important. I knew that before I had my own struggles as well. But just knowing how psychologists do their things and we need them to guide people. But what that mental hospital taught me was that if if we don’t incorporate gut health, they’re really spinning that cycle. And if you slow down the communication between the gut and the brain and have it be a healthy communication instead of overstimulated, it’s sending way more signals than it should, then they’re always having that struggle. But if you told somebody when you’re in that state, you feel like this is how life is always going to be.

Stacie Roby: And I saw my daughter there. School lost so many kids and adults I know have lost spouses or stuff. And if you could honestly sit with somebody and say, I felt that way, I know. I remember what that feels like. But when I learned that it’s actually a tummy issue as well, it wasn’t just changing my thoughts, but what’s driving it. So if I change my stomach, then I don’t have to feel that way. It is an actual feeling coming from your stomach coming. I understand that. But if we can correct that and it doesn’t take long. Well, if you give them hope, then they’re working on something. And then when they don’t feel when they see that, it starts to alleviate. Kind of like stone. It didn’t take him long to drop that. It doesn’t take long to have those emotions change. And then they have somebody, you know, a psychologist helping them through it and boosting them up and keeping them on track. Well, then you’re doing good. And then you can turn that person around who can go and spread that to others. So mental health is just as important to me as physical health. I do continuing education every year for psychology. I’m not a psychologist, although when I first left high school, I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do. So I actually was starting on both.

Stacie Roby: And then you’re like, okay, this is a lot. I have to choose. So but I love it and I understand it, but I want to bring in the psychologist to do what they do, and then I want to look at other avenues that work with like psychology works with the frontal part of your brain. I want to bring in other tools that work with the other areas of your brain so that we actually correct these pathways and then your gut. So it’s a healing house to bring in all those members, the nutritionist and myself or others, maybe the the nurse practitioner. I’m talking to a nurse practitioner. She’s a functional nurse practitioner. If we all anybody that works in the healing house has to be agreeable that we have huddles and anybody that that client wants to bring in, we all huddle to talk about that person’s health. So instead of piecing it together, that’s what I loved when I worked in brain injury. You had the GI doctor, the respiratory therapist, the PT therapist. You had everybody fighting and working together in a huddle for that patient. And I never saw it when I went to other family practice pediatrics, and I was like, Oh, why, Why we call the GI doctor. But then we don’t get the answers that we were looking for there. This person is in our care. We’re supposed to help them go get the answer.

Stacie Roby: Well, we didn’t get the answer from them. They didn’t get the answer. You know, it was just like all these pieces instead of really working together. So years ago, I was like, one day I’m going to have a place where people work together. Or I maybe I wasn’t going to be a part, but I was going to guide people to start doing that. And so that’s really how my dream of Healing House came to be. And yeah, so I’m talking to a nurse practitioner. I really hope and pray that she comes on board. I need I want to offer attempt. If it doesn’t happen right now, then maybe when I expand again, I will bring that in. But if I can do it now, I want to. And then the psychologist, really, any person, even if it’s an EMT who decided to look deeper and be functional. They have a space, you know, that is the people that I want to have collaborating together because we know the other the Western world, western medicine, but we bring in the other aspects. So there’s a lot of women’s health doctors that I’m talking to. And so I just want to bring them in together. And I told my husband, I was like, sometimes I don’t want to say too much because I want to put it out there and bring it in and, you know, keep on saying speaking it to action.

Stacie Roby: But then at the same time, I think this is I think I think health is changing and I think other people will start having this thing. And I know there’s other I have talked to some great facilities out there, longevity, health. They’re like, we are happy to help you learn which herbs to bring in and what to avoid and not to. I can lean on people that have a practice already. They’re all naturopaths and they do other things and to see that they’re willing to support me in my mission and my goals. It felt so good. That was so uplifting to go. I just want to know if you’ll share with me your insight because you’re you’ve already got a practice and I’m doing more than what they are, but they understand that and they really want me to be able to do it. I love that I’ll be forever grateful for them. And they are like, Come back to us when you have questions so that we can guide you. So I just really want to build and I’m, I’m starting in like right under 2500ft². So I’m starting in that space. But I know as I talk to people, I don’t have space for them now, so I’ll have to expand. But that’s a good feeling, right? But at the same time, I’m kind of overwhelmed like, oh my goodness, how do I fit them here and draw the floor plans out? And what size room do you need? Because I want to give them what they need, but I’m just I’m really blessed to be being advised by people that are like, eventually you just cut the room and say, This is what I have.

Stacie Roby: Do you want to be in it or not? And I was like, Oh, thank you, Shannon. Thank you for pointing that out to me. You know, I can’t appease everybody, but I have the space and I want them to be a part. And if they can squeeze in and be in there, I might just have to do that because I kind of get the floor plans need to be done and we need to get going. So but yes, if there is any people out there that want to work in this film where we collaborate together, they are their own business. So they don’t have they’re not if they already have a business or they are a chiropractor or somebody that wants to have their own business, they are totally their own. They can market themselves. It’s just underneath the blanket of healing house where we work together, and I think that’s a different aspect to it too. I’m not a hospital. I’m not a medical center that are hiring. I know that they have built what they do and they have a gift and I want to work together with that gift. So the only employees will have is like the staff that helps to flow, you know, people where they need to go and put them on machines.

Stacie Roby: I’m really blessed to also have found people that being tapped into the research area, they’re bringing machines out that anything we can’t do as doctors and stuff, anything that we can’t physically help you with, there’s God gives that information to other people that learn how to put machines in that come and do like neuromuscular retraining. So, you know, a table that can help people. And we a couple of weeks back, we put a whole bunch of people on this table and it was just it brought me so much joy. That’s what I loved. I love when I see the results. So we had some stroke people and they had feeling, you know, they weren’t doing remarkable things, but they hadn’t had feeling in their arm. That’s the beginning of healing, you know? And we work from the inner muscle and the inner neuropathways and retrain it and then we adjust it slowly so it goes all the way to the outskirts of the body and then bring it back in. So you’re retraining and they lay us on it when we get trained. So you know what it feels like because it looks really like, Oh, that’s are you shocking them or what? But then you realize it doesn’t hurt. And even my ex-husband went on it.

Stacie Roby: He hasn’t opened up his hand in almost 20 years. Wow. And he didn’t open it like us flat, but his fingers went forward. And that movement, we’ve had to pry it in that time to do it. So, you know, just seeing some people or a girl that was in an accident, you know, she was able to grip things again. You know, it’s something that medically like, yeah, we’re saying go to OT, we’re going to Pete, we’re we’re trying to do that retraining and we’re getting their muscles right. And, you know, sometimes, like we use Botox to relax the muscle and build it back to where the standard should be. But this somebody got the understanding of magnetic frequency and how it helps our body and it realigns it and retrains the body in a quicker timeframe. Those are the tools that I’m going to bring in to my practice to use alongside the the practitioners that know how to do. So I don’t know. I get really excited about it, but that’s where I want to make an impact that even when I’m not here one day, that this is there and people still come and they get answers that they didn’t have and they get tools that they can use. And my goal is eventually to do some fundraising with like golf tournaments or other stuff like that. I know a guy. I see. That’s what I need. I mean, the thing is, I made friends from networking that I don’t know how to put all this together, but I’ve leaned on the attorneys or the this person or that person or payroll person or, you know, all these people that you meet when you network.

Stacie Roby: And I got to say, I, I am so grateful for that because when it came time to be able to do this, it’s not done. But I’m still getting the pieces from everybody. So Brian can help me with the golf tournament. And the goal will be to have the funding so that when if you know limbitless disabilities, if you don’t go check them out. But Paige and I, the person that started luminous disabilities, we just really connected on knowing the people that sort of get forgotten or they don’t get the help that they need or they don’t have the space that they need to live in or to be in during the day. And if this machine helped my ex-husband, who I help, if it got him to open his hand, there’s no difference between maybe a contractor of a person that has CP or something else. I don’t know for certain, but the doctors that put it together and invented it, I asked them and they said, Yeah, sure, because we’re still training that brain in a different pathway. We’re creating new neural pathways we’re doing. And so kind of like this other gentleman I talked to that I hope will come work with me too.

Stacie Roby: He said, You know, I work with genetic diseases. Doesn’t mean that I’m going to fix a genetic disease. However, I look at the dysfunction that takes place because of that genetic disease, then I’m able to help that function. So then I made their life a little bit better. I made the process of digestion or hearing or whatever it is when, like with my concussion, I have vestibular issues now. So I’ve been going to training all this year. I had a concussion 2020 October 2020. I got hit head on. The vestibular did not show up until really this year. And so that’s surprising. But I do know that brain injuries are weird like that. But I’ve been doing this therapy all year and I’m not better. Well, what he was saying is right, because you’re trying to retrain it. But what happens when the dysfunction is and they did a test on me and this is where it’s at. It’s the vestibular. My balance is fine. Thank goodness I was a dancer. I can catch myself when I wasn’t so steady. They would put me on this thing in the floor, moves and all that, and I was able to correct it. But they were like, If you weren’t a dancer, you would be on the floor right now. You’re at risk to fall. So I got past that. But it’s not like the room spins or anything like that, but it just is a feeling that goes across me where I feel not steady.

Stacie Roby: But what happens is I’m trying to do the retraining by following my finger across the room and up and down and tilting my head while I do it and put my feet in front of the other and closing my eyes and all this other stuff. But the problem is the communication between my ears and my eyes and my brain. So if that is the dysfunction, if he can go and help me fix that dysfunction, then when I do the retraining, it works. So the same thing for any of these people that have had life, things that they’re born with. Maybe we don’t change that genetic code, but we help the other dysfunctions that are there. And I don’t know how to do it, but I’m touching. I’m finding the people that do. And if I can bring them in there and then if I have the fundraising that these families that pay for just daily care for their kids can’t always afford things. But if we could do scholarships for those people and then we change, just make their life a little bit better. And that’s really what I like to do. But I hope to do I’m not there yet, but that is my dream. And so I just really hope that I can do that and touch all the different people in the community that way.

Brian Pruett: I was trying to look up. I for some reason I’m having a brain fog for a moment, but Melissa is her first name, but she does brain wave stuff. Do you know her? Yes. Okay. I was going to try to connect you if you didn’t, but yeah. So massage therapist, you guys are going to have all that as well and.

Stacie Roby: I can use another one. Okay, I have one. I can use another one though. Yeah. And the thing is massage therapy. So you can go to a spa and do that kind of stuff. But it’s the ones that know fascia releasing techniques and the ones that like people have like dentists and people for lockjaw, you know, And they go in, they reach inside of your mouth and they’re stretching that fascia and they’re moving it and manipulating the muscles so that it releases or you don’t. They do digestive massage or they do where people can’t open up their diaphragm and breathe properly. So it’s or they’re retraining the muscles when somebody has gait that’s off or things like that, it’s that kind of massage therapy that it’s a specific type. So when they know that or if they know neuromuscular, it’s those kind of people that I’m really looking for. Because when you’re working with these conditions, that’s what you need. So while massages are great and I believe in self care and you need that, I’m looking for more of the functional things. So yeah.

Brian Pruett: Awesome. So as a I guess they would be patients, right? They come see you.

Stacie Roby: Well some of the people it’s clients so yeah.

Brian Pruett: So as a client, you know, we were talking about food earlier and to eat healthy, it’s really expensive, right? So if a client comes to you or and the folks in your the healing house, what does that look like? Is it going to be do they take insurance or what kind of you know is it what’s that look like for a client?

Stacie Roby: We’re looking at that right now because some of them like language and speech pathology. She’s like, oh, I’m Medicaid and I’m credentialed for those things. The chiropractor, he’s credentialed for those things or the people that he’s bringing in So some of them can take insurance and we’ll have billing for that. Some insurance does not unfortunately, cover like naturopaths and stuff like that. There are other the one thing I like about my friend Ken is when he designed that table that does the neuromuscular retraining, when he was working on it, him and his partner, they they all or the two inventors, they all thought about this ahead of time and made ICD ten code so that it can be covered like they did all the research that needed to go behind it and all the things that you have to do to get it medically covered with the insurance. Not everybody thinks about that. Like Hyperbarics does wonders, but it’s not approved. And they don’t utilize they don’t utilize it like we could. So some people, some I’m leaving it up to those practitioners to decide if they will take insurance or not. And it might be in the beginning we don’t. And then we see as the credentialing comes in, then later we can say, Oh, now accepting insurance and stuff like that, because that credentialing can take usually 90 to 120 days for different people. And so, yeah, some of it we will be able to, some of it we won’t.

Stacie Roby: At the same time, I want to make packages just for the different beds and things that we have that will help people, whereas it might cost this to do it individually, but if they buy a package or some kind of monthly thing, they can choose what was helping them. Because even when we put somebody on the bed. They’re making it to where you can have it programable for different types of conditions. But at the same time, when he was training me, he was like, It’s really good that you’re learning it before. It does that because just like with nutrition, it’s individual to the individual person. When we’re doing this, we’re looking at their responses and we’re seeing when they’re when they feel something, it takes the client telling us, Do you feel that? Well, then that’s enough for them. If they didn’t feel it, we can move it up more because they haven’t felt in so long. We’re trying to stimulate that. And the more that they can handle, that’s fine. And then as the healing occurs, you go less and less because they don’t need that stimulation as much. So it’s really looking at that person and knowing and observing them. So if I can make packages where they know that this helped them and that helped them and then later on they need other ones, I can make it more affordable for them because I know places that charge $150 just to get in a bed or just to get on these other things.

Stacie Roby: And if people can’t do that with their kids, But I say, Oh, if you buy ten at a time or if you buy five at a time, it’s discounted, well then they’ll utilize it and and let all the family members use it because sometimes it’s, oh, each person has to buy this. Well, then if you have two kids that are struggling, what the family can afford that and they got to choose one kid. You know, I’ve been in that position as a single mom. And, you know, my first husband was had a brain injury. So it’s not like I could get child support, not that I needed him or wanted him to, but but I needed to support my kids. And I was like, I can’t afford a psychologist for both of you. So you go right now because you seem pretty bad. And then later we’ll do this, you know? And the doctor I worked for was like, That’s so unfair. And, you know, I know life’s not fair, but if we could do things to make that better where people can afford and get what they need, that’s what I hope to do is to be, you know, we have to be profitable, right? So I do have to have a charge for it and it has to be reasonable.

Stacie Roby: But if I could sell it to where, hey, it’s profitable and then they get it. They get it at what they can afford, then that’s the kind of things I want to do. And like brain Train, I did want brain train in there. They’re limited to zip codes. I’m wanting to talk to them because where I’m located, I wanted to bring brain train in, but it’s in the same zip code as another person that has it. But if they would make a thing where, Hey, I just want you, I just want people people are coming here for all kinds of different things. And if we could have it in there somehow where either the person that owns that has somebody in there, it’s a benefit to have to where it helps the brain, the align properly and retrain it on its own. And there’s other there’s it’s not the only one. There’s other ones out there that I’ve looked at in case I can’t, I want to be able to provide that because it is part of that puzzle. That’s a missing link for either. It can be pain, but it can be anxiety, depression, sleep, all those things. It’s a it’s a missing part that helps the brain function the way it should. So I’m trying to figure out how to do that within the guidelines that are set out there.

Brian Pruett: So I think one of your packages should be AC DC with the AC DC. All right. So you already answered a question I was going to ask. We talk always about power of networking and you just talked about how people have helped you along the way now working on some things. So other than the reason of just being a helper and wanting to help people, why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Stacie Roby: Well. I’m a person that. Okay. One of the doctors told me you should go work in research because you’re good at asking the questions and all that. Why I don’t thrive there is because I’m a people person. I just don’t thrive without seeing people. And whether it’s just going to lunch and maybe there’s nobody that I meet that day, it’s other people that understand we’re all in it trying to do our thing and you need that and you need community for for just different things. You thrive with community. Humans aren’t meant to be alone, you know, we need that. But anytime I can even just make a connection like you connect your network and you’re like, Oh, you need that. I know somebody who does that. Here you go. That still feels good. And I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m about to do if I didn’t have those connections and the people that guided me to the right people. And I just love that in the community. I love how Woodstock and Cherokee feels. I loved where I lived before I moved to Cherokee County. But like, it’s just it seems so much more tangible all. And I just love when you see people and you give them hugs. Like when I came in here, I was like, Oh, okay, good. We’re all friends. You know? It’s just being able to do that and have people feel that, that they’re part of a community that cares. And when you when you do, I mean just good goes around and I feel you heal a community when you really believe in putting into that community.

Stacie Roby: There are so many things that I would like to be a part of and I’m like, I can’t go to that. I’m not here. And I kind of I’m like, I’m so sad, but I really want to be there. And I don’t want them to think that I’m not there because I’m not interested or I don’t believe in their thing. That’s my thing is I really want them to know I do care. But at the same time, I just only have so much energy or I’m only can be in one place at one time. But but I love to support others and find those needs or those niches like. Brain injuries. You know, it’s a silent epidemic and it’s been that way for a long time because even in trying to find housing for him, my ex-husband, we moved him here and he just wasn’t given the care from his family that he needed. And and I think they were probably also stuck with what they can do and stuff. But we brought him here and he lived with my sons who love them. I love them, but they’re in their 20s and they’re trying to get their own life together. So they couldn’t always make sure that he went to therapy or, you know, we had, you know, so I was like, all right, well, but I was just getting married when he moved here. And he him and my ex husband have I mean, my ex husband and my new husband, they have a special friendship.

Stacie Roby: And people sometimes like, how does that work? My ex husband, you know, we didn’t get divorced because we were on bad terms. It was his brain injury and the emotions that they go through while they’re healing, where it became dangerous for him to just I don’t want my kids to grow up not understanding what was correct behavior, what wasn’t. And just because he lost field of vision, sometimes he would slam down his cane. And it somebody pointed out to me. What if your child was laying there watching a movie and he just slammed down his cane? But it ruptures their whatever and they die. It wouldn’t have been that he was malicious, but it was something to think about because he had done that on my foot and he didn’t mean to hurt me, but he just was frustrated and I’m helping him walk without a cane. And that’s where it landed. But but so we didn’t get to live together. And then his parents convinced him to get divorced and stuff. So it didn’t mean that we didn’t love each other or that, you know, I just always would tell him when he was going through the emotional part. I know you’re mad. Don’t talk to me that way. Because if we want to always be family, we can’t hurt each other. So I’m going to let you go. And when your frame of mind comes back to where you normally are at, then just call me back.

Stacie Roby: And then he would say, Oh, I’m sorry, They got me aggravated about this. And then I just started going off on whatever. And so we just committed to always being family. And yes, my love for him changed. Now he feels like a brother or he feels like just a family member. And him and my, you know, my my husband now never had the chance to have kids. So he says, you know, he always tells him, thank you on Father’s Day for giving me the kids that I never got to have And, you know, raising. And my ex husband says, thank you for raising the kids when I wasn’t when I can’t do that I couldn’t I didn’t have the mental time to be able to think of the age that they were on or be the father that they needed. So they have a special type of bond, too. And so when we saw that he wasn’t getting his needs, we were like, Well, we didn’t bring him to Georgia. Not to be able to flourish and have the best life that he could. So we moved him back and with us, my daughter had moved out, so we moved him in. I actually he didn’t move into that room. He just took our guest room. But but we just want him to have, you know, the best thing that he can. And so I’m sorry. I forgot what the heck I was talking about.

Brian Pruett: Was talking about community.

Stacie Roby: Community. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve seen that people go, Oh, you take care of him and this and that. But it’s really just seeing that need. And as we moved him here, we’re like, okay, so not that we mind him living with us, but we would like to have our own space. I started looking and I was, you know, I met the lady that Kathy, she works with, Cobb Senior Services. And I was like, Hey, do you happen to know any place that he could go live? And I think I even asked you. I was like, Brian, you know this place for men. Do you do you know if they take this people? Well, there’s facilities for if you’re autistic or you’re mentally disabled and you have learning things, they have different housing for those people, but there’s still people that fall through the cracks. So what do you do if somebody has those disabilities but they can live on their own, but they are on Social Security because they’re disabled, they can’t afford regular housing. It’s just a problem that you find. And there’s other things that fall into that, too, with things that you need. But I know he’s not the only one. There’s other disabilities and things that people have and they fall through the cracks. That’s where you have to have a community to go. Well, how if we don’t have that conversation and you don’t recognize it, you don’t know that there is a missing piece? And how do you take care of those people? Because they live in our community and they need the services.

Stacie Roby: That’s why I thought Paige was so smart and doing what she was doing. And I don’t know the answers to how we help those in that in these communities. You know, we live in Cherokee and we’re trying to help everybody in that. I don’t know if we eventually find an answer or but if we’re talking about it, it’s the only way to do that and meet others. When you meet others. And you know, my ex husband had a severe traumatic brain injury. I have two cousins that had brain injuries way before he did. And you couldn’t tell by looking at them. They function. I have friends that I’ve met in the community and their husbands have brain injuries and a gentleman who has a wife. They’re different levels to their functioning. Not everybody is the same just with other disabilities. So, you know, even though you might find an answer for some people in that community, other people need a different complete answer. So I don’t I don’t know what we do, but that’s part of being in the community where we try to work together. And so that’s just I don’t know, community means so many different things to me, right?

Brian Pruett: So so I’m curious, what was my answer to you? Do you remember? Did I give you when you asked about a facility?

Stacie Roby: Yeah, You told? I did call and I can’t remember the name Hickory Log. Yes. Okay.

Brian Pruett: Just making sure I gave you the right one. Yeah. So I have an idea we’ll talk about later for your fundraiser. Other than a golf tournament, so. Okay. Do you remember what we did for Kevin?

Stone Payton: Yeah.

Brian Pruett: That would be perfect for the brain injury. So locker room chat with all the former athletes. That’s perfect. Yeah. All right. So if somebody is listening and wants to find out of being able to come to your services, first of all, where is your location going to be?

Stacie Roby: So the location is going to be on Piedmont Road across from Sprayberry in Marietta. Okay. There’s an office complex over there, so we’re going to be over there. I am drawing up the plans for the build out and hopefully in November, if not sooner, we’ll be open.

Brian Pruett: So if somebody is listening and wants to get a hold of you even before you’re open, how can they get a hold of you and talk to you and see if you can help them?

Stacie Roby: Right now, you can email me. So I’m getting the email working for Healing House, but right now it’s Stacy with an eye B, just the letter B healthy at. Email and I don’t want to put my phone number out there, so that’s it. But but email me and then I respond. And then if I need a call, we call and we go from there and connect you with the people that would be right for them. And then we’re going to get the website built and things like that. I wish it was up already, but just so many pieces to the puzzle that I’m trying to resolve. So but yes, then I do want to have the website where they can contact and it’ll take them right to the person they need to or our care coordinator who will then contact them to the person that they need.

Brian Pruett: Well, as we wrap this up, I always like to end this way. If you could give some positive either quote, nugget or word somebody to live on today in the rest of 2023 with and beyond, what would you say?

Stacie Roby: Oh, man. Um, um, there’s a few quotes that I’m seeing pieces of that I’m like, Oh, that’s that’s good. This is good. I don’t know. But I can make up something in my own head. I mean, I just think if you, if you love people, everything comes out of love, nurturing everything. Nothing can come bad from love. So if you’re forgiving and you’re patient with people and you love them, that’s how you change and nurture and heal a community.

Brian Pruett: Awesome. Well, the other thing I do is the thank you is a lost art. So thank you, Stacy, for what you’re doing for the community and trying to help people in their healing. So thank you for that. Everybody out there, let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

 

Tagged With: Healing House Mind & Body

BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Be a Part of a Community

August 21, 2023 by angishields

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Be a Part of a Community
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BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Be a Part of a Community

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I’ve heard for much of my career, you should be part of a community. I believe that. I want to live into that. But why? What are the distinct benefits of being a part of a community?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Well, there’s an old saying that says if you want to go somewhere fast, go alone. But if you want to go somewhere better, bring a crowd with you, or something along those lines. And I think that being part of a community rather than going at it alone is a better way to get a better result in the long term.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] At Business RadioX, everybody comes up to us and says, “Oh, why should I partner with Business RadioX? I can just do my own thing. I don’t need you guys to do any of that stuff.” And sure, the technology is out there to do a lot of the stuff that we do, but one of the big benefits of partnering with us is that you get access to a group of people who’ve been in this space for a long time that have been doing things in a different way and a successful way, and it can accelerate your learning and you can improve faster just by being part of the community. And the knowledge is great, but putting the knowledge into action is even better, and having a community around you that supports you and celebrates you as well as catches you when you fall, that’s going to help you get the ultimate outcome that you desire a lot faster and you’ll feel a lot better about it and you’ll be helping more people.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] A robust community will inspire you. They’ll challenge you. They’ll help you succeed. Your success is their success and their success is your success. You’re surrounded by people doing the same things you are doing, and you can learn from them. They’re available to you. They want to help you. Seeing someone in your community succeed helps keep you accountable. It helps keep you motivated to do more. So with the right community, you can do a lot of things and things that you maybe not even imagined that you could do.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:58] So that’s why at Business RadioX, it’s been very fulfilling to build this community and be part of this community and see the success of the studio partners that we have doing things that, you know, individually I don’t think you or I imagined that could be done using our platform, but people are very creative and are doing amazing things with this platform in markets all around the country. And, you know, we’re looking for other people that want to make a difference and want to, you know, get involved with a business that not only does well for themselves individually, but it also does well for the communities that they serve.

Do More. Think Less

August 21, 2023 by angishields

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Doing Business Right Episode 2: With Integrity | Blue Anchor Marketing

August 18, 2023 by angishields

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Northwest Arkansas
Doing Business Right Episode 2: With Integrity | Blue Anchor Marketing
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Jacob-MortonJacob Morton is the owner and founder of Blue Anchor NWA, a dynamic company based in Northwest Arkansas. In 2023, Jacob decided to transition from his corporate role as a software engineer, driven by a desire to collaborate more closely with people, particularly small businesses in the region.

Jacob’s journey began in 2017 when he obtained a certification in front-end development from the University of Arkansas. Initially, he worked on small personal projects, either for fun or to support various groups he was involved with. From creating websites for local churches to managing social media accounts for a prominent gaming and mental health nonprofit, Jacob’s skills evolved from a mere hobby to a true passion.

However, it was when he assisted his brother with developing logos, social media strategies, and websites for his farms business that Jacob realized his calling: helping businesses in Northwest Arkansas with their digital presence. With this vision in mind, he founded Blue Anchor, a company dedicated to serving the diverse needs of local businesses.

Residing in Springdale with his wife Jami and their two young boys, Geoffrey and Kyrie, Jacob is deeply rooted in the community. He invites you to connect over a cup of coffee to discuss how he can assist your business with website design, social media management, or graphic design. With Jacob’s expertise and commitment, Blue Anchor NWA is ready to propel your business to new heights in the digital realm.

Website — click here

Social Channels:

Facebook — click here

Instagram — click here

About Your Host

Bryan-RayaBryan Raya is a U.S. Army veteran with a diverse background including work in higher education, music, the performing arts, entertainment, casinos, food and beverage, hospitality, customer service, and project management. He is Advanced Certified in QuickBooks Online and Payroll.

Dr. Bryan Raya assists passionate small business owners and entrepreneurs increase profits by $5,000 per year by increasing business efficiency through high quality bookkeeping services.

DBR Bookkeeping also wants to help independent contractors and self-employed individuals manage their finances so they have more time to succeed in their work.

As a consultant, he can help in the areas of bookkeeping, project management, leadership, marketing, and overall financial planning.

Follow DBR Bookkeeping on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Tagged With: Blue Anchor Marketing

The Rome Floyd Chamber Show – Mari Rico Evans, Megan Patrick and Karley Parker with the Chamber

August 18, 2023 by angishields

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Rome Business Radio
The Rome Floyd Chamber Show - Mari Rico Evans, Megan Patrick and Karley Parker with the Chamber
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Tagged With: Broad Street, Hardy on Broad, Hardy Realty, Hardy Realty Studio, Karley Parker, Mari Rico Evans, Megan Patrick, Rome Floyd Chamber, Rome Floyd Chamber of Commerce, Rome Floyd County Business

David Castro with IceBrekr

August 18, 2023 by angishields

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
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ICEBREKR-LOGO

David-CastroDavid Castro is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of multiple technology companies; before IceBrekr, he co-founded a healthcare software company that was eventually acquired by Dr Oz’s ShareCare corporation.

Currently working on a first-in-kind app called IceBrekr. It is a networking app, a connection utility, that empowers people to meet key new connections on their own terms, and wherever their ideal kind of people gather.

In his off time, Dave is a golfer, decent social latin dancer, musician, athlete, and enjoys spending time with his daughters.

Connect with David on LinkedIn and follow IceBrekr on 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. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with IceBrekr, Mr. David Castro. How are you, man?

David Castro: Fantastic and excited to be here with you.

Stone Payton: Well, we are delighted to have you on the show, man. I got a thousand questions. 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 me and our listeners mission, purpose. What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

David Castro: Absolutely. So we believe and this is strong for me, I’ve been in sales my whole life. Um, the life that you’re dreaming of is built through the connections that you make. And that’s true whether it’s personal or professional. And so what icebreakers mission is, is to help you to make the connections that matter. And that can be for extroverts. And that’s I’m more on the extroverted side. And that’s that’s kind of how I began the concept, but found that it’s fantastic for introverts as well. So we just everybody is going to achieve what they want in life through the people that they connect with, surround themselves with because you don’t do stuff alone.

Stone Payton: Well, you’re definitely singing our song here at Business RadioX. Amen to that. Love it. So I got to know, man, what’s the back story? How did you arrive at at this? It probably if you’re like most of our guests, it probably wasn’t a straight line. Tell us about your backstory.

David Castro: Yeah, so I was working like five different jobs and and that’s just to make a nice, you know, easy to say number, but working my way through school and somebody snagged me into their startup. It was like they offered me. They literally What are you making now with all this stuff? And they offered me like a dollar more an hour. I’m like sold. And so it was me and the owners. Um, one of the owners, the wife and her black lab retriever in the basement. And that, that, that paid the bills and got me cooking on on, on sales career. We got bought by a big company and that that was the next you know decade of my life being there and making good money good career but always in sales, always doing that stuff. Wanted to get into entrepreneurship. That didn’t come later until I moved to Nashville as a family decision. We moved down here and just didn’t feel like what I was doing was the thing that I wanted to be doing but couldn’t get back to federal government sales and stuff like that. Because there are so many people in the DC area that were right next door, right? So I think that’s changed a little bit with the remote work stuff. But I was this is the opportunity to get cooking in entrepreneurship and I don’t know how much I should go into detail there um, on the pre story to icebreaker but you know had a couple stints of of creating stuff usually in the tech world because that’s that’s where I nerd out and I found myself at one point always always a networking event.

David Castro: So I always found myself in networking events and networking situations. And just like most of us who do that, we’re aware of the fact that, hey, that guy over there is a competitor, right? And who is he talking to? He’s talking to the guy I need to be talking to, you know, or, you know, this room is big and like, I haven’t connected with somebody yet who would make this worth my while for being here. Like a lot of great conversations. And these are wonderful humans, but, you know, it’s 9 to 5 and I’m putting food on the table and, you know, how do I get my ROI? Um, so things like that, right? So I was driving down the highway down here 65, and I’m connecting my phone to my radio because I had an old car and, you know, whatever. That’s what you have to do back then. And there was, you know, meanwhile, you know, people are flying by me at 75 miles an hour or whatever, and I’m picking up their their phones and and then just like just started hitting me.

David Castro: I kind of like have a shelf in the back of my head of like, cool tech. And so think about ways to use it. But I just started pulling that string. I was like, okay, so I’m seeing their phone that is basically an appendage and it’s got its unique identifiers. Each phone in the radio signals have like a Social Security, a Social Security number, basically, right? Unique universal identifier. And it’s basically an appendage of that person because it doesn’t move more than six feet away their whole day. And. Yeah, they can, you know, approve being attached to this number and and saying what they want to say about themselves anyway. So that’s how the idea came about. And I just realized, hey, you know, now we have the opportunity to have an opt in utility network, so to speak. That’s only eyeball distance. It’s not, you know, it’s not GPS. So very organic. Uh, again, privacy. Turn off, turn off, turn on, turn off whatever components of your profile that you want. But then folks can know who’s in the room and you can filter for who’s who’s your ideal connection to help you to make the connections that matter most.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at it a while, you’re out there. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you, man?

David Castro: Oh, man. Uh, you know, I am an artist. You know, on the side. Not professional, but decent. And the thing that you love most about creating stuff is when people react to it. Like you want to bless people. Right? And the coolest thing about what I’m doing right now is seeing people, like, just have the aha moments and the excitement. It’s a lot of fun when you tell somebody the story and they and they’re, Oh yeah, that’s super cool. But then when it actually happens in real life, man, that’s that’s beautiful. I had an event where someone came up to me and was asking me, Hey, you know, how do I, how do I do this? And she just wanted me to help her put her keyword in to her filter. And we did that. And then boom, like it was somebody showed up. That was her ideal person. She she’s like, I got to go. I got to go talk to this person and just. Awesome.

Stone Payton: Oh, it sounds like so much fun. So let me back up a minute. When you made that leap to true entrepreneurship, what I mean, that had to be a little bit scary. I’m trying to envision you coming home to your spouse or your significant other and, you know, Hey, I’m leaving this world that where I’m making a good living and I’ve kind of cracked the code here and I’m going to jump off this cliff. What was what was that like? Or was it all butterflies and unicorns?

David Castro: Man, I got to tell you, I was pretty lucky on my first rodeo, I guess, so to speak, in entrepreneurship, We it was a friend of mine who was also in sales who had the subject matter expertise in health care that that we utilized. And it was a basically a dashboard that helped doctors to understand what these patients need. That came in so they could check the boxes to make sure the patients were healthy and thus they’ll get a bonus from, you know, Medicare or whatever. Right? So anyway, but we had a partner that was helping us build it who, you know, these guys were data experts and they were they had some clientele as well. So I was like the sales guy selling our new software build and selling, you know, this other thing on the side. And we started off with, uh, we pitched the idea to a, a client and the, the client loved the idea and wanted to basically pay for it. So, uh, we had, we had it, we had it built by our first client. And then, you know, we just went to the other folks with, with credibility and a product. So it was, was pretty, uh, was, was, was pretty fortunate. Um.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I love the idea and I often will will counsel people who occasionally will ask me about some strategies for getting their thing off the ground. And I love the idea of a client funded startup that oh is amazing.

David Castro: That is, that is the ideal. And even if you can’t get it funded, obviously you’re you’re the first thing you’re doing is saying, hey, I know I can benefit from this. Right? I would buy it. But, you know, I need other people’s money to put food on my table. I need a lot of I need a lot of clients, not just myself as the client. So, yeah, that’s huge. And, uh, it’s actually very common. And if you’re in software or you’re familiar with the software development world, that’s what a lot of these folks do, is they’ll build something for someone and, you know, they’ll often say, Hey, you know, we’re building this for you and we’ll give you a discount if we can use it. But software development companies have a lot of stuff, you know, in the back, right on the right, mothballed that they can they can bring out after having um, you know somebody else pay for it basically. But but that’s you know depending on what your idea is that’s definitely viable. And it was for us, again, it was an industry as health care industry, very large. These guys are focused on providing health care. They’re not trying to, you know, um, you know, create an enterprise software product. And so ideas like that definitely lend itself to that.

Stone Payton: All right. So let’s dive into the work in the service around Icebreaker, including the what and the and the why. You know, what really compelled you to to marshal your forces and put this thing together?

David Castro: Yeah. So. You know, again, it was it was out of need and also out of out of like personal need, just awareness of like the the fact that this doesn’t exist yet, which is phenomenal. What you what we do have on the market are the platforms that folks are a part of in the virtual world. But getting from the virtual world to the present, right into the into the physical world, that’s a different ballgame. I can I can. And I have. And you have to probably met somebody on LinkedIn. Maybe it was an introduction or whatever. And then you go to the coffee shop and you can’t tell which person you’re about to meet with is in the room. It’s like they don’t look anything like their picture. So, I mean, even on the professional side, you got what they call catfishing, right? Like, right, right. Um, and then, you know, if you’re going to an event or a conference, you want to do your homework ahead of time and see who’s coming in, that type of thing. But great, they’re on the registration list now. What? And this is why a lot of events don’t use apps because they’re basically just a registration list. I mean, you see a lot of events going back to paper because there’s an agenda and there’s the the contact list or whatever. And but they could be not coming that day. They could be out of the room just because you know that they’re coming and you want to meet them doesn’t mean that that it’s going to be a thing. And so, you know, these are all the reasons why I thought and and validation from people that I interviewed that would be potential customers. They all concurred. So that’s that’s how we got started and how I got started, uh, funding wise, bootstrapping this through the, the sale of that health care startup. My first, my first, uh, first startup.

Stone Payton: All right. So use cases, some specific examples of where this tool is just, man, this is the right place for this tool. And this is this is how and why this is an event would want this and an individual would want access to the tool in that surrounding. Yeah.

David Castro: So it’s a tool that’s fantastic for folks who have somebody in mind that they’re looking for. And you know, if you put your keywords or the type of person you’re looking for when you walk into the event, it’ll notify you if that person is nearby. You can look at your discovery screen, see everybody who’s nearby, but it’ll highlight, you know, who that person is. And, you know, so and you can look at their profile and then you’ll say, validate why it says that this is your ideal person. And then walk up to them with a sense of like, you know, the icebreaker data that you’re looking for, um, or that that would help you have that initial conversation. Um, the, the other folks that helps is just introverts who feel overwhelmed with a bunch of people in the room and would love to know a little bit about some of the folks who are nearby. Right? Again, you can break the ice that way. You’re in a 20 person mixer and everybody here is somebody that you’d want to meet on your discovery screen. You can look at people’s profiles and in their their LinkedIn address or their socials or their, you know, whatever it might be and instantly connect with everybody. So if you’re on the small side, you know, understanding what people or remembering people’s names, understanding or remembering what their elevator pitch to make an introduction to somebody else who’s in the room, say, Hey, you need to go talk to this guy.

David Castro: He does what you’re saying. I think connecting with their socials, etcetera. Small side of the room, you know, small side event going upstream. If you don’t have an event app right now, Icebreaker makes a ton of sense because you can have your agenda, your itinerary, your speaker bios, sponsor ads, they’re all native. We could put those in there, plus all the features that that make icebreaker the powerful thing that it is. So but the bigger the event is, the more powerful it is because you’re more awash in a sea of humans. And which one of these people are my ideal connections, you know? And the more days it is, the more ROI you could have from it, and also probably the more money you’ve spent. So the more ROI you want. So as you’re walking through the venue, you know, you’re able to either look at the discovery screen and see your search or whatever it is, or just allow your keywords to notify you and then, you know, say, okay. Stone where is he? You know, there, that’s him. And I’ll walk up and say hi. All right.

Stone Payton: So is this something that the event organizer needs to underwrite for it to be available? For example, we do a lot of trade show and conference work. We didn’t there during Covid, but that business is. Back up against. So, for example, next month we’re going to be at a thing called FinTech South. We’ll be broadcasting live on behalf of that organization. We will probably have a third party sponsor, you know, sponsoring the interviews, the radio for that day. And there will be a lot of people there for. So would fintech South have invested in in this? And it’s makes it available to the participants or do the participants have it individually already or how does that piece work?

David Castro: Great question. My vision is that at some point in the same way you have a phone that you’re using to dial somebody or email that you’re that you’re using to email that icebreaker is the solution. The utility that you use to connect with people who are around you, who want to connect, who want to network. So at some point in the future, I envision that you can go to a conference and other people are going to be having it. So you’re going to be benefiting, right? You don’t need a registration list. Icebreaker, you’re walking around, that type of thing. Um, but, and then event event host can dip into that stream, so to speak. Right. And, and, and what, what we monetize and what they would pay for is the agenda, the speaker bios, you know, the kind of the the sponsor ads in the app but to you know, ensure that everybody has the app and that they know that, hey, we’re all going to benefit if we all use the app. We do have an event package, right, where, you know, it’s, you know, we charge by attendee and then and then again, if they want the sponsor ads and that type of thing. And there so yeah, the event would reach out to, to me and I’d take care of him.

Stone Payton: Gotcha. And then all right, but let’s say let’s say this, let’s just play this out a little bit. We got fintech to do it or we got us to do it. And we and so and then we get everybody in that world, sort of in the icebreaker world. Now we all go about our business and we get all the benefits of having connected in that way right there. The next time we go to an event, to an event, we already have the the system and we’re in there. And so over time, this sort of sort of grows, right? So is there also a path for individuals to just join straight up or does it pretty much have to start through the through an event like that?

David Castro: Yeah, absolutely. I that’s part of the vision is that everybody has it already.

Speaker4: Okay.

David Castro: And the event host just basically like connect to that stream basically connect to that community right that that user community the I’m in Nashville. I envision that at some point in this region, in this area metro area, folks are going to go to one of these coffee houses that’s constantly being used as a networking location and they’re going to turn their app on because there’s other people in there that they want to meet. I go in there and I see somebody I know meeting with somebody that I don’t know, and I’m like, I probably should know them, right? Because they’re meeting them or I do know who that I do know who that person is, but we haven’t met yet. Um, Icebreaker would enable things like that that are both serendipitous, but also I can message them or connect with them without having their phone number or that type of thing. So if they’re open to it.

Stone Payton: Man, I love it. So how does and maybe, maybe more accurately, how is the whole sales and marketing thing working for you right now? Getting people out there to adopt this and use it or or do you have some sort of are you out there like, do you need to be shaking the trees or you’re out there just creating awareness? Like, how do you.

David Castro: It’s a combination. Yeah, it’s it’s a. It’s improving. You know, the the tuning of the stickiness of the app, meaning like, you know, we’re going through a UI refresh right now and it won’t be it won’t be the last. But. Sure. Um, so it’s, it’s, you know, feedback, it’s, it’s watching people and that’s what we did a lot last year. This year it’s heavily shaking the trees. It’s having more events that we’ve done with, you know, proof basically of the value of it and getting that word of mouth and those referrals and stuff to to other events. And then there’s the, the marketing of it, which now that we have the assets to, to prove that we that we have. Great. Uh, my cat. God bless him.

Stone Payton: Welcome.

David Castro: Um, so, you know, so we have a marketing campaign that we’re kicking off to, to really kind of ramp up because this thing needs to be used by everybody. It will be something that is a worldwide phenomenon and it might as well be icebreaker because, you know, we have the vision for it.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So you’re talking to event organizers, associations. You’re building those relationships, you’re connecting with them, and you’re building relationships with just relationship oriented organizations and people that really resonate with and truly understand and appreciate the value of connecting with people. And yes, taking full advantage of technology, but but squarely in putting the human component, you know, where it’s absolutely.

Speaker4: It’s.

David Castro: It’s our our our goal is to bring people together. People can look great on paper. And but when you get there in person, it’s like, you know, there’s a vibe there. Right? That’s why every hiring manager wants to meet the person in person. So there’s that that personal vibe thing that’s so important in the in-person side. Relationships are just so much stronger when you’re in person. And really what our goal is to connect people. Um, and, and then they’ll go and use, you know, other platforms or whatever it is to, to do whatever that they want to do. Like I mentioned, you know, we have the profile links for their socials or their, you know, LinkedIn and all that stuff. Our goal is to connect people that are in person to make that powerful in-person connection with the right people and then let the let them take it from there.

Speaker4: I bet.

Stone Payton: You’re learning. I bet you and your team are learning a ton about networking in general, too. I mean, you could probably, if you chose to capture, generate a lot of thought leadership about how to fully leverage the fact that now we’ve got this great tool. You know, here’s some great strategies and tips on on networking virtually online. Here’s some things you ought to keep in mind to to make the transition and network and truly get benefit from the in-person connection. I can see you and your organization and maybe you’re already doing this really being an almost an education hub to to help, you know, business people just like, you know, just like me and my team get out there and really forge those relationships. And man, I’m really enamored with this idea.

David Castro: Yeah, it’s spot on. It’s really cool because I see a Venn diagram of folks who are doing personal development and they’re talking about, you know, growth of the soul, basically growth of the of the person, right? And then that overlaps with the person who’s all about the strategy and the and the sales and what what to do and how to how to do it. And then another Venn overlap of the the tech, the the format, the platform, the venue, right? So yeah I’ve got a keynote cooking on on this topic.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Well what you have here is a movement for lack of a better term. To me this feels like a movement and, and because it does, I genuinely want to know what we at Business RadioX but like minded people, listeners who hear this really resonate with the idea What can we be doing to help? Like what? What would help you the most from our listener base to kind of really get this puppy off the ground?

David Castro: It’s phenomenal. Thanks so much. Um, one thing we have a our probably most used social right now, which is icebreaker on Instagram and on on LinkedIn actually. So if you want to connect with me on. Uh, linkedin.com slash, you know, icebreaker icebreaker spelled, uh, it’s linkedin.com/company/icebreaker LinkedIn, you know, but if you search for Icebreaker on LinkedIn, it’s spelled I-c-e B, r e CR, so it’s spelled differently. I always say first two E’s no A-hole, i c e b r e cr.

Stone Payton: Fantastic. And we’ll make sure when we publish this on the Business RadioX network site and get it out on all the podcasting platforms. We’ll make sure that in the transcript and the publishing and all that we have that so that it’s easy for folks to link to. So for people to go on these platforms, support it, engage, interact with you and those of us who know people who are organizing events, those of us who know people that take full advantage of participating in events, we just we need to just get the word out and let people know about it, right?

Speaker4: Absolutely.

David Castro: Lutely Yeah, That’s awesome. Stone Yeah, that’s it. And then download it and give me some stars. There’s a digital business card on it that anybody can use, even if you’re not at an event, right? With other people using the the app. And that’s going through a, you know, that’ll be upgraded too. But right now it works phenomenally for being a digital business card. So that’s a, you know, a great way to to to be using it and and, you know, give us give us some stars that’ll give us some SEO on the app stores.

Stone Payton: So my vision and desire for you is like a Carfax, you know, like they’ve kind of trained people when they’re buying a used car. I want to see the Carfax. So now if I’m going to go to an event, where’s your icebreaker? You’ve got Icebreaker, right?

Speaker4: They want me to.

Stone Payton: Sponsor an event.

David Castro: I love that vision. Yeah, that’s great. I’m adopting that.

Speaker4: That’s cool.

Stone Payton: I’m going to switch gears on you here for a minute. Before before we wrap, I’m interested. And I don’t know where you would find the time, but if you have any outside passions, passions outside the scope of your work, most of my listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Right? Just something I can nerd out about that gives me a little white space between my work and the stuff we do at the at the network. But yeah, anything else you dive into? You mentioned briefly the art, so maybe that’s it. But yeah, say more about that.

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: So I, I really should kind of get back. Well, actually I have a, I’ve illustrated for a couple book authors. Oh wow. So that, that, that is, that is something. But man, I’ve been, I’ve been on this Latin dance kick salsa. Oh my my, my my dad was born in Puerto Rico, so I’ve got that background and it’s a lot of fun. There’s the athleticism and and, you know, kind of the art of of physical. It’s like physical art, right to the music. And it’s it’s a lot of fun. Um, I, I like riding motorcycle. Um, yeah, Um, but the icebreaker’s taken up a lot of time. But when I, when I, when I’m not doing that, I’m hanging out with my kids, probably hiking, you know, chasing waterfalls. We have a lot of fun together and yeah, outdoor stuff and salsa dance and.

Speaker4: Well, it.

Stone Payton: Sounds like you find this to be true as well. And I know I do. And a lot of entrepreneurs and founders that I speak with as as as focused as we can get. And given the level of energy that we pour into our work, I find that it is important to create that. I call it white space to create a little distance. It allows me, like for me sitting in a tree stand, even if it’s not hunting season, just sitting in a tree stand with a camera is it gives me a chance to to recharge, right? And sometimes I come up with some of our best ideas. I come up with some squirrely ideas that we don’t implement too, But I come up with with some of my best ideas for me, you know, with a with a with a line in the water or sitting in a tree. Same for you.

Speaker4: Yes.

David Castro: Yeah. It’s so critical to have that. And it’s one of those things where the not urgent, important, but not urgent sometimes can get overlooked by the things that seem to be, you know, pressing for your attention. But those other things are are the mundane bricks. Right. That hold everything up. Right. And so, so important. Yeah, that’s a great reminder. I love it.

Stone Payton: Speaking of ideas, I knew I wanted to ask you about this and I asked other founders about this, too. Do you have, like a methodology, a structure, a rigor, a discipline around your ideation process, or does it just kind of come to you in the shower or at the. Waterfall or what comments, if any, do you have around this whole idea of of not only generating ideas but what you do after you’ve got the nucleus of an idea, what you do to move it forward?

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: Great question. Um, I as far as thinking about an idea and, and then kind of noodling on it and pressing it forward, um. I. You know, one of the first things I do is if it’s not like a. You know, multi-million-dollar, in my estimation, potential opportunity. You know, that’s the first thing is like, you know, what’s the how big picture is it like and this is just me. There’s some riches in the niches. I totally get that that that idea, you know, but but for for for me being a tech guy and being on that side, it’s always kind of a tech related idea. In that case, you know, I’m looking for, you know, a really big story, like a really big idea because if I can get just a part of that, then that’ll be lucrative. And at some point, you know, you have other players and competitors and stuff. So it helps you to have something that’s a really big story that everybody can can use an analogy of. Like, you know, you’re down and you know, a somebody on the safari, some animal on the safari downs, a big animal, He’s going to get some right. Other animals are going to come in and jump in. But he’s going to get. So so that’s one. And then and then from there, it’s like, you know, all the problem solving. And I don’t know if I do it the same way other people do, but, you know, it’s really punch as much holes in as possible. And then at some point after you’ve feel like you’ve exhausted that, then a trusted person to punch holes in it too. But the punch holes part is the most, you know, ego taxing, but so critical.

Stone Payton: Now, that’s an interesting observation because once you start to get emotionally invested in an idea or I’ll speak for myself, I intellectually understand I need to let people smarter than me poke poke at it a little bit. But it’s it’s it’s like my little baby, right? I’m a little reserved and I don’t it’s it’s I don’t want them to punch it too hard.

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: So that is rural. So you got to be a problem solver. I think an entrepreneur and it’s in their core. They are problem solvers. All they’re doing is they’re monetizing a solution to problems that they’ve seen. So that’s part of the process, is letting somebody punch holes and then practicing problem solving. And at some point, if you can’t solve that problem, then you should probably let it go. But another cool thing is if somebody Pooh poohs it, but you’re really confident and you have done the work. You know, to problem solve that and then you’re just like, okay, that’s fine. I don’t need everybody to be like on board. That just means there’s less people that are going to try to like, jump in on the same idea, right? So, um, but yeah, problem solving is, is the, is the key. So when people punch holes, you know, that’s just your, uh, you know, invitation to practice.

Speaker4: Well, and.

Stone Payton: People like you, you have your antenna up for problems in the marketplace. And when you hear them, you kind of run it. You run it through your little, your, your system and say, I wonder if we could create a solution for that problem. And yeah, yeah, that’s a fun part of the, the entrepreneurial lifestyle and ethos, I think. Okay, let’s leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of I call them pro tips, but because you’re so immersed in this world, maybe a couple of pro tips on and certainly entrepreneurship in general is fine if you have something to say about that. But maybe we stay in your specific domain around around this networking, I guess, on maybe networking online or making sure that you you combine the two and don’t just leave it there. Let’s leave them with a couple of pro tips. And look, gang number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with David or somebody on his on his team that’s that’s your best pro tip. But short of that, you know, maybe something we could be reading, maybe something, you know, whatever you do, do this. Whatever you do, don’t do this. Something like that.

David Castro: Well, I’d love to give a shout out to a friend of mine who wrote a book that has just been great. And the title, you know, is fantastic. The depth of the book goes a lot broader than than just what the title the title is Unstoppable Self-confidence. Um, and, but it touches every area of your life. Um, and when I was talking about the Venn diagram earlier around networking, one of those is the personal growth, right? Um, and the, the level that you’re, you’re seeking to get to is Donald Miller, I think talks about this. It talks about the hero’s two journeys. Like you have a, you have a goal and it’s this hero’s two journeys is in every movie the person has a goal that’s monetary or achievement oriented or whatever it is. And so that’s one journey. And the other journey is they have to become better, You know, internally, they have to overcome internal challenges or whatever. Personally, they have to become the person, right? That’s their second journey. So that’s the hero’s two journeys. So, um. Anyway. So as far as a book goes, I think that’s a fantastic book, Unstoppable Self-confidence by Andrew Letham, and it will definitely affect your success positively. Let’s see, as far as you know, the other thing I would say is in networking, we can be impatient.

David Castro: And I think when you’re impatient or you’re too eager, then that’s a lot about me and what I want or what I need. And what you really want to do is just connect with the the human in front of you or on the other side of the the Internet, right on the if it’s virtual networking and be there to to be of service. If you’re talking with someone about something you’re trying to sell, then you should be in the mindset of I’m selling this to be of service like that, that you got to get that right first. But once you get that right, then the next thing is I don’t need to close them in the next conversations, you know, or in the next. If I am being of service to them and my product is going to serve them, you know, having that kind of atmosphere and approach, um, you’re, you’re not only will your success rate go up, your network will grow and therefore your volume of opportunities will grow and people will be bringing you in to to more opportunities and referring you and so forth. But that mindset part is, is an important part of, of networking and, and. Yeah, I think that’s that’s probably the, the most important, important part of networking is the human connection aspect, not your elevator pitch.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. Well said. Marvelous counsel. All right, let’s, uh. Let’s make sure that we leave our listeners with a way to tap into your work. Maybe reach out to you and have a more substantive, more substantive conversation with you so whatever you feel like is appropriate. But let’s give them some coordinates and let’s make sure that they have those social handles again. And then any other thing that you think is appropriate to share? I just I want people to be able to tap into your work and create a relationship with you and your team.

Speaker4: Man Thanks so much.

David Castro: Linkedin. I’m like the most active on LinkedIn, to be honest with you. David Castro you again look for Icebreaker. Icebreaker spelled Ike e b r e r. I always get a chuckle if I say that first two E’s no A-hole. So you.

Speaker4: I like it.

David Castro: And so. So you can find me at CEO, founder of Icebreaker on LinkedIn. And and then Instagram was the other one that I’m most active on and will be more active here on Instagram soon. But we’d love it if you reach out to us and follow us there. And that is again at Icebreaker Ice b e R, and there’s a bunch of icebreaker, you know, spilled all kinds of different ways in the app stores. But there’s except no substitutes.

Stone Payton: Well, David, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show, man. Thanks for sharing your insight and your perspective. Keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing here is so important. I don’t think I’m overstating it to characterize it as a movement. And we want to support your your efforts in any way we can. Man, It’s been a real pleasure.

David Castro: Oh, man. Same stone. Great to meet you. And thanks so much for this conversation. Really enjoyed.

Speaker4: It.

Stone Payton: You got it, man. This is Stone Payton for our guest today with Icebreaker, Mr. David Castro and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Tagged With: IceBrekr

BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another

August 18, 2023 by angishields

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BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another
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BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with BRX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, we talk a lot about branding positioning in our Pro Tips and throughout our work with our clients. But when you really boil it all down, why do you think people choose one brand over another?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Right. There’s obviously lots of reasons why people pick one brand over another. It’s how they want the people to see them. There’s a status element of it. But at the heart, I think, of choosing one brand over another is, which brand makes me feel good about myself that I’m part of this community? So, when you’re out there, especially in professional services, you want your brand in the community to be congruent with how your customers want to be seen. And at the heart of your customers, you have to remember that your customer is the hero of the brand story. As Donald Miller likes to say, that your story has to be all kind of customer focused and you are just there helping your customer get to the outcome they desire.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] And in our case, our customers like to have leads. They like to have business. They like to spotlight the people in their ecosystem. So, the more that we can help them do that, that makes them feel good about themselves, that makes them in connection to that, feel good about us because we’re helping them achieve that goal. So, remember, what does your client want to feel good about and then deliver that back to them? And don’t discount the fact that status is important. Don’t discount the fact that being respected in the community is important, the impact they’re having, the prestige that they would like to have. All of that is important components of them feeling good about themselves. And if you can deliver that, then they’re going to be customers for life.

Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter

August 17, 2023 by angishields

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In & On Business
Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter
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In this episode of In and On Business, Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter join host Andy Williams to discuss how both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success. 

Gloria-MatteiGloria Mattei was born in Puerto Rico in 1968. The last kid of five. Graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a degree in Business Administration, majoring in accounting. Worked for 16 years in the telecommunications industry performing several positions, domestically and internationally, starting with accounting and then transitioning to operations, due to her desire to get to know all the details of the business and understand how to run it.

She performed several functions within the Finance/accounting role, starting with auditing financial operations, new business initiatives financial support, and Wholesale Telecommunication operations, and her last role was as an Associate Director for M2M Operations for Verizon Wireless.

She was responsible for the implementation of the settlement system between Telecommunication carriers, when the first M2M system was established by Verizon Wireless, for Onstar-Telematics-General Motors back in 1999. From there she moved to manage a national team that supported major OEMs, such as Toyota, Mercedes Benz, etc. supporting the design, implementation, testing, and operational readiness of their telematics/M2M systems.

On a personal note, she is happily married, for 26 years, to her wonderful and supportive husband Sergio Pacheco. They have been blessed with two amazing kids, Adrian 21, and Zahra 18. Georgia has been their home since 1997, making Roswell their first home, and now in Milton for the last 12 years.

Gloria comes from a large family. Her grandfather was an entrepreneur farmer who owned and developed land for farming and cattle. Her mother had an entrepreneurial mindset as well and supported her family by establishing her own realty leasing business.

Her two older brothers owned a bookstore and a consulting business for many years. Gloria loved her corporate career and considered herself a conservative mindset. However, that owner/entrepreneur seed wanted to grow, and the inspiration to allow it to grow started with being a mom of two kids, one of them, diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Gloria’s entrepreneurship started when she met the Nothing Bundt Cakes (NbC) brand back in 2010, during one of her many business travels to California. She was introduced by a friend from Texas who knew the brand very well. She came home to tell Sergio, her husband, “ I think we found the business” and her husband said… “ Are you crazy? You don’t even cook!” Gloria had the vision to be the first NbC store in GA.

Her first thought after knowing the brand, was “There is nothing like this in GA”. One year later the first NbC store opened in Sandy Springs Ga, and Sergio got to taste the product, at his own XMAS housewarming party. At that point, he said, “You are on to something. Let’s start the research process”. What started as simple franchise research in January 2011 resulted in the opening of the 2nd NbC store in GA, store number 83 for the franchise system. They open their doors in December 2013. They will be celebrating their 10th anniversary on December 13, 2023.

In March 2022, Gloria and Sergio were approved to grow to their second bakery. However, destiny and serendipity had other plans. She had a strong relationship with the owner of the first store in GA (Sandy Springs) and that owner reached out to Gloria- as soon as she was approved for her second bakery- and said “I want to retire and I don’t want to sell to anyone but you.”

Long story short, Gloria and Sergio expanded their market by taking over the Sandy Springs bakery on June 2022 and are now proud owners of bakery #1 and # 2 in GA which proudly serves the GA 400 North Fulton Corridor.

She and her NbC family are proud to bring joy to our community and truly live the experience of how “cake changes everything”. Gloria opened her business with a big dream. That dream is her why. The dream of building a platform for her son, who is in the autistic community. He could either be able to perform in it or prove that he, and other kids like him, can function and have a role in the community.

Gloria is not a stranger when it comes to the community. She has used her business to integrate into the community and find different ways her cakes can bring joy and help at the same time, in all different ways possible. She says she is very proud and grateful for how this platform has allowed her son to grow, and how she and her team have been able to assist the community in many ways.

Gloria has seen this bakery grow not only as a platform for her son, but for her daughter, and many other individuals, including other special needs young adults in the community. Gloria has had the honor of being nominated and receiving several awards that have made her proud of all the hard work they have put into their business during the past 10 years.

Matthew-FosterMatthew Foster is a Tax Partner in Frazier & Deeter’s Tax Practice and Co-chair of the firm’s Manufacturing & Distribution Group.

With over 15 years of experience in public accounting, primarily at FD, he specializes in serving privately owned middle-market companies, including those backed by private equity. Matthew’s expertise lies in corporate structuring for tax strategies, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and ESOPs.

He assists clients operating in diverse industries such as manufacturing & distribution, technology, real estate and construction.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for In and On Business brought to you by the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber. For more information, go to Sandy Springs Perimeter chamber.com. Now here’s your host.

Andy Williams: Welcome to in it on business with the Sandy Springs Premier chamber where we explore the tension between day to day business operations and strategic growth. The in and on of business. I’m your host, Andy Williams. In each episode we explore the ideas surrounding working in your business, while also exploring the essential strategies for working on your business. Whether that’s carving out the visionary path or delivering a final product to streamlining processes, sustainability, whatever the case may be. Both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success. Our guest today first is Gloria Mattei. Correct, with the last name Mattei. Mattei, I knew I wasn’t going to get it right, even though I knew you corrected me already. Owner of not one, but two Nothing Bundt Cakes here in Georgia. And Matt Foster, tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. Welcome. We’re thrilled to have you guys here to share stories, wisdom of everything you all do to leverage your in and out of business within your own organizations to get us started, let’s start with our guests. Learn a little bit more about them. Gloria. Oddly enough, you began your career in accounting as well. So let’s hear how you made that transition from accountant to Nothing Bundt Cakes.

Gloria Mattei: For Nothing Bundt cakes, right. So I started, like you said, my career as an accountant. I was a CPA, and I started in the auditing world. I was auditor for the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico. And then I, I wanted to be in one of the big six companies, Right. Doing tax and auditing. And the opportunity came for telecommunications company that was looking for bilingual accountants. And so I had the opportunity to interview with them. And it was actually a company that was the legacy company of what today is Verizon. It was called GTE, and they were looking for bilingual individuals for their international operations. So that’s how I ended up in the United States, from Puerto Rico to the United States as an accountant, as an auditor in taxing and all operational for all their international operations and also domestic. And so from accounting, I was there for about five years in the accounting world doing new business initiatives and everything that was telecommunications based. And in all honesty, I loved accounting, but I got tired of the taxing and the closing and the closing months. Every you know, in one of the closing flash meetings that we had, they were talking about that we were losing revenue in one of the cell towers because we were losing records. And I’m like, Oh my God, I need to learn about the business. I want to know what the business is about, not just the numbers. And so I did a completely 360 degree and there was an opportunity on a new team that was being developed for telematics.

Gloria Mattei: So remember, OnStar and General Motors. So I jumped into that team completely away from accounting into building that network and doing the operations of that network. And so I was there for 16 plus years, and I was traveling all over the United States in different OEMs, etcetera. And then I was in San Diego doing one of my trips to one of the OEMs, and my friend invited me to a nothing bundt cakes. And I said, What’s that? And he said, I’ve never had nothing. Bundt cakes. It’s like, no. And so I said, I don’t know. I’ll go with you. I don’t like cake. And so I went, I saw the bakery and I was like, Oh my God, this is the cutest thing. It was in San Diego. And I tried a cake and I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So I asked him, Is there anything like this in Georgia? And he’s like, No, I know them from Dallas and they do super well. And I said, Oh, that’s very interesting. And then he brought home like a bunch of cakes with him. I was like, What are you doing? And he’s like, I need to bring this for gifts. Everybody loves them. So anyway, I came home and I told my husband, Hey, I think I found something else I want to do. And the reason is because in the back of our mind, I have two kids, but my oldest son is in the spectrum. He’s autistic. And so I knew that corporate world was going to be hard for sure.

Gloria Mattei: So for some reason we had in the back of our head, we got to do something on our own and see if it’s that platform for him. If it’s not a platform, at least we can prove if he can work with us that he has a value in society. And so that was the was in the back of my mind about, you know, stepping out of corporate world and doing this. That’s excellent. And so the first reaction was, you’re crazy. You don’t bake, you don’t cook, you don’t do anything right. And I said, that’s true. I don’t do anything. I always travel all over the place. So it just ended up being serendipity. And we just left the conversation there and I. Was actually moving to a new house. And my friend that introduced me said, Hey, somebody took your idea. And there’s a store opening in Sandy Springs. And I said, Oh God, I want it to be the first bakery in Georgia. I said, It’s okay. I can be the second one. And so he actually brought cakes to my housewarming party. And so when my husband saw the reaction on everybody’s face, he’s like, Is this the place you told me about? And he’s like, Yeah. So we lost the opportunity of number one, we got to be number two. And he said, It looks like you’re into something. And so we started researching and the reason why I ended up owning a Nothing Bundt Cakes.

Andy Williams: And here we are.

Gloria Mattei: And here we are. Now I got number one and number two bakeries in Georgia.

Andy Williams: Yes, that’s excellent. And over the course of time, you ended up acquiring Exactly first one. Yeah, that’s that’s such an amazing story to me, just on so many different levels. Just simply one being an accountant and then transitioning all the way and turning on a very different side of the brain.

Gloria Mattei: It’s completely different side of the brain. I remember that when I decided to study accounting and be a CPA, what I had in my head was what my first accounting professor at college told me. And it’s like, if you’re an accountant, you can own your own business, you can do whatever you want. And so that’s what actually inspired me to go into accounting. But never in my life thought I would own my own business. I was corporate hard core, so that was a completely out of nowhere.

Andy Williams: Excellent. Well, does that make you corporate hard core at Frazier, or is that where where we land? Give us give us some of your background, Matthew. This is a this is a tough opening act to follow here because mine is much more simple.

Matthew Foster: Um, yeah, I mean, I’m I’m a tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. I’ve been there for 15 years, so unlike you, I am from Atlanta. I’m from this area. Actually, I’m from Dunwoody, right where we’re sitting right now and have both of my degrees from Georgia State. And I, I remember the summer of oh eight very clearly. I left the school in June of oh eight and then or no, in May of oh eight. And I walked into the doors of Frazier and Dieter in June of oh eight, and I haven’t left since. So unlike you, I am a true walking accountant. It’s just the same as last year, every single year. But no, I’ve greatly enjoyed the the time I’ve spent here. And I mean, it’s it’s why I’ve decided to become a partner here and stay here. And it’s it’s working with individuals like yourself working with small business owners, usually family founder owned businesses and helping them to navigate the IRS, navigate the accounting side of the business because a lot of people don’t have your skill set that have started businesses and they’re very, very good at what they do. But struggle a little bit with with how to operate a business. So you’re a package that we don’t see very often in a client base.

Gloria Mattei: It’s hard when you when you build your own business and you really don’t have any background. Right. And still, as we’ll talk about it, it comes to a point in which even though you may have that background, you do need that extra help because you cannot focus on that if you really want to grow your business.

Matthew Foster: Yeah. So I mean, we’re we’re brought in a lot of the times to. Helped take over some of that for them, but also give them ideas about stuff they haven’t been thinking about, ideas about expanding or having them look 3 to 5 years out. And they’re so focused on the now, they’re so focused on next week or making payroll next week that they fail to really think about where do we want to take our business? How far do we want to take it? Or I mean, can we make it bigger? Can we expand or do we want to sell it at some point?

Andy Williams: Well, and I think you lead in with an interesting point there, is that there’s a lot more being asked of you as an accountant than than than what probably the general public looks at is we look at it very much as it’s the numbers and, you know, they’re their ledgers and this is the route that we go. But the reality is, is you’re asked to think outside the box for these people as well, too.

Matthew Foster: No, it’s it’s it’s funny. A lot of people when they when they hear that I do taxes, they think I’m just sitting there with a green visor and you’ve got. I’ve got my tent. Well, I do have my tent key and I love my ten key. But no, to your point, it’s. It’s not just looking at the traditional compliance, not just looking at the tax return, but learning about them, learning about what drives them and what can we do to help. Further what they want to do with their business. And it might not be anything that we can do, but it’s knowing people that we can bring in to help with what they want done.

Andy Williams: Know and spot on. And that’s that’s where it’s, you know, from an innovation standpoint, I think that’s I would say that’s probably where you’ve seen, you know, a lot of businesses accounting firms especially grow is you weren’t always supposed to necessarily learn and gain all that inside depth and knowledge. But the importance of that is, is what I think everyone sees now is there’s there’s a lot more that goes into into strategic thinking of how do we approach it now to transition to you from a strategic standpoint is how do you evolve and innovate and grow nothing. Bundt cakes like what does that look like, especially as a as a franchisee and, and moving a business forward, you’re really leaning probably hard in on corporate a little. But there also want you to go and innovate on your own.

Gloria Mattei: So it’s an interesting aspect, right? And again, I had the view of I got to do something on my own. I didn’t know what. Right. All I knew was accounting and corporate world. So I knew I needed some structure. So that’s the reason why a franchise kind of struck my attention. It’s like I’m a rule follower. I know how to follow a path, right? And so I need that structure. Once I have the structure, I can probably just, you know, venture from there. And it was it’s interesting, once you start your own business franchise or no franchise, you are mostly the beginning of the time just in the business constantly. I mean, labor is stuff you don’t have the right manpower, you don’t have the right team. You are just working in the business kind of. I mean, in my case, I had no experience in the food industry. I had no experience in baking, right? I just had to learn that in three weeks and then fly, Right. So, yes, they give you a structure, but you really have to come up and bring in all those skills. And for sure, being an accountant, being in a corporate world that really helped me.

Gloria Mattei: It was a huge learning curve. So it was a transition for me into venturing into the day to day operations, physically being there, not only implementing all the training that we learn, but also how do you coach your team, right? And so from an in working in the business perspective, that’s where the majority of the the action should go right? Coaching the team growing your team making sure that they can do their day to day operations so that you can transition out and then work on your business and figure out, okay, where do we go next? Right. And it’s been quite a journey from the first days of My God, we did 24 hours a day just trying to learn the operations in and out and then stepping out and saying, wait, we’re spending too much money in cost of goods, right? We have too much money in inventory. How do we lower the cost we need to make this profitable? Et cetera. Et cetera. And that’s when you step out and got to see all of that.

Andy Williams: Now, you know, staffing is a key buzzword these days, and I’m sure you all are in in different situations because I’m sure you have part time staffing that you also have, let alone full time your primarily full time at at Fraser and Dieter. But but I would suspect that that all of that still is it’s the same conversation that you’re having of how do you how are you finding these new accountants and bringing them on board? How are you finding this part time staff to fall in love with a business and want to be there, you know, day in and day out. So, you know, from a you know, I love the idea of coaching. You know, my background is in sports and sports is my passion. So when I look at something in coaching somebody, I look at, you know, how do you coach an athlete or how do you, you know, grow them from there? I think, you know, I also look at it in the business world, it works the same way. So looking at you first, first map, you know, from a coaching growing, you know, being in the business a little bit more is how do you what do you do, you know, to coach and grow your team and ensure, you know, their own success and peace of mind?

Matthew Foster: I mean, this is a huge thing that we’re dealing with right now where. We constantly are asking our staff, I mean, what can we what what is lacking? What what can we do better? And one of the things is training and coaching and developing developing is a big key word inside public accounting and probably in other career paths. But it’s in the business space. It’s we need to develop these people into becoming the next leaders of the organization into the next level. And. Covid has changed that up quite a bit for us. We did start noticing I mean, I kind of liken it back to I have two small kids and both of them started elementary school during Covid and there is definitely this Covid lag to their to their learning. We’re starting to overcome it in business. We’re starting to overcome the Covid lag as well, because when everybody left the office and we went full remote for I mean, about a year and even now we’re a hybrid environment. But that year away from our staff, our seniors, sitting outside in bullpens and not hearing the conversations between partners, between managers and just the. The overhearing highly technical conversations happening. Nobody realized how valuable just the hearing it being talked about in the open in the office was until we didn’t have the office to talk about it. So it’s it’s overcoming and learning how to now work in a hybrid environment and still impart that knowledge. This past year we did our first firmwide where we we brought everybody in to do a week long of training where you could network and not only learn technical aspects, but soft skills, leadership, you know, how to work around, you know, looking at people’s shortcomings. But they’re not shortcomings. It’s it’s, it’s strengths that are hidden and how to identify those, but also work around a big push in our firm and I think in corporate America in general is this push around mental health and being more cognizant of that in the workplace.

Andy Williams: Absolutely. I think, you know, that’s something you know, we’ve all had to check that a good bit here over the past year, year and a half. You bringing up having young kids at home. You know, some of the things even, you know, for us with my wife working upstairs, me working downstairs and kids working in the middle, you know, we kind of let things slide of, you know, who are you online with? What are you talking to? Who are you? Because we knew they needed that exchange and that interaction. And, you know, I think it just it proves your point of being back in the office matters, you know, and having that interpersonal communication is extremely important, you know, from a knowledge standpoint, but also from a just a mental health standpoint, just to sit down and have a conversation with somebody and not not necessarily about work, but just to turn it all off a little bit and take care of yourself.

Matthew Foster: Yeah, there’s a lot lost in translation when you’re over teams or over Zoom that I work, I work in the office as much as possible. I like to work hands on with with the people that are working on my clients and. A lot of times there might be some sarcasm that’s thrown around and it comes across much easier in person than it does over Zoom or over email. So. Yeah. Bringing up development. Bringing up coaching. When you talked about what’s the difference between on and in. So I was I was thinking about this over the weekend and over the past couple of days and. When I look at working, I get the two confused.

Andy Williams: I’m with you. There’s a lot in both on.

Matthew Foster: The end here. It boils down to what’s the core values of your business?

Speaker5: Absolutely.

Matthew Foster: And for Frazier and Deeter, it’s we call it peak. So it’s it’s people entrepreneurial, accessible and quality. And we live on those core values. So for our people, I mean, it’s one of our things is we greatly invest in our people and buy in turn, we want them to invest in our clients. So by working in your business on your people, it should in turn. Or is it the other way around? I think you’re right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. It in turn it it works on your on your business. At the same time, by focusing on the quality that you’re providing to your clients.

Andy Williams: No, I love that. And I was going to say your experience because, again, you’re you’re dealing with its younger group. Yeah.

Gloria Mattei: Completely different experience. So it was definitely quite an adventure in a different way, right? So I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to close doors because I was not considered a restaurant, so I wasn’t serving people. I don’t have chairs and tables, etcetera. So I was allowed to stay open. But then I was impacted by the fear of the employees I was impacted by. I mean, we all were like, okay, so what are we going to do? We, you know, we had big orders, we corporate orders that were shut down immediately. Okay, So how do we pull back? And, you know, you’ve got to bring down all of the production efforts, etcetera, and that’s the working on the business. And then working in the business was, okay, so how do I provide some safety to the team members that I have in here? Because I got to make sure that they’re safe, right? And and my team, you continue the coaching aspect. I got lucky too, because I have a mix. I have a mix of younger people and I have a mix of adults that some of them are maybe retired moms that are just doing something that they like to do and they don’t need the income. So I was really lucky because they were like, We’re good. We’re just going to go home and wait for this to pass. And some of the kids were also my mom and my dad doesn’t want me to work, but then I had the other ones and kind of mixing into the mental health. I had other ones that were like, If I stay in my house, I will go crazy. I cannot do this. I have to be active. I cannot. I get depressed. It’s like, Well, I’ll provide you a safe environment. We’ll put everything in place that we need to put. But I mean, we got to make things happen, right? And it’s that coaching of in good days you have and where is abundance and when there’s sales, this is how you operate, but there’s a lot of coaching. On when that’s not the case. How do you operate? Right?

Andy Williams: I know. And I think that’s great. I think, you know, the piece that that really stuck out. And you know, Matt, you had said, you know, strengths that are hidden. You know, to me, like that was a like I wrote that down as like, that’s something that’s a an interesting viewpoint to look at because too often, you know, if somebody is not successful or they’re not hitting marks or doing what they need to do, you know, you you almost look at that as a as a downfall for them and a failure. And but at the end of the day, it’s not. It’s how do we how do we coach them up? How do we build them up, how do we make that? And it could.

Matthew Foster: Be even going further. I mean, they might not be hitting the marks in the job that they’re doing, but is there somewhere else in the organization that they their skill set would be better, valuable?

Speaker5: Yeah, absolutely right.

Matthew Foster: So I mean, we have a couple people that I’ve seen go from our tax department to operations to marketing and and it’s. They do a good job. But it wasn’t you could tell it wasn’t what they were built to do. And so it was you know, if you look at it just in the lens of their their tax person, of course they’re going to fail. If you take a step back and say, well, what skill sets are they? Are they showing and is there somewhere else in the organization that would be a better fit? And we try to move people around as best as possible.

Gloria Mattei: Yeah, I think that applies to to any business, any industry. I think it’s the flexibility, but it also goes with the developing mindset, right? It’s not just about looking at what is on the outside. You apply for this job and this is what you’re going to do. It’s about you may not be hitting the mark here, but let me find where you can be and giving them that opportunity. And I think that happens in any industry. Corporate, of course I’ve seen it. But even even in this and that has been one of my biggest eye openers. I mean, I had I mean, my favorite story. I had an individual that applied for a job and he actually applied. I divide the bakery between the back of the house in front of the house, and he thought he wouldn’t the back of the house job. And we knew he had special needs. And so that’s close and dear to my heart. And of course, I offer him a job. And it was interesting. He really didn’t have the motor skills to be able to function in the back of the house. But the personality that that individual had was amazing. And the way that he talked to people and the way that he connected. I mean, going back to the values, one of our values is creating and genuine connections. So it’s much more than cake, right? It’s much more than the best product. You have to create that genuine connection with the guests that you’re serving. He was fantastic. As soon as we moved him to the front of the house, I mean, he could talk a storm and he could create those connections and he could say, and it was amazing. Nowadays he evolved. He found a job with other persons because we were able to give them the opportunity and find that spot. And he’s now apparently not a paralegal, an assistant for special needs kids in a school, which is like fantastic.

Andy Williams: Yes. And that’s great. And I think, you know, it kind of leads a little bit into the on side of things, you know, and that passion that goes into, you know, finding that passion for somebody and what that means and, you know, across your businesses, you know, having that passion or innovation or opportunity to work on your business and grow it is is always interesting. And I think, you know, the accounting profession, you know, we had spoken before is like, how do you, you know, students, new hires, how do you how do you engage someone to go like and both of you actually can answer this since, you know, with a background in accounting is, you know, how do you turn somebody’s brain on to to go like, this is where I want to be, You know, how do you how do you get them to find that passion of, you know, you’re fighting the marketers of the world, you know, with, hey, we have fun and we go out and we entertain and we do this, but at the end of the day, you all are doing a lot of those same things and you’re engaging in the same way. So how do you how do you get people to see that accounting profession as this this place that’s evolved and grown to be be more?

Matthew Foster: So it’s interesting you bring that up. I’ve been in I’ve been talking with the head of the School of Accountancy at Georgia State, and they’re having this issue right now where there’s not big enrollment into account the accounting program anymore. And it’s it is we’re seeing it in the profession. I mean, we’re seeing it in the industry that we’re seeing less students coming out of the school system. And so we’re having a shortage of first years coming into the profession. And what is the issue here? I mean, that’s the thing. And it boils down to or this is my take on it. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I’ve been thinking for a while is accounting in general. I mean, it goes back to what do most people think about when they think of accounting? They think of, you know, in a suit and a tie. Very long hours, never see light, always behind a computer or now always behind a computer, but very boring. I mean, dealing with the IRS, Who wants to deal with the IRS? Nobody wants to. I don’t even want to. But very boring career. Whereas. I mean, it’s there are boring times. I think anything that you do, there are boring times if you’ve done it for long enough. But. It’s also a different we have a new generation of leaders in the accounting space that we need to show the students.

Matthew Foster: We need to show younger individuals out there that the days of, you know, grinding, grinding, grinding are I mean, it’s starting to slow down. I mean, it’s still there. There’s busy times. There’s slower times. But we’re not just people in suits and ties. I mean, we all have personalities. We all have lives outside of of accounting. And we we it’s not just sitting down, grinding for ten hours a day and then going home and doing it all over again the next day. It is working very closely with business owners, getting to know them on a personal level so that we can help them with other needs, not just filling out their tax forms. But it’s it’s trying to get people to see because a lot of the older professionals in the in this industry where the. The long hours and the never seeing their kids baseball games or something along that as a as a badge of honor, which is not what anybody wants to hear anymore. And in fact, I don’t like I am very clear with my team. I’m like, Hey, my girls have cheerleading tonight. I’m going to see them cheer. Like if you have kids that are doing something, we’re doing this for our family. But why give up seeing your family grow up just to do this?

Andy Williams: No, that’s and I love that. I know. I, you know, made it a point. And, you know, my father was in sales, but he was also able to be home a lot of afternoons when I still got home. And and that’s definitely rubbed off on me of wanting to make sure I was around and being around and, you know, so I think that’s extremely important. And I think it’s important for all businesses, not just it.

Gloria Mattei: Is, but I think it’s what you just said, right? It’s about them understanding what is the value of what they’re bringing to the community in a way. Right. Because it’s like you said, accountants are not just about the numbers and the taxes and just crunching the numbers from, what, February through April and if you’re in corporate the different time frame. But it’s about helping that business owner finding an exit strategy or where do you get the funds to do that growth that you need. And those and I think those are exciting times, but it’s a misconception. I agree. Yeah. I mean, because my first indication when I told my kids my story and I was an accountant, you were one of those boring people that. Okay, you know, but but it’s much more than that. No, absolutely. But I think it’s in industry, of course. I mean, the majority of the my younger adults, of course, they’re coming just to do a summer job or they’re coming to do an after school job, etcetera. But I mean, the is much more than that is they can get a lot more than just, you know, learning how to do a pose or whatever.

Gloria Mattei: The majority of my kids that come in and it’s actually very rewarding. They come, they come super shy. They barely answer the questions in the interview. And then when you put them in front of the guest and they start talking and I mean, you see them progress and how and how they grow into college and you and you see them coming back and asking for references and it’s like, Hey, would you tell them what I did at the bakery and the connections that I made? And I went with you and I talked to people because those are skills that they are going to need wherever they go, right? And when I bring people into the bakery that I see a potential is if you stay with us, you can do a growth and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to be a bakery. I mean, the tax I mean, the skills that you’re going to learn are going to work with you wherever you go. Right?

Andy Williams: Well, and I think I look at it as they really they really become the face of the business. It’s not, you know, it’s these, you know, young children looking for part time jobs that are you know, they become the face of of the business. So you have to kind of share all of that knowledge information and get them to a point to to be comfortable in their skin and show that compassion.

Gloria Mattei: It all goes to the coaching and the developing right. And I think you need to be honest with them. This is and it’s also about the values, right? I don’t think if you have any values in your business, then it’s very hard to to communicate this and get this in their heads. But for us is, you know, servant’s heart. I mean, that’s what you’re here for, to serve the community in one way or the other. Spirit of a champion. Things are going to get hard and it doesn’t matter the industry again. Right. And so it’s that spirit of a champion. You’ve got to get through it. And it will be it will be fine. You will get through the other end. Right. And and genuine connections. One of the many things again, I was in corporate world and I was in the crunching numbers all the time. And one of the things that I never did was be out in the community and outreach at the community. I, you know, yes, we had the the the contributions to, you know, donations that you did that were matching by the company and all of that. But being out there in the community was not something that I did a lot in corporate world. And that was one of my biggest rewards as I stepped out. Because, I mean, who moves you as a business owner? The community.

Speaker5: Community. Yeah.

Andy Williams: Yeah, no, for sure. One last kind of question. We, you know, I don’t want to keep keep us all here for the afternoon because we could go round and round and chat even further. But as. You know, industry leaders in your respective spaces. What advice would you give to others as to, you know, the how do you balance, you know, not just work life, but even, you know, the in and on business or, you know, balance, you know, all of this moving forward. What’s the what’s something, you know, a little piece that that we could share of how do you balance, you know, working in an on business specifically, but even more broadly, because we’ve hit it a number of times, how do you how do you balance all of it, life work, you know, live, work, play, You know, how do you how do you balance all of that? What’s the what’s that piece of advice you’d give somebody, somebody young that’s that’s listening to us today.

Gloria Mattei: So so I go back to I think you have to step back sometimes and and have a vision of what you’re doing. In my case, it’s super easy to go in because I’m a control freak and I want to make sure that everything is perfect and I’m a perfectionist. But in my case, it’s really hard to when I go in the bakery, I just want to have hands on, right? But I have to be very conscious and have the vision of stepping back saying, Wait a second, I am not helping them in any way. I’m not developing them if I do this right. And I think it’s a progressive, it’s a journey. In my case, as a small business owner, you are maybe 90% in at the beginning of your years and then you have to progress eventually to be more, I would say 80, 90 and 10 or 20 in. Right. But it’s it’s definitely the vision of for me is stepping back and I’m like, okay, how am I going to develop them? They are the ones that are going to carry the torch either in my bakery or somewhere else. And if I do, then then I’m not developing them. And I think that’s the key in my case for me is stepping back. Wait a second, I that’s not where I need to be. I need to be developing them so that they go to their next level.

Andy Williams: That’s great. That’s great.

Matthew Foster: Matt Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think it’s the on comes before the end. I agree. I mean the on it boils down to I said it earlier that I mean it has to be your core values. You have to decide what are the core values of your business, make sure that your team knows that and they believe in those core values also, because if they don’t believe it and they don’t show it, then the end is not going to it doesn’t matter. So, I mean, they really feed off of each other, but I mean, the whole work life, the whole balance of the whole, all of it, that’s a tough one. I mean, it it takes years to practice to learn. I was telling my girls the other day, it’s like my my youngest, it’s, you know, sometimes something’s hard. You have to practice at it before it becomes easy. And when it comes to balancing this and I mean, I’ve been in this in public accounting now for 15 years. You have to know your you have to set your own limits. You have to set what is important to you and what is your in end result that you want to achieve and set that firm and work towards that. But don’t try to work past it. Know when to stop. Otherwise, if you don’t, then you are going to just 100% dive into work and life is just going to leave. And I mean, I learned it a hard way several years ago, but over the past several years, I found that I found what I wanted to achieve, and I’ve just been working towards that. And it has changed dramatically the balancing act that I’ve been doing.

Andy Williams: That’s great. You know what I love said just to kind of wrap this this up in a little bit of a bow here for all of us, what I what I took most out of this was the on the on before the end. I love that. You know, I think that was great. Like it’s such a unique perspective to look at it, you know, in regards to that fashion. And you know, and, you know, the key words and phrases and things that I heard throughout, like passion really is what it boils down to. Just a, you know, a passion for not just, you know, your business, but for all those involved. You know, I love the story of the young gentleman who just started out in the back and then works, as you know, works his way to the front because he really could connect and bring it to life a little bit. So it’s it, you know, is great to hear from both of you all. You know, that’s going to bring us to a close here today on in and on business. I want to thank both of you all for being a part of the Sandy Springs Chamber. We’re grateful for you all and your businesses and our community. You know, we appreciate your experiences and expertise. I want to thank the team at Business RadioX for hosting us and taking care of us here today and all of our partners and their continued support. I hope you enjoyed your time with us and we look to see you next month.

 

Tagged With: Frazier Deeter, Nothing Bundt Cakes

The Wrap Podcast | Episode 062 | Managing Risk and Navigating Challenges for Financial Institutions | Warren Averett

August 17, 2023 by angishields

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The Wrap
The Wrap Podcast | Episode 062 | Managing Risk and Navigating Challenges for Financial Institutions | Warren Averett
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We’re continuing our Industry Podcast Series with a dive into the current opportunities and challenges specific to financial institutions. The Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) Accounting Standard ushered in a new era for financial institutions that they are still grappling with, but the industry’s recent focus has shifted towards discussions about liquidity after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and others.

Join our financial industry experts Jeff Burleson, CPA, and Josh Bowen, CPA, CGMA, CAMS, CITP, as they discuss the evolving landscape for financial institutions and the continued influence of CECL, as well as strategies for driving stability, growth and adaptability in the face of change.

Special Guest: Justin Headley, CISSP, CISA, CDPSE, CRISC, member of the firm’s Risk Advisory & Assurance Services Group

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • Discussion surrounding CECL and its implementation
  • How the 2023 failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank led to shifts in liquidity management
  • Information about how economic uncertainty has led to the tightening of lending practices
  • The importance of third-party risk management within a financial institution’s cybersecurity policy
  • Strategies to help financial institutions manage staffing levels

Resources for additional information:

  • Blog: Don’t Turn Your Back on CECL
  • Blog: Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) Standard Update: Best Practices for Implementation
  • Blog: What is Enterprise Risk Management?
  • Blog: The Biggest Cyber Risks for Your Company and How to Manage Them
  • Previous Podcast Episode: Employee Retention and Recruiting in Today’s Competitive Environment
  • Event Invitations: Subscribe to receive invitations to future Bank and Credit Union Roundtables.
TRANSCRIPT

Commentators (0:02): You’re listening to The Wrap, a Warren Averett podcast for businesses designed to help you access vital business information and trends when you need it. So, you can listen, learn, and then get on with your day. Now, let’s get down to business.

Paul Perry (0:16): Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Wrap, a Warren Averett podcast. We’re happy to have you with us here for the next episode. Today, we’re going to be talking to some of the financial institution experts within our firm about some of the opportunities and challenges that they’re seeing when they talk to their clients. We are happy to have some of our own experts here with us, but also with us is a new co-host for our podcast: Jessica Juliano out of our Birmingham office and in our Staffing and Recruiting Division. Jessica, welcome to The Wrap, and I’m glad to have you as a co-host.

Jessica Juliano (0:53): Absolutely. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Paul. I’ve been with the firm almost 11 years now, which is kind of hard to believe. But yeah, I started in audit and decided to retire and recruit CPAs instead.

Paul Perry (1:10): We’re glad to have you with us today.

Jessica Juliano (1:12): Happy to be here. We’ve got Jeff Burleson, out of our Birmingham office, and we have Joshua Bowen from our Montgomery office here today. Welcome, gentlemen.

Jeff Burleson (1:23): Glad to be here on the podcast. So, I worked in CPA practice and then also in a family business, but I worked 14 years with an international accounting firm. In between, I worked in a family business. I’ve been at Warren Averett since 2010, and the whole time when I was with a public accounting firm and currently, I’ve been in the Financial Services practice, and I’m glad to be part of the podcast.

Joshua Bowen (1:49): Yes, so I’m in the Financial Services group as well and started with the firm back in 2005. straight out of Troy. My wife and I moved to Birmingham. That’s where it all began. I did go to work at a couple other firms in the process. But back in 2017, I had the opportunity to come back to Warren Averett and move back home closer to family. We jumped on that opportunity, and it’s been a blast ever since. So, here we are today.

Paul Perry (2:21): We are happy to have both of y’all with us today and look forward to this discussion. Let’s jump right in. Jeff and Josh, you both deal strictly with financial institutions, so you’re inside their offices and talking to them all the time. What challenges and opportunities are organizations in this industry facing? We know it’s a much more regulated industry than most, and there’s probably a lot of very unique challenges. Can you touch on some of those and what you’re seeing, Jeff?

Jeff Burleson (2:52): Yeah, sure. Probably one of the biggest changes in the financial institutions practice—I mean, it applies to various entities—but it is what we call CECL, which is the Current Expected Credit Loss. It changed how financial institutions accounted for the allowance for loan loss, and now it’s an allowance for credit loss. For public companies, it was adopted several years or a handful of years ago. For calendar year companies (12/31), they adopted it as of January 1, 2023. It actually changed the accounting from an incurred model to an expected model. FASB issued this at the time based on the recession in 2008 and 2009, and it’s generally applicable to loans and held to maturity securities. For instance, like loans held for sale—that’s not applicable to those because they were accounted for differently—anyway, for loans and held to maturity securities. One of the items that is not in the new standard is the OTTI (Other Than Temporary Impairment) on available for sale securities. That went away.

Another item that went away and is not in the current standard is the termination of impairment. There’s different ways and certain situations where that may be considered but generally speaking, impairment is not included in the current standard. Also, the intent in the standard was to not have an unallocated portion. In the incurred model, you know, you have your quantitative and then your qualitative amounts, but then there could also be an unallocated amount. But the intent was to not have an unallocated amount. However, if you look in the OCC handbook from April 2021, it is included in there. And also, currently on the call reports, there is an unallocated component that’s included in the allowance. We were at a recent conference—Josh, you want to elaborate on this a little bit?

Joshua Bowen (5:05): Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jeff. So, it seemed like every conference we went to last year, there was always discussions of M&A. It seemed to be the hot topic, and it has been for a while. But this year, we’re seeing a change in what we’re hearing at conferences, and it started at the beginning of the year. We thought that we were going to have a pretty simplistic year like—adopting CECL? That’s probably going to be the most complex, but then we had a little bank failure, and then another little bank failure. So, there were some issues as it comes into this topic of liquidity. So, Jeff, do you want to start us off on talking a little bit about Silicon Valley Bank?

Jeff Burleson (5:46): Sure. In March of this year—as many of you know that have listened to the podcast, especially on the financial institution side, you’re pretty familiar with Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank and what occurred—but basically starting back from Silicon Valley Bank, there was a run-on deposits. There were various causes of this. One of the things that has been looked at since then is: okay, who’s to blame for this? Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Even if you’ve listened to some of the testimony with the regulators, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, they’ve accepted some of the responsibility for it, but management was responsible for it. It really stemmed from a mismatch on the balance sheet and managing that balance sheet with the change in the interest rates. As many of you know, as interest rates increase, the value goes down. It has an inverse relationship. If you have available for sale securities, that change is running through equity and not through the income statement. So that does effect a large unrealized loss position, and that’s what was recurring. When this occurred in March of this year (2023), one of the things that we did on our audits that were ongoing at the time—since then, we’ve actually incorporated different audit procedures—is to put some effort towards this and the uninsured/insured deposits and how the financial institutions are carrying those deposits.

Commentators (7:33): Want to receive a monthly newsletter with Wrap topics? Head on over to https://warrenaverett.com/thewrap and subscribe to our email list to have it delivered right to your inbox. Now, back to the show.

Joshua Bowen (7:45): Yeah, so watching this unfold, we started getting a slew of calls. Jeff, we were talking multiple times a day, and we were just trying to digest all of the information as we were receiving it. This actually spread to our non-banking clients within the firm, because obviously if you’re holding cash in your financial institution—you have to question: am I about to lose my money? We were assisting other CPAs and advisors throughout the firm on their questions as they were receiving them from other clients. Luckily, it was very targeted. Obviously, there are some differences in how those banks operated and how most community financial institutions are operated. Fortunately, I think what we’ve seen—and it still holds true today—is that our financial institutions are sound, and they’re stable. We’re hearing that from the top regulators down. As we perform our procedures—whether that be on the external audit side or internal audit procedures—over asset liability management, interest rate risk and liquidity procedures, we’re seeing that that our banks are definitely well positioned. We’re very thankful for that. A few things to think about though. Obviously, as we mentioned earlier, we saw this shift where it seems like liquidity is the number one topic and rightly so. These were very significant failures in our banking system. It’s been a while. Jeff, during the downturn during the great recession, we were used to sitting back on Friday afternoon and waiting on the email from the regulators to say what banks failed, right? It was just every single Friday, it seemed like we were getting a listing. It’s been a while. So, we’ve had one here, one there and then all of a sudden, we get these very large institutions. Then, First Republic comes along not long after that, so it seems like this is systemic throughout the financial industry.

Jessica Juliano (9:56): How do the complexities and the challenges that both you and Jeff have brought to the attention of this audience—how have those impacted or will impact the overall business strategy for these institutions?

Jeff Burleson (10:14): Okay, Jessica. I think with CECL, is how it was adopted and how it affects the financial statements. Actually, when it was adopted, recording the effect of it—whether it’s a hit or a pickup to the allowance, it actually goes through equity. From that point forward, it goes through the income statement. Also, if it’s a pretty significant entry to equity, the financial institution can apply a transition method over a three-year period. But, as mentioned earlier, we had several financial institutions where it was no effect. Naturally, they would not apply any transition method because there would be nothing to apply. With regards to the liquidity crisis and how that’s going to affect banks? As we had mentioned, at a conference that we were at, the thought was—like on the CAMELS ratings, a rating that the banks get—the main focus going forward (or at least in the near term) is going to be on liquidity and management.

Paul Perry (11:25): That’s it. That’s interesting. Jeff, Josh, I want to go back to where you were talking about liquidity. I’m assuming the banks are feeling like there’s a concern with liquidity. I think you’ve talked about it, but we’ve been seeing a lot of activity from the feds with rates. I assume, as those go together, so can you unpack how that changes the business strategy for banks?

Joshua Bowen (11:49): Yeah, thanks, Paul. So, you know, for most of our financial institutions, we’re seeing that they’re still pretty strong from a liquidity standing. No major concerns there, although the regulatory concerns are heightened. We’ve seen a new financial institution letter is interagency that just recently came out. It’s requiring some changes to the contingency funding plan, and so forth. It’s something that all financial institutions should review. But because of the economic uncertainty, we’ve got large unrealized losses that are tied to the balance sheet and a lot of investments that can’t—well, you could sell them, but you probably don’t want to lock in those losses—coupled with the potential for regulators wanting more on-balance liquidity. It can reduce some of that future availability and current availability of liquidity that banks may be willing to put out, which could in turn reduce the amount of loans that they may be willing to originate. What we are seeing is that when you add that along with the potential uncertainty in the economy, we’re seeing financial institutions be a little bit choosier on the loans that they’re originating. Not all are that way, but every financial institution has their own strategy when it comes to managing their assets on their balance sheet. We are seeing some of those pressures come out that business owners and consumers may start to feel. Actually, something that the Federal Reserve, I think, are relying on to some degree, as they’ve begun to spread out how quickly or how often they increase rates. Obviously, as financial institutions are not lending as much, then that puts a little bit more pressure on the spending in the economy as well.

Jessica Juliano (13:49): I think it would be interesting to take a little sidestep here. Guys, we’ve talked about pressure. Staffing is a very hot topic as well, and we’ve talked a lot about regulations and things. But for these institutions, what would you say is going to be the biggest thing that they’re going to be focusing on? Because the June jobs report came out, and it was not what we expected but what we expected all at the same time. What are your thoughts on the staffing climate for this industry?

Joshua Bowen (14:26): Yeah. We’re seeing, like in so many other things, a trickledown effect. As COVID-19 hit our financial institutions, we started seeing a lot of the big banks start putting minimum wage minimums out there that are pretty tough for some of our community financial institutions. So, we’re seeing more and more pressure, obviously, as wages continue to go up. There’s a requirement there. We couple that with the fact that a lot of our financial institutions are not in Birmingham, Atlanta or Tampa, so the labor pool for those areas can be a little bit tougher to fill certain positions. So, we are seeing where financial institutions are getting more creative. Back in the day where you may have someone in operations—whether it be a loan officer or a deposit officer—you may be sitting right in the main bank headquarters. Now, some are thinking, “Well, we have a branch in Huntsville, or we have a branch in this city. So, can we hire in a city that has more talent in that population, and let them sit there or even let them just work remotely in general?”

Jessica Juliano (15:44): That’s right, and we are seeing a compromise. You know, obviously, COVID—there’s a significant portion of industries that outside of those industries that just couldn’t do business without their people being physically on site, we’ve come to terms that hybrid is the compromise. We’re seeing a lot of that. As long as companies and these institutions can access and have the technology to reach the talent, they’ll be successful, but it is cooling off significantly. We’ll see. I don’t know what other challenges you guys are going to anticipate.

Jeff Burleson (16:24): Hey, Jessica, I think another thing is looking at the talent pool. If you’re looking at people that have, you know, maybe they were retired or maybe displaced or whatever. You know, late 50s and early 60s. They’re great talent, but they don’t want to work full time. That’s a great talent pool to pick from. Generally speaking, you know, they’ve had their career, and they’re really not wanting to climb the corporate ladder. There’s not that pressure or drama internally, but that’s a talent pool that we’re seeing being looked at pretty significantly now.

Paul Perry (17:01): Gentlemen, I know that there’s another topic that always comes up when we talk about the challenges that industries face, specifically financial institutions. That’s technology and security. I know that y’all can answer the question, but I wanted to bring in another colleague of ours, Justin Headley, who is with our Risk Advisory and Assurance Group within the firm. Justin, welcome. Welcome to the podcast, we’re bringing you in to talk about financial institutions. When you’re out there talking to those institutions, what are you hearing from a technology perspective? What are the examiners focusing on? What are those hot, quick topics from a security perspective that people need to be focused on? Again, welcome to the podcast.

Justin Headley (17:46): Thank you for having me. This is a very interesting topic for financial institutions. While the FIC has guidance and their information security handbooks on what best practices should be in place, we do see that examiners and regulators have focus areas that they key in on and have a higher focus on. We also hear a lot of these things when we host our banking and our credit union roundtables for clients, and we see what they’ve been through and experience. There are two things I want to briefly mention, and these are hot topics that we’re seeing. The first one is third-party risk management. This is not necessarily something that’s new for financial institutions, but it’s an area we continue to see increased scrutiny on. I think the reason is because we’re continuing to see large scale, third-party data breaches almost every day. The very recent MOVEit breach that we’ve all been seeing and hearing about has been very interesting. We’ve seen millions of customer records that have been exposed already, and many more companies are finding out, “Hey, I’ve been impacted here.” This has included a lot of banks and credit unions that are dealing with this. Making sure that you have a well-functioning third-party risk management program that you’re continually assessing is key.

It is critical to think about that. You can outsource that service to a third party. But that responsibility is going to rest squarely with you. If you experience a breach, as a result of a third-party issue, your customers are going to look at you. They’re not going to look at that third-party. That responsibility, unfortunately, sort of lives with you. Your internal risk is always changing and so are your third parties. Staying on top of that is essential.

The second area I want to cover briefly is incident response. This is no surprise, but we’ve seen incident response at financial institutions be sort of an afterthought and something that gets baked into your disaster recovery and your business continuity plans. Obviously since data breaches are so mainstream, you have to make sure you have a completely separate incident response plan that goes into detail on how you’re going to respond to incidents. Along those lines, you have to make sure that you are testing that incident response plan regularly. Just like how you would traditionally test your business continuity plans: prepare a tabletop exercise, get the leaders of the organization around the table and walk out how would you respond to a ransomware scenario, for example. Make sure you’ve got your ducks in a row. Recently along the lines with incident response, we’ve seen both the FDIC and the NCUA provide guidance and rules on how you are to notify and respond to an incident. Making sure that you have a good well-functioning incident response program is key. Those are just two areas that I’d say to be on the lookout for. But those are two things that you need to make sure you’ve got good controls to cover those risks.

Paul Perry (20:39): Justin, thank you for calling in and giving us some of those insights on cybersecurity as it relates to financial institutions. We appreciate your time today.

Justin Headley (20:46): Thanks for having me, guys.

Jessica Juliano (20:47): Thank you so much, Justin. You know, we brought several different topics. I’d be interested, Jeff, Josh, how should the business leaders in this industry respond to these various dynamics to position themselves and their organizations to succeed in these various environments? What do they need to do for the immediate future?

Jeff Burleson (21:12): For the immediate future, it’s probably just continued focus on credit management and liquidity management. I mean, that’s what they do anyway, but just continued focus on that. Josh can elaborate on this, but with regards to liquidity management being such a big topic now…It’s making sure that the board or the audit committee is also knowledgeable and taking responsibility for that.

Joshua Bowen (21:38): Yeah, I completely agree. At the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that financial institutions and bankers are managers of risk, right? This is what they do every single day as they continue to expand their business strategies. For most of our financial institutions, we’re seeing that they’re in great shape. They’re not like the Silicon Valley, and they’re not running their financial institutions in very high-risk markets and customer bases. So, I think focusing on that and paying attention to risk within their portfolios, and just keep doing what they’ve been doing. Many of these financial institutions have been through World War I, World War II. They’ve seen so much, they’ve thrived, and they’ve continued to be resilient, regardless of what the economy has thrown at them. So just keep doing what you do best.

Paul Perry (22:37): Right. Good information. Gentlemen, here on The Wrap, we’d like to wrap it up in 60 seconds or less. Josh, I realize that’s going to be very difficult for you. But as we end this discussion around financial institutions, what is that one thing you want the listeners to leave with? Whether it’s something you’ve already said, maybe it’s a summary of some of the things or maybe some ideas that didn’t get into the podcast? What are those things that you want to leave our listeners with?

Jeff Burleson (23:09): Yeah, I think from my perspective, it would be that the adoption of CECL was not as big of a deal as everyone thought it was going to be several years ago. However, as the interest rates are changing credit risk, that’s going to have to be focused on. We’re probably going to see allowances increasing. You know, just the topic of the day: liquidity management. Just really focus on that. Josh?

Joshua Bowen (23:37): Yeah, I agree. For the first time in a long time, financial institutions had been under a lot of margin compression, because rates have been almost zero for a long time. Now, rates are higher, but there’s not as much margin compression there. At the end of the day, we have all these other ancillary issues. I think, for the most part that the financial institutions that we work with, and most financial institutions out there, are doing a great job. I think now’s a good time to—although we look at Silicon Valley and many other things going on, and we say, “Oh, they’re not like us.” This is completely true, but I think there’s still an opportunity for financial institutions that are doing a fantastic job to take a look at the smaller things, because all of the smaller things add up and can make significant impacts to the operations. Whether that be just spending a little bit more time looking at your model assumptions, whether that be combing through your contingency funding plan to ensure that it’s up to date and it’s aligning with the bank strategies or really just looking at the enterprise risk management process of the bank or financial institution. Just make sure that everything is aligned with the financial institution’s ultimate strategy as they look out the next year, two years, five years and so forth.

Paul Perry (25:08): Good stuff.

Jessica Juliano (25:08): Oh, thank you, Josh and Jeff. I feel like we probably could spin off and have five other podcasts based on the information y’all have provided today to our audience. We thank you both for your time, your professional insights and your expert advice on these matters. So, thank you both for being here.

Joshua Bowen (25:29): We appreciate the opportunity. Thank you all.

Jeff Burleson (25:31): Thanks. Yep.

Commentators (25:33): And that’s a wrap! If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review on your streaming platform. To check out more episodes, subscribe to the podcast series or make a suggestion of other topics you want to hear, visit us at https://warrenaverett.com/thewrap/.

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