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BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another

August 18, 2023 by angishields

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

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 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 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.

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

August 17, 2023 by angishields

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/.

BRX Pro Tip: Building a System: Start Here

August 17, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Building a System: Start Here

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BRX Pro Tip: Building a System: Start Here

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you this morning. Lee, in terms of building a system, I think one of the key challenges maybe is just, you know, where do you start?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] I think when you’re building a system, it’s important to start at the end, not at the beginning. And that might sound counterintuitive, but it’s really critically important to understand what the end looks like and what is the outcome you desire. And the clearer you can get from that standpoint, then the easier it is, is to reverse engineer the system. And that is, you know, one of the things that we’re pretty good at, at Business RadioX.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] So, my recommendation is, begin talking with the end user. Who’s the person doing the work? What’s the customer want? And what are the frontline folks kind of need? And if you start really diving deeply into the end, where the process ends, you’re going to have a way better kind of plan on how to get there. So, it’s better to have things work better for the frontline folks than it is for the management folks.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Like, just because it’s easier for the management to want to see something a certain way, but it’s hard for the frontline worker to deliver that, then that defeats the purpose. I mean, then the customers are going to get a bad experience just because it makes the person keeping score at the end of the day, it makes their life easier. That’s silly, I mean, to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] You’ve got to focus on the people that matter most. And it’s a lot more important to have your customer have a great experience, to have the frontline workers have an easy way of delivering that. Rather than some management person who’s just counting things. So, you got to kind of understand that going in and err on the side of giving the customer and your frontline people the easiest way to do their job so that the customer is the happiest.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:43] And then, when you’re building these systems out, you got to kind of give yourself a lot of grace because this kind of work never ends. The systems are constantly changing. You should be constantly trying to improve them. And change is not a bug in this. Change is a feature. You should always be learning, growing, tweaking, and sharing what you’ve learned.

Useful is Better Than Happy

August 17, 2023 by angishields

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Women in Business Putting Food on Our Tables Part 3

August 16, 2023 by angishields

Women in Motion

Women in Business Putting Food on Our Tables Part 3

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In this episode of Women in Motion, we discuss trends in the food industry and how different brands are serving their customers. Rhonda Busnardo with Caesars talks about the rise of plant-based and natural foods, as well as the popularity of finger foods and small desserts.

Chef Laura Briscoe from Laura’s Gourmet emphasizes their chef-driven, natural ingredient-focused brand and the incorporation of international flavors, and Michele Freeman with Venice Beach Beverage introduces their health-focused, plant-based vitamin teas. The guests also discuss their target audiences, challenges they’ve faced, and the importance of independent stores.

Rhonda Busnardo has worked in the Food sector most of her career starting off in retail, moving into food and beverage manufacturing and distribution, and currently in the Gaming and Entertainment industry.

Rhonda grew up in Southern New Jersey. Rhonda and her husband, Anthony, have 4 boys aged 20, 14, 12, and 6.

When Rhonda isn’t working, she enjoys family time and being at the beach. Rhonda enjoys kayaking, boating, dancing, and is currently working on her long game in golf.

Michele Freeman, a retired actress and grandmother, defies age limits to pursue her dreams. Collaborating with her husband, she built a thriving business from scratch, crafting functional teas from family recipes.

In just three years, their company, Venice Beach Beverage, becoming Amazon’s Choice and one of KeHE’s top spotlighted black-owned companies.

Michele’s leadership secured grants from The Fearless Foundation with Tory Burch and JP Morgan Chase & Co., earning awards from the city of Los Angeles for community contributions.

Her journey inspires others, as she believes there’s no set timeline for achievements. Venice Beach Beverage, under Michele’s guidance, innovates with high-quality ingredients, becoming a respected brand. She actively supports local charities and promotes wellness initiatives in underserved areas.

Michele Freeman’s entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to healthy living inspire aspiring business leaders, redefining the beverage industry one health-conscious sip at a time.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Political Science and French, Chef Laura Briscoe spent nearly 15 years as a sales executive in the tech industry working for companies including Apple and Oracle.

In 2001, Chef Laura changed career paths, attending culinary school in Arizona. She started her first business, Celebrated Cuisine, a private event and high-end catering company, in 2002. In 2004, Chef Laura created a recipe now known as Vanilla Almond Crunch, the flagship flavor of Laura’s Gourmet Granola and earned placement on the retail shelf of AJs Fine Foods.

Nearly 19 years later, Laura’s Gourmet Granola is a recognized brand of specialty granola of which all are all-natural, certified gluten- free, certified kosher Pareve, with vegan options, available at specialty grocers and to foodservice throughout the US.

About our Co-Host

Dr. Pamela Williamson, President & CEO of WBEC-West, is an exemplary, dedicated individual, and has extensive experience as a senior leader for over twenty years.

She has served as the CEO of SABA 7 a consulting firm, overseen quality control at a Psychiatric urgent care facility of a National Behavioral Health Care Organization where she served as Vice President and Deputy Director,and has served as the CEO of WBEC-West, since 2008.

Her extensive experience in developing and implementing innovative alliances with key stakeholders has enabled the organizations to reach new levels of growth and stability. Her ability to lead and empower staff members creates a strong team environment which filters throughout the entire organization.

She takes an active role in facilitating connections between corporations and women business enterprises and sees a promising future for WBENC Certified women-owned businesses.

Dr. Williamson holds a Doctorate in Healthcare Administration, a Master’s degrees in Business Administration, and bachelor degrees in both Psychology and Sociology.

Connect with Dr. Williamson on LinkedIn.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios. It’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by Wbec West. Join forces, Succeed Together. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here another episode of Women in Motion brought to you by our friends at WBEC West. And today’s topic is the food industry putting food and beverages on our tables. And we’re going to learn from a lot of several experts in this space. We have Rhonda Busnardo with Caesars. We have Laura Brisco with Laura’s Gourmet and Michele Freeman with Venice Beach Beverage. Welcome, ladies.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:00:53] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:54] Before we get too far into things, I’d like to kick it off with Rhonda to discuss maybe some of the trends she’s seeing out in the industry today, or is anything catching your eye?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:01:05] Uh, there’s a lot of new fun things out there. Plant based and natural foods are huge right now. Also, you know, for the vegan and just, you know, crowds that have health conscious or, you know, meat free dairy free type of diets in mind, they are huge right now. Every food show that I go to, there’s a very big portion of plant based items. So I definitely see a lot there. People are health conscious now more than ever, a lot of bright and natural colors, you know, different fruits and varieties, things like that. Now that are that are out there that you’ve never seen. And believe it or not, finger foods, a lot of finger foods, a lot of really small desserts. So the little tiny one bite type of desserts are a huge trend right now because restaurants are noticing that a lot of desserts people either didn’t want because they were too full or, you know, they would take a few bites and waste the rest of it. So it’s a lot of waste. So now, yeah, little finger items and small desserts are really popular.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] Now. Rhonda, can you explain for our listeners that maybe they’re not familiar with Caesars is a brand that we’re all familiar with, but there’s lots and lots of kind of brands underneath that umbrella, right?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:02:22] Oh, yeah. So we have, of course, Caesars as our brand. We have a lot of casinos that people don’t understand that are owned by Caesars I and you know, just go out there, Google Caesars Entertainment and you’ll be surprised at all of the casinos across the United States that we own. I think it’s right around it’s it’s at least 50 properties right now. We keep changing every day. So it’s it’s a lot across the board. And then we have many different restaurants, some owned by us and some that are not owned by us that are in each casino. So a lot of different a lot of different things.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] Now, when you’re talking about a trend in food and beverage, how do you kind of take that trend and then sprinkle it through all of the brands that you represent to make sure that it’s a right fit in each place?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:03:12] Yeah. So it’s different in each region, right? So the East coast, West Coast, very different. Sometimes things start over on the West Coast and then move their way to the east seems to be the case most of the time. And it also just depends on local sourcing and everything. But what we do is we we go to these food shows, we see what trends are out there. We talk to a lot of vendors and chefs. And then what we do is we send all of these things out to our chefs and procurement department to share amongst their properties. And yeah, then we start to source things that they’re interested in or that they see that’s going to work in their properties. We do a lot of cuttings which are going to properties, sitting with the chef and tasting different things, trying different things. Um, you know, there’s, there’s a lot that goes on in the background that a lot of people don’t realize.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:10] Now. Laura, can you share a little bit about Laura’s Gourmet? How are you serving folks?

Laura Briscoe: [00:04:16] So Laura’s Gourmet actually is the chef brand. So we have a few different things under our umbrella. The most widely known is Laura’s gourmet granola. Laura’s gourmet granola has been a retail product for just over 19 years, and we’ve been supplying food service for 16. And that’s actually a much bigger piece of our business, which is great for me as a chef. It’s a wonderful conversation. When you’re doing you’re speaking with other chefs about how you can integrate your products into their menus, talking to F and B, and then also identifying places on property. If it’s a hotel where you can integrate a retail product as well. But in terms of so our products are available nationally for both retail and food service. And what stands out around our our granola is that everything that we do is certified gluten free, certified kosher nondairy and also certified women owned, as you know. But also of our ten SKUs, seven of them are vegan. But the thing that’s interesting about it is that all of those certifications are just happen to be because as a chef driven product, we always look to do things as naturally as possible and. As cleanly as possible, because at the end of the day, we’re looking for the trifecta of taste, texture and mouthfeel.

Laura Briscoe: [00:05:32] And when you start incorporating other things that are not natural, then you also bring in textures and flavors that are not really good for what you’re trying to achieve. So so I like to talk about our products being chef driven, but happen to be so that there’s no sacrifice to the flavor profile. You know, there are a lot of trends out there, and I agree with everything that was just shared. But what I really love seeing is some of the international flavors making their way into the American palate. And I don’t mean just the low hanging fruit, but when I walked a show back in June, being able to capture things coming out of Asia that we don’t have yet or things coming out of Italy, even where you think that we’ve seen everything we haven’t. So being able to find ways to incorporate that into our product line, into subsequent lines that we’re introducing is and doing it in a way that meets the very needs of the American palate is it’s a fun chef challenge to have.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:33] Now, do you think that chef driven brands like yourself are the ones that are kind of leading the charge here, that the trends are starting with you, You’re able to connect dots maybe in some creative ways that the larger entities are kind of following your lead.

Laura Briscoe: [00:06:50] Yeah, that’s a great question because there’s two ways to look at that. There’s Chef Driven where everything we’re doing is based on the ingredients, right? The naturalness of the ingredient and, and manipulating it in a way that creates that recipe. But then the other way is if you look at it from a nutritional standpoint. So there are a lot of products out there that are driving for that, right? They’re looking to offer, you know, a probiotic or a prebiotic or something along those lines in their product, which may or may not influence the taste in a positive way. So personally, I prefer the chef driven way because there we know that we’re not going to put something out that doesn’t taste amazing, but we’re also going to ensure that it has the attributes that people are looking for.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] Now, Michele, can you share a little bit about Venice Beach Beverage, how you serving folks?

Michele Freeman: [00:07:39] Well, I like to call Venice Beach Beverage Health without the hassle. Venice Beach Beverage is a line of products that are from family recipes and plant based shelf stable, all natural vitamin teas with 100% daily vitamins in every can. I’m a midwest girl who was planted in California. Venice was my happy place. Thus the name. We’ve had the trademark since 2008 didn’t launch till 2020. That’s planning. So we waited until I was retired and my husband was retired to start our business. The nice thing about our products are they actually imagine if Sweet Tea was healthy. That’s what I like to tell people about our original vitamin iced tea. Then we also have a 35 calorie ginger tea with 5000mg of organic cold pressed ginger juice. There’s a lot of products out there with too many additives and too many things that aren’t good for you. You have to have something that’s healthy and that someone actually wants to drink. I am a big advocate of if it’s nasty, I don’t want it. So that’s the rule number one. I like hearing Laura talk about chef driven because I’m taste driven and I totally get what she’s saying. It has to taste good. You’re wasting your time. Otherwise, um, we have less than five milligrams of caffeine in our tea, so that way you’re not jittery. I’m trying to alleviate the issues that the everyday health enthusiast has. There’s so many people north, south, east and west that want to do better. They wanted a better beverage, but they don’t want to sacrifice taste for themselves and their families. So that’s what I’m here for.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:41] So I’d like to throw this out to the group. Let’s talk about your target audience. Do you have a target audience in mind or is this something that you have a passion about and you’re putting it out to the world and then you’re just hoping that the target audience finds you?

Michele Freeman: [00:09:59] Oh, no, you better have a target.

Laura Briscoe: [00:10:00] Audience 100% target. Audience Yes, You’re going to waste a lot of hope. You don’t. You don’t just cross your fingers and close your eyes and hope that’s just not what the product that’s not that’s not healthy.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:15] So then that being the case, then you have a persona of who that person is and then you are marketing towards that person.

Michele Freeman: [00:10:26] Correct? The everyday health enthusiast that’s looking for better beverage options for themselves and their family. There’s a whole thing that the powers that be age, demographic, where does this person work? What does this person do? How many children does this person have? All of that. There’s so many things that go into finding out your specific target audience. And it is different for our different lines because of our 35 calorie ginger tea. Everyone thought, Oh, she must be vegan. I am not. But I make a product that is and that’s very good for you. There’s there’s some overlap with the people that enjoy our products and I’m happy about that.

Laura Briscoe: [00:11:19] Yeah, to to dovetail on that. You know, when we look at our target audience, first and foremost, the thing that comes to mind are people who consider themselves to be foodies, right? Those who are looking at things that are more elevated, the combination of flavors. And in addition to that, then we look at those who are layering a different type of lifestyle or want to just have a day where this is you know, they’re going to be enjoying something that they know is better for their body, even if it’s not there every day. But, you know, we’ve targeted the higher end of the market in terms of retail, the specialty stores specifically, because we are an artisan crafted product and we can’t sit successfully on a shelf next to a granola that is full of not better for you ingredients that are that’s also being sold for a third of the price. We’ll never win that game and that’s not an educated consumer that we’re going after anyway. We are going after the people who pick up a bag and flip it over and look at a label and understand that seven ingredients can really taste this good. So I did a I did a small artisan market a few weeks ago that was local to Arizona. And what I really found interesting was that everyone who attended that was a self-proclaimed foodie and every single one of them were going berserk over the product because they felt like they had just had their first taste of what granola was meant to be, not what is normally billed as granola. So. So target market 100%.

Michele Freeman: [00:12:56] Yeah. And that’s so exciting when you see people. I’ve had people. Oh, I don’t. I don’t like Ginger. I don’t. You don’t like Ginger with all of the additives, powders, sirups and oils in it. If you had organic cold pressed ginger, that’s a different thing. It’s smooth enough for my grandchildren to drink. That’s another thing that I really like. And I hear that a lot. Oh, my gosh. This is really good. And they look surprised. Well, yes, I wouldn’t have done this otherwise. Thank you. So it’s really important to offer something that is beneficial. You know how many people juice every day and don’t want to? Do you know how messy it is? And I bet a lot of people that, you know, have a juicer, they don’t want to do it. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it’s time consuming. It’s expensive. And now you can have a better ginger juice and you didn’t have to do anything to get it. That’s what I like. And I put not.

Laura Briscoe: [00:13:52] Only that, it’s consistent every time, Right? You’re giving them exactly the consistency and the quality because you don’t necessarily get that if you try to make it yourself. So. Exactly.

Michele Freeman: [00:14:02] Exactly. And your kitchen is a whole lot cleaner.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:06] Now, when you both were when you both were starting, did you have this kind of persona in mind or was this something after you developed the product and then you realized, hey, this is the the target for this? Like, did the idea come first or did the audience come first?

Michele Freeman: [00:14:25] Well, in my case, the idea came first. These are my grandmother’s tea recipes. I was fortunate enough to marry a gentleman who grew up in Japan and Taiwan Air Force kid and learned how to make proper Japanese tea at a very young age. What are the odds of that? Fast forward. Um, he has been in the beverage industry for over 30 some years. He was actually vice president of Coca-Cola. So when you have a person that’s right next to you, that’s your best friend with all of that helpful information on quality control, logistics, manufacturing fleet, and then you put that with really good recipes, then you get an opportunity to check out the market to see who likes what and to find out, hey, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of people just like me who want a healthier alternative but aren’t die hard enough to do it every day themselves. And vitamins. I can’t begin to tell you how many emails I get from people. Oh, I hate taking vitamins. I forget they’re in my cabinet. It’s a pain, but you don’t have to now. You’re welcome. And it is very difficult to make vitamins taste good in a beverage. Very, very difficult. That’s why you don’t see any other ones but us. So I’m very, very proud of that.

Laura Briscoe: [00:15:48] Yeah. In our case, our it was an organic, happy accident. So I changed careers. I went to culinary school, and after culinary school I started my first company, which was focused on doing private fine dining and events and culinary instruction. And during that startup phase, over the first year and a half or so, I started playing with a recipe for granola for my own enjoyment, and I kept modifying it and modifying it, taking out ingredients that I can’t eat personally that just don’t work for my body, and trying to find something that reminded me of my college years and consuming boxes of granola during finals and after. A lot of it’s actually several months of just I don’t know why I was just on this mission and having been fully trained now on recipe development with culinary school, I was documenting everything. And just like any time you bake something, you have more than you want and you give it away. So I was sharing it at my daughter’s soccer games. I was giving it to friends, my personal trainer, whatever the case was, and people started asking for it and they asked for it a lot. So my best friend suggested I should think about selling it. And at the time and for the next 15 years, I did sell it, but not proactively. It was, you know, I just I placed it in our local retailer and that became a second retailer. And then that became a very large restaurant chain asking us to make it for food service. And finally, 15 years later, I figured I had to pick a team between running my private fine dining and elegant events or doing Laura’s Gourmet. And so since 2019, it has been with intention. And since that time we have weathered 2020 and have grown significantly since then with our most recent rollout last week, as a matter of fact, with fresh thyme. So so there’s a lot to be said for happy accidents. And then finally waking up and listening to the universe. So and a lot of planning behind that.

Michele Freeman: [00:17:50] Oh, yeah, agreed. Agreed.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:52] Now, Rhonda, how does it work in an enterprise like Caesar’s that’s so large? Does the audience come first or does the idea come first?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:18:02] I would say the audience comes first. You know, same thing. So we have people asking for things a lot. And when you see that becoming popular and asked for a lot, we start looking. Um, I would say it would be a little bit of both because sometimes our chefs come up with ideas from what they’re seeing as well, and then we go out looking for the items that we need that match that profile. So I would say just, you know, the consumer and what they want is where we get most of our ideas from.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] So now let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the challenges that are facing the food industry today. Rhonda, we’ll start with you. What are some of the challenges that Caesars is facing?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:18:48] Challenges in our side is just, you know, just the supply chain still with inflation. Also just being able to get the product that we want to get in in a timely fashion and for it to be available. You know, we still have a lot of problems from Covid that are still trickling down with just, you know, companies that are just getting back and up and moving again with being able to produce the amount of volume that we need. So and also getting professionals in the door that are qualified. You know, chefs, a lot of them moved out of being a chef and moved into different lines of work during Covid because all the restaurants were closed for so long. So, you know, getting our our employee employee base, you know, back up to where it used to be. It needs to be.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:44] So is that become kind of an opportunity for Caesars to acquire some talent that might be available now that wasn’t in the past?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:19:52] Yes, absolutely. And some new talent. You know, it also helps for new talent out there that are looking to get into these type of restaurants or this type of business that maybe didn’t have that availability before because we had people here that were, you know, there for so long and there was no opening. So a lot of new talent that’s out there. There are so many talented chefs out there. I mean, you watch the shows on TV. It’s a real thing. You know, there are so many just naturally talented and, you know, Internet based, you know, chefs that that really are looking for some type of way to get in. And now’s the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] Laura, what are some of the challenges that you’re facing?

Laura Briscoe: [00:20:37] So currently, I think some of the challenges that are most so logistics there seems to be always a challenge with logistics in moving ingredients in and moving product out. I don’t know what’s changed except for what we’ve all experienced, but it just feels like every time there’s a little bit of a of a struggle, even with with some of our logistics partners. And then weather has definitely played a role as well. I mean, yes, there’s supply chain issues and being we’re able to get product now that we weren’t able to before or as timely and prices have come down a little bit. But we’ve seen weather now impacting some of the ingredients that we usually could get very, very easily. And now we see lead times that we hadn’t experienced before. So that’s always something to, you know, get your heart rate up when you’re not wanting it to go up. So and you know, and then in terms of hiring, you know, we had had some challenges in hiring. And of late we have seen people really, really get entrenched in the business and are happy working in our packaging and manufacturing. It’s exciting to see that and I think that’s borne from the culture that the company has overall. And then the direction from our production manager for our team to really make them feel like a team. So, so that’s one of the ways that we’re surmounting that type of challenge. But there’s a laundry list, I’m sure, and, and sometimes it’s just a challenge working with some of our distribution partners, you know, just throws a wedge in here and there. So you have to keep your eye open for that.

Michele Freeman: [00:22:14] Michelle The main challenge that we faced, we handled our second year. This is our third year in business. And that was I don’t want a co-packer. So we purchased our own production facility. This way we are not obligated and bound to someone putting us on the back of the line. When someone bigger comes, making you produce more than you need losing money on that. That was very important to us because this is our money. We did not get funded for this company. I saved my entire paycheck for over 15 years to start this when we retired. So I like I said, I’m a midwest girl and I’m extremely. Ordinarily frugal. So I want to make sure that I am utilizing our money in its best capacity. So we got a production facility and that helped us alleviate a lot of the pain and difficulty that a lot of new businesses start with. With my husband’s background in manufacturing. I had no problems with worrying about who should I get this? Should I do this, what to do? Because that’s not my wheelhouse. I stay in my lane and he stays in his lane and it works out very well for us that way. And oh, one more thing. I was not aware that so many different stores are paid to play to the extent that they are. We’re in about 550 stores nationwide and as of yet, we do not pay for slotting. We’re in hotels, we’re in golf, country clubs and things like that all over the place. And I’m very appreciative for those independent grocery stores, hotels and things like that. Very grateful that I don’t have to pay thousands of dollars just to have the privilege of sitting on their shelf. I know that in the future that I will have to do that. But for right now, I’m going to try to collect every single store that appreciates our product for what it is and not have to pay to play and actually not make any money.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:38] Now, Michelle, do you mind explaining what pay to play is for the folks who aren’t familiar with that?

Michele Freeman: [00:24:43] Oh, sure. Um, big grocery stores will charge you anywhere from 500 to $1000 a skew just to sit on their shelf. Then there’s cap. That’s when you walk past a past a shelf and the end cap on the end when you’re going from aisle to aisle that they charge for that. Then a lot of these stores, even if it’s you know, one can talk about Venice Beach beverage better than I but they ask you to have someone else, a company come in and do sampling for you instead. I’ve gone as far as Puerto Rico to do samplings for our stores, so I’m not above getting on a plane and going. Um, these are the things that grocery stores have. Allocated as this is what you have to do. And it kind of started in the beverage industry when the top three beverages in the US said, Hey, we want to be at eye level and we’re going to pay you to be there. And then they realize, Hey, everyone can do that. And so now to be in these stores and these are very popular stores, people are very interested in being in them because they’re so big. But I would rather have 550 independent stores where they’re actually purchasing it. I don’t have to worry about, Oh, I’ve got to make this many sales or I get kicked out in six months. And just all of that added money. You would be surprised at how many people are in stores right now and they don’t make a dime because they’re giving all the money back because of the pay to play system. So I’m a pray for me. I’m trying to stay away from that as long as humanly possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:37] Yeah, I’m sure a lot of folks aren’t familiar that with that. They think that everybody earned their spot on the shelf. But people are paying to be in eye level.

Laura Briscoe: [00:26:48] To to clarify that, though, you do earn your spot in that chain. Okay. It’s not like you just said, I’m going to give you 50,000. Put me on the shelf. Right. So you do have to go through an evaluation process. They do category reviews for your products. You go through tastings, cuttings just like Ronda experienced or shared earlier. But if they select you, depending on the size of the chain, then there is normally some type of a fee involved. And it could be like just as Michelle shared, anywhere from $500 to several thousand per SKU per item. But but you do earn that spot. What I think the average consumer doesn’t understand, though, is there’s two parts to this. One for a retailer, while they may look at the at the high level, like their margin is so great, like they may have layered maybe 35% onto the cost from the distributor, that that margin gets whittled down very, very quickly between all the SKUs that they’re carrying, the management of it all, the people that they’re know that are in store. Et cetera. Damage loss, what have you. So so there’s that piece of it. But also, anytime you see an item on sale in a grocery store, a buy one, get one or it’s $2 off or whatever, that money is actually coming out of the manufacturer’s pocket, not the grocery store, unless you have a partnership with them where they might step up and share in some of the in some of the the the coupon, if you will.

Laura Briscoe: [00:28:25] So my favorite thing is when someone reaches out to me from Wisconsin and said, oh my God, your product is on sale at X, Y, Z, I’m super excited. And I’m thinking, yes, I’m paying for that. I am well aware that that is on sale there because we made that happen. So there’s just a lot if someone is planning on launching a retail product, I mean, the number one thing I would suggest to them is go and talk to somebody who’s been doing it for a while. It is it’s it’s challenging. It’s hard. Just like Michelle, we’re bootstrapped. We have been since the beginning. And it’s expensive if you don’t know what you’re walking into. You are at huge risk. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn over the last 19 years as I went, but we had some hard lessons. Really hard lessons. It’s it’s. It’s got its challenges.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:16] So is it still fun?

Michele Freeman: [00:29:20] Well, it’s funny for me because this is actually something I chose to do. I retired at 40, so I’ve been patiently waiting for my husband to retire so that we could do this. This is something that I’ve always wanted to do. So in trust, there are much better ways to to spend your retirement money. There’s a lot of easier things to do. So I wouldn’t suggest, hey, start a business at 57. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that for everyone. But for me, this is something that has been in the patient making, dreaming, hoping, praying for for a very, very long time. And I’m extremely happy and extremely proud that we’ve been able to do this. And you have everyone has their quitting days where you wake up and go, my God, why did I do this? And then you have those other days where you’re like, I’m so glad that I’m doing this. I could burst. So it’s within it’s like any other job, you know, you have your good days and you have your bad.

Laura Briscoe: [00:30:31] And luckily the good outstripped the bad by without a doubt far outpaced. Yeah, we wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t. And it is. Yes, it is still fun. And it’s not just still it is fun because as owners of the business and being the entrepreneurs who created the products and knowing that we have more products that we’re bringing to market and seeing the impact that it has on people and hearing from them about what a change it has made in their lives, whether, you know, no matter what, you know who or where that person is, you know, that is I think the word is rewarding that I think it’s so much more rewarding than anything I can put my finger on. You know, there’s there is a lot to be said for knowing that you’ve put something out there that no one else has done before, because you’re doing it in a way that no one else has done before, and you’re supporting it in a true, authentic and transparent way that that just that lights you up, that keeps you moving forward. That. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:31:35] So now, Rhonda, where do you find the joy in the work that you’re doing?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:31:40] I’m actually just bringing the food to the table in our restaurants, just finding, um, you know, like these businesses are just listening to these ladies and that passion. You know, I. I look for that passion. I can go to a huge floor filled with different vendors, and the passion and drive is what attracts me. Um, you know, so bringing those attractive and, you know, wanted items to the tables of all across the nation. It makes it exciting, you know, it’s almost like a challenge, but it’s really, really exciting to watch people enjoy themselves and our casinos to watch them, you know, post things on social media about their experience. There’s nothing more rewarding than all the hard work that goes on in the background just coming to fruition like that and seeing that happiness in our consumers and.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:40] Especially, I would imagine you get a lot of joy from seeing when you’re kind of discover this emerging brand and then you put it in front of your people and then it’s a success and you know that you had some help in making that impact.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:32:56] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:58] Now, I’d like to throw this out to the group. How important is you mentioned social media a second ago. How important is social media and maybe share some tips that you’ve learned in order to maximize social media to help you grow your brands? Anybody want to take a stab at that?

Laura Briscoe: [00:33:20] Okay, I’ll I’ll jump in there first. I have a dream that someday I’ll use social media just for the pure fun of social media. I don’t I don’t get to do that right now because it’s always brand awareness related. Right. And best foot forward. But like I said earlier, it’s authentically, you know, one of my favorite things to do when we use social media is use our behind the scenes. Here’s how our product is made. Here are the people who are making it. Here’s the heart and soul that goes into what we do. Um, and it’s it. You learn to get a thick skin too, because you’re putting yourself out there. You don’t know how someone’s going to respond. And luckily we’ve been very well supported. But but it’s social media. I remember when social media first really started raising its head in about 2010, and I didn’t even understand the phrasing social media, like, what is that supposed to be? And it was all about Facebook at the time. Um, and so, you know, it’s just there’s so many ways you can put yourself out there or you put your product out there. And each platform requires a different message because the audience is different. So I have a real appreciation now for why you would want to have someone do that for you full time. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet because it’s still my voice. It’s my product, these are my babies and I want to make sure that that is the message that’s consistently shared. So that’s a that’s just a quick social media from Laura.

Michele Freeman: [00:34:58] Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. I am very used to speaking. I was an actor. I did commercials and voice overs for a living. I had no idea that I would be running back to do this again on our YouTube page, on our Pinterest page, on Facebook. I wasn’t on all of these platforms initially, but when you have a business, it’s imperative that you are so it is very time consuming. And when like like Laura said, when you’re bootstrapping your business and you don’t have a social media person, you have to rely on doing it yourself and your customers. I have never been so grateful to strangers in my life. I don’t like taking photos anymore at at 59. I don’t like it. I prefer I preferred it in my 20s and 30s. But now I get photos from someone’s soccer team. I get photos from a guy going to work who’s in Florida. A very cool picture. Um, TMZ took photos of Brad Pitt drinking my drink. Very exciting. So things like that that helps with social media when your customers are are in contact with you.

Michele Freeman: [00:36:23] That’s the thing that I’m the most grateful for because I do not want to be on camera every day. I just don’t. So when I get these photos from people very, very grateful for a here he is, the official DJ for the Dodgers, for the baseball team here in Los Angeles. He is a huge fan of our teas and he told all of his fans about it. And then all of those fans started purchasing it through here in LA and on Amazon and so forth. And I got so much social media presence from those people, so grateful, so very grateful for each and every person that has purchased our product, reviewed it, talked about it, held up a can. And you know, took a picture. So I am really big on interacting. Oops, sorry, very big on interacting with our customers to engage with them and showcase their pictures and showcase their bar or their hotel and things like that. So yeah, it’s a lot of work. It is a full time job that I look very forward to handing over in the future.

Speaker6: [00:37:44] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:37:45] Now is there anything that you’ve learned that you can be doing proactively to encourage your superfans to, you know, share on social media? I mean, to have TMZ take a picture of Brad Pitt holding the can is a, you know, lightning in a bottle kind of thing. And I don’t know if you could have planned that that way, but are there anything you can be proactively doing to encourage that level of sharing and engagement from your fans?

Michele Freeman: [00:38:14] Well, what. I do as I ask them when when they tag me in a photo on Instagram, I message back, Thank you so much. May I please share this on other platforms? And most people are like, Sure, yes. And especially with different demographics that I hadn’t thought about or things that I hadn’t thought about. It never occurred to me to mix our ginger tea with alcohol. It didn’t occur to me, but it occurred to a whole lot of people on Instagram and they sent me the recipes and beautiful pictures. The black Cherry. This is the this isn’t a I don’t know if you can see that or not. This is our original sweet tea black cherry. This is really popular, very popular back east and in the South. And people mix that with all sorts of alcohol that it would have never occurred to me. So look, interact, engage with your customers and you’ll see they’ll tell you what they like and what their favorite is. I also hadn’t considered heating our ginger chai, our chai flavored tea. Didn’t occur to me to heat it and put it with cream. My a lot of my customers do that. So you learn how your products are implemented in different households. And I really that’s exciting to me. That’s exciting that someone likes it and put their own spin on it, whether it’s alcohol or or heated or whatever. I’m really grateful for the interaction with our customers.

Laura Briscoe: [00:39:59] And to to springboard on that too. When you talk about super fans, we have super partners also, right? We have our one of our Granolas, which is a coconut granola used exclusively by a few different chains of businesses that do acai bowls and smoothie bowls. And so they’re constantly promoting everything on social media to encourage their audience. And by nature of that, they’re tagging us. And so people understand that we are part of that product. And so we’re able to enjoy exposure to their fan base. And then people will end up going to buy the retail product because they want to have it in between or what have you, and buy the same thing as Michelle saying that she hadn’t thought about X, Y or Z with her product. We’ve had chefs from around the country who have taken our products and used them in such creative ways on their menus that I never would have thought about. My favorite is one who has taken our chocolate granola and soaked it overnight in milk and then strains. It uses the base, the milk to make ice cream and then dries out the granola and uses that as a crumble on the dessert. Okay, so what? Right. So just kind of fantastic to see and to help push the boundaries where the answer isn’t just a yogurt parfait or a bowl of cereal, but it’s literally breakfast to dessert. These are things I’ve learned as a result of social media and a result of the partnerships that we have.

Lee Kantor: [00:41:29] And it sounds like you’re both doing a great job in creating that human to human connection that, you know, is so important in today to have that authenticity and that relationship and that level of trust between the brand and the consumer is so important to differentiate yourself from maybe some of the larger players who can’t really make those one on one connections that you’re making.

Laura Briscoe: [00:41:55] You know, I think that 1 to 1 connection is one of the reasons our products taste better, because the bigger the company gets, the more outsourced and co manufactured and everything else. Something happens in that manufacturing process that takes away from the authentic flavor of what it is you originally went out to make. Because there’s some there’s some big competitors to us. I mean, huge. But you can it just doesn’t have that same artisan. Feel and flavor to it.

Speaker6: [00:42:31] He’s right.

Michele Freeman: [00:42:31] Laura So right. It cheapens the product and we’ve heard it before. There are certain things that are will never be in my products. And high fructose corn sirup is one of them. Under no circumstances. There are certain things that big companies will use to cheapen. They’ll use ginger powder. That’s by no means as effective as organic cold pressed ginger juice. Huge, huge difference in your body and in the nutritional value of it. So there yes, there are cheaper ways to make everything, but that’s one I know, Laura, and that’s one thing I really admire about her company as well. You’re not taking the cheap route. You’re taking the correct route to health and deliciousness. So that’s I think that’s why we get along.

Speaker6: [00:43:29] So. Now.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:31] Rhonda, can you share a little bit about how social media plays at Caesars? Because, I mean, you have so many brands doing so many things, it must be hard to kind of control, it seems, the uncontrollable.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:43:43] Yeah, I mean, it can be good and bad like everyone knows and you do have to develop thick skin, but it’s also a good, um, a good information platform. So if there is a problem that we’re not aware of, it’s being watched and being looked at to make sure that it’s not a real problem that we can fix. It’s a very large corporation, so things can slip through the cracks or there could be an issue that maybe someone’s not aware of. You know, it’s good and bad. You know, sometimes you just have unhappy people that go out there and say things that, you know, may not really be a valid, you know, thing, but you have to appreciate everyone’s opinions and take the good from it that you can. It’s definitely something that we use a lot in marketing, getting all of the different activities and shows and, you know, specials and restaurants that are opening, you know, anything that’s happening out there to our consumers. So it’s great for that. And it’s it’s really is damaging as you think it can be. We need to know the bad stuff, too. So you just really have to find the good parts of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:44:57] So as we’re getting close to wrapping here, Rhonda, is there what do you need more of? How can we help you? Are you looking for more kind of interesting ingredients to play with at Caesars and the different restaurants? Are you looking for more chefs? What what do you need more of and how can we help?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:45:17] Yeah, I mean, chefs, if you’re looking to work in any of our restaurants or at Caesars Entertainment, please go on caesars.com and look at career opportunities. We are always looking for talent out there for sure. Same thing with vendors. Please always reach out to me and I can provide Michele and Laura, you know, I can provide you with my contact information. I’m always looking for new innovative products out there. And especially as Laura was explaining and Michelle, you know, things these chefs can play with, you know, figure out what they can come up with with these new items. It’s really nice to have clean products that they can do a lot of things. And I mean, who knows, you know, your ginger tea could be in a soup. You just never you never know what these chefs can do. Keep your minds open and don’t just walk by a restaurant or a side shop a breakfast bar and think that your product couldn’t belong because you never know.

Lee Kantor: [00:46:17] So, Rhonda, one more time, the website for Caesars.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:46:20] It’s just caesars.com. Very easy.

Lee Kantor: [00:46:23] Great. Laura what do you need and how can we help you?

Laura Briscoe: [00:46:27] So what I really appreciate is when we get an email from one of our consumers that shares that they have a market local to them in the state that they live in, that they’d love to see our product in that we may not have ever heard of. So it gives us an opportunity to find placement with another independent because similar to what Michelle was saying, you know, the specialty independents around the country, you know, there’s such great stores. They have such a variety of products there. They’re very foodie driven with the products that they carry. And it’s usually a really good match for us. So I really would encourage anyone listening to this. If you don’t have one of our larger retailers near you to please share what your what the what the local independent is and let us know so we can share our products with them to bring to the store. And in addition to that, if there is their local smoothie shop or a restaurant, a breakfast restaurant or something like that where they know we’d be a great fit on their menu, let us know so we can send some samples, because I think everybody deserves to have Laura’s gourmet granola in their diet at least once during the day. So let us help you.

Lee Kantor: [00:47:38] And then the website. The best way to get Ahold of you.

Laura Briscoe: [00:47:41] Our website is Laura’s Gourmet.com And. And you can always email us at Hello at Gourmet.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:47:48] Michelle, what do you need and how can we help you?

Michele Freeman: [00:47:51] Agreed. Everything Laura said those small independent stores as well as larger chains. Because we are nationwide already. We can and we have our own manufacturing. We have the capability of utilizing more stores. I guess that’s the easiest way of putting it. Um, we are trying to focus this year, 2023 on the West Coast a little more. I actually have more stores in New York than I do in California. I’d like to even that out this year. And also I would very much appreciate sharing with these other stores. If you go in and ask, we’ve actually gotten into stores simply because customers have said, hey, I want to get the vitamin iced tea. I want to get the vitamin ginger tea. So that has helped us. You’d be surprised just walking in and asking. And then when all else fails, Amazon, we’re right there waiting on you. So that’s also an opportunity to enjoy our products as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:49:05] And Michelle, the website.

Michele Freeman: [00:49:07] Our website is Venice Beach beverage.com and you can find us at Venice Beach beverage.com on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.

Lee Kantor: [00:49:21] Good stuff. Well, thank you all for sharing your stories today. You’re each doing important work and we appreciate you.

Laura Briscoe: [00:49:29] Thank you for the opportunity to share. We really appreciate it.

Michele Freeman: [00:49:33] Yeah. Appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:49:35] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next. Time for Women in Business.

Kimberly Stark with The Flourish Consultancy

August 16, 2023 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Kimberly Stark with The Flourish Consultancy

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Kimberly Stark, CEO and founder of The Flourish Consultancy and prolific leader, has created one of the top California based, professional and personal development education companies. Kimberly’s B.S. in psychology coupled with her own life altering story of overcoming, spurred the innovative information curator to construct a highly developed program bridging the gap between conventional education taught in schools and the tools needed to handle day to day stresses and obstacles in order to “successfully adult.”

Kimberly seized the opportunity to expertly fill this space for others, by taking her course to market as an employee wellness program. The Flourish Consultancy reduces measurable costs to organizations as seen through attrition, absenteeism, lower productivity and increases overall employee satisfaction, productivity and wellness. The Flourish masterclass adds value to organizations who understand that supporting their employees is the ultimate path to profitability and has been credited with changing the trajectory of lives for the better.

The Flourish Model was born based on real world experiences and scientific evidence supporting the bolstering or rebuilding a life in a short period of time. Kimberly works with a wide range of organizations from school districts to life insurance companies, the hospitality industry, restaurants, and more.

In addition to her program, Kimberly provides employee wellness programs, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for adults and educators, and is accredited to provide CPA continued education hours, giving each person the agency they need to redeem and redefine challenges while creating systems that support future individual and organizational goals. Kimberly has worked with thousands of people, educating them on the cutting edge teachings of the Flourish Consultancy. Kimberly is a respected philanthropist, community leader and lives in California with her four children.

Connect with Kimberly on LinkedIn and follow The Flourish Consultancy on Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:14] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast CEO and founder with The Flourish Consultancy, Ms. Kimberly Stark. How are you?

Kimberly Stark: [00:00:34] I’m good, thanks for having me, Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:00:37] Well, it is a delight to have you on the show. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose, what you and your team are really out there trying to do for folks.

Kimberly Stark: [00:00:55] Sure. So. I. When I entered adulthood, I noticed that there was a gap in the education between what we learned when we were young. And I have a college degree and what it actually takes to successfully adult. So for about 15 years I had this idea of a life skills class. Like what are the things that we really need to know in order to build a successful adult life moving forward? It existed there for, like I said, probably 10 to 15 years, but I decided to take it to market in 2020 as an answer on how do we build true strategy through the adversity that we all face as an employee wellness program. So that is kind of the background. We have two different ways we speak about it. Our clients are our buyers, our corporations or school districts. And so for them we speak to it in essence as increasing profitability through preemptively providing education to your employees, increasing engagement, increasing wellness. But to the end user, it’s a true personalized strategic plan through adversity or just leveling up your life. But it’s not just like a hang in there. You got this, but providing some true tools and strategy in order to build a successful adult life. And it turns out in the long run, it makes a company more profitable as well.

Stone Payton: [00:02:26] Well, it’s got to be it must be incredibly rewarding work. What what at this point, are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the work for you these days?

Kimberly Stark: [00:02:40] You know, I guess both. It’s sort of like most entrepreneurs and a lot of your listeners, you like something, so you build a business around it so that way you can keep doing it. I mean, I’m sure you’re a perfect example of this. You like interviewing? You like talking about entrepreneurship. You’re great on the radio, so you build this company around it so you can keep going. And I’m no different, right? Like I am a total nerd on personal development. I love it. It’s all the books that I read. It’s my favorite conversations. I love increasing wellness. You know, it’s always been within me to help people. And as I look back in my life, what I wanted to do with my life was always in that vein, but it was always according to what I what options I knew at the time. Like so for instance, when I was younger, I wanted to be a missionary because that was like all I kind of knew on how to help. And then it became a social worker. I had a social work degree and then in college it turned into a psychology, and I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. And as my kids were little, I started Moms group. So it all sort of was that same thing. And now the work that I’m doing is also from that same mission of wanting to help in any way I can and take the stories and the adversity combined with my education and continual learning, and then package it to help others build their own lives and navigate the adversity that they face. Because we all face it, it’s just going to look differently in each of our lives. So if we can provide some true, like I said, tools to do it, then we can make the entire, you know, kind of culture leveled up.

Stone Payton: [00:04:26] So let’s do let’s dive into the work a little bit and we’ll pick a scenario. Maybe you have a client scenario or we can devise one, but I’d love to hear. I’m particularly interested in the early stages of a relationship with the organization that you’re serving in that way. And then maybe what some of the work looks like on the ground with the with the people who are actually going through the the process.

Kimberly Stark: [00:04:50] Perfect. Okay. So we have a couple of different verticals. And I’ll just tell you this part, but we have a couple of different verticals. We have corporations, so like corporate for instance, like Mutual of Omaha or somewhere in that vertical. Then we also work with school districts and so we have an education space. We also have CPAs is another vertical, so they get their CPE units. We work with hospitality, so like restaurants to help their staff. But really, so depending on the organization, the contract looks a little bit different. But we’re doing the same thing. The class itself, it’s an eight module master class and it is offered to the employees within that organization. So let’s just say, for instance, a company, one of your listeners decides to work with me. We reach out and then we’d work with them on what is the best way. So think of it as like professional development or an employee wellness program for their employees. We can offer it in a couple different structures. Typically we do once a week for eight weeks, 8 to 10 weeks in a one hour zoom and during, and I’ll let you know like what the content is. But sometimes we’ll do a half day sort of retreat style deep dive with four follow up zooms. Sometimes we’ll do two half days, but that’s essentially what it is. It’s about 8 to 10 hours of content and we can structure it in whatever makes sense to the company.

Stone Payton: [00:06:14] I got to believe that the employee, the people who are going through this process, if it’s framed properly and I’m sure not only do you frame it properly, you probably coach and guide your client in how to frame it properly. It’s got to be received as a true benefit. My company investing in me. Is that accurate?

Kimberly Stark: [00:06:33] Yes. And oh, what’s so amazing to live in the time that we live is that always we’ve always probably had this intuitive understanding of a connection between the well being of your employee and the profitability of the company. But that wasn’t always a culture, right? It was a culture before. It was like, leave your personal life at home. We don’t talk about that here. Like just man up and you know, that’s what it is. But the well-being of the employee has always affected company, bottom line, always. It’s just now that we’re talking about it now it’s really cool is we have visionary forward thinking leaders that are on the front edge of this who are preemptively wanting to support their employees through a lot of different ways. But ours is specifically through a wellness program, through an education or a class. And you have these managers who want to have these really powerful, productive wellbeing conversations with their team but don’t know where to start. And that’s where we can come in and say, Hey, here’s this environment for a shared language and here’s how to start these wellbeing conversation conversations. That will actually level up your engagement, which then levels up your profitability.

Stone Payton: [00:07:44] Yeah. And that kind of engagement can it sounds to me like it would prepare the ground for transitions. I’m from the change management world a long, long time ago when I had black hair. And I know that, you know, managing the human aspects of change was every bit as daunting as the technical aspects of a merger and acquisition. You know, any of that, I would think it would really cultivate the ground and equip your people to to whether, you know, the the challenges of change, but also make them much more productive. So the content let’s do a little bit of a dive into the content. Um, I don’t have the work ethic or the intellect or the pedigree to design a curriculum like that, but I would think if I were, I might want to approach topics like mental toughness or resilience or, you know, kind of getting outside of your normal pattern. Are those some of the kinds of things that you attack?

Kimberly Stark: [00:08:39] 100%?

Stone Payton: [00:08:40] Okay.

Kimberly Stark: [00:08:41] Someone wants to. So what leaders right now need to focus on almost more than anything is how to build, how to relate, how to build within their company, and also how to relay building true strategy through adversity on the back side of Covid and the tail end. And even just when helping people get through their lives. What’s the strategy behind it versus just a you got this or keep your chin up. So that’s what we’re providing. And also when people just want to level up their lives, they often or hit some sort of crisis or trauma. The problem is you don’t know where to start. So what we want to offer is a plan, is a strategic plan. So with, for instance, the content that you just mentioned, instead of just like a kind of weekly drip of it without a plan or somewhere to frame, we give them a framework. So that way when they do get these little bits of knowledge, they’re somewhere to hang it in an actual process. So let me walk you through that process. So at the very core of. Resiliency is a shift of perspective on hardships themselves, is understanding that the stress that comes at us or the adversity that comes at us, if we are willing to shift our perspective on it, can be utilized as a catalyst to not only wisdom or growth or expansion, but ultimately your greatest strength potentially. So really getting that mindset dialed in and starting to look at stress and hardship and adversity as a invitation to growth and giving the tools on how to do that.

Kimberly Stark: [00:10:23] So that is the first step in the Flourish model. The second step is agency. And you mentioned transition. Well, let me back up is agency. So it’s yes, your hardships can be redeemed. What you walk through, that’s challenging, you can use that for it, but you are the one that has to do it. So if you’re holding anyone else responsible, like it’s not even in your best interest. So really taking ownership. So in this module we talk about how do you navigate fear, How do you make yourself keep going even when you’re terrified? How do you navigate and build a true roadmap through change? So you were just talking about change management. In this module, we offer a shared language on a roadmap through transition, because the scariest thing about transitions is the uncertainty. But if you know, and this is based on the work of Dr. Virginia Satir, but if you know that every change, every transition has six steps along the way, and now you have the language to be able to identify that step those steps. So when you’re in the middle of chaos and what feels like chaos, you have words to it. And you know, well, you’re right on track. It’s a really uncomfortable part of the process. But we can now identify it, have some shared language. You can talk to your team about it. It’s helpful because it’s no longer uncertain. You can kind of a bridge. So shift your perspective on hardship, own your agency.

Kimberly Stark: [00:11:45] The next one is Imagine Forward. This is where we pull in a lot of the data around vision. And we we talk about something called strategic foresight, which has been used in the military and then in business. And answering this question of typically people think of. Making wise decisions moving forward. You pull from from experience, right? That’s how you know what to do next as you look at the past. But what happens if you’re in a situation where there is no previous thing to pull from? What do you do now? Well, there’s this thing called strategic foresight and creating these imagined worlds. And starting there, what happens when you start in this imagined world is you get past it. Number one. It can also build some strategy. And when maybe you haven’t gone through something before, but it also pushes you through any self-limiting beliefs you may have. Maybe you don’t have a blueprint of anyone and your family who’s who has gone through this. You don’t see yourself as that way. And the imposter syndrome. So we work with our clients through this process of strategic foresight and imagining the best outcome on on the other side of this adversity or change or whatever you’re trying to do. And you can do that on a micro level in your own life and ask yourself, what’s the most beautiful world I can imagine, both with my health and my relationships and my home, but also on a business level. So those are the first three steps.

Kimberly Stark: [00:13:13] After that we hit mindset. So that’s what you were talking about really. But it’s not just growth versus fixed and operating out of a growth mindset. We talk about what that is and how to do that. But before we do that, we need to be aware of the thoughts that are even going on in our head. And so we dive really into being aware of your thoughts and potentially the the lenses through which you’re seeing and experiencing the world. That number one, you may not even realize you are and number 2nd May be false. They might not even be real. And here you are operating. And it’s not even like a real belief, you know, it’s a belief you have, but maybe it’s not a real thing. So then and then switching those out and choosing the beliefs that serve you and move you forward and give provide resilience like resilient mindsets versus mindsets that might stunt your resilience. And then the fifth one is systems. So if your perspective own your agency, imagine forward, check your mindset and then set up your systems. And in the systems one, we talk about automating the fundamentals and and all of that, but we also pull a lot or push into identity and the role of identity, the role that your own self identity plays in the efficacy of wanting to change your habits and why you need to start kind of with identity on the front end of changing your habits versus changing your habits and waiting for your identity to catch up.

Stone Payton: [00:14:42] Well, I’m delighted to learn that you’re able to do this with a medium like Zoom. It strikes me that that gives you a lot more flexibility and the ability to reach people. You might it might find it difficult to reach otherwise, at least in a timely fashion. I am a little bit curious, having come from the training and consulting world a long time ago, what the mechanism for the what happens after you kind of bring these conversations to the front There you have you must have discovered a way to really let people chew on them, do some skill practice. Can you speak to that a little bit? You know, I’m just and I’m asking, gang, if you ever want to get a bunch of free consulting, get yourself a radio show. You can get just about any answer you want. But I am genuinely curious of how you can kind of really get beyond just the the information sharing piece of it.

Kimberly Stark: [00:15:43] Sure. And you are correct. I am purposeful in that I don’t want it to just be a I mean, hopefully our clients find it entertaining and fun, but I want to really create change in both their lives and the companies that hire us. So we found a couple pieces that work well for that. So yes, the model of the class is a content or live teaching either through Zoom, we have we have national clients, we have international clients. So those are done by Zoom or in person if they’re more local or a combination. But yes, there’s content and then there’s a reflection time of them answering some sort of we call them requirements, but the exercise of answering the question or applying the content specifically to themselves and then a sort of turn to your neighbor piece and let’s chat about it and like share out, right? So that way you’re, you’re, you’re connecting with your team, your colleagues in a way that is different than like a happy hour or a giving, maybe a giving back, which I support both, but it’s just another tool that you can use.

Kimberly Stark: [00:16:57] But there’s a there’s it’s like an invitation and say, Hey, we’re going to talk about this right now, where I find. The most success with our clients is to have an internal champion or an internal leader who is who has a leadership role within the organization but is just as willing to be vulnerable and show up and tell their stories and tell their failures that they’ve turned into benefits and say, Yeah, I felt imposter syndrome too, or any of those things. Because what that does is they’ve now modeled to the team that this is an environment where we’re going to talk about this and you can feel free sharing as much as you feel comfortable, but that your story is only going to be a benefit to the greater team because it shows humanness and it shows, like I said, a vulnerability and a willingness to learn and a growth mindset. And those are the clients that I have essentially the most. So much so, so the most success with so much so that now I make sure we have that sort of person in each of our courses.

Stone Payton: [00:18:09] I bet they learned so much from each other and find and are able to help the other person identify strengths and strategies. This peer to peer is the phrase that comes to me, but this this a peer to peer learning, like learning from each other. I bet they learn as much, if not more, from that than they do just the original content dump. Right. That’s just almost a catalyst for that, isn’t it?

Kimberly Stark: [00:18:35] Yes, because things content comes alive. I mean, there’s definitely content that you hear or it’s education. So there are things you hear where you’re like, oh my gosh. And the lights go off, you know, go on. And and it really hits. But there’s a different level that hits when someone tells their story and someone says, Here’s an example of when this content meant something to me or, Oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about because this happened to me. And it almost like, I’m not kidding you. I know it’s in it’s at work, but it ends up being this really powerful. Energy connectivity experience that happens that ends up changing the dynamic. And now the data show that A when a person conveys how they feel about their life and their overall happiness, you know, you have kind of like the main buckets, your work, your relationships, your home, how you feel in your body, all of that. But the number one contributor to how happy, how people convey, how happy they are is their career well-being. And one layer below that is the second thing is the how they feel about their manager. So when to answer your question before of like, why am I doing this work if I’m trying to genuinely increase people’s well-being? I decided to take it to market as a corporate wellness program versus just, you know, versus coming a coach because career well-being and how you feel about your manager are the two biggest contributors to how someone feels about their life. So if we can increase their how they feel about their career and their career well-being and their engagement and feeling seen and heard and start there and then we can upskill, upskill bosses to coaches through this, also education, and then we can deliver this education that helps people apply and build true strategy in their personal lives. And we can make a lot bigger impact.

Stone Payton: [00:20:45] Well, I love the focus and I’m particularly enamored with the the mechanism or the process. It just occurred to me and I feel like I’ve experienced this at various points in my life when I’ve taken a stab at self-development, how much I’ve gained if we spent that one afternoon, like trying to help Bob or Mary like like it was, it was so valuable for me, right? Like I learned I took a lot away from that. I love and I can it makes all the sense in the world to me that there would be an X factor and it would be so much more productive and powerful. And it sounds like you’ve pulled this off. If leadership isn’t just writing the check, but they’re diving right in there with you. They’re being vulnerable. They’re learning. They’re sharing. That’s wow. You’ve I think you’ve cracked the code on this thing.

Kimberly Stark: [00:21:35] Well, that is how you make for an impactful leader in the sense that I mean. I, I say this carefully because clearly there are a lot of different facets to being a great leader within an organization. You need to know what you’re doing in order to lead the company forward. But this the increasing if you’re looking to increase profitability, engage employee engagement and wellbeing is so tied to profitability like we’re talking an increase in 20%. So as a good leader, why wouldn’t you, number one, start there? And there’s there’s 20% increase in profitability right there. But. But even taking it further, people want to work for you. People will will get to the point where they’re where they’re wanting to come to work and work for you regardless because they feel that you’re prioritizing their health and they feel seen. They feel like their work matters. You’re going to have a much better retention rate and so you’re not going to lose money in needing to train people over and over. And leadership is changing. In the in corporate America from the sort of dominant role. People just have less respect for that now, like in a dominant domineering role. And it’s coming more and more conversation around servant leadership. And essentially what what that’s doing is, yes, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to know how to lead people, but you’re coming at it from a different position. And this tie to vulnerability and a tie to a willingness to see your mistakes and then change them and learn and grow and model that to your team only makes for not only a much healthier environment, but a more profitable one.

Stone Payton: [00:23:32] That is an impressive stat. 20%. It would it would be one of several compelling things about this whole conversation for for me, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for for a firm like yours? Is it as simple and straightforward as an ROI conversation or do you ever find that some senior level execs embrace the conversation a lot quicker and a lot better than than others? Do you do you have to get out there and market? Like how do you get to have the I got to believe if if someone in leadership has this conversation with you, I’ll bet they’re writing a check. But like, do you have to do some sales and marketing stuff to get here?

Kimberly Stark: [00:24:12] Yes, good question. That’s a really good one because it is changed over the last three years since I’ve taken this to market in 2020. There was well, I’ll say like for the business owner standpoint, right? So when I when I took it to market because my mission as we go back to, is that all may flourish. This is the mission. I get up and I’m serving every day that everyone has the opportunity to flourish. And I’m helping that mission through education and mindset shifts and essentially mine train the combination of content and mind training. So when I took it to market my pitch to the the people I was pitching was, Hey, don’t you want to increase the wellbeing? How can you support your team through the pandemic on this true strategy, through adversity? What I found was that what I was selling was the impact to the end user versus selling the Y to my buyer. So my buyer is the company. And sometimes, ideally, I mean, right, Ideally the people you’re pitching want the well-being for their employees, but that isn’t especially at that time there was not there was definitely like an Avatar executive who did not want to have these types of conversations at work. And it was very like, that stays at home. So now fortunately, that’s shifting. But regardless, you do have to you know, if you’re pitching the CFO, if you’re pitching a company that has shareholders, the conversation I lead with to those hearers of the conversation is increasing profitability.

Kimberly Stark: [00:25:54] We increase profitability through boosting employee engagement and wellbeing and the data show that you need to do both. So the let me let me back it up for you. Career well-being is the foundation of a thriving life, right? And so let we talk about it. So when I talk about I talk about in two ways. I talk about the end user, the employee who’s experiencing our class, and then also the buyer, the company who’s hiring us for this program. Okay. So from the end user career well-being they have found is the very foundation of a thriving life. So as I said to you before, when people feel the happiest about their lives, it’s most tied to I mean, of course everything’s intertwined, but it’s most tied to career well-being. Why do people feel happy about their career? Because they have high levels of engagement, and if they’re engaged in their career, they feel a few things. They like what they’re doing. They feel like their company sees them. They feel like they’re they can voice their opinion that their company values, the contribution they’re making. How do you get increased engagement? The number one.

Kimberly Stark: [00:27:02] You have a couple factors, but the number one contributor to increasing engagement is development, education. And that’s why we come in here. So we hit development. Education leads to higher engagement, leads to higher career well-being, and that’s why we start there. But you don’t get the same stats as by simply increasing engagement, the combination of increasing engagement and increasing well-being. That’s where you’re going to really supersize your stats. Now, from the conversation with the buyer, with our the companies that hire us, yes, data is showing that you can increase profitability by over 20% by increasing engagement levels. And again, how do you get your your employees engaged that they feel seen, They heard they can have well-being conversations, that we’re looking at the entire person. We’re providing some education on how to build strategy through adversity. And not only like when you hit trauma and crisis, but also how to level up your overall well-being. And we’re not just talking about like diet and exercise. We’re talking about the in the entire person. And yes, you can hit diet and exercise and make more impact in in those areas, but you’ve got to start where we start perspective agency imagination, mindset systems. Then you can apply that to bodily health, to relationship health and to career well-being.

Stone Payton: [00:28:31] Before we wrap, I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit, if I can. I’m interested to know, and I think our listeners will be too, about what passions, if any, you might have outside the scope of your work, outside the scope of what we’re talking about. My listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel outside of doing what I do with Business RadioX, but anything in particular you have a tendency to nerd out about or go and pursue That just sort of gives you a little bit of a break from this.

Kimberly Stark: [00:29:00] Yes. So, so and I love this question, too, because whenever you ask people this question, they have like one thing. There’s just endless combinations, right? You have someone who is a CPA, but they love sewing and they cook on the side or they’re just like all these combinations that you never expect from people. So, um, well, I would say two things. Number one is that I am also a single mom of four teenagers and I have them full time. And so that takes up a lot of my life. And a lot of my focus is they’re thriving and they’re flourishing. And so that unapologetically is what I’m focused on. I also have a really great community. I’m a I’m a California girl through and through. And that I grew up on the Monterey Bay in like Santa Cruz and surfing. And now I live in Newport Beach, which is also on the water. So we I am often like for fun, it’s on and around the water, whether it’s surfing or stand up, paddle paddleboarding or fishing or boating or anything that has to do swimming in the water, beach walks. But I will also say, and this is exciting too, I am launching a second company in. I have that. I have a background in travel. I was luxury leisure for a while and then business travel and now and popping back into travel and doing high end luxury leisure, doing a high end luxury leisure travel company. And I think why I love travel so much also goes back to my love for. Individuality and people and cultures and and in the same way, I like focusing on individuals, increasing their happiness and well-being. I think that’s what I love about travel, too, is seeing all the different types of landscapes and people and how people live and food they eat. And that’s incredibly and how small our world is. Honestly, it’s it’s rewarding for me.

Stone Payton: [00:31:10] Oh, well, congratulations on the new on the new effort. We for me, one of the reasons that I have been financially ambitious for so much of my career wasn’t so much about stacking up the money, but for me, a large expression of that is freedom and a way to the way that that often manifests for me is the freedom to travel. And I really and so that’s one of the reasons that Holly and I love to travel so much. We’ll have to have you come back on and get us updated on that effort at some point, if you like.

Speaker4: [00:31:41] I’d be happy to.

Stone Payton: [00:31:43] Absolutely. All right. Let’s, uh, if we could leave our listeners with a with a few I’ll call them pro tips. Just a few things they could be reading, doing, not doing, thinking about if they would like to begin to pursue this path of their own toward career well being. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Kimberly or somebody on her team. But, you know, maybe there’s something that they kind of get stimulated by hearing this conversation and they say, you know what, I’m going to start thinking more about this are few actionable things that we could be thinking about or doing to sort of begin to move in that direction.

Speaker4: [00:32:25] Sure.

Kimberly Stark: [00:32:27] I would say. Began. Okay. I would say a couple of things. It is a game changing to start shifting your perspective of hardships and knowing that as things come at, you start asking yourself, What can I learn from this? What is this here to teach me? Okay. I would also say in this process you have to be aware of, like I said earlier, what your thoughts even are. One tool to help you do this is a daily writing practice. I’m a huge proponent of a daily writing practice, and even my clients are like, What do we write? I’m telling you, just get something to write. And before you log on to your email or anything in the morning, like grab your coffee and go and just figure. Find out what’s in your head. One exercise that I use for my clients in order to do that is to take your paper and write different quadrants and write little like kind of the buckets of your life, your career, your relationships, how you feel in your body, where you how you feel about your home and your activities and your community, and get really quiet with yourself and write down what are your thoughts in your head in each of those areas. When you think about your career, what’s the first sentence that comes into your head? And we’re we’re operating day in and day out without realizing the lenses or the thoughts or the beliefs that we’re engaging with the world based on.

Kimberly Stark: [00:33:54] So first, you need to be aware of what that is. Then I would say, and when I did this in my own life, for example, when I got really clear about like what even the thoughts were in my head around these, they were awful. They were awful. I had no idea I was even engaging with the world through this like, belief system or thought or fear. Essentially, it was like fear. Right. So then turn the page, write those buckets again and answer this question. What is the most beautiful life that I can imagine? What’s the best life? I can imagine each of these buckets. But don’t just write it out and write the answers. Write it out in the framework of preemptive Gratitudes there’s a lot of research that backs gratitude and how it changes your day. It changes how you interact with the world, but write it out in this structure. I am so grateful that. But don’t just write what you’re grateful for. I want you to write a made up thing and imagine world what your world looks like. So, for instance, you know you want to up level your your physical health. I am so grateful that, like, in your most imagined world, you’re doing an ocean swim every day.

Kimberly Stark: [00:34:57] So I am so grateful that I did two ocean swims in a row in your most beautiful world, like you’re closer with your brother. I am so grateful that, like, we’ve met up twice this month. So get clear about what that looks like. And I’m telling you, like, blow it off. So in your career, if you want to write a book or whatever, I’m so grateful that I met with a publisher, but start there. And then when you do, if you’re daily writing, you’re constantly going back and looking at that list. And what happens is, number one, you’ve now gotten rid of those dumb frameworks and dumb thoughts that have been holding you back. And number two, you’re starting to dream about like, what do you want? And if you really believe like the the world is your oyster and you start there, don’t think about like how you’re going to make it happen. Just start there first, then you can. Little by little began to see little micro steps that are starting to get you closer to that. And that’s where the real fun begins. And now you know what you’re getting up and shooting for every day. You have a plan that you’ve kind of like given yourself a blueprint and backed it out.

Stone Payton: [00:36:07] I am so glad I asked. I now have a new mantra, preemptive gratitude. I wrote it.

Speaker4: [00:36:11] Perfect. Perfect. I am so grateful that. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:36:15] All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to reach out, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team starting to tap into some of your work. Whatever you feel like is appropriate, you know, the coordinates, LinkedIn, website, whatever.

Kimberly Stark: [00:36:29] Sure. So any information on the Flourish consultancy, you can go to the Flourish consultancy.com to reach out to me directly. You can email me at Kimberly at the flourish consultancy.com. But honestly I am active in two social apps or platforms and that is Instagram. I’m Kimberly. I’m at Kimberly and Stark on Instagram and feel free to DM me. I love having conversations with people who also nerd out on this stuff. I’m totally fine with you reaching out even to bring us in that way. And then I’m also on LinkedIn. I’m active on LinkedIn at Kimberly and Stark on LinkedIn also.

Stone Payton: [00:37:13] Well, Kimberly, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for sharing your insight, your perspective. Keep up the good work. The work you’re doing is so important and we certainly appreciate you.

Kimberly Stark: [00:37:29] Thank you. Stone It was a pleasure. Thanks for the invite and thanks for the conversation there. My favorite.

Stone Payton: [00:37:36] Well, the pleasure is all mine. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, CEO and founder with the flourish. Consultancy, Ms.. Kimberly Stark and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

BRX Pro Tip: Make it Easy for People to Leave You

August 16, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Make it Easy for People to Leave You

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BRX Pro Tip: Make it Easy for People to Leave You

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome to BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, there’s a lot of counsel that comes out of our shop that initially is probably received as a little bit counterintuitive. Maybe this falls into that same category. But, boy, have I found it to be good advice. And that is, make it easy for people to leave you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Yeah. That’s something that I think that you should be spending some of your time on. Maybe not every day, but just regularly is kind of purging your list of people that aren’t good fits. They’re not engaging. They’re not benefiting from you. Then, let them know that, “Hey, if this isn’t working for you, I don’t want to waste your time. And I don’t want you to waste my time. And maybe we should just kind of go our separate ways here. We still love you, but it’s not something that we should be kind of letting you know every thing that we’re doing.” And this is difficult for a lot of people because people spend a lot of resources attracting people to the community. But if those people aren’t the right fit, then you have to let them go.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] The business isn’t to collect lots of leads who are not the right fit for your service. That’s not what you should be after. Focus on the metrics that matter, not the cost metrics that don’t really move the needle in your business. You can’t help everybody. So, focus on the people that resonate with you and your mission. And invest energy and resources on those people. And build from those people outward. And when you’ve outgrown each other, then cut them loose so you can spend more energy on the people that do matter.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:44] The goal isn’t to just build the biggest list. The goal is to serve the most people. And the people that you’re going to be able to serve are the people that resonate with what you’re saying and doing. So, focus on them and then cut everybody else out.

Jeff Thompson with Americans for Prosperity and Matt Payne with Inner Circle Solutions

August 15, 2023 by angishields

Charitable Georgia

Jeff Thompson with Americans for Prosperity and Matt Payne with Inner Circle Solutions

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In this episode of Charitable Georgia, host Brian Pruett welcomes guests Jeff Thompson and Matt Payne. We dive into the positive things happening in our community and explore the power of community involvement and creating change for the better.

Jeff Thompson is a proud Girl Dad, grassroots engagement director at Americans for Prosperity, and a youth pastor.

Currently studying at Luther Rice College and Seminary, Jeff is passionate about theology and its practical application in today’s world.

Beyond his work and studies, Jeff actively contributes to the Frederick Douglass Foundation, fighting for equality and empowerment. He has a special place in his heart for both the elderly and babies, appreciating the wisdom and innocence they bring.

In his free time, Jeff enjoys chess, Reggae music and good cologne. These things bring him joy and helps him unwind.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Matt Payne is one of the Founders at Inner Circle Solutions. He is a Global Leader with 30 years of experience identifying and managing security risks for Fortune 500 companies.

Matt is keenly interested in emerging trends in the corporate sector and seeks to find and implement innovative processes, controls, and tools to help reduce risk for companies. Matt has a unique ability to see business from a holistic perspective due to significant cross-training experience.

Bringing together a wealth of experience to include Military Special Operations, Law Enforcement and Global Corporate Programs to deliver consistent and exceptional results.

Matt focuses on both customer and employee satisfaction which yields optimal management style with superior business results. Matt is an excellent law enforcement partner and maintains a significant range of contacts and willingly shares in education of industry trends. Matt comfortably applies delegation, empowerment, and leadership skills in dynamic environments.

Matt’s professional experience includes Director, Global Safety & Security at Epic Games; Director, Global Security Operations at PayPal; Leader, Global Safety & Security at Intuit, Inc.; Associate Director Investigations at Novartis Pharmaceutical; SME Counter-Terrorism at Coastal Defense Inc.; Retired Chief Humane Law Enforcement Officer, New Jersey; Detective at the Mercer County Prosecutors Office; Patrolman at the Hillsborough Township Police Department; U.S. Customs Inspector; Sergeant Combat Controller in the US Air Force

Matt’s extensive industry involvement includes International Association of Financial Crimes Investigator (IAFCI), Founder of Cyber Fraud Industry Group of IAFCI, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), International Association of Privacy Professionals, FBI Domestic Security Advisory Council, Department of State Overseas Security Advisory Council, Secret Service High Tech Crime Task Force, and FBI InfraGard. Career highlights include being a retired USAF 24th Special Tactics Squadron (Joint Special Operations Command) Combat Controller, Retired Chief Humane Law Enforcement Officer in New Jersey, and Former Chief Security Officer (financial, technology, entertainment, and engineering).

Matt received his B.A. in Criminal Justice at Caldwell College and received his Master of Public Administration and a M.A. in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University Camden in New Jersey. Professional certifications include Certified Fraud Examiner-Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

He is also one of the Founders of Outer Circle Foundation and President of C-Suite for Christ-Atlanta.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] 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: [00:00:45] Good, fabulous Friday morning. It’s another fabulous Friday, even though it’s wet outside. We needed the rain, so I hope everybody’s having a good week so far. The end of the week is here. And if you this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia. This is all about positive things happening in the community. So first of all, I’m going to welcome our guest in the studio. Rusty, welcome. Stone’s brother. You would never know you guys are related, so.

Stone Payton: [00:01:07] Thank you for saying that.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:09] So normally we have three people on the show, but one of them had an emergency and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But we got two fabulous guests this morning. And our first one is Mister Jeff Thompson from Americans for Prosperity. Jeff, welcome to the show this morning.

Jeff Thompson: [00:01:20] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:21] So Jeff and I met at the Carnesville Business Club. We found out we’re fellow Ohioans and so automatically we’re friends that way. So even though it’s Cleveland and Cincinnati, you know, it’s still still friends. Yeah. But Jeff does a lot of good things. We’ll get into Americans for Prosperity here in a second. But you you’re in a youth minister as well. You’re going through leadership. Bartow right now. So that’s pretty cool. So if you don’t mind, just give us a little bit of your background.

Jeff Thompson: [00:01:47] Actually grew up just right down the street, maybe five minutes from here. I went to elementary school for the last part of school right there, Little River Elementary. Let’s see, I’ve been working in politics for just a few years, but I also felt called to ministry. So I’ve been doing that for also maybe two years now. I’ve been a youth pastor before that, I taught fourth grade boys over at Woodstock. I have a I’m a girl dad. I got a 15 year old daughter. I do love the Buckeyes like you. So that was our immediate bond over that.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:26] Yes. So I’m curious, how is the politics and religion working together? How is that kind of what kind of balance is that?

Jeff Thompson: [00:02:34] I tried not to be overbearing with it. And but religion is the reason I got into politics. And that’s the cool thing about Americans for Prosperity. Although we don’t have specific religious tenets or anything, we stand on the truth and what’s right. That means we don’t chase any politician, any political party. We stand on our principles. You always know where we’re going to be at. We’re going to be at the truth. And my religious beliefs, I’m a man of faith is the truth. I stand for the truth. So I get to to do good stuff through my work as well. And I can I can love people. And when you stand on the truth, oftentimes it can be a nonpartisan issue because you can you can present that to somebody and they’re like, Yeah, I believe in that. And then it’s like, okay. And we invite any person or politician to meet us on that. Now, that might mean that sometimes one politician might meet us on the truth and on another issue, he might not meet us, but we’re not going to change. So I love it. I get to do good stuff in the community. I get to to be a light and they can see it because with ministry, it doesn’t always have to be specifically talking about the Bible. They can see it through your love and through your actions.

Brian Pruett: [00:03:55] What I think is really cool, especially with your organization, is I just know just a little bit from I think you and I met I told you, I looked at possibly working with you guys at one point, but it wasn’t it wasn’t a fit for me. So but what I think is really cool is, you know, I’ve networked in metro Atlanta for almost 30 years, and you could always tell when it was election time because that’s when the politicians came out and networked. Right. But obviously not necessarily being a politician yourself, But you just mentioned it being stuff in the community. You do stuff in the community. And it’s it’s very cool for you, for me to see you doing things in the community where it’s even when you’re together, at least the stuff that I’ve been to, you don’t really necessarily bring up the politics. It is all about the community. So can you share about some of the stuff you guys do?

Jeff Thompson: [00:04:38] Oh yeah. At the down, there’s a guy in Albany, his name’s King Randall, and Albany is kind of a rough area for at least the areas he’s from. So he’s got all these boys and they come to his boys school. And I also got to give a big shout out to my friend Joe Happy. He’s with North Point Roofing. I reached out to Joe. I was like, Joe, like there’s a school down here. And he he he did a $5,000 donation to that school. But we, we, we want school choice for people. We feel that parents can make the best decision for their child. So we support being able to pick which school you go to. And we support a King Randall in that we got to support his boys school. It’s all about teaching these boys from these rough areas, life skills, so they can go out and be productive members of society. We fight for freedom with less cost on our health care, something called certificate of need. Right now, the big guys can essentially block out any competition. And you have to pretty you have to ask for permission from your competition. And of course, it’s not necessarily when when it’s a big picture like that, they’re not thinking about what’s best for the everyday person. They’re thinking about their bottom line. And that’s what I love about this organization is we were we were founded where our original founders, Charles Koch, if anybody’s one of the big guys, it’s him. But he gives us the resources and the support to go out and make a difference for the everyday person.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:15] So explain a little bit more. Go into depth of exactly what you guys do for the people. Because I know you just opened an office in Cartersville. So what can somebody, if they needed, you know, to get in touch with you or whatever, what can they expect by working with you or what you can do for somebody?

Jeff Thompson: [00:06:33] I can educate them on our priorities. And my favorite part about it is teaching people to do politics in a way that’s not this icky stuff going on right now, this swampy feeling of you have to pick a side and then do what that side tells you. We stand for a bottom up control, bottom up paradigm. My goal will be to find what makes every person unique and their special abilities and plug them in. Maybe you’re a writer. Maybe you’re a good event planner. Maybe. Maybe you have something that I haven’t seen yet and there’s an area of the community I can pour into. So my goal is to build unique, unique groups and plug them into the fight using their unique abilities. So if you come to me, I will. First of all, I want to know you. What makes you tick, what you find important, and how we can teach you like a new way of doing things. Because people are tired of politics. They’re tired of the. The extremism of it, the polarizing ness of it. But I could show you, hey, you stand on the truth and you don’t move off of it. And then at the end of the day, nobody can can can say anything to you because you’re just doing what’s right and asking, Hey, come, come meet me here. I’m not going to follow you around or do whatever you tell me the party is doing right now. People are fed up with it.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:59] So do you guys do door knocking? Do you go into homes and stuff like that as well? So it’s different, I guess, than somebody, you know, obviously doing solicitation and technically I guess it is. But what does that look like for you guys?

Jeff Thompson: [00:08:13] So right now we’re doing voter ID, which means just finding out who people are voting for in the next primary. First we ask them, hey, just we just have a conversation with them. Ask them what you feel is important. Do you feel the country is going in the right way or the wrong way right now? Do you feel future people, future kids will get to live the American dream? One thing that I guess is a little alarming, a challenge for us to to to get us back on the right track. A lot of people are saying our best times are behind us and that future generations won’t even get to live the American dream. People are people are concerned right now. And and that goes back to what I can do to get like people want to be involved. But like right now, our loudest voices are the people on either side of the polls. And nobody needs to nobody wants to be near them, whether it be left or right. People are tired of that. So I try to give people a way, hey, you can be involved, you can do something. But the I, I have some some good interactions at the door. Sometimes people are really happy to see me there. I’ve I’ve had people we get in a deep my one of my one of my biggest just a little transparency. One of my things that I love is building instant rapport with people, having deep conversations with people that I just met. And we’ll be we’ll crying at the door, talking about life, sharing it. I love it. And. Like, I’ll tell people, some people like, Oh, I could never do that. Door to door canvasing is one of the number one life skills and job skills you can ever have. It teaches you to just be able to interact, think fast on your feet. Be able to talk to anybody in any situation. And I’ll just be a kind, gentle soul that invites people to just open up. But I love it. I love it. It’s how I started in this world was canvasing and.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:12] Also will teach you to learn how to take the know very quickly as well. It’s funny. So I spent years in sales and everybody kept telling me, I don’t know how you do and get the nose. You know, another thing that keeps you learn the nose, right? So in college, I asked every single girl out and they kept telling me no. So I learned to know very quickly. So no, but I think it’s cool because that goes back to your ministry, too. I mean, obviously your ministry heart that a lot of people open up to you with that as well. So, um, all right. So share a little bit about do you guys have like different areas you work in or is there a different representatives in areas? How does that look right now?

Jeff Thompson: [00:10:52] I would say that I like to do the 11th Congressional District, which is our senator. Barry Loudermilk.

Brian Pruett: [00:11:01] Congressman Loudermilk.

Jeff Thompson: [00:11:01] Yeah, Congressman, he and so that’s Woodstock or Cherokee? Bartow Cobb That’s where I am. But but it’s it’s still a statewide thing. And so I get to I can be anywhere, but I’m located in Cartersville. I’m heavy focus on this area.

Brian Pruett: [00:11:22] So you talked about the education piece. If somebody was really, as you say, a lot of people concerned and they wanted to learn about each candidate, can you sit down and talk to them about the candidates?

Jeff Thompson: [00:11:33] If we endorse them, if they’ve if they’ve we have policy champs. Some of them I know. I came in or he was at the then time he was a House representative, Ed Setzler. He’s a policy champ of ours, Huffstetler, another policy champ. So those guys I can tell why they why they meet us. Yeah. And if anybody ever really wants to know, I can always tell them. But. But more on a personal level.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:04] Okay, so you started networking with the Cartersville Business Club a year ago, is that right? About a year ago.

Jeff Thompson: [00:12:10] I kind of because I was doing Woodstock, I used to be in roofing. I guess I did Woodstock and Canton and it was there like similar. It’s almost like a sister organization type thing. So it was just a natural fit. I would see. I don’t even know how I first it might have been. Maybe Jennifer Smith told me about it. But yeah, I started out going to these ones around here because I was doing the more paid close seats. One and a gentleman I met with a gentleman named let’s see, it was Jim Hilber. He introduced me to Rudy Garza, who plugged me all in. Rudy Great dude. And that’s how I got involved. But yeah, Woodstock is where, where I started out.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:57] So but a lot of people I’ve seen in the Cartersville Club has really kind of latched on. You know, it was really more of like a community out there, especially, I feel, and all the networking I’ve done, of all the ones I’ve been involved in, it really is more of a community at Cartersville, so I’m guessing that might be one of the reasons why you picked Cartersville to do your have your office, but can you share a positive story of you and networking, especially now with Americans for Prosperity?

Jeff Thompson: [00:13:23] Well, originally it all started out with networking. I was at Tabernacle Baptist Church at something called a biblical citizenship training. I met and I’m walking around and it’s all the networking. And in these political worlds, there’s the there’s a certain posturing that goes on. And I see this guy, and it’s almost as if you can feel that this guy is acting different. He’s going out of his way to to make me feel welcome. And it was it was Representative Matthew Gamble. And so we hit it off. And a few months later, he introduced me to a woman on the school board, Miss Darla Branton Williams. And and she we hit it off, too. And so that community feel that that loving feel from them is what drew me to Cartersville. It was the people, the the networking aspect. There of just people being good folks. And that’s often a question in politics. I’m often one of the designated guys that they say, how can we get younger and more diverse? And the answer is just being a kind person. It’s like nobody, nobody felt they had to dress like me or look like me or talk like me. It was just love, you know, love. Love is a universal language. And they they I saw that in them and I saw that in the community. And like I tell people, hey, they told me I could pick anywhere in the state to build community and I picked Cartersville. And so, like, there’s really no place I’d rather be than out there.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:59] So other than the reason that you’ve just talked about, we talk a lot about community on this show. And so other than the reasons of educating people on politics and just a ministry giving heart, why is it important for you to be a part of the community?

Jeff Thompson: [00:15:16] Because I, I often well, for one, I want to do my part. I want to be a light. I want to shatter stereotypes, bridge gaps, open up doors and and and maybe be a positive representation for anybody that I represent, whether that be men, black folks, Christians. I want to use, you know, what God has given me because I have been I’ve been low. I’ve been pretty low. Yeah, I had a little bit too much fun out here in Woodstock and it beat me up. And I humbly say I don’t I’ve never met anyone who’s been out as far as I was that came back all glory to God. Nothing, nothing of mine, nothing of my doing. So I want to use whatever he’s gave me, the life lessons, whatever I can do to be a productive member of society and invite people in in the community.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:22] So Jeff keeps telling me he’s great at trivia and unfortunately, he’s got stuff at church. He can’t come to my shows. But one of these days we’ll get you because I want to see how good you are. Okay. Um, so I wanted to ask you if you could give somebody some advice on. I talk to people and you mentioned this earlier that people are scared right now. Things are going on and people are like, I’m just not going to vote. Yeah, give somebody advice of why that should not be the case.

Jeff Thompson: [00:16:49] Because there’s power. There’s power in in one. There’s power in one. You think of like even like a little ant. If every ant said, Hey, I’m not going to do anything, there would never be these big old ant hills or or things getting accomplished. But it’s just a defeated attitude. And it also gives you a little bit of self-worth. You do matter. Your input matters. You can show up. Everybody has their own brand of of. Of intelligence and input. And when you show up and you make your voice heard, you might give somebody some perspective that somebody else has never, never heard. But every every one vote counts. And it has to be that thing where everybody does it because, you know, everybody can’t take that attitude. And even your attitudes are infectious. You might say that, and then your friend hears it, somebody else hears it, or the next generation hears it or sees it. And, you know, there’s people that are always they didn’t always get to vote. So whether you feel whether you feel like it won’t make an impact or not, it will. And, you know, it feels good to vote. Like I say, I’ve been low, so it feels good to vote. It feels good. It feels good to pay taxes sometimes. And and I’m not a big taxes guy, but when you when you’ve been out there, man, it feels good. So think of the people that can’t do it and represent them. Think of people in the past that fought for your rights to vote and and just go do it and asked me. I’ll fill you in. There you go.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:28] It also feels really good when you get a tax refund.

Jeff Thompson: [00:18:30] Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:32] So talk to me a little bit about leadership. Bartow. I know you guys just started, but what’s what’s that look like? What do you do so far?

Jeff Thompson: [00:18:38] We did a little team building activities. It felt good. Mine came back in the 95th percentile of being social and outgoing and in the 95th percentile of being a person. That will change. And that felt good knowing that. You know, like and sometimes you need to change. There’s been times when I’ve, you know, a couple of years ago, like I like to tell people a few years ago, I think it is. I had a lime green flat top. I was wearing pearls and rock shirts, but for any of this stuff was even the thing to do. And I knew everything. I was loud and proud about it. And now I look back on myself and I had not a clue what I was talking about. So it’s it’s good to to to see that I have that flexibility to grow and learn and change and adapt. And that was one of the things that I got to know. I also got to meet some other cool people and just going there and make my voice heard when it’s appropriate. We also had a cool dinner at the the the country club and I met a woman named Danielle Swanson, and we gave each other a big old hug. And she was like she was like, Yo, do you remember me? And so, yeah, I took like I told y’all earlier, I graduated high school in 2020, y’all.

Jeff Thompson: [00:20:07] I’m 38 years old. Like it was a long journey, but along the way, I, I took a GED class with her and I eventually just dropped out of it. I left it and I told her I had gave up. I just gave up and I was out to go do all types of crazy stuff in the streets that I was doing. She was like, Yo, you broke my heart that day. So I’ve noticed a trend of like, you know, because I can’t go anywhere in North Georgia and not see an area where I did something really far out. I’m talking just right down the street over here, like multiple spots around here. But God always brings me back and it’s like, Yo, yeah, it’s humbly like a redemption tour. Like, yo, look at it now. Yeah. And so that felt good to meet her there. And then they made us sing for our food and that was fun as well. Nice. So things are starting off good. I’m looking forward to learning more about the community, meeting some of the people that may Cartersville-bartow County. Such a great.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:14] Place. You got a lot of folks in there that I know personally and that’s a great thing. You got Joshua Kolonitsky and say Veronica Mingo. So quite a few folks in that that are really, really good. So it’s a good class this year. So. Well, you just talked about it, your story of not giving up as well. So again, if somebody’s listening and have that thought of, well, I just either I’m not worth it or whatever, it’s just going to give up. Give some advice.

Jeff Thompson: [00:21:38] Yeah, it can get better oftentimes, especially my area was addiction, all sorts of addiction. And and what I like to tell people is that is an attempt to heal a spiritual hurt with earthly means. So your soul, your spirit, it gets it gets crushed. Mine was feelings of inadequacy and feelings of being a failure of a bad dad, feelings of being unaccomplished. And it put a big old and and broken relationships. I wanted my daughter to have a perfect family and the best life. And it hurt me when it didn’t happen. So it put a big old hole in me and then you got to stuff it and you got to numb it. And of course, those things fall out and so you got to do it again and again and again. And on the outside world, people are like, Why does that person keep doing that destructive activity over and over again? Well, it’s because they’re numbing a hurt. And that’s what was for me. I went off to a program called Waypoint. It’s up in Dahlonega. It’s in the middle of the woods. No TV, no phones. You get away and you get to work on your mind and heal those hurts. So anybody out there, I would suggest, you know, just just just think about what you can be, what can be hurting you.

Jeff Thompson: [00:23:00] The tricky part is, is that your mind will naturally start to to build defense mechanisms around it. And it’s hard to get to it. But hey, if you can reach out to me, I’ll help you with it. But yeah, don’t give up. And to the people who have those folks in their family, sometimes when you’ve and I understand that they can be a lot to deal with. But sometimes the reason they’re hurting is because of broken relationships. So just know you’re good enough, you can turn it around. That’s like, yeah, I am in Bible college and that’s one of the reasons I do it for the testimony. I want people to be like, Yo, this guy, you know, he he graduated high school when he was like 36 or something and he graduated four years of college. So yeah, you can talk to me. You’re worth it. Everybody’s worth it. Even like from the religious point of view, when you talk about everybody in the Bible that was used by the Lord was screwed up. So it could just be the beginning of an awesome Bible story. Hop back on it.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:04] I told Sharon last week, I love this show and you got some great stories that come on this show. So full circle, huh? Outer circle. We’ll get that in a second. But, you know, we did something with Kevin Harris, who is 11 years sober for his all in, all out ministries. A couple weeks ago, Matthew Gamble was there. We raised $10,300 for his ministry. So that was awesome. But it’s just great to have people who such as yourself and Matt here what we’ll talk to you in just a second who are vulnerable to share their stories and willing to be out in the community and share and help. So do you have anything coming up for Americans for Prosperity that events or anything coming up?

Jeff Thompson: [00:24:46] I’ve got a for the Republican primary. I got or I have a debate watch party. We’re going to do that on the fifth of next month, I believe that’s a Tuesday. I also have there’s a former representative, Tim Barr. He’s going to do a class on how to speak across lines, how to, you know, how to how to teach or do all this stuff without starting a fight. That’s that’s that’s one of my passions. And then that’s what I tell you. What, you got to be long suffering in this world. Like, imagine if I came in here and was like, All right, B, let me, let me tell you about doing a radio show. Even though you do this. Let me tell you about what I know because because maybe I saw something on the Internet or because my dad told me about it. I’m not going to listen to you. And then let me let me tell you. And even if you bring up a point that’s valid. No. Well, I don’t know about that. Yeah. So that’s a passion of mine as well. That’s what’s coming up. And we do phone banks. We do door knocking at the end of the month if it’s something that you’re passionate about and I’m also in the works for, I think I’m going to do we’re going to rent out a booth at the Rome Braves, going to start doing much like a lot more cooler stuff and just a little sneak peek. I want to y’all I want to I want to start talking to the our older generations that are we’re losing all that good knowledge. So I want to sit down with them. I want to get that also, y’all. I talk to people all over the place on the streets of all backgrounds and ages, and I want to get like some secret spy glasses. Nice and like teach people how to talk to anybody. So that’s what’s on the horizon for me.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:29] On November 16th, we got something for you, which we’ll talk about in a second. So we’ve got something you need to be at. So cool. Um, so again, so if somebody wants to get a hold of you, talk to you, how can they do that?

Jeff Thompson: [00:26:41] You can go take action on our website, select Georgia. There’s various ways to take action. I it’ll pop up on our website. You can also just call me on my work phone. That’ll be (470) 668-7805. Email me at T Thompson at AFP hq.org.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:03] And while all of the stuff you just talked about event wise or can find on the website or do you have like a Facebook or anything they can go and follow?

Jeff Thompson: [00:27:09] We have we’ve got Facebook, Instagram. There’s also yeah we’ll post those things on there. Right now. The two events I spoke of are getting approved, which will it’ll just happen. It’s just got another layer to go to and then they’ll be live and active. You can always find the events on our website.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:28] Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks for sharing a little bit of your story. Don’t go anywhere because we’re not done with you. But I’m going to move over now to Matt Payne with the Outer Circle Foundation, C Street for Christ and all kinds of other stuff. So, Matt, thanks for being here.

Matt Payne: [00:27:37] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:38] You were supposed to have your, as I say, better half here as well, but unfortunately, she got called into an emergency.

Matt Payne: [00:27:45] So, yes, she was unfortunate last night, got called in.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:48] So, Buffy, we’re sad you’re not here, but I hope everything goes well for you this morning. So we you have an incredible story. I won’t mess it up. But you are a veteran. You’re also a retired police chief. But if you would, just please give us your story.

Matt Payne: [00:28:02] Oh, Lord. So I was born in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Northeast corner. Johnson City-kingsport-bristol up in there. My dad had gone to Vietnam in October, I’m sorry, November of 66. I was born in February. He was killed in April. So, you know, we lived in a trailer behind my grandma’s house with my mom. My mom had my sister and myself and got the news. My dad was killed. And about a year and a half later, she married my step dad, who she actually had known since she was six years, six months old. He lived right around the corner and he went away and became a Navy pilot and then came back and ended up being a captain for TWA. And with his travels, it took us up to New Jersey and he flew out of JFK. I went to high school and didn’t do well, didn’t know what I wanted to do, and ultimately landed on going in. The military, never told a soul I was going, told my mom the night before, Hey, you got to give me a ride to the train station. Where are you going? And I signed up for the military. I leave to morrow morning and she wasn’t happy about that. But I went in and I became a combat controller. A combat control is the special operations arm of the US Air Force. We are certified air traffic controllers, parachute scuba demo weapons, call for fire, a bunch of different things. And I did that in in 1989.

Matt Payne: [00:29:35] I tore my anterior cruciate ligament. I had to get out of the military, went to college, played soccer knee, did well, called the military back and said, hey, can I come back? And they said, Yeah, absolutely. We now have a waiver because I had a screw in my knee. So went back and was medically retired in 1995 after four knee surgeries, had no idea what I wanted to do. It happened like that, like a month and a half, and I was standing outside the gate with my bags and I had no idea what to do. So move back to New Jersey and just trying to figure things out. Landed on law enforcement, became a cop and decided to go back to school, graduated college. And I just kind of wanted a little bit more. And I was in law enforcement for about ten years, and I left and went into the private world. And a buddy of mine called me about six years later and said, hey, New Jersey State Humane Police are looking for cops. I said, Dude, I got a job. I can’t do anything. He goes, No, they’re a we do cases when they come in, so it’s not a full time job. But it is. We had 60 cops. We handled 5200 cases a year. And I went in and ended up as their chief and retired buff. And I lived down here in Dallas. And, you know, we’re doing our thing.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:59] So talk a little bit about what how first of all, you shared a little bit about you and Buffy, how you got together. But you she does security as well. But can you share a little bit since she’s not here, but can you share a little bit about her? Because it’s amazing what you both do.

Matt Payne: [00:31:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’re both chief security officers by trade, so, you know, run security for for large organizations. She has come in from the intelligence world. I came in from the obviously the law enforcement and military side. And, you know, we have known each other for, I guess, about 13 years now. And way back before it was Bitcoin, a buddy of ours, he and I were writing a paper on cryptocurrency even before it was called Bitcoin. And he goes, Dude, I got to somebody that that I definitely want to bring into this. And she had been working at JP Morgan Chase and then ultimately went over to Equifax and she offered a lot of insight into that white paper. And, you know, in the security world, it’s not competition. It’s, hey, do you have a yeah, let me connect you. Let me hook you up because we want to keep everybody safe. So we stayed in contact. And, you know, she was married and I was married. And, you know, we just had that professional relationship. Long story. But, you know, marriages go south. We ended up getting closer and now we’re married. And there you go doing our thing. There you.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:21] Go. So, all right. So we’ll get to Outer Circle in a second because that’s an awesome organization. But I’d like for you to also talk about C-suite for Christ.

Matt Payne: [00:32:29] Yeah, So we opened our we have a risk resiliency firm called Inner Circle. And when I say we, it’s mine. Obviously Buff is there but when when I opened it, Buff and I are both very religious. We, we have a lot of faith in God and we put God first in everything we do. And I wanted to put God in our website on our stuff. And I went out and started talking to some. More friends and said, Hey, this is what I want to do. They all came back and said, Absolutely not. You can’t do that. You can’t mix religion and business and faith and religion. You’re going to upset somebody. You’re going to lose out on business. You’re going to do whatever. And a microsecond later, I said, too bad, that’s what we’re going to do. So we post a lot on LinkedIn, we post a lot on Facebook and different things. And a guy named Paul Newberger out in Wisconsin connected with us, and he started an organization called C-suite for Christ and C-suite. Think of C-suite as CEO, CSO CFO, Chief Marketing officer, all of those the big people in the organization. And he started liking us our stuff. We started liking his stuff. He came to us and said, Hey, I’m thinking about opening a chapter. Would you guys want it in Atlanta? And we talked about it and we said, Yeah, that’d be really cool. So C-suite for Christ brings business executives and leaders together in an effort to bring Christ back into the workplace.

Matt Payne: [00:33:59] So we meet the second Wednesday of every month at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church in Buckhead. We always have a speaker that comes in, and this is not networking. It’s not, Hey, Brian, I got a lead for you, or I got this or I got that. This is all about Christ and it’s all about fellowship. Will work happen? Absolutely. You’ll meet people and you’ll say, Hey, you know, whatever. But we always bring in a speaker. The speaker has we try to bring in people that have some form of professional development for our executives, whether it be leadership or brand or whatever it is. We had Mac Powell from Third day. We had Mark Lee from Third Day this month. We had Nancy Major. She wrote a book called The Wretch Like Me, the Modern day Mary Magdalene, kind of like your story. She was went down as low as she could possibly get. And now she’s out and she’s giving her testimony. And her story was, you know, on Wednesday. I cannot believe I put every bit of that in my book. The bad, the the really, really bad. The everything went in that book. And it’s her position that I don’t want others to do it. And I want them to know that they can come back, just like you were saying.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:14] That’s awesome. And I also like the fact that because there’s plenty of networking out there, I like the fact that you guys strictly get together for the Christ aspect. Yes. Because that’s that’s a loss these days. Yeah. All right. So let’s now talk about the Outer Circle Foundation, because you guys have a program that I think is so important that I think there’s other organizations out there that that help the people you’re looking to help and do help but share about the Outer Circle Foundation.

Matt Payne: [00:35:41] So about two and a half years ago, we started Outer Circle and we always wanted to give back. We wanted to do something. And obviously military and law enforcement. And it’s not only law enforcement, it’s first responders. So whether you’re a paramedic, a fireman, a fax worker, whatever it is, when you are in the trenches dealing with the stuff that you deal with, that’s what we consider a first responder and we wanted to give back. So we opened it and we sat on it a little while because we had I had started Inner Circle at that same time. And some friends of mine, when the Afghan government fell, some friends called and said, Hey, we need some help. I said, All right, what do you got going on? We need to help move our Afghan special Forces allies out of Afghanistan to safety. I said, cool. So Outer Circle changed the mission from the US to Afghanistan, and I started working the Afghanistan mission and one family turned into five, turned into 100, turned into a thousand. And, you know, we worked really, really closely with a bunch of nonprofits. Gonzo Lazuli at Tarjuman was probably the closest we work with. And he and I would just share resources and information and everything, and we were able to to move people. And about last summer is when we changed our mission back to the US focusing on PTSD awareness, suicide prevention and transition assistance. And there’s a lot of alternative methods for PTSD. From a treatment perspective, you have a lot of different counselors and different capabilities from the suicide side and transition. It’s really the soft skills. It’s resume interview, network, social media, building your brand, getting business acumen, learning culture, things like that to make that transition from the government into the private world and be very successful at your transition.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:42] And you don’t have to be from Georgia for you to do this. You just you can help all first responders and veterans from all over, right?

Matt Payne: [00:37:47] Anywhere. Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:48] So you have a big event coming up in just, what, a month and a half?

Matt Payne: [00:37:52] Yeah. October 12th, we have our second annual Outer Circle golf outing. It’s at Bear’s best in Suwanee. It’s a. All day event. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have a bunch of sponsors. Last year, you know, Buff and I went in and we had both done golf tournaments for different things and we had been years and years since we did it. And we went in and said, you know, if we can cover our costs and leave with $10,000 that we can help another nonprofit, we would be over the moon and fast forward. We raised over $100,000. We wrote a $50,000 check to Paws for Life. Pause is a nonprofit here in Atlanta. They give service animals to veterans, first responders and medically fragile. So the the woman who received the the dog from our donation last year will be at the outing this year. And so it’s a great day. We have a lot of fun. We’ll have a bagpiper from the Atlanta pipe and drums from law enforcement. We’ll have an honor guard. We have some horse soldiers coming up that were in Afghanistan a bunch of different things going on. So it’ll be a good event.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:03] Awesome. So that leads us to November 16th. You and I sat down and talked and I know you were one of the nonprofits I wanted to work with. So one of the things I like doing is putting on expos and we’re going to do on November 16th at the Acworth Community Center, the first annual America’s Hometown Heroes Expo. I got it right. Yes. You just found it out last night. So. Yeah, and that’s for veteran owned businesses, first responder owned businesses or businesses that want to hire those folks. We’re going to have an honor color guard there. We’ve got actually a gentleman who is an Army veteran who is a canine trainer, and he just told me yesterday that he is now training canines for PTSD. So you guys get together. Yeah, he’s going to do a canine demonstration while we’re there. And it’s just going to be a great time. So, Jeff, make sure you’re there November 16th.

Jeff Thompson: [00:39:47] So my schedule. All right.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:49] So, um, if businesses want to get involved with the Outer Circle Foundation, first of all, are there opportunities to help you in how what does that look like?

Matt Payne: [00:40:00] Yeah. So, you know, on our web, on our website, we have a strategic partners page and I have to give a huge shout out to James Lynch. He’s a doc. He’s up in Annapolis, Maryland, and he runs the Stellar Institute. And Doc was when I was in the military, I was at the Joint Special Operations Command, and Doc Lynch was one of our doctors. And when, you know, the war on terror happened and the guy started coming back, he started doing a lot of work around PTSD. And there’s a procedure out there called the stellate ganglion block And you have two bundles of nerves in your neck. They connect to your autonomous and your sympathetic nervous system, which makes your fight or flight. And he was able to numb that those two bundles of nerves that reset your fight or flight system. And it’s been proven really, really successful. The VA has adopted it. There’s four different VA’s that will administer this procedure. And I went up and did it in November. And for those that don’t have PTSD, PTSD, your head is just all over the place. It is like ping pong balls scrambling around. Dakota Meyer, who’s a medal of Honor winner, kind of summed it up. Think about being in rush hour traffic in New York City 15 minutes late to the most important meeting that you have ever that you are ever going to be in. And that’s kind of chaos and pandemonium that’s going on in your head, right? You don’t sleep.

Matt Payne: [00:41:26] You’re very short nightmares, a lot of different things Go on. So I lay down on the table. He uses ultrasound. Before the needle was out of my neck, he asked me, How do you feel? And it was totally insane. This is not a memory of mine. I never had this. I said, Doc, I’m a ten year old boy. It’s a summer day. I’m wearing overalls and I’m sitting on a dock looking at a lake that’s crystal clear. My feet are dangling because they can’t reach the water. And I got my fishing pole next to me. And I guess that’s what my mind said was the most relaxing, comforting kind of thought that I could come up with. And, you know, Doc is fantastic at this. There’s a bunch of people out there that do it, but he is he’s the pioneer from my perspective. Right. And that’s just Matt’s perspective alone. But if you if you’re an organization, you want to come in. We have sponsorships at the golf outing. You can come in and donate to us Outer Circle Foundation.org. There’s a donate button on our website. There’s a lot of different things we can do. And I would love to talk to businesses that have either, you know, military networks, they’re looking for veteran owned organizations. They’re looking to hire veterans. They want to get more involved in veterans or first responders. Right. We can we can help with a lot of that.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:47] And you can be part of the expo. Yes. So you were just talking about a little bit. But if somebody is listening and they’re experiencing PTSD or they’ve had the the dark thought of suicide, can you give any kind of advice? Just some hope to somebody who might be listening.

Matt Payne: [00:43:04] Yeah. So the crisis line is nine, eight, eight. You just dial nine, eight, eight and it’ll go right to a crisis counselor. So, you know, that’s kind of what I would say right there. If you have PTSD and there’s no shame in it, right? It’s just it’s a fact of life. Right. And I was I have a great counselor. I have a great network of counselors that can help. And even before the the ganglion block, you have to be in therapy. You have to be diagnosed with PTSD and you have to to do it. You know, there are plenty of people out there. There’s plenty of veterans. There’s plenty of people that will talk. You can connect my my cell phone numbers on the website. My email is on the website. You know, you can reach out and and talk to me. And I’ve been on both sides, right? So I’ve been on the military side and I’ve been on the law enforcement side. So you have the ability to talk about those things. Do not keep it inside. It is not never ending. And we just had a conversation the other day and I, I was watching a video and it was from a paramedic and she had gone to a attempted suicide call and the guy had put a gun into his temple and pulled the trigger and he lived while he was still alive.

Matt Payne: [00:44:20] They were in the back of the ambulance and his words to her, Please do not let me die. And I read a study of suicide, people that had committed suicide but had stayed alive. And there every one of them. Their statement was, The minute I did it, I knew I did the wrong thing and I wish I could take that back. And these are people that jumped off bridges that had shot themselves, that had done a variety of different things. It is not as bad as you think it is. There are avenues to come back and there’s ways to come back very productively and continue on doing whatever it is that you want to do. And then you can be that light going out and helping somebody else on the next round. Because you’ve been there, you’ve dealt with it, you’ve done it, and you know, so so do not give up.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:07] Unfortunately, I’ve had two brothers commit suicide, so it’s definitely a rough thing. So yeah. Um, all right. So other than everything you just talked about, give me a different answer. But why is it so important for you to be part of the community?

Matt Payne: [00:45:21] Ha. I mean, so, you know, we I think every one of us and, you know, it’s in the Bible that we are supposed to be God’s light. And, you know, it’s it’s just like he said, you know, it takes one. If we don’t have the one, you can’t transfer that light to someone else. And, you know, the goal for everything that we do, whether it be, you know, my work through inner circle or our work through Outer Circle or C Suite for Christ is to make the world a better place. It is to shine light where there is no light. It is to bring that light to the deepest, darkest areas that we can find to help people realize there is good and there’s things going on. You know, I get so frustrated with the news because you flip on the news and everything in the news is bad. Every single thing, whether it be climate change, politics, crime, the economy, trade agreements, I don’t care what it is, it’s all negative and it’s all bad. And, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn or you follow us on Facebook or anything, we shed all of that positive. You know, law enforcement’s got such a bad rap with, you know, everything that’s gone on. There’s bad apples in every profession. Unfortunately, in law enforcement, if you get a bad apple, it could lead to something, you know, devastating. But it does not. You can’t paint the broad brush and make every law enforcement officer or everyone out there protecting us a bad person because they’re not. And, you know, I posted, I think, two stories this week where cops gave their lives saving people and they do it day in and day out. So it’s you have to keep that going or else it’s going to be that the society is just going to be what’s the point? There’s no there’s you know, we’re just doomed for failure. And you can’t do that. We all have to do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:18] Hence another reason why Charitable Georgia was born, because too much negative. Let’s put more positive out there. So you talked about the police officers that gave their lives. I’ve also seen videos of police officers playing basketball with young men and the thing and then one not too long ago where this police officer gave a young man a ps5, you know, which is pretty cool. So can you share a little bit more about the inner circle?

Matt Payne: [00:47:40] Yeah, So inner circle, it’s a we’re a risk resiliency firm. So if a organization out there, whether it be a small, medium, large sized company has, you know, is facing any type of risk. So it could be emergency management, it could be crisis management, it could be investigations, it could be, um, you know, something along those lines travel, safety and security. We come in and help identify those risks that you are facing and then mitigate those risks with people, process or technology. So there’s a variety of ways you can mitigate things. And our goal is to mitigate it using the culture of the organization, being fiscally responsible and then giving you a solution that meets your needs without disrupting business. And that’s ultimately what we try to do. Nothing from us is out of the box. There’s not something that we did for you that I’m going to use over here. It’s totally I go in, learn the company, learn the culture, and then figure out what we what we should be doing based upon the ask of the organization and how we can use our expertise, our skill set, our people, our network to make that happen for that organization.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:51] So it could it be something as from everything from cybersecurity to actual personal security stuff.

Matt Payne: [00:48:56] So we I have cybersecurity partners, but I am not a cybersecurity professional. So we are really on the on the physical side, security technology, access control, CCTV cameras, emergency procedures, crisis management, things like that.

Brian Pruett: [00:49:11] Okay. And let’s because we kind of touched on it, but I don’t think we really talked in depth about it. But the go back to C-suite for Christ, if businesses want to get involved with that, again, share what that kind of looks like.

Matt Payne: [00:49:22] And how can they do that. Yeah. So we’re really, really fortunate that, you know, we started in March and it took us almost two months to find a location for us to hold our meetings. And we were getting ready to shell out $2,000 a month, you know, a month to have a two hour meeting. And Peachtree Road United Methodist Church came in and said, Look, this is your home. You have have this space for as long as you want it. Um, Jason and Hayley Bellotti, they own West Paces Ferry, Chick fil A, They are our lunch sponsor. So every single meeting we hold meetings from 1132 to 1. And the reason being with Atlanta traffic and everything that’s going on, we talked about it earlier, it’s just horrendous. And, you know, our executives can go in in the morning. They can come have a a little longer lunch and then go go back. But we do feed. And, you know, and as I sit and I look at you, you have Atlanta and you have 75, 85, and everybody’s sitting because of traffic and you look up and. There’s billboards. Why can’t we have a billboard? The one question we ask at C-suite. I don’t ask. Brian, How are you doing? I don’t ask how your family is. I don’t ask how your week has been. I ask Brian, how was your soul? A much different question than just how are you and why can’t I have a billboard out there that says How is your soul come fellowship with us at C-suite for Christ? So we always look for sponsors that help us because even though we’re C-suite for Christ, Atlanta, we want to bring this out. We want to cover the world in Christ. We want to bring this to all reaches of the world and see how good we can be with that message and spreading it around if.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:57] There are businesses that want to get involved with that, but say, I don’t want to drive to Atlanta because of the traffic and all that. Are there other ways for them to be involved and be a part of it?

Matt Payne: [00:51:05] We stream live every every meeting. I then post that that stream on our YouTube page. So we you know, again, we want everybody to have that opportunity to come in. And we’ve had people from South Africa. I’ve had people from Europe. We’ve had people join from all over the world and we do stream it. We’re we’re not as good as streaming as we should be, but we’re getting better at every one that we do. So we’re learning as we go. So, you know, just know that going in.

Brian Pruett: [00:51:34] Awesome. All right. So real quick, share again the information on all three organizations that you’re involved with so people can follow. You, get a hold of you, whatever the case may be.

Matt Payne: [00:51:44] So inner circle is one inner circle.com and you can get on our website. We have a lot of information there. Outer Circle is Outer circle Foundation.org. A lot of information there. C suite is Atlanta dot C suite for christ.com and information there. My my cell phone my email address Matt at one inner circle Matt at Outer circle foundation M pain at C Suite for Christ. You can get me there and I’m happy to help any way I can.

Brian Pruett: [00:52:15] All right. So before we wrap this up, I always like to ask this question. So this is for both of you. We’ll go back to you first. Jeff, I always like to ask and end the show on giving the listeners something positive, whether what’s a quote, a word, some nugget to live today, the rest of 20, 23 and beyond with. So what you got something?

Jeff Thompson: [00:52:32] I did hear you say.

Speaker6: [00:52:35] I, you.

Jeff Thompson: [00:52:36] Know, think for yourself and look for the love and the good in people. As I was saying, it’s hard to go anywhere in north Georgia without seeing something that reminds me of something from the past. Probably just the neighborhood right next door. I did have a run in with the police. I was at gunpoint. I’ve been at gunpoint with the police three different times. Woodstock, Kennesaw, Dallas, all of them. Great interactions. The cop that I was at gunpoint, he gave me a ride home. So it’s not, you know, a lot of this noise we hear out here is nothing more than tactics to gain power. So look for the love and people look for the good and people go out and diversify. Your friends group don’t just you know, diversity has nothing to do with how people look it It’s a mental thing. Go get you some friends. Okay? Some people are like, Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got black friends. Yeah, but they’re all black conservative friends. Oh, I got white friends. Yep. They all listen to De La Soul and stuff. Diversify your group, Get, get some, get some people that are going to tell you your opinion is not right and go into it able to learn like you. You don’t know everything. Humility, friendship. Look for the good in people. They really do say your attitude determines your attitude. So yeah, look for the good love conquers.

Brian Pruett: [00:54:06] I love that because of the diversity part. Because why can’t we be a Democrat, Republican or independent and still be friends? Why can’t we be black, be white, Asian, still be friends? God made us all and we’re all here for a reason. So let’s live it and be the love. So yeah, that’s awesome. Matt, what you got?

Matt Payne: [00:54:22] So I’m going to I’m going to read just a little bit of Ephesians six and it’s 13 to 18. Therefore put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after battle, you’ll be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth, the body armor of God’s righteousness for shoes put on the peace that comes with the good news so that you’ll be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith and stop the fire arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So be kind. Listen. Say hi. Smile. Be an ear. Somebody standing behind you, turn around and say, Hey, have a great day. Compliment somebody. Buy somebody a cup of coffee that’s behind you. Have them pay it forward. Do something to make this world a better place because we have to start somewhere. And it starts with you. If you wait for somebody else to do it, they’re waiting for somebody else and they’re waiting for somebody else. It has to start here and then it will transform. And that’s how we spread.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:25] So that’s again. Stone What do you love the show?

Stone Payton: [00:55:29] This is my favorite show, man.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:31] And you say every time you learn something, what did you learn today?

Stone Payton: [00:55:33] I do. I learned. I think Love Conquers is the theme here, man.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:37] Right. So, all right. The other thing that I like to do because again, it’s the lost art. It’s just being kind is the thank you. The thank you is lost. So, Jeff, thank you for what you’re doing for the communities America and Matt, thank you and Buffy for what you’re doing for the businesses, the veterans, the first responders and just everybody in general. So everybody out there, let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.