Business RadioX ®

Jake Kelfer with Big Idea to Bestseller

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High Velocity Radio
Jake Kelfer with Big Idea to Bestseller
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Jake-Kelfer-headshotJake Kelfer is a lifestyle entrepreneur, life elevator, and coach to ambitious entrepreneurs and freedom seekers helping people write and launch bestselling books.

He is a 3x bestselling author, a high-energy motivational speaker, investor, and the founder of the Professional Basketball Combine which has helped 70+ NBA draft prospects turn their dreams of playing pro basketball into their reality.

He and his work have been featured on Forbes, Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and many other major media outlets.

Connect with Jake on LinkedIn and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Project Bestseller – Jake’s current challenge where he is attempting to write and launch a book in 90 days or less
  • Jake’s upcoming book, Big Idea To Bestseller
  • Why a book is the best marketing and networking tool
  • Why a book is the best way to build authority
  • Why 99% of people should self-publish

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to the high velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Big idea to bestseller. Mr. Jake Kelfer. How are you, man?

Jake-Kelfer: It’s Don. It’s great to be here. Pretty fired up for this conversation.

Stone Payton: Well, we are so delighted to have you on the show. I have really been looking forward to having this conversation. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I. I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks? Man.

Jake-Kelfer: Man, what a great question to start this thing off. And since I know we got a lot to get to, I’ll keep this one short, but the mission has always been the same, and that’s to elevate people to achieve their own personal definition of success and to live the life they’ve always dreamed of. That’s always been the mission, the vehicle of which we’ve helped people achieve. That mission has changed as my journey has evolved. It started with me being a corporate partnerships assistant with the Lakers. Then it went to me becoming an author, then to me being a motivational speaker, then to me helping NBA players sign their first draft deal. So it’s become something. And now it’s by helping entrepreneurs, executives and people share their message through a book. So the mission has always been the same. We want to elevate people to achieve their own personal definition of success.

Stone Payton: What a fantastic way to serve and what a marvelous way to invest your time and energy and talent and resources. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work, man? What’s the most fun for you?

Jake-Kelfer: I mean, truthfully, I love what I do and I’m very blessed to to do what I do. But the thing that’s bringing me the most joy right now is helping people who have always thought about writing a book. We know that over 80% of people have dreams of writing a book, but very few people actually end up writing it, and even fewer people end up actually publishing it and launching it. And so what’s really rewarding right now is helping people tell their story in a way that can give them credibility, legitimize themselves, create an impact, leave a legacy, start a business, grow their business. And that’s really what’s bringing me a ton of joy and a ton of excitement is is helping people share their story, get their message heard, and help them achieve that that dream of writing a book.

Stone Payton: So what do you think the block is? And maybe it’s more than one thing. What keeps people from from getting it all the way to the goal line, man, what stops them?

Jake-Kelfer: And there’s a few things, you know, and I and I talk about this in my upcoming book called Big Idea, the bestseller How to Write and Launch a Nonfiction Book to Grow Your Business and Make an Impact. But there are a few things that I think are the biggest limiting beliefs, and one of them is I don’t have time, right? Because in our society we’re all busy, We all got things going on. We have families to raise, we have businesses to run, we have life to experience. And so one of the biggest things that we hear is I don’t have time. And then the other big thing that that we hear is, well, I just don’t know what to do. I have a ton of ideas in my head. So many people have told me I should write a book and share my stories, but I don’t know where to begin. And so we literally have found a way for from me writing for books and from helping countless others do the same. We found a way to help people write a book in about an hour a day so they can still be with their family, live the life they want, run their business. And also we found a way to really simplify the process to help anybody take the ideas in their head and turn that into something that can become a book that can impact people well beyond their close circle of friends and family.

Stone Payton: And you’re living into this whole idea yourself. You’ve given yourself a challenge. You’re attempting to write a and launch a book in like 90 days or less right now. Is that accurate?

Jake-Kelfer: Yeah. It’s always funny when I hear somebody asked me that question because, you know, 74 days ago at the time that we’re recording, the 74 days ago, I started on this on this journey. And I decided, you know what? I don’t want to be one of those people that just talks about things but doesn’t actually do it right. I don’t want to be one of those entrepreneurs who just talks a big game but doesn’t back it up. And so I said, You know what? I’m going to prove it. And so I ended up taking on a challenge to write and launch a nonfiction book in 90 days or less. And I’m excited to say that we’re going to officially launch the book on day 87. And a couple of quick statistics that that I think will be really important for for the listeners to understand is I wrote my rough draft in 17 days. All right? I just followed the process that we teach the people that we help. But I wrote my rough draft in 17 days, and as of today, on day 74, I have spent on average 45.5 minutes a day working on this book to get it completely done, edited, designed, formatted and ready for the official launch. So it can be. Owen. You just have to know where to go, what to look for, and have some guidance along the way.

Stone Payton: So two of my favorite questions in the world in a lot of different areas are who and why. So who should be writing a book in your opinion, and maybe even more importantly, why?

Jake-Kelfer: All right. Big, big, big answers and great questions here. So in terms of who should be writing a book, you know, there’s there’s a variety of different people that should be writing a book. But essentially, anybody who has a story to tell can write a book. Does that mean everybody should write a book? No, not necessarily. But if you have a story to tell and we’re going to talk about the why in just a second, but if you have a story to tell and you want to be remembered, this could be a great avenue for you if you want to impact people without actually being present in real time. A book is a great way to carry on a legacy and create an impact. Now, when it comes to why should people write a book? We specialize in helping people write nonfiction books. So some of the big reasons why people might want to write a book and why I truly believe it’s it’s the ultimate differentiator in your business is because it can help you sign new clients. It can help you sell products. It can help you start a coaching business. It can help you get speaking engagements. It can help you raise your rates. It is a way to make an impact. You build credibility.

Jake-Kelfer: You become the go to expert. You can create months of social content from this. So by doing the work one time, you now have a tangible asset in the form of a book which could be sold and given away to clients prospects, or it could just be sold and you collect passive income. You put in the work one time and then you reap all of these other benefits that you can use to really grow your business and make an impact. So who can do it? Pretty much anybody who wants to who should do it. People that have a core purpose and a core intention and then why you should do it is for some of the reasons that I just listed below, and that kind of gets people excited, gets people started, gets people thinking about books and a little bit different of a light then maybe, Oh, I just need to spend all this time lock myself in a cabin in the woods for two years, go dark and then come back. Because in reality you don’t need to do that. You can do this and do it while you’re present with the people that matter most to you in your life and still being able to operate at a high level in your career.

Stone Payton: So in writing your own books, did you find, in addition to all of those marvelous benefits that you just shared, did you find that it also equipped you maybe like helped you crystallize your own thinking and equip you to articulate your ideas and communicate even even that much more effectively in your client work as a result of of committing your ideas to paper like that?

Jake-Kelfer: Oh, 100%. I’ll give you a quick little story here. So I was working for the Lakers during Kobe Bryant’s final NBA season, and I ended up writing my first book in between traffic jams because I’m in L.A. and there’s always traffic on the freeway. So I’d leave super early and I would just kind of be waiting before the workday started at the Lakers office. And so I actually wrote my first book, and I was 23 years old when I launched this book. Kobe retired, I retired, I launched this book. And the crazy thing about it was I was just a kid that had a message to help people who were a year younger than me figure out how to get the dream internship or their dream job. What ended up happening was that led to me speaking at colleges and high schools all over the country. It led to my book being used in college programs as required reading for their classes. So when you say, Does it impact my message beyond. Absolutely. The book was the vehicle that gave me permission to express the message, and then the reception of the book allowed me to further enhance the message and develop the process and the teaching behind it. And so I kind of use that to kick start my whole book career. And now as I released my fourth book, Big Idea to bestseller writing, this book has just allowed me to fine tune my process, fine tune my program, make adjustments as I actually go through it. And it is just helped me build out so much more clarity in depth, improve my communication, made me a better leader within my team and so many other benefits. But to answer your question, absolutely. Writing a book has helped me and helped so many others improve upon their message and their clarity around the bigger vision.

Stone Payton: So as your practice has evolved, have you had the benefit of of one or more mentors to sort of help you shrink the timeline, remove some of the friction and navigate the new terrain along the way?

Jake-Kelfer: I wouldn’t be on this call with you right now if I didn’t have mentors along the way. Now, some of these mentors have been people that I’ve invested a lot of money to learn from and get access from. And some of these mentors have been from people that I’ve just developed friendships. One of my first mentors who encouraged me to write my my first book at 22, 23 years old, he was a professor at UCLA and he was the dad of a kid. I went to high school with. Another one of my mentors was someone who I did an internship under in college and we stayed very, very close. And he’s a digital marketing expert. Other mentors, I’ve paid for specific skill sets or paid for specific things because it’s all about, you know, who do you know and how can you really help them. And the truth is, no one would be where we are today without the help of somebody else. And so I always try to remember that. And in any situation, you might have the opportunity to step up and be a mentor or to be mentored by somebody. If your mind is open to it and you’re willing to receive feedback and be coachable.

Stone Payton: Well, you know, you’ve mentioned Kobe a couple of times, and it’s my understanding that even people who reached Kobe’s level, even they got help, right? They had coaches, they had specialists that helped them on different aspects of the game. That’s true, right?

Jake-Kelfer: Oh, of course. Of course. I mean, let’s look at a baseline level of of LeBron James, who’s playing right now. And there’s people that have said all types of things, but you have your basic, basic coaches, right? You have your head coach, you have your assistant coach, you have your skills coaches. Those are the coaches that are on the floor that are constantly helping you become a better player. But in LeBron’s case, he spends somewhere around $1,000,000 a year on other coaches, on other people to help him stay and optimize his gameplay. Tom Brady has done something very similar as well, so everybody at the highest level of their game is hiring coaches to optimize specific skill sets and specific opportunities. And so when you look at it from an entrepreneurial standpoint, when you look at it from a business person’s standpoint, when you look at it from a fitness standpoint, if you want to get to the next level, the fastest way to do that is to work with somebody who has been there, who has an experience in a specific area that you’re looking to improve and work with them in that capacity. And that’s why, you know, Kobe did certain things when he was recovering from his injury with his Achilles heel. Right. Like there were a few things that we look at when we look at these greats and we recognize the thing that all of them have in common is their ability to be coached and their willingness to learn from people who have access to information that they want.

Stone Payton: Now, the folks that you’re working with, for the most part, are you counseling them to get the book to A to the point where it can be? I don’t know what the right verb is shopped to publishers or are you counseling most of them to self publish or speak to that a little bit.

Jake-Kelfer: The majority of people that we work with, we encourage them to self publish and there’s nothing wrong with going the traditional route, but it often takes a lot more time and it’s a lot more challenging for a lot of people. So what we try to do is help people write the highest quality book in the shortest amount of time while still retaining 100% ownership rights and royalty. And so the people that we often work with, we help them go from what we say big idea all the way to bestseller, where their book is being sold on Amazon worldwide. And that is kind of the bread and butter of what we do. We coach you through the process. We help you find the right editors, the right for matters. We give you the roadmap, the steps to follow and the coaching that you need to be able to produce an amazing, amazing book in about 4 to 6 months.

Stone Payton: I mean, I just find this idea fascinating that it can be done so quickly and it’s so in line with the with the whole theme of this particular radio show. Right. The high.

Jake-Kelfer: Velocity.

Stone Payton: Radio show. I think that’s fantastic. To do that, I got to believe that you have to break through, break down, reeducate, destroy, if that’s the right word, some myths or preconceptions or preconceived notions or assumptions that people have coming into this process. There must be some some of those kinds of myths surrounding this big hairy thing for some of us of writing a book.

Jake-Kelfer: Yeah, no, it’s a great point. And one of the things that I always kind of compare this to is you’re not going to go run a marathon tomorrow just because you have the goal of running a marathon. Now, if you do all the power to you, right? But for most people, we need to break that crazy goal of running a marathon into smaller, actionable items. And so for some people, when it when it comes to a marathon, it’s like, what do I need to do first? And maybe they never run before. It’s I need to commit to it. I need to buy a pair of running shoes. I need to put my clothes out the night before I wake up so that I’m more likely to get into workout clothes. Maybe it’s take that first step outdoors. Maybe it’s walk your first mile, maybe it’s run your first five K, right? And you build up and up and up. And so that’s exactly what we’ve done with the book writing process, because truthfully, it is a daunting task and it is a lot of work. And so what we wanted to do is how do we simplify the process so that almost anybody can do it as long as they’re willing to put in the work and follow the roadmap. And so we’ve really, really gotten clear on, okay, here’s step one, here’s step two, here’s step three and here’s how long it can take you on average.

Jake-Kelfer: And the biggest thing I’ll say here when it comes to writing a book that’s maybe different from running a marathon or some of these other things is when it comes to writing a book, the first thing you should do is not to just start writing. All right? This is where a lot a lot of people go wrong is they say, I want to write a book. Let me just start writing it and hope that I can write the whole thing. And what happens is people start writing it, they get stuck. Maybe they start to revise, maybe they start to edit their book and they’re like, Gosh, this is going to take me forever. I’m a month in and I’m not even a chapter deep. This is going to take me years. And that discourages people and essentially stops them in their track before they even have had a chance to succeed. And so what we believe in is doing the prep work, is doing the prep work and showing up. So we actually have every person that we work with do what we call the five must do’s before writing, and I’m happy to share them with you if we have some time. But we essentially have everyone do the prep work before actually writing, and by doing that, the chances of completion increase exponentially.

Stone Payton: Well, we’re absolutely going to make the time because I personally want to hear about these five must dos. So. Yes, please.

Jake-Kelfer: All right. There we go. So so let’s break this down here. Right. And there’s a quote that I really love that is preparing to fail or excuse me, failing to prepare is preparing to fail. And this is the exact concept that we kind of take with is I want you to be set up for success. Right. Writing a book is already a big commitment for a lot of people. So that’s exactly where we start. So the first must do that anybody should do before writing a book is create a commitment. Now we literally have people sign their own commitment contract and frame it up on their wall so that they can honor that commitment with themselves. Because if you aren’t committed, you won’t do it right. And that’s that coaching me, that hard truth in me that coming out is like, if you want committed to the process, you won’t finish your book, period. So we really encourage people to get committed from the get go and ensure that this is a priority at this point of their life. The second must do is set your intentions all right. And there are typically three questions that we have people ask. The first one is what is your internal intention for writing this book? And this often falls in alignment with legacy impact service giving to others, inspiring others, sharing your story, something that you’ve always wanted to do.

Jake-Kelfer: That’s the internal intention. Then we ask people, What is your external intention? This is why the heck do you actually want to write the book? Speaking gigs, coaching clients, credibility, lead generation, raise your rates, whatever it is. And then the final question we have people ask in this in this phase is what is your definition of book success? How would you determine your book to be successful? And when you answer those things and you set your intention, you will have a much stronger purpose and drive to keep on going when things get difficult. And this is what we find happens a lot. So that’s the second must do. The third must do is you have to pick your book niche, your book audience. If you are writing a nonfiction book and you try to write it for everybody, it’s going to be really difficult to thin out the messaging, get clear on who you’re actually trying to to communicate with, and it’s much harder to write to everybody than it is to a specific group of people, especially people that, you know, you can help them solve a problem. And an example of this would be, you know, people are like, oh, I want to help people in real estate.

Jake-Kelfer: Amazing. But then we say, well, what really type of real estate do you want to help? And they go, Airbnb. I’m like, okay, that’s a little bit better. And then they go, I want to show people how to make their first six figures with Airbnb, with no money down, with little to no money down. That is a much easier book to write because it’s very, very specific for a specific person. So your book niche will really enhance your ability to communicate your messaging clear throughout the book. The fourth thing here is don’t I’ll wrap it up. Here is to add what we call book time to your calendar, because we know if it ain’t on the calendar, it ain’t getting done right. So you got to put it on the calendar, because what we found is if you don’t put on the calendar and you’re like, Oh, I’ll do it this morning as something came up, I’ll do it this afternoon. A book becomes one of the first things to go down because people in their mind, if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not as big of a priority as the sales call they’re doing today as the meet and greet as the lunch meeting.

Jake-Kelfer: And so what we really encourage people to do is to put book time on the calendar and create the habit of showing up that will really, really, really help people when they write their book to be consistent, do the little action repeatedly over time and eventually, boom, you’re going to have your book. And the fifth and final must do is to find an accountability partner. And you know, I love my mom. She’s one of my heroes, but she’s not the person that’s going to be my accountability partner because she’s just going to tell me what I want to hear. Right. And I love that. And so I encourage her to be a supporter of mine and to actually be my mom. Right. But a great accountability partner is someone who’s going to push you, someone who you’re going to show up for and someone who, you know will make sure you get your stuff done in a timely manner. And so those are the five must dos that when you do those before getting into the actual book, you set yourself up for a higher chance of success. And it is a magical thing. What a little preparation can do for you if you want to take on the task of writing a great book.

Stone Payton: Jake I think we have captured more practical content in the last three and a half minutes than we do in most entire interviews. I am so glad that you were willing to willing to share those five must do’s before we wrap, Let’s let’s paint the the endgame a little bit. The last mile and maybe you are a great specific use case example. You’ll have this fourth book out in a little while. Then what? So you’ve got you’ve got the books. So. So now what?

Jake-Kelfer: Well, that’s the question that everybody wants to know. Right? But look, here’s the thing for me in where I’m at at this point of my my career is, you know, my book comes out in a couple of weeks, and the goal is to get it in as many hands as possible. And I want to show people that writing a book is not only possible, but it’s possible to do faster than you ever thought imaginable. Right? And so for me, it’s really leveraging this book and using this book to impact people, get more books out in the world. And then on a personal note, it’s to be able to get more speaking engagements. I travel a lot for speaking, and so I want to continue to do that in the new year and then, of course, to continue to grow our business. And that’s what this book is designed to do. And it’s been a so much fun writing it this quickly. And we’ve already helped a lot of people as I’ve been documenting this entire process. But I’m really excited for for what to come next from there. And this book is just the vehicle to all of my wildest dreams.

Stone Payton: What a breath of fresh air. This this conversation has been inspiring, informative, chock full of practical, actionable ideas. I want to make sure that our listeners can easily connect with you or someone on your team. Begin to tap into your work. So let’s leave them with those coordinates, whatever you think is appropriate website LinkedIn. But let’s make it easy for them to to connect with you. Man.

Jake-Kelfer: Here’s the easiest way, and I appreciate you. You’ve given me the platform today. I really appreciate it. And I hope all the listeners got something out of it that they can implement right after this conversation. So the best place to connect with me is on Instagram at Jake Helfer. That is the the best place. I’m also on all social media at Jake Fromm and Jake Helfer in the world that I know of. So you can just find me anywhere. But Instagram is the place that I hang out with the most. And if you want to write a book, hit me up and we’ll we’ll get you a copy of my new book. We’ll get you an advanced copy. We’ll get you we’ll get you a live copy, depending on when you listen to this. And we’ll just we’ll get that relationship going and have some fun.

Stone Payton: What an absolute delight to have you join us on the program and a fantastic way to invest a Wednesday afternoon. Jake, you’re doing such important work, man. Keep up the good work. Don’t be a stranger. Let us know as your work continues to to evolve, I, I look forward to maybe subsequent conversations. This has been fantastic, man. Thanks for joining us.

Jake-Kelfer: Yeah, I appreciate you. Thanks so much.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jake Colfer with Big idea to best seller and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Layla Dierdorff and Austyn Guest

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KidBizRadio113022pic1
Cherokee Business Radio
Layla Dierdorff and Austyn Guest
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This episode was brought to you by

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Layla-DierdorffThe Kid Biz Expo was the flagship idea of Renee Dierdorff & Amy Guest.

They created a market where kids could compete among their peers instead of adults.

The Kid Biz Expo creates a space where the kids can use their platform to showcase their business, hone their sales pitch and earn a profit!

Austyn-GuestGuests Layla Dierdorff and Austyn Guest are young entrepreneurs from the program.

 

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Kid Biz Radio. Kid Biz Radio creates conversations about the power of entrepreneurship and the positive impact that journey can have on kids. For more information, go to Kid Biz Expo. Now, here’s your host.

Renee Dierdorff: Hello, everybody. My name is Renee, and thank you for joining us here at Kid B’s Radio. Today, we are creating conversations about the power of entrepreneurship and the positive impact that journey has on kids. I’m here with the co founder of Kid Biz Expo, my partner in crime, Amy Lowe, and we are happy to have our two oldest daughters in the studio with us today. Layla, Hi. And Austin. And we wanted to take the time being the end of 2020 to to discuss with them, reflect on this last year and just get your perspective on the Expos and the workshops and the program and the organization in general and the things you’ve learned over the year and just get your insights on that because you guys are the ones in it and participating in everything because we take you to everything. Layla, would you like to start? I know this morning we chatted a little bit in the car and one of the main things you talked about was, I’m just going to get to start with the topic Communication.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. In schools, like whenever we do projects, you have to like talk in front of the class. And I used to be really nervous because like, it was scary, but now because I’ve talked in front of a lot of people before, it’s not as scary because it’s like it’s just people. They’re just people. And so, yeah.

Renee Dierdorff: And you talk to them at the Expos.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. To like, sell stuff, like you have to talk to them.

Renee Dierdorff: What about you, Austyn? Have you had that same. Have you noticed that in school as well?

Austyn Guest: Not too much in school, but starting with talking to people at the Expos, interacting with them to get them to buy something or just interacting with them in general has definitely improved since I have first started talking to them. It since all the workshops and the Expos since we started them talking to adults mainly has gotten much better and easier since then. Talking to them quite often.

Renee Dierdorff: Yes.

Layla Dierdorff : I’m talking to people. Like people just walk by me, not even looking at me, but like if I talk to them, I usually get a sale because now they’re interested.

Austyn Guest: Interact with them.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. Like, you know, I can make a lot of money if you don’t talk to them and bring them in.

Amy Guest: Right. Sales are key, Right.

Renee Dierdorff: So you’ve learned sales skills as well. Yeah.

Amy Guest: That coincide with those communication skills?

Austyn Guest: Yes. They definitely go hand in hand.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. And today we were at a networking group and you were walking around talking to everybody. And I think you actually got complimented on your.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. They were like, I know children who, like, would never want to talk in front of adults. I know adults who don’t even want to talk in front of other people. And yeah, I used to like, never want to talk in front of people, but it kind of happened slowly anymore.

Austyn Guest: Slowly.

Amy Guest: Slowly.

Layla Dierdorff : Not like judgmental robots there also people, of.

Amy Guest: Course, also.

Renee Dierdorff: People. That’s a really good point. And also we were talking about how those skills just not only in sales, but moving forward in your life after high school, interviewing places and things like that, not just like ordering at a restaurant, but, you know, those kinds of things will help or the communication skills will help you and less nerves going into like presentations and stuff.

Layla Dierdorff : Like we had to do a whole like award ceremony and we had to stand on a podium and talk in front of the entire class. I not know, nervous.

Renee Dierdorff: That’s great. I think when you’re with like group members and stuff, she’s part of a group. They always have her talk because they’re all in front. You should encourage them to talk about this. Yeah, that’s cool. What else can you think of? Anything you need.

Layla Dierdorff : To talk about? We were talking about school teaches teamwork, like working as a team, but this is taught networking. It’s not like going, like, helping each other and then getting help in return, because that’s not what school teaches. Being able to teach other.

Renee Dierdorff: People, it’s not an environment to do that. It’s teamwork, which is still important.

Amy Guest: But it’s it’s a it’s on the same level. You’re taking that concept from school of working in groups and teamwork and applying that. And now in the business area, when we go to these networking events to work as is is, you’re essentially can work as a group as well because you’re benefiting each other. So it’s laying that foundation.

Renee Dierdorff: Mm hmm.

Amy Guest: What about you, Austin? What do you think your biggest takeaway?

Austyn Guest: Definitely about back to communication help. That is definitely improved since we first started doing this. And also sales skills have definitely improved since the first time. Just getting all these interactions and with the workshops and the Expos and even some of these networking meetings that I’ve gone to have really helped confidence, I guess.

Renee Dierdorff: My confidence.

Austyn Guest: With all of that.

Amy Guest: Yeah, because the first couple networking events that we brought you to, you refused to speak and then this morning you did it without even thinking.

Austyn Guest: So yeah, I saw Leila said her intro and so I was like, All right, she can do it, I can do it.

Renee Dierdorff: But I think also the workshop we did back in September on creating your sales pitch helped with that because you narrowed in, you know what to say, your unique selling point, and I think that will definitely repeat next year. But you know, talking about the workshops in general, we’ve come a long way with those and we’ve learned what people want and what is helpful and beneficial in like what’s more attended in those kinds of topics. And I hope you guys have other than that one or is there, are.

Amy Guest: There any other ways that you’ve which ones stuck out the most? Like what do you think you learn the most from which workshop or what topic?

Layla Dierdorff : I think it was like your target audience. Okay. Like learning how to like children aren’t going to want this stuff. And usually adults with children don’t like they’re busy trying to manage their own kids, usually like older people.

Amy Guest: So learning how to target your audience.

Renee Dierdorff: Okay, What.

Amy Guest: Topic did you like?

Austyn Guest: Austin Like Leila said, the sales pitch was also very helpful to me, along with time management.

Renee Dierdorff: Oh my God, yeah.

Austyn Guest: That one was very helpful to me because I am personally not very good at it. So that is that one was helpful, cutting everything together and making sure I had enough time to do everything. And then the sales pitch, making sure I get people interested, but then don’t bore them with a long speech about what my thing about what my product is.

Layla Dierdorff : And the time management thing. It’s like for me, it’s like three weeks prep to get this done. It’s like, I didn’t think I was going to take that long, but it’s a lot doing all the labels and.

Austyn Guest: The there’s a lot that.

Layla Dierdorff : Go into every song. Like it’s a lot to do more than I thought.

Amy Guest: Pay attention to all the details.

Austyn Guest: Budgeting was also very helpful to make sure that you don’t spend too much money on something that doesn’t sell very well and to make sure that you are getting more products of what people buy more often than not.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, why should we say what you guys do? Oh yeah. Might be helpful. Okay.

Amy Guest: Yeah. What’s your sales pitch?

Austyn Guest: I am Austin with crafty creations and I make resin products such as tumblers, keychains, trays. Really? Anything that you can put into a silicone mold and you can customize it in any way. I can put a logo on it, I can put a name on it, any color, any type of glitter. Some other examples are jars, jewelry, jewelry.

Layla Dierdorff : Some earrings. I have a few necklaces from you.

Renee Dierdorff: You still have them.

Austyn Guest: Lyla. How about you?

Layla Dierdorff : So, like, my shorthand pitch is I’m dip it good and I make handmade, dried dip mixes more into depth as I have nine flavors, and eight of them are savory. One of them is sweet, and therefore parties events.

Renee Dierdorff: Like on chicken and things. It’s not just.

Austyn Guest: Delicious. Like very good.

Layla Dierdorff : A lot of people say that like Fiesta on chicken.

Austyn Guest: Chicken rubs, mix it with sour cream and cream cheese, not together separately, separately. Sweet one is cream cheese. All the others are sour cream.

Renee Dierdorff: So because we’re talking about your businesses and taking a cue from our topic this morning at our networking group, what have you learned in this year that you want to whether it’s like what’s happening with your business, negative or positive, and how are you going to implement new strategy next year?

Layla Dierdorff : So for me, I get very overwhelmed because a lot of people come at one time and I’m I’m two sets of hands. What one pair of hands? And like, it’s hard to like give like five people a bunch of pretzels and open lids, then package them. So one of my friend name is Lily, thinking of hiring her as an employee to help at the Expos, maybe to like help with the prep work. And I also want to do a lot of people ask like, can I eat this now? And I have to say, no, we make it at home. And I’m thinking of like those like.

Amy Guest: Ready to already made.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. So it’s like a like a paper bag. Yeah. Paper boats, that’s what they’re called. And then put like some pretzels and some dip. So like Lilly or I probably Lilly is like that’s easier could. Be running that while I do the samples. And so like you would walk in, it’s more interactive and more interesting. I love that because like, you get to walk in and like, look at all the stuff.

Renee Dierdorff: It’s. Good job with that. So you’re going to change your setup?

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, I think of like I do an L right now outside than in. I want to do.

Renee Dierdorff: Like, like you.

Layla Dierdorff : Maybe like in the middle.

Austyn Guest: Have a table set up, like.

Layla Dierdorff : A walk in, like a stair step.

Renee Dierdorff: Like do. Okay.

Layla Dierdorff : Inside the tent. Yeah. So it’s like once you walk in to the left, on the side will be samples. Middle will be the. To go stuff and then like behind the like in the line will be like where I put like all this, like all the storage inventories.

Amy Guest: It’s a good strategy.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. Are you going to change flavors.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. One two of them aren’t selling great. I’ve been experimenting with some flavors. My add, some fun.

Renee Dierdorff: I know. You mean she keeps talking?

Layla Dierdorff : Another sweet one I want. Key lime.

Renee Dierdorff: Pie. Buffalo chicken. Yeah.

Austyn Guest: That would be really good.

Amy Guest: I want you to make that three.

Layla Dierdorff : Really similar ones, so I’ll probably exchange one of those for Buffalo Chicken maybe. And then I’m going to add key lime pie.

Austyn Guest: So I try that myself to test.

Amy Guest: Your quality control.

Renee Dierdorff: That’s the best part of all this. Yeah. You don’t get to test it. And then when we can we come back from expose Your dad is like we’re. Don’t throw those dips out to keep them in the fridge for a few days.

Layla Dierdorff : Maybe like one third of them is gone because people are like, I don’t. I don’t want to take too much. Take all.

Renee Dierdorff: You take as much as you want. Plenty. Because the ratios we don’t make, we make the whole thing 116 ounce. We’ve we’ve even been playing around with different ways of setting up the samples because right now.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, it’s like a big, like skinny float looking thing with ice in it. And then we put the containers. If the ice melts, you have to take it all out, dump it somewhere. That’s why I like being on the outside.

Renee Dierdorff: So I don’t.

Layla Dierdorff : Make noise.

Renee Dierdorff: You have anybody behind you? That would be rude. Yeah.

Layla Dierdorff : Like being behind grass. Cut the grass. So.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. What about you, Austin?

Austyn Guest: So I have recently decided to rebrand next year to a new business.

Amy Guest: Take a pivot.

Renee Dierdorff: Bit.

Amy Guest: Into a different direction because you have new interests and.

Austyn Guest: New interests. And I love doing the resident work, but it just hasn’t really been selling as much as I had wanted it to. And the I am going to rebrand to a mobile photo.

Renee Dierdorff: Booth.

Austyn Guest: Which is just going to be like a little camper where you can go in and take a couple of photos, some selfies with props and backdrops and backdrops and everything. And so I’m moving from resin to that. Hopefully within the next year would be ideal. And the goal?

Amy Guest: That’s a big change.

Austyn Guest: Yes, it is a very big change to working in my epoxy room where I have a ton of things everywhere to a small camper camper where I just set up everything and people can go in and take selfies and really just take any kind of pictures that they would like.

Layla Dierdorff : Would they take the picture themselves or will it be like one of those machines that like.

Austyn Guest: Going to have one of the machines inside the camper? But you can also take some with your phone if there’s something else that you want to do, like maybe outside the camper or if you want to do, I don’t know, something where the machine can’t see you, then either way it would.

Renee Dierdorff: Well, you have the this is the first time I’m hearing about it. So my my question. I’m sorry. Well, not hearing about it. Just. You know what I mean? Like like when you were like, I’m. I’m picturing it at expos, I guess. So in my mind. Do you have you have a way for people to book for like a birthday party or something?

Austyn Guest: People can reserve it for an A type of event for a certain amount of time, and it is just free for them to use however they would like. Or it’ll be at an event where you can go in and take pictures.

Layla Dierdorff : Would you like would you, would you like drive? Not you driving, but like would you guys go over there and like just kind of chill out there and.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, you kind of help. Yeah.

Austyn Guest: Yeah. We’d be at the event to help them go through it and bring it there and back.

Layla Dierdorff : I know you liked the old timey photos idea. Would you like to expand into that.

Austyn Guest: Maybe costume eventually be able to go into that? But for starters, just a photo booth type thing. But the old time photos do look very good and I would like to expand into that. Maybe in the.

Renee Dierdorff: Future. Yeah. Yeah. I think the people like doing. Would you, would you charge at the Expos or is it more of a promotional thing to get parties?

Austyn Guest: Probably. It would be nice to get parties, but if I did bring it to expose, it would probably be like just per photo that you take. And then if it’s an event probably per hour.

Layla Dierdorff : What if, like how many people like if there’s like ten people, would that be more than like two people?

Renee Dierdorff: Well, yes. Yes, I know.

Layla Dierdorff : But she said that.

Amy Guest: That we are still in the planning stages. We don’t have exact specifics. But yeah, that’s the goal. Like to find whatever that happy medium is for a charge like quote unquote admission, you know, maybe for like a mini session, like an event fee and such like that, like.

Layla Dierdorff : Like something under is free then like child and adult, right?

Amy Guest: We figure out, like, the best, most practical way that people would be willing, you know, if it’s $5 up to five people or whatever, you know.

Renee Dierdorff: Just only so many can fit in it.

Amy Guest: Yeah. And it’s little anyway.

Austyn Guest: It’s gonna be very small. So we can’t do, like, huge parties.

Renee Dierdorff: I’m happy for you. So you are going to do your resins all next year. Just kind of use what you have.

Amy Guest: Yes. Get through the inventory.

Austyn Guest: Get through the rest of my inventory and then that will.

Layla Dierdorff : Also give you some money to play with for props and backdrops and.

Austyn Guest: Stuff because that is.

Renee Dierdorff: Much needed investing.

Amy Guest: Learning.

Renee Dierdorff: How to do well. So taking all of that, you notice how we’re talking about the resin business? No, she never said it failed. Nope. You know, I mean, it’s you’ve learned what I mean. Even over the last year, you’ve changed your inventory based on what you learned, sold and didn’t sell. You made more of certain things, which you’ll do next year. But it’s not like we were talking about the car. They’re not. They’re just lessons you learn and interest change and.

Amy Guest: There’s nothing wrong with that.

Renee Dierdorff: You just move, you know, be happy.

Amy Guest: Yeah, You change directions and you find what works best for you and what you can do.

Austyn Guest: Yeah, my inventory is definitely changed since I first started as much expanded and changed based on what people buy more and what doesn’t take as much time to make as well. Yeah, but mainly what sells the best.

Layla Dierdorff : What’s interesting for me is that like I want my to experiment, like for like half the time I would like be like, this is like, this is my favorite. It’s selling really well and then this flavor and people always, like, chose the one that I was promoting.

Renee Dierdorff: Mm hmm.

Layla Dierdorff : Over. So, like.

Amy Guest: Power of influence. Yeah. Like.

Renee Dierdorff: It’s like I’ve got a lot of this. I need to push this one today. Yeah, I need to get this inventory sold.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, Like, sometimes I have, like, eight leftover, then I make 30, and I’m like, that’s way too many. I need to, like, sell that one.

Austyn Guest: But out the one you have more of.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Layla Dierdorff : The first one I didn’t and my perfectly perfect sold the best. So, so you know that one’s kind of like if I don’t have any influence.

Renee Dierdorff: I was going to say you don’t have to influence that one at all because people will.

Layla Dierdorff : Buy that one. Yeah, I try to get them to taste it because like all the other ones are like really interesting now it’s just like, perfect.

Renee Dierdorff: It’s amazing. It’s you do sell online and are there any is there? Do you want to do more of that next year? Just kind of keep it the same.

Layla Dierdorff : Every sale I make, I give them a card or like this, like long sheet where I’m like, if you go to this every single time, if you go to this Facebook page, you can order online, it’ll be shipped to your house. And that’s like what I’ve been doing and I’ve been getting a few after the Expos, maybe trying to, like, push that more.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, absolutely.

Austyn Guest: Exactly.

Amy Guest: If you have an employee, yeah. To help you work on that can.

Austyn Guest: Also be very convenient for some.

Renee Dierdorff: People. Yeah. Speaking of that employee, Shanna, his daughter Lily is the one that she’s talking about. And she was participating in the Expos as a business owner selling shirts. And she’s decided that it’s not for her, but she enjoys the helping part and wants to help her.

Layla Dierdorff : She likes she likes the, like, prepping and like that stuff. She doesn’t say she does a.

Amy Guest: Behind the scenes.

Layla Dierdorff : Or she doesn’t like staying there and trying to like, talk to people and selling it. She doesn’t like that part. That’s why I’m like, You can I can hire you, you know.

Renee Dierdorff: That’ll be pretty great. She and I talked at length about how she’s learned so much. Even still. Yeah. Yeah. And as an organization, we’ve learned that we’re not only it’s not that people are because we want to still be able to reach the Lilly’s out there and we want you to.

Amy Guest: Be a business leader. Owner? Yeah. Forever, right?

Austyn Guest: You don’t have to only be the one.

Amy Guest: Talking to learn where you.

Renee Dierdorff: Fit. Yeah. And and our goal is to create a space for them to learn life skills they wouldn’t necessarily have the chance to do. But the the vehicle is through entrepreneurship. So there are some kids that have this passion and want to do it. And we have the workshops and that’s where they’ll fit in there to, you know, learn more. But then also that’s why at expos we have some kids that have poster board signs and some that have real like real banners and like more marketing because they’ve been doing it a long time. And I love the eclectic feel and the just the randomness of all of it when we’re at the things because it makes it it’s real, you know, it.

Amy Guest: Gives them a chance to experience what that interest may be and whether or not they want to pursue it. Yeah, in a safe space. In a.

Layla Dierdorff : At the beginning it was handwritten posters and now it’s like full on, like.

Renee Dierdorff: It’s.

Austyn Guest: Actual banners and.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, and you just learn as you go and, and the prep work ahead of time I think is something that a lot of people learn and I think it helps them with project management down the road. Yes.

Layla Dierdorff : It’s helped with school projects like knowing that I kind of need to get this done, like I need to start sooner.

Amy Guest: Time management.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. So it’s more than just learning how to start a business. It’s the life skills that you apply to other things in your life. That’s the entire goal that we have and any other things that stand out to you guys now that we’re our brains are warmed up because.

Austyn Guest: So many things we’ve done.

Layla Dierdorff : Trying to, like, go through like all like, like the workshops in my head.

Austyn Guest: There’s been so many very helpful.

Renee Dierdorff: Yes. Oh, you know how we did go planning in January last year? Yeah. Have you still have any of that information? I would be. It’d be interesting to look at it and see if we.

Amy Guest: Achieved any.

Renee Dierdorff: Of those goals. Yeah. Like what your plans were then compared to where you end of the year and next year’s.

Austyn Guest: Plan, I believe I still have it, but I’m not sure if I accomplished those goals. I think that rebranding next year was definitely not one of the goals I had at the beginning of the year. I think the main goal I had at the beginning of the year was to get my stuff into small stores. That’s true was that main goal. And now my main goal is to rebrand to a different business.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. So yeah, I’ve just.

Amy Guest: Shifted.

Austyn Guest: Changed since then.

Renee Dierdorff: Do you want to try to get into stores?

Layla Dierdorff : I think I don’t know. I don’t think dips is something I want to do forever, Of course. Definitely not. I don’t know. I just want to make enough money to have the option to do something else.

Amy Guest: And that’s all it has to be. You know, it gets you through, you know, helps you save for your first car. It helps you do the things.

Layla Dierdorff : To save to account for.

Amy Guest: That. Yeah. Until you get to a point of what you can decide what you want to do. It’s a starting point.

Renee Dierdorff: It gives you freedom. I was going to say, talking about money, you bought yourself a switch.

Layla Dierdorff : Recently.

Renee Dierdorff: And a phone and she hated my phone.

Layla Dierdorff : Appropriately broke it in.

Renee Dierdorff: So she bought her cell phone and a switch, but she wanted to buy the switch. And it’s funny because she knew she had 30 days she could return it and she spent pretty much every one of those 30 days trying to decide whether or not that investment was worth it.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, because.

Renee Dierdorff: It’s a lot of money. Yeah. So, you know, you when it’s your money, it hits different. It hits different when you spend a good chunk of it on something that you’re like, Do I need it? But I was like, You play it. You enjoy it. Like because you don’t really buy a whole lot for yourself with it.

Layla Dierdorff : As a hard time buying things for.

Amy Guest: Myself.

Renee Dierdorff: You saved. A lot. You know, it’s okay to spend something on something fun.

Layla Dierdorff : I was more like, concerned about the switch because, like, I already paid for the phone at that time. So it’s like it’s going to be $600. It’s already gone in like a month.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, it happens.

Amy Guest: That’s what happened.

Renee Dierdorff: Life had replaced my age fax system. It happens. Yeah, but it’s a lesson learned, right? Like, that’s kind of my point, is that you’re learning those things.

Layla Dierdorff : You have money to.

Renee Dierdorff: When you’ve earned it.

Amy Guest: The value. Yeah.

Austyn Guest: Should be proud.

Renee Dierdorff: Of yourself.

Layla Dierdorff : Like.

Amy Guest: That. You had that. Like how many 13 year olds can say that they had this much money because they earned it and are able to do that? That’s impressive.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah. Stops me a lot is like what? I’d rather have the $12. Or would I rather have the shirt?

Renee Dierdorff: Right.

Amy Guest: Like some of us in the room are more impulsive.

Renee Dierdorff: And.

Austyn Guest: Not to point fingers.

Amy Guest: I didn’t point a finger. I’m just stating.

Austyn Guest: I believe there’s more than one person in this room.

Amy Guest: Oh, you are not wrong. There are a couple of people in this room that are more impulsive and less equipped to save.

Renee Dierdorff: To save like that.

Austyn Guest: So on that topic, the budgeting workshop was very helpful in that effect to make sure I didn’t spend too much money on new molds and new stuff to make the products rather than just using what I have that still sells well.

Renee Dierdorff: Those ask you, do you? I know. I guess for the fall when you made some fall type things, whenever you did things that were more geared towards holidays, did those sell or is or not as much like.

Austyn Guest: I recently did some Christmas ornaments in the most ornaments in the most recent one that we had. And those did sell pretty well because you were sort of getting close to Christmas at the time.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah.

Austyn Guest: Holiday themes. Yes. And I didn’t sell. I did sell a couple of the fall things that I had, but not all of them, because not everyone changes out everything for every holiday or every season. That’s just not everybody. But some people. Yes, that is what they did. They had bought some fall things or I had a couple Halloween things or a bunch of Christmas ornaments sold that day.

Amy Guest: Keeps a good variety.

Layla Dierdorff : I want to make holiday themed dips like one for each season. You should.

Austyn Guest: Do a.

Amy Guest: Peppermint.

Austyn Guest: Peppermint, cinnamon, gingerbread.

Renee Dierdorff: Peppermint. You got fall covered. Yeah, I know.

Austyn Guest: Pumpkin supplies.

Renee Dierdorff: Fall.

Layla Dierdorff : Like pumpkin winter, maybe summer and spring.

Renee Dierdorff: I think we need to work on a place. So I’m not using the Home Office as much anymore. I think that needs to be dipped central so we can store your stuff in there. It makes a difference because if you’re going to have that and.

Austyn Guest: Crafts, having a space definitely makes a difference.

Renee Dierdorff: It does. Well, food, I mean, we don’t keep the food down. We don’t keep the ingredients down there. We just keep the.

Layla Dierdorff : Packaging and storage.

Renee Dierdorff: Supplies. Yeah.

Layla Dierdorff : Everything you need, which is a lot, apparently.

Renee Dierdorff: Yes, a lot of.

Austyn Guest: Work goes into making your dips.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, but I mean, I think that it’s not trying. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into it when you’re starting something up, but people can do it on a budget when they’re just starting out.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, we’ve like upgraded materials. Like at first it was just like cheap stuff to see if I even liked doing this for sure. And now that I like it, we’ve upgraded to more high quality stuff so it’ll last longer.

Renee Dierdorff: Buying more in bulk.

Austyn Guest: Bulk less bulk is very helpful.

Renee Dierdorff: So kids that are thinking about getting into it and parents out there listening that have want to get their kids involved. I think a good workshop might be next year to have these two run one and it be a big brainstorming session, bringing kids that are wanting to get into it and helping them give ideas or give ideas on what they could do, explore their interests. And then we obviously be there to talk about the parents side of things and just kind of I think we should do that more than once.

Amy Guest: Yeah, we do get a lot of we don’t know where to start or we my kid wants to do something, but we’re not really sure what direction to go in, like what they could do.

Austyn Guest: With a couple of those.

Amy Guest: So outside of going beyond the lemonade stand and finding what interests and specific things that kids can target, because that helps. Obviously, if they have a passion for something, how do we turn it into a business?

Austyn Guest: Yeah. I also think that having other kids, teaching them where to get started and how to do it in that different ways you can start different things might also help to do that a couple of times.

Amy Guest: And shows that it’s it’s possible you guys can do it.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah. And you guys can talk about if somebody brings it up, you know, the kind of the things we talked about today that you learned a lot, you know, specific to that business part of it, but you learned a lot and things like that. What?

Layla Dierdorff : Go ahead. I have an idea for the workshop. I’ll tell you later. I like like really cool.

Austyn Guest: New ideas are always coming.

Renee Dierdorff: Yeah, that’s great. So you guys have any other.

Amy Guest: Final.

Renee Dierdorff: Thoughts, final thoughts on the year or final thoughts? Any encouraging words to parents to get their kids involved?

Austyn Guest: These past workshops that we have done this year have been really helpful to help me continue my business and expand my business, and they’re even going to be very helpful for me to rebrand next year. And I am very excited to see the new ones that we do in the upcoming years to help other kids start up their business and keep theirs going and expand and see that they don’t have to only be an adult to start a business. They can start it now and create really anything.

Layla Dierdorff : Yeah, I like that kid expo. It shows that kids can’t like don’t just have to do lemonade, babysitting and like dog walking. Like you can do so much more.

Austyn Guest: Than what you can.

Layla Dierdorff : Do on a budget. Like with everything, you can do a lot, a lot more passion. Think yeah and be happy. Don’t do something that you don’t want to do.

Renee Dierdorff: Absolutely.

Amy Guest: And learning that now rather than later in life.

Austyn Guest: Much more.

Renee Dierdorff: Helpful very help you in life That’s great. Helped a lot. I really appreciate you girls being here today. I should just for the audience, they’re 13. They are eighth graders here in Cherokee County. And they, along with their sisters, have been they were our inspiration for the organization. And so we appreciate you guys being here today and giving your feedback. Yes, I.

Layla Dierdorff : Think it started this like sixth, seventh grade.

Renee Dierdorff: Like I was some of them in.

Layla Dierdorff : Seventh grade. And you started in sixth grade?

Austyn Guest: We started when Avery did, but Kid was was our.

Amy Guest: Seventh grade.

Renee Dierdorff: Year. Yeah.

Amy Guest: But you guys have been on this for a little bit longer than that.

Renee Dierdorff: Yes.

Layla Dierdorff : Since the beginning. Old pros. Yes.

Renee Dierdorff: Veterans.

Amy Guest: Veterans.

Renee Dierdorff: Thank you.

Amy Guest: Yes. Thank you so much.

Renee Dierdorff: Everybody would like to learn more about the organization. You can find us on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook at Kid B’s Expo and online at Kid B’s Expo. Com And we will see you for the next one by my.

 

Vipin Singh with Murphy Business Sales

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Buy a Business Near Me
Vipin Singh with Murphy Business Sales
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Vipin-Singh-headshotVipin Singh is a Mergers and acquisitions professional working with small and medium-sized businesses. He owns a franchise of Murphy Business Sales in New Jersey.

Before this venture, he worked in the corporate world for 20+ years with large process-driven organizations like Visa, PwC, Morgan Stanley, General Motors, Merrill Lynch, Scholastic, Teleperformance, General Electric, and Hyatt.

He has incorporated the best practices utilized at these organizations in his business intermediary work. Vipin brings diverse experience supporting Financial Services, Sales & Marketing, Business Process Outsourcing, Manufacturing, and Public Accounting firms.

Vipin is an active member of the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) and M&A Source. He has earned a Masters in Business Administration from Darden Business School at the University of Virginia, a Chartered Financial Analyst certified by the CFA Institute, and a Financial Risk Manager certified by the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

Connect with Vipin on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • How Vipin decided to enter the world of small business M&A
  • About Murphy Business Sales
  • What Vipin tells clients with unreasonable price expectations
  • The kind of businesses buyers are eager to buy

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Murphy Business Sales Edison Office. Mr. Vipin Singh. How are you, man?

Vipin Singh: I Stone Very good. How are.

Stone Payton: You? I am doing well. Excited about this conversation. Got a ton of questions. I know we won’t get to them all, but I’d like to start if we could. If you would share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Vipin Singh: So our mission is to help business owners find the ideal retirement they are looking for. We seek excellence in transactions that we support. We are business brokers and we cover Main Street to lower middle market businesses. And we want to make sure that both the buyers and sellers have the best experience while working with us.

Stone Payton: So how did you get into this line of work, man? What’s the back story?

Vipin Singh: I used to be in the corporate world until last year, and then I was looking to buy a business, didn’t really see a lot of good information. Most of the brokers I spoke with, I couldn’t really figure out how they were presenting the information. Then I started looking at franchises thinking that they’ll be some more diligence and there’s a PhD that I could review. And in that process I found more for business sales and the interactions I had with the team that is based out of Clearwater, Florida, and the team in New Jersey. I love the setup. I love the process. I signed up by thought. This way I will also get to learn dealmaking and if in the future I like something for myself, I would be an investor. But right now I’m happy being a business broker, M&A advisor.

Stone Payton: So you mentioned Main Street. I’m particularly intrigued with what you feel like you you’ve learned in that arena and why the focus or at least part of your focus being on on Main Street.

Vipin Singh: So as most of your listeners probably know, Main Street drives the real American economy. 70% of US GDP is driven by small businesses or businesses, and then Main Street businesses are the local businesses that help local economies. We have been in this business of helping with buying and selling businesses since the early nineties, and most of the volume that comes through our marketing channels is Main Street businesses. We do go up to 20, 30, sometimes even more millions of dollars, but our average deal size is close to $1,000,000, and that’s pretty much what we see in the main street space.

Stone Payton: So let’s talk a little bit about not only deal size, but deal structure, because these things can be crafted in a in a number of different ways, Right.

Vipin Singh: That’s correct. So that’s a good question because it comes down to price and terms. And when you say deal structure, that’s the terms component. Sometimes business owners, both buyers and sellers, they kind of focus too much on the price and forget that there’s a whole separate area around deal structuring. And typically what we see is that buyer brings to the table, say, around 10 to 20% down payment. There might be some amount of seller financing that the seller is willing to take some of that debt on their own future balance sheet. And then there’s a bank that typically is an SBA lender, SBA being the Small Business Administration that guarantees the loan that a bank would underwrite. So most of our deals, we see that kind of a structure. But then there are also deals where the investor has enough capital so they are able to bring in their own sources of money. And then there would be other instances where the business is small and the buyer is able to buy it all cash. But I would say majority is done through an SBA loan and some seller financing and the buyer bringing in some down payment.

Stone Payton: Well, it still sounds like a lot of moving parts to me. And a really strong case for teaming up with someone that has the the background, the expertise, the experience to help you navigate that that terrain. When you are working with first time buyers or sellers, do you run into, I’ll call them myths, misconceptions, preconceived notions, assumptions that you kind of have to educate them and help them really understand what this world really entails?

Vipin Singh: Yes. Especially on the main street side, as unless someone has bought a business or sold a business. It is a brand new world. And there is what we call asymmetry of information. So whoever is selling the business has all the information that a buyer would like to see, and the buyer has to essentially dig into that data and get that information out. So we act as intermediaries and we help kind of bridge the gap where in the beginning, when we are engaging with the seller, we educate them as to what the process would look like, what a buyer would ask for, how they should approach the conversation. And then on the other side with buyers, we tell them that what a seller would seek from a transaction, what kind of a buyer the seller is looking for. And it’s not just about the buyer bringing money to the table. Sometimes sellers are looking for that individual who would take care of their employees, who take care of their company in the future. One of the reasons they are trying to sell the business and not shut it down is because they want to preserve that legacy that they have built over several decades of their life. And it’s in a lot of cases, 80 to 90% of their net worth. So they want to protect it. They want to hand it to someone who will be a good custodian of that asset that they have created. And that’s the kind of education we are providing to the buyers and also the sellers in the beginning.

Stone Payton: Now, as I understand it, one of the really important steps or processes on the seller side is this business of of valuation, valuing the business. Can you speak a little bit to to that process?

Vipin Singh: Absolutely. So that’s where we start the discussion as valuation is key for any business, not very dissimilar to commercial real estate. We look at earnings that a business has and then we look at how similar businesses in that same industry, same sector, perhaps in a similar geography have sold for. And then it’s essentially based on multiples. So it could be, say, a business is generating $100,000 in earnings and we see that other businesses, similar sized businesses, have sold for two X earnings. So it will be 200,000 will be the value placed on that business. That’s at a very high level. These multiples change as the businesses grow. We do see larger businesses sell for sometimes four or five, six times their earnings. And the reason for that is because larger businesses tend to have teams in place. The investors are looking at themselves as more in a governance role versus being an operator for smaller businesses. They are mostly owner operator businesses and the buyer is essentially looking to run that business once they acquire. So they tend to pay a little bit less in terms of the multiples on that business.

Stone Payton: I think I already know the answer to this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you find sometimes that the seller just feels like the value of their business is well beyond what’s what’s, you know, to be practical in the marketplace?

Vipin Singh: A lot of times. So the there are different ways of approaching it. One, the valuation aspect that we just spoke about and we are happy for them to take that valuation and ask others for a second opinion if they want to. But we are generally coming from a source of knowledge and information that the seller typically won’t find other data points. But obviously there’s there’s an aspect of they want a certain number from the sale of the business. And in those situations our recommendation is to grow the business to a certain size. So the earnings are going to be able to get that price that they are looking for and terms and then we can reengage in the discussion. In fact, one of the businesses that I have currently listed and has attracted a lot of buyer interest is one of those where when I initially spoke with the owner, she was looking for a certain price. I recommended that price will not be acceptable to the market. She held back for a few months. She made sure that she made those changes, grew the business a little bit, and then came back. And this time her earnings were looking better, her price was more reasonable. And we listed and we got lots of buyers. So it’s a matter of patience in some instances. Sometimes we also recommend that if the seller is looking for a price higher than what would be acceptable, they might have to be flexible with their terms so the buyer might not pay them as much upfront in the form of downpayment and loan. They would maybe ask for an earnout or a future payment contingent upon the business returning a certain level of revenue and profitability. So the sellers have to be willing to accept those terms if they’re not as flexible on the price as we would recommend.

Stone Payton: Well, this raises what I suspect is a very important topic, and I’d like to dive into it a little bit, and that’s timing. Well, for example, my business partner and I, we run a pretty successful media company where we don’t want to do anything next year or even the year after. But but sooner is better than later as far as connecting with someone like you and kind of getting our ducks in a row and planning for the the result that we want, right.

Vipin Singh: Those are the ideal customers for us. And we do offer a service which is exit planning, and that is the service where we provide guidance to owners who are not looking to sell immediately but would like to sell a few years down the line and we would tell them how they can position their business for success. It comes down to keeping in mind what a buyer would be looking for when the business is for sale. So one of the key issues we run into is some of the smaller businesses, their financials or the bookkeeping is not in place as the buyer would like it to be. The other thing is a lot of business owners are working in their business versus working on their business. So a buyer typically would want to buy a business that they could own but not have to operate, as I was saying earlier. So building a team that can be a team that the new owner can inherit is an important factor. And just making sure that you’re not tied to a few customers. Customer concentration can be a big challenge. Some buyers would not be comfortable having 50% of their business coming from one or two customers. So diversifying customer base, supplier base, or all of those things that we recommend business should focus on.

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

Vipin Singh: I would say most fun is that I get to talk to business owners, I get to learn their life story. I get to see what made them passionate about the business they are in. Even if we talk about a very small business, these are businesses that have funded their kids education. They have built a huge amount of net worth through these businesses and it’s just inspiring to see how they have done that. As like I said, my initial journey started with trying to buy a business of my own. So I’m respectful of what a business owner does, how they are able to deal with some of the volatility. They deal with good economies, bad economies, employee issues, inflation, and they are still being successful running huge part of the US economy and all over the world, all over the world. So I just enjoy that process of engaging with business owners from different industries, learning about them and in the process helping them.

Stone Payton: So there’s this activity, there’s this experience, and I’m operating under the impression, you know, structured process with some discipline and rigor to it. And in terms of you helping me prepare and then ultimately sell my business, how does the the whole sales and marketing thing work for for you personally? Like how do you attract the new prospective clients?

Vipin Singh: Most of our clients come through referrals, so it’s a very heavy word of mouth kind of a business because it requires a lot of trust. We are essentially getting into the details of a business owners biggest asset and we are asking for tax returns. We are asking for confidential documents. The business owner has to trust us that we will help them sell their business confidentially. Their employees should not find out until it’s very close to changing hands. Their customers should not find out. As in a lot of cases, they could switch to another service provider. Their vendors and suppliers should not find out. So confidentiality is a big requirement in terms of business sales and a huge difference from real estate sales. And in terms of our marketing, we make sure that when we are closing a transaction, we are sharing that with our network. We do our local networking with networking groups like B’nai to Chambers of Commerce. We participate in discussions with other business and industry associations. We are networking with CPAs, attorneys. So anyone who would be working closely with a business owner would be a great referral partner for us.

Stone Payton: So have you had the benefit of one or more mentors to to help you in this business along the way?

Vipin Singh: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I joined Murphy versus trying to do this on my own as I had some background, I have MBA, etc. that I could have potentially started doing this without joining a franchise. But the reason I joined the franchise was because I was looking for that mentorship. And there are individuals in New Jersey and rest of the country with the Murphy platform who are helping me, and we meet regularly, we discuss our issues. We have forums where we can ask questions from each other, and that’s the benefit of doing it with a bigger team versus going solo.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I’ll bet. And like in my example of of Lee and I, having a successful media company approaching you, even if you personally may not have had specific experience, I’ll bet somebody in that Murphy system has done something. You’ve got precedent for probably virtually any type of deal, don’t you, that you can rely on?

Vipin Singh: Exactly. So we have closed close to $3 billion in total deal volume. Just in New Jersey, we have more than 100 businesses that we have listed. We are close to $50 Million in total value just in New Jersey. So, you know, that’s one of the questions I used to get or I still get. Every broker gets is have you sold a business like mine? And for someone who is doing this on their own and hasn’t experienced that specific industry, it would be hard to say yes or I was working in that space. But we have so many deals in our database that we have closed or we are working on that. We can always pull up examples that are similar to another business. There would always be a new kind of an industry, a new niche that we haven’t yet explored, but we can show something that comes very close to that business.

Stone Payton: What a tremendous asset to be able to lean on that to genuinely serve your your clients. Okay, before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners, potential buyers and sellers alike with a couple of pro tips and things to be thinking about, some things to be doing, not doing reading. Let’s leave them with a couple of action items on some of these topics.

Vipin Singh: So for people who are looking to sell their business, I would recommend that they should definitely reach out to their local network and ask for people who they trust or they can trust. As like you said, this conversation needs time and you need to know the people you’re working with and you need to work with people. As typically, especially for larger companies, buyers have advisors that they are working with. So you need to have some advisors on your side as well. And you need good accounting advice, you need good legal advice, you need good business brokerage or M&A advice that folks like myself provide. And it takes time to prepare. As I was mentioning, you need to have your books in order. You need to have a team in place. So all of that takes time. So starting early is a great idea. And then for buyers, I would say look for opportunities that align with your experience and also your financial capacity. As a lot of times we see buyers come to us with an interest in a business, but they don’t have a lot of experience that would make them successful. So we don’t always dissuade them for not looking at that opportunity, but we feel that it’s always a good thing to have that experience. Banks look for that experience. If you are going to an SBA lender looking for money, they would look at your resume. They would like to see how your experience fits with that industry or that acquisition you’re trying to make and keep an open mind. Because like I was saying earlier, sellers are not just looking for the best price. They are looking for good terms. They are looking for someone who will take care of their business. So build that rapport with sellers, with brokers, with other advisors that a buyer would work with because eventually it is a team sport and a lot of stakeholders are involved in the eventual buying and selling of a business.

Stone Payton: Great advice, man. All right. What is the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and learn more?

Vipin Singh: So best would be my email. It’s v dot sing assigned at Murphy business dot com. Murphy is mrp ph vi business us i n s dot com or I’m on LinkedIn and Twitter as well best as my email. V dot singh at Murphy business dot com.

Stone Payton: Well, Vipin, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show, man. Thanks for hanging out with us and sharing your your knowledge. This has been very helpful. And keep up the good work, man.

Vipin Singh: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. And this was great.

Stone Payton: My pleasure, man. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Vipin Singh with Murphy Business Sales, Edison Office, and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Buy a Business near me.

 

Rome Floyd Chamber Small Business Spotlight – Megan Otwell with Downtown Development Authority, and Selina Bradley and Amanda Weeks with Riverwood Senior Living

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Rome Floyd Chamber Small Business Spotlight - Megan Otwell with Downtown Development Authority, and Selina Bradley and Amanda Weeks with Riverwood Senior Living
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BRX Pro Tip: Market to Your List

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BRX Pro Tip: Market to Your List

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, it’s one thing to gather a list, but it’s important that we market to that list.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think a trap that a lot of people fall into is they’re always focusing their marketing dollars and their marketing efforts on introducing themselves to strangers, to people who don’t know who they are at all. And you invest a lot of time and energy in getting strangers to kind of know you, like you, trust you, so that at some point they can buy from you.

Lee Kantor: I would highly recommend investing some of those marketing dollars into people who already know you and like you. And they should use your service because they know you and like you, but they just haven’t yet. So, spend some time trying to move those people through your funnel and move them to be a buyer than spending a lot of energy in trying to get a stranger to get into the top of your funnel.

Lee Kantor: So, I think that a lot of folks just always have that kind of shiny object mentality where they’re always looking for the new, the new, the new, the new, the new instead of investing in the people that already are part of their community. They already know them. They already obviously like them a little bit. They just haven’t bought from them yet. So, invest some time and energy and creativity into figuring out ways that you can stay on their radar, remind them of what you do and why you do it. And if you do that kind of relentlessly, I think you’re going to have a much better success rate and sell rate rather than just trying to get strangers into your funnel.

BRX Pro Tip: Never Stop Prospecting

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BRX Pro Tip: Never Stop Prospecting

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

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

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

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

Sergio DeCesare with Max Business Profits

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Sergio on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stone Payton: Wow, that’s impressive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sergio DeCesare: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.

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

 

Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA with Tax Goddess Business Services

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Shauna-Wekherlien-Tax-Goddess-Business-Services
High Velocity Radio
Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA with Tax Goddess Business Services
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Shauna-Wekherlien-Tax-Goddess-Business-Services

Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTP, CTS, Tax Goddess, is a highly sought-after Certified Public Accountant and founder of Tax Goddess Business Services, PC, established in 2004. Tax Goddess is a global team of 93+ specialists that uses plain language (not tax code) to help business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs create plans of action to increase the business owner’s bottom line, reduce costs, significantly reduce taxes, increase cash flow, and perform what-if scenario options so that owners know what decisions to make and which paths are best suited to their particular situation.

Shauna is a Certified Public Accountant (AZ) with a master’s degree in Taxation. She is a top 1% Tax Strategist in the entire country (per AICTP).

Before starting her own company, Shauna had garnered experience and sharpened her skills working with different leading corporations such as KPMG and American Express.

With over 24+ years of experience implementing innovative tax solutions, Shauna has continued to actively create tax strategies that have saved businesses and individuals over $1.93 BILLION and counting! Tax-Goddess-Business-Services-logo

Her resourcefulness and mastery in her field have led her to be featured by numerous top broadcast media platforms such as Forbes,CNN Money,Daily Herald,Big News Network, Entrepreneur,CBS, FOX, ABC,Sonoran Living,The List, The Connect Show,The Arizona Republic,Phoenix Women, KFNX, KFYI, AZBiz, NBC, and many more!

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

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

Follow Tax Goddess on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Donna Vallese with Inspiring Leaders

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Dr. Donna on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

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

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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