angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

BRX Pro Tip: Wealth is Not Evil

May 19, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Wealth is Not Evil

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BRX Pro Tip: Wealth is Not Evil

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, over the years of trying to help entrepreneurs produce better results in less time, I feel like I’ve run into this mindset, and sometimes I don’t know that they even realize it sometimes, that there’s something less than noble about making money. Have you run into this?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think this is something that really self-sabotages so many people, and it really has got to stop. The idea that wealth is somehow evil is just not true. And it might be rooted culturally, it might be rooted religiously or societally, but those narratives are not helping anyone.

Lee Kantor: In reality, wealth is a neutral tool. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. It depends on the values of the person who possesses it.

Lee Kantor: So, number one, wealth is a tool, it is not a moral compass. So, just get that out of your head. It has nothing to do with good or evil. Wealth just is.

Lee Kantor: Number two, if you focus in on your own character and have and use wealth for a good purpose, this is where generosity lives. The more money you have, the more people you can help, so there shouldn’t be a reason to be shying away from it.

Lee Kantor: And remember, wealth promotes security and freedom. Those are good things. And, ultimately, wealth allows an individual to leave some sort of a lasting legacy for their families, for their communities. Wealth itself is not evil. It’s neutral, and it reflects the intentions of the owner.

Lee Kantor: So, when wealth is managed responsibly and is aligned with ethical values, wealth is a powerful tool that creates positive change in yourself, your community, and in society.

Molly Birkholm with Team Genius

May 16, 2025 by angishields

Houston Business Radio

Molly Birkholm with Team Genius

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Molly Birkholm is a CEO, author, speaker, and advisor dedicated to transforming global mental wellness.

As the founder of Team Genius and lead developer of the Warrior PATHH Meditation Program for the Boulder Crest Foundation, Molly has spent over 18 years creating and leading evidence-based resilience and trauma treatment programs used by the U.S. Department of Defense, VA, and top organizations worldwide. Her work blends clinical research, mindfulness, and leadership strategy to build sustainable, purpose-driven work ecosystems.

In her conversation with Trisha Stetzel, Molly shared her powerful journey from a high-stress career in investment banking to global wellness leader—sparked by a near-death car accident that led her to healing practices like yoga and meditation.

She discussed her deep involvement with the veteran community, her work with the Miami VA Hospital, and her transition into corporate wellness. Trisha and Molly explored the rising rates of fear, loneliness, and uncertainty, and the need for mental health strategies in every sector.

Molly concluded with a calming breathing exercise to help the team reconnect and ground themselves.

Connect with Molly on LinkedIn and Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. It is my pleasure to have this guest on with me today, Molly Birkholm. She spent over 18 years pioneering evidence based, resilient resilience programs and trauma treatment programs, which are used throughout the US Department of Defense and US Department of Veterans Affairs. She probably doesn’t want me to tell you that she is also a CEO, a speaker and author, advisor, educator, and teacher trainer. Molly, welcome to the show.

Molly Birkholm: Thank you so much for having me, Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: And your story is so much bigger than that. Like I couldn’t do your bio justice even if I read the entire thing, because you’re doing such amazing work. You and I connected because you’re working in the veteran’s space, and I happen to be talking to a mutual contact. And he said, you have to talk to Molly. And we became best friends just over the telephone.

Molly Birkholm: I mean, it was within minutes we had we knew we found the heart space, a shared heart space.

Trisha Stetzel: Absolutely. So tell us more a little bit about Molly. And then I’d like to talk more about the work that you’re doing.

Molly Birkholm: Sure. Um, well, more about Molly. I live in Miami, Florida with my husband, my 15 year old man child who’s taller than all of us, um, two dogs, three cats, and whatever else happens to wander by.

Trisha Stetzel: And this is why we like each other.

Molly Birkholm: I just know exactly how many. How many animals do we have today? I don’t know. Um. So. Yes, the more the merrier. And our little farm here in the middle of Miami. Um, yes. And I love being in nature. I love swimming in the ocean, hiking in forests. Um, I love camping. Traveling all over the world, anywhere that I can. Just exploring this planet and people and culture and just finding new ways to connect with myself. Meditating, breathing, Pilates, yoga, anything that brings joy. Um, especially being with people I love. So yeah, I love that.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you for sharing. And, um, I was thinking as you were running through that list, I’m like, oh, we should all go barefoot and ground ourselves in the grass every morning, right? And I am, I’m so I walk from one place to another and I still have shoes on. Stop it. I should just stop it. So, Molly, let’s talk about that.

Molly Birkholm: That point right there. I just have to tell you one of my very favorite studies of all, because I know you like the science too. You and I connected on that, too. Was that as we, uh, we might talk about aging today? I’m not sure. But one of the best studies showed that people who go barefoot and also people who walk on cobblestones, have lower rates of falling in older age. So all these little old ladies, you know, living on the Italian hills, they they fall way less than those of us who walk on concrete. So.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, so the next time my husband says, are you going to put shoes on? I can say no with authority. That’s right.

Molly Birkholm: I’ll be well for so much longer, honey. Love that.

Trisha Stetzel: And I’m going to say. Because Molly said so.

Molly Birkholm: Yes, exactly.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. Thank you. Let’s talk about the work that you do. Um, the work that you’re doing, not just in the veteran community, but the people that you serve on a regular basis. What kind of conversations are you having with them? What type of work are you doing with your clients?

Molly Birkholm: So oftentimes I’ll describe my client base because it’s very, very diverse as people who want to become more exceptional at what they do and people who are having such a hard time that oftentimes they aren’t even sure they want to be on this earth. Now, those people can actually be the same people sometimes, or they can be very different people. They could also be the same people at different points in life. But there’s something that both of those demographics, if we identify them as separate, have in common and that’s that they want to change. They want to evolve. I don’t typically do well with people who don’t want to change, because if they don’t want to change, then you know it’s a waste of their time. Mine and waste of money, a waste of waste of effort. Um, so and when people really do want to change, they’re willing to open their hearts to find new ways of looking at life, at situations. They’re willing to go deeper. And so the nature of the work I do is I jump in with whatever the person presents me with, um, in the private client work. And if I’m working with teams or with companies, then I ask them, you know what? What is going on in your life? What feels strongest where, what is really bringing you to life? What is holding you back, what keeps you up at night, and whatever comes in that context? We start working in that space. Now, oftentimes that will involve stress management and resilience. So we’ll use our whole cadre of stress management and resilience tools to help them ground, as you and I were just talking about, to help them calm themselves down, sleep at night, you know, work with difficult emotions, keep their cool in the face of things that could be very stressful or could cause anger or fear.

Molly Birkholm: Um, and conversely, I also work with people who are trying to do creative things, whether it’s write a book or make a film or create a new company. Similar to your beautiful work, how do we harness the power of the challenges in our life in order to create? Because those two things are always connected. Transformation happens when we want to create and evolve an idea, when we want to reconcile something. So oftentimes people feel discomfort because they feel like, oh, there’s something here, I have to look at this. I have to explore it, and they can feel so uncomfortable. And then as they move into it, they feel the power of what it is that, uh, that they’re doing. And then all of a sudden, sudden it starts to unfold and a lot of magical ways. So I in a typical session, to go back to your original question, are you almost always will meditate with people, at least for a little bit, just to connect with the moment, do a little breathing. Um, and then we will work with whatever comes up. And we would just submit it to the, to the creative process, the transformation process, and goes from there.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So tell me how you got involved in the veteran community or even in the active duty community. How did you get pulled into this military space that you work in?

Molly Birkholm: So it was really interesting. I was an investment banker originally, and I almost died in a car accident in Manhattan in the year 2000. It was actually 25 years ago this month that I got into that car accident. Um, and I fractured my skull, my spine and my sternum. Um, my cabdriver died. I was trapped in the car with him for an hour. I had extremely bad post-traumatic stress disorder. I had every single symptom. If you read the list, I can’t find one that I didn’t have. Um. And in the process of healing. Uh, I had I still have an amazing, loving family. At the time, I had, you know, banker insurance, which is very good insurance. I had lived in Manhattan, where there were lots of, um, you know, top doctors and resources at my fingertips, and none of it was working. And, you know, I went therapist, I think I went to seven therapists. And they kept wanting to put me on a pill or do this or that. And I kept saying, I’m not depressed. I just had something traumatic happen. I need something else. Now, I do believe that medication does help a lot of people, and certainly talk therapy helps me. I still do therapy once a month because I think it’s a great time to check in with where I’m at, even if it’s exploring something that feels really good. Um, so at the same time, there was more to the equation. So I went on my own search, uh, and some of the things that helped me the most were yoga, meditation, and breathing.

Molly Birkholm: Um, when my lawsuit settled for my car accident, I bought a one way ticket to India. I went and as a Catholic girl, went and lived in a Hindu ashram and Buddhist monasteries. And I thought, there’s something here that I didn’t get, and I don’t want to become Hindu or Buddhist, but I know that they’re teaching these methodologies that actually help. And so I wanted to understand them. I wanted to understand them in a non-Western presented context. And so as I went deeper into the practices, I thought this everybody needs this. Every person who goes to war needs this. Every person who is having stress in their life needs this. And we weren’t taught, you know, even the most loving parents. My parents didn’t know how to teach me to deal with what happens when life falls apart. And so when I came back to the US, it was traveling for about two years. And when I came back, um, I ended up working at the Miami VA hospital in the PTSD program. Um, and with at first I was just teaching yoga and meditation classes, and very quickly we started doing. Within a couple of months, we got our first NIH grant. And then, you know, this was in oh seven, so we were still in oöphoi up that we had a lot of people coming into the VA, and we still had a lot of Vietnam vets.

Molly Birkholm: So it was overflowing. Seven month waitlist and we could pack a class for meditation. So and it was working. It was helping people. Um, we tried a lot of things that didn’t. And then we tried a lot of things that did. And we were just really in conversation with vets. How’s this? How’s this? And we were bringing it in a secular way. We were not teaching, you know, Hindu or Buddhist meditation. We were teaching how to breathe, how to be in your own body, how to be in your own mind, how to work with the difficult emotion. But we were applying these technologies to it. And as we got the clinical research to back it up, it just exploded. And we were asked, can you train other people to do what you do? So there were four of us that founded Warrior Studies and we, you know, we went on to train thousands of people who at 65 bases in Vas, and we’ve worked with foreign militaries and the work just kept growing. Eventually started working with the Special Forces community and working on resilience training, um, trying to apply the same principles to prepare someone for the experience of stress so that we weren’t just treating trauma after the stress occurred. But how do we actually create the conditions that someone can experience stress in a more, um, and a less impactful way, or maybe not experience stress at all?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Okay. So, Molly, we’re about halfway through our time together and I’m guessing just a guess that there are people who are listening who would love to connect with you already, and they haven’t even heard the rest of the story. But if they’re ready to connect with you, what’s the best way to get in touch?

Molly Birkholm: Sure, you can go to my website if you like the more corporate or team building side. If you have a team that you think could use this, you can go to Team Genius. And if you are more interested in the coaching side or in a keynote talk, or in just connecting one human to one human, you can go to Molly Comm. And for any veterans who are interested or first responders, we also have the Warrior Path program. You can go to Warrior Path with two H’s. That’s a free seven day post-traumatic growth program that any veteran or first responder can apply to attend.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you for all that you do for the greater community, not just veterans active duty, but also just the community in general. The work that you’re doing is amazing. I like to take what we’ve what you’ve been talking about in your past and the things that you’ve been doing into a conversation that I think is really real right now. And you and I talked about loneliness and how that has really weighed heavy on a lot of people. And now this morning, just before we started recording, we were talking about fear. And I think those two things are really heavy right now with people. So can you just give us a little insight in the types of conversations that you’re having around fear and loneliness right now?

Molly Birkholm: Sure. Um, you know, I just want to start out by saying everybody feels alone in some way. We might not have a generalized sense of loneliness, but even a person who has a beautiful Marriage might feel lonely in the workplace. A person who has beautiful family connections may feel very alone in their community. We might feel alone with ourselves because we’re not connecting with ourselves. So please, if you feel loneliness, I just first want to blast the notion of shame out of this because it is a totally normal human condition that every single human being faces. And in fact, loneliness can be the key through which you find connection. Because when we are vulnerable with ourselves, first of all, because we have to learn to be vulnerable with ourselves before we can extend that generosity to anyone else. A trusted person. You don’t want to be vulnerable with untrusted people, but you have to at least try to see, could I be vulnerable with this person? Does this happen to be someone who perhaps someone else trusts? Or I see something that is trustworthy, and then you can test it with a small thing. And if they prove trustworthy in that way, you can keep growing it. Now, what’s behind that? It’s fear, right? We are afraid we’re going to get hurt. Now, oftentimes, and I’ve been throwing up my hands, I was someone who thought, I mean, it was so. So not a good way to live.

Molly Birkholm: Please don’t be like this. But I think it might connect with some people. I would say I trust everyone until they prove me wrong. Terrible idea. I was like, the worst idea. But you know. So you know what happens? I end up, you know, getting a divorce. I end up, you know, you know, in business relationships sometimes that weren’t trustworthy. What we want to do in the creation of connection with this notion of loneliness is, first of all, identify what makes us feel afraid and try to start identifying how we can feel safe now in the same way. And I’m going to come back to loneliness in the same way that that loneliness is so common right now in our own lives and in the world. Fear is really this water that we’re swimming in and why? Because especially in, you know, since 2020, the whole world has turned upside down. Whether any of us like it or not, it’s a different planet than it was before. And you can pick any number of topics that make people feel afraid at all ends of the political spectrum, at all ends of society. And you will find that everyone feels afraid. Every single one of my clients that I’ve talked to in the past few months, if not years, come with this. This piece that says, I’m just so afraid, and we get shut down and we’re afraid to act, and then we actually create loneliness.

Molly Birkholm: We don’t know who we can trust. We don’t know if we can even trust ourselves. We don’t know if the old systems are trustworthy. We don’t know if the people that are running the systems that we operate inside of are trustworthy. And the whole thing is up for grabs right now. Now that feels scary. It feels scary. And it is unifying. It is so unifying when we can all sit down and say, I have fear in this way, or I have fear in that way. And in healthy communities and healthy conversations, listen to each other. Now we suffer when we want reality to be different than what it is. So there’s no getting out of fear without naming it, without allowing it to be there. And then the second we name it, you know, if Trish and I kept talking, I’m sure we could find other things like that. We have. Maybe aging parents. Maybe. I mean, we haven’t even had those conversations. But there’s lots of things I’m afraid of right now. You know, I don’t know, my 401 K went way down the past couple months. I’m afraid of that, too. Like I’m afraid of lots of things right now. So I don’t I. And that’s just human. So I don’t know. Trisha, tell me, how is this sitting with you just so we can connect in this space before we go any further?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. Like, it completely resonates with me, and, um, I so I wouldn’t personally label it as fear, and I’m sure that’s what it is. But my label for that is confusion, right? There’s no forward, um, plan or path that seems clear to me. So I would just put a different label on it. But I’m absolutely feeling that same thing right now. What’s around the corner? Sure. Yeah.

Molly Birkholm: Yeah. What’s around the corner? And that I love that labeling as confusion because the way we all internalize it is different. And by hearing Trisha say that I now have a new dimension, that I can look at my own experience of it. So that’s so powerful. We might have different things that cause confusion, and yet at the same time, we can start to isolate even the feeling in the body of what that’s like and start to notice it. So when you feel confusion, what do you feel? Trisha?

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Um. Tension. Right? Because I don’t know what’s around the corner. I’m confused by what the process or the path ahead is. So tight shoulders. My body gets a little tense. Maybe there are some other emotions that are coming up for me. Right? As we’re having this conversation, I got a little warm, like, okay, so I’m a little warm and I’m a little tense because I’m I’m like reliving this confusion or this what’s around the corner next, right? And I can feel it in my body. That’s where I feel it now. So my so my face got red and my chest got red. And I get warm and tense. And so that’s what I feel when you ask me to talk about that confusion. Right.

Molly Birkholm: Yeah. And even as you’re saying it, I’m feeling it in my body. And I don’t know if our listeners are noticing where it ripples in them. I get same as you right up here. And you can see I don’t know if the video everyone’s seeing the video, but my chest is a little red right here, too. I always get it up here and in the throat, and then I get it kind of in my belly, and I start to notice that I’ll start to hunch over as if I’m going to protect myself. This very primordial, instead of sitting upright and all of a sudden, like lunging in. And then in those moments, I every time I start to feel that way, I create this trigger. And maybe we just invite everyone to do it. Maybe we just take ten deep breaths together. And even though we’re here talking, we give real honor to the fact that sometimes stopping and just breathing together with other people or by ourselves is the most powerful thing we can do. So I welcome. Are you okay if we do that?

Trisha Stetzel: I already started, I’m ahead of you. Okay, great.

Molly Birkholm: So, everyone, if you’re driving your car or cooking dinner or doing whatever you do, just if you want. I love touch, so I always put one hand on my belly, one hand on my chest. But you can find whatever feels good to you and just feel your feet grounding on the earth. So if you had roots extending down from your feet into the earth, you can even think of a favorite place in nature, a favorite place that you love. Start to breathe up and through the body. Feeling. Grounding. Calming energy. Moving all the way up and through. Really expanding your abdomen on the inhalation. And as you exhale, just feel like you’re washing tension out of the body. Continue breathing at your own pace, but as you inhale, try to really expand the belly like a balloon. Expand the chest, expand the lungs till you can’t get any more air in, and then squeeze them out as if you’re squeezing out a wet rag. Pull the belly in towards the spine. Squeeze out the lungs. Get all the air out. Keep going. Like this.

Molly Birkholm: Deepest inhales you possibly can. Let’s see if you can make the exhalations even a little slower. A little deeper. Take five more breaths at your own pace, visualizing breathing in all this calming, grounding energy. And as you exhale, letting go of any confusion, any fear, any tension, let it go. It’ll come back later if it needs to. If you don’t want to let it go, you can also just welcome it. Just let it be here. Surround it with peaceful, calming energy, knowing you’ll be better equipped to handle whatever is here. More. You breathe and find your center. One last, very deep, very present breath. If you’re not driving before you open your eyes, bring your hands together and rub your hands together, making some heat between your hands. Really building that warmth between the hands. Place the hands over the eyes. Just cupping the hands over the eyes. And letting that be the transition that brings you back into this place, into this conversation, to this exploration of the human experience. Learning to be comfortable. Being uncomfortable. How do you feel now, Trisha?

Trisha Stetzel: I’m lost for words, Molly, because I relaxed. I actually cleared all of the garbage out of my head. So let me come back to reality. Right. Um. Much calmer. Right? More present. I feel like I have more direction. I’m really. And I think that the most important thing right now is that I’m even more tuned in to the conversation that we’re having now than I was before. And I’m a really good listener, and I’m really good at removing distractions. But that alone, I feel like I’m even more connected with you now having this conversation. Yeah. Thank you.

Molly Birkholm: Thank you. I feel so much better, too, and more connected to you. Um, sometimes people think that this could be woo woo or weird or something. People think I’m strange if I’m doing this thing. But we feel stress when we feel like we don’t have a choice. We have been breathing every single moment of this life, and we always have a choice how we breathe. Even people who have asthma, even people who have trouble breathing. We all have a choice about how we picture the breath. We have choices about how we work with the breath, and the breath is the only function of the autonomic nervous system we can directly affect. And it’s so quick. We just took ten breaths. That’s it. We can all do that. Even setting an alarm on your phone for every hour of the day it goes off. If you’re in a meeting, if you’re in the school pickup line, whatever you’re doing, stop and take ten deep breaths while you’re doing it, whatever it is and you will see it will invite your nervous system into deeper states of security, of safety, and you will feel more. Grounded to your own feeling of well-being. Regardless of what the stories of the world are.

Trisha Stetzel: We can only control a certain amount of things, right? And that is something that can really shift or change the way in an instant. Write in the way your day is going, or the way you feel, or the things that you worry about around the corner, right? Or are confused about. Yeah.

Molly Birkholm: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Molly, you’re going to have to come back. I’m just saying, because they’re at the back end of our time. And I’m, uh, thank you for taking us through that exercise. Completely unexpected and unscripted. And I think it’s going to help a lot of people who are listening or even watching today just to take those ten breaths. So you’re going to have to come back and teach us how to belly breathe and how to do all of those things. Right. That would be so much fun. I would love that. Thank you so much.

Molly Birkholm: Anyone want some free guided meditations? Just send me an email Molly at Team Genius. I will send you one for pain, one for healing, one for sleep, and one for daily living. And you can just try it and see if it works.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you so much for being with me today. You guys connect with Molly. I will also have all of the links and ways to get in touch with Molly in the show. Um, in the show notes. So all you have to do is point and click. I encourage you to connect with her. I also encourage you to rewind this, uh, show that you’re listening to and keep using that ten breaths that Molly gifted us with today. Molly, thank you so much for being here.

Molly Birkholm: Thank you Trisha.

Trisha Stetzel: I can’t wait to have you back. I hope you’ll come back.

Molly Birkholm: Of course. Anytime.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, good.

Molly Birkholm: We, our weekly meditation circle are fantastic.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. All right, family, that’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another amazing episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.

Navigating the Grant Landscape: The Essential Role of Grant Professionals and the Support of the GPA

May 16, 2025 by angishields

Association Leadership Radio

Navigating the Grant Landscape: The Essential Role of Grant Professionals and the Support of the GPA

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In this episode of Association Leadership Radio, Lee Kantor is joined by Mike Chamberlain, CEO of the Grant Professionals Association (GPA). They discuss the critical role of grant professionals in securing funding for nonprofits and local governments. Mike highlights the GPA’s mission to advocate for the profession, build community, and promote professionalism. He also addresses the challenges of navigating federal grants, the importance of ethical standards, and the need for organizations to diversify funding sources. The GPA offers resources like a consultants directory and educational materials to support grant professionals in their vital work.

Michael Chamberlain is CEO of The Grant Professionals Association (GPA), an international membership association for everyone in the grants industry.

GPA and its affiliates work to advance the profession, certify professionals, and fund professionalism. GPA offers continuing professional development through local chapter meetings, regular webinars, the GPA Journal, and an annual conference.

The Grant Professionals Certification Institute oversees the GPC credential based on a body of knowledge for the profession. The Grant Professionals Foundation provides scholarships to individuals to advance their career.

Follow GPA on LinkedIn, Facebook, X and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Mike Chamberlain and he is the CEO of Grant Professionals Association. Welcome.

Mike Chamberlain: Hi, Lee. It’s my pleasure to be here today.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Uh, can you give us a little brief overview of the Grant Professionals Association? How you serving, folks?

Mike Chamberlain: Yes, absolutely. So the Grant Professionals Association, we just celebrated our 25th anniversary a little over a year ago. So we’re relatively young in the association space, but our members are those people who write grant proposals, research grant opportunities and manage grant funds for their organizations. So that could be anything from your local school district to the nonprofit down the street to your city or local government. So anything to do with grants, that’s what our folks are are there doing. So we’re an individual membership organization, and we really focus on serving our members through advocacy, community and professionalism. And so when we talk about those three things, what we’re really talking about is advocating for the grants profession. You know, I always draw the parallel that very much like association executives and association professionals, grant professionals didn’t go to school for this. So they come from a variety of backgrounds. And so one of the important things we do is advocate for them as a profession and help people understand more about what the profession is. The second part of that is then building community. And as most association execs know, that’s probably one of the biggest and most important things we do is build community for those individuals. And it’s especially true for grant professionals because for many of them, they’re the only ones in their organization. So they really don’t have anybody to turn to within their organization to ask questions from. So they have to turn someplace else. And so that’s one of the things we do is provide that community for them to connect with their fellow grant professionals across the across the country. And now growing across the world. And then lastly, professionalism and education, as many other associations do. One of our primary objectives is providing continuing professional development. And as I mentioned, most grant professionals kind of fell into the field. So that’s where we can really provide a lot of detail and advanced education for them.

Lee Kantor: Now about how many people are in the grant professionals, like how many are out there as members or potential members.

Mike Chamberlain: So that is a great question. So we are currently just over 4500 members of the GPA. That other number is one that’s kind of a little bit of a mystery. And I’ll caveat that with we’ve done some research to understand the field, but because there’s no data currently collected on this, and this is one of our advocacy areas, is working to get, uh, grant professionals listed in the what’s called the standard occupational classification system to get them actually get that profession listed there so that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will start collecting information about this. Um, so roundabout way. The other part of this is looking at how many entities out there might be working and looking at getting grants. Um, so a couple of those benchmarks that we look at is in terms of federal grants, um, which has obviously been a hot topic the first quarter of this year. But how many federal grants are there, um, issued per year? And there’s literally tens of thousands of federal grants issued per year. Um, and then on top of that, all of the individual foundations, uh, also make grants. So, um, we look at those kind of numbers and then we look at the number of non-profits and other entities out there that are getting grants. So roundabout way to say this is there’s literally tens of thousands of people who do this work. Um, we just don’t know who they are and where they are yet.

Lee Kantor: Now, what was kind of the impetus of starting an association? Um, have grants been around for just that period of time or have grants been around for, you know, 100 years? I don’t know the history of grants.

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. So kind of the first grants are the land grants, uh, that the government did, um, back in the 18 1800s, I believe, um, is when the land grants started. Um, so that’s where many people talk about the, the founding of grants. Um, but grants really didn’t become an industry until maybe the late 1960s to early 70s is when it really kind of came around that grants were a thing. Um, so our organization was founded in the late 90s when a group of people attended a training course and said, uh, as they came out of that training course, they said, there’s got to be more for this. Um, there’s got to be more to this. And, uh, at that time, there were some folks who, um, for lack of a better phrase, phrasing, um, just may not have been completely ethical in how they were approaching, um, serving others in the grants profession. So out of that group of five people that came together, um, they really had a focus on creating a code of ethics for the profession. Uh, and that’s been one of our foundational pieces and our bedrocks from the very beginning is the GPA code of ethics. Uh, and what was really important about that for them was not only having, as I said, about that community, but having that that foundational document that not only could they point to for themselves, but they could point to for others to say, this is what a true professional does in abiding by that code of ethics.

Lee Kantor: And then, so the people in a given, um, company like, or an association like you’re in a nonprofit, you believe that everybody in a nonprofit should at least assign someone to be in this space, because there’s a lot of opportunity out there that could benefit the nonprofit. So is that how you see it?

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. It is. And one of the ways that I look at it, especially in terms of the organizational approach to things, um, some people look at a grant professional and some of them use the term grant writer and say, oh, they just fill out forms. Well, if that’s all they’re doing, they’re not really a grant professional because from my perspective, one of the things that is probably most important about the work of a grant professional is their holistic view of the organization and what it’s trying to accomplish. I’ve often said that if I wanted to learn about an organization that did anything with grants, I would go find their grant professional first, because they are the people they as a part of their process and part of their work, they’re going to touch every part of the organization. Um, and speaking of a nonprofit, um, a local nonprofit that does programing in the area, the grant professional is going to know what those programs are, who they serve, what the audience is, what are the other fundraising that’s going on? So talking to the other folks in the development, what’s the future of the organization knowing about the mission and the core values of the organization? So working with the executive team and understanding the finances of the organization. So working with the financial team to understand all of that. And that’s even before they write the first word of any grant proposal.

Mike Chamberlain: Um, and so they’re taking that information, doing good research to find a good match for the organization. Just because there’s a grain available doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good match for the organization. So the grant professional is going to be doing that work in terms of the research, to make sure they have a good match for the grantor and the organization. Then they do all the work of preparing a proposal, getting it turned in, and then once the proposal is received and say they’re awarded the funds, then the second part of the work begins in terms of working with the program staff and the finance team to properly manage those funds and evaluate the program and give feedback to the grant maker. Um, that’s kind of one of the big differences between grants and a lot of other philanthropy is in some, in many cases, with philanthropy, if somebody gives a gift, they’re not expecting any kind of a report back other than maybe an annual report or a thank you note with grants, the grantor or the person making the grant is expecting a full report and a full accounting of what happened with their funds. And what were the outcomes and what were the not only the outputs but were the outcomes. What are the impact of that grant making in in the community?

Lee Kantor: So now in today’s climate, how has this is? I would think that your organization is super important to navigate kind of the storm that’s occurring now when it comes to federal grants at least.

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. And that is, quite honestly, one of our biggest challenges right now is navigating that. Um, and in part because of the, for lack of a better term, the, the constant churn we’re being faced with right now. Um, what had been a pretty steady growth in federal grants over the last number of years, um, has kind of been turned on its head in the last few months. And so a lot of it is just trying to navigate these choppy waters, um, and figuring out what’s going on. And so one of the things that we rely on is some of the benchmarks and some of the, um, firm foundation, because there are a lot of rules around in speaking specifically of federal grants, there are a lot of rules around federal grants. Um, many of them are legislatively, uh, provided. In other words, Congress has passed laws about particular grant programs. And so, you know, not only do you have those laws in place, but you also have the, um, it’s the it’s the guidance for federal financial assistance. Um, but that’s rules and regulations around grants. So again, both sides of the coin there either what we call pre-award, before you get to the awarding the grant and post award, how the grants how are grants managed and how is the reporting done.

Mike Chamberlain: Both of those are well documented in terms of rule, current rules and regulations. So that’s part of what our members are dealing with is understanding what grants are. Um, you know what grants have been terminated. Um, and again, you know, that’s a debate to be had, but if they’ve been terminated, what are the recourse and what what can our what can GPA members do? Um, in that regard. And they are frankly being turned to by their organization to say, okay, we we no longer have access to this grant opportunity. What are other options? Um, and that’s certainly one area where our members and one of the things we’ve been reinforcing with our members is the ever popular need to diversify their funding, um, especially for nonprofits, you know, don’t rely on just one source of funding, whether that’s a government grant, a foundation grant, um, or whatever the case may be. And so that’s, you know, become abundantly clear, obviously, in these last few months, but it’s also where we’re doing our best to try to support our members in this in this time.

Lee Kantor: Now, are your members primarily employees of these organizations, or are they kind of freelance consultants that just help on a kind of a need basis?

Mike Chamberlain: It’s really a mix. So we have quite a few members who are employed by their organization, and a good percentage of our membership are consultants or consulting groups, um, that work with these organizations to help them navigate that. Um, so it’s it’s really a mix.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned earlier, um, um, at the genesis of the idea, part of it was to protect the ethics of the organization and to do things to a certain standard. Uh, this area at least. I mean, as a layperson, there’s been a lot of, I don’t know, opportunity to be taken advantage of. I’ll say that, um, where a person doesn’t know how to do this, and then someone comes in and promises them a bill of goods of though this is its money’s there waiting for you. Just you just don’t know how to, you know, write the fill out the form properly. Um, and I would assume that your organization is, you know, is working with people who are the professionals in the association and are telling the truth and helping people achieve that. But is that an area that you have to kind of educate the consumer about, and also that you have to, um, point them to people that are kind of vetted, that are going to treat this truly as a business, not some sort of taking advantage of somebody with a promise that’ll never be fulfilled.

Mike Chamberlain: You’ve you’ve hit it right on the head. Um, that has been that from the beginning and continues to be one of the cornerstones of the association is promoting our code of ethics. Uh, and so that is something that we are very passionate about, our members are passionate about in terms of educating the general public about the code, that code of ethics. And so, you know, that’s I wouldn’t say it’s a common question, but it’s one of the more frequent questions we get is from somebody who’s just starting out pursuing grant funding. And they’ve talked to somebody and they’ve the individual has said, I’ll write this grant proposal for you. Um, and just give me a percentage of what the grant is as my fee. Um, that is very much against our code of ethics. Um, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is, um, that the grant was made is being made to fund a program, not to pay a grant professional. Um, and so when we get those questions like that, first of all, we explain that to folks about the code of ethics and, and why this is important. And then secondly, we will refer them to our consultants directory. And so everybody who is in our consultants directory, all the members of GPA agree to abide by that code of ethics. And so it’s really important for us and for them that they maintain that that high ethical standard.

Lee Kantor: So that’s kind of a red flag. If they’re saying that I just get rewarded for a piece of the action. That’s not standard practice.

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah, absolutely. That’s a big red flag. Um, because there’s so many things that happen within the grant making process. Um, and some have referred to it as the grant makers black box. Um, others, you know, it just depends on so many other factors. You could have one of the best proposals. Um, and this is one example that I’ve heard from grant professionals. You may have the best proposal. Um, but there are three other grant proposals from your state. Um, and they’re only going to give one grant out in that state. Um, and so you might not get the grant just simply for the fact that there were three other great proposals in your state. And the state next door only had one great proposal. Um, so there’s so many more factors involved in, in, in terms of the grant making process. Um, and so the grant professional has done the work, has worked with the staff, worked with the program staff, worked with the finance staff to do all the work to not only research the opportunity but to prepare proposal. Um, and so that is work being done on behalf of the organization. Again, whether it’s from the individual inside the organization or a consultant. And so it’s really important to recognize that grant professionals are doing the work and deserve to be compensated for that work.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, on this show, obviously we deal with associations of all shapes and sizes. Um, I would imagine not all of them have a full time employee on this, but you mentioned that this is something they should consider. What are some like? So you think that anybody that’s in the association business should have a body on at least pursuing this in some shape or form, whether it’s a part time consultant or investing in a full time employee.

Mike Chamberlain: You know, I think that depends on the organization. Um, from some associations, grants are are an important part of what they do in providing services and or, um, providing resources to the, to the general public. And I know there are a lot of, um, healthcare associations that do work in the grants field, um, and work on research and other opportunities like that. So I think it kind of depends on the organization itself. Um, and for many organizations, going back to your question about, you know, should they have somebody on staff or should they be using a consultant for many organizations, if they’re just getting into grants, a great way to do that is to work with a consultant, and to have that consultant help make sure the organization is what we call grant ready. Um, and that means making sure there’s a lot of the things that are in place before you start developing an application or proposal, but also making sure that your organization is ready for the rigors of a grant, um, and making sure that you can find and do the right research to find the right opportunity to match with what the association is trying to accomplish.

Lee Kantor: Now, if there’s organizations out there that don’t have a person doing this or they don’t, they’ve never done it before. Is reaching out to your organization a good first step to at least kind of understand the process and, and kind of explain, is there any kind of content on your website or that a way to explain to them kind of the benefits of pursuing grants and then, you know, then the next step, obviously, is finding the right person to launch this effort in their organization?

Mike Chamberlain: Yes. And so on our website, which is WWE professionals, we have, I mentioned before our consultants directory where you can match up with any of our literally thousands of consultants, um, who will, you know, again, looking at depending on what part of the industry you’re in, um, might be a better match for you, or you might be looking for somebody in your local area because you know that there are local funders who are interested in funding, uh, or interesting, interested in supporting your organization. And so part of the from the consultants perspective is we we often say, um, you want to find the right person that’s going to be the best fit for you and your organization and your organization’s objectives. So there’s an opportunity within our consultants directory to do that. And then from the larger picture, we do have some general information about what grants are and what they’re not. Uh, in terms of kind of general education for the public. And again, that’s one of those areas we are continuing to grow that grow those resources because we realize there’s a number of misconceptions out there about what grants are.

Lee Kantor: Well, I mean, I think that the word is out that there’s hundreds of billions of dollars of grant money available. And I would imagine just a small percentage of that actually gets, um, kind of acquired by the organization. Is that accurate?

Mike Chamberlain: Um. It depends. Um, and I use that phrase a lot, but that’s what a lot of our members say, too. It just depends. Um, you know, for for many federal grants, they can be highly competitive. Uh, and so, you know, many of those grants do get awarded, um, in terms of foundation grants, it really depends on what the foundation is focused on and whether that’s a community foundation or private family foundation. Um, so it’s really finding going back to what I said before about researching the opportunities. That’s one of the ways that a grant professional can really help. An organization is fine tune and understand not only what opportunities there are in grants, but finding the right match. Um, so that may be a family foundation in a city, you know, far away from where you’re at located. But it may be a real high priority for that foundation to support the kind of activities your association is doing.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you all, um, I know this is a national now international organization. Do you have chapters as well or is it centrally located and everything’s virtual? How does it work?

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. So we do have chapters. Um, in chapters are really part of our, um, creating community. And that is creating community at the local level and giving members an opportunity to connect with others in their local community. So we have chapters across the US and one chapter in Canada. Um, so not exactly in every state, but we have chapters, like I said, across the country, in some states there’s multiple chapters, um, mostly kind of situated around metropolitan areas. Um, in some cases, they’re statewide chapters. Um, and they look to serve their members as, as well as we do, um, whether it’s through virtual meetings, um, some in-person events throughout the year. Um, we have our annual conference, which we call the Grant summit in the fall of the year, which is our in-person event. But we do as pretty much everybody does now, but we do a lot of virtual events just because it’s an easier way for so many people to connect.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have any advice, um, for other association leaders when part of what they do is to kind of debunk misinformation. Are there some do’s and don’ts that you’ve learned over the years in your organization that has helped in that area that you might be able to share?

Mike Chamberlain: Um, I think that the one thing I’ve learned is, as much as you communicate, and I think most communications professionals would say this as well. But as often and as much as you communicate, it’s never enough. Um, because there’s always a new rumor out there or always a new, uh, concept that you kind of have to battle up against. And for as much as we’ve told people that taking a percentage of the grant is not the right thing to do, there are still plenty of people out there that are promoting that or at least sharing that. And so that’s one of those things that’s a constant battle for us. But I think that’s the idea that as much as you communicate it, um, you just need to communicate it more and more often.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned that, um, when people are involved in this industry, they typically didn’t think, oh, this is what I want to be when I grow up. Is there any kind of effort to make this a path where people, you know, get some sort of a degree in this or they get, you know, some sort of, you know, certifications or, you know, proof of expertise in this area. Is there kind of an accreditation of this skill?

Mike Chamberlain: Um, so first of all, there is a credential. Um, and it is an accredited credential. It’s the grant professional certified. Um, and that is, uh, that credential is maintained by the Grant Professionals Certification Institute. Gbci. Um grant credential. Org is their website. Uh, so there is a credential for the field. Um, however, there’s not an education path yet. Um, and that’s one of the areas we’re working to develop. I mentioned before of working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, to identify and clearly define what, um, what the occupations are in the profession. And then our next objective beyond that, then, is to kind of work backwards into what are the exact what’s the exact curriculum that would look like for somebody to be successful as a grant professional? Uh, so many of our folks come from a background in journalism or writing or social work and education. So there are membership is incredibly well educated. And for us, it’s really a matter of finding that right pathway for them.

Lee Kantor: So it’s not an it’s not usually human resources. They come from more of a writing background.

Mike Chamberlain: Absolutely. That’s correct.

Lee Kantor: Oh that’s I wouldn’t have thought that. Like, I would have thought this would have been someone who was on a human resource path that had good writing skills. I didn’t realize they were we’re writing first and then getting into it.

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. And oftentimes we hear this story over and over again from our members of they, you know, started in an organization and maybe they started on the program side or worked with, you know, maybe in the marketing communications team. And somebody said, you really do know how to write. Can you help us put together this grant application? Um, and they start into it. They find they really enjoy it. Um, and then start building their skills in it.

Lee Kantor: Interesting. Well, so what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more members? You just want to get the word out more that the association is there to help. Like, how can we help you?

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah. So obviously more members. Um, one of the things, like I said earlier, we we know the the number of grant professionals out there is a very large number. We just don’t know how large. And so one of our continuing objectives is to get people to know about not only the association but the profession itself. Uh, and so for many individuals who are doing the work, they just kind of refer to themselves as, oh, I’m just a so and so. I just work at this organization. And one of the myths that we’re trying to eliminate, if you will, is that the grants profession is a real profession. Um, it requires a certain set of skills and abilities to be successful at it. Um, and it’s not just opening up a form, plugging in some stuff and hitting the submit button, but they have project management skills. They have finance skills, um, they have the ability to really pull together a story. Um, and, and again, that’s kind of why a lot of them come from a writing background is because they’re able to really have that narrative thread and be able to pull together, um, the stories of the people that are being served, along with the evaluation of the program, along with the financial side of it. And so being able to weave all that together in one great story to tell the story. And oftentimes with a limited character or word count for an organization, is really an art and a science. Um, and so again, as we continue to work towards helping people understand that grant the grants profession is something that is truly a profession and that there’s an opportunity for people to get better and be more effective and efficient as a grant professional, not only to serve their organizations, but to serve their communities.

Lee Kantor: And one more time, before we wrap up the website and the best way to connect with you or somebody on the team.

Mike Chamberlain: Is grant professionals for. Professionals. Um, and you can reach out to our staff through our website, um, connect through any of the resources there. Uh, I will share one other resource that we’re pretty proud of is our online learning platform, which we call Grant school. Um, so that’s available for folks if you’re just wanting to try out some stuff and learn about some of the basics of grants. Um, one of the things that we don’t do is do your basic training in grants. Um, there’s a lot of great organizations like Grant writing USA or the Grantsmanship center that do that work. Um, we really do the work after that in terms of helping people understand how to get better and more efficient and to really grow into the profession.

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

Mike Chamberlain: Yeah, absolutely. Lee, it’s my pleasure and it’s great to be with you today.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association leadership Radio.

BRX Pro Tip: Why Everyone Has to Learn How to Sell

May 16, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Lean Into the Suck

May 15, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Lean Into the Suck

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BRX Pro Tip: Why You Should Lean Into the Suck

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about the discipline, leaning into the suck.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. We just recently were broadcasting from the Tillman Run here in Roswell, Georgia, and we were around a lot of military folks, and leaning into the suck is a military kind of phrase that comes from military training. And it’s a mindset and strategy for confronting difficult, uncomfortable situations head on rather than avoiding them. And that’s how it is in life. You know, you have to accept and embrace challenges. You have to be able to transform adversity into opportunities for growth and resilience and self-improvement.

Lee Kantor: And obviously, anytime you start something new or you’re going out into an adventure you’ve never done before, you’re going to suck. It is going to suck because you’re learning. These are new things. You’re doing things for the first time, so you can’t be great at it at go.

Lee Kantor: When you start something new, you just got to just kind of power through, lean into kind of the suck, as they say, and then just focusing on improvement. And if you just start doing the work and you keep grinding, you’re going to get better. You’re going to suck less and less over time.

Lee Kantor: You cannot escape the suck. You can only make the choice to lean into it and get better. If you can really buy into this and kind of lean into this, this mindset can transform challenges into opportunities. It’s going to make you more resilient. Your awareness is going to be higher and you’re going to achieve more. By embracing the suck, you not only endure the hardships, but you thrive through them. You’re going to emerge stronger and more capable and ready for whatever it is that happens next.

BRX Pro Tip: 2 Best Ways People Make B2B Decisions

May 14, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: 2 Best Ways People Make B2B Decisions

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BRX Pro Tip: 2 Best Ways People Make B2B Decisions

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you and I have both maintained, and I think it’s a product of our experience, that B2B sales is different. People make B2B buying decisions differently than B2C, but speak to that a little bit if you would.

Lee Kantor: Sure. There’s a lot of stats around this that, number one, in a B2B decision, referrals are usually the most powerful decision-making influence over a B2B sale. If somebody recommends something, a trusted buyer is recommending this, that’s going to build instant credibility and trust. They’re going to be way far ahead of somebody who just, you know, maybe saw a brand name on a lanyard at a trade show. You know, that type of referral is really critical, so definitely you should be focusing in on things like that.

Lee Kantor: There’s some supporting evidence, I think a recent survey or a study said B2B companies with referrals experience a 70 percent higher conversion rate, 84 percent of B2B sales begins with a referral. So, there’s definitely evidence that supports trying to get referrals in any way you can.

Lee Kantor: Number two is for B2B sales, a lot of sales comes from upsells from the current vendor or whoever selling them something. So, buyers will buy more stuff from you if they’ve had a positive experience with you. So, upselling leverages established relationships and satisfaction and then they’re open to a higher value option. There’s, again, evidence to support that, upselling increases customer lifetime value by 20 to 40 percent.

Lee Kantor: So, these are two areas that you can focus in on. If you’re trying to grow sales, try to get more referrals, try to upsell more to existing customers. These two decision-making factors, referral and upselling, they highlight the importance of building trust, leveraging existing relationships, maintaining visibility. So, by aligning these strategies with these factors, your business can effectively influence more B2B buyers and hopefully drive growth.

Transforming Tech Management: How LMI Tech Systems Simplifies IT for SMBs

May 13, 2025 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Transforming Tech Management: How LMI Tech Systems Simplifies IT for SMBs

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Brought to you by Diesel David and Main Street Warriors

In this episode of Cherokee Business Radio, Joshua Kornitsky interviews TJ Blackmon, Vice President of LMI Tech Systems. The discussion centers on LMI’s innovative Technology as a Service (TaaS) model, which helps small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) manage technology costs and needs. TJ shares his 25-year journey with LMI, highlighting their evolution from high-end home systems to comprehensive tech solutions for SMBs. Key services include hardware, software, managed services, cloud solutions, telephony, and security. The episode underscores LMI’s commitment to making advanced technology accessible and affordable for all businesses.

TJ Blackmon is a 30 Year IT Professional, focused on the Managed Services. He’s the CIO/Vice President Managed Services, LMI Tech Systems, LLC.

TJ began his career in the tech industry right out of high school, working for a technology store at age 19. Prior to joining LMI Systems, he worked for Decision Digital managing more than 1000 servers and overseeing the daily operations of 10 engineers.

He currently resides in Lawrenceville with his wife and 19-month-old daughter. When TJ’s not working, he spends time fishing and soaking up the outdoors.

Follow LMI on LinkedIn and Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back. My name is Joshua Kornitsky. I am the host of Cherokee Business Radio and a professional EOS implementer. And today in studio, my guest is TJ Blackmon, vice president of LMI Tech Systems. Good morning TJ, how are you?

TJ Blackmon: Morning, Josh. Thank you for having me over today.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s a pleasure to have you here. So I understand from the conversation we were having earlier that you’ve been with LMI for a little while.

TJ Blackmon: I have, um, it’s a bit of a long story, but I’ll shorten it here. Um, I have actually been with and involved with LMI since I was about 19 years old.

Joshua Kornitsky: And he’s almost 22 now.

TJ Blackmon: So age is getting to me.

Joshua Kornitsky: There you go. So no. So how many years has that been?

TJ Blackmon: Um, this April, it was 25 years. Because I’ll be married 25 years in a month, so I better keep that date, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Yes. Yes, sir. Um, wonderful. So when, uh, when you started with LMI, you were functioning in the role of a technician, weren’t you?

TJ Blackmon: Yes. I worked for a managed services provider at the time. Um, and this was, you know, late 90s. It was very different than it is today. We were actually on site, uh, all the time because there was no remote access. You drove.

Joshua Kornitsky: That was remote access was. You opened the door.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. And you and you got in your car. Um, and we got a call that LMI had a server down, and at that time, LMI had a server.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: And, you know, things change. And, uh, I was dispatched there and met the principal owners there. Got the server back up.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay, good. Yeah. Good.

TJ Blackmon: Um, back in the day, when it was hard. You know, us old guys in it, we joke about that. Everybody today has it easy.

Joshua Kornitsky: There you.

TJ Blackmon: Go.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, and Hershey bars were a nickel.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, and I worked for that MSP, uh, until about 2006, and then had the opportunity at another MSP to become the network services manager. Did that for about ten years and then moved on and to LMI to become the CIO at LMI.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so let’s back up for a minute, because I guess I should ask you, what’s Lmi’s mission? What do you do?

TJ Blackmon: Again, I don’t have to give you a short answer to a very long explanation.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s okay. So so let’s let’s start simply. How does LMI help businesses? How about that?

TJ Blackmon: Well, first and foremost, LMI tech Systems, who I work for.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

TJ Blackmon: Uh, and LMI systems are two different companies.

Joshua Kornitsky: Forgive me. Okay.

TJ Blackmon: But we have one parent company who owns both, uh, LMI systems is an electrical contractor. Been in business since 1962. Um, LMI as a whole has been in business since 1962.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s pretty. That’s pretty long. The technology space.

TJ Blackmon: It’s a long time. I haven’t been around that long. Um, but LMI just continued to morph over the years and really to customer needs take on different types of things, from the electrical industry to low voltage to large scale deployments. That division started in about 2012. Um, prior to that, LMI had what’s called LMI home systems, um, which was high end luxury homes, audio visual.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, wow. Uh, lighting, home theater, lighting.

TJ Blackmon: Things like that. Um, that business was acquired, uh, and then LMI Tech Systems was really formed around that time where we were doing large scale deployments for very large enterprise type companies, um, multi-site Multi-location US and Canada locations.

Joshua Kornitsky: And I know it may seem obvious to to you and I, but just for clarifying for folks that these were technical implementations.

TJ Blackmon: That’s correct.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s correct. So what type of technology are were you implementing versus help us still bring us to date of how you’re helping now?

TJ Blackmon: So what we’re what we were doing then was very, like I said, very large scale deployments for us, these larger corporations, multi sites, uh, Wi-Fi installations, point of sale installations. Okay. Um, those type of things. In 2018, we made a decision internally to start take what we were doing on the enterprise level and move it back down to the small business space, the SMB. Now, when I say SMB, that’s anything from one person to 5000 people.

Joshua Kornitsky: So wait, you you kind of made your way based on the enterprise class stuff and you’re able to offer what you’re offering now down to the individual level. That’s true. So let’s talk about what is it that you’re offering? Because right now it’s a mystery.

TJ Blackmon: Well, so our big offer is, uh. And really, our brand is what we call testpac. Everybody’s going to get when you.

Joshua Kornitsky: Spell that.

TJ Blackmon: It’s t a p a k.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: It’s not like the Tasmanian devil.

Joshua Kornitsky: I get that a lot. Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Uh, it stands for technology as a service. All right. So.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Broad term. Uh, what does that mean? Uh, the best the best way to explain this is to give you an example.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’d be perfect. Thank you.

TJ Blackmon: October this year, Microsoft says Windows 10 are no longer supporting that.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. Yeah, I read that.

TJ Blackmon: Um, if you are a small business owner and you have, let’s say, ten computers that are not compatible with Windows 11, which, by the way, thanks, Microsoft. A lot of them aren’t okay. And they can be less than three years old and they’re not compatible.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’re looking at a big expense.

TJ Blackmon: You’re looking at a very large expense right now, especially with economic factors.

Joshua Kornitsky: The way things are.

TJ Blackmon: The way things are. The average laptop is running about 1200 bucks right now. Wow. Yeah. We’re talking about business.

Joshua Kornitsky: Not state of the art. That’s just business class.

TJ Blackmon: That’s a very standard basic laptop. Okay. Well, let’s let’s do the math on that. You got to replace ten of them. That’s 12 grand, right? That’s $12,000.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Uh, well, and that’s just to sit them on the desk in a box, right?

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, that’s just to get the equipment. Then you’re going to pay somebody to come install it, configure your software. Um, then what what do you do with long term support on that?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right, right.

TJ Blackmon: So we create these packages. That’s the pack piece.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

TJ Blackmon: Where we do it all for you. Uh, not only do we do it all, we’re looking at a capital expense versus a rather than a capital expense. You’re spreading that cost out over a contract term.

Joshua Kornitsky: So wait a minute. Because usually I would, you know, I might work with somebody like you to, to buy the $12,000 worth of laptops. And then I got to pay you to come in and set each one of them up and however many hours that is per laptop. Times whatever your hourly rate is. So by the time we’re done, it’s probably 2020 $5,000. Right. So what are you saying that you’re offering that’s different.

TJ Blackmon: What we’re offering is one package that that takes that cost and spreads it out over a contract term. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: So I don’t have to write the $12,000 check.

TJ Blackmon: No, you don’t have to write the $12,000 check.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. So we have and we’re we have contract terms that go 12 2436 we’ll even take it up to 60. Um, most people, the sweet spot is that 36 months, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Well, because the equipment’s going to be old at that point, too.

TJ Blackmon: All right. So what else happens during that 36 month? What if you get one of these computers in six months and it dies? Right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. Then I got to pay you to come back out, take a look at it and get on the phone under our program.

TJ Blackmon: You don’t do.

Joshua Kornitsky: That. Really?

TJ Blackmon: We replace that equipment, okay? We come out and we reinstall it. By the way, as part of that, you’re getting our managed services, right? We’re backing that machine up on an image based backup. We’re going to cast that image back to that machine, and it’s just like you left it the day before.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you do this on laptops, on on desktops. What else? What else do you do? You do you handle server and infrastructure stuff?

TJ Blackmon: We do. Um, that has become less and less of a thing these days. Um, we’ve had we we are now in 2025, we are doing more migrations towards cloud based services rather than servers or Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services, uh, rather than physical hardware. In, in these large server rooms like we used to have even ten, 15 years ago. Um, it’s more cost effective.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so back up a minute, though. You just said that that large server room. So in that server room, you got a UPS, you got switches, you’ve got routers. Do you. How does that get handled?

TJ Blackmon: You don’t need it anymore. You just simply do not need it.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well I mean switches you would always need right.

TJ Blackmon: Switches you’ve always got to have.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right, right. So do they buy their own switches?

TJ Blackmon: We include everything.

Joshua Kornitsky: Down to the cable. So literally turnkey.

TJ Blackmon: Turnkey.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow. Okay.

TJ Blackmon: So? So we have the capabilities to even handle the electrical, the low voltage wireless and and those, those hardware switches like you’re talking about.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like it’s a million bucks a month.

TJ Blackmon: It’s not a million bucks a month.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds like it’s an awful lot of services that you’re offering. And as you had said, it’s sort of that that cap expenditure versus operational expenditure. So it’s going to help small businesses keep their money in their pockets.

TJ Blackmon: You can budget. Right. That’s it. You don’t have this enormous oh my goodness. I’ve got this $12,000 expenditure that I got to spend in six months. Right, right. You can now budget that out. And we work. We work with customers all the time. All right. Let’s let’s help you work this into your budget so that, you know, every month I’ve got X amount of dollars rather than this. Oh my gosh moment.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so you have the variability, a term like you mentioned earlier so that you can help mitigate that cost. Right. What other services do you provide? Because I know that that sitting in an office these days usually still means that you’ve got to deal with other forms of infrastructure like Wi-Fi and telephones and things like that. Right.

TJ Blackmon: So telephones has been a huge thing for us. Um, really, I have a very funny story about this.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Um, my boss walks into my office about five years ago.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: And we have a customer who says, I’m going to give you all of my IT support and infrastructure and all that. You have to do my phones. All right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Remind. Reminder that here that I’m an old school I.T. guy. What’s the one thing I asked you guys hate?

Joshua Kornitsky: Telephones.

TJ Blackmon: Absolutely hate them. Right? You see, you have those old school phone guys who did the punch clock thing.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

TJ Blackmon: That’s not what it is anymore. It is true. Voice over IP. It’s more like a computer. So, Scott, my boss, walks in and says, hey, we’re doing phones. And I said, no sir, we are not. And he said, let me know when you’re done. Okay, so fast forward, the big joke in our office is now TJ’s a phone guy because I do love doing them. Um, ironically, I cannot believe I still say that, but, uh, it really has moved it from something that is less analog to. It’s more like a computer, right? We’re cloud hosting these PBX. They’re no longer a physical piece of equipment in your office that can go bad. It’s all cloud hosted, um, and voice over IP, and you can do anything. These large phone systems usually cost tens of thousands of dollars, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Absolutely.

TJ Blackmon: For a a small monthly fee, inclusive of all those fees and taxes, those those still exist and those still are there. Um, but we include all that in our packages.

Joshua Kornitsky: So realistically, if I’m sitting in and I have a dozen customers that fit into this myself, right, that they’re sitting in an office where the machines are all of varying ages. They’re running off of an old server that’s been there forever. That’s running Lord knows what version of what. Right, right. And their phone system is sitting in another corner, and all of it’s running in a closet that’s older than dirt and full of dust. One phone call. All of that can be in in a single bill.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. And really, what we like to do is come into a situation like that and just baseline everything. We really like to do that. We don’t have to do that. Sure, there’s customers who we just do their managed services, right? We just take care of their computers. There’s customers where we do everything.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, what? So I want to ask you, what about things like security and antivirus and anti-phishing and all of that stuff? Is that is that, uh, a service that you offer, or is that part of the package? How does it work?

TJ Blackmon: It is part of the package. And we’ll also call this the stuff that keeps you up at night if you’re an IT guy. Sure.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, well, I think at this point it’s an everybody guy, right? It is because everybody has gotten at least one emailer or letter in the mail that tells them that their data has been compromised.

TJ Blackmon: It’s daily and it’s scary. Uh, just saw an article this morning that said all your data is for sale, and you wouldn’t believe how cheap it is.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s terrifying.

TJ Blackmon: Um, especially when it comes to business data. Sure. Right. It’s one.

Joshua Kornitsky: Thing for your personal that’s the lifeblood.

TJ Blackmon: But it’s your business data. Um, all that is included in our package, right? We brought something to the small business that small business normally don’t get. And we brought EDR. Okay. Endpoint endpoint detection and response.

Joshua Kornitsky: So tell me. Tell me what EDR actually is.

TJ Blackmon: So EDR is the only easy way to explain it is it’s modern day antivirus. Okay. Back in the day, we had our Norton’s and our McAfee’s and all.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Well, you had to run your antivirus. Then on your mail server, you had to have some kind of anti-spam or anti-phishing.

TJ Blackmon: Those days are gone.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really?

TJ Blackmon: We’ve moved to this EDR and XDR. Xdr is extended data response detection.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: It’s real live monitoring of computers and servers that it’s watching more for patterns in data manipulation and how data is being moved around your computer and your server, and your internet in your internet connection. And it knows based on the way that data is moving. Something’s fishy here. Stop it. There’s no there’s no. Let’s quarantine. It has something called quarantine, but it doesn’t quarantine it like old school antivirus did. It just really stops that process.

Joshua Kornitsky: And so let’s say that it’s detected something bad. What? What is it? Does it notify you? Does it know?

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. It notifies. It notifies us. We get we get blinky, flashy things happening on our boards and on our computers.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: We’re monitoring. And then we remediate that. Right. And that remediation is really what the core of our of our managed services is. Right. We still do your normal. My outlook one. Open. This email is not coming through. My printer won’t print all those things. But really we’ve taken that to the next level bringing that to people who normally that would be just cost prohibitive, right? Right. Bringing that to the small business.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you had mentioned earlier you said anything from from really one person and up. When you talk about the the types of businesses that you currently help, I know you had shared with me that, that you’ve got some of the larger organizations and I won’t ask you to name names. Um, just if you give us a sense of scale of of what you’ve got on the high end versus what you’ve got on the smaller side, so that people understand that this isn’t priced to just be for the giant company.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, I call it uptown to downtown. Okay. Right. Um, I, I come from a very small town, so I appreciate the downtown people, the small business owner, the flower shop down the road. Uh, the restaurant owner. Right. These people are typically cannot afford the level of technology that they can. And they and they do need to be successful. Right. Right. Um, I’ll give you some examples of types of business. We’ve got a few restaurants that we do mom and pop type style restaurants.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Um, we’ve got, uh, print companies. We’ve got, uh, print supplier companies, um, on up to very large scale, you know, 5000 user enterprise type things that we co-manage it.

Joshua Kornitsky: With their staff.

TJ Blackmon: Right. They have a staff. We just augment them through various different methods. Right. We may supply we may supply the software we talked about. Okay. Monitor that. We may watch their backups. Right. For business like that, backups are critical. Still to this day, uh, or we may help them implement projects. We may be, uh, we’ve got one very large company that we just do project level managed services for. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: On an as needed.

TJ Blackmon: On an as needed. Okay. Um, they have their continuously growing and acquiring different businesses. We come in and cable their infrastructure, put our switches in and and assist them in the move. Right. So it’s very different than than most MSPs. Sure. Today.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and so we were talking earlier before we went live about the fact that the what I always call the the thousand dollar printer. Right. And it sounds like that doesn’t happen with you guys. And to clarify what I mean by that is, is you call somebody to come help you with a printer that cost you $200 and they spend seven, eight hours on it, when it would have been cheaper to throw it away and buy a new printer. But it sounds like the because you’re providing the service, you’re providing the hardware. That bill doesn’t come.

TJ Blackmon: That bill doesn’t come. And I can’t afford $1,000 printer and they can’t either.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Right. No, no, I understand that. So so that makes perfect sense to me that it’s a way on on the small to medium business because I don’t want to call them mom and pops or however you want to refer to them. The biggest roadblock for them with technology is typically access either to the hardware or to the support. And it sounds like you’ve kind of created a way to help make that much more approachable.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, exactly. Um, we’ve got a local, uh, where we’re headquartered. We’ve got a local brewery.

Joshua Kornitsky: And where are you headquartered?

TJ Blackmon: Tucker, Georgia.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: Uh, just right outside the perimeter. Um, we’ve got a local brewery who needed access control doors. Right? They needed to keep people from going into places through health code and stuff like that. Those things are very expensive.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

TJ Blackmon: Um, and it was really just they were lock and key in it. And then if they had to let an employee go or an employee didn’t show up for work, those keys are just floating out there. We we we’ve modernized that facility with access control doors controlled through Bluetooth on their phones or through a little card so that if that happens, they can call us directly 24 over seven and say, hey, lock this person out and lock them out.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like you’re able to bring people kind of state of the art technology all the way around, but but still keep it at a manageable price.

TJ Blackmon: That’s correct.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wow. So as you work and grow with different organizations, what are some of the things that that you’ve learned with regards to how how you best deliver your service, I guess is, is the way that I, that I’d ask that question.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, it’s a great it’s a great question. And doing this as long as I’ve, I’ve done this, uh, I’ve seen it done wrong and I’ve seen it done right and I’ve seen it done in between. One of the things that I am continuously trying to get my staff and the people in our organization is the customer is always first. And everybody says that, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

TJ Blackmon: In our world, when I go sit down with somebody who’s had a data incident or their managed service provider currently just isn’t doing a good job. The thing I always hear, and I can almost tell you every time I go into those meetings, I always hear this. I don’t know what I’m paying for. I get the I don’t know what I’m paying for.

Joshua Kornitsky: So they just get the the big bill.

TJ Blackmon: Or I get the they do an okay job but and that but.

Joshua Kornitsky: There’s always that.

TJ Blackmon: But I don’t know what I’m paying for. Um, they’re not really looking out for us. They’re just looking.

Joshua Kornitsky: So sort of reactive versus proactive.

TJ Blackmon: Exactly.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: And in, in Atlanta, especially within a three mile radius of here, you could throw a baseball and hit probably two MSPs.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: We all say the same thing. We we do this differently. And all this thing that I have done with this is we put in some something called a CRM. All right. Customer engagement manager.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: That person is our customer advocate.

Joshua Kornitsky: So, wait, you mean they don’t have 11 other jobs?

TJ Blackmon: No. They do one thing.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really?

TJ Blackmon: They are. They are talking to our customers on a really quarterly basis. Right? But they’re engaged with the customers all the time, right? Um, they don’t call them for support. They call them if they don’t feel like they’re getting the support they need.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you have a you have a role specifically designated just for the customer to have someone to, to connect with, right? That’s pretty impactful.

TJ Blackmon: And it has fundamentally changed the way we do business from the aspect of the customer always knows they have somebody on their side, and they know that because a lot of times a customer, if they have a problem, right. If they’re not happy with the way a technician did something, they’ll hold that back. And that just grows and that festers and that becomes the they do a good job. But gotcha. Right. I’m preventing that by having that person and this person is going to call on them. This person is there if they need to add a service, if they really take away a service, if they need to readjust, if they had a, you know, goodness forbid, they have like a layoff and they need to scale back.

Joshua Kornitsky: Or they hire for more.

TJ Blackmon: Or they hire for more, this person makes sure all that gets handled.

Joshua Kornitsky: So that only because you had mentioned this to me earlier, right. What does it look like? So let’s say I add four more people, um, based on the scale that you’re operating at, is that like a three week wait to get the equipment? How long is it?

TJ Blackmon: So current economic issues make things hard to get right now. But for the most part, it’s within a week we’re turning around.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and you operate it sounds like at a scale that you probably have a level of inventory.

TJ Blackmon: We warehouse a lot of the common things, um, laptops, desktops, people don’t really buy desktops anymore. So we have mostly laptops. We have a couple desktop phones. We keep a vast inventory of those because it’s the biggest thing.

Joshua Kornitsky: So when you say you do phones, you actually do phones all the way down to the handset on the desk.

TJ Blackmon: That’s it. We take care of everything.

Joshua Kornitsky: I didn’t realize that.

TJ Blackmon: The whole idea of task pack is one hand to shake. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: One hand to shake. We do it all. We handle the wiring. We handle the electrical if need be. We handle, in the case of a phone, the entire phone system, the installation, the norm reporting number. Reporting is huge when it comes to phones, it’s.

Joshua Kornitsky: Yeah, it’s the biggest nightmare I remember from my distant past.

TJ Blackmon: It has gotten no better. It has gotten no better. And now you.

Joshua Kornitsky: Have. It sounds like you’ve got people that do nothing but manage that process with phones.

TJ Blackmon: Now you have more people involved that make it. Everybody’s different. As far as number porting goes. It’s the number one thing that we deal with. Um, but we handle all that. And that CRM person is guiding our customer through this and saying, here’s what’s going to happen next.

Joshua Kornitsky: So no more mushroom theory. Keep them in the dark and shovel stuff on them.

TJ Blackmon: Look, an MSP is constantly battling what I call the 8020 rule.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: All right. And if my guys. If you’re listening and you don’t know this, we’re going to have talk. 80% of everything that we do as an organization is communication 80%.

Joshua Kornitsky: I would agree with that. I would definitely agree with that.

TJ Blackmon: 20% of what we do is technical. And you’re like, well, that doesn’t sound right. Trust me, 80% is communication. As long as you’re communicating with somebody and they understand where you’re at and what you’re doing, the technical part can always be figured out. But if you break that communication, well, that’s it.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s where trust lives, right?

TJ Blackmon: Sometimes you can’t build that. You, you you can’t fix a communication problem if you if it’s too far down the road.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s amazing the impact that openness and honesty can have.

TJ Blackmon: For.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. And you know, it sounds like in in the traditional model. It’s about as as I would imagine from the managed service provider’s perspective. It’s about to some degree, yes, obviously satisfying your customer, but you’re always looking to make sure you’re preserving your revenue stream. And it sounds to me like you’ve sort of taken that equation off the table because everything’s in there is no added charge.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. Exactly right. Again, back to the task. Back. I keep going back to that.

Joshua Kornitsky: But no, that’s that’s that’s everything. Right. Because it’s it’s a turnkey from the sound of it for.

TJ Blackmon: Exactly. Um, let’s go back to our computer scenario. Right. We put ten computers in. You’re paying.

Joshua Kornitsky: 12,000 bucks plus plus.

TJ Blackmon: Plus. Then the following morning, you open up in your your outlook just not working, right?

Joshua Kornitsky: Right.

TJ Blackmon: You’ve been charged for the hardware. You’ve been charged for the setup. Now you’re going to be charged to fix that. To fix that support. Right. We take that off the table. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s just one bill.

TJ Blackmon: It’s one bill, right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Seems like it’s got to be a lot more predictable.

TJ Blackmon: Oh, it is.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s not one bill that that ebbs and flows. It’s just one bill.

TJ Blackmon: It’s just one bill. Okay. And by the way, here’s the other thing. As long as they’re under contract with us, the cost never increase.

Joshua Kornitsky: Really.

TJ Blackmon: As long as you’re under contract. Right. Full hardware replacement. If we run wire as part of that and the wires broke, we’ll fix that.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds to me like you don’t upsell, and I mean that in a complimentary way. It sounds to me like you’ve got it all wrapped in.

TJ Blackmon: We do. Uh, and it’s a it’s a testament, really, to what we’ve done over the years and how we develop the business and grew into that. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, it sounds like your customers wanted predictability.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. I mean.

Joshua Kornitsky: And you found the ultimate mechanism to deliver it.

TJ Blackmon: As part of the owner of this business.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure.

TJ Blackmon: I want predictability in everything because I want to be able to budget that. Sure. Right. Um, that goes for insurance and all those different things. We’ve really taken technology and made it a predictable.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s that’s a pretty big accomplishment when you think about it, because that’s got to be, as I think about the businesses that I work with, that remains one of their largest, most variable expenses because something bad can come around the corner very quickly or just an unforeseen failure. Right? Whether it’s a phone system or server or just two laptops, if they’re the wrong laptops to fail and there aren’t a backup that gets expensive in a hurry.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah, I’m taking that risk. I’m taking the risk off of the customer and putting it on me. Really? Right in in this case.

Joshua Kornitsky: So so it sounds to me like it’s a pretty compelling offer. Um, you know, so one of the things that that I want to make sure that, that we get to is ask how people will get Ahold of you. And obviously, we’ll put everything on our website, uh, so that folks can find you. But before we get there, I always like to ask kind of a a a thinking question a little bit as, as we get towards the close. And, you know, I always you’ve taken us on a journey today, right from from walking in the door as a kid, trying to fix the computers at a place that you’re now part owner of, which is pretty cool in and of itself. And, and I think that says a lot about the culture of your organization, that that opportunity exists. Uh, what about today? Do those opportunities for your employees still exist where there’s the ability to to move up?

TJ Blackmon: It’s funny, we just had this conversation last week internally.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay. Not not with me.

TJ Blackmon: Not with you. Right. With with my guys. I’m constantly looking for someone to step up to that next level because as we’re growing as a business and I’m bringing in technicians, one of the hardest things we face is getting that mindset right. Right. That customer focused mindset. Sure, I deal with tech guys and, you know, tech guys don’t like to talk to people.

Joshua Kornitsky: Some do, some don’t. Right. But yeah, I broadly follow.

TJ Blackmon: But getting getting that mindset and getting somebody to step up internally, I, I never want to go out and hire somebody to take that next step. So internally, as we’re hiring people, I’m looking for people who I know can take that next step and lead a small group of tech people down this path.

Joshua Kornitsky: Right. So are you looking for people now?

TJ Blackmon: We’re always looking for people.

Joshua Kornitsky: Wonderful. So. And how would somebody get Ahold of you? It’s a perfect opportunity.

TJ Blackmon: Oh. That’s easy. Um, you can contact me on my email address. Uh, that’s t b l a c k m o n. Everybody spells that wrong m o n right at com, or our phone number is 56785782171.

Joshua Kornitsky: All right. And we will have all that information on the website as well. But but coming back to my closing question I wanted to ask you what are what are some of the things that made an impact on you in your in your professional life?

TJ Blackmon: It’s a great question. And, you know, a lot of people say, I have to sit and think about that. I don’t.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

TJ Blackmon: I have been truly blessed to have a core group of about five people that have made me who I am today and have not just parents and grandparents, but professionally, who took chances for me, right? I was 19 years old when I moved here from a small town in Alabama because somebody said, you have the ground floor of what it takes. Right. So they took a risk. And then throughout my career, you know, and now where we’re at at LMI, you’re right. At 19 years old, I walked in that building really not knowing how to get around Atlanta.

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure. Sure.

TJ Blackmon: And now. And now I’m a minority owner in the company.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s just amazing.

TJ Blackmon: So.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it sounds like there’s been a lot of people that have contributed to that. Yes. Well, TJ, I can’t thank you enough for your time. And I think that we’ve we’ve spelled out what LMI tech systems can offer to, to small businesses. You gave us your phone number. You gave us your email again. We’ll have all of that on our website. Any closing thoughts you’d like to share?

TJ Blackmon: Well, there’s a couple of things, if you don’t mind.

Joshua Kornitsky: Not at all. What’s next, I guess?

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. So we are excited about a big event. We have recently partnered with the Georgia Dental Association. Um, we’re doing their internal IT and uh, have also partnered with them for their upcoming member conference in Amelia Island. Oh, that I believe is on June the 18th. So obviously it’s a private members only event. But there are a I think it’s 3800 dentist offices under that association. Oh, wow. So we’re going to be there and present, uh, to speak to all the owners of those dental associations. We’re excited about that. We’re excited about that opportunity. And we’re looking to further expand that, uh, that team that we’ve built with Georgia Dental, uh, into the next level there.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s fantastic.

TJ Blackmon: Um, and I have a super secret announcement that will come back in July and talk about. We’ve been working on something internally for two years that we’re very excited about, but I can’t talk about it right now, so we’ll leave that on a cliffhanger.

Joshua Kornitsky: So, yeah. Yeah, we’ll definitely have you back on and you’ll have to tell us what that is and who and how it helps. Um, again, TJ Blackmon Vice president of LMI Tech Systems, thank you for coming in today. I sure appreciate it. And I think it was a really interesting discussion and gave people a lot to think about, because it turns out that there can be one solution to multiple problems.

TJ Blackmon: Yeah. Thank you again, Josh. We appreciate it.

Joshua Kornitsky: My pleasure. So this is Joshua Kornitsky I’m a professional EOS implementer and I am your host here on Cherokee Business Radio. And we will see you again real soon.

BRX Pro Tip: Audit Your Website Content

May 13, 2025 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Audit Your Website Content

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BRX Pro Tip: Audit Your Website Content

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, candidly as of this conversation, it’s been a while since I have dived into our own website and really reviewed what are we saying it, how are we saying it, how are we presenting it. Talk a little bit about reviewing your website content. What are you learning?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. You know, I’m a big fan of periodically auditing different things you’re doing to make sure they’re still delivering what you want them to deliver, and your website is no exception to that.

Lee Kantor: Number one, you got to understand the job of your website. Maybe it’s changed from when it first started. And if it has, the website better reflect what that new change is. So, define the purpose of your website. What’s its job? You know, what is your website meant to do? Is it generate leads? Is it sell products? Is it to build brand awareness? Whatever that is, make sure it’s doing its job and hold it accountable to that.

Lee Kantor: Number two, make sure your messaging is clear and focuses on benefits over features. Make sure that your messaging is telling the story you want it to tell. Because if you’re telling a story that made sense ten years ago and it’s still out there today, all you’re doing is creating confusion and you’re stopping people from doing business with you.

Lee Kantor: So, highlight how your product or service solves problems. How it improves the lives rather than just listing features. Obviously, use clear, concise language. Don’t use jargon. Don’t use overly technical terms that might confuse people. Communicate your value proposition very straightforwardly. And ask key questions. Is it clear what you’re offering or selling? Does the copy reflect your brand’s tone and the values that you’re striving for? Are the visitors guided towards specific actions like signing up for something or buying something? Is there any place you can get rid of words? Can you put a photo or a video on the page somewhere to replace some of the words?

Lee Kantor: If you follow some sort of structured auditing process, you can refine your website’s copywriting and messaging, and it’s going to better connect with the people that are most important to you.

Molly Flanagan With OpenField Solutions | Molly Flanagan Coaching

May 13, 2025 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Molly Flanagan With OpenField Solutions | Molly Flanagan Coaching

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Molly Flanagan is a coach, facilitator, and organizational-culture expert who champions Pleasure-Powered Leadership—the idea that joy is a strategic asset, not a side effect.

With 19 years’ experience, including 16 as a United Nations international civil servant, she helps visionary leaders harmonize personal well-being with high-impact results.

Through her firm, Molly Flanagan Coaching, she guides purpose-driven executives to stop over-giving, align with their deepest values, and create lives that are abundant and fun.

As co-founder of OpenField Solutions, she partners with organizations to craft intentional, values-driven cultures that boost engagement and performance.

Her mission: to weave intimacy, embodiment, and flourishing into the systems that shape our world.

Connect with Molly on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

When Molly realized that bringing pleasure—not just productivity—into your day-to-day leadership was the key to beating burnout
What Pleasure-Powered Leadership means for business owners and executives
How pleasure shows up on a P&L

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.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Molly Flanagan, who is a founder and coach with Openfield Solutions and Molly Flanagan coaching. Welcome.

Molly Flanagan: Thank you Lee. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Let’s start first with Openfield solutions. How are you serving folks there.

Molly Flanagan: Yeah. So Openfield solutions is an organizational culture design firm. So we work with mid-sized companies and organizations to support them in designing an intentional workplace culture. And really that means aligning their business strategy, what they do with their culture. So how they do their work together, how they be in relationship with each other.

Lee Kantor: Now, isn’t it true that even if you aren’t putting much effort or thought into a culture, it’s happening anyway?

Molly Flanagan: That’s absolutely true. And so we talk about the difference between culture by design and culture by default. So at the end of the day, if you’re not intentionally designing your culture, then you have a culture by default. And eventually maybe not right away, but eventually it’s going to stand in the way of your success.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, who is the the type of client that you have for this kind of work? Are they kind of startups, people at the beginning, or are they people that are like, what happened here? We I’m not happy with the culture we have.

Molly Flanagan: So we do work with some very enlightened startups, but more often than not, it’s an organization that’s gotten a little further down the road and realizing, uh oh, some things have gone awry. So there might be conflict within their leadership team. There might be silos. Often organizations come to culture design when there’s been some kind of a merger and acquisition, and there’s two cultures clashing, or there’s a big pivot that needs to happen, and there’s the realization that the culture that worked when they were, say, 50 or 100 employees doesn’t really work when they’re now scaling and redirecting at, you know, 1000 or 2000 employees. So those are some of the times when we find that organizations are really ready to take on culture design.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned silos. Are there other symptoms that, hey, maybe my culture has gone awry. Is it like, maybe you’re losing people or it’s hard to hire the right person? Are there some clues that maybe you need some help?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly attrition is one big signal. And today there’s many different surveys out there in terms of engagement and culture surveys that can give you that data. But we really take a more bespoke approach. And so we’re looking at primarily the starting point is usually what’s happening in your leadership team. So how is the communication flow between the leaders. Are we able to actually talk about the difficult things or what’s really going on, or are we sort of pretending that everything’s fine here, just move along. And and so usually the, the symptoms are going to be an executive saying like something’s really off in my leadership team and I’m not sure what it is. And that’s when we come in and we observe and diagnose and and come up with a strategy.

Lee Kantor: So how is your work different as working in the open field solutions with your open field solutions hat on as opposed to the Molly Flanagan coaching hat?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah. So open Field solutions is really about systemic transformation at the organizational level. And we can’t have successful organizational transformation if we’re not also doing that deep personal transformation. And so in my own private coaching practice, I’m working with visionary leaders who are doing that deep inner work to transform themselves so that they can have the impact that they want out in the world.

Lee Kantor: So what was the impetus to have a private coaching practice separate from the open field solutions business?

Molly Flanagan: Well, my open Field Solutions is a partnership. I have a co-founder and we work together and we each have our own separate executive coaching business. Um, in my private practice, I do blend both coaching with energy work. And so it’s a much more holistic approach, you could say, with different modalities than I use in my open field solutions practice.

Lee Kantor: And what was the, um, kind of what’s the backstory of getting involved in just coaching in general?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, well, I worked in human resources for about a decade and round about, yeah, ten years into the United Nations, which is where I sort of came up as a professional. I had my marriage, my first marriage fell apart, and the UN implemented a major ERP system, which completely changed my role as an HR professional. And those two events happened in the same week. So, um, it was it was one of those signals from the universe for me that it was time for me to look at relationships, because in my personal life, as well as mirrored in my professional life, I was really being asked to change how I related and how I led. And it was it was really a faded moment for me. So a few months later, I landed myself in a coaching class and the rest was history. It was. It was the medicine I needed both to heal my own marriage and transform that relationship into something else. And also to it showed me, you know, this is what I’m here for. Actually.

Lee Kantor: Now, was that coaching class pre-scheduled before all that, you know, change was thrust upon you, or was that something you decided in the midst of that? Hey, maybe let me check out this coaching class.

Molly Flanagan: That’s a good question. Thinking back it all. It’s all a little bit of a blur, to be honest, but it was scheduled right around the same time. Yeah. So there was certainly a faded aspect to it.

Lee Kantor: Sometimes the universe knows some things.

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, indeed.

Lee Kantor: Um, so then you go through, you go through that coaching. Um, class did that, was that an aha moment of, hey, maybe I should look into coaching. Um, or did they give you a methodology that you were just really liked and said, oh, I can help other people with this methodology.

Molly Flanagan: Well, it’s been a journey and I’m I’m really a lifelong learner. So that was just the first of many programs and certifications and, um, ongoing learning journeys that I’ve been on. But certainly something clicked for me in the Co-active classroom, which was my first coach training school. And then I also heard about something called Organization and Relationship Systems coaching. And that’s where the real light bulb went off for me, because I realized that there are certain life skills when it comes to communication, in particular, that most of us don’t get, uh, in our families of origin. It’s just not taught. And and so when I realized, oh, there are things that I can learn, there’s ways for me to become a more effective communicator and to have more generative relationships and be able to engage in conflict in a way that doesn’t make me want to Retreat or put up a wall, but that that can actually be part of a creative process. I felt like this is the thing I need to bring to the world.

Lee Kantor: So do you have kind of your own, uh, Molly Flanagan secret sauce that you add to your coaching based on all, you know, all the different modalities you’ve learned over the years?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s really what I’ve been spending the last several months, um, birthing out into the world. And really, my focus now is on what I call pleasure powered leadership. So it’s really about centering pleasure in our work and in our lives. Um, as, as the, the the primary orienting framework. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: So how did that come about?

Molly Flanagan: Well, going back to really still to the early days of my UN career, you know, I joined the UN at a very entry level and I rapidly ascended. So I had like seven promotions in ten years, and I had my eye on the prize. I was going to become an HR leader in the organization, and I had to pass a big competitive exam to get there, and I had to sacrifice a lot along the way. I had to do a master’s degree while I was working full time, and I finally got this big promotion that I had been striving towards, and the immediate feeling that I felt was disappointment. And that really surprised me. And I realized that I had been working towards something that I wasn’t even sure why I wanted that in hindsight. And so from that point on, I really started orienting towards this core question of what would please me now? And that’s a question that I keep coming back to. And when I get lost or confused or I’m dissatisfied if I can attune to that question and come back to not just my mental desires, but my whole body desires. I find that I can usually get clarity, not just usually. Without a doubt. I can get clarity of, um, perspective and purpose in a much faster way than any of the other strategies that I’ve tried to date.

Lee Kantor: So, um, how are you defining pleasure?

Molly Flanagan: Mm. Good question. It’s it’s a little bit audacious these days to be standing for pleasure when our world is upside down in so many ways. But for me, I take a much broader lens on pleasure. So my definition of pleasure is it’s a movement towards wholeness. But how do we hold pleasure in that way? It helps us discern from behaviors that may feel like pleasure, or we may think they’re pleasurable, but they’re not actually moving us towards wholeness. And so they’re not actually life giving, their life diminishing. So that’s a really important aspect of discernment. That’s that’s essential to be at what I call a pleasure powered leader.

Lee Kantor: Right? Because, I mean, I, I could see some people saying, oh, you’re just giving me permission to, you know, get high and play video games all day.

Molly Flanagan: Right? And and so the key here is awareness. So pleasure is something that can only happen in the present moment. And so in order to find out am I enjoying myself right now. Are we enjoying ourselves together. We need to actually get present. We need to be able to say, is this actually serving me? Not just is it feeding some addiction that I have or, um, protecting me from feeling something uncomfortable. And so it really is a deep, a deep personal inquiry to be on a path of pleasure.

Lee Kantor: And I would think that, um, this is something you need an expert to guide you through. Because if you’re doing this yourself or you just hear these words, it’s easy to maybe fall into bad habits that aren’t really serving you. But they might feel good in the moment.

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and that’s why I developed my six part framework called Pleasure on Purpose. And that includes what I look at as the aperture for pleasure. So how can we actually expand our capacity for and experience of pleasure? How can we increase our wholeness both as individuals and as organizations? And it includes first pausing. So if we can’t pause, if we can’t interrupt our downward spirals, it’s going to be hard to have pleasure. The second one is presence. So having some kind of a practice to come into present moment awareness and connect with our essence and what, what’s really true for us. The third part is pruning. So moving the stuff out of the way that’s actually no longer needed or actively obstructing our path. And then we can get into giving ourselves permission to what do we really want? And not again, just at a mental level, but as at a whole body level. And once we start to give ourselves permission for maybe many desires that we never thought that we could have, then we need to start bringing more focus. So the next step is to prioritize. So what is it that I really want? Among all of these amazing choices that I could make, what’s the most important thing? And from there we move on to pursuit. So that’s not only about can I take action inspired action towards my desires, but can I also allow myself to receive? And that’s really where the question becomes, am I willing to be changed by my desire? So, so many times I have clients that come. They want a new job, they want to change careers. But it’s like, but are you actually willing to be changed by that desire? Because things are going to come up that are going to need to shift. So that’s when it gets really real and the cycle starts again.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re working with clients, are they coming to you, um, with their I’m in business hat or their, um, you know, this is my personal life hat or does this work? Does this type of coaching work in the business setting, or is this something that is kind of an after hours? This is more my life rather than my business? Or is there even do people even separate the two anymore?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah. I mean, I think it varies, but like I said, my definition of pleasure is a movement towards wholeness. And so that does mean not looking at ourselves as a work persona separate from our private life. Although, of course we have boundaries and that’s healthy. It’s not about bringing every aspect of yourself into your work life. But yeah, most of my clients are organizational leaders. They’ve had a lot of success. They’ve mastered, um, drive and ambition and discipline. But something’s not working. Usually they’re encountering some level of burnout. They’re aware that they’ve been sacrificing or over giving and that it’s not sustainable. And they care about their careers. They’re passionate. They’re mission driven. So they’re really feeling like they’re faced with a tough choice between, well, do I have to give up on this life and this career that I’m actually committed to and care about? Or do I have to give up on my satisfaction and my well-being and my happiness? And so that’s where pleasure on purpose comes in.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you help your potential client. Um, with the language or the framework to get this in their boss’s hands to approve it, uh, for them to go through the class. Like. Like how does that. Hey, I’m taking this pleasure powered leadership class. Um, can you sign off on this? Like, does. You know, I would think that that’s not an easy. Yes, that there has to be some explaining to do.

Molly Flanagan: Certainly. And, you know, the truth is that we could probably have this whole conversation without using the word pleasure. Um, if you notice in the framework that I shared with you, none of those six P’s are actually the word pleasure.

Lee Kantor: Right? But you didn’t choose that word accidentally. Like there’s semantic weight to that word. That wasn’t an accident, I’m sure.

Molly Flanagan: No, no, it wasn’t an accident at all. And, you know, this is still a fairly new offering. I only launched pleasure on purpose as a as a course in the last few months, so it’s still a bit early to answer your question on that front, but I would say that this is a movement that’s not new or unique to me. So we’ve been having conversations at the organizational level around engagement, employee wellbeing. And um, and, you know, psychological safety. I think these are all adjacent to the question about pleasure. And pleasure is really just taking it up a notch. That to say that we’re not just here to be okay, we’re actually here to thrive. We’re actually here to have a great time. And that that is as important as our financial bottom line.

Lee Kantor: And you’re not hedging about it. Like you’re not saying that this is like a small ask. This is a big thing. Like we can shoot for pleasure. It’s okay.

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, is there some, uh, thing that you can share with our listeners maybe that can illustrate what some of the activities or some of the exercises you do with your clients to give some people an idea of how this can work and the impact it can make in the in themselves.

Molly Flanagan: Absolutely. Thanks for asking. Um, we can do that right now. So, you know, Lee, you can do it too. If you just think about a thorny work challenge that you’ve been dealing with, something where you feel stuck or dissatisfied or you know it’s not working, but you can’t quite figure out what the solution is yet. And probably it’s been spinning around in your mind for some time. So you and our listeners can all bring bring that first thing that pops into your mind, um, and just put it on the shelf and close your eyes and take a couple breaths. And just allow your body to settle into your seat. Connecting with the ground beneath you. And we’ll start with our mind. This is a quick body scan, and we’ll ask one simple question of different wisdom centers in our bodies. So starting with the mind, the question is what would please me now about this thorny work issue that you’ve identified? And probably the mind will start to spin, but just catch like the first word or two that comes to mind. So this isn’t about doing a deep analysis. It’s about trusting what shows up first. So what would please you now at a mental level around this issue and capture that word. Take a deep breath in, and as you exhale, drop down into your heart. Maybe a less familiar place for some of us, but as you bring your attention down into your heart, you’re going to ask the question again about this topic. What would please me now? And listen to what your heart says. Probably a different word. Capture that 1 or 2 words. And drop down once more into your belly. A third wisdom center in our bodies and our final destination on today’s tour. Maybe also less familiar. And here again, ask the question. What would please me now? And listening to the response in your belly. Capturing that word or two. And when you’re ready, you can open your eyes, take a look around. Come back into full present moment awareness. And just take a look at those three words or five words that you captured from your quick body scan.

Lee Kantor: And then what do you do with those words?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah. Well it’s data. It’s data to look at. And whenever I’ve done this exercise and when I do this with clients, what I find is it’s about expanding our perception. So at the mental level, I might think that what I need is, you know, new clients. But at the heart level, what I need is resonance with the clients that I do have. And at a gut level, what I need is transformation for those clients. So taking these words then is a starting place for a whole other exploration and really fleshing out well, what would that look like and how can we weave them all together?

Lee Kantor: And then you find that when you’re working with clients on this, is this something that they kind of get it right away, or is it something you have to do several times to really kind of hone in on what you’re really feeling and not maybe some of the distractions that happen when you are in silence.

Molly Flanagan: Mm. Well, there’s always a learning, a learning curve. If we’re not used to becoming present and connecting with our body. Wisdom. So, yeah, sometimes it takes a few rounds to not necessarily to get access to the information, but to trust it and to start to listen more intently to our bodies. But look, we have neurons all over our bodies. They don’t just live in our minds. So it behooves us to access that whole body wisdom if we want to be able to bring our full creativity to the challenges in front of us.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned that you’re just kind of, um, at the early stages of building out, um, this information and presenting it. Is there any advice you can give when it comes to launching a new initiative like this? Some of the things that you’ve learned thus far.

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I’ve been self-employed for a little over two years now, and I’ve done every marketing course under the sun. Uh, or at least that’s how it feels to me. Um, and I still feel that the best advice that I’ve gotten in any from any of the people that I’ve learned from is really that marketing is about being findable. So for me personally, the like, pushy sales tactics of, um, you know, being aggressively trying to, um, uh, land clients, it really first of all, it’s at odds with my personal ethics. Um, it doesn’t feel good for me or for them. And so I take a much more organic approach. And I will say that the first time I tried to launch pleasure on purpose, I didn’t wait for that attention to come to me. I tried to push it out into the world too fast. And and so it didn’t it didn’t take. But I was able to listen to the feedback I was getting from the people who were tuning in. And I realized, this is really something that people want more as a one on one offering. And once I put that out, I started finding that people were coming to me asking for it. So I think it’s really about tuning in and listening to your audience and also embodying the work that you’re here to bring out into the world. So the more that I focus on that embodiment myself, the more that I find myself naturally connecting with the people that I’m meant to serve.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more about either Molly Flanagan coaching or the open field solutions, what are the websites for each?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah. So Molly Flanagan Coaching.com is my personal website, and there’s lots of information about pleasure on purpose there and open field solutions. Dot net is the Open Field solutions website. And then and for folks listening today I have a special that I’m running for pleasure amplification. It’s a three session intensive and you can use the code podcast for 20% off through the end of May.

Lee Kantor: And uh, can you share, like, who the ideal client is for each of those?

Molly Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, my one on one clients tend to be, um, mid to senior level managers or leaders who are experiencing some degree of burnout or loss of, um, enjoyment in their work and are looking for another way, a way that’s more sustainable and generally tend to be going through some kind of major life transition. So I really look with my clients at how does what’s happening in our personal life inform or mirror what’s happening in our professional life. And how do those two how can we get those two in a more harmonious relationship? And in terms of our open field solutions clients, like I said, those tend to be mid mid-sized organizations in the anywhere between 200 and 5000 employees. And they’re usually having to navigate some kind of pivot or they’re scaling or they’re in a merger and acquisition and they’re noticing that their culture isn’t aligned with their business strategy. And so we come in to help with that.

Lee Kantor: Well, Molly, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Molly Flanagan: Thanks, Lee. It’s been a pleasure to be here.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.