Sarah Cotten is an Integrative Health Specialist and founder of Gut Instinct Wellness. The art and science of healthy living has been her lifelong passion. At an early age, she clearly noted the mental and emotional roots in her mother’s struggle with Crohn’sdisease and other illnesses. The quest for a deeper understanding of that stress-disease link inspired her work in SomaticExperiencing trauma resolution and Functional Nutrition. She has been in private practice since 2012.
Dr. Stephanie Stark is a licensed Naturopathic Physician. After interning with a variety of practitioners, she was inspired to make a true difference in people’s lives. Stephanie received additional training in Primary Care and enjoys seeing patients of all ages and backgrounds. She is especially adept with women’s health, allergies, and thyroid issues. She and her husband Ardeschir, whois also a Naturopathic Physician, started Blue Oak Clinic in 2007and have since grown a loyal following.
A business coach and author, Stephanie Rising has helped over 100 small business owners achieve greater proficiency, profitability, and sanity. She specializes in navigating the complexities of family-owned companies and partnerships with 5 to 25 employees. An expert small business advocate, she provides objective problem solving and accountability that has led many of her clients to award-winning achievement. Her clients have represented a total of over $60M in annual revenues and 1,000 employees.
Stephanie specializes in DISC behavioral analysis and her book, DISC: Leverage Your Nature, Increase Your Sales, is available on Amazon. She outlines step-by-step tactics for building a marketing plan that is sustainable for each reader’s personality and speaks to their specific target market. Stephanie has led numerous well-received workshops on DISC-based marketing and applying behavioral analysis in business.
As an extension of her belief in promoting an educated and healthy community, Stephanie is a monthly sponsor of Youth On Their Own, which provides stipends, supplies, and mentorship to Tucson teens who are homeless through no fault of their own. She also supports Temwani Children’s Foundation, which provides education, food, and hope to orphaned children impoverished by the effects of HIV/AIDS in Lusaka, Zambia in Africa.
Stephanie’s podcast, Small Biz, Big Voices, is broadcast monthly on Tucson Business Radio X. Show notes, interview questions and additional coaching tips can be found on her small Biz, Big Voices Facebook page.
Stephanie is available for executive team coaching, strategic planning retreats, and public speaking.
Stone Payton: [00:00:02] And we are back with BRX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, a lot to think about as you’re getting a studio launched or as a client, if you’re getting a show launched. One of the things that we like to focus some energy on is identifying, thinking through what you call minimum viable market. Speak to that a little bit.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:23] Sure. You know, Seth Godin, super fan, and this is a phrase that he’s been using lately, and I think it pre-dates Seth by a thought leader, too, but he has definitely been harping on this in terms of the media, that the media should focus in on the minimum viable market, where the keyword is viable, that there’s enough people out there that care about the work that you’re doing, that you can make something work. And that’s something that you should be thinking about if you’re going to open a studio in a market.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:54] What is the minimum number of people you need to influence to make this kind of a difference? And then, focus less on the demographics of the people and more in the psychographics that these are the people that believe what you believe, that these are the people that want to share the positive business stories in the community. And a lot of the times, these people are going to be in the professional services, they’re going to be challenger brands, and they’re going to be a part of an under-served business community.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:20] So, identify, are there enough of them for me to pull this off, to have a show? Are there going to be enough guests for me to have on the show? And the way you do that is kind of just be clear on who you’re trying to reach and see if there’s enough of them. You don’t need that many in professional services to make a studio go, but you do need kind of a certain amount of people who believe that this is important work and they want to financially support it. So, keep an eye out on the minimum viable market in your community.
Jennifer Seith leads Randstad’s talent strategy and innovation team where she is responsible for creating technological solutions to innovate the company’s talent acquisition strategy. She plays an integral role in driving candidate acquisition and engagement, employment branding and recruitment technology systems for Randstad.
As a respected thought leader, Jennifer brings over 20 years of industry experience creating technological solutions that solve talent acquisition challenges on a global scale. She resides in Atlanta, GA and holds a master’s in business administration from Brown University as well as a master’s in business administration with a focus on entrepreneurship from the IE Business School in Madrid.
How to Connect with Jennifer
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-seith-mba-67b1831/LinkedIn
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RandstadUSA
Bart Fanelli is a sales leader, entrepreneur, executive advisor, and platform developer who specializes in team building, sales execution, sales leadership methodologies, and global operational efficiency. He also co-authored “The Success Cadence”.
He has deep experience in building, leading, and scaling technology teams committed to rapid growth. The hypergrowth of one of the teams he led was the subject of a 2017 article in the Harvard Business Review. He is the recipient of the Technology Services Industry Association’s STAR award for “innovation in expand selling,” and the founder and lead designer of Skillibrium, a powerful sales success execution platform.
Things You’ll Learn in This Episode
Georgia State’s Main Street Entrepreneurs Seed Fund (MSESF) program is supported by the Marcus Foundation with a $300,000 grant to assist underrepresented student entrepreneurs, recent alumni and Georgia State community entrepreneurs with seed funding and mentorship to start and grow new ventures.
Brent Wouters, President, ValueKor
Connect with Brent on LinkedIn.
Jennifer Sherer, Director, GSU Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute
Connect with Jennifer on LinkedIn.
Mark Becker, President, Georgia State University
Connect with Mark on LinkedIn.
Joey Womack, Founder / CEO, Goodie Nation and Startup Labs Manager, WeWork
Connect with Joey on Linkedin.
Monica Hooks, Executive Director, Atlanta’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative and CEO, m-oracle, LLC
Connect with Monica on LinkedIn.
Ashish Thakur, Board of Directors, Atlanta CEO Council
Connect with Ashish on LinkedIn.
Bharath Parthasarathy, Deputy General Counsel, GSU
Connect with Bharath on LinkedIn.
Art Recesso, CIO, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia
Connect with Art on LinkedIn.
Marcus Ruzek, Senior Program Director, The Marcus Foundation
Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn.
David Cummings, Founder, Atlanta Ventures
Connect with David on LinkedIn.
Ashley Daramola, Founder, Artzy Bella and London Balbosa, CEO, Artehub
Foster360 is a program dedicated to helping youth aging out of foster care create successful and fulfilling lives. Through our team of dedicated navigators, we help youth avoid homelessness and sex trafficking by connecting them to existing resources that will empower them in reaching their personal goals.
Candice Liozu spent the majority of her career in the for-profit global consulting industry, working for major corporations such as Saint-Gobain and SAP. In 2017, she realized that the time had come for her to use her business background to benefit those who need it most.
In Arizona, she found out that 50% of the youth aging out of foster care would end up homeless by their 20th birthday. A third of these homeless youth will be victim of sex trafficking. That is when she found her purpose.
For the past 2 years, she has been working towards building a program, Foster360, that helps this vulnerable population navigate through the services at their disposal to help them create a successful and fulfilling life. At Foster360, they fight for youth to avoid homelessness and sex trafficking by helping them connect with services within their community.
Candice’s main purpose is to create equal opportunity for all youth, regardless of their background and social status. She believes that by helping today’s youth become productive members of society, the tragic cycle of poverty, homelessness and desperation can be broken to create a new generational path.
Connect with Candice on LinkedIn.
Arizona Trauma Institute is the leader in Trauma Sensitive Care in Arizona. We offer community trainings that focus on individuals increasing their knowledge of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), stress as a physiological response, and healing as a collaborative process. 
These classes are designed to help you develop an understanding of trauma and teach how to recognize when trauma has occurred. After taking these classes caregivers see an increase in the intimacy they share with their children, professionals are able to increase their effectiveness in helping their clients, and clients see a growth in their own treatment progression.
Dr. Robert Rhoton, CEO of Arizona Trauma Institute and President at the Trauma Institute International possesses a rich history of experience in the mental health field. Dr. Rhoton has supervised multiple outpatient clinics, juvenile justice programs, and programs, and child and family therapeutic services. Additionally, Dr. Rhoton has advanced training in child and adolescent trauma treatment, family therapy, and family trauma.
Dr. Rhoton served as president of the Arizona Trauma Therapy Network from 2010 through 2012. Dr. Rhoton was a Professor at Ottawa University in the Behavioral Sciences and Counseling Department whose primary interests were training counselors to work with traumagenic family dynamics, child and family trauma, and non-egoic models of treatment.
Dr. Rhoton is a Diplomate of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress and collaborates and consults with numerous Arizona agencies fine tuning their understanding of trauma and the impact of developmental trauma on the individual and family. Dr. Rhoton also serves on the Arizona Department of Health Services Trauma Informed Care (TIC) task force as a community member.
Follow Arizona Trauma Institute on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
3C Amplified puts the spotlight on change makers in our communities. Listen in as we share how businesses, nonprofits and community minded individuals are connecting, creating and collaborating to amplify their impact and create positive change in the world.
Want to be part of the conversation? Join us in The 3C Community! Our members create together a collection of stories, experiences, and practical ideas for taking action and implementing change through collaboration and community partnerships between individuals, businesses and nonprofits.
Jacqueline Destremps is a creative marketing strategist and founded Another Hand Advantage, LLC in 2014 to help community minded small business owners and nonprofit professionals move forward more confidently with their marketing strategy. After graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in Psychology, she has spent her professional career working in both the nonprofit and for-profit sector.
She now enjoys being self-employed and the flexibility it provides to allow more time to volunteer, serve on nonprofit boards, choose pro-bono projects, run 100+ Women Who Care Valley of the Sun (which she co-founded in 2014) and travel the world. Jacqueline believes in creating connections between businesses and nonprofits in the community to stimulate growth and collaboration.
AJ Barkley, SVP, Neighborhood Lending Executive at Bank of America
AJ Barkley is the Neighborhood Lending Executive for Bank of America, responsible for identifying opportunities to drive successful homeownership among low-to-moderate-income borrowers, underserved communities, and multicultural borrowers across the economic spectrum.
According to Bank of America’sHomebuyerInsights Report, most homeowners (88 percent) say that buying a home is the best decision they have ever made, however,95 percent of prospective homebuyer’s face barriers to owning, including 42 percent who feel they lack support/advice and don know where to start.
To set buyers in the right direction, Bank of America offers a wealth of resources and programs, including its recently-launched first-time homebuyer on-demand video series and significant grant programs that are helping buyers with some of the upfront costs of homeownership.
The Bank of America Community HomeownershipCommitment™ is a $5 billion initiative to help eligible homebuyers purchase a home affordably. AJ says, “Loans requiring a down payment as low as 3 percent, some with no mortgage insurance required. Through a Down Payment Grant program is available in nearly 50 cities, the bank will give–no repayment necessary–eligible homebuyers 3% of the home purchase price (up to $10,000) to be used for a down payment.
Qualified homebuyers may also be eligible for the bank’s closing cost grant program, a lender credit through which they could receive up to $7,500 toward non-recurring closing costs or, in some instances, to buy down their interest rate.
Bank of America has launched a new educational video series designed to simplify the homebuying process for prospective first-time buyers. First-Time HomebuyerOnline Edu-Series™features Bank of America experts providing guidance and tips on homebuying, and is the Company’s latest effort to help more individuals and families pursue sustainable and affordable homeownership. The six-episode, on-demand series, hosted by BuzzFeed’s Hannah Williams, covers key aspects of homebuying and teaches viewers smart strategies to shift attitudes from “How do I do this?” to “I can do this.”
Andrew More, Director, BlueStone Venture Partners
P.O. Box 17044
Tucson, AZ 85731
520-405-925
email: andrew.more@bluestonevp.com
SOCIAL MEDIA: LinkedIn |
Born and raised in Tucson, Andrew is a native Tucsonanand is what is known as a “boomerang”. Andrew moved away in 2008 when he graduated from the U of A, but found his way back to Tucson in 2018 when he turned down a job offer from Amazon to join their Seattle headquarters. Instead, Andrew decided to move back to Tucson and help launch BlueStone Venture Partners with BlueStone co-founders Mara Aspinall and Tom Nickoloff.
After moving away, Andrew received his Master’s degree from USC in 2009 and soon after began his career with Ernst &Young’s M&A Transaction Support team in San Francisco. In2012 he joined a Palo Alto-based private equity firm where he invested growth capital into a variety of private companies across a diverse set of industries.
BlueStone Venture Partners is a Tucson-based venture capital fund capitalizing on the strength and innovation found in entrepreneurial companies in the Southwest.BlueStone invests in early-stage life science and healthcare startups based in the “NATO” states (New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and Oklahoma).
Jim Cantrell, Executive Vice President
Nick Santora founded Curricula after a 7-year career at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the enforcement agency responsible for regulating the power grid across North America. Nick spends time advocating and advising critical infrastructure utilities on how to improve their cybersecurity programs. Nick is internationally recognized as a cybersecurity expert and speaks regularly at security conferences across North America on the psychology behind influencing employees within security awareness programs.
Nick holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration from Rider University. He also earned his CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) and CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor). Nick also serves on the board of advisors for Veracity, and industrial control systems SDN company.
Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.
Before starting Roadie, Marc Gorlin Co-Founded and was Chairman of Kabbage Inc., which provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses. To date, Kabbage has raised more than $250 million in venture funding and has a $270 million credit facility from Guggenheim Securities. The company has provided over $3.5 billion in capital to small businesses.
In 1996, Marc was a co-founder and an original board member of Pretty Good Privacy (“PGP”), a company formed to commercialize one of the most prevalent security standards used on the Internet, popularized in the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Marc assisted with the initial formation of PGP and oversaw the financing, growth and eventual sale of the company (to Network Associates (Nasdaq: INTC), a public company worth over $1 billion) in December of 1997.
After PGP, Marc co-founded VerticalOne Corporation, a content personalization service that was sold to S1 Corporation (Nasdaq: ACIW) for $166 million. Marc was Executive Vice President of VerticalOne and worked in multiple areas of the company including financing, business development, sales, M&A and security issues.
Marc is an active speaker on serial entrepreneurship, innovation and venture funding. Marc has spoken at SXSW, RILA Supply Chain, The Montgomery Summit, Internet Summit, Southeastern Venture Conference, and Finovate among others. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and remains an avid bulldog fan.
Connect with Marc on LinkedIn.
Bijal Patel is Synamedia’s Chief Financial Officer and brings over 20 years of experience in international high-tech and software companies as well as private equity-backed technology firms. Bijal has extensive experience driving business transformation, integrations and process improvements.
Bijal joined Synamedia from hospitality technology innovator, HotSchedules where he served as CFO for 3 years. Prior to HotSchedules, Bijal was CFO at Aptean and before that he held the position of Vice President of Finance at Finastra and was interim CFO between 2012 and 2014. Bijal spent the early part of his career in a variety of senior roles at IBM.
Connect with Bijal on LinkedIn.
Joey Kline is a Vice President at JLL, specializing in office brokerage and tenant representation. As an Atlanta native, he has a deep passion for promoting the economic growth and continued competitiveness of communities in and around Atlanta, as well as the Southeast as a whole. He has completed transactions in every major submarket of metro Atlanta, and works primarily with start-ups, advertising/marketing agencies, and publicly-traded companies. With a healthy mix of tenacious drive and analytical insights, Joey is a skilled negotiator who advises clients on a myriad of complex real estate matters.
With a strategy and business development background, Joey is first and foremost a pragmatic advisor to his clients. Most recently, he was the Director of Business Development for American Fueling Systems, an Atlanta-based alternative energy company. While at JLL, he has become a member of the Million Dollar Club, and has built a reputation as an expert on the intersection of transit-accessibility and urban real estate. With intimate involvement in site selection and planning/zoning concerns, Joey approaches real estate from the perspective of the end user, and thus possesses a unique lens through which to serve his clients.
Joey holds a Master of Business Administration from Emory University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a founder, board member, and the treasurer of Advance Atlanta, and also sits on the Selection Committee for the Association for Corporate Growth’s Fast 40 event. In addition, he is a member of CoreNet and the Urban Land Institute. Finally, he is part of LEAD Atlanta’s Class of 2019.
Connect with Joey on LinkedIn.
