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Before Your Next Big Decision
Tom Kosnik with Visus Group
Tom Kosnik, founder and president of the Visus Group is one of the staffing industry’s leading experts in organizational design, profitability improvement and work culture transformation. With a commitment to empowering staffing firms with the knowledge and tools to help business owners increase the value of their enterprise asset by helping them grow their business. Tom has coached and consulted hundreds of staffing executives throughout North America using his empirical based “Organizational Development Business Model” (ODBM). Most notably, Tom is the founder of the Presidents RoundTable, a nationwide leadership forum program strategically aimed at helping staffing professionals collaborate and solve industry challenges.
With over 25 years of consulting experience in the staffing industry, Tom’s diverse array of services have helped numerous staffing firms across the country improve their operations and bottom lines. As a RoundTable facilitator, Tom leads real world business problem-solving sessions in which he advises top executives on a variety of matters, including how to make winning business decisions; achieve profitability benchmarking; and reach peak performance through best practices. To date, he has conducted over thousands of RoundTable forums for all types of staffing professionals, including presidents and CEO’s, CFO’s, CRO’s, and CMO’s.
Throughout the course of his career, Tom has been a frequent speaker for many world-renowned industry organizations and corporate groups, including the American Staffing Association (Staffing World); National Independent Staffing Association (NISA); Illinois Staffing Association (ISSA); California Staffing Professionals (CSP); Missouri and Kansas Search and Staffing Association (MKSSA); and Massachusetts Staffing Association (MSA). He has presented on a variety of topics, including leadership development; strategic planning for small and large staffing firms; compensation planning; best management techniques; and mergers and acquisitions, among countless other topics.
Tom’s research and expertise has been published in dozens of national industry publications, including Staffing Industry Review; International Human Resource Management Journal; and Chicago Law Journal, just to name a few.
Tom holds an M.A. from Bowling Green State University in Organizational Development and a B.A. in Psychology from Seattle University. In addition, he is certified with the Center for Creative Leadership and a leading sales enhancement organization, MH Group.
Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.
The Harvard Business Review Article
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: [00:00:14] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with the Visus Group, Mr. Tom Kosnik. How are you, man?
Tom Kosnik: [00:00:34] I’m doing fantastic. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s, uh, the day after the eclipse, and, uh, I am just full of positive energy.
Stone Payton: [00:00:47] Well, we are delighted to have you on the show. When I first saw that we were going to have a chance to to visit I, in my mind, I was thinking we would be talking to a staffing company. But no, you’re actually consulting to helping staffing firms produce better results in less time, aren’t you?
Tom Kosnik: [00:01:05] That’s absolutely correct.
Stone Payton: [00:01:07] Well, I got a ton of questions. We’re probably not going to get to them all, Tom. But. But maybe that’s a good place to start is just mission. Purpose? What you and, uh, you and your team are really out there trying to do for folks, man.
Tom Kosnik: [00:01:19] Yeah, yeah, great. We, uh, work with the senior leadership of staffing companies, uh, predominantly privately held staffing companies. And, uh, it from the outside, it looks like an easy industry, but, uh, Stone, you’ve got you got candidates and, uh, contract employees that walk and talk and have their idiosyncrasies, and you have clients that walk and talk and have their idiosyncrasies. And the staffing companies are really the mediator between those two entities. It’s the only it’s the only business where, uh, where, where the, the product that you’re representing is, uh, is a live, live, uh, person. And uh, so the staffing we, we help staffing companies grow and we have about 120 active staffing businesses across the United States and, and the Canada and, uh, yeah, it, uh, it’s great work.
Stone Payton: [00:02:18] Well, it sounds like noble and probably lucrative work, if you can get it, but I got to know what, uh, what’s the backstory, man? How in the world did you find yourself doing this kind of work for these kind of people?
Tom Kosnik: [00:02:31] Yeah, yeah, it’s a it’s a great question. I was making a career change, and I connected my, uh, my father in law, who’s a serial entrepreneur, he introduced me to a gentleman out of Cincinnati that taught in some of the business schools, and he was managing a small peer to peer round table program. And he he was interested in expanding and my, uh, buddy. But he wasn’t interested in managing people. So we struck a deal, and he taught me how to develop these, uh, these roundtables, these peer to peer roundtables. And at that, at that point, uh, the staffing industry was growing at 12% a year. And off we went. And and three years later, we had over 100 staffing companies and 8 or 10 different, uh, peer roundtables that, uh, that I was facilitating. And that’s all we did at that time was manage the peer roundtables. And, uh, and today now we have president roundtables, CFO roundtables, CRO roundtables, and CMO roundtables and, uh, yeah, no, no, uh, no dull moment. So it was a was a career change and, uh, just worked the network and, uh, lucked into it. And, uh, and here we are. Here we are today.
Stone Payton: [00:03:53] Well, I am genuinely intrigued with this peer to peer learning discovery growth model. Can you speak to the the virtues, the advantages of a peer to peer model for people who are trying to accomplish more?
Tom Kosnik: [00:04:10] Yeah, our our clients tell us that the most effective learning that they can get, and we do have a lot of we do have a lot of clients that read books and take classes and do things online. Uh, but they tell us that the most effective, uh, way that they learn how to grow their business is peer learning. And that is people that have that are in the same industry that have tried, uh, tried certain things, have accomplished certain goals, have climbed certain mountains. And to learn from that experience, uh, is is invaluable. And that’s so that’s, that’s one side of the coin. And the other side of the coin is is what? We do, how we break open these these questions, these topics, these issues, these challenges that that the men and women that own and manage these businesses have and trying to get them to see things differently. So Stone, the the Einstein said, you cannot solve a problem at the same by thinking at the problem the same way you’ve been thinking. So you really have to change the way that you think about the the problem in order to come up with a creative, creative solution.
Stone Payton: [00:05:40] So it’s certainly one thing to get a group of people like that together. And even if we got them together over a glass of bourbon, there’s probably something good that would come out of it. But but for you to to do your work, there must be structure, methodology, rigor, discipline around all this. Can you speak to to that a little bit?
Tom Kosnik: [00:05:58] Absolutely, absolutely. We one of our differentiators is that we facilitate through a creative problem solving process. There are a lot of really good peer to peer, uh, roundtables and, uh, things like that. But but what what differentiates us is the creative problem solving process that, that we facilitate through. And the way that that works. It’s, uh, a little bit of a touch of organizational development, but but Arthur Van Gundy, who was the grandfather of creative problem solving, he taught at the University of Nebraska and Lincoln and and I was trained by him. And he connected me with a bunch of, uh, his associates that taught me all kinds of great things about creative problem solving. But it’s really a process of allowing somebody to unpack an issue. And then for the rest of us that are in the room to ask questions, you know, the five level deep questioning, uh, where tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. And Stone, here’s here’s what we never talk about. And this is this applies to your your life with your kids, your spouse, your your business associates, anything that you’re trying. I want to lose weight. I want to run a marathon. Uh, we have certain assumptions about the way that the world works, about the way that men and women relate about the economy, about employees, about how sales are done. And in order to get somebody to, uh, resolve, resolve an issue at a different level, we have to ask questions, good questions deep enough where we get those unspoken assumptions out on the table.
Tom Kosnik: [00:07:57] And if, if, if once those assumptions come out on the table, then the person who is in the batter’s box, so to speak, that’s trying to resolve an issue or trying to get past an issue, uh, which if we get those assumptions out on the table and then put those assumptions under the microscope, and if we can get them to change those assumptions, two things, two things happen. One, the whole construct of what they’re trying to achieve changes. They see the world differently and they behave differently towards the problem. And ultimately, you’ve heard it, uh, how many times do people try to solve a problem by doing the same thing that they’ve always done before? And it’s not a it’s just it’s human nature. But the reason that one of the reasons that is, is because they are operating under the same unspoken assumptions that they have about how the world and business and people, uh, work together. And so that’s that’s what we do at, uh, at the roundtable and, uh, many, many, many times, uh, the business owners that are with us, uh, say the, the, uh, that phase of our creative problem discussion where people are asking really deep, thoughtful. Moving questions becomes even more important than somebody telling me, well, I did this and these were the results. And if I were in Usher’s shoes, I would do that. They tell us that that’s that’s almost more important than getting actual responses from from other attendees in the, in the group. Uh.
Stone Payton: [00:09:45] So I have an observation from admittedly very limited experience in some kind of group setting where, you know, a small group of us were genuinely trying to help another person think through, through their, uh, through their challenges. Well, a couple of observations. One, we didn’t have to be geniuses about their thing. We just kind of made it easier for them to to talk about and ask themselves some questions. So that was one observation that was kind of revealing for me. But also I came away from that, even though the purpose of that period of time was to help Bill, I felt like I came away from it better to like like my thinking was more crystallized, solidified in my it made me that much better of a practitioner in my cases. Is that something that you see a lot? Is that a unique.
Tom Kosnik: [00:10:35] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are some times where, uh, yeah, where people come where people come to the roundtable and they may not have an issue at all. Yet they come up to me and say, Tom, this was the best roundtable I’ve been to in the last five years. Uh, because they learned something. Somebody else had an issue that they may have not even realized was an issue for their business also. And, uh, and then, of course, their, their mind is, is is reeling and then look, uh, we, we, we do want to help people. So at, uh, most most individuals do want to help each other. And there’s that sense of giving and that sense of building community and a sense of of helping one another. That really is a it’s a good, a good, uh, not an ego, but just a good human development sort of thing. And I should say the other the other piece of it, stone, is the, the what we call the leadership development piece of it. And that is that. Uh. Uh, no. Well, of course you’re going to be thinking about things differently, you know, upon your departure. But the leadership development is that one one is developing as a leader, one is growing, one is developing particular competencies about about. So for example, I have a, a client that’s been in the roundtable for, you know, maybe 12 years. And he recently shared with me, uh, I’m really Tom. I’m really trying to slow down, really understand what’s going on in my business and just ask, observe and ask much better questions, not only of myself, but my key reports so that we can not just make a decision, but that we can make a prudent decision. That’s, that’s that’s not just based on hearsay, not based on emotion, not based on solely on fact, but just good, solid decision making. So there’s that dynamic of of leadership development that happens as a result of these of these peer groups as well.
Stone Payton: [00:12:54] So now that you’ve been at this a while, what’s the most rewarding? What’s what’s the most fun about it for you?
Tom Kosnik: [00:13:02] You would think that after 30 years of facilitating these, these roundtables, that that I would be bored and would want to move on. But it’s more exciting now than it has ever been because things are changing so fast. But the most, the most rewarding is really to see, see our clients develop and grow and become the leaders that they were called to become. And it’s a it’s a it’s a very great thing when, you know, a company that’s got 350 employees or 525 employees, you know, is that is that company grows and becomes more profitable, there’s more opportunity all the way down from the leader down. So we’re really affecting opportunity for all those individuals within those within that organization. And it’s a it’s a very honorable, very honorable thing to, to be to be a part of.
Stone Payton: [00:14:05] You must sleep very well at night because, I mean, clearly you’re doing important, important work, and I’m sure it’s financially lucrative, but I, I just I get the sense that a great deal of your comp package is, uh, what I would characterize as emotional compensation. Yeah, yeah.
Tom Kosnik: [00:14:20] Yeah, yeah, that would be fair. That would be fair to say. That’d be fair to say.
Stone Payton: [00:14:24] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you? A practice like yours that is mature as it is, do you still find yourself out there with a need for a systemic methodology or strategy for getting new clients? The stuff just come in over the transom.
Tom Kosnik: [00:14:45] Oh yeah. No, absolutely. I mean methodology, discipline, there’s there’s freedom and discipline, right. That uh uh, so we we have a method, we have two selling methodologies, one, uh, for bringing in new roundtable guests to, uh, to find out if they would make for a good member in a roundtable program. And then we also do a lot of consulting, organizational development, consulting work. And so that’s a different, uh, different. And it all starts with knowing knowing the ideal client, knowing the buyer persona, knowing the buyer journey, uh, not getting ahead of ourselves or too far behind ourselves in terms of that. There’s alignment between, you know, the buyer journey and what we’re presenting to, to the buyer, uh, and, uh, and then managing that, having a CRM and doing things on LinkedIn and doing posts and social media, all those, you really have to have some kind of a game plan and a methodology and consistent execution. That’s where a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of companies, uh. They get going on something and then they it goes by the wayside or, uh. But consistency is is the big thing consistent and persistent is.
Stone Payton: [00:16:11] Sounds like you’ve been reading my mail because, you know, uh, my business partner, Lee and I, we run the business radio network, and we’ll latch on to to something, a methodology, a framework. And it just it works so well, we stopped doing it, you know? Yeah. Right.
Tom Kosnik: [00:16:27] How is it? How does that happen? Right. Uh, it’s it’s funny.
Stone Payton: [00:16:32] Speaking of methodology and framework, you’ve kind of handcrafted and refined. Refined your own model for the odd work. Right. The organizational development work in, in I’m operating under the impression you, um, you establish and execute on that model, but you’re probably at a point now where you’ve also got to bring on other people that can execute that without. Uh, correct. Too much dilution. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Kosnik: [00:16:57] We’ll we’ll get involved in strategic planning, financial analysis, some mergers and acquisitions, work compensation development. Uh, interim interim CFO, interim sales manager. But that’s not me. Uh, we, uh, I was three years into this, and I decided to get a master’s in organizational development from Bowling Green State University, which which is in a top three, uh, organizational development programs in the country. Uh, so now, uh, you get you we have over over 100 independently owned companies as clients. They all have challenges and issues and things that we can help them with. Uh, and so now it yes, we we, we have people that have competencies and expertise in certain ways, whether that’s valuation work, whether that’s interim sales management, whether that’s coaching CFO, whether that’s looking at a tax tech stack, whether that’s doing an internal assessment on the business overall, like all those all those projects, we we have people on staff that are that are that are executing on on those. So it’s it’s a good spot. It’s a good spot to be to be in.
Stone Payton: [00:18:12] It sounds like you’re able to keep the work fresh. And at the same time, I got to believe that you must run into some, uh, patterns, I guess, like with. And maybe you don’t vocalize that just yet this early in the conversation with them, but you’re thinking to yourself, yep, I’ve seen this one. Oh yeah.
Tom Kosnik: [00:18:31] Yeah yeah yeah, yeah. Although every time I say I’ve seen it all, uh, sure enough, uh, something gets said or something gets shown to me and I’m like, wow, I thought I seen it all, but that’s. I never, never seen that. Uh, there are some similarities. Uh, and I would say, uh, the, uh, the plateaus that, uh, there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that start a business and they hit a plateau. And there are various levels of plateaus. Uh, there’s the owner operator that gets in his own way or can’t not delegate or, uh, or doesn’t doesn’t, uh, doesn’t believe in methodologies and processes and, uh, and then there’s the middle market guys, the guys that are too big to be small, but too small to be big. And and they get what, what we call stuck in the middle. And then they start stagnating at 50 million or 80 million in revenue. And they can’t seem to they can’t seem to to grow past that. And, and and the funny thing is, is that, uh, oftentimes they, they make the same mistakes. Stone. All I need is a one more rainmaker. I just need to hire the lucky charm. And then somebody comes by who says I’m the rainmaker. And my salary needs to be 150 K, and I need to make 350,000. And I want to guarantee in the first year. And and they a lot of entrepreneurs fall for that. And, uh. In any year later. There’s no deals closed.
Stone Payton: [00:20:11] Yeah, another year and a half million dollars later.
Tom Kosnik: [00:20:14] Another. Another common. Another common mistake is, uh, is is, uh, uh, these businesses will go out and hire a president that came from a much larger organization. Well, if they were in that kind of an organization, they can come in and teach us how to go from here to there. But, you know, companies are made up of people. Every company has a different culture. Every company has a different mission and vision that they’re trying to accomplish. And and a lot of times, the execs that are coming from those big companies, they actually didn’t build anything. They they got on board after the business was a certain size. And they may have a lot of competencies and a lot of areas. But when it comes to, well, how do you take the business from 50 million to a half a billion? They’ve never done that before. And so I see I see that that’s another common, common error that that business owners will, will make as they’re trying to trying to grow the business. But yeah, we do see a lot of we do see a lot of common commonality in some of these things.
Stone Payton: [00:21:22] Well, with your pedigree, your experience base and I dare say maybe some scar tissue that you can call up when needed. I got to believe you’re called on to to speak. Do you find yourself on the dais talking to companies associations as a professional speaker?
Tom Kosnik: [00:21:39] Sure. Yeah. We we speak at, uh, state associations. National associations. We do a lot of podcasts like this. We do. We do quite a bit of that, uh, that work. Yeah. Well, the.
Stone Payton: [00:21:50] Reason I’m asking is I’m curious to know, like when you started speaking in front of large groups and you. And you’ve got this depth of knowledge, did it take you a while to figure out how to distill it to, to where it would be very beneficial for that short time period, but set the foundation to go do some real work at the opportunity presented it. So like, what was it like? What kind of shifts, if any, do you have to make when you’re speaking as opposed to facilitating? Because I think there is a pretty good distinction there, right? Oh, the first, the first.
Tom Kosnik: [00:22:24] When I first started speaking, I was terrible, terrible. Uh, and uh, a good friend of mine, I did a, I did a short stint. It was like a 15 minute thing and I thought I did well. And, uh, so I asked an associate of mine, hey, on a scale of 1 to 10, what would you rate me? And, uh, he rated me like, a four. Like four. And, well, you know, tell me why you rated me a four. And so then I went and got a, uh, a coaching for a, uh, to, uh, speaking, coaching and the best money I ever spent. And I try to I try to invest in myself, try to develop, uh, every year there’s certain things that I’m trying to learn or get better at. And so I’ll either I’ll either invest in, in a class or a coach or a program. And, uh, so anyway, I went ahead and, and, uh, and, and found a speaking coach and. My gosh, you just don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know all the mistakes that you’re making. And and she was has has been continues to be a tremendous help. She’s helped me with speaking in front of groups of people, developing the outlines, uh, the execution, the and not just not just like in front of groups of people, but when I’m on camera, on, on, on video, when I’m doing these kinds of things, she really has, has educated me tremendously. I, you know, so that was that was my my experience.
Stone Payton: [00:24:02] Well, what a marvelous reminder. And I think important piece of counsel for anybody who’s listening out there. I don’t care how accomplished you are. The, the good ones, the great ones, man. They continue getting coaching and they’re life learners. And that’s the.
Tom Kosnik: [00:24:21] Yeah that’s the Stephen Covey right. Always be sharpening the saw.
Speaker4: [00:24:24] Yeah.
Tom Kosnik: [00:24:26] There’s a there’s a great you can put I don’t know if you have notes in your, in your uh in your podcast. But there’s a HBR Harvard Business Review, uh, uh, uh, paper that was written and I can’t remember the author’s name right now, but the, the, the title of it is The Power to see ourselves, the power to See ourselves. And it is I was written back in 1962. And Stone, let me tell you, if you read it, you would say, this is so applicable to to today, to every executive out there. Uh, and it just it really talks about taking ownership of my own development, uh, becoming a professional leader, a professional manager, and the whole that whole process. And there’s too much in that article for me to kind of go into. But it, uh, yeah, it’s such a great read. I yeah, such a great read. Well, believe.
Stone Payton: [00:25:28] Me when I tell you I’m going to read it. But speaking of reading, is there a a book in you? Do you have any designs on on writing a book?
Tom Kosnik: [00:25:37] Yeah, I’d love to. I’d love to. Yes. Uh, the, uh, in fact, I’ve got a little project going on right now. Uh, and, uh, once we get through that, I have an editor. Once I get to that, uh, I’ve got a couple more ideas, but I’m hoping to, uh, hoping to be able to to get a little bit more published. I’ve been published in magazines and things like that, but, uh, but a book. Book? Uh, I, uh, I’d love to some some of my lessons learned. I’ve got a handful of ideas that I want to, I want to process. So I’m on the front end, front end of that one stone.
Stone Payton: [00:26:13] Well, I look forward to reading that and following the story. And if you’re up for it, when you get ready to to release that, let’s let’s have you back on the show and talk about it.
Tom Kosnik: [00:26:23] Yeah. Yeah, we’d love to. I’d love to.
Stone Payton: [00:26:25] All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work touch base, have a conversation with you or someone on your team.
Tom Kosnik: [00:26:32] You can look you can look us up on, uh, on LinkedIn or on the internet. We’ve got all the contact information and ways to to reach us. Uh, the website is Vise’s group. That’s v like Victor I s u s group. Group.com. Uh, and you can look you can also find us on LinkedIn. We post pretty regularly on LinkedIn. Uh, we’ve got a page, uh, Vise’s group page on LinkedIn, and I’m on LinkedIn. It’s, uh, it’s such a great, great tool for us.
Stone Payton: [00:27:04] Well, it has been an absolute delight to have you on the show, man. I really appreciate you sharing your insight and your perspective. You’re doing really important work and we sure appreciate you, man.
Tom Kosnik: [00:27:16] Thank you. Thank you so much. I, uh, I appreciate you saying so.
Stone Payton: [00:27:20] My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Tom Kosnik with Vise’s Group and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.
BRX Pro Tip: 2 Easy Ways to Use Canva
BRX Pro Tip: 2 Easy Ways to Use Canva
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, more and more it’s important to have our audio, to also have a visually appealing element. One of the tools in our toolbag is Canva. What tips, if any, do you have on using this tool, Canva?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Yeah. canva.com, if you haven’t been there, I would definitely check it out. It is a great resource if you want to add visuals to anything, really, in your business, but specifically in this case, we’re talking about how to add visuals to your podcast interview.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] So, first, go to canva.com, set up an account. They have both free and paid levels so you can get more services, obviously, and more variety if you have the paid account. But they have a free account that has tons of stuff, so you probably can get away with just having a free account once you start, and especially if you’re experimenting with it. Once you have your interview downloaded, you can repurpose it with Canva and create a bunch of assets from it to use on a variety of social media platforms.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:09] Two easy visuals you can create are something called an audiogram and something called a quote card. You can create an audiogram, which is a visual that also plays the audio from your interview. You can put your whole interview there or you can just grab a short clip. And number two, you can create a quote card, which is going through the transcript of your interview and pulling out some good thought leadership quotes and then popping them onto a templated quote card visual.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] If you’re having any trouble repurposing this content, please contact us at businessradiox.com. We can help you get the most out of that. That’s a service that we offer to a lot of our guests. We have also free and paid versions of that as well.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:54] So, first step, go to canva.com, set up an account, and play around over there. You’re going to have a lot of fun if you’re a visually oriented person. And you’re going to find lots and lots of ways to leverage that platform to help you kind of expand the assets you have from doing a podcast interview.
Empowering Businesses: The Vendorship Approach to Government Contracting
In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Dr. Nazeera Dawood, CEO of Vendorship, Inc, discusses her company’s role in helping businesses navigate government contracting. She shares her own frustrations with the RFP process and aims to educate and guide companies through the $600 billion industry. Vendorship assists with becoming a vendor, identifying opportunities, and submitting proposals, allowing businesses to focus on their expertise. Dr. Dawood celebrates client successes and the impact on women and minority owners, recognized by the Atlanta City Council. The company’s outreach includes newsletters, events, and word-of-mouth, emphasizing the sustainability of government contracts, particularly in tech.
Atlanta City Council recognized Dr. Nazeera Dawood, founder and CEO of Vendorship, Inc., for her outstanding contribution and service to the Greater Atlanta community in honor of Women’s History Month. A ceremony was held to celebrate and proclaim that March 7 is Dr. Nazeera Dawood Day.
After a rewarding career as a medical doctor Dr. Nazeera Dawood’s passion for prevention prompted her to obtain a master’s degree in Public Health. During her 8 years in public service as Research Project Manger, Director of the Fulton County Health Department as well as Fulton County Chief of Staff and she developed an extensive knowledge of the (governmental) proposal process.
Nazeera has a passion for solutions- and results-driven strategies, with a focus on quality, cost-effectiveness, use of practice guidelines, evaluation, supportive collaborations and public private partnerships for the benefit of all. She currently serves on the Review Board of the inaugural Fulton County District Attorney Conviction Integrity Unit.
A serial entrepreneur she has a wide professional network in the public sector, in business and in no-profit work. Nazeera founded Vendorship to ease the entry into government contracting.
As Vendorship’s CHH (Chief of Client Happiness) she strives to deliver the custom program to government contracting opportunities our clients need to provide government agencies with high quality products and services that improve the work of the public sector and all of our citizens’ lives.
Follow Vendorship on LinkedIn.
See also this article by the LegalOn team in which Stone Payton joins the discussion on common contract-related business mistakes
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast Founder and CEO with Vendorship Inc., Dr. Nazeera Dawood. How are you?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:00:31] I’m great and thank you so much for having me today. Stone, it’s so good to speak to you and your audience.
Stone Payton: [00:00:38] Yeah, it’s a delight to have you on the program. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but, uh, maybe let’s start with mission. Purpose. Tell us a little bit about Vendor Ship Inc and what you’re trying to do for folks.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:00:51] Sure, definitely. So in order to talk about mentorship, I have to tell you a little bit, uh, about myself and why vendor ship was started. And, um, so I used to be a physician. I used to be an ob gyn in India delivering babies. And then after I came to us, I did my master’s in public health. And from there I moved to, uh, Emory University for a job. And then I got my dream job at the county government. Uh, it was at the health department. I loved my job. And, uh, after four years, I was promoted to being the chief of staff at the former chairman’s office at the board of commissioners. Okay, so during this time, uh, I would have a lot of interactions with community members, businesses, um, other partnerships with counties and states and in the federal level as well. What I noticed was small businesses or midsize businesses or even large businesses did not know how to do business with the government. And to give you a particular example, Stone, I was also responsible as my position at the Health Promotion Division Director at that time put out opportunities, um, for uh, contractors or firms to respond. So when I did put out such an RFP, there were two bidders. One, and this was a simple technology solution that we needed, and one person responded five minutes late. So the response was stunned. Their submission was nulled and the other person was did not qualify for some of the eligibility criteria.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:02:32] So that was rejected as well. So ultimately my division ended up with zero responses after spending so much time, staff time, putting the RFP out, several discussions, interdepartmental, and then I didn’t have the solution that I really wanted. So that really frustrated me because it was taxpayers money as well. And I said, I know of so many businesses that could have responded and provided this solution that we needed. And when all the, uh, procedures were was done, I asked around a few firms on why they didn’t respond to the possibilities right in their backyard. They said there were several responses. One was they said they don’t know. They think, uh, it’s a slow process. They don’t trust the government. Or they said there’s no profitability. So they were giving all these reasons which I thought was a myth, and I knew it was sometimes a piece of cake to do business with the government. So when I, uh, got promoted to the chairman’s office, I also learned the ins and outs of what happened and how those decisions get made in choosing a contractor. And that’s when, when I resigned from the government, uh, position that I was in, uh, I saw the need, uh, where businesses need to be educated, uh, needed hand-holding, coaching and guidance in doing business with the government. And that’s when mentorship was initiated in 2018. I hope that answered your question. Well, it.
Stone Payton: [00:04:06] Does very elegantly and succinctly, but but that’s a lot of information to take in. I love that you found a need. You decided to try to fill it, but it occurs to me that there was and maybe there still is, just a tremendous amount of opportunity being left on the table out there, isn’t there?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:04:26] And can you believe $600 billion industry and, uh, people usually have all these myths. So we, we, uh, we our team loves to educate and inform because we have to bust the myths out there. One such, such myth is that people think the contracts have already been decided, which is not true, and it’s a transparent, open process. Um, all you have to be is just be eligible, uh, to make sure that you’re able to provide that service that the government is asking. There’s no one that is that cannot work with the government. It’s just that they have to be in the playing field to play the game. Otherwise, they’re just going to be sitting on the fence and watching what’s happening out there. But a $600 billion industry combining federal, state, county, city and education and schools.
Stone Payton: [00:05:14] That is a sobering number. So how does a company know if they’re eligible or if they don’t know then they’re not eligible. And they better find out.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:05:24] Exactly. So to be eligible all you need to have is a company. You have to have a company in existence. Uh, you should have you should be compliant. That is paying your taxes. And you should have a service to offer that the government needs. That’s all it takes for, uh, doing business with the government. So when you asked about eligibility, if you have a company, if you have a service to provide, and that’s a service that government needs. You can get into the playing field to do the business.
Stone Payton: [00:05:57] So, uh, walk us through, if you can, at least at a high level. How do you find out what the government needs and wants? Because. Because I’m one of these people you’re talking about. You know, I’m probably susceptible to all these myths I don’t have the first clue about to find out what they want. And, you know, for all I know, they may need something in the media area, I don’t know.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:06:18] Oh, we see those marketing and media, uh, UI, UX opportunities available all the time. So, um, Stone, let me tell you. So think about it. 50 states, almost 20,000 cities, 5000 counties, right? 100,000 public schools, more than 5000 higher education centers. All these are independent government entities with opportunities available for any firms to respond. Right. Um, so the opportunities are existing. The opportunities that government puts out is technology, even services, janitorial, um, mowing. You know, lawn mowing needs, um, office supplies, media needs. They want managers to help them strategize training needs so services that you can imagine the city government, state government, county government everyone needs is that the firms business firms usually have. Uh, the thing is, you have to know where these opportunities are. You have to become probably a vendor depending on the opportunity, and then respond to this. So the process is a little bit complicated in the sense it’s not it’s not hard, but it there is a process to follow. And that’s what people get so uh, frustrated about because they just don’t know how much to try. And then they get frustrated. They go through these red flags and they leave and they say government is not for them. But if you see once the government contractor always a government contractor, right, because they see the benefits of doing business, getting paid for it, and they see the profitability as well. So people have to be aware that it is time consuming, sometimes paperwork. But then once it is done, uh, they’re they’ve laid the foundation. Well, then it’s much easier to get into to win the contracts.
Stone Payton: [00:08:16] So let’s talk about the work specifically with regard to what you and your team do. Do you educate? Do you actually actually help execute on some of this? What what does that look like?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:08:27] Definitely. So let’s don’t let’s take it this way right with you. Uh, let’s say we are working with you and you’re a media company, right? And there is city of, uh, let’s say Petersburg. Right? Petersburg is looking for a media, uh, campaign and someone to run their campaign on smoke free areas or smoke free parks. Um, now they want to work with you because you are a media company. And, I mean, they know they put the opportunity out. Hey, we need some media person or a media company or a business firm to come and help us design this campaign and put the marketing out. So now you are working with us because you are working with us. We’ve already helped you coach. You build the documentation on what are your capabilities. We have your company’s profile business profile completely right. So once we have that, what we do is we, um, we bring the opportunity to you to say, hey, Stone, in St Petersburg, there’s this opportunity, and then we review this together and you say, this is a perfect opportunity. Our team will write the response for you. So we do proposal responses.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:09:38] Not only did we identify the opportunity for you that is fitting and you’re eligible for it, but we also help you become a vendor. We do all the paperwork. We become your extended team because we don’t want you to get succumbed to all the supplemental, uh, the massive paperwork that is needed and get frustrated. So we let you focus on what you are good at, which is your niche area, which is campaign and marketing. Right. What we want to help you is identify the opportunity, right. The response, um, we give you the intelligence behind that entire RFP on why what what’s the estimated budget that they are looking for. And then we put the response because they are not a media company. Stone. So we would we would need that specific technical response from you. So we will put the entire proposal document and submit it, uh, for, for evaluation to the government. So that is we take up the 80% of the work. Uh, the 20% of the work is your niche area. So where you will be able to tell us, this is what I want to do for this proposal?
Stone Payton: [00:10:46] Well, I just love that. I love that we can stay in our lane, do this. You know, one thing that we feel like we do really well and then work. Work with best in class experts that understand the system, how to navigate the the obstacles. Well, now that you’ve been at this a while and helping people accomplish this, what’s the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:11:08] So a stone. Believe it. Because we become your extended team. It’s like we, our our teams have joined, aligned together, and we gelled together for the entire one year that we are working together. We also have clients who work with us for continue to work with us in their fourth year, and our retention rate is renewal. Retention rate is 75%. So you can see people have felt this comfortability that they don’t need to go and build their own five member, six member team of proposal writers, marketing, business development directors or anyone. They just see that us coming in as the extended team. What have we felt good at is when our client wins, we all celebrate as a team, so it’s a huge win. We pat each other and that’s a huge affirmation for each one of us, because we know we put a hard work in submitting that proposal for the client to succeed.
Stone Payton: [00:12:00] Well, your work’s getting noticed. I understand you were recently recognized by the Atlanta City Council. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:12:09] Yes. Uh, so Council member Andrew Andrea Boone, um, sponsored, along with all the other council members, uh, to, uh, you know, appreciate, uh, women, minority business owner, uh, along with the mentorship team for all the good work that we are doing and also assisting not just the big firms or medium sized firms, but also assisting small firms, uh, to do business with the government. And apart from that, they also named uh, uh, March 7th as uh, my day like Doctor Nasir Dawood appreciation day.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:12:47] Oh, yeah. For empowering more women to come into business and, you know, get into the entrepreneurial world.
Stone Payton: [00:12:53] So outside the government contracting world, when you were, uh, marketing to people like me, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for you? How do you get to get your new clients?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:13:06] Sure, several ways. We have multiple touch points. We do send out newsletters, we do attend events, uh, we do attend conferences. And, uh, all we have to say is, are you planning to expand and diversify your business, to expand your revenue? Right. And everyone wants to do that, especially, uh, the technology firms. If you see, there’s been like, uh, talks about recession in the past and business has been slow. So we tell them, like with government, there’s always a sustainability government is always looking for, um, uh, services, uh, from technology firms, especially after Covid, um, the digital transformation that is happening, you know, the cloud computing, uh, getting prepared, cybersecurity, if you notice, recent in our own counties in Georgia have been ransacked or ransomed. Um, so these are we just asked them, do you want to expand your revenue into a sustainable revenue generating model and diversify their business? And people get interested, and if they come when they know that we do 80% of the work, all they have to do is stay in their lane, provide their niche area expertise. They’re they’re open and welcome to listen to us. But our touchpoint is events, uh, meet people. Um, what I’m telling you now, like, I’m sure you have listeners who might be interested in government contracting. We, uh, word of mouth. We have a lot of testimonials. Clients who work in the past who continue to give us testimonials, and someone who’s worked with us always have a good thing. Have to say.
Stone Payton: [00:14:43] Doing great work is a marvelous sales tool, isn’t it?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:14:46] Yes.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:14:48] So we realized, yes.
Stone Payton: [00:14:49] So it strikes me, and this may or may not be the case that that once you get that first one, even if it’s a relatively small government contract, now you got a little bit of track record under you. In the next one comes a little easier. Is that accurate?
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:15:04] Uh, so, um, here’s I can give you two scenarios. Many cases can be it can be any case. Right. Basically you want even a single SEO firm to do business with the government. Right. And how do they do it? So what we do is we coach them to build their paperwork and documentation and, and and the company profile well documented if they need any certifications like minority or women owned or even the federal level, it is called GSA. And I don’t want to throw so many acronyms there at a program. We assist them through that entire process. Right. And certification is not begin all, end all. It is I would call it as a brownie point, right? It adds it adds few points, but doesn’t mean if you don’t have a certification, you’re not going to be in a contract. All you have to because this is you’re the you’re opening the window to the reviewers who don’t know anything about you or your company, and they’re just reading your documentation to say whether you’re a fit company to work with them or not. So it has to be very strong. Why are you unique? Why are you selling this service? How can you respond to what the government is asking? So for that you have your information has to be very, um, readable or presentable and executable and your pricing, you know, so all these, all these makes a difference because those who are reviewing are not in your field. All they know is the story that you’re telling them why you started the company, what can you do for them, and how long you can take to do for them. It’s going to help them decide whether you are the best fit for them, but for that you have to continue to play the game.
Stone Payton: [00:16:44] I can see so many ways where your council would impact this process, or even make it a plausible dream for a company like ours. Everything from how to price it, how to articulate it, how to find out where the opportunities are. And, you know, maybe there may be certifications that would serve us well. And you’re tapped into that world, too. In fact, I don’t think I’m talking out of school. Before we came on air, you had to field a call from, uh, Greater Women’s Business Council, right? Like, so you’re you’re tapped into that certification world. So, you know, if it’s something to pursue or. Yeah.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:17:19] Definitely. And like I said, one of the examples I wanted to give was one company that just opened zero days old, but came with great capabilities within their team members. They worked with us within a within a year they were able to back two projects. So what you talked about track record, you have to start somewhere to set that track.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:17:41] Right.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:17:41] You can’t you can’t keep saying, I don’t have a track record, so I can’t be in business. So there are several strategies that you can follow to establish that track record. That’s when mentorship comes in to strategize with you, to build that strong foundation for many more years in the government sector.
Stone Payton: [00:17:56] Okay.
Stone Payton: [00:17:57] So let’s kind of go back to the work. And I’m particularly interested in the front end of the work. Someone listens to this conversation or meet you at one of these events and they at least want to explore is like, is the early step just sitting down with them and learning a little bit about what they’re trying to accomplish and the kind of work they might be capable of delivering? Well, walk us through kind of the front end of the engagement, if that’s the right word.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:18:20] So let’s say Stone, you are interested in learning more, right? Um, uh, what I would do is I would ask you to visit our website, which is w w w dot vendor ship dot net. That’s vendor ship, vendor ship dot net. And there are several pages with contact us. All you have to do is fill the form up. We will get the inquiry. Our team will reach out to you to schedule an intro call. Um, that intro call can be half an hour because we are exploring and discovering we’ve had we have had, uh, calls where we say, hey, your services. We don’t see anywhere government requiring your services. Right. So we would have that intro call with you to see what is it that you offer. We would tell you, hey, we’ve seen almost a thousand opportunities across us, uh, for what you need or for what government needs from you. If you if you plan to get into government sector. And then we would have that intro call and then provide you with the next steps.
Stone Payton: [00:19:18] I absolutely love it. All right. What’s the best way for people to connect with you? I think you may have just shared it. Tap into your work. Have that conversation. I just want to make sure that they have that we give them easy access to talk to you guys.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:19:32] Definitely. We do have a number, uh, (404) 982-4070. We have a great sales team members who will pick up the phone and talk to you and schedule that call. They can also email us at info. Info. Info at vendor ship dot net.
Stone Payton: [00:19:52] Well, Nazir, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show. You’re doing such important work. I appreciate you sharing your insight and your perspective. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon.
Dr. Nazeera Dawood: [00:20:06] Thank you so much, Stone, for having us. If anyone is looking for that government contracting, our motto is remake Government contracting. Easy and don’t miss out your piece of the pie. So what I would say.
Speaker4: [00:20:17] Don’t I.
Stone Payton: [00:20:18] Love it? All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Doctor Nazir Dawood with Vendor Ship Inc and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.
WBE Feature – Women‘s Month & Stress Awareness: UNiTE
In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor interviews Clara Paye, founder of UNiTE, a unique protein bar company offering global flavors. Clara discusses her inspiration, stemming from her gluten intolerance and immigrant background, to create a diverse product line. She shares the challenges of breaking into the grocery retail market, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how community feedback shapes their offerings. Clara’s story highlights the importance of a strong brand mission and her dedication to encouraging women entrepreneurs.
As the CEO and founder of UNiTE, Clara Paye’s mission is to foster a more expansive and inclusive wellness community—a place where everyone is not just welcome but encouraged to try something new.
UNiTE made its debut in March 2020, introducing an award-winning range of protein bars thoughtfully crafted to embrace diverse cultural flavors. Exciting flavors include: Churro, Bubble Tea, Baklava, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and PB &J. Today, UNiTE stands as one of the innovative leaders in the rapidly growing protein bar industry.
Connect with Clara on LinkedIn and follow UNiTE on Facebook.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios, it’s time for Women In Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women In Motion, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show we have Clara Paye with UNiTE. Welcome.
Clara Paye: [00:00:44] Thank you. Happy to be here.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about UNiTE. How are you serving folks?
Clara Paye: [00:00:51] So, UNiTE, if people aren’t familiar out there, is a protein bar company with a twist. So, our protein bars are not your average run of the mill vanilla and peanut butter and chocolate. We like to incorporate global flavors to welcome everybody into wellness. So, our flavors would be churro, baklava, bubble tea, Mexican chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly, because that’s my American heritage also. And our goal is to just bring everybody into wellness, make protein bars that reflect our beautiful multicultural world.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So, what’s your backstory? How did you get into this line of work?
Clara Paye: [00:01:27] So, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I had no food background other than, you know, just being a home cook. But it was just born out of personal need. I was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance a few years ago and was trying to look for diet compliant food. I ended up working with a nutritionist who told me gluten free foods to eat were like protein bars. And I would go to the grocery store and try to find one that I liked. And one day I just realized that they are all the same flavor. It didn’t matter which brand I chose, they were always chocolate or chocolate-peanut butter or double chocolate chip or just kind of all in the same flavor profiles.
Clara Paye: [00:02:03] And I’m an immigrant. I was not born in the U.S. I was born in Sudan in Africa. I came here at the age of five. And I have always loved to incorporate my cultural foods with American cultural foods and just thought that, you know, nobody had done this yet. Why hadn’t there been any kind of more interesting flavors out on the shelves? And thought, you know, I could do it. It can’t be that hard.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] So, was it that hard?
Clara Paye: [00:02:28] You know, I think there’s, like, such a benefit to being naive and starting out. I happen to pick a super competitive category. Grocery retail is super cutthroat, low margin. But it’s been more fun than it is hard. And I think the fun makes the hard work worth it. And when I get emails from consumers who say thank you for making a protein bar for us, thank you for seeing us, for validating us, it becomes about more than just creating a product. It’s about living out a purpose and a vision and a mission.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:57] So, what was it like at the beginning not having the background, how did you make a bar? Like, how did you even begin this?
Clara Paye: [00:03:06] Simply. I mean, I went to Trader Joe’s and I got one ingredient I would put in my bar if I was making it for my family. And I got a Cuisinart out, and I started just tinkering with ingredients. So, I put in some almond butter, some dates, some vanilla, and cinnamon and started just creating my own recipes and testing them on my friends. My poor friends, I probably went through 20 different flavors on them.
Clara Paye: [00:03:35] When they finally started to like them, I got a little bit more serious and found a food scientist to help me take my kitchen formula and make it kind of a manufacturable formula, manufacturing ready formula. And she went to Trader Joe’s, too, so we were working off the same ingredient list. And that’s how we did it. We just created a prototype.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] And did you like, go to farmers’ markets and festivals to just test it or did you go right from your kitchen and your friends to let me see if I can get it on a shelf somewhere?
Clara Paye: [00:04:04] Yeah. It went straight from my kitchen to shelves. And so, that’s probably not the best path for most food entrepreneurs. But I knew that I didn’t want to make it myself. I knew that I wanted a very qualified packaging and producing partner – it’s called the Coleman in our space – to make it for me so that there was no liability or no way for me to kind of mess it up. I wanted the highest level manufacturing.
Clara Paye: [00:04:32] And so, we had the product made, and I was sent to debut it at a large expo in natural products called Natural Products Expo in March of 2020, and literally had our booth set up ready to sell my product, and COVID happened. So, our business was born at the intersection of the COVID pandemic. So, kind of a really crazy launch story.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] Now, those kind of food, I’ve been to several of those trade shows where there’s a lot of vendors but it gives you a chance to put your product in front of people that could buy large amounts of it. Being in COVID, were you able to do that? Obviously, you couldn’t do it in person that kind of sampling, but were you just sending out samples left and right?
Clara Paye: [00:05:14] So, during COVID, if you remember, grocery stores and everything were more worried about keeping toilet paper on shelves and Lysol. Nobody was buying bars because consumers weren’t on the go, so the category took a major hit. But I kind of saw the opportunity in using our bars for the power of good. So, I just really started donating as many bars as I could to hospitals and food banks. You know, I didn’t have any masks I could donate, but I could donate protein bars to help fuel our health workers and just started really spreading the product out through charitable contributions. And that kind of started to build our brand awareness.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:54] And so, you were building your brand awareness by a good group of people that are the potential purchasers of the brand in the long run.
Clara Paye: [00:06:03] Yeah. I didn’t even think about that, but that’s a great point, health workers and healthy people.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:09] Now, what was your first flavor?
Clara Paye: [00:06:13] Our first flavor, actually we launched with three, so they were churro, Mexican chocolate, and peanut butter and jelly.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:20] So, they forced you to put a chocolate in there? You couldn’t get around that?
Clara Paye: [00:06:25] No. For me, I wanted an interesting chocolate. Like chocolate is one of the most popular protein bar flavors that there are because people want to really eat a Snickers, but they’ll settle for a chocolate protein bar instead. And so, for me, if we were going to make a chocolate one, I wanted it to be interesting. And Mexican chocolate has really interesting flavor notes and a flavor profile that I just really love.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:47] And then, what is kind of the nutritional makeup of these bars?
Clara Paye: [00:06:54] So, the bars are under 200 calories, a minimum of 10 grams of protein, a good source of fiber, and, really, dietitian and nutritionist approved.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:05] And then, are they all gluten free or that was just what got you started?
Clara Paye: [00:07:10] Thanks for reminding me. They’re all gluten free, soy free, and free of artificial flavors, and anything artificial really. They’re very natural.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] And when did you start kind of getting some traction where you’re like, “You know what? I think this thing’s going to work out”?
Clara Paye: [00:07:26] So, there was no opportunity to really meet with grocery stores, but my local grocery store had a local program, and it was Bristol Farms. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but it’s a chain here in Southern California, where they look for local makers. And I said, I live here where your store is, would you help me spread the word about my product? And the local buyer loved it. And she gave me this huge display of protein bars, like, in June or July of that year, 2020. And we were able to sell so many bars and people really started to build traction. And then, later that year, I got a chance to get in front of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, and they loved it, too, and they launched our product that next year.
Lee Kantor: [00:08:08] And then, how did you develop the packaging because it’s beautiful packaging?
Clara Paye: [00:08:14] Thank you. Yeah, I did it with a freelancer. So, I knew exactly what I wanted. I had a clear vision for the product. You know, when I think of global flavors, I think of color. And so, I think of like a Moroccan souk or a bazaar in Mexico City and those tall mounds of spices that are always very colorful. And in the protein bar space back then, it was very grays and whites and green, and people were really trying to show natural through just a lack of color. And I said, well, we’re going to stand out. We’re going to be the color on the protein bar aisle. And so, color is very important to our brand. And then, just really clear value proposition right on the packaging, so our packaging has served us well.
Lee Kantor: [00:08:59] And I think there’s some whimsy to it, too. It doesn’t look like those kind of corporate-y bars.
Clara Paye: [00:09:04] Yeah. It’s supposed to be fun. We’re food that you want to eat, not food you have to eat.
Lee Kantor: [00:09:08] Right. So, now, any advice for an aspiring food entrepreneur out there? Are there some kind of things that you’ve learned that you were like, “Well, if I could do this again, I probably would do it this way”?
Clara Paye: [00:09:21] I think in formulation. You know, how we started our conversation, I think, don’t get too married to your very first iteration. You’re going to launch and then you’re going to get a lot of consumer feedback, and obviously you want to have the best product when you launch, but be amendable to insights as you grow and as you learn to improve your product. And, really, taste is table stakes. It has to taste really great.
Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Right. So, that’s a given, like you have to get that right to just play.
Clara Paye: [00:09:55] Right. And you’d be surprised, a lot of people think that you can just launch an average product and people will eat it just because it’s healthy. And they might try it once, but they won’t continue to eat it.
Lee Kantor: [00:10:04] Right. I think the consumer is so much more sophisticated now and their expectations are so much higher now.
Clara Paye: [00:10:10] Right. For sure.
Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] Now, how important is having kind of this brand mission that you have and the social impact that you’re shooting for? How important is that in the success of a brand like yours?
Clara Paye: [00:10:26] You know, consumers want to understand who the company is making their products are, and especially with food. I think in this Netflix era where there’s so many food documentaries and what you should eat and what you shouldn’t eat. Consumers are smarter than ever and they want to peel back the curtain and they want to know who’s making their food, how are they making it, what causes do they support. So, it is important. And I think brands that will emerge as leaders will have powerful social missions in addition to great products.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:04] Yeah. I think if you have a strong why that’s an edge in today’s market.
Clara Paye: [00:11:09] A hundred percent. And we’re not selling widgets here. Food is what brings people together. Food is how you nourish yourself and your family and those you love. So, it deserves a good analysis.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:23] And, also, it makes the customer feel good when they’re pulling it out of their bag at the gym. They’re signaling to their folks what kind of person they are as well. So, it has to be kind of authentically theirs as well.
Clara Paye: [00:11:37] I couldn’t agree more. We’d like to invite our community into creating our products. So, on the back of every single one of our packs is an email address, it’s hello@unitefood.com, and we invite our community to tell us what flavors we should make next. And I love getting those emails and I love learning what flavors people grew up with.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:55] So, have you been able to incorporate any of their flavors yet into your product mix?
Clara Paye: [00:11:59] Yeah. So, we’ve taken a lot of insights, and so in our innovation pipeline, we’ve got quite a few flavors developed. But people have said that they want to see more indulgent flavors and that’s what we kind of take.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:15] So, now are your neighbors your beta testers still or you’ve kind of got a whole new advisory board when it comes to beta testing?
Clara Paye: [00:12:26] It’s expanded a little bit. But I do love testing them on my neighbors. They’ve been with me from the very beginning. They’ve tasted every bar, every iteration, every change, and so I do trust them. But I also like to test on my kids because kids don’t lie and kids don’t pander. And if my kids like it, or our cousins like it, or friends’ kids like it, then I know it’s on the right track.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:49] And that’s another pro tip for those aspiring food entrepreneurs is, kids don’t lie. That’s a better focus group than your family.
Clara Paye: [00:12:58] A hundred percent.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:59] Now, can you share a little bit about why you chose to be involved with WBEC-West?
Clara Paye: [00:13:06] Well, when I started this business, you know, I didn’t see a lot of women represented in the food industry. And if they were and they raised funds, they quickly were diluted. And so, getting women-owned status was an important differentiator for me because my bigger mission is to inspire more women to become entrepreneurs, and to enter the food space, and enter just the business space, because I think women bring a unique point of view that will actually create a better business environment.
Lee Kantor: [00:13:39] Now, have you had a chance to collaborate with any of the women in the association?
Clara Paye: [00:13:45] Not too much. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to attend the conference, but it’s on my list for next year. It’s a little bit too close to Expo West, which is our national large trade show for natural products. So, I can’t be in two places at once, but it is on top of my list.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:01] So, what do you need more of? How can we help you?
Clara Paye: [00:14:05] I think you guys are very supportive. I think it would be great to have more continuing education. You guys do a lot of that and a lot of great resources out there. And I think the trade shows that you do, where you bring partners who are looking for women-owned businesses to partner with, I think that’s really important. So, creating economic opportunities is probably what’s most important to women starting businesses.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:31] And then, what’s next for UNiTE?
Clara Paye: [00:14:34] We want to be the next household brand. We want to stand for diversity, inclusion, for a protein bar that people can trust, that is going to taste really great, that it’s going to give them the energy that they need to get through their day and their tasks, and to be just the bar that you reach for that’s your favorite and your kid’s favorite.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:55] And if somebody wants to learn more about UNiTE, the website or the way to kind of learn more on social media?
Clara Paye: [00:15:03] Yeah. You can look us up at unitefood.com or on Instagram, @unitefood. And if you want to follow my personal journey, I’m Clara Unite; on Instagram, @clara_unite; or on LinkedIn, Clara Paye.
Lee Kantor: [00:15:18] Well, Clara, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Clara Paye: [00:15:23] Thank you, Lee. It was a pleasure to be on.
Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women In Motion.
Exploring Hormone Therapy, Menopause Care, and the Holistic Approach to Health and Well-being
In this episode of Cherokee Business Radio, Stone Payton welcomes Katherine “Kitty” Houston, a nurse practitioner and owner of Elite Health HRT, and Carrie Soulliere, owner of Covered with Carrie. The discussion delves into the nuances of hormone therapy and menopause care, with both Kitty and Carrie providing valuable insights on the symptoms of hormone decline, the critical nature of personalized therapies, and how lifestyle choices can influence hormone balance.
Kitty opens up about her entrepreneurial journey, detailing the challenges she encountered while establishing her own business, and the marketing tactics she has found effective. Carrie adds to the conversation by sharing her own experiences and perspectives in the industry, enriching the dialogue with her expertise.
The episode also explores the affordability of treatments and the range of services offered at Kitty’s clinic, such as IV hydration and vitamins, which Carrie reflects upon, highlighting the importance of such services in overall health management.
After spending years in the nursing field, Kitty Houston, owner Elite Health HRT, became a family nurse practitioner to help men & women naturally solve the root causes of health issues – rather than medicating symptoms.
At 45, she experienced the negative effects of imbalanced hormones firsthand. It was this time-period that made her realize how many others also suffer from similar challenges.
Since then, she’s helped thousands of patients (including herself) reclaim their health through HRT treatments!
Follow Elite Health HRT on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Carrie Soulliere is a licensed insurance agent and Owner of Covered with Carrie, a health insurance agency that helps outdoor tourism workers nationwide.
Though she travels the country in an RV most of the time, her home is in Acworth, GA. Her agency is in the top 15% of health agencies nationwide. In addition to her agency, Carrie owns Courses with Carrie, an educational company that sells courses for insurance agents. 
She also does specialized consulting within her field. She passionately advocates for consumer and agent rights within the health space.
Connect with Carrie on LinkedIn and Facebook.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning, and today’s episode is brought to you in part by Woodstock Neighbors Magazine, bringing neighbors and business together. For more information, go to Facebook and Instagram at Woodstock Neighbors dot BVM you guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast, first up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning with Elite Health HRT, nurse practitioner and owner, Ms. Katherine Houston. How are you?
Kitty Houston: [00:01:03] I’m doing great. Thank you. You can call me Kitty.
Stone Payton: [00:01:05] Oh, good. All right. Well, all right, Ms. Kitty. Well, we’re delighted to have you in the studio and on the program. I got a ton of questions. I think our other guests have questions, too. So this ought to be a very informative segment. But before we go there. Mission. Purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?
Kitty Houston: [00:01:27] Well, um, I really specialize in menopause care. I take care of men as well for hormone therapy, but when I went through menopause, it was rough. It was really rough. And my, um, physician really just kind of was like, well, you know, this is this is, you know, basically suck it up. And for me, I was not willing to just suck it up. I was a nurse in women’s health at the time. And, you know, I wanted to figure out the whole menopause issue because we don’t talk about it. We don’t talk about it in nursing school. We don’t talk about it in nurse practitioner school. It’s not taught in med school. So, you know, we practitioners just are like, well, I don’t know what to do. It’s just normal. Just suck it up. Here’s an antidepressant move on. And I really wanted to help women because 100% of us go through menopause now. And so that’s what I do.
Stone Payton: [00:02:22] Well, now that you’ve been at it a while. What, uh, what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the about the work for you?
Kitty Houston: [00:02:29] It’s definitely seeing the change in the patients that I have that come in. I have women that come in and they are desperate, and they say, you know, I’m taking this herb and and this medication and this supplement, and I am out of my mind. I don’t feel like myself. I’m going crazy. And then eight weeks, ten weeks into therapy, they’re like, you gave me my life back. I feel normal again. And it’s wonderful for me to see the light in the eyes of these women who came in a lot of times crying, saying, help me, please help me. Because I am struggling with work. I’m struggling with relationships, my marriage is struggling. I hate everybody and everything all the time, including myself. And I know what that feels like because I went through that. And so it’s wonderful for me to look at these women and go, I know, I know how you feel. I know that that you feel like you want to participate in life again. So that’s probably the most rewarding thing for me is to see that change.
Stone Payton: [00:03:28] I gotta believe that it’s not one size fits all, that every situation is different. Yeah it.
Kitty Houston: [00:03:34] Is. You know, I have no idea what someone’s base hormones were like when they were in their 20s and 30s and they felt their version of normal. So it’s a lot of trial and error. It’s a lot of adjustments to get women to what they say is, this is my norm. And for some women, I, you know, that might be like, wow, that’s you know, that’s a really high level of estrogen. But for them, that’s their norm and that’s where they feel good. So it’s definitely not a one size fits all. It’s definitely a tailored therapy for each individual person.
Stone Payton: [00:04:07] So I’ve heard it before, but, uh, I’m, I guess I’m still a little bit surprised that men sometimes have some of these challenges.
Kitty Houston: [00:04:16] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. So women peak their testosterone production at 28, and there’s a slow decline until we go through menopause. Men peak their testosterone production around 20, and then they have a slow decline until they’re about mid 40s. And then they stay stable for the rest of their life, which is about half of where they were when they were in their 20s. So for some men, they they don’t have what’s called andropause where they feel like I am not myself. I’m having poor quality of sleep. I’m having less motivation, I’m having weight gain. I’m having more anxiety and depression and inability to manage stress like they could. But I see time and time again men are like, well, you know, my doctor says my testosterone is normal. Well, the normal range for men is the same from 18 to death. And it is a very, very, very broad range. So if they’re making half of what they were in their 20s, when they’re 50, they don’t feel normal. So I get them back to that normal level where it’s it’s still safe, but it’s definitely giving them the oomph that they need.
Stone Payton: [00:05:23] All right. So let’s talk about the work a little bit okay. And maybe and let’s let’s start at the beginning. Well yeah. Like when should, uh, a man or a woman reach out to you or are there signs or should they just be checking anyway? Is this like you take your car in, just you don’t go on a long trip without taking your car in.
Kitty Houston: [00:05:43] So it’s always great to get a baseline when you’re young. And I do have patients that are in their 50s that bring in their, you know, semi adult children that are in their early 20s to get a baseline and see where are their hormones at that age. And any time you feel like you’re just not your optimal self is probably a time to have your hormones checked to say they’re starting to decline because they decline as we age. And then when you factor in all of the hormone disruptors that we have in our environment, they’re declining much more rapidly for people in their 20s and 30s and 40s than they were for people in their 50s and 60s.
Stone Payton: [00:06:25] Okay, I got to ask about hormone disruptors, and then I want to know more about the process. But yes, speak to that a little bit.
Kitty Houston: [00:06:30] So hormone disruptors can be anything from pesticides or some of the things that we put in our plastics, or they’re in our To-Go foods in our to go containers. Hormone disruptors are in our foods. We put a lot of, um, antibiotics and hormones in our food, in our in our animals. And then we eat that and they mimic our, um, our hormones in such a way that our body’s like, well, oh, I’m getting so many of these hormones, I don’t need to make as much. So then we naturally decrease our own natural production and it’s just a cycle. Then we make less so we feel worse and it just goes on and on.
Stone Payton: [00:07:13] I hope mom’s listening because my that’s it’s good. If you have a radio show that mom listens now and again. Right. But. No. Mom watches her vegetables. She buys the grass fed beef. So there really is something to this.
Kitty Houston: [00:07:26] There’s that is huge. Eating organic, eating non-GMO, eating food that is not treated with pesticides is huge for your health and for the health of your family.
Stone Payton: [00:07:38] So carry over here is nodding her head. Ah, it sounds like you buy into this whole thing about at least doing what we can to stay away from these disruptors. She was going, so I lost.
Speaker4: [00:07:49] Half of my body weight at one point in my life. So I saw a huge change when I moved to the eating in this style, where my health was significantly better, I felt better. I slept better when I focused on eating foods that were healthy, natural, and organic and were not filled with pesticides. I felt a huge change in my life. It was so significant.
Stone Payton: [00:08:09] All right, more about the process. So that’s one of the things that identify. So those that’s just like some quick pro tips right out of the box that you can have a conversation with them about, and they can start making some of those adjustments and be on the lookout for that. But yeah. So I come into your office, I sit down. Well, first of all, what am I complaining about or worried about if I come if I’m coming to your office?
Kitty Houston: [00:08:32] Um. The symptoms for men and women are very similar. Okay. As women are going through perimenopause and they’re starting to have hormone decline. Uh, the symptoms, the most common ones that everybody thinks about is hot flashes, mood swings, but heart palpitations, itchy skin, dry eyes, joint pain, um, weight gain, especially midsection weight gain, low libido, low drive to be active. Forgetfulness. Less ability to stay focused and on task. These are very, very common as the hormones decline because our hormones have a lot to do with that for men. Um, anxiety, depression, less motivation, poor quality of sleep, lower libido, weight gain. Um, just that motivation that get up and go is kind of got up and left and it’s it’s terrible. But it happens to us all as we age. And a lot of times we attribute this to I’m tired, I’ve got a job, I’ve got kids, I’ve got spouse, I’ve got stress. So we attribute a lot of the common symptoms of low hormones to life factors, whereas a lot of it is is cohesive. You’re going to have hormone disruptors. You’re going to have hormones dropping along with all of these, these life things that are happening. But it you know, you just get your hormones checked whenever you can.
Stone Payton: [00:09:53] So please tell me there are no disruptors in bourbon.
Kitty Houston: [00:10:00] As long as they’re not using, you know, pesticides in their grains and things, then you’re good.
Stone Payton: [00:10:06] Organic bourbon.
Kitty Houston: [00:10:07] Organic bourbon. You should be just fine. I would say drink in moderation, but. Right. You know, there’s nothing wrong with having bourbon.
Stone Payton: [00:10:15] Well, Kerry brought up weight loss. So there’s there’s some real connection here in, um, weight loss or the appropriate weight for your frame. And with all this as well. Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Kitty Houston: [00:10:27] So when I bring a person into our office and they have questions and they want to become a patient, one of the things that we do, we do blood work. But I also put every single person on a body composition scale, because it’s important to know that it’s not about your weight, it’s about your percentage of body fat. And, you know, just for me, for example, my weight hasn’t changed in five years, but my size has changed dramatically because I’ve lost 13 pounds of fat and put on 10 pounds of muscle. So my weight is the same. But I went down three sizes and I have, you know, lost a lot of the visceral fat, which is the fat that kills us. It’s the fat that causes high cholesterol and heart disease and fatty liver. So just balancing the hormones can help you lose all of that midsection weight and help you feel better. You’re putting on muscle. Your muscle burns your fat even at rest. The more muscle you have on your body, the more better calorie burner you are.
Stone Payton: [00:11:30] So a lot of this is counsel from you with your specialized expertise, but it’s shifts in lifestyle and and habits.
Kitty Houston: [00:11:39] Yeah, absolutely. So you know, getting the hormones balanced is part of the, the the process. So I like to think of that as if you have a toolbox balancing your hormones as a tool, watching what you eat, how you eat, the order in which you eat your food is a tool. Being active is a tool. How you exercise is a tool so you know you have a toolbox. You can’t just have a hammer. You have to have a screwdriver. You have to have a wrench. You there are other components. And when you you know, when patients come into my office, I counsel them on all of the different tools that they can use, because some patients don’t want to do hormone therapy, but they want to feel better. So we look at it from a nutrition standpoint or for a supplement standpoint or from a weight loss standpoint, but you know, you have to have all the tools.
Stone Payton: [00:12:30] So does hormone therapy or can it include adding some hormones or.
Kitty Houston: [00:12:36] Absolutely.
Stone Payton: [00:12:37] Oh okay. Yeah. Say more about that.
Kitty Houston: [00:12:38] All right. So um, we do hormone replacement for men. We do testosterone and we monitor estrogen because estrogen and testosterone have a symbiotic relationship. So we also give something to men to help with preserving testicular function so that they don’t have shrinkage or they don’t have infertility, especially for my men that are in their 20s and 30s. Yeah. And still planning for families, for women we do testosterone, we do estrogen, we do progesterone. And we have a balance. I have a formula that we do a balance. Some women don’t want testosterone. Great. You don’t have to have it. It is our most abundant hormone in our body as women. Women don’t realize that. But we have a lot. I didn’t.
Stone Payton: [00:13:22] Either. I don’t guess.
Kitty Houston: [00:13:23] We have a lot less testosterone than men. Um, but we have a lot of testosterone in our bodies when we’re in our 20s and 30s. And I replace all of those. Some patients are like, oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to turn into a man. I don’t do gender reassignment. I just replace hormones so that we feel optimal.
Stone Payton: [00:13:43] Yeah. All right. What I’m going to switch gears on you a little bit. What was it like to leave the the job, a job and then start your own business? That had to be a little scary. It was.
Kitty Houston: [00:13:54] Terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. But I wanted to be able to help people the way I didn’t get help. And my husband is a partner in this business with me, and he does the business side of it, whereas he says, I’m the talent, so I, I take care of the patients, he takes care of the business side of it. So if I wasn’t doing this with him, I would never have done it.
Speaker5: [00:14:23] Knee.
Stone Payton: [00:14:25] So how does the whole, um, sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Because not only do you have to be good at this, you got your husband in there. Do you have to get out there and shake the trees? Do you have, like, this whole systemic approach for it? I guess education would be a big part of your whole marketing approach. Yeah.
Kitty Houston: [00:14:44] Yes. So we don’t do any kind of like outside marketing.
Stone Payton: [00:14:50] Not going to see you on the billboard.
Kitty Houston: [00:14:52] No, we’re not going to see me on a billboard. Okay. Most of our patients come in as word of mouth and, you know, just I go to the hair salon and I had somebody ask me, well, what do you do? And I said, well, I’m new to the area. I just opened my own business. This is what I do. And they’re like, oh my gosh, I need you. And just from that, I’ve gotten like 20 patients because women at the hair salon talk and were there for a long time. And, you know, you go to your hairstylist and you’re like, wait a minute, why do you look like you feel so much better? I saw you three months ago and you were miserable and you, you know, had no energy. And now you feel great. What did you do? And so that’s a big marketing thing. But just being out in the community, I just talk to people. I keep business cards in my purse. And anytime I hear somebody, you know, if I’m, I’m out. I went out to the wineries over the weekend with my daughter, and there were four women at the table, and they were griping about all the things. And I said, ladies, where do you live? And they said, Marietta, I said, come see me, I can help. And they’re like, oh my gosh, you do hormones? I said, yes, I do. And so it just, you know, listening to conversations and chit chatting with people is how we do our marketing.
Stone Payton: [00:16:10] So deep root, downtown Woodstock has a ribbon cutting in a few days, so you should definitely show up.
Kitty Houston: [00:16:15] Oh, absolutely. I’d be happy to. You should.
Stone Payton: [00:16:18] If you do sponsor anything, you should sponsor Deep Root, right? We’ve been a couple of times and we really we really enjoyed it. Oh that’s that’s great. So I don’t know when you would ever find the time because it sounds like you got a lot going on. But interests, hobbies, passions that you pursue outside the scope of your work, anything you have a tendency to nerd out about?
Kitty Houston: [00:16:40] Um.
Stone Payton: [00:16:41] Uh, my listeners know I like to hunt, fish, and travel. Okay. The reason I ask, okay.
Kitty Houston: [00:16:45] I love to be outside. So I just hiked Yonah Mount Yonah on Saturday. Oh baby, I love to. It’s gorgeous. So. And it’s a it’s a good hike. I’m still sore. And I hiked on Saturday and I’m still sore and I’m not out of shape. So I love to be outside. I love to hike. I love to kayak when we have time. Um, I’m contemplating taking up golf. My husband golfs, my son golfs, my daughter in law golfs. So they’re like, you need to be the fourth. And I’m like, yeah, but I really am going to be terrible because I am not sports oriented. I never did sports, but I’m willing to try. I’m willing to I’m willing to try taking up golf.
Stone Payton: [00:17:28] Oh, I wanted to ask you about and this is, you know, all of my research is like from Facebook, so take it with a grain of salt. But a word that keeps popping up for me is peptides. Mhm. Is there something to that or is that just Facebook pablum or no Pep.
Kitty Houston: [00:17:44] Peptides are another way to do something to help with anti-aging. There are different peptides that do different things. Peptides are just chains of amino acids that work in different ways. We have peptides that help with sex drive and let me tell you, they really work. We have peptides that help with healing, especially with healing the gut and healing wounds. We have peptides that help with increasing muscle mass, and we have peptides that help with decreasing weight by regulating insulin sensitivity. So by adding these into your routine for your hormone replacement or your weight loss, people can see a much bigger benefit using peptides. Well, I’m.
Stone Payton: [00:18:30] Glad I asked. All right. Circling back to the work, yes. Uh, and we and we used me as our case study. I think, you know, I got a little too much prosperity right here. You know, I’m not fat in a lot of places, but I got a little prosperity right here above the belt. Uh, even if I lose weight, it’s still. It’s that smaller. But in proportion to everything, it’s right there. So I come in, I talk with you, you ask me questions, you know just how much bourbon stone and where is it coming from? And we think to that, if appropriate. And so you might provide some immediate counsel on, hey, consider doing this and eating less of this and more of that and all that kind of stuff. And if appropriate, you might say, and maybe we need to add some of this, you know, and we’ll and we’ll do that and think about the peptides and all that. So walk us through what that I know you’re not prescribing for me because we haven’t had that conversation. But. And what what might uh I don’t even know what to call it. A. Therapeutic plan look like over the course of the coming months or something.
Kitty Houston: [00:19:27] Okay, so the first thing I would do is check bloodwork. So anybody that I’m going to treat I check bloodwork. So I look at cortisol because if your cortisol is really, really high you’re going to hold on to that belly fat no matter what you do. Got it. So we look at cortisol. We look at thyroid. We look at testosterone. We look at fertility hormones for everyone. Just so we have a baseline. And I tailor everybody’s therapy to what are your goals. What is your body fat percentage. Because we have patients that come in that like you you look fit. You look slender. You might be skinny fat, meaning your percentage of body fat is high for your frame because you don’t have enough muscle. And we lose muscle at about 1% a year as we age. For women, when we’re about ten years into menopause or ten years around menopause, we will lose 2% of our muscle mass.
Speaker4: [00:20:22] Interesting.
Kitty Houston: [00:20:23] And this is why we start going. I’m not changing how I eat. I’m not changing how I exercise. I’m not changing how much alcohol I drink. And yet I’m putting on all of this weight. It’s because we’re losing our muscle mass, so we’re burning less calories. So for someone like you, I would say the first thing I’m going to do is look at your hormones. You could probably benefit from testosterone. And then based on what your individual goals are and what your, um, body fat percentage is, we would come up with a plan specifically for you, and then we recheck body composition every six weeks. You know, some patients want to check it every week. Great. Jump on the machine. Check it every week. It doesn’t cost you anything. Um, and then we look at blood levels after about 12 weeks of therapy just to see are we getting where we want to be? Are we getting where we feel, where we’re happy, where we’re comfortable. Mhm.
Stone Payton: [00:21:14] And is this a terribly expensive prospect or does it just vary from person and case and goals.
Kitty Houston: [00:21:22] Um, if you’re looking at just specifically hormone therapy for men, it’s about $140 a month if you spend.
Stone Payton: [00:21:31] That on bourbon.
Kitty Houston: [00:21:34] Weekly or monthly. So for women, if they are in perimenopause and and need all three hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone, it’s about $200 a month because we’re working with a lot more hormones. Um, um, weight loss therapy is very affordable. Peptide therapy is very affordable, and I have some patients that just come in and get IVs and vitamins just to help give them a boost and help them feel better. And we’ve had a lot of patients come in lately that went on spring break and came back with a virus. I’m like, you need some hydration because you probably drank too much at the beach. So we also do IV hydration and vitamins.
Stone Payton: [00:22:12] Oh, neat. Uh, physical location. Then you have a physical location?
Kitty Houston: [00:22:16] Yes, I have a physical location. We are on highway 92. We are at, um. 920 Woodstock Road, suite 240, in Roswell. So there’s a moe’s there. There’s. It’s like a little plaza right across from LA fitness. Yeah. In Roswell.
Stone Payton: [00:22:34] All right, so what’s the best way for our listeners to have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, or they. I guess they could go to go to the place, but maybe set up kind of a consultation thing or what’s. Yeah.
Kitty Houston: [00:22:46] Yeah. So we do consultations are free, which I know people think I’m crazy. Um, but a consultation is free. We can do a consultation over the phone. We can do a consultation in person. Uh, the best way to schedule a consultation would be to call the office, and somebody will that’s in charge of my schedule will put them on my schedule. And the phone number is (678) 539-9464.
Stone Payton: [00:23:11] Fantastic. And then get the blood work and all that done with you. Or do we got to go out and do it and come to you with the blood work report? Or how does that piece work?
Kitty Houston: [00:23:20] We do the blood work at the clinic. It’s $150 for a very, very comprehensive, um, panel. Yeah. If you were to go to a lab and have these labs done, it would be about $1,800. Ouch. We charge 150. We charge because we get a discount from the lab. So we charge what the lab charges us. And it’s very, very comprehensive. And it’s about a two day turnaround. So if somebody came in today, I could see them on Thursday to go over their results and get them started with therapy.
Stone Payton: [00:23:50] Man, that seems fast.
Kitty Houston: [00:23:52] It’s pretty fast.
Stone Payton: [00:23:53] Yeah. All right. One more time. Those coordinates, let’s make sure our listeners know how to get to you.
Kitty Houston: [00:23:57] Okay. Um, the office is at 920 Woodstock Road, suite 240, in Roswell. We’re right there on highway 92, and the phone number is 678. 5399464.
Stone Payton: [00:24:12] Nobody ever calls themselves right. So they always they it always takes them a little longer to tell you their phone number that you don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.
Speaker4: [00:24:19] It took me forever to memorize my business number. I was like, oh, I just could not. I took forever in the.
Kitty Houston: [00:24:25] Beginning, I kept giving people my cell phone number. I’m like, oh no, no, no, no, no, don’t, don’t, don’t call me on my cell because I don’t answer it after work.
Stone Payton: [00:24:34] Well, thanks for coming in and sharing your insight and your perspective. I look forward to continuing to follow your story, but I also look forward to to to learning about this topic in particular. Uh, but don’t go anywhere. Will you hang out with us while we visit?
Kitty Houston: [00:24:46] Absolutely.
Stone Payton: [00:24:48] And she’s been a great wingman. She’s been nodding and been very encouraging. And we’re going.
Speaker4: [00:24:52] To take the card, actually.
Speaker5: [00:24:54] Uh.
Stone Payton: [00:24:55] There you go. And I’ll send you the invoice for the broker fee. There you go. If she.
Kitty Houston: [00:24:59] Does, is it.
Speaker5: [00:25:00] Bourbon? Yeah.
Stone Payton: [00:25:01] It’s one bottle of decent bourbon. Absolutely. All right, next up on Cherokee Business Radio this morning, please join me in welcoming to the program with covered with Kerry. The lady herself. Kerry Soulier. How are you?
Speaker4: [00:25:15] I’m doing great. How are you today?
Stone Payton: [00:25:17] I’m doing well, but I, I guess I’m in a little bit of a fall. Maybe I need some hormone because Kerry walks in the in the lobby and, uh, and I and I asked her if you if she was Kitty. Well, I didn’t know it was Kitty at the time, so I said, are you cats or. She says, no, Kerry like you, dummy. We just met last week. We just. And I had the most wonderful conversation with Kerry. It was like last week, wasn’t it?
Speaker4: [00:25:39] I think it was like two weeks.
Stone Payton: [00:25:40] Was it okay? Yeah. Well, see, that makes it sound better. And, uh, it just she’s a fascinating person. I can’t wait for you to hear about her, the breadth of her, her life and her life style. But. Oh, by the way, she also runs a very profitable and productive business that genuinely serves people. Tell us about it.
Speaker4: [00:26:00] Definitely I own covered with Kerry. I help people under the age of 65 with health insurance. I serve via marketplace healthcare.gov. I help with private plans. Short terme medical. I sell all types of insurance, but I specialize in helping people that work in the outdoor tourism industry. I work nationwide, but I when I’m in town, when I’m home. Staying in Red Top Mountain. Um. My business. Has been open since April of 2022. And so we just celebrated one year or two years now on the first.
Stone Payton: [00:26:40] So one of the things that I immediately found fascinating about Kerry and her mindset, and you will see as this conversation evolves, how much she genuinely cares about other people and really does want to, uh, want to serve them. My business partner at the Business RadioX network, uh, his name is Lee. He’s, uh, known for saying that niches make riches, and he’s a very big proponent. And we are in our in our work of, you know, finding that that crowd that wants to hear your music and playing really well for them, you know, basically. And I just found it fascinating that that you chose that niche. Speak more to why that niche and some, some things that we may not realize about that group of people. Yeah.
Speaker4: [00:27:23] So the outdoor tourism industry, first of all, what is that? White water rafting guide, zipline guides, hiking guides, farm and ranch is part of outdoor tourism. So overall it’s people that help you when you go on vacation. Have fun. The reason that’s my niche is that’s who I am. I’m a whitewater rafter. I’m a guide. I never intended to find this niche. It just happened overnight one day. I owned a perfectly normal insurance agency that specialized in helping Cherokee County before this. Uh, that was my primary form of business. But I arrived at Guy camp for training at the Ocoee River in Tennessee last year and discovered the entire community did not have health insurance, and they qualified for pretty much most of them $0 plans on marketplace. Due to their income levels, most people in the outdoor tourism industry make a fairly low wage. They’re below or within 150% federal poverty line. Just for example, in the state of Georgia, that would be under $21,000 a year for one person. Um, they travel between multiple states and work two or more seasonal jobs. So a lot of them are just like, oh, I can’t have health insurance because I live here, I live there, I live there, and I’m licensed nationwide between myself and my referral network. So I was able to help no matter where they originally were from or where they were going, so that they’re able to manage their health care throughout their yearly moves. It’s been really fulfilling.
Stone Payton: [00:28:57] I can tell and I can tell and I could tell when we when we sat down and visited a couple of weeks ago how much you really you do find the work rewarding. You do. I know you’ve built your business up to the point where it is financially rewarding, but I get a sense that so much of it for you is what I would characterize as emotional compensation. Or you really that’s a big part of your comp is helping people, isn’t it?
Speaker4: [00:29:22] It is. It’s something about just finding there was this whole group of people that never knew they had access to health insurance and wanted it and wanted my help was just such this fulfilling thing. And then they are my friends, my community. Those are the people I want to help. Um, and just to see that things that were problems in the past aren’t problems so much, and to join in levels of advocacy for them to help improve their living conditions. Most people that work in outdoor tourism, uh, live in company provided housing, and it’s not necessarily in the best of conditions. I lived in it when it when my business found success. I was actually considering closing my business when I found all these people that needed my help because I was like, I think my industry, something’s wrong with it. I’m not being paid correctly and I don’t have any money. And then, like, a tree fell on my car. And, you know, the people I work for just stopped paying me. All of a sudden I was like, maybe my industry’s a scam. Maybe I should quit. And then one day it was the last day of the month. You have to sign up for health insurance via healthcare.gov by the end of the month for it to start on the first. Um, the outfitter that I was living at and working at asked me to help enroll her staff in health insurance and like, she was ready to just pay them more for whatever it costs.
Speaker4: [00:30:50] And I just she brought them one after another after another to me. And it was like 20, 30 people at the end. And every single one except one family of two was $0 and theirs was $0.41. And I just kind of I, I never really discussed like the income if you worked in the industry full time. I worked corporate America before that, I had quit corporate America so I could be a whitewater guide, um, and opened my own business so that I had more time. And I asked the owner and I was like, does everyone who works here make about that? And she’s like, yeah. And I asked, how many companies are there? And she said, 27 here. And I was like, oh, that’s a lot of people. And I just decided to throw a taco and beer party. And I just like, made some fliers on Canva and threw them up on social media and told some people and it was like free tacos, free beer and low cost health insurance. What else do you need? And hit me up? Yeah, I had no money at this time. Like my life was on fire and I was like, well, I have $800, I can buy a beer and tacos, but I hope they come because like, this is my last $800.
Speaker4: [00:31:58] And I was setting up and people were walking in and I was like, oh, at least people showed up. And I was like, I’m almost ready with the food, the beers in the back. And they’re like, well, that’s all great. Well, but we’re here for the insurance. And I was like, oh, that’s strange. Okay, um, give me just a minute. And I had thought real quick to put a QR code up with like my intake form so that people could fill it out while waiting. While they were waiting. And I sat down and the party was planned to be for four hours. And I did not stand up for five hours because I was just enrolling one person after another with health insurance. And at the end of that month, you know. Health insurance agents that work on marketplace. Their busy season is normally November through February 15th, mostly November through December. Um, and this was in the spring, in March, April, because all of them qualified for year round enrollment due to their income levels. You can enroll at any time if you earn below 150% of the federal poverty line. I was like, hmm. So I just made some like marketing fliers that were focused on the industry, and I just kind of started emailing them to people. And then. It just exploded. My phone just never stopped ringing after that. That’s great. Yeah.
Stone Payton: [00:33:24] This is the kind of story that I love because. And look, I have a great deal of respect for the people that do all the due diligence. They go get the SBA loan, they, you know, take out a second mortgage on their house and they properly capitalize their business, or maybe they even decide to franchise because they’re not really, you know, but this this I find so incredibly inspiring and it’s it continues to be wildly successful. Yes.
Speaker4: [00:33:49] It’s it is. I’ve seen the results in my work. It’s not been easy. I, you know, I have a high school education. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was just like, well, I have an insurance license. I’m not bad at selling insurance, and I’m terrible at being a corporate employee. So I’m not wanting to do that. I got Covid and they went to write me up for taking time off, and I was like, no, I don’t think I work here anymore. Um, and I had like $1,400 opened my business and I was like, well, I’m going to make this work. Um, and when it happened, you know, I did not have a car I lived in. I called it my shack. It did not have running water. Um, it just was a cabin in the woods. If someone’s like, yeah, you don’t have anywhere to live, so you can live there if you want. Um, and, you know, I didn’t have internet. Obviously, there were cell phone service, so I had to walk to those things. Uh, and just like I found someone that would rent me their car while they were working because I quit guiding. I was, like, too busy selling insurance now. Sorry. Um, so it just started growing and it just spread because I had all my state licenses at that time.
Speaker4: [00:35:01] I’ve let some go because some states don’t have rivers and outdoor tourism, so they don’t really matter anymore. And I just found other people that can help there. But I just had a cell phone, my laptop, and an Excel spreadsheet, and suddenly I went from having like 50 clients, which was normal for how long. I had been open to having hundreds within a matter of 60 days. And I was like, Holy cow, I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have any money. Because I still wasn’t being paid correctly from my prior company I was contracted with who still doesn’t pay me correctly, whatever. Um, but I was like, how can I quit when there’s such a need? And I can see the obvious scalability of this? Like, I got to figure this out. Like I didn’t have a credit card. Um, I definitely could not get a business loan. Um, you know, that wasn’t going to work. And I was like, well, I just better get to work then. And I just worked for ever. Um, you know, I people in the insurance industry started to take notice of what was going on.
Speaker5: [00:36:04] I bet they.
Speaker4: [00:36:05] Did. Um, and I didn’t even mean to do it. I had always been a moderator and an administrator on Facebook groups for insurance. I was knowledgeable, you know, I have designations now in the industry from working at the carrier. Um, and they started asking me questions and I was like, I am way too busy to talk to you right now. You don’t pay me any money. Like, I gotta work. Good for you. And then somebody might. You should make a course. And I was like, huh? And I was like, no, I’m busy. And then I thought about it. I was like. He should make a course. I had friends suggested I should, like, make something. That’s what I call one to many like you, when you work with someone, it’s 1 to 1, right? Right. And when I sell someone insurance, it’s 1 to 1. But I could one to many this for insurance agents and just make it like a course that they watch and it answers all their questions. And I was like yeah, you know, maybe I’ll make a couple thousand bucks, like, I need a couple thousand bucks, I’ll do some work for that. And I just posted on Facebook because all these insurance agents were bothering me. I was like, if I made a course, would anyone buy it? And they were like, yep. And I was like, all right. Um, so I sat on a friend’s couch. She came and picked me up because I didn’t have a car and I didn’t have an internet. I was like, I need real internet because I need to work right now.
Speaker4: [00:37:23] And I sat in, uh, Atlanta for four days just and I did not sleep. And I just wrote this course, and I started a pre-sale while I was writing it because I was like, okay, I can see this going to like, I’m near the end. And I was like, huh? And I made $25,000 off this course in 48 hours. Wow. And I’m just like sitting there and I’m like, Holy cow, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, I plan to, like, deliver this to, like, you know, ten people. And now I got to deliver it to a couple hundred, and that’s going to take a lot of time. And I was like, I need automation. So I had already had a CRM customer resource management system that had a lot of automation capabilities, and I built it out for my insurance aspect of my business at this point. And I was like, well, I just need to make an automated delivery system for that, so I did. Um, and when it was all said and done, I’m sitting at $75,000 of sales on it since August of 2023 last year. Um, and I don’t talk about it anymore. I don’t want to talk about it. It just sells itself and it delivers itself, and it has answers to all their questions in there. And it’s just a case market analysis of my marketing concepts. Obviously, it’s focused on insurance agencies like how I present it, but it’s more so how I market it on social media and through employer engagement to prospect business to business, even though I sell business to consumer.
Stone Payton: [00:38:57] So you see, Katie, why? We wanted to have her in the studio.
Speaker5: [00:38:59] That’s amazing. That’s fantastic.
Speaker4: [00:39:03] Yeah. So it’s just evolved. And, you know, insurance is my passion. I do everything else so I can sell insurance to my consumers. Um, because I can’t keep up with them. Like the demand I’m booked every week. All week. Um, doesn’t.
Kitty Houston: [00:39:20] Leave you much time for rafting then, does it?
Speaker4: [00:39:21] Oh, I make time. I make the time for rafting. Definitely. Um, so I scale back a little bit in the summer. Um, I’ve learned outsource, I utilize automation. Um, so, like, if somebody walks up to me and they’re like, oh, I need to talk to you about health insurance out in public, I’m like, great, get your phone out. And they’re like, I’m like, type in (304) 507-8039. Just say health insurance. And I have an automation built so that if you’re not an existing client and you say those words, it’s going to intake you, it’s going to book your appointment, it’s going to get your intake form so that when I just have to pick up the phone and call you, um, that’s all I have to do. I don’t have to do the fact finding myself anymore. And that’s just eliminated so much in my life, so that I don’t need as many people to do a large amount of work. Um, I also utilize outsourcing things I’m not the best at. It’s so important. Um, I can build automation, but I would rather just tell someone what I want and be like, here you go and let me know when it’s done. So that’s what I do now. Um, but overall it was crazy. I got invited by the largest outdoor tourism employer in the United States to come live on their property and, and, uh, offer their 700 part time staff health insurance. It was so crazy.
Kitty Houston: [00:40:39] I bet you met a lot of fun people, though. Oh, my.
Speaker4: [00:40:41] Gosh. I have friends all over the country. I live in an RV now. Um, don’t live in a shack selling that course. Got me an RV. Um.
Kitty Houston: [00:40:51] Moving on up.
Speaker4: [00:40:51] So I travel to the country now. Um, which is always been a thing I’ve enjoyed, but I just sell insurance as I go, and I get to go rafting.
Kitty Houston: [00:41:02] That’s fantastic.
Speaker5: [00:41:03] Yeah. Isn’t that marvelous?
Stone Payton: [00:41:05] So what will the summer look like for you? You’ll back off a little bit, you’ll play a little bit more, but you’ll you’ve got you’ve got things set up, so I.
Speaker4: [00:41:13] Do the.
Stone Payton: [00:41:14] Machine keeps running.
Speaker4: [00:41:15] So I will be working in Fayetteville, West Virginia, which is the Whitewater capital of the world. I’ll be working at Ace Adventure Resort as a whitewater guide. I’ll be doing new trips from June through August, um, up there. So I know a lot of people sometimes go on vacation because that’s a state or a national park, the new River Gorge. And then from there it’s festival season. Um, my industry had a insurance crisis where so there’s whitewater races where people go race, and the highest classification is a class five. So a class five is really challenging. And they basically just said no insurance for class five races anymore. The company that previously provided it. And they just started canceling all these races. And I was like, oh no. I was like, I think I can fix that. So like, I figured it out, I found an insurance and like, I started this social media campaign like called Save Class five and like, made it like a movie style, like thing, um, and like, got all the people that formerly organized the races to reach out and like, got them insurance. So I’m going to go to the festivals and I created a waiver system for it.
Speaker5: [00:42:28] Are you hearing this is insane.
Speaker4: [00:42:31] Um, so that they used to just have to fill out pieces of paper and that’s silly. So I made a waiver system so that I can intake all of the insurance information for the users, for the liability policy. And so that I also have the master like billed for it for the industry.
Speaker5: [00:42:49] All right.
Stone Payton: [00:42:50] Before we wrap, I got to ask one more question because I could I could swear we had a little bit of a conversation around it. You do a radio show while you’re out playing too, don’t you?
Speaker4: [00:42:58] So I just do a lot of podcasts in general. I, I didn’t even know I was going to be on your podcast. I came looking to run a podcast. So he’s like, no, I don’t do that. But like, I want to talk to you.
Stone Payton: [00:43:08] I want you on the show.
Speaker4: [00:43:09] I just I find them in the world and I do quite a few of them.
Stone Payton: [00:43:14] So you get on them as a guest a lot.
Speaker4: [00:43:16] I about two a month usually.
Speaker5: [00:43:17] Oh wow, that is fantastic.
Stone Payton: [00:43:21] Oh, what an inspiring story. We’re going to follow your story as well. I hope you’ll check. Maybe you can be like the, the, uh, on the road, uh, health insurance correspondent. Yeah. Have Carrie call in.
Speaker5: [00:43:33] Call me.
Speaker4: [00:43:33] I can stop by and give a visit when I’m in town regrouping. This is where I come back and be like, oh, I need a new round of stuff. Got to get my mail. Say hi to everyone.
Speaker5: [00:43:42] That’s perfect.
Stone Payton: [00:43:44] All right. What’s the best way for listeners to learn? Learn more. A website, a good central hub for you.
Speaker4: [00:43:49] So first, if you’d like to book some time to chat, you can go to covered with Caricom. If you’d like to talk to health insurance, you can always send me a text at (304) 507-8039. And if you just want to follow along, you can type Carrie, Carrie, Grace, grace in Facebook. I’ll be the first one that pops up.
Stone Payton: [00:44:09] What a delight to have you come join us this morning. Thank you so much. All right. My pleasure. Okay, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today. And everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.
Nicole Thomas with Rockin Rollin Resumes
Nicole Thomas has lived in Woodstock, GA all her life. She’s always had a strong passion for writing and graduated from Piedmont University with a Mass Communications Degree.
It was at Piedmont University’s Career Center that Nicole learned how to write her resume, and she’s now able to apply that knowledge to write other people’s resumes.
One of her closest friends, who she calls her 2nd mom, knew that Nicole had helped friends before with writing their resumes and asked if she could help her write hers. Happily, Nicole agreed. Her friend was very impressed and suggested she start her own resume business, which Nicole did.
Her friend used the resume Nicole had written for her to apply for a job, and shortly after she applied, the hiring manager called saying that he was so impressed with the resume that Nicole had written for her that he wanted to hire her.
Nicole’s number one goal in life is to make an impact. She’s grateful that one of the ways she can do that is by writing people’s resumes to increase the chances of them getting hired.
Follow Rockin Rollin Resumes on Facebook.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX Studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is fearless formula with Sharon Cline.
Sharon Cline: [00:00:17] Welcome to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX, where we talk about the ups and downs of the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline, and today in the studio, I’ve got someone who’s pretty special to me, who I think is just a wonderful person I’ve met through Ypow. She is the founder at Rockin Rollin Resumes. Her name is Nicole Thomas. Hi.
Nicole Thomas: [00:00:40] Thank you so much for having me.
Sharon Cline: [00:00:42] You’re welcome. It’s like such a pleasure to spend some time with you, because every time I’ve spent time with you in the past, it’s just been really fun for me and I always leave feeling really good. So I’m excited to have like some one on one time with you again.
Nicole Thomas: [00:00:52] Thank you. I feel the same way about you.
Sharon Cline: [00:00:54] Oh, thanks. All right. We’re. Our work is done. That’s all I needed. I’m just kidding. So what’s cool about you is that you really have a lot of different skill sets that are really marketable and valuable. And one of them, right now that you’ve really focused on a lot, is rock and roll and resumes. Tell me about how you got started in that.
Nicole Thomas: [00:01:15] Thank you. So I had helped friends before with resumes and then somebody very close to me who I call Second mom. Uh, she was like, I’m applying for a job. I would love for you to help me with my resume. And I was like, okay, cool, no problem. I’m very close with her. So I helped her with her resume and she was so impressed. Uh, the hiring manager called her saying, I love your resume. This is very impressive. I want to hire you. This is an amazing resume. And then second mom, uh, news. How passionate, how passionate I am about, uh, entrepreneurship. So she suggested that I start a business doing resume writing, and so I’ve done that.
Sharon Cline: [00:01:54] So what was special about the resume that you made? What do you think made it stand out?
Nicole Thomas: [00:01:58] I highlighted her skills. I tailored it to the specific job position, since she had the specific job position in front of her, highlighted her skills, accomplishments, listed everything in a neat, organized, uh, fashion.
Sharon Cline: [00:02:12] It’s interesting because I think I’ve heard that if you submit your resume into like LinkedIn or something automatic like that, that it will not be, um, highlighted or flagged if it doesn’t have certain words that are exactly what the client is looking for in terms of hiring. Is that right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:02:28] I know with resumes there’s not all the time, but there’s sometimes an ATS system called an applicant tracking system. Um, and it’ll look for certain words. So I can’t guarantee that clients it’ll pass through the ATS system. But what I do is I use ZipRecruiter and so zip. Um, and the reason why I can’t guarantee that it’ll when one of the reasons why I can’t guarantee that it’ll pass through an ATS system is because I don’t make, uh, resumes tailored towards, uh, specific job descriptions. So, um, one of the ways that I help increase the chances, though, of it being passed through an ATS system is by ZipRecruiter has an. Says the top skills listed by employers. And they say this for different industries. And so I will look up the top skills for the job, uh, field that my client is wanting to get into. And I will use those, uh, job, uh, skills. Yeah, those.
Sharon Cline: [00:03:30] Are descriptive words, skills.
Nicole Thomas: [00:03:32] Right. To increase the chances of it getting, um, through an ATS system if the ATS system were to have those words. So that’s a very helpful resource. I highly recommend ZipRecruiter.
Sharon Cline: [00:03:43] It’s interesting. It’s not something that I thought about in terms of, um, trying to get myself to stand out is to actually use what the job description is that I’m applying for and really tailor and highlight some of the items that are more useful to that job description, as opposed to saying, oh, yeah, you know, I used to do, you know, wait tables or whatever it is. If that doesn’t really apply, it’s not going to seem like I would be a good applicant. It would automatically kind of pass me by. Right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:04:08] You’re going to want to include the most relevant experience and title it as relevant experience. So for example, with my resume, I have marketing experience in a section with all my marketing experience to help increase the chances of it going through an ATS system. And even if an ATS system doesn’t look at it just to an employer’s, eyes are like, oh wow, she has a lot of marketing experience, right?
Sharon Cline: [00:04:30] Right. That totally makes sense when I think about it. Um, so it’s really come a long way since I’ve worked on my resume. I think in terms of the computer metrics and analytics that I guess forward you through. So I don’t really know. I mean, I’m thinking what it must be like for anyone who’s like 2021 just graduating school. I don’t know how they would be able to compete so well. When you don’t, if you don’t have a really good understanding of how that all works. So that’s what you do, right? You give people that explanation.
Nicole Thomas: [00:05:03] I find people’s it’s important to include accomplishments. So I include their accomplishments. I include their job skills. And then I also include why they did the specific position. So for example, if they marketed I would say marketing, um, if they have analytics, user quantifiable achievements, um, to raise brand awareness. So what they did, why they did it, that stands out a lot.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:28] I bet a lot of people don’t think that deeply about resumes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:05:31] Probably not.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:31] But it’s important, clearly. Right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:05:33] It is if you want to get hired. Yes.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:36] What software do you use to help get the resumes to look really nice? I’ve used word in the past and it always would just populate in a really weird way. If I added anything different, it would just kind of change because you want it to look esthetically pleasing. It would not work for me. So I’m wondering what you what you’ve had success with.
Nicole Thomas: [00:05:54] So I use I actually do use word. Oh, you must.
Sharon Cline: [00:05:56] Be better at it than me, that’s for sure.
Nicole Thomas: [00:05:58] But I convert it to a PDF file and so that helps contain maintain its consistent format. I actually learned how to resume write my own resume in college. So I use that format that I learned in college and I use Microsoft Word, but I trans um, I.
Speaker3: [00:06:17] Forget the export it. Export it? Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:06:20] Export it as a PDF file.
Sharon Cline: [00:06:22] What? I never thought to do that. So that if it when it gets brought up on someone else’s computer, it won’t look all strange and wild and wacky. Yes, to the schools. Thank you. So I know that you’ve been promoting yourself some on on Facebook, do you how how successful has it been with you? I mean, have you had to feel like you have to do any kind of extra advertising, or is Facebook just most people use Facebook for advertising? Has Facebook just been kind of the way that you’ve been able to get business networking?
Nicole Thomas: [00:06:50] Actually a lot of networking.
Speaker3: [00:06:52] In person, networking.
Nicole Thomas: [00:06:53] And Facebook. I’m part of a group called Cherokee Connect. A lot of people from Cherokee County are part of that group. And so people will ask, hey, I need a help with a resume written. And then the people I network with are so sweet. They refer me. So Cherokee Connect and word of mouth goes a long way. So Facebook and word of mouth, networking and networking is free. A lot of them are. So that’s great.
Sharon Cline: [00:07:15] I was thinking about the fact that, you know, people discount how important relationships are, um, in, in terms of, um, getting one on one business. In other words, there are a lot of people that will use advertising like on Facebook, but it’s impersonal. But when you know someone and you’ve got that history behind it, that relationship, it really does tend to make you think, oh, I know that person, Nicole, you know. Oh, I remember we had such a great conversation. You’re not just a name, you’re an actual person. Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:07:44] And it counts so much more. I feel like when somebody else refers you versus just saying my own things. Great. Of course your own things. Great. But when somebody else refers you, then that goes a long way too.
Sharon Cline: [00:07:54] It feels. Yeah. It feels more secure or something. So what’s your favorite part about making someone’s resume look just right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:08:02] I think the rewarding, um, one of my biggest goals in life is to make an impact. Um, so I want to do that, uh, by writing people’s resumes. Like when second mom she got hired or the calling that sorry when she got hired. Um, that felt so rewarding. And especially because the, um, hiring manager said, I really love your resume. I’m like, I want that to happen to everybody. Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:30] Who wouldn’t? Right. You must have felt so proud like that was because of you, you know? Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:08:34] Thank you. It felt really good. We were very happy.
Sharon Cline: [00:08:37] I think it’s cool, too, that you learned how to do this in college. But not all colleges focus on that, right?
Speaker3: [00:08:43] Right.
Nicole Thomas: [00:08:43] I mean, I don’t know, I can’t really speak for other colleges. I was very lucky. I went to a private school so they can give students more attention, which is great, and more support. Uh, I’m guessing maybe than a public school. So I went to the learning center and they were able to help me with my resume.
Sharon Cline: [00:09:01] Well, look how valuable that is. I mean, now it’s translated into a business. What were the challenges of starting this business? Did you have any.
Nicole Thomas: [00:09:09] Um, challenging? Maybe getting clients. I mean, figuring out, uh, how to make it more marketable because I, uh, no longer am tailoring it towards specific positions because it was a lot of work finding positions and then trying to tailor it to that. So still trying to make it where it is presentable. But I feel like I did that pretty well by using ZipRecruiter, top skills listed by employers, because it increases the chances. And like I said, even if there’s not an ATS system, I know what employers are looking for. So I would say that it’s interesting.
Sharon Cline: [00:09:44] I it’s like I never I don’t know why my brain just goes right to LinkedIn. But but ZipRecruiter is like it’s like the unsung hero in my brain. I feel sad that I didn’t even know. So that makes me think if I ever do want to kind of progress in my career, that’s where I would go to do the exact same thing. Yes, but I’d also be asking you for help because.
Speaker3: [00:10:02] I clearly don’t know what I’m doing. I would love to help you.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:05] Oh, you’re the sweetest. You also had previously been the, uh, the community liaison for Piedmont Injury Law, and that is Ken Crossen.
Speaker3: [00:10:14] In his group. Yeah. They’re great. Yes.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:16] They’re wonderful. So what was it like to be working with him as well?
Speaker3: [00:10:19] Uh, it.
Nicole Thomas: [00:10:19] Was so much fun. I miss it. Uh, so I would network, uh, for, uh, Piedmont Injury Law, and I would constantly refer business owners, and it felt so rewarding. And I would meet with people I love people, um, so I would meet with people, um, and I would ask them, so who would you like to be referred to? And then I would also manage their Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn back when I worked with them. Um, and I would do some email marketing to promote events that they were having. It was so much fun.
Sharon Cline: [00:10:48] These are all skills that you use now, I’m sure you know things that you did very well then. So what do you do now with with rock and roll and resumes? How do you use social media this way to help promote your business?
Speaker3: [00:10:59] So I’ve made.
Nicole Thomas: [00:11:00] Some Instagram Reels. I want to get back on that. Um, I’m have several things I do during the day so it can get a little busy, but I, uh, I’ve created Instagram Reels before I’m in the process of creating a website. Uh, Randy with, uh, studio Lensa uh, took my photos and they turned out they’re.
Speaker3: [00:11:20] Beautiful, I saw them, I appreciate it.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:24] Yeah. So you reached out to him and said, hey, do you have a minute?
Speaker3: [00:11:26] Get some photos posted on.
Nicole Thomas: [00:11:28] My Facebook saying, uh, if anyone was a photographer and he was happy to help. And so that was great. He took amazing photos. So I’m in the process of creating a website right now. It’s almost done. Not yet, but um, the website is almost done, so I’ll have that. I post on Facebook, post on Instagram. If I see somebody on Cherokee Connect I’m posting on there. That’s the main thing. I feel like.
Speaker3: [00:11:47] Really, that’s.
Sharon Cline: [00:11:48] That’s also how I get a lot of guests to come on the show, especially authors, you know, um, it’s really handy in order to kind of pare down this. What is it like? 60,000 people are part of Cherokee Connect. I mean, you’re going to find someone that needs something on there like that could benefit from your business, I imagine.
Speaker3: [00:12:02] Thank you.
Nicole Thomas: [00:12:03] I appreciate.
Speaker3: [00:12:04] It. Yeah, yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:12:05] All right. So, um, how challenging is it for you to create a website for yourself as well? Like, what are the steps that you’ve taken?
Nicole Thomas: [00:12:13] It’s actually pretty easy. So I learned a lot of great skills in college. And one of them was a website design class. I have a mass communications degree, um, in a social media marketing certificate. I learned, uh, the website though, in my, uh, in college at Piedmont University, it was called Piedmont College back when I went. But I, um, uh, learned, uh, website design there, so it was pretty easy. So, um, I used I normally use Wix, but for this one I use Squarespace, and it was pretty easy uploading everything in there. I highly recommend, uh, Squarespace.
Speaker3: [00:12:47] I use that.
Sharon Cline: [00:12:47] For my my website too. Yeah. I’m thankfully and it’s so nice because you can really deal with everything you need to on your phone. Like if I have something that I just want to change on the website, I don’t have to go to a regular computer. I can do it on the fly. It’s kind of nice.
Speaker3: [00:12:59] I mean.
Sharon Cline: [00:12:59] Certainly when you’re not, this isn’t your everyday thing to do is to create a website. There are so many great resources, right, that can kind of help you to make the basics. It doesn’t have to be the most special stellar.
Speaker3: [00:13:12] Website.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:12] It just needs to be where people can see who you are.
Speaker3: [00:13:15] Yes, and get to you.
Nicole Thomas: [00:13:16] I would suggest stick with your brand colors, have appealing photos, have your logo, have your contact information, have all that marketable information that says what you are, and then you’re pretty much good to go.
Sharon Cline: [00:13:26] Who’s your ideal client then?
Nicole Thomas: [00:13:28] My ideal client. I love doing students resumes and I actually offer a discount for students. Um, I offer different discounts regarding professions, but they get the most discount. Um, I love doing students. It’s so rewarding. And it’s a lot easier, um, because they don’t have all this experience built up yet. But I want to help them, you know, hopefully get their first job. So, um, students, I love doing students. Um, and then other ones, uh, teachers hospitality. Um, those have been good too. And then I have a list of, uh, packages that I’d love to share with anybody that might be interested in it, just depending on what their profession is, because some resumes are harder to do than others, for sure.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:10] And I like that point that you. Make that the older I am, the more experience I have in the background to try to like, navigate around that and decide what’s really relevant and what’s not. You know, that must be challenging new students or, you know, people who are just new to the workspace, right? It’s like, oh, shiny, brand new.
Speaker3: [00:14:27] Let’s make you.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:28] Look the best you can. We don’t have, you know, have to make it too complicated.
Speaker3: [00:14:31] Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:14:32] And their accomplishments can still stand out if they’ve received any awards or if they’ve had jobs during college or internships or classes. So their accomplishments can still stand out, but they are a lot easier to do.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:44] Or how do you get the students? Are you are still going through Cherokee Connect or do you go to like some of the universities? How do you market to them?
Nicole Thomas: [00:14:51] I really want to call up some of the universities. I haven’t done that yet, but I really want to call the universities up.
Sharon Cline: [00:14:57] They’re not that far like there are enough around here, right?
Speaker3: [00:14:59] Right.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:00] So amazing that you don’t have to go too far.
Nicole Thomas: [00:15:02] Yes, I actually put a, um, flier in, uh, Chattahoochee Tech.
Speaker3: [00:15:07] That was smart.
Nicole Thomas: [00:15:07] And I’d love to put more fliers and more colleges.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:10] Heck, yeah. This is a valuable skill.
Speaker3: [00:15:12] Thank you, I appreciate it.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:13] So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your job prospects, because I’ve seen on Facebook that you have been looking for full time work for a little bit, but also you did something so unique that local news stations here, uh, had you on their station and interviewed you. Um, can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker3: [00:15:32] Yeah.
Nicole Thomas: [00:15:32] Thank you. It was so nice. The community is so important and the kind of people really care. Um, uh, so that was great being on the news. Uh, somebody I was passing out resumes on the corner of, uh, want to say exit eight, maybe. Sorry, I.
Speaker3: [00:15:51] Forgot that, like, Town.
Sharon Cline: [00:15:52] Lake Parkway. Yeah.
Speaker3: [00:15:53] And 575. Yes. Yeah.
Nicole Thomas: [00:15:55] Uh, so I was passing out resumes. Somebody picked up a resume, and they, uh, shared it with somebody. And then, uh, today on Cherokee Connect. And then a lot of got way more attention than I thought it.
Speaker3: [00:16:10] Was going to. I was like, oh, wow.
Nicole Thomas: [00:16:12] So many people care.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:13] You had a sign as well, didn’t you?
Speaker3: [00:16:14] What did your sign say?
Nicole Thomas: [00:16:16] Um, it said, all right. It was close to Halloween. What’s scarier than Halloween? Being almost homeless. I was so afraid of being homeless. I would ask my best friend every day. I was like, hey, if I end up in a Walmart parking lot, will you come visit me?
Speaker3: [00:16:30] And he was so encouraging. He’s like.
Nicole Thomas: [00:16:32] That’s not going to happen. You got this, you got this. So encouraging.
Speaker3: [00:16:35] But yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:36] So then what was it like for them to contact you to say, wow, you know, look at the lengths that you’re going through to get a job. What was that like?
Nicole Thomas: [00:16:42] I was pleasantly surprised. And back in my mind I was like, I really hope this is real. I hope this is good. And thankfully it was. They were so nice. Um, so that was really great.
Speaker3: [00:16:51] To have you.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:52] Gotten some good feedback then from that um, story, I want to say, was it 11 alive?
Speaker3: [00:16:56] Yes, it was 11 alive. That was great.
Sharon Cline: [00:16:58] Yeah. Um, and it’s funny because it’s like here you are doing everything that you can going way beyond the extra mile. And, and you’re still able to make your company the way you want it to, but you’re still looking for that, that one right job for you right now.
Nicole Thomas: [00:17:12] Yeah, I really am. I’m really needing full time work, preferably with benefits.
Speaker3: [00:17:17] Right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:17:18] Yeah. Like I’m 26, so I’m no longer on my parents insurance.
Speaker3: [00:17:22] So yeah.
Nicole Thomas: [00:17:22] Preferably with benefits. I would prefer a marketing job, but if it right if the right opportunity opens up that’s not within marketing, I would be more than happy to explore that.
Sharon Cline: [00:17:32] Well, so do you want to take a minute to explain some of the skills that you feel like are just yours, that you feel like you could offer any company?
Nicole Thomas: [00:17:39] Thank you. So I’m really love interacting with people, and I’ve been told that I’m good with interacting with people. Yes, I have strong interpersonal skills. I genuinely want to help people. And I also love the, uh, companies that are involved in the community and really care like I want to work for. And I’ve been so blessed to work for employers that genuinely care about people. And I want to continue to be able to do that. Um, so, uh, companies that are like, involved with the community would be great. Um, and then I have strong social media management skills. I got my certificate in October 2023, uh, from KSU. Nice.
Speaker3: [00:18:18] Thank you, I appreciate it.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:19] Thank you.
Speaker3: [00:18:20] That’s where I went to school. Oh that’s.
Nicole Thomas: [00:18:21] Awesome. What did you get your degree in?
Sharon Cline: [00:18:23] It’s in communication. Media studies. Just like you. Awesome. I know we’re like soul sisters.
Speaker3: [00:18:27] I love.
Sharon Cline: [00:18:28] It. Yeah. So I mean, you have so many of these great basic skills that are marketable right now. In particular, like you’ve got digital marketing down and you clearly are a go getter and you clearly have, um, um, bravery. And that seems like to stand out. It feels like you, you really do have to do something a little extra out there.
Speaker3: [00:18:48] Thank you.
Nicole Thomas: [00:18:49] I try, um, I also have writing skills, and I’ve used Canva a ton. I, uh, I’m almost. I want to make some tweaks, but I’m almost done with, um, my portfolio website. I plan to share that with people soon. Um, I’ve passed out some business cards, but there’s, like, minor tweaks I want to make to my website first. Um, and I have a portfolio website, so I’m really out there. Wanting to be as proactive as possible. I think that’s.
Speaker3: [00:19:13] Important.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:14] Oh my gosh, you are. You’re doing so much. It’s funny. It’s like you want people to take steps and be brave and like, use their time wisely. And I have to say, you do you do.
Speaker3: [00:19:23] All those things.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:24] Thank you know and this is another step to it. Like I’m so happy to have you on the show to be able to give you just a minute to to get people to know who you are. It’s not just Nicole who does resumes, but here’s what motivates me. You know, I love that you’re a people person when you’re in communication and you you know, you’re in marketing and you are really trying to get people to understand a message, you’ve got to really be a people person.
Speaker3: [00:19:47] Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:49] No. It’s important. These are valuable skills. Not everybody who’s super smart out there has that kind of basic skill.
Speaker3: [00:19:56] So and I genuinely.
Nicole Thomas: [00:19:57] Enjoy interacting with people.
Sharon Cline: [00:19:59] And I like to that. You want to give back. You want to be part of a community or a business that really cares about the their, their population. And that’s I know you’ve done some work with limited, limitless disabilities, right?
Speaker3: [00:20:11] No, I worked with a circle of friends.
Nicole Thomas: [00:20:14] Volunteer work with circle of.
Speaker3: [00:20:15] Circle of friends. That’s right. How did that go?
Nicole Thomas: [00:20:17] So a circle of friends. That went well, I, uh, recently, after college, I volunteered, uh, with their social media, with their Instagram, with their Facebook, with their, um, TikTok accounts. And then I would, uh, some of those were like interviewing the employees. Some of them were doing pictures of event of an event they had, especially their kickball. I loved their kickball event. Um, and, um, it was a lot of fun. And then I also wrote a blog post, why I Love Volunteering or Circle of Friends and encourage other people to volunteer.
Speaker3: [00:20:49] That’s awesome, because I think a lot.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:51] Of people don’t know how satisfying that can be if they don’t really.
Speaker3: [00:20:54] Try it.
Nicole Thomas: [00:20:55] Yes, it’s great. I miss volunteering with them. I might try that again sometime soon.
Speaker3: [00:20:59] Yeah.
Sharon Cline: [00:20:59] Heck yeah. Or with the company that’s going to hire you because they do things that will give back.
Speaker3: [00:21:03] Yes. Preferably both.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:05] So how will it be when you are hired with your position and obviously looking for full time and benefits? How how challenging will it be for you to keep rock and roll and resumes going?
Nicole Thomas: [00:21:15] Mean, I’m the type of person where I don’t know until I’m in that situation, but I think I’ll be able to handle it. I have some part time jobs right now. I’m working, uh, some part time jobs right now. So I am working.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:28] Yeah. You are doing.
Nicole Thomas: [00:21:29] It. Yeah. So I think I’ll be able to manage it. I wouldn’t want to take on more than maybe 2 or 3 clients at a time, just because I want to provide the best service I possibly can to the clients I’m doing. But, um, I also like the resume business because I can monitor how many clients I can take on.
Speaker3: [00:21:47] Oh, that’s so smart.
Sharon Cline: [00:21:48] It’s great that you can do these kinds of things. Like at home, you don’t have to actually be in a place.
Nicole Thomas: [00:21:52] Yes, I love that. That makes it so much easier. Yeah. Um, so I was like, I can still do this and I can still work full time. I can get everything I want in life. I can, you can.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:02] That’s the American.
Speaker3: [00:22:03] Dream. Thank you, I appreciate it.
Sharon Cline: [00:22:05] What do you think people don’t know about what it’s like to be you?
Nicole Thomas: [00:22:09] Um. I don’t know. That’s a great question.
Speaker3: [00:22:14] Can you repeat that again?
Sharon Cline: [00:22:15] What do you think? People don’t know what it’s like to be you. Like, what do you think that people would really benefit from knowing something about you? Something that surprising? Because I think I think it’s easy for all of us to just pass people by every day and not really take a minute like this is one of the best things about this show, is that I get to spend some time one on one with people that I normally wouldn’t because I’m so busy. This is my dedicated chit chat and I feel like I. I get to have like this exchange of who you are, who I am, and, um, yeah. So I feel like I know you better than I would know someone else that I, you know, I’m just talking to at Ypo. But it’s like having this time together is great. So if you if you could tell everyone something about you that you feel like maybe would be helping you in the job world, what do you think that they need to know?
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:00] I’m people driven and I’m value driven. Um, so I want to make an impact, and I hope that shows through my work that I provide for people.
Speaker3: [00:23:09] Heck yeah, I.
Sharon Cline: [00:23:10] Love that value.
Speaker3: [00:23:11] Driven. Thank you.
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:11] I appreciate.
Speaker3: [00:23:12] It. That’s a really good word. Look at you.
Sharon Cline: [00:23:14] I’m like trying to download some of these terms so that I could use them if I ever need to. You know, that’s great. And I also feel like that’s really undervalued a lot to the fact that people really care about what they’re doing. It’s not just the money, but it’s actually really investing your life energy into something that you believe in.
Speaker3: [00:23:32] Right?
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:32] My perfect job would be something where it’s both where it pays well and also has great values. And there are several companies out there that have values. I’m like, I love this. That’s great.
Sharon Cline: [00:23:42] Yeah, we just need that. We just need to get that going. Yeah. This is part of it though.
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:46] Yes. Yes definitely definitely.
Sharon Cline: [00:23:48] Do you have any mentors or people that you kind of look to to kind of help guide you if you have some questions?
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:54] I have friends, I have very close friends, and I also have a second mom.
Speaker3: [00:23:58] Uh, second mom.
Nicole Thomas: [00:23:59] Yes, I love her. She just started calling me daughter one day and I was like, I’ll just call her second mom. This is great. Um, and so, uh, my friends mean the world to me. Uh, second mom means the world to me. Uh, my family means a lot to me. Uh, so those are the people that I tend to go to.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:16] Is there anything that’s been really surprising as you’ve gotten started with rock and roll and resumes? Is there something where you’re like, wow, I wish I had known that before I got started?
Speaker3: [00:24:25] Um. I don’t know.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:29] I threw I threw a curveball.
Speaker3: [00:24:31] At you. I think I.
Nicole Thomas: [00:24:32] Was excited about how many people actually wanted resumes, because I didn’t know if they were just if it was something that would work out or not. Because some people can just do resumes by themselves or have a parent help them. And that’s great for the people that have that resource. But then there’s other people where it’s like, I really want to improve my resume even more. So I guess I was happily surprised that so many because, like, I think I do offer something valuable, but I was so happy that people needed it.
Speaker3: [00:24:56] Do you.
Sharon Cline: [00:24:56] Still have physical resumes, like print them out and send them anywhere, or is it everything really digital.
Speaker3: [00:25:01] Right now?
Nicole Thomas: [00:25:02] Everything’s really digital right now. I mean, I would suggest to somebody who might want to be somewhere to reach out to that employer directly. Um, that helps a lot. Um, or the hiring manager directly. That can help a lot. Or to even go into, like, these places and be like, hi, I’m Nicole, and here’s my resume and hand out a paper version. I don’t give my clients a paper version. I’m hoping that they can print it out themselves. And a lot of things are digital, but that can help a lot. I’ve heard that it can help to go into a place in person. I was.
Sharon Cline: [00:25:32] Thinking that too, because you’re not just a name, you’re actually putting a face and energy and name together.
Speaker3: [00:25:37] Right?
Sharon Cline: [00:25:37] But I always wondered, there’s such a fine line between being aggressive or I don’t know, I don’t know what the word is, but like, not not being too much, you know, when you’re doing. Because I always thought you’ve got to stand out a little bit, but not too much. So I love the idea of just being able to go and say, here’s my resume. I just want to say hello and name and face.
Nicole Thomas: [00:25:59] And that’s something, you know, I’ve had to learn over time because, like, I’m trying to get a job myself, okay? So be driven, not desperate.
Speaker3: [00:26:04] Oh, that’s the energy.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:05] That’s what I’m thinking. It’s not aggressive, but it’s desperate.
Speaker3: [00:26:08] Like hire me, right? Right.
Nicole Thomas: [00:26:09] And I’ve had to learn that over time. Okay? Like I’m confident in who I am now. I have these skills. Sometimes people take longer, uh, to respond and nothing against that. But just keeping that in mind of, okay, like, sometimes people just take longer to respond. And it’s important to keep that in mind and try not to freak out.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:27] What do you think your fearless formula is? Because, you know, fear stops a lot of people from doing a lot of things. So I’m wondering how you are so brave.
Nicole Thomas: [00:26:35] Thank you. I mean, I get anxiety, I mean, a lot of people do, but, um, I think I’m just really driven and I’m passionate about what I’m doing, and I’m so lucky to be surrounded by so many amazing people that want me to succeed. And that helps a lot.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:48] Oh, so the right people around you?
Speaker3: [00:26:50] Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:26:50] And there are so many wonderful people, uh, who I’m friends with and in the community, and there’s just so many great people out there. And that always, like, is very heartwarming.
Sharon Cline: [00:26:59] Yeah, it gives you courage, right?
Speaker3: [00:27:01] Yes, definitely.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:01] People people are looking out for you, which is so sweet. Like you said on on Facebook, you know, someone hears that there’s something that you could provide for them.
Speaker3: [00:27:09] They’re like Nicole Thomas.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:10] They tag you.
Speaker3: [00:27:10] In it.
Nicole Thomas: [00:27:11] Yes, I love it.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:12] Well, you certainly are doing all the things that you know to do. And this is one other step. So I just I’m so honored that you actually, you know, came on the show and explained kind of what motivates you and maybe gives somebody a little bit of a, of an insight into what makes you, you and how valuable you can be to a company. I can’t imagine any company. They’d be so lucky to have you.
Speaker3: [00:27:32] Thank you. I really.
Nicole Thomas: [00:27:33] Appreciate it.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:34] Where can people get in touch with you? If they’re interested in.
Speaker3: [00:27:36] That, people can.
Nicole Thomas: [00:27:37] Email me. Rock and roll and resumes at Outlook.com.
Speaker3: [00:27:40] Excellent. And Facebook. Facebook? Yes.
Nicole Thomas: [00:27:42] And Facebook to Facebook, too. I’ve had a client reach out to me on my, uh, rock and roll and resume Facebook. And then I’ve had people reach out to me on my personal Facebook. So both.
Speaker3: [00:27:52] Both both.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:52] Work. Oh that’s.
Speaker3: [00:27:53] Awesome.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:54] Well, I can’t thank you enough.
Speaker3: [00:27:55] This has been such.
Sharon Cline: [00:27:56] A pleasure for me, and you have to keep me updated on how things are going. And I would love to have you back. And we can even talk about how things have progressed as time’s gone on with your company.
Speaker3: [00:28:04] So thank you.
Nicole Thomas: [00:28:05] That’s really sweet. That’d be so much fun.
Speaker3: [00:28:07] Yay!
Sharon Cline: [00:28:07] All right, Nicole Thomas with rock and roll and resumes. And thank you all for listening to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX. And again, this is Sharon Cline reminding you with knowledge and understanding we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.
ACG: Connecting Middle Market Companies for Unprecedented Growth
In this episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio, Rachel Simon and Gloria Kantor delve into the Association for Corporate Growth’s efforts to stimulate middle market growth. Gloria, VP of Operations for ACG in Atlanta and the Southeast, discusses how ACG connects companies with revenues of $15 million to $1 billion with essential advisory services and facilitates networking to drive business expansion. The episode covers ACG’s role in matchmaking for M&A consulting, the significance of social events for networking, and how ACG’s programming addresses executive challenges. Additionally, Gloria highlights the Georgia Fast 40 awards, which honor the state’s rapidly growing companies, and shares observations on office return trends and emerging industry growth. 
Gloria Kantor is the Vice President of Operations for ACG Atlanta and the Southeast Region. She has been with ACG since October of 2015. Before her role at ACG, Gloria was with Prime Wine and Spirits, a middle-market wholesaler of wine and spirits in Georgia.
Gloria provided administrative and strategic leadership as well as the support of Prime’s operations. Previously she has worked in radio and event promotions. Ms. Kantor is involved with Second Helpings, Kate’s Club, the Alliance Theater Advisory Board, and Goucher College.
A native of Atlanta, she has a degree in Management and Communications from Goucher in Baltimore, Maryland.
Connect with Gloria on LinkedIn and follow ACG Atlanta on Facebook.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for Sandy Springs Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here with Rachel Simon. This episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio is brought to you by Connect the Dots Digital. When you’re ready to leverage LinkedIn to meet your business goals, go to Connect the Dots dot digital. Rachel, great show today. How are how are things in your world?
Rachel Simon: [00:00:44] It’s eclipse day.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Eclipse day. So you got big plans?
Rachel Simon: [00:00:48] I’m going to sit in my driveway and see what happens.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] Don’t look.
Rachel Simon: [00:00:52] Don’t look at it. Uh, now we have a great show today. Very excited to have our guest, Gloria Kantor, who is the VP of operations for Atlanta and the southeast region of the Association for Corporate Growth. Super cool, amazing organization doing incredible things here in the southeast. So Gloria, welcome.
Gloria Kantor: [00:01:12] Thank you guys for having me. Appreciate it.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:15] So, uh, Gloria, tell us a little bit about ACG for folks who don’t know.
Gloria Kantor: [00:01:19] Yeah, ACG actually has a brief four word mission of driving middle market growth. We are locally about a 600 member organization, 15,000 members throughout a 59 chapter uh association headquartered in Chicago. Um, locally, you know, we we, our members, allow us to facilitate great networking and content events for them to help drive business growth.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:47] And then how do you define middle markets for folks, you know, just so they can get.
Gloria Kantor: [00:01:51] Exactly. Yeah. Locally we define middle market as $15 million in revenue. And that’s that’s gross revenue to a billion in revenue. Uh, National Center for Middle Market, uh, defines it as 10 million to 1 billion. Atlanta’s business community and the great venture work that is done here through through some other organizations, we play nice together and in our sandbox of of growth equity, but really focus more on the private equity versus series A and uh, venture funding.
Rachel Simon: [00:02:19] So what are the kinds of companies that you tend to work with that are members of the organization?
Gloria Kantor: [00:02:24] The membership base is is, you know, really split up amongst corporate members. We do the Georgia Fast 40 awards, which I’m sure we’ll talk about a little bit later. Um, which for us is really great. It gives us connectivity into those, really the growing industries here in Atlanta and and in Georgia, you do have to be headquartered in Georgia. Um, but the rest of our members are a make up of advisory services, roles of accounting, legal consulting, um, as well as our private equity friends and investment bankers, uh, as well, and all of those kind of consulting roles that touch a merger or acquisition.
Rachel Simon: [00:03:00] So you’re helping to facilitate relationships between the company and then those.
Gloria Kantor: [00:03:05] We are the matchmaker. Yeah. The matchmaker of the of the of the group. So we, we put about 25 events on a year, uh, locally and throughout the country based, you know, we typically are not industry specific. Um, we pretty much play in a generalist space. But ACG is a is a global organization. We’ll do some, um, more specific content events for specific markets.
Rachel Simon: [00:03:33] Yeah. I was spending a little time just looking at the kinds of events that you’re putting together, and it’s sort of a mix of, you know, educational but also fun. Like you’re going to the Braves game. Exactly.
Gloria Kantor: [00:03:44] We have a we have a Braves game, uh, tomorrow actually, hopefully. And then actually our newest kind of social event, we’re doing a putting social on Thursday. Um, hopefully the weather holds out for us, but for the first day of the masters, for folks that can’t go to Augusta. Um, and then, you know, kind of our next big content event is May 7th. We have we will be announcing our Georgia Fast 40 honorees that evening, but also have a really great fireside chat with Yum Arnold of Leapfrog Services, who also happens to be president of the board of the Federal Reserve, and Paula Takac. I’m hoping I pronounce her name right. Um, who’s the chief economist with the Federal Reserve Bank? Uh, for our members and guests as well.
Rachel Simon: [00:04:24] So where do you see? Because like that mix of social but also, um, like educational value content speak to the value of the social components of it. Like how does that help facilitate the mission?
Gloria Kantor: [00:04:36] The social component really is to, to drive. Our mission is that that relationship business, you know, we are all about relationships and you fostering and building your network, um, is an emerging leader if you’re new to the or just in general, new to the industry of, of mergers and acquisitions, um, you know, 75% of our members do business with one another throughout the, throughout their membership life. Um, so it’s it’s are you going to get a deal on the first day? Probably not. But you build those relationships going forward, uh, for for your business growth and, and your client growth.
Rachel Simon: [00:05:12] That’s that’s amazing statistic 7,575%.
Gloria Kantor: [00:05:15] Right? I mean, and it’s you know, we do keep our our dues are a little bit higher, but it’s it’s the right people I think that you want to meet in this city in the country that are, you know, in the mergers and acquisitions space. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:05:27] As my business coach would say, they meet the red velvet rope policy.
Gloria Kantor: [00:05:31] Exactly.
Rachel Simon: [00:05:33] Um, yeah.
Gloria Kantor: [00:05:34] So using that one, that’s that’s a good one. That’s a good one. Yeah. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:05:37] She’s always like, do your clients, does this person meet your red velvet rope policy because. Not everybody know.
Gloria Kantor: [00:05:42] That’s a really good. And those folks will, you know, will, you know anybody that wants to come check us out and see an event? We will. Absolutely. But if you are, if you’re the one that does not necessarily meet the Red velvet group, you know, they’ll weed themselves out pretty quickly. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:05:56] So you’ve been with, um, ACG for almost a decade. What are some of the trends that you’ve seen over the last ten years?
Gloria Kantor: [00:06:06] You know, it’s it’s been now that I’ve been been with ACG and a decade seems like a really long time.
Rachel Simon: [00:06:13] Um.
Gloria Kantor: [00:06:13] Sorry to make you. Thanks. Um, I mean, it’s it’s to be, you know, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. Um, but what I love about it and the trends that I’ve seen, it’s interesting. From the networking space. Uh, we got to a really a point, and I don’t know if it was pre-COVID. Covid’s kind of that draw line for me. Um, we’re now just kind of getting out of. Folks are starting to realize the importance of building a network. We had emerging professionals and your young what you want to call young leaders, whatever you want to call them. The importance of building that got it kind of got away for a couple of years that they were just heads down doing work, not realizing that they were going to have business development goals or other things put on them. Um, I had a I had a lawyer say to me at one point, if I had known the law was going to be the easiest part of my job, I would have probably rethought what I’ve done with myself. Um, so I think that for me is the biggest trend is, is just building your network and realizing the value of of who you know and who you can meet in the city especially, you know, as transient as Atlanta can be. Um, on those pieces, that’s. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:07:20] Yeah. I mean, you’re speaking my language right there with the whole building your network. And, you know, obviously from my vantage point with LinkedIn, like just it’s so hard to keep up with people and so making a concerted effort to track and kind of follow up with, oh, you know, I haven’t talked to so and so in a while I should reach out.
Gloria Kantor: [00:07:42] I should reach out. Yeah. And taking that time to, to go through and be like, who in my network, especially when it comes to, you know, award season or whatever, you know, who am I connected to, you know, from a CEO, CFO perspective that I can invite to these events, that I can do that, that puts them in the room with with their peers as well as, you know, some business connectivity with advisor partners that that they can meet.
Rachel Simon: [00:08:05] Yeah, I mean, there’s the value of your own network, but then you become a valuable commodity when you can bring people together and introduce them.
Lee Kantor: [00:08:16] Now, when you have a constituents that range from 15 million to 1 billion, how do you create programing that kind of brings them all together because they each have different kind of objectives, goals and needs from the organization.
Gloria Kantor: [00:08:30] Absolutely. We you know, from a social networking perspective, sheer social is sheer social that kind of touches everybody. Um, when it comes to content, a lot of the challenges that we hear from our CEOs and CFOs and C-suites that we talked to are relatively similar talent, huge issue. Can’t find the right people. Not sure where we’re going to find them. There aren’t enough of, you know, just all of those pieces. Um, and then we can kind of tailor, you know, for, for the folks that are already equity backed, we do some roundtables for, um, corporate, uh, you know, corporates that are private equity backed because they have a whole different set of challenges and reporting and all sorts of pieces there. Um, we don’t growth. To us, growth is growth, whether it’s organic or acquisitive. We also do roundtables for corporate development professionals. So strategic acquirers that are buying throughout the life cycle. Um, so we really, you know, we look at we survey our folks every, every couple of months and say, what are your biggest challenges and build around that now?
Lee Kantor: [00:09:36] How do you work with the other kind of acgs around the country, or do you work together in terms of, hey, it seems like there’s a cluster here in Georgia that are in fintech or whatever. You know, we have kind of superpowers here in Georgia. Absolutely, absolutely. And do you help kind of make those kind of connections?
Gloria Kantor: [00:09:52] So we do we we also both between industries. So you know, obviously fintech is big. Um, all of the and that’s a much broader, much broader piece than, you know, what do you define as fintech. Um, and so many different places, the health care, you know, the health care tech space is huge here. Um, we’ve seen a lot of manufacturing coming back as well and choosing Georgia to, as a place to do business. But we do connect with our other ACG chapters and really, you know, look at how can we do programing together. There is a from a ACG perspective, there’s an ag tech. So agricultural, you know, technologies that’s hosted in Raleigh every year. Um, because they have a big ag tech space. There’s a defense and aerospace contracting event in DC that we spend some folks to as well, um, kind of with a cyber unit out in Augusta and some other pieces. Right.
Lee Kantor: [00:10:46] We’re like, if you’re Atlanta centric, you may not remember that Georgia has a extensive agricultural component to the.
Gloria Kantor: [00:10:52] Georgia is a much bigger state than Atlanta that people don’t realize, uh, for many reasons. But, uh, yeah. So that’s where we look at it while we are ACG Atlanta. Um, we do look at it from a state perspective as we are the only chapter, um, here, here in the state. Now, are you.
Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] Doing, uh, kind of. Or research and connecting collecting data regarding kind of what’s happening here, or is that just happen organically?
Gloria Kantor: [00:11:19] Yeah. We, um, ACG acquired a company out of, I want to say Pennsylvania or Connecticut called GF data. So they are actually a blind service. So you submit your deal based on NAICs code. So it’s completely aggregated. Um, which we can pull. We pull a bunch of data from them and they share that with us. Now granted it’s not drilled down and. Because it’s completely anonymous. They don’t drill down to where the deal takes place. We’re working on trying to figure out if there’s a way to kind of get around that, to make some regional, you know, look at things from a regional or local perspective. Um, by NAICs code versus versus specific deal.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:02] Is that something the members are kind of asking.
Gloria Kantor: [00:12:04] Members do have access to that as well as, you know, from our our investment banking partners and private equity folks and companies, we it’s a really great way to submit data with it being anonymous, unlike some of the other you know, there are some regulatory issues around PitchBook and some other sources. Um, from the private equity fund where this is not considered marketing because it’s it’s completely anonymous. Mhm.
Rachel Simon: [00:12:30] Interesting. So we talked about sort of like reflecting on trends in the last ten years. But where do you see, what do you see coming down the pike.
Gloria Kantor: [00:12:39] Depends on what happens in November. Um, I mean I think as I’m sure most of your guests probably are like, oh, well, we’re just kind of in a holding pattern. Um, we are seeing, at least from what I’m hearing from our members and folks, uh, ideal activity is picking up. I think that a lot of folks will try. And there’s still a ton of dry powder and money out there to deploy. Um, folks are holding on to it a little bit, a little bit tighter than they have in the past. But, um, it’s been interesting to see how how those how that’s going. I think it’ll be. I think also again, going with with what is the fed going to do with interest rates? It does make a bank dollar a little bit more expensive than, than other dollars. So we’re seeing a lot more alternative and alternative investments in different strategies. That’s been fun to watch. The creativity of deals and how people are getting deals done. Um, in that that vein.
Lee Kantor: [00:13:36] Now, what are you seeing from the return to office standpoint?
Gloria Kantor: [00:13:40] It’s a mixed bag. It really I mean, you know, for us, we’re we’re fully remote. Um, and we will continue to be fully remote. Uh, we have a, we have a mailbox in a storage unit, uh, because it makes it nice. And we have great members and, you know, firms that allow us to use office space. So for us, the dollar doesn’t quite make sense to spend there. Uh, it’s a mixed bag from the return to office. I think most people are probably going to be. You know, most days in the office, um, you know, with Georgia being one of the first states to open, we had a lot of folks that went back immediately that weren’t really, you know, it’s a small enough office, and there are enough doors and safety mechanisms that they were like, you know what? We’re going to go work from the office anyway. Um, on those pieces. So now.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] What about the commercial real estate component to the I would imagine your sponsors and, and other folks that are part of the ecosystem we.
Gloria Kantor: [00:14:33] Have we have a little bit. Um, our, our commercial real estate folks, we do work with a few different firms. Um. But they’re, you know, they’re kind of hearing the same, you know, they’re hearing the same thing, but it is picking up, you know, for them it’s picking up as well. Um, as far as space being, you know, people looking for more space. Yeah. And the return office. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:14:56] Uh, tell us about past 40. Yeah. Um, and, you know, what is it for our listeners who may not be familiar, and it’s coming up soon. It is coming.
Gloria Kantor: [00:15:05] Up in June. We just finished our our application process closed at the end of March. We honor the 40 fastest growing middle market companies in the state of Georgia. So it’s based on you have to be headquartered in the state. You can be private equity backed, but your and your equity firm doesn’t have to be here. But your your headquarters has to be here in Georgia. Uh, you have to have between 15 million and 1 billion in revenue and the most current year. So for that would have been fiscal year 23. Um, and then we just need six data points. So we, we need three years of revenue growth and three years of headcount growth. And we do a little bit of math. And it’s all math based. There’s there’s no application fee. There’s no pay to play. Um, all of the things are there. And we we run the math and it’s we get, you know, 20 companies in the lower category, 20 companies in the upper category. And then we added the last couple of years, um, a category of 500 million to 1 billion, uh, that that is a growing category for us, but that also falls under those same categories. Um, and that so the 15 to 500 million, we get 40 companies and then the 500 and above, we get usually about 6 to 8. Um, and it’s a lot of them are alumni that have kind of grown out of the process and are still in the middle market, but. Yeah. So we it’s we get 100, 120 applications. We, we narrow it down via math and we actually do go out and interview them. Those interviews will start this week and next week, um, just to verify the revenue and headcount growth. So they give us we don’t publish any of the numbers. So it’s just a really great recognition of growth here and here in the state. Uh, last year, I think the companies have not run the numbers this year. Um, last year our 40 companies, you know, contributed two point over $2 billion in revenue to the state of Georgia.
Rachel Simon: [00:16:56] That’s amazing. Yeah, I love that. It’s completely math based as opposed to like, there’s no, uh, there’s nothing subjective.
Gloria Kantor: [00:17:03] There’s nothing subjective about, you know, and we’ve had people call us in the, you know, so we’ve been doing this six this will be our 16th awards technically 17 years. We did we did take 2020 off. Um, it wasn’t appropriate to celebrate 2019 growth in, you know, in June and try and talk to a CEO in April of 2020 to figure out, oh, you did really well last year. What? You know, what can we. How’s it going? How’s it going? Right. Like, let me not take 45 minutes of your time to, to do that. Um, but, you know, it’s been a couple of things. One, it’s been great. All of the companies that we have are definitely great companies that are headquartered here and have really great news. Um, and then the other piece is also watching the, again, going back to industries. And I should have brought that list with me and I totally forgot, um, just how cyclical the growth trajectory of, of specific industries are. You know, we’re always going to get the tech companies. We’re always going to get, you know, a little bit of manufacturing. But it’s really fun to watch. You know, obviously post post Covid, we had a really we had a bunch of really great construction companies because people were doing, you know, home renovations and all of the things. It was just really on trend with what was going on nationally. Now.
Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] Looking back through those 16 years, is there, um, kind of leading indicators like are you noticing like how we have a cluster here? So that might be a trend coming moving forward.
Gloria Kantor: [00:18:32] We I mean, yes and no. I mean, I think that that you always you always get the firms that are, that are going to apply no matter what. Right. Um, and again, it is kind of word of mouth. We don’t necessarily advertise it, but we have enough of a of inroads and that we can, you know, go out into, you know, chambers and other sort of things and say, hey, who are your members that that should be involved in this? Um, there are probably a few. I’m not sure that we’ve ever actually looked forward looking at the trending indicators. Definitely more back than than forward.
Lee Kantor: [00:19:01] But I would I would wonder, you know, those smaller ones are those really or those emerging, uh, industries?
Gloria Kantor: [00:19:08] Probably, yes. I mean, I think that, you know, you have, you know, you know, if there’s.
Lee Kantor: [00:19:12] One that may not be, but if there’s three, all of a sudden you’re like, wow, this is right. There’s more. You know, where these come.
Gloria Kantor: [00:19:18] From also is is and it’s something to look at. And we haven’t in a greater ACG world is should we take those industries and look at it from a, from an ACG perspective, as a growth perspective? Um, just because we’re focused here does not mean that it’s not necessarily growing in the, the industry or in the region.
Lee Kantor: [00:19:36] Now, do you have, uh, any learnings from what makes an, uh, you know, uh, growing company or there are certain things that you’ve kind of gleaned like, oh, you know what? These all have this in common or like, were there some foundational elements or is it just kind of the usual suspects? You know, I need talent, I need a culture, good leadership.
Gloria Kantor: [00:19:55] Um, obviously looking at looking at your c-suites and your leadership, you know, we’ve had folks that have made the list that grew a business in a basement and just, you know, the I’m going to call it the HP in the garage, you know, the HP in the garage. And we’re going to go interview this person, um, two serial entrepreneurs that have that have come in. And this is not necessarily the first time that they’ve made the list. Um, I do think that leadership probably and leadership at the top is, is probably the best indicator of if you’re going to continue to grow, um, and building that team around you from a talent perspective and bringing your folks along for the ride. Um, on those pieces.
Rachel Simon: [00:20:35] Yeah. I mean, you can’t underestimate the. Crucial importance of of leadership. It can make or break.
Gloria Kantor: [00:20:42] Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s and it’s also seeing you know, we had there was a company here that a medical company you know a one of the like doc in a box type places that obviously during Covid was they were the first ones to figure out how do we do these mass testing facilities. And so therefore we’re going to, you know, have significant growth. Now the past couple of years, they’ve kind of pivoted and figured out what they’re going to do. But it’s, you know, still in a really great, great position. Um, to be in there just not necessarily growing. They’re just still, you know, but they’re still a great middle market company here in town.
Rachel Simon: [00:21:15] Yeah. I mean, you have to. Right. That’s an example of like taking advantage of you take advantage.
Gloria Kantor: [00:21:20] Of circumstances and and for better or for worse, you know, looking at looking at the landscape you have, you know, that just broke I guess this week that prize picks which is another fast 40 alumni, um, is just taking on again another I think three. They’re building a 33,000 square foot space in the Star Metals building, um, and bringing on another thousand employees because of the growth of of that the esports game and, and, you know, game betting and all of that.
Rachel Simon: [00:21:47] And so prize picks is a UGA alum.
Gloria Kantor: [00:21:49] It is a UGA alum company as well. It is a UGA alum company but.
Lee Kantor: [00:21:54] And Tech Village right.
Gloria Kantor: [00:21:56] They started in Tech Village I think they I think they started in Tech Village. Do not quote me on that. I don’t need them coming coming after me. But, um, they’re they’re a fast 40 alum as well. But I read read about that last week.
Rachel Simon: [00:22:07] So yeah very cool. It must be like feel great to see some of these companies that have it’s been given this, you know, honor and continue to they.
Gloria Kantor: [00:22:16] Continue to grow. And then it’s also you know, there are some folks, you know, that that are no longer eligible because they get acquired by somebody else and they’re no longer technically their company headquarters is here, but they’re no longer really headquartered here. Um, you know, the favorite phone call that I ever got was. I think some, you know, a CEO called me and said, well, why didn’t we make the list this year? I was like, well, you’re the 43rd fastest growing company. I don’t know what to, you know, it’s all math based. I don’t know what to tell you. I. Congratulations on your success. But, um, which is fun, but it’s fun to watch, you know, the alumni and where they go and what they do and or all of them. Great stories. No. You know, there are a couple that have, you know, folded or, you know, things have happened, but, um, yeah, it’s the majority of them are good.
Rachel Simon: [00:23:01] Someone’s got to be that 41st.
Gloria Kantor: [00:23:02] Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I could get a lot more CEOs in the room if I dealt with slow growing companies versus versus fast growing companies. Um.
Lee Kantor: [00:23:12] Now, you said that right now is the time when you’re looking for those people to apply.
Gloria Kantor: [00:23:17] We just finished our application process. Too late now. It is too late to apply for this year. Um, but we do open that process again in the fall for the for the fast 40, um, which is our second largest event behind M&A South, which is our big conference in February where we’ll have, you know, 200 private equity firms in town. Atlanta is a really nice place to be in February when you live in New York or New York or Boston or Chicago, um, the folks that have moved to Miami are not as much. But, um, so that’s our that, you know, fast forward is and to me, it’s the most mission driven event that we do. Sure, we do celebrate those companies in June and then we will make the announcement May 7th. We typically do that via email this year. We’ll do it in person at our Spring Summit event. So that’s also a time to come and meet those folks. If you are a company, you know again, a company, please feel free to check us out and find find us and get involved before the application process.
Lee Kantor: [00:24:16] What’s the.
Gloria Kantor: [00:24:17] Website? It’s acg.org. Org forward slash Atlanta I.
Rachel Simon: [00:24:23] Have a funny story quickly about M&A South. So one of my clients attended and it was his first time going and he didn’t really know what to expect. And so he booked himself. And it’s like it runs like 20 minute meetings. He had like 20 I mean he was like he he completely overbooked himself. And the next week we had met and he’s like, I needed like two, three days to recover from that because it was like he had like 50 meetings in a day and a half. It was.
Gloria Kantor: [00:24:53] Bananas. We’ll have some equity for, you know, some equity firms and investment banking firms that between their team will have 200 meetings over. It’s like a day and a half Monday. Yeah. It’s Monday afternoon to Tuesday. Maybe some on Wednesday Wednesdays kind of light. But um, it is. Yeah. And then we do offer some content. What we did this year, um, instead of doing full hour long panels. Now, we did do a couple of hour long panels as well, but we added some micro learning sessions just in 20 minutes so that somebody could block out 20 or 40 minutes and be like, I don’t want to talk about myself. Let me go learn about AI or some other things affecting our industry. Um, some health care, you know, health care costs, things that things that folks need to know, which was really fun to watch that this year as well.
Lee Kantor: [00:25:39] Do you offer some coaching for those firms to get the most out of that experience?
Gloria Kantor: [00:25:44] We do not, but we probably should. So we do a couple of preview. We do a preview event. So we did a preview event in January this year. Um, there was a deal story with Scott Devaney of Chicken Salad Chick and their acquisition of Piece of Cake, because it was a really good Atlanta home grown story. Um, and so we did that as a kind of opening networking. Come meet some folks that you’ll see again. Um, but we probably should do, you know, we always kind of communicate here’s how to best get, you know, get the most, get the most out of it, you know, one register early. That’s that’s how you that’s how you get the most out of it is registering early so that you’re in there before, you know, when the, you know, the, um, application opens to schedule meetings. Um, how many.
Rachel Simon: [00:26:29] People attend that.
Gloria Kantor: [00:26:30] This year? We had over 1200. Wow. Yes, we had 12. Which which in the past we’ve we’ve said we’ve had 1200, but we you know, we were really pushing about 1300 this year, um, and trying to figure out at Avalon who was, who’s a great partner of ours, um, how we don’t outgrow the space. Yeah.
Lee Kantor: [00:26:50] I mean, that’s a testament to the market here, right?
Gloria Kantor: [00:26:53] It’s absolutely a it’s a big number. It is a big number. And it’s also the, you know, from from the ACG perspective, it’s the first kind of major conference out of the calendar year. So folks will come in to fill their funnel to hear what’s going on. What are trends. What are, you know, what are people seeing for the year coming down the pike?
Lee Kantor: [00:27:11] Um, and this is human beings. So this isn’t a hypothetical. Like, this isn’t like you’re seeing 1200 human beings here.
Gloria Kantor: [00:27:18] 1200, right? There are 1200 human beings there. Um, and the great part about Avalon is that folks can walk to lunch and have a meeting. Or do you know, there’s some just really great, great space out there to be able to to facilitate.
Rachel Simon: [00:27:31] Up. Yeah. And it’s always the very beginning. It’s the first.
Gloria Kantor: [00:27:34] It’s the first week of February. So we’re I guess it’s the third through fifth next year. We used to be the week after the Super Bowl. Now we’re the week before the Super Bowl.
Rachel Simon: [00:27:42] Um, but it’s great timing wise with the calendar because it’s like you’ve sort of gotten through the first month of the quarter. And now.
Lee Kantor: [00:27:49] Exactly. It’s game.
Gloria Kantor: [00:27:50] On. Now it’s game on, right? It’s game on. It’s so funny. The number of people that come back, you know, we open registration in the middle of August, September somewhere in there January 1st, people were like, oh I need to register. It’s like too late. You can, but I don’t have any tables. You know, this year, you know, this year we sold out of all of our exhibitor tables the middle of December, um, which has never happened. Um, I mean, at least in the ten years I’ve been here, uh, our hotel rooms were sold, like, everything, which was great. Um, so we’ll see. We’ll see how that what that trend continues at. And we’re looking to add more tables. Um, we added some more tables and sold those out. So it’s, it’s, you know, all in the good problems to have category. Yeah. It’s all right. It’s all of the good problems to have category for that.
Lee Kantor: [00:28:33] And that’s why Georgia is one of these growing states. I mean this is I mean it’s it’s like you just don’t see an end to it. I mean, it’s crazy. It’s it’s.
Gloria Kantor: [00:28:43] Right. I mean, you look at it, it’s, you know, you look at it and it’s continuing to grow. There’s are there a ton of folks that from a private equity perspective, are there a ton of folks seated here and people not not a ton, but there’s a ton of investment and folks that are coming in and, and, and investing in the South and in Georgia and specific and the southeast, that is just it’s fun to watch and I. Not making any prognostications, but like, I don’t see it ending anytime soon.
Lee Kantor: [00:29:10] It’s just Georgia. So the economy is so diverse. And I mean that just when one thing’s down, there’s something else up. And invariably it just people don’t realize how diverse the economy is in Georgia. Absolutely.
Gloria Kantor: [00:29:21] Which is what, you know. Yeah.
Rachel Simon: [00:29:24] It’s awesome. Great. Yeah.
Lee Kantor: [00:29:25] So, uh, one more time, the website, if people want to connect it is yeah.
Gloria Kantor: [00:29:30] Dot acg.org/atlanta and we’re on LinkedIn and all the social medias.
Lee Kantor: [00:29:37] So speaking of LinkedIn.
Rachel Simon: [00:29:39] What a great transition.
Gloria Kantor: [00:29:40] I’m so good at this. That was great. You thought I’d done this before.
Rachel Simon: [00:29:45] Um, yeah. So I, I actually put up a post, um, this week with this great tactical tip that I got from, um, somebody else. So there’s a gentleman named David Fisher. He actually runs social selling program for SAS. They have an internal social selling, uh, team, which is awesome to see. I love seeing companies investing in, um, like a real social selling program. But his tip that he shared, which I reposted, is that he takes a stack of ten pennies and puts those on his desk, and that is for every com. Like every time he drops a comment, he moves one of those pennies over. So it’s like a good way of a visual cue of activity on LinkedIn. So you could do that again for comments like, okay, I want to drop, I want to write, uh, share five comments on posts. Or you could do it for DMs outreach. But I love the visual cue of having something because and I do this for myself, I’m like, I really need to comment more. And then you get busy and you don’t do it. So when you see something and it could be paperclips or whatever, it shows you, did I actually do it? So that was that a week?
Gloria Kantor: [00:30:52] Is that weekly or is that.
Rachel Simon: [00:30:54] Well, he does it every single day a day.
Gloria Kantor: [00:30:56] Wow.
Rachel Simon: [00:30:56] So I’m not saying you need to do ten comments a day, but maybe you can do three comments a day or three DMs a day or something. You know, start small and build up. But having that visual cue I think is a awesome tip. I loved it.
Lee Kantor: [00:31:09] And then from a standpoint of activity on LinkedIn, is commenting better than like liking or like how would you kind of rank order? What is the activity?
Rachel Simon: [00:31:17] Commenting is always better because you can share your perspective on things. So no, not a thanks or good post or cool, but actually engage with what the person is talking about in a meaningful way because it’s a win win. It helps the the author’s content obviously get more seen in the newsfeed, but it also helps you because sometimes you’ll see in your news feed, you know, Gloria commented on blah blah blah post. So you get you show up in the news feed, but it also helps build that rapport with the person posting content.
Gloria Kantor: [00:31:50] So it also true that you you should use more than three words. Yeah, I mean I is what I hear like from a perspective of.
Rachel Simon: [00:31:57] Yeah, I mean the better you know, the more in depth you can go the better. Um, I like to ask a question or but comments comment first and then you can react. It’s a better order of operations.
Lee Kantor: [00:32:11] Good stuff. Well, Gloria, thank you so much for sharing your story today.
Gloria Kantor: [00:32:14] Thank you guys for having us.
Lee Kantor: [00:32:16] Yeah, you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Gloria Kantor: [00:32:19] Thank you for having me again.
Lee Kantor: [00:32:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor for Rachel Simon. We’ll see you all next time on Sandy Springs Business Radio.
About Your Host
Rachel Simon is the CEO & Founder of Connect the Dots Digital. She helps companies ensure that LinkedIn is working for them as an asset, not a liability.
Rachel works with teams and individuals to position their brand narrative on LinkedIn so they can connect organically with ideal clients, attract the best talent, and stand out as a leader in their industry.
Rachel co-hosted LinkedIn Local Atlanta this week along with Phil Davis & Adam Marx – a networking event focused on bringing your online connections into the real world.
Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn.
