angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Alane Boyd with Workday Ninja

November 4, 2024 by angishields

Nashville Business Radio

Alane Boyd with Workday Ninja

00:00 /

Alane Boyd is the Co-Founder of Workday Ninja, a systems and operations growth strategy agency that utilizes AI and automation to improve efficiency for its clients.

She has been in the tech industry for two decades and has had two successful SaaS exits.

Connect with Alane on LinkedIn and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

Why Alane has chosen to bootstrap her companies versus raising money
How she decided to focus on systems and operations in her new company
The impact on company culture after implementing systems
How Alane uses a project management system and knowledge base to ensure intellectual property doesn’t sit in her head but inside systems

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Nashville Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast co-founder with Workday Ninja, Alane Boyd. How are you?

Alane Boyd: Oh, I am great, Stone, and I’m so excited to be here.

Stone Payton: Well, I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions. Elaine, we probably won’t get to them all, but I think maybe a good place to start is if you could articulate for me in our listeners a little bit of a broad overview, mission, purpose. What what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks.

Alane Boyd: Man our mission and it’s been the same since we started. And it’s to make work days easier for people because we’re burnt out. We have so many things on our plate, how can we enjoy work and be done with work at the end of the day? So that’s what our core mission is. And you know, I really that’s our purpose. And that’s why I started this company, was because I saw what the workday was doing to people and just wanted them to have an easier day so that they can go and do the things that they really want to do and enjoy.

Stone Payton: So what’s the backstory? How did you get into this line of work, doing this, kind of providing this kind of service for these folks?

Alane Boyd: Such a roller coaster. But I sold my first company in 2018, and I built that company for about ten years, and we were a social media and reputation agency. I built two software platforms, and our niche was with car dealerships. So we did all of this stuff for car dealerships. And the reason I got acquired was because I was such a well-oiled machine with our team and we, the private equity companies and companies looking at us, we’re thinking, you’ve got a skeleton team doing this much work, and I’m going, this isn’t a skeleton team. Like they’re they just get their work done. And when we sold, I realized we were unique, that what I built with my business partner and the systems that we had was something special that not every company did. And I thought maybe other companies need it.

Stone Payton: Now, if I remember from my notes, you have had two successful exits and you bootstrapped both companies as opposed to going and getting external funding.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I did, and, you know, and there’s of course like a whole bunch of ifs and thens and buts in that. But I was bootstrapped. We did take on an early seed round and it was such a terrible relationship after two years of trying to. To work with that investor that we actually bought him out. And so we went back to. Being bootstrapped.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, helping others and replicating your success and providing that rigor and discipline and structure and repeatable processes and all that. What’s the most rewarding about the about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh. I mean, you know, you you start working with a team and you can just tell the energy is being sucked out of them. And they they really they want things to work better. And they’re at a point where they’re just like, we’re going to try anything because I’m I’m exhausted. And then after, you know, some projects are longer. It depends on how many moving pieces there are, how big of a team there is. But when we start getting closer to Implementation. You can see the excitement and relief that these team members have, and they always write us. I mean, we keep a log of all the the sweet emails that we get written and of course like testimonials and things, but these people genuinely are just so excited to have something that they can be proud of and get through their day without being tasked with tedious work, having to put out more fires. And so that’s the best reward, is just seeing how we do make a difference, and that it’s making people’s days better.

Stone Payton: I’ll bet. So have you found yourself gravitating more toward a certain type of business, an industry, a sector, or have you found that you can be pretty agnostic and serve a lot of people in several different arenas?

Alane Boyd: Well, that’s been a learning curve in this business. In in my early days of starting my business partner and I were, you know, we were coming out of an exit. And so we were just kind of consulting. We were getting bored not having anything to do. And so we were working with all types of companies, and it really revolved around our expertise. And of course that’s evolved over time. And now we’ve got a full team. And yes, we have niche down, because when you can, when you can do everything for everybody, you know, you’re not serving anybody really. You’re too much of a generalist. So we really narrowed that down. And there is a little bit of a team size revenue scale that plays into it. But a lot of times it’s mature businesses because they have systems, they’ve got team members, they’ve got already workflows that they’ve been doing, even if they are strenuous to the team, you know. So they know the value of if if it could improve that, how much of an impact that would be. So that’s typically the the client type. Now industry Does. We’re in a bunch of different industries. And so the biggest thing that we have found is that at a core, they use specific project management systems like Clickup, Asana or Monday, and they use a CRM like HubSpot or Pipedrive. And these are just examples. There’s others that we do, but that’s the core pieces. Like they need to have some some software platforms and that we are experts in those platforms.

Stone Payton: All right. Let’s dive into the work a little bit. Maybe if you could walk us through the process. I’m particularly personally interested in the early stages of, I guess I’ll call it an engagement. And maybe you want to apply it to a to a use case. Of course, you probably don’t want to name names or, but yeah, let’s help us get our arms around what it might look to look like to to work with you guys.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So that’s perfect. And I can this is a very common workflow that we do with a lot of businesses. So it’s not calling any particular company out of. Out. And it’s the idea of you start with a client, a potential client, and you have to create a proposal for them. Well, we do AI and and automation so that when it moves to proposal stage in your CRM, it’ll auto generate a proposal based off a template and use AI in the call notes to generate that proposal so that you’re only having to edit, you know, 10 to 15% of the proposal instead of trying to create it from scratch. So that would be the first step of the customer journey. Then if the customer signs the proposal, the next piece of the automation would then kick off automatically. New client onboarding. You know what needs to happen? A welcome email needs to get sent. Um, maybe if you’re using a project management system, tasks automatically get created for that client for what needs to have happen after that. Maybe an asset folder in Dropbox gets created. And let’s see, I love that. I love a task. We have this set up for our clients to connect with them on LinkedIn automatically if, you know in that automation. And so and then the last piece and you’d be surprised how often people forget to invoice their clients, but it automatically creates a customer in QuickBooks with a draft invoice. So, you know, these pieces that we don’t have to memorize for everything, this can automatically be done. So it takes two hours of work that would be done manually down to about five minutes in an automated sequence.

Stone Payton: Wow. And everything you’re describing that that you bring to your client systems and help them implement. I’m operating under the impression you’re probably eating your own cooking too, right? Like you’re you’re probably doing this for your own practice. Yes.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. We drink our Kool-Aid and it’s, you know, and and to be honest, I’m glad that you said that. Yes we do. We do eat our cookies, drink our kool aid. And we were doing this for ourselves. I started writing our very first automations in 2016 with my previous company, because I was getting so frustrated. You know, the sales team, they just want to move on and get their next sale. And so their attention to detail can sometimes be missing. Then I’m seeing this long transition between sales to account management to do all the knowledge transfer. I’m paying an admin to go and manually set up all the things that need to happen. And I was just like, you know what? I’m really frustrated today about all this money I’m seeing. Just go out the door for my company. And I wrote our first automations and it just transformed, you know, it would take us, on average, two weeks to onboard a new client back then because of we’re we’re waiting on people to do each step. Right. And then we got it down to. They’d be on boarded almost immediately. And I’m like, wow, I could save that time for my team members. Plus the admin that was doing that, I repurposed her on a more valuable position within the company. So not only did I save her salary, but I’m making money in her new position that she was in. And I just thought, you know, that’s what I want to focus on. And so I’ve been drinking this Kool-Aid for a while to answer your question.

Stone Payton: And I have to believe when you can tighten up and button down systems like that, get them humming, it would have to have a really strong impact on the on the culture, which then could turn around and strengthen things across the board. Is that accurate?

Alane Boyd: Yeah, you nailed it. And the culture piece is what I didn’t even think would be a result early on. You know, I’m looking at it as a business expense and advantage Vantage for us to save that money. But the culture change and I’ll I’ll tell you what I saw in 2016 when I started to implement this, that our team went from staying on board for about six months to where they were staying on for years because they weren’t so burnt out, they didn’t feel like they were being pulled in so many directions. Our lifetime value of our client went up, so we weren’t losing clients, you know, on, you know, let’s say that they were staying on for a year. They were staying on indefinitely at that point. And then one of the most interesting pieces is because our employee turnover was reduced and our lifetime value was increasing. The amount of money the client was spending with us was also increasing. And so you just felt this energy in the company that we didn’t have before, where things just felt like a drag and we were being, you know, wrung through the wringer all the time and, and chaos. And then we just saw it flip flop, where people were so excited they were cheering each other on whenever we, you know, kept clients on longer and, you know, celebrating anniversaries and people just got to build longer relationships with each other. The culture really started to thrive.

Stone Payton: I gotta confess, Elaine, I feel like you’ve been reading my mail, and here’s why. Yeah. Lee Kantor my business partner and I, we own the business radio X network. We’ve been incredibly blessed. We’ve made a comfortable living. We’ve impacted some lives. And just to be perfectly candid, you know, our onboarding is is clunky. We have a, you know, 21 years plus of best practices. And I’m sure, you know, buried in there somewhere is some genuine in some ways is some genuine intellectual property. A lot of it’s in Stone’s head, a lot of it’s in Lee’s head. Some of it is in the 19 studio partners heads. Um, and yeah, I, uh, I feel like I’m getting a. Hey, gang, if you want to get some free consulting and talk to some smart people, get yourself a radio show. Uh.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So do some interviews.

Stone Payton: But. And, you know, I’m sure as people begin to have this kind of conversation with you, the light bulb starts to go off a little bit. And you, you probably have some coachable moments and can probably get a lot of, uh, a lot of good done pretty quickly, huh?

Alane Boyd: Yeah. And that’s been the fun part is, you know, we bring on a client and they have a very specific need right then. And they want to solve that problem in their in their workflow or in their team. And it typically does not end at that once we get there, because then they can see the possibilities. They’ve now had the time to take away some of the layers of the onion and say, hey, you know, could we improve this operation or this workflow? Could we be using technology for this? And so it does grow. And this instant institutional knowledge piece that you just mentioned, between stone or between yourself and your business partner is a huge piece. Because when you have knowledge in people’s heads, they are the workflow. You have to go to them because they have all the knowledge in them. And so part of what we do is start getting that knowledge out of their head, to start getting into a process that people can delegate and have some accountability with, instead of that person always having to be it. And then that’s where you I don’t know if you use slack internally, but you see slack messages start to decrease because people don’t have to ask you as many questions anymore.

Stone Payton: That would be nice, I think. So on the front end of things, and it’s a question I often ask the people that have a chance to have a conversation with how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Like to have that to even get a chance to have this conversation. Is it all referrals now that you’ve been at this as long as you have, or do you do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit like some of the rest of us?

Alane Boyd: Well, I you know, I don’t like sitting back and doing anything, waiting around for anything so early in our business. It was very referral based and, and that was comfortable at first. And then once I was tired after I sold my company and I really just needed a break for a while. And so, you know, when we were just consulting and early days, you know, we were 100% referral based. But now I have, you know, we’re talking about operational automation in this conversation so far, but I have a whole nother side of the company where we focus on sales, outreach, automation. And I do a huge piece of that myself, drinking my own Kool-Aid. And then I also train companies on that. And, and it’s, you know, how do you find your target market? And I love using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for this. To find your exact target market, find the contacts that you need. And then I use tools like Lemlist or Apollo to do cold outreach to them. And I have a whole automated sequence. So it’s not just like one email or one LinkedIn message where they’re receiving a number of them. And, you know, there’s a there’s a lot more to the sales outreach part, but it’s actually my favorite part of the company that that I lead and enjoy. And then I also do a lot of speaking engagements, and I’m in a few niche industries that I do speaking engagements at, and I see that as a lead generator as well, because people in the audience are my potential customers. And so we’ve brought in clients from that.

Stone Payton: So I know in my world anyway, business talk radio, digital media in on some channels, if you will. There’s, uh, I’ll call it misinformation. There are some preconceived notions. There’s some just downright, downright just off the mark information. So sometimes early in a conversation in our work, we’ll have to we’ll have to educate before we can even really consult. Do you find with regards to AI and automation and processes and systems and tools and all these wonderful things that you’re describing, that sometimes at least early in the conversation, people come in with a little less than accurate lens on things, and you are kind of in education mode early on.

Alane Boyd: Yes. Oh my gosh, an AI just made it even worse. You I can there are so many conversations now that we have with a potential client where they are 1,000% convinced that I can just do everything in their business. And I’m going, no, if that were the case, none of us would work. That is not possible. And so there is an education piece. What could I alleviate? And and also there’s a missed understanding of what not only what I can do but where I can’t do everything. But automation can be a big piece to do things that you don’t even need AI for. And so that’s a part of the education is like you are going to overcomplicate your process by trying to use AI here. You just really need automation. And those two things are different. And we’ve started creating free tools that companies can go and use to try to start to distill down. What could I do in the beginning? And so automation is a big one. Like what could you automate if you’re using Calendly and zoom And Pipedrive CRM and Monday.com, you know, where we’ve started is like, let’s have a tool that gives the education first. And so we have a free tool. You answer eight questions, it takes less than 30s, and it’ll send you a custom report within about two minutes to your email with 25 automation ideas that you could put in your business right now based on your software that you use. And so that’s been a great just initial piece to the conversation, because they get that report, they get real ideas of what could be automated in their company instead of these bizarre out of like, you know, what they want to want to do would be $1 million investment. You know, what could you put in that you could actually afford and get value from in your business? And that’s been a big change for us that we’ve seen in that initial conversation.

Stone Payton: So this next question, 100% ulterior motive and I’ll share it with you before I even ask the question. Business RadioX network. Stone and Lee and team uh, on the short list. We we want to put a physical studio in Nashville, and we have some hypotheses around why we want to do that. But I wanted to ask you why Nashville. For you, what’s the business climate like? Or is it just you were there in Nashville and that’s just where you are anyway?

Alane Boyd: Oh, gosh, Nashville was actually so I’ve been in in Nashville for almost 11 years. And I’ll tell you why. I moved my company there. I started my first company in San Diego, and that’s where we were based. We were working with car dealerships all over the country, and my team was getting burnt out with the time zone change. And so I had two things on my mind. One, I wanted to open a central office that team member I could hire from, I could hire a little like less expensive than California costs. And that I could buy a second house as like a getaway house on buy some land. You know, in San Diego, you can’t buy any land unless you’re way out in the outskirts. So I wanted some land and I wanted some water on the property. And I just had these visions. And Nashville hit all the spots. And there’s. We’ve hired the very best people in Tennessee and the Nashville area. And, you know, I sold that company and I chose to start the next company there because of the environment. People are just so kind. They connections. You’re, you know, you’re one introduction away from pretty much anybody you want to meet. And I also joined EOE Nashville. It stands for Entrepreneurs Organization Nashville. And that that CEO environment has been such a good client like just investment for me to be in that, and I just would not want to leave that group of people.

Stone Payton: Well that’s encouraging. Thank you for that. And I’m sure Nashville appreciate you as well. We’ll have to send it to Chamber of Commerce and invoice or something.

Alane Boyd: Yeah I know right.

Alane Boyd: And you know, when I moved, we moved the office. We opened the office in Tennessee, and we offered any San Diego employee we offered to move them for free to our office in Tennessee. And we had two employees that did it. And they’ve now moved their entire family. Their parents now live there. Their siblings now live there. So it has been a good economic boost for for us to be in their small, small scale, but definitely a benefit.

Stone Payton: Oh that’s fantastic. I’d like to switch gears on you for just a moment. If we could interest hobbies, pursuits, passions outside the the scope of this work, a lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. How about you? Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about other than this kind of work.

Alane Boyd: Man, I’m the biggest nerd, and when it comes to hobbies, I’ve probably oversaturated myself. But I love traveling. You and I could talk forever on that one. It sounds like. So travel. I do leather working, so I make my own leather bags and I come up with all kinds of stuff I made myself and my my brother a firewood carrier out of leather. So I, I do that, and I love hiking and mountain biking. I love being outdoors. So I’m just. And I always try because I’m, I’m doing technology. I’m in front of my computer so much. I’ve just found that being outside and being active outside is so important for mental health. And so I try to push that on everybody in my family too.

Stone Payton: But at least my experience is similar to yours in that yes, it’s good for me and I enjoy it, and I feel like I do get a chance to recharge. But I think everybody wins because I genuinely believe with all my heart an afternoon in the woods. It equips me to be of that much better and more service to the people I’m trying to help. And it sounds like you feel the same way.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we need to give our brains a break and be bored in the outdoors. Let our mind wander. And, you know, I’ve. And I’m sure you’ve noticed this, too, when you’re out hunting and you’re you’re just sitting around waiting is that’s when like, ideas pop up. So I always have either a little notebook with me or even just taking notes on my phone if I’ve if I brought my phone with me, it’s like, that’s where your ideas and your good ideas start to bubble up because you gave your mind to rest. And so I found that that’s just really important for me to take that break.

Stone Payton: Amen. All right. Before we wrap, I think it would be great if you’re up for it, if we could leave our listeners with a couple pro tips, something to chew on just to be thinking about and look, gang. The number one pro tip here is if any of this interests you, if you recognize any of the symptoms in your organization that these kinds of solutions might address. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Elaine or somebody on her team. But let’s see if we can tide them over with a little something to chew on between now and then. Elaine.

Alane Boyd: Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I think two things that have really just impacted me in business is listening to podcasts and listening to a different perspective, and I’ve found that I’ve had to listen to things that aren’t in my wheelhouse, because if I listen to things that are in my wheelhouse, I already know those things. I need to push myself to be listening to things outside of it and reading, reading, reading, reading. I read so often. I’ve got Libby the free. It’s from the library. Every county has Libby and Tennessee, and I put on audiobooks on it. So I’ve always got an audiobook downloaded, and so it’s free, you know. It’s by the public library so you can access it. So if money is a barrier, you know, these things are free on Libby. So I’ve always got an audiobook and I’m always reading, um, books. And right now I’m reading one of Nick Saban’s books because even though I’m an avid LSU fan and he left and went to Alabama, what he did in football is incredible. And his players love and adore him. And I’m, you know, for as a leader and wanting to be a leader, you know, am I that into football to know everything about football. No, but I am I love him as a leader and I think that there could be things that I learn. So I’m reading his book right now. And, you know, I think us, you know, whether you’re running a business or you want to grow, I think those things and expanding our knowledge is so important.

Stone Payton: I agree 110%, and I’m so glad that I asked. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners To learn more, tap into your work. Maybe have that conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Alane Boyd: Yeah. So first way is on LinkedIn. I’m very active, so connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Elaine Boyd and shoot me a message. I love connecting with people. And then the next thing would be you can visit our website, Workday ninja.com. And we’ve got two free resources. So the one that I mentioned with the 25 free automation ideas that you could put in your business. And then we have a second one for project management tools. A lot of time companies, they feel like maybe I’m in the wrong project management system or I don’t even know where to start. And again, it’s super quick. It’s just a few questions and it’ll tell you immediately which project management system would be best for you.

Stone Payton: Elaine, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. It’s been a real shot of fresh air for me. I feel like I’ve personally learned a ton. I know our listeners have, and clearly you are doing important work and having a great deal of impact on so many. That, in turn will have impact on others and it will just keep going forward. Thank you for investing the time to visit with us this afternoon.

Alane Boyd: Thank you. Stone. This was a lot of fun for me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Elaine Boyd with Workday Ninja and everyone here at the Business RadioX family. Satan. We’ll see you next time on Nashville Business Radio.

Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics

November 4, 2024 by angishields

Chattanooga Business Radio

Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics

00:00 /

Andrew Van Breugel brings leadership and business transformation experience to Rock Creek Informatics. Up until 2018, Andrew was the general manager and operations director of an Australian pharmaceutical manufacturing and supply organization based out of Adelaide, Australia.

Andrew’s passion is business excellence, helping organizations combine the elements of leadership, customers, strategy, people, processes, knowledge, and results into management standards that work for them. Andrew is energized and fascinated with the cause-and-effect relationships between these drivers of organization performance and the results achieved.

With over 25 years in the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, Andrew has a keen eye for detail and an astute mind for excellence. He has worked abroad for much of his career, calling Australia, Singapore, Fiji, and Cyprus home at various points in his life.

With decades of experience as an executive, Andrew has played a key role in the development and implementation of Good Manufacturing Practices, new product development, broad lean deployment, and much more. Andrew is currently a certified Assessor of Business Excellence for the Singapore Quality Awards and Evaluator for the Australian Business Excellence Awards.

His interests outside of the manufacturing arena include family, share trading, photography, business management theory and practice, travel, property investment and home maintenance.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

How RCI supports small to medium enterprises in the SE TN region
The advantages of using a smaller, local business consultancy over large, national groups
How RCI has helped smaller firms
Fractional management: what it is and why it’s emerging as a viable solution for smaller companies

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It’s time for Chattanooga Business Radio now. Here are your Business RadioX hosts.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Chattanooga Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Rock Creek Informatics, Mr. Andrew van Breugel. How are you, man?

Andrew Van Breugel: Doing well. Stone. Great to be here and looking forward to, uh, to sharing some time with you and your listeners this afternoon.

Stone Payton: What a delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions, Andrew. We may not get to them all, but what I think would be a great place to start, just maybe if you could share with us a little bit about Rock Creek, what mission, purpose? What are you guys really out there trying to do for folks?

Andrew Van Breugel: Sure. So, sir. Look, we’re a small business consultancy based here out of Chattanooga. Um, we try to do most of our work in this south east Tennessee. But it doesn’t work out that way. Typically, we do work all over the country, and what we’re trying to do is help small to medium enterprises, uh, with their process efficiency and their business performance, um, particularly on the operational side. Uh, we have a, um, a bunch of consultants that that work with small businesses. They’re all highly experienced with a lot of, a lot of work background. Um, and we’d like to get into the nitty gritty, uh, down low and dirty, uh, with organizations and really get into what they’re doing and see if we can assist them with their with their efficiency.

Stone Payton: What’s the backstory, man? How’d you get into this line of work?

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, how long has this guy for this? Uh, look. A long story, so I did a lot of my work overseas. You can probably hear I’m not, uh, from the US. I’m Australian. Uh, I spent a lot of time in Asia working for some large corporates over there, and I met my current business partner over there. He was bringing students over from Lee University up in Cleveland. Here, um, he teaches the MBA program there, and they would come to Singapore, uh, you know, to get some experience and do some projects in my plants that I was running over there. And as time went by, you know, we talked and we decided, hey, look, why don’t we do this, uh, on a more serious basis and run this consultancy and do some work down here in Tennessee. So I came over to to run the consultancy because my business partner, guy, he has a passion for teaching. So he’s a professor there at Lee University teaching the business school.

Stone Payton: So now that you guys have have gone out and started to, to do this, what what are you finding the most rewarding and what’s the most fun about the work these days for you?

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, it’s always a similar sort of thing. So most organizations, you know, particularly smaller ones, they either have the founder and the family, or maybe some employees trying to run the business, and they really don’t have all of the skills and capabilities and expertise, and certainly not all of the experience that’s necessary to really do well. So that’s where we come in. Um, and to see them improve their business, to teach them, especially because we don’t just like to go in and leave, you know, we like to go in and leave something behind. And what we leave behind is, is as much knowledge as we can, and the tools and techniques that we feel will help them run their business better. So that’s always very rewarding for us and the part that we certainly enjoy the most.

Stone Payton: So you touched on something that suggests to me that smaller and midsize businesses, maybe they do have some unique challenges and opportunities that really are a little different from your large organization, where previously. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Oh, absolutely. So large organizations typically have all the capabilities and experience and skills that they need, not only to run the business, but to improve it on an on going basis. Smaller businesses tend to obviously have what they need to run the business and to remain, uh, you know, successful or survive, let’s say. Um, but they rarely have the resource to actually improve the business, to actually look at how we’re doing things, map out the processes, see where the waste is, figure out why things aren’t flowing better. Uh, you know, that’s a job in itself. That’s a that’s a vocation in itself. And, uh, very rare that a small or even a medium business is doing that. It’s something that everyone’s doing part time, and as a result, they don’t do it particularly well.

Stone Payton: Well, let’s dive into the work a little bit. The, the process. And maybe it would be helpful if you wanted to use a use case or something. Of course, you may not want to share names just to help us get our arms around. What what this process might look like.

Andrew Van Breugel: So it is different for different businesses in in many respects, but in some ways it’s also very similar. So, so most businesses, um, whether they’re involved in producing a physical good or a service, they have people, they have facilities, they sometimes have materials, they’ve got a bunch of things. And what they’re trying to do is, is, is convert those things into either a physical product or a service. That means there’s a process behind it. In fact, there’s usually several processes behind it. That means to say people have to do certain things with certain things, convert the materials or whatever it might be, whether it’s making a bed in a hotel or producing a piece of ammunition in a factory, you know, um, there’s a process behind that. And if I know what that process is and I put all the steps together properly, and I start to examine and see things from the perspective of waste, um, now I can change my process and reorganize it a little bit, uh, to drive out that waste and to make the thing flow better. To give you a quick example, we do some work with a company out west. Um, they make recreational, um, uh, equipment. High end recreational equipment. Um, now, if you look at how long does it take to make one of these items? It’s around about ten hours. Okay. If I if I have nothing else to do and all I do is work on this thing. Ten hours to make. But when I look at the value stream map, I see it take, uh, 7 or 8 months to get through the plant. So you see the inherent waste there? Uh, seven months to ten hours of work. And that’s very typical. Nothing unusual about that at all, because people think as long as I’m busy, it must be good, right? But no, you can be busy doing the wrong thing, or you can be busy doing things that don’t add value. And that’s what we try to help companies see and then address.

Stone Payton: Well, I have to believe that to have a set of objective eyes that are not weighed down with sentiment and emotion, they’re looking at the processes that has to be incredibly valuable. And I guess I’m, I guess I’m you’re already winning me over to this idea of working with a smaller, focused boutique consultancy that’s going to roll their sleeves up and get in there and see what’s really happening in my business. But there really are some advantages in working with a with a smaller consultancy for this particular constituency in there.

Andrew Van Breugel: I think I think for sure. So first of all, and you know, to get the nitty gritty, but we don’t have any overheads, right. We don’t have an office somewhere. We don’t have uh, you know, a buildings to maintain. There really is just the consultants fee and that’s it. So that means we’re inherently less costly than, than many of the larger consultancies. But more important than that, we can come and see you and interface with you and your managers. We can go to where the work is done and actually see what is happening and how it’s done. And obviously for local, we can do that on a daily basis. And all this travel and accommodation and meals, whatever is all cost, which you don’t have to incur. And you’d be surprised how much that is. For some companies, it could be, um, a half or even more of their total cost, and it’s really doesn’t add value to them. Um, so we can go and see where the work is done. We can go and talk to the operators on the shop floor. Let’s say if it’s a factory, we can map with them the value stream. Uh, and as we’re doing that, we’re teaching them, you see. So all of this is intense and all of it takes time. And if you’re paying one of the big consultancies, you know, the sort of fees they charge, you’re just not going to be able to do it. So it’s a much more affordable and much more, uh, I would say friendly relationship that we create. And I think that’s why we have so much repeat business, because once people see it and experience it, they say, yeah, that works for me. It’s effective. Um, it’s personable. And on top of all that, it’s cost. It would cost me less than if I were to use one of the big companies out of one of the big cities.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So do you ever find yourselves filling or maybe coordinating someone else to fill some sort of fractional management role for a period of time in some of these client systems?

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. Stone. That’s becoming very popular because like we said earlier, a lot of the smaller to medium sized organizations, they don’t have the skills in house. So now they have a choice. Or maybe I should employ somebody, but now I end up having to employ somebody to do more or for more hours than what’s really needed for that skill set. Um, fairly expensive probably. And I may have to get someone from out of state and pay all of their relocation. So there’s a lot of risk there. And then after 6 or 8 months, I find there’s didn’t really work out. You know, we find that a lot. Now, on the other hand, I could do the fractional way and say, here’s a person with 30 years of manufacturing experience, Um, maybe I need them two days a week. Whatever, three days a week. But for the long haul, meaning to say, you know, six, 12, 18, 24 months, we’re not there to do a project. We’re there to be your, for example, operations manager. So we expect a seat at the table, but we don’t need to be there five days a week, and you don’t need to be paying us five days a week.

Andrew Van Breugel: Uh, a lot of smaller companies are finding that really attractive because it’s cost effective. They really don’t have any other way of getting that experience and those capabilities and those skills into their business. Uh, and it’s risk free. Because, you know what? If I don’t like you, after a couple of weeks, I’ll just politely ask you to leave. Um, which is hard to do with an employee, you know? So fractional management or fractional leadership, as we call it, um, becoming very popular. And we have we have some of our consultants working for more than, uh, more than several years in some businesses, um, on the plant side or on the quality management side, uh, or on the financial side. Um, so for small family businesses or even medium sized ones that that that are not family businesses, they know they’re finding this a very, a very suitable alternative to the traditional find an employee, get them in on board them, hope for the best, pay them a lot of money. Find something else for them to do because they don’t really need their skill set for 40 hours a week. So that’s the solution there. Stone.

Stone Payton: You know what? You just you’ve mentioned it a couple of times. The family businesses, I bet they have their own set of challenges above and beyond all the challenges that that a small and medium sized businesses face. I bet there are some unique dynamics when you’re working with a with a family owned business, aren’t there?

Andrew Van Breugel: Very much so. Very much so. And there are quite a few of them around here, uh, in the South. And, uh, you know, some of them are into their first generation of, of, of handover and some of them may be into their second, But you know, the success rate of family businesses beyond the second generation is very, very low. It’s very small. Um, and we find a lot of family businesses are still being run by the founder, who may be in their 60s or even 70s now, and sometimes the children are not interested in the family. So obviously their only choice is to sell. And they find that their business is severely undervalued because they’ve, you know, they’ve never they’ve never bothered to. It’s a bit like if I want to sell my car, I should at least wash it and tune it and get it a little bit fixed before I sell it, you know. But a lot of family businesses aren’t like that. Um, so they’re leaving a lot of value on the table because, as you know, there’s a multiplier on your earnings in terms of what you charge for the business. So every $100,000 of earnings that you can secure might be worth 7 or $800,000 or more to you in terms of the selling price of the business. So a lot of a lot of businesses are asking us to help them with that aspect, I’ll bet.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a consultancy like yours? Is it is it almost all referral based, or do you find yourself having to shake the trees a little bit and do some actual marketing? How do you get the new business man?

Andrew Van Breugel: So honestly, we do both, but I can tell you the relationship based, um, marketing or representation is by far and away the most successful. I mean, probably probably I mean, virtually all of our business comes from referral or repeat from existing clients. It’s very hard to attract. It’s very hard to get the story across in a way like I’m communicating it to you now. You can’t really do it by on a leaflet or you can’t really, you know, put an ad in the, in a, in a periodical. You’ve got to sit down with someone for a good 45 minutes, 60 minutes to convince them that, you know what, you’re hitting all the things that bother me. All the reasons I can’t sleep properly, all the reasons I’m working 65 hours a week. And now finally, someone is coming with a solution that is affordable and plausible. You know, to have that conversation really, really requires you to be face to face and probably have some relationship with that person.

Stone Payton: Well, relationship strikes me as the right word as you’re describing the work and the people that you’re that you’re serving the the level of trust that you must have to cultivate with these people must be incredible. Because, I mean, you’re getting in there with them, rolling your sleeves up, learning about their business, providing counsel, maybe not always telling them exactly what they want to hear initially. So the you must be in your team must be really good at cultivating and sustaining that that trust and that relationship.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, we find, uh, like any business like ours or probably, um, any service oriented business. It’s it’s hard to get the door opened. You know, it’s hard to it’s hard to get people to open the door. But we find that once we once we’re in, it’s really quite easy to, uh, to get the job done and for them to find more things that they want you to help them with. And then they start telling their, um, their friends or their other business associates. And that’s how we get referrals. And being a small boutique consultancy, we’re not looking for a lot of work, to be honest with you. I mean, we’ll take as much as we can find and grow the the bench accordingly. But honestly, and this is going to sound very corny and very hard to believe. But the bottom line is me and my partner, my business partner, we really are just more interested in helping local businesses. Um, you know, we neither of us do this because it’s necessary for income. We do it because, you know what? We’ve got something to offer between the two of us. We’ve probably got, you know, 80 years of work Experience, um, right across the gambit of small to large companies, private, public family. Um, right. Covering everything from leadership development, coaching and support, strategy development, you know, management of information and how to use that in decision making, you know, people and human resource processes, uh, how to define the customer value and drive that through processes to delivery operations and vendor management. You know, there’s a lot of experience there. And we know that most businesses can benefit from that experience. It’s a question of how open they are to it.

Stone Payton: You mentioned a term earlier in the conversation that I would love to learn a little bit more about, if you’re up for it. And look, gang, if you want to learn a lot, meet some brilliant people and get a little bit of free counsel. Get yourself a radio show. You get to talk to some really smart people.

Andrew Van Breugel: Okay, I’ll try that. I hadn’t thought of that.

Stone Payton: But the yeah, the, the term that I think you mentioned a couple of times is this value stream map. Can you speak to that a little more?

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly, certainly. So, uh, particularly in manufacturing environments, but actually it applies to any environment. Um, what a company is trying to do is assemble. Let’s we’ll use a manufacturing example because it’s easier. Okay. I’m going to buy some materials. Right. And I’m going to get some people and maybe a couple of machines and a building, and I’m going to convert these materials into something else that people find value in. And they’ll pay me more than it cost me to produce. That’s the whole point of of business, correct? Yeah. Now, doing that is a series of processes, as we discussed earlier, and there’s a flow of those materials through that process. It could be through a series of machines, or it could be to different facilities or there’s something coming from my supplier and maybe I send it to somebody else and they do some more processing. Maybe they paint the thing or whatever, and they send it back to me. If I map this process and I take a look at where is the physical item going, how does it move? Right. Not, not not like a geographical map or not like a spatial map, but just conceptually, how does it flow through the process? What’s the capacity utilization of each process? How many people are there? You know, where’s the inventory sitting? Why is there work in progress between the steps and also the information? Where does the information come from? How does it get aggregated, and how does the person on the shop floor know what to do each day? And how does that come from the customer or the distributor or wherever the the end customer is? So if you can imagine on a wall covering it with butcher’s paper, you call it butcher’s paper here.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Covering it with butcher’s paper at brown paper. Having a bunch of people in the room who know the process, or typically going and having a look as well, and starting to measure cycle times, starting to measure downtime, starting to measure defect rates. Having a look at who’s working at this equipment, taking a look at the, you know, the work in progress on either side of the of the work unit. If you if you map that out and draw it on the wall using symbols that we used is a classic lean technique, by the way, our value stream mapping. And then I overlay that with the the information flow. Like how does information come from the customer to the shop floor through who and through what systems. If they’re using any kind of computerized system. And then down the bottom I’ve got this process cycle efficiency sort of diagram that’s going to show me, okay, when am I adding value to this product through this value stream map.

Andrew Van Breugel: When am I adding value. So envisage if you will, stone on this wall inside a large room, a map that shows a bunch of processes and a whole bunch of data around each process. It shows me where the inventory is and down the bottom I have the lead time. Let’s say it’s five days, but how much of that five days was I actually working on the product and how much was it sitting around? Now I’ve got my process cycle efficiency and boom, right there. I have a very valuable piece of information that I can start to assign improvement around. Okay. I can start to see the waste and I can start going attack that waste. I can start to see where the flow is or where the flow is being retarded. And how do I how do I stop that, that that flow from stopping? How do I make it flow better? Um, and this is how you make value flow and how you reduce waste and drive process efficiency that way. That’s a very convoluted answer. I should have just shown you one. If this was if we were doing a video, uh, sort of thing, I could just show show one on the screen. Well, and since radio, I have to try and describe it.

Stone Payton: Well, when we get that studio in Chattanooga that I was telling you about before we come on air. Then you can. You can show it to me. You can show it to me in purpose. But no, I didn’t find it convoluted at all. It makes all the sense in the world. I think it would be incredibly valuable. And I see the use case and application for manufacturing. But, you know, I’ve been in the professional services arena for 35 plus years. I think there’s plenty of application in our world to man, I think that seems powerful.

Andrew Van Breugel: Yes, absolutely. We’ve used it in the healthcare setting as well, um, where we try to expedite the processing of, uh, of of healthcare providers fees from insurers. Um, the only challenge with, with non-production processes is everything is done sitting down at a computer. So, you know, there’s no physical product to follow. There’s no sheet of paper, there’s no, uh, folder. You know, it’s all happening electronically. And so it’s it’s exactly the same concept, though. You’re going to map it out, um, and you’re going to see where does the information stop. So I give Stone something to approve, and he sits on it for five days on the average. Well, there’s five days lost. Okay. Now, if it’s a if it’s a physical item sitting on the shop floor, you can actually see it there. And you can say, why are there ten of these sitting over there? Are they waiting for machine A to be repaired or whatever? You know, it’s harder to see. Or if I’m making beds in a hotel or if I’m servicing animals in a veterinary clinic, you know, a lot of it is, um, it’s harder to map, but the concept is exactly the same.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Hey, I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute, if we could. Hobbies, interests, pursuits, passions outside the scope of this consultancy work. You know, a lot of listeners, uh, for us, anything that I’m producing or hosting or co-hosting, they know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you kind of nerd out about that is outside the scope of this conversation.

Andrew Van Breugel: You know, that’s the that’s a that’s a that’s not a good question to ask because, uh, I’m really quite boring and I try to figure out why I’ve got no time. But no, look, I’m not into anything that takes time. I don’t do hunting, fishing, golf all off the off the agenda. None of those things are ever going to make it onto my onto my, um, I think although, having said that, you know, I probably spend too much time, uh, watching sport, uh, like, at the moment, uh, you know, my sons go to UTC here in Chattanooga. Oh. So, um, yeah, right now, of course, we go to every home game there for the mocs. Uh, who are doing okay, by the way, if you’re interested. Um, unfortunately, I also watched the Titans. Um, but this year, that’s proving to be a waste of time. Um, so to answer your question, I like, look, I like documentaries, I like movies, I like hanging around at home. I don’t mind doing home repairs, which nobody likes, but I like doing it. Um, trying to figure out why how things work. I’m not a builder, obviously. So, you know, if something’s broken, I like to figure out how to fix it myself, if I can. Uh, so, look, it’s a really boring stone. Uh, that gave me no listeners out there that are going to be enthusiastic about my extracurricular activities. I thought.

Stone Payton: Hey, I would love to leave our listeners if we could, with a couple of actionable items, something to chew on, maybe something to read or do or a don’t. And maybe it has to do with looking, you know, inside their organization. But just, you know, you’ve been at this a long time. You’ve seen it all. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Andrew or somebody on his team. But yeah, Andrew, maybe just to tide him over between now and then, let’s give them a little something to to noodle on and think about. Yeah.

Andrew Van Breugel: Look, the thing I want people to learn to do better is to keep an open mind, uh, to not be afraid of outside. Um. Oh, let’s not call it advice, but just outside experience and outside thoughts. Um, now we we we peddle something called inclusion. I know we’re using inclusion all the time now, and I don’t use it the way that most people are. Inclusion just simply means everybody. Everybody in your factory or at your workplace, whatever it is, nearly all of them are working below their potential. I guarantee it, right? Just about everyone. Now, why is that? Well, it’s because they’re not included in the important stuff of decision making analysis, idea generation, idea assessment, and then finally choosing to do something. So so my my nugget, if I can call it that, is learn how to involve your people in the stuff that you think for some reason is only yours to do, and that is decision making. Learn to teach your people how to be involved, and you open your eyes and you open your mind, and you open your ears and stop trying to be the one who does all the decisions. And I don’t have a book for you to read. There’s probably thousands of books on this. Um, but but, you know, for me, and it has been since I learned it myself back in the early 2000. Inclusion is about including everybody at work. It’s got nothing to do with race or gender or anything else. It has to do with a person is going to have something to offer to your problems, to your and therefore to your solutions and the skill. The one skill that leaders don’t have and never have had is how do I spend my day doing that with my people? Come and tell me. Come and show me. Teach me how to engage my people and to include and involve them in the running of my business in a way that doesn’t threaten me or make me feel as if I’m losing my authority. Teach me. How can I turn that corner?

Stone Payton: I am so glad I asked. That feels and sounds like marvelous counsel. Thank you for that. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team. Let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Andrew Van Breugel: Certainly they can visit our website. It’s think rci.com, or they can write to us at info at think rci.com. Or if they want to reach me directly they can write to a Van Bruegel. That’s a v a n b r e u g.

Speaker4: E l.

Andrew Van Breugel: At think RCA. Com. That’s the way to go about it. Stone.

Stone Payton: Andrew. It has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You and your team are doing such important work and having such an incredible impact on so many. Keep up the good work and know that we appreciate you, man.

Andrew Van Breugel: I appreciate that. Thank you Stone. And again, thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with you this afternoon.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Andrew Van Breugel with Rock Creek Informatics and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Chattanooga Business Radio.

Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: Marci Klein on Storytelling and Work-Life Balance

November 4, 2024 by angishields

Women in Motion

Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: Marci Klein on Storytelling and Work-Life Balance

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In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor interviews Marci Klein, founder of Klein Creative Media. Marci shares her transition from a 20-year career as a television director in the reality genre to starting her own video production company. She discusses the challenges of balancing work and motherhood, the importance of storytelling in business, and her initial struggles with pricing and establishing her business.

Marci highlights the impact of organizations like WBEC-West on her professional growth and emphasizes the unique challenges women face in entrepreneurship, particularly in valuing their work and navigating business complexities.

After spending 20 years as a Hollywood director in the reality/documentary genre, Marci Klein, CEO of Klein Creative Media, has dedicated her life to bringing stories to life for business owners. She creates high quality video content with video, stills and drones that create an impact while promoting brand recognition for her clients.

She’s both an Emmy and Cable Ace winner, and very active in her community as a Public arts commissioner and Board Chairman for the Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce. She’s incredibly collaborative and generous with her insight and creativity, and loves to help business owners walk away with the best video content she can deliver to help her clients succeed.

When they succeed, she has succeeded. Through her best-selling books, Women in Business Leading the Way, her training courses, and fully equipped video production studio in Redondo Beach, Marci has inspired hundreds of business owners to to both learn, and create impactful video content and still make the experience as fun and exciting as her deliverables.

Connect with Marci on LinkedIn and X.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: 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: 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 Women in Motion, we have Marci Klein with Klein Creative Media. Welcome.

Marci Klein: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Klein Creative Media.

Marci Klein: Well, Klein Creative Media is a video production company, and we work with other small business owners, medium business owners, and corporate business as well as government to help create branded video content that they can use to expand and grow their business and get brand recognition.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in the video game?

Marci Klein: Actually, yes, I have always been. I was a television director for 20 years in the reality genre and loved working in television. Crazy at times. It’s definitely a different lifestyle than your traditional 9 to 5 job, but I loved every minute of it.

Marci Klein: We were telling stories with video. I was doing news magazine shows, like things like Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, lots of shows on E! Entertainment, and it was a really great career. But I did end up leaving television to have kids in about – I was working at the Dr. Phil show at the time and that was about, well, I can’t remember exactly. Oh, my gosh, my dates. You know, when you get so old, you can’t remember those dates anymore. But I’ve been doing business videos for about ten years now.

Lee Kantor: So when you decided to get back into kind of the working world, why did you not just go back into the, you know, storytelling via television rather than kind of going into your own private practice, going for a more business side of things?

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a great question because I did say that I loved every minute of television, and that might have been a little bit of an exaggeration.

Marci Klein: What I didn’t love about it was the long hours. There’s so much commitment you have to – there’s so much time commitment that you have to put into being a television producer and director that I just didn’t feel like it was a good match while also being a parent. I really wanted to be a hands-on mom and I didn’t see that balance playing out if I went back to television, so I thought I would do something that I could have a little bit more control over, which was having clients and working with them and working around my kids’ schedule.

Marci Klein: And I’ve been very successful in being able to do that. I have a really great work-life balance now, and – I mean, sometimes it gets crazy in this business as well. You’ve got clients that are on a deadline that needs a video right away, and it’s not – but it’s – I don’t think it ever has gotten to the level that television got to.

Marci Klein: I mean, television was, you know, your video is going to be on the air. You need to get your, you know, your video done within minutes or seconds. And it’s just the intensity is, it’s different than working in business videos. It’s definitely different than working with clients.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And especially in that kind of reality TV and that kind of world where it’s everything is hurry up and wait, and hurry up is kind of a thread that runs around everything. Everything has to be done today, yesterday. And they don’t care. You know, the show must go on, they say, so you got to make it happen somehow.

Marci Klein: That is so 100% true. Yes.

Lee Kantor: So now when you were kind of, said, “Okay, I’m going to go into business here for myself and I’m going to target business clients,” was that a difficult transition to kind of educate the business consumer of, hey, I have this background in TV and it’s going to transfer to business because it’s the same type of storytelling – I’m just storytelling in a different manner?

Marci Klein: You know, that’s actually really funny. It is – it was very hard for me at first to get clients to understand my skill level. What – and I have a funny story. My kids went to preschool, and this was before I had really dived back in completely. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really know how to get back, started back into the business. And so I started doing keepsake videos, and my clients were moms from my kids’ preschool. Now, these moms from the kids’ preschool, they did not – they had very low budgets to work with. Yet they had expectations that I think were higher than some of the biggest executive producers I’ve worked with in Hollywood. And I thought that was really funny because I always had to prove myself that I was capable of editing their kids’ first five years together.

Marci Klein: And yeah, here I was, having television, half-hour shows, hour shows, segments on the air, broadcasting to, you know, the whole world on a nightly basis for many, many years. And then you have these moms that are really concerned about my ability to edit their kids’ home videos together. So it was quite interesting at first.

Marci Klein: And I did realize that that’s probably not the right space for me to be in. And I did move on to start doing business videos. But that was my starting point. I needed someplace to start, and it was the keepsakes that got my foot back in the door to telling stories with video again.

Lee Kantor: And it’s interesting because like in the reality TV world, like you said, you’re doing this every day. So in some ways, it’s super important that day, but it’s not very important the next day. But a keepsake video is important every day because that’s the one video they’re going to have. They’re not going to produce another video next week. This is going to be the video that is, you know, kind of forever.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a good way to look at it. I never really looked at it that way. But yeah, maybe that’s why they were very, very detail-oriented and so perfectionistic about what they wanted. And maybe I just needed to learn to price it better.

Lee Kantor: There you go.

Marci Klein: And that’s – I think that’s an issue with women and that’s what I – you know, I’m a member of WBEC and WBENC and I think that’s one of the things that I like about this organization is they really help you to try to learn to price your services better. And I really learned a lot from working with an organization like this and being part of it about how you create value and how you value yourself. And I think it’s a – I don’t think all women have an issue with it, but I think probably more women have an issue with it than men in my humble opinion.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’ve interviewed a lot of people that coach in this area and they agree with you that women – guys tend to price on what it could be, and women tend to price on either what it is or what. For sure, they feel like they can deliver. They’re not as willing to kind of fudge upward. They’d rather fudge downward and know for sure they’re going to be able to deliver.

Marci Klein: That’s an interesting way to put it. And I mean, I like the way that you put it. I don’t like the way that it’s true, because I do think it is true. And I wish that that wasn’t the case. And I need to learn every day. I need to learn something new. And, pricing is something that I keep trying to learn and get really solid with.

Marci Klein: But it’s always a struggle. It’s always a struggle. I think the maternal instinct kicks in and you just want to please your client, you know? It’s like one of those things you’d rather be, the, you know, concerned and compassionate person than that, you know, I don’t know, a bulldog that’s like, “Oh, this is my price. This is what I go. You know, this is what I’m valued at.” It’s a hard thing to – it’s a hard balance to get as a female, I believe.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Well, pricing, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got regarding pricing was through a guy named Seth Godin. I don’t know if you read his blog, but he’s a marketer and he says pricing is a story. There is no price that’s the right price. Like any, any price can be the right price with the right story attached to it. So, I think a lot of times people price on, you know, just whatever the tangible value of something is. But the value of something is so much more than that. You know, that’s why a piece of art can, you know, cost millions of dollars on the same canvas and paint could cost, you know, tens of dollars. So it’s just the story that’s associated with it.

Marci Klein: Very good point. Love that.

Lee Kantor: Now, when it came to building out your business, how did you go about doing that? Because having a team and building a company around a vision, it’s one of those things where in your head, maybe it seems easy, but in reality, it’s hard to get a bunch of like-minded people on board, you know, delivering what the vision you have in your head.

Marci Klein: That is so true. My company is a bootstrap business. So I started it with a computer with my own money, well, my husband and my money. We – I said, hey, – I said to my husband, “Hey, Ken, I want to, I want to start a business. I need to buy a computer.” So I took some money out of the bank, bought a computer, and started going to work, and then I bought a camera, and then I bought some lights, and then I bought, you know, and it went on and on and on.

Marci Klein: And what happened is my children, they were I think nine and 11 years old, and they decided that they didn’t want to share a room with each other anymore. And so they said, “Mom, can you – instead of working in the office, can we use the office as our bedroom?” And then I was like, “Oh, my goodness. Okay, what am I going to do now?”

Marci Klein: So I set out to look for office space, and I accidentally came upon this office where I’m sitting right now, which I absolutely love. I have a studio and an office now, and I ended up going to a meeting at this location, and the landlord mentioned that they have, that they have office space available. I took a look at the space. I fell in love with it and decided to open a business.

Marci Klein: And that was a big, scary step to actually move out of my house where I was just working remotely and create a real place of business. So I found a place to rent. I moved in immediately and my business tripled. It was amazing, but so did all the things that I needed to do to run a business.

Marci Klein: I did not know of all the different hurdles I’d have to jump through to actually have a legit business, from workman’s comp to HR, to hiring, and just so many different things that I didn’t know about, even becoming a WBE, a women-business enterprise. I had no idea that the steps that would take to get that far.

Marci Klein: And I’m still learning new things all the time. I still have to get audits by workman’s comp every year, and I have to have an accountant and a bookkeeper. And wow, I didn’t realize. You know, it’s not just all fun and games and telling stories with video, which is the part that I love. It’s all the business stuff that goes along with it, which I feel like I’m not an expert at, but I’m definitely getting a lot better at it. And I know so much more than when I started ten years ago.

Lee Kantor: Now, when did you have that first client where you were able to deliver something and go, man, that really worked for them, and this is something I’m going to really be able to help a lot of folks.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s funny. That was my one – one of my very first clients stemmed from something I did in television. So I would – picture me. I’m still a stay-at-home mom at this point. I don’t have my office yet, and I actually went to the plastic surgeon’s office because I had this horrible C-section scar that I needed to get rid of. It made me look ridiculous in a bikini. And I live at the beach, and I play volleyball and wear a bikini all the time, and I needed to fix that.

Marci Klein: So I’m sitting in the plastic surgeon’s office, and I get brought into the office and the nurse comes in and the nurse is one of my clients. She was one of my mother’s who hired me to do her kid’s first five-year keepsake video. And I’m completely confused. You know, that this woman’s in here because I didn’t have – I had no idea. She worked in a plastic surgery office, and she started bragging about what an amazing video I did for her child. Meanwhile, the plastic surgeon is talking about a project that he has. He’s doing a mommy makeover project where he is doing a contest where one woman in the community was going to get a full-on plastic surgery makeover from head to toe.

Marci Klein: Now, ironically, I worked on a TV show called The Swan. It’s actually a very controversial TV show. But The Swan was about these – all these women they called themselves, or they were called ugly ducklings. They weren’t really ugly ducklings, but these women went through complete makeovers, body makeovers, head-to-toe and psychological makeovers, and diets, everything. And I was a producer and director on that show for two seasons, and so I had so much experience working on plastic surgery shows that the combination between, you know, the keepsake videos, doing those myself and the professional mommy makeover shows that I did for television, I was able to work on this mommy makeover for this plastic surgeon.

Marci Klein: I did 12 segments, which turned into a half-an-hour television show that I did all by myself. I shot it, I edited it, I interviewed everybody, like from soup to nuts. I did this whole program and that was very, very rewarding and made me realize that keepsake videos are not really where I need to be. I needed to be doing real stories for real businesses, and that was a big transition for me.

Lee Kantor: And what a wonderful bridge for you, because that made it seamless. Like you went into the business world kind of leveraging all you would learn from the reality TV world through this keepsake thing that you were just trying to do to keep, you know, stay involved in the business, you know, at the beginning. So it was a perfect bridge into the business community.

Marci Klein: It really was. You know, it’s so interesting the path that we go down. You know, I think there must be some sort of master plan somewhere because, you know, I do feel very blessed and very lucky because things do fall into place for me. I do feel like my, you know, life’s been – I mean, yes, I have ups and downs. Everybody has ups and downs, and I have had plenty of downs. But I feel, for the most part, I’m a very fortunate person. I’ve had so many positive things in my life and the direction that I’ve been led on just sort of serendipitously happens for me, and I feel so fortunate about it.

Lee Kantor: Well, when you do good work and you’re passionate about it and you put out kind of these good vibes, I think that you have better chances of finding the success that you’re finding.

Marci Klein: Well, thank you. I hope you’re right. I hope that that success continues because I’m looking forward to having my business keep growing and making a mark and and satisfying a bunch of happy clients. That’s my goal all the time.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned a little bit about the impact of WBEC-West and those types of organizations, but can you share – is there anything that being part of that WBEC community has tangibly helped you kind of grow your business or you’ve gotten business from it, or just learned or found a collaborator through it? Has there something happened through that relationship that you can talk about?

Marci Klein: Oh, so many amazing things. I don’t even know where to begin. One of the things that I loved about WBENC and WBC is they have a thing called a Platinum Supplier Program. That was the beginning. So I’ll talk about that first.

Marci Klein: It’s a training program that teaches you how to come up with your own capability statement and your elevator pitch. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even know what a capability statement was prior to the Platinum Supplier Program. So I cannot give kudos enough to Marianne Ellis, the teacher, and Jaymee Lomax, who throws the program through WBEC. Amazing program. And it changed my business and just changed the direction, the trajectory of everything. They opened my eyes to the fact that I could actually do work with corporations. I never knew that I could do that. I never knew how that was happening for other businesses. And they opened my eyes and they’re still helping me make strides every day with that program.

Marci Klein: And let me talk about the second thing that, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of business from WBE, so much business I can’t even tell you with a lot of fellow women business owners. But one of the best things that happened to me was I was at a WBE National conference in Nashville and in the Uber line, I met an amazing woman.

Marci Klein: Her name is Elin Barton, and she owned a company called Riveo Creative, and we just met in the Uber line, and we were chatting and we liked each other. Next thing you know, we’re collaborating with each other over the phone a few weeks later. And next thing I know, her client, Black Angus, had a corporate commercial, a national corporate commercial that they need produced, and she’s not able to come to California to do it. So she brought me into her loop and introduced me to her client, and we did a collaborative shoot for Black Angus and did a commercial that Black Angus loved so much that they hired us to do a second commercial.

Marci Klein: And I just have to attribute all of that goes back to WBENC for having the conference and for having the most amazing women at the conference, and for them encouraging collaboration and set of competition, because it’d be real easy for me to compete with another video production company and think that they’re a threat to me, but I don’t look at it that way. I look at every company, whether they do the exact same thing that I do or something different, as an opportunity to collaborate and grow. And I think this was a perfect example of that.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a great lesson for the listeners when it comes to going to events like this or joining communities like WBEC-West. You don’t just join and pay dues and think you’re done. Like, you have to go and be part of it and be active and open and reach out and look for those opportunities because they don’t happen by themselves. You have to be proactive if you’re going to get anything out of these either events or joining these organizations.

Marci Klein: I agree 100%. The more I go to these events, the more the most amazing people I can continue to meet. And the more times that you meet these same people, you start forming relationships and they start trusting you and referring you. It’s really amazing. And the whole networking and being able to do it in person with all these amazing women and amazing corporations, it’s been very rewarding for me.

Lee Kantor: So who is that ideal client for you today and how can we help you meet more of them?

Marci Klein: Well, it’s still a combination for me. I love the Black Angus of the world. Those are amazing. Those are corporate clients. I’m definitely looking for more corporate clients who want to put their trust in us. I feel like we can do a great job at any level. I still have all my television crews and talent that I work with that I bring in on shoots.

Marci Klein: But then I also really enjoy working with other women business owners and minority business women – and minority business owners as well. I really feel like there’s a connection, especially with the other women business owners. I feel like there’s a shorthand with women. We just get along. We’re able to communicate so clearly. I mean, I get along with men, too, don’t get me wrong, but I just love helping other women. I’ve always been a proponent of supporting women, even as far – even when I was in college. And I’m just going to divert here for a second.

Marci Klein: I just went online the other day and was able to find a documentary that I made in 1987, my college, my senior college project, which I got an A on, by the way. But PBS in Chicago purchased my documentary from me. It was called Breaking the Boys Network, and it was an empowering video about how women are making strides in the film and television business.

Marci Klein: Yes, it looks at where there, you know, that the issues lie, but it also looks at a positive stepping forward and how we’re going to change that and how we’re going to, you know, make strides. So I’ve always been into supporting women and empowering women and bringing up stories of inequality that we can work on to make better. And I think that – I’m kind of losing a little bit my train of thought. I forgot where the question started. But supporting women is something that’s really important to me and empowering women.

Lee Kantor: Now, the organizations that you’re working with as clients, are they coming to you because they’ve never done video before, or are they coming to you to solve a marketing problem?

Marci Klein: That’s a good question. A lot of – a lot of businesses – there’s both actually. A lot of people have, you know, homemade videos on their website that just don’t show the quality of work that they really do. And so, they come to me for an upgrade because they want something more of a higher quality. And, you know, sometimes people have nothing on their website and they don’t have any video at all. And video is the most powerful tool to bring in an audience. And we all know that by just by, you know, looking at Instagram or any kind of social media where you post videos. The stats are so much higher for viewership when you bring video versus still photographs. It’s just much, much more – brings much more of a –

Lee Kantor: It’s more – right. It’s more impactful.

Marci Klein: Yes, it is much more impactful. I have a bunch of stats about it too. I just didn’t bring them up on my computer screen prior to this phone call. I should have.

Lee Kantor: But yeah. So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the best way to connect? Is there a website?

Marci Klein: Yes, kleincreativeMedia.com. And you spell Klein just the same way that you spell Calvin Klein. That would be K-L-E-I-N. So kleincreativemedia.com. And we have a contact page on there, and all you have to do is there’s a button, you can book a consult, and we do a free 30-minute consultation and get your ideas flowing. And even if you have your – if you have your idea already set or if you don’t have any idea at all, we can work with clients.

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

Marci Klein: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you doing this.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.

Chantay Allen with Momentum Companies

November 4, 2024 by angishields

Buy a Business Near Me

Chantay Allen with Momentum Companies

00:00 /

Chantay Allen, a Business Broker at Momentum Companies, is a native of Southern California and has a diverse business background with an education in the social sciences and ability to speak Spanish.

Nearly ten years of combined retail management experience in North Carolina and California has earned Chantay a broad perspective and developed her expertise in customer service, marketing, sales, retail operations, and knowledge of corporate-to-franchise relations.

As a former Inside Sales Representative for a Consumer Products line at a minority-owned small business in California, Chantay raised the bar by setting a new sales quota. Chantay’s consumer products work experience with factories in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, China, increased her commitment to think globally and act locally.

Having owned and operated a local nutrition store franchise, Chantay has the ability to relate to buyers and sellers since she has been through the process of buying a business. As a Business Broker with eight years of experience, Chantay has sold an assortment of established restaurant, bar, retail, salon, and advertising businesses.

Chantay has served on the Cape Fear River Watch Board of Directors and is involved in the arts community. For the last 14 years, the Atlantic coast region has become a special place for her to live and help a great variety of local businesses in the Southeast thrive.

Connect with Chantay on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me now. Here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me. Stone Payton here with you this morning and this is going to be a good one. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Momentum Companies. Chantay Allen, how are you?

Chantay Allen: Good morning. I’m doing well. Thank you. How are you?

Stone Payton: Stone I am doing well. I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions, Chantay. We likely won’t get to them all, but let’s start, if we could, with you painting a little bit of a picture. Mission. Purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks?

Chantay Allen: Sure. Stone. Well, I as a business broker, I specialize in selling businesses. I help prepare sellers or, you know, buyers for the process. I make sure that they have the right resources to be successful in the transaction. I work with the deal team as a business broker. So my deal team consists of a transactional attorney, CPAs, maybe SBA lenders. The financing is necessary, and so I cooperate with all of the team members to make sure that the sell of the business is successful.

Stone Payton: How did you get into this line of work?

Chantay Allen: I was recruited by a client, so I’ve been selling businesses in March. It’ll make nine years. So about nine years ago, I had a client, you know, give me their commercial that I should really come on board. And I had never heard of this before, so I’m kind of like, uh, can’t we just focus on what you hired me to do? And so this this, uh, this guy was like a grandfather to me. And, uh, so I kept getting these little commercials, and I was invited to, I think, come meet his family. He’s very family oriented. And so I met his family. And, um, basically, it was kind of, um, I wouldn’t say it was on a whim, but there was an opportunity for me to go along to a business meeting, and they had a particular listing that was, uh, actually at the time it was in the process of being listed. And the, you know, the potential seller was really in a tough situation because it was regarding like a health issue and with a family member. So, you know, and this happens often as a business broker where the reason why they need to sell the business or what prompts them to sell the business may be something like a pending health crisis or something.

Chantay Allen: So it was right in my wheelhouse because I actually have a background in the wellness space. Um, and so when the head broker and the client, the potential seller, once I engaged them with a round of questions, the seller said, okay, she needs to sell this business. And so I that was one of my first listings. There was another challenge that I had where the head broker was saying, if I had what it took to sell businesses because it is there is a skill set, but there was another business that no one could sell that I looked at the file, blew dust off the file. It was actually a a convenience store in downtown Wilmington, and that they had some issues with getting it, you know, sold. And I and I got it sold. So that is, you know, pretty much the back story. Once I actually successfully sold a business and then another business, I thought, okay, I could do this. And then from there, I sold a Italian restaurant that had been in Wilmington for ten years. And, um, you know, we just we just kept going. So that gave me the confidence that this is a service that I can provide.

Stone Payton: So nine plus years in, what are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it these days for you?

Chantay Allen: Well, Stone, I do like business. I like various aspects of it. Um, and I think what has been Rewarding is helping the seller who has been, you know, typically the business owner for at least three years. I mean, I have business owners who’ve had their what they call their baby, you know, for a decade or more, of course, but ensuring that they get an ROI. You know, there are there are business owners who have to close shop, and they have really nothing but a collection of memories to show for, um, after it’s said and gone. So when I can help, um, offload that the task is it’s a pretty arduous task of selling the business, and the business owner is able to just focus on their daily operation, and I can get it done confidentially. Right. So they’re not put on blast. I’m able to sell the business and it’s very seamless. They are very, um, you know, happy about that process. And then they’ve got, you know, some money in their pocket to invest in their future. Uh, you know, apart from being the owner of that particular business.

Stone Payton: So walk us through the process, if you will, and maybe, you know, you reflect on a use case that you remember, or you can use Business RadioX if you want. I’m a managing partner and equity partner of the network. The Business RadioX network. Uh, me and my business partner, Lee Kantor. We’ve been doing this for 21 years. If we were looking to shape an exit, you know, you can use that as a use case, but just kind of give us some of the highlights of what the process looks like from the seller’s perspective.

Chantay Allen: Sure. So number one, sometimes, um, the potential seller didn’t realize they wanted to sell their business until I approached them in some way. Uh, we’re, you know, it didn’t really occur to them that, yeah, actually I do want to do this, but sometimes you have a seller who is seeking, um, you know, someone to sell their business. I find that’s often rare, but sometimes you do. And then oftentimes, um, you have to, um, kind of bring up the idea, so to speak. And I’ve done this by just, um, having a conversation with someone who owns a business, how long they’ve been in the business. Bottom line is, once they reach the point where they are open to the idea of selling their business, I help them get started. So would be there would be a listing meeting, uh, to get the process started. And I make sure that the potential seller is prepared for that listing meeting by having the last three years of their financials. That includes their profit and loss statements, balance sheet, tax returns, a list of the FFA and inventory. You know that are vital to the business. And you know we review those financials. I ask, you know, list of questions to determine what their seller’s discretionary earnings are. Um, I have to get both, you know, quantitative and qualitative info, uh, you know, from them to really get a grasp on the business that I would, you know, be putting on the market. And so once I have all that information, you know, I take the financials, you know, back to, uh, my valuation team and have to determine what the list price is, right.

Chantay Allen: So once I have a list price. That’s fair. Uh, then I share that information with the with the potential seller. And if they’re in agreement with that list price, then we, you know, we get it on paper. We we do a listing agreement. Once I have a listing agreement, then I get to have a lot of fun going to work on how I’m going to advertise the business listing confidentially. Um, yeah. And so once I kind of give a, I capture all the best aspects of the business for sale, and I, you know, give it, you know, like an alias, right? I’m not going to say, like, if your business was called Stone Payton Steak House, I’m not going to list it as Stone Payton Steak House. Okay. Then everybody’s going to know what it is, right? Right. Um, so it may be, um, highly profitable, um, restaurant in, uh, eastern Georgia or wherever, you know, you’re located, something like that. And so once the potential seller agrees to how I have the business advertised, then publish it ready to go on the market. Uh, so that is essentially how the process gets started. And then I get to take on handle all the spam, you know, calls or, you know, or, you know, people calling and, you know, maybe they really don’t have the means to buy a business, but I will make sure that I, uh, you know, talk to these potential buyers to make sure that they are qualified to purchase a business and if they are qualified to purchase the business and they sincerely are interested in buying a business, then I determine, you know, what their goals are, um, there’s a process where I need to be able to determine, you know, how are you going to pay for this? You know, so if I, you know, if I’m talking to someone and I’m like, okay, so I’ve got the business listed for, let’s say 250 K, right.

Chantay Allen: And, and my potential seller is selling their business because they are relocating, you know, let’s say they’ve had the business for 15 years. They’re ready to get a Dodge, go somewhere else, maybe join you in Georgia. Um, and so they’re ready to relocate and they’re selling the business, uh, within that two month time frame. Right. Um, and or they’re selling the business, let’s say, within let’s be more realistic within. Um, 3 to 6 months is when they would love to exit their business. And I’m talking to a potential buyer and I’m saying, okay, and when would you like to move into this business? Like about a year or two. Not gonna work. Right. My seller wants to exit their business in less than a year. You’re not prepared to buy a business for another year or two. So this is not the ideal buyer. So I make sure that I go through that process. It’s very selective, uh, to, to ensure that we have the right buyer for this business. I also, uh, you know, consider things like personalities, uh, if there’s been a personality type that has been, um, you know, a great fit for the type of business that we’re in, and I can see some things that might be red flags.

Chantay Allen: I take that into consideration. I don’t feel like a potential buyer should be excluded, you know, necessarily because of it. But I do take that into account to make sure that we don’t have, like a left fielder put in place. And you have to think about those things when it comes to small business, when it comes to small business, you have to. Things have to fit like a puzzle because, um, we don’t want we don’t want the Joe Schmuck Italy moving into this business because. Yeah, because they have the means to do it, but they don’t really have the personality. They don’t really have the skills. They they’re a fish out of water. Um, maybe they have the money to buy a a beauty business, but there’s nothing about them that they don’t have the background experience, you know, to operate or even be, you know, maybe a silent partner in one. So all of those things have to be evaluated when you’re looking at the right fit. And sellers appreciate that because they know that you’re not just doing this for the money, right? You want whoever buys that business to be able to thrive after you sell it. So I have to make sure that in this move that we’re going to make together, it’s the right move for both parties.

Stone Payton: When you put your valuation team on this, you come up with a number and it’s based on experience and expertise and reality. Do you ever find that you you swing back around to the seller? It’s not even close. Maybe to what they were hoping to get for the business, and maybe sometimes they have sentimental attachment to it. And in that case, might you say, look, you might get a lot closer to what you’re looking for, but you need to get these ducks in a row and get these financials looking like this before we can go out to the market and ask that kind of number, does that ever happen?

Chantay Allen: That’s a really good question, Stone. So and yes it happens. You hit on something very important. The seller has to be happy. And so what I would do then is I would offer to help them increase the profitability of their business. Yeah. And so they could we could schedule a consultation and I can let them know what they could do to improve the business. So there is a, you know, much larger ROI and I’ve got the experience and place to help do that. I have had clients who were not, um, expecting the list price to be what it turned out to be. And I said, hey, you know, here’s what we can improve. It may take you another year. You know, it may take you another two years to get it to where you want the business to be. Having a background in sales I have, however, worked with a seller to increase their profitability within like a quarter of a year.

Stone Payton: Wow.

Chantay Allen: That’s if they listen to me. We can get it done. We can get it done soon. But yeah.

Stone Payton: So in that vein, I guess one of the things I’m picking up in this conversation is you don’t reach out to Shanti if you want to, necessarily. Only if you want to sell the business now or in a few months. You might want to get with Shanti kind of early, right. And make sure you do have your ducks in a row and get everything prepared so that you get the best return. Is that accurate?

Chantay Allen: Bingo.

Stone Payton: It’s not like you’re trying to make your money from this transaction tomorrow. You’re accustomed to that longer ride in some cases.

Chantay Allen: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So preparation is key. And I think in most cases there’s there’s going to be a client Where they, for the most part, have all the information we need in place. You know, like the financials. But part of the work that I have to do up front is getting them prepared to sell. Yeah, that that really is, you know, as a business broker and consultant, that is what I probably spend a lot of my time on is getting it ready for the market. So it’s not it’s not necessarily a fast turnaround process. And the seller experiences that, you know, when they’re working with me, they go, oh gosh. And I was like, but if we get all these things, all these ducks in a row, you’re going to be, you know, thanking me once we have a buyer because you’re going to pay for it if you don’t have these things in place, if you’re in a due diligence process, it’ll they’ll come back to haunt you. So if you’re not, you’re not ready. So and in me but definitely my but definitely my client. So I want the process to be seamless and I really go through it when I have a, you know, a buyer, you know, drilling me with questions, I, I really have to have all of the necessary financials and background information about the business. It can be, you know, getting prepared could be even knowing. Okay, I may have to know you’ve been at this location for five years, you know, have you been anywhere else? Like, I have to know the seller’s, you know, whole story. I have to know, you know, staff information and whatnot. Um, so there’s a there’s a lot that goes into that. And, you know, part of my job is making sure I make the process easier for the seller to, you know, to go through. So it’s a pleasant experience for all parties involved.

Stone Payton: You touched on this earlier in the conversation, But I am interested to know how the whole sales and marketing thing works for a practice like yours. Like how you get the new business. Is it all referral or do you find yourself out there having to shake the trees a little bit? Do you speak to that if you would.

Chantay Allen: Oh yeah. So I mean, you do, you should, you know, if you have connections, you you will have people refer potential sellers to you or buyers to you. Um, now, my best referrals have come from satisfied clients. So if I’ve sold, um, I’ve gotten referrals from a client because I sold two of their businesses were like, well, she sold two of my businesses. So of course I’m going to, you know, refer people to her. So that is one way. And then you do have to knock on doors, so to speak. It’s not one of those businesses because this is not like real estate where everything’s on MLS.

Stone Payton: Right? Right.

Chantay Allen: You were. You were confidentially selling somebody’s baby. Yeah. And so you you have to be trusted by the seller, um, that you’re going to remain discreet. You don’t want to do anything to upset the apple cart.

Stone Payton: Well, in nine plus years in, um, I’m operating under the impression you probably have this this group of people that buy and sell businesses. So it wouldn’t surprise me if you could go to some of them early on and say, hey, I got another good one. Something you might want to take a look at, Joe, you know, or something. Yeah.

Chantay Allen: Yeah. And so it’ll be nine years in March. Um, but. So almost there. But yeah. So I can I can do that. I do have the, you know, proven capabilities of selling a business. Um, you know, I do have a reputation among my clients. Um, in the New Hanover, Brunswick County, uh, you know, Pender area. But, um, when you have a conversation with the seller, you can’t do it in front of people. I mean, you have to be very careful, very respectful of their business operation, because what if, um, you know, their employee overhears you talking and they go, oh, I better get out of here. You know, like, they start to get apprehensive about their employment and they’re like, oh, wait, boss is going to sell. You know, and then before you know it, people are banning ship. We can’t have that. Right. So how you approach a seller or by some of the old fashioned means, um, you know, meeting in person? Um, I believe my background with, um, inside sales has definitely been, um, beneficial because picking up the phone, calling people, uh, you know, so that’s that’s still a thing. Um, networking. You can, you know, meet someone. Definitely, um, you know, through networking, but it’s, um, it’s just not as, um, the sales and marketing aspect. Advertisements. Um, similar things that other people do for their business. As business owners, you know, your email marketing, you can do. Um, and I think that would you know, that’s a good start.

Stone Payton: And as the ball gets rolling, I mean, the the mental image I have in my head is like, you’re the quarterback. Because as things get going, you’re coordinating with people who have specific expertise and experience in the valuation domain. You’re working with the transaction attorneys, the CPAs, possibly lenders and then so so you’re you’re sort of marshaling all of those resources. The reason I’m bringing it up, I have to confess, I think maybe before this conversation, I was viewing your line of work as as more on the transactional side of the continuum. And now I’m thinking nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, this is a very relationship oriented business, isn’t it?

Chantay Allen: It is. And I love your, your your football analogy because I do like football.

Speaker4: Oh.

Chantay Allen: What am I talking about I love football. And so, like the quarterback, uh, who’s, you know, whose role is to lead the offense? That’s what I do in the business, right?

Stone Payton: Yeah.

Chantay Allen: So I totally love the football analogy. Um, you know, and so you’re right, it’s it’s a combination Of of all those things and kind of being ahead of the team, um, leader of the pack, so to speak, when it comes to getting, you know, getting the transaction done. Um, and that’s one of the things that you bring up a good point because this is, you know, a transactional, um, you know, process and it’s so financial. Mhm. And, um, when people and it’s funny because, you know, I’m an artist, you know, by nature and when I, I didn’t run away from math, you know, but I was in school but I was always, you know into like the am I creative person. Right. Which helps me, you know, as a saleswoman, um, in consultant that that’s, that’s a benefit. But it is so, so much of it is numbers. And so when I try to help the seller understand, um, that it’s so financial, it’s it’s a lot of it is I mean, you have your again your quantitative aspects of it, but a lot of it is about the numbers. And when I have a client, you know, really wanting me to vouch for, oh, but this, this and that and here and there and this, that and the other, I’m like, I asked them, I said, and you expect the buyer to take my word for it. You you expect them to pay six figures, you know, for a really compelling story.

Chantay Allen: You know, they’re going to look at me like I’m crazy. Like it? I have to prove that it’s worth it. No one in their right mind is going to pay thousands of dollars. Uh, you know, take my word for it. So I, you know, in terms of presenting and negotiating, um, one of my favorite stories is, uh, I had to, you know, lead a conference call, um, with a, uh, potential buyer whose spouse, you know, has a master’s in accounting. Um, this this conference call was over one check. And I say to my seller, listen to me. Find that check, okay? I was like, we we we got to get this done. And after that conference call, um, with the potential buyer whose spouse is a master’s in accounting and speak four languages. Okay. Um, I go through the rest of the process and within 48 hours had an offer to purchase agreement. And that client, um, who? Those are the clients who bought the business? Um, they now have three locations. Oh, so I really proved the value of that business. It was a restaurant, and I steered the seller in the right direction to where they made the, uh, the right decisions. Um, or they. I’d say they heeded the advice that I provided for the business to be more profitable. And the buyers were able to reap the benefits of that after the sale, um, to the point where they’ve been able to increase by another two locations and counting. So that is how crucial. Um, you know, the the numbers can be in this line of work and, uh. I think that’s a really, like, big answer for, like, what I find rewarding. Is that good enough?

Stone Payton: That’s more than good enough. Let me switch gears on you for for a moment. Uh, hobbies, pursuits, interests outside the the scope of your work. A lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about that doesn’t have anything to do with this work.

Chantay Allen: Of course.

Chantay Allen: Um, so, again, I, um, you know, I’m an artist. I my medium is acrylic. Uh, so I do enjoy painting. I’m very active. Um, you know, with Pilates and cycling. Um, little known fact. You know, I’ve, uh, been, uh, road cycling, you know, for years. Uh, one of the, one of the last rides that I did was the tour de pickle. And so some cycling buddies, they’re like, Shanti, have you done the tour de pickle? And I was like, no. And I saw the t shirt. They sent me a screenshot of the t shirt and I said, I want that shirt with that pickle on it. I just did it so I can get a t shirt with a pickle on it. Now the t shirt ended up looking nothing like the one that lured me in, by the way. It was awful. I should probably shouldn’t say that on on air, but it was different than what I expected. So anyway, that is what attracted me. Was the whole having a shirt with the with the goofy looking pickle on it. So this is, this took place in Mount Olive, North Carolina, which I knew existed, but I, I really I’ve seen the. You’ve seen the jar like the green lid in the grocery store, right? You’ve been in a baseball game. You’ve seen Mount Olive, uh, pickled relish. Yeah, right. So this little town in North Carolina has an annual pickle festival. And I was mind blown by how many people in this small, little downtown area there was, like, the downtown where they were cooking on the grills and selling stuff. It was like you were in a sardine can, and I could not find where this, uh, where this ride began, where all the cyclists.

Chantay Allen: I’m asking people, the locals. Where is this? Because it wasn’t really, you know. So anyway, I got on track. It was a beautiful ride. Um, so as a cyclist, you you’re in different weather conditions. You could be going against the wind. With the wind. It could be scorching hot. This was perfect. Riding weather was fair weather overcast. You didn’t have the sun beating on you and it was a little hilly. And so I’m going, you know, past a lot of the green. It was beautiful because you had a lot of kind of wide open country. And I learned that that menthol pickle company has been in business since 1926. Whoa, 1926. And when you see that they’re in, like, every grocery store in America, I was impressed by their distribution. I was like, wow, you know, this family was booking it. So it was a beautiful, enjoyable ride, I think. I think it was a 26. I think I did a 26 mile ride. And so, um, there were there was one part of the ride where these, like, rabid looking dogs came out of nowhere. That was my fastest mile per hour speed. That right there that I’ve got tracked on my Strava. Was that section right there where I was being chased by these little rabid, you know, dogs. And then I saw cute little things on the ride, like, um, a, a yard that had, like, a sliding board and a little, um, you know, those little metal riding horses back in the day where it’s like, stuck on a thing and has little boink. So. And then there was a Billy goat.

Chantay Allen: And so it was cute to see in the country, like a yard with, like, you know, a dog and little playground and little playground toys. And then this little Billy goat smiling at me because Billy goats, they have, like, a permanent smirk. Even if they’re sad, they’re probably smirking, I’m sure. So there were little, little rural, rural America, uh, memories that I had. So then, as I’m coming and finishing the ride, I go back to the downtown area and there’s a deputy, and I said, you know, sir, this is I’ve never been to this before. This. This place is crowded. And he he cracked the best dad joke and he said, yeah, the the annual pickle festival is kind of a big deal. I thought, you get it.

Stone Payton: Yes I do get it.

Chantay Allen: So, you know, best dad jokes. So I do enjoy writing. Um, I love the outdoors. And, um, I may do the three bridge bike tour next. That’s in South Brunswick Islands. That one takes you over. If you do all three bridges, you’re doing 68 miles. If you do the first two, you’re doing 30 plus, which I’ve done. Oh, please. They’re they’re writers who were like 80 who were century writers. They do like 100 mile rides. Um, I’ve got clients who have, um, cycled abroad. Um, you know, I’ve got clients who have shipped their bikes to France to cycle in France. And it’s something that I definitely see, you know, between that and art that I see myself doing, you know, through the rest of my life.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. Oh, man. Okay.

Chantay Allen: When was your last? Like outdoors adventure. You said you hunt.

Stone Payton: Yesterday afternoon I saw a buck. I couldn’t get the shot I wanted on him, but I had a marvelous afternoon.

Chantay Allen: Where have you seen? Where did you see the buck?

Stone Payton: Um, in some woods about 15 minutes away from my house.

Chantay Allen: How far are you? Is your area from the Chattahoochee River?

Stone Payton: Oh, not too far. This is actually a different area. It’s Lake Allatoona and Kellogg Creek, but I’m 20 minutes or less from Chattahoochee.

Chantay Allen: I read a book, um, about a month ago, about the first female riverkeeper and what it took to clean up that river. And, uh, you know, I know some people, um, in Athens, Georgia, which is also not far from it. So that’s really good. You get to kind of zen out, zone out and be in the woods.

Chantay Allen: And I’m sure you, uh, do you have any family that goes along with you or hunting buddies that you take with you? Do you go by yourself?

Stone Payton: Um, a little bit of both. Yesterday was by myself. My brother drives up from Florida about once a month. I’ve got friends at, uh, at Wildlife Action of Georgia, which is adjacent to this, which is a nonprofit that kind of helps disabled people and urban kids and other kids and introduces them to outdoors. And so we, you know, we go canoeing with them. We teach them about hunting, fishing, camping, all that stuff. So I get to hang out with a lot of folks on this trek.

Chantay Allen: So with hunting, um, is it similar to other things where you, you have to be licensed, where like, does your license only work for your area in Georgia? Or if you’re in North Carolina, can you use your license to hunt in North Carolina?

Stone Payton: I would have to get a different license, but I have a Florida license, a Georgia license, and if I go on a paid hunt, I buy I buy that that license. And so yeah, you have to you know, it’s pretty well regulated. And I want to I’m happy to pay it because that helps go towards conservation and preserving, you know, what I’m able to enjoy for future generations.

Chantay Allen: So have you ever hunted in North Carolina ever?

Stone Payton: I have not, but now you’re piquing my interest. You got an idea?

Chantay Allen: So yes, it’s an outdoor story. Me and some friends. You got to go to the Birkhead Mountain wilderness.

Stone Payton: Okay.

Chantay Allen: There are. Yeah. So there are protected wilderness areas that you can hunt. And long story short, we were in Birkhead Mountain Wilderness, and, um, I was fortunately with three other friends. So there was four of us. We were getting ready to take care of some business in the woods. And then we heard a gun go off and we realized, oh, it’s hunting season.

Chantay Allen: So fortunately it was like we were further enough away, but it was within earshot. But we, uh, we realized that it was hunting season when we heard the the rifle also probably should have maybe picked a different time, but that’s proof that you can hunt and Birkhead Mountain wilderness. You’re welcome.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners with a with a couple of pro tips, something to chew on and look, gang. The best pro tip I can give you buying or selling, trying to get ready to buy or sell. Just reach out and have a conversation with Shanti or somebody on her team. But to tide them over till then Shanti, let’s give them a little something to noodle on if we could on buyer and or seller side of things.

Chantay Allen: Number one be ready. Be ready to sell your business, right. Secondly, have your financials. Selling a business requires them. Make sure your sales taxes are paid.

Chantay Allen: That will come back to haunt you. It’s something that the buyer cannot. That’s an expense. The buyer cannot take off your hands. You are liable to have your sales taxes paid, and also make sure that your, um, your, your website presence, your, you know, your marketing, those types of things are in place as well and have a plan for how you’re going to, um. Invest or you know, where you’re going to allocate, um, the funds from the sale of the business. Be ready to have a conversation with your CPA, um, about where are you going to put that large sum of money. Right. Especially, um, as, as, uh, it plays into, uh, you know, taxes, you know, your capital gains and things like that. So that that would be my, my list if I just kind of, like, off the top of my head would be be prepared. I am not here to force you to sell your business. I’m here to help you sell your business because that is something that you are ready to do. Um, I’m kind of just going back over it. Your profit and loss statements, your balance sheet, tax returns, uh, list of equipment, you know, inventory. And just have your your business in order. Um, staffing included is another one, um, that will help to make the process easy or easier for for you as the seller and the buyer.

Stone Payton: Fantastic. And what’s the best way to for our listeners to connect with you, tap into your work, maybe have a conversation with you or somebody on your team. Let’s give them some coordinates.

Chantay Allen: Sure. So they can send me a message on LinkedIn. Um, they can also reach me via email. And that is my name Sean t c h a n t a y at momentum projects com. Those are two great ways to get in contact with me.

Stone Payton: Well, Shanti, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast today. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm. You’re clearly doing important work and having a real impact on a lot of folks and making their lives richer in the process. Thank you for investing the time to visit with us today. It’s been a real pleasure.

Chantay Allen: Thank you so much, Joan.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Shanti Allen at Momentum Companies and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you again on Buy a Business Near Me.

BRX Pro Tip: How to Build a Strong Business Network

November 1, 2024 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: How to Build a Strong Business Network

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BRX Pro Tip: How to Build a Strong Business Network

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, today’s topic, how exactly to build a strong business network?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, this is one of the challenges that a lot of entrepreneurs face, especially if they’re new to business or they’re new to kind of having to create their own business development. Because a lot of folks that we deal with are coming from a corporate background where they didn’t really have to invest in building a strong business network outside of their own company that they work for.

Lee Kantor: So, when all of a sudden those folks are thrust into the open market, and then they have to then build a network of people in their community or in their industry’s community, they don’t know where to start. So, here’s some tips that can help them build that strong business network that they need in order to grow whatever their new venture is.

Lee Kantor: The first thing is it’s important to identify and connect with the local business leaders and organizations in your community. And that could be like your chambers of commerce or other business groups that are relevant to whatever your business is or the niche or industry that you’re in.

Lee Kantor: So, first, identify this is the place where these people that you want to meet are hanging out. And for a lot of folks, they got to kind of start at the bottom. They got to join as a member. And then, they got to kind of work their way up and find the groups and the initiatives that are happening inside those organizations and then join them, and then, eventually, take a leadership role. That’s the typical path that most people take.

Lee Kantor: So, they join the organization, they take some sort of an active role in the organization. You can’t just join these organizations, write a check, and then sit at home and wait for business to come in. That’s not how these organizations work. Just paying your member dues is not enough to get anything out of these organizations. If that’s your plan, you could forget about it. That’s just a waste of your time and money.

Lee Kantor: In order to benefit from any of these organizations, you have to volunteer, you have to participate, you have to become a valuable member of the group. If you’re not willing to do that, then don’t join the group. By doing this activity, by becoming and kind of leaning into that group, you’re going to build the relationships with the key players in your business community. They will see you as a valuable part of the ecosystem. They will see you as an important kind of constituent, because not only are you showing up, you’re actually doing the work that needs to be done to help grow the organization and help everybody in the community.

Lee Kantor: If you want a cheat code that accelerates all of this and doesn’t require you to invest years and years of your time slowly working your way up and earning the trust of an organization or a group like this, you can become part of the Business RadioX Studio partner community, because being a Business RadioX Studio partner allows you to kind of cut the line and accelerate your presence and authority within your local community. You can easily meet and build relationships with the business leaders who are most important to you.

Lee Kantor: If you kind of go at the work of the community building as part of the Business RadioX Studio partner community, you get to be that person that is meeting all these people, because what you’re doing is helping them promote all of the good work that they are doing, and that allows you access to all of these people who want to come on your shows to tell their stories.

Lee Kantor: So, that is a cheat code if you want to, you know, cut years out of your business network building, you can do it quickly or more quickly by being a studio partner with Business RadioX.

Author and Coach Jessica Joines

October 31, 2024 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Author and Coach Jessica Joines

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Jessica Joines is a former Global CMO turned bestselling author, spiritual coach and international speaker who helps women awaken to their true power and potential.

Through speaking, coaching, and a community platform — she empowers women to transform their lives by mastering their own spiritual journey.

Jessica is here to help women rise above all forms of fear and limitation and transcend the ego.

Jessica has a unique ability to break down complex and esoteric spiritual principles into simple, step-by-step plans of action, resulting in “DIY soul-work” that is not only practical, but life-altering. Many of these methods manifested during her life-changing, year-long, solo soul journey across Southeast Asia in 2011. That’s where she began to wake up to her own soul purpose.

A natural teacher and speaker, Jessica is never more herself or connected to her purpose, than when she is in front of an audience. She has keynoted and spoken at iMedia, Advertising Week, WUB Wellness, CRN International Summit, Dmexco and several corporate leadership events, including Rakuten and Starcom.

Igniting and energizing audiences around purpose and possibility, it’s not uncommon to see a crowd of people gathered around Jessica after she speaks. As the energy and wisdom she brings forth always inspires audiences to want deeper guidance on how to navigate life’s challenges.

In May 2021, Jessica launched her live coaching show, Soul Purpose, with the popular online spiritual media network, Unity Radio. Soul Purpose keeps Jessica on her toes as listeners call in live to receive coaching guidance on their most critical life questions and challenges.

Soul Purpose can be found on all major podcasting platforms, including iTunes and Spotify. Additionally, Jessica regularly shares spiritual lessons and tools on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

In January 2021, Jessica launched the Women’s Purpose Community, an expansion of the incredibly successful Women’s Purpose Retreat, which she launched in 2018. WPC is a community of executive women who crave a safe-space to do the deeply intimate work of self-discovery.

In sum, Jessica is helping to bring an awakened-mindset to where it’s needed most, Corporate America. Jessica’s work has been celebrated in publications such as Forbes, Marie Claire, Thrive Global and MediaPost. She holds an M.S. in Communications from Cornell University.

Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and you guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast speaker, author, and founder of Women’s Purpose Community, Jessica Joines. How are you?

Jessica Joines: I’m good. It’s so good to be here with you, Stone. I’m excited for.

Stone Payton: This. What a delight to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions, Jessica. We probably won’t get to them all, but maybe we could open with you sharing with me and our listeners what is women’s purpose community, and how are you trying to help folks?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, well, it’s a Community that focuses on personal and spiritual growth for women in leadership roles, and I really created it from my own experience. And that was, hey, there’s a lot of great leadership training and leadership development out there. We actually don’t need any more of that. What we need is a way to connect from the heart space, to build really deep, supportive relationships with our peer sets, to foster one another’s growth, and to also focus on the deep, really under layers of the work that fuels everything, which is this kind of continual process of self-discovery, self-awareness, this self-inquiry journey that leads to the endless question of, you know, who am I? And what am I here to do? So that’s what we’re up to. Um, it’s been a pleasure and an honor to create it after myself leaving the corporate world nine years ago.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Say more about your backstory. How did you get into this line of work? I bet it wasn’t a straight path.

Jessica Joines: It was not a straight path. It’s a path where you go back. In hindsight 2020, you’re like, oh, I get it now. But, you know, I often say like, pain is the portal to awakening. And it was definitely the case in my story. And like the dirty little secret, I had my whole 18 years working in advertising and marketing. I was a global CMO when I left. The corporate world was that I never loved it, and I didn’t actually know that I had the opportunity or possibility to choose to do something I loved and make money. So I settled right. Like I went to college, I began a career. I’m like, yeah, I’m going to figure out something. I’m good at that I can make money doing. And what I learned along the way is I’m just the kind of person that, you know, can’t thrive in complacency. And but I kept going. I kept climbing the corporate ladder. I kept really like living this outside in journey, meaning, you know, looking to success or achievement than thinking that that would make me happy. And the truth is that that it didn’t. So I left to embark on my own soul purpose journey S-o-u-l soul to figure out truly like who I am and what I love, and to bring that to the world. And that’s that’s ultimately what led to the creation of this.

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

Jessica Joines: Um, I love that question. That’s an incredible, beautiful question, Stone. I love seeing the transformation in these women that are that I get the honor of working with. It’s mind blowing to me that I have a even a very little part in their journey and seeing the ways that they’re choosing themselves, that they’re walking away from things that don’t serve and that I spark that in any little way. I mean, a, you know, fills me with happiness and tears, but it’s rewarding in a way that I never imagined possible. So I love that. And then I love getting out there and like talking to folks like you or getting on stage and speaking. Um, it’s always been a passion of mine, even when I was in the marketing world. And I just love getting to, you know, take the message out to people that I think can benefit from it that are feeling trapped by their own careers, their own lives trapped in lives that don’t fulfill them. And to know that there’s there’s a way out if they choose it. And that’s just about choosing yourself.

Stone Payton: Let’s dive into the into the work a little bit. So are you getting groups of women together and facilitating sessions? Is it individually paced? Is it some kind of blend? Talk about the structure and the work a bit.

Jessica Joines: Yeah, I’m happy to. So the the community it’s a year round community. It’s it’s a year long membership, if you will. And something really beautiful that we do is every woman. We have about 65 women that are currently a part of the community is every woman is put with six other women, and you’re with that core group of women for one whole year. So you get to know them really well. You get really deep with them. And every month I introduce a topic that we’re going to focus on together as a community. And it’s always in the realm of personal growth, wellness or spiritual growth. So topics like surrender, um, topics like how to write intentions and manifest a life that you want things of this nature, and then you get to work on these topics within your core group. It’s all virtual. On top of that we have gosh like 20 or more different workshops, classes, everything from meditation and sound healing to we have physicians come in that are more of a holistic background and functional space, talking about brain gut health and how to live healthier lives. So it’s really a place where women can come and be nourished and restored. And, you know, a lot of my women, 90%, you know, they’re moms, right? And they have these really busy careers. So it’s a place that they can just truly focus on them and what they need. So that’s the structure of what it tangibly looks like. And then we have two in-person retreats, um, each year, as I was telling you before I came on one, we just had not too far away from you.

Stone Payton: Yeah.

Jessica Joines: Yeah.

Stone Payton: So I know in in my arena, digital media, business media, there’s I have come to believe there is often some misinformation or incomplete information or some preconceived notions that are often off the mark. Do you find or do you feel that sometimes you initially at least run into people that have some, uh, maybe some notions about this kind of work and, and a lot of, some of what you have to do is educate before you can really Serve.

Jessica Joines: Yeah, sometimes it’s got so the main thing when I was first starting out, and it’s particularly women that were working at companies and actually wanted to get this funded. Right. And it’s proving the validity of it. So very traditional, like, hey, I’m giving you leadership training. No brainer. Right. But making the connection to wellness, things like life balance, things like truly understanding and feeling emotionally connected to a sense of purpose is a little like less tangible. And also, you know, understanding how women in leadership roles, the kind of relationships they need, right. So there’s a lot of networking type of stuff out there, lots of conferences. I’m sure you’ve been to them, and they often can be a little bit transactional in nature. And that just doesn’t work for women in long term. They need those heart centered relationships, yes, even in the business world. So at first that was like a outrageous kind of Conversation. It wasn’t. But, you know, times have changed and especially like with Covid and when things hit and just seeing the impact, like, you know, it was a million women that had to leave the workforce. Right.

Jessica Joines: They’re getting it. They’re getting that. It’s it’s more holistic support that’s really needed. So there has been a bit of an awakening around that. The other thing I run into a lot is and this is how I grew up, and I don’t know how you grew up with it, Stone but the the message was always like, go figure out what you’re good at. Well, what you’re good at is not necessarily your purpose. And so my reframe of that is like, no, it’s what you love. You will be good at what you love, but the thing you’re truly passionate about is what you’re meant to show up in. Because when we anchor into what we’re good at, like, I’m really good at math, but you know, that’s not something I love, right? So that’s been a reframe too, because it goes against a lot of traditional, more types of career assessments in the ways and things that we measure and try to anchor to purpose so that that sometimes is an obstacle because people think, I can’t do, I can’t make money doing what I love. There’s a big limiting belief around that.

Stone Payton: Yeah, well, I have to believe while there is certainly must be so much value in the rigor, the discipline, the structure and the ideas that you are bringing to these groups, I have to believe there must be tremendous value in just hanging out with other women and having these conversations, that peer to peer dynamic. I bet that has some power to it as well, doesn’t it?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, it really does. And for me, again, I created this from my own experience. So, you know, I was a global CMO, you know, several, you know, $500 million company living in New York City. I was one of three women on the executive team in New York. Can be very transactional, you know. And I would go out to all these events, and I was exchanging business cards, but I wasn’t building the type of relationships that were supportive to my growth. And look, um, you know, we’re a little bit different. And so it was really created from my own pain point, like, well, how do we do this? How do we bring all these women together who are in these very high powered roles, but help them really build relationships that are not anchored to this is what I do. So identifying like what I do and like getting right into deal making, but connect from a place of like actually who I am and and what’s keeping me up at night. So at our retreat, for example, I mean, yeah, we have women holding space for one another on really deep, sensitive issues. Um, you know, a lot of tears, a lot of laughter. But it’s it’s incredibly rewarding. And for me personally, I feel like, wow, this is created, you know, an incredible family. That’s how it feels to me.

Stone Payton: So on your personal journey when you made this, I’m going to call it a leap. That’s what it seems like. It was a.

Jessica Joines: It was a leap with no plan into the unknown. To be clear, I had no plan. So I’m a risk taker though, so I was able to sustain it.

Stone Payton: On this leap. Did you have the benefit of one or more mentors coaches to help you navigate this new terrain along the way? Early on you.

Jessica Joines: In a sense. So the way that I went about it and it’s what my book is about and it is a unique way. So to back up, I had spent like a decade within the corporate environment, like trying to figure this thing out. And when I say figure this thing out, what I was looking for was purpose. Like how to get paid to be happy. You know, how to how to because I wasn’t. And to wake up and do something I love. I was waking up in fear and anxiety. Okay. And every traditional avenue that was available to that was not returning the answer to me. It was very much the skills based approach. Um, even, you know Simon Sinek, who I love, but the concentric circles and getting in this formulaic way wasn’t working for me. So I had to go back to some of my roots. And those are spiritual roots and, um, not connected to any religion, but more, um, eastern wisdom, ancient wisdom teachings around purpose and dharma. And I resonated with those, but I didn’t know, like I understood them in theory. I didn’t know what to do with them. So looking back at those teachings and some modern day teachers around, that was the guidance that I looked to, to quote unquote, figure it out. And then I ended up turning that into a book, those lessons and putting it in a more practical way for others that maybe weren’t finding, um, the answer to purpose from the traditional measures. So it was different spiritual teachers and then a lot of like ancient wisdom teachings.

Stone Payton: When you were committing these ideas to paper, when you were putting this book together, did did parts of the book or chapters or whatever come to you easier than others? What was the experience of crafting the the book like for you?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, it it was not traditional in terms of what I hear the process can be because for me it was a bit easy in terms of I was not even wanting like it was not like, oh, I want to write a book. I felt like I uncovered something through my own journey that I had to share, because I had suffered through it for so long. So it was really me taking what I had actually done to arrive at purpose and just translating. It started as a course book, okay. And translating that, you know, pen to paper, which was easy to do, which was a little hard, is when I said, well, this isn’t very interesting. I should probably put connect it to my, you know, autobiographical story. And putting that in was, you know, a bit more vulnerable and a little bit more challenging at times.

Stone Payton: And I know you’re a professional speaker was was speaking in front of groups. Was that intimidating at all or had you already kind of been there, done that in your corporate career? What was that like becoming a professional speaker?

Jessica Joines: So this is like my passion. Yeah. So the answer is, um, no, I do. I get nervous at times. Yes. Um, but I’m able to channel that adrenaline to the stage since I was a, you know, I did acting as a kid even, you know, in my 20s for a bit. A lot of theater. So for me, it’s always been like a divine calling, something I have loved doing. You know, when I was a CMO, I spoke a lot, too. So the only time I would feel nervous is when I decide that I’m going to share something pretty vulnerable. So sharing, for example, in my book and on stage about, you know, being in recovery and being an addict, that wasn’t easy the first time I did it.

Stone Payton: So with your marketing chops and you clearly have them. If you were a CMO of an organization that size, I’m curious to know what shifts you chose to to make, or how the whole sales and marketing thing works for a practice like yours. Now, clearly a very different animal. How do you get the the new business?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, it’s such a good question. I will say on the marketing front, let’s start there. You know, a lot of what I did was positioning and, you know, I could tell a story. It was hard to tell my own story. So I actually hired a friend from the marketing world to, like, help me craft my story for my website. It is so hard to like to, you know, even if you’re a professional, to tell your own story. So I always encourage people like get the coaching help, you know, get it because it’s really hard to do for you sometimes what you’re able to do for others. And this was this was a little bit different because of the nature of what we do. I really tuned in and saw quite, you know, from results early on that this was an attraction not promotion. So you know, I haven’t done a ton of like direct outreach, for example. But what I do is create content and do a lot on social media and try to put out really helpful info, which is, you know, definitely a strong principle within marketing and really draw people in that this type of work speaks to rather than like hard. You know, I worked at a performance, you know, marketing agency for years rather than doing any type of real hardcore direct efforts or the types of tactics I used to use.

Stone Payton: I don’t know where you find the time or the energy, but you also have a radio show. Tell us about that.

Jessica Joines: I do. I love it, so I fell into this. Gosh, I think I feel like it was a year or two before Covid. I was doing what I’m doing right now with you, Stone. I was and it was also an Atlanta based podcast. I was interviewing with them and the executive producer is like, you should have your own show. And I was like, okay, what does that mean? And fell into it. And, um, they they ended up making some changes. So I moved over with another network, Unity Radio, which was a part of Unity Church. Very kind of new age spiritual radio show and doing a lot of live shows and live coloring. And that now has migrated and become mind, body, spirit, which yeah, I love doing it, as I can tell you do too. It’s just it’s just a ton of fun and it’s great. It’s a live coaching show, so it keeps me on my toes too. Yeah. And to find women that want to that do want to come on and talk about their problems isn’t always easy. Um, but I think you learn, you get so much out of it, um, when you’re just really hearing that other people struggle and what those what those answers or solutions or ways forward might be.

Stone Payton: Okay, so let’s paint just a little bit more of a picture. If someone is listening to this and they’re exploring the idea of becoming part of women’s purpose community. What are what are some things that they might expect, and what would you have them to begin thinking about if they’re considering this?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, a lot of women come in that are going through different life transitions. And I’ll, I’ll say that’s the number one reason. And also that they just, you know, they’re giving everywhere in their life. You know, they’re married, they have kids, they have a job, and there’s no place that’s just solely for them. So what they can expect is to receive. And I very much hold the energy around it of a sanctuary where they can come in. They don’t have to do anything. They don’t have to be anything. They don’t have to like, think about an agenda or, you know, they just come and really receive. And it’s a place to be vulnerable and know it’s a safe space to do that and to focus on their own self-discovery, which for me is a continual lifelong journey. I was reading recently that it said, you know, the spiritual journey is not like seeking wisdom or or learning, you know, studies or scripture even. It’s really the continual journey of self-inquiry and the willingness to look within. And so we do a lot of looking within and, um, you know, willingness to continually discover who we are.

Stone Payton: Passions, interests, hobbies outside the scope of, of this work. Again, don’t know where you would find the time and energy. A lot of listeners on shows that I produce and or host or co-hosts know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you nerd out about that’s not this.

Jessica Joines: I’m a massive hiker, so that’s like, you know, my where I am on the weekends and I live in an area where there’s just a ton of great, you know, mountain range and a lot of hiking. You can find me up in the mountains. Um, that’s what I do. I love solo hiking. People who love me don’t really like that, but that’s okay. So I’ve done a lot of, like, national parks on my own, and that’s a real passion for me. Um, and then, yeah, you know, um, I’m a spiritual seeker. I love all of it. So I spend a lot of time exploring that. I’m very open minded and I love it all. And that’s a passion for me is just continually, you know, whether it’s different talks or things going out there and seeing what people have to say in that arena and, and always being willing to learn. So those are really my, my main passions at the moment.

Stone Payton: You know, I characterize the question as if it were going to be something outside the scope of your work. But as I hear you talking about it, and as I reflect on what I enjoy doing, it’s just so wholly consistent with this idea of doing your own soul work. Hunting, fishing and travel is soul work for me, I think maybe. Huh?

Jessica Joines: Yeah, absolutely. You know, whatever lights you up. And personally, I think any time that we’re doing anything out in nature, we’re getting closer to our soul. That’s that’s been a big lesson for me.

Stone Payton: And as a practitioner, I’ve come to believe that everybody is well served from that. I really do feel like if I can do that, recharge the batteries, I come back that much more energized and equipped to genuinely serve the people that I’m trying to serve. So I think it’s an important component to the whole equation. Huh.

Jessica Joines: I agree. I mean, it’s the air mask analogy. And again, women are like notorious of not having their air mask on. And then, you know, giving from depletion. And, you know, I’m someone that I went through burnout. Adrenal fatigue. I’m still recovering from it. So I also know the darker end of like not taking care of yourself and restoring yourself. And, you know, just it leads to health problems at the end of the day. And you’re and then when you’re giving from depletion, I don’t, you know, not from wholeness. I don’t know if you’re truly able to give in the way that person deserves either.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of actionable ideas. Something to chew on. Sometimes I call them pro tips. You know, maybe it’s a do or don’t something they could be reading. Just something in. Look gang, the number one pro tip here is reach out to to Jessica or somebody on her team to tap into her work. But to to hold them between now and then. Jessica let’s let’s leave them with with something to chew on.

Jessica Joines: Okay. I got it for you. This is something we talk about on my show a lot. And often women who ever come on, they’re struggling with something. And the question I always ask, and so I’ll ask this to your listeners, is, you know, think of anywhere in your life you’re struggling. And I promise you, in that part of your life, you’re believing the fear in your mind more than the truth in your heart. So anything that you ever want to solve or dive into to, you know, ease your own suffering, just ask yourself, how am I believing the fear, the voice of limitation in my mind more than what my heart has to say about this? And within that, there’s so much that will be revealed for you. And it is really like the key to happiness.

Stone Payton: Well said. An excellent counsel. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to do just that, to have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, tap into your work, maybe get their hands on this. We got a long list here. Get your hands on this book. Catch you at a speaking engagement. Hear your show. But let’s leave them with some coordinates.

Jessica Joines: Yeah. So the best place to go to my main website, which is, is pretty easy because it’s my name. And my name is a little bit unique, as you might have heard, it’s Jessica jones.com, but that’s joins with an e j o I n e s. And from there you can find my book. You can find the Woman’s purpose community. You can find all the things.

Stone Payton: Jessica, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, your wisdom. You are doing really good work that clearly is so impactful for so many. Keep up the good work. Don’t be a stranger. We would like to circle back sometime and and continue to follow your story, but thank you for making the time to visit with us today.

Jessica Joines: Oh, thank you so much for having me on Stone. It’s been an honor.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. Alright, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jessica Jones with Women’s Purpose Community and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients

October 31, 2024 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients

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BRX Pro Tip: Identifying and Converting Ideal Clients

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today let’s dive into identifying and converting our ideal clients.

Lee Kantor: This is an important exercise that I think every business leader should be doing. It’s so critical when it comes to your marketing or to how you’re going to market. You have to have a clear picture of who that ideal client is, and have a method or process to help convert them into actual clients. So, you have to get good at this, once you have identified them and then convert them into ideal clients, that is kind of table stakes if you want to grow any type of organization.

Lee Kantor: A great way to start this process is to start with your existing clients. You know, if you were to clone one or two of your clients right now, who would they be? Who are the most profitable clients? Who are the most easy to work with clients? And then, just figure out what they all have in common. What are the common characteristics and traits? Don’t just focus in on, you know, what business they’re in. Try to understand what their pain points are, what challenges they face, kind of really dig in there to really understand where they overlap.

Lee Kantor: And, also, when you’re kind of building this Venn Diagram, also focus in on your superpowers. Which ones of these clients would most benefit from whatever it is your superpowers are and what services you provide in that area. So, if you kind of build this Venn Diagram out and you’ll get to that ideal client, and then once you’ve identified who that ideal client is, you can then figure out where they hang out so you can market to them effectively.

Lee Kantor: And then, your marketing should include a combination of thought leadership that’s going to attract the right people to you because they want to learn more about what your expertise is, and how you’re great at what you do, and how they might benefit from them. And you also have to include some direct communication marketing that introduces you to the right people that you need to meet and who needs to meet you.

Lee Kantor: So, identifying the right ideal client is the first step, because if you start marketing without really understanding who your ideal client is, you’re going to waste a lot of resource, a lot of money, a lot of time.

23 Consulting CEO Bianca Thrasher-Starobin

October 30, 2024 by angishields

GWBC Radio

23 Consulting CEO Bianca Thrasher-Starobin

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Bianca Thrasher-Starobin, President and CEO of 23 Consulting, is a consultant and lobbyist with experience in financial markets, investment management, electoral and legislative political activities, relationship management, and business turnarounds.

23 Consulting helps companies and organizations improve their business strategy, business development, and government relations.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from GWBC’s Open House. So excited to be talking to my next guest Bianca Thrasher-Starobin with 23 Consulting. Welcome.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Thank you so much for having me here, Lee. I’m excited as well.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about 23 Consulting.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: So 23 Consulting. I actually started officially in about 2017. I am a lobbyist and a consultant. I am registered in Georgia as well as in DC, and I operate nationwide. Um, I also do a little bit of global business just in representing the interest of corporations and organizations before political audience, and then connecting the dots with the corporate corporations for opportunities for revenue growth for everybody.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the kind of the meaning of 23 consulting?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Yeah, sure. So Michael.

Lee Kantor: Jordan fan.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Oh, I’m not that cool. Not that cool. So before I incorporated, just before that, I kept seeing the number 23. And so I looked it up. I just decided to look into it like, what is this? And I saw Psalm 23, and it’s the Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. And I’m not going to front on you. I am not in church every Sunday. That’s not me. And I wasn’t there last Sunday or the Sunday before that. However, that was a very powerful and strong message and I can honestly say that since that experience I have not wanted. I just thought it was really beautiful. I’d gone through some like some financial turmoil through a divorce as a result of a divorce right before that time. And so that was music to my ears.

Lee Kantor: So that’s kind of the guiding light moving forward.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Yep. That’s the entire Psalm. It’s just powerful.

Lee Kantor: So, um, how did you get into this line of work? What’s your backstory?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Well, so I started out as an intern before interning was the thing, and I was about 19 and I interned at the Capitol. And even before then, my dad’s family is from Atlanta, although I was raised in Virginia. And every whenever we would come to visit, we would always pass the Capitol. And I just remember thinking, I’m going to work there one day, I’m going to work there one day. And that’s how that happens. And once you get into the business of politics, you never leave because it’s all about relationships.

Lee Kantor: So what what do you like about it?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: I love the impact, the ability to impact make a change in a positive way. And there is a lot of what some might consider negativity and all kinds of stigmas. And it’s not always a beautiful and perfect scene for all involved. However, learning to navigate that territory. I mean, these are the people that make the rules and regulations, and if you can connect the people that need those rules and regulations to work in their favor so that they can improve the conditions for us all, or a certain demographic or certain audiences or your client. Then you’ve done a really good job and figuring out what everybody in the equation needs to make something work is. It’s always very exciting. There’s never a dull day at the office.

Lee Kantor: So how does it work? Like a corporation hires you to do what? Like what’s the pain they’re having? Yeah.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: So it’s always the same thing. For the most part. It doesn’t even matter. The industry. They want to make more money or they want to, um, they want to build relationships, to make more money, to be more successful and to have their interests represented, which always amounts to probably more money. Um, because all corporations, even if it’s a nonprofit organization, they need money to work.

Lee Kantor: So then how do you help them kind of translate what they’re doing into some line to the government to help them make more money?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Hopefully a little common sense and human capital resources. Figuring out depending on the corporation. Like, are they trying to penetrate this area of Georgia, this municipality, or is it something in New York? And then what political person do I go to to make the introduction that could use their support as well in some way, even if it’s just my support, and then to connect that dot with that dot. And so the political folks, they know lots of people. And if it’s a corporation, for example, let’s say I’m maybe I’m in the rug business, whatever. This is just an example. It’s like, I want to expand my business in this municipality, and I get to go and talk to this legislator. Well, the legislator knows all the different companies. They know a lot of different organizations. So they hear them out. They get to know that corporations, they’re hopefully they’re properly vetted through me, and then things pop into their head. Well, maybe they connect them with that and then they connect them with that. And then the introductions come from there. And an introduction from the top is always better than an introduction from somewhere else. It’s not that they don’t matter, but this one definitely makes a difference.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re working with some some organization, what does that look like? What are the initial questions you’re asking them in order for you to know if okay, is this the right fit? Am I going to be able to to make the impact that I, you know, hope to deliver.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: At this state and at this phase in my in my practice, I want to get the warm and fuzzies because not all money is good money. I want to know that this organization, if I am able to use my gift of the relationships and my experience to be able to help them, to raise awareness to what they’re doing somewhere in that equation, that they’re going to use their ability, their success, to be able to help others. And I want to know that if I bring them to the table, there is properly vetted. They have as many of their ducks in a row as possible, because I don’t want to bring junk to the table, because that could amount that affects your reputation.

Lee Kantor: 100%. And that’s all you have, right?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Yep. That’s right. They don’t I mean, and that’s what we see sometimes in the media where something went sideways. Well, it might have started with the lobbyist not properly vetting their client or whatever. Next thing you know, it all went to hell in a handbasket. So, um, so yeah, I want to make at this phase, like, I’m taking on organizations and companies, whatever their give back is getting to know that CEO, getting to know the heads, like getting to know that they have a good, like a good cause, um, down the road, like, fine. I mean, you’re making the rugs. That’s great. But if I know that they have this aspect of their company where they give back over here to communities or to different audiences, then that I in some way or shape or form get to help those people. So that’s the gift and that’s the blessing and that’s what I’m seeking.

Lee Kantor: So why was it important for you to become part of the GWBC community?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Well, initially I, um, I guess probably like everybody else. I hadn’t heard of it, but I was speaking with a hedge fund buddy of mine, and and I’d heard somebody he’d mentioned, yeah, you should go and get this designation. And that designation. And I thought, ah, you know, I’m in the business of relationships. I don’t know if that’s even good. I don’t even know if these people want to hear that. That’s what I’m doing. And he said, you know what? It’s good you’ll be able to build relationships. And he said, look, lots of people get into different doors many different ways. Some folks might get into the doors because of their family. Some folks might get indoors because of their, their, um, country club affiliation. Some it’s like it’s if something’s going to give you the opportunity to get into a door, then you play the cards that you’re dealt and you make that work for you. So he said, go ahead on and get it. And I thought, you know what? This is a pretty credible dude, really great guy. Um, and I listened, and I’m so glad that I did, because really and truly, it’s an honor to be able to support these folks and to be a part of this squad, because it’s very genuinely they want to help women businesses. They really care. There is not. You never feel a sense of ulterior motives. I mean, the end goal is recognizing the value in women, women owned businesses and working together to collaborate to support them. And when we support these groups and these different sectors. At the end of the day, we’re really uplifting everyone.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Let’s see. What do I need more of? My goodness. Um, you know, I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be here. As far as. What do I need more of? I honestly, I mean, I’m not sitting before you like. Oh, yes, it’s trillion dollars in the bank account. I mean, how can I help you? It’s not that. It’s just, um. I’m just thankful for the opportunity to be here. I mean, Mr. Patrick Berger and Ross. I’m just so fortunate to know these people and how they have been so welcoming in so many different areas that I just I just need to be able to have the opportunity to support them.

Lee Kantor: So what is that ideal client look like for you?

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Oh my gosh, it varies. Um, it just like for now, I’m courting the interest. It’s like a Mexican nonprofit organization. And I like in my head, I kind of sum it up to like, they save the whales, but who? And so it’s like, but really they’re there. It’s like there’s a lot of overfishing in this area. This large body of water. And they are seeking to have protections for this, this body of water so that there can be no mining, there can be no overfishing. And so so I’m loving this because I’m like, ooh, I get to help the whales. So, so yeah, that’s that’s ideal. But the industries are changing. I just when I get that warm fuzzy when it comes across, it comes my way. And um, and you meet people that are really passionate about what they do, then that is the ideal client, because I have a feel good feeling that I get to go and help whoever it is that they’re helping.

Lee Kantor: Right? And if you are aligned philosophically and value wise, that’s a good fit and you know that you’re going to make a difference.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Yeah. You want to fight for people that you really care about. I mean, um, you don’t want to be in situations where you’re representing a corporation and now you’re going to have to do a cleanup on aisle three. That is so much not fun. It is so not fun.

Lee Kantor: Sounds like someone who has some scar tissue.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: Oh, my God, you didn’t see them. Like there was a huge gash across my cheek. I did the laser removal, so you probably. But if you look, you’ll still see the line. But everybody has those experiences in every industry. It’s a learning process and that’s part of the journey. Right?

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to connect with you, learn more, have a more substantive conversation. What’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Speaker4: Yeah. Yes I am.

Bianca Thrasher-Starobin: 23 consulting LLC. Com. Bianca. Bianca at the number 23 consulting LLC. Com. And of course my cell number. It’s all public knowledge. Google Bianca. It’s (678) 640-6819.

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

Speaker4: Lee, I’m honored to be here. Everybody have a great rest of the day.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor back in a few. With GWB open house.

BRX Pro Tip: Leveraging Content Marketing Assets

October 30, 2024 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Leveraging Content Marketing Assets

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BRX Pro Tip: Leveraging Content Marketing Assets

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Of course, as you and I well know, the Business RadioX platform methodology is an absolute content factory. But then it’s on us to leverage those content marketing assets. Speak to that a little bit if you will.

Lee Kantor: A lot of people spend their time kind of generating brand new content marketing assets, and that’s where they invest their time and energy and resources. And I don’t think enough people take the time to kind of curate the existing assets that they have already. And that’s important for us at Business RadioX, because every day, like you mentioned, we are a factory for our guests and for our clients. We are generating just a ton of content for them like a machine. So, like, every week, every month, they’re having multiple new assets at their disposal.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you get the most out of them? At Business RadioX, we encourage our guests to take the interviews that we deliver back to them. And remember, we deliver back to them in two forms. One is an audio form, obviously, but there’s also the digital text format that we also provide for all of our guests. When they have these two assets, they can then repurpose that content into a variety of formats. They can put it in social media. They could put it on a blog. They could put it on their website. They could put it in their newsletter. The same piece of content can be sprinkled through all of those channels more than one time.

Lee Kantor: And that’s the thing, a lot of times people think like, “Oh. I was on that thing,” and then they put it out one time and they think that everybody in their network has seen it. And that’s just not true, especially for the ones that lean on third party social media platforms to share their content. Just because you put something on Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn doesn’t mean your entire network has seen it. In fact, probably barely any of your network has seen it. Usually it’s less than ten, maybe 5 percent of your network sees any one given post. It could even be less than that.

Lee Kantor: So, if you want more people to see your post, the best thing to do is take that one piece of content and then sprinkle it through all of those channels multiple times. And multiple means way more than you think you should. If you think you’re hammering people with content, you are sorely mistaken because most people are not seeing your content.

Lee Kantor: So, you can take any one piece of content and share it multiple times throughout the year, you could share it monthly, your entire network still wouldn’t see this stuff. So, err on the side of sharing too much rather than too little, especially if it’s a valuable nugget of thought leadership that you’re proud of.