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Linda Ruffenach With Execuity

January 26, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Linda Ruffenach is an entrepreneur committed to helping business owners achieve their maximum potential and protect their legacy. Her 20+ years of C-level experience with a startup enables her to relate to the challenges business owners face every day. As the former CEO of a $100 million international enterprise, she has been through almost every stage a company can experience from fast growth, and rapid decline, to complete transformation.

In 2014, she founded two companies, Execuity Value Advisors and Whisky Chicks. Both companies embrace the idea that knowledge and experience breed confidence. Linda is a skilled facilitator and has developed a systematic approach for accelerating growth, increasing profits, and optimizing the value of a business.

More importantly, she knows how to turn strategy into results and deliver results. She is a Certified Exit Planning Advisor through the Exit Planning Institute where she is a member of the EPI Thought Leadership Council. She was recently featured as a Leading Exit Planning Advisor in the publication Exit Smart Vol. 3. She has appeared as an expert speaker for WBENC, IBBA, Women’s President’s Organization, Goering Center for Family & Private Business, WIFS Women in Insurance and Financial Services and the Exit Planning Institute.

In addition to running multiple businesses, Linda is Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of Louisville’s School of Business where she teaches Venture Finance and oversees the MBA Capstone program. She is also the best selling author of the book, “How to be a Bourbon Badass”.

Connect with Linda on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • It is never too early to start planning for an eventual transition
  • The 5 D’s that can disrupt your business
  • 3 things you can do today to accelerate business value

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Linda Ruffenach and she is with Execuity. Welcome, Linda.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:00:26] Thank you. I’m excited to be here today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your firm. How are you serving folks?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:00:32] So we actually are a firm that focuses on helping small business owners scale, grow and navigate major transitions in their business that could be reinventing themselves, not getting investment into their organization or from any of them. It’s transitioning out of their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] So what’s your back story? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:00:54] Well, it’s funny. I spent 20 years at a company that, when I started, was just a mere startup with 15 employees. And over a 19 year period, we grew that from a 15 person operation to over 3000. We had 11 locations in four different countries. And through that journey I ran operations most of the time, was CFO for a short stint and then spent the last few years as CEO. And in that role of CEO, I really discovered what it was like to be lonely at the top, even though I’d been there for so many years and had all my friends and peers surrounded me, it was just a very different role. And when I thought outside help, what I found was individuals that would either follow a cookie cutter approach or ones that wanted to tell me what to do versus advise me on what to do or help me discover the answers myself. So when I left there, I decided I’m going to be the role that I couldn’t find, and that’s kind of how executing got started.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] Now, when you started, how did you begin the journey of kind of attracting clients to you? How did you get the word out to let people know, you know, what you did and how you can help?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:02:03] Well, here was my first lesson in the whole deal. I did not do enough networking when I was CEO of the prior company. A lot of my network was within my clients or within the the business that I was in. And after being and it was a customer care marketing business, and I’d been that in for a long time. And anybody that spent a long time in the customer care business knows that it’s a 24 by seven operation. And I was kind of tired. I needed to get away from that. So I really had to start hitting hard and start building my network. A lot of that was here in based in Louisville, Kentucky, but I started to have to build network out beyond there. And over the years I’ve kind of created a bit of a following. And and so I actually do presentations and speaking engagements all over the US now. And that’s kind of how I been able to gain clients today.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:55] And what organizations hire you to speak? What’s your kind of keynote on?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:03:00] Well, I kind of got two messages out there, so the word some of it started out I actually have done some work in the bourbon industry, being from Kentucky. You know, I began a group of women speaking and hosting events related around Bourbon added that I wrote a book called How to Be a Bourbon Badass. And so that introduced me into giving some presentations on that very topic. But given my business background, one of the analogies that I found was a lot of things in the bourbon industry crossed over into the business industry and a lot of really great lessons came out of that. And so that’s that’s also another topic I spend time talking on is a lot on the business side of it. And today I spent a lot of time talking about transition planning and a lot of that is in front of women groups such as Women’s President’s organization, NABA, the National Association of Women Business Owners, WFS the Women’s Financial and Insurance Services. But I also work with family business centers such as the Center up at University of Cincinnati and the one here at U of L. All of it’s around helping business owners and introducing them to the things they can do now and in the future to help increase the value of their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] Now, you mentioned when you were the CEO of that organization prior to your current adventure that you hadn’t kind of invested the time in the networking as much, you know, in hindsight that you maybe would have made a faster transition? Is that the same for your clients? That they have to really invest some time into like who that person is that’s going to buy their business or attract the people that are the potential buyers? At some point they have to kind of build a bigger network.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:04:42] Well, one of the things that I found a lot of business owners struggling with is who their customer really is and really understanding their persona. And what I mean by persona is who is that buyer? What are the influences that have inside and outside the role that they have within when it comes to making that decision, becoming that decision maker, making the decision to buy from you? Really looking at the wants, needs and fears of those individuals and discovering who those individuals are, and then from there figuring out where did they live, where did they where do they congregate, how do you connect into that and really start focusing your networking in those areas? The other thing is looking at those common connections. Part of my network over the last couple of years, especially since we went through the pandemic, it’s been much easier to reach out to people than before. It’s trying to find people that I do have something in common with. So for instance, I’m a certified exit planning advisor. So one of the things that I did is I reached out to certified Exit Planning Advisors on LinkedIn just to make that connection. I’ve done the same thing with NABA. I’ve also done things with same thing with the bank, which is the Women Certified Women Business Enterprise Organization and making those connections and then not approaching it from a sales perspective, but just approaching it from a relationship standpoint of how do I get to know you and how do you get to know me type thing?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:07] So you didn’t look at all of those folks as competitors. You looked at them as kind of potential partners or referral sources or just people that would be beneficial to kind of a win win in your network and theirs.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:06:21] Exactly. You know, that kind of comes back to my second lesson that I learned is that when I came out, I was kind of insulated from the standpoint of if I was afraid somebody else was going to do what I was going to do or that if I explained it to too many people or got too close to other consultants, that they were going to take my business or they’re going to replicate my ideas. But the one thing I came to conclusion is that I’m the only one that can do what I do, even though there’s others that offer have similar offerings and they maybe don’t exit planning, they may be helping do business coaching and advising. I’m the only one that can do it the way I do it. And and I think that’s one of the places that I had to get to, as well as the fact that there’s more power when you start to support each other. You know, that was a key lesson to learn from the bourbon industry, which is they truly embrace the philosophy of all boats rise where it was such an anomaly to me, to where I discovered that like take a two competing distilleries that are right down the road from each other. If one of them has a breakdown on their equipment, they can actually call down the street and ask the guy down the road if they can borrow something so they can keep their production up. Totally strange to me coming from that competitive business world, but it was all built upon a philosophy of all boats rise. Their mindset is that if I convince one person that they like bourbon, then that’s that’s a customer for me. But then the guy down the street also sees it as a potential customer for them as well. So once embracing that, it really is, you know, people ask, Who is my competition? I don’t know that I have competition per se. It’s about figuring out how do we support each other and I might be the right fit for you, but that other person might be a better fit.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:02] Well, all boats rise. Sounds like a good title for your next book.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:08:08] Well, look, we’ll start working on that one.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:10] I agree wholeheartedly. I think that it might seem counterintuitive to people that collaboration and a generous spirit is beneficial in the long run. But I think that just as a society, that it just better that people perform better. People want to work with people like you. And instead of just saying, you know, I’m out there and I do X, it’s just keep looking for best fit clients and don’t worry about anything else. And there are people where you’re the best fit for and that’s all you should really care about and not worry about every single person as a prospect, because that’s not the reality of the situation. You have best fit clients and the faster you identify them and the faster they identify you, then both of you win.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:09:01] Exactly. And the one thing the other thing that I learned along this journey is the power and saying no, because to your point, not all clients are best for me and I’m not best for all clients. And and I think that’s an important part of any business is recognizing who are the right fits and who are not and saying no, particularly when you’re starting up a business or you’re in that early phase and you’re really trying to grow revenue and you’re trying to pay all your bills, you tend to go towards saying yes to everything. And that’s exactly what I did in the beginning. But what I found is it created a lot of distractions. It created me, created a lot of angst for me. And so I made a conscious decisions a few years ago, which is I’m going to work with those clients that can have the most impact with and that are going to enjoy being with me and I’m going to enjoy being with them. And if I’m not the right fit, then I’m going to introduce them to somebody else at my network who I think is right.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:54] That’s it’s so much healthier, I think, and it’s so much less stress on both parties. You don’t want to ever have a client. You dread their call.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:10:04] We’ve all had a few of those.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:06] But early on it’s hard to really believe that. So but I think in the long run, most people kind of land where you landed on this.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:10:15] I hope so. I hope so. You know, it’s funny is it’s a place where you almost get this place of relief and freedom when you realize you don’t have to take that on and you kind of get away from that place of desperation. And it took me a long time to get there. And I started to just really, through the process, discovered my purpose. Right. Which is that I have been given all kinds of experience and knowledge and gifts that it’s my responsibility to pay it forward. And when I lean into that, I worry less about whether the next is going to come around, the next client’s going to come, the next one that I’m supposed to help and supposed to lead. They’re going to be there and I’m going to have an impact and I do my best to have an impact on their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:58] Amen to that. Now let’s talk about what it looks like from an onboarding standpoint. How early do you want to start having conversations with people about a transition? In the past, I’ve talked to people that say, look, the minute you start a business, you should know what that exit is, or at least start planning for that. What should that person that has a business, how should they be thinking about their exit and or this transition? How early?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:11:28] Well, as I tell most business owners, it’s never too early to start. And to your point, that can start when you actually create your business. I will actually do a little workshops for startup companies and work with startup companies and actually teach at one of the local colleges. And one of the things in the concept that I’m trying to drive home is you you want to have an idea where you want to take this thing because you’re going to make a lot of decisions up front that are either going to enable your ability to do that or it’s going to put a roadblock in front of you down the road. And that’s everything from the type of products and services you create to actually how you take on funding or investors or financing and those type of things. When I’m talking to a company that’s been around for a few years and they tell me, Oh, I’m not going to plan on transitioning for at least ten, 15 years. One of the questions I ask them is, what are you going to do if something was to happen to you? And one of the more poignant questions I’ll ask a business owner is, you know, if something had happened to you three months ago and you died suddenly, where would your business be today? And that gives a lot of people pause. And the fact that, you know what? When you look at it that way and it’s not about trying to be negative, but the bottom line is you’re going to leave your business one day no matter what. And it’s either going to be under your conditions or somebody else’s conditions. And I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather do it under my conditions than somebody else’s. And the only way to do that is you have to plan for it.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] Now, when you’re having these conversations with people, it sounds like kind of the life insurance conversation that people have. It’s like you don’t want to think about that. Like it’s almost something that, you know, is going to happen. You know, at some point you’re going to not be here anymore, but you don’t want to think about that. Is it? Is it kind of emotionally that same feeling for a business owner where that this is something that they don’t really want to think about because it’s so much their business? A lot of times it’s part of their identity. It’s how they see themselves, how the community sees them, and it’s not something that they’re very easily want to give up, especially before they have to.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:13:36] Well, you know, it’s funny because one of the things is I point out to them what I call the five D’s, there’s death, divorce, disagreement, disability and disaster. And I think in the last couple of years, we’ve seen how that can impact businesses left and right. So that’s one perspective of it and trying to get them to see it from that side of it. But there are those business owners who don’t want to think they put their tunnel vision on, you know, put their blinders on. And the way that I approach them is, you know, some of the techniques that I’ll teach you is how to make your business worth more. And if you’re the number one investor in your business, don’t you want your investment to be worth more? And so whether you’re going to take on or sell this eventually or you’re going to pass it on to your kids, nobody goes into business to go out of business. We go into business because we want to make money. We want to build something. We’re trying to create a legacy for ourselves or for our children or our families or the community, whatever that might be.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:14:31] And if that that feeling of I don’t want to think about what could happen, but then focus on the fact that you’re the biggest investor that can shift your mindset as well, which is for many business owners, they have 70 to 80% of their wealth tied up in their business. But the scary part is over 97% of them have no idea what it’s worth. And when I learned that stat, I was astounded. And then you think about it, that there was another survey done that three out of four business owners regret selling their business one year later. And the reason is, one, they didn’t get the price that they thought they wanted and deserved. And two, they had no plans for what they were going to do afterwards. So the earlier you start to think about these things, the the higher the likelihood you’re going to get out of it what you want. And you also protect the legacy that you want to create for for yourself, your family, community and all of those things.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:24] So when you’re working with somebody as one of the first steps, doing some type of valuation so that you have some number, some baseline that you’re like, okay, this is where we are today. This is where down the road you want to get to one way or another, let’s at least kind of see where we’re at today. It’s like when you go to the doctor, they take your blood pressure so they have something to compare it to. You know, a year from now, five years from now to see how you’re doing.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:15:51] Exactly. And that is one of the places that we’ll start actually do two types of evaluations. One is a purely financial evaluation. It looks at your income statement, your balance sheet, all of those things to come back to. What really is your business worth from a financial standpoint? And there’s a lot of factors that go into that, including what your what type of business you are, what recent multiples have taken place and that. But the second type I do is more of a subjective assessment, which is going through a series of questions to identify where you are in alignment to some of the key value drivers that are out there. It’s built on John Murillo’s Built to Sell method, which is there’s eight key drivers in your business. And when you understand those drivers and understand where you are in alignment with that, then you can start to build strategies that will make your business worth more, but also makes your business stronger and more equipped to handle downturns and recessions and all of those things that none of us plan on and never, never want to think about. But you’re in a much better position had you not thought about it and planned for it.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:00] Now, when you do this evaluation and valuation and does that number for the most part, are they your clients like, Wow, that’s more than I thought, or Wow, that’s less than I thought. Like, where do they typically fall?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:17:15] Um, I will say there’s been a few that have been. Wow. But the majority is. Oh, wow. I didn’t know that’s what it was worth. More like I thought it was worth more because we hear anecdotal stories about others out there selling their business for four or five times the revenue that they generated, or you’re talking to the to the individual down the street. And she sold her business for all this money. And you kind of look and you’re like, well, I think my business is stronger than hers and I run my business far better. If she can do it, then I can do it. But the reality is there are so many factors that go into that. It’s it’s not always a good comparison when somebody says, I sold it for this, you should be able to sell it for that. So there’s a reality check to it. I think the bigger thing that people underestimate is how much they have to sell their business for in order to retire that they don’t realize. That if I sell my business for 5 million, I may only be walking away with 3.2 and we get those numbers in our head and think, Wow, I can live off of 5 million, or I can live off a million and a half. But when you start taking out fees and legal expenses and retention, things that you want to play to your leadership team and all the legal all of those things, go into it, that you’re not walking away with a whole lot. Oh, and by the way, taxes, you have to pay taxes and all of that. And people realizing I need to sell my business for a lot more than I thought it would. I thought I would. And there’s some big steps I have to take to get there. And these aren’t the kind of steps you can make in 18 months. These are the kinds of strategic decisions that take 3 to 5 years to implement.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:58] So is there any advice you can give somebody today? Is there anything actionable today that a person could do to increase their value of their business or they’re some kind of low hanging fruit that you find in a lot of businesses?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:19:12] Well, there’s two two of the biggest factors that impact the value of the business is recurring revenue versus recurring revenue. And let me explain the difference between that. So you’ve got a customer who comes back and buys from you on a regular basis, but there’s no contractual obligation. There’s no monthly quarterly annual fee that they’re paying to you. It’s just project or project, or they may even be paying you an annual amount, but you have to initiate a renewal in the process. That’s recurring business. I’m sorry, I’m going to get mixed up reoccurring that’s reoccurring. Sorry, reoccurring business. What you want is recurring business, which is that predictable revenue that’s coming in every month and that comes from subscriptions. It comes from having longer term agreements. It’s about having auto renewals, it’s about where it’s consistent, predictable revenue. And when an outside investor comes to either look to acquire you or invest in your business, they’re looking for predictable income, that they have high levels of confidence and that are either going to grow or at the very least is going to stay around after you go. And so that recurring revenue model gives them those extra assurances. The second thing is dependency on you as an owner. You know, there’s a lot of business owners that take pride in the fact that the business runs can’t run without me. I know every client by name and every client can pick up the phone and call me, and those clients know they can trust me.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:20:45] Well, if you really want to build a business that’s worth a lot more, yes, they need to trust you. But more than anything, they need to trust your business. They need to trust your team members. They don’t should not need to have the need to pick up the phone and call you, because when they pick up the phone and call you, then that business is dependent upon you. And if something happens to you, then once again, I’m an outside investor. I’m somebody looking to acquire you. What happens if Bob or Jane go away and the business is depend upon it? Well, they bought from Bob, they bought from Jane. Now they’re going to go find somebody else to buy from because it was purely dependent upon you. And that is really a place where a lot of individuals and business owners struggle is how do I peel myself away and how do I let go and how do I trust? And this isn’t even just trust between letting others take place many times. This is the biggest challenge you have in a family owned business, is how do I let the next generation start taking on these relationships when I’ve owned them for so many years?

Lee Kantor: [00:21:45] Yeah, the ability to delegate and have systems and processes that work without you, that seems just kind of just they have to you have to have that right. And that’s just almost table stakes and any type of exit.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:22:01] Absolutely. And it’s a hard thing to do if you don’t start on it. It’s not something if you’ve never really planned for that, you’ve not really done much around succession planning and you’ve been just working head down in your business and you’re looking at, you know what, I’m 60 some years old and I’m I’m ready to start pulling back a little bit or I’m getting tired and you’re starting it a couple of years before you want to do it. It takes a long time to get people to break dependance on you and takes a long time for you to let go. And some of the stuff that’s in your head that tribal knowledge is difficult to transfer if you don’t take the time and the effort to work with others to get that or bring people alongside you that you can mentor and grow. Because the other piece that when investors come in and look at your business, they’re looking at your leadership team, you know, there are some that are strategic that they come in and all they’re on is the technology or they’re buying the customer list or all that kind of stuff. But a lot of times when investors come in and looking to acquire you, they’re looking to acquire the talent and the leadership as well. And if you don’t have the right talent and leadership in place, then that’s also going to discount your value. And that talent leadership also needs to have a vested interest in staying because maybe they’re working for you, because they like working for you. And as soon as you sell this thing, they’re out of there. Well, that’s not going to be appealing to an investor who’s wanting to come in, put their money into the business and get their money out in the next few years.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:27] So what’s it look like when a firm is working with you? Is it something that is done at the beginning to put a plan into place? And you say, okay, good luck. Go forth and prosper? Or is it something that you’re working with them throughout all the way through the exit and maybe onto their next adventure? Like, what are your kind of has how does your relationship typically play out with a client?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:23:51] So I do everything to get them ready to put it on market. I’m not a business broker. I will help them find a business broker. I will help them find somebody who or an investment banker who can help put it out there. But that’s not a role that I play. But what I do do is do everything up to that point, which is helping them get ready, helping them put their business together and start to tell their story and figure out how to tell their story in a way that’s going to be the most appealing to the investors. How do you put credentials against the things that you’re saying about your business? Like, my customers are really loyal. Great. How do you quantify that? Where do we get that information that my customers have a lifetime, a very high lifetime value? Well, let’s quantify that. Let’s figure out how we put metrics behind some of these story points that you’re telling and then getting it to where, once again, that it becomes an appealing business to put in front of an investment banker or a business broker who says, Wow, I can sell this thing and I can sell it pretty easy. And then once it’s in their hands, the one thing that I will do is I will stay alongside the business owner if they want me to, to help them through that decision making process. Because selling your business is far more than just getting the right price for it.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:25:03] It’s about finding that right buyer who is going to fit for you and fit for the legacy you’re wanting to create. For some, it’s all about the financial transaction and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. You’ve built this thing to sell it, and so I’m going to sell it for the most that I can sell it for. But there’s others who have had their business for 30 years and their team is their family. And so making those decisions about a sale is very different for them. They when they come to selling it, they want to think about what’s the impact on the team I have, what’s the impact on the community. You know, I had one recent gentleman who we we worked really hard. We worked with the broker. We actually got the price he wanted for his business from the people that he wanted to make the offer. And then when it came down to it, he stepped back and realized he was taking all kinds of revenue and money and taxes out of the side of the community that he lived in. And he changed his mind. He was like, I can’t do this. I can’t do it to my community. And so he chose to stick with it. And now we’re looking at other alternatives for him. But there’s a lot that goes in that decision making way beyond just the money.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:13] Right? And I guess at those points of inflection where it’s becoming real, then you understand the ramifications of what that looks like and how it’s going to impact others. And the sooner you kind of go through at least that process in your head, then the more effectively and efficiently you can make that transition.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:26:33] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:34] So if somebody wants to learn more about your work, your team and how to get on your calendar, is there a website?

Linda Ruffenach: [00:26:42] Yeah, there is. So you can go to execute. It’s x, e, c, u, i, t, or if you want to set up 30 minutes to chat, it’s really easy. You can go to consult Linda dot com and you get direct access into my calendar and set up 30 minutes and I always love chatting with. Any business owner out there. And if I can’t help you, I’m going to point you in a direction to somebody who can.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:06] Good stuff. Well, Linda, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Linda Ruffenach: [00:27:12] Thank you, Lee. I appreciate you having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:14] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.

Crystal Khalil & Dr. Nicole LaBeach With Sister Diamonds and Volition Enterprises

January 26, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Dr. Nicole LaBeach, entrepreneur and former host of OWN’s “Put A Ring on It,” and Crystal Khalil, former Porsche C-suite executive and entrepreneur, have joined forces as Co-CEOs of Sister Diamonds and Volition Enterprises to empower individuals in business and relationships.

Through their vast business and entrepreneurship experiences, the duo harnesses the power of collectivism and collaboration to celebrate and advance individuals through many events and opportunities.

Follow Sister Diamonds on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Women in Business
  • Business Relationships
  • Minorities in Business
  • Leadership
  • Business
  • Professionalism
  • Confidence
  • Public Speaking
  • Persuasion

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Crystal Carlisle and Dr. Nicole La Beach with Sister Diamonds and Volition Enterprises. Welcome, ladies.

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:00:47] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:48] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to Tell us about your venture. How are you some folks?

Crystal Khalil: [00:00:54] Well, the doctor, Nicole and I, are focused on helping high achieving women unlock and unbind their unlimited potential in business and relationships. And we do this through our Women Unlimited live platform that we host monthly, where we help women to transition in corporate America, if that’s what they’re looking to do or grow their careers, or if they’re focusing on relationships that matter to them at the home and community or in their workplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So how did you stumble upon this calling? Is this something that you’ve always done in your career? Is this a new thing for you to join forces like this?

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:01:37] Well, we’ve both been in the coaching and development and leadership space for many, many years. Crystal was the first African-American executive for Portia Collins worldwide. I had my own business in the space of leadership development and AI and change management, and before that I was a leader in the corporate arena as well. So when we saw the opportunity to really help women in our BDC space, right, which is Sister Diamond’s, we jumped on it right away because we could see the opportunity to help women flourish in their careers and in business. And we really had worked in the corporate arena from a coaching and development standpoint, helping businesses that really wanted to develop their people. So it was really a good way to extend our expertise, extend our purpose and help people to grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:42] Now, were you finding in your work in kind of enterprise level organizations that there was a hunger from women specifically to kind of be all they can be and to really maximize their talents, whether those opportunities are internally or externally?

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:02:59] Absolutely. 100% looking for opportunities to grow, to create allies in their work, to create relationships where they were developing mentors and being mentors to others, seeking opportunities to be sponsored, and rooms where they weren’t, where people could speak to their talents. We could see that women were seeking to be proactive in their development and seeking to create alignment with other people that saw their genius were open to them growing and open to them moving forward to serve others on their teams and serve others in leadership.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] Now, it’s one of those things where sometimes in life you need help and sometimes you need a helper. Do you find that folks have the desire to be to go to new levels, but maybe they lack the roadmap or the path or and there’s folks out there that would gladly tell them, but they just don’t know each other. And there’s an opportunity to be this connector that can really help people get to new levels just by building community.

Crystal Khalil: [00:04:18] You know, oftentimes women who’ve achieved a certain level of success really are what we call the brilliant caretakers. They are the ones that are taking care of everybody around them. They are the go to at work. They are the Olivia Pope at home and in the community and in their service efforts and even in their friend circle. They are the one that everybody comes to for support. And they often look around and they don’t know who can help them in their development and in their growth. And what you said was so crucial community, right. Getting into community with others who can do for you what you do for everyone else is critical and your your next level development. And so we focus on building that community, bringing together what we call those brilliant caretakers that just are are the ones that are solving problems for everybody else. And then. Putting them in a community together where you can mastermind and you have other people that can connect you to their connection and that will go the extra mile for you like you do everyone else. It’s a game changer.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:37] Now, earlier you mentioned two words, and I think that people don’t really understand the difference between them. You use the word mentor and you use the word sponsor. Can you explain? While mentorship is nice and it’s great and everybody loves being mentored and being a mentee, but sponsorship is what really gets you to new levels.

Crystal Khalil: [00:05:59] Yes, sponsors. Mentors can show you the way. They’ve been there. They’ve done that. They can show you the way where sponsors speak up for you when you’re not in the room. And that’s a game changer. We don’t always develop sponsors. Sometimes sponsors are watching you. I find that their people are always watching you. People are always looking at how you show up in the world, and sponsors will be those people that will tap you on the shoulder for opportunities that you may not even have known are available, or they’ll speak up for you in a room that you have never stepped foot in. So it is so critical to be aware of sponsors and that people are watching and the connections that you make, how important those are because sponsors are difference makers.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:53] Right? I think that people really don’t appreciate the difference there because a lot of folks that are in corporate especially think, oh, I’ll be a mentor and I’ll share my knowledge and I’ll carve out 30 minutes every once in a while to help this person. And I’m checking a box in my head that I’m helping. But the people that make a difference, like you said, that are the game changers, are the ones that put their own political capital on the line. And they say Mary is a rock star. Hire her for this position, move her up. She deserves more. She can do more.

Crystal Khalil: [00:07:28] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:31] But I just don’t think that there’s I think sponsorship is underutilized. And it happens, like you said, kind of behind the scenes. But it has to be something that we talk about and that that gets as much press as mentorship because everybody talks about being a mentor mentee. Doing mentoring, that sounds good, but it’s putting political capital on the line to move people up is where the differences are made.

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:07:58] Sure, and that’s where leadership comes into play. You know, being a leader in a position where you can help. Clear a path for somebody else to move up, for somebody else to have a special project, for somebody else to be promoted or to have some cross functional team expertise. You recognizing your opportunity to do that for others is very important because often if you are in that leadership position, you are in a room behind closed doors with other leaders who may be putting other people’s names in the forefront and speaking about their capacity and their capabilities. So it’s it’s very important if you are in a leadership role or if you know that you are an influencer who gets the attention of leaders that are in those formal positions, that you really speak up and push forward, those who could really benefit from the opportunity and who, you know, are going to take the opportunity seriously and be able to do things to serve the company brand and to elevate possibility for others.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] And that’s where representation is so critical, because if there aren’t people that look different than you, it’s easy to just pick people that look like you to fill that next spot.

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:09:34] You know, it’s one of those things where in a lot of the coaching that we do, the professional and executive coaching on the corporate side, we really try to help leaders take an inventory of what it looks like as it relates to who they’re advocating for, because we know there is such a thing as unconscious bias and everybody has it. Everybody has it. No matter your gender, your race, ethnicity, everybody has unconscious bias, but it is stopping to audit and being able to say, okay. Who are the people that I’ve been helping get ahead and what does that look like as far as diversity of their experience, as far as inclusivity? What what does that look like for me as a leader? And if when I’m looking at what I’ve been doing for the past six months or who I’ve been pushing forward, do I see inclusivity? Do I see a diversity in what I’m positioning and who I’m mentioning and whose names are coming forward? Or does it look pretty homogeneous? Because a lot of times it’s not until you stop and you take that inventory as a leader that you can see, Oh, wow, I’m missing some opportunities here. So then what can I do about it? Are there some diverse players that I can go to and say, Hey, help me to understand what your team talent is looking like these days? Who are some of the shining stars that you’re seeing that I need to be made more aware of who has expertise in these areas that I may not be privy to. It’s when you take that audit that you can then say, Do I like what I’m seeing? Or do I have some areas of improvement that I can maximize to really turn some things around? If people start doing that, you can start to see some real different moves in how things are moving forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:43] Yeah, it really kind of shocks me in today’s world that especially with the the challenge people are having with talent, that they don’t even just look at their own website’s leadership page. It doesn’t take, you know, a super consultant to just tell somebody to look at their their company’s leadership page. And if the leadership page doesn’t look like your customers or your employees, maybe you should have some conversations.

Crystal Khalil: [00:12:12] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:14] Now, talk about these monthly events that you’re you’re doing. What happens there and who would be good people to attend?

Crystal Khalil: [00:12:25] Woman Unlimited live is for that brilliant woman who’s high achieving and it’s just looking to grow in her career. Or maybe she’s pivoting and transitioning and she wants to start her own business, or she started a business and wants to grow that business. And she also wants to get in community with other like minded women who can hold her accountable, who can see her for not just what she does in the world, but who she is. Right? These women are the ones that everyone looks to for solutions, and so we bring them into community. Woman Unlimited Live is a four hour mastermind with these amazing women where we show them our three step process that we follow personally to unleash and unbind our unlimited potential to live our yummy life. We call it the yummy life. Yummy stands for your ultimate most meaningful yet, because oftentimes we can be doing a lot of good things, but it’s not the best thing for our purpose and what’s next for us in life. We can be serving in our community and showing up at work and we’re meeting everyone else’s expectations. But when you ask what is your purpose and are you fulfilled, these women take a step back. So Women Unlimited Live is the place to come to unlock that unlimited potential. We show you three steps to unwinding and unleashing that unlimited potential.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:12] So for the folks that are participating or joining those events, what are those 4 hours like? Are they listening to somebody for four, 4 hours or are they actively doing things? Is there is it interactive? Is there a breakout groups like what are those 4 hours look like for an attendee?

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:14:31] It’s very interactive. It’s a lot of fun because you know what we recognize as women when we come together in this space is the value of being heard, the value of having a like minded experience with other women who recognize that there’s more. They are feeling like there’s more, but they’re not really sure how to get to that more, how to move within purpose at this stage of their lives. So it’s interactive where you’re able to hear crystal and mind journey, you’re able to see other women that are in this this space without the mask is what we talk about, because in so many dynamics as women, we have to wear multiple masks to be able to progress, to be able to deal with politics, to be able to move within the expected role. And in this space, there’s a freedom to be able to speak truth to power, to be able to see one another, identify with one another, and really figure out the practices that are going to be necessary to move from where they are when they come into the room to where they desire to go. So it’s a progression that happens over the 4 hours where there’s intimacy, there’s connection, and there’s a recognition. Wow, I am not alone. I can do this.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:08] Is there a story you can share of maybe a woman? You don’t have to name her name, but maybe that her story of what she came to you with and her challenges and how you were able to help her get to a new level.

Crystal Khalil: [00:16:22] We have one woman who came to us at a point in her career where she was feeling like she needed some growth. She felt stagnant and stuck in her in her career. And after working with us, we uncovered her purpose was to create her own business, to help others. She was a social worker, a social worker in schools. And what she’d always really wanted to do was start programs to help social workers, to reach children in a different way in schools. And a lot of schools were pulling pulling out their funding for social work and programs. So she wanted to consult with school systems and school districts on the social working field and work with social workers. And so after working with us for some time, she actually retired from her position and started her business. And now she’s actively walking in her purpose and making a difference in the lives of children in her community as well as social workers. But she just needed that extra oomph and push to know that she could do it, to be in community with other like minded women, to have that coaching and accountability to help her make strategic moves during that transition so that she could leave and retire in a position where she was financially stable. But she was also able to make her employer, her sponsor, and they were able to help her to build out that business as well and be a reference for her in building out that business.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:05] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need more attendees? You need more corporate sponsorship and clients. How can we help you?

Crystal Khalil: [00:18:13] So for women that are that are listening, we invite you to join us at Women Unlimited Live Woman unlimited live dot com the up for the upcoming one and then if you if your organization is in need of executive coaching D-I and training in training leadership and training that goes beyond just checking the box. Please visit us at volition enterprises dot com volition enterprises dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:46] Well thank you both so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Dr Nicole LaBeach: [00:18:52] Thank you, Lee. We appreciate you.

Crystal Khalil: [00:18:54] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:55] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Anders Lillevik With Focal Point

January 26, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Anders Lillevik is the CEO and Founder of Focal Point – a company providing an end-to-end enterprise procurement orchestration platform. For more than 20 years as a Chief Procurement Officer, Anders has helped organizations such as Fannie Mae, QBE Insurance, and Webster Bank optimize their procurement operations. In these roles, he has managed teams of 120+, including $8bn annual spend and $5m annual procurement software expenditures.

As an industry veteran, Anders had a vision for procurement departments to shift from pure cost centers to strategic contributors to the top and bottom lines.

In 2020, he set this vision in motion and founded Focal Point to address the unmet need for a complete solution that connects the tools for every aspect of procurement orchestration across siloed data and processes. Focal Point empowers Chief Procurement Officers to move up the digital maturity curve across the entire procurement process.

Connect with Anders on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Inspiration to go from a CPO at large financial services institutions to founding Focal Point
  • Enterprise procurement faring today
  • Focal Point’s objective

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio, we have Anders Lillevik with Focal Point. Welcome.

Anders Lillevik: [00:00:43] Welcome. Thanks for having me, Ali.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] So excited to learn what you’re up to. Can you update us a little bit about focal point? How are you serving folks?

Anders Lillevik: [00:00:50] Yeah, so focal point is A B to B SAS solution in the procurement space. What that means is we are facilitating the processes that are currently under served in the procurement space, specifically as it pertains to how selection processes and supplier management activities are done. And we’re basically our biggest competitor at the moment are Excel and Email, which is an exciting space for us to get into.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Anders Lillevik: [00:01:19] Well, I have been in procurement for 25 years. The last 20 or so I was leading large global and complex procurement organizations and I have implemented a slew of systems in my time. And the challenging part for me, like I said earlier, was that regardless of how much money I spent on procurement technology, my team and I were working predominantly in Excel and email to to facilitate things like collaborate, collect data, consolidate data and so on. And I had this epiphany that there’s a lot of good technology out there, but there’s a connective tissue that is missing, and that’s why I decided to build focal point, really to help bridge that gap.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:02] So were you the technologist who put the software together or did you partner with other folks?

Anders Lillevik: [00:02:07] No, no. So the origin story there is I created a wireframe and a PowerPoint deck, and I walk that around to a bunch of people in procurement, and we got our first two customers before we actually started developing the product. I’ve got two large global brands said, Yeah, we have this problem too, and if you build this, we sure would love to try it with that. I went to my wife, we just got married actually, and I said, Hey, I’ve got this crazy idea. I want to leave the corporate world and start my own company. So I guess you can say she was my first investor. So we bootstrapped the company on a higher set of Ukrainian developers to build a first prototype. Went live at the in December of 2020. So I’m not a technologist and I don’t pretend to be one either.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:51] So when you were making that transition, was it something that you had always wanted to be an entrepreneur and this was just the opportunity Was there or was this kind of a big, you know, map out the pros and cons of this decision and play out different scenarios? Was this really a hard choice for you or was this something like a calling that you were like, I got I’m the right person to do this.

Anders Lillevik: [00:03:12] It’s a it’s a mix of a few of those things. Like I never set out to be an entrepreneur. To me, it was always scary and always sort of, you know, I got my MBA, I, I was on the path of, you know, I was a senior vice president at a very large global organization. So for me, it certainly wasn’t a financial calling for me. It was a real problem that I think the industry needs to be solved. And I kind of sat down and looked at it and said, look, I’m not of a certain age now. I’ve been I’ve had a long career and if I don’t do this now, I will never do it. And, you know, having having done this for a very long time, I really felt that I was the right person to to solve the problems And certainly with the validation of having customers pre development was was also a good sort of benchmark for me to say, yeah, I got something here. And it wasn’t really until I went live with two national global brands where I realized like, holy smokes, now I have to build a company around this because it’s literally just me and a bunch of folks in the Ukraine on contract. And that’s when things started sort of really ramping up.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:22] Was that the point where you’re like, okay, this is real now? Like, this is I have to really start, you know, having systems and processes like I’m really running a business now. And this isn’t just like this clever idea that’s solving a problem. This is like now a complex business.

Anders Lillevik: [00:04:38] Yeah, absolutely. And that’s when I realized, like, I have to get some, some money to sort of fund the operation because the two first customers, when they sign up pre product, they’re not willing to pay a lot of money for this. Right. So in in 2021, it was kind of a pivotal year to to start dipping my toe into the venture capital arena, getting some some VC funding, hiring a CTO, bringing a team on site and not on site, but in the company. So when you have to stand up against things like security reviews and process mappings and so on, that it’s not just a bunch of outsource folks is literally we have a team we can, we can show them the team, we can show them our processes. So yeah, that’s when things really started getting real and it’s. It’s been a journey ever since.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:24] Now, has that part been as rewarding? Like to me having an idea and seeing it kind of bubble to life, that’s exciting. You know, a lot of the administrative side and operational side is the stuff that’s super important that makes, you know, the trains run on time, but that’s not as, you know, romanticized maybe as that aha moment and then making something come to life.

Anders Lillevik: [00:05:49] Well, having having been on the other side of of of buying technology, I knew this was a necessary evil so to speak. Right. So you don’t get into a Fortune 500 company and processing their data without having all these things buttoned up fairly tight. So I knew that all along that if I’m going to play in that arena, this is something that we needed to do. And it’s it’s kind of when all the trains come in, right? When you’re able to get in front of the customer, sell them on the value proposition, get them to see the vision. And then going through the security review, the legal review, the insurance review and all the other stuff they make you do. And when they finally go live, that’s that’s the thing that really makes me excited about it. Like one more customer. A couple of hundred people in procurement and in the organization using our solution. That’s really cool to me. And it’s all of it. Not just the epiphany moment where it’s like, Oh, someone should go fix this.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:48] So now you’re finding the joy in the actual kind of keeping everything, all those plates spinning at the same time. Now that’s the the rewarding part for you, knowing that you have a solution that is getting traction, that is providing value, and it’s just now a matter of just kind of scaling.

Anders Lillevik: [00:07:05] Yeah, Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s, it’s never ending, right? Because what you realize is that your requirements are different for different industries. So, for example, we have a very large hotel brand that’s using our solution. And their complexity is very different than a pharmaceutical company that we’re just onboarded. And you kind of I never run out of things to do on the operational side that’s going to help us become stronger and be able to grow faster and scale faster. So I kind of lean into it. I think a lot of startups fight the the need to to build a robust operation and kind of deal with that as as they scale Eileen right into it and say, look, it’s better that we deal with these things upfront than try to kick the can down the road and deal with it two years from now. I’d rather fix it now then then when things go wrong. And I think that’s going to serve us well in this industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] So when you started, you focused on financial and then now have expanded to other verticals.

Anders Lillevik: [00:08:05] So it’s interesting. So our first two customers, one was a very large recruitment recruiting company based in Austin, Texas, and the second one was a gaming company in California. And now we have hotel chains, we have pharma companies, we have insurance companies. So it’s a bit of everything. But all of our customers have in common is that they are large and complex and they have legacy systems that are disconnected and and we bring that to the table and help them structure their their processes, structure how they work with their customers and become that connective tissue. So I wouldn’t say that we are specifically connected to verticals. We we deal with large, complex organizations and regardless of the vertical they’re in.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:54] So how quickly do they notice that things have improved?

Anders Lillevik: [00:09:00] Yeah, it’s an interesting question. A lot of these large companies are very resistant to change, right, because some of these folks have been in the company for 20 plus years and they love their Excel spreadsheets, for example. And some customers like are the recruiting company that I keep referencing. They went live globally and to end in two weeks and they saw they saw the benefits immediately. Some of the larger companies that are are on ramping in, say, 6 to 9 months. That’s when things are really coming to the forefront, when you can actually see everything in one spot. Hence the name of the company focal point. You can manage everything in one spot and that’s when things become real for them. So it really depends on your risk appetite and how much you’re willing to bite off.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Now, how does the you know, I know you’re solving a problem with software. How is the change management part of this solved with the humans?

Anders Lillevik: [00:09:58] Yeah. Showing them how the new how the new thing can work in in the new environment is really, really helpful. So the software itself is fairly easy to use. It’s you get notifications, you get told what to do and how to do it, and it’s just a matter of following the prompts. It’s kind of like paint by numbers, right? So we demystify some complex processes by making them more accessible and user friendly for even non procurement practitioners. So the change management is kind of twofold. Like number one, you show them how to do it. Number two, you’re always available if and when they need help. And I think that helps a lot as well because we have a chat bot, for example, or a phone phone number, they can call and we’re always very responsive to make sure that if there is a need we can address it head on and very early so that it takes away the fear factor of trying something new.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] So they’re able to kind of ease into it. And then knowing that there’s always someone kind of watching their back.

Anders Lillevik: [00:10:58] Correct 100%. So again, back to our original question of having infrastructure, right? So our helpdesk can see which screens customers are on and sort of pick it up from there today. Or you should click here, click there, and it becomes easy to to to shepherd people through the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:14] So now when you’re selling this in, is this like you’re selling it into the C suite and they’re deploying it, or is it somebody that’s kind of the boots on the ground that’s kind of dealing with this day to day that’s like kind of pushing this from the bottom up and saying, hey, we need a better solution and here’s one.

Anders Lillevik: [00:11:33] It’s a mix. So I would say that the process owners are the folks that typically bring us in to say, Alright, there’s a better way of doing this process, whatever that process is, whether that is managing suppliers or managing projects in procurement or managing supplier risk or whatever. Right. And they will say, Well, we’re doing this manually today. This is something that we can use to create visibility and workflow and visibility to to the process, and they can bring us into the C-suite or the organization’s procurement office or head of procurement can bring us in and realize like I can manage my entire department with more visibility, more transparency and better customer service if I just implement something that can manage that. This process beginning from from beginning to end. Sorry.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:19] Now is there you know, people don’t like change and this sounds like something new. And like you said, some people’s identity are built on how good they know Excel. And that’s, you know, part of their brand is I’m the person to go to, you know, if you got a problem. Is that a difficult change to manage when it comes to, you know, just having a better mousetrap here that solves things better? But do you the emotional connection that people have to legacy systems and the fear of, you know, I don’t want to be the one that’s pulling the trigger on this, this thing explodes?

Anders Lillevik: [00:12:55] Yeah, it’s an interesting question because some of these larger organizations have those folks right, that I’m the gatekeeper of this particular information and making it visible to other folks is not necessarily a good thing for me. Those are not typically the people that are going to lead the change. But once the rest of the organization comes down the system and realize that there’s benefits to it, it’s hard to resist. Right. And I think ultimately it comes down to the leadership of the organizations we’re selling into. We need strong leaders to be able to, like you said, deal with the change management process and push the organization along. And if there’s not an impetus for change at the top, you know, this is probably not the solution for folks, right. If they want to if you want to keep doing the same thing over and over again, but this is not your type of solution.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:42] Now, do you think that you again, it seems like you were just at the right person at the right time for this type of solution, having kind of lived through all of this and knowing where all the landmines are, it helps you kind of communicate the value proposition more effectively and efficiently with more kind of street cred than maybe some technologists who develop the software know.

Anders Lillevik: [00:14:03] Absolutely right. And you find as I’m as I’m starting to navigate the startup community and also the procurement startup community, there’s a lot of technologists that have developed a thing that solves a problem, a very specific problem, and they leverage the heck out of it and they start scaling it. And that’s kind of the the anti focal point solution. They essentially they’re building a point solution that does one thing and does it really well, and it’s disconnected from the rest of the systems that are in the organization. We we bring this together end to end and we’re looking at things more holistically rather than just a point solution. And this is probably why I took we have 30 engineers working on the solution and it’s been quite a while now and we’re very development focused and product focused. So yeah, I believe you’re right. It’s the right person solving the right problem at the right time and also the advent of and the normalization of using APIs to push and pull data is necessary for us to do what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Now with the recent supply chain issues and logistics issues, does your solution have made things better or more efficient or made things more obvious, like where the problems were? Like, How would your solution impact any of that stuff or would it?

Anders Lillevik: [00:15:27] It would, but it necessitates you from actually doing the work, right? So we can say, let’s call it aluminum. Let’s say a category of spend is aluminum, and your organization is critically dependent on the supply of aluminum using using focal point. You can drill down to say, how many aluminum providers do I have and where in the world are they? And am I am I covered? Like if, for example, if you have two providers that are both in the same geographical location. Then you potentially could have risk there. So what we do helps organizations map out where they have problems or where the potential problems could be. And if they have, if the, God forbid, something happens, you can very quickly respond to and say, all right, I only had one provider. They went down, how can I find another one? So but it necessitates you from doing the work you actually actually have to do the work or else is not. That’s no good, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] Right. But it it kind of gives you a view of things maybe more holistically and where you can see where there might be a potential problem down the road a lot more efficiently than a huge spreadsheet.

Anders Lillevik: [00:16:35] Exactly right. Exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Now, are there any kind of trends in procurement that we should be keeping our eyes on in 2023 that you you all are well positioned to leverage.

Anders Lillevik: [00:16:49] Right? So, I mean, procurement is a is a is a discipline that continues to evolve, right? So 20 years ago, it was all about saving money and trying to negotiate the best deals possible. Ten years ago it became save money while reducing supply risk. Make sure that they have a secure environment, make sure that they can handle your data properly. And now I would like to say a procurement is also trying to save the world. So it’s not just the best price with less risk, but also with the least amount of carbon footprint, least amount of waste and energy usage and so on. So so now procurement is really getting into the ESG space, getting into the supplier diversity space. So you have to make sure that a certain percentage of your spend goes to diverse suppliers and that that continues to reflect the environment that you’re in. So focal point can can now start measuring and tracking supplier diversity as well as supplier ESG initiative. So, for example, if you’re looking for a ways to reduce your carbon footprint, we can benchmark your current footprint and come up with solutions for how you can reduce that carbon footprint either through supplier innovation or through switching to closer supplier, for example.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:12] Now, as you grow, are you finding that you’re kind of developing a marketplace of suppliers that focal point will have knowledge about?

Anders Lillevik: [00:18:24] Absolutely. So we because we are connecting to so many different, you know, different supply chain partners. So we connect with the large organizations like SAP or Oracle, but also the smaller startups that provide data services, for example. And we’re becoming, like I said, the focal point for all these things where the processes kind of come together. And it’s it’s kind of intimidating about all of the data connections and APIs that we have to build and maintain. But it’s it’s really exciting stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:56] But it becomes a situation where you’re solving a problem for an individual company, but you’re also have the opportunity to build a marketplace for all people within that industry at some point.

Anders Lillevik: [00:19:08] Correct? I mean, obviously downstream we’re looking at crowdsourcing a lot of these different data sources and figuring out what are the best suppliers in a specific field, in a specific region, for example. And I think that’s going to become even more valuable than than what we imagine it is today.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:27] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need I would imagine talent is near the near the top of your list, but also customers, maybe customers in certain industries. I know you said your industry agnostic, but there’s probably some places that are more available than others.

Anders Lillevik: [00:19:45] Yeah, large services organizations are prime or prime leaves for us always looking for more customers to deploy technology to. We love helping people save money and reduce risk while making better customer service and the organization talents. We’ve been very lucky. We found really good talent here in Atlanta. We have a team of 12 people here now, plus our development staff offshore. So we’ve been very lucky, but we’re continuing to grow and we’re probably going to be racing an around later on this year. So a lot of things happening.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:25] So if somebody wants to learn more, maybe get on your calendar or maybe somebody on your teams, is there a website.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:31] Yeah, get focal point dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] And that’s get focal point dot com.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:38] You got it.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:39] Well thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Anders Lillevik: [00:20:44] Thank you, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:45] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Dan Maddux With American Payroll Association

January 25, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

APA Dan Maddux headshotDan Maddux is Executive Director of the American Payroll Association (APA), the leading payroll authority in the United States. His APA career began in 1982 as the first employee hired by the fledgling association. Over the next ten years, he would hold every job in the association, ultimately becoming Executive Director in 1992.

Through classroom and online education, print and electronic publications, certification programs, a network of over 100 local affiliated chapters, and advocacy with government agencies, the American Payroll Association serves a community of over 48,000. APA membership also includes representatives of large, medium, and small payroll service providers who are responsible for processing payroll for an additional 2 million U.S. employers. APA has represented these constituents on Capitol Hill and with federal, state, and local government agencies for more than 30 years.

In 2015, APA launched the Global Payroll Management Institute (GPMI), with the mission of forging a community by providing th education, skills, and resources necessary for global payroll professionals to become successful leaders and strategic partners within their organizations. As GPMI’s President, Dan has led the organization’s growth to a worldwide community of global payroll professionals with over 12,000 subscribers in 117 countries. Each year, more than 9,700 global payroll professionals attend GPMI education. Currently, GPMI has established four chapters in three countries. GPMI is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

The APA is headquartered in San Antonio, TX, with additional facilities in Las Vegas, NV and Washington, D.C. APA owns all its properties, which house the association’s operations, including a host of commercial tenants, and an acclaimed Event and Training.

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About the American Payroll Association
  • Products and services they offer
  • Payroll industry looks like in the future
  • Projects or initiatives they’re looking forward to in 2023
  • Some advice for other leaders doing work in Associations

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:00] We’re broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Dan Maddux with the American Payroll Association. Welcome, Dan.

Dan Maddux: [00:00:32] Hi, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Hey, So excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about American Payroll Association. How are you serving, folks?

Dan Maddux: [00:00:39] Thank you, Lee. The American Payroll Association was founded in 1982. We’re a professional organization that is comprised of individuals that are responsible for payroll management. We also attract professionals from HR and other payroll related corporate financial responsibilities. The APA represents payroll professionals across the US and increasingly from across the globe that have US payroll responsibilities. Annually, we conduct training programs, conferences, seminars and an annual convention and expo through a myriad of in-person and virtual deliveries. We reach about 75,000 individuals with some type of education experience annually.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:24] How has the payroll industry kind of evolved over the years in that I’m sure at one point it was all kind of corporations doing payroll for their employees, and now we’re living in a world where there are so many subcontractors, there are so many, you know, kind of software as a service solutions for payroll. How have you seen the industry evolve?

Dan Maddux: [00:01:47] The industry has evolved in many ways, I guess to a great extent, because we’re a professional organization and we serve the individuals and their professional journey. We’ve seen the industry involved and the fact that products and services are constantly evolving and changing. So that is something that that professionals in the industry need to keep up with. Often those products are for payroll and HR, so they’re working with their partners in HR. Whenever a company is going through any kind of change. I would say more and more payroll are brought to the table and helping to make that decision. Historically, before that, you know, decades ago. Payroll often found out about the changes and it wasn’t necessarily something that they were part of, but certainly they were part of the implementation. These days, I would say that they definitely have a seat at the table and helping to make those decisions. And they’re, of course, part of the implementation. And that’s where I’d say that the industry has grown considerably in the fact that they do have a leadership seat at the table and more and more, which we always try to expose to our members, is that you have payroll professionals or people that have even risen to being at the C-suite level.

Dan Maddux: [00:03:02] And often when you will meet, let’s say, payroll vice presidents or officers in a corporation, they begin to think that they’re the only ones. And in some cases, that’s why, let’s say over the years they have become less engaged with our association, because they really do truly think that they’re the only one that exists in the industry. And you bring them to the table and you ask them to share their story and then they come to realize that there are actually a lot more people in their position in the industry, which shows you that the industry is evolving and it’s changing and their positions have become more strategic. They still are going to have the regulatory and compliance aspects that payroll is responsible for, but they have become more strategic players. And I think that the great thing about that, not only for those people that are in the C-suite positions and payroll, but for the general people in the industry, is that for them they thought that there was this ceiling and that for them to move further in their career, they had to lead payroll. And now it allows them to redefine their career objectives. And the fact that they really can truly go further in their profession.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:16] Now, how do you kind of share the information with your folks? Do you do it through chapters? Do you have national conferences? Do you have online learning? Like how do people interact with the knowledge that you are willing to share?

Dan Maddux: [00:04:30] We do have 125 affiliated chapters, but I would say the way we communicate more with our members, though, certainly through the host of publications that we have, we have eight attorneys on staff that research and write, but we also have what we consider a customer or membership publications. We have several of those, predominantly as an organization beyond the work that we do in D.C. with government agencies. Most of what we do is communicate it through education, so we have education to take them throughout their entire journey. So through what would be foundations, which of course companies utilize us for to train people as they’re coming into the profession, but also through. Their career all the way up to management. So we we train over 75,000 people a year through the myriad of education that we provide. That historically, of course, there was a lot of in-person learning as what we did we. Years ago, prior to the pandemic, we began to move quite a bit of what we did virtually. And I would say that in the years of the pandemic, you know, two years plus, we moved so much of what we did for the myriad of training programs that we provide know 1 to 3, up to five day learning programs. We moved to virtual formats. We even moved our annual convention for a couple of years to a virtual format. And when we were now, while we had a virtual delivery for over ten years for our annual convention, it did challenge us to pivot, to move everything that we did to a virtual format for those two years, even the delivery of our certification exams. And while I’m not saying I’m looking forward to another pandemic, I would tell you that we made the pandemic a really great learning experience and we had to do a lot of soft and hard pivots.

Dan Maddux: [00:06:32] But we figured if we’re going to have to move everything that we do to virtual deliveries, which we are very skilled at doing, but also a annual convention and an expo, we’re going to be the best because I saw so many organizations that were deciding not to do much in 20 and deescalated what they would normally do in 21 as well. And now today they’re still catching up. And we had really no downtime. While we may have had some slight delays because we had to pivot to new deliveries, I would tell you that our virtual convention in 2018 was it was very exciting. And then when we knew we had to do it for 21, we could even make it more exciting. And what I loved coming back to an in-person convention in 22 was that I met people that were members or customers for years. They knew about our convention called Peril Congress, but they had never really considered attending. But they decided to attend it because it was offered virtually. And they said if they can make it this exciting, virtually, I’ve got to attend in person. So what I thought was great about that is that we knew that what we were providing during the pandemic was substantial. But when you are speaking to customers face to face that are telling you that what you delivered during the pandemic was so inviting and exciting that it that it was essentially the marketing tool that made them come to their first in-person convention. To me, that was very powerful.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:04] Now, did that trickle down to the chapter level as well? Did the folks locally, were they able to kind of make the best of a bad situation in their local markets?

Dan Maddux: [00:08:17] Every chapter is different, of course, than their affiliated chapters. But what we did do is we offered them Zoom licenses and having their national organization be so apt at at providing we embraced virtual many years ago. So even by the fact that we had more than one office, we were originally located in New York City, moved the headquarters to San Antonio. We’ve always had multiple offices, Washington, DC, so we would use video conferencing from the Donna video conferencing. So we always embraced technology. So we’ve been utilizing Zoom for a number of years. What we did is we worked out a Zoom license for our chapters so that they could facilitate their chapter meetings through Zoom, and that was very well received by our chapters because there was really no other way for them to conduct their meetings in a professional way. And I would tell you that quite a few of our chapters have maintained their zoom license. And now, even though some are back to some in-person delivery, some of their meetings, just like just like everything else in life is a hybrid, some some of their meetings are still conducted virtually.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:37] And did you find that as the pandemic waned, people were hungry for this kind of face to face and getting back to interacting in person?

Dan Maddux: [00:09:48] I think what people are hungry for and what their employers will support or what they have the bearing to do are two different things. So what? So people may want to go back to in-person and certainly we want to get back to in-person. But what we’re finding and I think that that other groups will will share this with you as well, is that what we’re finding is that virtual is still a more popular option. Now that is probably more popular because there are so many people working remotely or in a hybrid situation. Also, employers had the cost savings of virtual deliveries. So now when you’re looking at in-person deliveries, particularly when there is travel, hotel and incidentals and they’re comparing those costs, certainly some employers are going to look at saying, yes, an in-person delivery of a convention people are going to get more out of. But when it comes to a training program, do you necessarily need to have those additional costs? So we are we have less than person deliveries because we try to gear them towards the market need. And what we’ve found is that we have an increased need for virtual deliveries. So coming out of the pandemic, we are seeing we’ve amped up more virtual deliveries, but we we still do have the in-person component and we’ll continue to adjust those by market need. But I would tell you that in introducing one new class that we have that’s foundation of payroll analytics that was introduced in 22, while there is a need for people to attend it in person and there’s a value to that. We have three times as many people that would like to attend it virtually.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:35] Now, since you kind of had the head start of embracing virtual, you know, pre-pandemic, that obviously had a running start when the pandemic happened and you were that much more adept at and skilled at executing that. Or is there any tips you can share on how to create engagement virtually? Is it just is education and training kind of the easiest path to create the education, or were you able to do it also in these kind of just maybe informal, you know, monthly meetings or things like that?

Dan Maddux: [00:12:08] I think there’s many different ways to communicate. But in in in education, I think that sometimes sometimes in a learning experience when when it’s being delivered, which we have, of course, acknowledged and embraced many years ago, I would say well over 15 years ago. Is that education? Well, I actually say even longer than that because of our learning centers, that education has to be more participatory, that people get more out of the educational experiences if it’s not just a one way delivery. You can have plenty of one way deliveries when it comes to an instructor providing or a speaker providing information that that is webinars or a more rigorous delivery. But when you’re looking at 6 hours or 12 hours or 18 hours of education, if it doesn’t have some level of participation and it’s not more participatory and you don’t have ways for them not only to to interact with the instructor but also interact with each other, that it is difficult to keep that engagement of people. Now, by today’s standards, of course, everybody is experiencing this. You will have people that want the online education and however it’s being delivered, but they have a difficult time fully engaging.

Dan Maddux: [00:13:32] They won’t necessarily turn on their camera. They still want to chat their questions rather than to ask their questions. But what we find, because we have been nurturing this more participatory way of educating for decades, is that we do have a it’s it’s how you’ve seasoned your audience. So more than half of the people that attend our virtual experiences when it is 6 hours, 12 hours, 18 hours, that a good portion of the class, more than half, they are on camera and they are raising their hand and they are asking questions in the virtual environment, which does make it a much more inviting experience for them or a more well-rounded experience. But you still are going to have those people that I believe have gotten into a rut by what their companies have allowed or in any other type of educational experience that they’ve had because of the other type of education that they may be required to achieve through their employer that have turned it into a one way communication and don’t necessarily see that it is to their benefit for it to be more participatory and for them to fully engage.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:49] Now, when it comes to payroll, in the macro sense, are there any trends or anything in the industry that we should be on the lookout for coming forward that.

Dan Maddux: [00:15:03] So I’d say that from that framework that employers and this is really worldwide, but particularly in first world countries that during the. Pandemic. We had this aspect of allowing people to work remotely, and in some aspects we didn’t always know where they were working from. In places like the UK, what was a predominant factor was people going to Spain to work. And in the US we were very lenient as well. But in the US of course we have, we have federal laws, but we also have various state laws and local jurisdictions. And during the pandemic there was a certain leniency. But you will have, let’s say, some well-known companies, and I’m not going to say who they are, but that will have been on the news and saying we don’t care where our employees work. But it’s like, do you really not care where they work? Because wherever they’re working from that you as an employer are going to have have a responsibility And you probably have seen it in the news. It was reported well over six months ago that we know that there are over 1.6 million Americans working in Mexico, predominantly in Mexico City. And there that’s a big issue because it’s not only do employers need to be aware of the fact that where their employees are working, but also at some juncture, those jurisdictions, you know, Mexico is going to say we’re going to need a piece of that taxation pie, and that’s going to happen. That’s going to be a global issue and an issue for employers in the US because they’re going to need to take hold of and take responsibility for where their employees are working. And that’s something that’s been a bit laxed throughout the pandemic, but is going to be a significant issue moving forward. So there are employers that do embrace allowing people to work from wherever, but they’re also doing all of the backend things that are necessary in order to make that possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:18] So they have to kind of ramp up some infrastructure for themselves to handle that complexity of their employees being in different states, different countries because of the taxation rules wherever that employee individually is located.

Dan Maddux: [00:17:35] They do because when when these companies are inevitably audited, their their employee cell phone records, these employees will have probably signed leases. Let’s say there’s going to be an audit. Even the technology for the employer, they’re going to know whether people have logged in from and all of this is going to factor into audits. So employers are going to need to get in front of that and either have stricter rules about what states, let’s say in the US you can work in or can’t. And if you can work outside the US, they’re going to need to be aware of that and then provide for that because it’s not as simple as saying that somebody can work in Mexico. There are certain corporate structures that have to change and filings that have to change. So I believe there are employers that that have already they they rose to the occasion and will continue to rise to the occasion. But I think the majority of employers, when they understand the complexities of that type of global reporting and even domestic reporting in order to provide for that will retract from allowing their employees to have the leniency of working anywhere they want.

Dan Maddux: [00:18:59] So I do think that that the pandemic certainly changed the way we work. And the fact that there is this well, there is more remote work. There is an expectation that you can be a hybrid worker or a remote worker. And it is how we attract talent now is that we have to think about the fact that talent isn’t necessarily going to be in our back door. We need to to set our sights a bit further and where we we look and attract talent. But we have to take these other considerations into the equation. We just happen to represent the payroll industry, which is highly has has a slew of regulatory and legislative issues that companies have to adhere to. So it is it’s the space that we’re in. So we’re more cognizant of it. But I do think that that’s going to be an issue for any small to medium to large size employer that is going to have to reel in what they allowed for during the pandemic.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:02] Right. So the pandemic kind of forced their hand. It seemed like they were being generous and accommodating. But, you know, once you flip that domino, there’s other ramifications that are occurring that maybe you didn’t realize. Time or didn’t understand kind of how how many things that that affected down the road.

Dan Maddux: [00:20:21] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:22] So now, is there anything through your organization that you’re most looking forward to in 2023 and beyond? Any projects or things you’re working on?

Dan Maddux: [00:20:31] We’re looking forward to that. We I mentioned to you earlier that in 22 we came out with our first. It was called Foundations of Payroll Analytics. It’s 18 hours and we provide in-person delivery and also virtual delivery. And what was great about providing that is that the attendees could naturally see by the the 18 hours of education that there had to be a part two, which we already had in development. But it’s great when the attendees can say I need more. So we have part two in development and we plan on having it in the marketplace before the the end of 23. So that’s exciting. And I believe that even past part two, it’s going to continue. So it’s substantial content. I believe that by the time we finish the series, we’ll have over 50 hours of content just on this one subject matter, which to me is really exciting to procure or create new content. And another exciting project that we’re working on is that we will soon launch our online community and we like to think of the fact that yes, we have members, but we also have subscribers. We have customers. I think any association has to begin to look at what are your total engagements, because people that may hold your certifications aren’t necessarily your members, but they do think of themselves as part of your community. So when we look at our total engagements, we in 22 had over 191,000 engagements. So if somebody has your certification and they’re in another country, they still think of being in inside your circle. They still think of being part of your community.

Dan Maddux: [00:22:20] So when we launch this community, it is available to anybody worldwide. And it does. It is for our members, for our customers, for our engagements, for those that have our certifications worldwide. So I think that it’s very exciting because not only does it does it connect people from around the world because you could have somebody in Ohio that has an issue with German payrolls and can connect with somebody and ask a question. So it really does meet the need of the fact that many years ago people would think of a multinational company as being a really large company, but now it can really be a company of any size and they can be located anywhere. So it does create a knowledge share within the industry because within this industry, yes, every payroll practice or regulatory and legislative issue around the world is different. But payroll as it is, is is pretty much processed the same way no matter where you are. It’s just pay cycles are different and the laws are different, but there’s a lot of commonality. And we’re looking forward to launching this community because that, yes, there are people within our community in the US that just think US centric, but their world is changing and they may not be in a multinational company today, but you don’t know where their company is going tomorrow or what employer they might be working for next year. And by having this worldwide community, not only will it meet the needs that people have today, but people today don’t realize that it will meet needs that they’ll have in future years.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:12] Right. And it could open up other opportunities. When you have this knowledge, it may not be something that you’re fearful of or you embrace and you lean into and say, hey, oh, there is somebody there I can chat with and just ask them some questions.

Dan Maddux: [00:24:24] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:25] I mean, building relationships worldwide, I mean, there’s no negative to that.

Dan Maddux: [00:24:31] There is. There isn’t. And I that has organically happened over the years. You know, you provide the forum for it, but then it organically happens among people. But I believe that with an online community that that it will happen much faster. And then years from now, in a few short years from now, there are people that would not have seen the value that will see it as being a very valuable tool.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:00] So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more members? You need more subject matter experts, you need more chapter leads. How can we.

Dan Maddux: [00:25:09] Help? We we are always we have been great over the years of. Cultivating SMS or subject matter experts. I would tell you that and I would recommend to any organization to do this. We certainly put subject matter experts through the test and cultivating their natural well. We improve their their their knowledge base, but we have always had professional speech coaching for decades so that our subject matter experts become the best speakers they can be because they’re really the voice piece for the for all of the hundreds of courses that we teach a year. So we always want more customers, we always want more members, we always want more people to go through our certification programs. So in in the various ways that we serve the community, whether it’s through the American Payroll Association, the Global Payroll Management Institute, we always want more people to come into the fold.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:17] Well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom and congratulations on all the success to be able to handle the pandemic as well as you did and to really use it as a launching point for even more robust services and education for your members. Congratulations. That is just amazing achievement and I hope you’re proud and I hope your members appreciate what it took to do that, because that’s a big deal and you did a great job. Thank you for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Dan Maddux: [00:26:49] Thank you so much, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:51] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio

Daniel A. Scola, Jr. With Hoffman & Baron

January 23, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Daniel A. Scola, Jr. is the managing partner of Hoffmann & Baron, LLP, and also manages the chemical, pharmaceutical/biochemical, and medical device practice group in the New Jersey office. He has extensive experience in polymers, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. He specializes in building IP portfolios and designing strategies to protect and enhance company value.

Previously, he was Counsel, patents, and trademarks as well as Assistant Corporate Secretary at The Warner-Lambert Co. and Intellectual Property Attorney at Loctite Corporation.

Prior to earning his law degree, Scola was an adhesive and composite materials engineer at the Pratt & Whitney Division of United Technologies.

Connect with Daniel on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Intellectual property
  • Importance of intellectual property to any business or entity
  • Protecting assets for start-up companies
  • IP to be implemented at the same time funding is received
  • Venture capitalist to work with an IP law firm

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Daniel Scola with Hoffman and Baron. Welcome, Dan.

Daniel Scola: [00:00:26] Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Hoffman and Baron and how you serve in folks.

Daniel Scola: [00:00:33] Yeah, so we’re an intellectual property law firm, and that means we’re exclusively devoted to procuring, protecting and enforcing protection of ideas, creations and expressions of those ideas into intellectual property.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Now, in today’s world, intellectual property seems to be an area there’s a lot of gray area in terms of what is my intellectual property, what is kind of the public’s intellectual property, how is it defined, number one? And number two, how can you possibly protect it?

Daniel Scola: [00:01:08] Well, there are very good vehicles for protecting it. And they go back to the constitutional mandate that if you exchange your ideas and teach the public how to do certain things, the government will in return give you a limited monopoly or monopoly for a short period of time. So, for example, there’s different vehicles that protect things like patents, protect inventions, for example, and you get 20 years of protection and then you’ve got the creation of expressions and ideas that go into brands and that’s covered by trademarks. And then you’ve got copyrights, which is protection of things that are reduced to a tangible form like like books, movies, dance steps and so forth and so on. And what actually happens is these rights become property rights just so just like real property, like you can sell real property. It’s an asset. You can, you could license it, you could, you could rent your, your, your land, for example. Same thing goes on with assets that are formed from these intangible ideas. You reduce them to a tangible form and they become property rights that you can license, you can sell, and they’re quite valuable.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:21] Now, the area where for me it gets gray and I was in Chicago the other day with my son and we were walking and there was a truck that was selling like a roofer or something. It was some manual labor vehicle. And on it they had pictures of all kinds of superheroes that are well known. And then my son made a comment about, Wow, how did they do that? And I’m like, something tells me they didn’t ask for permission to do that, that they just did that. And so how like is Marvel going to search these people out to try to tell them to stop doing this? Like it just seems like that in today’s world where there’s so much content just constantly being thrown around, it’s hard to defend your trademarks or your your marks in terms of everywhere that somebody is misusing it.

Daniel Scola: [00:03:16] Well, that’s a very good question, but there also is a very good answer to it. You know, normally what they would what most companies do who have like certainly the famous brands, for example, like the Marvel Comics, you know, all those action figures there, they have a a daily, weekly and a monthly program where they police their their marks and the use of their marks. So they hire people. Sometimes it’s outside law firms like ourselves. And we look to see, you know, on a constant ongoing basis, monitoring basis who is using something that is similar or identical because it’s not just using identical, it’s something that’s confusingly similar to the public. And so what happens then is they’ll get they’ll get a letter saying, you know, you either have to stop doing this or you have to have some discussions with us to allow us to develop maybe a license situation. And, you know, it’s just a way of policing it. So you really do have to to you know, one of the big advantages of having IP is that when you do get a copy copycat, you do have rights to to stop them from doing it. And I know that there’s a lot of content out there, but it’s also a lot easier to find the content these days so you can search and find lots of things it used to be, and they still do it to some extent.

Daniel Scola: [00:04:45] Used to be in the old days before social media became so prevalent, you could hear in a restaurant, for example, you could hear various songs that, you know, well known music being played in the background. Well, all those commercial establishments have licenses to play that music and they play they they they go through a a single source. Usually it’s it’s ASKAP. And they’re responsible for giving royalties to all of the performers and the people who have copyrights in the music. And they pay a limited amount for certain amount of plays that they’re you know, it’s sort of an average. And they go back and it’s a little bit on the honor system, but they do audit audited it. So all those restaurants that are playing commercially available music are paying license fees on those. So you can imagine how many restaurants out there and how many royalties are getting paid just for that, and that’s restaurants. It applies to any commercial situation. And yeah, you’re right. You’ve got to monitor it and police it and then you’ve got to get someone to to write the letter or actually follow up on on something like a lawsuit.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:03] And if you don’t follow up, are you at risk of losing your marks?

Daniel Scola: [00:06:09] Well, you do have some risks if you don’t follow up. So, for example, in the trademark situation, if you allow someone to exist so long, it becomes more difficult to to make the argument that the coexistence is creating an issue for you, even though there’s infringement. I mean, you can still get them off. But it’s always almost like, for example, in patents, the patent area, if you have an invention and you have a patent on it and you know there’s infringement and you don’t follow up on that for a period of time, usually it’s a six year period of time. There’s a doctrine called latches, which means you basically sat on your rights, you didn’t enforce them, and now you can’t enforce them. So, yeah, you have to pay if you’re going to have an asset. It’s very much like if I have a house sitting empty on a lot and I do nothing with it and I just let whoever wants to go live there, you know, I’m sitting on my rights. I have the right to charge them rent, but I’m not not a good thing to do in any field.

Daniel Scola: [00:07:15] And also the IP field is the same way. Can’t do it. So you really should pay attention. Look, it’s an asset. You know, these are valuable, valuable assets. They’re property. They can be licensed, they can be sold. They they increase the value of your company. And and by the way, whenever you’re looking for money for an investment, IP is is right at the forefront. They’ll say, okay, what is your product or what are your services? And then is it protected by IP because IP represents a barrier to the public getting in. So normally you would be you would say, I have IP and here’s here’s what it is. And they would do an evaluation. They say, oh, well, you know, the people shouldn’t be able to get to where you are easily. They have to redesign something and that’s going to cost them money and that’s going to take time. So you’ll be out there for a while first in the market will invest in you. And that’s sort of the thought process.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:17] Now is the recommendation for a, you know, maybe a startup or a new firm, even a professional service or consulting firm to develop some IP that is uniquely theirs. Will that help them in the long run, maybe get more value down the road if and when they sell?

Daniel Scola: [00:08:37] Absolutely. You know, IP always increases the value. Sometimes it’s exponential. I can tell you many examples of situations where startup companies have come to me and to my firm and we’ve worked with them to develop an IP portfolio. So it becomes a thicket of of little think of them as little land masses where people have to figure out how to walk in between these land masses so they don’t step on your IP because they don’t want to infringe. And and nobody wants infringement, right. But you know that you can enforce it if you if someone does. So it’s a real barrier and they have to redesign spend the money and sometimes they just go it’s it’s too expensive, it’s too difficult. I will just take a license from them and I’ll just compete with them. But I’ll I’ll make mine a different name. So I’ll call it a different brand and I’ll work on my brand and just try to develop that as opposed to the product and the patent behind it. But but no, you know, almost all investors look very heavily at the market and how they can prevent others from getting into the market if they invest in this in this particular asset. So if a company has a good portfolio of of IP assets or a dominant position in that technology area in terms of patents and a dominant position in terms of trademark, which is the awareness, the goodwill associated with the name and everybody knows it’s that company that sells that name, you know, then, you know, they really feel much more comfortable and they do a lot of due diligence before they put, you know, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in in investments.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:32] Now, if somebody is thinking about protecting their IP, when you’re working with an IP attorney, is their job just kind of just kind of going through the process of protecting it and defending it or is a good relationship with an IP attorney, one in which maybe your brainstorming together and you’re saying, you know what the IP attorney maybe is making recommendations of, hey, you should think about protecting this, or if you did this a little differently than that might be protectable. Like, is it is it kind of more of a partnership or is it more of a kind of person that’s executing some tasks?

Daniel Scola: [00:11:10] You’ve you’ve hit on a very important point. It’s actually the latter. It’s a person who is in a partnership with the client and has added value in terms of creativity, where to step, where not to step, how to take an idea which might be somewhat narrow and say, listen, we can develop this into a little broader concept and still not be within the scope of other people’s property. And you know, you do you do searches, you do patent searches, you hire specialized patent search firms, you do an analysis. You say, you know what, there’s a range of competitors or we’re doing something similar, it’s yours is distinguishable, but it’s going to narrow the scope of your protection. Do you still want to go forward with this? Or we can redesign this to actually broaden it out in another aspect which goes away from those competitors? What do you think? It really is a partnership and and a good IP attorney who is thinking ahead also has to add creativity to it to really be. And so what does that mean? It means a lot of times you have to know or learn something about the technology because, I mean, we do everything from complex immunology to, you know, in engineering, industrial engineering, chemistry, I.T. computer business methods is a whole array of technology. So, you know, you have a lot of specialists. So you hire people who have you know, the attorneys have electrical backgrounds or they have I.T. backgrounds, or they might be a biological guy or a chemical guy. And it’s sometimes you get a team and the same thing goes when you’re enforcing it. You know, you have that whole litigation aspect to it, which is more more than just protecting it. It’s defending it. So, yeah, it’s an excellent question. It’s really a partnership.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:05] And when you’re in your firm, when you’re working with clients as your client, maybe the business owner, or sometimes are you working with like private equity firms or venture capitalists who might have a portfolio of clients that it might be more efficient to work with one IP attorney firm in order to help my whole portfolio of clients rather than, you know, one at a time.

Daniel Scola: [00:13:30] Well, you know, it’s it’s the the the portfolio management like with with investors, what we’re looking to do is work with investor groups who need an evaluation of all their IP, because we have we have different departments which can handle that. But the idea is you want a consistent source of, of judgment in the evaluating of the IP. So we we work with we do diligent diligence for investment companies, but we also do a lot of work for eight universities, large companies, small companies, startups. I love startups because and I love the due diligence, which comes when investors are looking to put money into startups because that’s where I feel I can be particularly creative and add value. And and I have a lot of experience judging when something is going to be too close to for comfort and that you need to change something so you don’t get into a situation which is uncomfortable, you know, maybe a litigation or maybe someone saying the product isn’t differential enough. And, you know, but we work with all kinds of and all levels of people, including some individuals and professors and inside guys, the business guys are fun to work with. Sometimes it’s a small company and the top business guy will come and, you know, if they’re a really sharp entrepreneur, it’s a pleasure to work with them because they understand what it means to take prudent risks. They also they also know when they see creativity, they they latch on to it. So it’s it’s really it’s a fun area to practice. And I have to say, and you have to be able to to trust experts. And so this is our expertise. But when we talk to inventors, for example, or marketing people, you know, they’re experts at what they do. So it’s a nice integration of expertise coming together. When you when you work together, like in a partnership like that.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:42] Now, can you share a story? Don’t name the name, but explain maybe the challenge they had or where the opportunity was. Were you able to add value, maybe make a recommendation that that took their business or their idea to a new level?

Daniel Scola: [00:15:56] Sure. Actually, I won’t name the name, but it’s a it’s a company that was a one person startup and now it’s a public company and it is a leader in its field and it’s in the pharmaceutical area. They came to me with an idea of how to make a particular dosage form for a drug. And the idea was it came from watching the way California pulp manufacturers dried dried fruit. And they said, Gosh, that’s a cool process. I wonder if I can take certain pieces of that and adapt it into a new process and make something that will be useful to deliver drugs, which no one has done before. So in evaluating that, I found that there was an awful it was just a terrible amount of a huge amount of prior art. But in other words, patents and and disclosures in different publications which talked about, you know, this particular delivery system that this this client wanted to make, but they never described how they went about to make it. They would describe what we have a product and here’s what the product is made of X, Y and Z. But the process of getting there was never described. So what I had suggested to them is focus on that process piece, because if you can dominate a process of making it, nobody else has that. And then they all have to go through your patent to do it. And that’s exactly what happened. We got coverage on the particular and it had to do with the uniformity of content. So when you go to make a dosage form, the FDA wants to make sure the public is getting whatever the label says. If it says ten milligrams of a certain drug, you want to make sure that there’s ten milligrams in there with a small variation one way or the other, plus or minus.

Daniel Scola: [00:18:02] But when you’re doing that particular dosage form happened to be a film, like a small film, I mean, years ago. Give you an idea of what a small film is. It’s like a one inch by one inch very thin film you put on your tongue and that’s how you got your dosage form. They were making Listerine pocket parts. If you remember, Listerine used to sell a little thin strip. You could pull out and put it in your mouth. If you saw some years ago. Yeah, well, it was similar to that. Only they had to have uniformity of content. So the drug in each one of those strips had to be the same amount of drug that it’s that they said it was in it and each one of the strips had to have that. Now when you go to make they’re not making individual one by one strips. They’re making hundreds of thousands of yards of film and then cutting it. So how do you make sure that every every one by one inch film cut has the right drug in it, the right amount that you’re saying it does? So that was their invention. So when I saw that, I said, don’t worry about the compositional nature of it. Go and try to get the best coverage we can get. And sure enough, they have several hundred patents on it. They’re a public company. We still represent them. And that’s that’s an idea. I’ll give you another quick one, very quick, if you like, on Super Glue. That’s that was a patent one I just gave you. This will be a trademark example. So you’re familiar with the trademark super glue?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:33] Sure.

Daniel Scola: [00:19:34] Yeah. Most people, they know Super Glue. Well, when I was a fledgling attorney with, you know, I had maybe a couple of months experience, I was on the ground floor when the guy who came up with the name Super Glue came in to me and of course I was assigned to him. So he came in and he was a big marketing guy and he was he was herald to be this this real marketing genius. So I was a little intimidated by the guy at the time because I was just brand new and he was asking me all these questions. But the one question that he asked me was, What do you think of the name Super Glue as a trademark? And I knew this much. I said, I think it’s great from a marketing perspective, but I don’t think it’s protectable. And he said, Why not? He said, I said, Well, you know, to be protectable, it has to be something that doesn’t it can’t be generic, right? Because no one can own the rights to a generic name like glue. Glue is a generic name, and it has to be something that’s fanciful that doesn’t describe the product. That’s what most people get confused. Trademarks should not describe the product.

Daniel Scola: [00:20:45] They’re really adjectives, but they don’t describe the product per se. And Super Glue Super was just saying, Well, it’s kind of a laudatory thing, saying it’s pretty good glue and you know, you would not get that that trademark through. So I said to him, I don’t think you’re it’s very protectable. He goes, Well, I don’t care. I’m putting $10 Million into this program. And we’ll just beat them on the market side. So, you know, we’ll do our best from the legal side, but I think it’s going to be difficult. So he didn’t listen to me. But he did listen to me. And the reason I said he didn’t, because he launched the product was very, very successful. The reason I said he did listen to me is because very shortly after that, he left the company and he started his own company called the Superglue Corporation. And and we sued him. And we we basically lost because it’s a terrible trademark. Trademarks. Look at look at the word tide. That’s a pretty famous trademark, right? It doesn’t describe what the product is. It’s a great mark. It’s very fanciful. It’s like, well, you know, it gives you the connotation of suds.

Daniel Scola: [00:22:03] You know, like when you see the ocean waves come in. They look like, you know, the tides come in. It gives you that sort of foamy action. And so they named their detergent that way. And everyone knows Procter and Gamble makes Tide. And you’ve got to enforce it. And going back to your other question real quickly there, you know, Velcro is a very well known mark, and it was almost in, you know, going generic because of misuse. People would refer to say, give me a I’d like to buy some Velcro. It really it’s it’s a hook and loop structure and the brand is Velcro. So people were identifying it like Velcro is a noun. And if you said Velcro brand, fine. Ibm went through this when with I’m sorry, I’m sorry Xerox went through this with photocopying. Everyone would say, make a Xerox copy of this. Well, you know, there’s a lot of different copying machines out there. So Xerox put a whole marketing program together saying don’t misuse our trademark. If you misuse the trademark and you let people do it long enough, you will use it. Lose it. So. So did you know that escalator was a trademark that went generic?

Lee Kantor: [00:23:18] I didn’t I didn’t know escalator. I imagine Kleenex was one Kleenex.

Daniel Scola: [00:23:23] Right. Kleenex. I’m not sure if Kleenex still. Kleenex still may be. I’m not sure it’s generic. I’ll tell you what really is surprising. It was surprising to me when I learned it. Adrenaline was a trademark. In fact, it was it was a trademark of a company I once worked for, which was the Warner-Lambert Company. Adrenaline was the trademark for epinephrine. So and everyone uses adrenaline now to get your adrenaline going. Well, you know, drink some, drink some coffee, and you’ll get your adrenaline going.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:54] So they created their own word. That’s now just that’s.

Daniel Scola: [00:24:01] That’s amazing. In that’s what trademarks are great on you be be creative. You know, you can come up with some great names and I’m guessing that adrenaline came from the adrenal glands, right? Right. But they called it for it was for a shot that contained epinephrine. And that’s that’s what they named it. So, you know, it’s these these trademarks can be extremely valuable. I mean, you know, and sold. I remember when when Johnson and Johnson bought the Mylanta name, they bought it. In fact, I was involved in the sale and. My lanta was a it’s. It had a distinct color on the bottle. It has a distinct name and so forth. And they even the color of the bottle in combination with the name was a protectable thing under trade dress. It’s part of the trademark genre of protection. So IP can really be a fun place to be if you’re if you create. And the one thing that entrepreneurs don’t do usually early enough is get their IP, because once they disclose their idea, if that’s not under a non disclosure, it’s gone. You can’t protect it anywhere. I mean, you get it, you get a little time in the States, they give you a little grace period. But you know, you always have to file first if you’re going to get the best out of your IP because you never know if you’re going to misstep. Otherwise, it’s just very much safer. So what do you do if you don’t have the money? You have to have the money early enough. You’ve got to get some money to get some IP early enough or you will you will really be sorry later. And there are many stories I could tell you where people come and there’s not a lot you can do with the early stage stuff they had now, which was excellent but now can be copied. So it’s just a lesson, you know, for entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:08] So now who is the ideal client for you and your firm? What is that, that perfect fit client for you?

Daniel Scola: [00:26:16] Well, I think, you know, between companies where they’re they’re really technology driven and that’s really independent of the size and they really have a lot that they want to do in the IP side. That’s the kind of client because that’s where you can you can have the most room for being creative. I love the due diligence aspects. I love evaluating IP and creating it. So investment firms like large companies that that large investment companies that that are looking to buy and companies that are looking to get new IP, it could be there could be small firms, it could be medium sized firms, they could do large firms. And we have all of those small investors, big investors. You know, a lot of times people think, well, patent patent firms, they really just, you know, deal with single inventors who come in, who have got a better way to slice bread. That’s not really the bulk of the work that we do. We certainly do some of that because there are investors. I mean, it takes a little bit of money to get some patents going. So, you know, you can’t think you’re going to get have a patent with that’s going to cover anything for a small amount of money. This doesn’t happen. You have to know you’re in for it for the long haul. You’re getting a monopoly. So you’ve got to pay for a monopoly. Monopoly? It’s not it’s not a free thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:49] Right. So but these larger entities, like a VC firm, private equity firm, a university where they they have a lot of intellectual property or potentially could have a lot that’s a good fit for you to have conversations with.

Daniel Scola: [00:28:02] Absolutely. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:04] Now, if somebody wants to connect with you or your firm, is there a website?

Daniel Scola: [00:28:08] There is. You know, it’s it’s the Hoffman and Barron website. W. W w h. B ip locked. Or you could put in Hoffman and Baron, and you’ll see it come up on any of the search engines. And the firm number is is, is on there as well. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:32] And you’re open. If they go to the website they can find information to connect with you, maybe learn some things.

Daniel Scola: [00:28:39] Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you can go and do some there’s a blog page where you might be able to there’s there’s I know that we have some basics on why should I get a pad and what should I do, you know, when is it a good time? And then if they just want to give a call or an email, I can answer them. Or we can get people, other attorneys who might specialize in that particular question.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:06] Well, Dan, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Daniel Scola: [00:29:12] Well, thank you, Lee. It was a pleasure to be on.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:14] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on High Velocity Radio.

Dustin Whistler With Forte Commercial Real Estate

January 23, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

FCREDustinWhistlerDustin Whistler is a Denver-based entrepreneur with a unique combination of business talent, leadership skills, community engagement, and activism that make him an asset to his clients, boards, and committees he serves. He is the founder and principal at Forte Commercial Real Estate, a corporate –, community–, and sector–serving firm that does work along Colorado’s front range and nationally.

Dustin’s unique value to his clients is synthesizing the goals and strategy of boards/leadership teams with operational realities to achieve best-in-class real estate solutions.

Forte has a deep client roster and following in practice areas including the Nonprofit/Creative Sector, Life Science, Manufacturing, Architecture/Engineering/Construction, and Outdoor & Apparel. Dustin serves as Chair of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, is on the board of Colorado BioScience Association, and serves on the Building Up Committee for Executives Partnering to Invest in Children.

Dustin makes Denver his home with his wife Tamra Ward, three children, and one rescue daughter. In his free time, he’s a patron and likes to travel, run, and spend time with his family.

Connect with Dustin on LinkedIn and follow Commercial Real Estate on Facebook and  Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Forte CRE
  • Forte CRE being set apart from other commercial real estate firms
  • Examples of their unique work

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:00] We’re broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Dustin Whistler with Forte Commercial Real Estate. Welcome.

Dustin Whistler: [00:00:32] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] Well, tell us about your firm. How are you serving folks?

Dustin Whistler: [00:00:37] So we’re forte Commercial real estate is an occupier driven and sector focused commercial real estate firm based in Denver. We represent businesses that occupy real estate, and usually that’s office space or industrial space or both. Simply put, we’re a rep firm, but we focus deeply in certain sectors in which we have a unique story or more to offer a passion, I guess. And those sectors are manufacturing, outdoor and apparel, advanced industries like bioscience or clean tech, community real estate, which we think of as nonprofit sector, creative sector, social enterprise. And then we recently launched the architecture and engineering and construction practice, and then we do a lot of work with private equity as well. And then the service offering is really lease acquisition or renewal or sublease, or we do a bunch of project management and then our community real estate practice, we do capital campaigns and non profit center services.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:41] So what’s your backstory? How how’d you get involved in this line of work?

Dustin Whistler: [00:01:45] I originally I guess I started working this in 96, I guess late 95, 95, I was working in cell site acquisitions and those are small micro transactions and I was getting permits to do to install these antennas when it was first when we first started having cell site coverage like we do today. And by the end of the year, I realized I just really like the transaction site a little bit better and decided to move into commercial real estate. Now, in 2008, we launched the firm with the idea that we would just start a firm focus on the user.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:28] And did you have a niche then, or was that something that just evolved over time?

Dustin Whistler: [00:02:34] Yeah, for I guess our niche. I guess what makes us unique is our original niche was manufacturing, lifestyle, life sciences and outdoor and apparel. And so the theme there is those are all companies that have typically hard to do transactions. So what we do is then those companies need more than most brokers can or will provide. And so what I guess our niche is, is we’ve built a we’ve built solutions to specifically support them. And that’s particularly true in one of our newer that that new I guess now it’s nine years or eight years. Our committed real estate practice really true that can be can be really hard to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:22] So when you were building out the firm, you had this vision and you were handling transactions that were more complex or required more. Was it difficult for you to build a team that was kind of on the same page from a value standpoint?

Dustin Whistler: [00:03:37] Um, I don’t think originally we were really focused on values, but as we. As we grew. So the early days, it was very. So there would be external partners that we would engage and we were working with companies we enjoyed and or that were profitable. And I think where that changed is in 2000, I guess that’s 15. We started thinking about what was working well, what was working well, and what was working well was Boardwalk and Orca and our bioscience practice. And I realize is that’s a very. Both of those are very mission driven organizations and our mission driven deals. So the. So your board work you’re trying to achieve a mission and bioscience their focus is on saving lives and improving lives. And so we realized that we just wanted more of that in our sort of company DNA. And so started asking people what we do in the community, whether we should start a nonprofit practice. And that was in January. By June, we had to hire someone, just work in that practice area. And so. So back to culture, where that starts to shift is right at that moment and evolved to a point where we kind of think of ourselves as a very mission driven firm. So whether you’re manufacturing 5G towers or you’re trying to build a nonprofit center to serve the well-being of the people of Colorado, our clients mission is our mission shapes that that sort of mission driven idea really shapes how we serve our clients, their success and how we serve in our community.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:27] So when you kind of flip that switch, did you was that something that you were like, Wow, now that we’ve kind of made that mental shift, I mean, it probably didn’t change many behaviors, but now mentally, you’re saying this out loud and you’re talking about it. Did that impact anything or did you notice anything like, Hey, we’re getting better people or people seem more engaged? Or did you was there any kind of clues that you were on to something here?

Dustin Whistler: [00:05:53] Um, yes, several. One is that that business that we pursue and that we want to do in the nonprofit community or in a community real estate practice that comes in so readily. And what we find is that we, we do a bunch of work in those other sectors, but it’s it is not nearly as easy as in the nonprofit practice. And so I think part of it is that we understand the nonprofit community because we’re members of those boards and committees and we understand how nonprofits work and what they need. And it’s shifted. Who is attracted to our firm? I think the people that we get here are coming here because of that mission focus. And and then I think we’ve just become known for a bunch of that work we do now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:47] How does it work Kind of practically now and now that you have employees going out in the world, is that something when you’re onboarding an employee, there’s you tell them there’s like a level of expectations that you’re expecting them to kind of lean into their community and give back and get immersed in the nonprofits and the business associations and really, you know, kind of walk the walk and not just join, you know, pay money and be a member and just say, look, I’m a member and then I’m done.

Dustin Whistler: [00:07:18] Yeah, Yeah, that’s right. So my answer is set a couple of ways. So one one thing is that a lot of our peers and this isn’t true, uniformly true, but a lot of our peers might think it’s good enough to serve, raise money once a year and ask clients for money and then give it to a cause and that gather together as a community sometimes. But is that as deep of a commitment to the community? And so we view that as part of our culture and part of our expectations. So when we’re interviewing people, usually they’ve come to us Because of that, we’re a little different than the rest of the commercial real estate world and our mission focus. But then, yeah, we really expect we were pretty declarative than we expect Our everybody that’s in our firm that they’re tangibly engaged in the community. I’m chair of the Board of Color of Business Committee for the Arts. And so we put I think we put through six or seven different folks in our firm through the Leadership Arts program, which is basically for training. And so, yeah, it’s shifted. I think what the other piece that I would say is that.

Dustin Whistler: [00:08:33] Well, we have I guess to follow on to that one is we think an organization’s value should show up in the way it does business, that what it says. And part of that is investing your time, treasure, talents and connections for the work you do. And and that that really shows up when you’re especially if you have a community real estate practice that where you know what’s going on in the broader community. So you’re really a value to those boards that are associations you’re on the board of. And then the other one is just that that expectation, what it what it does in my mind is when you are serving on a board, being responsible for the health of that organization, it changes your posture and your business and your life. I think it’s really about stewardship, right? You’re the you’re the steward of the board you serve on or the cause of the committee you’re serving on or the association. And that shifts how you treat your clients in more of a stewardship model. And it just feels good ultimately.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:43] Now, when you’re talking to a young person about this, is this something that they’re like, wow, you know, I didn’t think of business in this manner. You know, I thought I was getting a job and I just show up and do my work and I go home. But this is asking them to really, you know, think of the community, not just the business or their job.

Dustin Whistler: [00:10:04] Yeah, I think the younger folks like it. So I think they prefer to work for a company that has a broader purpose and they’re just making money. And we don’t we like we like making money and we think that’s valuable. We also believe in sort of this virtuous cycle about giving back to the communities you’re working in.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:33] Now, is there a story you can share about maybe one of your employees that kind of got involved in one of these groups and helped take them to a new level or because of the connections or the resources that they had?

Dustin Whistler: [00:10:47] Well, I don’t know that I have a specific story. I mean. I guess I could talk about a project we work done where I feel like our involvement was in our practice was community building.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:04] Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah. Just something where you can kind of draw a line to this effort into the kind of helping the greater good here.

Dustin Whistler: [00:11:13] Yep. So in some ways, we think of ourselves as a chief enablement officer. So if you have some crazy idea or that’s good for the community or you have desire to grow your footprint and grow your company, we’re we’re the ones that you have the vision, we have the infrastructure to make it happen. So one example of that work would be Colorado’s health capital. The CEO of Healthier Colorado had the vision to create a nonprofit center focused on the well-being of people of Colorado and our client, their client, Jake Williams, CEO and Healthier Colorado had that vision. And then we got to know each other through connections in the community. And what what the result is, is that we ended up building a 26,000 square foot nonprofit center with 40 nonprofits in the building. And what was true on the front end is that Jake said, hey, here’s 13 folks that we know that are interested. And we said, Well, we have a database of, I think, around 200 organizations that we think would have some appetite for this. And so, in fact, to sort of that, your mission is our mission at times, I think Jake would say, hey, we should just go grab this tenant because it would gobble up a lot of space. But when we think about are they on mission or not? The answer was no. Sometimes we would skip it and then we just worked hard enough that within I guess we’re now a year and a half in, it’s 97% leased. And so who we knew in the community via boards we served on or other work, we do really help that nonprofit center be successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:13] Right? Without you, it would have been impossible.

Dustin Whistler: [00:13:16] I just don’t think there was anybody else that does what we do. So yeah, it would have been a lot harder. And yeah, without without all that infrastructure, without the commitment and the community asset possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:30] So then you mentioned some of the industries you serve and some of the work that you do. Is there an ideal client or is it something that if they’re within those industries, then you know, they should talk to you? Or is it, you know, would you like them also? Obviously, I would imagine, to share similar values or if they have similar values and maybe aren’t in those niches that you serve, maybe they would work out as well, Like who is that kind of perfect fit client for you?

Dustin Whistler: [00:13:58] Yeah. You know what? We we do business across all sectors, to be honest. And. But the perfect client is someone that is doing good in the world, whether that’s innovating in the medical device world or they’re doing something in the community or we we love geeking out on manufacturing projects. So I feel like a lot of those what I’d say about those sectors that we’re focused on is we’re not entirely agnostic, but pretty close to the size and who they are. We love doing bigger deals, obviously, but if it’s if it’s a nonprofit in our community and it’s a small town probably in our community, we’re going to find a way to help them out.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, What is the website? What’s the coordinates?

Dustin Whistler: [00:14:55] Our website is 40 c r e dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:01] And that’s 40 CARICOM.

Dustin Whistler: [00:15:05] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:07] And then they can go there, they can learn more mission, purpose and some of the work that you’ve done in the past and how to get a hold of you.

Dustin Whistler: [00:15:15] Yep. And they can find us on social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. We’re pretty easy to find.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:23] Now, is your work primarily in the metro Denver and Colorado area?

Dustin Whistler: [00:15:30] We were probably the the deepest along the front range in Colorado, but we work nationally as well. We’re part of a larger national network. And, you know, year to year, our business is probably 25 to 35% outside the state and the rest within Colorado.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:52] Well, congratulations on all the success. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Dustin Whistler: [00:15:57] Thank you. Thanks for what you’re doing. Hopefully you’re motivating a lot more people to get involved.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:02] Yeah, that is what we’re trying to do every day, is to teach people, you know, how to get the most out of, you know, this type of association work and leadership and getting involved in all aspects of it, not just running them, but also the you know, they couldn’t survive without people like you who are really encouraging their people to get involved and to lean into the work in their community.

Dustin Whistler: [00:16:25] Yep. Yep. Well, thanks for what you do, and thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:28] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

Sam Nimah With TriVent Healthcare

January 23, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2TriventSam NimahAfter several years as an executive at two Fortune 100 companies, Sam Nimah, MBA, CPA became the CEO and owner of TriVent Healthcare in March 2014.

While healthcare has always been one of Nimah’s passions, he also fell in love with the positive clinical impact the company has on its patients. Currently, he serves on the Board of Advisors for The Center for Supply Chain Management at The University of Florida and is a member of the Young Presidents Organization of Palm Beach.

Nimah earned his Bachelor of Accounting from the University of Florida and his Master of Business Administration from Florida Atlantic University.

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn and TriVent Healthcare on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

TriVent Healthcare

  • Difference between a Trivent Healthcare unit in a hospital compared to an ICU in a hospital
  • Help with partner hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic
  • The importance for hospitals to have a dedicated ventilator care unit and staff

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio now. Here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio, we have Sam Nimah with TriVent Healthcare. Welcome, Sam.

Sam Nimah: [00:00:33] Hey, thanks, Lee. How are you this afternoon?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] I am doing well. I’m so excited to learn what you have to tell us about private health care. How are you serving, folks?

Sam Nimah: [00:00:41] Well, we are a a unique one of a kind company. We operate inside of hospitals. We work and partner with hospitals to care for their ventilated patients who’ve had a tracheostomy. So they are typically the most complex patients in the hospital. And we we help them liberate from the ventilator.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] So how did this idea come about?

Sam Nimah: [00:01:06] Well, it was started about 30 years ago by a respiratory therapist. They simply needed they needed a better solution for this patient population. These patients are typically in the hospital for a very long time. They can sit in an ICU for a very long time, which is very expensive real estate within a hospital. And they are they have been a challenge for the entire industry to get off the ventilator and permanently and and moved in through the continuum of care. So it was founded 32 years ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:41] And then so so you’re becoming your organization is a specialist in this niche?

Sam Nimah: [00:01:48] Yes. In fact, we’re the only specialists in this niche.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] Now, why is it something that the hospital staff can’t handle?

Sam Nimah: [00:01:56] So so these patients typically start in an ICU, and ICU stands for intensive care unit, as we all know. And the idea in an intensive care unit is to help the patient survive. It’s not about rehabilitation. It’s simply about survival and stabilization. So patients don’t typically rehabilitate in the ICU. And so we are a stepdown level of care from ICU. And we have a model of care that allows us to really laser focus on just this patient population. Whereas an ICU, it could be a neuro ICU or a medical ICU or post surgical ICU. But a tragic event patient requires a very different approach. In any one of those ICU, you may have you may have one tragic event patient. But in our stepdown unit, we take all of the patients and we it’s a laser focus on that patient population.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] So then you’re taking the patient out of the hospital into your facility?

Sam Nimah: [00:03:04] No, we work with the hospital in the hospital. So we operate inside the hospital. We have a unit within the hospital, but we operate inside the hospital.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] Now, do you work in hospitals all over South Florida or just in a handful of hospitals?

Sam Nimah: [00:03:19] So the closest unit we have to south Florida is Tampa General Hospital. We are not currently in South Florida.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:27] So you’re based in south Florida, but your your operations, you’re working around the country?

Sam Nimah: [00:03:32] Yes, it is our corporate home.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:35] And then so why are some hospitals open to this and others hesitant?

Sam Nimah: [00:03:42] The model of care is very uniquely. Many hospitals are not familiar with it. There is a model of care called a long term acute care hospital, which is actually a standalone facility. Hospitals can and can discharge those patients to those hospitals. The results have not been fantastic in those hospitals for this particular patient population. They have a they have a role to play in our industry, but tragic event patients. They’ve just they’ve been a problem in the ICU. They’ve been a problem in health tax. I have not seen anybody who provides the outcomes for patients that we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:29] Now is what makes you different. Is it your personality or training? Do you have technology that that makes you different?

Sam Nimah: [00:04:38] You know, people ask us our secret sauce all the time. What I tell them is we have so many ingredients to the secret sauce that it’s really difficult to pinpoint any one. Yes. Do we have personnel that is allowed to? This is a key point. We allow our personnel to practice through the entire scope of their professional training. If you ask many respiratory therapists. What they get to do. They have so many patients to see on a daily basis and they have to travel throughout the hospital typically to see them. So there’s a lot of windshield time. So by the time they get to the patient, they don’t get to, again, practice through the entire scope of their professional training. On our unit, we don’t have a respiratory therapist coming from all over the hospital. They are dedicated to our unit. And by the way, I’m talking about respiratory therapy, but it’s really all of the disciplines. So we get to work together as a small group. A small team. And we get to really, again, practice the entire scope of our professional training. That’s such an important piece. And and it’s it’s often overlooked when you have people that don’t get to practice through the entire scope. They don’t get the level of satisfaction in their job that they do on our unit. So the satisfying is on our unit, not pay, not the hours are long, the patients are hard, but it’s really the ability to to work as a team, as a team member and through the entire scope of their professional training.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:23] Now, why do you think it’s important for hospitals to invest in something like this and have a dedicated ventilator care unit and staff there in their facility?

Sam Nimah: [00:06:34] Well, everywhere I go in the country, I look at the statistics for these patients. And anywhere I go, the statistics are bad. There isn’t a single place in the country that that handles this patient population as well as the results of providing on a daily basis. Now, we’re not for everybody. If you have a very, very young, healthy population, I’ll give you an example. We were asked to to quote some business in Utah, and frankly, there weren’t enough of this patient population to make one of our units viable. But then we looked in in markets where there’s either a large population density or a large enough population density of of elderly, and there’s just so many of these patients. So it’s not for everybody. We would never go to probably North Dakota because there just isn’t enough volume there for us to make sense. But in the markets where we provide care, we are doing so in a manner that provides better care for the patient. It saves the hospital money and it improves some really key statistics for them, and that’s length of stay and quality metrics, which are huge in hospital reimbursement.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:56] So what are some of those clues that a hospital that isn’t partnering with you? What are some of the symptoms they’re having where try them may be able to be a good partner and a good solution for them?

Sam Nimah: [00:08:08] Sure. Very, very simple. The length of stay for this patient population, they’ll they’ll see it climbing and high. The readmission rate, meaning the rate at which they discharge a patient and they come right back to the hospital for the same disease. That is another indicator. And then lastly, their internal ventilator liberation percentage. The national average for ventilator liberation is about 60%. We consistently have been providing ventilator liberation at 86%. In fact, the next level of success, if you will, after you wean the patient or liberate the patient from the ventilator, is to decontaminate them, remove that cannula from their throat. And we’re doing that at a rate that exceeds 60%. So we’re decontaminating patients at a rate in excess of the national average for ventilator liberation. So anywhere where there’s population density, we see that the length of stay for this patient population is super high. And anywhere that happens, we can be of assistance.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:17] Now, how what is like kind of the onboarding and the transition to partner with you look like? Because a lot of folks, you know, this type of change management might be a bridge too far for some people. Can you talk about what it feels like to go, you know, a before and after when you’re working with Prevent?

Sam Nimah: [00:09:34] Sure. I mean, we’re fairly turnkey. We provide most of the resources for our own unit. We one key thing is we do not provide the physicians. We allow the physicians in the hospital to to to do what they do best. So we partner with the physicians in the hospital. We provide all of the other staffing and incremental care in the unit. And it’s again, it takes about 4 to 6 months to to stand one of our units up. But it’s fairly turnkey. We do a lot of the heavy lifting.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Is there any story you can share about kind of a problem that one of the hospitals had? Then you came in and you helped them get maybe to a better place?

Sam Nimah: [00:10:20] Yeah, You know, so. So I could very easily share one story. There was a patient. She was a bilateral lung transplant patient, and she had been discharged to El TAC two times and readmitted both times to the hospital. She had failed to wean from the ventilator a number of times, but all in Lea. She had been hospitalized for over three years. I want to I want to let that sit three years in my hospital. So we had gotten we’d gotten a shot at her. They sent her over to us and frankly, we were able to wean her off the ventilator in 32 days. After three years of being hospitalized. She got off the ventilator, spent a couple of weeks in inpatient rehab after that, and then she got to go home. Now, I love that story because it shows the the the high end of the spectrum of what we can do. But the reality is there’s not a lot of bilateral lung transplant patients out there. What we love is the little everyday stories we’ve got. We’ve got dozens of them. But we had a we had a name for a hot rod motorcycle driver. His crew chief came down with COVID. And then ultimately had to be tracked on the ventilator. And we helped save his life. We got to participate in that. That that team went on to build one of the third fastest motorcycle engine in history and actually gave us a duplicate of one of their trophies after they want to race. And they brought it back to our unit. And that was really cool. But the other piece is I like to tell the stories. Like, for example, we mentioned Tampa General, their CEO in a recent article written he expressed that we saved them in fiscal 21. We saved them $2.3 million. Now we know hospitals are really taking it on the chin right now. Financials are really, really at risk. So when we can help save a hospital $2.3 million, that’s meaningful. And those those are all those are all stories to tell.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:42] So now you mentioned COVID. Was it were the hospitals that had you there, was that a big help for them to kind of go through that that period of crisis?

Sam Nimah: [00:12:54] Yeah, Yeah, we are. We’re proud to be part of the COVID response in our hospitals. We were able to take post COVID patients and wean them off the ventilator. I told you that our our our liberation percentage is about 86%. Frankly, with COVID patients, it was over 90%. We had great success getting COVID patients off the ventilator. And that’s when, by the way, everybody was telling you that if you went on the ventilator with COVID, it was going to be a bad outcome. We had amazing success with that patient population. At one point during one of the peaks, we were actually called on by one of our hospitals and they said, Look, we don’t need a ventilator weaning unit right now. What we really need is a COVID unit. And so we told our team, Hey, we’re going to transition for a period of time. And for six weeks we became an extension of a COVID unit for the hospital. And then when the six weeks were up and the latest surge died down, we went back to doing what we do. But during COVID, we all needed to be good partners. And so we just we did what we needed to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:00] So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Look, do you need more hospitals? You need more folks to work there? How can we help you?

Sam Nimah: [00:14:10] Well, I’ll tell you, we have there’s there’s plenty of patients both in South Florida and throughout the country that need this care. And they’re not getting it. They’re not getting it in South Florida, when we would love to be able to to provide it and where, frankly, where our corporate home is. Right. I live in South Florida, and we’re looking forward to partnering with some hospitals in this market and others.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:33] So who in the hospital do you need to talk to?

Sam Nimah: [00:14:36] Oh, goodness. You know, any anybody in the C-suite, frankly, whether it’s the CEO, the chief medical officer, is typically a huge fan of what we do because they see the quality metrics and the outcomes. The chief financial officer can identify what the dollars that we’re going to save them or make them. So really anybody in the C-suite is an appropriate in for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:01] And then you said it’s in hospitals in areas where there’s an elderly population. That’s kind of the sweet spot for you.

Sam Nimah: [00:15:09] Either either a large elderly population or a or a super large population density. I’ll give you an example. In New York City, for example, there are over 8000 patients in New York City alone every year. That’s just a huge number.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:29] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website?

Sam Nimah: [00:15:35] Yeah, it is to prevent H I’m sorry, to prevent health care. Try vents, not try. Don’t try vent health care dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:45] That’s try V.A. health care.com.

Sam Nimah: [00:15:50] Yes, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:50] Well, Sam, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Sam Nimah: [00:15:56] Ali, I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on South Florida Business Radio.

Jeremiah Smith And Ed Carroll With Edison Marks

January 12, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

EdisonMarks

JeremiahJeremiah Smith, CEO and Cofounder at Edison Marks

Jeremiah brings more than 15 years of diversified marketing and sales leadership experience and a documented history of creating hyper-growth in technology driven environments – ranging from SaaS, B2B tech, cybersecurity, and machine learning.

For him, it’s all about authentic communication of your story and just the right amount of behavioral psychology. Meet people where they are, listen with purpose, break the rules. The rest will come.

Along his journey he’s seen just about everything startup life can throw at you – from the highs of finding traction and scalability as the first sales hire to the lows of a $580m valuation turned flameout and a handful of exits.

He’s even ventured out on his own as Cofounder more than once – (Navacy, Edison Marks). He counts the epic failures as the best learning experiences of his life.

EdCaroll

Ed Carroll, Cofounder and President at Edison Marks.

Ed is a consistent, top-producing sales and partner Executive in the security space that has a proven ability to bring in new business while retaining and growing the base.

Connect with Ed on LinkedIn and follow Edison Marks on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Behavioral Science & Cybersecurity
  • Philosophy about security for startups and small businesses.
  • Fundraising in advance of a looming recession.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:06] Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly 120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web3, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech, and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:41] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Jeremiah Smith and Ed Carroll with Edison Marks. Welcome, gentlemen.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:01:02] Appreciate you having us today. Lee, looking forward to talking with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about Edison Marks. How are you serving folks?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:01:11] Edison Marks is a platform that’s built on the premise that that a small and medium business operator should be able to manage their cybersecurity risk as easily as the average consumer manages their credit score. That’s just not the way the world works today. So Ed and Nick and myself set out to to change that, to help them reduce their overall vulnerability as an operator and put them in a better position.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:40] Now, if they don’t work with you, what are they doing or are they doing anything in this regard?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:01:46] The overwhelming majority of small and medium enterprises are ignoring the problem. About 42% of all cyberattacks are focused on the small and medium business, but about 14% are prepared, which means the overwhelming majority, again, are just not doing anything. It’s mostly because the problem is hard to understand. The solutions are mostly built for the enterprise, which means they’re pretty complex or pretty pricey for a small or medium business operator. So it just makes it easier to just sort of put your head in the sand and pretend it won’t happen to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:18] And then what are some of the cybersecurity issues that a small to midsize business would be dealing with now?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:02:25] You’ll see things from we actually still see quite a bit of phishing attempts. So most of the breaches are still coming through email. They’re looking for credentials, your username and password, that type of information. And once they get those types of things, they’re looking to do malware or things to to inflict viruses on systems and looking for ransom in a lot of cases. So different hackers, different cybercriminals are going to are going to attempt different types of things. But for small businesses, we’re going to see mostly things that result in them looking for ransom or looking for money to encrypt their systems. Which sucks.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:01] Yeah, I can ruin your day. It can ruin your business. You could be out of business if you don’t take this seriously. Are you seeing are you are you selling the service as kind of software as a service where this is a subscription? I pay a fee and then I get kind of access to this on an ongoing basis. It’s working in the background.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:03:21] Well, currently we’re working through what we would best describe as trusted business partners or providers for small and medium businesses today. These are the folks that have already been working with small and medium businesses, so they’re trusted partners to them. They have the ear of the owner or operator, which allows us the opportunity to do what we do best, but through that partner. So today the platform is going through managed services providers manage security services, providers, white labeled for them. They pay a subscription fee to us and then provide it to their client base as a supporting tool in their toolbox to their range of solutions that they’re providing already today.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] So then you’re going through this intermediary that already has access to the client base.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:04:14] Right? I mean, going door to door with and selling small or medium business operator is both slow and hard. Right. And and so we thought this is the best way to find traction. And scalability is again, work through these partners who have who have already established themselves in that arena. And that intermediary is proven pretty successful for us thus far.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] And then what kind of services are these intermediaries providing to the small and midsize business owner? Again.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:04:43] Most of them today, those who are going through to start with are think of them as sort of an outsourced i.t provider. So lots of small and medium business operators supplement their i.t department or have the entirety of their IT department outsourced to what we call a managed services provider or managed security services provider. And that’s the group we’re going with. So we’re going through these sort of outsourced I.T providers and, and working our way into the trusted conversation with the owner.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:16] And those folks don’t have a cybersecurity solution right now or there’s isn’t as good as yours.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:05:22] Now, funny story is that they have solutions. Their problem is selling those solutions and our solution supports them in that. For the managed services provider, this is a great utility for them to highlight. In a really simplistic and easy to understand manner the concerns that they are trying to sell additional services to support. But today they have. That’s their number one problem is customer acquisition. And so for us, we support that customer acquisition effort without them having to change their operation or their process. And and so they get that value added benefit, but then they get to have this really simple, straightforward conversation with a small and medium business owner that they can then upsell. Right? They can then provide their additional services that we are not by design providing to close the gap with that customer.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:15] So what was the kind of genesis of the idea? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:06:24] Yeah. I’d say both of us have been in and around cybersecurity for the last 15, 20 years, and we were starting to realize a lot of the times we were focused on enterprise and we’ve got friends, we’ve got family. We both remind myself have fathers that were small business owners, and we started to see these trends starting to happen. So we had a passion about trying to find solutions and being in the enterprise space and talking bits and bytes. We’ve realized that when we talk to our friends that are small business owners, that they would just retreat if we started talking about cybersecurity. To them it was, you know, they they, they’d crawl into their shell and say, I’m not interested in hearing any of this. And so we had some experience in the past working for a company that leveraged behavioral science helps to help folks reduce their energy spend. And we thought, hmm, why don’t we look to apply something similar to this problem that we’re both passionate about, that we both want to help these small businesses with? And so in your mind, and I’ve known each other for over 30 years, we grew up playing baseball on the fields of East Asheville and always spitballing ideas with each other. And so it just organically came out on like a Thursday afternoon. I still remember the day.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:37] Now, was this the first time that you worked together on a project like this?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:07:43] Yeah. You know, interestingly enough, having done all of having spent all of that time together as we grew up, went through high school, went to college, both Ed and I, having spent time in startups since I was like you mentioned, this is the first project we’ve really been able to dig into together, and that’s been an interesting sort of wrinkle in our relationship for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:07] Now you also have a third co-founder that is not in Asheville, that’s another country. How did that come about?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:08:18] Nick Kristof is our CTO and and I met him through editor. Ed, why don’t you talk about Nick? Yeah. So I’ve known Nick for a number of years. We both worked at an email security company a number of years ago, and he ran product for us. And interestingly, like he was right under our nose this whole time, as Jeremy and I were coming together on this, we looked at, Hey, how do we get our VP out? How do we get this minimum viable product out? Do we go low-code no code? Do we try this approach to go test the waters on some of these things? And in Nick’s been a buddy that we’ve worked with in the past and and it kind of dawned on us one day because we’ve talked about doing this type of stuff with Nick before and, and, and we brought it up and he’s like, Oh, I’m in, I’m in because he, he gets it. He also has a passion for what we’re doing here, too. And it was just one of these weird things where it was like, keep your eyes open. You just don’t know where that next co-founder or next strategic relationship is going to be. Keep keep your seats warm with folks.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] Now, a lot of folks, you know, start a company with two co-founders and that has its own challenges. But to have three and have this kind of triangulated possibility happening, how are you guys managing that?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:09:38] I’d say I’d say pretty easily. I mean, I think we’ve. What’s the old adage on you need the the hipster the I’m not going to remember maybe Jeremiah will remember that. But I think we all have our roles. Jeremiah has been fantastic as our CEO to make sure I’m a maverick. If you look at my personality test, I’m a maverick. I need to be reined in. I’ll go off and try to pursue interesting strategic things. And Jeremiah is a perfect person to rein me in. And Nick from a from a from a CTO perspective and a tech perspective, he’s the perfect guy we know and trust him. We’ve known him for years and so it’s been a little easier than one would think. You know, we’ve got three strong personalities, but I think we all know our roles and where our strengths and weaknesses. Knowing Jeremiah for the last 30 years, he he knows my weaknesses. He knows my strengths. And he makes sure he puts me in a position to to take advantage of my strengths.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:29] And then you don’t have any of those, you know, kind of flashbacks to when you were ten. And then the, you know, the that history, those relationship history, little pokes that can come about when you were dealing with an old friend.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:10:46] I think that that’s actually played to our advantage. I mean, we still have arguments about whether or not Dale Murphy is the greatest baseball player of all time, but he’s not the but the the ability to be able to sort of break a tense, business oriented conversation with with a flashback to the the beatings that he used to get on the baseball field. Our team versus his are actually nice break points from from what would just be otherwise a business relationship. I think that’s created this situation where we’re able to work together and understand when it’s time to relax and how to communicate in both those situations pretty effectively.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] And then you were able to kind of convey this mission and the values with Nick as well, which I mean that you have to think the little bit that that’s a tough needle to thread to get three people all aligned with this kind of this is our true north, these are our values. This is the mission. This is the hell we’re trying to climb.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:11:55] Yeah, I think for me, the. You’re absolutely right. Right. I don’t think that’s something that that every team thinks is ideal. Come together. Let’s put three heads on the founding team and just assume we can make it all go successfully. I’ve had some experience across 15 years. Teams like Planned Grid, that was four co founders right out of the gate as they graduated Y Combinator in in being an active participant in a very, very early days with teams like that and how they worked and operated and and communicated internally to the success of their near-term and long term goals, I think really, really helped us in this situation. I think we’re we’re all pretty sensitive to to each other’s unique needs. And we we’ve been around the block enough to know that to take care of them as they arise. And so I think experience has helped us in that respect. Now speaking well, maybe I’d lead that also. I mean, look at the missions altruistic in its nature. And I think when you look at cybersecurity and you can come from that background, too, it’s it’s easy to get aligned when you’re doing good, important things. You know, now we get lost maybe sometimes in making some of these businesses, but the overall mission is so altruistic that we’re able to quickly align on that.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:17] Now when you are attacking kind of something like this, I would think that it’s kind of easy to get behind because the mission is so kind of pure in the sense of you’re trying to help small and mid-sized businesses deal with something that’s that they’re kind of in denial about. So I get that completely. But do you think that you guys are kind of uniquely qualified because you have kind of been around the block a bit and you have a bunch of failures that are part of everybody. I mean, not just your resume, but everybody’s resume. And you’ve kind of lived through that. And I think that when you’ve gone through some of that and you have that skinny, it’s easier kind of to attack things and easier to kind of bring people together that have all shared those experiences 100%.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:14:05] And well said, the skin the knee analogy is perfect. It gives us the opportunity to not get too caught up in whatever it is in the moment. Right. We can all stay focused, whether it’s good news or bad news or otherwise. That experience has put us in a unique position to take on what is a challenge that, candidly, most cybersecurity startups flat out will not go after because it is such a challenge. So yeah, I think you’re right. Well said. It puts us in a unique position and we’re taking advantage of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:41] Now when you are I mean, I think this is one of the advantages of having people have gone through the process several times where, you know, that one big issue isn’t necessarily a death blow. You know, you’re like, look, we’ve been through worse than this. This looks hard and it’s a setback. But I mean, we’re going to we can figure this out like you have the confidence and because of the experience. And I think that that probably helps you kind of reach ultimately reach your goals.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:15:13] Yeah. Like it’s the old like. I mean, you can make sort of analogies on this all day long, but for us it’s, it’s we just want to get 1% better every day. And we know that’s going to come with some some setbacks. But the experience, again, of of having been through start ups from 0 to 100 million, $150 million flame outs and sort of everything in between has definitely put us in this position where where we we neither get too excited or too high or too low, right. I think actually that may have created a weakness that we kind of laugh about. We don’t celebrate enough. Right. You know, because we’re like, let’s keep trucking. We’ve got work to do, but we don’t celebrate enough in that respect is probably the weakness of that. All that experience and all that, all those skinned knees have created.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:01] Right. It’s funny you bring that up in my business. My wife was worked in corporate for a long time and now she’s part of my small business. And we ring a bell when something good happens and she’s so ready to ring the bell. And I’m like, Look, not yet. We’re not ready yet. You know, like and it’s important to ring the bell, you know, you got to the the the mouse has to get the cheese because that helps everybody kind of, you know, stay motivated and feel like you are making that 1% progress each day.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:16:31] Well said.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:32] Now. So what is next for you all? What do you need more of? How can we help?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:16:38] Yeah, I think what’s been interesting in Lee, you probably hearing this from other other founders and folks that are on is is what we’re staring at is this economic downturn that we should probably expect the next 12 to 24 months. And so we we know with that experience we have to be nimble and adjust and adapt. And so we’ve started looking at a few different things. We’ve recently were accepted into a highly competitive, competitive accelerator with a cybersecurity focus. Very interesting thing that we’ll be doing. It’s international based and we have very specific reasons for wanting to do that. And some of the relationships that we’ll have and we’re kind of shifting a little bit from we were pursuing a lot of institutional funding and we’re saying, hey, let’s we were thinking about it now we’re going to we’re going to pull back and really fine tune our program. And in our platform these next six months, we’ve got a transformative type of opportunity since the startup showdown that we’re working on right now. So we’ll spend some time really doing that well so that we can replicate and reproduce it. And then we’ll probably look at a different type of fundraise. We might look more towards angels for a period of time and then going into 2023, really throwing gas on it. So I think that’s an important thing for us to be thinking about, right, is what we’re seeing from an economic downturn, being able to be nimble and adjust.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:57] So how did you hear about startup shutdown in Panoramic Ventures?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:18:02] Look, if you look into we’re very specific about who we wanted to talk to really early. And if you look into the world of institutional funding, particularly in the Southeast, and then you sort of cross that with, again, cybersecurity players, people, judges name rises right to the top. And so really early before we were. Ready in any way, shape or form to begin really talking to institutional investors like panoramic. We knew we wanted to talk to Paul. We knew we wanted to talk to Biraj and get feedback because I think feedback is something we’ve learned really, really early on in our startup careers is, is what’s going to propel you further, faster? So being specific in who we wanted to talk to and knowing that at the intersection, cybersecurity, Paul George is somebody who’s well respected. Panoramic is extremely busy in terms of their volume. It was an easy one for us to find and surface as a as a sort of must have conversation really early on. Startup Showdown came as a result of us chasing Biraj down in bucket and getting a 15 minute meeting with him over coffee. He presented Startup Showdown as an opportunity for us to to go test our value proposition in front of a really good group of judges. And we were just absolutely going to jump on that for the experience, if nothing else.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:30] So what had you benefit from going through the process?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:19:35] Yeah, I’d say that there’s a number of things that we took from it. It’s the amazing mentors that they put in place that were super helpful with feedback on on, on our pitch that and along with working with Dustin the team at Panoramic like they really helped us fine tune and customize our pitch a little bit more. So those things were super helpful for us. It’s it’s always good to be doing these pitches in a vacuum with each other. But to get that type of feedback from the type of people that panoramic puts in place is priceless.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:08] So now, having gone through the process and having kind of made some adjustments and which is just part of the part of the experience as you move forward, is there any advice for other founders when you’re and let’s talk about advice because I love to ask the advice question, but in your case, I think I’d like to be specific in terms of giving advice to folks that are that their ideal prospect is not necessarily the end user, but is an intermediary. So how would you recommend founders who are, you know, taking on the same strategy, the go to market strategy as you are, go about finding those first partners and and kind of customizing the offering so it helps them sell to the end user.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:21:01] I’ll jump on that by just simply saying, in my personal opinion and it may have something to add here. In my personal opinion, my advice would be to get out early and often. We’ve benefited from having done so, get out talking about what we’re doing really early and often. I mean, it wasn’t forget about it being baked, right? The oven wasn’t even really warm yet. And we were out just conversing because we we felt like we were really on to something. And so getting out early and often gave us an opportunity to both spread the word in terms of who we are getting introduced to, people who seemed like they might be a proxy value add to what we’re presenting and then continue to tweak our focus and orientation in our go to market strategy. It gave us an opportunity to do all of those things getting out early. Right. It’s it’s really helped us hone in on the crowd that that understands what we’re doing. But we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to even get there in such a short period of time if we hadn’t started before we were ever ready. So I’d say, don’t be shy, get out there.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:02] And just start kind of learning and having conversations with people that are in the space just to see what their needs are and how you can fit your solution in there.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:22:12] Right? If you if you’re really going out and having these conversations from the perspective of curiosity and adding value, not selling or trying to assume that that everybody’s a buyer. Right. Don’t present yourself in that conversation that way, but really get out, get curious, have a conversation, build a relationship and understand that it may not go anywhere, but it also may if you really doing that and you’re really being honest with yourself about about how you’re approaching that, then getting out early and often, you’ll find people will reciprocate, right? They’ll respond in kind and it’ll lead you down a path you didn’t even know was in existence.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:53] Right. Which sounds a little counterintuitive to maybe a new startup person, because it requires you to be humble and vulnerable and curious and ask a lot more questions than kind of showing how smart you are as well.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:23:09] Said well said. We were we were all of those things in many conversations. Right, humbled, left, vulnerable, questioning ourselves in a lot of really early conversations. But again, it’s such a priceless conversation to have had and has really taken us leaps and bounds beyond where we would have gotten without it.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:29] Well, congratulations on all the success thus far in the momentum. If somebody wants to learn more and have more substantive conversation with you or anybody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect websites?

Jeremiah Smith: [00:23:44] Edison Marks and we’re happy to connect. You can chat with us there. You can send us an email in our emails. We’re we’re an open book, whether it’s just to talk about starting a venture early and the things that we’ve learned or if it’s about managing your cybersecurity vulnerabilities, pointing you in the right direction, we’re happy to have any and all those conversations. And you can get us at edX, at Edison Carroll, at Edison Marks and Jeremiah at Edison Mark’s dot com. And we’d love to talk.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:12] Well, thank you both for sharing your story. You’re doing important work, and we appreciate you.

Jeremiah Smith: [00:24:18] Thanks for having us, Lee. Really appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:24:26] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown Dot VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right. That’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

Sandra Marin Ruiz With Florida SBDC

January 11, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Sandra D. Marin Ruiz, Ed.D. is the Assistant Vice President for Innovation and Business Development and the Regional Director of the Florida SBDC at FAU. She is a serial entrepreneur and leader in innovation and business development ecosystems in Latin America, the Midwest, and Florida. Dr. Marin specializes in international trade, technology commercialization, and community and industry engagement. She is well known as a partnership builder in domestic and international entrepreneurial ecosystems of the America’s Small Business Development Center Network and the International Business Innovation Association.

As an engineer and a member of the communities she serves, her mission includes engaging communities to bridge the gap between accessing capital and opportunities to run successful businesses as well as support economies via technology innovations that address social needs.

Her broad background also encompasses expertise and credentials as a Florida Small Business Development Center consultant, university professor, and certified program director for Kauffman FastTrac, SBDC Global, and Lean LaunchPad, and extensive experience as an entrepreneur and business owner. She is passionate about linking local needs to national and international policy. She is well recognized for being part of a positive force to support organizations in implementing entrepreneurship and social innovation programs.

Connect with Sandra on LinkedIn and follow her on Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About SBDC and her role
  • The relationship between the SBDC and Florida Atlantic University
  • Mission and vision of the SBDC
  • Services they provide to help businesses
  • Type of specific businesses they work with and the size range

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the business radio studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:08] Now, here’s your host. Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, DIA’s Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio, we have Sandra Myron Ruiz, who is the Florida SBDC and Assistant Vice President of Innovation and Business Development at Florida Atlantic University. Welcome.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:00:43] Hi, Lee. Thank you for the invite.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am doing well. I’m so excited to learn about what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about the SBC for the folks who don’t know, what’s the mission purpose and your role.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:00:56] Oh, thank you so much. This is a great opportunity to inform our business owners and also those who are seeking to start a business that we are a resource available. So the Small Business Development Center is a program that was founded 60 years ago by the Small Business Administration. And this is a national network. So wherever you are in the US and now in different countries in Latin America, you can find a small business development center to help you in business consulting at no cost and confidential for starting a business to grow your business, even to do exports. So we have a group of 40 consultants serving Broward and Palm Beach counties. And together, we help all of those business owners with different expertise. So we work in capital access. We support technology based commercialization. Also, we support the government contracts path, local contracts, federal contracts. And also we have programs together with Enterprise, Florida, to support exporters. And also we surround this BDC with a lot of resources that the university has in house that I will expand in a minute. And most of the vision is related to help our regional economy, helping businesses start growth and also to provide assistance to help those businesses to stay in business, to access capital, and most importantly, to create more jobs that support our communities at the same time.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:39] Now, this is something for any kind of stage of a business, right? You can come to this BDC with just an idea and you can come to the sbdc with a, you know, a business that’s been in business for 20 years. There’s still resources available to each of those constituents, right?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:02:57] That’s correct. And the beauty of this BDC is that now we are an anchor program of the Florida Atlantic Innovation and Business Development. So we created an ecosystem of multiple resources that facilitate that no matter which state you are your business, if you’re in the idea, if you are just an innovator who would like to explore federal grants to create intellectual property, or if you’re in business and you will start contracting with the government no matter which stage you’re at or which industry. We have a one stop shop at Florida Atlantic in which BDC is the anchor that provides the services based on your needs. So you come to us identify what is the support that you are looking for. And we have multiple resources that can help you identify the right path. And the beauty of this is that they are services sponsored by the federal government, the State government, the Florida Atlantic University and other partners. So those services are provided at no cost. So there’s no skills to start a business now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] Now, can you really make it clear about where the service begins and ends in terms of can are you a consultant or are you just advising or are you actually kind of rolling up your sleeves and doing work for your members or the people taking advantage of this opportunity?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:04:27] So the process is start requiring consulting services. This is something that anybody can do on an online platform that we have is BDC that if a you that you so then we provide business consulting. So our team is our certified business consultants in different areas. We have from finance marketing, the government contracts and what we do is to advise. But sometimes there are clients that require more hands on work. So we provide export marketing plans, government marketing plans and marketing plans. And this is the time in which we put capacity doing the research and also doing some work for the business for them to use. So it happens a lot when we do capital access, in which we do some financial projections. Also we provide some business valuation. So the business are able to have some elements, some assets that they can utilize to move forward. So we work together. It’s a collaborative, collaborative work with the entrepreneur as well, because like a business plan, this is something that we guide in the process, but we also provide some data and resources that we have in hand. So it’s. More like a mix. It depends of what is the exact need of the innovator, the entrepreneur or the business owner at that time.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:50] But you wouldn’t be doing something like making business development calls or cold calls on their behalf. You’re more helping them and guide them rather than, you know, doing the day to day operations or work of that business.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:06:08] Yes, sir. This is the right way to explain it.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:12] So now what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work? It seems very rewarding.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:06:17] Oh, yes. We are mission oriented. So I started in my country many years ago being a technology based business owner. So then I moved to the US and identify that is, BDC has too many resources to support entrepreneurs. I had to start my business and sell my business with no resources, basically. So in the US we have the beauty of having these small business development centers funded by the Small Business Administration, and I started this 12 years ago in the state of Missouri, and then I moved to Florida two years and a half ago to run the Small Business Development center here and be able to support more entrepreneurs that are related to my roots. And I’ve been connected to the BDC and entrepreneurial ecosystems in Latin America and the Midwest. Now I’m working with Europe and the rewards are coming, helping all those businesses to actually reach their goals. And when you see a business that impacts their community as well is what keeps us doing this work every day in our best capacity and I’ve been in both, is because I know what it means to be a business owner and to run a business and to support your employees, to help your economy. And from the CDC, what we find is, and I personally find very rewarding to contribute with our work. And this is what keeps us happy every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:51] Now, as part of your mission to attract businesses from other countries to come to America, to either establish, you know, North American operations or to just expand.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:08:07] And yes, so we are part of the Small Business Network of the Americas. This is a program that is started with the US Department of State about five years ago. We established a small business development centers in different countries. Chile, Brazil is about to come also in the Caribbean. And with them we help their clients or businesses abroad to identify how to do business in the US. So with that business attraction process, we guide them on how to establish a business in the US, how to grow that business. And once they are located in Florida, we provide the services that we have for local businesses. So when we talk about economic development, we’re talking about business attraction, retention and growth. So we are helping the business attraction, helping businesses to start in the US from abroad. So we also support those ecosystems in other countries to support our exporters to have those early connections. So this is a win win. And answering your question, yes, we help on business attraction, helping businesses from other countries coming to Florida. And specifically, we have 17 companies from Chile working with the College of Business at Florida Atlantic. We help them with market research, helping them even before coming to the US on a trip. We are helping them to get information and to have market research from the students. And it helps a lot to have the decision. Now, there are 17 companies that will be located in Palm Beach County in the next year.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] And having the Sbdc as kind of a partner to help them get going, that really probably accelerates their growth in the US and in Florida, Right?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:09:58] That’s true. And also this is I’m telling all the business owners in Latin America they engage with, this is the safest way to learn how to do business because we’re a neutral party. It’s also at no cost. So this is a resource that really worth to explore before even engaging on having some investment, because we’ve seen a lot of companies that start the. Some bees and start registering an entity before even knowing if the US is a market for them. So we are helping from the early stage, from the communication with doing outreach and definitely having the BDC on their side, being able to provide resources and information or at least connecting with the right resources in the area is the easiest way to start navigating the US as a potential way to put a new business.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:54] Is there a story for you? Is there a story you can share with maybe one of the businesses that you were working with that you helped them get to a new level? Maybe not you personally, but the sbdc through for you. Is there a story that kind of stands out to you over the years? That was, wow, we really made a difference and we really impacted not only this company but the community as well?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:11:18] Yeah, it was a it was a story that happened during COVID. So we have a manufacturer that started with us 20 years ago because in Florida we’ve been 45 years already. So imagine the age of some of the successful businesses in the region. So one of our manufacturers who run company, they successfully exporting and everything happened during the pandemic in which they had to shift because they sold mostly their products to Crucis. So suddenly they didn’t have a client. And we help them to shift the operations in manufacturing from Rome. They had all the infrastructure, so they moved to hand sanitizers and we start doing all of the process to export and also to supply the domestic market. So in a couple of months they were able to shift from producing rum to produce a high demand product for the domestic market. We started doing some export support as well. We put all the resources, the connection that we had in hand and they were able to stay in business. They were able to save about 200 jobs in South Florida. And then once the pandemic finished, they kept that new business line. But also they shift the traditional cruises as a client to shift to do a commercial product. So they start doing now canned recourse. And that is the type of support that we provide in the backyard. And we just take this as part of our heart as well. So we just this is one example of many. So we serve about 4000 businesses a year. So you can pick the story you want. And actually on our website we have a lot of the success stories that you can read at anytime now.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:18] What does it look like if somebody says, You know what, I’ve never heard of this before. It’s one of those best kept secrets in a lot of places where they they wish there was something like this available. And for it to be no cost is hard to believe. But if somebody says, you know what, I want to learn more, how do they what is the process look like to begin a relationship with the Sbdc?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:13:42] Oh, thank you for that question. And basically what you utilize is open source. We utilize partners and a opportunities like this to share what we do for the business community and the process to study super easy. You can type in Google as BDC and regardless where you’re at when you register, it will land in this BDC that is closer to you. So we do as BDC that for you that EDU is another way. So you request consulting. So once you request consulting, you get into our system. If there is a listener here that may be in Miami, they will go to the Miami SBC. If they are in Tampa, they go to the Tampa BDC. If they’re in Broward and Palm Beach County, they land in our team. So the process is the same nationwide. So you register request for consulting and you will assign a business consultant. So that business consultant will contact, you will have a conversation and decide what are the services and the path that we can follow. And we start with multiple expertise. So you start the process. Maybe you are meeting one consultant, three or four consultants according to your need. Some people come for capital access, but the best option for them to start is with a business valuation. Or some people come for government contracts, but they need to align for the marketing. So we put all this network of business consultants in their hands and the process is start with that, just contact us Registered request consulting and we take it from there and. Is not an automatic is an individual talking to you all the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:29] So but it can start with a phone call or online conversation. It doesn’t require them physically coming to your office, or it can be both.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:15:38] Can be both by the process starts requesting consulting through our website.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:45] So that’s the that’s the first step that somebody has to take. They have to take that action of coming to you via their website and signing up, and then someone will contact them to just kind of see what the needs are. And then that way you can match them to the appropriate resource.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:16:02] Yes, sir, that’s the right way. And we match with the consultant and most of the consulting processes virtual unless the business owner or the consultant agreed to meet in person because it facilitates the conversation. So nowadays you don’t have to take your car to go for an hour meeting. So we provide both according to what is the business owner. Sometimes we do visits to the companies as well, so it depends more of the the dynamic that the business owner would like to follow.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:33] Now, in addition to this personalized consulting, there’s also do you do educational kind of seminars and webinars and things like that?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:16:42] Yeah, we have like a monthly webinar. We have multiple topics. Our format is to have some theoretical conversation at the beginning and then we have. Like consulting a life while we have the webinars we do a lot of this in. How to charge your business as a bankable asset. How to do government contracts, how to export. So we do the basics and this year we will have a series of export assistance support in Spanish. We also have in Spanish other type of programs that are for early stage businesses. This is an eight week bootcamp that we have in Davie in town of Davie coming up in February. This is also a scholarship that we work with the cities and the training is basically hands on activities to help our business owners, our entrepreneurs to navigate the process faster. So we have webinars that are super informative and also we have onsite training. So the best way is just to stay connected. So we have newsletters that provide information on what training programs are coming up, but also we have a lot of social media presence. So it’s the easiest way to know is to follow us and just participate. Everything again, is at no cost and as much information, a business owner has better decisions they can take. So we invite them to be part of this.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:21] And like you said earlier, it’s industry agnostic. Like you don’t have to be part of a technology firm or a manufacturer exporter. This is open to any business owner or entrepreneur, right?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:18:32] And to every industry. And again, we are moving to have more Spanish based communications. So it’s easy to access. Yes, we have to have English to the businesses in the United States, but sometimes the conversation is easier to have it in our own language. I’m Latino, so I understand that some concepts need to be explained differently. So just follow us and be part of this community and we will. We are super happy to support whoever is coming to our door. We serve a nondiscriminatory basis. So whatever business you have business idea, we would like to help you.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:15] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website one more time?

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:19:23] You can type. Florida is BDC, the Small Business Development Center, and you can put like the county or you can put Florida Atlantic, but if you just put Florida’s BDC and you can have a lot of results in Google and if you go to the Florida Atlantic University website or if you go to the BDC website, it will land in the same place in which your request for consulting and then we’re taken from there. I suggest that you also follow us in LinkedIn or Facebook and follow us and identify which training you would like to start. If you don’t want to start consulting right away, at least start being informed and involved. And we have 11 locations in the region. So if you want to meet your consultant in person, we have 11 locations that you can access those. So the websites are, if it’s BDC that for you that is EU or Florida is BDC that org.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:32] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you and I am a big fan of the Sbdc. I think it’s one of those best kept secrets. I it boggles the mind that more people aren’t taking advantage of this. The people involved are smart. They, you know, are, are talented. They have a history of working at a high level and they can help a business grow and it doesn’t cost anything. So it’s one of those things where I wish every business owner at least had a conversation and got to know a little bit their Sbdc.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:21:07] This is one of the great opportunities we have as a program that you allow us to share this with the community and I do really appreciate it. This is an area because as much businesses know that we exist and that we have resources for them, the better we are as a community, as as economies.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:28] Right? It’s a win win across the board. It helps with more jobs, it helps more entrepreneurs succeed. And everybody knows that there’s a high failure rate with entrepreneurs. And why not do everything in your power to help yourself succeed? And that sbdc is a great resource for everybody.

Sandra Marin Ruiz: [00:21:47] Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:49] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on South Florida Business Radio.

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