Business RadioX ®

Jeff DeLoach With CogNet

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Jeff DeLoach serves as the President of CogNet. Having hatched the HR global services center over 17 years ago, he has returned to CogNet to help build on that vision in partnership with the outstanding team.

He has more than 25 years of experience in the BPO, HRO, and Technology space. Previously, he served as CEO of US Personnel and CEO of QCI, an international hardware and services provider.

He has also served as Managing Partner for TDG, Inc. a global advisory and services company that helped develop and scale one of the largest human resources service companies in China.

DeLoach is a graduate of Baylor University with a degree in Political Science. He currently lives in Atlanta with his family.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What equipped him to be a CEO/President
  • Working with employees across the globe
  • What are misconceptions about outsourcing
  • Business Process Management changes with technology

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Jeff DeLoach and he is with CogNet. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff DeLoach: Hello. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about cognate. How you serving folks?

Jeff DeLoach: So cognate we are. It’s funny this question. We’re right in the middle of, of sort of, uh, adjusting our message down to something simplified. And because we do some pretty complicated stuff. So cognate is a business process management company. We, uh, focus on the HR outsourcing space, where we help companies that work smarter by offloading the administrative tasks around payroll, payroll, tax, benefits, Finance and accounting. And we also do help them do AI and automation development as well. So that’s sort of us at a high level. We do it at scale because we we support HR outsourcing companies within the US. So you know, a company like I may perhaps an ADP or a or a companies in the PEO and Aso space. We’re, we’re sort of their back office administrative uh go to organization for them. So help them scale and and create efficiencies and reduce costs.

Lee Kantor: So so what was the genesis of the idea? Were you always an outsourcer for outsourcers or did you start just trying to get customers individually?

Jeff DeLoach: Actually, it’s even got a bigger genesis than that. We actually were a customer. So 20 I was a CEO of a PEO some 20 plus years ago, and we were looking at ways to create efficiencies for our back office. And we partnered with a company way back when that, uh, helped us develop a shared service center. And over time that we exited the company, sold it, and the acquiring company didn’t want the shared service center. So, uh, that ultimately became cognate some 18 plus years ago.

Lee Kantor: So now, for folks who aren’t familiar with exactly what’s going on here in terms of the service you’re providing, what’s kind of the entry level point where people start saying, you know what, maybe I can outsource this element of my business, and I’m sure there’s kind of project creep once they’re like, wow, that worked out pretty well. Um, why don’t we take another little chunk of the business outsource? Is it always I mean, not always, but is is payroll usually the first step here?

Jeff DeLoach: It’s you’re it’s interesting. You hit it on the directly on the head. So we have something we call land and expand. And so organizations usually have, you know, some particular pain point. And typically it’s not they can’t do it. Do it. It’s just they don’t necessarily have the scale or capacity to do do it. Or maybe they’re they’re struggling with or they lost someone. And so we help them provide that capacity. And so it might be one task payrolls one area. But payrolls typically a broader engagement. Because when you think about uh, HR outsourcing company, you know, they they do a lot of payroll. So it usually starts in a smaller engagement. So perhaps something like Garnishments. So perhaps they start with us and we’re managing their garnishments. And then uh, they say, wow, this is amazing. You guys do great. And then they start moving into other areas. And, and then we begin to, to, to help them and support them in these broader areas. But, uh, so typically we start out with a particular process or a few processes. Uh, occasionally we go, you know, we, we jump, you know, head first into, into broader engagements. But, uh, you know, one of the big things that that we do well is, is, is the change management piece of it. You know, helping integrate our organization with theirs. You know, we have a you know, our product is called we we label it EOS, which is extended office as a service, which we become part of that, that organization. It’s not just, you know, hey, some somebody else somewhere else is handling this for us. We actually integrate weekly meetings with teams and things like that. So it becomes an extension. So that’s where we see this land and expand because they they view us as, you know, part of their organization as they expand the outsourcing engagement.

Lee Kantor: So, um, how far can you expand, like what areas, uh, kind of are your sweet spots? Because it seems like it could be the almost everything.

Jeff DeLoach: So we we we’ve been, uh, strategic about staying within our niche and within our, uh, we’re sort of what I’ll call seven yards wide, but 70 miles deep. Uh, so we have seven practice areas that we operate, and we and we target specifically the HR outsourcing and the associated, uh, organizations around that, such as, uh, staffing companies, uh, insurance brokers, tpas, things like that. So we have seven practice areas. The first one we talk about payroll and then payroll tax is another one, benefits an HR administration that sort of falls into the garnishment falls under that. We have the finance and accounting, uh, where, you know, we’ll close books for people and manage their, uh, their GL and things like that. And then we also have sales support, sales and underwriting support. So within the industry, uh, when when they’re doing quotes, the insurance is a is a product piece in there. So there’s there’s quoting and things like that and information gathering that you have to do around underwriting. And then we do implementation. So we’re one of the things uh, implementation around we’re we’re technology agnostic. Like people contract with us. They don’t have to take on technology. We integrate with their existing technology. So we have broad knowledge across all the different platforms that are in the space. And then one of the newest obvious practice areas that we’ve gotten into is AI automation, where we assist companies that are, you know, doing these processes, automate more of them, and use the existing technologies today to help them do that. So. So those are our areas that we work in where we don’t get into programing. We don’t get into call centers. You know, the other type of things that people might associate with with outsourcing, but that’s sort of our core niche area that we stay in.

Lee Kantor: Now, are your clients typically enterprise level or do you work with kind of the smaller folks as well?

Jeff DeLoach: We have the we have the full scope. Uh, I would tell you that most of our clients would be mid-market. Uh, but we definitely have some clients that are, uh, you know, small, smaller HR outsourcing companies, uh, smaller gauges, maybe, uh, 1 or 2 of our knowledge associates to, you know, engage with larger public companies where we have 100 plus people working with the organization.

Lee Kantor: So how do you get those clients, like if they, um, maybe you were serving a larger enterprise and then these individuals spin off and start their own consultancy or start their own business and they’re like, well, can Cognet come along for the ride here? Because I know that they do good work.

Jeff DeLoach: Uh, we definitely have some of that. But I’ll tell you, the we gained most of our, uh, our revenue and new growth around referrals, referrals and relationships. Uh, our business depends on, uh, trust and transparency of we can perform, uh, with their organization and, uh, they, uh, that’s really how how we how we built it up over, over these many years. And we’ve had a lot of success these last several years. Uh, you know, we made the Inc. 5000. Uh, we’ll make it again this year. So we’re, we’re having some, some good success.

Lee Kantor: So any advice for other leaders that would like to get more referrals and build enough deeper relationships where they come about in a manner that cognitive is able to achieve them. Is there some do’s and don’ts when it comes to building out a strategy that really allows word of mouth to to really, um, kind of grow and work in the way that you envision rather than that sounds like a good idea on a whiteboard, but in practice, it’s not kind of bearing fruit.

Jeff DeLoach: Yeah, I’ll tell you. And I don’t know if it is replicatable to every, every type of business, but I’ll tell you that what’s driven us over these last several years of success is we have a we have a little acronym internally we use it’s called the tackle. And the first two, the T and the A are trust and accountability. And we firmly believe in, um, transparency. For example, um, people don’t usually think about processes like, you know, payroll or benefits administration as being something that you that you manage like a metric that you might with a, you know, with a manufacturing company or something like that. But we we manage our time, monitor our time, and evaluate the processes down to the minute for everything that we do. So so we have the data there that we can we can share and be that transparent and accountable partner, uh, to so they understand what their cost is, what they’re spending time with us doing, what to what their, uh, you know, spend is around around what, what our non-core but critical processes, I mean, uh, being compliant and payroll tax is not something companies think this is how I’m going to be successful. But if they don’t do it right, or if they’re ineffective at it, it can completely derail your plans. So, uh, we really have to build that, uh, that trust and accountability piece around that. And I think that at the end of the day, gives our clients not only comfort and expanding their own business, but also taking it to other businesses and recommending us so.

Lee Kantor: So now how would that happen? Like, I understand the word of mouth internally, like, hey, you know, a bunch of executives have a meeting and they’re sharing what’s working, what’s not, and they’re like, hey, we got this cognate thing. And if you haven’t been using it over here, you might want to think about it. That makes perfect sense. But how do you get it outside the building? How do you get them to tell their buddy playing golf that, hey, if you’re struggling over here, these guys are the ones to work with?

Jeff DeLoach: Yeah. So, um, the HR outsourcing space is is a community. Um, you know, people, you know, for the most part, everybody knows everybody, particularly when you boil it down to the PEO space where we have deep penetration. That’s a, that’s a what I call a smaller pond where people have been involved in the industry for a long time. So we spend a good amount of time at conferences, uh, around the industry, uh, you know, and building out those relationships, uh, and, uh, over and we’ve done it over years now, but, uh, you know, and then there’s places like where there’s the bigger pool of places like HR, tech, uh, where, uh, you know, we, uh, you know, spend time there. And then also, uh, we, we develop partnerships. Uh, so when we develop partnerships with, uh, some, some HR consulting firms that we work with who are into the implementation space or doing other, uh, support services for, uh, HR systems. Uh, they bring us into deals as well as their partners. So that’s where so we build out these partnerships in these specific spaces. And, uh, that’s how, uh, you know, the word gets out, how they share, how people, uh, uh, you know, are able to come to us and we go to them, uh, for, for opportunities. So and then, you know, of course, we do some marketing as well, but, uh, we, we Three. Frankly, because of what we do and the strategic nature of it, it’s not necessarily a dialing for dollars type of type of relationship. It’s, uh, I would I would parallel it more to how perhaps in an Accenture or somebody or TCS, you know, partners with engagement. We just do it at the at the lower end while those guys are chasing the fortune 500.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working in a space like AI and automation, that is just, you know, fast and furious, the information is coming and the opportunities are kind of blossoming in ways that, um, it’s hard to even keep track of because it changes in a minute by minute basis. So how do you are you listening to your customers to say, okay, what are your pain points? Is that even possible, or do you have to just keep staying ahead of them to say, hey, you know, if you’re not kind of doing this now, there’s going to be a cost of inaction here later. Um, so how do you kind of balance that? Because that seems it’s it’s moving so fast. It’s like jumping into, you know, um, the rapids that, you know, there’s no great time to start. So you better just jump in and, you know, figure some stuff out as you go.

Jeff DeLoach: I gotta tell you, Lee, you are hitting the nail on the head because there’s there’s two parts to my answer to your question. Because you covered it so well. The first part is we as a as a process organization, uh, and we are a process organization. We actually had to take a hard look at ourselves and say, okay, this is coming. We how do we adjust our business model, even internally, to take advantage of this technology? That’s this sort of quiet revolution, I’ll call it. Maybe it’s not so quiet that it’s happening around, uh, AI and automation. And so we had to look at that. How do we be a more efficient partner for our partner and for for our clients? And, uh, so, so we took a hard look at that, and that’s where it sort of began. And then we realized that, you know, our clients are not being able to take advantage of. Can we be a partner there to help them do that. And so there’s a there’s a quote, I saw a woman one time that I thought was fantastic that talked about I, as you said, uh, you know, I don’t know that I want to ai to do my, uh, my writing and painting, uh, while I do the dishes and do the laundry. I’d rather me do the writing and the painting, and I do the dishes and the laundry.

Jeff DeLoach: And so because we focus on non-core, uh, but critical activities, we really are in the space of the laundry and the dishwashing, and it’s it’s primed for automation. So we have we have really leaned into that a lot. And one of the things we do is we try to bridge that gap that you talked about, about people really don’t still don’t know actually how they’re going to use an automation. Uh, we were at a staffing conference, and, uh, the, uh, analyst said, uh, everybody talks about AI, but only about 10 to 15% have actually figured out how to utilize or maximize it to assist their business. So we’ve, uh, because we do these processes on a regular basis because we, we’ve, uh, we’re applying it to our own organization. We’re able to come with a solution and a recommendation to clients on certain processes we handle for them to better automate that and utilize the powers of AI. And that’s where we start. And then it gets into, oh, wow, can we look at this? And we can we look at that? Because, uh, I can tell you personally, I’ve been I’ve been amazed at what, uh, what it brings to the table and even the potential of the future for it.

Lee Kantor: So now, is any part of working in AI and automation? Is it something that you’ve achieved kind of monetary savings for a client where it’s like, hey, we used to do it this way, but if you take this thing that we figured out with an AI and automation kind of combo, this is going to save you time. This is going to save you money. This is going to be, you know, there’s a tangible benefit. It’s not a hey, this is a cool thing we can do. It’s a this is a bottom line thing that’s going to benefit everybody if we can really just become more efficient. I mean, that’s what everybody’s shooting for is just be more efficient.

Jeff DeLoach: Uh, absolutely. Uh, we have we have multiple examples of that. Uh, I’ll give you something, an example. It’s something, uh, you probably hadn’t even contemplated. But, uh, when companies do transitions from one system to another. So let’s say they’re leaving one vendor, one payroll vendor, and going to another payroll vendor. Uh, particularly in this mid and larger corporation, one of the things that gets lost is the amount of documents, employee documents that you collect everything from W-2s, I mean, W-4 and I-9. As you’re collecting and at the beginning when somebody comes on board, then all the things that happen in between performance reviews and all that, well, those sit there and there’s no, there’s no, uh, automated way to transfer them to one system to the other. It’s literally a download, upload, download, upload process. So we were able to apply some orchestrations and automations that saved our clients thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of time in doing this via via automation. And that’s been a that’s been a real growth and success here. Excuse me here for us because and the reason why it’s, it’s it’s difficult is because each company is different. Each company has documents in different areas. Each company has certain things they want and don’t want. It’s so it’s, uh, so automation was a real, uh, successful application there that we orchestrated and developed. So we’ve we’ve done it across dozens of platforms at this point now.

Lee Kantor: So yeah. And this is one of like you were saying earlier, when you have kind of that miles deep understanding of the the nuances of systems and processes, it gives you a, a unique perspective to solve problems in that space as opposed to somebody who is just kind of dabbling.

Jeff DeLoach: Right, exactly. That’s a that’s sort of what we, uh, you know, why we stay with within our, our niche and, and really, uh, you know, we’re, we’re at ISO 9001 company as far as process goes. So having done this for you know, we’re almost approaching 20 years now, our, our SOPs that we have around all the processes that are involved in managing HR and managing HR processes across multiple platforms gives us a knowledge base. And matter of fact, I played a role in that because one of the one of the things we say to our clients and internally is our people are our product. And so we sort of had to treat our, our people that we, that we put into our engagements, uh, from a almost like manufacturing where we, we take people who perhaps have good education but don’t necessarily understand, uh, the, the depths and intricacies of US payroll, US HR laws, benefits, etc.. So we used AI to develop help us develop a broad LMS tool, uh, learning management system, uh, that, uh, literally, you know, test them. We can and we’re able to get people, you know, straight out of college to active, successful, uh, participant in these spaces within three to 3 to 6 months. Uh, and where they’re where they’re actually, uh, on the brink of being almost an SME, uh, to that. So that’s, uh, but I played a big role in that in helping us build out the content and, you know, doing the you know, we have, uh, you know, AI driven, uh, uh, agents that, uh, you know, talk to them, do the testing, have interactive responses? It’s really fascinating. So.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the pain that your ideal client is having right now? Where, uh, they should be calling Cognito. Are they just frustrated, or are they, you know, is something happening internally that they’re, you know, falling behind? Like, like, what’s the trigger that that has a conversation with Cognito has the answer. Yeah.

Jeff DeLoach: The trigger is, is this is 90% of the time the trigger is needed capacity either because of growth. Uh, they just they’re just unable to handle it, though. They made an acquisition, and it’s, uh, they need help. Uh, in the transition. They lost some staff, and they just don’t, you know, they can’t they can’t keep up with the turnover. Uh, it’s typically those things. And we believe we’re in a good space because, uh, the accounting, uh, sort of career in the US has been on the, on the decline for some time now. Uh, for whatever reason, you know, uh, the youth of today are more interested in other in other avenues. And so there is a true labor shortage, uh, in the, in, in the US, uh, in general. And then, uh, so we’re, we’re we find that, uh, you know, when someone has, you know, this, these capacity issues that they need a partner that can, uh, that, that has the knowledge, can scale up quickly, uh, like, like we are and can, uh, you know, um, immediately give them, uh, you know, within 30 days, uh, 30 to 45 days, be ready to roll and operating. So and then, yeah, those are, those are the main drivers that, that capacity, the needed capacity for whatever, whether it’s a negative creation of capacity or a positive creation of capacity.

Lee Kantor: And then your clients are here in the US, but global as well.

Jeff DeLoach: Yes. Yes, we do have some clients global as well.

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

Jeff DeLoach: Yep. Yeah a cognitive it’s cognitive. Com so cognitive.com is our website. And uh you can reach us there or you can reach me directly at (404) 863-1245.

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

Jeff DeLoach: Thank you Lee I appreciate it. Enjoyed it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This Lee Kantor.

Jeff DeLoach: Great.

Lee Kantor: Day. We’ll see you next time on High Velocity Radio.

Daniella Granzotto With Wednesday Waffles

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Daniella Granzotto, Chief Growth Officer, Wednesday Waffles.

She brings strategic expertise to Wednesday Waffles, transitioning from her role as Head of VIP Relations where she managed relationships with North America’s most prestigious brands. Her talent for nurturing high-value partnerships and creating authentic connections has been instrumental in Wednesday Waffles’ growth.

As Chief Growth Officer, she leads the company’s communications strategy and go-to-market initiatives, applying her relationship-building expertise to a platform dedicated to authentic connection. She orchestrates Wednesday Waffles’ influencer strategy, cultivating partnerships that align with the brand’s mission to foster genuine friendships in the digital age.

Her approach combines data-driven growth tactics with a deep understanding of what makes friendships flourish in today’s fast-paced world. A passionate advocate for combating digital loneliness, she has shaped Wednesday Waffles’ distinctive marketing voice that emphasizes warmth, authenticity, and meaningful connection over metrics and algorithm-driven content.

Under her leadership, Wednesday Waffles has developed a communications strategy that resonates with its target audience, creating a movement that challenges how we use technology to maintain our most important relationships.

Connect with Daniella on LinkedIn and follow Wednesday Waffles on Instagram.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What inspired the creation of Wednesday Waffles

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Daniela Granzotto and she is with Wednesday Waffles. Welcome.

Daniella Granzotto: Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Wednesday Waffles. How you serving folks?

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, so we created the concept. The concept was actually created by one of our founders, Zachary, a couple years ago, and he posted on Instagram and TikTok recently just saying that him and his friends had been taking three minute videos of themselves on a weekly basis every Wednesday and just sending it to a group chat. And it was just a really effective way for them to stay in touch. And that video went viral. A couple of us got Ahold of it and started doing it and saw some really great benefits, but there were some pain points of just doing it in a group chat. So we decided to turn it into an app and that’s where we are today.

Lee Kantor: So what is the meaning of Wednesday? Waffles is there is waffle like in America? Waffle is a breakfast.

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah. The term waffling is from British and Australian slang for just chatting or, you know, waffling about nothing, just talking for the sake of talking. And so it is kind of what we picked Wednesday and we play on waffles for the American food as well within the app, but it’s just a once a week ritual that you and your friends can get together and really allows for more deep, authentic connection rather than all of the maybe highlight reels that you see in traditional social media today.

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

Daniella Granzotto: I’ve been in software and a tech company for the last eight years, and when this opportunity came across my plate and it felt like the I think there’s a real problem personally, with social media today, digital burnout is a real thing. Social media often leaves you feeling worse than better. And so when I saw the benefits of allowing the group of people in your life and the people closest to you, whether it’s friends or family, to connect in a real, authentic way, it just spoke to me and I decided to take the leap and pursue it full time.

Lee Kantor: And then had you done this before? Build community like this?

Daniella Granzotto: No, I, I wouldn’t say community like this specifically. I have a background in personally in PR and marketing for tech companies, and so I was familiar with the space and a couple of my co-founders are developers. And so we all got together and decided to build your new weekly friendship app.

Lee Kantor: So any advice for other business people out there? If they’re trying to create a community around something important to them, whether it’s their business or a mission? Is there some do’s and don’ts when you’re trying to launch something like this that requires kind of, um, you know, somebody you have you’re asking people to share personal things and to not only do that, but also bring their friends along for the ride.

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, I think from I mean, from the development standpoint, security was super important to us. And so some Dos, as I think, do your due diligence. If you’re building an app that involves other people getting onto the platform, both from a being able to report any not great behavior, but then also being able to have all of their data be super secure. So we want people to really be authentic and vulnerable on this app, and we want to make sure that they feel comfortable and that they know that whatever they say is only being stored locally for them and won’t be misused in any way.

Lee Kantor: So is the is the waffle if I’m if I create a group for my friends and family. Um, is that the only people that are going to see this, or is it kind of have a public feed as well?

Daniella Granzotto: No, those are the only people we really are trying to break the cycle of traditional, uh, social media. So there’s no likes, there’s no filters, no followers. It’s really just you and your group of friends connecting on a weekly basis and sharing a little bit about what’s going on in your life.

Lee Kantor: And what stage are you at right now?

Daniella Granzotto: Uh, we I mean, we’ve launched, uh, we launched in, uh, middle of March, and the results we’ve seen so far have been really, really exciting. We’ve got hundreds of thousands of users on the app already, and and we’re I will say we’re not perfect yet either. Launching a new app comes with definitely some like, bugs and features and and the fact that we’ve received so much feedback of like, hey, this is broken, please make it work. I really want to use it has been really exciting to see.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, obviously you were very mindful and purposeful around this once a week concept. Um, can you talk about how how you came up with once a week and, um, what did you try twice a week or like, how did you land on once a week?

Daniella Granzotto: Once a week really came from Zach being the original creator and had been doing it for years. And I think it allows the appropriate amount of connection while still not forcing you to go back to the app. Um, these conversations can obviously always continue and develop longer outside of Wednesdays, and we hope that they do. But we don’t want people to feel pressure that they have to be in the app at all times in order to stay connected.

Lee Kantor: Acted now are there, um, within the app? Are there prompts to help a person who might be struggling with even filling their three minutes? Is there things that are thought starters, or is it just like you just turn, hey, you get a reminder, hey, it’s Wednesday, time to do your three minute waffle.

Daniella Granzotto: You get a reminder. We do have prompts. If you feel like you don’t really have anything to talk about that week, we’ll give you some suggestions. And then we also have a notes section that you can go to throughout the week that if something happens on Monday and you’re like, oh, I know I want to put that in my Wednesday waffle, you can go in and and put it in the notes so that when you are ready to record on Wednesday, it’s all there and ready for you as well.

Lee Kantor: Is there anything that kind of reminds me of people in my network that I might want to include on this? Or is it like, how do you kind of expand the network, or is that not really the objective?

Daniella Granzotto: The intention really isn’t, at least right now to expand the network. It’s to really focus on deepening the relationships that you already have. I think everyone has a really close social circle, but even if you think about how often are you actually seeing those people? Um, it’s as we grow up and life changes, it becomes less and less frequently throughout that stage. And you really want to be able to connect with those people. It’s the type of people that when you do get together, it’s like you never missed a beat. And so how can we bridge that gap so that you still are connected and sharing what’s going on in each other’s lives, even if you don’t get the chance to see each other face to face so frequently anymore.

Lee Kantor: Now, if if I, if I form a group and I have like, what’s a typical number of people in a group right now.

Daniella Granzotto: Uh, it can really vary. I would say on average it’s like between 3 and 8 is the largest group size. Um, and that’s I’ll speak for myself. I have a lot of siblings. So there’s, um, I have a siblings and spouses group that has, uh, ten of us in it. Um, and that’s really the most we tend to see because we want people to share what’s actually going on. And it can be quite a vulnerable space. And so you want people, everyone in the group that you feel comfortable with, you can also just create a group with one person too if you want to. I have one friend in Australia who I connect with, uh, just her and I, as a weekly ritual to just to stay in touch with each other. So there’s no minimum or maximum, but that is the average that we’ve seen.

Lee Kantor: And do people have multiple groups, like you said, like you have one with a friend in Australia, you have one with siblings, I have one with maybe, you know, friends from work. Like, is that what typically happens that you have like six different groups going simultaneously?

Daniella Granzotto: Exactly. Um, that is typically what happens. I have six groups myself. And you can if you, you know, have the same thing to say to everyone. You can when you record your video, um, select to have the same waffle sent to all groups Or you can do individually personalized waffles per group, depending on the relationship you have with them and how much you’d like to share.

Lee Kantor: Right. Because I could see that could then become a stressor. Now I got to record six different things.

Daniella Granzotto: Exactly. We’re really trying to eliminate, um, as much social burnout and digital burnout as possible while still being able to use the benefits of technology for good.

Lee Kantor: I know that’s a that’s a tough, uh, needle to thread.

Daniella Granzotto: It is. And but we’re working on it. Slowly but surely.

Lee Kantor: Now. Um, so you found it because you were included in a waffle. Is that how, like, you you just kind of stumbled upon the group?

Daniella Granzotto: I actually, um, discovered it via Zach, who was the original creator on TikTok. His TikTok video about it went viral, and then I just suggested to a couple of my girlfriends that we start and through that experience obviously saw some really great benefits. I had just moved across the country to. And so all of my friends were in one place and I was in the other. Um, and being able to touch base with them and keep up on their with their lives on a weekly basis has just been so amazing. Being able to see friends recently give birth and like just staying connected in a way that I wouldn’t if I’m all the way on the other side of the country. However, there was definitely some pain points about doing it in iMessage. It cut. You don’t know how, um, it can cut you off, and you don’t know how long of a video actually sent. And so you’re only your friends are only getting half of a story. Um, it has lagging issues and storage issues. Your phone, you know, at some point you have to go through and delete everything off of your phone because recording takes up so much data and it just wasn’t a great experience. And so even though I knew the benefits were worth it, the experience wasn’t great. And that’s what inspired us to build an app for it.

Lee Kantor: So did you know Zach at the beginning? Or you just found it on TikTok and you were like, oh, this is a great idea. I’m going to do this. And then you reached out to me.

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, I didn’t know Zach. I after after, um, enjoying the experience so much and deciding that some of it needed to be fixed. I did reach out to Zach and I said, hey, I’m building this thing. We’re building this thing. Um, do you want to be a part of it? And he obviously jumped on board and we’ve been working towards it ever since.

Lee Kantor: Cool. I mean, what an exciting, uh, adventure you’re on.

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, it’s, uh, it’s, you know, it’s been really rewarding. I think, um, entrepreneurship and technology in general has, uh, a lot of ups and downs. There’s good days and bad days, but to see the benefits that actually impact people’s lives and how much people are enjoying it by being able to develop more authentic relationships, um, is a really, really important mission that I’m really passionate about, so makes it easy.

Lee Kantor: So how do consumers typically, um, watch the, you know, their other nine if there’s ten in a group like how do they watch the nine other video. Do they just sit and binge nine in a row, or do they just kind of when they think of it, they hit the button and watch a couple.

Daniella Granzotto: Um, it depends like you, you only get notified when someone posts a fresh waffle, right? So depending on when your friends actually post their waffle wherever they are in the world, you’ll get you could get them sporadically through the day. Um, I typically watch all of my waffles while I’m on the treadmill at the gym. That’s just my, you know, way of catching up. And you can, you know, press forward back. You can speed it up to like 1.25 if you want to listen to it on, um, a faster scale to bring down some of that watch time. But, uh, yeah, whether it’s throughout the day, the idea is that at capping it at three minutes means that even if you are watching all ten friends at once, you’re still only investing 30 minutes of your time into deep, authentic friendship. Versus if you get caught Instagram scrolling mindlessly, you could be stuck there for hours.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there kind of a hard cap of, okay, we’re not going to let anybody have a thousand waffle, you know, friends in this.

Daniella Granzotto: We haven’t um, we haven’t made that decision candidly. We haven’t seen it as as a decision that we’ve had to make yet. Um, but I the real intention is for the conversation to be two ways. And I can’t imagine you’re going to have an easy time doing that if there’s a thousand people in the group. But there are other social media. Um, platforms out there that encourage lots of followers and communicating to a broad audience. That’s just not what the intention of this is.

Daniella Granzotto:

Lee Kantor: And then, um, has there been anything that unexpected when you rolled it out and were starting to get more and more users, are there anything kind of surprise you in terms of how people used it or how they benefited from it? Or, you know, what they discovered?

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, I mean, I think the most rewarding thing has being able to see the feedback and how a how long people have been waiting for an app like this and b the benefits that they’ve had, like we had one user, um, basically say that it’s, it works as therapy for her. And she thinks that if, um, her brother had something like this, he’d still be around today. And so we really believe in the benefits of being able to see someone’s face every week. And actually when they share what’s going on, being able to see a little bit deeper than the surface and be able to check in on your friends and share both highlight reels of what’s going on in your life, but also the pain points because it’s a really small, safe group of people.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re going about marketing this and getting the word out, obviously you’re doing shows like this, but are you going into kind of hospitals or, you know, targeting people, um, that are struggling in some way with addiction or something so that they have a resource that can help them stay connected to people that they need in times of struggle.

Daniella Granzotto: Um, yeah. I mean, we haven’t done hospitals specifically, per se, but we’ve been connected with a bunch of psychology associations and just sharing that, hey, this is a tool that we’ve seen work really, really well for people who are either, um, in therapy or considering some sort of therapy or counseling. Um, and then I think the other area that we’ve seen, uh, big success is actually high schools and universities. Um, at that stage of life when they’re graduating high school or university is usually the point where all of their best friends are all breaking up, spreading out, and going to other places in the world. And that can be a really hard, uh, time of life when that’s all you’ve ever known, and now you’re switching it up. And so being able to have a tool that allows them to remain connected, um, and maintain those relationships even as they, you know, continue on their path, uh, in a different direction has been really nice to see, too.

Lee Kantor: So what’s on the roadmap? Uh, moving forward, what are some of the, um, interesting at least ideas that you are considering as you add features?

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah. Um, I mean, first we want to make this, uh, app as smooth and seamless as possible. So we’re still working on that every day. But I think one feature that we’re particularly excited about is the waffle wrap up, which is similar to a Spotify wrap or a Snapchat Memories, where we’ll be able to take, um, all of your weekly Wednesday waffles throughout the year, throughout a specific season of time, and kind of show that back to you so you get a little bit of a weekly journal in the future, as well as just being able to share what’s going on about all the day to day parts of your life.

Lee Kantor: Is anyone using it individually, just for themselves, as a place to just kind of vent or or capture things individually? I know it’s not meant for that, but I was wondering because if you’re going to add that element, it becomes a journaling of some sort.

Daniella Granzotto: Yeah, that’s honestly a great question. Transparently, I have not looked into the data to see how many single group users we have. I wouldn’t be surprised if people do though, but we do, and you can absolutely use it for that feature. But we designed it to be able for you to connect with your loved ones most importantly.

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

Daniella Granzotto: Um, well, we’d love for everyone to check out the app and give us your feedback. You can find us at Wednesday waffles.com. Or we’re on the Apple Store or the Android Google Play Store. Um, and on all social media channels at Wednesday Waffles app.

Lee Kantor: Is there a fee for.

Daniella Granzotto: Um, there’s not. It is completely free. Um, we’re potentially looking at adding additional features for a premium subscription, but we really just want people to use the app at this point, enjoy it and give us feedback and see what the benefit and see for themselves the benefits of using the app are.

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

Daniella Granzotto: Thank you so much for having me.

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

Karla Jo Helms With JOTO PR Disruptors™

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Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR™ Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors™. Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line—and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected.

Being an alumnus of crisis management, she has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators, and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion—she operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel. She has patterned her agency on the perfect balance of crisis management, entrepreneurial insight, and proven public relations experience.

She speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.

Connect with Karla Jo on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Why do VCs place such a high value on media coverage for their portfolio companies, and how does media visibility impact their decision to fund startups
  • In an era of market volatility, how can media visibility protect startups from funding droughts and what role does strategic communication play in securing investment for early-stage startups
  • What steps can startups take to ensure their media narrative resonates with the right stakeholders and aligns with their growth objectives
  • As competition for funding intensifies, how can startups prioritize Anti-PR® strategies to attract investors
  • How can a well-crafted data-driven Anti-PR® strategy improve a startup’s chances of overcoming funding challenges and scaling sustainably

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Carla Jo Helms, who is the chief evangelist and anti PR strategist with JOTO PR Disruptors. Welcome.

Karla Jo Helms: Welcome. Thank you I appreciate that.

Lee Kantor: Well I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about JOTO PR disruptors. How you serving folks?

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah, sure. Um, we are an anti PR agency, which means we use innovative, disruptive public relations techniques that are based on crisis management methodologies and the media’s algorithms to get unknown companies put on the map with a lot of consistent positive press. We’re typically dealing with companies that really need to educate their markets, because they have new technology that’s helping a lot of people, and people need to know what’s possible.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey?

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah, I don’t mind that at all. People ask that a lot. My background actually is in crisis management, and if anyone knows anything about crisis management, the very first thing people do when they’re in a crisis is in a business is they call the PR people. And it’s about 9% of my industry that are really trained in handling crises of public opinion. So these are like breaches, wrongful deaths, lawsuits, embezzlements things that are in the court of public opinion and are keeping a company from, you know, having a good reputation, which could impact, uh, revenues, impact jobs, impact the ability to compete. And my job was to go in and turn things around.

Lee Kantor: So then how did you make the move to this anti PR strategy that’s behind your your company today.

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah I um it’s okay. It’s a great story. Years of doing this I noticed that there was a common denominator with all of the companies that we had helped and turned around. They had, you know, superior services and products and technology. They were growing fast. They had a loyal following, but they were woefully naive in terms of building up a great publicity foundation of goodwill that protected their reputation. So they were very easy to attack by their larger competitors and turning them around, building up a good foundation of goodwill, good works, well publicized third party credibility through channels like yourself. Speaking of the issues and the the harms that they were solving with their technology and services and why they were doing what they were doing and how many people they were helping. We noticed a few things. Companies expanded much faster that way. Their marketing ROI increased. They expanded twice as fast as their competitors and their profitability increased. So I thought, you know what, let’s just take it and put it on the proactive side of PR and let’s help companies build this up before they get into trouble.

Lee Kantor: And then how did you land on anti PR. What was the thinking behind that semantic term.

Karla Jo Helms: We used to get other people or prospects customers people. They would say oh my gosh this has not been my experience with PR. Like you’re the antithesis of PR, you’re the opposite of PR. Um, you know, years of hearing that. Um, we decided that, well, we saw that we were really going up against sort of an ironic industry. Il. Um, as as great as PR is, um, it doesn’t always have the best reputation as an industry. So after years of being told you guys are like anti PR, the opposite of PR, we just rebranded that way because it is a trademark process. It is different than how proactive and traditional PR works and that’s how we came up to that. Our customers actually named it for us.

Lee Kantor: So you do a lot of work with technology firms, um, and new and old and, um, can you talk a little bit, maybe give an example of what would be a traditional PR approach to, say, a launch of a startup versus an anti PR approach to the launch of a startup?

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah. Uh, traditional PR approach is, uh, you know, let’s put out this, um, news that we have a great new company that, uh, is building this solution that is going to revolutionize an industry. Um, a lot of what they call fluffy news, right? Um, anti PR Anti-prom is really exploiting the biggest issues harm, controversy, money wasted, lost that this technology is solving. So say you have a med tech startup and they have a cardiology device that is, you know, able to detect heart arrhythmias in real time in patients and send that to cardiologists. Well, you know, people don’t know that there’s a problem or why they would need something until they actually know that there’s a problem. So Anti-poor would really expose the the time involved in the, the legacy technology of taking that particular heart monitor and having an arrhythmia go through a whole industry of middlemen that could translate it and then pass it on to the cardiologist 2 or 3 weeks later. Cardiologists get it very expensive reports. They see their patient has a heart arrhythmia. They send them to the emergency room, they could be too late. The patient dies. This is a very common thing that happens. And so instead of saying, we have a new heart monitor that helps cardiologists get information in real time, people may not even understand why that’s so important.

Karla Jo Helms: But if you really like take into account why people go to the news, they’re looking for information that’s really going to help educate them and solve their problems. And you learn about the number of people with heart problems. You learn about this particular industry. That was great at one time. But now because we have so many issues with health and we have so many boomers that have, you know, cardiac disease, and we have so many cardiologists that are inundated with paperwork and insurance regulations that they’re not able to get the information fast enough to save their patients lives. And we can tell this story and really educate people on the problem that startup becomes super relative to our economy, to our health care, to health care facilities, to cardiologists. And they have a ton of positive publicity around that. Rather than doing the 70 year old technique of let’s putting out a really good news, fluffy press release that touts how great this company is, but doesn’t really talk about what they’re doing and then how it’s going to impact society.

Lee Kantor: So when you create a piece of content like that, are you actually producing the content or are you kind of, you know, doing the scripts and the messaging and the, um, delivery in terms of video and all, all that it takes, because of the more and more media companies becoming leaner and leaner, that if you give them something that’s well produced and informative, that that gives, that makes their life easier.

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah. That’s you hit the nail in the head. Um, today we have to really help reporters and journalists, uh, do their job for them or help them do their job for them. Connect the dots. Get the sources for the story. Do the B-roll craft the messaging? Uh, you know, you name it. Uh, we have to do that today. So that’s we’re like an extension of the news. We really help journalists do their job. Uh, just even much better. We’re not only bringing them stories, but we’re also connecting the dots and doing a lot of the collateral that they need to tell those, you know, impactful stories.

Lee Kantor: So, um, in your career, I’m sure you’ve seen the media kind of evolve to where it’s at now and how, um, are there different strategies today in a world of Substack, um, versus, you know, a day of, you know, lots of local newspapers and lots of local news stations?

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah. You know, it’s very interesting that you ask, um, but today we’re in an alternative. We’re in a world of alternate media. Mainstream media calls my firm, um, you know, every day asking about, uh, certain narratives or certain trends that they’re seeing in trade publications, industry press podcasts, even. Right. Um, or aggregate. Um, you know, media outlets that are aggregating stories. Um, and so you have this great benefit today to communicate to, um, many targeted segments of the business population along many channels where people get their information. So today, it’s not really like I’m aiming to be in, you know, the top mainstream media outlets. Those are really peppered in, um, where everybody’s getting their information or alternate channels where people are going to where they actually trust what’s happening. And regional media is not that far off, right? Um, regional media really communicates to their areas, they know what’s happening in their areas. And, you know, a lot of, um, like new technology or businesses today that are making an impact in their community. Regional media and community news is extremely impactful.

Lee Kantor: Now in your work with technology firms. Uh, do you work with like VCs do they hire you to work for their with their portfolio of clients, or do you work with individual, um, startups.

Karla Jo Helms: And individual firms and, uh, private equity? Yes, all of the above.

Lee Kantor: So it’s, um, so you have relationships with people who might have several different startups, and this gives them all kind of a leg up when it comes to the marketing and rollout of their startup.

Karla Jo Helms: Yes. Yeah. I mean, look, venture capitalist and even private equity firms, I mean, they they always want a return on investment for their companies. And uh, today it’s a PR world. Uh, buzz and influence really impacts the markets. Um, it can be upwards of a third of the valuation of a company like goodwill or reputation and really guiding and, um, you know, controlling public opinion to the best you can, uh, is really very important today, not only to startups, but those that fund them.

Lee Kantor: So what, um, maybe some advice for the startup founder out there and especially the maybe the tech startup founder who isn’t as, um, knowledgeable about marketing? Is there some do’s and don’ts? Is there some things that you would recommend? Early steps. Um, you know, when it comes to launching a new product, especially a technology that may be a disruptive.

Karla Jo Helms: Yes. It’s such a great question. You know, I have a podcast where I talk to disruptive innovators, um, every week that are building brand new technologies, uh, in, you know, agriculture, education, uh, the financial markets, healthcare and so forth. And I am hearing that they are learning, um, that one of their biggest skills is becoming a really good storyteller today. Uh, the technology no longer or good works, the technology, the merit of the technology no longer speak for themselves. They have to really tell the why behind the story, why they built it, why it’s helping. Um, before they get into the bells and whistles and all about the technology. People today really want to, you know, they buy into the why before they buy the what. And one of the best things that, um, brand new startup founders can do is really craft their storytelling skill and, um, sell the problem that they’re solving. Quit leading with the solution. People don’t understand the solution until they really understand the problem that it’s solving and why you’re solving it. Many people have personal stories. You know the one I told you about the med tech company? I mean, he had a parent that, uh, you know, had a heart arrhythmia, and that information didn’t get to the cardiologist in time. And he was a technologist, and he says we can do better. Many tech startups and founders, they have these incredible stories, and they’re deciding to do something about it. And those stories is what sells now.

Lee Kantor: Is there a story you can share? Don’t name the name of the organization, but maybe, um, share a little bit about the problem they were having before they started working with your firm, and how you helped them maybe get the escape velocity they needed to grow.

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah, sure. Um, you know, let’s say, uh, a company that, you know, there’s a lot of, um, things that go on in our society that sometimes are not, like, great to talk about. Um, it might be considered, say, a stigma. For instance, you know, back in the day, do you know what chargebacks are?

Lee Kantor: Chargebacks for your credit card.

Karla Jo Helms: When you file a chargeback on your credit card?

Lee Kantor: Yeah.

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah. So you get something in the mail or it’s not what you wanted or you did say you didn’t get it right. Uh, it didn’t get delivered right. You call visa, you say it didn’t get delivered. And so they go, great. Well, we’ll charge it back. We’ll give you a credit back on your card. Well, this is a big problem in the financial world and the e-commerce world. In fact, 84% of all chargebacks are fraudulent. But just, you know, several years ago, it was taboo to talk about, as a merchant having chargebacks even when they could prove that they were fraudulent. The consumer really did receive the package. They did send it. Um, but they filed a chargeback anyway. And Visa and Mastercard would penalize merchants if they went over a 1% threshold of having chargebacks filed on them. So merchants were afraid to speak up. Um, and so this was sort of taboo, right? And we had to get a lot of publicity, uh, for merchants being able to speak up about fraudulent chargebacks that were costing them so much just to stay in the business. Right. Um, so much so that it created over a period of a couple of years, really exposing this, getting people to talk about it, show the different states that were having the biggest fraud, fraudulent chargeback issues. Uh, what, you know which gender is mostly responsible for chargebacks, by the way? It’s female. What industries are more prone to having chargebacks? What are things that merchants should do to mitigate this? Um, Visa and Mastercard started to listen to merchants instead of penalizing them. And so what became a profit center per se for Visa and Mastercard that would actually charge merchants to file these chargebacks even when they were fraudulent. It became a cost center, and it started to create an ability for merchants and visa and Mastercard and chargeback entities, mitigation entities, to work together as an ecosystem. That’s how you change the court of public opinion for business.

Lee Kantor: And, um, who is the ideal client? Is it just technology firms or or now do you go into other industries?

Karla Jo Helms: We mostly work with technology firms. Most everything is technology based today. Um, so that is our particular niche. Um, but if people have particular things that they need help with regarding, uh, publicity or public opinion, public opinion issues, we will talk to them, but we may not take them on, but we might refer them to someone in our network.

Lee Kantor: Is it mainly B2B or it can be B2C?

Karla Jo Helms: It’s mainly B2B, yes.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Karla Jo Helms: Great. The website is jetpens.com. Com that’s the best way to reach out to us. Um, and a member of our team, an anti PR advisor or even myself as the chief strategist, we can talk to you and advise you and let you know what can be done to help you.

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

Karla Jo Helms: Yeah. Thank you very much.

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

Gary Stokan With Peach Bowl, Inc.

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Gary P. Stokan is CEO and president of Peach Bowl, Inc., a position he has held since 1998. Under his management, Peach Bowl, Inc. events have generated an economic impact of $1.53 billion and $96.7 million in direct government tax revenue for the city of Atlanta and state of Georgia since 1999.

He has positioned the Peach Bowl as one of the best bowl game organizations in the nation, and earned the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl a position as a New Year’s Six bowl game in the College Football Playoff (CFP) and will host future CFP Semifinal games in 2022 and 2025. He also inked contracts with Mercedes-Benz Stadium through 2025 and with Chick-fil-A to continue its title sponsorship of both the Bowl and Kickoff Games through 2025.

During his tenure, the Bowl has enjoyed sellouts in 22 of the past 25 years, and earned the second-longest sellout record in the Bowl business. Peach Bowl, Inc. has also distributed more than $281 million in team payouts under him and is college football’s most charitable bowl organization – having donated $58.8 million since 2002 – which garnered Peach Bowl, Inc. the Atlanta Small Business Philanthropic Award.

In 2019, Peach Bowl, Inc. donated a record $20 million to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta creating the Peach Bowl LegACy Fund to find cures for childhood cancer. As result of this effort, the organization was named a finalist by ESPN for its 2020 Corporate Community Impact Award – a category in the annual Sports Humanitarian Award.

Recently, Peach Bowl, Inc. was also named to Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2021 Best Places to Work list, as well as a Best Employers in Sports by Front Office Sports, a Top 10 Small Business in Atlanta by Business Leader Media, and was presented by the Mayor of Atlanta with the Phoenix Award, the highest honor an individual or group can receive from the city of Atlanta.

He has created major events that bring exposure, economic impact and charitable donations to Atlanta by creating the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game in 2008, which is the leader in opening weekend games. Stokan’s innovation of the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game helped change the college football season by elevating opening weekend and placing a focus on scheduling nationally ranked, out-of-conference opponents.

Since its creation, the Chick-fil-A Kickoff Game has distributed a cumulative $83.5 million in team payouts and has sold out 12 of 15 games. He also created the Peach Bowl Challenge charity golf tournament, which since 2007 has given $8.73 million for scholarship and charity to its participating universities and coaches charities is the preeminent coaches golf tournament in the country.

It was his relationships that led to the 2006 Sugar Bowl being moved to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Peach Bowl, Inc.’s addition of the management of The Dodd Trophy presented by PNC, college football’s most coveted national coach of the year award, is due to Stokan’s leadership.

He has also inspired the creation of the Peach Bowl College Corner at the Tour Championship and Peach Bowl Touchdown for Children’s which have raised and donated more than $1.5 million to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. These accomplishments have prompted national media to label Atlanta the Capital of College Football.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Peach Bowl, Inc. events
  • Backstory on the bowl being created in the spirit of giving back,  and how the organization is continuing to implement this philosophy by donating more than $65.4 million since 2002.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: 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, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories today on Atlanta Business Radio. We have Gary Stokan, and he is the president and CEO with the Peach Bowl. Welcome.

Gary Stokan: Hey, Lee, how are you?

Lee Kantor: I am doing well. I am so excited to get caught up with what’s happening at the Peach Bowl. But for the two people out there who don’t know what the Peach Bowl is, kind of share a little bit about mission purpose and how you’re serving the community.

Gary Stokan: Sure. I appreciate you having us. We, uh, we were founded back in 1968 as the first bowl game founded for charity and the ninth bowl game founded overall. And it’s always been our mission to be the most charitable bowl organization in the country. And we’ve done that by, uh, donating $64 million since 2002 to various charities around the country and here, mainly here in Atlanta. And that makes us by far the most charitable organization in the country. So by being a part of the CFP now, the College Football Playoff and being the most charitable bowl game, we’ve met our mission to to welcome people to Atlanta using college football for the greater good.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you talk about maybe the genesis of the idea? What kind of was the thinking to tie charity along with this bowl game? Because bowl games had been going around for decades, if not now, over probably a century. What was the thinking there?

Gary Stokan: Well, there was there was eight bowl games already in the United States. And George Crumbley, who was leading the Lions Lighthouse at the time, said, well, we need to create a fundraiser to raise money for what our mission is. And Atlanta is a football crazy town. So let’s start a bowl game. And so he tried three different times with the NCAA to get a license to create a bowl game. And finally, on the third time in 1968, he was successful and he started the Peach Bowl. And so we’ve had a great run. It was tough in the beginning. They didn’t make any money for a lot of years. But now we’re very, very successful, very successful financially as well as nationally. And we’ve been able to help the Lions Lighthouse grow as well with our charitable contributions.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did the bowl kind of evolve to get into the CFP? Like you mentioned, because as you mentioned, it was the the at that time, it was the new kid on the block. And then now there’s it seems like there’s dozens of bowl games. How did the Peach Bowl kind of earn its way up the ladder into one of the Premier Bowls?

Gary Stokan: Yeah, I have to laugh because my first year in 1998, uh, I, I was in charge of selecting the teams, and I selected Georgia to play Virginia. And Virginia was ranked 12th in the country, and Georgia wasn’t ranked but the head headline of the AJC sports section that day said that, uh, Georgia going to Peach Bowl, a third tier bowl game. So our own newspaper thought of Atlanta as a third tier bowl game. And, um, you know, back in 1985, I guess we were, uh, because we had Army in Illinois and there were 22,000 people in old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. And, uh, the weather was terrible. And Dick Bestwick, who had my position at the time, said that unless the business leaders in this city get involved, the Peach Bowl is going to go out of business. And so he rallied. Um, uh, uh, Ron Allen, who was the CEO then of Delta Airlines, and he was the incoming chair for the Chamber of Commerce. And, uh, he said, well, we can’t let the Peach Bowl fail, so we’re going to put up $100,000 check, and we’re going to sell a bunch of tickets. And, uh, so he had Bob Coggin, his chief marketing officer, go out to all their vendors and have them buy tickets to the Peach Bowl, and they sold 3300 tickets. And financially, that helped the Peach Bowl along with that $100,000. And then Ron rallied, you know, the Coca-colas and the other corporations in the city. And, um, the Peach Bowl stayed in business and slow, but sure, moving into the Georgia Dome, getting a contract with the ACC to play the SEC, uh, getting on ESPN.

Gary Stokan: And then subsequently, in 1997, chick fil A signing on as a title sponsor for the game. It gave us the the underpinnings, uh, financial success with chick fil A, uh, with the ACC and SEC ticket buyers. And we were off and running and, um, in 2006 when the, uh, commissioners said, we’re going to start a, uh, you know, a national championship game. We need another bowl game beyond the Rose, sugar, orange and Fiesta. Us in the Cotton Bowl made great bids, but neither of us won as the commissioners decided to let the four bowls have their game on January 1st, and then take the national championship game and rotate it between the rose, the sugar, the orange and the Fiesta. And so in 2007, the NCAA legislated a 12th game to the schedule. And I said, well, being a competitive son of a gun, I said, well, if they’re not going to let us in the BCS on the on the backside of the season, we’re going to start the BCS on the front side of the season. And so I started the kickoff game and had Alabama and Clemson come to play. Sold out us the game in the Georgia Dome. And uh, you know, we basically recreated what now is the front side of the season in college football with great matchups because prior to that teams would play non-directional schools and get easy wins.

Gary Stokan: It was kind of everybody looked at it as an exhibition season to get three wins and then start your conference schedule. Well, now you have the likes of Notre Dame playing Ohio State in the first game of the year. And, you know, we’ll have two kickoff games this year with Syracuse and Tennessee on Saturday. And then on Sunday, uh, we’ll have Virginia Tech play South Carolina. And that’s never been done. Two games within 24 hours in one city. Um, but the kickoff game really elevated our brand to a lot of people around the country because we had blockbuster sellout games with huge TV viewership. And then, uh, we went after the College Football Hall of Fame. I was just coming out of working the Atlanta Sports Council and using Bob Costas famous statement around the 96 Olympic Games that, you know, Atlanta is becoming the sports capital of the world. So in 98, based on the foundation that was put in place by the Olympics, we went out and, um, you know, we got all the NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL all star games. We brought a lot of Olympic type events back into town. And, um, so we made Atlanta the sports capital of the world. And then I said, well, why not make Atlanta the football capital of the world? Because we have huge football fans in this, in this city from all over the country. They they emanate to Atlanta and get jobs and they follow their teams.

Gary Stokan: And so in 285, it would look like a NASCAR race with flags from all kind of ACC and SEC teams and even Big Ten teams driving around to get to their to their games on a Saturday. And so we, uh, we went after the College Football Hall of Fame and we moved it from South Bend to Into Atlanta. And I think those two things, along with the success we were having of selling out Peach Bowl’s, uh, the commissioners looked at what we were doing in Atlanta and said, hey, they deserve a chance. And in 2014 over 15 season, when the CFP was created, uh, they took Atlanta and the Peach Bowl, along with the Cotton Bowl, added to the four bowls of the Rose, sugar, orange and Fiesta. And we became the new year six bowl games. And now we’re currently involved in running the CFP playoff, which started this past year, where we host quarterfinals for two years and then a semifinal. Um, and so this year, we’ll host the semifinal of the College Football Playoff. So, you know, having the College Football Hall of Fame here, having the kickoff games, having successful Peach Bowl has allowed us to recruit the national championship game here twice since 2017 And, uh, have quarterfinals and semifinal games. So now we are looked at as the, uh, the shining light in college football is, uh, a lot of media have called us the capital of college football in Atlanta, Georgia.

Lee Kantor: And do you see any, um, is there any trends you’re seeing with regarding the Nil and the portal systems, uh, with the player transfers? Is the popularity of the game, I’m sure in game day and especially in Atlanta at those games that you’re describing, it’s full house and and they’re always sold out. But is it impacting kind of the, um, popularity of the sport or is it just growing the sport more and more?

Gary Stokan: Yeah, I think the College Football Playoff was responsible this year for increasing the viewership of college football as well as attendance, uh, primarily because you had interest from around the country longer into November and early December with teams that could vie to make up the 12 team playoff. So you had more interest across the country. Number one, that led to more viewership. And secondly, because you’re probably 30 to 40 teams were still vying for those 12 slot slots to make the playoff in in December late December. Um, attendance was increased all throughout the year instead of in the old playoff where you had four teams. There was no team that had two losses that ever made the 14 playoff. And so if you got an early loss in September by, you know, October, November, a lot of people, you know, didn’t follow the team as much because they knew they were out of the playoffs. So I think the playoff has really created a new opportunity for college football to grow. Uh, we’re currently the second most favorite sport in the country, uh, only behind the NFL. Uh, I think we’ve taken a hit with the transfer portal and nil a little bit, uh, that some people have been turned off by, you know, kind of a pay for play for players. Um, uh, by players transferring. They don’t know the players as well because the players aren’t staying for years. Um, but we need some guardrails. We need some regulation from Congress. Uh, I think that’s going to happen. And, um, you know, we’ve got to we’ve got to remain, uh, a collegiate experience where kids are offered a scholarship, uh, get an education, get a degree, because most of these kids are not going to play pro sports. Um, the advent of the Pell Grant and and helping now nil money give these kids an opportunity to start out their career in life and in business, uh, successfully, without any debt. And, uh, with with a great opportunity. So, uh, college football is meeting its mission and will continue to do so.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, do you think that the fact that the Peach Bowl started I mean, we got to the point where it was ACC versus SEC, um, and Atlanta, they have Georgia Tech and Georgia Tech has a stadium, but the there’s so much activity at, uh, at Mercedes-Benz now with these big college games like that you’re bringing in now there’s two kickoffs. Now the Peach Bowl there just seems to be it’s almost I don’t want to say it’s a neutral site, but it’s it’s kind of, um, maybe college agnostic spot for the SEC and the ACC to just create big events. Are you finding that because of your efforts that more and more people are going and attending these kind of college games downtown?

Gary Stokan: Yeah, certainly the the Peach Bowl back in, uh, 1992. I guess it was when the Georgia Dome was built. Uh, the SEC had started a championship game and played the first two years in Birmingham, Alabama. Uh, but they had bad weather. And with the Georgia Dome being, you know, 72 degrees and indoors, obviously, uh, the Peach Bowl worked with the SEC to bring the SEC Championship game to Atlanta. So a lot of tickets for it. Um, and, uh, so the SEC, along with our two kickoff games and the chick fil A Peach Bowl and the national championship that was played in January, late January, uh, they’ll comprise five of the top six conventions in the city of Atlanta this year. And if you think about Atlanta, Atlanta is the fourth largest convention town in the United States, behind Las Vegas, Chicago, Orlando and then Atlanta. So to think about five of the top six conventions in the fourth largest convention town in the United States. Our college football games. The SEC Championship. The two kickoff Aflac kickoff games, the chick fil A Peach Bowl, and the national championship game. So, um, the economic impact and the tax revenues that flow back to Atlanta and Georgia through college football are unlike any other city in the country. And that’s the reason why a lot of people call Atlanta the capital of college football.

Lee Kantor: Now, how important is it to have kind of this really collaborative public private entities working together for kind of the the common good? Atlanta, to me, seems like that’s part of the secret sauce of why, um, so much gets done here.

Gary Stokan: Lee, you’ve hit on it. There’s no doubt about it. When I talk to people around the country and they ask me that same question, uh, it all started with the Olympic Games. There was a perspective and a feeling after the Olympic Games, through the volunteers, through the city and the state, working together through the corporate leaders that we could do anything. And so that’s one one of the reasons we’ve been very successful. It is the secret sauce in the recipe of our success. Um, a lot of lot of cities have stadiums. Um, we have great stadiums, close proximity to our, our hotels with 16,000 hotel rooms downtown, easy walking distance to the facilities, great restaurants and things to do, like the College Football Hall of Fame and aquarium around the hotels and our and our facilities for people to entertain themselves. Um, we have the most effective and efficient airport in the country, probably in the world. Um, with hourly flights from a lot of the major markets like Chicago, New York, DC, LA, etc. so you can get to town easy. You can, um, you know, you can be in the middle of downtown in 15, 20 minutes. Uh, you don’t even have to rent a car. You can get on Marta and be in downtown Atlanta. You can walk around the city to our facilities, our entertainment, our restaurants, um, and all that is important. The infrastructure, the having three interstates that intersect into downtown. So people from the east and west and north and south can get here. Uh, all that infrastructure makes for the opportunity. But at the end of the day, it takes people, it takes strategy, it takes, uh, people willing to commit, uh, volunteer hours, uh, corporations willing to commit money. And, uh, we’ve been able to rally all of that together, uh, to make Atlanta very, very successful in, in the world of sports.

Lee Kantor: And it seems like we’re just scratching the surface with the advent of the gulch. Uh, what’s happening in south downtown, uh, with, you know, with the Georgia Tech and Georgia state campuses being right there in the midst of things, it seems like we’re just now about to begin again.

Gary Stokan: Yeah, it really is. It’s it’s interesting. Um, the World Cup in 2026 is basically going to mirror what happened, uh, and elevate the city. Um, maybe not to the tune of what the Olympics did, because back in 1990, when Atlanta was selected to to host the Olympic Games, a lot of people around the the world, um, thought Atlantic City had won the rights. Uh, because Atlanta was not a well-known, uh, international city at the time. And then when by the time 1996 got here and the Olympic Games, it made Atlanta an international city. And I think the World Cup is going to take that to the next level in 2026 when we host the World Cup.

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

Gary Stokan: Well, we’re very, very blessed to have great volunteers, a wonderful board that supports what we’re doing, uh, tremendous support from the business community in sponsoring a lot of the, the headquarters, uh, companies like Delta and Chick fil A and Home Depot and Kia and, uh, Georgia Power. Uh, support what we’re doing. Um, the city leaders and the state have been tremendous. The facilities, like Arthur Blank and, uh, what he’s been able to do with Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So everything there, it’s just a matter of creating the next, uh, whatever it is. And we’ve been very exciting to do it in college football and make Atlanta such a prevalent, uh, hotbed and capital of college football, but yet still maintaining our mission of donating, uh, you know, $64 million back to charities to help charities in Atlanta and in, uh, cities where teams come from, you know, our, uh, around the country to play in our game, we donate $100,000 scholarship under our John Lewis Legacy of Courage scholarship. And those scholarship monies, which are over $9 million now, $9.5 million, I believe, uh, all around the country, they’re earmarked for kids from Atlanta and or Georgia, title one kids to get those scholarships.

Gary Stokan: Um, so we’ve been able to look out for the education purposes of kids that in their whole generation of their families, no one’s ever gone to college. And some of these kids now are able to go to college. Uh, they’re underprivileged, uh, to get an opportunity to get a degree and hopefully change the self-fulfilling prophecy of not only their family, but their communities. Um, and then to, uh, work with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and with Aflac to, uh, now have 14 trials, uh, in five different, uh, uh, states. Um, and uh, creating hopefully, uh, cure to eradicate childhood cancer with, uh, certainly with, uh, whether it’s neuroblastoma or leukemia. We have trials going on that people, you know, hopefully will come up with a cure for a kid for a day. Another day, another month, another year or maybe a lifetime to eradicate childhood cancer. So those are a couple of our big initiatives that we’re working on by using college football to do the greater good.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, What’s the website to get tickets or just to learn more about what’s happening over at the Peach Bowl?

Gary Stokan: Yeah, we’re on Facebook. We’re on Instagram. Um, we’re on X. Uh, our website is, uh, chick fil A Peach bowl.com. So, um, yeah, if you want to volunteer and be a part of the, uh, the great success we’re doing and helping people by using college football, please join us. Um, and whether you want to sponsor, whether you want to volunteer, we’d love to have you involved. And it’s it’s a great feeling to give back to the city that’s, uh, meant so much to all of us.

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

Gary Stokan: Sure, Lee, thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

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

Sandra Gonzalez With Sandra Gonzalez Enterprises

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Sandra Gonzalez, Retired Marine Officer turned Executive Coach, Speaker NeuroChange Practitioner.

She is a high-performance coach at Sandra Gonzales Enterprises helping successful high-caliber entrepreneurs elevate their mindset and harness sexy confidence, so they can quickly kick self doubt to the curb, command any room they are in and develop the certainty that magnetizes opportunities for growth.

She had the honor of serving 20 years of honorable service in the Marine Corps. She served my country, and in the process, she realized that her strength came from her heart, and the ability to develop mental toughness.

She faced many obstacles along the way, and she know that confidence, discipline and courage have been key characteristics to her success.

Connect with Sandra on LinkedIn and follow her on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Her new book called “Sexy Confidence™: A U.S. Marine’s Blueprint for Women to Command their Seat at the Table to become Bold, Beautiful, & Bulletproof.”

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Sandra Gonzalez. She is a Retired Marine Officer turned Executive Coach, Speaker, NeuroChange Practitioner. Welcome.

Sandra Gonzalez: Thank you so much for having me, Lee. It’s an honor to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving folks?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes. So how am I specifically serving? And thank you for that beautiful introduction. I served 20 years of honorable service as a US marine. Now as a high performance coach, speaker, and now author. I just published my book last month. I empower women in business to rise to top leadership positions in male dominated industries so they can grab that head seat at any table and take command of the room as they should. So that’s what I specialize in and that’s what I’m passionate about.

Lee Kantor: Lee, now can you share a little bit about your journey? How did you get to where you are now? You mentioned serving in the military, but what led you there and what led you to the path you’re on right now?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes. Great question Lee. So in addition to empowering women to take command, I help them cultivate sexy confidence. And this definitely ties into your question. Um, I help them cultivate this high performance state of mind. It’s an attitude that enables women leaders to stay calm and composed during stressful challenges and situations. And growing up, I had a father who exuded sexy confidence. He allowed his moral values and principles to guide him. And it was my father who suggested I join the military right out of, you know, my senior year in high school. And when I joined the Marine Corps, my first boss was Colonel James N Mattis and, uh, Colonel Mattis at the time. You know, he was he this man exuded sexy confidence. He had this command presence. And he taught me so much about leadership, uh, that I fell in love with leadership and leading others. And that was my experience in the Marine Corps. Furthermore, I want to share that he would always share with the Marines. Uh, he would always share with us. Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet. Now this is very appropriate for us Marines. However, the following thing Lee that that he said that left an indelible mark in my heart was that we must first win the hearts and the minds of the people. So it was then that I fell in love with servant leadership. I knew that I was, you know, destined to serve my country for 20 years. And now, as a coach, speaker, author, I continue serving, but through a different modality. So that’s I can I can keep sharing. Morley. But that’s the basic premise of where, where I came from.

Lee Kantor: So when you got out of the Marines and now you’re still pretty young, even though you were there 20 years, you’re still pretty young. Um, what were some of the career paths you were thinking or were you always going to go into coaching immediately after, um, leaving?

Sandra Gonzalez: Great. Great question. Lee. Um, so I, I would say at my 17 year mark, um, I happened to be on the Home Shopping Network in Tampa, Florida, live on live TV promoting an international fitness models, um, product. And it was at that moment I realized, wait a minute, this woman has created her brand. I want to be an entrepreneur. Um, I want to, you know, delve into what that means and empower others. So that experience, uh, I would say, definitely sparked my interest for becoming an entrepreneur and serving others. And I know that I get that question, uh, asked um, often because a lot of our veterans or or military service members have a hard time making that transition, and this is applicable to anyone you know, especially when you’ve served for 20 years. Uh, that’s all I’ve been. I was doing, that’s all I know. It’s tied to to my identity. So how do I now shift into something new? And you’re right, Lee, I am young. I’m super young. So I, I’m passionate about serving. But that’s just the one example of where I realized. Wait a minute. If this woman. If this woman can do it, so can I.

Lee Kantor: So then you saw somebody who was able to kind of create a personal brand for themselves and be successful and offer a variety of services around that personal brand. How did you kind of determine what your kind of niche would be and what your personal brand would become?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes. Well, you know, it’s a process. It’s definitely a process. But what I did identify Fi specifically with was that this woman hosted an international conference. Um, that same year, and she invited me to be a keynote speaker. So, uh, when the women are standing up giving you this beautiful standing ovation because they absolutely loved what I had to share, it was at that moment I knew that my calling was to be of service to to build my brand, to figure out what that was, but that I needed to continue speaking. So, um, that’s how it started. And and it’s it’s just something I’ve, uh, refined over the years. Um, and that’s what brings us to this point.

Lee Kantor: So when did you start kind of working with, um, women executives and women business leaders? How did that come about? Because that’s I mean, it’s, uh, I don’t want to say a totally different role because leadership is leadership. But how did you get involved, like in the business world?

Sandra Gonzalez: I got involved in the business world right after, uh, retirement, retiring from the Marine Corps. I had I was fortunate enough to go overseas. Uh, overseas. I lived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates for four years. And this was after my Marine Corps. You know, I’m retired, and I just went for it. I realized, you know what? I want to connect with ambitious women, uh, that have an insatiable appetite for growth. And, you know, we’re like minded. So that’s where it started. I started connecting with expats. I’ve coached women, thankfully, at an international level. And I seen two through my message. Um, especially because I, I come from a male dominant organization, I learned that it’s so important for women not only to be assertive, but to be feminine. To, you know, to give ourselves grace under pressure, because some of these situations we will find ourselves in are not easy. But when you’re able to combine the masculinity and the feminine, which is beautiful energy so that it serves you, you can stand out as a leader. Um, and that’s how I started connecting with these ambitious women.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you have any kind of coaching training? Did you go through any, um, kind of methodology or system, or did you come up with your own methodology in and around leadership coaching?

Sandra Gonzalez: So of course, you know, as an executive coach, holistic coach, certified, um, I was a personal trainer once. Um, that’s continuous getting that education, those certifications. That’s continuous. But I learned that. The information and the knowledge I had received, coupled with my signature coaching, was the thing that would help me stand out from others. And it’s important to, uh, figure out what that is. Figure out our strengths so we can be of service. And through my experiences and everything, uh, you know, and, uh, how I’ve educated myself, I learned that I had a signature methodology that I could serve others with.

Lee Kantor: So let’s start talking about your new book, uh, Sexy Confidence a US Marines blueprint for women to command their seat at the table to become bold, beautiful and bulletproof. Uh, tell us about, uh, the writing of that.

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes, yes. So I started, uh, writing my book, um, Last year. I knew that I’ve been writing before that, um, it’s one of these beautiful disciplines I believe especially women writers should continuously work on. Um, but I it was a beautiful journey of putting this, you know, methodology down on paper, coupled with beautiful stories that have helped me take command of the room, that have helped me and other women leaders and men. I’ve had the the honor of coaching men as well. Um, to, uh, empower them to step into the best version of themselves. So it was a beautiful process where I, I realized the imposter syndrome will pop up. The perfectionism will come up, but we have to do our due diligence as women leaders and persevere. Push through all that, uh, the self-doubt, the imposter syndrome. Because we’re not a fraud. We have so many a wealth of experiences that others could benefit from. But it was an empowering experience and very fulfilling at the end. Thank you for asking that question.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there anything you can share for our listeners that’s actionable right now? Some action they can take in order for them to at least begin their path to becoming sexy, confident?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes, yes. So I share a lot of examples in the book, but I would say here’s a simple one. Uh, in that first chapter, I talk about really building a strong foundation. It’s important for women leaders to develop a strong foundation, and a strong foundation means that you build a strong identity. And when we have a strong identity, it’s tied to our character and our character speaks volumes, you know. Is this woman reliable? Can she lead others with servant leadership? Um, so a quick, uh, exercise would be for the women leaders that are listening. It’s it’s important to ask yourself these questions. Who am I and what do I stand for? And those two questions are powerful because, uh, from there, I, you know, I encourage women to write down just three, uh, character traits that you want to embody this year. So, for example, for me, my three character traits are I want to be more patient with my mom, my daughters. I have two amazing daughters. I want to be more profitable because it’s tied to my business. This is how I serve others, and I want to be present with every single moment that’s happening allowed me to be present. God, what does this do? This helps me raise my consciousness. So for the for the listeners that are listening, watching, write down these three character traits that are tied to your character, your identity that will help you step into your best version. Write them down. Have them visible somewhere where you could see, remember them, and then take action. And there’s more information in my book. Leave somebody that, you know, the listeners are interested.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, who is kind of your ideal client? Is it a woman that is a high achiever, or is it somebody that aspires to be a higher achiever and is frustrated? Um, who kind of who is your ideal customer profile?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes. So my ideal customer profile is this woman who’s got this business and she wants to scale her business. She’s already achieved success, but she wants to scale her business. Take it to that next level. Um, she, you know, wants to delegate authority specifically to take that well-deserved vacation. Um, and right now, at this moment, she wants to fully, completely trust yourself and, um, and take action. So this this would be the woman. She she has an insatiable appetite for growth. She’s continuously refining and educating herself because she believes in not only living her life with integrity, but she’s passionate about servant leadership.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, or get a hold of the new book, where should they go?

Sandra Gonzalez: Yes. My book. Uh, they could go to my website. Sandra Gonzalez. That’s with two zs.com. Or I can be reached on social media platforms. Love LinkedIn. Uh, Sandra Gonzalez or Instagram coach Sandra Gonzalez. Um, and my book is also available. Um, it’s on Amazon for purchase ASAP. That that’s another way they could, um, get the book and contact me directly through any of the social media platforms.

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

Sandra Gonzalez: Thank you. Lee, I appreciate you for having me.

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

Todd Stanton With Stanton Law

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Todd Stanton, founder of Stanton Law, has focused on management representation in employment matters since graduating from the University of Georgia School of Law in 2002. Starting with labor and employment boutique Fisher Phillips, he eventually moved to Powell Goldstein (later Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner), where he represented some of the largest companies in the country.

A litigator by training, he’s well-versed in the slate of employment law shorthand — EEOC, DOL, NLRB, OSHA, ADA, FMLA, ADEA, FLSA, and Title VII — and knows first-hand how much sloppy human resources practices can end up costing. Todd’s refreshing approach to his legal practice seeps into the firm’s employee-first operations. He’s most proud of the platform Stanton Law provides for other entrepreneurial and ownership-minded lawyers to build their respective practices while keeping an eye on what’s most important.

A native Atlantan and Marist alum, Todd graduated from Washington & Lee University with Honors in 1995, majoring in Psychology and with a 4-year letter in baseball. He married Ashley in 1999 and they have two sons.

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What motivated this “hire-quisition” between Stanton Law and Briarwood Legal
  • What new practice areas or services will Briarwood Legal offer that weren’t previously available at Stanton Law

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: 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, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Todd Stanton, Principal and Founder of Stanton Law. Welcome.

Todd Stanton: Hey, thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to get caught up for folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Staunton Law? How are you serving folks?

Todd Stanton: Sure. Staunton Law was started in 2011. We have our roots as a management side HR firm, helping small and medium sized businesses with their employment issues. Over the past decade and a half, we have, uh, bolted on several sidecar services to that HR practice. At the core of our of our being with some corporate transactional attorneys, we’ve added a robust litigation department as well, and also have ERISA and trust and estates practice on the side of that as well. So we’ve about a $4 million firm last year. We have 14 attorneys on our staff now about 20 lives all together. So we’re a thriving, thriving business right now.

Lee Kantor: So recently, can you talk a little bit about the Staunton law, Briarwood legal kind of partnership, or I guess you’re calling it a hire acquisition?

Todd Stanton: Yeah. Yeah. A hire acquisition. So, yeah, it’s an interesting story. I met Tyler Henderson. Probably about this time last year in a small firm networking group, and Tyler was building a very successful complex collections practice and helping other attorneys enforce judgments, helping businesses collect. Some old are suing on contract and things of that nature. Tyler is a pretty enterprising young attorney and was really coming up on the cusp of what it looked like to build his own firm, which is, as we know, comes comes with a bunch of baggage on it. When we start talking about the overhead that’s involved with even a small law firm, it’s rather substantial and there’s lots of ownership headaches. I heard Dan Martelle talk about that. People who start their own business often just become the administrator of their own business. And I think that Tyler looked at this and said, I need to grow. I’m kind of at my capacity with what I can do on my own and with my associate. So we started exploring what it would look like for him to merge with with Stanton Law. Um, and, uh, we’re about two months into this now and things are cooking along. He’s opening up new matters every day and using the taking advantage of the overhead that we’ve built and provide as a platform for him to grow his own practice within our within our ecosystem.

Lee Kantor: Is there any advice you can share for other lawyers who might be contemplating something similar? Is there some do’s and don’ts or some trade offs that maybe you didn’t anticipate?

Todd Stanton: I haven’t found the trade offs that I the negative trade offs on this. It is certainly inspiring to have a younger attorney with a pretty pronounced ownership mentality come into the come into the firm and really juice things up. Last week when I got my first new matters, one of my first New Matters reports since he’s been on board. It’s been one of the first times in state law history that somebody has eclipsed me, and the number of new matters that are coming in. So that momentum has been great as far as the things that I think that, uh, people need to look out for, uh, making sure that there is a cultural fit there. Uh, Tyler has, uh, is proving himself to be a good cultural fit here with our core values of ownership mentality and not taking ourselves too seriously. And he brings his dog in. Uh, if this were a if this were a more straight laced shop, I don’t know that it would be, uh, as good of a fit as it is. Uh, I think a lot of times, uh, lawyers in particular get stuck on the revenue side of the ledger and not really looking at the cultural fit. Uh, when they when they bring on a, when they bring on a new partner or another lawyer into the office.

Lee Kantor: So how did you go about kind of contemplating this cultural fit? What were some of the things that would have been like kind of red flags or and that turned out to be green flags, like you mentioned the dog, but were there other things?

Todd Stanton: Yeah. So I mean, I make sure that, uh, I meet Tyler and his family. Uh, he’s got a lovely wife, Allie, and a three year old daughter named Piper. And at Staunton Lauren employee first organization, we make sure that the the the inside of work is or excuse me. The outside of work is just as important as the inside of work. And so making sure that Ali and Piper are comfortable with their, their dads and husbands decision on this was important to me, too. Um, and so as we got to know them and Tyler spent time in the Tyler spent time coming over to the office and getting to know the other folks, it was pretty clear it was going to be a good fit.

Lee Kantor: Now, has there any has there? I know it’s been a short period of time, but do you see like synergies or ways that the dots are being connected. And you know one on one is equaling three rather than two?

Todd Stanton: Uh, well, again, I think that the, the, the revenue numbers are going to, uh, are going to show that pretty quickly. Uh, as we approach into his second month and, uh, start to see how that works. Yes, there’s some synergies there. Um, back to that cultural side. Uh, one of my goals, uh, for Tyler, is to get him to perhaps work a little less. Uh, and I want him to I want him to up the number of rounds he plays on the golf course each year. And so as I as I start to push that out and getting him to spend less time behind his desk and more time outside, whether that’s with Ali and Piper or whether that’s a business development golf with clients, I think we’ll start to see that that materialize as well.

Lee Kantor: So how does it affect the other lawyers on the team?

Todd Stanton: Um, people like results. And, uh, and when in a firm like Staunton Law, the where you have somebody who is originating business and bringing in matters, uh, and bringing in the work, uh, other people like to stay busy, uh, and, you know, managing work life balance and, uh, finding just enough work to do to, to pay the bills, but not enough to be overwhelmed. And, uh, and more than enough to be bored. Uh, I think they appreciate another another rainmaker in the office so far.

Lee Kantor: Now, why do you think that over the years, it was difficult to find another rainmaker just through hiring or just through normal practices.

Todd Stanton: I that’s a great question. Um, I think that, uh, I think that too many lawyers come out of law school focused on being very good, substantive lawyers. And I think that those are table stakes to having a successful practice. But I think a lot of lawyers come late to the game about having to develop their their book. Um, when, when I was, uh, exploring what it looked like to be a partner at Big Law, uh, I was, uh, asking, what does it take to make partner? How do I make this? Well, how many hours do I need to Bill? How many, uh, cases do I need to supervise? And a mentor of mine named Elaine Cook kind of reframed the question. She said you’re asking it wrong. She said. Instead of asking what it takes to make partner, you need to ask yourself what it takes to build a practice, to make partnership inevitable. Um, and I think that the switch flipped for me, that all lawyers are self employed. And I think that and we have to develop our own practice in order to in order to thrive. And I think that lots of more traditional lawyers, particularly in big law, but could be anywhere, tend to get in a service oriented mentality, uh, and, and want to do the work of the clients and don’t necessarily want to go develop the work themselves. I mean, sales has a bad reputation and lots of aspects and no worse than in in the legal realm. Uh, nobody wants to be seen as a as a salesperson. So we try to focus it more on relationship and business development going hand in hand. And I don’t think that lawyers necessarily are focused on that. And it’s it’s a bit of a risk to come over to a, to a smaller shop when you can instead be down on a nice office with a good art collection in midtown, you know.

Lee Kantor: So how do you recommend for that lawyer that says, okay, I want to be the person that brings in business? What are some do’s and don’ts? Some some advice for that person to become the rainmaker that you think that it takes in order to be successful and build out a career?

Todd Stanton: I mean, there’s lots of ways that you traditional lawyers can go about building a successful book. They can specialize, they can work for a huge firm with a good brand recognition. Um, they can they can become the go to person for a particular topic. Uh, my business development mentor, a gentleman named Steve Sunshine out of Bryan Caves California office. He preached a more authentic way or a way of authenticity in order to develop business. Um, I go about doing the things I like to do with my with people who have shared passions for me. Uh, that is, uh, that is golf and that is, uh, hiking with my dog. And when I find other people who, uh, enjoy those things, we go do those things together. Uh, and as we’re talking about things other than legal work, relationships form. And once they get to trust me in those other aspects, then the the business comes about. And I would suggest that the sooner, uh, newer attorneys can get started on that, the better. The old axiom about the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. Um, getting started developing those relationships and letting people in to see not just what kind of lawyer you are, but what kind of person you are, uh, is the key to the key to building a successful, successful book.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website?

Todd Stanton: Uh, we’re at Stanton Law LLC. Com s t a n t o n l w.com. Uh, we we specialize in making sure that we don’t turn, uh, legal or business problems into legal issues. Uh, before it’s time. Right. We try to give practical, ROI based, bottom line oriented advice and keep people out of trouble.

Lee Kantor: So what what is the problem that a firm is having right before they should be calling Stanton Law?

Todd Stanton: I’ll tell you, the the thing that we’ve been seeing a lot more recently is restrictive covenant issues both on the, the, the, uh, business that is losing an employee who has signed a restrictive covenant and going to a competitor. Uh, we see it on the competitor who’s trying to hire that employee, and we, uh, we get it from the employee who’s kind of stuck in the middle. He’s got a contract that says he can’t go somewhere, but he really needs the the career advancement. Um, and we have a pretty unique, uh, way of looking at that restrictive covenant issue from any of those, uh, legs on that three legged stool there. Um, so if you’ve got a restrictive covenant issue that’s stuck in your craw, please let us know if you’ve got some outstanding are. Tyler would love to talk to you about whether or not there’s a way to maybe get some of those dollars in the door. Um, and certainly just about any employment issue on the on under the sun, if you’ve got a 5% of your employees causing you 95% of your problems, we’d love to. We’d love to see whether or not we can. We can mitigate those for you.

Lee Kantor: Now, uh, is your work industry agnostic or do you have a sweet spot in certain industries?

Todd Stanton: I get that question a lot. Employment work in particular is industry agnostic. I mean, if you tell me what kind of employment problem you have, I can generally tell you what department they’re coming from, right. Somebody’s hands in the hot tub. That’s a that’s a sales organization. Somebody with somebody in the who’s got trouble drawing, uh, interpersonal problems. That’s probably an engineer whose lines are too straight. But no, I we’ve we’ve decided that we we are better serviced, uh, better serving our clients with a practical approach rather than focusing on one particular silo.

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

Todd Stanton: You bet. Thank you. Lee, I always appreciate the opportunity to speak with you.

Lee Kantor: All right, this Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Luciana Nunez With The Preston Associates

by

Luciana Núñez, co-author of COACHING POWER, is a partner and Head of Americas at The Preston Associates, one of the world’s premier executive coaching firms.

An accomplished executive coach and former CEO with more than 20 years of leadership experience at Fortune 500 companies, including Bayer, Danone, and Roche, she blends her strategic expertise with a passion for mentoring, serving as a board member, investor, and advisor to entrepreneurs and executives worldwide.

Connect with Luciana on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The “Emotional Leadership Flow”
  • What are the “Trilogy Questions” she describe as the secret sauce of effective coaching
  • What are the most critical first steps a company can take to embed coaching into its organizational DNA

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Luciana Nunez, who is the coauthor of the book Coaching Power and partner at the Preston Associates. Welcome.

Luciana Nunez: Julie. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to before we get too far into things. Tell us about the Preston Associates. How you serving folks there?

Luciana Nunez: We are one of the very few, if not maybe the only, coaching boutique that serves leaders all over the world from San Francisco all the way to Hong Kong. And we’ve been in the market doing leadership coaching for well over 20 years from well before coaching was a thing. So we’ve done it all, we’ve seen it all, and it’s still as exciting as it was on day one.

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

Luciana Nunez: You know, I was a corporate leader for 20 plus years and I got into coaching, to be honest with you, a little bit by accident. So just to to give you the gist of it. In one of my corporate roles, I had a big scope of 3000 people under under my management. And I had a very simple brief from my boss which was upgrade the leaders. And at that time I thought, how do you upgrade 3000 people all over the world from Indonesia to Mexico? And I concluded that it was going to be through the lens of coaching. So then I became a coach, but I thought that I would use coaching as just another toolset in in my leadership belt. And then fast forward to a few years, as I was already the CEO of a company, I decided that actually coaching was the main vehicle that I wanted for the second half of my life. So I left the corporate world. I became a full time coach and here I am maximizing the power of coaching. Now, luckily for the thousands of leaders that I get to work with. So I did. The corporate life, got into coaching, and I love being on the outside in, but still very much in the world of of business and leadership.

Lee Kantor: So how have you seen the coaching profession evolve over the years? At first it was like almost for only the highest of the high potential people, the executive leadership were the only people really getting coaching. And now it seems like it’s being democratized across corporations, where pretty much everybody is getting can get access to coaching if they need it.

Luciana Nunez: You’re absolutely right. I think at the beginning of the profession, it had two components. I would say the first reputation that that was associated with coaching, actually, was that it was a remedial thing. You got a coach if you were in trouble. Over time, it became what you were describing, which is is that perk for the C-suite guys that that are in in the track path to to becoming the CEO. But in the last, I would say, five years, that trend has really democratized. And there’s different models of coaching and different layers of an organization, from entry level coaching that is very much AI enabled, driven by systems all the way up to still the top of the house, as we call it, very much getting that that one on one coaching. So that’s one aspect of how it has changed. Exactly. To your to your point, it has been democratized and scaled up. The other way that I have seen personally coaching change a lot, especially for me as a practitioner, is through the lens of team coaching. This is something hugely beneficial to companies, and it’s relatively recent that we have seen companies really embrace team coaching 80% of the coaching I do is, in fact, team coaching, and it’s a real game changer. But it’s not that popular yet. Not every coach can be a good team coach, and not every team is willing to to really take coaching to the next level by by committing to a process of of team coaching. So those are some of the key changes that this profession is experiencing. But I can see much more in the horizon still now.

Lee Kantor: Can you share a little bit about this team coaching? Are you working with specific teams within an organization? Or is this kind of group coaching where there’s a disparate number of people with different types of skill sets that are all together for this type of coaching?

Luciana Nunez: Ooh, great question. And yes to both. So we do both types of, if you will, collective coaching. Team coaching is for a team of people that work regularly day in and day out with each other. And that’s a very specific design of coaching because you want to deepen the foundations of trust, ways of working. You’re going to work on the business of the business. It’s one of my clients calls it. So it’s a much deeper form of coaching that maintains the same group of people throughout the journey. Typically for a year or two years, I have some teams that I’ve been working with for up to even 4 or 5 years. The other kind of coaching that you describe is what we call cohort coaching or group coaching, which is cross-functional coaching people that operate at the same level. Newly promoted director from different functions that they all at the same time want to work on similar things. They want to grow their strategic thinking abilities. They want to improve their executive presence. They want to understand how to influence stakeholders at the same time. And because they have the same need to grow at the same time in the same areas, it’s actually very beneficial for them to work with each other. So you could have a guy from finance working with a guy in marketing, and they both want to improve their their influencing ability. So they’re going to be able to be coached at the same time, but then also to coach each other to be able to develop that. So it’s a slightly different flavor of a collective coaching with different designs, different objectives. But but a lot of fun to to do as well.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re working with teams, um, that are cohesive and within the organization, how does that differ than their manager?

Luciana Nunez: Mhm. Well often the manager is in the room and that’s part of what we designed for in terms of dynamics. Because all of a sudden yes, you have the manager in the room and there’s a component of hierarchy in in the conversation. But you also have to make everyone feel equally comfortable to sometimes challenge the manager, challenge the leader, put their opinion on the table and have a conversation with they’re going to hash it out and debate it. So to some extent, in in good coaching, a good coach can get that dynamic out of the way, because you also read the leader of the team to also create space for the team to show up. Because if everybody keeps deferring to the manager or the boss, you don’t shift the the power dynamic. So a capable, experienced coach learns and knows how how to both leverage the presence of the manager in the room, but also put it to the side if it’s not helpful.

Lee Kantor: Now, how does Preston associates, um, with, um, kind of coaches all over the world? How do you handle kind of the cultural differences when it comes to, um, how organizations behave and what their expectations are from, uh, workers and executives and leaders and coaches?

Luciana Nunez: That’s actually a super insightful question, because to your point, different companies have different corporate cultures, one layer of culture. Different countries have different social cultures. Um, environment? Cultures. So for us to be able to competently as a company, to competently navigate all of these layers of culture, the first thing that we do is we have coaches that are operating in that culture. Um, in a fluid way, they are they are native to that culture. They know how to navigate the cultural component of their their country, their, um, demographics, the the day to day reality of your culture. At the same time, we also have only coaches that bring a personal experience in the world of leadership, with at least 15 years of experience in different companies, in different organizations, because this makes coaches very comfortable with navigating a corporate culture, but also being able to understand, oh, this, this corporate culture is a little bit more open, a little bit more willing to take risks, a little bit less hierarchical, whereas the same coach starts to work with a different client, then that coach will very quickly realize, no, this company is much more process oriented. This company is much more risk averse. So you become a really good reader of cultures. If you’re an experienced business coach and you become a great navigator of cultures if you’re an experienced coach. So a big part of how we select for this is, again, by picking a local coach and an experienced former business leader. And the way we leverage them, a global view is that all of our coaches really work super closely with each other behind the scenes to connect the dots between, even in the same company. What’s the culture like in the US versus in France, versus in the Middle East? So we have a lot of conversation to really unpack the elements of those cultures.

Lee Kantor: So is there a Preston Associates Methodology that you expect your coaches to all adhere to? Or is it, you know, like you said, you hire somebody in Indonesia that’s a local Indonesian executive, former executive that can share their specific knowledge there, and then you’re just helping them get the gig. Is that how it works, or is there a Preston Associates way of going about this activity?

Luciana Nunez: There’s definitely a Preston Associates way of of going about it. And even internally we call it the TPA way. We call ourselves the shorthand for the Preston Associates. It’s TPA, so we call it the TPA way. So throughout the last 20 years we’ve we’ve really leveraged and created and took hundreds of frameworks through the test of time, but also through the test of different geographies. So through that process, we we know what works and what doesn’t. And we train all of our coaches to be super fluent with every single one of those, those frameworks. But then we also trust their expertise and their seniority to adapt the framework to the culture, to the client, to the situation. So we are able to do both keep, if you will, a certain quality control that we have to make sure that if you’re coached by a person coach in the US versus in the Netherlands or in Singapore, you’re going to get the same quality of coaching, you’re going to get many of the same frameworks of coaching, but you’re also going to get the coach to adapt to your environment, to your system, to your surroundings. So that’s one way we we guarantee, if you will, that quality of delivery, the second way that all of our coaches operate is through the lens of what we call the process. We coach a person doing a role within a system, and we prepare every coach to be equally fluent in all three levels of of this reality. Because regardless of where you are in the world, you will always be a person doing a role within a system. Does that resonate?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, absolutely. Now talk about the book coaching power. Was is this kind of the methodology? Is that the reason the book is here?

Luciana Nunez: Yes, the methodology is the how of the book, but if you will, the why of the book was a little bit, you know, rocked by the big shifts that we see in the world of leadership in the last 2 to 3 years, where we have realized that the old command and control model of leadership is broken. If if you think of the the old school leader that had all the answers, that gave the direction that was there to be the expert. That model is no longer valid. The world is moving too fast. The new generation’s Gen Z’s millennials. They don’t want to be bossed around. They want to be coached. In a world where you can Google anything or ChatGPT anything, having all the answers is no longer differentiable. So we truly believe that coaching is the ultimate leadership skill for the future. And the book, to your question, is all about the how. How can I live with a coaching style? How can I build the fundamentals of coaching to learn to coach my team, my people in one on one? In a team setting? Asking good questions is a big part of the art of coaching the right active listening, the right ability to have an empowerment conversation. So. So if the why of the book is to make leaders comfortable leading with a coaching style, the book is all about how.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re saying the why about coaching is kind of at the heart of this. And then you’re going to give that the how to do it, the nuts and bolts of how to do it. But it’s a mindset shift, right? You’re asking the person to kind of change their way of thinking, to say, okay, let’s take more of the mindset of a coach rather than this, um, you know, kind of ivory tower methodology that might have been successful, you know, a generation or two ago. Is that a difficult, um, ask for the, the leader or, you know, this is something that maybe they hadn’t grown up with, that this is kind of news to them. Is is it a challenge to kind of open their mind to this way of thinking?

Luciana Nunez: I think it’s that.

Luciana Nunez: Challenging at this stage, because what I have found with the clients that I work with is that they get it intuitively. They realize that the way they have been leading, if they’ve been, you know, in in the world of business for 20, 30 years, they have first themselves understood that the old way of leadership that they used to be very comfortable with ten, 20 years ago is no longer giving them the same results. The world is now a place where people work remotely. There’s hybrid leadership. So for them to be able to give directions and tell people what to do and expect that that’s enough, they know it’s not enough. So I think they’ve all first hand experience that, that that model is no longer working. And then intuitively, they start to realize that when they change gears to go from like you describe the leadership mindset more into a coaching mindset, they start to see, you know, intuitive results. They start to see how people engage differently, respond differently, take more, more ownership, find their own way to their solutions versus expecting them to solve it for them or to give them the answer. So when people intuitively try coaching skills, they see that it’s a better way. What I do think they sometimes struggle with is, okay, so how do I do that more consistently? How do I do that more regularly? And how do I how do I do that more effortlessly so that it starts to become second nature? And that was really the premise of the book, is to help people practice those skills on a small scale, first in ways that feel very practical, very simple, very approachable, because we realize that there was nothing like it when we started to write the book and we did a bit of research, nothing was fully focused on helping leaders lead with a coaching style, so that really inspired us to make it to your point, applicable to both help create that mindset shift, but then also help create that up skill in terms of how they embrace it.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there anything you’ve learned over the years to help that person that might be struggling. To become more vulnerable. To become less controlling and more trusting. Um, these are some of the qualities that it takes to be a good coach. And it’s something that a lot of people have a difficult time with. You know, a lot of people’s ego is such that it’s hard to, uh, you know, give up some control and to trust that other people are going to, you know, end up where I’d like them to go.

Luciana Nunez: Yeah.

Luciana Nunez: You know, I, I can relate to what you’re describing because we have seen as coaches that leader that came, you know, very confident, confident, very, very assertive. And even those leaders, at some point in time start to realize that it’s no longer working for them. Sometimes that realization happens in in their business life. Sometimes it can happen in their personal life. I can tell you that with some of my clients. The big aha moment happened when they started to look at how were they showing up, even in their families as parents. They realized that, you know, at some point when your kids started to grow up, if you if you were trying to control what they do and how they, they do it, it’s just not going to fly. So in working very closely with clients, we get to see what’s under the hood and we get to understand their their motivation. So sometimes if someone is, to your point, a bit resistant to make that mindset shift in the world of business, because they were very used to the results that they were getting from that style. The unlock is to actually help them see the power of leading with a coaching style in their family or in their social ecosystem, because then they start to see, oh, people respond to me very differently when instead of telling them what to do, I start to be curious. I start to ask questions. I start to engage. We start to have a thinking partnership, a conversation among peers. And that makes people, to your point, start to trust, to open up, to become more vulnerable. And sometimes for some people, it’s easier to practice those things in their personal life. And then when they bring it to the world of business, boom. Game changer.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned the remote office, uh, you know, remote remote working and things like that. And it seems that, uh, especially during the pandemic, obviously there was a big shift towards that by necessity, but it seems like there’s more than a few companies that are just trying to go back in time and to pretend that that didn’t happen and that making people return to office or these people just laggards and that that they’re not going to kind of buy into this type of thing. Or is that the trend that’s going to overwhelm the people that are trying to be more open to this level of flexibility and this kind of kind of coaching thinking.

Luciana Nunez: You know, we’ve we’ve seen.

Luciana Nunez: Everything in the spectrum. The beauty of working in, in a very global business and with very different sizes of companies from very mature and very conservative to younger startups that by, by, you know, almost design were born remote. We’ve seen all of the different variations from, you know, the all remote, all virtual, all distributed, all the way back to hardcore, everyone back in the office, everyone back 9 to 5. We’ve seen the different degrees of of this shift. And what we have concluded is that the world of the future is going to be in the middle. There’s going to be a degree of flexibility that allows people to have some time in the office and some time working from home. But what we’ve also seen is that the more intentional you make the design of every situation to the objectives. The more you engage people. So for example, instead of mandating people to be back at the office Tuesday to Thursday, 9 to 5, make it around those meetings where there’s going to be co-creation, there’s going to be creativity, there’s going to be problem solving, but there’s a clear added value for that magic that does happen when you are face to face, when you are in an in-person environment where you’re shooting the breeze to try and come up with a new idea, but build the situation and the and the location around the business objective and not the other way around.

Luciana Nunez: And then if you need the same people to have heads down time, planning time, time to process, to think, to read, to, you know, be strategic, that’s a good time to actually do it in the quiet of your house or even in a different location. Some people might actually sometimes be outside of their regular office, and they might book a co-working space or a different place where they can engage their reflective gears or even, um, creative gears into a different mode of work. So, so designing the moment and the environment to the business objective is what we think is going to be the biggest trend of the future. The companies that get that right are going to be the difference between the best and the rest.

Lee Kantor: So now, uh, can you share a little bit about what that ideal client for Preston Associates looks like? Is there like you mentioned, all different, uh, size and stage companies? Is there a sweet spot for your firm?

Luciana Nunez: Um.

Luciana Nunez: To some extent, I think I think we we add the most value in instances where there’s either a big strategic challenge or where aware, there is something that needs to shift in terms of how things work today are not going to be the same thing as how things will work tomorrow. So if you’re in very, very early stages, if you’re still very much in the doing mode, building a product, testing your hypothesis, coaching any kind of coaching. But coaching in general is not going to be necessarily that helpful for you, because you’re not yet thinking about the leadership aspect of things. So we add the most value when there is already a strategy in place, when there’s already a team in place, when you already are going from where you are to where you want to be. That’s our sweet spot. And we do a lot of work with finance, with fast moving consumer goods companies, in the pharmaceutical space, in the industry of energy as well. So companies that have, by definition, complex challenges in their hands. We’ve done a lot of work in the in the education and technology intersection because this is very much booming and in in in the face of transformation. Another sweet spot that we find we really add a lot of value is when teams have dysfunctions. This this happens a lot, especially in this context of remote leadership and strategies that need to change a lot in a short period of time. That’s when we help bring clarity back to the table. We help rebuild the foundations of trust of a team, and we help get that team back into different routines and norms. To go back into that high performing team stages that that we know is one of the drivers of of performance.

Lee Kantor: And who is the ideal reader of the Coaching power book?

Luciana Nunez: Well, we were very.

Luciana Nunez: Inspired by that leader that wants to lead with a coaching style, the leader that has a team or even a leader that needs to influence peers in a cross-functional setting. So if if you have realized that the old command and control is not giving you the results that that it used to, and you want to learn to live with that coaching style. This book should be on your bedside table, because we’ve also written it so that it’s very easy to navigate. You can zoom in the chapter that feels most relevant to you. So if you really want to understand the foundation of one on one coaching, zoom in that if you want to go into what does it mean to do team coaching, zoom in that so so the leader that wants to bring and build those coaching skills is the leader that I think is going to truly, hopefully enjoy the book. We’ve given a lot of heart to the writing process, a lot of soul to the to the process, and we can’t wait to put it out there in the world and and get the readers to tell us what they think.

Lee Kantor: And, um, what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more coaches? You need more clients?

Luciana Nunez: Well, we.

Luciana Nunez: Are very happy with the cadre of coaches that we have at the moment. So thank you. First of all, for for asking that we look, at the end of the day, you become a coach because you want to maximize your impact. You want to be able to help more people. Nobody became a coach to to get rich fast. We are in the business of helping people. So yes, we are always wanting to help more leaders, help more companies perform, engage, do what they do better and and also do it with with more enjoyment and and more, more passion. So if you think that your team has more fuel left in the tank and you want to take it to the next level, let’s let’s definitely work, work together and explore what we can do.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, either about the book or about the Preston Associates, what is the website? What is the best way to connect?

Luciana Nunez: You can go to the Preston Associates. Com and then you’re going to have the bios of all of our coaches, the different methodologies of coaching that we had the different offices that we have in the world from the Silicon Valley, Bay area all the way to Hong Kong. I think everything you can read about is on that website. And then you also have emails to reach out to me personally and start a conversation. We’re big believers in people connecting in, in, in a real life environment. So I welcome anyone reaching out also on, on LinkedIn. My name is Luciano Nunez. I’m based in New York. Find me on LinkedIn and let’s get the conversation going.

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

Luciana Nunez: Thank you. Lee. It was my pleasure.

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

Omar Qureshi CIMA®, CPWA With Hightower Wealth Advisors | St. Louis

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Omar Qureshi, CIMA®, CPWA®, is the managing partner of Hightower Wealth Advisors | St. Louis. His life-long love for computers eventually led him to where he is today—using technology, modeling, and his innate ability to problem solve as the lead investment strategist with the organization.

Having started his career as a computer repairman and IT specialist at Rogers & Company, Qureshi worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming partner and co-owner of the company before merging with Archer Wealth Management in 2017 to form Hightower Wealth Advisors | St. Louis.
Qureshi oversees the practice’s investment philosophy and strategies, and has a profound understanding of proper portfolio construction and asset allocation to match an investor’s goals and needs. With an analytical mindset, he has a rare ability to understand numbers and implement complex systems and technologies to deliver sophisticated strategies.

He holds various securities registrations, including the Series 4 registered Options Principal, and has earned one of the most rigorous designations in the securities industry, the Certified Investment Management Analyst® (CIMA®) designation. The CIMA® program, conducted through the Wharton School of Business, is a comprehensive study and examination of advanced portfolio management concepts and processes. Qureshi was an also member of the first class to receive his Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA) designation. The CPWA is an advanced designation through the University of Chicago’s Booth Graduate School of Business.

Qureshi currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Villa Duchesne & Oak Hill School, Chair of the Investment Committee, and Chair of the Head of School Search Committee, as well as serving on the Board of the Clayton Chamber of Commerce. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems and a minor in Economics.

Follow Hightower Wealth Advisors | St. Louis on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Investment strategies, portfolio construction and asset allocation
  • Holistic financial planning
  • Financial technology
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • INDUSTRY: Practice management & team dynamics
  • INDUSTRY: Tips and benefits to recruiting young talent

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Saint Louis, Missouri. It’s time for Saint Louis Business radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Saint Louis Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Omar Qureshi. He is the managing partner and investment strategist with Hightower Wealth Advisors, Saint Louis. Welcome.

Omar Qureshi: Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me on the show. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Hightower. How are you serving, folks?

Omar Qureshi: Yeah. So at Hightower, put most simply, you know, we really help clients simplify the complexities of wealth. So I often tell people that, you know, if you don’t have any money, you always think that having money would make your life a lot easier. And in reality, the opposite is true that the more more wealth you accumulate, the more challenges and the more things that you have to deal with. And that’s where we come in to basically help our clients who are high net worth or ultra high net worth clients. So that means, you know, net worths of 5 million plus help, you know, navigate through all those complexities of wealth.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey? How you got here?

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, yeah. Love, love to share this. You know, I’m going to go all the way back to the early 1980s. I was given a mac two computer by my parents for Christmas, and that started me on a love affair of technology, and it was just something that always interested me. I have a very active mind. I get bored easily. And so technology was one of those things that, you know, you can hardly get bored or you can hardly master. And you know, when you fast forward into the 1990s, of course, it was the first of the internet revolution and the internet boom and the dotcom, you know, boom and bust. And, you know, a lot of the companies that were making a lot of money in the stock market, I was very familiar with from my kind of tech interests. So I started trading stocks, actually, in my dad’s pension account. We did it together, and I read the Wall Street Journal, and that’s when I sort of discovered the stock market. And, you know, yet another thing that kind of changes every day and you can never really master. So I’ve always had kind of a finger in both pots, but when I graduated from college, I was, believe it or not, fixing computers for a company on the weekends, really for for kind of beer money. It happened to be a financial services firm, and at the end of the summer, when I’d done all my computer related projects, they kind of knew I wanted to get into the financial side of the world, and they offered me a job. And so that company is actually one of the predecessor companies of Hightower. So I’ve been there 25 years. So short version is I started by fixing computers on the weekend at this company, and now I’m the managing partner.

Lee Kantor: So that’s the modern version of the mailroom is the. Yeah.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, exactly. I guess so, I guess so.

Lee Kantor: So, um, your clients you mentioned are high net worth. Are they coming to you? Um, because they’ve tried to do this on their own, and then now they’re like, hey, this is getting too complicated, or I’m missing things. I need an expert. Or are they coming to you from maybe another wealth advisor who is just maybe not as attentive?

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, I think it’s a mixture of both. You know, I think and by the way, this answer is going to be different based on the different generations. So, you know, the meat of our clientele are boomers, and boomers generally tend to be delegators. So, you know, they’re happy to basically pay somebody like us to help manage their financial affairs. That’s that’s not as true for the younger generations who want a much more active part. But I think what I found true across all generations is when you get enough money, when you accumulate enough money, you start to realize, man, this is this is serious. And I can’t screw this up because there’s a lot at stake. And I think that’s where people reach out for help. Or, you know, they can do the basic stuff on their own. But when it gets to taxes or estate planning or more complicated investment strategies or corporate benefits, they think, you know, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I don’t have the time to learn to deal with this. And you know, and that’s where we see a lot of demand. Um, we do, you know, we do pick up new clients from from other advisors. Um, you know, in the Saint Louis market in particular, it’s an incredibly fragmented market. So there’s tons and tons and tons of people who call themselves some version of me. Right? Um, but there’s a lot of, uh, divergence in terms of what services they’re actually providing people. So I think the end consumer has a hard time differentiating how these firms might be different and might support their needs better or worse than others. Um, and so, you know, oftentimes we see people who’ve had bad experiences or they just feel like they’re not getting the attention or the services or the depth of knowledge for their particular situations. And that’s when they look to, uh, to make a move.

Lee Kantor: Now, you know, when there’s a bull market, everybody’s system works or seems to work. It’s just a matter of degree. When it gets a little more chaotic and a little more volatile. Um, that’s where I think a professional comes in handy. Um, what advice would you give maybe that person who’s on their own right now and everything seems it looks like they’ve got everything figured out, but as volatility and chaos ensues, possibly, uh, you know, things might change. Is there any advice you would give someone who doesn’t have a wealth advisor right now? You know, maybe some of the trade offs that they’re not maybe taking into account.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, yeah. No, I love this question. I think it’s a very timely question with the amount of uncertainty that we’re currently facing as a country. Uh, which, by the way, is manifesting itself in the markets and generally not in a good way. Um, to your point, you know, markets have been very, very Be positive. Over the last handful of years, they’ve actually returned, you know, roughly two and a half times the average return for the last two years, which is to say, people have made a lot of money. Um, and you know what? What I’ve personally seen across not our clients, but but, you know, maybe new clients and even folks outside is that they’re taking on a considerable amount of risk, and they may have outearned the market that two and a half times return because they’re just taking so much additional risk. And it makes you look brilliant when it’s happening and things are going your way. The problem is, as you said, when things are going down, that level of risk has an equal impact, but this time to the downside. So the first thing I said. And I think a lot of this started, you know, during Covid where people more so than ever started viewing things like the stock market as sort of like a hobby as a casino.

Omar Qureshi: So we’re seeing people, you know, whether it’s cryptocurrencies, whether it’s, you know, options, strategies and a subset of that called zero days to expiration, zero RT options, leveraged funds, which are, you know, goosing up the returns. There’s a there’s a ton of people using all of this stuff, and I fear that they don’t really understand what’s going to happen when things go the other way. So my my advice to anybody today, um, is, you know, know your risk, know what you own, figure out what you can afford to lose and rightsize your holdings to to match that. Because I think we’re in for a period of time where there’s, you know, a shakeup of sort of the global world order that we’ve known for 40 years. That’s all happening very fast. Uh, you know, obviously that coming out of Washington today, for sure. Um, and, and that always puts, you know, markets at risk. So I think it’s a great time. If you have gains, know what you own, know what the risk is rightsize those things before it’s too late.

Lee Kantor: Now do you see any impact on the prevalence of gambling in in sports and where it just they’re, they’re making it seem like this is almost like an investment strategy and you’re bombarded with opportunities to literally in real time make bets. Is that does that positively or impact your industry in the wealth industry, especially with young people.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah. So so I haven’t I haven’t seen a huge impact directly of that. But but where I think there’s certainly parallels is that mindset, that mindset of oh I’ll, you know, put some money down and I may get paid 5 to 1 or 10 to 1 if it hits. People are treating the stock market that way also. Um, and that’s where I think you get into trouble. Um, you know, sports gambling has obviously become very popular as states look to collect more tax revenue, right? Ultimately, that’s why a lot of this stuff gets approved. And, you know, it’s just like Vegas. Uh, if you think you have better odds than the house, you know, think again because you don’t. Uh, the house is always going to win. Um, that’s I would make that same statement. If you’re treating the stock market as a gambling venture rather than an investing game investing approach. You know, for participating in sort of the longer term fortunes of good companies, you know, in the market.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I just I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of young people and they just spend so much time and energy in their mind that they’re they think they’re, you know, planning for their future by, you know, studying, you know, football lineups. And they could be taking that same money and just using the power of compounding that is going to have a better chance of success. Um, it just I just think the younger people especially are equating what that is and what you do as similar. And I don’t think they’re similar at all.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah. I think, you know, to your to your point, I totally agree. And I think, um, they’re viewing the stock market though like the casino as well, that. Oh, I can just make these big bets get paid off and I’m going to get rich this way. So that’s the commonality is there’s this notion amongst younger folks that they can make these insane bets and make huge upside and somehow become rich from that, where that that is not going to work. You know, maybe a handful of people are lucky enough where that works, and then there’s going to be millions of people where that doesn’t work versus the tried and true method. To your point of saving regularly, investing in a good portfolio, letting the markets do its thing, compounding wealth over time. Um, that’s a much higher probability to create wealth. And when, by the way, you look across all of our clients at Hightower, um, that’s how they all made their money. Uh, they didn’t gamble their way to good fortune. Um, they worked hard. They started businesses. They saved a lot. They invested wisely. And that’s that’s why they’re in the positions that they are today.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s talk a little bit about kind of maybe the mindset of your clients as they go through the different stages of their life. You know, when they’re younger, you know, obviously they’re trying to accumulate wealth. So they’re investing regularly, like you said. But when they get to be of a certain age there, there comes a period where they have to accumulate. And that might be challenging for some people who spent their whole life saving. And all of a sudden they’re like, well, I don’t have money formally coming in anymore. And now I’m taking this out. How do I come up with a good, you know, accumulation plan that feels safe and comfortable and will, you know, keep me, uh, having money throughout my entire life because I don’t know when it’s going to end. There’s a lot of unknowns when you get older and you’re in the accumulation phase.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, yeah, it’s a good question. And I’ll approach this from, from a couple of different aspects. I want to start with, you know, kind of client psychology first, as that has a huge impact on clients in these different phases. And so, you know, the question I ask, you know, new folks who come into our office to learn about what we do, I always ask them the question of, you know, tell me about your experience with money, uh, before you were 16 years old. You know, tell me about your family. Did you have money? Did you not have money? Did your parents resent people who had money? Did you not have a lot, but, you know, acted like you had plenty. You know, tell me all of those kinds of stories about your childhood. And I’ve heard everything from people’s, you know, father going to jail and, you know, all sorts of stories that come out of that. The reason why I asked that is because your relationship with money is imprinted in your brain by the time you’re 16, and so all of the, you know, coping mechanisms or habits or feelings about money or relationships with money, those are all determined by those formative years. Okay. And so as you as you think about, you know, somebody who’s retiring, for example, and needs to switch from taking, you know, for adding money to the portfolio to taking money out of the portfolio.

Omar Qureshi: Well, imagine if their childhood, they didn’t have any money, their parents just scraped by, saved every nickel, didn’t waste a dime on anything, you know, were completely frugal. Well, imagine what happens to that person when they’re at retirement. It it is like it’s worse than pulling teeth to get them to take money out of their portfolios to live. Because they are not wired to do that. And so it’s part of what we do, one, to elucidate these kind of thoughts around money and bring them out, because a lot of people don’t think about this stuff. Uh, you know, more often than not, but then also help them kind of cope with this fact of this is why you accumulated all this money was to retire and eventually, you know, take, take money out. So, um, it’s a very emotional time for clients in that retirement phase, right? They they sort of question who they are. A lot of their friends typically are coworkers that you don’t really hang out with those coworkers after retirement anymore, and you don’t have something to fill your day anymore, right? Of going to the office or whatever. Um, so so it’s a big change and money is obviously a big a big part of that.

Omar Qureshi: Um, and so what we do is try and help clients, you know, through those phases. A lot of it is, um, you know, planning way ahead of time. Um, so, so when you mentioned kind of accumulation versus accumulation, we we map that out and we constantly are planning and incorporating new facts and figures and goals into that client’s plan and then presenting them to say, hey, you’re on track for this or you’re going to, you know, you have a great, great probability of this all working out exactly as you want to. So reassuring them along the way. Um, is very important and I would say a good advisor in our industry. Um, you know, even though we’re known for investing people’s money as sort of the primary thing we do. The best people in this industry are going to be the ones who insist on planning first, and then figuring out the investments in the context of that plan. I would I would tell people, if you’re if you’re quote unquote advisor is just talking about investments, and that’s the only conversation you have, you’re missing out on a much richer picture of of planning for your future and taking advantage of a lot of strategies.

Lee Kantor: Now, why don’t you share a little bit about what it’s like working with your firm? Um, when a person, you know, raises their hand and says, Omar, I’m ready. Um, can you talk about what it’s like when you onboard them and what the regular kind of rhythm of your conversations are with your clients? So, so the listener can get an idea of what it’s like. Um, you know, to be working with your team.

Omar Qureshi: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I’ll mention, first and foremost, uh, we are a very high touch service, uh, firm. Um, you know, we want our clients to be welcomed and taken care of in every single way we possibly can. Um, you know, even down to the phone, we don’t have phone trees. You don’t have to dial one for an operator. We just answer the phone. We want people to appreciate working with us and and feel like they’re really, uh, a part of our family and vice versa. And that they’re very well taken care of. And and by the way, our clients are high net worth clients. And so they, they expect that that high touch service as well to a large degree. So, you know, the interactions with a new client will always start with us getting to know you as a person and then getting to know you on paper. Um, you know, and that’s a little bit of an x ray, a little bit like a doctor’s office when you have to fill out way too much stuff. We ask for a lot of information up front, um, so that we really have a full picture of your situation. So things like taxes and insurance documents and, you know, wills or trusts and investments and corporate benefits and, you know, all of the various things that you might have. Um, and we’re going to sift through all of that, and we’re going to put together a presentation where, uh, at no cost, we kind of give you a high level thoughts of their situation. And here’s what we see.

Omar Qureshi: That’s good. Here’s some deficiencies. Here are some things we might recommend. We’re going to tell them essentially a roadmap of what we might do for them if they choose to work with us. And again we do that at no cost. Um, up front. Then they get to decide, hey, is this going to bring value to my situation? Um, is this firm going to help me achieve my goals? Um, and then if they sort of, you know, decide to move forward from that and become a client, then we moved into the implementation implementation phase. Um, you know, where we’re going to start doing the recommendations, get more specific, more detail oriented around a lot of the different things. Um, you know, and that, that honestly that that phase could, depending on a client’s complexity, could take up to a year, right, to, to to get everything in tip top shape. Um, and then we moved to an ongoing cadence of reviews and education, uh, with the client to make sure that they’re on track. You know, if the markets have changed or tax laws have changed, or if something in their lives have changed, we obviously want to know about that. Um, and again, that education piece is making sure that they’re up to speed about all of the things happening in the world that might impact them. We also do things like family meetings. So you mentioned, you know, getting into the decumulation phase and then eventually getting older. You know, what we find is that after a certain number of years after retirement and the client becomes kind of comfortable being in that retirement phase, they kind of, you know, graduate to this next phase, which I’d call legacy.

Omar Qureshi: And that’s basically asking them, you know, or themselves asking the question, what what’s going to happen to my wealth when I’m gone? Who’s it going to go to? Who’s going to be in charge of it? Am I going to leave any money to charities? What are the restrictions in place? And they have this legacy mindset to want to really focus on on all of those types of issues. What I will say. That’s true of the boomer generation. That’s not at all true, say, of the Silent generation is boomers don’t want to be a burden to their children, whereas the Silent generation, you know, went out of their way to make sure they didn’t tell their kids anything about anything. And it was sort of like, figure it out after I pass away. Boomers generally don’t want to do that. They want to have everything buttoned up. And even when they’re gone from this earth, everything is in good order and it’s easy for their kids to handle. So we do family meetings, for example, where we’ll bring in their children and we’ll educate the family about the parents situation. What do they need to know? Who do they need to call? How are things set up? What’s the intent? What’s the sort of value system of the parents that they want to, you know, pass along as well. Um, so that’s that’s kind of the end part of that, that cycle.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or the team, what is the best way to connect with the website?

Omar Qureshi: Yeah, our website is just ww dot Hightower s t l.com. Um, or they can email me directly. I’m just Omar at Hightower stl.com.

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

Omar Qureshi: Yeah. Thanks, Lee. Thanks for the opportunity to be on the show today.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Saint Louis Business Radio.

Katie Wagner With KWSM: a digital marketing agency

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Katie Wagner spent 15 years as a television and radio journalist, working for news outlets all over the world, including ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN & National Public Radio. Today, she owns a full-service digital marketing agency made up of brand journalists. KWSM specializes in lead generation with services including websites & SEO, content creation, videography and digital advertising.

Katie lives in San Diego, CA with her husband and their 5 rescue dogs.

Connect with Katie on LinkedIn and follow KWSM on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How lead generation has changed in the 15 years she have been in business
  • What Nearbound Lead Generation is and why it’s important
  • The biggest mistake business owners make when approaching digital marketing

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: 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, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Katie Wagner. She’s the CEO with KWSM. A digital marketing agency. Welcome.

Katie Wagner: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn about your firm. Tell us about KWSM. How you serving, folks?

Katie Wagner: Sure. So KWSM is a full service digital marketing agency, but we specialize in lead generation, so that means all of our clients need to scale or grow, and they’re looking to generate more leads and sales online. And then sometimes that’s sort of outside the box lead generation applications like recruiting because hiring recruiting is lead generation just aimed at candidates instead of clients. So we can also help with things like that.

Lee Kantor: So do you mind sharing a little bit about your journey? How’d you get into this line of work?

Katie Wagner: Sure. Happy to. So I was a television anchor for 15 years, actually, before I started the agency. And in the last few years of my TV career, nobody was going home to watch the 5:00 news because they get headlines on Facebook and Twitter and see videos on YouTube. And so the powers that be at my station said, get out there and learn how to use these channels and get our audience back. And the more I learned about digital, this is back in the early 2000 when when Facebook was just coming out and these channels were being popular. The more I learned, the more I realized that we weren’t going to get our audience back, that people liked the immediacy of digital, and that’s how they wanted to get information. And so I retired from TV and opened the agency in 2010 with the goal of helping business owners tell their story and learn how to use and harness these new channels.

Lee Kantor: So was that a difficult transition to go from being on air to being kind of behind the scenes, helping other people?

Katie Wagner: No, not at all. Not at all. So I say that my favorite part of not being on TV anymore is that I don’t have to wear makeup to the grocery store, so it’s nice to be a little more incognito. But also, Lee, it’s the same job. I mean, we tell stories for a living, and these days we just tell them from a certain perspective rather than sort of neutrally. And for that reason we call ourselves a brand journalists. But it’s the same. It’s the same skill set. We’re asking questions. We’re trying to uncover the stories behind the work they do every day, and what’s appealing to their audience, and then help them position that in a way that captures attention and drives action.

Lee Kantor: What are some of the misconceptions when it comes to lead generation? Because the word is kind of bandied about very liberally and I get bombarded. I’m sure you do. And I’m sure most business owners do with just spam in their LinkedIn about their. Here’s a new magic lead generation system that will do this while you sleep.

Katie Wagner: Yes, that happens frequently and there is no magic bullet, so we should all proceed with caution with those emails and messages. But I think one of the problems is that lead generation can mean a lot of different things. So sometimes it means cold outreach or appointment setting. Sometimes it means inbound marketing with blogging and SEO, and there are a lot of different ways to generate leads online. And I think how we generate leads has changed quite a bit over the years. But at Wzzm we do. Lead generation. By positioning our clients as thought leaders and as experts in their space, and we really try to position them as best in class companies. And by leading with that expertise and that thought leadership, we can generate leads through people that are searching and want to work with best in class companies. So our leads are mostly inbound, right? They come through the internet to the website, but these days it’s harder to rely only on one lead generation tactic. And so we often combine those strategies with some outbound, which is cold outreach, sometimes through email or ads, and then near bound, which is strategic partnerships, um, you know, leveraging partnerships and relationships to reach new audiences that way. So really, everything we do is about positioning our clients as experts and as as credible partners for their clients.

Lee Kantor: What are some examples of Near Bound?

Katie Wagner: Well, this is an example the podcast you and I are doing because, um, you know, at the end of the day, you’re going to interview me and then I’m going to take this content and I’m going to share it with my audience, and you’re going to share it with your audience. And what we are doing is exposing our constituents to each other. And so often for our clients, it can be as easy as doing a webinar with a strategic partner or co-creating blog content or social media content, something like that, where you’re each sharing with your respective populations and then you’re exposing the other to your audience. But what happens is, because my audience trusts me and is used to consuming my content, that is sort of a transfer of trust that happens with anybody that I bring into that content. And so it essentially delivers warmer leads for the other person. So for our clients, we’re constantly thinking about who are the strategic partners, who are the adjacent types of businesses that we could couple with to create content and to add more value. And we’re brokering and leveraging those relationships for them.

Lee Kantor: Is that kind of an area where maybe a lot of business owners don’t think about that as a, as an avenue to kind of grow their network and grow their business, that they’re not looking for those collaborative, complementary partnerships.

Katie Wagner: Absolutely. And even the word near bound is very, very new. Not a lot of people are talking about it. But, you know, it’s it’s a concept that we’ve all known about forever. You know, how many of us have gone to networking meetings or tried to, you know, cultivate referral partners? Um, people like people. We connect with people. Um, I think the reason Near Bound is coming to the forefront is that, candidly, trust in the internet is declining, right? There’s a lot of misinformation out there. There’s a lot of AI generated content that may or may not be fully accurate. And people know that where ten years ago, 15 years ago, when I started the company, they could Google, they could get an answer that was reliable and they can make decisions that way. These days, there’s a lot more distrust around that. And so it’s a lot harder to generate leads strictly online. And so I think there’s there’s been this mind shift where, you know, when we can’t find something trustworthy online, what do we do? We ask other people, you know, I need a mechanic. Do you know somebody I need a lawyer. Do you know somebody? And we trust what other people tell us. And so Near Bound is actually just the latest iteration of how we leverage that trust and, and systemize it for our clients. But I don’t think many people think about it, and I don’t think many businesses have a formal plan around how they’re going to leverage those relationships. And if if they did do that, it would exponentially increase the amount of leads they could drive for their businesses.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, early on, you mentioned how you when you started, there was kind of a different landscape when it came to come, came to lead generation. And as the technology has evolved and the media has grown less and less trustworthy, and people have had to alter their tactics, obviously we’re talking a lot about this near bound as a tactic. Um, have you is it difficult to when you’re communicating with your clients because a lot of them obviously aren’t as attuned to the trends and the and kind of the, the landscape change that you’ve experienced because you do this 24 over seven. Is that a kind of an eye opening, difficult conversation where they’re kind of begrudgingly going along with these new tactics as opposed to look back in the day, you know, we ran commercials or we did pay per click ads or some of those things that, you know, like you said earlier, used to be effective but are losing a lot of their effectiveness.

Katie Wagner: Yeah, it’s it’s a new conversation, right? It’s conversations they haven’t had in relation to marketing in the past. But I don’t think it’s difficult because most people are experiencing what you and I are experiencing. We’re flooded with outreach online. We’re seeing a lot of stuff on the internet that’s just not very valuable. And so most people, when you explain that that landscape makes it harder to generate business, they’ve already been feeling that and seeing that. So it tends to resonate. I think the part that’s new is most business owners don’t know what to do about it. Right? What are my choices? We’ve been taught for so many years that you just continue to do the marketing, and this should help grow your business. And there hasn’t been a lot of exposure to new ways to look at that. So I think once we explain it to our clients, they do get it. And it does resonate. And it doesn’t take very long to show them the value. Right. If we can just create a webinar or have them guest on a couple of podcasts, or create a survey or a blog or a study together with somebody else, they sort of see the power of amplifying that promotion through the partner. And so it’s it’s a tactic we can prove pretty quickly. Um, but sure, it takes a little bit of of openness to new ideas and thinking outside the way we’ve sort of always done things. And we’re we’re lucky activism because we are first and foremost trusted advisors to our clients. And, you know, our our goals are aligned. We need to help them grow or else they don’t have to continue to work with us. And so I think there’s a lot of trust in our relationships that way, that most clients will will give us a shot and hear us out at least.

Lee Kantor: Right. So they’re open to the conversation. But I don’t know. I just feel like we’re there so much misinformation about how there’s all these leads that are just kind of waiting for you, and all you have to do is do whatever this magic thing is, and then they’re going to be kind of flooding to your door. And in this new world, that sounds like and I’m a proponent of this. Well, and this is a personal challenge for us as to, to explain this in a way that they believe that this is a better way to do things, is that it’s kind of a longer play in that you got to nurture relationships and you have to build relationships, and there’s no kind of magic unlocking of hundreds of people just can’t wait to hear and learn from you. Like you got to kind of grind and earn them one at a time.

Katie Wagner: Yeah, no, you’re exactly right. There is no magic bullet, and lead generation in general is not a fast process. It is a long term strategy. But I think it helps to think about sort of what I’m going to call active prospects versus passive prospects. So active leads or active prospects are people that are out there searching for the thing that you do, right. They know they have a need. They want to find somebody to help them. They’re searching for your product or service, and those are the leads you can capture with things like SEO and blog posts and a great website and maybe even ads placed in the right place. But there is a lot of competition for those leads, those people that are showing intent to purchase already. And so it becomes a game of can you get in front of them first? Can you stand out against the competition sometimes? Do you have the budget to compete in a crowded landscape and that, as it gets more crowded, is getting more and more and more difficult? So what tactics like Near Bound capitalize on are the more passive prospects, the people that may not know they have a need, but if they hear your content and resonate with with it, it plants a seed. It gets them familiar. They start to build a relationship with you, and it may mean that they need to read 3 or 4 blogs, or watch a couple of webinars, or hear 5 or 6 episodes of your podcast. But it’s that connection and that emotional tie that you’re trying to build that builds trust, and that can lead them to explore your services, even if they weren’t actively looking.

Katie Wagner: I would tell you, those are much warmer leads for you because they’ve chosen, after consuming your content to start the conversation, rather than the the people that are out there searching that are probably going to talk to 5 or 6 companies and you’re you’re literally trying to sell against those companies in Near Bound, you’re building a relationship that leads to a business conversation. So yes, it takes a lot longer, but also it’s a lot stickier and a lot warmer when you’re having those conversations. And it’s easier to close business. And and I sort of liken it to when we all go out and go to networking events. Very rarely do you meet somebody at a networking, you know, happy hour and they hire you the next day. But maybe you stay in touch and decide to go to coffee with them. Or maybe you exchange some emails or talk about your business a couple times, and then a few weeks or months down the road. They say, you know, I want to talk about what you do. Maybe you could help me that know like and trust factor that you’re building then leads to business that is no different than what has to happen online these days. Because that quick find me and sell to me immediately. That’s getting too hard and too crowded in this environment. It’s not a reliable lead generation strategy anymore.

Lee Kantor: So who is the ideal customer for your services?

Katie Wagner: We usually work with, um, usually low lower middle market businesses, maybe 1 million to 50 million, something like that. And we’re industry agnostic. We work both B2B and B2C, but there’s four different buckets we’ve worked in quite a lot over our 15 years. One is professional services. So law firms, CPAs, wealth managers, those sorts of things. One is manufacturers and distributors, companies that make something. We work a lot with nonprofits and local governments, city and county governments to help communicate with their constituents. And then the last one is direct to consumer, which sometimes is consumer products, but not often. Often it is things like banks and gyms and businesses that serve consumers but don’t have a tangible product. They’re more service related. So we, um, we’ve been in business 15 years. We have about 200 clients a year. So it would be hard to find an industry we haven’t worked in at least once. But those are four buckets we find ourselves returning to quite frequently.

Lee Kantor: And is there an example you can share? Maybe a story? Don’t name the name of the company, but share maybe the problem they came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level?

Katie Wagner: Sure, absolutely. So, Um. Let’s see. I’ll tell you a story about a CPA firm that came to us. They’ve been working with us for about five years. So to your point, long term, um, and the CPA firm came to us and it was just a single person, a CPA that was doing great work. And they had a niche in helping older adults with their finances. So often they were hired by the kids of those older adults to help put the finances in order. And so we started really marketing to those children of older adults that needed this help. And we were writing blogs and we were interviewing clients that we that our CPA had helped. We were interviewing our CPA about the work they do. We did a lot of SEO optimization to get our content in front of the right people, and over the years, we were able to build it up so that we generated about 150 reliable leads every year. So, you know, 12 to 15 a month, something like that. And each of those, uh, Leeds was worth. Um, uh, let me think. Maybe several thousand dollars, like 3 to $5000 at the outset. And then the lifetime gets a little more. So it was a reliable revenue stream. But the reason I like this story, because we can just say we helped them grow and things went great.

Katie Wagner: But the CPA firm actually got acquired recently by a much larger regional firm. And typically when a client gets acquired, that brand would be folded into the new brand. And, you know, our marketing might go away because now they’re going to market as the larger company. But in this particular case, Lee, the the buyer company, said to us, what you’re doing is a valuable revenue stream for us, and we don’t want to change anything. So we want to keep the CPAs website and lead gen system exactly as it is. We’re not going to wrap them in, and we want you to continue to run it. It’ll just be part of the larger company now. And I thought that was a really big win because it showed the value of what we were doing, and that we had created this equity for our client that could live on even as part of a post-acquisition scenario. And it turns out that later on today, I have a call with the larger company to talk about taking over lead gen for the entire company, because the portion we’re running now is going better than their overall strategy. So, um, that’s a story that’s near and dear to my heart because it’s a big win for us.

Lee Kantor: Now, you started in California, but now you have offices here in Atlanta. Can you explain why having a presence in Atlanta was important for your growth?

Katie Wagner: Yeah, yeah. So first of all, I’m from Atlanta. I grew up in Atlanta. I went to Westminster for high school. So Atlanta is home to me. But I moved to Atlanta 15 or sorry, I moved to San Diego 15 years ago when I started the business because I also married my husband and he lived out here. So we did start the company in California. But about.

Katie Wagner: Two.

Katie Wagner: Years in, we opened our Atlanta office, and we’ve had it ever since because we have clients all over the country. And I realized that we needed a presence in both time zones to be able to serve them to the best of our ability. And so, um, so we opened the Atlanta office, and we have a staff and a physical office there, just like we do in California. And then we’ve expanded over the years. So we also have we have two California offices and one in Las Vegas. Um, and I actually split my time between California and Atlanta every other month. So I have, um, home base in both places, and I’m back and forth dealing with our clients. And, you know, it’s unusual for a digital agency to have physical spaces like that, but we’re really invested in building relationships with our clients. And I think it’s really important for us to be able to sit down and meet with them face to face and have them meet the team that’s working on their accounts. And in this post-Covid world, that’s a little bit rare, right? Most of our business is done over zoom these days, and we really felt like it was important to hold on to that personal touch and that that human relationship building that was been has been so important to us over the years.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Katie Wagner: Yeah, our website would be great. It’s k w s m digital.com. Or you can always find me. Katie Wagner on LinkedIn I’m really responsive there and I would love to chat and just love to brainstorm, even if it doesn’t lead to a working together conversation. I’m passionate about this stuff and I’d love to help you think through marketing things you’re stuck on.

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

Katie Wagner: Yeah, thanks for having me.

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

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