Business RadioX ®

Indrea Gordon With Quad Clothing Company

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Indrea Gordon With Quad Clothing Company
Loading
/

Fashion Designer Indrea Gordon is the founder/C.E.O. of Quad Clothing Company, whose fashions are created to help women and girls feel confident and empowered. Her designs are known for their unique styles mixed with unusual fabrics and are worn by discerning fashionistas of all ages.

Indrea is motivated by the look in a customer’s eye when she knows what she’s wearing is flawless and suited just for her. The company’s focus is for every woman to make a statement without saying a word when she enters the room.

With a keen eye for detail, The Quad Clothing Company focuses on creating a high fashion red carpet statement, at a price point suitable for any customer’s budget.

Connect with Indrea on LinkedIn and follow Quad Clothing Company on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in the Episode

  • About Quad Clothing Company
  • The Fashion Meets Food Experience
  • The Fashion Without Limitations program
  • About the non-profit Autumn’s Gift

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on Atlanta Business Radio. We have Indrea Gordon with Quod Clothing Company. Welcome.

Indrea Gordon: [00:00:43] Thank you, thank you. How are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am doing well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Quad. How are you serving, folks?

Indrea Gordon: [00:00:51] Yeah. Quad clothing company is actually a designer brand. My focus is on women and girls, and I design formal wear, so basically custom clothing for women and girls.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in the fashion industry?

Indrea Gordon: [00:01:06] You know, I’ve known since I was about nine years old that I wanted to be a fashion designer. My first sketch was in the fourth grade. I redesigned a poster that my teacher had in her room of Mickey Mouse in a wizard gown, and I thought it was just much too plain for me. So I redesigned it. And ever since ninth, fourth grade, nine years old, I’ve always known this is what I would do.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] So now how did you kind of continue on that path? Like, what were some of the activities you were doing? Were you designing your own clothes and actually creating them or drawing them and then started creating them

Indrea Gordon: [00:01:38] In in high school is when the journey actually kind of came to fruition? I started sewing at in home EC in high school and went to college f IDM as a matter of fact in San Francisco, and that’s where I did all of my schooling at. And from there it just kind of took off. I went into the hair and fashion industry and so I would do complete looks for my customers and that’s what I continue to do for today.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:04] So now what advice would you give a young person that, you know, maybe is enamored with fashion and they see it? You know, maybe they’re watching some of the shows, maybe like the Project Runway type shows where it seems almost out of reach for a regular person. What advice would you give them to, you know, just start experimenting and playing and just, you know, testing the waters.

Indrea Gordon: [00:02:26] You do just that. You take the jump. This is a rough industry and you’ll get more no’s than you get yeses. You’ll get more negativity than you do encourage encouragement. And so for a young person, I would just say, take the jump and start kind of dabbling in what you love to do. And it just so happens that once you take that jump and you dabble into what you love to do by accident, it tends to develop itself and it becomes a reality. And once you see things actually become a reality when they’re taken from a thought to paper and then from paper to an actual reality, then something else evolves in that in that moment, and once it becomes a reality, then you realize this is achievable. And so once you realize it’s achievable, the rest is just execution. But you have to first be brave enough to just take that jump and just start.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:15] Now, when did you start having clues that you know, this isn’t just something that you like, but you’re good at it?

Indrea Gordon: [00:03:22] I think that kind of happened a little bit later on in my career, I didn’t realize how good I was at it. You know, I used to always say I was trying to be a designer. And then my son, ironically, in the fourth grade, he had to write a report and he did a report on me. And in that report, he said, My mother is a designer. And I thought, Whoa, he sees me as a designer. And so at that point, it was almost his words validated that, OK, I’m pretty good at this because of the way he sees me. I’m like, I’m pretty good at this, and I started to change the way I thought about myself. And then once I realized how good I was, then the rest was history. I was able to embrace it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:07] Now do you find that people who are in a creative industry like you are struggle with that a little bit that confidence or that imposter syndrome that maybe they are not good enough and that they need some outside person to kind of give them that confidence that to believe in themselves, maybe they believe in them more than the person believes themselves.

Indrea Gordon: [00:04:27] Right? Absolutely. You, you know, as creatives, we all deal with that. We get a little cold feet sometimes. And, you know, the industry is really competitive. So you do kind of have those fears that revolve around your creativity, but you have to just like like in anything, you have to find your lane. You have to realize that sometimes for designers, we think when we create, Oh my god, this has never been created before. This is the best sleeve in the world. This is the best color in the world. And then you do your research and you’re like, Dang, this collar was like created in eighteen hundreds, you know, so nothing is brand new in this industry. It’s just finding your lane and where you’re comfortable and honing in on that and not necessarily reinventing the wheel, but just making it niche based and really focusing in on how you can serve as that particular niche and those particular people that enjoy that niche.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Now, when you were starting out, were you working for someone else and then you went out on your own with your own designs? Or were you always kind of working on your own designs?

Indrea Gordon: [00:05:32] I have always been an independent designer, and looking back when I was in college, I had an offer to go and work for Levi, and I thought, You know, Oh, I’m going to do my own. Being Levi is so boring, nothing changes except the color, it’s just jeans, and I passed up on that opportunity, and till this day, I wish that was an opportunity that I had taken advantage of because the road has been extremely rough as an independent designer. I would advise anyone in this industry to get under the direction of someone who knows the industry and get all the training that you could get at ground level because I kind of had to learn everything along the way and I was an extremely tough route to take.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:14] So now how did you kind of land in the niche that you are in now?

Indrea Gordon: [00:06:19] You know, I’ve always loved pretty dresses, right? And I actually was just critiquing all the gowns for the Met Gala. It was crazy, but I’ve always loved glam, old Hollywood glam, pretty dresses and all of that good stuff. But more so importantly, I love what feeling beautiful does for women and girls, and I’ve kind of taken that aspect of it and really developed how the garment makes makes a person feel. And so that’s what I specialize in. So although I love the pretty garments, it’s really about how it makes you feel when you’re wearing the garment. That’s what the empowerment piece takes place.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:01] And then once you kind of capture how you would like someone to feel, then you design towards that feeling or you design something and then you kind of work how they feel after you’ve got kind of a basic design, like how they how do you kind of marry those two concepts

Indrea Gordon: [00:07:18] In a consultation? Once you once I schedule a client, we have a consultation and I find out, of course, where the garment is going to be worn to ask questions like, What are you trying to achieve with this garment? How do you want to feel that night? Why? Why do you think this garment will be the garment that will help you achieve that feeling? So I kind of get to know my client and then I give them what they want, but I kind of tailor the design to what I know they really need. And you know, once you do that, once you understand your client and understand their desires and what they’re trying to achieve, the rest is just a matter of putting it to paper.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:55] Now you mentioned the Met second ago. How often are your designs kind of meant for an event like that?

Indrea Gordon: [00:08:06] That is what I specialize in. So if you have a special event for a clothing company, it’s definitely your go to person for that event. If you want to make a statement, you know, most of what I do is geared towards formal wear, the extravagant the make a statement without saying a word type pieces. So although we do have ready to wear things that you can wear to the office and transition into night where we really enjoy and tend to focus our efforts on Met Gala type designs.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:36] So now tell us about that. This upcoming fashion meets food experience.

Indrea Gordon: [00:08:42] I am super excited about that. Fashion meets food kind of came about because those are two essential elements. Everyone wears clothes, everyone eats food. So we figured for National Food Day, what an awesome way to bring those two industries together, but to create an event that caters to both. So I have a private chef and her name is Kendra Bates from Honey Sole. And what we did was we collaborated her dishes with my garments or else my garments with her dishes. So at fashion meets food, it’s going to be a full experience of those two, those two essential elements. So one could expect to come in and have have a gallery showing up all of the gowns and how the gowns relate to the food. So if she has, I don’t know, these chefs have all these fancy names, and so I can’t even pronounce the fancy names. But let’s just say we have, I don’t know, shrimp cocktail for lack of a better word that shrimp cocktail will match with my red gown and my red gown will have some elements of the of the shrimp, whether it be the cut of the garment or the color of the garment. Somehow they will translate and you’ll be able to merge the two together to see how they resemble each other. So it’s going to be really, really fun and really interesting to see.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:00] And when is that event

Indrea Gordon: [00:10:01] That is October 24th, which is National Food Day? It is a Sunday, October twenty four.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:09] Are there tickets left? Are there tickets available?

Indrea Gordon: [00:10:11] There are a few tickets left, and you can find those by logging into Quad Kumu Ayda’s and David Clothing Company. And you can purchase your tickets there now.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:22] If they go to the website, there’s other things to find like is your fashion without limit limitations program there as well.

Indrea Gordon: [00:10:29] There is. We actually always incorporate. I am really big on really including my special needs babies, and I always include someone who has some form of special need in whatever I do. And so on that night, I’ll have a couple of my babies who live with autism. I’ll have them walking for me that night. They come from a program called Autumn’s Gift, and that’s Autumn’s Gift Dawg. And so I’ll have a few of them modeling that night, and it’s going to be really fun for them and I’m excited to have them a part of it as well. But yes, there is information on the website about them as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:05] So now is the website the place like for everything, quod clothing. They can find any upcoming events they can find, maybe some some of your looks, just everything they. You’re up to is is found on that website.

Indrea Gordon: [00:11:22] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:23] And then and then the ideal person for you as a client is somebody that goes to events, big events that wants to make that wow statement.

Indrea Gordon: [00:11:33] Absolutely. But more importantly, someone who wants to discover their inner and outer beauty. You know, especially mothers. You know, we have a tendency to care for everyone, and we’re the last ones to to get taken care of. And so really, if you want to discover that that new you and really make a statement, that would be me.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:57] So it might be the person that’s never kind of work with the designer before they wants to, you know, kind of break out of their shell and just really stand out.

Indrea Gordon: [00:12:07] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:09] Well, congratulations on all the success and the story is amazing. And the way that you’re helping so many folks around you in your community is really outstanding. And kudos to you.

Indrea Gordon: [00:12:22] Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:24] And then that website again is quad colored clothing company. Thank you for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Indrea Gordon: [00:12:34] No problem. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:36] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We will sail next time on that land of Business RadioX.

 

Brett Baughman With The Brett Baughman Companies

by

BrettBaughman
Coach The Coach
Brett Baughman With The Brett Baughman Companies
Loading
/

Brett Baughman is the Founder and CEO of the Brett Baughman Companies Inc. He has been a professional business, executive, and life coach for more than twenty years.

Voted the #1 Business Coach for six years running, Brett specializes in helping his clients to reach peak performance through his revolutionary program called The Ideal You.

Connect with Brett on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How to monetize your marketing and publicity to grow your business and credibility

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

COACHTHECOACH_09152021_BrettBaughman_1.mp3
Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxAmbassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Bret Bauman and he is with the Bret Bauman companies. Welcome, Bret.

Brett Baughman: [00:00:44] Thank you, Lee. Great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice. How are you serving, folks?

Brett Baughman: [00:00:52] Yeah, you know, it’s been extremely busy and I feel very blessed over the past couple of years, especially with the economy and the things happening with COVID. You know, primarily, I work as a life coach and a business coach, but most of my work, I work with what I call overwhelmed and stressed or stuck entrepreneurs trying to help them keep their business doors open and help them keep growing and thriving during challenging times.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:14] So now, have you seen some commonality among your clients that they struggle in the same areas?

Brett Baughman: [00:01:20] Yeah. You know, it’s I would say it’s it’s usually there’s a theme between a couple of common things. I typically feel that it’s either people don’t build their brand the correct way. By that, what I mean is maybe they started from a scarcity point. Like, maybe they worked another career and jumped over to start something new or said, Hey, in general, I’d like to be a coach or a consultant or this person, and they just start kind of doing what everybody else is doing, which is to general. And the other thing is not believing in themselves and taking risks and challenging themselves to continue to grow, which keeps you stagnant and know again fear based thinking, which is not going to create prosperity for you in the end.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] So now any advice for that coach? Maybe it’s like you describe maybe they maybe they were kind of achieved a certain level of success working for a big corporation and then they get laid off, or maybe they retire, or maybe they just want to, you know, kind of do something different and shake up their life. But they said, OK, you know what? I’ve been doing this kind of work anyway. I’m going to now be a coach and I’m going to share what I’ve learned to new folks. And do you you find that there too general like there just instead of kind of maybe going after a niche there, just kind of trying to solve everybody’s problem?

Brett Baughman: [00:02:34] Yeah, absolutely. You know, my my my structure, my format that I approach with my coaching, I have a trademark process called the ideal view and the first step I take with any executive, any entrepreneur that’s working with people they want to get started is helping them understand that everything you build has to come from the inside out. And what typically people do, I see, is they look at what someone else is doing and try to copy it, or they say, Oh, I want to be a coach or consultant, let me do this thing. And they start modeling after someone else, which is fine to take the structure and say, Hey, here’s the box. Good to have a book. Good to have social media presence. Good to have a website, but then you’ve got to make it identifiable to yourself. It’s got to be your passion, purpose and speak to your specific target audience and brand. When you do that, what it does is you get in touch with what I call your your kind of core principles, the core drivers that make you who you are. And it’s not saying, you know, Oh, I want to be a coach, it’s like, what about coaching? How are you going to execute that? Like my my specific drive and my music is helping people determine that passion and that purpose so they can be fulfilled and therefore use that as a guiding, a guiding light for how they design their services are offering who their target audience is and how they develop content or monetize that down the road to grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:53] So now when they’re when it gets to the point where they’re going to market themselves, they obviously if they don’t have kind of a clear position and in the mind of their prospect, it’s going to be difficult to build marketing around that right. So that is a foundational element is kind of building this. This is who I am. This is what I stand for and this is who I am going to target. Absolutely right. You have to start there because everything else is then you’re just kind of burning money guessing.

Brett Baughman: [00:04:24] Yeah, and you become again, like, if you look online, that’s why when you go to look for stuff, there’s so many general information here. You look up a business coach, a life coach coaching anything. You’re going to find so much technical information about setting goals, getting started and you can find millions of things about that. What people don’t do is give their specific recipe formula or their weapon for why you would do that and how which differentiates you that way. Not only can people see, Oh, I see why you’re different, I specifically relate to this. This speaks to me, but it’s also how people find you. If people are searching just for coaching or help, it’s going to be very generic. But if somebody says, I need help to grow my business because of this or something, you’re going to find people are going to identify with you and say, this is exactly what I need, and it’s less that takes you away from selling and gets you more to executing the results.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:11] Now you mentioned early earlier about maybe sometimes people approach this with kind of a scarcity mentality or a fear based mentality. It’s almost like they’re they’re afraid that they’re going to leave money on the table or they’re going to miss an opportunity so they don’t want to exclude anybody. But I’m hearing you say. That the tighter the better like you, it’s better to start very granularly and expand out from there rather than trying to boil the ocean.

Brett Baughman: [00:05:43] Yeah, it goes back to that old saying, you know, Jack of all trades, master of none. You know, most people will will, like you said, be afraid of closing someone out, you know, missing a sector being too specific. But what happens is they’re thinking one track. They think, if I create this, everyone will read it, need it. But then what happens is what everybody’s doing. And then you’re competing against every other person in your industry. Whereas if you define yourself and your brand and get clear on what you specifically do and have how it differentiates, then people can look and say, Oh, that’s different, or that’s specifically what I need. And I now I understand how you would help me specifically versus just in general. And you’re not getting on the phone with someone that’s speaking to 10 other coaches or consultants and then weighing out, you know, basically how the conversation went versus your ability to produce.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] Now how do you help the folks kind of narrow it down? Like what’s too narrow? Like if I said, You know what? I am an expert at coaching fireman. Oh, that’s great. And then I’m like, No, I’m only good with redheaded firemen and I’m only good with redheaded firemen in Wisconsin, you know, like how how niche is too niche?

Brett Baughman: [00:06:49] Great question. You know, the way that I do that is it’s kind of reverse engineer to answer what I what I have my clients do as I have them determine who their audience is, who they want to help, what they want to do, and then go and do research as to specifically how that audience is looking for their help. Where are they going to what websites are they using? Are they using Forbes and Inc and entrepreneur? Or are they using something like Psychology Today or better help? Are they looking for therapeutic help for their mindset, or they’re looking for help to pivot a business and a strategy? And so if you find the keywords and the exact search phrases people are searching for, then you can determine this is how I’m going to speak to my audience and you can develop your content based on that so that everything you do is clearly answering a problem your audience already has. Instead of you trying to pick out what it is like. If you were to say fire with red hair, you’re coming up with that because that’s what you’re choosing to do. Your audience may not be that way.

Brett Baughman: [00:07:41] Maybe no firemen have red hair. You need to go out there and find out who are the firemen or what are they looking for. What’s the problem? The pain points and then answer those and then through a balance of back and forth creating content, putting it out and then running analytics to see how your responses are. It helps you refine the process and you can become more and more of that, but it really has to start with what your audience needs. And then the other part of that it’s important is what you want to do. I watch a lot of coaches build companies again based on what other people are doing, and they don’t want to be doing it. They want to be a coach, but they don’t necessarily want to be doing the services they create. And then what’s funny is the service you don’t want to do is the one you’ll be doing all the time and you get stuck doing it every day, every week, every month, and you’re miserable. So make sure what you’re going to do is what you’re passionate about and what your people are asking for

Lee Kantor: [00:08:28] Now is your go to market strategy usually includes some type of thought, leadership and content. Or is it something where you work? Is it better to have partnerships and kind of people working together, collaborating? How do you kind of determine the marketing plan?

Brett Baughman: [00:08:46] Yeah, great. Great question. It’s really a mix of all of that. So a d all the above, we, you know, in order to do it, I believe, especially if you’re starting out, if you’re well established in the business for a while, I got a good presence online. Collaborations are not as important. Collaborations are going to pull you up on the expertize of someone else and broaden your audience, so they’re always great to do. But if you’re established not as necessary for someone greener or starting out, that absolutely the more you can learn and grow with somebody and share their audience, the more that’ll give you more eyeballs on what you do. But you definitely need to start creating content. And the way I do it is I say your content should be made and translated to be for your art or your blog. You need to have social media and you should be looking for publications. And then also some some radio shows like this or podcast you can do and you want to again speak the same brand and be answering across the board all those same questions. This is my audience. This is their pain point. So when somebody reaches out, says, Hey, we have a show to do on this, you can say I can speak to this because this is what I do exactly. This is my niche. This is my my wheelhouse.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:52] Now, as part of the strategy, you mentioned publication, so having some effort in PR and being published yourself in more traditional publications is a strategy as well and in terms of building up your credibility.

Brett Baughman: [00:10:09] Absolutely. You know, there’s the there’s just the audience looking first of all, that’s going to build trust. It’s going to give that level of expertize. Basically, I look at this what you need to be your audience. The people are looking for your help, need to look at what you’re doing and read it and say, OK, I trust this person by listening to them. They’re clear and just in their conversation, you’re just reading this article. I can see that I’m already changing the way I think. On the other side, it’s important to look for things that are credible again. The more popular, the website, the show, the thing is, the more that’s going to build traffic and ranking for your website, which backs up the match between the content that shows this person’s talking about this and people are searching it and they’re finding things. So you’ve got the, you know, what’s happening in the mindset of your target audience and then what’s happening operationally and technologically online to grow your brand?

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] Now, let’s go back in time to the beginning of your coaching career before you had a coaching client. What was the strategy to get that first client? What was that? Did you go through any of that imposter syndrome like, Hey, who am I to be coaching somebody? Did you have any of that kind of fear that, you know, we’re trying to help other people get through? Or was this something that you were just pretty confident and you just went boldly forward?

Brett Baughman: [00:11:29] You know, I was I was. Fortunately, I was confident. But here’s the thing. It’s because I grew it organically. I started out managing people. I was working in corporations, working at companies where I was managing people. I was a leader. I was a sales trainer. And so from inside, I was developing people and I started being asked by other companies to come and do the same. So I started working more and more with executives, more and more with managers, sales team from internal. And then what I realized was I wanted to do it also on my own so that I had more flexibility and structure, and therefore I could do. I could go into a company and work with them in that style, but I could also set my own frame and again develop the things I wanted, specifically my way. And therefore, and to kind of answer what I would suggest coaches do is determine an industry or two you’re good at. When I started, what I did was I was very good with mortgage insurance and I did a lot of stuff with car dealerships, and they’re always looking for people to come in and talk. They’ll give a forty five minute hour long talk and just talk to a bunch of people. You got anywhere from 10 to one hundred people in a room. This gives you practice. It starts building expertize. You can get a list. I had every single person give me a review of how I did give a testimonial. So now I’m building credibility and then out of every one of those experiences, I’d have one or two people start saying, Hey, if you do anything outside this and that would turn into people asking me to be a coach rather than me sitting at home going, OK, let me grab the yellow pages and start dialing. People were already coming. I started to see between the reviews, the experience and how many were contacted before I needed to adjust or refine.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] And then as you kind of expanded, you moved from coaching individuals to coaching companies like how are you discerning the difference between like training a company like you would like? If somebody brings you in to do a talk or a training to working with a specific individual, your your firm handles, you know, again, all of the above.

Brett Baughman: [00:13:24] Yeah. Well, so what I’ve done now, you know, it’s been an evolution. I’ve done this for twenty two years, so I’ve evolved through it. And, you know, it’s primarily been what I’ve wanted to do that I’ve adapted also the call of the wild, what’s been going on in the world. You have to kind of look at what’s that, what people are looking for again. And so basically, what I do right now is I primarily work with executives, so high level executives because I like taking on those high level strategic problems. So I will either work with an executive one on one and I’m guiding them through a whole life approach. So I never work with anybody just on one thing, because if you’re just focusing on business, the rest of your life is going to fall apart. So we kind of look at all that together to make sure that everything is support is supporting each other and creating a momentum to your future in all areas. But beyond that, based on the experience with that executive, typically they will want me to come into the company and start kind of either facilitating a role or helping solve problems. And I go end to end from either training and marketing, development, hiring all the way down to operations or executive coaching. And so my my kind of fix right now, my structure is primarily executive coaches working on leadership and peak performance. And then I will have a handful, maybe two or three companies that I’ll be consulting specifically or a broader scale to the whole companies approach and success.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:39] Now are you finding since you’ve been doing this a minute, that companies are getting more comfortable and more bought into the importance of coaching, not just for the senior leadership, but kind of trickling down to more more of the everyday employee?

Brett Baughman: [00:14:58] Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it’s great that no one there’s just there’s just so much information is becoming, you know, it’s becoming common knowledge that having a coach is a benefit. I mean, there’s I can’t find a single bit of information in the world anywhere. So somebody had a coach and they did worse, you know, any two heads together better than one. And so it’s the ideology. The methodology is becoming more popular and understood. But this is again where it’s important to make sure that you’re on brand with your message and know what you want to offer. Because then if you can build the credibility, I always tell everybody every single day you should put at least one gold brick in the road to your future. So every day I’m putting out an article, a podcast, something something I’m doing that is letting people know about what I’m doing. And it always has value, always building my credibility, but providing takeaway value immediately. That means when these companies look online, they’re finding information constantly that can help them so that when they look, it’s not just trying to sell somebody into the opportunity, it’s saying, Hey, here’s something you could take right now and you can use this and change your life. And so I think there’s enough of that out. Now, when people start to look, they go, wow, just in reading, this is starting to change my mind just in doing this, I see there is potential and that lowers the bar for people thinking the risk is too high to take the chance, and it’s become more and more more prevalent and easier to get in the door every place.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:18] Now, can you share a story where you had an impact that you were most proud? Maybe it doesn’t have to be the most dollar amount, necessarily, but the one that you’re most proud and the one that maybe took a company to a new level or took them to a place that they didn’t even dream possible?

Brett Baughman: [00:16:35] Yeah, yeah. Know I was about saying the company’s name, you know, several years back. This is back before 2008, the big gold market crash in the mortgage industry. I did a lot of stuff with mortgage companies working in them, owns couple, develop them and I worked at the very large subprime lender. And when I went into the company, I was brought in to do some sales, training and development. And so I was working with a couple of the executives on the management team and they just had a simple structure. You know, they had tons of calls coming in from leads and marketing being done all over the place. There was like seven hundred and fifty agents, but everybody was working individual and what I did was I did it doing a valuation of the whole company to structure the scripting experience from start to finish for a client coming on board a prospective client. And what I realized was, you know, everybody is not good at everything. And truthfully, I’m really into mindset and psychology, so I understand how behavior works and how your mind works. And somebody who’s a great salesperson is not commonly also good at the operational side, doing all the work, plugging the information, follow up, getting the paperwork.

Brett Baughman: [00:17:37] That’s where they fail. They’re charismatic and they’re great on the phone. It’s selling, but then they don’t do the work that needs to be done with paperwork, and I realize this is a hindrance. So I broke up the company into teams. They’d never done this before, and I said every team was going to be 10 people, 10 to 20 people with one team lead. You’re going to have an opener and closer. The opener starts to call, tosses it to a closer, and then that opener is going to be the first that basically conducts all the operational side. What we did is and within the first month, they grew by 20 percent. And I mean, after that, we went from people to people in there that were, you know, doing two three four five loans a month going up to like, you know, 15 to 20 the following month. So the company just grew incredibly. You probably doubled and tripled the size in the first six months

Lee Kantor: [00:18:18] Because again, in those kind of situations, if everybody is doing what they do and doing what they’re good at and what they don’t get frustrated, they’re doing more of it. So if you get people that are operationally minded doing operational stuff and people that are, you know, sales minded doing sales stuff, then everybody’s in their lane and everybody benefits.

Brett Baughman: [00:18:37] Absolutely no big thing that I like to do. But like one thing I’m proud of doing is I’ve worked on very long time, is trying to take, you know, big complex ideas and making them simple so that people can digest it and integrate it. Because, you know, how often do we learn something and don’t use it when we need to? And so a big part of this is that, you know, I look at thinking in two ways there is emotional thinking and there’s objective thinking. The more emotion you are, the worse decision you’re making. It’s not a good time to make them. Nobody ever says I’m so ticked off. Let me sit down and write a business plan, right? I’m so sad. I’m all right. My goals. You’ve got to get your head straight and get clear. And so like the example that business there, everyone was in emotional thinking because the people on the phone would do a great job selling and then were frustrated because they had to go and get all this paperwork or frustrated because it was taking time away from selling something else. The people who didn’t want to be on the phone were being pressured constantly. Where’s your numbers? How are you doing? What your sales get it up when they weren’t good at that? And once you alleviated the stress of something you didn’t want to be doing and put you right into your, into your, your zone and your expertize, then the people saw good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:38] Well, congratulations on all the success. If there’s someone out there that wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team. What’s the website?

Brett Baughman: [00:19:47] Just my name. Brett Baughman pretty be a you man. And if you search my name, pretty much find a bunch of stuff. Like I said, I’m trying to put gold bricks out there every day, so hopefully I can help people and they can find me easily.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:00] Well, thank you again for sharing your story, Brett. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brett Baughman: [00:20:05] Thank you. Thanks for having me on it. You as well. Love the show and wish you guys much continued success.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:10] All right, this is Lee Kantor will sail next time on Coach the Coach radio.

James Mayhew With James Mayhew Consulting

by

Coach The Coach
Coach The Coach
James Mayhew With James Mayhew Consulting
Loading
/

James Mayhew is an expert on organizational culture and values-based leadership.

He was the chief culture officer for one of the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the country, leading the initiative to become one of the top workplaces in Iowa.

Today, James works with $4-40 million companies as a corporate trainer and executive coach to help build culture, improve communication, and boost engagement.

He is the creator of the Culture Mastery System – a customized framework that gives companies an unfair advantage over their competition by defining their core behaviors for operational excellence.

Connect with James on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Organizational Culture, Core Values / Core Behaviors, Human Behavior & Communication, Customer Experience

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have James Bayu and he is with James Meiyu Consulting. Before we get too far to things, tell us about your practice. How are you serving, folks?

James Mayhew: [00:00:46] Ali, thanks for having me here. Yes. So one of the things that I love to be able to do is to serve my clients in a way to build culture, to help them improve communication and boost engagement. And so we we do this through a number of different ways. But I wear a coaching hat, a consulting hat or a training hat, and those are different entry points for different types of customers, different sizes of businesses. And that is one of the wonderful ways that we just have that freedom to go in and serve clients where they’re at, at the level that they’re at.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] So now what’s your back story? How did you kind of develop this unique strategy? Because most folks kind of pick one of those lanes, and it sounds like that you’re using whatever tool you need to solve the problem you’re working on.

James Mayhew: [00:01:33] Yeah, it’s a great question. And so it’s a trial. It’s a baptism by fire kind of approach. A number of years ago, I was working for a company that in Iowa and my home state where we were an incredibly fast growing business. We weren’t necessarily a great place to work for, and I don’t know that any of us necessarily even realize that. And so when I started with the company, we were about 20 employees. I think I was number twenty one ish. If I remember right in September, November of 2009 and then we were always very, very fast growing. And so we learned that we knew how to make money. We learned that we knew how to grow, but we learned also that we weren’t very good necessarily at developing people and preparing them for the next steps. And I actually experienced that myself. It was, you know, Hey, just keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be great. And we know from a leadership perspective that that’s not going to keep you in a leadership role. And so when when we would move people or person into a new role, we didn’t set them up necessarily for success. And so things that that we took for granted that people would know would be how to set expectations, how to cast a vision either for a project or for what our team was working on or for the company. How how do you communicate that? How do you get people engaged with what they do on a personal level that’s meaningful to the company’s vision, strategy and goals? And so through that process, I made a lot of mistakes and those mistakes were everything that I’ve named and many things that I haven’t named.

James Mayhew: [00:03:19] And quite honestly, it was it was a great experience. It was a humbling experience and it was over those six years. One of the greatest growth stages, probably the greatest growth stage in my life. Up to this point. And as a result of going through those things, we learned that we didn’t necessarily understand what our culture was. In fact, when I first started, you know, I had an entry level job in marketing. I moved up to a lead role. From there, I threw my hat in the ring, which is a longer story for maybe for a different time where I said, I want to do this. I don’t know if I’m the right guy, and that got me into a VP of mission and culture role. It was an experimental role. And from there, within about 18 months or so, we restructured again to support growth and all the initiatives that we were doing. And I ended up as chief culture officer. So we went from. We’d always been fast growing. We’re one of the fastest growing companies, actually, you know, privately held in the United States. But if we go back, it wasn’t a great place to work, and there was a number of factors that went into that, and when I took that VP role, we started to take an immersion into what our values were, what is our culture, what is culture? And we were always about performance, but we weren’t necessarily, like I said, great at prepping people and developing people, and that’s where we took it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:52] Now what was happening internally, because to even have the self-awareness and introspection required to make that change or even see the need for the change, were there symptoms that were like, Hey, you know what? I’m not kind of really loving our culture here, and maybe there wasn’t a lot of thought until culture. But to me, culture and branding are two things where they’re happening. Whether you’re putting an effort to do them well or not, you know, things are happening and you have a culture, whether you decided to have one or not, it’s it’s forming. And the same with your brand. Your brand is forming. Whether you can, you know, do some work to kind of shape it. But if you’re not, it’s going to form anyway. So you might as well be a little proactive. What was happening where folks were like, Hey, you know what? Why don’t we try to fix the culture part of our organization, like where their symptoms were, their kind of telltale signs that maybe it looks good? Maybe in some ways. But we’re really, you know, heading into some danger if we don’t really get down and dirty when it comes to culture.

James Mayhew: [00:06:01] Yeah, this is such a great question. And, you know, symptoms. Let me just start there for a second. You’re so right in the way that you said if you’re not paying attention to it, it still exists. And we actually had a really great marketing team. We had a great branding team. But but we didn’t understand the connection from like the internal impact, the employee experience and how that would impact the customer experience. And so we were at times we were again, let me put this in a performance based area because that’s what I’m talking about when I’m talking about culture is in our sales team. We were a very transactional type of business. It was based in e-commerce, but we were selling some commodities. We were in a space where AECOM was was still kind of emerging. So we just were in the right place at the right time. But we were measuring and giving feedback to people on the sales team that was about volume and it was about transactions and the quantities. And so we were great at measuring metrics. But I think at times we were measuring the wrong metrics. The reason I bring that up is because that began to reveal why there were stresses that were happening on the team. So we had a company vision that was kind of going in one direction. But what we’re having internally was people not intentionally fighting against that, but not understanding what we were trying to achieve. So here’s some of the things that we would see people get frustrated. You go to lunch. We were in a rural area in Iowa, so we were we were right off the interstate, which is great location.

James Mayhew: [00:07:38] But the little town that was near us, there was a convenience store and outside of that, there really wasn’t. There was a bar. And so to go and get lunch was a time when people would complain, you know? You can just imagine some of those conversations that are happening in the car, you drive 10 minutes to go grab a lunch with somebody and there’s three or four people in the car and that’s when conversations start to emerge. All right. And that’s the toxic behavior that we would see happen at times. You would also see people that were saying one thing and doing another. There was hidden agendas. There was all sorts of things that that we all, you know, we’ve had enough work experience or leadership experience that make you go, Yeah, this isn’t right. And for me personally, I was in a really low spot at one point putting a resume out, and this is before taking that VP role. And coming back home are to the work. The office, I mean, we had a pretty nice facility, actually. And coming back with that, I was sitting in the back seat of a car with two other people and it dawned on me as we’re driving down the lane to go back after lunch that I don’t. I am not helping myself. I’m not helping my team, I’m not helping the company, the owners. I am contributing to the negativity. I am that person and I decided right then and there I wasn’t going to be.

James Mayhew: [00:09:04] It was an epiphany moment. The the flipping of of the switch, if you will. And I just I stopped going to lunch with certain people and we remained good work, you know, good working relationships, good work friendships. But I had to sever some of those ties because it wasn’t helpful. And so I guess one of those results is as we did our core values and we began to really define them and communicate them. There was a pruning that began to happen. Some of it was people just checked out and said, I don’t want to do this anymore, and they went to, you know, different opportunities on. Sometimes we helped them understand this is the wrong place for them and they were let go. And that was one of the biggest revelations when we revealed our core values. I revealed them to the to the owner. My team had been working on it. We as a leadership team had been working on it. We extended that into the management team. We had pulled a lot of people and we’re about 50 employees at the time. So we had we had grown fast. But I remember very distinctly the owner saying as he kind of stood with his hand on his chin. We’re going to lose people over these. And that was a very revealing moment for me, and I think I understood it. But when he spoke those words and it was kind of coming to me. It was, it was very obvious. And then those things happened.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:31] Now when you’re now helping your clients currently and having gone through that and having the scar tissue of that and seeing the impact that when a leader does step up and say, You know what, we’re building something amazing and on some levels, it’s we’re just killing it. And if an outsider looking in would see if I can show them this part of our business, they’d think that, you know, we hung the moon. But if I show them this other part, it would be kind of I don’t want to say embarrassing, but it wouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be as proud of that belief in the culture over kind of the numbers and really focusing on metrics that matter, not just metrics that you can count in there that are obvious and maybe easy, but maybe working on these other metrics that are at the heart or the mission or the true values of the company that true north. That takes courage and that takes true leadership. And what are some of the ways that you help your current clients understand the difference?

James Mayhew: [00:11:39] Hmm. Well, this is a great question, and I’ll take it back for a second because one of the advantages and I think one of the the biggest learning opportunities with this was that the CEO of the company that we did this with was the driver behind it. He was fully committed. He in fact, he was the one leading discussions leading up to this, driving this new position forward. And and it was when he said, I want this to be a leadership role that it really made me perk up. At that time, I had never volunteered for that. So now when I’m working with my clients, whether they’re a smaller business or a medium sized business, we’re talking about developing or shifting culture and harnessing it. What we’re talking about is it can start anywhere in the company, but one requirement is is that we have to have senior level buy in and senior levels all the way to the CEO or president. Whatever your structure is, has to be behind it because if they’re not, it’s not going to stick and other priorities will take over that priority. And so going through that, the scar tissue and remembering those things that we had to go through has made it so much more valuable because it’s not theory that I read in a textbook.

James Mayhew: [00:13:02] It was life experience that I went through, and that life experience gives you so much more well, like perspective in depth because when there’s tears involved, when they’re shouting involved at times, when there’s when there’s some, you know, somebody that you’ve recruited to come to the company and they’re being let go. I mean, it becomes very, very real. And so the what we’re working to now is to make sure that I’m setting up that scenario, that situation well with the people that I’m serving to say, Listen, you need to understand if you’re truly committed and serious to this about this, this is what you should be expecting. This is probably going to happen. And I want you to understand it’s maybe going to be a little painful in the short term, but from the long term is a massive benefit. It’s going to help you accelerate and it’s going to help you go further and faster than you would if we don’t do this. But but being able to set that up and be very real and honest to say this is a potential outcome. Here’s how we’re going to do it. And be prepared for that.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:08] And that’s why I like working with people who have that kind of experience, that kind of skin in the game. Because your examples aren’t some hypothetical case study that you read about you. You’ve seen the tears, you’ve heard the shouting, you’ve kind of lived through this so you understand viscerally what could happen and what may happen. And that means you can communicate that with somebody to say, Look, you know, you can read a case study of how to do something and then theoretically understand what may happen. I’m telling you, I saw with my eyes what happens. It’s a different level of belief. I think that you can convey and share. And because of that, I think it becomes that much more powerful. And I’m sure that that’s what spurred you to create this culture mastery system of yours, that this framework that’s built on, you know, actual blood, sweat and tears, not on a whiteboard somewhere and theoretically constructing it.

James Mayhew: [00:15:12] Absolutely. So, so the culture mastery system. Got it start in the company that we talked about, that’s the origin for it, and it’s it’s taken on multiple iterations since then or phases. I don’t really track it, but I would say it’s like fourth or fifth iteration now. And each time we get smarter about how to do it, we find new ways to do it. And and not only are we getting more efficient, but we’re getting more like better, more powerful results. I’m not a cookie cutter playbook kind of guy. We just don’t pull it out. Here’s what we did with Company A and and automatically just try to apply Company A to Company B. What we do is we have a system that has a framework, and so I love the concept of a system or or framework that says, here’s what we’re trying to do. Here’s what what we should expect to happen. These are some of the goals and milestones we’ll know along the way. But this is going to be tailored to you. It’s based on where you’re at, what your competitive advantage is, how you’ve gotten this far.

James Mayhew: [00:16:15] What’s your aspirational values are all of these elements need to come out and the beautiful thing. And this is the part that that you it’s hard to understand until you go through it. We just did this with a with a local nonprofit, and the revelation for them was what I’m going to tell you. And I tried to paint that picture ahead of time, which is this is going to be transformational for people because the entire time that we’re doing it, we’re starting conversations that need to happen, that don’t happen on their own. We don’t make time for them. And as a result, it’s going to create little pockets of coaching opportunities and mentoring. And somebody’s going to say, I don’t get it, I don’t like it, and we’re going to have to bring it back and we’re going to need to show them what we’re actually trying to do to pull them back in. That happened time and time again with this nonprofit that I did it with recently. Now go ahead. It was just a really, really powerful exercise for them to be part of, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:14] And that’s where I think that by using all of the tools in your toolkit, the coaching, the training, the consulting, you can really accelerate the learning and the transformation.

James Mayhew: [00:17:27] Absolutely, yeah, it is. I mean, that’s a great point that you make, because sometimes we enter into this where maybe I come in to do a training on feedback and I have a program called Feedback Mastery, how to receive it, how to give it. And and it can be a a one hour keynote through a day long training. But inevitably, what’s going to happen then is somebody is going to say, OK, I’ve got some new leaders or I have a seasoned leader. We’ll say an experienced leader that struggling mightily in this area. How do we help them? And so I can either work with them directly that person or I can work with the team to help them get there? And that’s that’s just the advantage of being able to do that. Each one has its own little nuance to it.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:10] Now do you have a sweet spot in terms of an ideal client? Is there a certain group that this really resonates with or this is the right kind of solution that they need?

James Mayhew: [00:18:19] Yeah. So if we’re talking about the culture mastery system, I have learned to stay in my lane and my lane is small to medium sized businesses. So I just kind of qualify it as like in that four million to 40 million range in revenue. When we get above a certain number of employees, you know, when we get into, say, the 200 count and and above, I don’t have the experience working there. I don’t know that I’m the right person to help them initiate culture change at that level. I can coach and train there. I can offer some consulting there. But the culture mastery is really great with a smaller to medium sized business because first of all, there’s not as much red tape, there’s not as much bureaucracy involved. And I don’t I don’t. I don’t really work well in that kind of environment because I’m a little bit faster paced. We want to see the change and that’s where where if a, you know, a large company was to say, Hey, we want you to do this, I would really want to sit with them and understand where they’re at and what those layers look like. Because if we’re just going to bump into layers, you know where people aren’t behind it or they’re doing something that’s counter to what we’re trying to do at the ground floor, then I mean, we have to call that out. And so sometimes that’s going to work and sometimes it’s not. So again, that sweet spot for me is that small to medium sized business in that four to four, $40 million range.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:47] Yeah, where it’s less time spent planning to plan and more time, you know, doing the

James Mayhew: [00:19:53] Work well said yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:56] Well, James, congratulations on all the success. I mean, it’s just a great story and a great testament to you and being kind of a lifelong learner and just keeping serving folks, I mean, just great job.

James Mayhew: [00:20:08] Well, thank you. And this is listen, I just try to live by essentially for personal values that we need to lead with confidence that’s covered by humility. We need to leave lead with courage that’s covered by empathy. And if we can do those four things, well, we’re serving others pretty well.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:29] Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

James Mayhew: [00:20:36] The website’s James Mayhew. I’m very active on LinkedIn at James R. Mayhew. And then if somebody wants to contact, I love to use the phone. I’m a little old school that way, so I’m just going to give you my number here. It’s three one nine nine two nine two six zero four that’s going to go directly to me. So there’s not going to be somebody that you have to go through. I may not be able to take your calls. I may be working on some, you know, a project with someone, but those are the three best ways to to contact me.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:08] And that website is James Mayhew. Jm M A Y H e W. James. Thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

James Mayhew: [00:21:19] Thank you so much. This has been great. I appreciate the opportunity to share it.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll sail next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk With BBR Companies

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk With BBR Companies
Loading
/

bbrcompanies

BonnieBuolRuszczykBonnie Buol Ruszczyk, the president of BBR Companies, is a strategic marketing expert and outsourced marketing director with outstanding experience advising professional services firms on how to differentiate, market, and grow.

Secondly, she is a Cornell-certified Diversity & Inclusion professional who offers training and consulting for firms looking to start or advance diversity, equity & inclusion programs.

Finally, she co-founded (with Katie Tolin) and manages Rounds Rounds, mastermind groups for accounting marketers and partners. These small groups offer a blend of education, peer accountability, brainstorming, collaboration, and support in a safe environment with the ultimate goal of helping each member succeed and achieve their goals.

Connect with Bonnie on LinkedIn and follow BBR Companies on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Some reasons why companies should look at being more diverse
  • Advice for those at businesses that are just beginning their DEI journeys

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today, I’m Atlanta Business Radio is an old friend, Bonnie Buell Rusike with BBR Companies. Welcome, Bonnie.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:00:44] Hey, thank you, Lee. Good to see you. Well, or here you at least.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:48] Well, it’s great to catch up with you. Tell us what’s new at BBR companies.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:00:54] Yeah. So as you know, I am have been doing marketing for professional services firms now for about 12 years, believe it or not. And one of the things that I kind of goal I set for myself was every year I wanted to learn something new, take a course of some sort or something just to kind of keep abreast of what’s going on in the world. And just a little bit over a year ago, I decided that for 20 20, I wanted that to be getting certified in diversity, equity and inclusion consulting. So I jumped in with both feet and went through the Cornell program and got that certification back in November. So in addition to the marketing stuff I’m doing, I’m also adding in some diversity, equity and inclusion, training and consulting and working with clients and other firms out there to help them set goals, meet goals, create programs, whatever it is that they want to do, to try and make their workplace more diverse and more inclusive.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:07] So now how did D.I become such a priority for you? What attracted you to choosing that to learn more and get certified in?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:02:17] Well, you know, it’s always been something that I’ve I’ve felt was an important thing and part of. That’s just, I guess, the way I was raised in the part of Atlanta I live in and just being in Atlanta itself. I’ve always felt like, you know, my life was richer when it was when I was surrounded by people that weren’t necessarily exactly like me. And so, you know, I think a lot of us were hit by the murder of George Floyd and went, Wow, this is kind of definitely something. It was a turning point, I think, for society. And it kind of made me say, You know what? This is something I kind of want to pursue. And if I can do something to make the world a little bit better place, then I should do so.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:04] Now, were you seeing your clients or the people in the professional services industry? Was it kind of a hot button issue for them as well? Were they saying, You know what, we’ve got to lean into this a little more. We got to pay more attention to this. Maybe there are some unconscious bias or subconscious bias happening in our firm that we should kind of look at.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:03:25] Yeah, I mean, there was some certainly the clients that I tend to work with, which are, you know, professional services, accountants, attorneys, I.T. and others tend to be probably a little more conservative in nature than some other types of businesses. But they did recognize that there are opportunities to grow and expand and create workplaces, like I say, that are much more inclusive. And, you know, inclusive workplaces tend to keep employees to and with, you know, a shortage of particularly accountants out there. You know, there’s a battle hiring battle going on right now for just trying people trying to fill spots. So, you know, those that tend to be more open minded in their hiring practices and actually how they’re running, their firms are going to be more appealing, particularly to millennial generation and even Gen X now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:31] What did you learn when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion in the workforce, did you? Are there stats? Is there research that says, you know what? This is more than just kind of a a nice to have or something that we can, you know, put a certificate in the corner of our website. But there’s really a business reason that companies should look more at being more diverse and more inclusive. Are there stats that back that up or is this something that just sounds good and feels good?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:05:03] No, and I thought you might ask about that, because this is something I get asked a lot. And there are stats and I’m going to read them to you just to make sure I get them right. Having more diverse, inclusive, equitable, just more open minded workplaces. One encourages greater creativity, innovation and growth because diverse firms are 70 percent likelier to capture a new market and forty five percent more likely to report increased market share year after year. So definitely, you’re going to have much more likelihood of entering new markets and expanding the services you offer to. It increases employee engagement, mentioned millennials before. Eighty three percent of millennials report being actively engaged when they believe their organization fosters an inclusive workplace culture. Three. It supports better decision making teams that are inclusive make better decisions up to eighty seven percent of the time, which is pretty darn amazing if you ask me to more better financial performance that definitely interests the accountants. Ethnically diverse companies are 35 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry median, so they’re going to make more money than their competitors. Gender diverse companies are 15 percent more likely to outperform their competitors, and companies with more diverse leadership report 19 percent higher revenues. And finally, it attracts talent. Sixty seven percent of job seekers in all ages via diverse workplace as an important factor when evaluating companies and considering job offers. So not only is it, it’s a good thing to do. We want to be, you know, human beings that are supportive and inclusive of others and get to hear different viewpoints. There’s some really solid business and financial reasons behind moving toward a more diverse and equitable and inclusive workplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] So now when you’re working with your clients and educating them about this new offering, what does that conversation look like and how do you implement maybe some baby steps to get them thinking about how to improve their own firm?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:07:44] You know, it’s it’s all about baby steps. Know it’s not one of those kind of things where you’re going to flip a switch and everything is going. Everybody is going to be happy and everything’s going to be wonderful. I think one of the best places to start is to figure out where your business is in terms of DIY. And generally the best way to do that is to have an external resource. I can do this. There’s plenty of other people out there, too, that surveys your employees. And the reason I say an external resource is you want to make it in a way, do the survey in a way that people feel like they can be completely honest and safe in being honest. We all H.R. and all of our companies is a wonderful resource, but people sometimes just still don’t feel comfortable sharing their honest opinion. And so gathering that information, which typically what it’ll do, is it’ll uncover some areas that your employees see that need to be addressed and then also looking at best practices at businesses like yours or even others across the country or in Atlanta or wherever you’re located to kind of see how do you measure up against those other companies? How are you competing against them for employees or best places to work and those types of things? And then typically, with all of that information, what you can do is create a training program.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:09:22] A lot of businesses are actually smaller. Businesses are creating internal committees or councils that are dedicated to this larger companies or even in some cases, hiring somebody full time to be the in-charge of the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives so that it’s weaved into everything that the company does and truly becomes a part of their culture. You know that that to me, is kind of some of the best places to start. I’ve also done some trainings for people, for things as simple as, you know, defining the terms that are used when people are talking. About D-I, not just diversity, equity, inclusion, but, you know, terms like microaggressions or unconscious bias, and there’s a lot of words that are thrown around and it helps just to understand what each of them means. And you know, I’ve also done a good deal of unconscious bias training because that’s kind of one of the places to start is by looking inside of ourselves. And we all have unconscious biases. It’s just it’s in everything that we do. And, you know, it’s all the media that we consume, how we were raised. So many different things create these. And just learning how to recognize it and overcome it in our own personal lives has a big impact on not just us, but on the businesses that we work for.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:52] Now, when you’re talking about something like unconscious bias, some people can get defensive about things like that since it’s unconscious. How do you kind of are you first working with leadership to, you know, they have to have kind of the. They have to have the belief and vulnerability to even have this conversation with you, so kudos to you for being able to do that, but is it something that you work with the leader first to kind of work through it with the leader and then it gets kind of disseminated throughout the rest of the staff? Or does it go, you know, do you start kind of at the bottom and then work your way up?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:11:33] You know, I think my experience has told me that unless an initiative like this is supported from the top, it’s not going to work. So, you know, and a lot of the businesses I work with have partner groups that manage them. And you may not have the absolute complete support of every partner within the organization, but you certainly need to have some that feel like this is important enough to put, you know, resources behind and to incorporate it into your culture. But you’re right, a lot of people, you know, one, we don’t think that we’re biased. You know, nobody wants to think that way. And most of us in our day to day lives really don’t feel like we are so well.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:21] I can make an argument. I can make an argument that the most biased person doesn’t think they’re biased, even if facts say otherwise, because they think they’re seeing the world in the right way. I mean, to them, it’s crystal clear and obvious.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:12:36] Yeah, and that’s that’s the biggest challenge that you know you kind of deal with in some ways is that, you know, it’s difficult to see that sort of thing about yourself. And, you know, but until you do, you’re not going to understand it in others and you’re not going to understand the impact it has on decisions that you make and you have to keep in mind. And I’ve done so much reading on this. It’s fascinating to me that that part of our brain, where our unconscious bias is live is actually in the in the amygdala, which is the same area where our fight or flight responses live. So it’s not something that we really think about. If you’re walking down, taking a hike and you see a big, scary snake, you know you’re not thinking about, well, what should I do? You don’t sit there and ponder and process. You either pick up a big stick or you run, you know, so it’s the same type of processing of information that happens within us, you know, for unconscious bias. So it’s it’s very difficult to kind of take a look at that and think about how it is that you approach things. And you know, when was the first time you had a female doctor or a person of color as a doctor in your life? You know, and that’s kind of and that’s just one example of many. But you know, that feeds how you see people in positions of leadership. I mean, I know from my perspective, you know, I didn’t have a doctor of color until I was probably well into my thirties, you know, so that you have to kind of think about that. And how do you view the people in your life and in positions of power? And how do we learn to kind of adjust that thinking a little bit so that we can see others that may not look like what we’re used to and even ourselves in those roles?

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] Yeah. And I think it really that kind of unconscious bias really comes into play like in terms of recruiting new employees, like if historically you’ve always recruited from a certain group, maybe it was a fraternity or an athlete or certain groups of people were typically who you were looking at to hire, then they’re going to almost by definition, all have that in common. So you’re missing out on the rest of the planet who doesn’t participate in whatever that activity that you had deemed as the place where our employees come from. So it’s just a matter of sometimes just kind of going outside of your comfort zone and go, Hey, why don’t we do this experiment with this other group and see how that plays out? And just I find that when you look at things in terms of experiments, then it’s OK to fail and it’s OK. Do you understand that you’re trying something new and sometimes it’s easier to to do something that’s called an experiment than it is to make a policy change?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:15:46] I think you’re right. And you know that that actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a actually, it was an accounting firm and this was many. This was over a decade ago, and they were actually wondering, you know, why do we not have any, you know, black applicants for jobs? Or Why do you know they’re just not finding us? And you know? Ask the question, I’m like, well, where do you go to recruiting fairs? And it was they went to the schools that the partners had graduated from, so they went to University of Georgia. They went to the University of Alabama. They went, you know, places that they were familiar with. And I said, we have some of the best HBCUs in the city of Atlanta that have really tremendous accounting programs. Let’s go to those fairs too, right? And I’m not saying don’t go to the others, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Include that in there. And it’s ironically, is that the campus of those are probably a lot closer to where they are than the campus of University of Georgia.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:16:45] Very true. And but you also have to keep in mind, too, and I want to comment on what you said about an experiment. I think that’s that’s a really interesting way to look at things. But one thing you kind of have to be careful of, too, is, you know, you can’t judge an entire group of people based on the performance or activities or how well one person works out. And I think that happens a lot of times, too, where you’ll judge you have your first. I’m just going to say gay hire, and it just didn’t work out to be a good fit for the firm. Well, one, what did you do to make that person feel included at the firm? Was it actually not that person as much as the culture of the firm itself? And to that one person, does it represent the entire gay population? So you have to be really careful not to extrapolate and make assumptions and just write off an entire group of people based on what one how well one person works out, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:50] So now, if somebody wants to kind of learn more about this side of your practice, what is the best way to find you?

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:17:59] Well, you can find me. My website is BBR Companies. There’s a page on there all about the D.I services, and I love talking about this topic, as you can tell. So you can email me at Bonni, at BBR Consult CEO Insult or, you know, LinkedIn, Facebook, I’m out there. Just my name is so unique, but if you do a search for me, you will find many ways to find me.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] That’s a that’s a good branding tip, right? There you go. Well, Bonnie, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Bonnie Buol Ruszcyk: [00:18:47] Thank you so much. It’s great talking to you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:50] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Edward Adams With Bloomberg Media Studios And Michael Matthews With Synchrony

by

Bloomberg-feature
Atlanta Business Radio
Edward Adams With Bloomberg Media Studios And Michael Matthews With Synchrony
Loading
/

EdwardAdamsHeadshotEdward Adams is an editor at Bloomberg Media Studios. Prior to joining Bloomberg in 2012, Ed was editor and publisher of the ABA Journal, the American Bar Association’s flagship magazine.

His work at Bloomberg Media has been recognized by Adweek, the Native Advertising Institute, the Webby Awards, and several film festivals.

Connect with Edward on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Michael Matthews is Chief Diversity and Corporate Responsibility Officer at Synchrony, one of the nation’s premier consumer financial services companies that is recognized as one of the top employers for diversity.

In this role, he is responsible for strategy development and execution for Diversity &Inclusion and Corporate Responsibility & Citizenship including the synchrony Foundation.

Michael has played an integral role in shaping the company diversity & inclusion strategy and working to prioritize recruiting, developing, and advancing diverse talent through a focused, data-driven approach.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today, we’re going to talk about a recent report that’s come out the road map to diversity learning from Atlanta’s small businesses. This report was put together by the folks at Synchrony and at Bloomberg Media Studios. Today from Synchrony, we have Michael Matthews and from Bloomberg we have Edward Adams. Welcome, gentlemen.

Edward Adams: [00:00:50] Thank you, thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] Now, before we get too far into things, Michael, tell us about Synchrony mission purpose so our listeners can get an idea of why this was so important for you to get behind.

Michael Matthews: [00:01:01] Yeah, so Synchrony. We are a financial services company. We’ve been around six years, but we’ve have over 80 years of existence. We used to be part of General Electric GE Capital, and we’re located in Stamford, Connecticut, and we are into financial solutions, from credit cards to private label to medicines, medical procedures. We do it all. But one of the things that we are most proud of is our diversity, diversity and inclusion strategy. It’s an integral part of who we are, and I am the chief diversity officer here. So my job is to make sure that one hundred percent of our employees can bring one hundred percent of themselves to work. One hundred percent of the top 100 percent of the time. And in an environment where they’re not only just accept it, but they’re appreciated. And so that’s something that’s one of our core values and it’s in everything that we do. So I’m happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:03] And Edward, can you talk a little bit about why Bloomberg decided to get behind this specific topic in the in the world of business and why specifically Atlanta?

Edward Adams: [00:02:14] Sure. Well, Bloomberg Media Studios is the branded content studio of Bloomberg Media and and our role is really to help our brand partners like Synchrony try and craft and disseminate the messages that are important to them. And secretly came to us and said, Look, we care about the small business diversity space. That’s a passion point of our company. It’s one of the principles that we’re founded on. We just need ways to sort of communicate that. And so we crafted this this roadmap to the diversity report and we focused in on Atlanta for a very specific reason, which is that Atlanta is been more successful at promoting small business diversity than any other city in the country. Among the nation’s 10 largest metro areas, Atlanta ranks first in terms of the percentage of black-owned employers, with about 6.6 percent that ranked second after Washington, D.C., in the percentage of female owned employers with 22 percent. And the vast majority of Atlanta’s women and minority owned businesses are small businesses, which we define as the as the U.S. government does as companies with 500 or fewer employees. So it seemed to us that Atlanta was the should be the focal point for us. And what we’ve tried to do in this report is craft something that all small businesses around the country can learn from from the lesson of Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] So now were there any surprises?

Edward Adams: [00:03:48] Well, there were some we actually did an exclusive poll of small businesses, both employees and owners in the Atlanta area. We surveyed 100 of them and what we found was 87 percent. Almost all of them believe that diversity and inclusion is an important part of a business’s financial success. That’s something you hear a lot about when you talk about big businesses, how diversity helps large corporations earn more revenue, but you don’t often hear it about small businesses and something that we found to be true again and again in the course of our reporting. We also found that about 60 percent of the people we polled believe their own companies should be doing more to promote diversity and inclusion in their workforces. And I think that’s evidence that Atlanta’s long time work on this area has has been improving the diversity and inclusion metrics in the city.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:45] Now, Michael as Chief Diversity Officer, How does kind of in your job, how do you kind of build in diversity as part of the culture, diversity and inclusion specifically? And also, how does it permeate into the kind of the working relationship you have with your clients? Because I’m sure your clients represent that same diversity that you’re trying to, you know, kind of work on within the culture of your company.

Michael Matthews: [00:05:13] We’ll start with the second question first to your point, many of our clients are smaller businesses themselves, so we work with them not only in offering financial solutions, but also in a range of topics and supporting them in the range of areas to help change what’s possible for their businesses. We know that diversity isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s also a key economic driver, so there’s mutual interest on both sides. And so by partnering with organizations like Bloomberg, we can help provide some of these positive success stories and address some of the pain points they have. And because it is, to your point, woven into the fabric of what we do at Synchrony, a lot of the stuff is easily transferable. I’m an easy to partner with them on. So it at Synchrony, for example, we have a program which we call ADT, which is advancing diverse talent, which we look at. We do data analytics methodology to look at representation and the opportunities for our company on an annual basis, and that helps us create and execute strategies related to diversity. And so those are the types of methodologies and tactics that we share with some of our small business partners.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:39] Now you mentioned that diversity isn’t. Just the right thing to do, but it can also be an economic driver. Can you talk about specifically like, are there stats that back that up like everybody feels good and it sounds good and everybody, you know, has that mission statement on the wall? But is there a kind of data to support that fact that diversity is kind of a quality of those fast growing or growing companies?

Edward Adams: [00:07:09] I think there certainly is. We spoke to dozens and dozens of small businesses in the Atlanta area for this report. I’ll give you just a couple examples of ones where diversity paid off in terms of the bottom line. The High Museum of Art Back in 2005, their CFO established a fund to acquire works of art by black artists and really has made a name for that museum in the arena of art by black artists. And that brought in almost $2 million in donations to the museum over the subsequent years. Or there’s the Choke Construction Company, a small construction company in the Atlanta area. The training manager there launched an online course to teach managers Spanish so they could communicate with Spanish speaking crew members. Not only has that improved construction site safety, as you would expect it would, but it’s also reduced injury costs, and it’s certainly bolstered morale at the company. Those are just a couple of examples where I think we’ve seen that diversity isn’t just good for people and communities, but it’s also good for business.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:15] So now in the report, there’s the information is there kind of maybe some actionable next steps that companies can take?

Edward Adams: [00:08:26] There are a variety in each one of our articles. We always have some actionable steps that that readers can take to try and duplicate the successes of the small businesses that we speak to. I think that one of the things that we hear a lot from small business owners is that it’s hard to find qualified, diverse employees. A good example of that is we spoke to the founder of something called the Patrick Law Group, which is a seven attorney corporate transactions law firm in the Atlanta area. And the recommendations that we heard for her to try and overcome that challenge was to make her business more a part of the diverse community in Atlanta. In her case, it meant participating in events at the Majority Black Bar Association in Atlanta so that as as the advisor to her put it, so that you can show up where members of the diverse community are showing up. There was also a recommendation that she reach out to recruiters who specialize in placing candidates of color as another means to try and reach her goal. And those are things that any small business could do to try and find more qualified, diverse candidates.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Now is there anything that companies can do to attract more diverse customers?

Edward Adams: [00:09:42] Sure. Absolutely. In fact, we spoke to a company called Classic Vision Care, it’s an optometry practice up in Marietta and Kennesaw, Georgia. And we had the diversity expert, Damon Williams, who’s the founder of the National Inclusive Excellence Leadership Academy in Atlanta. Give them some advice about how to reach a broader customer base, and he suggested connecting to diverse consumers in ways that make them feel valued in the case of the optometrist. He suggested doing free vision screenings in economically vulnerable schools, and he thought that could build brand equity as a company that’s concerned about diverse consumers.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:25] Now, Michael, can you give some advice to other maybe chief diversity officers out there? What are some things that folks can be doing to maybe open their eyes to some unconscious or subconscious biases that they might have as an organization?

Michael Matthews: [00:10:44] Of course, probably one of the main tools that we have in our toolbox is our we call them diversity networks or their employee resource groups, as they’re more commonly known. We have eight at Synchrony and they’re really the foundation of our culture with more of our more than 60 percent of our employees are engaged because that synchrony this we have the plus sign. So you don’t have to necessarily demographically fit into a box, but you can be have passion or want to be affiliated or support a group or be an ally of such. And so that allows you to participate. And us having strong partnerships with our diversity networks really helps us maintain that appropriate perspective and maintain relationships. They help drive and inform our diversity strategies in terms of what markets to touch base on and to plan and what kind of relationships we need to establish or maintain. So that’s probably one of the main pieces of advice that if they don’t have employee resource groups, establish them and if they do to invest in them

Lee Kantor: [00:11:58] Now, is there anything Synchrony does for their clients in terms of diversity when it comes to spotlighting some of their work or sharing best practices or even creating a community among themselves?

Michael Matthews: [00:12:10] Yeah, we’ve seen incredible examples of programs that are established by small businesses in the Pillars project. And so it’s an annual synchrony celebration of community leaders where they have the opportunity to come and highlight and spotlight some of the things that they’ve done. So like mattress retailers donating beds for families experiencing hardship or music repair shops, donating supplies to school to school music programs. And this not only provides the opportunity for some of our partners or these companies to do what’s right and to contribute to the community, but to also highlight some of their diverse focus and and show their commitment to these communities.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:57] So now large organizations like yours have a lot of resources. Is there any kind of low hanging fruit that the small business can can be doing in order to attract and maybe advance some diverse talent?

Michael Matthews: [00:13:13] Yeah, that’s a great question. When I think of small businesses, I think the one thing that they can focus on is making sure that they are hiring from the neighborhoods and the communities for which they serve, you know, and making sure that the employee population looks like the customer. They’re the customers in that population. So people naturally want to shop and want to do business with people who feel comfortable with them and who they feel comfortable with and who they feel represent them. So by making those types of investments that will help customers engage. This can also bring in new opportunities and address concerns of small businesses. A small business owner may not have seen otherwise from diverse, from diverse perspectives. Having that diversity in your employee base in forms like like I keep saying your diversity strategy and your overall company perspective

Lee Kantor: [00:14:08] Now, is there any advice of how your how our listeners or how the people who get their hands on this report, how to best use this report? Like how would you recommend they use the report once they get their hands on it?

Edward Adams: [00:14:25] I would recommend that they take a look through the reporting we have about, I think, about 20 pieces of content ranging from videos to audio reports to written reports, and take a look and look for the kinds of companies that represent them. We have a wide selection of small businesses in the Atlanta area represented in this report. I think if they see some of the kinds of small businesses that they are, they may also see some of the challenges that they face. Really, the the challenges that we’re faced by these Atlanta companies we talked to are not that different than the challenges faced by similar small businesses in in Iowa or Montana or California or New York. They’re really all the same, and I think that they’ll see some of themselves in this reporting.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:12] Now is this report a one off or is this something that’s going to be an annual affair?

Michael Matthews: [00:15:18] Michael? We’ll see. Right now, it looks like this has been such a successful endeavor and the partnership with Bloomberg that we’re definitely investigating future opportunities to have this occur again in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:35] Well, if somebody wants to get their hands on the report, what’s the best way to do that?

Edward Adams: [00:15:39] Real simple, Lee, just go to Bloomberg.com. Roadmap to diversity. That’s Bloomberg.com roadmap roadmap to diversity.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:49] And Michael, if somebody wants to connect with Synchrony and learn more about their offerings, or I’m sure you’re always hiring, you know, if their talent and wants to get involved with Synchrony as there a website for Synchrony?

Michael Matthews: [00:16:04] Yeah, you can just go to Synchrony. It’s easy and you’ll see links to anything and everything that we’re involved in. So I just encourage and you are right. We’re always hiring and looking for good talent, especially good, diverse talent. So I encourage people to go to Synchrony Jobs dot com,

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] And that’s S.Y. and R-N.Y.

Michael Matthews: [00:16:26] That’s correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:27] Good stuff. Well, Michael and Edward, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you. Thank you for having us. All right, this Lee Kantor will sail next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

 

Special Episode: Collette Portis With RED Development Group, Inc.

by

Collette-Portis-Red-Development-group2
Coach The Coach
Special Episode: Collette Portis With RED Development Group, Inc.
Loading
/

Collette-Portis-Red-Development-group2As CEO and Founder of RED Development Group, Collette Portis, M.Ed. is a serial entrepreneur proving that the entrepreneurial spirit of her parents and grandparents certainly rubbed off on her.

With 20+ years of experience as a master business coach and strategist, she has helped business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives through the process of developing their roadmap to business expansion, growth, and sustainability ultimately leading to a lasting legacy.

In line with her business accomplishments, she has earned 6 degrees including a Masters and is completing her Doctorate in Transformational Leadership. She’s been recognized by the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as a Women in Leadership, honored with the Career Mastered Leadership in Action Award, and has been featured in ValiantCEO, Authority Magazine, Voyage Dallas Magazine, Mira Largo Magazine, and on countless podcast.

In addition to authoring the G.O.A.L.I.E. business strategy bundle, Collette is the host of REAL-Eyez Destiny Radio and a contributing writer and influencer for Prime Women Magazine. After founding three businesses and achieving high educational success, Collette contends that her greatest accomplishment is being the mother of her son who’s an entrepreneur and soon-to-be lawyer Thomas.

It is her heart’s desire to help business owners realize the full potential in their business, gain their freedom, and implement the steps to generational wealth and legacy in their lives.

Follow RED Development Group on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time For Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them.Go to brxambassador.com to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to this very special edition of Coach the Coach Radio Stone Payton Lee Kantor here with you this afternoon. What a delight to hear in a little bit. We’re going to get a chance to visit, revisit and welcome back to the Business RadioX microphone with Red Development Group A. Collette Portas. But first, please join me in saying hello again to my co-host and business partner of 15 plus years now. Mr. Lee Kantor, how are you doing, man?

Lee Kantor: I am doing great. I’m so excited that we’re doing this series that’s so important for folks to really understand and learn how to get the most out of their interview and how to repurpose content. As in just the general sense, whether you’re being interviewed by us or by anybody. There are so many coaches out there that are just part of their marketing plan is to be interviewed on podcasts. And if you’re not kind of bringing all the juice out of that interview, you’re kind of leaving money on the table. So I am really excited about sharing different ways that we do it and different ways that the coaches that we reached out to come on and share ways that they kind of repurpose this content and leverage the content. So this is going to be fun.

Stone Payton: Well, to me, one of the marvelous, really fun things about this work is just when I think that I’ve got it figured out. We’ve got it figured out. You know, we put it in in the Business RadioX Academy for our correspondents and our studio partners and our clients. Just when I think when we have cracked the code on this, we turn around and we learn so much more from our guest, from our clients. That’s where all this wealth of knowledge comes from, and it’s just one of the many fun and rewarding things about doing this for a little minute. It beats the heck out of working, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Lee Kantor: This kind of content, I think, is super important for folks to kind of just listen to and learn from. And that way you get the most kind of benefit out of that activity. You’ve already spent the time doing the work. So why don’t you just kind of learn different ways to get the most out of the content? And this is stuff you can implement, you know, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. This is stuff that you can be using this content years down the road if you kind of plan it out, right?

Stone Payton: So what’s been the most interesting approach for capitalizing on on interviews that you’ve done, even if it was outside the Business RadioX system? Lee, like when you’ve done an interview, what’s been one of the most interesting and surprising ways to get the get the most out of it for you?

Lee Kantor: Well, I think something that we do internally that’s important to keep in mind when we’re doing an interview. We try to kind of plan it out in advance and know what we’re going to want to share ahead of time and try to plan that content so that it’s evergreen content. I think when people start talking about something super trendy or hot, that’s hot in that one minute, I think they’re going to regret that maybe down the road because that social media platform or that app or whatever may not even exist again six months or a year from now when someone finds this interview. So try to create kind of evergreen content. I think that’s very important when you’re doing this and when you do that, then you can add it to like what we do is we have an academy where we share best practices with our team and with our people and our clients. So we want to collect all of these things. So if they’re evergreen, it makes them more valuable and then it’s usable down the road. So I would say my big tip for this episode is to create evergreen content and make sure that you’re sharing evergreen content that you can repurpose and use down the road.

Stone Payton: Well, if my big tip, if I have one is don’t lose sight of some of the old school methods for getting the word out about the fact that you are on a on a show no matter or the fact that you are featured in a in a print article or something like that. I think it’s fabulous. I know it’s fabulous that we have all of these digital formats and with the social media platforms and new ones are emerging every day in so many ways to to multiply the effect of of any of your messaging and announcement. And yeah, I got to tell you, picking up the phone and just checking in with people and letting them know that you were featured on a show or, hey, I had an interesting experience the other day, Greg, I got a chance to do an interview. And, you know, we talked about blah blah blah. But you might enjoy it. I’ll send it to you if you want or the same, that same sort of of Typekit that same tone in a in a few emails to your inner circle. So my tip of the day would be, you know, don’t lose sight of some of the old school methods, then they can be they can be very productive.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, that’s a great tip. So why don’t we bring on the guest to get some wisdom from the crowd?

Stone Payton: I think that’s a marvelous idea. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Red Development Group Miss Collette Portis. How are you, sunshine?

Collette Portis: I am amazing. Stone, you know why? Why? Why? Because I get to choose to be there every day. So why should I be anything else?

Stone Payton: A been a man. So now you appeared on the Business RadioX Coach the Coach program. It hasn’t been this long ago, as made. That sounds about right. This year

Collette Portis: It’s been. Yeah, I think it was. This year was either this year or it could have possibly been the year last year. But yes, I was on Coach the Coach and it was awesome.

Stone Payton: Well, your host for Coach the Coach almost always is is Lee Kantor. So he probably had a little something to do with that. But in my experience, the reason that those interviews are so powerful in that program has been so successful is this the caliber of our the caliber of our guests? So thank you for that.

Collette Portis: You are welcome and thank you for allowing me on your show and then being crazy enough to bring me back. I’m just saying I don’t know why people keep giving me a mike, but they do.

Lee Kantor: Now, Collette, before we get into the subject of leveraging content, can you share a little bit about Read Development Group? How are you serving, folks? Give our listener kind of a snapshot of what you’re up to.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. We are a global business development firm and we’re focused on three things. Number one, increasing the revenue of small to medium sized businesses. Number two, helping to build out and put their internal team in the right place and then helping them to build their external team, which oftentimes we don’t think about it as think about those outside of our company that support us as part of our team. And so when we think about them as part of our team, we are sure that when we make decisions and things like that, we’re conscious of them because we understand that they help us to do whatever we’re going to do. And so when we make decisions, we’re always considering what is it and how what do they do? How can they support us? And then how, how do we make it a win for them at the same time? So we’re on purpose about making sure that we evaluate a company to see where they are because oftentimes as business owners, we just guess about where we stand and where out, where our company is. And then we create a strategic plan to help you get the success you want. And then we help you to execute that plan. So we make sure that you get results. So that’s that’s a little bit about it.

Lee Kantor: Now in your world, when your go to market strategy, obviously appearing on shows is a part of it and you do a lot of work networking in real life as well as online. Can you share a little bit about what has worked best for you when it comes to doing an interview like you did with us on Coach the Coach or in any of the other places that you’ve done interviews with? How do you do you have a kind of a set? Ok, this is what I do with every piece of content or do you kind of take it piece of content by piece of content like how do you kind of strategize around that effort of being interviewed?

Collette Portis: Absolutely. So number one, as soon as that content is published, my team gets it out on and on our social platform and they are sure to get it to our media page on our website, which is absolutely pertinent. So if you Google, collect Portis or you Google read Development Group, you are sure to find us. And part of that is because when we get content like this, we’re putting that on our website, which now creates what’s called a backlink, which is great for search engine optimization. And a lot of people don’t understand that that the more that people that you’re connected to in the online space, the further up and the listing for search and engines you are. So it’s easier to find you because you’re so connected to so many people. So that’s what we that’s the first thing we do.

Lee Kantor: So then you so you have a page on your website that lists your most recent or a lot of your different media appearances?

Collette Portis: Absolutely. And either you or Stone talked about even your old or your recent magazine articles that have been written about you or that you’ve written all of that stuff is on our media page because we understand that, you know, social media is like life in the internet world is much like life in that the greater connections we make, the richer life is and that’s really if you want to break. Search engine optimization down. That’s really the heart of it. The the greater the connections you make, the higher you’re going to rank. And so we make sure we put all of that stuff on our media page.

Lee Kantor: And then when it’s on the media page, you’re not just cutting and pasting it there, you’re linking to the actual source of it and the website of wherever you appear.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. And then we have what’s called a link tree. So in our email signature, there’s our Link Tree Link. So our website link is there, our link tree line, because they’re so average and we made sure that the link is hot. And what I mean by that is somebody can go right to that email signature and click on that link and get to where you want it to be instead of just leaving it as regular text. Because every time we send that email, that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating another link back to our website. Another link back to our our link tree. And so on our link tree. You’re going to find an all a lot of the media appearances that we’ve done, the articles that have been written about read, you’re going to find those links inside of our link tree. So we’ve done it twice in our signature. There’s the link for our website and there’s the link for our link tree, both of which have all of those media appearances on them.

Lee Kantor: Now, for those who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about a link tree?

Collette Portis: Yes. So Link Tree is amazing, so if you don’t have it, you should have it. They have a free version, but I encourage you to pay for the paid version because Lee and Stone don’t know this until now, but I also own a branding company. It’s important that your brand is always upfront. It’s always representing for you when you can’t represent yourself. So it’s a nominal fee. It’s not that much, I promise you. I’m not a representative for Link Tree at all. I get no benefit from it. But you want to make sure that your business shows up at its best 100 percent of the time. So the fee that you pay for that small, the small fee in order to brand your link tree is very important. So what it allows you to do is to create a page like a landing page that you can brand with your logo and all of that. So if you look that red, you would see our logo and all in our brand colors. But it allows us to put our website. There are social media links there, any media links so that people can connect to YouTube videos. I too have a radio show. It’s linked on my link tree. So any link that you want to put, you can also add documents. So for instance, if you’re a speaker and you have a speaker sheet or a bio or something like that, you can put all of that stuff on your link tree. So when we get new clients, we always like to brag about our clients. So when we get new clients, one of the assignments they get is to go connect with us in the social space. Well, we just give them the literally they don’t have to try and go find us. We don’t have to try and figure out what all of our links are to send to them. We send them the Link Tree link. They’ve got everything they need right there in order to click and go directly to our pages.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff and that stuff that it seems obvious to you. But other people sometimes don’t understand the value of linking to another person’s website. They think, Oh, they’re leaving my website, but there’s value to being like you said, Google values that, hey, you’re associated with this other place that has a lot of page authority. So then you must be good to say you’re getting benefit from linking to other people’s websites.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. And even more than that, you guys mentioned earlier or you asked me earlier, how is it and why is that valuable and how do we continue to do what we’ve been able to do because it’s really all about relationships? Yes, I’m going to be concerned if someone leaves my website and goes to someone else’s web site that I haven’t built a relationship with. What if I’m on purpose about building a relationship with Lee and Stone when somebody gets to their site and they say, I found your site because we came from Red Development Group? You guys are probably going to say, Oh my god, yes, they’re great over there. Now you’ve built my credibility because statistically people only believe 20 percent of what we say about ourselves, but they believe. 80 percent of what somebody else says about us. So if you understand relationships, you want them to go to your collaborative partner site so that your collaborative partner is building this credibility and people begin to understand that you are not just good for the service you provide, but you’re a holistic provider in the sense that you bring in collaborative partners that can answer as many issues as they might come across so they can go to one place and then people really start to depend on you, and then you start getting the weird text messages like, I get that says, What do you know about trucks? I don’t know. I’m a girl. I don’t know. They’re like, Well, I know, you know someone. I’m like, You’re right, I do know someone. Let me, let me send them a text message.

Lee Kantor: Now you mentioned that part of what you do is around branding. Is there any advice you can share with the coaches out there to kind of further separate themselves? Because coaching is a very, you know, it’s the Wild West out there and it’s hard to really discern one coach from another unless that coach is really putting a specific effort to really create that niche and that that slice of mindshare, any kind of do’s and don’ts when it comes to branding for coaches.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. So I’m going to give you guys a golden ticket. It’s one of the tools that I use for my own companies and for my clients, and it’s called the lean canvas. And there’s one site that we use, particularly called lean stack. And the thing that I love about lean stack, if you’re a coach worth your weight and salt, you will look at that, that thing. And it has videos for every section that Blaine Stack is going to help you determine why you’re special, why the market needs you. What problem directly you can solve for who and who do you want to solve them for? If you can figure that out. Number one who you want to solve problems for. Number two what their top three issues are. Number three, how you resolve those top three issues. And number four, what’s unique about you? Then you sell that. Not the fact that you’re a coach because like you, said Lee, it is a while. It’s the wild wild west out here. You can wake up tomorrow and say, I’m a coach. Or you can decide by five p.m. today that you’re a coach and start coaching. There’s nothing really to regulate our industry. So you have to know how to separate yourself and then begin to use words and images branding to separate yourself and create the culture and create the idea of who you are. It’s about relationship building. It’s about building your what is it? Building your personality for your brand, the feel of your brand? What are your colors communique? What are the images on your website? Communicate. One of the things that saddens me sometimes Lee, is I look at cultures, websites, and it’s almost like we don’t make much effort or we don’t see the value in and paying someone to make sure that we show up our best. My grandmother used to say, Don’t leave that house looking like nobody loves you. And, you know, sometimes I see someone’s brand and I’m like, Oh my god, nobody loves them enough that they are them. They they can do better than that. So that’s why that is important.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you share maybe an example that in your career of having been interviewed countless times, maybe kind of the most, maybe an unexpected benefit of an interview you did and somebody found it, and all of a sudden now you got business or somebody heard about what you were up to and wanted to learn more like something that was maybe unexpected from doing, you know, these kind of interviews where there was that benefit because a lot of times people think, Oh, I’m just doing this, I’m talking there. I don’t know if anybody hears me. Can you share an example that demonstrated to you? Look, people are listening in the weirdest ways. And here’s an example.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. I said on I was nominated as I was nominated as one of the exceptional women in my community. And so I was on this panel and they were asking us pretty much about our journey and things like that. Well, what I didn’t know is there was someone in the room that was looking for someone to provide services to two cities and one county. And simply now, if anybody knows anything about government contracting, typically that means you have to find the contract, you have to respond to the bid. You have to wait to see if they accept you. There’s this whole long process. Well, just by me being on that panel and being interviewed, they determined that they wanted my company to serve those three contracts. And so we got them. We were asked. Has said we were told what they need it. We were told what the goals were and we were asked to send them something to say how we could do that. And we were selected. It took I don’t even think it took two weeks for that to happen. And then another instance I was on a not an international panel speaking and I’ve built these relationships over in Europe and in other in Germany and other countries that I didn’t expect to build. But just for the fact that I was on these panels allow me to interact and to be heard by others who decided that I have something of value that they wanted to connect to. And in the light. Another example was I was in. There was an article written about me in a magazine called Voyage Dallas Magazine, and there was another lady that they wrote an article about in that same edition who ended up reaching out to me going, I read your article. It was awesome. Let’s have coffee. Let’s have a conversation about how we do some things together. And so our media is absolutely pertinent to the growth of your your business. And so the opportunity to build relationships?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I agree. And so many folks are doing more and more media appearances. I just want to make sure that they’re getting the most out of each and every one of those. And thank you so much for sharing what you’ve heard today. It’s so important. If you’re going to do spend the time and invest the time in doing the interview, then spend a little bit more time to squeeze as much juice out of that interview as you can. I mean, take a few steps, and if you can systematize it and do it every single time, then you’re really going to have a productive use of those times for those interviews and you’re going to get the most out of it.

Collette Portis: Absolutely. Some of the things that I’ve done with my content as my speaker rail, I’ve used content from my interviews, absolutely evergreen content and being all purpose about, you know, I’m a stickler about, I don’t want to do what’s trendy, I want to do what works and what long and what’s lasting and if it’s if it’s got staying power. I don’t mind doing that, but I don’t want to get caught in the trendy stuff, but I’ve used it again for my media page, social media accounts and commercials for my business, my YouTube channel, and most of all, for social proof, social proof, social proof. It’s proof that you are an expert at what you do. It’s proof that you have value it, build your credibility. And that, to me, I think, is probably the greatest benefit.

Lee Kantor: Well, Colette, thank you so much for sharing today. It’s just been fantastic catching up with you. If somebody wants to learn more about read, can you share the website so they can get a hold of you, maybe up their branding game or get a hold of you for your coaching?

Collette Portis: Absolutely. They can go to read development group dot com. Make sure you put group at the end or you can simply Google Colette Portis and you’ll be able to find me.

Stone Payton: Well, this is Stone speaking again, thank you so much for joining us, I want our listeners to know and I want you to know during much of this conversation, while of course I was listening to you and Lee, I was hanging out at your link tree. If that’s the right way to say that because I went to your email signature, I clicked on that and then I saw that whole a whole variety of things I could choose. And then I chose to dove into the media section and gang. This is a ninja level practical clinic on how to represent yourself. And if you if you choose to leverage one interview to get the next and capitalize on those two interviews to get the next two. I mean, this is such a perfect example. Just on one page in one section of this link tree thing on the red development site, you have all of these interviews and articles, and wow, I am so glad that that you agreed to come hang out with this, and I’ve certainly learned a lot. This is this is fantastic. I think Business RadioX Lee and Stoney Link Trees,

Collette Portis: Mozart and Lee because if you guys did nothing but link to all of the websites of everybody you interviewed. Can you imagine how many links those would be? Oh my gosh.

Stone Payton: Well, we certainly are blessed to have Collette Portis in our inner circle, and I expect that circle will continue to expand and get deeper and wider. Thank you again one more time before we wrap. Best way for people to get in touch with you. Coordinates website LinkedIn, whatever is appropriate.

Collette Portis: They can catch me on just Google Collab Portis or go to read Development Group. Com and Lee and Stone. Thank you so much. You guys are always so great. I always enjoy hanging out with you.

Stone Payton: All right. Well, this is Stone Payton for Lee Kantor our guest today, Collette Portis with Redd Development Group and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

Austin L. Church With Balernum

by

Coach The Coach
Coach The Coach
Austin L. Church With Balernum
Loading
/

Austin L. Church is a writer, brand consultant, and online entrepreneur.

After finishing his M.A. in Literature in 2008 and getting laid off from a marketing agency in 2009, Austin started freelancing. He got into iOS and Android apps and eventually sold his portfolio of 30+ apps.

In 2013 he co-founded a tech startup called Closeup.fm (touring, ticketing, and communication software for performing artists). In 2018 he co-founded a branding and marketing studio called Balernum.

When Austin isn’t helping online creators and entrepreneurs build real brands and make a positive impact, he teaches freelance creatives how to have a record year doing their most joyful, profitable work. Austin, his wife Megan, and their three children live in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Connect with Austin on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • It’s important for coaches to have a program
  • Advice to freelance creatives and artist types
  • Advice to other coaches and companies who want to work with or sell to creatives

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to BRXAmbassador to learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Austin Church with Bill Burnham. Welcome, Austin.

Austin Church: [00:00:42] Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Burnham. How are you serving, folks?

Austin Church: [00:00:49] So I serve folks in two different ways. On the consulting side, I help the typically e-commerce brands with a specific focus in outdoor brands with their brand strategy. That’s everything from mission. Vision values all the typical stuff to differentiation, target audience, all the stuff that helps them stand out. And then on the coaching side, I help freelance creatives most often, and that’s where we’re working on business levers. The areas of their business where with a little bit of effort, they can see outsized returns.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:29] So now what drew you to creatives as a focus?

Austin Church: [00:01:34] So my background is in literature. I went to grad school to get a master’s in creative writing and never really realized it until I got into the business world. But I was always entrepreneurial, and so I was that odd duck who loved the arts, loved poetry, loved fiction writing and yet liked money and wanted to make money. And then later, when I had a family needed to make more money and didn’t think I was that unusual. But after hundreds of conversations with writers and freelancers, I’ve realized that a lot of creatives really struggle with the business side, and I’m passionate about helping them work through some of those issues.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:26] So how did you kind of I don’t want to say pivot, because maybe it was just a natural evolution from, you know, kind of wearing the hat of, I’m a creative, I’m a writer. I’m going to write. And then now that you’ve written, then going, OK, when’s the money come from this? And how do I build a business around my writing? Did that just happen? Like, you just figured out a way to do it and said, Oh, I’m going to share this with everybody else. I know, and that’s how you got into coaching. Like, what was the path?

Austin Church: [00:02:56] I think I was like a lot of people in that I had the problem, and I think most people don’t change until it hurts worse to stay the same. And I was failing forward and had a number of experiences early on where I made a mistake undercharged or had a bad master service agreement. I just made some kind of mistake that caused me pain, and I’m like, Well, there’s got to be a better way to do this. You start looking around and then as time passed, you realized, Well, I’ve started to have some success. I changed the way I operated, developed some business acumen and wait a second. All the other people that I see that are making six figures as freelance creatives, well, they’re all doing the same things. They’re all pulling the same levers. And that was kind of my light bulb moment when I thought, Oh, there are, like I said, levers and there are principles at play. And I think a lot of those will be replicable or repeatable for most people. And so that’s when I put together my program and started sharing what I had learned through trial and error.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:15] So what are some of those main levers?

Austin Church: [00:04:18] So I think a lot of them will apply both to creatives and to coaches, the six that I talk about most often are positioning, packaging, pricing, pipeline psychology and process, and I can go as as deep as you want to go in any of those.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:37] So are they in order so you have to get your positioning right before you do anything else?

Austin Church: [00:04:43] I think that helps because positioning goes back to like your dream clients. Who’s the target audience you want to serve and your market? And it’s really easy to pick a bad market, a market where people don’t have money or a market where they don’t experience an appropriate degree of pain that would motivate them to make a change or they don’t or the market shrinking. Right. So I think positioning is the best place to start. And then once you see all the indicators you need to see in your market with the type of client that you want to serve well, then you can start thinking about the packages that you want to create what I would call your juicy offers. And then, you know, you start putting prices on your offers and your pricing can be strategic and premium, or it can be more knee jerk and reactive. You can probably tell by my wording which I prefer and which I recommend definitely strategic and premium, but start with positioning for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:50] So now is this kind of gear to a business audience? Or is this geared to like, what if I’m a fan fiction writer?

Austin Church: [00:06:01] So some some things still apply, right? Robert Kiyosaki. I think it was a rich dad, poor dad where he’s passing on this interview he had with a journalist, and she was expressing frustration that her books weren’t selling. And he told her, You know, they called me a best selling writer, not a best writing writer. I recommend you take a class on sales. And so certainly fiction writers, other types of writers could benefit from looking for those levers, sales being one of them. But primarily, I’m working with creatives, writers. Yes, designers, illustrators, photographers, software developers. I’m looking for folks like that who are definitely in business. Definitely see their work as a business, not just a hobby. And, you know, look for the more ambitious ones that are looking to turn a profit.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:02] So it’s not artist to be art for art’s sake. This is artist for commerce that they’re helping other people leverage their art to for their business in some manner.

Austin Church: [00:07:13] Absolutely. And I love art for art’s sake. But art and commerce have always mixed, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of in that. And wanting or needing to sell your art and support yourself does not make you a sellout. There’s a lot more to talk about there, but yes, definitely focused on people who are art as business or creativity as business.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:41] So now what are some of the symptoms these folks are having that your team or you yourself is the right fit to help them kind of get to the to a new level? Is it just frustration or lack of sales or or can it be something more deeper than that?

Austin Church: [00:07:58] Good question. It’s certainly inconsistency. You have a great month and then the next month isn’t so great and you see that freelance feast or famine. Another thing that is pretty common is burnout. Once people get to consistently making around five thousand bucks a month, so they’re, you know, topping out at around 60 a year. They get tired and maybe they don’t enjoy the work as much as they used to or find themselves pretty getting frustrated with clients or not short tempered, but just annoyed or irritated easily. And so there’s some emotional signs as well. You find yourself not as excited to get out of bed in the morning, and every new request that comes from a client may meet with some eye rolling or size. Or you get what I’m saying, right? So you’ve either hit a wall with your earning or there’s something about your emotional life or even your work life balance or blend that just feels off, and that’s when people start looking for help.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:16] So now, if you’re a creative, should you have something that is. Almost a vehicle for passive income, whether it’s a course or a book or a series or some some something that is kind of making money for you, just with the without you doing much anymore, were you did the initial work to kind of build it, but it’s saying there in the background kind of working for you?

Austin Church: [00:09:41] I recommend it. I mean, when I look at a lot of my big gains, yes, I ratcheted up my prices with creative work over the years, but a lot of my big gains came from, like you said, packaging up something that I know as a course, as a workshop and finding a more leveraged business model. There are so many business models available to us online now, and it seems like even with something like ticktalk, new ones crop up every year. So yes, by all means create some kind of digital product and you’ll achieve some scale. That’s simply not possible when you’re trading time for money

Lee Kantor: [00:10:27] And then the beauty, or one of the benefits of doing this is that this is just kind of incrementally going to add income without you kind of fussing with it a lot.

Austin Church: [00:10:37] Oh, for sure. And I think I was explaining this to my daughter the other day I had earned an affiliate commission through a product that I linked to and one of my blog posts. She’s eight. I think she’s I think we’ve got a little entrepreneur on our hands. But I was explaining to her that I wrote this blog post once years ago, and to date, I’d say that it has earned me around fifteen hundred dollars in affiliate commissions. And no, it doesn’t generate a huge sum of money on any given month. But I mean, I look at my revenue as a mosaic. Some pieces are bigger, some pieces are smaller. But every piece I add well, the whole mosaic gets bigger. My my overall revenue gets bigger. So I’m just I’m amazed at how many different ways there are to piece together that mosaic.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:32] And then as part of your work as a coach is kind of manage the expectations of your clients because like you said, you do this blog post, you add this affiliate link and it’s generating, you know, over the course of like, say, five years say it generates even even if it’s just the $1500. Well, that’s three hundred dollars a year. And if you can do that times 10 times, 15 times, 20 times one hundred, then it becomes money that you’re paying attention to. Now it’s all like you said, it’s just sitting there working in the background. And if you can get enough of that mosaic going, then then that creates that security and that creates that kind of predictable revenue over time.

Austin Church: [00:12:18] That’s right. And I think one of the things I talk a lot about is both a plan and patience. I think one of the traps that creatives in particular fall into is what I would call the skills improvement trap, where if you have, let’s say, 20 units of time and effort that you could spend, you’re a lot more likely as a writer or another type of freelance creative to go spin those units of effort on becoming incrementally better as a writer. Even if you make a 20 percent gain in skill or quality over the course of a year with copywriting that doesn’t translate into a 20 percent gain in income, so you have to come up with a plan that is built around OK, if I have these 20 units of effort and I were to apply them over here in terms of prospecting or even in terms of like what you said, creating a digital product or finding more leverage somewhere else, will that 20 minutes of effort might not represent 20 percent gain in income, but more like a 60 percent gain in income? And so part of my program is helping freelance creatives find those fulcrum, those like points of leverage so that, yeah, you won’t. We all have limited time, but where you put your time really matters in terms of the results that you give.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:54] Now I’m a big believer in processes over goals, and I think to create the right systems and tweak the right systems is more beneficial than having a goal that you’re shooting for. And is there work that I can be doing or should be doing as a creative every day to just keep pumping that lever like you were talking about earlier? That’s going to generate some sort of return over time?

Austin Church: [00:14:19] Yes. The most common mistake I see freelance creatives making is they stop marketing when they get busy. They finally experience that sense of relief, of having plenty of work, maybe even too much work. You have that one month that maybe it even doubles your best month. To date, everything is going great. And so you take your foot off the gas with marketing, with lead generation with follow up, not fully realizing that each week you’re actually working on generating leads that you’ll need six months from now. And so the one habits that I advocate for and I love what you said about process over goals. Hey, listen, if you’re going to be constantly implementing one process, it should be business development, marketing, lead generation, even if it’s just 30 minutes a day. Forty five minutes a day, don’t become inconsistent with that.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:25] So now what are those activities? How do you recommend your clients like? What activities are they doing for those 30 minutes?

Austin Church: [00:15:32] It depends on what their market is and what their primary channels are going to be, but an easy answer is listen. Beyond LinkedIn, be posting on LinkedIn. Be proactively building your audience on LinkedIn by sending 10 to 15 connection requests a day to people in your target audience. Find posts from people and your target audience. Comment on those, whatever whatever your market is, you find the main channel or the watering hole where people in that market in that target audience are hanging out and then show up there often and you put in your statistically significant number of activities there. Again, like you said, trusting the process more than you trust even a specific goal or how you feel on a specific day.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:31] So if you invest the time in kind of building this prospecting machine properly and efficiently, then it is kind of a rinse and repeat every day.

Austin Church: [00:16:41] That’s right. And it takes the pressure off of needing one particular post to get all the attention because you know, you’re going to be showing up and making another one tomorrow. It’s I mean, we all know that consistency trumps everything in marketing. It’s just that consistency is hard.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:59] So all right, that’s the work part, people. That’s the part they don’t like.

Austin Church: [00:17:04] Well, and that’s the part that, you know, a lot of freelance creatives are really smart people and we’re always looking for hacks. We’re always looking for ways to like, maximize results with minimal effort. But there are some things that you cannot hack in. Consistency is one thing you cannot hide. You just you have to put in your ups. You have to show up. You have to get the basics every once in a while. Maybe you do hit a grand slam, but you know, show up every day. And sure enough, you’ll usually come out with more than enough leads.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:39] Good stuff. Well, if someone’s out there that wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, maybe to get a hold of your program or just kind of learn more what you are up to. What’s the website?

Austin Church: [00:17:51] So it’s billion m b a l e r n UMD. I’m on LinkedIn a bunch. It’s my name Austin L as in Larry Church. Find me there. Send me a message.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:04] Good stuff, Austin. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Austin Church: [00:18:10] Thank you for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:12] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Enrique Ortegón With Salesforce

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Enrique Ortegón With Salesforce
Loading
/

Enrique Ortegón is the senior vice president, SMB at Salesforce where he leads the North America sales team focused on helping small and medium-sized businesses grow with easy-to-use CRM technology that scales with their business.

Previously, Enrique served as the Senior Vice President and General Manager, Latin America at Salesforce.

He has shared his expertise as a writer and speaker, participating in events like the World Economic Forum, Inter-American Development Bank Summit, MexicoBusiness Summit, eMerge Americas, and IPAE Digital.

Connect with Enrique on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Small and Medium Business Trends Report
  • How government and community support has affected SMBs
  • How technology has helped SMBs survive and thrive in an increasingly unpredictable world
  • Changed on SMBs in the past year and how that impacts their future

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have Enrique or with Salesforce. Welcome, Enrique.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:00:35] Hi, thank you, Lee. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me here on your show today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to and what Salesforce is doing here with this new, I guess it’s the fifth edition of the Small and Medium Business Trends report. Can you talk a little bit about what’s the kind of the reason behind even creating the report in the first place?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:00:57] Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you so much. Yeah. So today we launch our fifth annual Small and Medium Business Trends report, and we launch it in the framework of the Small Business Week here in the United States today kicked off the National Small Business Week, which is the opportunity for us to recognize and celebrate what I call the foundation of our economy and the fabric of our society and what we try to do here at Salesforce. We are very we’re customers, first customer centric company. We want to understand what’s going on with our customers, right? What are they going through and what are they doing to adapt, to survive, to thrive in different environments and listen? The last 18 months have been very challenging for all of us, and a small and medium businesses have, you know, are not the exception. So we went out there. We asked more than ten thousand five hundred small and medium business leaders and owners from around the world. What are they doing? How have they manage the pandemic? And we found things that are very encouraging and that makes us feel very optimistic about their creativity, their resilience, their social resourcefulness of this small and medium businesses. When we ask them how they manage to survive the pandemic. Seventy one percent of them told us that they did so by going and adopting digitalization, which is a very encouraging trend. The other thing we realized is in the U.S. alone, more than four point four million businesses we’re creating were created during this time. So I think it’s a very encouraging landscape. I think a very I’m very optimistic about what small and medium businesses are doing and will continue to do for our economy and for our society.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:41] Now, having my business, all I do is interview small and mid-sized business owners. So every day I’m on the I’m doing these kind of interviews with maybe half a dozen or so different small business mid-sized business owners around the country. And what I’m seeing is, again, just like every other crisis. Business owners tend to be optimistic. I don’t think you can be in business and be pessimistic. It’s very difficult to be kind of a naysayer and still try to grow a business. What are you seeing as kind of some hurdles ahead of small business that they’re going to have to deal with? One of the obvious ones is hiring. A lot of folks are struggling to find the right team members. Do you have any kind of insight based on your report of how they’re attacking that part of the challenge?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:03:35] Yeah. Well, I’ll just say firstly, I knew I liked you for a reason and I love your job because as much as I love my job because I also spend a lot of time talking to small and medium businesses, I mean, it’s my job, and I find it fascinating, and I admire and respect small business leaders, owners, entrepreneurs so much. And you’re right. I mean, it’s been a challenge to feel the need for employment, right? The first thing that we saw is that a lot of small businesses have to furlough a lot of their employees. Now, about half of them have a starting to hire them back, but they’re starting to hire them back under different conditions. What’s going on right now is that employees, usually customers, their expectations have changed. So now you have employees, they’re asking if they’re going to come back to the workforce. They want to come back with a flexible work and flexible work arrangements. They want to do so remotely right under the conditions that are better for them, that help them be more productive, that helped them to be happier, right, and helped to contribute more to their own onto their customer success. So as a response of that, what we’ve seen is that there’s momentum. Businesses are offering flexible work arrangements, the ability to work from home. They’re investing in online productivity and communication tools, and they’re rebuilding these relationships that they have with their own employees, right? By allowing them again to be successful from anywhere right on in the working arrangement that they find more flexible and better for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:08] So now how how have kind of the underserved entrepreneurs done through the pandemic? I know there’s been record numbers of black Latina women owned businesses. Two bubbling up during the pandemic, but how have they fared?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:05:27] Yeah. Listen, Latina and black owned businesses have not fared as well as the rest as well as the rest of the other businesses. That’s that’s a sad reality of the environment in which we are. And that’s why when we look back and think about when we ask them all of the businesses, what has helped them succeed get through this pandemic, both government and community support has been very important. Sixty nine percent of the leaders we asked said that government support play a key role. Sixty seven percent of the leaders we asked said community support played a key role in their in their survival. Even one one out of 10 said they will not be around if it wasn’t by a combination of good government and community support. And this is even worse for Black and Latinx owned and supported businesses. And I think that’s why it’s so important not only on this week, which is a small business week nationally. I like to say, you know, Small Business Week should be like Mother’s Day. It should be every day of the week. It’s important that we go out there and we support our local, small and medium businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:39] Now it’s encouraging to see that community support is almost as high as government support because community support to me is sustainable and replicable year round, where government support probably has a expiration date. And that’s hard to kind of count on that year after year. Is there anything that you learned that is maybe kind of be actionable teaching items for folks to leverage their community more to immerse themselves in their community more to get the most out of it so they can really bond and have the community care if they’re not there anymore?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:07:14] Yeah, I mean, this goes hand in hand. We learned about how businesses actually survive and are finding success in these new environment. And the answer is do utilization right? What we’re seeing is that as small and medium businesses through digitalization are extending their relationship with their customers, they’re giving their customers the choice, the flexibility to engage with them right in the channel of their choice, the device of their choice, the time of their choice. Right. So they can have both a detail as well as an in-person relationship. I got to tell you, I love walking down the street to my favorite coffee shop, pick up my coffee and my donut right in the mornings. But sometimes I’m going to be in a rush. So I also love the ability to order from the app and have again my coffee, my donut right there waiting for me. So it’s a transaction that will usually take five 10 minutes. I can. Sometimes I stay there, I hang out there for for a few minutes to one that could be just I used to come by and grab my stuff and move on with my day right? I’m still supporting my local, my local business, right? But I’m doing in a different environment. So small and medium businesses are finding that is really important. So seventy five percent are establishing a digital E commerce and e-commerce channel, right? And they don’t anticipate this is going to go away. So they continue to invest in contactless delivery options, et cetera. They continue to invest in social media channels and communication with their customers through different channels via text message, email, marketing campaigns, etc..

Lee Kantor: [00:08:49] Now are you finding that because of this digitization and this kind of ecommerce element that they’ve added to their business, is there a chance that they might say, You know what, maybe we don’t need to be brick and mortar anymore. Maybe we can be all digital.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:09:06] I think the key word is flexibility and choice, right? I think they’re finding that they’re going to have to live in this both worlds. They’re both here to stay. Seventy five percent of the growing businesses we talked to said the changes they did in the past are going to stay and they’re going to help them remain competitive and successful into the long term, whether they’re going to keep both options. Users like employees are going to continue to say, Hey, I might be working remotely, but I want to have the option to come back to the office maybe one or two days a week if I need to. So I, I don’t anticipate and we haven’t seen a downward trend where say, Hey, we’re completely shuttering our doors and moving into an entirely digital engagement form. But rather, we’re going to leave from this duality where the customers and the employees are going to have the choice to engage both digitally and in person.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:59] Right. But that’s an interesting trade off that they’re making because in one case, they’re just competing with the folks around them and then the other case, they’re competing with the globe, whether it’s in terms of talent or whether it’s in terms of competition. Is there anything that Salesforce does to help them kind of, you know, kind of maintain that hybrid plan of attack?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:10:20] Yeah, absolutely. Listen, we’re in number one. Crm, customer relationship management platform and what we do, we actually help teams sales, marketing service, e commerce, IT teams work as one team from anywhere. So what we’re doing, we’re empowering companies. Customers of all sizes, small and medium businesses to use our tools to find ways to connect and to satisfy their customers in the ways that their customers find best as well as their employees. And we’ve done things like, for example, Slack, which, you know, introduces a whole concept of the digital HQ, right? Which means now we’re all working together in a virtual world that we can be working together side by side, and we will also be collaborating with a teammate that is in a different timezone, right in a different state, a different part of the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] And then not all of your offerings are for fee for these microbusinesses, there’s kind of no charge low charge versions of Salesforce.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:11:17] You’re certainly options. Listen. They’re very affordable options. There are different ways to get into our platform. What I will say, you know, if you know your people listen to your show, are interested. Go to Salesforce.com, a small business France sub trends and find out. Engage with us and we’ll figure out a way to make sure you are successful. We’re helping you and we’re successful and we’re helping you be successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:40] And then when a person engages with Salesforce, are they dealing with a kind of a live human or is this a kind of automated interaction?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:11:51] Both. I mean, all digital world. We’re an artificial intelligence. It’s so relevant and important these days. If you want to reach a human, you will reach a human. If you want to interact digitally with a chatbot, you can do that. And if we can solve your problem, we’ll do it that way, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:07] So now are there any kind of takeaways from this report that you would say this is the low hanging fruit that people can take action on today?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:12:18] I would say there are four things that we learn from this report that are very important. One is that small and medium businesses are prioritizing both customer and employees needs in this new digital world, right? They’re engaging with them in the channel of their choice and the device of their choice right at a time of their choice. And given the flexibility to engage digitally as well as in person, which means there’s an acceleration of digitalization, which also means there is a prioritization of security with digitalization comes the importance of keeping customers and companies data secure, right? And the fourth thing that I’ll say and we’ve seen is really interesting. You see it. You talk all the time with small and medium business owners and leaders and entrepreneurs, hard times, uncertainty, crises and challenges. They’re not as strange to this. I mean, they are sometimes, you know, they’re perennial optimists, right? But what they’re finding is the changes are coming in a faster way and a more unpredictable ways. So they’re now incorporating the scenario planning practices into their management style and into their management practices. So four things prioritized customers and employees needs accelerate utilization, focus on security, cybersecurity and incorporating this in their planning through their management style.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:43] I couldn’t agree more. I think that that is so important with these small and mid-sized businesses, especially to have that kind of support and community to help them through these challenging times because a lot of folks feel like they’re going at it alone and they don’t have a kind of a place to turn. I think one of the benefits of partnering with a Salesforce company is that community of Salesforce, folks that are users of Salesforce and the community that you’ve established over the years to help each other. And that is just the worth the price of admission by itself. I think, because it is kind of the Wild West out there and you need as much help as you can in order to survive.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:14:24] You know, I could not have said that that early. That’s just phenomenal. We do have a trailblazer community, which is millions of people who are certified, who use Salesforce, who are evangelists of Salesforce and who help each other learn advance, right? Help certainly give us feedback. As a company, they help each other and be successful in this ecosystem. But most importantly, if you’re a small and medium business leader, owner, an entrepreneur, you’re not alone. Ninety nine point nine percent of the businesses in this country are small or medium businesses. Forty seven percent of the people who are employed in this customer are employed by industry in this country are employed by small or medium business. And in this week, what I’ll say is an opportunity for all of us to recognize to celebrate small, medium businesses by a small user, small write, reviews, post and social media channels and use overall, you know, spread the love for small and medium businesses. I said before, and I will continue to say small and medium businesses are the foundation of our economy and the fabric of our society. We need them and they need us. So let’s go out there and, you know, spread the small business love.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:37] I couldn’t agree more. And the sad fact is, and this is my mission and this is why Business RadioX exists, is because we’re trying to be the voice of those small to midsize business owners. Because sadly, even though ninety nine point nine percent of the businesses are small and midsize, the zero point one percent of the businesses take all the headlines and all the media attention away from all the other ones. So we’re trying to be that voice of business and give them a chance to be heard. And I think that it’s critically important because those are the folks that are supporting the community. They’re the ones. They are supporting the church and the schools and the Little League teams. They’re the ones doing the hard work and they’re kind of the unsung heroes of those communities.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:16:18] At least we’re together on this campaign to make sure small and medium businesses continue to be around, continue to support our economy, continue to support our societies and our communities. We’re in this one big symbiotic circle. And I agree with you. So you and me, we’re hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder in this. We’re advocates, we’re evangelists and staunch supporters forever or small and medium businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:44] So now if somebody wants to get their hands on this report, where can they find it?

Enrique Ortegon: [00:16:48] Salesforce.com SMB trends?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:52] Good stuff, Enrique. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. You and your firm are doing important work and we appreciate you.

Enrique Ortegon: [00:16:59] Thank you, Lee. It’s been a pleasure and go a small business love.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:02] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Will Downs With Downs Law

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Will Downs With Downs Law
Loading
/

After working for several years in larger firms, Will Downs started Atlanta-based Downs Law in March of 2013 with a desire to offer clients quality legal services delivered in a more personal and thoughtful manner.

Will established immediate success with Downs Law, prevailing in several jury trials within the first few years of opening the firm. Throughout his career, Will has participated in hundreds of trials, as well as achieved successful resolution, thorough settlement, or summary judgment, of numerous other cases.

He primarily practices in the area of commercial real estate, with an emphasis on landlord/tenant and collections. Will also has extensive litigation experience in the areas of property damage, real estate, construction, and homeowner’s association law.

Additionally, his experience includes negotiating and facilitating business deals, such as leases, personal guarantees, deeds, operating agreements, security agreements, and other transaction documents.

Will’s results have prompted numerous speaking opportunities, including at the State Bar of Georgia’s Solo and Small Firm Institute along with the National Business Institute, where he has spoken on various topics including The Ultimate Guide to Commercial Real Estate Law, Combating ‘Rambo’ Litigators, and Collection Law: Start to Finish. Additionally, Will provides pertinent legal updates on the Downs Law blog.

​Beyond his dedication to the firm’s clients, Will is also committed to volunteering his time through pro bono legal work. He currently serves on the State Bar of Georgia’s Access to Justice committee where he works to increase the public’s access to legal services.

In 2008, he participated in the successful habeas trial of an inmate on Georgia’s death row. The trial was the client’s last hope of avoiding the death penalty for a crime he was mentally incapable of committing. Will also represented several Georgia non-profit environmental organizations in filing amicus briefs to stop the permitting of a coal-fired power plant in southwest Georgia, emphasizing the significant impact of the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Will also presently serves on the ACLU of Georgia’s legal committee and is involved with several professional organizations, including the Lawyer’s Club of Atlanta, the Atlanta Bar Association, and the DeKalb County Bar Association.

Originally from West Point, Georgia, Will, completed a journalism degree from The University of Georgia.

Connect with Will on LinkedIn and follow Downs Law on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The best way to find a lawyer
  • Some good questions people should ask when hiring a lawyer
  • Some things people should avoid when looking for a lawyer
  • Some things a commercial landlord or tenant should never agree to in a lease
  • The top things to look for to avoid issues down the road

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one, but before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on Atlanta Business Radio. We have Will downs with Downs Law. Welcome, Will.

Will Downs: [00:00:41] Hey, Lee, how are you doing?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:42] I am doing well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about dance law. How are you serving, folks?

Will Downs: [00:00:48] Sure thing. Well, we have a law firm that focuses on commercial real estate and litigation and and really kind of what that boils down to is we negotiate and fight over a property and money. So so that’s kind of what we do and the way we do it is we just try to to do so in a clear communicable way that kind of articulates the mission, our purpose, our scope of work, and we try to be transparent about the legal process to guide clients throughout.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] So now what’s your back story? Did you always want to be a lawyer and specifically, do you always want to get involved in this side of the law?

Will Downs: [00:01:26] I did not always want to be a lawyer, Lee. I have a journalism background, so I was always interested in stories and telling stories and people. So it is kind of a good Segway to the law. So it’s a practice in journalism for a couple of years and then made the transition to law. So. So now I get to, you know, when I’m in court, I get to to craft the story. I want to tell that that is designed to persuade the judge or the jurors.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] So you get to use that storytelling still comes into play, it’s just you’re kind of using it a little differently than maybe you envisioned when you were younger.

Will Downs: [00:02:08] Yeah, it’s you know, it’s it’s interesting because, you know, in journalism, you can often take a quite complex piece and you kind of have to distill it into that, you know, however many words you’re given or how many minutes you’re given and the laws the same way. I mean, you know, in court, at least you don’t have a long time to to impress people and you kind of get to the point and you get to choose what’s relevant and what’s not and what you think is going to persuade and kind of leave the the kind of ancillary details that you may think are interesting, but other people might not out so. So it’s it’s all about it’s all about a lot about crafting the story and you know, and also in a in a negotiation, not just in core, but say, you know, a lease negotiation, for instance, you know, that’s a 50. It can be a 50 page document. And you know, you can really get bogged down in a few of the details that you may have an issue with. But you know, kind of the the bigger picture is kind of, you know, is this a deal worth entering into or not? And so, you know, kind of looking at as a lawyer, I try to guide people in looking at the particular provisions that that really matter the most to Elise

Lee Kantor: [00:03:37] And even a negotiation of that kind. It’s not always kind of the facts of the matter, right? Like it’s the numbers or the numbers. And but the story is important as well because people buy things or they negotiate things, and the outcome might not be. Maybe they justify it with numbers, but sometimes the story kind of persuades them to make the deal or not.

Will Downs: [00:04:00] Yeah, yeah, that’s very much truly. And another thing is is often find in leases too, especially from the, you know, the tenants perspective, the prospective tenant, you know, they may get, you know, their story, they may get really attached to the particular space or the particular business idea. And they may have already kind of convinced themselves that this is what they want to do. And as a lawyer, I’m not ever trying to kill the deal if that’s something that that you want to do. But I I do want to, you know, make sure you’ve considered all the scenarios that may come into play and have done your due diligence to make sure you know this will be a story with a happy ending.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] Right. And they can make an informed decision. Not one. That’s an emotional decision, necessarily.

Will Downs: [00:04:56] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:57] So now being that there are so many different types of lawyers in your case, you gravitated to this commercial side of the law. Can you talk to the folks out there that are deciding which lawyer I should choose in my situation? Is it something that I have to as a business person, I have to have, you know? Just a 20 different lawyers for every specific specialty or like. Or is it some general purpose lawyers can handle some of this stuff, like how do I know when it’s time to go for a specialist or a generalist?

Will Downs: [00:05:36] Well, that’s a that’s a really interesting question and one I’ve actually dealt with myself, you know, and I’ll start by saying this is that, you know, talking to lawyers can often be incredibly confusing. Know I am a lawyer and I find that often, you know, if I’m at, you know, gathering with another attorney, I haven’t met before and they’re trying to tell me what they do often can’t even quite make sense of what they’re telling me. They do so. So I certainly sympathize with, you know, the general public or even a business owner who you know, is looking to hire an attorney but but doesn’t quite know how to go about that or what they’re looking for. Yeah. So it can be incredibly difficult to find the right person. And even in my practice, you know, we often do work out of state. And so I need to associate an attorney in another jurisdiction. And it can be difficult unless I have, you know, have a colleague, you know, that I know they’ve worked with before. It can be difficult to find someone. So, you know, in hiring an attorney, you know, there’s a lot of factors to consider. And, you know, because it can be not only a life changing experience, but incredibly expensive and emotional decision as well. You know, so do doing due diligence is important. And as far as the types of law generals versus specialists, I don’t know that I quite see it that way. I mean, obviously, if if there are some certain, you know, specialty, I guess areas of law, let’s say like if you need a divorce, right? I mean, you know, a bankruptcy attorney isn’t going to necessarily be able to help you. So there are some certain specific categories of law that that a consumer or business owner may be looking for.

Will Downs: [00:07:41] But what I often find you know that that I get connected with with people and businesses is that it’s, you know, it’s I think of myself as like our firm, as a problem solver, right? So if you if you have a legal problem, you come to us and we can assess whether it’s something that kind of fits within our skill set that we can help with or if not, you can we can reach into our network of attorneys and find someone that they can help. But you know, some good resources to find attorneys are obviously, you know, people, other business owners that you trust. You know, those are always the best referrals. You know, they may not necessarily know exactly what type of attorney you’re looking for, but if they recommend it to an attorney they trust, you know, typically that trusted attorney, you know, will be able to point them in the right direction, even if it’s not a direct connection. That trust that attorney can then refer them to someone that they trust and help you get connected that way. You know, another really good thing to do. Like with any consumer product, is to try to find reviews. You know, a lot of there’s a lot of sites out there know Google. You know, there’s some other online sites where attorneys can get reviewed. And so when I’m looking to associate attorneys as well, I’m typically looking at, you know, or do they come highly recommended and what are the types of reviews? Is it? Or they reviews that you know they’ve solicited? Or do they seem like genuine client reviews? So those are some those are some considerations I would take in mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:28] So now in your working commercial real estate, obviously, since this is what you’re doing every day, you have a depth in that space that obviously other people wouldn’t have. Can you talk about in the commercial real estate world? What are some things maybe do’s and don’ts when it comes to a lease? If you’re obviously if you’re representing the landlord or the tenant, it would matter. But what if you could break down some do’s and don’ts in the lease? Can you can you share some of that thought leadership with us?

Will Downs: [00:10:03] Yeah, sure. You know. You know, absolutely, I mean, I think that there’s definitely. You know, I’ll start with the, you know, the tenant considerations, you know, just some things to keep in mind and things I’ve seen in my practice. I think one of the biggest things that that that comes up a lot is, you know, when do you start paying rent? So as is often the case. You’re not when you’re going into a new space, there’s some work that needs to be done to it. Often it’s not turnkey, you know, just come in and switch the utilities over. You may need to reconfigure the space, move some walls around, you know, depending on the size of the space, the project can be quite complex. So within that, you know, there are a lot of considerations as far as you know, timing of that and also the financing of it. And those are all interesting topics as well. But I think that the takeaway I always have is is regardless of how long or how much you’re spending. Um, you know that at some point, you know, you’re going to have to start paying rent and you really don’t want that to happen before you’re open for business. And so, you know, try to be realistic about the construction process and construction right now.

Will Downs: [00:11:35] You know, it’s fraught with issues, cost issues and delay issues. And so, you know, be realistic about how much time it will take if there’s things the landlord’s doing or we’re supposed to do in order to get you open for business. What are the potential repercussions if they don’t do those things on time? If there’s things that you need to do to get open for business, you know, make sure you have enough time to do all that stuff before before you have to start paying rent because, you know, it’s a really, really significant burden for you to start paying rent before you’re making money as a tenant. And it happens a lot more than you would think, just because I think people kind of underestimate how long it will actually take to do the things they need to do. So talk to, you know, talk to your lawyer or talk to other professionals about a realistic time frame and how you can craft, you know, language such that protect yourself in the event there are unforeseen delays. And I think on the landlord side. You know, a lot know landlords, I mean, this is obviously a very landlord friendly state in Georgia and most leases are very landlord friendly. So the things that you need to do as a landlord, you know, most often you know you’ve got a form, or at least that’s that you’ve thought about that are taking that to consideration.

Will Downs: [00:13:06] But I guess kind of one thing I will note on the landlords side that can come up a lot is and what a lot of landlords don’t think about is that, you know, you need to have adequate security from the tenant that you’re leasing to even if it’s a business with an established track record, you know, not not not not a new business, not a start up, a business with established track record. I mean, you know, businesses always or in flux, you know, there’s there’s ebbs and flows to it. So a landlord will often take a security deposit, but the amount of the deposit should be taken into consideration. You know, it’s not uncommon now to see a deposit, plus the last month’s rent on hand that gives you two months of security. Other forms of security can be personal guarantees, even if you have an established business, perhaps obtaining a personal guarantee from one of the owners or a parent company or another financially solvent company. Just to give you that added layer of protection in case things do go south with the lease.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:19] Now, do you work primarily with the landlord or the tenants?

Will Downs: [00:14:23] It’s just really a mixture, I mean, I don’t I’d say it’s probably 50 50 on each side of it, so I’m not an exclusively landlord, attorney or tenant attorney

Lee Kantor: [00:14:34] Now when but more things are negotiable than maybe the layperson realizes, right?

Will Downs: [00:14:43] Yeah, I mean, not only the layperson, but even sophisticated, you know, business people. Yeah, yeah. Most a lot of provisions are negotiable now. I mean, you know, when you’re negotiating against a large institutional landlord or tenant, you know, they typically have things that they’re not willing to negotiate on. But if you don’t ask, you’re obviously not going to get it. So, you know, the approach I take to negotiations, it isn’t. And you see, sometimes you get advice of, you know, always ask for everything and you know, then we’ll whittle it down. I mean, and while that’s true to some extent and you do start out with like a longer list of things. That you have concern about and isolating the one or two things that are most concern, always always try to be reasonable and not waste everyone’s time right. So if I know I’m dealing with, you know, a form lease that doesn’t have a lot of wiggle room, I mean, we’re not going to I’m not going to waste the client’s time or the other side’s time, you know, sending back a document that’s, you know, bleeding with red lines.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] Now, can you share a story? Don’t name any names, but an example of how working with your firm or a firm like your firm could actually save a lot of money or make a lot of money for the client.

Will Downs: [00:16:12] Yeah, and I mean, I will say. You know, I think just kind of goes back to on the on the leasing end of I’m thinking of at least it goes back to. You know, just that. You know, due diligence and how long it will actually take to, you know, to be open for business, right? I mean, you know, there’s there’s definitely been scenarios where we’ve. You know, counseled, you know, particularly tenants on how to protect themselves in the event this project runs long and pointed out that the way this lease is written, you’re, you know, you could potentially be on the hook for, you know, six months, rent or so before you’re open for business. And here are some things that you can do to protect against that. You know, I think that certainly saves clients money in the long run. If, if

Lee Kantor: [00:17:09] Right, like an example of that would be like, OK, I’m going to say my lease begins October 1st of this year, or I can say my lease begins when the build out is fully completed. And you know, right, like, you don’t have to have a hard date to start. You can you can negotiate a the date of moving rather than the date, a certain specific date and time.

Will Downs: [00:17:31] Yeah, you can. You can negotiate that stuff. I mean, so you know, while the landlord may want a date certain you can make it contingent on certain things happening, such as you being able to get a certificate of occupancy, which will allow you to do business in space, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] Because those things can be like if it’s if you’re waiting for a permit of some kind, it could be months and you’re just sitting there paying rent for months and not being open for business. But if you negotiate it properly, I mean, you could be saving them for six months worth of rent that they didn’t pay, whether or not McCain money.

Will Downs: [00:18:07] Yeah, that’s absolutely true, and especially it’s it really came into play with the, you know, with the pandemic, you know, shutting down a lot of governmental offices. You know, that’s certainly made permitting harder to obtain in. You know, there’s lease language you can put in there about those kind of unforeseen governmental delays, kind of extending the time period for you to do certain things.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:33] So now part of your job as you help your clients collect money that’s owed to them.

Will Downs: [00:18:40] That’s right, yeah, we do. Yeah. Like I said, we’re fighting over money, so we’re we’re trying to trying to get money to do to clients, whether it be under a lease agreement or a construction agreement or things of that nature.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:55] So can you talk about how that how do you know when it’s worth the effort to try and collect his or a dollar amount? Or is it how do you determine like, OK, let’s pursue this? Or look, I checked them out. You’re just trying to, you know? Get money from a black hole here, it’s not going to happen.

Will Downs: [00:19:16] Well, I kind of start. I mean, that’s a obviously a nuanced question, Leigh. And I think I think it’s a very important one, and I’ll start by saying this about collections at the end of day is always a business decision. Right for every business is going to be a different set of factors, but it certainly is the, you know, the cost and time and effort to collect the money versus the amount of money. And I’m not ever going to tell any business owner that the amount of money that they’re trying to get is too little, if that’s really important to them. All I can really advise them on is, you know what it would take for someone like me to help you get that money. And also, you know, potentially other ways to do it. And the other thing I’ll say about collections is this because I think there’s a lot of kind of it’s a hard kind of concept to grasp. But but the way I just kind of try to simplify it for people is one year or any business is when you’re looking to collect. There’s really, you know, there’s kind of the what I say, the easy way and the hard way, right? So that and what I mean by that is there’s either you do it outside of court or you do it through court. So right outside of court, you know, the easy way all you can really do in that kind of scenario is is just try to get them to the table, right? Try to get whoever is owing you money to come to the table.

Will Downs: [00:20:47] You can do that through calls, through letters. You know, by the time it gets to me or attorney like me, it’s typically, you know, business owner is exhausted, you know, all the efforts to try to get compliance with paying the debt. But if you’ve got someone that’s not wanting to pay you, you know your recourse is is kind of limited if they’re just ignoring you, if they’re taking the head in the sand approach. And, you know, if you hire a collection agency, you know, that’s really all they’re going to do to right. So the collection agents are not attorneys. They may work with attorneys, but you know, agencies then in and of itself is all they’re really going to do is just kind of send letters or make calls, try to coerce payment, try to, you know, settle for some amount, then what an attorney can assist with is, you know, the hard way right is collecting through the court process. And you know that anytime you’re weighing a decision whether to file suit against someone, it’s an important decision. It’s not something you should take lightly. And you know, there’s cost factors and not just cost factors, but there’s time.

Will Downs: [00:22:11] Factor as well, so you turn this over an attorney, but that’s it doesn’t mean you get to wash your hands of right, you still have to kind of be involved, you still have to provide answers, you know, documents, you may have to appear in court. So does that kind of time and expense of hiring an attorney? Another thing that kind of comes up with any sort of debt when you’re hiring an attorney is, OK, well, I’ve got to pay you to collect the debt. What about my legal fees? Can I get those? And that depends in in America, we kind of have this, you know, what’s called the American rule. That’s each side kind of pays their own legal fees. But as you know, in law, there’s always exceptions. So one exception is if you have a written contract that says the other side has to pay legal fees. If you win, then you can, you know, recover your legal fees as part of any sort of court award. A little bit outside of the the scope, but even kind of further nuances. Let’s say you go to court and you win and you get a judgment. How do you put that money in your pocket? And you know, that’s a that’s a whole separate set of questions that you know, we can get into if you want. But we can also save for another time.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:33] Right. But again, having a lawyer as part of your team going in, you can kind of set the stage for that at least proactively establish that as, OK, I’m going to be able to negotiate that back. If you had planned well at the beginning, right, you can put as part of your contract that the if you don’t pay, then you’re going to pay the legal fees.

Will Downs: [00:23:56] Yeah. And I mean, that’s, you know, any any business owner probably has a form contract they’re working with. And you know, if that if it doesn’t say anything about legal fees, then there’s the general rule is you’re you’re not certainly not guaranteed to get them. So that would be something to, you know, to consult with an attorney about to make sure your contract, you know, has the provisions it needs to have to make. Make sure if you do have to go to collections through an attorney to make sure you can maximize a recovery. Because I mean, you know, the the part that’s unfortunate is if you’ve got a debt in your contract doesn’t say anything about legal fees, then it gets expensive really quick and starts eating into, you know, the amount of, you know, recovery you stand to get right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:48] Obviously, in today’s climate, real estate is a very popular. A lot of people are seeing a lot of money being made and they’re trying to get into it that maybe they don’t know kind of some of the the potential risks or pitfalls that might happen. Can you share a little bit about some of these things that maybe some danger, that people maybe aren’t aware of that maybe they should take into consideration before they kind of dip their toe into the real estate world?

Will Downs: [00:25:19] Sure, sure. Let me kind of to to kind of quick things kind of come to mind to me, especially right now, is, you know, if if your project or the deal you’re looking at involves construction, you know, those costs are all over the place right now. You know, they change all the time. You know, there’s material shortages. So costs can vary widely, widely and timing is is always a problem in construction. But even more so now. So I would just say, you know, having a good understanding of the variables in play for that is certainly something to keep in mind. But then, you know, specifically kind of on the legal side, something that’s come up, you know, a fair amount, you know, not just now, but you know, historically too is, you know, what happens if someone kind of wants to back out of the contract, right? So you’ve got a real estate deal or real estate agreement that you put in place and you’re the buyer or the seller, there’s some money put down in one party just kind of backs out. You know, you see that a lot now, especially with real estate prices still being high. As you know, people flipping deals, you know, getting an offer or contract in place on something, but then still shopping it and then pulling that deal from you and going with another offer. So what what do you do in that situation? So, you know, as a buyer, if the seller is flipping the deal and just kind of breaches the contract, I mean, you know, you have to understand what your what your recourse is in that scenario, right? You’re now kind of in a scenario where kind of getting back to the collection thing, if you can’t just talk them into continuing on with your agreement, what do you do? Well, the only way to legally for someone to do something right is you have to get a court order.

Will Downs: [00:27:24] And so what that looks like from a buyer’s perspective is a court order for what’s called specific performance in order to force that seller to sell you the property for the price you agreed to. And while there is that remedy at law, right, and there’s plenty of case law to support that remedy, it again is not without its expense in time involved on enforcing that. And so, you know, I’ve certainly handled scenarios where, you know, we’ve we’ve pursued specific performance, but it’s it can be a complicated and time consuming process. So some people lose interest in pursuing that all the way on the sellers in, you know, if you’ve got a buyer who defaults for know reasons such as, you know, you know, not having enough money to proceed with the deal or the financing falls through, you know, typically your recourse under any sort of agreement is to keep that earnest money, keep the deposit money. So you know, you just need to understand, you know, if a buyer is trying to tie up. A deal for a significant period of time while they put together financing, you know, just making sure that the monies you’re getting is security for that or sufficient to cover you in the event that buyer defaults, realizing that you may lose out on being able to like market the space or we’re entered the agreement with other prospective buyers during that time period.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:10] Man, there’s just so much. And this is why it’s so important to have the right trusted adviser as part of the team because you need people watching your back. A lot of this stuff is not obvious. It’s a lot of this stuff is more complex than you would imagine. So having a trusted adviser is critical when you’re especially, you’re dealing with these kind of complex deals and complex interactions. Now will, if what can we do to help you, what do you need more of right now?

Will Downs: [00:29:41] Are like everybody. We need more time, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:29:44] More time now. So I’ll just I can whip up some more time for you. What can you create that day? Yes, we’ve been working.

Will Downs: [00:29:52] I’ll probably be a bad thing

Lee Kantor: [00:29:54] Because really, I don’t know if that would help. So what do you need more of? Are you looking for more clients right now or are you looking for more talent? What can we do to help?

Will Downs: [00:30:05] Well, we’re always they were always open to working with new clients. You know, we like building relationships, longstanding relationships with clients. So if you’re a business owner or property owner who’s looking, you has a legal need or look at develop a relationship with an attorney. We’d love to serve you. You know, we we try like I said, we try to be up front about about what we do, what we can handle and what we can offer. And we tried to really use technology to kind of streamline our processes so that we can, you know, we can’t service the volume of clients that we want to service and build those relationships that we really value. So, you know, when I started my firm, cash has been. About a year ago, one of the one of the great things about is I still have, you know, several of the clients that there wouldn’t be from the beginning or still with me. So it’s I like building relationships and working with the same people because, you know, we kind of learn a working, a working style together. And so that’s that’s always been one of the joys of mine is in one of the reasons I started my own firm is to be able to to take on more things and more different types of things. You know, that I could when I was working at a larger firm that had kind of more kind of parameters or kind of safeguards around, you know, just kind of being able to to take more stuff. So yeah, I’m always I’m always looking to build relationships, Lisa. If you’re your network, want to reach out, I’d love to talk with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:31:47] So if somebody wants to have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Will Downs: [00:31:54] So our website is Downs Law LLC, says Downs Dwayne’s Law LLC. You know, our phone number is four or four eight four to six thousand five hundred.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:08] Well, well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Will Downs: [00:32:13] All right, thank you. Thank you for your work as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:16] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Our Mission

We help local business leaders get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, their community, and their profession.

We support and celebrate business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignores. Some media leans left. Some media leans right. We lean business.

Sponsor a Show

Build Relationships and Grow Your Business. Click here for more details.

Partner With Us

Discover More Here

Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy

Connect with us

Want to keep up with the latest in pro-business news across the network? Follow us on social media for the latest stories!

Business RadioX® Headquarters
1000 Abernathy Rd. NE
Building 400, Suite L-10
Sandy Springs, GA 30328