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Investing with Impact: How Greenleaf Balances Profit and Community in Real Estate Development

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Investing with Impact: How Greenleaf Balances Profit and Community in Real Estate Development
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In this episode of Atlanta Business Radio, host Lee Kantor interviews Josh Friedensohn, co-owner of Greenleaf Management. Josh shares how he and partner Dave Codrea built a real estate investment company focused on acquiring and revitalizing distressed properties across Atlanta and the Southeast. Starting during the Great Recession, they capitalized on undervalued properties, renovating them to benefit tenants and communities. Their portfolio has evolved from multifamily housing to office, industrial, and retail spaces. Josh also discusses their investor-focused model, naturally occurring affordable housing, and their long-term stewardship philosophy of creating community value rather than maximizing short-term profits.

Josh Friedensohn is co-founder of Greenleaf Management and directs acquisitions, fundraising, and lending relationships throughout each asset’s life cycle. An adaptive and strategic leader, he has guided Greenleaf through multiple shifts in the real estate market and into new asset classes.

Greenleaf began with single-family and student housing investments before expanding into low-income multifamily housing. After eight years, the company grew its multifamily portfolio to 4,000 units and expanded into mobile home communities, NNN leased properties, and commercial office investments. Over the past 18 years, he has helped lead more than 150 acquisitions.

The relationships Josh has built with brokers, bankers, and investors continue to serve as catalysts for Greenleaf’s growth. He leads the company’s Capital team, which he has expanded to support new partnerships and investment opportunities.

He is also passionate about community impact. He supports nonprofit initiatives that create opportunities for underprivileged youth, including Camp Impact (20 years) and the Crazy Science Extravaganza (13 years). Greenleaf has also launched its own nonprofit focused on reducing everyday costs such as food, utilities, transportation, and education in the communities where it operates.

He graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Chemical Engineering and lives in Peachtree Corners, Georgia with his wife and four boys.

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Origins and founding of Greenleaf Management
  • Focus on buying and renovating distressed properties
  • Impact of the Great Recession on real estate opportunities
  • Challenges faced by undercapitalized property owners
  • Evolution of the company’s portfolio and investment strategy
  • Definition and distinction between affordable housing and naturally occurring affordable housing
  • Community benefits of revitalizing distressed properties
  • Investment approach and engagement with investors
  • Current market opportunities and property types of interest
  • Philosophy of long-term stewardship and community impact in real estate investment

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have the co-owner with Greenleaf Management, Josh Friedensohn. Welcome.

Josh Friedensohn: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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

Josh Friedensohn: So my business partner, my business partner is Dave Coudray. Him and I started the business, uh, really right out of college. But while we were still working our day jobs. But we’ve, we’ve built a business of community and service. So we buy buildings that are distressed using investor money. So we pull together investors, buy distressed properties, and then make them better for the community and the people around us. And that also brings tenants into them. We’ve done that with everything from single family housing to multifamily housing to office buildings to industrial properties. And all the while, as we do this, it really brings up and lifts the area around us because typically a vacant building is a blight on the area and we’re looking to make it better.

Lee Kantor: So what was the genesis of that idea? Where did you see the opportunity?

Josh Friedensohn: Dave and I met through my college roommate and we were working at our day job. So my day job, I studied chemical engineering and I was I was a chemical engineer for Kimberly-Clark for seven years. Dave was a real estate finance guy, a consultant at Deloitte in D.C. and we were I was down here in Atlanta, and we were were looking for investment opportunities in a way to start a business. And Dave had a really strong background in real estate. And at the time, the great financial crisis was really, uh, was really under underway. So this is call it 2007, 2008, 2009. And Atlanta became one of the best buying opportunities for single family homes in the country. And so homes that were selling for 4 or $500,000 in 2006 were now selling for 80 to $120,000 throughout metro Atlanta and some even less. And so we saw an opportunity to buy a couple of these homes and renovate them and get and lease them. But also what we did was we saw that people were stuck in their houses and they couldn’t sell them, and they were greatly upside down. And so we started knocking on doors and saying, hey, we can help you solve this problem. We know you want to move. We know you want to sell your house, but you can’t right now. How about this? We’ll take over property management of your house. We’ll renovate, we’ll do the minimum renovation because we know you don’t have excess cash, get a tenant to move in, and that revenue for the rental revenue will help fix your debt to coverage ratio when you go buy your next house.

Josh Friedensohn: And so we went knocking on real estate offices, doors, and we started incentivizing real estate brokers to refer their clients that couldn’t move to us and enable them to move. And then the real estate broker got a commission for helping them by their next house. So we really started there. And that kind of led us into this, this thesis of how do we help solve problems? How do we fix, how do we fix issues? Led us into a low income apartments predominantly along in Atlanta, along Buford Highway is where we probably bought our first 20 properties and they were boarded up. Uh, the the water wasn’t running to them because the, the previous owner didn’t pay the water bill. Uh, gas lines were broken. People didn’t have heat. And we were able to buy these directly from the lender, renovate them, and make a better community for the people that live there. They fell in love with our commitment to them and the property, our management style, and they would bring their friends and family, and the whole place would lease up in a matter of weeks. So we really have just copied that model over the years and kind of led into other different building types.

Lee Kantor: So before you or when you’re not around the typical, like, why do those, um, areas get kind of distressed?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah. So it’s a great question. Um, you know, the great financial, you know, the, the great Recession, you know, that that hit and give or take 2008 really just wiped out a lot of people’s pocketbooks. So real estate requires constant capital investment. And over, you know, if you’re let’s talk about a multifamily property, it doesn’t have to be big. You can talk about a ten unit property. When the Hvac goes out, you don’t really have the option to keep kicking it down the road. It’s gone. Especially on a 1960s, 1970s property. It’s probably on its fourth one, and you need to put the fifth one in. Well, if you don’t have three, four, or $5,000 sitting around to make that investment. Because of what? Because of your your the recession that’s happening, you couldn’t keep investing in those properties. And that led to a faces are out. Well, if a tenant’s Hvac is out, the landlord is now in violation of the lease and the tenant moves out to another property that has Hvac. So properties went vacant and things just got worse and worse and worse and really compounded in that direction.

Lee Kantor: So that, um, is it so it’s an undercapitalized kind of management company that is at the heart of the problem.

Josh Friedensohn: I would say undercapitalized owner is probably the is probably the answer. Um, and lack of liquidity in the market that, you know, if, if you, if you don’t have the liquidity, a lot of times if the property is performing well, you can go to a bank and get a renovation loan or get an improvement loan. Well, banks were totally wiped out during the recession. So there was not a lending option. People didn’t have the liquidity. So taking care of these properties, honestly, it just required a fresh set of capital to come in and recapitalize the deal. So a lot of the properties we were buying, the former owner had had bought them for, say, $50,000 a unit and they had $30,000 a unit of debt on them. Well, we were buying them for 25 to right below the debt amount, and we were only putting 10,000 a unit of debt on it. And the rest we were raising money for. And so we were, it was just a different capital stack that was able to improve the properties and fix the problem.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, we’re not in that financial situation right now. Are there still opportunities?

Josh Friedensohn: Correct. We’re not in a financial situation right now. Um, opportunities are fewer and further between. We’re in a very challenging market to find buying opportunities, distressed buying opportunities because the market has been so liquid, meaning that owners have free cash flow that they’re putting in their pocket and investing in their properties. Banks are lending decently healthy. Um, so you can get improvement loans. You can get new loans to buy properties and properties are selling at a really high value. So most owners of commercial properties or apartment buildings, they own more than one. And at times if they own five properties, they’ll sell one of them. And that will and that knew that all that new money that comes in will help improve the other ones. So it’s a, it’s a, it’s a much better, healthier market than it is now, so it’s harder to find deals. Um, we are still finding opportunities where like where we’re buying heavily right now is in industrial space. And industrial space has moved very quickly. So we can find opportunities that tenants are paying half of the market rent, and we can go in and renovate the place and get them to all the way to market rent. Or we can find properties that tenants leases are coming up and they’re not renewing. And it really just requires a fresh set of capital to renovate the place and bring a new tenant in. So yes, there’s still are opportunities, but they’re fewer and further between.

Lee Kantor: And your portfolio has evolved based on these kind of new market demands.

Josh Friedensohn: Absolutely. Yeah. So we, um, at our peak, we had about 4000 something apartment units and about 1500 mobile homes. So all residential. Now we’re down to about 20% of that. And we redeploy that capital into office buildings, retail properties and industrial buildings.

Lee Kantor: So that’s where you see the greatest opportunity in this market climate.

Josh Friedensohn: Exactly. That’s where we’re really finding that we can still buy, uh, really in any market. We can still buy in distressed pricing and bring improvement dollars. Because if a tenant’s been in a building for 20 years and they leave and the owner is, is basically stuck with a vacant building needing millions of dollars, and a lot of times they’re better, they feel that they’re better off selling that property so we can buy it as basically distressed, meaning that it’s vacant and put a bunch of money into it. Uh, one of one of those recent, I would say value add purchases was last fall we bought a vacant film studio. So as most people know, Atlanta was a hotbed for filming, uh, movies and, and TV shows, etc., etc. and still is, but a lot of that industry has moved overseas because of the complexity of using us domestic, uh, film crews here. There’s strikes. They cost a lot of money. Um, there’s a lot of red tape. So a lot of the film industry has moved abroad. And Atlanta built out all this infrastructure for the film industry. And it’s not being used as much anymore. And they’re perfectly built industrial buildings that the film industry doesn’t have use for. So we’re buying them vacant and repurposing the buildings.

Lee Kantor: Right. So that sounds like that’s kind of the model, right? Is look for distressed opportunities where you can come in and infuse it with new capital and maybe repurpose it. And then.

Josh Friedensohn: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: Do what you do in terms of providing that high quality management and that really caring for the end user.

Josh Friedensohn: Exactly. Yes.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned starting in this kind of multifamily environment, is that do you call that affordable housing? Is that what when people refer to affordable housing, is that affordable housing?

Josh Friedensohn: So there’s two kind of definitions of affordable housing. One is, kind of the industry term, affordable housing, which would be a restricted rent based unit. So, um, the government will incentivize owners to limit the amount of rent that they’ll charge to potential tenants to make housing more affordable. That’s the technical term. The, the less technical term is what we do, which is, um, what we call it, uh, naturally occurring affordable housing, which means we have older buildings that are in good condition, but they’re still older buildings and they naturally attract a lower income tenant to live there versus a brand new building with elevators and pools and all that. We don’t have any of that in our buildings. Um, and so in a, it’s, it’s, it’s more, it’s a more natural way that we’re not restricted by the government on what we can charge. We can charge whatever we want, but our, but the market dynamics is we’re generally in the lower end of the, of the rental spectrum because of the age and condition of our properties. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, I was always confused with the term affordable housing because if if there’s a subsidized housing for an individual, are they just getting lower rent to afford to live in a desirable area without any opportunity to build wealth for themselves? Are they just basically renting a nice place, a nice area at a lower price? I never understood kind of the logic there because any even an area that’s distressed, if it becomes more desirable, then the value will go higher. And if the person who’s paying the rent isn’t getting any upside, then, you know, it just didn’t make any sense. I didn’t understand conceptually the logic behind it.

Josh Friedensohn: So and then the other component that I didn’t really mention was on the kind of government side of things is, is the subsidy, the true subsidy, meaning that the tenant is getting a monthly check from the government and the government is and then they’re using that to pay their rent to us. So that’s the, I would say the additional layer, um, that that comes into play. We have a little, we have maybe 10% of that in our portfolio. Not much. Um, but we’re very familiar with and we’re familiar with the way it works. But to your point, um, these are in the most part, these, these tenants in these conditions are, are they don’t really have the luxury of looking ahead and saying, how do I build myself out of this situation? They’re more looking from a day to day survival mode on how do they pay their daily bills and how do they get their hourly paycheck? And, um, we, our, our goal is to provide them housing that a comfortable place for their family to raise a family with enough space in a, in a safe environment that they can afford to do that.

Lee Kantor: Right. Well, that makes sense to me. Like that the, that logic makes sense. I didn’t understand when the government’s involved in subsidizing people in an area that is appreciating in value and then somebody is getting the upside, but it’s not them.

Josh Friedensohn: Right, right. Well, there, there, I, I would, I would somewhat disagree with that because I do believe that that so we have a, we have an affordable, it’s actually expiring affordable housing. So affordable housing has a time limit when you have these restrictions. Um, going back to the government restrictions on the property, they’re usually a 30 year contract with the government. And then after 30 years that goes away. So we have a property like this in Alpharetta. Um, and it’s the only one in North Fulton. It’s the only one in Alpharetta. And the benefit is, is that the tenants that are paying the subsidized rent get to use these top tier schools and get to use the top tier amenities that an Alpharetta provides, versus if they have to live in a low income area in a low income property, the schools are usually catered to more low income, meaning that they’re a little bit rougher and the community around them is usually a little bit rougher as well and not really taking care of as much. So I, you know, I do think there are some, I would say, less tangible benefits of being in a, a nicer community to raise your family that you can’t necessarily afford on your own, that the government is helping you be in that community.

Lee Kantor: But I mean, in that case of Alpharetta, I mean, that happened probably towards the tail end of the 30 years rather than the first part of the 30 years.

Josh Friedensohn: In terms of being kind of.

Lee Kantor: The the quality of schools.

Josh Friedensohn: Right? I’ve been in Atlanta for 20 years. Alpharetta has always been a pretty, pretty gem to be in. Um, we’ve had this property for about ten years and Alpharetta has been top tier schools for a long time. So yes, yes, but I mean, Alpharetta has always been a.

Lee Kantor: And there’s one affordable housing place in Alpharetta, like compared to other parts of the city of Atlanta.

Josh Friedensohn: Correct. Yeah. Other parts of the city of Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: Do you want to compare the school systems and all the affordable housing? How do you think they’d fare?

Josh Friedensohn: Exactly. No, I agree with you on that front.

Lee Kantor: So, um, now has your companies evolved? Is it now a place where people can make investments into these properties? And, and this is now an investment vehicle? Like what, how would talk about the evolution of, you know, at one point you were doing this for yourself, or was this always a place for people to invest in, in your kind of vision?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah. I didn’t really have any, uh, any money to invest, uh, for a long time. Um, so we’ve always raised money and pulled together investors. So, and the way we do it is we find the property, we evaluate the property for give or take about 30 days is our evaluation process. Once we determine that we want to go proceed and buy this property is when we offer it out to our investor community and show them, hey, this is the opportunity that we see. Here’s the physical nuts and bolts. Here’s how we plan to improve the property management of it. And here’s the dollars and cents of what an investment looks like and what we plan to turn it into. And a potential, you know, call it a five year hold horizon, what that means for your money. Um, we kind of look at investors two ways. One is the primary way is we want you to be part of our community. We want you to, to be involved with our company. Uh, we offer a lot of investor engagement into our, our operations, our property management tours. And also we do speaker series. We have a, we have a, every quarter, we do a growth day where we invite all our investors. We actually invite the whole community. You’re welcome to come to our growth day. It’s next Thursday. Um, and we have speakers come in and we talk about big goals that we have set and how we accomplish those goals. We have speakers from all different walks of life that will tell their story. Um, and so that’s, that’s the, uh, I would say nontraditional investor involvement. The traditional investor involvement is you write a check, you’re involved with one of our properties. We report to you every quarter. We pay distributions as they’re available by the property performance, and eventually we sell it. And we show you more and more opportunities to invest in now.

Lee Kantor: So the investors are buying one property at a time. There’s no way to buy kind of the portfolio.

Josh Friedensohn: No, we’ve always been, I would say a little bit grittier than the portfolio. What we found is like doing the fund or the portfolio approach. It’s, it’s less tangible. So like I’m like, hey, Lee, I have this great fund that has 50 properties in all over the country. You want to make an investment, you’ll make 10% a year. You’re like, well, where are the properties? What are they? Oh, they’re in the fund. I’ll send you, I’ll send you paperwork versus Haley. We just bought a film studio in Hiram, Georgia. Do you want to go on a drive with me? We can go look at it together. We can tour it together. We can touch it together. In three months from now, we can go look at it again and show you all the improvements. It’s just a lot more. It’s a lot grittier and more tangible. And that’s kind of our approach to business.

Lee Kantor: And then so you’re doing this in markets outside of Georgia as well.

Josh Friedensohn: So we’re probably pretty close to 70% North Atlanta. Um, we are in Chattanooga and Nashville, Raleigh, Durham, Columbia and Greenville and Charlotte as well. Uh, we kind of called the 85 and 75 corridors north of Atlanta. And, um, we’re looking at some, you know, we’re looking at some, some industrial development in, uh, north of Austin, Texas as well. Uh, so we, we generally like to operate everything we own and kind of be and have hands on people where we go. So that’s, that’s the only way the markets we’re looking at.

Lee Kantor: So you have partners in all those communities outside of Atlanta?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah. I mean, outside of Atlanta, it’s my staff that operates them. Um, and in Austin, we have, we have an operating partner that we be working with.

Lee Kantor: And then, so what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah. So we’re always looking for.

Josh Friedensohn: I would say, an opportunistic real estate deal. So, um, you know, if you drive a property, it looks boarded up, it looks vacant. It looks like it could use some love. We’re always looking at that, whether it’s retail, whether it’s industrial, whether office building. I mean, we haven’t bought multifamily in 7 or 8 years because there’s just so much competition in that space. Um, so yeah, my, my weekend when I’m driving my, I have four kids when I’m driving them between soccer practice and gymnastics and all that other crap. I’m looking at buildings everywhere I go. So, uh, if anyone, you know, I would say for the general audience, we’re always looking, we’re always looking for a buying opportunity and to make improvements. And, but we like the value add story. Like I’m not the group that’s we’re not the group that’s going to buy a Starbucks and just lease it to Starbucks and just kind of go to sleep at the wheel. We’re, we’re always looking to how do we make an improvement at this place.

Lee Kantor: So just for people, if they’re driving around, what are signals that maybe there’s a distressed property? Is it like when there’s a a fast food restaurant that’s closed and it’s empty? Like, is that a signal for you?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah, that’s absolutely a signal. Um, I would say the obvious, which would be there’s a for sale for lease sign in the yard. Uh, the grass is overgrown. The windows are boarded up. Any one of these are signals that there’s something going on here that the person that the owner needs to get out, the owner might be a bank. They don’t want to own the property anymore. They want to get out. Um, also, you know, we’re always looking for expanding companies, expanding brands that want more space. So we, um, we’ve done partnerships with an operator at Zaxby’s where he came to us and say, hey, listen, um, I’m looking to expand stores. Will you guys help me buy a store and provide me renovation dollars? Right. Absolutely. And he signed a ten year lease with us when we did that. So, um, every, every of that. And then the other part of it is, you know, we, we have a podcast where we talk about our deals on a regular basis. Uh, we, we have an additional podcast where we interview government officials. So we interview mayors right now. We’re interviewing government governor, governor, candidates, um, on both the Republican and Democratic side because we have a big race coming up in the fall in Georgia. And, um, so we’re always looking kind of, you know, to tell the story of, um, of, of people that, that want to hustle.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, is there an investment you made that you’re most proud of or most rewarding? You can share.

Josh Friedensohn: Investment? I mean, oh man, that’s a, that’s a loaded question. Um, you know.

Lee Kantor: I mean, you don’t, it doesn’t have to be about the, maybe it’s not the financial gain, but it’s about the impact it made in the community.

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I like talking about kind of more. I mean, we’ve done a lot of I have lots of stories from the apartment days, but it’s been a while since we’ve done that. So I want to talk about something more recent. Uh, the, over the last three years, we’ve bought about 1,000,000ft² of single story office buildings that were vacant. And these were grasses, overgrown dirty buildings. You know what vacancy you have people that do stuff in the parking lot that you don’t want them doing. Um, and they become an issue for the city and the owner. And it’s just a problem. We bought these single story office buildings and we ripped out all the old office. We put a roll up door in them and storage in the back by the roll up door and put a small office in the front and we lease it to, we call them office flex users, and they’re everything under the sun. They’re pest control companies, they’re Hvac, they’re plumbing. Um, and like, I have a pharmacy in the building in the unit next to me that I’m sitting in right now.

Josh Friedensohn: Um, um, I have car storage. We have, um, I, we have a um, a car parts distributor. So everything we have a pet crematorium in one of our buildings. Um, I, I’m very excited about that opportunity. I think that opportunity still exists that we buy single story office and convert it into this flexi, um, investment. And it does so much not only for obviously the tenants that come in there, but so much for the surrounding community. The building that I’m in right now, I live in Peachtree Corners. This building is in Peachtree Corners. My kid, I, I have to pass it every single day. I’m dropping my kids off at school, picking them up, driving them activities. And it was really just a, a pain in the butt looking building. Um, before we bought it and, and made this investment. And now it’s one of the, it’s just, it’s just one of the, the pretty shiny buildings in Peachtree Corners. It has a beautiful car lounge in it. Um, and it has just active use that just adds to the whole community around us.

Lee Kantor: And that’s really at the heart of this, right? You want to be a force for good and not just kind of squeeze every dollar out of what’s happening there. You’re trying to really positively impact the communities you’re in.

Josh Friedensohn: Well, what we found is that squeezing, squeezing every dollar out is not actually a good investment approach. There’s no long term commitment to squeezing every dollar out. That’s a very short term minded thing. And I think eventually everything just falls. If you’re squeezing every dollar, eventually there’s no dollars left and you’re giving that property back to the bank for someone like me to buy and actually love on it. So, um, a wise investor of ours said to me, um, that if you hold real estate, it will hold you. And it’s one of my favorite phrases and beliefs in real estate that if you make the right investments, if you take care of it and you do the things for the long, the long run, it will hold you back and take care of you back. And that’s just a general philosophy of our company.

Lee Kantor: And it sounds like that’s just the part of the culture of your organization is trying to positively impact the communities.

Josh Friedensohn: Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Well, Josh, if somebody wants to learn more, um, where should they go? What’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Josh Friedensohn: Yeah. So our website.

Josh Friedensohn: Is Greenleaf mgmt.com. Um, we’re, you know, we’re on YouTube with our podcast. So you can look up Greenleaf, uh, you can look up my name. My business partners name is Dave Cordray. Um, and, uh, we, we just like, uh, we like building community. We like, uh, spreading the word about, uh, how to operate real estate. And we love hearing about other people’s operational stories, so we’d love to connect.

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

Josh Friedensohn: Of course. Anytime.

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

Unlocking the Growth Code: From Founder Grind to Fractional Executive Powerhouse

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Unlocking the Growth Code: From Founder Grind to Fractional Executive Powerhouse
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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee speaks with Andrea Beach, CEO and founder of Growth Concierge. Andrea shares how her company provides fractional executive teams to help growth-stage companies ($5M–$50M in revenue) scale profitably while giving founders more freedom. Drawing from her experience founding 22 companies, she discusses common challenges founders face, including growth plateaus, bottlenecks, and mindset shifts required for scaling. Andrea also emphasizes the importance of early exit planning and explains how Growth Concierge guarantees measurable results, including $300,000 in cost savings within 90 days.

Andrea Beach is an accomplished entrepreneur, investor, and business strategist specializing in scalable growth, improving profits, and consumer behavior.

In addition to having founded over 22 companies herself, she has helped CEOs and business owners scale rapidly while reducing risk and giving the founder more freedom.

She is the CEO & founder of Growth Concierge, that helps companies 5-10X their business with a team of seasoned operators, all for the cost of one employee. Andrea has worked with Fortune 500 brands, advised hundreds of growth-stage companies and is an in-demand speaker and media commentator – and fun fact…she’s a certified hypnotherapist and expert in human behavior.

Connect with Andrea on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Overview of Growth Concierge and its services for growth-stage companies.
  • Discussion of the challenges founders face as their businesses scale.
  • Explanation of the unique fractional membership model and its benefits.
  • Insights on identifying and overcoming growth bottlenecks.
  • Importance of mindset shifts for founders transitioning from hands-on work to building systems.
  • The concept of “invisible ceilings” and how they affect business growth.
  • Strategies for early planning regarding business exits and succession.
  • The role of seasoned entrepreneurial experts in delivering measurable results.
  • Advice for business leaders seeking quick wins and immediate improvements.
  • The onboarding process for new clients and how to assess their needs.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is gonna be a good one. Today we’re going to catch up with an old friend, Andrea Beach, who is the CEO and founder with Growth Concierge. Welcome.

Andrea Beach: Thank you so much for having me, Lee. Good to see you again.

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

Andrea Beach: Uh, sure. Of course. So after 22 companies and doing it wrong almost as many times as I did it right, I started to see that there were some patterns and some, you know, continuity if it was done correctly. So as a business advisor and investor and everything else, I got a lot of requests for how do you how do you structure a business that can be profitable, scalable, but where I’m not completely tied to it, I want some freedom in my life. And that’s where Growth Concierge was born. People are familiar with the word fractional these days, but that’s, uh, a wide net on things that that can mean. All of our fractional experts are seasoned entrepreneurs. Uh, they’ve all started, grown and sold or IPO companies for hundreds of millions, and they’re just too young and energetic to golf all day. So they still want to be in the game. And we do that by helping grow stage companies. So we actually have a fractional membership model, which is very different. You’re not just paying for hours, you you get a whole team. And so that’s what we’re about is helping companies break through to the next level and find some freedom in their life and hopefully enjoy the ride.

Lee Kantor: So what, who was the initial target for this kind of an offering? Was it the small aspiring entrepreneur or is it the kind of the entrepreneur that’s plateaued, or just the person who’s tired of doing all the work and said, there has to be a better way?

Andrea Beach: Yeah, well, I would say all of the above, but initially we were thinking that our target was going to be founders that had maybe a 3 to 5 year goal of wanting to retire or step back. There’s a lot of baby boomers and older Gen Xers that are even looking at succession plans. And so originally when I came up with the idea of the company, I thought, that’s going to be my target, is people that have maybe grown the business for however many years. They’ve reached a certain level, they’re getting a little tired, and they know they want to jump out, either sell IPO or hand it off to someone in the next 3 to 5 years. And so they want as big a growth and as much stability before they do that. That’s all good and fine. We actually bring in a whole team, kind of like a special operations team with exit planners and strategists on valuation, and we can do that. But then the more conversations I had, the more I realized that other companies and other founders that said, no, I’m good, I don’t need to sell. And the next 3 to 5 years, I just want more profit, stability, and freedom. Can we still work together? So I actually expanded the offering quite a bit. So now we serve founder CEOs all the way from 5 million up to 50 million is kind of our sweet spot.

Lee Kantor: Now. Is there a story you can share about working with somebody who came to you with a challenge, maybe share the challenge and how you were able to help them get to a new level? You know, you don’t have to name them or the company.

Andrea Beach: Yeah, sure. Actually, one of our very first clients that we ever had as a behavioral health company who led by a psychiatrist, so not a business person by education or training, um, had grown the company to the point where he knew he wanted to entertain the idea of maybe looking at a PE firm and taking some kind of a, of an exit that would be good for his family. But he also knew that he had some cultural challenges. There were a couple of different sections of the business that didn’t get along, and so we almost treated them as two separate companies, which of course isn’t scalable or sustainable. And he was right around 40 million when he found us. Um, I can’t even believe this, but it’s really true. Lee, we did a 190 minute strategy session, and at the end of that session, we had gotten him from 40 to 50 million just by rearranging the Legos. Um, better and smarter. So that’s a obviously a great win for him. He immediately found some interested PE firms. I think he was courting several. And because of the work we did together, he didn’t have to figure it all out and juggle it all. We could sustain the new structure that he needed and give him a lot more valuation and a lot more leverage, and he got exactly what he wanted.

Lee Kantor: So now when you’re working with these leaders at that level, are you seeing kind of common threads amongst them in terms of what’s holding them back or, or mistakes that they’re they’re making?

Andrea Beach: Oh, absolutely. And I think it’s so interesting that founders think they’re on an island. They think, well, my company’s different or my situation is unique. And the more you do this, the more you realize that’s actually probably not true. Um, there are very predictable phases of business. There’s about five major phases. Phases that all businesses go through. And each phase has its own set of predictable patterns. And those predictable patterns are going to appear until you hit an invisible ceiling. And that’s when they tend to lean in like they want to work harder and grind harder and do the things that worked before, and they get confused and frustrated why it’s not working and they stop growing because effort stops equaling growth at that point. What has to change is their mindset, first of all, and then the behaviors and things have to change because what worked to get them there is not going to get them to that next level once they break through and make some of these changes, which of course, we can help them him with. But there’s ideas out there on how to change these things, but you’ve got to make sure their identity can handle it. You know, if they’re the hustler, they like to call themselves the grinder when the next phase comes along, where it’s about systems and automations and having your people become autonomous and empowered. That’s an identity shift for that founder. But yes, there are predictable phases, predictable patterns in each and every phase, and very predictable ceilings. And then thankfully, predictable ways that you can break through to the next level and keep going.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned invisible ceilings. What do you mean by that? And what’s an example of 1 or 2?

Andrea Beach: So in the beginning, when a company is going through that grind and hustle phase, this is when efforts are scattered. They’re probably making more exceptions to the rule than any kind of structure. They’re basically selling to anyone and everyone because every dollar is precious. Um, the founder tends to be the one doing a lot of the sales or the negotiations, and there’s people behind him are trying to just catch all the balls as they’re coming across the net and do the fulfillment that works until it doesn’t. And so when you hit that ceiling, it’s because the ceiling essentially is the bottleneck of the founder and the fact that every day is a new day and there’s no predictability or stability. So what you have to do to get through that is narrow in on your right fit buyer, your ICP, your ideal customer profile. And that feels counterintuitive because they think, oh, I can sell my widgets to anyone. Yes, you can, but you probably shouldn’t because then you become invisible out there. You don’t you don’t actually have a brand. You’re not known for anything. So instead you become the company that sells widgets to veteran owned companies or however you need to narrow your focus, then you’ve got to build that repeatable sales process. And then you’ve got to start documenting and automating what’s working. That’s the only way you’re going to break through from you being the one kind of cooking the French fries all day, or making the donuts or whatever example you want to give to break through to that next level because more of you grinding is not going to equal more success in your business. You’ll plateau.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with a team, the team that you deploy of these, I don’t know. Do you like to call them fractional executives or what do you call your team members that you deploy?

Andrea Beach: Yeah. I don’t love calling them fractional because then it lumps them in with the corporate refugees who’ve worked for some big company until they got laid off. And now they’re, they’re doing fractional work on your dime while they’re job hunting. These are really successful seasoned entrepreneurs and operators. So I don’t love that word, but it is the one that meets people kind of where they are in the market right now. Um, but yes, we, we will deploy a growth team. So it’s always led by a chief growth officer. Our chief growth officers are, you know, black belt lean Six Sigma, multiple successful exits, best selling authors, and they come in and do the assessment. They’ll figure out where your bottlenecks, your gaps, your challenges are and your easy wins. And then whoever that additional team needs to have as far as a compliment, we usually bring in a CFO, we’ll bring in a COO and a CTO before we ever get to marketing and sales and things like that, just to make sure the infrastructure can handle it. Because sometimes, Lee, you have to go slow to go fast. And so we make sure we do the structure right. So when we’re ready to hit the gas, they can handle it.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re deploying a team like that, is this something that the team has been trained on, the, uh, Andrea Beach methodology, or is this something that they’re experts in the niche or industry you deploy them in and you just kind of let them go and do what they do?

Andrea Beach: I would say both. So having started, own, sold, grown and acquired companies my whole career, there are certain things that I know to be true regardless of industry. There’s best practices. And like I already mentioned, the predictable phases and patterns. Folks that have had those kinds of experiences as well will nod and say, yeah, that’s right. It’s an 80/20 rule. Pretty much everything’s about the same. So on some of those, I would say they’re just standard. But when it becomes industry specific or becomes niche specific within an industry, we do bring in growth operators that have experience in that industry, but also maybe have encountered some of the same challenges. That’s when I’ll step back as far as the philosophies or the structure or the scalable patterns and say, hey, you’ve walked this step before, you’ve seen this movie. So whatever needs to happen to get them, you know, successfully navigated through the minefield, go for it. So I’d say it’s a really perfect compliment of tried and true proven structure and their personal Expertise, having been in that industry and walked that path.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you go about vetting your experts?

Andrea Beach: That’s a great question because it is so important in such a distinction for what we do. Um, well, first of all, I’m very fortunate that after, you know, decades in business, I have met and mingled with people way smarter, way more successful and way more interesting than me. Um, and they have along the way, you know, remained friends or we’ve stayed in each other’s orbit. And when I came up with a concept for growth concierge, I really wanted the A players. I wanted people that no matter what situation I dropped them into, they were going to guarantee results, which we do, by the way. Um, and so I had a handful of those folks that I already knew and that I brought on board and they were totally down for this concept. But then as I started having additional conversations, there were people that said, oh, man, you need to meet so and so, or that sounds exactly like such and such. And then as I met people and went through the criteria, they have to be entrepreneurial. They have to already have walked that path and had a successful growth and exit at least one. And they have to understand more about human behavior than just spreadsheets. And you know, what goes on to like maybe a valuation or a term sheet. They need to understand people. So those are the main criterias that, you know, we look for as we’re bringing our cxos into the network. And currently we have 39. Well, about to be 40 by the end of this week, we’ll have 40.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned, uh, human behavior and I know that’s a passion of yours and expertise of yours that you’ve had over the years. How much of the issues that your clients having are they mindset issues versus maybe operational or tactical issues?

Andrea Beach: Yeah, such a smart question, Lee. So I would say there’s a good combination of both, especially in the beginning where they do hit those break points and those bottlenecks ceilings. And then they’ve got to change their mindset and change their behavior to break through. But where the mindset shift becomes really personal is once you get to some of the later phases. So once you’ve brought in some leadership team and there is such a thing as the leadership illusion or like fake leadership where they might have the fancy titles, but everybody’s still coming to you as the founder for everything, at least the big decisions that is not going to get you to scale. So once you’ve actually architected, moved from operator to architect, and you’ve architected a system and structure that truly doesn’t need you on the day to day operations. This is where founders struggle with their behavior. This is the identity shift of, well, if I am not the smartest person in the room or the subject matter expert with all the answers, then who am I? You know, if I’m not solving problems and firefighting and leading this company, then do I really matter? And that’s a personal experience that needs to be addressed long before that moment arrives, in order to not slow that momentum, because a founder will say, yeah, I want freedom. I want to go spend time with my wife, my kids, whatever. But then when I actually get to it, they have a really hard time letting go. So I’m really proud of our team and our ability to work through those behavioral challenges before they become obstacles.

Lee Kantor: And it’s something that you really have to deal with those up front, right? That’s not something you wait till the end.

Andrea Beach: Absolutely not. And people will sometimes say, hey, I’ll call you when I’m, you know, six months to a year away from wanting to exit. And we’re like, no, no, no, uh, we need to think about that now because it’s not just how the company’s physically structured and who you bring in as far as team members, but it’s, you know, it’s everything from how you do the books to then what that founder focuses on. And sometimes it requires them multiple years in advance to shift that mindset in their behavior, to empower that next team of leaders so that honestly, the business runs just as well, if not better, without them.

Lee Kantor: Now, when people are thinking about exiting, are you finding that they’re having these kind of questions like way too late? Like this is something they should. Obviously, a lot of people believe that you should be thinking of that when you start, but for a lot of people, it’s also. Well, I think I’m ready. And then you got to cut to five years later when it actually happens.

Andrea Beach: Yeah. I mean, the earlier the better because you want to get them where they can actually have the most impact on the valuation when they’re ready. And the most impact is usually at least 3 to 5 years ahead. So if somebody still comes to us a year out and says, you know, or even a month out, they say, I’m ready, I’m ready right now, they’re probably going to get a smaller valuation. Maybe they get a one or a two X. But if we say, hey, if you will follow this path, this growth strategy and plan for the next 18 to 24 months. Do you have it in you? Can you still hang in there for the next year and a half to two years? If we can get you a six or a seven X sometimes Lee they’re like, no, I’m done. I’m burnt toast, I’m cooked, I’m ready to go. And shame on them. Maybe for not, you know, thinking about it earlier, but that’s okay. Everyone’s different. Other people say, heck yeah, I can get an additional 5 or 6 X on top of what I thought I was gonna get. Yeah, show me the way. And I think that’s probably more often we see that.

Lee Kantor: So when a person is about to exit or is taking the steps exiting, they, they contact you and you deploy your team. Is this something that your team is kind of coaching them? Or are they actually doing the things that need to be done in order to get that seven, eight X return?

Andrea Beach: Yeah, that’s another really big differentiator is we actually implement, I don’t know, a single founder or CEO that needs more on their to do list. And in cases of, you know, where they’re bottlenecked or they’re burnt out, they really can’t handle one more thing. They don’t need more advice. They need implementation. So we come alongside them and we have different levels of membership. So at our base level, they just get a chief growth officer, and they’re the ones doing the assessment and the strategy and figuring out what that founder should be focused on in what order. And they’re still the ones doing the work, but they’re doing it alongside the chief growth officer and only focusing on the things that matter at the next level up, they get a plus one. So a chief growth officer plus a CXO at a time, maybe they start with a CFO. That CFO is doing the work. They’re actually running the reports. They’re shoring up whatever the automations are. You know, they’re future proofing. They’re helping them attain, say, lines of credit or whatever they need for growth. So they’re not giving advice. We’re not consultants, we’re not advisors. Even though we all have that Capability. We are implementers. We’re operators.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a critical distinction because there’s, like you mentioned, there’s a lot of folks out there that will give you advice or sell you a playbook, but they’re not ready to roll up their sleeves to actually get things done and be held accountable for outcomes.

Andrea Beach: Yeah. And accountable for outcomes is key. You know, everybody’s great at giving advice or giving you a report that they charged you six figures for that sits and collects dust on your desk. But if you can actually not only be held accountable, but have ownership of outcomes, it changes the game. And that’s why right off the bat, I said, I want to guarantee that we find at least $300,000 in the first 90 days either in, you know, cost savings like immediate waste or cost savings or in low hanging fruit. And that’s found that’s not projected. That way. I can get the ROI conversation completely off the table, and we can just get down to business and everybody’s comfortable.

Lee Kantor: So now if somebody raises their hand and say, okay, I’m in. I want to do this. What is kind of the process when you onboard somebody or at least vet them to see if you’re the right fit or they’re the right fit for you?

Andrea Beach: Yeah, that’s a good question. The main thing is we will connect them with the chief growth officer that understands their industry, understands exactly where they are, what phase or stage of business and what their goal or trajectory looks like. So that has to be a right fit because that chief growth officer is your quarterback, their maestro. Um, then we will fill out the rest of the team based on that. Some of it has to do with industry, but a lot of it has to do with personality and who we think is going to work well with whom. Um, and then we also have 80 to 100 support staff that comes in up underneath and does things like rebranding, marketing, social media. You need a new website, you need your website to be ChatGPT, you know, crawlable all those things that require time and energy that maybe you and your team don’t have. That’s also included in your hours that you get based on your level of membership. So we’re taking all that off your plate. So we’re going to assign when you first get onboarded, your Chief Growth officer comes first. If you’re happy, you guys, you know, fall in love.

Andrea Beach: Everything’s wonderful. We then bring your full compliment depending on your membership level, um, how many additional team members you have? And sometimes you just need them at a time. You know, you need one at a time and you kind of go at a predictable and comfortable cadence. We still assign dedicated cxos to you. So even if they’re not up to bat, they’re still watching, they’re still paying attention, they’re still weighing in because these, these, uh, different areas of business really shouldn’t operate in silos when you’re trying to holistically grow the whole organization. So we assign that team and then we get to work and the first thing we do is assessment, of course. And then while we’re doing the assessment, we’re looking for quick wins. We’re not going to do a six month assessment. You know, like a lot of consulting firms, we want to get that founder some quick wins and some quick leverage. It’s in our best interest to do that so that we can, like I said, take the ROI conversation off the table, give them a comfort level. Okay, let’s dig in and keep going.

Lee Kantor: Now, talking about quick wins, do you have any advice for the listener right now? Maybe they’re not ready for you and your team yet, or maybe they’re would like to be ready shortly, but is there any advice for getting a quick win? Where do you look for quick wins if you’re listening right now? Where would you tell them to go and what would you recommend they do?

Andrea Beach: Yeah, well, it depends on the stage of business, but I would say if I had to pick a universal quick win, it would be do an honest assessment of where you as the leader or the founder, the CEO of the company, where are you the bottleneck? Where do all roads lead to you? Or where do you still block anybody else’s autonomy or ownership of a decision making process, and free yourself from as many of those roadblocks or bottlenecks as you can. That’ll give you some breathing room. And then think about what the ideal structure would be to actually grow or get to the next level. Do it on a piece of paper. You may not have those people yet, but even if you can step back and, and look at that as far as what I would need, what would have to be true at the next level for me to be able to get there and not be involved in every single sale, conversation, negotiation, or decision, that is the easiest win. Is figuring out how to get yourself out of the way. Because people always think it’s a strategy problem. They’re always looking for. What is the new strategy I need? You probably don’t need a new strategy. You probably need new structure because you have frankensteined together, the different systems, tech platforms. You know, the way people have done it. You know, if Janice comes in and has done your workflow of your onboarding process for clients a particular way for nine years, that’s just how it’s always been done may not be the best way. You may need to completely re-engineer that to get to the next level. So before you look for a new strategy, I would look for a new structure that gives you the support to be able to even get to the next level.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you are there symptoms or signals that tell you that you’re the bottleneck in an area? What is it like? You’ve been doing it for so long you may not even realize.

Andrea Beach: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And like I said, there’s an identity and an ego that’s kind of wrapped up and being the one that’s got all the answers or being the subject matter expert, but ways that you can identify if that’s the case is if you feel like, I couldn’t step away from my business for two weeks and go off grid and come back and it still be running, well, that’s probably your biggest sign. If you can’t step away for a couple of weeks and let your team manage and handle everything. You automatically have a bottleneck problem. The other way to know is if they have titles and they have particular roles that are more task based instead of outcomes based. So you look around at your leadership. If you’ve got managers or directors or VP’s or whatever levels you’ve got, if they still have to come to you for the big decisions, or if they maybe don’t have that authority, but they really still come to you for guidance, they don’t. It’s an illusion. So those are ways that you can immediately assess, am I the bottleneck? Because you probably are.

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

Andrea Beach: Yeah, I appreciate that. So growth concierge.org is our website. We are on all social platforms as well. So I would say just, you know, reach out to us. We’d be happy to have a discovery call, an initial conversation, not a sales conversation per se, just a discovery conversation to see where are you stuck? Maybe give you some ideas or suggestions on how to break through. Hopefully then we earn your trust. And if you feel like having a sales conversation at some point, you know we can always set that up as well.

Lee Kantor: And then the ideal client for you is what range of sales annually.

Andrea Beach: Well, I would say in order to make the most effective changes, we really need a company to be doing at least 5 million. So that 5 to 50 million is our sweet spot. However, we do have a CEO club which is CEO club.online. That is for our founders doing a million in sales or above. And some of those we have CEO club members doing half a billion. Um, they just don’t really care if they grow too much or they’re a lifestyle business. They’re just looking for more profits, more stability, and of course, more freedom. But they also want to be around like minded, you know, growth minded entrepreneurs. So if you’re doing a million or more and you’re an actual company, meaning not a, not a solopreneur, not an agent or a distributor, if you’re a real company million or over, and if you’re looking for that kind of like the personal trainer, so to speak, or the, the team around you for growth concierge, that’d be over 5 million.

Lee Kantor: And the website for CEO club, again.

Andrea Beach: It’s the CEO club.online.

Lee Kantor: The CEO club.online.

Andrea Beach: You got it.

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

Andrea Beach: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It was good talking to you again.

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

Next Conversation Consulting’s Playbook for Turning Difficult Talks into Breakthroughs

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High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Next Conversation Consulting’s Playbook for Turning Difficult Talks into Breakthroughs
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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee interviews Kristy Busija, CEO of Next Conversation Consulting, about building thriving workplace cultures. Kristy shares how her psychology and business background led her to help organizations identify invisible cultural issues, measure abstract qualities like creativity, and improve leadership effectiveness. She discusses her book Hidden in Plain Sight, addressing invisible disabilities affecting 73% of the workforce, and offers practical inclusion strategies. Kristy also advises aspiring leaders to make their contributions visible and encourages a conversational, experimental approach to workplace change.

Kristy Busija is the CEO and Founder of Next Conversation Consulting and is widely known for one thing: making sense out of chaos. Before becoming an award-winning business owner, best-selling author, and Forbes contributor, clients simply called her when things felt messy, stuck, or unclear—because she has a rare ability to see patterns where others see problems.

With more than 25 years of experience in corporate leadership, talent development, and organizational strategy, she brings a practical, business-minded lens to culture, leadership, and change. She doesn’t speak in theory or buzzwords. She translates complex challenges into clear, actionable steps leaders can use immediately.

She works with organizations across industries to build cultures where people can do their best work and leaders know how to navigate uncertainty without losing momentum. Her work has been recognized with a Gold Brandon Hall Award for Best Unique or Innovative Leadership Development Program, and her insights are frequently sought after by executives, boards, and leadership teams.

Connect with Kristy on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Creating positive workplace cultures where employees thrive.
  • The role of psychology in understanding workplace dynamics.
  • Addressing invisible cultural issues within organizations.
  • Measuring abstract qualities like creativity and strategic thinking.
  • The impact of coaching on leadership effectiveness and business outcomes.
  • Discussing invisible disabilities in the workplace and promoting inclusivity.
  • Practical steps for companies to support employees with invisible disabilities.
  • The connection between psychological safety and innovation.
  • Strategies for leaders to improve communication and visibility of their contributions.
  • The importance of focusing on incremental conversations to drive change.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor. Here are another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is gonna be a good one. Today on the show, we have the CEO and founder of Next Conversation Consulting, Kristy Busija.

Kristy Busija: Yeah, it’s good to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn more about your work. Tell us about your firm. How are you serving folks?

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. Well, we are at the heart of what we do. We try to help companies create cultures where employees actually love to work, and we can help them prove it.

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

Kristy Busija: Mm. My backstory is I, I’ve always loved psychology and so how people tick, but I also love the business side. And so when I had a chance to go into a field to see how companies can use the most valuable assets, their employees, and really, really help to create an environment that’s going to get help them to thrive and be innovative, which then can help the bottom line and help the company grow. I found my calling.

Lee Kantor: Now, is your work primarily at the organizational level, or do you work with individual high performers?

Kristy Busija: Both. Actually. So even if I work with an individual, that individual is part of a team, part of a department, part, a part of the whole ecosystem. So when I even work with one person, I’m actually looking at the whole system.

Lee Kantor: But when they come to you, or are they coming to you typically as an individual or as a kind of an executive saying, hey, Kristy, we need some help in this area and work with this team.

Kristy Busija: It can be both. It could be both. I could be.

Kristy Busija: Brought in to to work with one individual within a company to coach an individual to help them be more effective or handle difficult conversations, more strategic thinking, things like that. Or it could be they come in, contact us for more of a team. This team needs a little bit of love and care and needs a little help and support. Or it could be the whole system and say, well, we, you know, our culture isn’t where we want it to be. We’re having our numbers are slipping. We don’t know why. Can you help us think that through?

Lee Kantor: So are there kind of signs and signals for an executive to know if their culture is a problem?

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. The biggest sign is if if you’re always if you’re if as an executive, you’re always saying, I don’t know why they’re doing that. We tell them that this is what we do. You now, you know, now you have, um, what we call an invisible programing problem. Something in the system is signaling that what they’re getting is acceptable, not what they want to see. So that’s typically what I tell them to look for.

Lee Kantor: So you’re saying invisible and then something makes it visible. Like what? So the pain is that the executive is like, this isn’t, you know, congruent with how I think things should be or we think things should be.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely.

Kristy Busija: It’s invisible. It’s that fuzzy thing. It’s the I’m not getting what I thought I would get. Why aren’t people, you know, speaking up? Why are we not getting innovation? Why are we not getting X, Y, or Z or whatever that thing is that that ideal that they want to see? And that would be the thing that we would strive to help them get to, but they don’t know exactly what is that trigger or that lever or that thing leading into it. That’s the invisible part. But we come in and we help them. We help them think through and see all the places that they’re they’re quietly teaching people what to expect and how to behave.

Lee Kantor: Now, is this an area that can be measured? Is it like, you know, when you say like, I wish we were more innovative? Like, is that something that you can count?

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. We can. We can take a look at whatever metrics they currently have in place in terms of, um, whether it’s looking at their, their, you know, the, the R&D projects, the schedules or whatever, whatever they have in place, we can help them quantify what they’re doing now and what they want to do different in the future, and then figure out how the path to get there.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help people kind of develop metrics around things like creativity or strategic thinking? Hmm.

Kristy Busija: Well, the, um, very, very good question. We get all the time. Um, we actually, we take it, we boil it down to the simplest of terms and we ask them, we ask them to define what does creativity look like for them in their environment? What does strategic thinking look like for them in their environment? And we try to get as granular as possible with it. So for some companies, strategic thinking is being able to create the three year plan, five year plan. For others, it’s just being able to, to look further, a little further ahead down the road. Um, or, and for even other companies, it’s, it’s more of, um, instead of just looking at how it affects your team, you’re pulling your head up and looking across departments and how that one decision can impact everybody. So when we look at the measurement, we get as granular as we possibly can for them and then help them assess where they are now and where they want to be. And then we think through how they can close that gap.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there an example you can share? Don’t name the name of the organization, but maybe an example along those lines to illustrate how this kind of work can impact a company and get them to a new place.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. So we were working with one of the executives of a technology consulting firm. And, um, she came to, they came to us and asked us to work with her on strategic thinking. And part of part of that conversation when we dove into it was, uh, she really is a strategic thinker, a strategic thinker. So she is able to see all of the pieces and the parts. But the challenge was not, not necessarily being able to think strategically, but to be able to articulate that and also be able to say how this impacts here, changes impact over there. And then we even dove in a little bit more and found out that the other challenge that was kind of getting in her way was, um, she wasn’t a fan of, um, difficult conversations. So being able to have a conversation about why we should do this or not do that. Why this employee is not performing and how to handle that. That was actually getting in the way of her making the strategic decisions. So fast forward six months of working with her and partnering with her. Um, we actually asked her and her leader, who is the president of the company, to put a number on it and say bye bye. Her leaning into the things that we’ve been working with her. What is the impact to the business? And she line itemed they line item out every single decision that was made and saw over $1 million impact directly into the business for doing the work and building strategic thinking and also the difficult conversations.

Lee Kantor: So that probably helped her review a 100%.

Kristy Busija: So when we’re in that call, we get the we get the thumbs up emoji from the president. I was like, oh my goodness, this is great. Yes, it did help.

Lee Kantor: And that’s, that’s probably good advice for people to to try to quantify as much of the impact you’re having so that when you do have that annual review conversation, that you are equipped with some metrics that matter.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. Well, also return on investment. So bringing some bringing firms in or bringing consultants or bringing coaches in, you want to actually see those dollars coming back into the business, not just to develop that one person. So absolutely, it helps with the performance, the performance conversations, but it also helps from a from the company understanding the value that they receive from the work that from the investment that they made into the people.

Lee Kantor: So let’s talk a little bit about your, uh, your book Hidden in Plain Sight. How did that come about?

Kristy Busija: Oh, that one came about from my own lived experiences. And then getting a chance to meet Doctor Jessica Hegstad, a leading researcher in the space, and then a good colleague of hers, Danielle Ralston. Uh, so, um, in, you know, invisible disabilities. I had no, up until a couple years ago, I had no idea what those those were and that I had a couple of my own. And they’re just anything that, um, can prevent you from being, maximizing your personal effectiveness in the work environment. And so for me, my personal story is that, you know, I, um, and it’s actually in the book, um, I, it was my worst. I’ll be honest, it was my worst fear come to life where, you know, I, I have reactions to perfumes where my, it makes it hard to breathe. So imagine in a cubicle environment and colleagues wearing perfume and instead of instead of, uh, working with me to help solve the situation, I was, I was literally put into another corner of the building away from everybody instead. And so my, you know, I really want to help companies think through how do we help make more inclusive spaces for those with things that we necessarily don’t necessarily see, whether that’s hearing impairments, whether that’s anxiety, whether that’s, um, autism, learning disabilities, anything that’s invisible that could impact their effectiveness. And I want to create a space, a safe space for them to talk about it, ask for what’s going to help them to maximize their effectiveness without feeling like they are the problem. Uh, for bringing it to somebody’s attention.

Lee Kantor: About how many, like what percentage of a given workforce has some sort of invisible disability?

Kristy Busija: Uh, Jessica. Doctor, Jessica’s research shows 73% of the workforce has at least one invisible disability, which is over double of what the current research is showing.

Lee Kantor: So, um, when you explain that to leaders, are they do their heads explode? That seems like such a high number to ignore.

Kristy Busija: Their well, their their heads don’t explode, per se. It’s just more of wait, what? Wait whoa whoa, wait, there’s that many people. Um, well, it’s more of an education around what exactly is in that bucket, which is anything that’s covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act here in the US. Um, but then more importantly, it’s. Oh, wow. I had no idea is what the typical response I get. And for me, that’s just a jumping off point to say, now that we know, let’s unpack that and see where do we take it from here? Because there are a lot of things that we can do that that are easy. We already have native to what we do in work and our tech stacks anyway, and, and don’t require a lot of extra things or dollar value to, to be able to work with.

Lee Kantor: So what are some of those kind of easy things?

Kristy Busija: Oh, the easy buttons are things that, um, you know, zoom does it teams does it. Um, and a lot of the other platforms do it. Closed captioning is closed. Captioning is one great thing to do. Um, allowing people to to hit the record and the note takers on on, uh, on meetings so that they can go back and take a look at what that look at the transcript or read it on screen at the same time that they’re hearing it. Um, there are, there are, there are so many things. And we even have a partnership with, um, a really great strategic partner, translate live. Their software actually allows you to translate what I’m saying into over 200 languages instantaneous. And then it also shows what I’m saying, um, on screen. So it’s actually, it actually helps when I’m speaking or I’m teaching so people can actually see it, especially if they’re hard of hearing or, um, or they need to, they just need that visual cue as well.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re having the conversation with the leaders, is this an area where they just kind of like kind of give lip service to it, but don’t actually do something or do once they’re aware of it, do most people take action?

Kristy Busija: It’s it’s a space where we’re, we’re trending. We’re starting to tread lightly because it’s a space that people don’t know what to do. Right? So historically it’s been, oh, I don’t know what to do. I have to make, I have to make an exception. And accommodation for this one person. Oh my goodness, is legal going to get involved. What do I do. So I think we’ve you know, there’s been a lot of fear around this space or and also fear of not knowing what to say or saying the wrong thing. I think that’s the biggest hurdle that we have, which is honestly why Danielle and I wrote the book. The book. It gives very practical. Instead of saying this, try saying this instead. Um, this, this is a good alternative to what we do. Here’s how to, here’s how to have that conversation. Because we, we don’t want to just point out that we’re, you know, we’re doing it wrong because we’re not, we’re just, we just don’t know what to say and what to do. And I think that that’s where leaders get a little hung up.

Lee Kantor: And change is hard in any case. So, I mean, I could see how this is a tricky conversation. Like you’re opening up a Pandora’s box.

Kristy Busija: So yes and no. Yes and no. It’s it’s Pandora’s box in terms of creating more inclusive work environments. Um, which, which honestly, the new generations in the workforce is actually demanding and asking is that we be more inclusive and supportive and bring your whole self to work, which could be your, your messy middle. Um, instead of masking who you are. Um, but it’s, it’s, it’s just what we find is that what will help one person typically helps the majority of the population. So being able to give people the choice to not have to be on camera, um, which is, you know, you can’t, there is something, you know, something as, uh, zoom fatigue or video fatigue. And so allowing people that space to do that without forcing the issue. That does help more than one. And I think that that’s so Pandora’s box. I think in some ways can be a good thing because it’s actually creating a better environment for everybody.

Lee Kantor: Well, I agree, I think it’s I think it’s a positive in the, in the sense that once people are aware of it, I would hope that they get on board and try to serve their people because the people, a lot of them give, you know, say they’re the most important part of their organization. So live in to that. I’m pro that, that’s for sure. But I can see a portion, um, like you mentioned earlier about being fear based, saying, oh, here we go. Now I got to get, you know, HR and that’s illegal. And now there’s compliance. And, and that’s what I was referring to when I said Pandora’s box.

Kristy Busija: Well, absolutely. And we definitely want to make sure that, um, you know, companies feel, feel that we we’re not we’re not sidestepping that conversation. We actually touch about that in, in, in the book as well that it’s, um, absolutely pull in legal because you don’t want to put something in place that’s going to totally get you out of, out of whack in one other don’t over index in one way or another. Um, but I think the question like, at least now we just want to get onto the table. Let’s change some of the language so it doesn’t sound like legal ease of how do I accommodate you? Right. Which sounds like, oh, wow. How do I put you in a little box and make sure that we’re doing things only for you and, and, and make sure that’s that’s all buttoned up. But is there something else in our culture, our environment, our workspaces that could really help everybody else, which doesn’t require legal intervention. It’s just the ways that we work.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I’m a big fan of bringing humanity back into the workplace. Um, and having human to human interactions that aren’t kind of robotic or, you know, where it’s just a checking a bunch of boxes, like deal with the human beings as human beings. I mean, we’re all unique and we have our own needs and desires and, you know, just try to you want us to be part of the team. So make it so that I can deliver what you’re investing in.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. That’s absolutely. Talk human to human. Let’s just put the humanity back into it. Not let not have to have people mask and just show up a certain way to be accepted. Allow them to participate however they need to. And I think we’re going to get a lot more innovation, creativity, psychological safety from it.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there metrics that kind of back up that thesis?

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. So doctor Jessica’s research does show does link to all of that. Um I don’t have those handy today. So I can get those to you later into your listeners if they’re, if they’re interested. But yeah, there is a link between psychological safety and innovation. The work of Tim Clark around the four stages of psychological safety shows that direct line, that when you create that safe space for people to be themselves, learn, contribute and challenge, then you will get that, that creativity and that innovation which a lot of companies really want.

Lee Kantor: Now when you’re working with, um, like walk me through what, uh, what it looks like to work with you and your team. So they kind of like, what’s a typical problem they’re coming to you with?

Kristy Busija: Usually what they come to us with, um, is, well, it definitely depends on it depends. Well, it, it, I don’t think there’s any specific things that we, we hit, I think right now lately we get a lot of, um, my team, we have some team problems. This team is kind of not getting along. They’re not productive. We need some team stuff over here. Uh, we also get quite a bit of we, we want to develop our leaders towards the future capabilities, but we have no idea where to start, especially with the, um, the, you know, the, you know, right now we have five generations in the workforce. What do we do with that? How do we lead? What, what capabilities are we going to, are we going to need? Um, but usually there is something that is there burning platform or they just got their engagement scores and they’re not looking as well as they would like to. And they want to, they want to see how they can impact that culture. Those are some of the big ones that people come to us for.

Lee Kantor: Okay, so let’s work on the, the culture element. So somebody calls you in and says, we’re not happy with our culture. Um, so what, so how does it begin? Like, so what, how do you start? Is there assessments? Like, what is some of your framework that you go in and your methodology to deliver an outcome?

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. We can, um, we can do everything from, um, interviewing stakeholders and focus groups in different pockets of the organization to kind of get the voice of the customer from all, from all over the place. If they have their engagement data, we’ll take a look at whatever they have. Um, or we can get even as, depending on how much they really want to really dive in and invest. We could also probably use the human synergistics culture assessments that get us really, really in depth information around what their ideal culture is and what their current culture is. And then we can really map out a clear plan. But regardless, we do really heavy discovery phase. And when I say heavy, I’m not talking months and months and months. It can we can short circuit it, but we really want to go deep and understand what’s really happening. And when we do, we do that. We listen for what’s being said, but also, more importantly, what’s not being said and read between the lines so that we can help them understand What they’re saying is happening and what’s really happening, happening and what’s signaling or what’s driving that. That’s, that’s typically what we do to assess.

Lee Kantor: And then once you come to, um, a realization of what you feel is happening, how quickly can change occur?

Kristy Busija: No change can, um, if the company is ready to put in the work, um, change can change can happen very rapidly. Um, I worked with this, I worked with a, um, an entire nursing leadership team and um, started with the, the, the chief nursing officer. And when we started working together, they had a very, um, as they described, as they described it, a very toxic environment, very fear based environment, um, threats in the parking lot environment in rural America of all places. And we, so we started working with the leaders, started teaching them and working and helping them understand behaviors and the impact and the result you’re getting by the input you’re putting in. And in less than a year, that team became that nursing leadership became so cohesive that other departments were looking at them to say, how do I, how do we become like that? Because that group is so tight knit and, and functioning really well. So that domino can fall really fast, that momentum can pick up super fast, but the leaders have to be willing to go first, be vulnerable and reinforce it and, and start to move the momentum in the right direction.

Lee Kantor: So now we’ve talked a lot about teams. Let’s talk about individuals. Is there, um, any advice for that aspiring leader that maybe isn’t getting, uh, the promotion that they like or they’re not moving up as fast as they’d like to? Do you have any advice for that person in order to, you know, get the momentum they need in their career.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. So I do quite a bit with leaders that are looking to get promoted or want to move to a in a different role. And it’s, it’s, I’d say 90% of the time, it’s not because they’re not qualified or capable. What I see quite often is that they have a strategic marketing or strategic communication challenge where what got them there is not going to help them get propelled forward. So, you know, as we are, we’re doing work. We, you know, our work does speak for ourselves up to an up to a certain point. And at some point we have to shift into, um, starting to tell people what we’re doing, what our team’s doing. And for a lot of leaders, they, uh, to kind of use some of their language, it feels icky or feels weird, it feels self-promoting. And that’s that mindset. That’s a mindset shift of it’s not self-promoting, It’s just making the invisible visible because people don’t see the work product of leading. Leading is seen through the work and the things that other people do. But the only way to make that visible is you’ve got to tell people about it, and you’ve got to bring it to the light. That’s honestly what I see quite a bit for getting promoted.

Lee Kantor: Now, what’s the, um, why is the name of the organization next conversation. What’s the meaning behind that?

Kristy Busija: Um, it was, it came about from um, not needing to think through your entire, your entire roadmap or everything that you need to do to get from point A to point B, it was, it’s more of, let’s just focus on what is that next conversation we need to have? What’s that critical piece of information we need to talk about and share? Because that’s going to then change and shape what that adventure is going to look like next second, third, fourth and fifth.

Lee Kantor: So do you find a lot of times people are overthinking things.

Kristy Busija: Yeah, yeah yeah we do. We all we typically think, overthink things or, or try to think or try to predict. If I say this, you’re going to say this and this and that, and we can’t. Again, it goes back to that we’re we’re humans working with humans. All bets are off. We have no idea what the other person’s going to say or do, which is why we say start with one conversation, one experiment, one one choice point and see where it goes.

Lee Kantor: How do you help your clients get comfortable with that kind of chaos where a lot of especially leaders, like to be in control?

Kristy Busija: I asked them to to treat everything like a hypothesis and a mini experiment and just say, can you do, can you just for, you know, the next conversation, can you just at least try this and see how and see how it happens, what happens and if it works? And of course, asking them what makes the most sense for them based upon their their personality, their style, and how they want to be perceived and show up. And then from there, they’re like, okay, I’ll try that one thing. And then when they come back and say, oh my goodness, it worked. Then it starts to build momentum like, okay, what else can I try? What? What’s the next thing I can do? And then we start to piggyback on that and habit stack on it.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. If you can take the emotion out of things and frame it as an experiment, I think that that goes a long way for a more less stress and a more productive life.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely. Because there’s no, you know, because when we, when we say experiment, there’s no, we don’t, we’re not saying it’s going to work. We’re not saying it’s not going to work. We’re just going to see what happens and go with it.

Lee Kantor: And no one knows. I mean, it like a lot of things sound good on a whiteboard, but once you know, you hit the market, it’s a different world.

Kristy Busija: Oh, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think a lot of people stay in their own head, in the safety of the whiteboard, and are afraid to kind of put their things out there for the world to see and hear.

Kristy Busija: Absolutely.

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

Kristy Busija: They can go to our next conversation, consulting.com, or they can email us at info at next conversation, consulting.com, and we’d be happy to hear from them and schedule some time to for a further chat.

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

Kristy Busija: Thank you so much for having me.

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

Inside the Mind of Charlie Ebersol: Building Tech That Syncs Sports Data and Empowers Entrepreneurs

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Inside the Mind of Charlie Ebersol: Building Tech That Syncs Sports Data and Empowers Entrepreneurs
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In this episode of Atlanta Business Radio, Lee speaks with entrepreneur Charlie Ebersol about his journey building Infinite Athlete, a sports data synchronization company recently acquired by Exos. Charlie explains how the technology unifies disparate data sources across major leagues like the NFL and Premier League, with plans to expand into healthcare and fitness. The conversation also covers Charlie’s expertise in fundraising, team-building, and delegation, his views on AI’s impact on entertainment, and his passion for teaching entrepreneurship to the next generation, including his own young daughters.

Charlie Ebersol is an award-winning television and film producer, turned sports and technology entrepreneur. As a seven-time founder with five exits, he has raised over $400 million across media, sports, and technology.

Most recently, he served as the CEO and co-founder of Infinite Athlete, an AI sports technology startup with partnerships across the NFL and Chelsea Football Club. In late 2025, Ebersol sold Infinite Athlete and its subsidiary Biocore to the global human performance company, Exos. He has always been rooted in storytelling.

He is an award-winning producer with credits that include Netflix’s “The Recruit,” CNBC’s “The Profit,” and ESPN’s acclaimed documentary, “This Was the XFL.” In 2019, he co-founded the Alliance of American Football and currently serves on the board of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports (TGL), where he was one of the original investors.

He is a graduate of Notre Dame and currently resides in Atlanta with his family.

Follow Infinite Athlete on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Entrepreneurial journey of Charlie Ebersol and the founding of Infinite Athlete.
  • Development of technology to synchronize data in professional sports leagues.
  • Sale of Infinite Athlete to Exos and expansion into other sectors like gyms and healthcare.
  • Insights on fundraising strategies and the importance of resilience in the face of rejection.
  • Team building and leadership qualities necessary for successful entrepreneurship.
  • The role of technology and AI in transforming sports and other industries.
  • Education and encouragement of entrepreneurship among children.
  • The impact of AI on the entertainment industry and the evolving landscape of content creation.
  • Comparison of traditional media events with modern digital audiences and monetization opportunities for creators.
  • The importance of self-reliance and confidence in sales and business ventures.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have Charlie Ebersol with Infinite Athlete. Welcome.

Charlie Ebersol: Thank you. It’s nice to be here. Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Infinite Athlete.

Charlie Ebersol: Well, I sold Infinite Athlete about six months ago in October. And we’re we’re now part of a larger organization called Exos, which is the largest performance company in the world. What Infinite Athlete was focused on is building the technological infrastructure for the biggest sports leagues around the world, the NFL and the Premier League and other leagues like that. And now we’re focused on growing that to gyms and performance and health across all the commercial sectors. So businesses, healthcare, etc..

Lee Kantor: So what was kind of the the deliverable to these leagues?

Charlie Ebersol: Well, one of the biggest problems that.

Charlie Ebersol: Really any industry has with sports uniquely has is that you have a lot of disparate data sources that are being operated by third parties. And so in the case of a sports league, you have the broadcast company that’s got a certain number of cameras in the stadium, and then you’ve got your teams have cameras and you’ve got security cameras, and you have player tracking systems like radar and lidar and UWB chips, ultra wideband chips the players wear on them. And all of those systems work asynchronously. And so ten years ago, I started a football league with the NFL not eight years ago called the AAF. And at the AAF, we built a system that synchronized all of those disparate data sources into one thing, one single source. And when that league went away, I got a call from my friends at the National Football League and they asked if we could take our learnings from the AAF and build a universal solution for them. And so we started building a system that we called Tempus Ex Machina or Time from the machine. And what that really did is it allowed them to have any type of technical system running simultaneously. And we would tie those systems together so that people could build on top of them. The best commercial example of something like this, existing somewhere else, is 15 years ago, Google built something called Google Maps, which, for those of you old enough as I am and I imagine you may be, they remember things like MapQuest and Garmin navigation systems.

Charlie Ebersol: Most people thought that the reason Google started Google Maps was for that solution was to compete with them. But really what Google was building was a synchronized map and GPS system that companies could build on top of. So they built the Google Maps and then companies that got invented around that time, like Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp invented the company Uber. And the only reason they were able to launch Uber is because they could license access to Google’s mapping system and then build Uber on top of it. So Google made hundreds of billions of dollars off of that business. They make more than $1 trillion a year off of that business, synchronizing maps so that people can build companies on top of them. And so we did the same thing for sports. And so now a lot of the technologies that are built around player health and safety and replay and rules, etc., across all kinds of different sports are built because they have access to this foundational software and hardware that we, we built and distributed across the major sports leagues.

Lee Kantor: So now because of you, we’re going to know if a person really went across the goal line or the first downs, really a first down.

Charlie Ebersol: Uh, well, definitely not because of me. It’s because of much, much, much smarter engineers, um, that, that actually come up with those solutions. But, uh, I would say theoretically that is correct. I look forward to seeing it in action this year and seeing how it plays out.

Lee Kantor: So are they. I mean, it sounds like they’re okay with putting all these trackers on the people, but are they hesitant to put it on the ball?

Charlie Ebersol: No, it’s on the ball. The tracker. The NFL has had as an example, and this is true for a lot of the NFL has had a tracker on the ball for 12 years, give or take. And they’ve had. Same with the players on the chips. Um what we what we really were focused on is how do you make that, uh, data sync exactly right. With what’s happening on the field and what’s happening in the camera and what’s happening in all the other technologies. Because, for example, at a Premier League soccer match, they have chips on the ball, they have chips on the players, they have radar tracking the ball speed. They have lidar, which is what’s on like a, um, like a Waymo vehicle tracking player movement. And then they’ve got computer vision running. All of those systems are completely different. What are called codecs. They’re, they’re, they’re, um, sync. The code comes in at a different pace and in a different language. And so by building a synchronization system, smart engineers could take the best parts of all of those different streams and then build solutions across them. And really what I do like, I mean, look, I’m, I’m a non-technical CEO. Like I, I don’t build technical solutions. My job is to, um, successfully fundraise and successfully bring commercial partners in and then bring the right smart people together and create a sandbox that they can play inside of and be protected inside of. And so when we sold Infinite Athlete and I also am an investor, so I was the first investor and I’m an a board member. I am a board member at the at tomorrow’s sports, which does the TGL and does flag football. I’ve sort of taken the learnings of the companies that I’ve started and started applying them to my partnerships where I. One of my skill sets is fundraising. One of my skill sets is bringing good people together and protecting them. And so that’s really become my primary focus in this approach.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, now you’re trying to take what, uh, was being done at the highest sports levels and then kind of trickle it down everywhere.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah. I mean, like, yes. And, and I think what you see there, and this is really what Exos has done very expertly is Exos for the last 20 years has taken has used sports as a place to battlefield test the best techniques and products and services and then bring them to the masses. Um, now I think what we’re doing is doing the same thing, but with software and AI, so that you can scale that across tens, if not hundreds of millions of people instead of having to do it on a 1 to 1 basis.

Lee Kantor: So now getting back to your superpowers of fundraising and bringing the right people together, what are some of the lessons you’ve learned in that regard of, of what makes a person good at that, and what are the qualities you look for when you’re putting a team together.

Charlie Ebersol: Well, fundraising, the number one quality in fundraising is, uh, is not being afraid of rejection and embracing the fact that you’re going to get rejected 99 times out of 100. And then the second most important thing in fundraising is asking questions and listening. Um, whenever people ask me for advice on how to go out and raise money and I’ve raised, you know, something like 450 or $500 million across my last couple of companies. Um, what I tell them is that every pitch meeting should start with asking questions. Um, so if you go into an investor, your first question should be, so what do you look for when you’re looking to invest? And what are your, you know, key requirements or what are the never going to happens or, and really listening to what their answers are and really trying to piece together what it is and then understanding that you need a lot of reps, like, um, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are not the two best offensive players in Major League Baseball because they don’t take a thousand pitches a week in batting practice. That’s why they are. And so I think that what I encourage people to do is to get out and have as many meetings as possible and start asking and operating from a position of when someone says no, find out why they say no. So you can start to adapt and understand where you are short and where maybe where you have a shortcoming, or where it wasn’t a good fit for that investor, and then applying that the right way.

Lee Kantor: Are you when you’re having those kind of conversations, it sounds like you’re vetting them as much as they’re vetting you.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah. Well, I.

Charlie Ebersol: There’s a great Danny DeVito quote that says, if you have one script, you take it. If you get two scripts, you take the better one. And when you’re trying to make a movie, and I think the same is true with investors. My my rule of thumb with investors is, in an ideal world, if you have choice, the investor’s money should be the least important thing they’re giving you. Like you, you should be seeking investors. Like, for example, I was very, very fortunate in my last company, Infinite Athlete, that my very first investor was Andreessen Horowitz, because Andreessen Horowitz is it’s obviously a great brand name investor, but more importantly, they have an entire infrastructure of human resources and lawyers and intellectual property attorneys and accountants. So when you get $10 million from them, for example, to start a company, they really show you what to do with that, because I think people grossly underestimate how complex it is to start a business wisely. Um, which is one of the, I mean, you know, it’s funny, one of my focuses these days, I have a seven year old daughter and a four year old daughter.

Charlie Ebersol: One of my focus is that they have a lot of interest in, you know, I’m an entrepreneur. My wife is also an entrepreneur. She. She is the founder CEO of the largest beauty booking website in the United States. And so they see us working on business a lot. So they ask a lot of business questions. And one of the things I’m focused on right now is how do we educate kids on what home economics was 30 years ago in high school? How do we bring that education to entrepreneurship so that kids understand what it is to make money? Because I think AI above everything else, AI is going to disrupt the out of coming out of high school or coming out of college and getting a first job. And I think the number of people who need to understand how to go create their first job and start their first business is important. And a lot of that is about just understanding what are the key tentpoles to being able to start something, because it’s a lot less complicated now than it ever was before.

Lee Kantor: And like you were saying earlier with the baseball players getting reps is important. And why not get reps when you’re young, when there’s no stakes as opposed to I.

Charlie Ebersol: I recommend to every parent I know to. There’s a board game that I tell everyone to buy. Do you remember the book? Um. Rich dad, poor dad. Yeah. Okay. So he created a board game called Cash Flow. And I tell every parent that they should. That’s the board game. They should play with their kids once they get to like, 5 or 6 years old. And the basic premise is, it looks like it kind of looks a little bit like the game of life and monopoly had, uh, like a baby, but it teaches you the concepts of assets and liabilities. And I’m constantly shocked when I talk to 22 year old kids that are playing for jobs, to work at my companies, or 35 year old people who are going out to start their own companies, that people don’t fundamentally understand the difference between an asset and a liability, or, you know, how to build a P and L, and a lot of that, to your point is just I started my first company when I was 12 and it was a magazine and my parents made me, you know, um, pay them back for the paper and the ink and these things. When I was first starting the company, I was fortunate the company became very successful, but I learned at a very early age that there’s a cost to starting a business and how that works. And so when my daughter started her cotton candy sales business last summer, I rented her the cotton candy machine against her profits. And so she was like, oh, I made $60. I was like, well, actually, you know, the cost of the cotton. You know, that basic understanding and then doing that 25 times so that by the time you get ready to start your real business, whatever that is, you really understand it. I think that’s wildly under taught and trying to figure out how to bring that to the education system is kind of becoming a pet hobby of mine.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. One of my pet peeves is, especially this time of year when you have the Girl Scout cookie sales, which to me is the easiest sale. Like that’s. That’s a great way to introduce selling to a child. But then when you have the parents bringing in the sheets to their work to get the their friends to buy it, you’re defeating the whole purpose of the exercise. It isn’t to sell the most cookies, it’s to get the kid comfortable selling anything.

Charlie Ebersol: 100%, 100%. And also ultimately, look, you asked me a question a little while ago about what I look for when I’m bringing people together. Um, I believe fundamentally that the key is that you got to find people that all want to row in the same direction. And you similar to what we were talking about with reps before you, you got to put in the reps of hiring people and then recognizing when someone’s not a good fit and moving on from those people as quickly as possible so that you can understand what the team dynamic and culture looks like. To your point about, um, the Girl Scouts. The entire point of the Girl Scouts is about building self-reliance and self-assuredness. And to your point about sales. Sales is about getting set. Getting a lot of no’s like that is really the key to sales is you’ve got to just, you know, I tell almost anyone who wants to start a business, I say that they should go do some sort of cold calling business for 3 to 6 months right out of college. Because if you can get good at that, if you can get good at, you’ve got two seconds at the beginning of a phone call to get somebody to like at least have the conversation with you, you’re going to be able to do just about anything in sales. And I’m always dumbfounded by the people who show up and are like, oh, I worked in sales. And then you realize they really didn’t. They either existed in a sales system that was completely built for them, or they never actually interact. They were sending emails or, or some sort of like passive interaction. And a lot of it is because things like the popcorn for the Boy Scouts and the cookies for the Girl Scouts are basically become parent, uh, homework assignments.

Lee Kantor: Right? Which defeats the purpose of the exercise entirely. They miss the point. The, the point is to get the kid comfortable in those situations, not to have them avoid being in those situations.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah. And that, by the way, when I look, I started, like I said, I started my first company when I was 12. I’ve had employees since I was probably 13. I don’t think I hired my first employee in the first year, but but around the time I was 13, I’ve had employees working for me. And one of the things that I am always surprised by, and I had to learn this lesson the hard way was I. My instinct was always like, I don’t ask anyone to do anything I haven’t done or I wouldn’t be willing to do. And it has taken me 20 plus years of running companies with employees to understand that that is actually not a great leadership dynamic. You want people to see that you’re committed to the company and you’re passionate and you’re hard working. But actually, you want to find people who can do things you can’t do. Those are the people you. Those are the people you should be hiring is the people who do things you can’t do, or the people who are doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. And in either case, you doing that job inherently is defeating the purpose of the exercise. And I am constantly shocked by the number of founders that I know that, you know, every decision runs through me.

Charlie Ebersol: It’s like, that’s a terrible way to run a business. Like you want you want to take the American military approach to the special forces, which is we’re going to train you to the best of our ability. We’re going to give you the right equipment. We’re going to give you the right team around you. And then we expect you to understand that the outcome is the requirement of the mission and that you follow these sort of ground rules, but you don’t need to keep coming back to us and asking for permission to do every step like that defeats the concept of asymmetric warfare. And yet constantly I’m seeing companies where every decision runs through the founder. And it’s I’m just like, not only are you never going to scale, when are you ever going to sleep? Like, what’s the point of making all the money or doing all the hard work if you can’t have dinner with your kids every night at, you know, 5:00 or take them to school every morning, or not have to have your phone out at 8:00 at night. I think those fallacies of leadership lead to terrible cultures inside of companies.

Lee Kantor: Now, why do you think that is, is that a fear thing? Is that an ego thing? Like what? What would keep a person, you know, having their fingers in every pot if they know the outcome that they desire is to, you know, build an empire.

Charlie Ebersol: I don’t think people realize, well, here’s what I’ll tell you. This might be less true now because of all the political stuff that’s tied to him. But I would say for the better part of the last 15 years, the most celebrated modern business person is Elon Musk. And all of the stories of Elon Musk are he slept on the floor of his factory. And he, you know, willed these companies into existence. And those things are true, but they really miss the point of Elon Musk, which is Elon is running 5 or 6 companies right now, and he has extraordinary CEOs running every one of those companies. And I assure you, Elon is not having conversations about, uh, vacation policy at any of the companies or making decisions about what vendor they’re using to bring in food for the people that work at his headquarters in Austin or whatever. He understands the delegation is so that he can maintain 80 to 90% of his brain. I had an amazing mentor tell me once that the job of a CEO is to hire people that are ten times smarter than they are, and have them solve every problem the company, and that the only job the CEO has after he hires those people is to solve the problems that those people can’t solve.

Charlie Ebersol: So it’s like you hire the smartest people you know and have them solve everything they can, and then they come to you with the problems because the problems they can’t solve generally are not like science problems. They are 300 zero foot, uh, command decisions that have to be made. And the mistake I see so many founders make is that they think that brute force and I just, I work harder and I go longer. You know, the, the adage of work smarter, not harder is so true and yet totally ignored by the vast majority of founders that I see when I hire people, I say, I’m hiring you and I’m paying you, and I fully expect you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes. I just expect you won’t make the same mistake twice. But I don’t want you thinking that I’m going to be upset at you for making a mistake, for trying hard. Um, because I don’t want to be. I don’t want that person trying to clear everything with me because they need to cover their CYA.

Lee Kantor: Right. But don’t you think that that’s where kind of startup and technology firms have such an edge over maybe more established 100 year old firms where they just have so much bureaucracy built in and there are so many kind of stagnant systems that they they give lip service to trust and vulnerability and risk. But anybody who does that and fails is fired or displaced.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah, 100%. But it’s also why I think you’re going to see over, I think, the next 50 years of businesses in America or in the, in the, in the capitalistic society. I think you’re going to see are going to be a much higher, a much higher rate of evolution that you’re going to see the General Electric’s of the world grow to a point and then get broken up, and that you’re going to see these upstarts come and take them down. I mean, if you look at what’s happening in Hollywood, if you look at what’s happening in technology, I mean, look, I keep pointing at, uh, anthropic because Google is. A million times bigger than anthropic is. And they have all of the information. They have all of the ad data. They have all the user data, they have all the YouTube data, they have all the ad and Android data. And yet anthropic, the, uh, Claude’s revenue is dwarfing OpenAI and Gemini. Uh, and OpenAI has all of Microsoft’s data. And yet anthropic is dwarfing. And it’s because, uh, the younger, hungrier, smaller, nimble company that can sort of like move and make moves is extreme is way more effective. I mean, all you have to do is look at the fact that meta had to buy Manus to get their AI platform up. Microsoft had to basically buy OpenAI. Um, Google is the only one that built it from the inside out with Gemini, and they’re all playing catch up to a company that 18 months ago, I think was doing like 5 billion annualized revenue, and now they’re going to do like 5 billion a week or something like that. Um, this year it’s, it’s, it’s astounding.

Lee Kantor: But is it sustainable? Like, you see that there’s in China, there’s companies that are obviously not as, um, innovative, but they’re, you know, playing catch up pretty quickly and at such a less cost that, um, you know, they become an issue also. Yeah, the fast, the fast followers in this world when things are moving this fast is not the worst place to be.

Charlie Ebersol: No, not at all. I think the challenge is that, to your point, I think the bigger companies are going to have a really hard time competing with them. I mean, SpaceX is the best example. Could you imagine what would happen if Boeing blew up one rocket on the rocket pad, let alone nine? Like they’re a publicly traded company?

Lee Kantor: Right.

Charlie Ebersol: Would end. Space blows up a $100 million rocket like every four weeks. You know what I mean? Like they’re but they understand fundamentally, they come from. We forget, I think, that we as leaders constantly forget that the era of innovation in America, which to a huge degree was the 50s and the 60s, which got us to the moon. So much of that innovation that that allowed us to, to put somebody on the moon in the late 60s. So much of that was a function of the fact that you had a bunch of 20 year old something kids, which was basically what NASA was. Nasa was a bunch of 20 year olds with, you know, all being led around by Wernher von Braun. That these 20 year old kids were willing to risk everything and try new things and challenge all of our understandings to sort of reach for the stars. And then I think what happened was we codified that concept as like our national ideology in the in the 70s and the 80s. And there was obviously a lot of countercultural pushback, but then we monetized it in the 80s without actually building the businesses anymore. And so, you know, we had to fight in the in the 80s and the 90s because Japan was out innovating us. And then in the early 2000, San Francisco and really the state of California basically started out innovating the rest of the planet.

Charlie Ebersol: And then I think what we’re seeing now is we’re in this new wave where China is. I think China is massively out innovating us right now. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg because they really do keep so much of that internal, um, in terms of how they’re doing development. And I think a lot of that is because we, to your point about the really to go back to the Girl Scout cookies, like there’s a lot of back slapping about, like we’re selling a lot of cookies and there’s not a lot of questioning, like who’s actually making the cookies and who’s actually selling them. And I think that you’re seeing that across the economy. And so these small, I think our, our, our salvation as a country has always been at the hands of, uh, iconoclastic, idiosyncratic, idiosyncratic founders, you know, the, the, uh, the JP Morgan’s and the Walt Disney’s and the Steve Jobs and, you know, Dario at anthropic, etc., and not the, um, financial engineers. Um, and I think what you’re seeing is you’re seeing the separation at cloud, for example, from open AI because it’s, it’s the meritocracy actually works when it comes to that type of, of innovation.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s shift gears to entertainment. I know you have a background in that, and I’m really curious about your take on the speed in which AI is, um, is touching that world and the, uh, the fact that so many of the creatives just abhor Just the word AI. Um. How are you gonna like, what’s your, your take? If you were to look at a crystal ball on, on what that’s going to look like, um, down the road.

Charlie Ebersol: There’s a great quote by the doctor who runs the University of Colorado’s medical program. He’s got 11,000 something doctors under his stead. And he said in a quote, I literally just heard this today. He said in a quote, AI will not replace doctors, but it will replace doctors who don’t understand AI. And I think that that is probably the best answer for the entertainment business is people who AI is not going to replace Tom cruise, but you. If you want to succeed in entertainment, you have got to figure out how to use AI. Because AI is a tool. Ai is a. There’s a lot being said for like people talking about agentic And. It’s gonna it’s gonna take over, you know, all this other stuff, which, you know, look, that may be true. I can’t think of another time in the history of the universe where a superior intellect didn’t supplant the inferior intellect. But we’re not there yet. Like AI for the next ten years is an exceptionally good, um, data retrieval device, I think. And executor. But ultimately, you know, is it going to write a symphony? Is it gonna write? Um.

Lee Kantor: Well, it’s writing a lot of songs that are in Spotify top 100.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah. But they’re not. Yeah. But they’re not net new. Like when you think about transfer, when you think about music, there’s the, there’s the great speech in, uh, The Devil Wears Prada, the first one where Meryl Streep where where Anne Hathaway sort of scoffs at her choosing between two blue belts. Right? Yeah. And she scoffs her and she gives her this speech about you don’t know what went into this, but you think you made a choice, but you didn’t make a choice, right? We made that choice for you seven years ago, and then you picked it out of the bargain. You know, a basket. Similarly with AI, it’s like you have transformational artists. Like when you think about the, the, the advent of hip hop, um, that was a net new piece of art that then defined the whole next generation. And you’ve had these sort of touchstone moments that have changed the way we think about things. When you think about like, you know, how modern art works, etc., they, they require like Christopher Nolan, AI is not making a Christopher Nolan movie like inception until someone has made something like inception. And then AI will iterate on top of that. And I think what you’re going to find is the artists who figure out how to utilize their creative mind, the the spark of life that makes the human spirit that causes artists to be able to create what they create. When, when an artist figures out how to use AI to supercharge that concept, you’re going to get net new pieces of art, which then AI will obviously, to your point, be a fast follow on and build on. But evolution comes from innovation, and innovation has to be an individual. It’s an individual experiment. Experiment.

Lee Kantor: But how do you see the entertainment world kind of adjusting to the new reality of our attention being so fragmented? Um, like there’s no, it’s not a monoculture anymore. There’s not kind of the, um, water cooler. Talk about the Seinfeld finale. Like I don’t, you know, you’re watching things that I never heard of. I’m watching things you’ve never heard of. And there’s not kind of that common language. And it’s so fragmented. How does an individual artist, you know, monetize their work? Uh, in a world I know there’s a lot more opportunity. Um, but there’s going to be a lot more opportunity than making a lot less than they did previously.

Charlie Ebersol: Well, there’s two points here, I think that I don’t see it as the death of content. And creativity I see is the death of old, of the old school way of doing it, where you had gatekeepers like Mr. Beast could not exist.

Lee Kantor: Right back in the day. Look, the irate dogs guy couldn’t exist. I mean, there’s, there’s people that have niches that have figured out how to monetize it. But when everybody’s attention is so, um, is, is just built on just these little mini things. Like there’s a whole industry now of just those vertical phone serials that AI is cranking out scripts for that are, you know, 100 episodes. And then people are paying a little bit for each one just to know what happens next. Like there’s new industries happening in entertainment. It just as an artist, how are they like, are you going to have to be your own kind of production company and distribution company in order to, to make it in, uh, as a creator nowadays.

Charlie Ebersol: I think you have the ability to be that, but I don’t think you have to be that. I mean, I think the reality is, um, 150 million Americans tuned in to watch Bad Bunny together and.

Lee Kantor: Right. But that’s one singular thing, like most.

Charlie Ebersol: But I don’t think, but but but Lee, I don’t think that that’s. I can probably name a half a dozen TV shows and I say TV with air quotes because the how you consume them is probably different now with respect to streaming and phones and iPads and all this other stuff. But there are there have been massive cultural touchstones. I mean, if I have to hear the, uh, demon Hunter. The K-pop demon Hunter song. One more time. Um, I’m gonna lose my mind, but I’m in good company. There’s half a billion people listening to that, you know, stream that stream that show on Netflix. I think that you still have mega, mega content moments. But I also think that what’s happening now is the number of people being served by content now is higher than it has ever been in history. And that is because we can serve bespoke content to so many of them. So if you have a niche that you’re interested in, where you where it used to be that you would have to go find, you know, there was a comic book series when I was a kid called spawn that was only sold in certain comic books. It eventually got made into a movie because the fans found it, and they went to the Newbury Comics of Boston and all these other places to find the comic book, and it turned into something.

Charlie Ebersol: But I think if you looked at the gross number of people who ever read the spawn comic book, it was probably hundreds of thousands of people today. To your point, there are there are people that are doing garage laboratory experiments on YouTube that are doing 30 million views. I think that the scale is completely different. I also think that we what what basically happened in my mind is that we democratized access to excuse me, we democratize access and ability to create and distribute content. And then we empowered every human being in the world to carry around Steve Jobs, you know, internet communication device, so that now every single person with access to electricity has access to every single piece of content that has ever been created in human history. And so now I think what you’re seeing is a shift in the ideology of content commercialization and content distribution, but you’re not seeing the death of mega content because the reality is human beings are communal in inherently. And so, I mean, look, they are a hail project. Hail Mary did box office numbers that were in line with the box office of pre-pandemic numbers. That’s because people are looking for an excuse. They’re going to do it for Chris Nolan again, with with with Troy or not Troy. Um, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Lee Kantor: Odyssey.

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah, the Odyssey. So I think they still exist. I just think that people are being served at an individual level now too. And so it seems like it’s less, but the reality is there are more people watching things. When my dad retired in 2011, The New York Times said that he produced eight of the ten most watched events in the history of the world. Like he produced the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics and the Atlanta Olympics and Super Bowls and all this other stuff. And I think that all eight things that he produced by audience were have been have been dwarfed by internet only videos now in terms of now. His was a concurrent audience, which I think he’s probably still safely in the top 25. But if you think about it, Justin Bieber’s videos are doing a billion, a billion, five views, which is, you know, inconceivable 15 years ago.

Lee Kantor: Right. Well, you mentioned the, um, K-pop demon Hunter thing. Uh, how much money would that person if that was released? And it even got to the point of where it is today. How much more money would that have been to the creators and the participants of that if it was, you know, ten years beforehand? I mean, they would have made lots more money. You think they would have gotten screwed there first?

Charlie Ebersol: Yeah, it was their first project. They would have gotten a terrible record deal. Ask Miley Cyrus how much money she made on Hannah Montana. Like that was a blowout runaway hit. Or asked the High School Musical kids how much they made on that. Those guys were under Disney contracts. They made, you know, whatever Disney scale was at the time. They didn’t own the music. I mean, Hannah Montana, the, the, the Masters and the recordings of those songs are actually owned by Disney. Like they are written by the Disney Corporation. So I in reality, I think those people probably make more money now because unlike 15 years ago, there’s a whole apparatus where those three women who wrote the songs and sang the songs, all this other stuff, can now go online, become famous and have live shows that are outside of Netflix’s reach. And so Netflix has to pay them so much more money to do what they do.

Lee Kantor: So that would would that be your recommendation? If you’re an artist nowadays, a creator is to just kind of choose yourself and build your own following an audience, and then that’ll make you more money over the long run, as opposed to an actor that maybe got residuals back in the day if they were on a sitcom somewhere.

Charlie Ebersol: Well, yeah, that’s exactly my advice I had in my career in the last 15 years. I had the number one show on CNBC. I had the number one show on TNT. I had the number one show on Netflix for a period of time and all these different places and meaning a show I created that I put on television that aired multiple seasons in those in those shows cases. And I would have made infinitely more money if I had produced any of those shows today on YouTube.

Lee Kantor: So that’s the lesson, is choose yourself and build a team around you.

Charlie Ebersol: That is always my advice. My advice is always be an entrepreneur and build it yourself. Because the worst thing that can happen is you fail. The best thing that can happen is you have economic and you have emotional freedom, which I don’t know that there’s really a price tag on. And if you want to make money, anyone can make money. There’s a thousand ways to make money. Making money on your own is always better than making it for someone else.

Lee Kantor: Well, Charlie, it’s been a joy chatting with you. I really enjoyed the conversation. Um, now that you’re, uh, I guess is your. What’s the best way to get a hold of you? Or do you want people to get Ahold of you? Um, what is the, uh, the best way to connect with you?

Charlie Ebersol: Um, I’m at Charlie Ebersol on Instagram and I tell people if they want to try to connect or reach out, that that is always the best way to send me a note and connect.

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

Charlie Ebersol: Hey Lee, thank you so much for taking the time means the world.

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

From Stage to Strategy: Transforming Leadership with Actors and Executive Coaching

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High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
From Stage to Strategy: Transforming Leadership with Actors and Executive Coaching
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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee interviews Executive Coach Kim Nielsen, founder of Creative Coaching & Actorvention LLC. Kim shares how she integrates her theater and stand-up comedy background into coaching, including using professional actors to simulate real workplace scenarios. Specializing in the pharmaceutical industry for over 12 years, she coaches leaders and medical science liaisons on communication, leadership, and presentation skills. The conversation explores fear of success among high performers, how it manifests as hesitation and overanalysis, and practical strategies to overcome it, including micro-commitments and redefining success as alignment and contribution rather than pressure and performance.

Kim Nielsen is an ICF certified International Executive & Performance Coach, actor, trainer, and facilitator with extensive experience working across global and regional teams. Her co-active coaching approach fosters transformational growth by guiding individuals through self-discovery, heightened awareness, strategic goal setting, accountability, and action-driven learning.

She creates dynamic, engaging environments where participants feel empowered to respond candidly and participate comfortably. Leveraging her accreditation in tools such as C-Me® Color Profile, Resilient Leader Elements™, and Positive Intelligence®, Kim applies a systematic methodology of inquiry to unlock potential and drive meaningful change.

She takes great pride in coaching Leaders through times of significant change, offering a solid support system while navigating new paradigm shifts. She is a firm believer that “small shifts equal big change”, and where there are obstacles, there are opportunities. Her aim is to offer clients a fresh perspective, allowing them to see their challenges, opportunities, and growth through a different lens. During the last 10 years she has coached pharmaceutical professionals; Medical Science Liaisons (MSL’s) and C-level executives in Clinical and Medical Affairs, with a strong focus on both the whole person aligned with their professional role.

In addition to her work in Pharma, she has coached leaders across industries, including Tiffany & Co., Amex, MSNBC, and Caterpillar Inc. She has also collaborated with top-tier medical and academic institutions such as NYU Langone Health, Maimonides Hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, and The Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education.

Her love for the stage continues through her active involvement in the theater community. She unwinds at her mountain home in Pennsylvania, where time in nature, exploring local wineries, and being with her partner, family, and friends offer a welcome sense of balance and connection.

Connect with Kim on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Integration of acting and comedy into executive coaching practices.
  • Use of actors to simulate real workplace scenarios for enhanced learning.
  • Focus on coaching leaders in the pharmaceutical industry, particularly medical science liaisons.
  • Development of leadership skills, presentation abilities, and effective communication.
  • Addressing the fear of success among high performers and its manifestations.
  • Strategies for overcoming self-sabotage and fear of success.
  • Importance of creating a safe space for clients to share and set goals.
  • Building a coaching culture within organizations that values psychological safety and authenticity.
  • The role of vulnerability in leadership and fostering honest dialogue.
  • Engaging and memorable learning experiences through forum theater techniques.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is gonna be a good one. Today on the show, we have executive coach with Creative Coaching and Actorvention, Kim Nielsen. Welcome.

Lee Kantor: Hi. Thank you Lee. It’s a pleasure to be here.

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

Lee Kantor: Yeah, well, a little bit about me. I’m a certified personal executive and team coach. I partner with leaders across the globe to help them think more clearly, you know, communicate more intentionally and lead with greater impact. So I also work with leaders and we have simulations where we’ll come to maybe their office or do a workshop on site, and we’ll bring some actors along with us to simulate employees maybe handling different difficult conversations, maybe understanding more about a product or increasing their sales ability. Yeah. And so I do a little bit of both because my background is I was a stage actress in New York City for many, many years, which seems like many, many years ago. And I did stand up comedy as well. So I try to incorporate those threads into my current work.

Intro: So how did you come up with the idea of actually using actors, rather than just having kind of the workers that are in the workshop be the actors?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, because we needed to separate, we wanted to separate those from their own mindset, actually. And when you’re an audience member, you do take on the the learns in a different way. It’s like you and I watching a movie rather than being in it. We can it’s a different perspective completely. So we found that utilizing Actors can not only educate but also entertain and the. The education points as far as the learns that are absorbed are memorable. So it has really worked. It’s been a great it’s been a great format for this.

Intro: Now, can you share a little bit for the coaches that are listening when you’re going to try something that is this kind of outside the box and innovative, how did the first ones go or was it difficult to get buy in from your first clients when you were coming up with this idea, or did you just go boldly forward? Like, what was the early stages like? Because there’s a lot of coaches, especially that have great ideas that maybe are afraid to implement some of them.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, sure. Well, for me, being an actor, it was seamless. I knew it was something that I still wanted to carry on into my, my work as a, as an executive coach. And earlier on, I had worked with children at risk. I worked with women in domestic well, they were involved in domestic violence and shelters, and the way to reach them was through theater, allowing them to be able to express themselves and to have a voice. So for me, it was very seamless to try to bring this and explain this to a potential client. I also worked a lot in different hospitals in the five boroughs in New York, and I was an actor myself playing a patient. So I got to know the clinicians and together we ended up working cohesively, creating different, what can I say, different vignettes for third year med students. And so this became very effective for the for the med students. So I think the buy in is where you can show that this kind of work, this kind of practice, this role play is very effective.

Intro: Now in your work, do you have a niche or is it, you know, across the board, just leaders in general? Like, is there a kind of specialty or an industry that you work in?

Lee Kantor: Well, right now I’ve been in pharmaceuticals for the past 12 years. This is a space where I landed 12 years ago. And it was through actually through word of mouth. It was a friend of mine because I do work with different industries. We’ve I’ve worked in finance, uh, luxury retail, uh, worked with MSNBC and their employees. So I’ve done a big, I think a big variety of different type of work, different industries. Anyway. Um, but I’ve landed in pharmaceutical land 12 years ago and I’ve stayed because I, I realized that the leaders and I work with, um, Msls they’re medical science liaisons. They’re, they’re leaders on the edge. They are ready to leap off of the cliff. Their wingspan is huge. And I just enjoyed this group of people because they’re so anxious to learn more. And so, um, right now it’s leadership training, presentation skills. It’s working through challenges. When these msls have to meet their. They call them HCP. They’re healthcare providers where they need to speak to them about a drug. Um, there’s a lot of intensity that goes on with creating a rapport. So I think some of my theater background has come in handy with that as well. So right now, yeah, I’m in. I work with many different leaders, different industries, but I’ve landed predominantly in pharmaceuticals.

Intro: Now, are you working with individual high performers or is the organization bringing you in? You know, to handle groups or teams?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, both. Both. I work with different consulting agencies that outsource me to their clients. So it could be a facilitation for a leadership workshop and through that we pull through with some coaching afterwards. That contract can start with six months and then really evolve into two years or more, which is really been what it has been. It has evolved. Um, and also the leaders that I coach are leading other teams. So then they will refer me to their team members as well.

Intro: And is there kind of a specific area that they want to work with you on? Is it like typically like public speaking or things like that? Because, you know, I would think an actor has an edge or can give some good tips in that area. Or is it just just general business challenges? Like is is there a specialty in that regard?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it’s both. It’s really whatever, you know, it’s the agenda of the client. So I want to create always a safe space for them to I have to earn their trust. And that has to be done in a short amount of time so that we can get to business. And so I want them to understand who I am, what the coaching process is all about. I want them to feel safe, to be able to have a voice and to ask any questions that they want. We’ll set up with a contract as to what do they hope to achieve by the end of our time together. And so we will comprise some goals and objectives, and we start to dip into some challenges. We build on the strengths that they already have and are working well. But how can they get more buck? How can they get more money from that one, that one strength that they have to build upon it and then to speak about their challenges?

Intro: Now, is there, um, do you see in high performers? Because I know in folks that aren’t maybe or don’t regard themselves as high performers, there’s a lot of self-sabotage, but do you see even at the highest levels that there are some maybe fear or self-sabotage?

Lee Kantor: Absolutely, Lee, and that’s a good point that you raise because, you know, we often talk about fear of failure, failing and failure. But in my experience, working closely with leaders, fear of success is often the quieter force shaping some of their decisions. Fear of success. I notice in many, many high achievers and sometimes they can’t recognize it themselves. It’s it’s an inner dialog and it could be a slow erosion. I’ve noticed it in myself too, over certain pockets of my career.

Intro: So what are some of the signs or symptoms of a fear of success? How do they show themselves?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and that’s another great question. It’s it’s not dramatic. Doesn’t look dramatic. It’s it’s not self-doubt because most of these high achievers are very competent. They are very confident as well. They’re very good at what they do, and they’ve already achieved such amazing levels and and heights. So it’s an inner dialog that starts to take place. And it like, again, it’s not self-doubt. What it does look like is a hesitation right at the point of expansion, you know, and I recognize this pattern easily because it shows up in certain ways. This is when I can hear it, when a leader tells me that they’re staying busy instead of becoming more strategic in their evolution, in their journey and their growth, uh, they know that they have the capacity for more, but they stay a little bit smaller. They hold back. They even hold back their own perspective in a crowded room, when there are people that really want to hear their voice, it would probably shift the whole entire temperature, but they hold back and they are always, um, I’m sorry, I just wanted to add one other point. They’re always overanalyzing. Uh, they’re always looking for one more proof point before they can make a decision. So a slow, gentle spin starts and then a spiral takes place, and before you know it, they’re talking themselves right out of any advancement.

Intro: Now, when you’re working with somebody, I can see how this can come out in a coaching session by you being good at asking questions, where this can come about. Is there anything that the leader who doesn’t have a coach or doesn’t have you in their corner can see? Are there some signals that just the person right now listening could maybe, um, reevaluate some things that are happening? Like is there like, how does it show itself to a person who doesn’t have someone to point it out to them?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it does, and it happens slowly and it’s an inner dialog. The first thing is, is it repetitive? Is every time that there’s some opportunity that you could step into that, that might be a little bit of a risk or a little uncertain. Is the same dialog taking place within one’s mind, which then becomes a fixed mindset, not a growth mindset. You’re closing yourself off. It’s also about visibility because when we think about fear of success, this is about people that want to grow and achieve and step into something bigger. But the moment they get close, this internal dialog that I’m talking about goes off. It’s like an alarm. So it’s a fear of what success can change. So they feel that visibility feels risky. If I stand out, I’ll be judged. I’ll be exposed or expected to keep performing at this level. Um, sometimes they feel that success disrupts familiar patterns. Uh, sometimes there’s identity conflict. Who am I if I no longer am the underdog or the helper or the the strong and silent one and the steady one. They also fear of losing relationships. It’s their entire landscape. It’s the people that they’re comfortable working with and for, and they’re respected and valued. Am I still going to have that same level of respect and feel valued? If I move on to something a little bit bigger? And there’s some of these old narratives, again, that that inner dialog that takes place, there’s messages from childhood that could creep up, you know, you’re not, this is too much. You’re too ambitious, you’re too confident, you’re overextending all of these voices that comes into play is obviously the inner dialog of one person. And once they start to hear this over and over again, this is where they can recognize and identify. I’m not afraid of failing. I’m already at this high level of achievement. I am afraid of succeeding because it will change many things that I’m very accustomed to and that I love and enjoy.

Intro: Well, there’s a song lyric that says, when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. But when you have something like these people do. I guess that’s where fear starts creeping in. How do you like what’s something actionable that a leader can do that you would help them with? If they’re showing some of these signs of fear of success? Yeah.

Lee Kantor: Great question again. Um, it’s, it’s starting small. It’s micro commitments to oneself. It’s creating movements without forcing it. Right. So this is not about pushing harder. Or once one identifies that they are in this container. It’s not about trying to break free and break loose of everything. It’s just identifying it first, embracing the emotions, understanding why this is even existing, but also asking yourself the question first, you know, if this goes really well, if I were to step into this new space, what am I afraid will happen next? What are those? What could happen next? You know, the answer is usually revealing because fear of success is rarely about the achievement itself. Again, it’s about what you believe. Success will cost you. Belonging, the balance, even the authenticity of it all, and the control. So the first thing is creating movement, right? You want to redefine success internally. If success equals pressure and performance, part of you will definitely resist it. But if success equals alignment, clarity, collaborative effort, contribution, it can become something a bit more approachable, something that you can grow and step into. So what I say to, to my leaders, I ask them two questions that they can ask themselves, what does success mean to me, independent of title or even the recognition of it? That’s number one. Number two, what version of success feels expansive rather than performative, you know? So thinking about expanding and sharing your abilities and this question can change their mindset.

Lee Kantor: The second thing is separate visibility from your ego. Visibility is not about arrogance. It’s not arrogant at all. Having the spotlight, this is where people are actually learning and growing from you and the insights that you provide. And it’s about your influence as well. Sometimes you just need to reframe it in a different way and saying, I’m not stepping forward. For me, I’m stepping forward for the work, for the team, for the organization. And then you want to normalize the discomfort of expansion. You know, growth stretches capacity. The stretch is not danger, it’s development. Again, this is a shift in the way somebody would interpret what this is. Instead of going right into that spin and spiral. And so instead of interpreting discomfort as a signal to retreat, try renaming it and just say, I’m expanding. This is just me expanding my you know, you have a wingspan. Fly, you know, take take flight, do this. So this is about the nervous system that’s sending all these triggers. So the mind is controlling what we end up doing. So we want to control the mind. Some of these questions that I just brought up, if you ask yourself the answers will be revealing. And so what you want to do is be able to identify the triggers, name the triggers, embrace the emotion and start to reframe some of the way you look at this. And what I just described now.

Intro: Is there a story you can share about maybe a client and obviously don’t name them, but maybe, um, explain what they came to you with, what their maybe self-sabotage was and how you were able to help them get to a new level or.

Lee Kantor: I did have a client and they are, um, I won’t even say what industry, but they are, they are a VP. They’re a vice president in their organization, obviously have already climbed the ladder, already has won the respect and has the integrity of the rule and is very, very good at what this person does. And the organization knows it, values it, trusts it, honors it. There was another step in which this person could take to go even further, and there was absolute sabotage. The saboteurs were running free in this person’s mind. And there’s this wonderful assessment that anybody could take, and I offered for this person to take it as well. And it’s called positive intelligence. It’s probably a ten question assessment test. And what it does is it asks questions. Um, and based on your answers, it will give you your top ten saboteurs. And some of them can range from being the judge to the pleaser to the high achiever. And this person actually came across as hypervigilant. They were one person that just always needed to check all the balances, check the boxes, and it started preventing this person from moving forward. So we so this became a pattern in the conversation. And so I quickly asked him to take the assessment. We looked at the saboteurs. We agreed that saboteurs are with us from when we’re children. They’re never going to go away. It’s just about managing them and squelching the voice and taking control again. And how do we do that? We have to look at the same situation in a completely different way.

Lee Kantor: Not the usual knee jerk reaction or going into the fixed mode or the problem solving, but a different way to look at this and exploring the situation. Think about different questions that one can ask yourself. What will I learn from this? How will I grow from this? Who can I, um, make an impression on and effectively make an impact on? If I were to take on this role through this work, this took some time because identifying, squelching the voice and then coming up with ways that obviously the client needs to come up with because it’s them that needs to do the work and live it. We come up with solutions and again, micro-commitments as to what they can do to make certain changes. And I always say small ships equal big change. And so at the end of it was like six sessions that we did have. And there were other things parlayed into those sessions. Um, he decided that I’m going to go for this. I’m definitely going to see if this is still available to me. He did. He got the promotion and he’s in a completely different atmosphere and he’s loving it. He’s absolutely loving it. And he’s bringing such I don’t know what to say. It’s such a, um, a capacity of, of wealth and expertise that he’s bringing to the organization and he’s really secure in where he is today. So that was a very successful story.

Intro: Now, is there any advice for the organizations that want to create kind of a culture of coaching within the organization where people feel safe kind of, um, being their whole self, like you described?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Yes, definitely. And I think organizations have been making this shift. They’re understanding that this isn’t only about performance and outcomes, that this is about the integrity of the individual, this is about the authenticity of the individual. And everybody brings something to the table that when you put this fabric together, each thread is strong by itself, but even stronger when together. I think in organization, what they can do is create that psychologically safe space. When I say that, I don’t mean it just by being nice to people. It’s creating a space where you can be honest, where people understand that others are taking risks and they might not always succeed, but that’s also celebrated in that they’re stepping out of their comfort zone and they’re going into their learning zone. It’s also about real dialog, having these one on ones or having these group coaching sessions, whether it be internal or externally, so that people have a voice. We’re not all going to agree, but how can we come together for a common purpose? And I think also leaders can role model the way. You know, let others, let team members see that you’re human.

Lee Kantor: That there’s a vulnerability to you that share your story. Tell them what it took to get to where you are. Talk about some of those hills and valleys and some of those things that you needed to redesign. That just didn’t happen right off the bat. You know, how did you become this expert? Share. Share and also celebrate the learn. Celebrate the team members journey, not just the outcomes. You know, everybody’s looking at, um, you know, metrics and I know that this is a big part of, of an organization, how they function, how they stay afloat. But when you when you have people that feel safe to grow, organizations get more, I don’t know, they become more creative, more innovative. There’s more ownership and there’s more resiliency. So I would say to organizations is create a safe space, allow people to be who they are, you know, create that inner, that, not inner dialog. Bring it outward. Share your own story of vulnerability and the lessons that you’ve learned to achieve where you are today and celebrate people’s journeys. Not just what they bring to the table as far as outcomes.

Intro: Yeah, I’m definitely for more bringing humanity back to the workplace, more definitely more human interactions and less, you know, uh, optimizing for metrics rather than optimizing for humanity.

Lee Kantor: Yes, I completely agree with you. And when we talk about people that are and many are experiencing fear of success. You know, this isn’t, again, a question of if they’re capable. It’s it’s the question, are you willing to expand without abandoning who you are in the process? That’s the real work. It’s not becoming someone else. Um, it’s not faking it till you making it. It’s just growing safely into more of who you are.

Intro: Now, before we wrap, I just I’m really enamored with this actor vention component of your practice. Is there a funny story you can share about, uh, when your actors were working with the team and maybe something unexpected happened or something memorable or funny?

Lee Kantor: All the time. All the time. But I will tell you, uh, something that did happen. It wasn’t too long ago and it was in the pharmaceutical capacity. We have amazing actors that take on the role of these medical science liaisons? These Msls need to go into hospitals and speak with these key opinion leaders about the compounds of the drugs and the MOA. And my actors needed to understand so much about the drug. And if and if you know pharmaceuticals, there’s acronyms for everything. You could get tongue tied and twisted very quickly. And I would say that the actors are doing a fine job of, of being an MSL. Well, we got into a situation where I think the script just went completely out of the actor’s mind, and he just looked at the audience and he did something that we call a forum theater. He actually asked an MSL to come in and join him on stage, and he said, okay, I think you could do this better. And so the MSL actually sat in the seat talking to the make believe doctor, and it was brilliant. It went flawlessly. It was wonderful. Team members were clapping. As an actor, we learned even more. Everybody just had a blast doing this. So yes, these things do actually happen.

Intro: And then the impact becomes that much more powerful, right?

Lee Kantor: Does it’s very real. And it wasn’t really about putting anybody on the spot. That was an audience member. It was allowing them to be a part of the action, you know, to take on. And that’s what Forum Theater is sometimes is that I can be doing something. And then if I feel that you can add to it, I’ll point to somebody in the audience and they’ll come up and start from where I left off. And that’s exactly what happened. And so we did described Forum Theater to the audience. And they said, we said, you just participated in Forum Theater and you didn’t even know it. You did a fine job. They did an excellent job.

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

Lee Kantor: Sure, it’s w w dot activation atorvention.com. I also have a cell phone number that, um, readily available, (718) 809-5087. I welcome any call to talk with leaders one on one or emerging leaders. I mean, we’re, you know, you don’t need a team in order to be a leader. We’re a leader. We’re leading ourselves every day. So I welcome any call.

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

Lee Kantor: Thank you. Lee. I appreciate this opportunity very much so.

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

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

Empowering IT Teams with AI: Reducing Burnout and Increasing Efficiency Through Smart Automation

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Empowering IT Teams with AI: Reducing Burnout and Increasing Efficiency Through Smart Automation
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In this episode of Atlanta Business Radio, Lee interviews Richard Shaaya, CEO of Sigma Automate. Richard discusses his IT infrastructure background and how it inspired him to create a no-code, AI-enabled automation platform designed for enterprise IT teams. Sigma Automate simplifies complex tasks like patch management, system migration, and VDI management, eliminating costly manual processes. Richard shares a success story involving a major landscaping company that fully automated patch management, freeing staff from overtime work. He emphasizes that Sigma Automate delivers fast ROI and scalability, making sophisticated IT automation accessible to organizations across multiple industries.

Richard Shaaya, Co-Founder and CEO of Sigma Automate, led IT Operations and Cybersecurity across enterprises including The Home Depot, Wellstar Health System, Corning Inc., and Volkswagen.

Drawing from that experience, he founded Sigma to solve a critical gap in enterprise infrastructure, turning AI-driven insight into reliable, system-level execution.

Connect with Richard on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Overview of Sigma Automate’s mission and services
  • Challenges faced by IT teams with current automation tools
  • Importance of no-code, AI-enabled platforms in IT automation
  • The role of AI in enhancing IT operations and automation
  • Comparison of manual IT management versus automated solutions
  • Customer feedback and success stories related to Sigma Automate
  • Metrics for measuring success and ROI with automation tools
  • The evolving role of IT administrators in the age of automation
  • Insights from the CEO’s background in IT infrastructure management
  • Current focus on expanding partnerships and market reach for Sigma Automate

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have the CEO with Sigma Automate, Richard Shaaya. Welcome.

Richard Shaaya: Thank you for having me. Good afternoon.

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

Richard Shaaya: Absolutely. So I come from IT infrastructure. I used to manage large IT teams in the metro Atlanta area, both in healthcare and retail. And the problem we’re out to solve is to provide accessible and easy to use IT automation software to enable teams large, you know, sophisticated, complicated IT teams to be able to automate systems in a resilient way, right? Patch them consistently, migrate them in between all the different clouds. So in a world of complexity, we’re here to be the execution layer for Agentic AI to help serve it automation.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the backstory? What was kind of the genesis of the idea?

Richard Shaaya: Yeah, absolutely. So like I said, you know, I used to run IT teams and one thing was clear to me, uh, you know, most IT teams in the enterprise are too busy chasing their tail, right? Troubleshooting day to day issues that they never have the opportunity to really zoom out and re-architect their environment in a stable, consistent, automated way. And the big reason for that is not a lack of competency or a lack of will. The big reason for that is that the tools that are present and available out there are simply too complex, and time to value is too slow. So I used to run projects to get some automation workbooks off the ground, and it just simply took too long and cost the enterprise way too much money before we could access that automation. So I went off on my own and wanted to solve for this problem by providing an accessible, easy to use, no code automation platform that integrates with, you know, VMware technology, AWS, Azure, whatever the cloud provider is, and help the IT department access automation features without having to write code or install agents or worry about, you know, things like Yaml files or kind of the more sophisticated, slower time to value ways of doing this today.

Lee Kantor: So when you developed it, was it difficult to get kind of people to try it out?

Richard Shaaya: Honestly, not when we were talking to the right people. You know, I think I think executives, IT executives in the enterprise, I think we’ve disappointed them as, as you know, a software industry, we’ve promised easy troubleshooting, easy system build, easy patch management over the past 20 years, and we’ve simply not delivered on that. So there is a lot of hunger for this one. You know, once we’re talking with the right folks and that’s anywhere from the CIO, CTO, all the way to, you know, manager, senior manager of IT operations and IT infrastructure, they really have that wow factor, you know, on their face once they see how simple the platform is, and once they see how cool the AI enabled features we’ve got in there. So, um, speaking with the right audience, right, that really understand this pain and is living it day to day, um, has allowed us to get quick adoption in the first nine months.

Lee Kantor: So what? Um, when you’re talking to them, how do you answer the, the why now issue? Like why is now a good time to pull the trigger on something like this?

Richard Shaaya: Absolutely. In the age of AI intelligence and reasoning, you know, the large language models, the AI functionality itself has become a commodity. However, it is still stuck again, fighting fire fighting day to day problems. We’re here to bridge that gap, right. So we’re here to make use of AI for the IT enterprise.

Lee Kantor: So now um if they’re not using your service, how what are they doing instead? Is this manual at this point? Like what, what are they doing to kind of like you said, it was very, there’s a lot of complexity. So what are they doing to deal with this right now if they’re not using Sigma automate?

Richard Shaaya: Yeah. Great question. Um, the bulk of the Companies out there are doing things manually. Uh, the ones that are implementing some automation heavily rely on certain key players and individual contributors to continue supporting, maintaining, and developing that automation over time, which causes problems for, uh, retaining resources and making sure that we can support the technology that we’re deploying into, into the future. So there’s a little bit of DIY out there, but for the most part, it’s being done manually. It’s consuming, you know, uh, weekends and nights for systems engineers that really should be focused on delivering value to the business instead of firefighting and manually patching systems and repairing, you know, agents and dealing with very complex, um, automation code. Uh, that really should be solving an easy, simple, repeatable problem. So the bulk of it is, uh, is manual and then there’s a little bit of DIY, uh, kind of, you know, A house built, uh, processes that are just become, you know, brittle, fragile, and, uh, disparate.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned having kind of deployed this already in the market a little bit. Um, when you go back to the leaders, uh, after you’ve deployed it, what is something they tell you when it comes to, I can’t believe that we were doing this manually before. Is there anything that they’re saying that’s the big, you know, uh, aha moment for them that this is kind of blowing them away?

Richard Shaaya: Yeah. It’s really enabling, uh, consistent IT operations. Uh, simply. Right. So, um, a set it and forget it button, right. A big troubleshoot button that will go out there and look at a lot of logs and different systems and all the moving parts, uh, with our AI agent and come back and tell you what might be going on in your environment. Right? Uh, a couple, you’re always a couple clicks away from building many systems at scale. So the ease of use and the power of executing in your environment at scale with such little upfront work. That’s really what’s wowing our customers.

Lee Kantor: And then, so how are you measuring this when it comes to the client? Like, what’s your kind of metrics for success when they’re judging? Is this a worthy investment?

Richard Shaaya: Yeah. You know, we have.

Richard Shaaya: Multiple modules in the in the platform. So I’ll give you a couple examples. One of them is patch management automation. So our customers use us to ensure that their systems are up to date and patched in an automated way. That means that, you know, the IT team is not up every Saturday night manually clicking buttons and fixing, you know, patch software that might be broken on the systems. They schedule it and they set it and forget it. And then they’re able to get compliance reports, right. That makes their security team happy to prove that these systems have been patched. If there is any problem with the patch installed and there is, you know, logic in the platform to resolve that problem. And that’s where our AI agent excels significantly there. So that’s that’s one of the use cases. Another one is VDI management. So that’s virtual desktop infrastructure. Things like Omnisphere and AVD out in the Azure space helping, uh, UC teams. That’s end user compute, helping end user compute teams. Again, automate simply the automatic, uh, uh, scaling of their VDI environments. So that’s building desktops every day and then shutting them down at night to save on cloud costs or on prem resources. Uh, that’s been a big aha moment for our end user compute teams.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about the rapidly scaling a company that’s growing, you know, from X number of servers to ten X servers? Does does your system help them when they’re growing that rapidly?

Richard Shaaya: Absolutely. So we’ve got a we have a theory of templatizing everything, right? So the idea is, if you’re going to do it once, you’re likely going to repeat it. And the platform’s ability to help you save a workflow, save an automation and then replay it at scale, that’s really what we’re here for. And again, that could be anything from deploying a system all the way to patching it or migrating it, or looking for configuration drift. Um, it’s all, you know, point and click. There’s no code required. There’s no training required. It’s very simple for, um, you know, the typical systems administrator to utilize this platform, uh, in a scalable way where it’s, you know, we call it a, um, DRI concept, right? And it just means that we’re not going to repeat work. Uh, so do it once, scale it and, you know, rinse and repeat. And once you enable access across your team, then you know, you’re not dependent on that one. Uh, system systems engineers that honestly today is not able to go on vacation, right. Or is not able to stop working every single weekend, uh, because they specialize in a certain system or a certain functionality in the environment. So enabling people to, you know, look out for each other and, um, having that force multiplier to do more with less, especially as organizations, um, you know, are under strict, uh, budgets and are generally struggling to keep up with the business. Uh, that’s been very powerful for us.

Lee Kantor: Now with the rise of AI, um, and more and more automation. How do you see kind of the role of the IT administrator or those leaders evolving?

Richard Shaaya: Right. So, um, you know, with how incredible AI is and it’s not going anywhere. Uh, you know, if you think about the current landscape, it is still struggling, right? And there’s always talk about AI is doing incredible things. And yet we are struggling to patch our systems. We’re still struggling to build systems, um, you know, in a timely way to support the business there. You know, there’s a missing layer and that missing layer is practical execution, right? So that means how do we use AI reasoning in AI intelligence practically in our environment, other than just manually asking the LLM to write a script for us and then go and apply it, right. That’s what we’re solving for. We are the execution layer and the, the automation layer to execute on intelligence for the IT enterprise.

Lee Kantor: So now do you think that your background of being a technologist and kind of working in the, in those huge systems that you had in the past, that you were kind of the perfect person to be doing this kind of work?

Richard Shaaya: You know, I’ve worked for.

Richard Shaaya: Multiple industries spanning, you know, retail, healthcare. I used to work up, up in Corning, New York for, for the glass manufacturer, right. So multiple industries and they, they’ve all had the same pattern of challenges, which really boils down to, um, you know, inaccessible or hard to access automation, and that’s consistently been the root cause of outages, the root cause of inefficiencies for the IT enterprise. So I bring a background of, um, you know, multi industry experience with, you know, with the same pattern of problems that we’re solving for now.

Lee Kantor: Um, has it been difficult for you to get funding?

Richard Shaaya: It, um, it has not. We closed, uh, we closed our, uh, incubation round and, uh, we were able to, uh, you know, honestly just find the right partner. I always tell folks I only pitched once, which is unheard of. You know, I think there’s a little bit of luck there potentially. But, you know, I think again, um, the enterprise and, uh, investors are hungry for a practical, useful, right? Not dreamy solution, but more of a practical, um, uh, you know, very short time to value, uh, platform that we can articulate our value prop to the enterprise.

Lee Kantor: So what’s that pain that your potential customers are having right now where, um, they should be calling you? What, what’s happening in their life that, um, that sigma automate is going to be able to just make their life easier.

Richard Shaaya: Yeah. You know, the biggest thing I would highlight is, uh, the current automation tools out there are so, um, you know, slow to get any ROI out of and also very costly to the point that it has just decided to do things manually, which really should not be an accepted answer. Right. But they don’t have a choice. Um, so if you’re in the IT enterprise and you’re doing things manually, and that could be anything from patching your systems to building new systems to managing your VDI environment. Um, that’s, you know, I know that you’re going through outages. I know that you’re going through delays that are affecting the business negatively. So we’re here to solve the problem of it. Automation is too complex and too expensive. And the the ROI today is currently just not there for the existing products. And the alternative is just do it manually or try to develop something in-house that’s brittle, that’s going to break very easily. We’re here to solve that problem now.

Lee Kantor: Um, is there a story you can share of maybe one of your users, um, share, don’t name who they are, but maybe share the challenge they had. And then after using Sigma, automate the, the new kind of, uh, experience that they’re having.

Richard Shaaya: Absolutely. So we work with, uh, the largest landscape company in the US. They’re a public company. Uh, they’ve got thousands of virtual machines in multiple data centers. Uh, patch management had been a huge pain point for them where it was a very manual process, even though they’ve invested in the right tech, right to patch their systems, you know, they still needed, uh, systems administrators to spend their weekends and their nights, you know, setting those batches up and then chasing after systems that refuse to patch because the agent is broken, you know, or you know, any, any combination of 100 different reasons. So they purchased a platform and we’ve enabled them to fully automate that process and have automated logic to look for those errors and properly resolve them before the patch window even hits. So, you know, now they’re in this set it and forget it. Um, architecture where, you know, their staff is not having to be up, you know, after Patch Tuesday for multiple nights in a row to patch their thousands of systems across multiple data centers. So that’s been one of our major use cases with a public company.

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

Richard Shaaya: You know, I’m looking to spread the word. We’ve been working on our product market fit across multiple industries. And we’re ready to expand our partnerships. And, um, you know, just start to clone, rinse and repeat what’s been working for us. Uh, we’ve got a presence in very large enterprise healthcare, uh, retail again, multiple industries. It’s more about, uh, you know, the IT environment and the landscape being sophisticated and being in this dire need of accessible automation. Uh, that’s who our ISPs are. And we’re looking to start spreading the word.

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

Richard Shaaya: Yeah, reach out to us on sigma-automate.com or reach out to me personally on LinkedIn. Richard Shaaya, SHAAYA.

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

Richard Shaaya: Thank you. I appreciate the time.

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

From Small Towns to Big Cities: How PMI Franchisees Thrive in Every Market Type

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Franchise Marketing Radio
Franchise Marketing Radio
From Small Towns to Big Cities: How PMI Franchisees Thrive in Every Market Type
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In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee interviews Steve Hart, CEO and Co-Founder of Property Management, Inc. (PMI). Steve discusses how PMI became the largest property management franchise in the U.S., with over 450 partners across 48 states. He explains how PMI supports franchisees across five sectors—residential, commercial, HOA, short-term rentals, and multifamily—providing systems, training, and marketing tools. Steve highlights the recurring revenue model, recession resistance, and synergies between property management and real estate sales, making PMI an attractive opportunity for real estate professionals seeking to diversify and grow their businesses.

Steve Hart is the Co-Founder and CEO of PMI, which he launched in 2008 with a vision to build the nation’s leading residential, commercial, and association management franchise.

With a background in land development, construction, and real estate sales, he saw firsthand the market’s ups and downs—and recognized that property management remains a stable, recurring-revenue business.

He built PMI around that model, helping hundreds of entrepreneurs create scalable, successful property management companies.

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Overview of Property Management, Inc. (PMI) as a franchisor in the property management industry.
  • PMI’s position as the largest property management brand in the U.S. with over 450 franchise partners.
  • The various sectors of property management covered by PMI, including residential, commercial, HOA, short-term rentals, and multifamily.
  • Challenges faced in the property management industry and the complexities involved in managing properties.
  • Benefits of franchising with PMI, including standardized systems, training, and technology support.
  • Typical backgrounds of PMI franchisees and the requirement for real estate licensing.
  • Strategies for franchisees to build their business and establish a network within the real estate community.
  • The relationship between property management and real estate sales, and how they complement each other.
  • Success stories of franchisees who have built substantial businesses through PMI.
  • The importance of community and support among franchisees for sharing best practices and fostering growth.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor through here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio. And this is gonna be a good one. Today on the show, we have the CEO and co-founder with Property Management Inc. PMI, Steve Hart. Welcome.

Steve Hart: Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me on your show.

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

Steve Hart: Yeah, we are a property management franchisor. There’s not very many of us out there. In fact, when we started PMI 18 years ago, there were no real national brands in the property management space, and we felt like we could create an opportunity for all these people that were doing property management on their own, ultimately creating their own processes and systems to do it all under one brand. And so myself and my business partner put it together. And here we are 18 years later, the largest property management brand in the United States with over 450 independently owned and operated franchise partners through 48 of the 50 states. So we’re almost everywhere.

Lee Kantor: Well, so your intention initially was to build a franchise.

Steve Hart: It was yeah, we started out, uh, we chose that model. We felt it was the best model to really get this opportunity out there. We saw the opportunity being that, you know, there’s a lot of property management industry is over $1 billion industry and no national brands, no one really helping people start out and scale their businesses. So unfortunately, in property management, we have a lot of. In fact, 80% of the close to 400,000 property managers in the United States are small mom and pop shops. And I believe the reason for that is, you know, property management is it’s a tough business. It’s a business that has so many different aspects to it. It’s not just collecting rents. We provide dozens of services as a property manager, all under one roof, and you have to be really good at all those different services. And some of these people that get into our industry, they they think it’s easy and they think they just have to collect rents and, and they realize it’s a lot more than that. And that’s why they kind of get stuck. They can’t scale their business. They might not have that maintenance background or the leasing expertise or skills in accounting and bookkeeping, which is a big part of property management. And then of course, you got the legal side and the utility management and and the list goes on. And so our industry, more than any other service industry that I’ve seen, has all these different service levels. And we saw a need for an organization to come in, systematize all that, put it in an easy to follow training system and help people scale in property management.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned that kind of the vast majority of folks in property management are maybe kind of that neighbor who bought the house next door and fix it up, and then is now renting it out. Like, is that kind of the, I don’t want to say prototype, but that’s an example of a common right?

Steve Hart: I’m smiling right now because that’s, that’s typically the case. You know, a lot of property managers didn’t choose to get into this. They kind of just stumbled into it or maybe, uh, you know, they’re a real estate agent and they’re buyers. Uh, said, hey, you know, I’ll buy this, I’ll buy this investment property, but you got to manage it for me. And, uh, so they just kind of stumble into it. And, uh, so we, we’re bringing some structure, a lot of structure and all the processes and systems, the technology, um, and the training that goes behind it all under one brand.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. No, it makes perfect sense to me because when I hear, um, like my, like, I have a neighbor and I have a nephew and both of them have a couple of properties that they do, they purchased and they kind of manage. And then it’s. That sounds terrible to me like that. I mean, I understand the opportunity and the math of things, but just from a lifestyle standpoint, that seems like not a great idea for me. And I live in a, in a neighborhood that’s an older, a nicer neighborhood established and, um, and I, I’m, I’m assuming I’m going to be the last person to live in my house and that I, um, that developers at some point will tear it down. But in the interim, if I were to move, I wouldn’t sell it. I would rent it. Mhm. Um, and so how would it work? Like, how does your like, as opposed to me trying to do it myself? And I say, you know what I, I believe in PMI, they make perfect sense. They have the systems. So how does somebody take their property and then hand it over to PMI?

Steve Hart: Yeah, we’re we’re professional property managers and there’s a lot of professional property managers and almost every city and town across the United States. It’s not a new industry. Like I said, there’s over 400,000 of us, uh, property managers throughout the United States, and we fall into lots of different categories. You know, you have your residential property manager, you have a commercial property manager. Your HOA that you live in. Uh, if the board’s not cheap and trying to do it themselves, they probably have a professional HOA property manager taking care of the community. And then you have this new thing called Airbnb, which has created a short term rental property management industry. Uh, you have the big, huge apartment complexes and cities that, uh, require larger scaled, what’s called a multifamily property manager. And so there’s lots of different levels of property management and there’s property managers everywhere. And if you wanted professional management instead of you trying to just rent it out on your own, find a tenant, um, you know, maintain the property while you don’t live there, collect the rents, um, and all the things that go along with that, um, dealing with the tenant issues and and things like that. You would probably want to hire a professional to do that for you and a good property manager charges anywhere depending on the type of property. Um, but let’s just speak that single family residential, uh, scenario that you posed, you know, a good property manager will charge anywhere from 8 to 12% of the rent collected, but the value they’re able to provide and all the different services they can, that they can provide, you know, for most investors, make it well worth that, you know, 8 to 12% of rents.

Lee Kantor: Now, for the franchisee in a market, you mentioned several different types of property management. Does that unlock if they become a franchisee with you that unlocks all of those?

Steve Hart: Yeah. You just, uh, asked a great question. This is what makes PMI unique. And the reason why I feel we’re the fastest growing and largest property management brand is because we don’t just offer one sector of property management like some of our competition. They’ll just do residential property management, franchising or short term rental franchising. The PMI franchise, with the purchase of one franchise allows you to expand if you want, into any of those five sectors that I mentioned. So it’s a full service property management platform that allows our franchise partners to do one of those sectors or all five.

Lee Kantor: And what is kind of the background of a typical franchisee? Are they coming from a real estate background?

Steve Hart: Many of them, yes, but not all of them. We do require all of our franchise partners to get their real estate license in the state that they’re planning on operating in. And so it does require that little bit of, uh, real estate, um, not necessarily background, but licensing requirement. And that’s not just because we require it. Most states in the United States require property managers because we’re showing properties, we’re collecting deposits and, and rents, of course, um, they require property managers to have a real estate license in their state and whether the state requires it or not, just to keep our processes and systems all congruent, we require every one of our franchise partners to have that real estate license. And we, we do that not just for, to make the system smooth, but our property managers also make quite a bit of revenue from brokerage transactions or listing and selling these properties. Because as you can imagine, if you’re working with all these real estate investors who are constantly rotating their portfolios, if they know that their, their, um, property manager, uh, is licensed and can buy and sell properties, they’ll typically in a lot of situations use that property manager over a realtor because we already know the property, we know the rental market. And sometimes they’ll say, hey, the market’s really hot right now. Um, I can get a lot of money out of my property. Lee, throw a for sale sign up on that property, let’s liquidate some of my portfolio or, hey, the market’s hot right now. You’re a great property manager. You make managing all these rental properties just such a piece of cake. You take all the headache out of it for me, I want to expand my portfolio. Um, can you let me know any good rental properties that you see available on the market? Uh, and I want to buy ten more in the next few months. So, uh, brokerage is a big part of our revenue streams as property managers too.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there, um, like an ideal territory? Is it better to be in a big city? Is it better to be in a suburb or exurb? Like, is there kind of a sweet spot?

Steve Hart: Great question. You know, we see success with our franchise partners in any type of real estate, uh, town or big city or small little resort community across the United States. Uh, like I said before, their property management opportunities everywhere. You could be in a little small resort town and just do, uh, vacation rental property management. Um, or if you’re in a big city, you might be surprised how many short term rental opportunities there are. If you were a short term rental property manager, even in a big city. And so, um, yeah, you can do property management and there’s equal opportunities everywhere. There’s a lot of competition in the bigger cities. Um, not as much in the smaller towns across the United States and our franchisees, because they have all these professional, um, programs, the marketing and the branding, uh, in our, in our franchise that they really stand out as the professionals in the area. So they typically are able to go out and gobble up properties and build their portfolio quicker than your average mom and pop.

Lee Kantor: So what is a day in the life of a franchisee and say like a city, uh, in California, like a, let’s say, uh, Pasadena or Altadena that have been maybe ravaged by the fires and things like that when they’re in a transitional state.

Steve Hart: Yeah. You know, that’s an interesting question. You know, there is always, it seems, transitional states in real estate. You know, markets get hot, markets get cold, interest rates go up and down. Um, you know, for short term rental property managers, there’s, um, busy seasons and not so busy seasons. And so as a property manager, you’re always, you know, adjusting to the market that you’re in and the type of property management that you’re doing.

Lee Kantor: So what is your day to day in an environment like that? What what do you recommend one of your franchisees do every day to kind of grow their business and nurture their existing clients and sustain their business?

Steve Hart: It’s exactly that. You know, first off, we take care of our existing clients. Uh, our, uh, our number one priority is that customer, which is the owner of the property. But we also have to keep in mind our other customer, the tenants that are living in those properties that we manage. Or if you’re a short term rental property manager, it’s those guests that are checking in and out every four days, and you’ve got to get the cleaning crew in there to rotate, clean up that property before that next guest arrives. So depending on what kind of property Management you’re doing really dictates the activities of your day. Um um residential property manager, um, is going to be doing a lot of bookkeeping and, uh, also, you know, property inspections, making sure that those tenants are, are, are moved out or after that tenant moves out. We got to turn that property, you know, make sure the carpets get cleaned. And if there’s a, you know, a problem with any of the, the utilities that those get updated during that turn time. No, we’re not we’re not doing the carpet cleaning and the painting and, and things like that. But we’re hiring, we’re that middleman. We’re that management manager that brings in those contractors to make sure that property gets turned and fixed up. So it’s ready for that next tenant to take over.

Lee Kantor: So how did they build their book of business? Like what is the activities you recommend to build a book of business.

Steve Hart: Yeah. As a new property manager, you’ve got to get the name out there. You’ve got to get the word out there. And you don’t make money if you’re not managing properties. And so we help our new franchise partners go out and get their very first door, you know, to manage. And that includes our full suite of marketing services. We do a lot of online marketing. We do a lot of social media marketing. We do a lot of boots on the ground marketing campaigns where we’re just out there networking with real estate offices and agents and investor groups and all these service providers that may happen to know where the rental properties are. And so we have a suite of services that help our franchise partners really dig in and get those properties and do really good professional marketing campaigns.

Lee Kantor: So within any given market that your franchisees are serving, there are certain, um, like alliances or partnerships they have that, you know, like they want to know every real estate, uh, professional in town. They want to know every, um, you know, real estate investment company in town. Like there are certain groups in every market that you have to kind of be the go to resource for.

Steve Hart: Absolutely. You know, those realtors, they, a lot of them don’t want to manage properties. They’re not managing properties. And most real estate offices throughout the United States, they don’t have property management. So here these realtors are listing and selling and working with, uh, investors that are buying that property to be a rental. They’re the first ones to know that this new property that just got purchased is going to turn into a rental. How nice would it be if you’re a property manager to have that agent in your back pocket? Uh, you pay them referral fees and so they, they’re incented to toss those leads your way and, uh, and, uh, you get the, you get to meet those new investors right when they first invest in that property.

Lee Kantor: So is that one of the early activities your franchisees are doing is just kind of kind of shaking a lot of hands and meeting a lot of folks, um, in those industries.

Steve Hart: Absolutely. It’s the best way to get business. You can get out there and compete on Google AdWords and do that type of marketing, which works. It’s a part of our marketing campaign, but the very best leads are those organic leads. You know, that you get out and develop and, and get, uh, referred to you.

Lee Kantor: So now you mentioned that real estate, they have to have a real estate license to be a franchisee. But if they’re a working real estate professional in a market, is this something that can be kind of done also?

Steve Hart: Yeah. In fact, a lot of our franchise partners, um, are, uh, as real estate agent’s full time. And they they do property management on the side to start out. Yes, we allow that to that to happen. And as their property management business grows. Um, they either need to slide in full time or hire staff to run it for them if they’re going to stay focused on the real estate side. The cool thing about the tie between real estate and property management is exactly that they feed off each other and, uh, what I call cross-pollinate. A good, uh, property manager gets a lot of real estate leads, and we do a lot of brokerage transactions. And, uh, a good real estate agent sees lots of property management opportunities. So it really makes sense, uh, for a realtor or real estate office to have ties to property management, if not own their own.

Lee Kantor: So now what is the typical. You mentioned that there’s different sectors. What’s the split of business that in a given market. Um one of your franchisees has.

Steve Hart: Um most of our franchisees just start out with one sector, we call them pillars. So, uh, typically a new franchise, see if they don’t have property management experience and they don’t live like in a beach town or a ski town where obviously they probably lean toward doing short term rentals in those resort towns. Um, if they don’t have property management experience, we typically will start them in the residential pillar. Uh, just because it’s, it’s the easiest, it’s got the lowest hanging fruit, you know, 1 in 3 properties in the United States is a rental. And so it’s, it’s easier to get a start in that pillar typically than maybe HOA pillar or commercial pillar. And so, uh, most of our franchisees start in that sector and do residential, and then they typically will expand from there. So residential pillar is the largest, um, HOA pillar is actually our fastest growing pillar. Um, there’s just not that much competition and a lot of opportunity in the United States right now for HOA property management. But the cool thing about our industry that I haven’t mentioned yet is that we’re talking about a business, an industry that’s based on recurring revenue.

Steve Hart: If you’re a good property manager and you’re taking care of that property and that owner, they’re probably not going to go away and they’re probably going to let you keep managing their property. And that management fee that you collect every month is residual. It comes you don’t have to earn, you don’t have to go out and sell and close a deal every month to get that money. And it’s awesome, uh, to have a building portfolio of recurring revenue. And on top of that, we’re talking about an industry that’s literally recession resistant when we when the economy, you know, improves or decreases. People aren’t, you know, they don’t stop needing a property manager. And so the demand for property management is always there. Even through Covid, we didn’t see, you know, any slump in property management except in the short term rental category. Obviously, people weren’t traveling during Covid, but we’re in an industry that’s recession resistant, recurring revenue. And it’s, it’s just a great place to make great money.

Lee Kantor: So is there a story you can share of maybe one of your franchisees, um, don’t name who they are, but maybe how they came to you and how you were able to help them become a business owner and really build something of substance in their market.

Steve Hart: Yeah, I have 450 stories I could share. That’s how many franchise partners we have right now. And everyone has a unique story. But to just list just one, you know, we have a franchisee that was from Canada that was wanting to move to Maui, used to travel once a year, a couple times a year to, to Maui to travel, and decided that he wanted to move there. And as an E-2 visa recipient, he utilized our franchise to help him get that visa first off. Um, so we helped him get to Maui legally and, and have a business there from day one. And he’d never done property management before. And we, we were helping him do residential property management. This is about 15 years ago. And he said to me, he said, hey, Steve, there’s this new thing called Airbnb. And, uh, I want to do short term rental property management here in Maui. And I said, well, I don’t know anything about it. And we don’t support that type of property management. But I said, if you see an opportunity there, as long as you do it through our brand and, um, you teach me what you learn. Uh, I said, I’ll let you play around with that sector. Well, Lee, he became one of our top ten producing franchise partners in this new space called short term Rental Property Management. He’s built an extremely profitable business, top ten, like I said, in our entire franchise. And he had no prior, uh, real estate property management experience.

Lee Kantor: Now, what is if you were pitching somebody in real estate that maybe hadn’t considered this, what would you know? What’s your elevator pitch to somebody like that, that, you know, they’re maybe they’re new into real estate and they want to, um, you know, kind of build their empire in their local market. And to me, this is a great way to differentiate yourself.

Steve Hart: Yeah. We get a lot of real estate agents, real estate investors that have tried to do this, but, you know, just have struggled creating those processes and systems on their own. And so it’s a perfect partnership. Uh, whether even if you’re an existing property manager that’s stuck in that slump of, you know, transitioning and scaling to a more strategic type of property manager, we do a lot of what we call conversions, where someone’s already kind of in the space trying to figure it out, trying to scale their business, um, joins our, our brand and we help them scale it and grow it from there. But, uh, real estate, uh, and property management, as I’ve already mentioned on this podcast, it’s just, they’re a great fit. They feed each other. And, uh, uh, if a realtor or a broker of that office does not have a property management arm of their business, I’d highly recommend taking a look at what property management can offer. And it’s just going to increase the number of real estate transactions they do. At the same time, it’ll stabilize their revenues. So when the real estate markets like today, where it’s a little slow and stagnant because the interest rates are so high, um, you’ve got that property management arm of your business to lean in on or to lean on as bringing those stable revenues in every month. They’ll cover your office lease, maybe cover the front desk, you know, worker, you know, things like that. Uh, um, while you’re transitioning through those slower months or years in real estate.

Lee Kantor: Now, what do you tell the person, like you mentioned, that it’s such a fragmented market that there are so many people that are doing this, you know, with 1 or 2 properties and they think they can do it themselves. Like, what’s your, um, I know you mentioned the different pillar sectors, um, and specialties, but and the systems behind each of those, but what is kind of the aha moment these people need to kind of say, you know what, maybe I should be partnering with a national brand rather than just sitting here trying to, you know, create this wheel on my own.

Steve Hart: Yeah, it’s an easy thing.

Steve Hart: For me to talk about because people ask this all the time. They’re like, why do I need a franchise to do property management? I mean, property management has got to be so simple. It’s just a simple service. But here’s the thing, and I touched on this a little bit earlier. We don’t just provide one service as property managers. We provide a dozen, you know, all under one roof, under one company name. We call it property management, but it’s really multiple businesses all rolled up into one. It’s maintenance and all the things that come with maintenance. It’s leasing. You know, how do you get that property leased if you’re not doing a good job, you don’t have the right marketing channels. That property is going to sit empty for two months, and that owner’s going to be ticked off that you haven’t rented it for two months. And they’re showing that mortgage payment on their own without any assistance. You know, it’s accounting. Um, you’ve got to have processes and systems to, to do that bookkeeping properly. If you mess up an owner’s books on their property, you’re going to get let go. And it’s utility management, it’s legal work and the, and the list goes on. So this concept of, oh, it’s just property management that is a thing of the past. There’s so much technology involved in our business. A typical a really good property manager will use sometimes 6 to 12 different tech decks or technologies to their deck that help them accomplish all these different processes. With our franchise, we lay this all out to our franchise partners and we train them on this. So they plug in to literally this process and system and are able to scale their businesses so much quicker than anyone trying to do it on their own. I would never recommend anyone to start a property management business on their own, unless they really felt they were very entrepreneurial and proficient at some of those things that I just listed.

Lee Kantor: And then how important is the access to a community of, like you said, 450 other people doing a similar thing in their markets.

Steve Hart: Oh, Lee, I love that you brought this up because it’s my favorite thing about what I get to see in our, our Community of professional property managers every day. This is. This is a tough business. You know, property management’s tough. And it is so cool to be part of a group, in our case, 450 plus like minded entrepreneurs all working under the same brand. And our vision is to become the world’s premier property management brand. So every one of our franchise partners elevating their efforts, their service, their systems to that premier level, and they help each other out and share secrets and what’s working over here. And, and hey, you should try this. It’s it’s working. And, and even we here at PMI corporate, we listen to our franchisees. They’re part of the reason why we have the five pillars that we do in that example, that story I told you about our franchise partner in Maui. Because of him, we rolled out an entire short term rental pillar shortly thereafter. And so this community, this part of our PMI brand is what’s what makes this business so enjoyable and so fun. And it really fuels our entrepreneurial franchise partners to grow bigger, better, more successful businesses.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the best way to connect with you or somebody on the team?

Steve Hart: Hey, our website’s got tons of information. It’s PMI corp.com. Or you can also go to Property management inc.com and check us out there.

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

Steve Hart: Thanks, Leigh. Appreciate it.

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

Behind the Curtain: How Atlanta’s Entertainment Scene Is Evolving with New Talent and Technology

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Behind the Curtain: How Atlanta’s Entertainment Scene Is Evolving with New Talent and Technology
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In this episode of Atlanta Business Radio, Lee interviews Jason Lockhart, co-owner and TV/film division head of Atlanta Models and Talent (AMT). Jason shares his eight-and-a-half-year journey to ownership, emphasizing patience, persistence, and positivity. He discusses Atlanta’s thriving entertainment industry, highlighting strong studio infrastructure, Georgia’s tax incentives, and growing independent productions. Jason also addresses emerging trends, including mobile serialized content, streaming acquisitions, and AI’s evolving impact on talent representation. He announces AMT’s aggressive talent expansion, particularly seeking youth performers and older adults, and hints at future representation of writers and directors.

Jason Lockhart is a Talent Agent from Los Angeles who relocated to the Southeast market in 2017 as the Head of TV & Film at one of Atlanta’s largest & most prestigious agencies. He is also a #1 best-selling author, a talk show host, and an accomplished filmmaker. He has worked with National Lampoon and sold two feature films as an award-winning Writer/Director, one of which The CW picked up as a Movie of the Week.

Having grown up as a child actor, Jason has over 25 years of experience & education in the industry, but after bouncing around several seats in Hollywood, he finds it most rewarding behind the talent agent’s desk, helping others pursue their dreams.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Jason Lockhart’s journey to becoming co-owner of Atlanta Models and Talent
  • Advice for aspiring owners in small to midsize organizations
  • The current state and trends in Atlanta’s entertainment industry
  • Growth of Atlanta as a key market for film and TV production
  • Rise of independent and streaming content in the entertainment sector
  • Impact of AI on the industry and concerns regarding actors’ rights
  • The importance of building relationships for sustaining business
  • Expansion plans for talent representation, focusing on youth and older actors
  • The shift towards artist-driven and indie projects in the market
  • The agency’s future plans to represent writers and directors alongside actors

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the show, we have the owner and head of the TV and film Division of Atlanta Models and Talent, Jason Lockhart. Welcome man.

Jason Lockhart: Hey, Lee. Thanks for having me, man.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to get caught up with you, especially in to talk about kind of Atlanta’s entertainment industry. It seems like it’s exciting times.

Jason Lockhart: It really is. You know, there have been a few years that weren’t as busy as we wanted them to be, and this year’s already kicked off in a pretty cool way.

Lee Kantor: So let’s start with Atlanta models and talent. Tell us about your journey to become the owner of this. It’s one of those kind of, uh, overnight success, right?

Jason Lockhart: Yeah, sure. It took 24 hours. Um, no. You know, what’s funny is there are three things that I really preach to actors that I think stretch far beyond helping just actors in business. And that is patience, persistence and positivity. And people joke with me that these three P’s come out of my mouth all the time, but even in this instance, it really helped achieve what I always hoped I could achieve, which was owning the agency, you know, and now I am a co-owner. But it really took a lot of patience And it kept. It kept happening. We kept. Kelly and I kept getting into these situations where we wanted it to happen and then it didn’t. So it took persistence and we absolutely remained positive through a lot of negative ups and downs that this would happen one day. And after eight and a half years, it finally happened.

Lee Kantor: So maybe let’s not talk about your specific agency, but just maybe in general advice for other people that are part of, you know, small to midsize organizations where they seem to be kind of a rock star. And it’s obvious to everybody that, hey, there is a, you know, like a path to ownership. Is there some dos and don’ts or some structure that you would advise people to take on if they are, you know, vying to be an owner one day?

Jason Lockhart: Absolutely. And what a great question, because I would love for, for these words to be able to translate and help anyone in any field. So I would say grab Ahold of the passion that the owner might have had for the company when they bought it and or at its height of success. And embrace that passion and make it your own. Because that truly is what I did and what we did. You know, we acted as if we already owned the agency and had that kind of passion. And with that passion came respect from all kinds of business to business colleagues and clients and staff within. And so I think if you can already act as if you’re there and you carry that kind of passion, people will respect and treat you like you already do own it. And that really will help when the transition comes.

Lee Kantor: Now, what do you tell the person that’s like, look, I, I don’t want to work for somebody else. I want to do my own thing. Um, you know, this is fine, but I don’t want to, you know, invest my time, energy and talents in helping someone else be successful.

Jason Lockhart: I would ask them if they’re really ready to run it on their own. Have they built enough relationships to foresee consistent income for the next five years? You know, relationships are a huge part of ongoing business. You know, who do they know and how well are they working together? And could they actually start something on their own and drive consistent income? Or is it better to hold on to a brand that’s already preexisting and has ongoing, consistent business? So that would be my main question.

Lee Kantor: Now, in your case, you were building a brand for yourself. Um, I guess side by side Amt you wrote a book. You’re obviously an expert at what you do. You’ve taken on a lot of responsibility. And, uh, so you had a brand maybe separate but adjacent, but it’s all together, right? Like it’s, it’s one big thing now.

Jason Lockhart: It really is. Yeah. And we joke, uh, Kelly Neiman, who’s the co-owner of Amt with me, uh, we joke, we joke that she partnered with the brand of Jason Lockhart, and I think that’s hilarious. But I’m also really grateful that that she values me that way. I value her, uh, immensely. Um, so yeah, I’ve, I’ve been very verbal and very passionate about behind the scenes information about the entertainment industry. Um, because I just get a lot of questions that people should know the answers to that take up time during the work day. And so I thought, wow, if I could really help my own clients with more education about behind the scenes, I might be able to help a lot of actors far beyond my reach with information behind the scenes based on real life experience.

Lee Kantor: So do you feel that having done that and, uh, establishing establish yourself as kind of a thought leader in this space that made you more valuable and it made the path to ownership, um, easier or smoother.

Jason Lockhart: I don’t know if it made me.

Jason Lockhart: More valuable, but I think, I think it definitely makes the awareness stronger. And sometimes when people want to spend money or they want to do business, they just quickly go to Google. And if there’s more awareness to something, it seems like a more obvious choice or a a higher choice. And so I would imagine that it all kind of works together to form some sort of, of positive financial business. Um, but I wouldn’t say that it, that it absolutely correlates.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there anything different in your day to day now that you’re, quote unquote, an owner, like you were acting as an owner as if the whole time? So did anything really kind of dramatically change or is it just now, you know, you have skin in the game?

Jason Lockhart: Uh, no, some things have changed. Now I’m, you know, dealing with the bank and the lawyers and excel sheets and all this crap that I don’t want to do because I just really want to be a talented people in movies. Uh, so yeah, but but Kelly is an absolute rock star at that stuff, and she’s faster and more efficient than I. And we have two wonderful women that work in the financial department who are also rock stars. And so I’m just kind of cc’d on more emails and chiming in. Uh, chiming in when I can, if I think I can add value, you know, or help.

Lee Kantor: It’s a glamorous showbiz life, right?

Jason Lockhart: I mean, that’s all I want to do. Yeah. I just really want to be an agent. But this stuff is necessary to keep the lights on and keep everything going so that the actors get as many opportunities as possible.

Lee Kantor: So let’s talk about the Georgia, um, entertainment environment. We’ve heard a lot of things. There’s a lot more competition nowadays from other cities, other countries. How is Atlanta doing and what’s your kind of take on how it’s trending?

Jason Lockhart: I still feel really excited to be in the Atlanta market and be a staple here. Um, because the infrastructure is here, there’s a lot of studio space here. There’s a lot of gear here and there’s a lot of talent here both behind and in front of the camera. And I see that slowly expanding as well and more projects being created here on the ground up. I think we’re going to be seeing even more of that. The tax incentives are very much in motion here. So I still think that we’re one of the key cities in the country to shoot. And I think, uh, as the year unfolds and we get less politics, uh, kind of in the way of major entertainment industry decisions, Atlanta will be one of the thriving markets.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you see, uh, with the media consolidation, are you seeing more projects or does do you think there’ll be less? Like, how do you see this all shaking out?

Jason Lockhart: We did see a lot of projects, um, right as the new year began and all of these shows kind of slowed down and, and completed the season or the series in the past month or so. So now we’re kind of in this, you know, this, I would say there are peaks and valleys in all businesses. And this time of year is typically a valley for TV and film. But I foresee I see a new peak by June. I really do. There’s a there’s a lot that wants to be coming here.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you seeing any projects, maybe artists directed projects rather than maybe studio directed more indie, more, you know, actors and actresses saying, you know what? I’m tired of waiting to be chosen. I’m going to kind of build my own project.

Jason Lockhart: Absolutely, absolutely. And I’m seeing a lot of these producers who started doing smaller things, doing bigger things now. You know, they gained a lot of experience from working with the studios. Um, whether it was in a, in a small role or in an ongoing educational role where they could really shadow some important people. And now they’re doing things on their own and the budgets are going up and the crews are getting stronger. And it’s, it’s really cool to see here.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about the evolution to, um, online and streaming? Are you seeing a lot more independent streamers doing their own things, uh, creating their own media kind of properties and their own projects outside of kind of traditional studio ecosystem? Yeah.

Jason Lockhart: I haven’t really seen the streamer say, hey, let’s go ahead and greenlight independent stuff. Um, but we’re seeing a lot of the TV networks that make films like Lifetime and Shudder and whatnot, purchasing a lot of lower budget stuff from the indie filmmakers and then streaming them. And then we’re also in this space with just a massive amount of vertical content to be streaming on these apps, on phones. And it seems like every few hours, there’s another one of these 105 page or so series that’s casting all the roles, and it’s very soap opera with a hook at the end of every mini episode. And, um, they’re just there in abundance right now.

Lee Kantor: So you’re seeing that as a trend.

Jason Lockhart: A huge trend. Yeah. And it’s interesting because some actors are very excited about it and want to work on it all the time and are happy with the rates, which range anywhere from like 150 a day to over a thousand a day, depending on the size of the role and the value that the talent may bring. Um, but then we have other actors who are like, I absolutely don’t want to do that. I don’t feel like it’s grounded in reality. I don’t think the content is is written as strong as, let’s say, something on HBO or Apple TV. So they just are holding out to do the content that they’re more excited or passionate about. It’s really interesting to, to kind of be in my seat and see, see this abundance of work and that some people want to do it and some don’t. And I have yet to really form a strong opinion myself on it. Just kind of, uh, kind of taking it one day at a time, seeing, seeing what happens.

Lee Kantor: So on those type of projects, how long are the, is the talent booked for to crank out that many episodes.

Jason Lockhart: Sometimes only 4 to 5 days. You know, um, we’ve seen actors book a lead like the lead villain and they’ll shoot five out of five days and the entire project is done in five days.

Lee Kantor: And then it’s rolled out every day for three months or something.

Jason Lockhart: Uh, pretty quickly on these apps and, you know, on the apps, some of the episodes are free and then you have to start paying if you want to see what happens. So they kind of hook you as an audience member, right?

Lee Kantor: I knew that was popular in Asia. I didn’t know it was penetrating here in the US.

Jason Lockhart: Yes, some of the Asian companies have absolutely made their way here with it.

Lee Kantor: Wow. I mean, the the fight for attention is just real. Like there’s no it’s the Wild West when it comes to attention. How are you seeing AI kind of trickle into this conversation?

Jason Lockhart: It’s becoming a conversation every day. I still don’t have any scary stories to tell or or seen anything bad happen to an actor. And I don’t foresee anything awful happening anytime soon. Um, but these conversations are happening a lot. I’m going to an interesting webinar, um, in about a week and a half with our TV film agents to kind of learn more and see what’s going on. I’ve recently heard that Val Kilmer’s life rights were sold. I guess I need to look into that. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll be real curious if if companies are starting to purchase actors likenesses to be able to use them in video games or whatever it may be, and what those contracts would look like, and how Sag-Aftra would prepare contracts for that and boundaries and safety. And, um, it’s going to be very interesting what happens. And I hope that whatever happens keeps actors employed, you know.

Lee Kantor: So you’re still seeing a high demand for actors.

Jason Lockhart: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I’m not seeing I’m not seeing any project out there saying that, you know, we need to cast half of this. The other half is cast with AI talent. Like, I haven’t seen anything even close.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you right now or is that something? You’re always on the look for new talent.

Jason Lockhart: You know what’s fascinating, Lee is right now as a new owner of the agency, I am very aggressively looking to expand. So yes, I really want to help blow up our youth department. So if there’s anybody listening and you’ve got really cute and talented kids, absolutely. Now we want to blow that up. So anyone that can play 12 and under is an area that we’re going to be really excited about in the Atlanta market really, really soon and see them flourish. And then also, I think older folks, people that are retired, that their kids are grown and they want to get back into this and they have 100% flexibility. And the, and the desire to be competitive with people who may have been doing this their entire career. I’m interested in those folks as well. And then, of course, just like really strong talent, you know, I’m not at this point in my career, I’m not really looking for people who are good, who are just really good actors who, who are like, want to get into the NFL. I like to joke, but but people that are good enough to win a Super Bowl ring and, and adamant about winning it, not just playing the game, but but being a champion. So I’ll always consider someone who’s just extremely good, even if I have a lot of people in their category.

Lee Kantor: Now, when it comes to Atlanta models and talent, does that also go to like writing, directing, or is it primarily acting?

Jason Lockhart: It’s primarily acting, but we are absolutely moving in that direction. I know some other agencies do that and it’s, um, kind of, you know, mirrored business to what some of the big ones in LA and New York do. Uh, I’ve got my hands and feet wet right now in some projects, and we’re looking at some pretty exciting announcements later this year.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on the team, what’s the best way to do that? Uh, socials and maybe your website.

Jason Lockhart: Yeah, absolutely. Um, our website is@agency.com and people can write to us through contact@agency.com and that will get to the appropriate person. Um, then yeah, anybody can follow me on Instagram. I use Instagram and try to check it at least once a day. It’s just Jason underscore Lockhart.

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

Jason Lockhart: Oh, thank you so much. It’s happy. You know, I’m happy to be here.

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

From Lawyer to Leadership Whisperer: Coaching Your Way Out of Corporate Chaos (No Magic Wand Needed)

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
From Lawyer to Leadership Whisperer: Coaching Your Way Out of Corporate Chaos (No Magic Wand Needed)
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In this episode of High Velocity Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Anjli Garg, Executive Coach and Leadership and Wellbeing Trainer at Your Coach to Soar. Anjli shares her transition from a 24-year legal career to executive coaching, focusing on helping high achievers develop self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills. She discusses the growing ROI of coaching in organizations, common leadership challenges like burnout and navigating organizational politics, and the importance of psychological safety. Anjli Garg also introduces her Career North Star framework, which helps clients clarify their core values, unique strengths, and non-negotiables to align their careers with what truly matters to them.

Anjli Garg, Esq., PCC, is an ICF certified executive coach, and leadership & wellbeing consultant, speaker, and facilitator. As a former c-suite corporate lawyer, she brings 24 years of leadership experience to her work, including at American Express, Citibank, and State Street.

As the Founder & CEO of Your Coach To Soar LLC, she has delivered transformative coaching and training programs for Fortune 100 companies like Google, JPMorgan Chase, and MassMutual. Her particular expertise is helping clients move confidently through inflection points—such as career transitions and expanded leadership roles—by blending strategy, emotional intelligence, and mindset to fuel growth without burnout.

Her approach is informed not just by her legal and executive background, but also by her lived experience as a first-generation professional, mother, artist, kriya yogi, and certified energy practitioner. Her clients credit the safety she creates, along with her integrative approach for their tangible outcomes—including promotions, new leadership roles, stronger business development, increased confidence and visibility, renewed focus, and newfound fulfillment and ease.

She is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) through the International Coaching Federation, a Certified Professional Coach through iPEC, and is certified to administer the EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360 emotional intelligence assessments. She holds a J.D. from NYU School of Law, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of Connecticut.

Connect with Anjli on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Transition from a legal career to executive coaching
  • Focus on self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills in coaching
  • The role of coaching in organizational development and leadership programs
  • Challenges faced by leaders, including burnout and navigating organizational politics
  • The value proposition and ROI of coaching in corporate settings
  • Unique coaching methodology: Career North Star
  • Importance of psychological safety in organizations
  • Strategies for addressing trust issues during organizational changes
  • Tailoring coaching programs to meet specific organizational needs
  • Techniques for individuals to recognize and articulate their unique value and strengths

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have executive coach, leadership and well-being trainer with Your Coach To Soar. Anjli Garg. Welcome.

Anjli Garg: Thank you Lee, wonderful to be here.

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

Anjli Garg: Well, I’m an executive coach and leadership and well-being trainer. As you said, my biggest thing is to help clients achieve the kind of success that feels as good as it looks.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in coaching?

Anjli Garg: So this is interesting. I never imagined that I would be in coach. I actually didn’t even know what executive coaching was, but I started my career off as a lawyer. I practiced law for 24 years. I practiced at law firms. I practiced in-house at places like Citibank and American Express, and I’ve led global teams. And one of the things I found in my practice is that when you’re navigating these complex matrix global organizations, there’s a lot of unwritten rules that go along with the territory of thriving in those environments. And one of the things that I’ve discovered is that knowing those unwritten rules is such a key to the success of those organizations. And at the same time, the kind of leaders who make or break those organizations are the ones that are self-aware, that lead people through influence, through great communication, through transparency, through heart. And those are the kind of leaders that I want to see more of in the corporate space. And that’s what inspires me to do this work, because I work a lot with high achievers that are hard on themselves, that are there to transcend and get to the highest levels of the organization. And at the same time, they want to bring others with them. They want to be leaders who inspire people as opposed to cut them down.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you were in your corporate career, what was coaching offered as something for their employees, or did you ever get coaching during that time?

Anjli Garg: I was part of coaching programs and leadership programs, I would say, but I wasn’t somebody who received the one on one leadership. It’s always been limited to the C-suite in terms of and some place like Citi, the C-suite is like very, very high up. And that that opportunity isn’t offered to most of the employees in the organization. Now, having said that, when people invest in that success on their own, they actually get the edge that others don’t have. And so I didn’t learn about executive coaching through that process. I learned through it from connecting with an old law school friend of mine who became an executive coach. And that’s how I learned what she did. And that’s what inspired me to become a coach myself, because everything she said, she said, you’d be an amazing executive coach. And I said, well, what’s that? And as she explained what she does, it just seemed like everything within me lit up and it felt like such the right move for me because I wanted to do that work. I wanted to help others. I wanted to bring that confidence, that power, that unique secret sauce that they have to the surface for them to use in their own career and for themselves, and also to help others in their orbit.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you finding that organizations are more open to having coaches trickle down deeper and deeper within the organization, or is it still kind of relegated to the C-suite?

Anjli Garg: No, it is coming more and more into into corporations because they’re seeing the ROI from coaching. And although they may not offer it one on one, they will offer it in leadership programs. And I’ve been part of those leadership programs. I’ve done that for fortune 50 companies, where they brought me in for their leadership programs on a year long basis to help their people advance, both through workshops and one on one small, smaller, one on one coaching opportunities or cohort coaching opportunities.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with large organizations like that, what is that conversation like and what is the value proposition you’re giving to them? And kind of the ROI projection you’re, uh, talking about with them?

Anjli Garg: Well, their leaders are at this place where they achieved a certain level of success through grinding, through hard work, through doing the work, and from knowing all the answers. One of the things that they don’t necessarily know or have is what it takes to get to the next level. The playbook, if you will, the the next level of playbook that they need, where they’re not grinding and burning themselves out, but rather using their time more wisely and strategically knowing how to influence others, knowing how to delegate, knowing how to have the hard conversations, how to align with other stakeholders. Up, down and across and be able to move in that environment. And that means also being able to navigate the politics of these organizations. And when your employees are able to do that, your, your, your highest performing leaders are able to do that. What you do is not only maximize and leverage the leader himself or herself, but also the teams that they are leading, because if they’re able to more effectively delegate and identify the opportunities and strengths of their team members and have inspire them and be able to empower them to take that bigger platform, then you’ve just increased the ROI to the organization.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re talking to these leaders before you start an engagement, are you talking about some of the pain that they’re having where coaching might benefit in terms of, like you mentioned, maybe preventing burnout or increased productivity or, uh, more efficiently, um, or more organizations moving more efficiently and collaboratively. Um, how are you? Like, what’s the pain that they’re feeling where they’re like, you know what, maybe we ought to give this coaching thing a try.

Anjli Garg: All of the things that you mentioned, I build the program around what the company’s needs are, where are the things that are the biggest opportunities for them, the low hanging fruit. So if you have people who are exceptional and they’re exceptional at what they do, but they haven’t been taught how to lead people and how to navigate inside complex organizations, then you need to equip them with the equip them with those tools. And those tools could vary based on what it is that they need. Right? Some places It’s how. It’s how to give effective feedback. Some places it’s how to delegate and some places how to run efficient meetings in some places, how to manage their time and energy in the best way possible. So it’s it’s different things for different leaders, but the through line is always about the emotional intelligence that’s needed in these roles to be able to, to work smarter, not harder. And so that’s the piece. But in terms of the specific areas of focus that’s really determined by the company or the leader, depending on what the engagement is.

Lee Kantor: Now, are there signals from an organization that you see that might be clues to them, but maybe they’re just not connecting the dots that coaching could benefit their organization. Like, are there signals or some things that are happening within the organization that are telltale signs that, hey, if you insert some coaching here, you might have a better outcome?

Anjli Garg: Yes, sometimes it’s more transparent and other times it’s not. You need to take a little bit more of a, of, of a deeper look to find that. So what do I mean by that? If there’s an organization that’s had a lot of structural changes or leadership changes and a lot of uncertainty, then that in itself can be a signal of what may or may not be working, especially for leaders who are sandwiched in the middle where they’re reporting up the chain, and they also have people reporting to them. And the lack of transparency is very evident to that leader because they don’t know what’s going to happen. And so how do they lead their own people that are depending and looking up to them for answers through that uncertainty when they themselves don’t know what’s happening. So that is a situation where you can say, okay, there’s a gap here. How do you equip your leaders to be able to lead through that uncertainty when they don’t know the answers themselves, and yet show themselves as someone who can remain even keel and calm. And it doesn’t mean that they’re lying to their people. But it’s a question of what level of transparency do you give and how do you give it, and how do you say it in such a way that it doesn’t result in panic? Right. But at the same time, there’s an authenticity and a transparency there so that people understand you don’t have all the answers. But here’s what you do know. For example, in other situations, it might not be that clear as to what exactly the breakdown of the gap is, and that’s where more conversation needs to be had. And sometimes there’s shadowing of leaders and interviews with others to figure out what exactly is the missing piece.

Lee Kantor: How do you help organizations that might be struggling with a maybe a trust issue within the organization? Like you mentioned, there could be a lot of outside change, maybe merger, acquisition, and both sides of this and their trust level maybe isn’t where it should be or could be. How do you help, uh, organizations manage that trust? And I’ll give you an example. A lot of organizations, um, want people to, uh, take risks. They say fail fast, fail forward. But then if somebody fails, then they get dinged or they get, you know, they don’t get the promotion or they, there’s some, uh, negative, um, uh, negative impact on their career for not failing, but they want them to try, but they just don’t want them to fail. But it’s impossible to experiment and try without having failure.

Anjli Garg: Well, what you’re talking about is an environment that doesn’t really have psychological safety, right? So there’s an expectation that you do and take a certain action, but then there’s no safety for the person if they actually take that action and fail. Right.

Lee Kantor: Right.

Anjli Garg: And so of course, there’s going to be a breakdown in trust because then people are going to say, well, then why would I take that risk? Because if I can’t guarantee the outcome, which no one can guarantee, right? I don’t know anybody who can guarantee an outcome to this day. Then your people are obviously going to shy away from taking risk. So the question is those organizations you’re asking what how do you rebuild trust? Well, you have to figure out what’s more important to you. Is it more important to you that people take risks and, and, and are innovative? Or is it more important to you that they don’t fail? Because that’s going to that’s going to determine what your employees are going to do. Now, you can also create a hybrid where you create a container like Google did, for example, where they created, um, a situation where a part of your time, you could just use that as, um, creative time without question where you could experiment, take risks. And so it wasn’t the entirety of your time, but there was a small portion of your time that you could use to just play around. And that is resulted in, in different kind of outcomes that were really, really beneficial to Google, right? For example, kind of a laboratory approach, but it’s hard to speak out of both sides of your mouth. And then, and then expect that there would be trust on the part of your employees.

Lee Kantor: But don’t you feel that a large number of organizations do do that?

Anjli Garg: I can’t speak for all organizations, but you asked the specific question of the corporation saying, this is the situation. We are asking our people to take risks and then if they’re not, and then if they take the risk and it doesn’t result in a positive outcome, we’re not promoting them. So how do we build trust so that people continue to take risks? Right. That was your question, right.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m just trying to get your take on it. Is that uncommon or is that common in organizations that you work with?

Anjli Garg: I haven’t found that to be common with the organizations that I work with, to be honest with you.

Lee Kantor: Well, really that’s encouraging. So, um.

Anjli Garg: I mean, there’s, there’s organizations that have different profiles if you are in a financial institution. There are regulatory constraints and there’s a certain risk profile that the organization will tolerate, right? You have different kind of verticals. Tech space has a different kind of risk tolerance than another kind of area. Like I said, like financial institutions or healthcare. So you have to see what you’re operating in and what is the risk tolerance of the organization.

Lee Kantor: So what are the types of organizations you work with? Primarily, you mentioned you came from a legal background or a lot of your clients in law or legal profession?

Anjli Garg: Yes. I do work with law firms and I also work with corporates, both financial institutions as well as tech and healthcare. So I tend to work with these industrials.

Lee Kantor: And is there a common thread amongst those organizations that you find in order to get the most out of coaching, are you working primarily organizationally or individually?

Anjli Garg: I do both. I work both with the organizations as well as with individuals. So if you’re asking if individuals come to me on their own, um, on a B2C level, yes. And organizations also hire me on a B2B. And that’s with all of these types, law, uh, healthcare, financial institutions and tech companies.

Lee Kantor: And how would you regard the split of your work? Is it 5050 or do you do more one than the other?

Anjli Garg: I do both. So it’s, I, it varies in terms of what the split is, but it’s, it’s, it works out to be about 50 over 50 over time.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with an individual, is there a story you can share? Maybe you don’t name the name, but maybe share the challenge that came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Anjli Garg: Yes, absolutely. A lot of the times that my clients are coming to me with tactical points. So for example, they want to get a promotion and they’re not able to get a promotion or they haven’t been able to do so so far. So one of the things I do and this is this is a real client example, is we get really clear on what it is that the promotion means to them and why they’re why they want that promotion. And once we clarify that, it makes it very clear for them what’s at stake for them. If they really want that promotion. Then we get to the point of where is the stuckness? Is it an external issue? Is it an organizational issue where no matter what they try, they’re not going to get that promotion just because of how the organization stacked, because there’s no upward mobility or their leader is not really in support of them, or the business is not in support of them. Whatever the situation is, if there’s an external piece, then we look to see what their next step is. If that if they really want that promotion, they want to go somewhere else, then we we work on their exit. Now, I’ve been successful in helping them get promoted within their org as well, which is through getting really clear on what story they’re telling. Are they making the ask, first of all, and who are they making the ask of? Do they know what are the clear parameters for promotion? Both the written parameters, if you will, or the the published parameters and the unwritten rules.

Anjli Garg: What are the requirements to get promoted? And then who are those decision makers? And how do you tell your story in such a compelling way that you show your value proposition in dollars and cents so that somebody looking at you is, is, is or hearing your story is can see the clear ROI for promoting someone like you, right? So what are the challenges that you’ve solved? How have you solved them and how have they resulted in revenue for the company, for example? So once we put that picture together, they’re able to make that compelling case to their, their managers. We also work on strategically, how do you have those conversations in a way that that is effective? Part of that, what I find find with my clients is that they themselves haven’t been clear on their own unique value proposition. They haven’t owned it completely. And that’s where I use my, my framework with them, which I call the career North Star. It’s, it’s a framework where I get really crystal clear with them on three pillars. One is their core values. And that’s important because that’s what drives them. And if their values aren’t being honored, then they’re not going to find alignment in that role. The second is their core values. That’s the second pillar. And that’s really important because that is their differentiator. That’s their unique value proposition that they bring to the table. And the third is what they need to thrive in their role, their non-negotiables. What is it that they need in a role that is or isn’t being provided in this situation?

Lee Kantor: So how did you come up with that methodology? Is this something you just figured out on your own, or did you have mentors or or how did you come up with that?

Anjli Garg: This is something that I came up with from all of the different things that I’ve done in my career, whether it’s my own, my own legal background in terms of thinking through this and the ways that I’ve interviewed and what’s been successful for me. My coach training and the tools that have been really fundamental in understanding myself and connecting with myself, like the core values as well as the other work that I’ve done over time for my own self development. And so that’s how I came up with that. And for all three of these, I created detailed assessments and I came up with those assessments. And when I say assessments, they’re like questionnaires. They’re not online assessments like Myers-Briggs or anything like that. These are detailed questionnaires that I put together so that my clients, it’s not difficult for them to answer the questions, right? They don’t have to sit and stare at a blank sheet of paper. Okay, so now what are my strengths? I asked them very, very specific questions over multiple criteria to get to them so that they can catalog their strengths. And then we take that data, and then we create a unique picture and integrate it for them. For example.

Lee Kantor: Now if you’re giving advice to other coaches out there when it comes to creating a methodology like yours, how do you go from in your head? This is an idea of this is what I would like it to be, to kind of Honing it and, and maybe tweaking and iterating around the different elements of it so that it is delivering the outcome that you hope it will.

Anjli Garg: Well, some of it is trial and error, but the question is, what’s the need? I mean, I’m a very creative person. I have always been, if that’s something I’ve always enjoyed. And one of the things that I looked at with this methodology was what’s the gap? What’s really the gap? And I realized that one of the things I struggled with in my own career, and what I see a lot of high achievers struggle with in their career is, is really believing and valuing your own contributions and what you bring to the table. A lot of times, both myself and my clients often devalue the thing they do really well, but value the thing that that somebody else can do that they can’t do as well as that other person can do, if you know what I mean. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. So you’re saying that you’re anything you’re doing, you’re kind of dismissing it or not valuing it as highly as a gap that you might have that somebody else is doing.

Anjli Garg: Correct? Correct. Often, often we’ll dismiss that as something that, oh, anybody can do that. And so I realized that that is something that happens. And it’s very difficult to convincingly. Articulate your value proposition and what you bring to the table. If you yourself don’t own it and believe it. They just become words on a piece of paper. And I hear this a lot from my clients. I’ve had clients literally look at this stuff and be like, wow, I feel it. Finally, for the first time when I bring to the table, I’m like, I’ve heard them say, wow, I’m awesome. And these are really humble people. And so this process, I’m sorry, you’re going to ask me something.

Lee Kantor: Well, I was just going to see if we can make it actionable for a listener. Is there an easy or a low hanging fruit exercise someone could do right now to maybe get that aha initial belief in themselves in the manner that you’re discussing.

Anjli Garg: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things they can do is, and sometimes it is hard when you stare at a blank sheet of paper, but think about, think, think through your career and think about what are the top five compliments you’ve gotten from people that you respect? And that’s important, right? What are the top five compliments you’ve gotten from people you respect? About your professional, about your professional contributions? What is it that they said? Just write them down and then do a further exercise of why do you think they said that? What was it about you that made them say that? Right. So let’s say that they called you. Um, I’ll give you an example from my own background. I had a business head, a global business head who I respect enormously. Say to me that I’m a legal eagle and, and I, I remember pondering that and wondering what what did he mean by that? And as I was looking back into my career and saying, well, here are the problems I solve for him, and here are the things that I did. And this is what led him to say that that backs you into what is your unique, what are your strengths that people are seeing? If they give you that compliment and they may give it to you in the context of a specific matter or transaction. And so when you start to do that, it’s not about you making an assessment of your strengths. It’s actually seeing yourself through somebody else’s eyes.

Lee Kantor: Now, for most people, are they able to do that? Because I would imagine a lot of folks out there, they remember the slights and the, the, the times somebody said that they, they weren’t a rock star, but maybe it takes a while and maybe it even takes the exercise of writing down. If someone gave you a compliment, write it down so you remember it for future. You will appreciate that. Where you may not remember even going back in time, the compliments as quickly as you’ll remember the slights.

Anjli Garg: That’s absolutely true. And that you’re making my point right there, which is a lot of high achievers don’t remember or don’t they kind of tune out the good stuff and remember all the bad stuff, right? And so this exercise, yes, it’s a little bit difficult in the beginning, but it can be something that if they sit down and really think about it, they will find those moments in their career where they’ve heard good things said about them. So taking note of it over time is a great exercise. Having a feedback folder for yourself where you write these good things that you hear from people so you remember them. Some people put them in a jar, right? They write it down on a piece of paper, or they have a note in their iPhone. Whatever it is, this is this is a great thing to collect over time because when you’re feeling down on yourself, it’s a great thing to look back to all of the great, all of the lovely things that people have said about you over, over, over the course of your career.

Lee Kantor: Because to your earlier point, um, having that kind of data is real, right? Like you can’t deny if a hundred people said nice things about you, you can’t be a terrible person. Like the odds are lower when you have a preponderance of evidence that says otherwise.

Anjli Garg: You’re absolutely right. But you’ll be surprised at how much that power to tune out. Good stuff really affects you. And that takes me to deeper issues. So one of the things that I do with my clients is I work very tactically with them and strategically with them, but I also work at a deeper level on the mindset pieces, because we have these programs that are running below the surface that Aren’t really in our conscious control. And that’s why I call it programs, because it’s not logical and it’s not something you can override. It’s something you can rewrite. But you have to first find out what that program is. And that program are these patterns of, of behavior like perfectionism Overgiving worrying. Overfunctioning. These are all patterns of behavior that have been coping mechanisms for beliefs that we’ve taken on over time, limiting beliefs about ourselves, about the world, and about how what’s available and possible for us that keep us stuck and small. And some of those, those, those limiting patterns and beliefs are what help us tune out the good stuff because hey, I’m wired to wait for the other shoe to drop because things have been difficult in life, right? I, I don’t want too much. I don’t want to get too happy. Because if I get too happy, then I’ll be setting myself up for disappointment. So these are coping mechanisms. And once we deal with those deeper issues, actually that’s where the real meaningful change happens. So my clients often tell me that they’ve gotten more than they bargained for in the coaching because they came with some tactical issue, like promotion or having a difficult conversation, dealing with strategy, coming in like I’m coming into a new role, how am I successful here as a new leader? And they get so much more because they go to their core of their confidence, their anxiety and other beliefs about themselves, so they can let go of patterns that have been holding them back for many, many, many, many years and, and, and decades for most people.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you deliver your coaching to the individual group and also the organizational group.

Anjli Garg: Uh, when you say, how do I do?

Lee Kantor: You mean like, do you do you do one on ones? Is it group coaching? Is it an online course? Uh, for the individuals and for the organization? Is it speaking lunch and learns webinars? Like just how can someone buy what you do?

Anjli Garg: Yes, that’s a great question. I in a short answer is I’ve done all of the above. So I do in-person as well as, as, um, as remote one on one sessions and, uh, workshops and speaking engagements and trainings and part of multi, multi month and even year long programs, as well as shorter lunch and learn type of opportunities. So I’ve done the gamut. And in terms of online courses, I have a 12 week program for high achieving professional women that I, that I created from scratch. And I’m very, very proud of it. And it’s, it’s led to a lot of transformations for people. Even four years later, my clients come back and tell me that that was a catalyst and, and a turning point for their life. It’s a, it’s a hybrid program in the sense that they have. It’s, it’s accessed through online every week. There are modules, video modules that they have, which are like coaching sessions with me and workbooks where they can do the work on their own time. And then we meet once a week for an hour and a half to do a live coaching group coaching session where whatever issues are coming up for them, any questions? I provide coaching and they get support from each other as well as a community build. And what happens is that there’s a that the learning gets amplified in that setting, and it’s still intimate enough that they can be safe and vulnerable to show up.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more and have a more substantive conversation, What is the website? What is the best way to connect?

Anjli Garg: Great question. Thank you. They can visit my website at w w dot your coach tucson.com. They can email me as well. And I they can subscribe to my newsletter to keep connected. I, I share tips, I don’t, uh, I have a monthly newsletter. I don’t make it a practice to spam people so they can keep in touch with me through that way.

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

Anjli Garg: Thank you Lee. I appreciate you having me and, and listening to my story.

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

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