Business RadioX ®

Yori Galel With Opus Virtual Offices

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South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
Yori Galel With Opus Virtual Offices
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Yori Galel is an accomplished entrepreneur who developed an exceptional product that provides small businesses with a platform to compete with their larger counterparts without incurring expensive overhead.

The virtual office concept existed prior to the creation of Opus Virtual Offices, but he wanted to create an affordable and complete office presence that includes live answering, a corporate address, and a local business phone number for less than $100 without any hidden fees.

This unique idea created the foundation of a product that has been used by over 50000 businesses worldwide. Yori’s mission has always been to provide smaller companies and startups with an outlet to compete with major businesses and have the ultimate office solution.

Connect with Yori on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What a virtual office is
  • How a virtual office can help streamline a business and reduce overhead costs
  • What industries can benefit from a virtual office
  • How a virtual office can provide privacy for your home-based business
  • Professionalism on a budget (i.e. phone number, physical corporate address, virtual receptionist, mail handling)

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of South Florida Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Yori Galel with Opus Virtual Offices. Welcome.

Yori Galel: Good morning. How are you?

Lee Kantor: I am doing well. I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Opus virtual offices. How are you serving folks?

Yori Galel: Sure. So opus virtual offices, we provide a complete corporate presence without the overhead, so for only $99 a month, our services include professional phone answering where we answer the phones live under the company name, a corporate address where we receive mail and packages, transfer the calls anywhere the client is. The program also includes phone and fax number local. It includes voicemails that converts to email faxes that converts to email. Some locations even have digital mail notifications, and many have conference rooms for meetings. So basically, it’s really the ultimate office solution because you don’t need the expense of a traditional office, and you can operate your business without a full conventional, traditional office.

Lee Kantor: Now, what type of individuals, businesses, entrepreneurs would kind of be the right fit for a virtual office as opposed to maybe a co-working space or, you know, a permanent office, like where what’s kind of that Venn diagram of where virtual office makes sense?

Yori Galel: So it makes sense for a lot of markets, actually, that’s probably our biggest challenge is to introduce it. Say that 97% of people that can use it don’t even know it exists. But we cater to from the small to the medium sized companies. So small company, let’s start with potentially Joe Painter that needs somebody to answer his phones while he’s on a ladder, painting a wall, or needs a package to be received. Needs doesn’t want to use his home address, but wants to have a full corporate presence on that end. We take it to the next level. If somebody wants to expand into a certain market and doesn’t want to have the overhead until he’s confirmed that it’s actually a good market. So potentially go. I mean, we’re all 50 states in Canada. We have about 650 locations. So the footprint permits people to test markets that traditionally they would have to pay quite a bit of rent for. We have international companies that come in and want the presence in the US will have attorneys that potentially are let’s use Florida, Florida barred and maybe have an office in Miami, but could expand into Orlando and could explain into Tampa, could explain to Naples, could have a full nice footprint throughout the state without creating, you know, tremendous overhead. So it caters to a lot of different markets.

Lee Kantor: So what was the genesis of the idea? Where did you kind of see the opportunity? What was was there something for you that was happening that you’re like, hey, this this might work instead of what’s out there?

Yori Galel: Well, we we operated it. We owned commercial real estate and we operate it. You were mentioning earlier co-working. We had co-working, executive suite type space, and people found that they were traveling. They were spending a lot more time outside the office and really didn’t need a full time office. What they needed is a full time presence. Um, having somebody assist them by answering their phones, receiving their mails, giving them an opportunity to have places to meet. So have the conference rooms, but after that, didn’t need to spend the money. One, but also didn’t need the actual office independent of the cost. So able to be anywhere in the world and still have an office in a certain market to develop a presence is, uh, something that as technology grew, I mean, we own a lot of our software and be able to create a seamless transition from a full time office into a virtual office.

Lee Kantor: So, um, so say I’m a like you described, I’m a painter in a local market, and I notice that while I’m painting, I can’t answer the phone. Obviously, when I work with opus now as an opus person saying, hey, this is when they answer the phone. This is, you know, Joe Painter, and then they just take a message. Or can they answer questions like what is kind of the scope of their, um, service?

Yori Galel: So we we have a variety of ways of addressing it. When, uh, give you the first part is, uh, you are a painter, you’re out there painting. If you do not have opus as your backup. Um, and I need my house painted, I will call and go straight to voicemail. I will call the next painter, or I’ll call the next plumber, or I’ll call the next electrician. I’ll call the next party planner. I mean, they’re just, uh, we’ll, uh, reach out to the next person because nobody actually answered the phone. So starting with, we will personalize, customize the way we answer the calls. The screen will give us quite a bit of information. When the call comes in, the screen becomes very customized and personalized to the client. So if the client cares to share some additional information as we’re running certain specials, or we are specializing in residential painting but do not do commercial either way, all that will come up. So the receptionist doesn’t just come out as a robot, but actually is, uh, very personalized and feels like it’s the personal secretary of that painter. Uh, when we transfer the calls, we transfer the calls to the painter. If he happens to be available and he answers, the system will ask him if he wants to accept or reject the call. So he knows it’s an office call. He sees the caller ID coming through of the caller. If he is unavailable, it can revert back to the receptionist who can take a message. But traditionally we’ll go into a voicemail that then converts to email. And the beauty of that for me is, um, not only do you get your message and you get to listen to it, but it comes in an email format which you can forward to someone else. So potentially you have multiple partners in a CPA firm. Everybody works from home, and you just want to share this client’s message. To get me taken care of. All you have to do is forward the email. So there’s a lot of advantages to it from a technology standpoint as well.

Lee Kantor: So then, um, so then the person answering the phone can answer some questions. They’re not going to be able to sell somebody something that’s not their role. Their role is just to capture this information and transfer it to the appropriate person.

Yori Galel: That’s correct. I mean, we don’t want them to go too far out because, uh, uh, providing the wrong information will kind of one shatter the image. And it’s a lot easier for our staff to when they reach a point where they’re unable to answer, we’ve trained them to go, I’m just the receptionist. Let me transfer you to somebody who can help you as opposed to saying the wrong thing.

Lee Kantor: And then for the person, you mentioned that coworking space a little bit. So if I do need an office, you know, once a month, once a quarter, I have access to an office or obviously that’s an additional fee, but there is a place for me to go if I need a office or a conference room.

Yori Galel: That’s correct. So you have access to you conference rooms within the specific office where you’ve, uh, acquired a virtual office. And in addition to that, you also have access to, let’s say, the top 15 cities in the country where if you may have an office in with us, a virtual office in Miami, but you can still use the Atlanta or New York or LA or Chicago office to have a meeting as well. So it expands your market a little bit. That’s not available in every single location. So if you were to go to Kenosha, Wisconsin, uh, you may not have the full service that you would have in New York City But for the key markets, even if you have a virtual office with us in a specific location, you can expand and go and have a meeting in a different market because you happen to be in that area. So then it’s for a nominal fee.

Lee Kantor: So my membership gives me access to other offices if I need it on a kind of a day by day basis.

Yori Galel: That’s correct.

Yori Galel: Not all 650, because some of them are not as equipped with it or do not have enough space to accommodate your entire client base. But the larger markets, being the top 15 cities in the country or largest, busiest cities certainly provide that. So by being a client in one location, you have access to others as well.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it difficult for you in these all the local markets that you serve to just kind of educate the marketplace of, hey, you don’t have to just use your cell phone as your office? There’s you know, this is a super affordable way to have a presence in the market and have a professional answering the phone for you that this is going to be a great benefit. I would imagine, like some of the painters aren’t really going to appreciate that unless they’re kind of educated about it.

Yori Galel: Right? I mean, our biggest challenge, I mean, yes, I mean, you mentioned painters. I mean, a lot of professionals. That’s probably our key market. A lot of attorneys, a lot of CPAs, insurance, um, you know, entrepreneurs of all kinds, um, use mainly the virtual office. But like you said, many of them do not know. And it is our biggest challenge, uh, going in through associations, uh, if it’s the American Bar Association or if it’s, uh, you know, SBA for being a small business association or, uh, a whole variety of markets just to promote and let people know that you can compete with larger companies. I mean, you’re talking about if you were to use a personal injury firm as an example or a larger firm offices throughout the country, and now you’re a smaller firm and a little more difficult. And if somebody gets injured in Orlando and you have an office in Miami, uh, you’re certainly not calling the attorney in Miami if you’re based in Orlando. Now that virtual office, for a few hundred dollars a month, you can have four or 5 or 6 offices, um, throughout the country, throughout the state. And you can really attract a certain market and still give them the service they deserve and the attention they deserve. So it gives you a lot of opportunities. So it makes us feel really good because we’re helping a lot of businesses as well.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there an advantage like maybe from a search engine standpoint, like am I going to have presence on your website locally in those markets so that my address comes up, as you know, that local Orlando address or the local Miami address so that I’m going to be found like in Google, my business locally there or things like that.

Yori Galel: You will.

Yori Galel: I mean, you actually getting a physical address with us in a physical presence. So it’s not like you’re going to be under the opus virtual offices umbrella. You’re going to be under the actual your own, your own company at that address with your own specific suite number. And you can certainly use it for search engines. You can certainly use it as a physical presence and you can let your clients know as well. Maybe they need to drop something off. Um, so there is actually, you know, presents. Well, so I dropped the keys at your office, so I dropped the contract at your office. Uh, there’s always somebody there, which is also nice. So, uh, you know, some people travel, some people will start working from the beach. I mean, you can do it from just about anywhere and still have the backup, knowing that you have staff that we manage on your behalf for a nominal fee, of course.

Lee Kantor: And then if if I’m not in that Orlando office, do you mail me whatever it is or are you obviously on anything digital or you can, um, I guess, scan and then send me the mail. Like, is that how that works?

Yori Galel: So, um, as far as mail comes in, uh, we set it up. We can certainly forward you the mail. Uh, we can scan the mail for you. Uh, we have in many of our locations now have what we call digital mail notification, where we basically take a photo of the envelope, uh, send it to you, and then you can give us instructions via the app or via an email and let us know. Uh, no. Destroy this. Please open and scan for me. I’ll pick it up later. If you’re local or, you know, include it in my weekly mail forwarding. Any of it is all available to you. So we find that a lot with international clients. You may be in the UK and you have an office with us in Chicago, and a piece of mail comes in that you need it. Uh, forwarding it is going to take way too long. So you have the option to ask us to just can you just open and scan it for me so I can see what this is all about? And certainly we can do that for you.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you started this, when did you kind of get the the feeling like, hey, this is really going to be a good service because I wouldn’t imagine you didn’t flip a switch and all of a sudden you had hundreds of these things. You probably started and then it expanded over time. Can you share kind of that aha moment for you where you’re like, hey, this is going to be something that’ll be scalable.

Yori Galel: Uh, well, it started locally in Florida and then expanded slowly. But as we originally were, partnering with certain locations in certain markets and utilizing their space found the need for it. But the biggest moment was Covid. Um, you know, as much as, uh, people were either furloughed or let go and needed to do something. So everybody decided to start their dream job, right? An opportunity for $99 to explore, an option to maybe start a business they always wanted to start. And prior to Covid, people were not. I mean, our client base did not really share with their clients that they were in a virtual office. It wasn’t so accepted to work from a virtual office. Uh, maybe didn’t make the company so legitimate. So none of our centers actually said virtual office, and it actually only had suite numbers on it. So if you stop by, brought a client and you can create your own illusion any way you wanted to, uh, Covid made, uh, working from home acceptable, of course, that people had no choice and post Covid it became a trend. So a lot of people are working from home now. And um, that helped create quite a bit of opportunity for people to now expand into a virtual office and not have to pay crazy rents, um, either for the short or long term, depending on their business. And, um, so I’m not exactly sure if there was a aha moment where we just said, ah, this is really going to benefit. We always knew we would benefit with just, uh, the volume of people that are actually coming in now is, um, grown quite a bit just because of people accepting the fact that you can work from anywhere and still provide a good service.

Lee Kantor: And that $99 a month price point is that’s much lower than other your competitors, I would imagine, in local markets.

Yori Galel: Right. So so we are probably the most competitive for the all inclusive. We make it up in volume. But the idea behind that is we want to treat people the way we want to be treated. And what that really means is to run an all inclusive, not have any limits on the number of calls, not leaving limits on number of mail, not any limits on number of voicemails, really, uh, create a number and not nickel and dime our clients. Um, and we also even go further than that. We don’t do the 12 month agreement. We do a short term agreement. So we do a three months and thereafter it’s month to month. And the way we feel is, uh, if it’s right for you, you’ll stay. And if you need to leave, just tell your friends how great we are. And that’s much more important to us than obligating you and sticking you to a contract where maybe your business plan has changed. Maybe you’ve absorbed by a different company. Uh, there are so many different reasons why you may need to leave us. And, uh, we don’t want to obligate you to that. We prefer we have clients that have returned after, you know, for multiple types of businesses. We have clients that are with us for over ten years and it’s fine too.

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

Yori Galel: There is a website. Opus. Virtual offices. Com or opus. Vo com. Um, certainly. I mean, the website is pretty informative. A lot of videos, a lot of information on there. Certainly follow us on social media as well. But uh, and then from there our team can jump in and, uh, explain. The enthusiasm is pretty contagious here. So everybody feels pretty strongly about the product.

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

Yori Galel: No, no, thanks for sharing it with your listeners. I think a lot of them could benefit. And thank you for your time.

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

Bradley Hamner With BlueprintOS

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Bradley Hamner With BlueprintOS
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Bradley Hamner is a Business Growth Coach. certified Value Builder, creator of The Rainmaker to Architect Assessment, and host of the Above The Business Podcast. Each week, he shows other entrepreneurs & business owners how to install the systems, processes, and routines their business needs to grow and scale. The ultimate outcome? Business owners have a successful business that creates the freedom and flexibility they desired from the start.

He started his first business in 2009 with no customers, no leads and very little cash but he did have a desire to win and succeed. After being successful early in his career in sales, he believed that his ability to be the Rainmaker for the business would be enough to grow and scale. That however, proved not to be the case.

From 2009 – 2014 after seemingly working around the clock. With young children at home, endless rescheduled appointments and tee-offs, and hitting an invisible barrier to personal and business growth, he knew something had to change.

After a stress-related health scare at the age of 34, this change finally happened. Bradley began to build himself first as a leader, and then he focused on re-structuring his business. He learned how to “architect” the business to work for him, not the other way around. This led him to designing the ultimate operating system for business owners – BlueprintOS. This framework has empowered business owners to move successfully from rainmaker to architect in their business.

Connect with Bradley on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • From rainmaker to architect of your business
  • Working on, in & above the business
  • Leading yourself first
  • Mindset, skillset & toolset of a visionary entrepreneur
  • Models, frameworks & tangible concepts that saved my business (and him)
  • Structure, process & routine and why they push against it
  • How to create winning playbooks & where to put them
  • BlueprintOS: the operating system your business needs to grow & scale without you

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 Bradley Hamner and he is with Blueprint OS. Welcome.

Bradley Hamner: Lee. Thanks for the opportunity to be with you.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about blueprint OS. How are you serving folks?

Bradley Hamner: So we help business owners and entrepreneurs go from being the rainmaker of their business to where everything is dependent upon them, to help them to become the architect of their business. And we can get into the five milestones of what that specifically means to become the architect of your business. Obviously, that’s been my own journey. I was the rainmaker. I became the architect of my business, and that’s what we help entrepreneurs to be able to do today.

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

Bradley Hamner: My dad is a farmer, a small business owner himself still to this day, and I picked up from my dad. Really, I caught it. I wasn’t taught it, per se, from my dad. Um, just the value of hard work. And so I brought that in. I had a couple of corporate jobs, um, out of school from Auburn University and then ventured into entrepreneurship in 2010. And I brought in sales skills and the value of what it means to actually work hard that I picked up from my dad. And that’s exactly what I needed initially to get lift in the business. I think a lot of your listeners can understand that. I mean, you just it’s just embedded in who I am to be able to work hard. And it worked up until the point that it didn’t. In 2015, I burned out and thought I was having some heart issues. I wasn’t having heart issues, I was just having panic attacks. But I didn’t recognize that at the time and knew I needed to make a change. And it wasn’t really until a few months later, I was in Toronto, actually at a program called Strategic Coach. And there’s a book now out about this exercise that we were doing called Ten-x is Easier Than two X. And the guy that I met was a financial advisor.

Bradley Hamner: And so I guess I had it in my mind that he was probably doing half 1 million to $750,000 in top line revenue. And so when we do this exercise, he said, well, last year I did 40 million top line and made 5 million personally. And I was like, wait, what? That’s not what I expected. And he said something I’d heard for years, which was, you know, look at systems and processes and you’ve got to have a good team. And I said something smart back to him, uh, to the, to the tune of like, I’ve heard that so many times before and nobody ever shows me what that actually is. And so he said, I’ll show you at lunch. And he did. And that that changed everything. And so I finally went back and for the first time, instead of hearing a good idea about actually building that, I started to do it. And so ultimately, instead of everything being dependent upon me, I became the architect of my business. Of course, I didn’t realize that that’s what I was doing at the time. Um, and so turned the business around. And that business has been growing and profitable, um, ever since. And that’s what we share with other business owners to be able to do today.

Lee Kantor: So what were you doing prior to what you’re doing now?

Bradley Hamner: I was doing everything. I was doing everything in the business. I mean, everything was really dependent upon me. The business was really hand-crank, I think.

Lee Kantor: But what was the what was the business?

Bradley Hamner: It was an insurance agency.

Lee Kantor: So you you were an insurance person. So you were, you know, the face of the insurance agent. You were meeting with people. You’re trying to sell people. If they have a problem, you’re trying to fix the problem. You’re it. You’re kind of the, you know, wearing all the hats.

Bradley Hamner: I was wearing all the hats. Air traffic control emails would come in to me. I would respond to them. Sure. I had a team, but at the end of the day, the business had grown, had outgrown me. And that’s why I say that it was successful and it worked up until the point that it didn’t. And so as the business was growing, I just expanded my time. And so it went from five days to six days to seven days to, you know, effectively around the clock, you know, rushing home to eat dinner, immediately, flipping open the laptop to be able to respond to emails, waking up early the next morning to try to be able to do the exact same thing. And, you know, a few months, even prior to me having those panic attacks for the first time, I was in Disney and I was responding to customer emails, and I was running a team meeting from Disney. Uh, the Disney Yacht Club even have a picture of that. I had two laptops up because that’s that’s what I thought I needed to be doing. And, you know, I kind of wore that as a badge of honor as well is that, you know, this is just what what it takes. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. Well, you know, I burned out and it was just too much. And so I needed to make a change. But it wasn’t immediately. It wasn’t immediately evident to me what I needed to do to make the change until I made my way to Toronto.

Lee Kantor: So you go and you talk to this person who obviously is walking the walk. Um, and he shares with you a way to build processes and kind of let go of some of the things that you had taken ownership within your organization.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. I want to be clear. He actually what he did do is he actually at lunch shared with me, I don’t know, it was maybe 5 or 6 documents that he had built. And he said, Bradley, I got my business out of my head. And there’s a few things, Lee that stood out to me about that time. I think it was also just kind of where I was. You know, I thought about leaving entrepreneurship and going back into the corporate world. I’d even explored what that would possibly look like. So I really was considering leaving entrepreneurship because I was so frustrated with kind of where things were. But I remember specifically the the documents that he shared with me, just how well organized they were, how beautiful they were, how easy to understand they were, how well structured they were. And he said, look, this is what it looks like. And there was something about that in that moment for me. Maybe it was also that I had in my head what I thought he was doing, revenue, etcetera. Um, and then for him to say, you know, we were doing 40 million. It just it was such a, such a day for me. I don’t really remember anything else about that day except for that. And so it was really on the plane ride home that I said, okay, I got I got to start to, to do this. I’ve actually got to start to put pen to paper. And I mean, specifically what it means is, you know, actually go to a Google document and write down, okay, what do we actually do? How do we onboard customers? How do we onboard a team member? I didn’t have I didn’t have anything documented.

Bradley Hamner: I’d been in business successful successfully for, you know, five and a half years up to that point, we didn’t have a document for our sales process. What was our marketing strategy? How we onboarded customers, how we handled in that business at the time, how we handled claims nothing was documented, nothing how we ran appointments, and we were just winging it. And ultimately it was all in my head. And, you know, I know business owners can relate to this. You, you know, you you train. I mean, I certainly would train my team members, but I was training them different every single time. I didn’t I didn’t go off of a document and say, okay, now let’s next time I forgot to do this. And so next time we’ll do this for the next for the next person that we bring on board. We didn’t do any of that. It was just it was just day to day, day to day, day to day. We were not building any assets into the business. And so what was happening is, you know, you bring on a team member and they get up to speed. And it took them longer to get up to speed than it should have. Um, but eventually they do. And then guess what happens? They leave. And then what happens then? You got to do it all again, because all that intellectual property walked out the door and I just was getting tired of it. And so there was something about just seeing that documentation, the way he laid it out that I finally said, okay, I’m actually going to do this instead of hearing it, I’m going to do it.

Lee Kantor: So then did you just take his five pillars and just say, okay, these are now my five pillars, and I’m just going to kind of work through each one of them and build out processes and systems for each pillar.

Bradley Hamner: No, not at all. He didn’t he didn’t share with me five pillars. I mean, he just that’s why I said he shared with me roughly like five or 6 or 7. I don’t actually know how many documents. He didn’t have any principles. He didn’t have any. He just was pulling up word documents and kind of showing them to me and like, look here, this is how we onboard customers. This is how this is our sales process. This is this. And he was just flipping through them, you know, and I was like, oh, okay. That’s actually what it looks like. I’ll give you an analogy. Like I play golf in college and played at UGA for two years, University of North Alabama. And then I transferred to Auburn, and I lived with a couple of guys on the team, and there was a, um, Lee Williams, who was a two time Walker Cup, um, golfer at Auburn University. He ended up playing on the PGA tour for a period of time, and I played with some really good players over the years, even in just junior tournaments and amateur tournaments, and Lee was on such a different stratosphere in terms of quality of player.

Bradley Hamner: He was an All-American, I think, even a multi-time All-American. And but the thing that I would notice about Lee was the amount of time he practiced and whenever it would be on a Saturday before a college football game at Auburn, which is obviously a big deal, he was on the range, you know, uh, hitting balls. And then he would go work out, then he would come to the game, and then Sunday morning he would go work out. Then he would go to church, and then he’d go back out and hit balls again. And it was like this idea of like, oh that’s what it actually takes. I mean, you hear stories you know about Steph Curry Kobe Bryant LeBron and and their incredible work ethic. I think there was something about that moment for me that nobody had ever seen for the five years prior to that. People had talked about that. You need to have systems and processes, but nobody ever showed me what it looks like. And he did. And that was a forever changed moment for me because the bar was raised just like it was whenever I was watching Lee Williams become an All American in golf.

Lee Kantor: So it wasn’t necessarily what was on the paper. It was the fact that there was paper and there was a playbook and there was detail. That was really the epiphany moment for you that says, okay, this is what I have to do in order to raise my game. I have to get this kind of granular and this precise when it comes to messaging and mission and training and all the different aspects of running a business.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah, 100%. There was nothing. I don’t recall even a specific thing on any of the pages, but I remember how beautifully documented that they were and how easy they were as he was like, look, this is this is how we do this, and this is how we do this, and this is how we do this. And I don’t remember anything that was on the document, but I remember saying like, oh, that’s actually what it takes. I mean, his sales, his sales process document was, you know, 25 pages. And I was like, oh, okay, that’s what it takes. Whereas before I was, I thought it was like a, you know, maybe a page or page and a half type thing. And he was like, no, this is everything that we do of how we sell it. These are the scripts. This is the process. This is the visual aspect of it. I was like, wow, okay, that that makes more sense to me about how you actually get a company from him being an individual, um, you know, financial advisor to 40 million and and look, I’ve, I’ve never set the goal of getting a company to 40 million. I think that’s, you know, beside the point. But that actually shared with me. That’s what it takes. That’s what it takes. If you actually want to want to scale a company.

Lee Kantor: So then let’s talk a little bit about your, um, blueprint operating system. What are the tenets of that. Yeah.

Bradley Hamner: So there’s really five milestones that it means to become the architect. And so both when you become the architect of your business, it is first and foremost an identity shift. You start to see yourself differently. See, that was the journey that I went on. Yes. I ended up sitting in front of my computer and actually typing out what our process was like, what our marketing process was like, how we got leads, etc. yes, I did that. But the bigger thing was first how I saw myself instead of seeing myself as the doer of all the things, or the person who’s all knowing of all of it. My job was to be the architect, to first design it, build it, and then install it in the business. So that’s the first thing is it’s an identity shift. You see yourself differently and you start to see things in the business differently. Some of our members, they start to consider and they’ll even have the vernacular to them, themselves and the team of how can we go about architecting this? Okay, what if we were going to build it? What would it look like? And so that’s the first thing. But the five milestones are this. And I’ll go over them kind of super high level quickly and then leave. You want to ask me about any of the five. We can certainly do that. So number one you got a business doing over $1 million top line revenue. 91% of small businesses never cross a million and top line. And so for a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners, it is a huge goal of theirs. It’s aspirational to get their business to a million or more in annual revenue. Number two, it’s not enough to just be over a million.

Bradley Hamner: But you want the thing to be growing and profitable. And so as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, we have to balance both growth and profitability. If you take on outside investment, Um, then it’s different. They look at they look at growth beyond anything else because the reality is they can they can fuel that business with with more cash as long as it’s growing. But for a bootstrapped entrepreneur, they need it to be both growing and profitable. And we call that the rule of 40. So number one, you got a business doing over a million. Number two, it’s growing and profitable. Number three, if you’re doing that and burning yourself out, what good is it worth? So we encourage our entrepreneurs to take 12 weeks off in a year so you can rest and recharge and actually be better in the 40 weeks during the year than if you’re trying to work around the clock. Number four, you have an executive assistant or E to help you buy back your time so that you can focus on the things that actually accelerate the growth in the business and do more of the things that you love and less of the things that you don’t and probably aren’t good at. And then number five, you actually have upgraded your operating system. You’ve actually installed an OS, what we call blueprint OS. So the business is not running on you. It’s actually running on something independent of you. So there’s five again. Ah, got a business doing over a million. It’s growing profitable. You’re taking off adequate time. You’ve got an E to help buy back your time. And you actually the business is running in an operating system outside of you.

Lee Kantor: Now in your. Are you do you still have the insurance business or are you now just doing the blueprint OS.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah, I do have I do have it. It’s actually one of the five companies that that I still own to this day inside of a portfolio.

Lee Kantor: So um, and for the blueprint OS, who is that ideal um, member for you?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. Great question. Half a million in revenue to 3 million in top line 2 to 2010 members. And someone who really wants to grow and wants to grow can look like a lot of different things. A lot of business owners will say things like, you know, I just want to grow I want a thriving business. Some of them. It’s growing top line. Some of them it’s become more profitable. Some of them is being able to take more time home, uh, take more money, uh, home themselves. And some of it is, uh, to be able to spend more time with their family and doing things that things that they love. So if you’re doing, you know, half 1 million to 3 million. Top line, I really know that space. We really know that space really, really well. 2 to 20 team members and and you know, Aspirationally really want to grow.

Lee Kantor: And then um, are they in any type of industry or are they anywhere in the world, like how do you deliver the learning.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So first of all, we’re agnostic to the to the industries. And that’s by design. So certainly we have people that are in uh, the insurance agency space. But we think and maybe it was my experience in other programs I’ve been a part of that has been really helpful to that. I think industry specific programs are great. Um, but getting around other people who can hear a concept and thinking about it differently in a different industry than you. I think is incredibly valuable. So we’re not niche down into a specific industry. And then secondly, we are together 38 out of 52 weeks in a year, 36 of those weeks are on zoom. Um, so we do 30, uh, what we call implementation sessions weekly on Tuesdays. And then we do some spotlight events where we bring in guest speakers. We just had Dan Martell speak at our event a couple of weeks ago. Um, and he he was fantastic. So we do some quarterly events for our members, and then we get together twice, twice a year in person in the spring and in the fall. We’re actually going to, uh, Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri, uh, coming up in about eight weeks. We’ve been to Destin, Kiawah Island, Scottsdale, um, things like that. So yeah, we’d love to be able to get together at least twice a year with our members.

Lee Kantor: So when somebody begins like, what does that look like? Is there some one on one coaching or training or is there you just give them information and Go read up here. Here’s your pre homework before we get started. And then you just start going to the the zoom calls.

Bradley Hamner: No we we we onboard people pretty intentionally. We don’t just throw them into there’s so much content in our learning management system that if we just opened up all of our content. Um, I know business owners at that level. They’re they’re hungry, ready to grow. And so there’s a balance that you have with giving them enough content but also not giving them too much. So we we think we have a really first class experience in the way we onboard people so we can take them through a really small, uh, small group cohort on a monthly basis. All the new members that, that, that come on board, they all go together in a, in a small group cohort and we take them through a four step growth track. And then once they’ve gone through that, then we get them access to our weekly, uh, our weekly implementation sessions, and then they start to unlock more of the online content that we have as they’ve completed some of the other ones. So it’s a both a combination. And we think the combination of it works the best. It is absolutely not just a digital course, the digital course component. A lot of people want access to our playbooks. I mean, the way that we have our operating system set up is that they just want access to our playbook templates. And so, um, they obviously have access to that at all, all, all the time. And then we just go through all the playbooks throughout the year. And so it’s a combination of our community being live on Tuesdays as well as online content.

Lee Kantor: And is there any type of support outside of those weekly calls like if they have a question or something comes up, or do you rely kind of on your cohort in the other community members for help or its combination?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So in addition to me, we have a couple other associate coaches that are blueprint OS certified coaches. We obviously have our community, so our community lives in the same place that our content lives. And so we’re, you know, people are active in there on a weekly basis asking questions. Somebody just asked a question earlier today, as a matter of fact, about kind of the recruiting system. They wanted to get some feedback on their, um, system that they have for recruiting. So I’ll chime in there and give them feedback. Our coaches are available. They have some open call time. Some like office hours, so to speak, and then and then sometimes people connect with me. Our members connect with me one on one. Uh, via voxer.

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

Bradley Hamner: You know, I my job here is just to be able to get the message out of going from being the rainmaker to becoming the architect of your business. I mean, if people get nothing more out of this, my hope is, is that they start to see, you know, the movement that we’re on is to help more people become the architect of their business. And if they start? First, start with that identity shift to me. Then that’s that’s my mission is to. Help more people to become instead of having a business that’s suffocating and. You know, just solely reliant upon them. I think at the end of the day. Business owners got into this for some level of freedom and flexibility. And my. My belief, my, our, our kind of core belief is to be able to get that that you started your business for freedom, flexibility, income, potential is I think you need to become the architect.

Lee Kantor: And then is there a way for listeners to kind of sample this before kind of going all in? Is there some resources or anything you have that a person can kind of get an idea of, you know, the look and feel before they commit?

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. For sure. Um, you know, you understand, you hear somebody on a, on a podcast and for the first time and it’s like, yeah, I kind of conceptually get that. But you know, where where do I start? So we’ve put together a starter kit. We call it the Rainmaker Architect Starter Kit. So they can go and check that out. Go to blueprint os.com/assets, blueprint os com forward slash assets. And then they can opt in and get access to our starter kit, which is actually on the same platform as the rest of our content and our community. And so yeah, they can go and check that out. And I’ve got a bunch of different downloads inside that mini course, as well as a little over an hour of content from me walking people through that.

Lee Kantor: And you have a podcast too?

Bradley Hamner: I do, yeah. Um, so I have a podcast we’ve had for, gosh, about four and a half years. It’s called Above the Business. We think that sessions like this, um, are whenever people are able to get above the business. We love what Gerber has done, where he’s shared with us in the book E-myth about don’t just work in it, work on it. I agree, I think there’s a third dimension as well and that’s to be able to get above the business. And so that’s the name of my podcast is above the business.

Lee Kantor: And then what kind of content can people find there.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. So I do interviews like this on Mondays. And those are 30 to 45 minute interviews with, gosh, we’ve had some incredible guests that have been able to come on. General Stanley McChrystal has come on. Cameron Herold has been on the podcast we just recorded, obviously, with Dan Martell has been on there. So we’ve got about 250 or so interviews, maybe 300 actually at this point. And then on Fridays, I drop a 5 to 15 minute solo episode with kind of a mindset, a skill or a tool, um, that people can take away.

Lee Kantor: And can you share for our listeners, maybe a story of somebody who’s gone through the program and maybe you don’t have to name what their business is or who they are, but just the challenge they were facing when they came into the program and how you helped them get to a new level.

Bradley Hamner: Three female founders that were just excellent at what they do. They own a behavioral therapy company their very first year 2019. They had a had a dream and had a vision. They all kind of collectively left where they were working at the time. In their first year in business, they did cumulatively $90,000. And they, as they have admitted to, they really knew nothing about business. And over the last several years and working with them of can I helping them go from being the rainmaker to the architect of their business, they’re doing over 100 and 110,000 a month now. They’ve been able to, you know, impact the lives of, you know, just ten times, maybe more than that, and the lives of families around the, the Huntsville area and school, school kids to be able to be more successful and just to see their own success of them transferring from, you know, what, they knew that they were really good at, but then actually being able to build a true scalable business around that has been awesome to work with them and and to see their growth and the impact that they’ve been able to make because they’ve all become the architect of their business.

Lee Kantor: Well, Bradley, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work. Um, we really appreciate you. What? One more time before we wrap the website to learn more or to connect with you.

Bradley Hamner: Yeah. Blueprint os.com/assets. Blueprint os com forward slash assets. They can get access to the Rainmaker Architect starter kit. And yeah, we’d love to connect with people.

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

Shavonne Reed With OPUA Agency

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Shavonne Reed With OPUA Agency
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Shavonne Reed is a marketing and communications expert, a Self-Advocacy and Confidence Coach and a public speaker. She is the CEO & Founder of OPUA Agency, a boutique health marketing communications firm on a mission to educate, mobilize, and empower Gen Z to develop healthy lifestyles.

She is also the founder of Future Health NOW Foundation, Inc, that works to improve health and financial literacy in underprivileged communities by providing programming to increase awareness. She also hosts a bi-weekly podcast titled “Future Health NOW” with special guests in the healthcare sector.

After a successful career as a global marketing executive she pivoted into her purpose to inspire and encourage others through inspirational storytelling that recharges others into action for positive behavioral change, elevates their careers and amplifies their presence to thrive in business and in life. She has been instrumental in designing successful global product launches, employee wellness and engagement programs, and executing million-dollar marketing and advertising budgets.

She studied mass communications at the University of West Georgia, completed post bachelor studies in marketing at Georgia State, and received her MBA from Georgia Southern University. She  is also the author of “Ugly Duckling: What You See Is Not What You Get,” a book that details strategies to show up and stand out and stand for change in your organization and in life.

She is active in her community as the ‘21 Dunwoody Perimeter Chamber Chair. She is a mom of two Zoomers, a puppy son and a devoted wife. She is a native of Atlanta and believes smiles, love, and laughter are the best medicine in life.

Connect with Shavonne on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What work does OPUA Agency do
  • About Future Health NOW Foundation, Inc and the corresponding podcast
  • Her main goals as a speaker and within her work with these organizations
  • Her work with the CDC Foundation and her How Right Now Campaign

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 Shavonne Reed with Opua Agency. Welcome.

Shavonne Reed: Hello. How are you today, Lee?

Lee Kantor: I am very excited to be talking to you. For folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about your firm? How are you serving folks?

Shavonne Reed: Absolutely. So I’m with Opua agency. It stands for Optimistic People, Unified for awareness. And we’re all about helping people to think about the marginal decade of life and how their future health starts now. So we focus on behavioral change and making sure that everyone is kind of informed about how their behaviors today will affect their future health in the future.

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

Shavonne Reed: Well, I spent more than 20 years in corporate in the healthcare space and always had an affinity for just the healthcare industry. And I pivoted outside of corporate and saw quite a bit of things happen in my personal life. My mom ended up passing away from several diseases that were preventable. And just as the pandemic hit, I noticed that I was not necessarily prioritizing my health as much as I should have been, and then also saw that in my Zoomers. And so I wanted to affect change in the world, and that became my heart’s work and my legacy in the building.

Lee Kantor: So now in your agency, are you working with corporations or are you working with entrepreneurs, like who is the ideal profile for your ideal client?

Shavonne Reed: Yeah, so we love to work with mission driven organizations who are looking to stand up marketing communications that will have a call to action for behavioral change. So think chronic disease prevention and health promotion.

Lee Kantor: So you’re working with the corporations so they can share that information with their employees. Is that what you’re doing.

Shavonne Reed: So we do have an internal communications arm that really focuses on workplace wellness. And we also have an arm that focuses on direct to consumer communications.

Lee Kantor: So let’s talk about that. Any initiatives in that area you can speak of.

Shavonne Reed: Oh yeah absolutely. So right now we’re working with the CDC Foundation as a communications partner for the How Right Now campaign, which is an evidence based campaign that is targeting school teachers and school staff in the K-12 school systems. And what it really is all about is helping them to build resiliency and have awareness of their mental well-being. A lot of times they are just really focused on the students and getting the work done. But they’re not necessarily focused on making sure that they take care of themselves. So as part of this campaign, what we’re doing is really pushing them to make their own wellness a part of their daily lesson plans and highlighting ways that they can actually prioritize self-care. How can they make sure that they are, you know, tending to their mental thoughts and things of that nature? So that’s how we are actually helping right now. And so we recently held the Empowered Ed Project Summit, where we were speaking to school teachers and staff and brought in specialized thought leaders and experts who brought amazement and stories of resilience and encouragement just to really hone in on how to leverage the tools of the How Right Now campaign to just drive mental health and well-being.

Lee Kantor: So can you walk us through what it’s like to create a campaign like that for the CDC? So potential corporates out there that are doing work that might be able to hire. You can understand what. So like, did the CDC Foundation come to you with this challenge? Did you start working with them and start brainstorming different initiatives like how did this come about and how did you help them, you know, execute?

Shavonne Reed: So actually, the How Right Now campaign is a long standing, evidence based campaign that was led by an elite researcher by the name of Amelia Burt Garcia at Newark University of Chicago. And it started back in like 19, I mean, 2019, just as the pandemic was hitting. And, uh, so they actually, you know, did all of the background work, did all the research, social listening and surveys to just really understand what, um, the challenges were from a mental health capacity. And initially it was more of a global campaign that had a broader audience. And so in this iteration of the campaign, we’re focused focus solely on school teachers and staff because based on the research, we found that they are the ones who are actually really stressed out, and they’re up against a lot at being asked to do so much more with less. And the idea is to really make sure that we have a variety of channels, that we’re actually reaching the audience to get them kind of, you know, prioritizing this mental thought process of their overall well-being and self-care. So we’re incorporating things such as TikTok, Instagram, videos, going out to do speaking. I actually had the opportunity to go to the Newark Board of Education and facilitate a workshop at their annual women’s conference, and so really just building up the momentum during Mental Health Awareness Month, we actually did a full activation.

Shavonne Reed: And right now for Back to School month, we’re doing a huge activation and incorporating, um, influencers to just really help us to amplify this message and get it out there in all kinds of cool ways, on every level, so that the teachers and school staff know that they are very much appreciated. They’re not in this alone, and we understand just what they’re going through. And it’s really a hard and tough space to be in, because everybody is looking to them to be more than just a teacher. Right. We know they are being looked upon as a confidante, as counselors and so many other hats that they play. And they even played a special role in my life growing up because I had a ton of adverse childhood experiences, and it was the teachers that really poured back into me and helped me to see that I was something and someone that was worthy to, you know, be here and to thrive in life.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did the CDC Foundation ask you for something that’s measurable to say that, okay, this campaign is working. We should do this maybe in more verticals or like, how do you kind of measure the success of a campaign like this?

Shavonne Reed: Yes. So as part of our. Activation campaign periods, what we’re doing is collecting metrics. So that would include things like impressions. How many people are actually seeing and getting exposure to these messages. Also, how many people are actually engaging with our communications on the various platforms and how are they accessing the tools that are available. So we have everything from toolkits to resource lines to guides, resources that can actually help them to bring all of this to life and make it tangible and valuable, so they can know exactly what to do with it. Um, something as simple as meditational practices. So as part of the summit, we actually recorded all of our sessions, and we have those available now online so that folks can actually get the message and, you know, really just indulge because like one in particular was featuring, uh, a thought leader by the name of Keisha Ferguson, and she led us through a ten minute meditation moment. And it was so powerful because when you just be still and you activate in gratitude, you just don’t realize how wildly your thoughts can run all over the place. And this gave us a chance to just really sit in silence and mind our thoughts and listen to the words and the guidance that she was giving to us. And so that’s one of the things that we are, you know, tracking to see how many people are actually watching those videos, how many people are downloading the resources and actually visiting the website so that they can, you know, tend to the mental well-being of themselves and making it a part of their daily practice.

Lee Kantor: Now, how has it been for you as an entrepreneur, kind of making this change from your more kind of corporate past to the entrepreneurial present? Was that a difficult transition?

Shavonne Reed: Well, I will say it wasn’t necessarily a difficult transition because it was something that I really wanted to do deep down inside. Um, but there are some highs and lows that come along with entrepreneurship, especially when you’re on the micro level and when you’re trying to scale your companies. Um, but it’s something that I definitely would encourage anyone to do if they’re really, you know, passionate about something. Finding their, um, their why and following their North star. Because there is nothing, absolutely nothing that compares to it.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you speak a little bit about your work with Future Health Now Foundation?

Shavonne Reed: Yes. So the Future Health Now Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the opioid agency. And what we do is look to give back to the community. And we have like three pillars where we are really focused on workforce development, also health promotion and then women’s empowerment. So as part of those three initiatives, what we’re doing is standing up programs that will help to cultivate the next generation of health communicators, for one and then for two. Helping to promote health, especially in marginalized communities because the statistics are there. I mean, if you think about in Georgia, maternal and infant health is really huge because we have the greatest mortality rates among African American, uh, babies and moms. And so it’s one of those things that’s really critical, that is near and dear to my heart, because I actually had a preemie as well, and she spent nine days in the NICU. And so, as you can imagine, my experience was not as grave as some of those experiences. And so but I empathize with them because I’ve walked in their shoes. And so I really want to just elevate that space and try to do as much as I can, um, to drive awareness, to help, to promote and get more resources for the cause. And then, of course, for women’s empowerment. Every year we’re hosting the International Women’s Day event celebrating women Real Talk with Siobhan Reid. And so we’ve had a great spread of women to come in and share their experiences in corporate spaces and entrepreneurship and show business, you name it. And it has been a really incredible experience just pulling these women together and building camaraderie. So I’m looking forward to just continuing to champion these things as we move forward.

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

Shavonne Reed: Oh my gosh, I’m glad you asked that question. Always need advocates, always need sponsors, always need voices. So we also host the Future Health Now Foundation. And what we do is interview, uh, thought leaders in the space. And there’s so much change with how communications is being done from the old times to the new times. And I remember very vividly how when I was graduating college, it was like, oh, the convergence of media, because it was became the three screens. Right? Um, and then now it’s like the new advent of information design and technology. Right. And so we have like this advent of AI and how it’s just transforming everything. And so with that, it is just incredible to see how the trajectory of things are going and being able to interview these folks and highlight their thought leadership in the world to increase their funding. Like, for instance, um, Adrian is, uh, Adrian, uh, Amarin. She has a platform called Artlist, and she’s really revolutionizing the way that we approach health communications. And it’s just so great to see all the new changes and being able to amplify the messages. And so I would love for folks to go and tune in and listen. Give us a review if you feel like it’s a five star rating and just engage with our content. We are all over social as an agency. And of course you can follow me directly. I am at Siobhan Reid. Um, I am Siobhan Reid on all platforms. And then for the foundation, it’s health harmony and the Future Health Now Foundation.

Lee Kantor: Now, before we wrap, I want to talk a little bit about your book, Ugly Duckling. What you see is not what you get. Can you talk about the thinking of, hey, I’m going to write a book because a lot of folks dream of writing a book, but you actually did it.

Shavonne Reed: Yes. Oh my gosh, this book has been living in me forever. Uh, as I mentioned before, I grew up with a lot of adverse childhood experiences. And as a part of that, one of the results of that was the trauma that caused me to feel like I didn’t have a high self-worth, and I felt like an ugly duckling, which is the title of the book. And for so long I felt isolated, and I thought that I was the only one that had these experiences and going through, you know, growing up and then matriculating into To adulthood and becoming this young woman and finding myself. It was really just a transformative experience. And there have been so many highs and lows, and I’m an overachiever by nature. I think that’s just something that’s deeply embedded and ingrained in my DNA. And as a result of that, there have been so many disappointments. No matter what I have been able to accomplish on my own. And so I really wanted to write about it because there are women who are actually struggling with these things right now, that if they just had this word, you know, and they could see how I was able to emerge and overcome the many obstacles and challenges that I’ve gone through, that it would empower and encourage and inspire them to do more of the things that they have embedded in their hearts and that they want to do now.

Lee Kantor: Any advice for that person that’s out there that’s struggling and is feeling kind of like there’s no hope? Is there anything you can share that can help them. You know, other than maybe getting this book and reading it, you know, kind of help them get back up on their feet and move forward.

Shavonne Reed: Absolutely. So what I like to do is to make sure that I have a way to show gratitude and being in the moment. So understanding where I am, one of the things that I started doing early on, and it came from my grandfather because he just loved to take pictures, was on my worst days when I feel like I’m just like the ugliest or the I just feel the worst, I make sure I take a picture of that moment because when you look back at it, nine times out of ten, you’re going to see something very different than what you saw when you were actually in that moment. And so I love to have those because they help me to have more gratitude as I go on each day, to be able to reflect back and see how I was able to get over those things. Another thing I would like to encourage folks to do is to identify at least 1 or 2 people that you admire that seem like they have it together, that can offer inspiration from afar. Um, a lot of times we get into this comparison game, and so if you step away from that and you realize that you’re in it, you have to be able to know how to have that awareness and separate yourself. But have those 2 or 3 people that you can look to to say, wow, okay, she’s doing the thing that I like to do or I want to do and be able to use that as inspiration. I know I have so many that I look up to, um, right now, but just identifying those individuals that really can, you can hold on to and then also making sure that the circle that you have around you is lifting you up and giving you positivity and being able to identify when there is something that is not for you, and not being afraid to separate yourself from it no matter what it is.

Lee Kantor: Well, Siobhan Reid, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you one more time. The website, and maybe also where they can get the book.

Shavonne Reed: Absolutely. So the website for the agency is Apua Dot agency and you can find the book on Siobhan Read. Com it’s also available on Amazon. And um, yeah, that’s where I am. And you can follow me on social at I am Siobhan Reed and the agency is Apua agency.

Lee Kantor: All right. Well, thank you again for sharing your story.

Shavonne Reed: Thank you for having me. This has been great. All right.

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

Michael Berkhahn With Graham Capital Wealth Management

by

Tampa Business Radio
Tampa Business Radio
Michael Berkhahn With Graham Capital Wealth Management
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Michael Berkhahn, CFP®, Vice President of Graham Capital Wealth Management, is a highly qualified financial advisor with over a decade’s worth of experience in the industry.

He believes that to be a successful advisor, one must not only have strong analytical skills but also be able to build meaningful relationships with clients. Specializing in retirement, tax, and estate planning. he takes great pride in helping ease his clients’ concerns as they work together to achieve their financial goals.

After successfully starting his career at Citigroup’s Institutional Client Group as a project manager, he later moved to Graham Capital Wealth Management in 2016.

His passion for finance led him to obtain a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Florida and a Master of Science in Finance from the University of South Florida. He is also a member of the Financial Planning Association of Tampa Bay.

As a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner, Berkhahn is part of an elite group of advisors who have completed the necessary training and requirements to hold the CFP® designation and is a fiduciary committed to complying with its continuing education and ethics standards.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What business owners and taxpayers need to know ahead of the TCJA expiration

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Tampa, Florida. It’s time for Tampa Business Radio. Now, here are your business. Radio X hosts.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Tampa Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Michael Berkhahn with Graham Capital Wealth. Welcome.

Michael Berkhahn: Thank you for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Graham Capital. How are you serving folks?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. You know, so here, Graham Capital Wealth Management, we are an independent registered investment advisory firm that really focuses on retirement planning. You know, as our clients, you know, fiduciary, we try to make prudent investment decisions on their behalf. I think the one thing that really makes us unique here in the Tampa area is just more of our active management approach. You know what I what I would want listeners to not think of when, when when I say active is that we’re not day traders, but we really, you know, try to, you know, personalize each of our clients portfolios by, you know, you know, individually, individually purchasing stocks or bonds rather than, you know, utilizing, you know, predetermined models or funds just because, you know, there’s added cost to that, you know, handing it off to a third party money manager or, you know, purchasing ETFs and mutual funds. You know, we believe that cost should be, you know, in in our in our client’s pockets versus, you know, paying those additional expense ratios and things like that.

Lee Kantor: Now are your clients typically, you know, coming from corporate background or are they entrepreneurs or are they athletes or are they celebrities? Like, what is that ideal client look like for you guys?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah, no. For us, I mean, I think we have a pretty wide breadth of clients and we we have, you know, former CEOs of publicly traded pharmaceutical companies as a client. We have, you know, former board members of energy companies, you know, and we have, you know, clients that are just kind of starting out the first Roth IRA. So, you know, I think we have a pretty wide breadth of clients that we’ve been able to, you know, assist with, you know, with their financial plans.

Lee Kantor: So there is there a minimum to get started, a minimum amount of wealth, or is it because a lot of, um, people in your space, they prefer going after wealthier people, but it sounds like you’re you’re kind of casting a wider net.

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. You know, you know, we really try not to market to saying that we have a minimum. I do think that our investment approach, uh, really, you know, I think it for us, you know, for us to really take our, you know, to utilize our investment approach. I think, you know, I would say probably between 50 to at least $100,000 would really allow us to, you know, really start implementing our investment strategies. But we really do not market a minimum because, you know, if you start working with someone that’s 25 or 30 and you know, they’re just getting out of, you know, just finishing up, you know, their law degree or, you know, becoming a doctor. You know, it’s more about that long term play with them. And, you know, that’s really why I try not to market a minimum with, with as a firm.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’ll tell you that’s pretty refreshing because a lot of wealth management firms, they don’t want to even pay attention to people at that stage because, you know, you know, frankly, there’s not a lot of money in it for the wealth management. But to make that kind of investment in your clients for that period of time is pretty different, I would think.

Michael Berkhahn: No. Yeah. You’re right. I mean, I do think we are unique in that aspect because I see it all the time. Um, you know, there’s a lot of advisors here right here in, uh, in downtown Tampa that, you know, yeah, they have a minimum of 500,000 or $1 million. And I actually found over time that I think it puts off a lot of people, honestly. You know, I have people come to us and say, oh, do you have a minimum? And I’ll say, no. And they’re like, oh, well, I was going to go talk with, with with with so and so. But they told me that they had a 500,000 minimum and I didn’t feel that I had those assets. But then lo and behold, they had, you know, you know, 2 to 3 times that amount of investable assets. So, you know, again, you never know, you know, people’s experience. And again, I think, you know, some people just don’t like, you know, hearing that they have to invest X amount of dollars to be able to, you know, even talk with that person.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I think, uh, I really applaud you doing what you’re doing because I find it’s a missed opportunity for a lot of wealth management firms because, uh, a lot of people who have wealth would want, like, their kid who may not have wealth today, um, have access to your expertise, but it’s not even on their radar to, um, to make that kind of connection. And I think it’s a mistake for a lot of these firms. They’re missing out on a generation of people that could be using their services if they would just invest some energy into them, 100%.

Michael Berkhahn: You know, I think it keeps our clients stickier. Uh, you know, from the fact that, unfortunately, the one thing that we know that that happens in life is, is death and taxes, right? Uh, so, um, you know, sadly, you know, I think of it as an opportunity that we can actually build a relationship, um, with their kids. So, you know, if something does when something does happen to the, to the parents that we’ve already built, that, that relationship that, you know, we don’t just see assets leaving, you know, the firm just because, you know, um, you know, their parents um, or passed away sadly.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And I think the stats back that up. I think that the vast majority of people don’t their kids don’t move to the parent’s wealth management advisor. They find their own.

Michael Berkhahn: Correct. Yeah. No. Absolutely. And again, you know, I think, you know, for for us, You know, we are, um, a much younger, you know, uh, registered investment advisory firm. So, again, I think for, for us, it’s, it’s taking that opportunity that, you know, we don’t we’re not sitting here and saying, hey, we have a 5 or 10 year exit plan or our hopes is, you know, this business is going to be, you know, 30, 40 years in the making. And, um, you know, I think we can take that long term, you know, plan, even though. Yes, if someone’s just opening up a 20,000 or $50,000 account, you know, I think it’s it’s the idea that this could be a very good client for us 10 or 15 years down the road. And yes, it’s not it’s not as lucrative as, you know, someone that brings in, you know, millions of dollars of assets right away. But I think you need to also plan for the future as well.

Lee Kantor: So now, um, can you share a little bit about the scope of your services? Is it just, uh, kind of wealth management? Does it, uh, kind of go into taxes? Does it, you know, like, are you the kind of the quarterback, the CFO of somebody’s financial life?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. You know, so here at Graham Capital Wealth Management, you know, I think we really try to bring in a number of different services. So, you know, we don’t just, you know, do you know, financial planning or investing for our clients. You know, we have, you know, accountants in-house. We have attorneys that are in-house. So, you know, we can do everything from, you know, planning, investing, you know, uh, their taxes, whether it’s individual or business taxes. Uh, and also, you know, really put together a true estate plan, uh, you know, so really, I think, you know, we can kind of, as you mentioned, you know, be me kind of being facilitating as the quarterback of saying, okay, how do we create a holistic financial plan for this estate and make sure that we’re making, you know, all the right, um, decisions when it comes to the holistic financial plans, whether it’s just individual taxes, business taxes, investing retirement assets, creating that estate plan. And I think that that that is something that a number of our clients really appreciate. You know, that they’re not having to work with a number of different, you know, companies. And having everyone in house really allows me to, you know, specifically with the accountant, it really allows me to work in unison with them so we can reach not only their short and long term financial goals, but really try to make that and to reach those goals in the most tax efficient manner.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I think that’s better for the client to have that kind of Mayo Clinic or the Cleveland Clinic kind of, um, opportunity where everybody’s working together, everybody’s seeing all the data together, and they can work together to come up with the optimal plan rather than have siloed specialists that you’re hoping are going to connect at some point so they can get on the same page.

Michael Berkhahn: No. Yeah. I mean, a couple years back, we didn’t have an accountant in house. And, you know, I would I would meet with, um, you know, our clients, accountants, you know, at at their, at their office or their accountants would come into our office and, you know, we just thought it was it was time for us. I think we got to a size where we said, you know, listen, you know, we have a number of clients that would appreciate us, you know, bringing someone in-house just so that we’re all working in unison. Because I don’t even think the client sometimes even realize how much, you know, the accountant and I throughout the year. It’s not just when, you know, you know, tax season comes around that I can provide them their consolidated 1099 or their 1099 R tax document. It’s really a thoughtful, you know, thought out plan throughout the year saying, hey, uh, for for client so-and-so, how do we um, is this is this, uh, is this going to how is this how is this investment going to affect their overall, you know, uh, you know, tax strategy for, for 2024?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And a lot of times obviously the your client isn’t up to date with all the ever changing rules when it comes to taxes. Like is there any advice you can share when it comes to maybe. Let’s talk about the expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Is there anything you can share that people can do today that maybe can save them some time and money tomorrow?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. You know, I think, you know, with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you know, for so just kind of even taking a step back for the listeners if they’re not, you know, aware, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was initially implemented, you know, going back to 2017. And you know, that is those those that legislation’s actually, you know, set to expire here. Uh, you know, next year at the end of 2025. So, um, you know, and this could, you know, depending on what happens with Congress and, um, and what happens with this upcoming Coming election if, if, if they expire and we do not see, you know, uh, any sort of modification or extension on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, you could you will see, um, you know, tax rates revert back to, you know, uh, 2016 levels. Um, and, you know, I think for, for, for our listeners on this, um, you know, I think I don’t know how much they realize how that could impact, you know, their upcoming tax season when it comes to, you know, 2026 and beyond. Because, you know, just for instance, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, um, uh, when it comes to individuals, is that one, uh, you know, it decreased, you know, the individual tax rates, uh, for, for people and two, uh, it also affected, you know, the standard deduction, um, for, for, for people married and filing single. Uh, and those, those standard deductions are actually going to move lower or back to the previous levels, uh, which, you know, right off the bat is going to impact their, their overall taxes.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And and this is something that if you have this information ahead of time, you can be proactive. But if you’re going to wait and then all of a sudden it’s sprung on you, you might be in for a surprise.

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. I mean, I think that that’s that unfortunately, I don’t think enough people are keeping as close of an eye on, you know, the Tax cuts and Jobs Act as as they probably should be. Um, you know, especially with this election, I think both of, you know, both of the candidates kind of have different views on, on what their plans would be, you know, with, with, with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sunsetting next year. Um, and you know how how they plan to, you know, change one from, you know, for, for, for not only individuals but also for businesses and how that will, you know, for small businesses, how that would affect them.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share? Don’t name the name, obviously, but maybe explain the challenge that someone had before they started working with you and how you were able to help them either get peace of mind or get to a new level?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah, I mean, I think for, you know, a story that really always comes back, you know, to me that when people ask that question, um, is, is one that, you know, unfortunately, it was a very sad event that, you know, um, I had recently met with a couple down in our Sarasota office. So we have an office in Tampa and in Sarasota, and I met with a couple and we were just, you know, starting off, you know, building out that relationship. And they were they were both retired. So we were really, you know, trying to develop, you know, their overall retirement plan and, and really trying to position them for the next ten, 15 years to be able to kind of live off of their live off of their assets and continue to maintain, you know, their current life, you know, lifestyle. And then obviously we we move forward with them as a client. And you know, prior to, you know, leaving the meeting, you know, the client had mentioned, oh, yeah, I have to go back into, you know, I’m having back surgery in a week. And it was supposed to be a very minor surgery. But lo and behold, unfortunately, um, the the individual ended up passing away. And, you know, the wife, you know, when, when when we heard the news, you know, just the, you know, the first thing, it’s wanting to be there for that person. Um, even though we, you know, she they barely knew us. We probably met one or once or twice before that, maybe an hour or an hour and a half at each meeting. But, you know, that’s where we have, you know, as, as your fiduciary, you know, is really we need to kind of step up and say, hey, this is what, what changes need to be made.

Michael Berkhahn: Because I go back to Lee talking about, you know, estate planning, you know, we, we, we we had already created a trust for them, right. So, you know, again, I think that’s where we were able to, you know, the the attorney and I were able to sit down with the wife and really, you know, walk her through all the necessary steps. And, you know, by the time we were done meeting with this client after 3 or 4 hours, because it was it was a sad it was a very grieving event. You know, a lot of tears were shed during this meeting, you know, so after 3 or 4 hours, you know, at, you know, when we were, you know, kind of leaving the meeting, you know, she comes up and just kind of hugs us both and just says, you know, I really don’t know. You know, I think the the last thing, um, you know, the last thing, the, the last final decision that my husband made was to move forward with you guys. And if we didn’t make that decision, I really don’t know what I would be doing right now. So, you know, again, I think that’s always a story that that always reminds myself of the importance of, of not just, you know, making clients monies, but just trying to be there for them. Um, and just trying to kind of be a resource when when these sort of events happen.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a piece of advice you could share for someone listening right now? Um, maybe it’s a way, because I don’t want to get obviously into any financial advice, but is there a way that maybe you can tell that the current financial advisor, the the way you’re getting financial advice? Because I would imagine there’s a bunch of people that are doing it themselves. What’s kind of a signal that, hey, maybe it’s time that either you got to switch or maybe have a conversation with, you know, an expert.

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, going back to, you know, what we were just talking about briefly with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. I think it’s, you know, I think a lot of people, you know, do try to, you know, take the onus on themselves to, you know, to make their own investments, you know, their, their own investment decisions. And, you know, frankly, a lot of people, I think, do a very good job, you know, at the investing part. But, you know, from a tax, you know, strategy, um, you know, standpoint, you know, unfortunately, I think that’s where a lot of people, you know, don’t do as good of a job, right. Um, you know, so, for instance, you know, for our high income earners, you know, they’ll say, well, I can’t, I can’t make I can’t make Roth contributions. And that’s true. But there are ways, right? There are ways that, you know, actually, you could still make contributions to a Roth even if you’re above the income threshold. There’s something called the backdoor Roth conversion, where basically you put pretax money or you sorry, you put after tax money into an IRA, and then the very next day you convert that after tax money into a Roth. Uh, and that’s a way for you to get money into a Roth and continue to make contributions every single year, even though you’re above the income, you know, even though you’re above the income threshold. So again, I think there are loopholes in our tax legislation that, um, that I think, you know, could benefit people long term when it comes to their overall financial plan.

Lee Kantor: And then regarding that, it’s it’s that knowing about any changes in, you know, where the tax levels are would be good to know because you may want to make a move sooner than later when it comes to a conversion.

Michael Berkhahn: No. Yeah. I mean, I, uh, especially with this expiration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act at the end of, at the end of next year. Um, you know, I think there’s just that big question mark out there is saying, okay, what’s going to happen with with tax rates? I know, you know, you know, a lot with the, you know, corporations, they talk about, you know, uh, possibly increasing that from 21% up to 28%. But, you know, if if individual taxes are going to go up from, you know, 37% up to 39.6% on the on the top tax rate. You know, it might be it might behoove certain individuals of saying, hey, you know, individual tax rates are going to be increasing, uh, in the future. Maybe we take advantage of these low, uh, the historically low tax rates right now and start converting or putting in a Roth conversion, you know, strategy for a multi year strategy to try to mitigate taxes. Because I think the one thing, Lee, you know, uh, whether whether or not taxes go up at the end of next year or five years or ten years from now, you know, we’re we’re at a point with our national debt, you know, sitting right around, you know, $35 trillion. You know, maybe, maybe the next president doesn’t change the tax codes all that much. But I feel pretty strongly that in the next ten years, I mean, we’re going to have to do something with taxes, and most likely it’s going to be increasing them to obviously, you know, start paying down some of our national debt.

Lee Kantor: Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, is there a website? Is there a way to connect?

Michael Berkhahn: Yeah, I think the best way the website that we have is, is Graham Capital Wealth.com. Or you can call one of our local offices our our Tampa or Sarasota office number. You can just call us at (813) 645-1233.

Lee Kantor: And Graham Capital wealth is g r a h a m capital Wealth.com. Michael, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Michael Berkhahn: Thank you. Lee. Thank you for having me on today.

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

Bob Littell With NetWeaving International

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Bob Littell With NetWeaving International
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Bob Littell spent over 50 years of his career in the insurance and financial services industry, serving as head of marketing for two insurance companies; then launching a national insurance brokerage agency and a consulting firm offering advice to high net worth individuals, insurance companies, and a variety of other parties including providing expert witness testimony.

In 1999, he created the word and concept of NetWeaving and has writing several books on the topic and spoken to hundreds of different organizations and companies here in the U.S. and around the world.

Connect with Bob on LinkedIn and follow him on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The concept of NetWeaving
  • The keys behind setting up and ‘hosting’ NetWeaving meetings

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have an old friend, Bob Littell, with NetWeaving International. Welcome.

Bob Littell: Hey, thanks for having me, Lee. So great to see you again.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to get caught up. Please get us caught up. What’s been going on in your world?

Bob Littell: Well, you know, you you had kind of said, give everybody who may not be familiar with the net weaving concept a little, little background. This is a 25 year old concept. And the reason why I actually came up with it initially, and I’m sure that a number of your listeners can identify with being in a large room. And what you’re sort of expected to do is to have these conversations with a bunch of people and find the perfect prospect for you. That’s the goal of most people who go into a networking event of any kind. Well, frankly, I just felt uncomfortable doing that. And so what I started doing is I would have brief conversations with people, and I try and get around to five, ten, 15 people. But what I try to do is find people, frankly, who I just liked talking to, talking with, and frankly, after having a short conversation and then I’d move on to someone else and almost invariably I’d find somebody who all of a sudden I said, you know what? I just had a conversation with Joe over there, and I think the two of you would really enjoy meeting, and I’d drag him over or her over and introduce the two. And so what I just found that I got my real enjoyment out of being in a networking event by just having good, friendly conversations with people. And if I had a short conversation with someone who was all about, well, let me tell you, enough about you talking about me.

Bob Littell: Why don’t I talk about me for a while and it just got a little overwhelming. So net weaving. Reverses the traditional concept of networking. Instead of asking yourself the questions, can this person help me? Do they know somebody I need? Do they have resources or information that would be helpful to me? Net weaving just flips that around and you train yourself to ask yourself, who do I know who might benefit meeting or getting to know this person? Or secondly, what resources or information do I have? Or someone in what we call my trusted resource network that once again might be useful and might actually help develop and create a trusted relationship with this individual. So that’s kind of the basics, but the action step of net weaving really entailed setting up meetings, usually a one on one first, and then at that one on one meeting, trying to identify someone who they would really like to meet and setting up and hosting that particular meeting. And that’s how some of these what I call ripple effect stories. And we can talk about some of those later, how they took place is that I’d make some introduction and then host a meeting, and then they would turn around and host a meeting for someone else. And it just created this ripple effect of positive energy that ended up being some amazing things. So that’s the short description.

Lee Kantor: And I think a key component of it is really the intent, right? When you go to one of these, um, events where there’s lots of business people, some people historically have gone there with the intent of I have to find that golden ticket person that’s going to buy my stuff. And when you go there with the intent, like you’re describing and you’re like, I’m just here to meet people and connect people, it takes all the pressure off and it just makes it a much more enjoyable event.

Bob Littell: Yeah, I’m very proud to say. In fact, I’m getting ready to have a conference call with a zoom call with him later on this week is my good friend Jeffrey Gitomer, the world famous, uh, speaker and crazy guy. Uh, Jeffrey one time quoted in one of his conferences saying, Bob Littell is the only person who I’ve ever met who totally gets what networking really should be all about.

Lee Kantor: So now I didn’t.

Bob Littell: Have to pay.

Bob Littell: Him.

Lee Kantor: That’s a bonus. Um, so, uh, you’ve been doing it for 25 years. You were kind of in a break for a period, and then you’ve relaunched.

Bob Littell: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re, you’re a you’re a perfect classic example of what we’re doing today. The most powerful form of networking. Net weaving. As I said before, you first have someone who you met at one of these meetings and the 1 or 2 people that you want to follow up with, I make notes on the back of their business cards so that when I send them an email, I almost always try and reference some comment that they made. Then I call up and assuming that it’s somebody that I want to set up a one on one hosting meeting, I mean, a one on one meeting that just the two of us. Then when I decided that this is someone I’d like to introduce to someone else, that’s where the real difficulty starts. Because in the old days, almost all the meetings were in person, and the higher up you go in power and influence, the more that you find difficulties in scheduling busy business schedules. Uh, travel. Travel to and from the meeting, setting up and picking the place where you’re going to meet. And frankly, the reason why I sort of got discouraged was how few people were recognizing the power of hosting meetings to make the introduction of two people, because what often would happen is a lot of the connections I was making, frankly, were above my pay grade.

Bob Littell: And when you hosted those kind of meetings, in many cases it allowed me to get invited into a, you know, a whole new network of people who, frankly, I had not been involved with prior to that. And so consequently, when zoom came along and when all of a sudden I realized that I could set up one or 2 or 3 zoom meetings. This this is my second. I’ll have two more zoom meetings this week, because now it’s as easy to set up a meeting or to host a meeting to make an introduction of two different people as it is sending a text or an email. And that’s why I wrote an article that, um, maybe I’ll send or send you a link that you could include in the post, uh, information that sent out a two part article in Sales and Marketing magazine on why net weaving is is exploding in popularity now, and it’s largely because of the ability of zoom and other forms of virtual online face to face communication.

Lee Kantor: Now, when things are done virtually versus in person, are there some kind of tips or or tactics or advice you can share to get the most of the virtual meeting? Because a lot of times in person, obviously there’s the energy of people in a room together. There’s all the subtle cues. And are there some things that you can share that can help somebody have a more effective virtual meeting?

Bob Littell: Yeah, hiring dancing women to be in the background can really be effective.

Lee Kantor: That helps. Okay, wait. I’m writing that down. Wait.

Bob Littell: It is more expensive. It is. What I find is that the virtual meetings do not take that much away from an in-person meeting. If you handle the meeting correctly. Now, what do I mean by that? The first thing is, when you have the one on one conversation with the individual, you’re trying to find out who were the key people that this person would like to meet. And what’s surprising is in many cases, this is not somebody who I know. They tell me someone who they would really love to meet. And in many cases, especially if it’s a high level individual, what I will do is I will ask them to send me their bio, and then I will make a send a that bio along with an email, knowing that my first conversation, if it’s a high level individual, is not going to be with the individual, it’s going to be with his executive assistant. And so I would start out by saying, um, uh, I’m sorry, but what is your oh, Barbara. Um, you hopefully. You remember I sent an email and I copied you on it, uh, about an individual who I think your boss would really enjoy meeting. The two of them have very similar backgrounds, and they’re working on some projects that I think might be of interest to both of them. And so I’m wondering if this is someone who you think, based on the bio, if you would share that with him, would like to meet and I’ll check back with you and see if and almost always then after they look up the bio, if I’ve done my homework correctly, it’s almost always would love to have that meeting be so nice to set it up.

Bob Littell: And then that’s that’s all there is to it. So it’s being creative in the way you set it up, listening. And it’s a puzzle. It’s putting pieces of a puzzle together of what is a meeting and a communication? For example, I’m hosting a second meeting this week and this one is in person. I’m putting together a fellow who’s with one of the senior VP of one of the largest construction companies in Atlanta, um, and putting together with someone who literally helped run six of Ted Turner’s companies back in the in the heyday of when Ted Turner was just doing unbelievable things and buying companies and doing all kinds of stuff. I was amazed that the two of them didn’t know each other, from just the fact that both of them were so high profile in Atlanta, and once again, they both have a high interest in cars. And so the two of them, uh, I can’t wait to be part of the conversation.

Lee Kantor: Now, is that a mistake that people make a lot of times is that they focus in on maybe their exact target, rather than maybe people in and around them. Um, a lot of times I think the phrase is called weak ties. Those are the people that aren’t directly connected, but they’re around your periphery that you can maybe access a little easier, and then you could leverage that.

Bob Littell: Well, two points, two points to be made there. One is I define meetings as either strategic or non-strategic. A strategic meeting is where I already have in my mind how the two people would really enjoy, why they would really enjoy meeting and getting to know each other. A non-strategic meeting are ones where these are just two good people that I’ve just really enjoyed having a conversation with. And frankly, some of those meetings that I’ve set up that I had no idea up front. I just felt the vibes. I felt the body chemistry of the two of them. And some of those meetings had been some of the most fun, and some of the ones that have created amazing things that none of us had any idea prior to having the conversation. The second point, though, I was really influenced by research by a fellow named Mark Granovetter from Stanford. And what he the research that he had done showed that if you imagine a target and three circle with a bull’s eye being in the center, the bullseye represents your primary circle of contacts. Depending on the size of your network, that might be three, four, five, maybe even ten people who you’re dealing with on a daily or at least a weekly basis. The second circle, the secondary one, are people who are coming in and out of that primary circle on a fairly regular basis, maybe every couple of weeks or every month.

Bob Littell: You just kind of reconnecting. Everyone in that third circle is what we would call a weak tie. They are someone who, over your lifetime, your career, you at one time had a good relationship with, but you’ve lost touch and contact. And so I literally make a habit every week. And if if your listeners, if they do nothing else than follow up on this piece of advice, every week I go back through emails, through past correspondence, and I come up with two people, three sometimes, who I haven’t talked with in usually two to 3 to 5, sometimes even ten years. Uh, there’s one individual that I’m now working with that guess what? I may end up being an executive producer on a. Science fiction movie. It’s too long to tell the tale, but he used to, uh, come to one of my book clubs, and he’s now written a science fiction novel called The Cloud, which was, uh, considered the best science fiction book of, of 2023. And so who knows? It’s just it’s just so much fun when you kind of approach net weaving more as a game than as something you have to do.

Lee Kantor: So, um, where what’s kind of on the roadmap?

Bob Littell: Well, I told you why I kind of dropped out of the game for a while. Um, and when I decided to get back in. I said, you know what? This is my legacy. What do I want to leave as the legacy? And I got to thinking, I years ago, I had developed something called the Net Weavers Aptitude Assessment Quiz. And the new website that’s going to be launched within the next week or so, which is Net Weavers Inspire. The first thing that will happen when you go to the website. You will take this free quiz. And first, the quiz has has a series of statements and you grade yourself from 1 to 10 on how applicable that statement is for you currently. The first category is your attitude towards the concept of altruism. Doing something for someone without any expectation of how you’re going to benefit. And so there’s five questions there that or five statements. And you grade yourself from 1 to 10 with ten being boy that’s me I do that all the time. Then the next three categories are the three skill sets of net weaving being a connector of others with their needs, problems, opportunities and mind rather than your own learning how to position yourself as a gratuitous resource for others. No expectation of gain. And the third in line with the first two is building a trusted resource network, made up of people who either you have vetted as being exceptional at what they do, or they come so highly recommended to you that you immediately trust and want to have them in that in that network. So part of what I wanted is I wanted to have a course.

Bob Littell: And so now we’ve developed a course online called the NetWeaver Diplomat. And the great thing about this is we’ve got it on a platform that allows me to translate it into over a hundred different languages. So you come to the you come to the website, you take the free exam if you like what you see based on your score, because your score will either say you’re a natural. Netweaver been doing this all your life. You just never had a word for it. In fact, that’s what Arthur Blank, the testimonial on the cover of my my book The Heart and Ardent Weaving, said. The second category, a little lower score, is Annette Weaver. In the wings you see a few areas that you can improve upon. And then Annette Weaver’s apprentice, meaning you see a lot of areas that you could improve on, but you love the concept and you want to improve. And then I struggled with what do I call that bottom low score. So I finally came up with a politically acceptable that’s a net weaving skeptic. Oh, nobody does anything for someone without thinking of how they’re going to benefit. And there’s two areas of that. One is, though, people who are scoring low because they’re just starting a career, and they really have never thought of all these skill sets and ways. And that, for example, I’ve done a number of programs there at CSU’s executive MBA program, and part of where I really get excited is helping people launch a career with Net weaving in mind. I sure wish I’d realized or been taught these skill sets coming right out of college. I don’t know where I’d be today, but, uh, but I know I would be even more above where I am today.

Bob Littell: So anyways, now those are the first two. You actually do upgrade to take the course and also have access to all 50 of the business book summaries. And I mean these are Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Pink, Stephen M.R. Covey, Jeffrey Gitomer. These are some of the best business books out there that I, with author’s permission, I wrote, and those are terrific as what I call follow up and follow through value added ways to add to the emails that you’re sending out, either wanting to set up a meeting and providing information up front, you would ask, what’s a better what’s another way to set up a meeting? That’s a great attachment to send an article that you and a some one of the book summaries that you know, would have interest be of interest to the high level individual you’re trying to to connect with. But the final area that I’m really excited about is I want to leave a legacy of inspiring people to create their own ripple effect. Stories where you make a connection, you make an introduction, you host a meeting, and then those people, when they try and turn the table and say, Bob, this is great, but how can we help you? You simply ask them to pay it forward and do the same thing for someone else or someone else. And it creates that ripple effect. And I want to create a whole library of stories by category of people who have done that and the amazing things that end up happening. So that’s that’s kind of the goal is to create that platform and get people involved.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you, um, how do you kind of explain this concept to a lot of the young folks who are not? I guess I don’t know if the word comfortable is the accurate word, but they don’t do a lot of in-person conversations. They don’t do a lot of even zoom conversations now. They prefer more of the impersonal texting. And, you know, not almost not in real life interactions. So how do you kind of help them either see the value or open their minds to, uh, to this concept?

Bob Littell: Well, actually, it’s a great question because, frankly, I’ve created a new word called a catalyst connector. And in some cases, I hate to say it, but the new generation of young leaders in many cases are not comfortable with net weaving. And so I another one of my goals is to create an army. And I’ve already got a number of people that are willing to fall into that role of actually calling up with the young people and showing them by doing it, how to make those kind of connections. And frankly, it’s a little bit the same with highly technical financial service people like CPAs and attorneys. And, you know, the jokes about an actuary, you know, an outgoing actuary because he’s looking at the other person’s shoes rather than his own. Um, and yet I’ve had some success stories with very highly analytical people by not just telling them how to do it, but actually showing. And that to a little, a little extent is what we’re going to be doing with this new Project Atlanta Way 2.0, where we’re going to be using net weaving as a way to create leader to to to inspire leaders within the city of Atlanta to work on major projects together and collaborate and and connect with each other in ways that they might even be uncomfortable doing. But we’re going to make them.

Lee Kantor: It’s so interesting because every person in business knows that referrals are kind of the key, and if you have a system for referrals, you’re going to be in great shape. And then this just kind of aligns perfectly with that type of thinking.

Bob Littell: Yeah. And you know, we’ve only got a few minutes. So let me end with or at least cover one thing that I think is so important because a referral is a risk on the part of the person making it, you, you know that you’re not going to go to a networking event and have somebody immediately say, oh, my best client is so-and-so. Let me make an introduction. You have to build trust. So I had had quite a few people at the not quite a few, but a number of people who would come up to me at one of my talks and said, Bob, I heard you speak a while back. And I had to be real honest with you. I’ve been doing a lot of your net weaving and I’m not seeing little, if anything, come back. And so finally, I really developed a a way to determine what the problem is. First, I’d ask them, tell me how you’re doing it and all. And a lot of times what would come out is they’re still net weaving, networking. They’re implying after they help someone. Well, you know, it sure would be nice if you happened to come across someone who needs my services. I’d love to have you refer me. You can’t mix the two. Net and knit weaving is not an attack on traditional networking. You have to do both to be successful, but you can’t mix the two. The second reason I discovered was the world is made up of givers and takers, and when you knit we for a taker, they will take and take and take. And you can do it till the sun doesn’t shine and nothing will come back around because they just have.

Bob Littell: They’re missing the reciprocity gene. The third one is the most interesting though. And it’s a weakness that we all have, especially if it’s a high level connection. So you introduced me to Arthur Blank. And guess what? I take ownership of that new relationship. And unless you follow up a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month. Hey, Bob, whatever happened to that connection introduction that I made with you? And oh, my gosh, Ashley, I forgot you were the one that introduced me to him. Gosh, I really am sorry I never got back. He introduced me to so and so and we’re now. We’re best friends. So we forget the girl that brought us to the dance. And it’s a I see that happen a lot. But frankly, Lee, there’s one other category and it’s the hardest one. It’s where you’re having this conversation with someone, and deep down inside you’re saying to yourself, I’m not really sure I would feel comfortable introducing this person to someone else. They didn’t come across to you. Maybe it was their dress, maybe it was vibes, whatever. But frankly. Once again, a referral is a risk on the part of the person making it. And if they don’t have confidence, what’s the solution They have to become more. They have to change their image. For some people it may not be possible, but I make suggestions of taking different workshops on creativity, how to how to how to make yourself not just acceptable, but the wow factor. So somebody would say, wow, no one has ever done that for me before.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with the community. What is the coordinates? What is the website?

Bob Littell: The website is is you can we’re going to get there where you can get there one of three different ways. You can either go to net weaving, dot com, Net weaving international.com or the new Net Weavers Inspire, which will be launched within the next week or so. And once again, we hope that, uh, those who love this concept will spread the word and become ambassadors of the concept because not only is it good for your business, but, you know, research has shown that there’s such a thing as endorphins in the brain when you help someone, that just gives you that satisfaction feeling and that makes that energizes you, makes you better at everything you do. It’s a great way to build your business, but it’s actually a great way just to live your life.

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

Bob Littell: Well, thank you again for having me. And let’s stay in close touch. And remember, I want to have you involved in this Atlanta way 2.0 as well. So we’ll talk to you about that later. But thanks again for having me.

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

Jeffrey Gray With AgeTech Atlanta

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Jeffrey Gray With AgeTech Atlanta
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Jeffrey Gray serves as the Founder of AgeTech Atlanta, The Memory Kit, and Forever Home. He is a Certified Aging-In-Place Specialist (CAPS) and advocate for Alzheimer’s care and prevention.

Age Tech Atlanta is a close knit community of Atlanta-based innovators that are committed to changing the definition and experience of aging. Their group is comprised of startup founders, industry mavericks, educators, researchers and influencers in the fields of age tech, elder care, and longevity.

Connect with Jeffrey on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • AgeTech Atlanta history
  • Partnership with AtlantaTech Village, the 4th largest tech space in the US
  • Atlanta as a significant city and an innovation hub to develop age-related technologies
  • Market for Agetech related solutions
  • The greatest challenges facing AgeTech entrepreneurs

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

Jeff Gray: Hey, thanks. It’s great to be here.

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

Jeff Gray: So age Tech Atlanta is a community of innovators and educators and influencers and others, all who are trying to redefine the experience of aging through technology. And we have built this community into the largest of its kind in North America. So Atlanta is home to some of the greatest entrepreneurs and innovators in the in the space of age tech.

Lee Kantor: So what is your background? What led you to be involved in this community?

Jeff Gray: Well, I moved to Atlanta for 25 years ago or about 25 years ago as a part of my the sale of my first business, which was in an entire different technology sector. But after I lost my mom to Alzheimer’s in 2015, I started on a journey of innovation, founded an early company called the memory Kit. But I got interested in trying to solve problems around Aging care course, the Alzheimer’s and Dementia diseases. And that was in 2015. And that led me to over time, create a large network and found H tech Atlanta as a way for folks to get together and network, learn and grow.

Lee Kantor: Was H Tech Atlanta part of like a larger organization or did you start this just from, hey, I think there’s a space here that we should bring some smart people around and see what we can do.

Jeff Gray: Yeah, more the latter. You know, I’ve been I’ve had my home base business wise at the Atlanta Tech Village since 2016, and I had a lot of folks who asked me over the years, hey, Jeff, why don’t you start a little net or not even start a group? But why don’t you throw a networking event? Because I was introducing people over the years, making cross connections, helping other people meet folks that could, you know, help them, you know, increase their knowledge or get some traction in their business. So we did that three years ago, started it with a networking group and a margarita bar, by the way. And from there grew this organization organically by meeting every other month since we started.

Lee Kantor: And then what are you kind of defining the parameters of agetec as like what are the components, like you mentioned, Alzheimer’s. I can understand kind of medical components to this group, but does it involve like, you know, active lifestyle for retirees or like are there, you know, other components or is it kind of just focused on health?

Jeff Gray: No, it’s more towards the latter. So we have you know, we have startups and large ventures that are focused both that are focused on things like, you know, health care, senior living, senior care, home health, those kind of things that your mind would naturally go to. Also, some of the diseases that we commonly associate with aging, like Alzheimer’s, dementia, to some extent Parkinson’s, but we see the whole age tech ecosystem as a lot bigger We think that there’s room for innovation in travel and tourism, finance and banking, retail, um, uh, home improvement. Um, so there’s lots of areas where there’s innovation for aging populations. Remember, you know, they there’s a commonly, uh, bandied about statistic, but it’s even though we hear it often, it’s still worth noting that, you know, today, um, and every day, some 10,000 people turn 65 in the US, um, uh, people over 55, actually, Boomer, Gen X and boomers own 71% of all single family occupied houses in the US. It’s $0.50 on every dollar spent in America of our GDP is by an older adult. So it’s a huge sector of the economy. And yet there’s definitely, uh, innovation in those areas you mentioned. But as you alluded to, it’s a much bigger tent, if you will, than just care.

Lee Kantor: So what are you trying to do with age tech Atlanta? Are you looking for more members of the group, or are you looking for more organizations that are touching this space to, you know, just learn about like what? What’s kind of the goal?

Jeff Gray: Yeah. Well, the mission is actually to build Atlanta into the center of excellence and innovation for tech. And while we’re at it, we’re also trying to make Atlanta the best place for older adults and their loved ones to call home. But we’re always looking to engage entrepreneurs, educators and researchers as well as larger ventures. Um, healthcare systems, healthcare providers. Did you know digital health innovators? Um, we meet our I would say foundationally, we built ourselves on a meeting every other month where we always have three presenters that show their new technology or new innovations in the space, so we’re always looking to invite more people to come. And you know, those events themselves offer incredible opportunities for people to meet one another in a casual setting, but in a learning setting as well. So that’s one of the main ways we help, is by putting people together every other month, every year, um, where they can meet each other, connect, find opportunities to do business, maybe to engage in pilots, to do research together, those kinds of activities.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you finding the folks that are playing in this space? Are they themselves kind of the seniors, or are there young people that are also getting involved?

Jeff Gray: Yeah. You know, uh, well, first of all, I would say that the majority of the age tech ventures that we see are, you know, the overwhelming majority, like 90% of them are story led. And I mean that what I mean by that is something happened in that person’s life, um, that gave them that aha moment, or they went through a difficult journey and they, they went about the business of trying to tackle problems that they had. I would say that the majority of founders are not over 55, I would say. I we’ve never really tracked that, but it’s a pretty mixed group. Um, we have a couple of founders in their 70s. Hey, I’m 62, but it is a it is a young crowd. Um, I’m always fascinated and encouraged by the interest really young founders in their in their 20s and early 30s. Uh, the interest and passion they have for this space.

Lee Kantor: So, um, share a little bit you mentioned a little bit about what happens at one of these events. Um, I know margaritas are involved sometimes. Um, and you mentioned some, some speakers, but, like. So, um, is it at Tech Village? Is that where they’re usually located or they’re around town.

Jeff Gray: Mostly at the Tech Village, but we have um, we are events are sometimes hosted off site. We publish them at Tech Atlanta on our events page. Um, but yeah, I would say, you know, we have a great partnership with the Atlanta Tech Village that I can tell you a little bit more about, but most of them are here. Um, again, we publish them and we send them out to our whole mailing list, uh, as soon as we have another date. We’ve also, uh, at the atdc is hosted a couple, and we’ve had an event or two at a partner site. Um, so we mix it up a little, but most of them are here at the Tech Village.

Lee Kantor: And then how many companies are involved with the group right now?

Jeff Gray: Well, you know, our mailing list is about a thousand of those. We’ve got a couple of hundred companies at various stages. The core group of innovator companies is closer to 70. Um, but in addition to the, to the, you know, the tech startups themselves, um, you know, we’re working with, you know, the we’re, you know, interacting with Georgia State and Emory and Georgia Tech, right. Obvious folks who are innovating some and their students. Uh, other incubator and accelerator program. So the the ecosystem is not just the startups. And we also have, you know, it’s it’s startups and upstarts at all different sizes and stages. So it’s not just the scrappy startup with an idea on the back of an envelope. We’ve got some fairly large ventures that have got some serious traction in the industry. Companies like AQ, shield, Welcome Home Software, uh, that are fairly well known, that are at, you know, they’re operating at large scale and now giving back and supporting the ecosystem.

Lee Kantor: Now as part of the community is you mentioned incubators. Is that part of kind of the roadmap where you’re trying to incubate some of these ideas as well? Or is it just to be a community for people in the space to, you know, kind of mix and mingle and learn from each other.

Jeff Gray: Well, we over the years, we’ve had about 125 or 1 on ones that have led to about 450 introductions to capital, community content, um, partners. Um, so we are active, uh, you know, sounding boards and mentors on an ongoing basis. We don’t operate as a formal incubator or an accelerator because there’s a lot of those both in Atlanta and beyond. Um, but we have an open door. All of our contact information, information is easy to find, either on our website or LinkedIn. We’re always here for our founders to help them solve a problem or if they need an introduction. We do host, um, pitch competitions and other signature events, um, where we’ll, you know, we’ll do specific programing or content or an event for the industry itself. So last two years in a row, we’ve produced the tech Challenge Innovation Showcase Pitch competition in partnership with the American Society on Aging. So it’s an example of, um, of some of the things that we’ll do that go beyond the meet ups.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned some news with Tech Village. You want to share that?

Jeff Gray: Yeah, I’d love to. So, um, as of a few months ago, we kind of expanded on our partnership with ETV, has been supporting of us of what we’re doing from day one. Uh, they expanded that support. Um, have provided us some larger office space. The key part of the partnership that’s really exciting. Um, is that we now have two scholarships to offer tech startups who can work in in our office for six months to a year at a time. And this is great for for founders who are, um, either kind of early on and need some need some space, maybe save some money, or maybe they just want to benefit from the environment over here at the Tech Village, which I’m sure you’ve been over here. There’s really no place like it. Um, you know, if you if you want to meet some people that can maybe help your business grow, spend an hour in the community center or a couple of hours just working down there. People come up and introduce you. They want to know what you’re doing, what you’re working on, and how they can help. Um, so we’ve got two founders, one, uh, a guy named Bryce Folsom, who’s the founder of a company called E-life, which is a wristband that connects to a mobile app, which at the top of it would allow first responders to have all of the medical information about a person wearing the band, even if they couldn’t communicate themselves. Um, and a company founded by Melody Roberts called Live Labs, which is a female incontinence product that’s, um, going through its development and FDA approval process. So we have two entrepreneurs now in residence with us as they’re building their companies, um, fully supported by us and the networks that we provide them.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you finding that, um, maybe across the country or even internationally, there’s more and more, uh, you know, technology startups that are playing in this space or at least exploring this space, is this kind of a growth area.

Jeff Gray: It really is. So, um, I’m sure a lot of your listeners and you have heard of AARP, um, which is a huge organization. They, um, have a they have a program called the Tech Collaborative. So they’ve been fostering innovation in the space. They’ve really validated it. Um, and um, all of that programing is, is virtual. And then we are actually mentoring new communities, helping communities grow, um, using our playbook and what we’ve learned in other cities around the country right now. So we’re working with, with groups of of innovators in LA, Denver, Chicago, New York, Washington DC and Toronto. So, um, yes, we’ve found our found that not only are we able to reach out throughout the southeast. Um, but over the last two years, after about after our first year, we started receiving lots of outreach from folks saying, hey, can you help us, um, grow similar communities in our areas? So we’re going to do six of those all under the Atlanta umbrella. So yeah, we’re we’re growing beyond the borders. Uh, well, we grew we outgrew the strict borders of metro Atlanta in terms of the companies we interacted with early on and then through the southeast. And then, you know, really into North America as well.

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

Jeff Gray: Um, gosh, I just love first of all, we’re so appreciative just to, you know, have your airwaves and let people hear about us. You know, we’re really interested in meeting anyone that’s even interested in technology, that it can improve aging at any level. So it could be we welcome individuals who want to come to our meetups. They can go to our website. There’s you don’t need credentials of any kind to attend a meet up. We love to talk with investors, um, social workers, caseworkers, um, from Triple A’s, um, folks with the state Department of Aging. Again, we always welcome investors who are interested in learning more about the space and and entrepreneurs at any stage. And maybe someone out there here’s the here’s us on the show and has just an idea they can reach out to us through the website or to me on LinkedIn. We’d be happy to talk to them and give them some feedback. Uh, even at those just nascent stages when they they’ve just got that spark. Um, and I would say, you know, just the other day I met with someone who said, I don’t know what it is, but I know I want to help this community through technology. Can you give me some ideas of some, some places or some needs that you think are unfulfilled? So we’re always here to help. We are just really interested in meeting anybody who shares our interest and passion, no matter what they do.

Lee Kantor: And then folks in other markets that might want to start their own community. You’re up for those conversations as well.

Jeff Gray: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. For today, we would probably plug them into one of the super regional communities. But yeah, we’d love to hear from anybody who’s outside of of the greater Atlanta or southeastern region, um, that’s interested in supporting the growth of this really, uh, thriving and exciting ecosystem, um, called age tech.

Lee Kantor: And then the coordinates one more time is age tech Atlanta. Com age tech atlanta.com.com.

Jeff Gray: Yeah that’s us.

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

Jeff Gray: Oh no I appreciate you. Thanks for the opportunity to share some of what we’re doing.

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

Anne Shoemaker With Anne Shoemaker, LLC

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GWBC Radio
GWBC Radio
Anne Shoemaker With Anne Shoemaker, LLC
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Anne Shoemaker,  Founder of Anne Shoemaker, LLC.

She is a career advisor, strategist, and coach for executive and aspiring executive women. She applies her 20+ years of experience as an executive and leader in corporate, non-profit, privately held, and early-stage startup businesses towards supporting and elevating women into positions of power and influence in their careers and communities.

Prior to founding a WBENC-Certified WBE (Women Business Enterprise), earning her coaching accreditation, and navigating a career change, Anne earned a business degree from Wake Forest University and a graduate degree in e-commerce from Lulea University of Technology in Sweden.

A lifelong learner, she has earned professional development certifications from globally recognized institutions such as The Banff Center, the International Coaching Federation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Co-Active Training Institute. Through 1:1 and small group coaching, advisory services related to building one’s career marketing portfolio and network, and workshops, Anne helps women unlock their potential so they can reach new levels of impact and fulfillment.

Her portfolio of coaching clients is 100% dedicated to women who are CxOs, legislators, founders of venture-backed and bootstrapped companies, and professionals such as attorneys, accountants, and physicians who are considering steering their career in a new direction – and want a co-pilot to help them navigate.

Connect with Anne on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Why should organizations invest in the advancement of women in their workforce
  • Investments into what kinds of programs or activities tend to pay off in this regard
  • What distinguishes a coach from a mentor or a therapist
  • What is it about coaching that makes it so transformative

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

 

Genna Keller and Anne Marsden With Trevelino/Keller

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Genna Keller and Anne Marsden With Trevelino/Keller
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Genna Keller, Co-CEO, Trevelino/Keller

She is a public relations and marketing executive with 30 years of experience working in the technology, health, B2B and consumer lifestyle sectors. As agency co-founder, she has been instrumental in guiding 20+ years of growth and leadership, expanding the company from an initial five-person firm to an agency to a nationally ranked and ranked #2 independent firm in Atlanta.

Prior to the founding of Trevelino/Keller, she served on the management committee of Ogilvy Public Relations via the acquisition of Alexander Communications, where she parlayed her technology and innovation foundation across multiple practices – serving as M.D. of the Atlanta office as well as simultaneously serving as M.D. of the N.Y. and D.C. technology practices.

Genna is active with the startup ecosystem in the region and is a member of the Buckhead Coalition. She has been named one of Atlanta Magazine’s 500 Most Powerful Leaders for the past five years and is recognized in Georgia Trend’s Georgia 500 Most Influential Leaders.  She serves on and is an advisor to several service-oriented boards and is a proud graduate of Wake Forest University.

Anne Marsden, Founder of Marsden Marketing

A graduate of Georgia Tech, Anne is a “geeky creative” type who is passionate about using marketing to drive revenue growth. With 20+ years in B2B technology-driven companies, she built and led marketing, business development and sales teams for Fortune 100s and entrepreneurial startups, in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. A high energy, results driven professional, her motivation is to create positive growth for her clients and her team.

She launched Marsden Marketing in 2001 as a marketing consultancy. As technology began to change buyer behaviors, she anticipated the shifting roles and opportunities in B2B marketing and sales, and expanded the firm to provide a complete suite of digital and traditional marketing services. Today, Marsden Marketing is helping clients accelerate growth using the technologies, digital tools and channels that have unleashed the connected world.

Every day, Anne challenges herself, her clients and her team to be bold, think strategically and have fun.

Follow Trevelino/Keller on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How has the focus of B2B marketing shifted in the past few years
  • How can B2B marketers stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing landscape
  • How has the digital transformation and new technologies affected B2B marketing
  • What are the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers today
  • Opportunities for B2B marketers in the next few years

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Genna Keller and Anne Marsden with Trevelino/Keller. Welcome.

Genna Keller: Thanks, Lee. Well, glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to get caught up with both of you. Before we get too far into things for folks who aren’t familiar, can you give us kind of an overview of Trevelino/Keller? How are you serving folks?

Genna Keller: Yeah, sure. Thanks. So we are a digital and marketing agency, and we’re serving folks in three primary areas public relations, creative services, and growth marketing. Ann and her team have recently joined us to add incredible depth and expertise on the growth marketing path, so we’re incredibly thrilled.

Lee Kantor: So for folks who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about maybe definitions of terms like what is growth marketing and what is specifically B2B growth marketing?

Genna Keller: Yeah, sure. Sure. I’ll lead off. And then Ann, you can you can add to it. But at the highest level we define growth marketing as you know, marketing that will grow the business. Right? I mean, it will grow the business from a sales perspective, etc.. And, you know, B2B is certainly a critical part of that. So and I’ll let you add to.

Anne Marsden: Yeah. So Marsden marketing, when we were acquired by Trevelino/Keller, we’ve been doing B2B focused marketing for over 11 years, and the the difference is that there is a need for marketing to now have a revenue responsibility. As a matter of fact, our tagline has been marketing that sells because it’s now marketing’s job to work more closely than ever with the sales organization and to put programs in place that actually move the needle on the sales side.

Lee Kantor: So how is that different than the past? I mean, I have a degree in advertising from many, many years ago, and one of the first things we were taught was it’s not creative unless it sells. So how are we back to that now? Like what? What’s changed? Well.

Anne Marsden: Well, first of all, the biggest thing that’s changed is the shift to digital. And with the shift to digital comes a lot of different aspects of how you do marketing and how marketing supports sales. First of all, B2B buyers don’t buy the way they used to. They now have the ability to go online and learn and make decisions without even talking to a sales person. So there’s a greater emphasis on content marketing and thought leadership, as well as the fact that with digital channels, we can now measure things in a way we never could before. You couldn’t really measure how your advertising was doing 20 years ago, but now you can.

Genna Keller: Yeah. And to add to that, Lee, I don’t think at a high level it’s different, right. You know, you’re not doing marketing just to market. You are doing marketing to sell something. But Ann’s exactly right. You look at the influences and you look at the buyer. I mean, right now we are dealing on the B2B and B2C, but on the B2B end, a lot of these buyers, the majority are digitally native, right? I mean, they they know this and, um, you know, they’re looking at the website first, they’re eMarketer, uh, published a study, 60% from their survey, 60% of the buyers go to the website, to a supplier’s website, 55% go to a webinar, 52% to Anne’s point conducts research, 50% look at peer review sites. So those are all digital platforms that growth marketing has the ability to influence that impact sales.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, just because you can measure something doesn’t mean it’s kind of worth measuring. How do you kind of discern, um, with the metrics that matter and really get down to, um, what are the metrics that matter? And let’s focus on moving the needle in those areas instead of just moving the needle on things that we can measure.

Genna Keller: Yeah, and all of.

Anne Marsden: It is about finding the right KPIs for what you’re trying to achieve. You know, I use the example, the fact that I have 36,000 Twitter followers or X followers doesn’t mean anything unless there’s a through line that says that the interactions that we’re having on that channel are actually educating people and creating more interest for us. So you have to go past vanity metrics and pick the right KPIs.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help your clients do that? Like what does it look like when you’re onboarding a client who obviously is not as savvy as you and maybe has a lot of things they think, they think or think they know. But how do you kind of educate them and move them into the mindset of this growth marketing and to help them understand that, hey, you know what, at one point we thought having, you know, lots of Facebook, uh, followers was a good idea. But to your point, you know, we have to, you know, have a through line to revenue and all of that stuff. While it looks good to talk about, you know, at the club isn’t really moving the needle in your business.

Genna Keller: Yeah, yeah. And I think we can tag team this one in. Um, you know, first off, we as marketers have to understand the client’s business, the prospect’s business. Right. And what are their goals? You know, what are their short term goals? What are their long term goals? Um, and long could be. And short can be defined by any difference measure. But we’ve got to understand what is important to them and where do they need to move the needle. Right. Then, you know, we will look at the different channels that map to that, um, that they understand. Right? They may not understand all of the sausage making in the background, but they understand at a high level what their buyers are influenced by and where they’re going. If they don’t understand that we can even do tests, right, so we can test different channels and then we can explain to them, hey, look, this is who who you’re getting from X, this is who you’re getting from LinkedIn. This is who what’s happening from an email marketing perspective, this is your website traffic.

Anne Marsden: Very often times we have people coming to us and they have a sense of who their buyers are, but they haven’t necessarily dug deep into understanding actually, which channels do they use? Where do they go to learn, as Jenna mentioned, you know, do they use peer review sites? Do they attend webinars? And so, um, every client is different in terms of where they want to get to and what where they sit competitively within their landscape, and doing the research to understand the buyers and where they are. And the best ways to get in front of them is a key part of putting the plans together. It’s really helping them develop a go to market strategy to be the most effective.

Lee Kantor: So how do you help someone develop a go to market strategy when the market changes so rapidly? Like, you know, the search engines change their algorithms. Ai is now coming into play where that’s affecting search engine optimization and how you structure content. Um, how how do you kind of deal with this ever changing moving landscape?

Anne Marsden: So the methodology doesn’t change tremendously. But what you learn as you’re putting your methods to practice does bring you new information. So there’s no such thing as a set and forget mentality. You know, the the thing about being mostly digital is that you’ve got to constantly be iterating, learning and staying at the forefront of the different tools that your buyers might take advantage of, and also the technologies that we can use to better get in front of and service those prospects.

Genna Keller: Yeah, yeah. And Lee brought up the I, you know, phrase, right. It’s omnipresent. Um, and it is the wild wild west of that. And so, you know, we are constantly evaluating the tools and the technologies. And, you know, we’re constantly evaluating how can we stay current and how can we, you know, take advantage of those because you can’t just do those in a vacuum. You still have to have the human filter. Um, to your point, to keep up because everything is consistently changing. But you’ve got to have, you know, the folks that understand and can interpret what is happening in that realm.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you have any advice for the business to business marketer who maybe was relying on some of these third party platforms, like you mentioned, LinkedIn and Facebook and, um, and then they realized that, you know what, when I’m posting there and I’m spending a lot of time and energy and resources there, it’s not going to everybody that I think it’s going to and I’m going to in order to reach all those people, I’m going to have to, you know, pay those platforms. Because the old adage is true that if you if it’s free, then you’re the product. So they are realizing more and more that building up those kind of, um, audiences in those third party platforms isn’t really your audience.

Anne Marsden: I think that you have a good point, Lee, but particularly what it points to is the need for every marketer to understand all of the different channels that they should be using at the same time. We talk about omnichannel marketing because that’s what buyers now expect. But that’s also, as a B2B marketer, the only way you’re going to win. Gartner did a study, and they found that companies that use four or more channels to reach their target audience were 300% more effective in their marketing programs than those that just just used 1 or 2.

Genna Keller: Mhm. And to that point, you know the set it and forget it. That’s that’s gone. And those four to use Gartner’s data could fluctuate and change depending on the month depending on the seasonality of the business depending on, you know, what is going on from a macro economic perspective. You know those your channels are constantly evolving and that is our job to look at them and see which ones are working and which ones are not. And that is the beauty of the digital channels. We can see that, um, and we can see that in real time, and we can make adjustments in real time and advise our, our client base and marketers on what they should do.

Lee Kantor: So any advice for the B2B marketer out there? We’re like, what’s the low hanging fruit today? Where are some, uh, places they should be, um, putting their energy and resources. Uh. Any advice?

Anne Marsden: I think the advice.

Genna Keller: Go ahead. Yeah. Go ahead.

Anne Marsden: Uh, I think I think the advice has to be different for each person in each organization because you have to measure what is their maturity model today. If they’re not, um, super digitally focused, then the first, then start there. If they already have a fairly sophisticated tech stack and they understand that, then the advice becomes, where can you be gaining maximum ROI from each of your investments and using all of your investments together in that technology stack.

Genna Keller: Yeah. And even to back up, um, I think, you know, we can get caught up in the tools and the tech and the AI because that’s it’s cool, right? I mean, and it really is. And, and we have data as marketers that we’ve never had before. But oftentimes I think folks need to go back to the basics. And that basic is their messaging, right? Their content, you know, what are they saying externally to the market and is it right? Are they being consistent, particularly when you look at all of these channels. Right. So I think sometimes, you know, we all need to take a deep breath and just go back and make sure we’re we’re saying what we want to say and then we tweak it, you know, based on all those channels to.

Lee Kantor: Now, can you share a story maybe that illustrates how you were able to work with a company? You don’t have to name the name, but maybe share the problem that they had when they came to you and how you were able to take them to a new level.

Anne Marsden: Absolutely. Um, for instance, without naming clients, um, a very large manufacturer, um, had a had a need because they hadn’t put a lot of focus on their digital channels. They had a website, but that was about it, and they hadn’t really invested in understanding how it was being used. So they asked us to help them form a go to market approach that was digital first, and they recognized that their buyers were retiring, they were aging out and new, and they were selling to engineers, and they had new engineers coming in, so they wanted to find out the best ways to reach them. We started doing the go to market planning and the research. And just to give anecdotally, one of the things we found out, which we didn’t expect, and you don’t sometimes you just don’t know until you do the research. The one of the most popular social media channels for these engineers was Instagram. Turns out that these guys like to take pictures and show what they’ve been working on. So. So that opened up some new ways to get in front of and communicate with them. I mean, but that was only one of many things you have to put an integrated set of programs together to reach those people and get them the content that they need. So who I can tell you, go ahead.

Lee Kantor: Sorry. No, go ahead.

Anne Marsden: To close the loop on that. I can tell you that at the end of the first year, the program was so successful, the board decided to roll it out to the rest of the divisions of the company. They also tinkered with the idea. Because of that, they should stop doing trade shows because why spend all that money to face to face if our digital is being so successful? And we said, don’t stop doing that. You still need face to face. You know, it’s just you need to balance it.

Lee Kantor: So what is the ideal, uh, traveling Keller, uh, client look like now?

Genna Keller: Yeah. Um, I think it is. It is a company that believes in integrated marketing. Um, and particularly understands how marketing can impact sales. Right. And when we say integrated, you know, we do think of folks that understand growth marketing or want to. Right. Um, but also value public relations, the PR side of the business. And that goes back to that content and the messaging. And then you throw in some creative services that could be, um, a website design, it could be a refresh for a trade show, you know, as Anne mentioned. But understanding how all of those disciplines work together and understanding how they can help each other, and it really makes for a a marketing program that is firing on all cylinders. But you also have flexibility, right? So again, there may make some senses where it is you lean more into the PR, then you dial that back and you lean more into growth. So those are the fun ones where we can, you know, really just help them across the spectrum.

Lee Kantor: So what’s the pain they’re having today where a call to Travaglino Keller would be the right move?

Genna Keller: Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, and I think it varies by call and inbound leads that we receive and the folks that we know, some of them, it’s resources, purely a resource. You know, they need help. And they may be, uh, a marketing team of 1 or 2. And, you know, they need help on strategy. They need help on execution. Um, some it may be there is a new product, a new service, a new brand, a new company to launch. And it is that complete go to market strategy, you know, how do we get out there? Some it may be, um, growth pains and they may need funding or they may need to get in front of some strategics from a partnership perspective.

Lee Kantor: And if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you, either of you or somebody on the team. What is the website? What are the coordinates?

Genna Keller: Yeah. Well, you know, we practice what we preach. So we’ve got all of our social channels. But Trevino Keller comm.

Lee Kantor: And that’s t r e v e l I n o k e l l e r com.

Genna Keller: You got it.

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

Genna Keller: Thank you, Lee, for having us. Thank you.

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

Ron and Sue Rescigno With Rescigno’s Fundraising Professionals

by

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
Ron and Sue Rescigno With Rescigno's Fundraising Professionals
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Ron and Sue Rescigno, VP of Rescigno’s Fundraising Professionals.

A colleague, after reading Ron’s blogs and newsletters, once said, ” He is a person I would like to have a glass of wine or beer with. His literary voice is approachable, friendly, and has a Chicago southside feel to it. His style of writing is both unique and inviting.” A great compliment when you consider that Ron doesn’t drink and isn’t originally from the south side of Chicago.

His new book, Fatal Fundraising Flaws,” has been written for fundraising professionals who know they’re leaving money on the table.
Ron has helped nonprofit organizations grow their base of support for over 33 years. It is Ron’s hope that his new book will help nonprofit organizations raise more money so they can do even more good in the world.

He is known as a thought leader for nonprofits who seek new and creative ways of appealing to their constituents. Ron holds a BA in English from Lewis University and an MA in Educational Administration from Governors State University.

Sue spent the early years of her professional career in development at prestigious educational institutions such as Illinois Institute of Technology and St. Xavier University. During her tenure at IIT, she won awards from Council for Support of Education (CASE) for Sustained Performance in the annual fund.

Her degree is in Mass Communications from St. Xavier University. In 1992 she started Rescigno’s in her garage because she saw a need for the services RMS offers. The business has continued to grow and has helped more than 700 nonprofits achieve their fundraising goals.

Follow Rescigno’s on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Why some nonprofit’s fail
  • What role does communicating with donors play in getting donations from individuals
  • If an individual makes a gift of support to a charity organization what does he have the right to expect in return
  • Is it a good idea for nonprofit organizations to describe what they need from donors
  • Does direct mail still have a role to play in raising money

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 Sue and Ron Rescigno and they are with Rescigno’s Fundraising Professionals. Welcome.

Ron Rescigno: Thank you. We’re glad to be here.

Sue Rescigno: Hi, Lee.

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

Sue Rescigno: Okay, sure. So Recinos has been in business for over 33 years. We started actually out of our garage and as a direct mail communications office for nonprofit organizations, and we have grown to be a full service consulting firm for nonprofits, helping them raise money to do great things in the world.

Lee Kantor: So was your backstory that both of you were involved in nonprofits.

Ron Rescigno: Actually? Um, yes. That is our backstory. I was involved in Catholic high school education for 23 years, first as a teacher and then as an administrator, and Sue has worked at um. Several nonprofit organizations write.

Sue Rescigno: In fundraising and development.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned that you’ve been doing this for several decades now. How has kind of the landscape changed when it comes to fundraising for these nonprofits?

Sue Rescigno: Wow, it’s changed a lot. Well, what’s interesting that we’ve been since we’ve been in it so long, we’ve seen the different trends and and we’ve gone through the, you know, the recession. Um, where okay. So how did that how did the recession really change? Nonprofit fundraising. It changed it in terms of people were doing like they were sending out to the masses of people, so they were communicating with maybe 50,000 people, asking them to support their organization. And they were doing beautiful, like brochures and really flashy things when the recession hit. The donors said, please don’t spend so much money on that, so be smarter about it. So what we did at Recinos was we started targeting. So we do a lot more with data, like who are you communicating with and why? And so we research that before we ever send anything out. And then the pieces are simple. They are they are simple solicitations, um, like an eight and a half by 11 letter. I’m sure you get these. They’re appeals from your college or nonprofits that you are, um, connected with. And so like that change happened during the recession and then things started to come back. Um, and people started doing, uh, fancy brochures and things like that again. And then the pandemic hit and we went right back and something interesting that I just want to throw out here is that direct mail fundraising is still the number one source of finding new donors. Everybody thought email was going to change that and it never did. And that was proven during the, um, pandemic. So yeah, that’s just one interesting trend.

Ron Rescigno: And that’s what we have specialized in for these past 33 years that we’ve been in businesses, direct mail, fundraising. We’ve, um, begun a transition into helping organizations with capital campaigns now, major gifts and mentoring and coaching. But it’s it’s still that one on one piece that you get in the mail that gets the best response.

Lee Kantor: Now, I, um, in my business, I interview businesses and nonprofits and a variety of industries and sectors and the nonprofits I find they lean on, like galas as their big fundraising. What’s your take on that?

Ron Rescigno: So. So, uh, it’s it’s very interesting because, um, the galas are great things for a lot of organizations. They raise a lot of money. But when you when you kind of measure that against the time that it takes to put the time and the, uh, the physical time as well as the, the emotional time that it takes to put one of those events together. We often say, why not target one of your best donors or a couple of your best donors and ask them for a specific amount that you expect to to raise from from a gala and avoid all that. In my opinion, unnecessary work that you could be spending on creating more relationships with more donors.

Sue Rescigno: Yeah, if I could just add to that, I think that, um, it’s good for cultivation. It’s good to keep your donors connected to each other, bring everybody together. But I agree with Ron. The work that’s put involved in them, you’re much better sitting sitting down with a donor and ask them, asking them for $100,000 gift than trying to put all that work and staff into a gala.

Lee Kantor: That was my instinct as well. It seems like the galas are a lot of work, a lot of headache, but it just seems that that’s the go to move for so many of these folks is I got to put this thing and all of a sudden they’re become event planners, and then they got to go out and get silent auction things. And like, everybody is doing things that they’re not like, great at, and they’re begrudgingly doing it in the hopes that at the end of the day, when they look at the numbers, it’s like you said, couldn’t we have done something else that’s more efficient use of all of our times and talents?

Sue Rescigno: Right. And you’re.

Ron Rescigno: Exactly right.

Sue Rescigno: And that’s why we we work a lot with our clients data. So looking at the data and examining like, um, who you have in your database. So are they candidates for an annual fund gift? You know, maybe a gift of $5,000 or less, or are they candidates for a larger gift? And then you can develop major gift campaigns. And maybe you have are having small little events, maybe like where you have your major gift, people coming to have dinner with your president or dinner with your executive director or a breakfast or something like that. That type of event with major gift prospects is very important.

Ron Rescigno: The kind that’s much more focused.

Sue Rescigno: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: So part of the strategy in your model is obviously sending direct mail and direct communication with a select audience of your kind of superfans. How do you help your organizations build that list to begin with, to get people in that funnel so they can solicit them at some point?

Sue Rescigno: Right. So it all depends. So you always start with the list that they already have. So what we normally find is that a client will have a list of. It could be ten, 20, 25,000 or more um in their current database. But they only communicate with a certain number. Right. So our question is always like, well, who are those people on your list? So you would always start with the current list. Um, and then there are ways to add to your list by working with your board. Um, getting names to put on your list. Um, uh, doing kind of a friend raising thing. There are acquisition, you know, purchasing lists. You can buy lists that, um, you can acquire lists of, um, people that look like your current donors. So you do a profile of your current donor, and then you buy a list of people who look like that. So and you do that gradually, um, because that costs a lot. But normally, you know, people should be mailing to at least 5000, um, and then they want to add maybe 2500 per year. They, they add people, they take people off. But that’s how you maintain the list.

Lee Kantor: But how do you build the list from scratch? Like, say you’re a new or, uh, you know, an emerging nonprofit? How do you kind of get up to that 5000? Is it through kind of the initial board and you just kind of build it, you know, individual by individual?

Sue Rescigno: Yeah. Um, yes. And if you’re a brand new nonprofit, I would suggest purchasing a community list and people within your community. I always tell organizations that it’s it’s, um, people are happy that nonprofits exist in their area. Um, so and and but they need to be aware of what you’re doing. So in the beginning and getting that list, um, you’re, you would acquire a community list.

Lee Kantor: And then once you have that kind of at least a minimum number, you’re saying, I think I heard you say around 5000 is kind of the number you need in order to kind of start working that list to get the results you’re going to want.

Ron Rescigno: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: And then is that the ideal, um, client for you, somebody who has a list already of at least 5000?

Sue Rescigno: Well, yes, that would be ideal for us. Um. However, we also work with, um, clients that are much larger, um, that already have their list. And sometimes, um, many times, um, clients will come to us because their program is stagnant. Um, and we find that there are basic fundamentals that people need to be following. And like one of the things that is really important is that you’re not only asking and soliciting, um, gifts, but you’re also, um, uh, sharing information with them. And you want to talk about like, impact. And.

Ron Rescigno: Yeah. So, so one of the big things that we, we really focus on and try to impart to our clients is that when you send out a solicitation letter, it the letter should be what we call donor focused or donor centered. And by that I mean it should not. The letter should not be about how great your nonprofit is. And look at what we’ve done in the last six months or the last year. And and that’s why we’re worthy of a gift from you or an increased gift. Rather, it should be. Look at the opportunity you have as a donor to make an impact in the world. You have an opportunity to to really make a difference and tell stories that kind of reflect on that difference that a donor or a potential donor can make. And when donors see that there is a need to help someone rather than to help an organization. It’s to help someone who would benefit from what the organization does that gets them to open their pocketbook.

Lee Kantor: So they like to see kind of where their money’s going and what kind of impact it’s making, not just, hey, give to our cause because we’ve been around for 150 years.

Ron Rescigno: You hit it right on the head. That’s exactly what we we try to to talk with our clients about all the time And, you know, uh, there is, uh, the tendency is to want to talk about, look at what we’ve done. And this is why we deserve your support. And there is a place for that, for example, in a newsletter or um, um, a an impact report, but in a, in a letter where you’re asking for a gift of support, it should be about how the gift can make a difference in someone’s life. Who who the organization is, uh, says in their mission that they’re trying to help.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned nonprofits, obviously, as kind of your sweet spot. Is there a niche within nonprofits? Is it medical? Is it, uh, business associations are there, you know, are they health related? Are they community related? Like what’s what’s a good nonprofit for you and what’s not?

Ron Rescigno: Well, probably one of our top, one of the top, um, niches is, uh, educational institutions. We work with, um, several community colleges across the country, a health care organizations. We work with hospitals, religious organizations, um arts and culture, um, animal welfare organizations to name. And museums which would fall under the arts and culture. Uh, just to name a few.

Lee Kantor: And then, uh, I mean, talking to you just for these few minutes, you can see there’s a wealth of knowledge, but you’ve kind of documented some of this knowledge in a new book, Fatal Fundraising Flaws.

Ron Rescigno: Yes. Thank you. I’ve, uh, I wrote the book and, uh, actually, it, uh, the launch of the book was about a month or so ago, and, uh, it’s available on Amazon. And what I do in the book is I talk about mistakes. Common mistakes, um, in many cases, simple mistakes that nonprofits make that cause them to not get funded, not have the revenue coming in that they they deserve to have, that they should have. And I offer solutions to, um, to to fix those mistakes. One of the most common mistakes is nonprofit organizations do not invest in their fundraising program. They don’t put enough money into the program in terms of resources, in terms of the technology that’s needed today to to really, um, do well and in terms of staffing their fundraising departments. Uh, the more you, you staff and the more technology you use to your advantage, the more, um, support you’re going to receive.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share? Don’t name the name of the group, but maybe share the problem that they came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Ron Rescigno: Um. Let me.

Sue Rescigno: Oh. Oh, sure. Yeah. That one. Okay, so, um, yes, I can share this. So, uh, we work with a very well known, um, national organization that, um, came to us. Um, they raise their religious organization and they raise a lot of money every year. And they were just stuck. It was just stagnant. And the thing is that they had been doing it the same way every year and never examining it. Okay. By that, I mean, um, they had a good program. Um, but they weren’t analyzing everything. So when we asked them about the analysis and how it compared to the previous years, um, we could see that, um, it was just stagnant. And so we asked them, um, they weren’t getting their acknowledgment letters out in an appropriate time. That’s a huge thing. So that there’s a cycle of you have to ask for a gift, whether it’s a large gift or it’s a it’s an annual fun gift. If it’s a major gift or an annual fund, you have to ask for the gift. You have to acknowledge the gift in a timely manner. You have to share the impact, and then you have to ask again. And so normally when clients come to us with a um, issue, it’s that they’re missing one of those steps. And a lot of times it’s the acknowledgment or sharing the impact. They’re good at asking, but they’re not sharing enough other information with the, um with the donors.

Ron Rescigno: Does that or or there are organizations that maybe aren’t so good at the asking part because they are reluctant to ask too often. And that’s a real myth when it comes to fundraising. Is that, um, all we we already asked that particular donor, uh, six months ago, and we received a gift from them. We don’t want to ask them again for another gift until a full cycle of a of a year has gone by. And what our research tells us time and time again is that if you have a compelling story, a compelling reason for the donor to give, ask again after you have told them about the impact their initial gift has made, because more often than you would believe, you’ll get a second gift from him, from them. And guess what happens then? You then can kind of begin to get the idea that, gee whiz, that individual may become someone who may become a loyal giver for a number of years and a major gift candidate, or a legacy gift candidate.

Sue Rescigno: Oh, and could I just say, I just want to add so that one organization that I was that I mentioned, um, what they worked with us when we started working with them by following a plan. They didn’t really have a plan. They just kept doing everything that they did the year before. They didn’t really have a plan. When we put together a plan that included these, uh, more of the about acknowledgments and sharing the impact and also analyzing what they were doing, they increased within two years. We increased it by 60%.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it’s funny when you have the right strategy and you execute it, all of a sudden good things can happen. Instead of having no strategy and just hoping and then doing what you did, you know, last year and just thinking it’s going to work. It’s um, a lot of times you need those fresh eyes and people like you that have kind of the experience and, and have kind of the scar tissue of learning the hard way. What works, what doesn’t work, what’s optimal in being able to give best practices and all the groups that you’ve worked with? I mean, it seems kind of like a no brainer to at least have some conversation with you just to learn, you know, what’s what. What is the typical kind of first, um, project for you? Like, what do people have to bite off on a whole major campaign? Or how do people work with you?

Ron Rescigno: Um, many people, many organizations work with us, uh, on year long plans. And that is the ideal way to work with us, because, um, we can create a plan that builds a program from, uh, the ground up. There are individual cases of organizations that choose to work with us on what we call one off projects, and that’s fine. Um, we.

Sue Rescigno: That’s fine because once they work with us, they then want to sign on with a yearly contract.

Ron Rescigno: Well, that’s that’s that’s true. Right. And we we build a straight we can build a strategy with those organizations that that sign on to do yearly work. And what we have found is then they they stay with us for years afterwards. Right.

Lee Kantor: And then if people that don’t have the budget, they can get the book and at least begin.

Ron Rescigno: Well, that’s what we believe. Uh, and the book, as I said, is filled with these common mistakes that nonprofits make. For example, Sue was referencing the large organization that was just they were kind of stuck in a rut. They were satisfied with what they were doing, and but they weren’t motivated to do better. Complacency is a, a a big mistake because there’s so people want to support organizations that are doing good work in the world. But unless you’re you’re out there getting your not only your name out, but your story out, your mission and your vision out there. Um, people don’t don’t know that you need more money to do more good in the world.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website? What is the best way to connect with you?

Ron Rescigno: Our website is dot recinos. That’s r e s as in Sam signals.com and it’s ron@recinos.com or sue@recinos.com.

Lee Kantor: And then you can learn more about the book there. And, or you can just go to Amazon and get the book there.

Ron Rescigno: Exactly. You can learn about it on the website or go to Amazon.com. The book is available there. Yes.

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

Ron Rescigno: And we.

Ron Rescigno: Appreciate you.

Sue Rescigno: Yes we do. Thank you. Lee.

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

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