Business RadioX ®

Mickey Leech With Schumacher Electric Corporation

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SchumacherMickey LeechMickey Leech is the Chief Executive Officer of Schumacher Electric Corporation, a power conversion company that specializes in creating, patented, award-winning technology that serves professionals and consumers in all parts of the battery charging, boosting & portable power market, including automotive, recreational home, and garden and more.

After leading several divisions at MTD for more than 17 years, Mickey joined Schumacher in 2021, as it approached its 75th anniversary. In his new role, Mickey has been working to expand Schumacher’s line of products into new and upcoming areas of the market. He hopes to continue Schumacher’s legacy for innovation by entering new product categories and channels of distribution.

Connect with Mickey on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Schumacher’s 75th anniversary – years of innovation
  • Recent products
  • Cater to all lifestyles (automotive, Overlanding, RV, boating, etc.)
  • Tips for car maintenance heading into winter
  • Discuss the future of the company

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Dallas, Texas. It’s time for Dallas Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Dallas Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Mickey Leach with Schumacher Electric. Welcome, Mickey.

Mickey Leech: [00:00:28] Hello, Lee. Good to be with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, I’m so excited to learn more about Schumacher Electric. Tell us a little bit about what you’re up to. How are you serving folks?

Mickey Leech: [00:00:37] We are serving folks in a lot of different ways, but primarily around power conversion. We are celebrating our 75th anniversary as a power conversion company. And we we essentially empower people to enjoy the benefits and freedom that comes with mobility. And we make sure that everybody’s vehicles, no matter what type of vehicle or what type of power needs they have, they can meet them. And for example, jump starters for cars, battery chargers, for motorcycles, ATVs, boats and so on and so forth.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] So 75 years ago, was that the business that you all were in, or is that been kind of an evolution over the years?

Mickey Leech: [00:01:17] It’s always been power conversion, but it’s been an evolution as to how we apply that. We were based in Chicago on the Schumacher family founded this business. You may be familiar with Don Schumacher, the Hall of Fame race driver. Drag racing particularly. And we were primarily in power conversion for the television and audio industry back in Chicago. And then when that industry and technology changed, Don transformed the business into an automotive power conversion company. And that’s really when we got we’re ubiquitous when it comes to jump starters and battery charges for all types of cars. And I’ve been with Schumacher now a year and a half, and Mr. Schumacher sold the majority interest to a private equity firm in 2021 and brought me and leadership team in to transform the business into a power conversion around energy independence and electric vehicle charging.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] Now, are you seeing is the level of adoption of electric? Is it at a pace that you anticipated or is it faster or slower?

Mickey Leech: [00:02:24] We are developing as fast as we can because there are opportunities everywhere. So the market opportunities for EV is accelerating very quickly. And I think what we’re going to find is consumers are going to adopt the cars as they become more available and more affordable price points. And the automotive OEMs are making sure that that happens. So really there is the foundation is being built for it, and I think you’re going to see some really tremendous acceleration in 2023 and 2024.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:57] In terms of individuals buying electric cars or electric vehicles.

Mickey Leech: [00:03:02] Yeah, Yeah, exactly. And we’re Schumacher’s role really for the community and for the environment is really to help improve the adoption of an electric vehicle. All right. So we are focused on developing chargers for people’s residence so that essentially like your cell phone, when you go go home at night, you plug in your cell phone and it’s ready to go for the next day. And we provide a range of chargers for your home that will provide you fast charging and then a slower charging, if that’s what you want.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:35] And then it’ll be kind of vehicle agnostic.

Mickey Leech: [00:03:38] Correct? Correct. Yes, a vehicle agnostic. There’s just really there’s Tesla has a type of adapter and then everybody else has their own. And then our business in Europe, it’s actually one type of power adapter to the car for all vehicles. So you’ll start seeing more consumers in your neighborhood driving electric vehicles and enjoying the benefits of that comes with it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:01] Now, our other vehicles and other kind of modes of transportation, at least using electric a little bit are they’re electric boats or they’re electric, you know, ATVs or RVs. Are there other kind of vehicles that are moving towards electric?

Mickey Leech: [00:04:18] Absolutely. And as an example, I spent 17 years at a company called MTD Products, which makes brands such as Cub Cadet and Troy built. And over the last probably ten years, we were developing lawn mowers, riding tractors, string trimmers, leaf blowers that are battery powered. So the outdoor power equipment is definitely electrifying. Here in town, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, there are entrepreneurs and businesses, electrifying boats to make actually boating more safe. If you think about all the issues about personal boating, it can get dangerous out there. And there’s really a use case for using technology to improve that. So we’re collaborating with a group who’s a. Electrifying boats. And then there’s a big company here in the area that’s also electrifying motorcycles and ATVs.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:11] Now, do you see a point in time or maybe you’ve identified a point in time where, you know, like kind of electric charging stations will be as ubiquitous as gas stations, or will it be different where they’ll be? Because it takes the time to charge that. It’ll be like maybe they’ll be at coffee shops rather than standalone convenience stores or gas stations. So you have something to do while you’re charging.

Mickey Leech: [00:05:36] Yeah. So our our perspective is that we’re only going to get busier and our calendars are going to be filled with more to do. And we are all consumers and creatures of convenience. And we we see that charging at home is going to become more prevalent and actually going to be part of a grid ecosystem. So here in Dallas two years ago, we had a huge storm and, you know, everybody lost power for or most people lost power for days, if not weeks. And there’s a way to be able to create some resilience in complement the grid. When you when you connect your vehicle, which is a basically a huge energy storage device with your home power, you may have a home power standby generator, you may have solar panels and a battery bank. So your vehicle connected to your home power connected to the grid becomes this ecosystem that creates a little bit more resilience. So we really see it going to home charging and not so much. They’ll definitely be public charging, but I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about standing around coffee shop for 20 to 30 minutes.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:53] So the range for these vehicles will be such that you’ll just charge in the evening and that should be good for 90% of the people that are using electric vehicles.

Mickey Leech: [00:07:04] Right. Right. So much has been talked about with road trips and that is going to be solved. Right. There’s a lot of government investment going in that to make sure that you could go on a road trip in your electric vehicle. You know, that’s that’s a minority of the big minority of the time you spend with your car. So if you get to 300 miles on a charge, you’re easily going to meet all your needs from charging at home.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] Because most people during the course of their day or are driving well under that. Right. It’s probably 100 ish at the moment.

Mickey Leech: [00:07:37] Dallas-fort Worth area.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:38] As far as probably bigger because you’re so spread out, Right. So you’re probably pushing it 200.

Mickey Leech: [00:07:44] Yeah. Yeah. And you know, whether or not you have to go from empty to full is, you know, you just quite easily top it off. Every night when you get home, you get out of your car, you plug it in and you’re good to go, right.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:56] It’ll just be just that’s how you handle arriving home and leaving.

Mickey Leech: [00:08:01] Mm hmm. And, you know, we’re we’re introducing a lot of technology that, you know, you hear a lot about smart homes and home automation, and we’re creating a lot of technology and partnering with firms who are providing more. You’re putting more tools into consumers hands so they could manage their own home in the sense of a lot of areas or regions charge for electricity at different rates throughout the day or at different demand levels. So we’re creating smart tools. You know, the in our case, an EV charger that would say if you’re doing your laundry and charging your car, you know, you’re going to be maxing out on power. We’re going to be able to to spread that demand out so it evens out. And you get your car, your car charged at a time when you’re not using your laundry.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] So you have your own kind of bank, your charging bank that you can use as you needed in your own home.

Mickey Leech: [00:08:59] Yeah. So we sell the wall mounted EV charger and then technology that then integrates into a lot of the smart power systems that are coming into homes these days.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:11] Now, does it work kind of where like say, there was a power outage? Could you use your car to like, power your refrigerator?

Mickey Leech: [00:09:19] You you will in the future? Not today, but you definitely will in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:25] So everything will work symbiotically because you know it’s the same. Do you have the charge? You have the electricity. It’s just in a car rather than in your home at that moment.

Mickey Leech: [00:09:35] Yeah. And of course, you know, then you’re like, Well, wait a minute, now I have I still have my cold beer in the fridge, but my car can’t go anywhere. Right. So you still are going to need to recharge your car when the storm is over. So, you know, you may need a standby generator or you may need solar panels, but at all, it’s going to work together.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:52] Now, are you seeing more people embracing solar?

Mickey Leech: [00:09:56] We’re seeing it in a lot of the regions where we’re seeing higher EV adoption and it’s really around that ecosystem between being able to generate solar electricity through solar stored in my battery and then when I get home at night plugging that into my car and not using the grid to charge your vehicle.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] So right now is the adoption like primarily like a certain person of a certain mindset? Is is that kind of I’m the solar person. It’s not gotten to the point where everybody that has good clear view of the sun is saying, hey, this is a no brainer. Let me just pull the trigger on this.

Mickey Leech: [00:10:35] Right. Well, there’s a couple of things. There’s. Local building ordinances are some markets where new homes have to have solar. So that is a requirement, some areas, particularly in California. And then also they’re cost prohibitive for many people right now. But that’s going to continue to improve and you’ll see a higher adoption of it. So right now you’re seeing most electric vehicles are out of the price range for most of the market. And I think in a lot of cases, so is the solar battery ecosystem. But that I think is going to continue to change as time goes here.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] So now for you, what is the most rewarding part of this job? It must be exciting to be kind of on the kind of the edge of technology here. Like you can kind of see the future that other people aren’t really participating in yet.

Mickey Leech: [00:11:29] Well, what’s most exciting about this is. Really preserving the core business that we have. We have a tremendous rich legacy with the business and our traditional automotive charging, jumpstarting and so on, and leading leading the organization with working through automotive aftermarket and continuing to serve our base customers while we go and try to create the future comes to home electric vehicle charging. So working with the team is really the most exciting part of that because there’s this natural tension between keeping the old going and improving the old while we really participate in creating the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:13] Yeah, you don’t want to forget who got you here.

Mickey Leech: [00:12:16] It’s it’s a tremendously successful business and we’ve got a lot of customers who rely on us to keep very safe, high quality, very reliable products to keep vehicles on the road.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:30] Speaking of which, do you have any kind of advice or tips for folks as we head into winter when it comes to car maintenance?

Mickey Leech: [00:12:38] I would say, and this is not a plug for us, I would say every person for the account of safety and security in your vehicle should have a lithium powered jump starter. These devices are no bigger than maybe two books from the library. And well, for those younger people, the library is a place where you used to get paper books. But so you have a lithium jumpstart. It’s pretty small. It’s like size. Let’s call it two cell phones and it’s got jump starter cables. And you’ll never be in a position when your car doesn’t start when it’s cold or your battery has failed you. You can start the vehicle without relying on somebody to come help and some stranger come to your vehicle and help you jumpstart or sit in there waiting for a tow truck driver to arrive. So my advice is get a portable, lightweight lithium jump starter and put it in your trunk.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:32] And for parents listening out there, that’s a nice gift for your kid when they go away to college or leave the home.

Mickey Leech: [00:13:40] Great point. Great point. I’ve got two adult daughters and that was exactly what they got for Christmas last year.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:46] So what’s next for Schumacher as you kind of grow in the Dallas Fort Worth area? Is do you need more talent? You need more opportunity in the automotive space. I mean, you’re a household name there. I would think. So. What do you need more of and how can we help?

Mickey Leech: [00:14:04] We there’s a couple of areas. I think one is, you know, how can we help? Right. We’re we’re the new kids on the block. And I think this community has worked, works really well together. And it’s a very friendly business environment. So we’re here to participate and be a good corporate citizens. And one of the things that attracted us to the market is the growth and the growing number of people in very talented positions. So we have a design engineering center here, our customer service organization, marketing finance and our corporate headquarters, essentially. And, you know, we’re continue to grow and we continue to looking for talent and helping us develop products in in the electrical conversion space.

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

Mickey Leech: [00:14:54] Schumacher electric dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] Well, Micki, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Mickey Leech: [00:15:01] Thank you very much. It’s nice being with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:03] All right. That’s Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Dallas Business Radio.

 

Dr. Guy Hadden With CSL Plasma

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Coach-Karena-ambassadorCSL PlasmaGuy HaddenDr. Guy Hadden, Center Manager at CSL Plasma.

CSL Plasma is one of the world’s largest collectors of human plasma.

As a leader in plasma collection, CSL Plasma is committed to excellence and innovation in everything they do. Their work helps to ensure that tens of thousands of people are able to live normal, healthy lives. They are committed to their work because their lives depend on them.

CSL Plasma operates one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated plasma collection networks, with more than 300 plasma collection centers in U.S., Europe and China and employs over 12,000 employees.

CSL Plasma is vertically integrated, meaning plasma collected at CSL Plasma facilities are used by CSL Behring for the sole purpose of manufacture and deliver its life-saving therapies to people in more than 100 countries.

Connect with Dr. Guy on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Richmond, Virginia. It’s time for Richmond Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor are here, another episode of Richmond Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor War Cry Consulting Solutions, supporting women to lean into their purpose, craft their vision and crush their goals. Today on Richmond Business Radio, we have Dr. Guy Hadden with CSL Plasma. Welcome.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:00:40] Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:42] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about CSL plasma. How are you serving folks?

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:00:48] CSL plasma is a biopharmaceutical company is what we are. The plasma portion that I’m affiliated with is a division within the larger parent group. We’ve been collecting human plasma for the manufacture of different serums and therapies for treating just a variety of diseases, mostly rare diseases, but nonetheless diseases with for thousands and thousands of people around the world.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] So is donating plasma the same as donating blood?

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:01:27] Sort of. When you go in and you donate blood, they take the whole blood from you. That part is the same here. Where it differs is when you donate whole blood, they’ll take a pint or a liter of blood from you and then they’ll keep that entire amount of blood. And then you can’t donate again for another 56 to 60 days because it takes that long for your body to regenerate it. In the plasma process, we take the whole blood just like, say, the Red Cross would, and we run it through a centrifuge or a four rhesus machine. We separate the blood from the plasma. When I say blood, I should say we separate the red blood cells, the white blood cells and the platelets, because those three items and the fourth item being plasma is what comprise comprises all of the blood that’s in your body. All right. And so what we do is we separate the plasma from those other elements. We give those elements back to the donor IV group, goes right back into the donor, and we only keep the plasma throughout this process. You can actually donate two times a week. You can donate as long as there’s a day in between. So if you donate it on Monday, you can donate again on Wednesday and you can donate up to the two times in a seven day period.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:57] And that’s because you’re putting the less the plasma, everything else is going back into the donor.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:03:04] That that is correct. We also supplement with just normal saline. So you’ll get that upon leaving or finishing your your donation procedure. So, I mean, technically, when you walk out of the building, you’re walking out of the building with the exact same of volume of fluid that you walk into the building with. So and then within 24 to 48 hours, your body is going to replenish every bit of that plasma that was extracted.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:36] And then so a donor could do this more often. And then you’re getting that needed plasma more frequently.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:03:44] Absolutely. A donor can donate up to two times every seven days year round.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:51] And then is the experience from the donor side pretty similar other than the kind of getting the IV back and getting the fluids back into them.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:04:03] Yeah, it’s the you know, if you’ve ever given blood, then the experience is virtually the same. The the cells and everything that are going back into the body are not going in through a different tube like a second needle, any of that kind of stuff. It’s going through the same process. And so through the same tube, the same needle, you only get stuck once and the whole process will actually take a little bit longer than it would for you to donate blood. You could probably donate blood in anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. It really depends upon how hydrated you are. The process here is going to take you anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending upon the how hydrated you are and whether or not you’re really prepared to donate.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:58] And that’s an important thing also. So if somebody is interested in donating, how would they go about being kind of optimally prepared.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:05:08] As far as as far as the the donation process, being prepared really means nothing more than being properly hydrated, you know, eating, eating a decent, well-balanced meal. Obviously, if you eat it in the morning and you come in the afternoon, that meal isn’t going to help you because that meal hasn’t even been absorbed through your body. So it’s one of those things that, you know, for a day or two prior to donating, you know, if you’re eating a decent meal, you’re keeping fully hydrated, then the process goes smooth, it’s fast and you know, you’re in and out of here within an hour to an hour and a half.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:53] And then why should someone consider doing this instead of or in conjunction with donating blood?

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:06:05] Well, I mean, that’s a great question, and I don’t want to talk to anybody out of donating blood because blood is very much needed as well. Our parent company, which is CSL Behring, and they use the human plasma that we’re collecting and they use it to produce different therapies and pharmaceuticals to treat numerous diseases, you know, that are all around the globe. All right. We we provide these different medications in over 100 countries around the planet. The therapies are different types of bleeding disorders, such as hemophilia, von willebrand’s, disease, primary immune deficiencies, head, a hereditary angioedema, respiratory disease, neurological disorders, autoimmune diseases. Plasma is also used in cardiac surgery, organ transplantation, burn treatments, cancer treatments used in trauma. And then it’s also one of the big things is to prevent hemolytic disease in newborn babies. So the need is there and. The majority of these diseases. It doesn’t necessarily cure the disease, but it provides a much better quality of life for these patients around the world. I’ve spoke with I can’t tell you how many how many different patients that I’ve spoke with or people that are that are actually using these different types of of drugs and therapies to allow them to do the things that you and I normally do and we don’t even think about and don’t don’t consider. So that’s why it’s such an important. Important topic and issue and that we really push for and try to help.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:08:09] Unfortunately, to one person that has, say, von Willebrand’s disease, all right, that one person requires up to 1200 donations of plasma just for that one person per year. So, you know, I mean, it’s we can’t make enough of it. All right. Let me rephrase that. The body makes it, but we can’t store enough of it to treat everybody who actually needs the product. And so that’s why there’s just such a push right now to to help as many people as we can. And of course, coming out of COVID, you know, there was a lot of people with the lockdowns and everything that the donations slowed way down and but the need for the product didn’t. And so that’s kind of where we are now, where it’s just created a a supply issue, much like groceries and everything else. And probably the biggest thing between donating blood and donating plasma is when you donate plasma, you have that knowledge that you’re helping somebody. But you’re also getting paid for it. So that’s a nice little perk that and that’s why we say that, you know, it’s it’s good for the great for the individual and good for you because, you know, they get the medication they need and then, you know, you get paid for your time to come and do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Now, for folks who are suffering from one one of those diseases, are they typically the first move is to go to family members? I would imagine that’s the first thing that the family reaches out to everybody and say, hey, this is important. Let’s all do this for the sake of, you know, our niece or our cousin or whatever. But like you said, this is something that the general population should be thinking about in order to just do good for others. But also you can get paid. So it’s kind of a win win win all the way around.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:10:18] Absolutely. And to be honest with you, that’s what really got me into this in the first place is because of my own daughter. You know, she’s got an autoimmune disorder. I don’t know where it came from. Does it run in the family? But it’s just one of those things that out of the blue she ended up with it. And she’s currently taking some of the medications that that I personally don’t make because I’m on the plasma side. But our company makes and let me tell you, it’s a world of difference between before she started and where she is now. I mean, it’s not going to remove that condition from her. She’s going to have that till she dies, but at least she acts and feels like she did before, before the whole thing happened. So, yeah, absolutely. And when anything hits close to you, you know, it becomes bigger. You know? I mean, it’s crazy that I would venture to say that most people, if you talk to them about plasma, you know, and donating plasma, they really don’t even know what you’re talking about. I mean, this is not one of these these things that have been widely publicized, publicized like donating blood. So that thought really just isn’t automatically their right.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:38] It’s not top of mind, but the need is there. I mean.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:11:42] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] So if somebody wants to learn more about this, find to see if there’s a place for them to donate, what is the website? What’s the best way to go about getting involved?

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:11:57] The easiest way to do is just I mean, if you have access to a computer or a phone, just go to CSL and that’s really all you have to put in a CSL if you want. You can put CSL plasma, which is our specific department of CSL. But either way I’ll get you to it right there on that website. There’s a spot in there, you know that you can see all of the different centers. We have over 300 centers in the United States, we have over 900 centers around around the globe. You can pick a state, a city and all of the places within that geographical area and get addresses, phone numbers and everything to that particular CSL. There’s even a link on there. You know, for careers, if you’re looking for a job, you know, if you want to be within this industry, you know, and the jobs are listed the exact same way, so you can do it by state by city and, and just kind of go through right here in the Richmond area. We’ve got two two centers, one in Henrico and one in Richmond, and then we’ve got one down in Norfolk. So if you’re in the Richmond area, we’ve got one one within an easy driving distance to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:15] And like you said, you know, if you want to do this, to do to do good, sure do that. But if you want to do it to earn some extra money, I’m on the website right now. It says you can earn up to $1,000 in your first month.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:13:30] Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and every month you see once you once you become a new donor. All right. Basically your first eight donations is what’s considered a new donor. All right. So you can make anywhere from 800 clear up to 1200. All of the centers have different promotions going on each month. Then once you become a qualified donor, then obviously those those numbers drop a little bit. But you go from making $800 in your first month to making five or $600 in your second month. And virtually you can do that year round. So I mean, I have a lot of donors that come in and they basically treat this as a second job. You know, I mean, it’s a couple of hours of your time, you know, two times a week. And you make five, $600 a month. I mean, it’s pretty hard to beat.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:30] Yeah. One more time. The website I was on CECL plasma dot com. That’s where I found this information. Is that kind of a clearinghouse for this?

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:14:39] So that one more time I’m sorry.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:41] I was at CECL plasma dot com. The letter C, the letter S the letter L plasma plasma.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:14:50] That is correct, yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:53] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Dr. Guy Hadden: [00:14:59] Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and even talk about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:03] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Richmond Business Radio.

Jason Reep With The Employers’ Association

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TEAJason ReepJason Reep joined The Employers’ Association in 2015 as Director of Learning & Inclusion. In that role, Jason lead the Training & Development activities, oversaw the Association’s Affirmative Action services, and provided coaching, mentoring, training and consulting support. Jason was named President by the Board of Directors effective September 1, 2018.

Prior to joining TEA, Jason worked in the healthcare field and at a “sister” employers association in Seattle, WA. Jason’s experience includes over 20 years of Strategic Inclusion & Diversity work accomplished through his activities in Training & Development, Organizational Development, Coaching, and Human Resources Consulting. Jason has worked with employees at all levels within manufacturing, healthcare, non-profit, educational/governmental and service industries providing coaching for executive leaders, development for supervisors and managers and a variety of training experiences for hourly and contract employees.

Jason was graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a BA in Psychology then attained a MEd in Human Resource Development from Xavier University. He has been a Certified Association Executive (CAE), a SHRM Senior Certified Professional (SHM-SCP), and a Senior Human Resource Professional (SPHR).

In addition to his role at The Employers’ Association, Jason has been an adjunct professor at Grand Valley State University (Human Resources) and serves on the Board of Directors for Grow, Health Net of West Michigan, and The Employer Associations of America (EAA). Jason is also a past member of the Experience Grand Rapids Diversity Advisory Council and the WGVU Engage Inclusion committee.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Leadership Skills
  • Embedding Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion into organizational strategy
  • Development through training AND coaching
  • Balancing tactical and strategic work in small organizations
  • Human Resources as a strategic business function

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.

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

Jason Reep: [00:00:32] Well, thank you, Lee. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about the employers association. How are you serving folks?

Jason Reep: [00:00:42] Yeah, so so we’re in association with about we serve about 400 members and our members are our businesses. So they may range from very small. We actually have a few of our members who are just a couple of people, and then we have some of our members who are thousands and thousands. Our average, though is probably around 100, 150 employees, and then we provide support to obviously our members. But our responsibility really is to the business community as a whole in the sense that we really want to help employers with those people related aspects of a business. So the human resources component and and then we we have a number of ways that we attempt to achieve that. We do a lot of research. So today we just released the areas we’re in West Michigan. So the area is largest wage and salary survey that we do on an annual basis, and we do a number of other surveys to really provide data so that those businesses can make good strategic decisions in their various decision makings that they’re making for around people, but also lots of strategy decisions. We do we do a lot of development. Leadership development tends to be one of the largest areas.

Jason Reep: [00:02:05] Obviously we develop a lot of human resource professionals, but we also have a number of other soft skills and hard skills trainings that we offer, offer coaching, teambuilding, all sorts of things like that. We do a number of projects with our members and then feed that some of those trends that we tend to see back to our to the community. So we do a lot of, let’s say right now what’s really big employee engagement surveys and a lot of compensation work where organizations are really reevaluating their comp structures, setting them up if they don’t really have a good structure. But with engagement, employee engagement, obviously they’re trying to keep their employees, trying to attract employees. We have a number of other resources, networking opportunities. We do a number of roundtables with about five HR roundtables around the around the area that we serve. We have a diversity equity and inclusion roundtable, safety roundtable, CEO Roundtable, Young Professionals. So we have just a number of ways in which we’re trying to develop those professionals within their organization so they can better serve the organizations, strengthen those organizations so we ultimately can strengthen the business community.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:19] So what is the origin story for this association? What how did this come about?

Jason Reep: [00:03:25] You know it. So there are a few things that. So we are we are there are other employer associations around the country. And we all have very similar stories where there were employers who were working to address challenges and concerns, usually with regard to employment issues that they felt like they could do better, collaborating with one another versus. And even some of that was purchasing and things like that. But to be able to work together to really strengthen those those businesses and the needs that they had and they all said we all have these same kinds of needs, whether it’s labor negotiations or or different challenges. Like I said, purchasing might be some of the pieces. So we had a Grand Rapids area where we are. We had a lot of furniture manufacturers out here who most of them are, who originally kind of banded together to create the initial what became the employers association.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:32] Now, at that time, it sounds that it was very collaborative, that that people were open to sharing. And it wasn’t one of these situations where they were looking at this information as this is our secret sauce and we don’t want anybody else to know it. Are you finding that that this group is still that way with that mindset of sharing?

Jason Reep: [00:04:52] Yeah, and I wouldn’t necessarily say that everyone’s always been 100% open, right? So there’s opportunities for where people are going to collaborate. And I’m sure that was long ago, you know, that that those folks kind of came together. It was 1939, right? So it was long before my time to kind of do that. But to answer your question about kind of current day, absolutely. I mean, we have these roundtables where folks are going to say, here are some of the things that we would like to do. Are any of you doing this or what Have you seen results, great results from these particular pieces. And in addition, you know, here are some of the challenges we’re having and what are some techniques to to address these those challenges. So in those particular areas, absolutely. People are are willing to share because they know it’s this give and take that I have to come in with the ability to be open and honest about what’s going on and then other people are doing the same. And so then we all can grow and develop and learn. And then when we talk about these surveys that we do, people are very willing to share because it’s all done through a third party, through us. We don’t report out any specific information anybody shares. We don’t report some data if we don’t have there are certain criteria three, four, four some results. Three companies have to have participated or five companies or ten companies have to have answered a particular question. So you can’t try to identify who which companies might have said what or anything like that. So because we take such great care in the data and in how we manage the conversations, people are very, very open organizations and those leaders and those organizations are very open to sharing as long as they feel like that this is benefiting them in their community, they’re very open to sharing that information.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] Now, you mentioned earlier something about coaching. Now in 1939, there probably wasn’t a thing called coaching, at least formalized to the way that it is today. Are you seeing coaching as more and more of a kind of a must have perk almost for folks rather than just something that at one point was just for the highest level of people or it was kind of remedial for the person they were trying to fix because they were doing something wrong.

Jason Reep: [00:07:19] Yeah, yeah. It’s a good point that coaching has really changed, right? So coaching back then probably was a little bit more like because I said so or you know what the consequences are. So that might have been a coaching conversation. And so yeah, so there’s we still see both of these developmental opportunities to coach right where we’re going to help somebody maybe move to the next level in their career within the organization or somebody who might have an opportunity to kind of grow and develop a particular skill set so that they can become more valuable in the organization. But we also still see organizations that are like, okay, we have someone who has some challenges and they really need some more one on one time to address their inappropriate behavior or their inability to manage time or whatever might be the case. I would, though, to answer the other part of your question. I would say that we have absolutely seen an increase in and what you might consider to be kind of that professional coaching, that developmental coaching, whether it’s executive. Obviously we do a lot of executive coaching, but we’re doing coaching with even what folks might say is individual contributors.

Jason Reep: [00:08:38] So they may not even have leadership roles, but they have an opportunity to maybe move into other roles, and coaching really offers much more one on one again, whether it’s whether it’s one on one actually, which a lot of our coaching is, but we also do group coaching. But but it provides that opportunity for for employers to provide that skill development and that awareness and that in that knowledge to maybe a group of people in a way that’s much more specific than a training, which may be a great content, great skill development, but not unique to what their needs are. So if you’re in manufacturing, that might look different than if you’re in a nonprofit, which is going to be different than maybe in a tech environment. And so and we serve we serve all of those industries. I mean, we serve many, many industries, health care and on and on. And so each of those when you provide that coaching, you get to get very specific about the skills that are going to need to be successful in those environments.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:48] Now, are you seeing there’s a lot of lip service to. Diversity, equity and inclusion. Are you seeing more and more companies really make some headway in this area and really have that representation throughout their organization, not just in certain kind of corridors?

Jason Reep: [00:10:07] Yeah, you know, it’s it’s very humbling to see the number of employers who really want to make a difference in this particular area in diversity, equity and inclusion. You know, and some of them are savvy enough to be able to say, you know, if we do this well, then there’s also business benefits to it. And then there’s really a large number of them who are like, we just want to make sure that we’re also creating the environment that people want to come to every day. Right. And that they can and that they can really excel and do their best work in every day. And they don’t have to deal with stuff. So I think, you know, that there is a mixture of very strategic. And when I’m describing that, I don’t mean it to be like in some sort of manipulative way. They’re doing it for the right reasons, but they’re saying there’s other there’s other benefits. We could do a better job of marketing to folks that maybe we haven’t marketed to. We might be able to extend our recruitment areas to places that we haven’t necessarily done that before. And so they’re beginning to think about DEI efforts as a more strategic and not just necessarily the right thing to do. But I would say that there are more and more that we are working with that are not just doing the minimal amount because we also help people with compliance so we can remind them what do you need to be doing? Like what’s what are the minimum amounts of equal employment opportunity that you need to be working on? And we write affirmative action plans so we can run demographic data on an employer that that needs that kind of stuff so we can help them at that level. This is usually well beyond just kind of the basics and the the minimal that they need to be doing.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:58] Yeah, it’s amazing to me in this day and age where there is such a, you know, emphasis on acquiring and keeping talent that some companies websites, when they just have the leadership and it looks like it’s all one group, they’re not even like it’s just, you know, it’s just like a bell. They’re ringing to say, hey, this is who we serve and this is who these are the people important to our organization. And they’re not even like a company could just just go in their website and look up leadership and then you’re that’s that’s a that’s a branding opportunity.

Jason Reep: [00:12:38] Yeah, absolutely. And the reality for a lot of these organizations is they’re like, okay, here’s where we are right now, and our leadership doesn’t turn over frequently and we don’t have a lot of opportunity to add new roles into that leadership mix. So you definitely see that that is one of the slower areas to to kind of visually see that there might be more diversity in there. So those organizations often are saying, okay, we will continue to work on becoming more diverse in our workforce and definitely in our leadership when the opportunity arises. But what we can do in the meantime is ensure that we are creating the right environment and inclusive environment that welcomes and values and helps people feel like they belong there. That when they when when the more diverse folks begin to work in the organization, they’re not kind of like, this is a weird place to work because nobody understands me or sees value in what I’m doing. So some of those organizations that are less diverse at their leadership level still are doing a lot of work, but it’s just not going to be seen for some years because they don’t have the opportunity to do that even though they want to make a difference.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:55] Now, isn’t this an area where this is where your organization really could help and make a difference?

Jason Reep: [00:14:02] Yeah, Yeah, definitely. I mean, we we have a lot of resources that we don’t have a magic bullet for anything, right? So if you if you were to think about all of this stuff around diversity, equity and inclusion, we work with folks on that people are struggling with how do we keep how do we find people? How do we keep people? Are we paying people appropriately? All of the things that you say, What are the biggest challenges right now for organizations around that people side those? We’ve got our hands in all parts of it. Does your handbook speak to employees in a particular way that is welcoming and and sets the tone for what kind of culture there is there and what kind of interactions people. We’re going to have all of those types of things are so, so important. And and to pull out just one component of it is is a challenge. And so when we when we look at the way that we work with our members, their members, this is different than a transactional client customer relationship. So we are very much wrap around our members and say, how do we help you, you know, kind of in a multi-pronged approach, get to excellence, right? And what is it that you need? And you can’t do all of it at the same time. And so how do we how do we scale it for your size? And then how do we put together a timeline for what can be done when so that you can make continuous improvement and progress toward the work that you are wanting to achieve? What are the goals that you’re looking for? And so that would cross over any of those dimensions that we had talked about in workplaces.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:49] Now, are you seeing that more and more organizations are looking at HR as a strategic business function rather than like a cost center or kind of a necessary evil that that that they are getting a seat at the table? Because to me, they’re the ones are there at the heart of the culture of the organization. They’re the human component.

Jason Reep: [00:16:10] Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that we have a good mix of our members who really are saying we’re elevating that role to something that thinks more than just have we filed the right paperwork and kept up on time cards. And so so there are a lot of folks who are really elevating that role and the responsibilities that go along with elevating that. Right. So there are a lot more strategic h.r. Thinking people, people who understand the business, not just the individuals that are in the organization and the and the requirements to stay in compliance. But i would say that there’s challenges, right. There are there are organizations who are like, we’d love to do that, but we don’t have the money to pay somebody to to be a more strategic person. We don’t have that much work for them to do. We’re a very small organization. And so we we tap into those HR folks all the time, but they’re not necessarily the strategic arm of the organization. So I think there is there’s a mix and often the type of business might have something to do with that size absolutely has to do with that. And so so it is a mix. But to to answer kind of the bigger, broader question, even outside of our specific members, we can look in the community and you can absolutely see that there is not only elevation of these HR professionals to do such great work in their organizations and to have huge impact, but recognition of like HR people are beginning to be recognized within their organizations as a key component. And as you said, more than just a cost center or a place that people go when they have problems. So I would say, generally speaking, I mean, there’s certifications that people can get as professionals that really indicate, yeah, I take this serious and this is this is something I want to do and I want to do it in a way that elevates the organization from where it is right now to what the vision is.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:33] Now is leading an organization that serves this group. What are your kind of maybe tricks or not tricks necessarily, but tactics you use to create that engagement and to create the environment that people want to go to these meetings. They want to participate, they want to be a part of it, and they see kind of a bigger why? Because it sounds like this is one of those associations that people look forward to going to the meetings because they’re getting so much out of it, not only education, but also just it feels good that you’re helping, you know, affect so many people.

Jason Reep: [00:19:11] Yeah. Yeah. I think that the the our history has and continues to be very strong in relationships. Right. And so we we we start with phone calls. If we need to reach somebody, we’ll start with a phone call before just just hitting someone with an email or. Right. So it’s very much about we know you, we like you, we value you and what you contribute to our community. And so we have honest relationships and honest, deep levels of respect for for our members. And again, in a way that is a member relationship. And so I think people recognize that and appreciate that. And so you’re right in the sense that the folks are excited to engage with us and to do things with us and trust us, right? I mean, you don’t get to a level of trust without people knowing you, people interacting with you, watching your for your integrity and those types of things. So our ability to really have those very deep relationships with the businesses in our area, I think adds to people’s excitement, enjoyment, appreciation of the work that we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:38] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jason Reep: [00:20:41] Yeah. You know, I mean, because we’re a member based organization, we members are what help us do what we do. So I mean, the rates that we I’ll just mention this, the race that we might do a project for for someone at our kind of below market rates and people sometimes will be like, well, you can’t be doing a great job if you’re doing that. And we’re like, We do. But because we have members who help us make that possible. So we’re not we’re not making our money simply by charging a fee for somebody to come to a training or something like that. So members and we serve you know, we serve primarily the West mission. There’s like 15 counties in West Michigan that are where about 94% of our members are. But because we can do work with people, we can write somebody’s affirmative action plan, you know, from outside the state or something like that. So we can do work with people who are not necessarily in the state. So we have members who are out of state and we still provide them the same opportunities. They can still come through training, they can still have access to the data points that we give. So so we we have that as as a a desire to continue to strengthen and engage with the community here.

Jason Reep: [00:21:58] We’re also part it’s just probably worth noting, we’re part of a larger association of employer associations and those that that Employer Association of America represents many, many states throughout the United States. And so if somebody’s listening and they’re not in West Michigan and they’re like, Oh, I think we might have an employer association near us, you know, they probably do. We’d be happy, of course, to work with them and help them. But because we understand culture so well in the communities that we serve, somebody might say that might be valuable for us to have an organization, another employer association, who understands the the culture of the community that we’re in. And so they may choose to go to a more local association near them. But we always value an organization who says, Yeah, we want to be a part of the employers association and whether whether they’re here locally or not. So if you say, how can you help get the word out? I mean, for a long time, probably like many associations, you know, you say things, you hear things like, oh, you know, you’re the best kept secret that I have. And I’m like, But we don’t want to be a secret, right? We’d like the people to know about us. So yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:11] So if somebody wants to learn more, where should they go?

Jason Reep: [00:23:14] Jason Yeah, our website is W-w-what. Tgr So the employers association Grand Rapids, so t ag are dot org and on that on the site, there’s a number of places that you can learn a little bit more. I would say just start in the about us tab. The about us tab gives you information about what we can do or what we do do, but what we can do for any, any organization, whether they’re a member or not, because we serve non members, because of the dues that we have from our members, that helps us subsidize some of those costs and whatnot. But then you also see, you can see on that page what are the benefits of membership, right? So for example, the roundtables I told you about, that’s only open to members. So if you want to engage with us on some things, we can do that whether you’re a member or not. Other things you look at what are the member benefits and you’ll find things that are unique to to joining the association. And then there’s a obviously a joint now button down in there that can tell you how to calculate your dues and then you can get signed up. We’d be happy to help anybody who’s interested in that.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:25] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jason Reep: [00:24:30] Yeah, I’m just I’m very grateful for the opportunity to to to be here to lead this fantastic organization that’s been around for so long and really just always excited to see the opportunities that we have to serve the businesses in this in this area. And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it. I love talking about our members.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:52] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

David Aferiat With Trade Ideas LLC

by

Trade Ideas, LLCDavid AferiatDavid Aferiat, CoFounder and Managing Partner at Trade Ideas LLC.

He helps FinTech product and marketing managers grow and retain their trading communities with content designed to make better market decisions.

Trade Ideas was founded in 2003 by a team of financial technology entrepreneurs who had already been leaders in the Self Directed Investment movement. Investors were looking to manage more of their own money instead of having other people do it for them for a fee.

Fueled in the 90’s by the overall technology boom of the Internet, online trading brokerages like E*Trade and TD Ameritrade allowed investors easy access to the market. Other types of brokerage firms sprung up to cater to the more active investor, sometimes known as the “Day Trader”. People looking at the market were desperate to find good stocks. The question is, how do you catch them, as they happen in real-time? The founders decided to call the new company Trade Ideas to distill it to the very basic essence of investing. Every investment first starts as an idea, and when it is placed, it becomes a trade. Hence the name Trade Ideas.

Connect with David on LinkedIn and follow him on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The problems they solve and what impact they have
  • Active investors in the current market

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the Atlanta Business Radio. We have David Aferiat and he is with Trade Ideas. Welcome, David.

David Aferiat: [00:00:44] Hi, Lee. Great to be with you. Thanks for having.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Me. Well, I’m excited to learn a little bit more about trade ideas. Can you share a little bit about that mission purpose?

David Aferiat: [00:00:53] Yeah. Yeah. Our mission is for a 19 year old fintech company, constantly innovating. And our mission is pretty simple. It’s to help anyone that’s in the US equity markets make better decisions.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] And then how does one do that with your service?

David Aferiat: [00:01:09] Yeah. So, you know, a lot of active investors, a lot of traders deal with an onslaught of information and we try to organize, curate that information, turn it into powerful decision making guide rails for for, for better decisions. So what we do is we spot opportunity oftentimes where no one else is looking in places before anyone else that can that can direct them to. These are opportunities that are happening in the market. Sometimes they’re short term, sometimes they’re short term. They can be intraday, sometimes they’re long term. For us, it’s maybe swing trading types like two or three days to even a week in length. But either way, when you make a decision in the markets, it’s good to have the guardrails of like this is the stop loss where the whole idea fails, you should get out, preserve capital. And then there’s other price points where we have a first profit target where you might say, okay, if it reaches this level, this is where I can take my principal out and let the the profits ride or I can double down and increase. It helps we help with those kinds of decisions.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] And then who is the buyer of this? Is it a software? Is it a machine? What actually is it?

David Aferiat: [00:02:18] Yeah, it’s a it’s a SAS model. So it’s a subscription as a service. And anybody with any amount of experience, although the ones who tend to stay with us and find us are ones who are well on their journey of having understood the markets, they know how to place a trade and they’re just starting to understand their own preferences for what they like to see. And we accent that and then we start to show more information based on what you like to you and again in a really timely manner. What’s what’s the main the experience of using trade ideas is to give back time, time that is usually spent by traders. You know, the night before preparing for patterns, looking for patterns, marking charts and saying, okay, if it makes if this chart, if this stock reaches this price, I’m going to I’m going to buy it. But somehow during the markets, we all get distracted by the day. You might not be able to have your eyes everywhere they need to be. And trade ideas is like eyes on the market and it will find you setups that you don’t have to spend any more time looking for the night before or setting up for. We bring you these opportunities and they’re matched to, again, your preferences. You can design, you can actually it’s it’s a very robust tool. You can design your own strategies, you can rely on the ones that we have and that we test.

David Aferiat: [00:03:35] We even have a machine learning AI that actually runs through about 70 or so simulations and then it every night does this optimization exercise and then right before the market will publish, okay, these are the six or so seven algorithms that I’m going to use to look at the market today. And it’s the result of the previous day’s market, plus all the history that it’s crunching. And it’s no different than we’re in the baseball season, right? So in the playoffs and it’s no different than a a manager saying, who am I going to who’s healthy enough to be on the field, who’s on a hot streak, and what do they set up? Well, against the opposing pitching and so forth. They meet all that criteria. They go on the field and play. And so these six or seven algorithms are will produce ideas during the day, and some of them may not conform to the way our individual subscribers trade. So they take them or they leave them. But the idea is that here’s a co pilot who is understands tons of information about the market and is condensed it down into a view that it’s looking at to find opportunity. And you can ride that wave as well or you can look at even other strategies that we create from our data scientists and people that we have using the tool for for decades that designing these strategies.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] Is your ideal client, the individual active investor. Is it a firm that is managing other people’s money is a combination.

David Aferiat: [00:05:03] Yeah, it’s a it’s been a combination, but by and large part it’s the individual active trader. It’s someone who has a a brokerage account and actively trades, takes time out of the day to do so. We have dentists or lawyers and people who are actively engaged in the markets again for that time savings are looking for. I’ve got a few. To engage with the market. I want to know. I want to understand how the overall market is. And I want to understand what. What are some of the ideas that that I can take advantage of and do so in a way that protect me? It’s not just a lot of services will help you get into a trade. Not many will help you get out. And we do just that. So when you make a decision, you understand where the exit is and it enables a lot of people to to take advantage of the market in a new way without having to put money into a 401. K and let someone else manage it. I’m not saying to do that with your entire portfolio. In fact, I’m not giving any investment advice at all today. But what I am saying is that with a tool like trade ideas and with the allocation, if you, if you will, of what what someone would plan to invest in the market on an active basis, our tool is the perfect solution for finding these setups.

David Aferiat: [00:06:16] And we have some creative ways of visualizing the data. Like, for example, we’ve figured out a way to instead of looking at like 12 charts and scrolling through each one and trying to understand, well, where is the activity in this chart? We’ve condensed it into one viewing space and we make it look like a race and it’s got the stock logo, the company logos as on this kind of starting line and the movement of these of the race over the course of 10 minutes or 15 or an hour or however long you set it, it will track what, what what stocks are racing ahead of the others. And you think, well, how is that different than looking at like a data table? Well, in a data table, our eyes go to the very top row and they say, well, who’s the leader and who’s maybe the one after that? But what you don’t see is the movement further down that data table of stocks that may be moving faster or rising to the top. And this visualization that we have, which we call a stock race, actually shows you what’s what’s in the undercurrent, what’s what is happening within that time period, 15 minutes, an hour, however long you set the race for. And it will show you movements in a data table that you just wouldn’t see.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this kind of what’s the origin story.

David Aferiat: [00:07:36] Origin story? Well, it came out of pain. Oh, as most great ideas do, pain on multiple levels. It came from this kind of frustration of, as I was mentioning before, like the time that I would spend and many others would spend looks at creating, how are we going to deal with the market the next day when these ideas come up and we’d mark up charts, we’d have, I mean, at the time printouts and other things and notes that we would have about what charts we were going to look at. The so the scanning tool that we have and not a screener, by the way I call a screener is something where you can find on almost any site that says what’s the top five gainers of the Nasdaq or the top five stocks performing today? Those are screeners. They screen information to show you a result. But scanning is a different tool. We are scanning is a different act. It’s actually going across all of the it’s going across all of the issues in the market, all of the stocks in the market to find the patterns that it’s looking for that either have been set, they’ve been requested by by you, the user, or by us. It’s scanning and filtering that way. Screener isn’t quite the same. But the pain that this came out of was basically we wanted an unregulated tool.

David Aferiat: [00:08:58] So we did want to create a brokerage. We wanted to create a easy to subscribe to tool that gave insight as to what was interesting in the market. And a lot of people, when they use the tool, often come to us and say, well, what can this tool, what can trade ideas tell me about Apple or Tesla, for instance? And we can say a lot about what Apple and Tesla is doing. But if that’s what you’re looking to trade, you don’t use trade ideas. You look for trade ideas when you say, well, Apple and Tesla aren’t doing anything today. What is it that’s moving and what is it that I can take advantage of? Instead of waiting for Apple or Tesla to do what I want it to? And that’s another problem that we saw with like these are the stocks that are actively doing something. And in fact, all of our analysis is based on what our stock’s doing that on a statistical basis are unusual for versus it’s normal behavior. I’ll give you one more. I’ll give you another give you an example. So we use a concept called relative volume. And so we understand and we track. The volume for Apple or for a pharmaceutical stock say we know what the normal volume of for Apple, for instance, is as of 11:00 in the morning to, you know, an hour and a half into the trading day.

David Aferiat: [00:10:17] And if it’s if today’s normal volume at 11:00 is normal for what, the first hour and a half of trading is for Apple, but we don’t really pay attention to it. But if Apple’s volume in that first 90 minutes is three times or four times or any amount really above what it normally trades, that relative volume is an indicator that we look at to say something unusual is happening in this particular stock because it’s got more than usual volume in it up to this point in the day. And we are making that calculation constantly across every single stock. It would take a lot for Apple, for instance, to trade like 17 times more than what it normally trades. But there are other stocks that are smaller, obviously a smaller cap stock. We’re 17 times 30 times what it normally trades isn’t. So I mean, it’s extremely unusual and and possible because it’s a smaller stock and not that we trade. Just do we look at only small stocks. We just look at whatever is unusual statistically from how it normally behaves. And then we start putting a lot more real time analysis on this so that. In real time if you’re between patients or if you’re doing when you need to see this information. We are tracking it in real time to show you.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] So when you have kind of the the technology figured out, which is a challenge, obviously unto itself, how do you know there’s kind of a market fit? Like when were you getting clues like, hey, you know what? There’s a bunch of people that that would be open to using and purchasing and would value this enough to pay money for.

David Aferiat: [00:11:55] Oh, I mean, you know, again, the experience is if this if this tool can save me money and it can point me in the right direction. I mean, we have we have subscribers who pay for their year or their month of trade ideas, you know, in a single trade.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:10] Right. But at the very, very beginning, when you’re like, okay, we’re going to solve this hard problem to create the software. Did you solve it before you knew for sure that there were people there or was it a build it and they will come situation?

David Aferiat: [00:12:26] That’s a good question. When we started 19 years ago, there was a need for this and there were some tools out there that we that we looked at and compared to what we thought was the ideal that we were building and said, okay, these are lacking. They don’t for instance, these don’t track all the stocks, they check the track, they automatically make a cut and they say, Well, we’re only going to trade the most active 100 stocks. And we thought, well, we can do better. We can go beyond that. And I will tell you, the other partners that that that I co-founded the company with, they are the two partners. We all have our kind of divisions of labor. And one partner is kind of introverted, as you might suspect. And he’s really in charge of the architecture of of how all these servers need to work to with each other and the different jobs they have to do and putting all and working together to take in information, analyze it, and then meet requests that our customers are asking for and sending that out to each individual subscriber.

David Aferiat: [00:13:32] All this in real time, of course. And and now with the cloud, we’ve made that transition with that arm, with the architecture. You know, it’s constantly in need of evolution. But he is his background came from defensive from the defense industry. And he was like, rather than making like systems that track and kill, I feel much better. I can sleep at night if I can create something like engaging in the stock market where there isn’t so much literal physical carnage. And then my other partner is kind of like the Bill Gates. He’s very much he has the longest amount of experience trading among all of us and understands how the tool has always needed to be constantly evolving to to, to, to not only make his demands and needs as to what kind of information would be useful to make a good trading decision. But two steps ahead, like what’s the next thing that we need? And that’s taking us into some not just within equities, but now the plan is to also do this with cryptocurrencies as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:37] So once you but but so at the very beginning and so someone has an idea and they in themselves, they see I’m the power user that I want this, these are the things that I would want as a power user of somebody that could really benefit. And I wish there was this thing that trade ideas solves. At one point, did you start putting it out to the real world to get kind of that market input, to say, you know what, this we are on to something. Look at the demand of this is, you know, they just have to be educated that a tool like this exists.

David Aferiat: [00:15:10] Yeah. And when we started the the vision, the tool, the arc that we’ve taken was so much simpler. I mean, it was when we first started, it was just web based, it was a website. You had a few indicators that you would pick like filter the market based on price, based on some volume, based on some industry perhaps, or based on some earnings percentage growth rates. And then boom, Let me see the list of stocks and we have it color coded and we had it and it was very simple. And that’s where you have to start. I think we learned from previous companies and experiences that we had is that a lot of companies hold hold back the software because there’s just one more thing to add. If we can add just just one more feature, If we can do this one more thing, then we’ll release it and it’ll be perfect. Well, it’s never perfect. You have to. You have to. It’s vaporware until you actually put it out there. Then it becomes okay. Working useful software and your customers guide you. The reaction, seeing it live also guides you and and and boy I mean we went from so for example we went from a simple website where we had a few indicators to growing the list of indicators that led to a complexity of, well, how do we put all this together? Well, we have to do some of that ourselves for our customers.

David Aferiat: [00:16:32] So we started putting together combinations. And then the question, the feedback was, well, how do we know this is good? And in fact we would take a look and say, Well, it was great when we started it. Two weeks, three weeks later, the market’s always changing so it’s not as good now. So we created a backtesting tool to say, okay, if it worked in the recent history, we might suspect that it would continue to work. And we gave that backtesting tool capability to our customers. And so they started doing their own back testing for strategies that they would like to put on. It’s still. So that adds a little bit more complexity and people would rapidly find that, you know, the things I’m coming up with mixing indicators and alerts and filters to try to create a strategy. The backtesting tool is telling me that this is awful and so that it’s true. What you’ve created is terrible and even again, forced on us the ability to say, Well, for our customers sake, we need to be using this backtesting tool that we call the oddsmaker. That’s still part of the trade ideas. We need to find what’s working for our our customers and give that to them. And that proved the way.

David Aferiat: [00:17:41] That oddsmaker was first built to be a pretty laborious process because we had to do the iterations ourselves, hit the button, manually, see the report and kind of tweak it. And the AI and the machine learning was born from that process. It was like, Well, rather than us keep doing it manually, let’s turn this over to a system that can learn and evaluate and actually change the strategy and the settings within that. In order to create a more optimized result. And so and so that’s what it does. It creates it does millions of calculations and millions of simulations in order to arrive at. Yep. And the result is the market’s always evolving. So out of these 70 or so strategies that the there’s only six or so that are picked, the rest are just they’re great strategies at one point, but they have decayed as the market has evolved and they may come back and as if they come back. I mean, the system is looking at all of them. So it will recognize like, okay, this this particular strategy not seen for three or four weeks, is now actually ascending in performance. And it will make at some point it makes a cut or it doesn’t and says, okay, this is this is now a lens through which it’s going to view today’s market activity.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:52] So it must be pretty exciting to have seen it kind of in a more rudimentary tool to the robust tool that it is today. I mean, probably the vision was always there to be what it is today, but you’re seeing the growth over time of the evolution of it for sure.

David Aferiat: [00:19:09] And we have a saying. It’s like, how do we deliver for our customers the most value on the first impression? Because that’s all you have. You have one chance to really make a great impression and you’ve got to show the tool very quickly. Can this this is going to this is going to help me. I can use this because active investors and traders, they’re they’re very set in your ways. It’s like anybody who’s going to excel in any particular endeavor in life has to have routines or has to be set in their ways for everything else in their life so that they can just focus on what they’re going to excel at. So, for instance, you know, a Olympic swimmer has got to be very set in their ways about when they go to sleep, when they wake up, what food they’re going to eat, when they eat it, when they practice, how often do they practice so that when the time comes to actually swim in the heat, everything is focused on on those variables. It’s no different than trading. I mean, you have to be set in your ways about what’s the technology, what’s my monitor look like, what are the times that I have to make these trades? What tools am I going to use? Do I belong to a community, and what kind of input am I going to get from that community? Do I get ideas from them? Do I get help on regulating my ego? Do I exercise enough? Do I work out? There’s tons of considerations that go into anything we want to do that have to be set so that what we want to excel in and the variability that’s within what we want to excel in, we can react to better trading is no different.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:42] Now in growing a business like yours from an idea to where it is today. Were you part of any communities or were there any mentors that helped you get to this level that you’re at today?

David Aferiat: [00:20:55] Most definitely. So I think you could probably qualify me as being a lifelong learner, someone who is always in some respects trying to take like a beginner’s mind to certain things and with questions, but at the same time wanting to constantly learn new models and new ways of looking at things because you can get things can get stale pretty quickly, and then you start to see other competitors show up and exceed or match what you’re doing that you’ve got to be ahead of, especially if some of the strategies you’re using or practices that are not getting results. And so even before trade ideas, I was a consultant for energy and Internet companies, and I thrived in that scenario because I had started that job on the heels of getting my MBA and going back to school and learning and then applying all that and consulting and then starting trade ideas. And after a while, though, I trade ideas, I also started to kind of plateau where our growth, kind of our growth, frankly, kind of leveled a little bit and we started to see some more competitors. And that kind of prompted us to to kick things into gear. But for me, I needed to find advisors and mentors, and I found that in an organization that I still belong to. In fact, I lead as a chapter president. It’s a global organization with chapters all over the world, but it’s called Entrepreneurs Organization. And I joined because two people close to me, my cousin and a dear close friend here in Atlanta, I saw the change in their decision making and their behavior and the results impact their business from being very scattered and unfocused to being very planned and very achieving.

David Aferiat: [00:22:44] And I was like, Whoa, what is this? What is this change? How have you gone about making this change? And it’s like, well, this peer group of entrepreneurs and the organization that I belong to called EO or Entrepreneurs organization has helped me expose me to new ideas, puts me in a peer group with other people once a month with whom I meet Seminar eight. And then there are chapter events where the larger chapter meets together. And I was like, That’s for me. I’ve got to be connected to, I’ve got to be constantly inspired, I’ve got to be. And so each month now I meet with a group that is kind of like a mastermind or a group of people that I trust to tell really everything, you know, whether it’s family or business or personal issues, just to help the the entrepreneur focus and stay and really share experiences that can hopefully be used to help in any of those three areas. As I said, it goes back to, you know, how can I make my routine better? How can I upskill my routine level so that I can be set in my ways and perform where I need to and face where I’m performing that variability the best I can.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:01] Now, for entrepreneurs out there listening that maybe weren’t aware of EO or weren’t aware of these type of organizations that involve peers talking to peers, business people, talking to business people about kind of the good, the bad, the ugly. It requires a level. Vulnerability and humbleness. And in order to get the most out of it, what would you say to that person who’s never done this before and always thought of themselves as, you know, that that almost is a sign of weakness, that they look at themselves as kind of a lone wolf out there and they want to be that person. And here they are now looking for help or needing help. How would you kind of sell them on the benefits of the.

David Aferiat: [00:24:46] Yeah, I mean, you know, you kind of have to look in the mirror and say, am I bloodied enough from hitting my head against the wall and not getting any? Not going through it, but just hitting my head against the wall. Have I got enough bruises on my face that I realize maybe I don’t have all the answers here? And yeah, you have to come to that so that when someone can share with you like, Hey, I’ve been through that same experience before. Like, I have know I also found an employee that was a dear and trusted employee. That’s that was cheating me out of that was taking money or I’ve got a large partner that’s about to cut off a contract that 80% of our revenue depends on those kind of situations. You’re not looking in any way. We learn to talk about the experience of going through that and telling that story rather than turning around and saying, Hey, here you need here’s advice and pointing your finger at somebody and saying this is what you need to do. We’re fundamentally we share and retain a lot more information when it’s told as a story than what it is when it’s just saying like, Oh, do this, do as advice. The meeting could end and you just might forget what the advice was. But you do remember the story. And we try to when we’re sharing, we try to acknowledge that and share those experiences. But that’s when you realize, like, why would I try to solve this on my own when six other people or two other people have have gone through this and I can learn from I mean, it just it starts to you start to get back time and you start to get back. I don’t have to waste those years learning that lesson from this myself, from from being with this person. I’m literally taking back time into my life.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:31] So if somebody wants to learn more about EO, what is the best way to do that?

David Aferiat: [00:26:36] Yeah, so there’s some qualifiers and that we don’t take everybody. But if you have a if you have a business that has a million in the last 12 months worth of revenue, that’s $1,000,000 business or more, you, you, you can join EO and you can join the Atlanta chapter at EO Atlanta. If you don’t have a business that’s $1,000,000 in revenue but makes perhaps at least 250,000. There’s an EO accelerator program where we literally create an accountability system and we for those smaller companies making 250 in revenue or more, and with that accountability group and and meetings, we accelerate their growth to get over and into the million dollar mark.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:25] And then for the folks who want to learn more about trade ideas, what’s the best way to do that?

David Aferiat: [00:27:30] Yeah, your journey of making better decisions starts at trade ideas. There’s a little hyphen there. Trade hyphen ideas dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:40] Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

David Aferiat: [00:27:44] Oh, Lee, this was great. I really appreciate it. And thanks for the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:47] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Atlanta Business Radio.

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Kathryn O’Day With Atlanta Ventures

by

atlantaventures

KathrynODayKathryn O’Day is a partner at Atlanta Ventures where she empowers entrepreneurs to learn, build, and grow.

She has been scaling Atlanta tech companies for over a decade as employee #9 at Pardot (acquired by Salesforce) and COO at Rigor (acquired by Splunk).

Kathryn lives in Atlanta with her husband and two sons. She is a 7x Ironman Triathlon Finisher including two World Championships.

Connect with Kathryn on Linkedin and follow Atlanta Ventures on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How to pick a market and idea when getting started
  • How to find authentic demand
  • How to test ideas

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the start of Showdown podcast where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web3, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech, and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Catherine O’Dea with Atlanta Ventures. Welcome, Katherine.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:00:57] Lee. Thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] Well, I’m excited to be talking to you. For those who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Atlanta Ventures and how you’re serving folks?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:01:06] Absolutely. At Atlanta Ventures, we empower entrepreneurs to start, grow and learn. We found companies out of our venture studio. We do early stage investment in tech subscription companies, and then we are passionate about paying it forward. So we do tons of events, blogs, podcasts, anything to help entrepreneurs grow amazing businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:33] Now what is your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:01:37] Yep. So I am a Spanish major who liberal arts degree who found her way into tech.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] So it was just a logical, logical path that other Spanish majors go through. Right.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:01:51] Exactly. Exactly. I stumbled into into the Atlanta tech scene a decade and a half ago, and the company that I joined was Pardot, which was an amazing story here in Atlanta, and it was acquired by Salesforce. And then I went on to be a CEO at another tech company acquired by Splunk. And and then I, I turn I guess they say turn to the dark side to join venture. But but throughout all of that, I had worked closely with David coming to founded Atlanta Ventures and his passion aligned with my passion, which is helping entrepreneurs. And so that’s how I ended up at Atlanta Ventures.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:37] Now you use the word dark side, and I know you were kidding around, but from a lot of startup founders. Listen to this. And can you give some insight into since you’ve been on both sides of the desk there, can you give some insights into maybe the mindset of a VC and how, you know, what you would have maybe done differently if you would have known that as you were an entrepreneur and startup founder? Not maybe not a founder, but at least that the earliest stages of a startup, you know, kind of give some empathetic perspective from the founders standpoint of of what a VC is looking for and and really kind of red flags, yellow flags and green lights when it comes to their pitch.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:03:24] Sure. So what VCs? Vcs have bosses. They have investors that they need to show returns to. And so VCs want to invest in something that’s going to show big returns. And the thing I think what sometimes people don’t understand is that there’s amazing companies of all shapes and sizes, but there’s only a small subset that is that hits the qualifications for VC investment. And what VCs look for is they look for really big markets, they look for really big opportunities. So people build amazing businesses in $10 million businesses or $15 million businesses, and those are amazing, but they don’t always have the scale that VCs are looking for. So I think the biggest learning from being on this side of the table is really to think about the market and the idea and how big the market is going to be. And also that competition isn’t scary. Competition validates that. It’s a great idea. And there’s a lot of people there’s a lot of room for winners in that space.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:40] Yeah, I think that kind of the managing of the expectations is important in this, that it forces are looking for kind of home runs or grand slams and your thing might be a great lifestyle business. It might be a great small midsize business, but it may not be appropriate for a VC. So don’t take it personally. It’s, you know, it, you know, just kind of be what you are rather than getting frustrated by the process or feeling like, you know, it’s, you know, they don’t get me or they don’t understand.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:05:12] Absolutely. That’s exactly it.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:14] So now when you are working with an entrepreneur, can you share a little bit about how I know you helped them by giving them funds? A lot of times. But really, I would think the more important aspect of the partnership with the VC is kind of the connections and the help to make their business the best it can be. Can you share a little bit about how you help an entrepreneur kind of bring out the most value from their startup?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:05:43] Yes, we like to ask a lot of questions. We think that. So first of all, every entrepreneur is different and we want to play to their strengths and we want them to be their best self. So we want to kind of there’s not a playbook that we use for everybody. It’s what’s right for based on this entrepreneur’s personality and their goals. So that’s the framework that we look at our anybody that we’re trying to help. And then what we’ve found also is it doesn’t help to tell people like people don’t want to be told, you know, so if people ask a question, we’ll always answer it honestly. And then we like to ask a lot of questions to help people think through things and make sure they see all sides of the problem or they are looking at all avenues for that. So we find it’s really every every investor is going to have good connections. Most investors have lots of experience themselves at Atlanta Ventures. We are all we all have a startup background. So we come from deep startup experience. We’re not the quote unquote spreadsheet jockeys, but the so that’s the the lens from which we look at things and how we try to help entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:07] Now, when an entrepreneur is kind of going on this adventure, one of the most kind of foundational things that they have to do is to kind of pick a market and when they get started, right? So how do you help them hone in on maybe that ideal customer or that market that is ripe for a solution that they might be working on?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:07:32] We like to look at markets in terms of what is going to be really big a multibillion dollar market in the next 3 to 5 years. Some of those markets are not big markets yet, but they will be. An example of that is the creator economy. It’s getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but it’s still going to get even bigger. So what are tools that freelancers, people working remotely, people doing solo entrepreneurship? What are what does that ecosystem look like in 3 to 5 years? That’s an example of how we would think about a market. The other piece, of course, is founder market fit. So what things are is a founder passionate about because they’re going to be doing this business for the next decade of their life. So we want it to be interesting and exciting for them every day. And then the other piece is, once you identify a market to how do you find the authentic demand within the market? And we talk a lot about authentic demand. And that’s where people are pulling you. Customers are pulling you. They will pay you before you’ve built the product. They will pay you even when there’s a lot of bugs in your product. And so that’s the other piece that we’re always looking for is we think there’s a big market. What’s the right slice to start with in this market where the pain is most acute?

Lee Kantor: [00:09:09] But can we just kind of pause on that one for a second? When you’re talking about authentic demand and you’re using the words pay you. So you have to kind of discern between, oh, a lot of people are following me or liking me where there’s no skin in the game, where they’re just saying, Yeah, thumbs up. You’re I want that. And the difference between I pay for that. So it’s better to have people paying you, obviously, than just liking you. So is that kind of one of your signals that maybe you’re on to something when they are more more apt to pay rather than just, you know, just like or just say, yeah, that sounds good. When you get it built, then I’ll buy it.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:09:54] Exactly. We recommend a book called The Mom Test. And the idea behind the mom test is that. If you ask for feedback on your idea, everyone is going to tell you they like your idea. Everybody like your mom is going to say, Oh, that’s wonderful, honey. But what you really want to do is ask questions about people’s pain and what problems they have, and then see if it’s painful enough that they would pay you money to fix the pain. So one of the key criteria that we look at is do you have unaffiliated paying customers that love your product? One of the mistakes that we see people make is they have such optimism and belief and vision, which is amazing, but it leads them to a path where they say, I’m going to build it and then people will come. And the joke is like, What’s the best way to fund your company to get customers to pay you? And so if a customer is willing to pay you for your product, you know you’re onto something that should be your first test. Don’t build anything until somebody says that they will pay you and that they’ll give you that money upfront and then you can start building.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] Now, when you are kind of growing in that manner, that tends to be obviously slower in some respects because you’re kind of going out to the market and and having to find these early adopters, the people that are willing to take that kind of a risk without seeing something that’s real. How do you kind of go about identifying those early adopters? And then once you have that pool of them, how do you kind of adjust to get beyond the early adopters to get to more of a mass appeal?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:11:41] Yes. So your early adopters are hopefully the people that you have done customer discovery with that you’ve interviewed to understand what their pain is. And the pain again is so acute that they’re willing to take a chance on you or on an unproven product because it’s worth it to solve the problem. In terms of how do you how do you scale to the next level? Well, once you have customer case studies, enough customers that you have reference customers, then it becomes easier and easier to bring on some of the people in the middle who are not quite the early adopters. And we saw that a lot at Pardot, where I started part out when we had 80 customers and by the time I left, we had hundreds of customers. And so that that second wave of customers, you know, I think the key there is giving them an amazing customer experience. And then also always be listening to what your customers are asking for and what they need. And then to continue to build for the 80% of your customer base. If you get too sucked into doing one offs for edge cases, that can be a big distraction. But if you stay focused on your core customer and solving 80% of their problems, you are going to be in a great spot to be able to scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:09] And that tends to be kind of a trap for the technology driven founder where they like to add more like, Oh, it wouldn’t be great if it did this. Oh, wouldn’t it be great if it did this? And then all of a sudden the the scope of the project and the product is. So maybe it’s diminished from that 80% that you should be focusing in on.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:13:29] It’s a it’s a trap for for technologists and everyone, especially people who care about their customers. And they want to say yes and they want to help people. So it’s really a trap for everyone. And it takes a ton of discipline to say no. And you have to keep your eye on the prize to be able to understand what to say yes to and what to say no to. We we talk a lot about if it doesn’t if 80% of your customers won’t use this feature, if you need at least 80% of your customers to use the feature to build it. So if only 20% will use it, then you better have a really, really, really important business justification to do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:13] Now for you, what’s the most rewarding part about working with these kind of early stage founders and entrepreneurs like in Your Job Now? I’m sure you were dealing with lots of them, whereas when you were in a startup it was just heads down like a laser, just focusing on the task at hand. And so these are different, I guess, different types of skills, maybe in different types of rewards that you’re getting. At the end of the day.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:14:40] I, I absolutely love my work. It is so fun to talk to people who are insanely smart, insanely optimistic, they’re passionate about changing the world. And that’s who I interact with all day, every day. And so I love being on the building side, too. Like building, there’s nothing more rewarding than building a company. And now on a side where there’s nothing more rewarding than talking to amazing people changing the world every day. So my favorite part is, is literally just being surrounded in a in a world of people who are building the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:21] And then when you’re around those people, it’s hard to be kind of cynical and pessimistic. Right. These people are, you know, let’s run through the wall every day. So you get kind of caught up in the emotion of that. That’s every day. You probably feel like, wow, this was a good day.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:15:40] Yes. Every day I come home and I’m so fired up, and then I have to. Well, I was going to do that. And then I’m then I have crying kids and.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] The other.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:15:56] Interrupts.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:58] So do you tend to look at your children as a start up?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:16:02] Yeah, actually there’s a lot of lessons in both situations where it’s about a lot of patience, a lot of longevity and looking towards be, looking towards the future and letting that drive you and keep you focused. You’ve been through the ups and downs. So there’s there’s a ton of parallels there.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:21] So now how did you get involved with Start Up Showdown and the Panoramic?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:16:26] I love this story because I think it speaks to the connected nature of the startups of Atlanta especially. And I knew Tammy McQueen when she worked at Sales Loft and I was working at Pardot and Rigger, and so we were all part of the Atlanta Ventures family of portfolio companies. And so I knew Tammy really well through her marketing efforts. She was fantastic, and then it was really fun once we both ended up in the investing world to reconnect. And I mean, what she was what they’re doing with sort of showdown is just tremendous. And it’s an amazing program.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:10] And then for founders that are getting involved in start ups showdown across the country. Any advice for them to get the most out of the experience?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:17:23] That’s a great question. I think, you know, asking putting your best foot forward. So being prepared and everyone is and then getting the feedback from the judges and taking that to heart. And then funders do get a lot of feedback from everywhere. So it’s important to listen and then see what works for your company.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:52] And for for you at Atlanta Ventures. What’s next? What do you need more of and how can we help?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:18:01] I love that. Thank you. What I am passionate about is helping entrepreneurs. We’re always looking to partner with entrepreneurs in our venture studio. So if there’s any entrepreneurs listening that are looking for their next company idea, they’ve started something before. They know they want to start something else, but they’re trying to find an idea or a market that matches. We’d love to talk to them.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:30] And then if they want to learn more and connect with you or Atlanta Ventures, what’s the website or best coordinates.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:18:37] Atlanta Ventures dot com and connect with me on LinkedIn I’m also on Twitter and I’m also at Katherine O’Dea dot substack dot com. It’s called the OA Daily the very, very punny.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:53] And what do you talk about on that?

Kathryn O’Day: [00:18:55] I talk about practical advice for startups and sometimes some life advice mixed in because startups in life are very intertwined.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:03] Absolutely. Well, Katherine, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Kathryn O’Day: [00:19:09] Awesome. Thank you so much, Leigh. It was wonderful to be on the show. And what Startup Showdown in Panoramic is doing is just amazing.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:18] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:19:23] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown Dot VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right, that’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

Zoe Newman With Capital on Tap and John Lariccia with WelcomeHome Software

by

John Laricio

Zoe NewmanZoe Newman joined Capital on Tap in 2012, its founding year, fresh out of school. She has worked her way around the business from operations, product, partnerships, and, most recently, launching the product and team in new geographies.

Having recently moved from London to Atlanta in the US, she is now the US Managing Director and building out the US business and team – along with enjoying all the new local Southern experiences and culture…and the fried chicken!

John LariciaJohn Lariccia is the CEO and Founder of WelcomeHome Software, which provides senior living operators the most innovative sales and marketing tools available. Prior to starting WelcomeHome, John was a senior partner with Bain & Company, the global management consulting firm.

During his two decades with Bain, John worked in the Atlanta, San Francisco and London offices. He was a member of Bain’s Private Equity Practice and the founder of Bain’s work with financial investors in the Southeastern United States.

Within private equity, John has led over 200 due diligence assignments, more than a dozen portfolio engagements, and multiple fund strategy and organizational design projects. Outside of his work with financial investors, John has worked in a number of industries including software, logistics, retailing, construction, manufacturing, media, consumer packaged goods and telecommunications.

His work experience has included a wide range of projects including corporate turnarounds, operations excellence, growth strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and pricing policies. Earlier in his career, John served in the Department of the Air Force’s Office of the General Counsel, specializing in government acquisition and resource planning.

John attended the University of Virginia School of Law and earned his Juris Doctorate in 1996. John is also a graduate of the University of Notre Dame where he received a Bachelor in Business Administration degree in finance with high honors. John resides in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife and five children.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Coming to you live from Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for another episode of Tech Talk with your host, Joey Kline.

Joey Kline: [00:00:17] Good afternoon and welcome. So, as always, try and think that we have some of the more interesting companies in the Atlanta area. On this show, we try and stay away from, you know, your standard 20th marketing automation firm. And these two companies that we’re going to have today I think are doing something really unique within both their sectors. So first, we’re going to talk to Zoe Newman, who is the managing director of the US at Capital on tap.

Zoe Newman: [00:00:41] Hi, Jerry.

Joey Kline: [00:00:42] Hello. And then we are going to chat with John Lariccia, who’s the CEO and co-founder of WelcomeHome Software.

John Lariccia: [00:00:48] Hey, Joey. Thanks for having me.

Joey Kline: [00:00:49] Sure. So we have two seemingly disparate industries that we’re going to discuss today at a high level financial services with capital and TAP as well. And then senior living and and that space in the growing need for CRM in that space with John. So as always, we’re going to start with the first company in the alphabet which would be capital on tap. So that would be you.

Zoe Newman: [00:01:14] Yes.

Joey Kline: [00:01:15] So you have you have only worked at capital on tap?

Zoe Newman: [00:01:19] I have, yeah. I graduated from university ten years ago and first first job out of uni. I met co-founder David Luck and the team. When we were just getting started, there was less than ten people in the office and I joined as customer service, jumped right into it and helped kind of figure out what our products would. Our our market segment we were going to go after was going to be. And then, yeah, I’ve been been working in building and supporting the team at Gap on tap ever since.

Joey Kline: [00:01:50] Okay. So I think that when when someone thinks of the standard professional story of a millennial, which is obviously a very wide range of ages, they think of someone who jumps from job to job, maybe doesn’t have too much company loyalty. I think there’s a number of things wrong with that. For certain reasons, however, you are seem to be the epitome against that. So were you specifically looking for something entrepreneurial when you graduated or just happenstance? It’s, hey, here’s the opportunity. Let’s see what happens.

Zoe Newman: [00:02:23] Yeah, it was definitely the latter. So yeah, didn’t really know what I was getting into in 2012. Even the term tech fintech didn’t kind of really exist. It definitely didn’t exist for me. And yeah, a lot of friends at the time were just jumping into grad programs, management, consulting, banking, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. And yeah, just stumbled over the opportunity and met a great team. And that’s really the thing that’s kept me with capital on tap ever since, is is working with the amazing people we have on the on the team and your comment there on jumping job to job I feel like I’ve kind of done that but at the same employer the same company. So I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of different things during my time at Capital ONTAP, which is the the main reason I’ve saved. I’ve been interested and been challenged, and those opportunities has definitely kept me kept me here.

Joey Kline: [00:03:18] Okay, let’s for anyone who is going to shut this off, although you shouldn’t, you need to keep listening. But for anyone who just wants the high level, let’s talk about what capital on tap does. So everyone gets an idea from the outset.

Zoe Newman: [00:03:29] So we are a small business credit card and we are purely focused on supporting local mom and pop shops, retailers, construction companies, the kind of high street, small businesses that kind of are running our our economy in the UK and the US are our current markets that we’re that we live in. Kind of mission is to make that as streamlined, easy, simple as possible and provide a great payment solution, a great product and service that is built just for SMEs.

Joey Kline: [00:03:57] And so what is the model now where people just maxing out their credit cards and getting as many as they can?

Zoe Newman: [00:04:04] I think there’s there’s it’s interesting, actually, the markets, the UK versus the US has definitely been a learning curve for us to kind of see the difference in competition and difference in in credit usage over here compared to the UK. But I think it’s really small businesses trying to find the, the credit card provider that best works for them and is kind of building a product that is kind of specialized and bespoke for what their needs are. So if you can provide the best product in terms of integrations to QuickBooks or the best employee cards that have the right restrictions and right management tools, those are what is kind of those pain points that small businesses face. That is what we’re trying to build to to make their lives easier.

Joey Kline: [00:04:47] Is this something that a Visa or MasterCard or American Express either doesn’t want to do or just or has ignored or simply just can’t do? Because, you know, they’re just too focused on on other types of businesses and customers? Why does it take someone else to come in and do this?

Zoe Newman: [00:05:08] Yeah. So I think our cards are actually issued by Visa, and so kind of the card issuing platform behind the banks is the Visa or MasterCard or Amex. And in terms of our competition, it’s the the American Express, the Capital One, the Chase business cards that are out there. But what we’ve seen historically is that those banks are actually servicing a lot of different people with a lot of different products. And actually that focus and providing the perfect small business credit card is what we really want to do. And we’re we’re here to build it and listen and get that feedback from our from our customers to to evolve and to kind of adapt quickly to what they’re they’re looking for.

Joey Kline: [00:05:47] Okay. So so it’s the specialization. It’s the kind of focusing on one lane and really being the best at that. That is seems to be what differentiates.

Zoe Newman: [00:05:56] Exactly. Yeah.

Joey Kline: [00:05:57] Okay. So you moved to the United States and specifically six months ago.

Zoe Newman: [00:06:03] Yep. Just over February.

Joey Kline: [00:06:05] Had you ever been to Atlanta before?

Zoe Newman: [00:06:07] I’d been a few times the previous year, so I actually really struggled to get over here initially because of COVID, and they weren’t letting anyone in from Europe for for a while. But yeah, I spent kind of a week per month here for the last few months of the year and yeah, got adjusted and was like, oh, I could, I could move out here, this would be fun.

Joey Kline: [00:06:25] And how why was Atlanta chosen as the United States place to plant a flag?

Zoe Newman: [00:06:34] Yeah, I actually was speaking to, to a company about this this morning. I think the three big reasons for us one was kind of our HQ is London. So time zones is is a is a real, real challenge, kind of jumping online in the morning and UK being halfway through that day. That’s tough if you’re in West Coast California. Sure, it makes it really tricky. And second, our CEO is originally from Atlanta and our CEO, he also is as well. And he’s moved out over here kind of a year ago or so. So kind of the connection was was strong. And then the third piece has been kind of talent, having some great universities here, a great pool of talent for us to kind of dip into. And yeah, just a great space in terms of entrepreneurial fintechs kind of seem to be sort of popping up here more than well, than a lot of other areas. And so, yeah, really kind of saw a huge opportunity from moving over here.

Joey Kline: [00:07:30] Yeah, it does sort of seem to be the, the nexus of that industry. Yeah. What have you noticed again, it hasn’t been that long, but just since you’ve been here, what have you noticed that you think that we as a city are doing a very good job of as it relates to growing technology companies, providing the right talent? And where do you think there’s a little bit of room for improvement?

Zoe Newman: [00:07:50] Yeah, I think the university pool of talent is definitely a huge opportunity. I’ve seen some really interesting kind of other organizations, particularly in the fintech space, FinTech, Atlanta, the team there and some other kind of fintech connections with the universities is really great and pushing people to be aware of it. As I said, I came out of university and didn’t know what fintech meant. So the fact that there’s a lot more kind of vocal involvement, the community around that, I think there’s a huge opportunity there in terms of what to do more of and I guess just continuing to push that out and to kind of one of the things I suppose that I’ve seen a little bit in the US compared to the UK is there seems to be kind of graduates come out of university and they have a a kind of connection to big names, big banks, big insurance companies, Home Depot here, Delta here. And it’s kind of how can the sort of startup opportunity be publicized a little bit more? Right? So in London particularly, it’s kind of great. Go work at a startup, a tech company. It’s a bit of a a bit of a gamble, but it’s going to be more fun and you can kind of make it more of an impression and more of a have have more responsibility in that role. And so I think kind of continuing to push that in Atlanta would definitely be a good thing.

Joey Kline: [00:09:06] I wonder if that. So I guess I’m trying to think to myself, what does that have to do with. Right. You know, I understand that for someone starting their career, there is it’s already scary, right? Entering a totally unknown company where maybe you’re sacrificing pay for equity. Do you have no idea what it’s going to be worth? That could be scary as well. Yeah. You know, I’m curious. I imagine that, you know, the UK probably has a much more generous public university system, public university system than we do. You know, this is just sort of us pontificating on the spot. I wonder if this has a little bit to do with well, you have people here who probably have a little bit more debt coming out. Totally have to really bank on that sure thing. But it’s do you do you think that it’s an Atlanta thing specifically that you saw where people are maybe kind of going to big names more or is this a US thing?

Zoe Newman: [00:10:02] I don’t have a solid answer on that. It’s just just. In my experience, Atlanta so far, and just kind of meeting some kind of recent grads or young people just kind of stepping into their career on the career ladder. Just just kind of anecdotally what I’ve heard and yeah, totally. I agree. Kind of having a massive student loan and it’s a safe bet to go to a grad program where you’re going straight onto a good, good salary. But yeah, for me it’s the opportunity to learn faster, be exposed to more and to really get thrown into something. You’re going to learn fast and learn on the job. If you’re jumping into a small company that, as you say, could, could, could pay off and could work out really well, but for me is definitely worth the worth the gamble, I.

Joey Kline: [00:10:46] Think I look, I would agree I’ve you know, until recently I’ve really only worked at small companies. And the fun is that, you know, it’s just it’s always different. You get to see everything. I think for someone that gets bored easily, it’s quite useful. Slash necessary. Okay, so you’ve been here for six months and what is the charge for growth in the US? Is this simply, Look, we’re very popular in the UK. We really need you to come over and just scale this across North America.

Zoe Newman: [00:11:15] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We saw some amazing traction in the UK with our products, small businesses across the UK. We’ve got over 120,000 small businesses we’ve supported there and had built that technology and that foundation and realized it was possible to kind of bring that over to a new market, take that sort of vision, one really a copy and paste format and then iterating it to the market. And so adjusting our credit underwriting, adjusting the product and tweaking some of the communications and yeah, just seeing a really big market opportunity where there’s a ton of small businesses here that we that we’re really keen to support.

Joey Kline: [00:11:52] What is the sales marketing process like? Because we’re talking about I mean, these could be, you know, 5 to 10 person companies, right? Some of them even less than that, a floral shop bar, you know, I mean, really the we’re not talking about the big chains. We really are talking about the one and a half one off mom and pops. Yeah, that would seem to be quite a wide market. That would also seem to be quite a quite a challenge in terms of focus.

Zoe Newman: [00:12:19] Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think our marketing strategy has been really kind of combination of online marketing. So looking at affiliates like a credit karma, nerdwallet sort of the traditional platforms that you go to if you’re looking for a credit card, we look at some kind of social pieces. So we’ve had some good traction on on Facebook, YouTube and advertising on there. And then we also do some direct mail. So kind of reaching out to small business owners directly. One of the challenges we found is over the above the line marketing. So kind of posting on TV ads or kind of doing billboards where it’s quite expensive and it’s not so targeted really the market we’re kind of going after as those small businesses rather than kind of broader consumers. So, yeah, really trying to focus in and use the technology and availability that we’ve got with online marketing to kind of focus in on that segment. And the same with our data analytics team. We have an amazing team that kind of help us find the right small businesses to send out those letters to. And that kind of means that we have the businesses that are most likely to respond to us and get approved. So those basically those two channels are really our focus at the moment.

Joey Kline: [00:13:32] And is as much of the customer base, at least as far as the US goes in Georgia, the Southeast, is it all over? How does the geographic focus break down?

Zoe Newman: [00:13:40] Yes, we’re all over. We’re not not kind of focused in any particular geography. We’ve got customers in Hawaii, we’ve got customers in Alaska and New York across the whole of the states. And one of the interesting things I think that’s come out of our launch in Atlanta is we have done a bit more PR than we previously done in the UK or had done before, just based on kind of launching in the city, kind of employing and building our team out here and getting our kind of office space set up. And so we’ve actually seen quite a lot of traction in the Atlanta area, seeing a lot of entrepreneurial kind of small business community here. That’s something that I’ve been trying to get involved in just some really interesting events and entrepreneurial focused kind of networking opportunities that I think has kind of driven quite a lot of traction here as well.

Joey Kline: [00:14:27] Okay, that makes sense. And our outlook, obviously, this is very early on into your tenure here and it’s important to scale up. I’m curious if there are other ancillary financial products that you guys are thinking of rolling out in the future. You know what? In addition to just simply blanketing the marketplace with Marketplace with as much coverage as you can, what else is on the horizon?

Zoe Newman: [00:14:54] Yeah. So for us, we’ve still got work to do to get our our business credit card to the best it can be. We’ve still got more opportunities connecting in with QuickBooks, with card management, virtual cards. All of those those features that we really want to deliver to our customers. And we have been looking into kind of general B2B payments. So I hadn’t used a checkbook in 20 years until I arrived in America. And so I think there’s still some opportunity that the US has in terms of businesses paying their suppliers, making those payment solutions more streamlined. So that’s something we’re definitely looking into and kind of probably the next opportunity that we that we see. And then obviously kind of considering other markets, geographies is, is the other approach is the way we look at it is either we keep really focused on our one product and look at new markets or we start to kind of drill in on our two markets we’re in now and look at those other other products or opportunities.

Joey Kline: [00:15:52] Sure. So let’s I want to switch to kind of you and your your leadership style, the culture you’re trying to build because you’re in a very unique position in that you have this team here in Atlanta and you are all part of a larger company, but you’re also kind of your I recognize that for, you know, business licensing reasons, you’re not your own entity. Right? But it’s like, you know, you sort of are just based you know, you are geographically separate. It probably feels like you’re sort of a team within a team and you’re kind of the CEO of the team. And so you function as both, I imagine, an executive leader of the company and also kind of a CEO of this business unit. How how does it work? What are you trying to build here? What are you trying to foster in the community and and the people?

Zoe Newman: [00:16:44] Sure. So I think one of the best traits features of capital on tap in the UK has been the culture that we’ve built and the team that we’ve built. As I said, I’ve stuck it out for ten years. If I didn’t like the people I was working with, I probably would have laughed a lot sooner. So yeah, keen to kind of replicate that, that great culture that we’ve built in the UK and trying to kind of take any of those really positive kind of traits that we’ve got and replicating those over in the US. So as an example, I think one of the reasons I’ve been so engaged and kind of felt like I’ve been invested in and developed through my career at Capital ONTAP, TAP has been opportunities, autonomy being given kind of those projects to to run with and and kind of the get big. I would take that on my own and just figure it out. And so that’s definitely something we’re we’re trying to replicate here. So finding great talent, really ambitious people who want to make their mark and have the opportunity to do that and kind of have that autonomy to to kind of prosper, to succeed and to make their mark on the company. And as I said earlier, the opportunity to do that with a small business means you really can be okay, I want to fix this. I’ve got this idea. I want to run with it. Can I just go? And that’s that’s something we really want to foster and give give people that that chance, that opportunity to do that.

Joey Kline: [00:18:06] Yeah, I imagine it’s you are not just hiring for a certain set of skills. You are hiring for a mind set as well. Someone that you can trust and who wants to be autonomous.

Zoe Newman: [00:18:17] Yeah absolutely. And a lot of our team, our core founding team in the UK, none of us came from banks. We were all generalists. We all had kind of that experience in There’s a Problem, we want to fix it. We want to solve it in the best possible way, in the best experience for our customers. And similarly in the US, obviously we’ve got our fraud experts up in crime, those kind of core skills that we need to run a financial products. But outside of that, it’s it’s kind of ambitious, smart generalist that really want to kind of make a mark and get stuck in.

Joey Kline: [00:18:49] Yeah. And I assume you are hiring.

Zoe Newman: [00:18:52] Yes. Always looking for great people.

Joey Kline: [00:18:54] Yeah. Okay. And what kind of positions?

Zoe Newman: [00:18:56] So we are actually right now hiring for a head of credit, a head of growth and some a lead analyst data analysts that as I said, a lot of our marketing, a lot of our approaches are all super data driven and our business is run on run on data really. So kind of looking for more smart people in that area as well.

Joey Kline: [00:19:15] Okay. Well, everyone out there, if you’re a great candidate looking for an exciting new opportunity or if you are a small business capital on tap, I’m assuming. Yes. Yes. One capital with an A, everyone. Oh, okay. Well, Zoe, thanks a lot for coming on. I appreciate it.

Zoe Newman: [00:19:31] Thanks so much for having me.

Joey Kline: [00:19:32] Sure. Hey, John.

John Lariccia: [00:19:33] Hey there. I should have renamed my company. I don’t want to follow Zoe. I don’t know how I’m going to top that.

Joey Kline: [00:19:40] Well, you know.

John Lariccia: [00:19:41] I’m not.

Joey Kline: [00:19:42] Along. I think you’ll be fine. So. Senior living.

John Lariccia: [00:19:46] Senior living?

Joey Kline: [00:19:47] Yeah. So you’ve got. I like both of your stories. They’re very unique. Separately, you have Zoe, who’s just kind of grown with the same firm and has a lot of loyalty to this place, and you’ve got you that has made the jump from the big, bad corporate world into the fun startup.

John Lariccia: [00:20:06] Is that your way of saying I’m old?

Joey Kline: [00:20:07] No. You could have been in the big, bad corporate world for two years and then jumped. We don’t know how old you are.

John Lariccia: [00:20:12] That is.

Joey Kline: [00:20:13] True. Yeah. Okay, So. So headline. Let’s talk about Welcome home. Sure. Executive summary.

John Lariccia: [00:20:19] What you do know. So the executive summary is we are a technology company focused on helping senior living operators perform the sales functions more efficiently and effectively. That is the summary. You know, senior living operations are something that are hidden in plain sight. You’ll now start looking around and start noticing them. There’s a million seniors that live in residential care. It is an enormous business within the United States, almost $60 Billion, a million seniors living in these types of communities. And it’s an incredibly complicated sales process. It’s complicated from logistics standpoint. It’s complicated from the emotional standpoint that families are going through. And at the center of it all is a salesperson that’s well-meaning and extroverted but not always well supported. And we’re here to support that person, both with the technology and the form of the CRM, but also with our entire team.

Joey Kline: [00:21:18] Traditionally are I imagine it’s probably not necessarily even the actual resident that is looking. It’s typically maybe an adult child. It could be a spouse, I suppose.

John Lariccia: [00:21:31] Yeah. So it breaks down about a third of the time. It is the senior themselves that are initiating it, a third. It’s a family decision and the third of the time it’s entirely driven by the family. So you have an independent living, which is almost college on steroids and it’s driven by the senior. They sit there and whether they’re 65 or 85, they’re still spry and lively and fully independent, and they just don’t want to live in their home anymore. They don’t want to care for the yard. They don’t want to care for the neighbors. They don’t want to care for the kids that are that are running through their backyard and they downsize and they get to go into independent living and everything is taken care of. There’s amenities, there’s people driving them, there’s food that’s being served. The bar is always open. And so that’s that’s a third of the instances. And on the other end of the spectrum, unfortunately, you have a lot of seniors that are battling dementia and they can’t drive the process legally. And so the family has to take over. And a third of the time is somewhere in between where mom typically mom is starting to struggle with activities of daily living. She is coming to appreciate that the burden is being borne by the family and they all collectively come to the decision to to find an alternative way of living.

Joey Kline: [00:22:51] And so our most inquiry will look at whether it is sole family, sole elder, elderly resident or a combination. Are most of the inquiries that the centers get from some from the outside, or is there a lot of outbound push that a salesperson is doing? Yeah. What is the what is the pitch process there?

John Lariccia: [00:23:13] Yeah, it is shifted dramatically since the pandemic. So before the pandemic it was an equal mix where the sales director was calling on hospital discharge planner or senior centers or synagogues and making themselves known to establish that footprint and that relationship early. Yeah, When the pandemic hit, you couldn’t do that anymore and the need was still there. And so we’re now seeing upwards to 80% is inbound. It’s everyone is starting every search online, whether you’re buying a car or a house or now senior living. And so they will go on some digital platform, start researching and then do an inbound. It’s slowly getting back to normal. But I think that the kink is the kink of the curve is more systemic and structural.

Joey Kline: [00:24:03] Okay. So I want to talk about the ins and outs of the product and the experience. But let’s let’s move back for a little while. Okay. So you come from the consulting world.

John Lariccia: [00:24:13] I believe I do.

Joey Kline: [00:24:14] And had you worked on in this industry, how did you identify and get passionate about this problem?

John Lariccia: [00:24:21] Yeah, so I spent 20 years in management consulting at a place called Bain and Company, and this is a very funny small world. I’ve just met Zoe, her CEO. David Locke. Yep. I hired him out of Emory.

Zoe Newman: [00:24:35] Really?

John Lariccia: [00:24:38] Yeah. And. And I remember when he moved to the UK and around halfway through my two decades there, I had the good fortune of working with a senior living community. And like a lot of folks that have a brush with senior living, you fall in love with the people, you fall in love with the mission. But I was quite simply appalled by the technology they were using. And, you know, I just. But in the back of my mind. And then over the course of the next decade, I worked with a variety of other operators and kept finding the exact same thing and got to a point where it’s like, Well, are you going to do something about it, or are you just going to keep lamenting it? And so that just gave me the context that this was a real issue and it gave me contacts that I could I could reach out as I was exploring what to do.

Joey Kline: [00:25:29] Yeah. You never know. You never know what those early life experiences are going to lead to. Right. That’s exactly right. So what are the folks that you would consult with as well as the ones who are not using your system? What are they doing? Is this just an Excel spreadsheet? How does it work?

John Lariccia: [00:25:46] It runs a gamut. So some folks are using nothing more than paper and pen. Excel would be the next step up, right? There are handful of systems that try to do every single function within a senior living operator, whether it’s managing the menu to sending out the invoices to the clinical records, and they’ll have a CRM that’s tacked on to it. Typically, you pay nothing for it and you get exactly what you’re paying for. And on the kind of far end, you’ll have a few folks that have gone so far as to have a salesforce and do a customized build of Salesforce, which is incredibly expensive to maintain and to understand how to operate. So we are going to all of them with Welcome Home and and having them migrate, whether it’s from something like a Salesforce to to paper and pen and so.

Joey Kline: [00:26:39] Obviously I get the pitch from paper and pen and excel to welcome home. Right. What I’m curious about is why a company like a Salesforce can’t customize this. And I’m going to I’m going to guess you can tell me if I’m right, but it sounds like, one, it’s too expensive for what it is. Because because of course, you have the that that that person is partially subsidizing all the other stuff at Salesforce that they focus on. And too, it’s probably just too complicated for what they need.

John Lariccia: [00:27:10] Yeah, that’s that’s exactly that’s what came screaming through when we were even thinking about building the CRM, which is my power user, is not necessarily a technologically adept individual who doesn’t want to become technologically adept. And so the key was building a piece of software that was easy to use, but also simultaneously useful. And so we like to joke that ours is incredibly robust, but that’s behind the scenes. When you log on, it looks like something that I imagine your kids would know how to use. And so there’s a lot of popular phrases about gamification, but at the end of the day, it’s make it user friendly and make it useful and and allow folks to kind of get on with their day, with without having to spend a lot of time getting up to speed on how to use a piece of software.

Joey Kline: [00:28:04] This seems like one of those industries. And it’s always interesting to me when I come across one of these that have not been truly changed by technology yet because they seem to becoming, you know, smaller and smaller, whether it is tech, whether it’s industry or function. And this seems to be one that there’s probably a pretty big old green field of opportunity out there.

John Lariccia: [00:28:26] We certainly hope so. And we launched the product three years ago and had three different pilots and now we’re into 4500 different, different clients using it. It’s humbling, but it’s also very gratifying because, as most operators would say, they are probably 10 to 15 years behind most other industries. Mm hmm.

Joey Kline: [00:28:47] And what percent I’m trying to kind of figure out how much of this is an enterprise sale and how much of this is kind of a one off, right. You know, like, how are your people focusing? Is it geographic? Is it let’s just go after the largest users? How does that.

John Lariccia: [00:29:04] Work? Yeah, even an operator has a single community. This is change and change is hard. And the systems all have to talk to one another. So they’re all enterprise sales. They all take months from initial inquiry to to final conversions. Sure. And so we focus on slightly larger operators. They don’t have to have hundreds of communities. They have five communities. That’s kind of a target market for us. And we have three salespeople and we’ve divide it up the nation based on geography as well as size. And so my head of sales is going after the larger. And then we have two executives that are going after the midsize and smaller based on where they are in the United States.

Joey Kline: [00:29:51] What is the distribution of industry concentration?

John Lariccia: [00:29:56] It is very fragmented, I would imagine. It is. You know, the the provision of of senior living is a very local enterprise. And so you have most of the operators that will have somewhere between ten and 20 communities and they’ll be clustered geographically.

Joey Kline: [00:30:14] Yeah, I think everyone probably gets a sense that there is a looming wave of a very large number of elderly people in the United States. And I’m curious from. Your bird’s eye view of this industry. Are there enough of these facilities that either exist or are being built to handle what is about to happen?

John Lariccia: [00:30:37] Yeah, the silver tsunami there aren’t is a short answer. But it also, again, is very local In Atlanta. We have enough to handle the wave. But if you go across the United States, you will find enormous pockets where there is undersupply.

Joey Kline: [00:30:57] I mean, I would imagine that this is you know, let’s let’s take just health care in general, Right? You have increasingly, you know, your major cities that are health care centers, and then you have the rural areas again, whether it’s in our state or in another that are deserts. Yep. And I’m going to guess that this isn’t really in the top 30 metros that we’re talking about that are issues. It’s in those outlying areas that aren’t growing or are shrinking.

John Lariccia: [00:31:24] Yeah, that’s right. So I’m from a place called Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown, Ohio needs more senior living communities because it’s got plenty of seniors that need somewhere to go.

Joey Kline: [00:31:34] How do you incentivize Is it just that, you know, the big cities or the sexy places to do this and no one’s thinking about that lack of opportunity, but lack of competition?

John Lariccia: [00:31:46] Yeah, I think that’s what ends up happening, is that you have more and more data that you put in front of operators and developers, and they’ll start to realize that I just have to shift my focus 40 miles to the west and I’m going to find places that have opportunity that someone else hasn’t hasn’t gone to. Because the kicker in the larger cities where the operators and developers want to personally live and they want to work where they live is you build a beautiful community that suddenly gets full. Then another operator and developer is going to open one right down the road and you can get some of these smaller communities like Madison, Georgia, which is a lovely place. You build one, you’re going to get all the volume there for years and there’s really no math is going to tell you to build another one.

Joey Kline: [00:32:32] Big fish, small pond.

John Lariccia: [00:32:33] Exactly.

Joey Kline: [00:32:33] Yeah. Clearly, right now you are laser focused on this industry. When you look at this software, which would seem to have applications for other sales processes that aren’t fully technology ified yet. Right. I’m thinking, I don’t know. Lawn care, cleaning services, etc., etc.. Right. Do you do you look at that? And it’s this kind of shiny object on the horizon that you want to grab after? Or is it just, you know what? Let someone else handle that? We are focused on being the absolute dominating force in senior living.

John Lariccia: [00:33:13] Yeah. 20 years of being beat it into me that you want to focus, right? And as long as there’s opportunity in your core business, you should go after that. And so that’s part of my answer. The other part is senior living operators have unique challenges and I want to dedicate all my time to them and it resonates with them. When you sit there and say, My entire company is focused on senior living and how to make you better. Yeah. And so that’s what we’re going to do until we run out of, of opportunity, which I don’t see happening in the next couple of decades.

Joey Kline: [00:33:45] Yeah. Are there any other CRM companies out there that are solely focused on this vertical?

John Lariccia: [00:33:51] There are two that are solely focused on it, and we’re chipping away.

Joey Kline: [00:33:56] Excellent. Yeah. Okay. So at what point did you I imagine there was probably an overlap where you were at Bain and you were doing this as well? I didn’t mean to be that like a gotcha. I guess more what I meant was at what point, whether, you know, at what point did you make the full leap? Were you mentally there to do it?

John Lariccia: [00:34:20] Yeah. At the end of the day, businesses are about collection of human beings and and the collection of human beings that were the first few that were founding members. Welcome Home looked at me and said, We’re all in, Are you all in? And it was only fair to them to say, yes, it was time to to cut the cord and and and leave big bad corporate. Yeah. And and be there for them. And so, again, the pandemic helped because it forced me off the road. And so I was spending more time working in Welcome home and realize that this was the next chapter and this is where I wanted to be.

Joey Kline: [00:35:04] Yeah, that’s I think those sort of things become a demarcation line in the sand that divides time. Yeah, Yeah. Okay. And so, so you’ve, you’ve had roles in a large organization, you have roles in a small organization. Right now you’re running a small growing team. I mean, kind of similar question that Zoe and I talked about, but. What do you take from what you learned about leadership, either from your consulting clients or from Bain itself? And what do you take from there and bring to this new opportunity, whether things that you have dedicated yourself not to do or that you want to implement as well?

John Lariccia: [00:35:46] Yeah. Authenticity really matters, right? So I feel like it is going to resonate with clients, it’s going to resonate with recruits, it’s going to resonate with team members to just speak from your heart. Having a mission driven organization, which oftentimes I thought was just lip service matters because it’s a way to encapsulate what you’re there for. Culture. Culture kills again. It’s one of those things that before I was in the seat thinking about growing, I didn’t always believe or also I’ve just joined places that already had great culture and now that I have to build it, it is incredibly important. I had a client that refused to take the CEO title. He called himself Chief Culture Officer, and I kind of rolled my eyes at it until I was CEO. And you get to a certain point and we’re at 40 employees. It’s not even like we’re hundreds of employees and real jobs someone else has been hired to do.

Joey Kline: [00:36:56] That’s right. You’re not you’re not everything.

John Lariccia: [00:36:59] You’re not everything. Yes. And and so it’s like, all right, what exactly is my primary role here? And building and maintaining culture might not be number one, but it’s in the top five.

Joey Kline: [00:37:11] Well, I really do see it as you’re sort of like an orchestra conductor. Yes. They’re, you know, kind of pointing people in the right direction, making sure that they’re playing in sync. And yes, your date, certainly you’re still executing, right, Like your days of deep within each function, just, you know, by imperative have to go out the window at a certain point.

John Lariccia: [00:37:34] Yeah. Let’s dead on.

Joey Kline: [00:37:35] Right. Yeah. What I’m also curious about so you’ve look obviously you’ve been with this company since the beginning up until 40 people. Right. And the leadership needs when you’re under ten people or one thing the leadership needs when you’re 40 to 70 or another and then of course, past 100 is very different. So what are you doing now that you didn’t use to do and what do you think you’ll have to do in, you know, whatever when you double hopefully that you’re not doing now.

John Lariccia: [00:38:03] Defining and selling vision. Right. And even if it at times feels like Groundhog Day is something that is core to what I’m doing all the time. The other at this stage of of of our evolution and growth is I’m constantly thinking about organization constantly. Right in the beginning it was grab some team members, let’s serve and let’s just keep up. And now it’s about let’s be much more intentional. Let’s think about every single person’s development path within the company and, and, and overall as, as the leaders themselves and thinking about how do we make this not just survive, but but scale. And so that’s how I’m really thinking about it.

Joey Kline: [00:38:52] Yeah, that’s exciting.

John Lariccia: [00:38:54] It’s been great. Yeah.

Joey Kline: [00:38:56] So. Atlanta. Atlanta. Atlanta is a backdrop to your company. What are we good at? What do we need some work on?

John Lariccia: [00:39:06] What are we great at? You know, I do think that we are emerging to be very friendly towards startups and tech. It’s if I even think when a place like ATB started, it was a lone bastion, right? It was just sitting out there and now it’s much more expected. And so I think that. That there’s something that’s cool and hip and expect it and respected that you’re going to be in a startup world. I think that we’re still affordable relative to everything else. And so while people certainly are taking a leap to come here versus going to management consulting or go to Home Depot, the no one’s living in poverty, even if they have to take the pay cut. So I think those are both great. You know, where I think that we have room is probably much more a marketing marketing. Local companies for both employees to relocate to come here marketing so folks can seek outside capital. Again, we’re getting slightly better, but you know, startups are living off of people in capital.

Joey Kline: [00:40:28] That’s you started plan planet like this but you know really that is that goal is the reason why kind of the three of us are sitting around this table right now. And I do think that we’ve gotten much, much better at it. But at the end of the day, what you hear about most here are the Fortune one thousands. And not that those are not important and large employers and a large customer base for startups and small growing companies. Yes, not enough people really know about the really interesting things that are happening beneath the surface that the two of you all are doing as an example. And so, I mean, that is absolutely the reason why this exists and why we broadcast this out.

John Lariccia: [00:41:12] Yeah, And I think it’s a great service that you’re doing for Atlanta and the two of us and ones that came before and the ones that came after.

Joey Kline: [00:41:19] Didn’t didn’t certainly didn’t make the mean to make that self-serving statement. But it’s just I think it it reinforces the mission here.

John Lariccia: [00:41:28] Yeah.

Joey Kline: [00:41:29] So if you are a senior living operator or know someone adjacent to that community, welcome home software.

John Lariccia: [00:41:38] Is that that’s exactly.

Joey Kline: [00:41:39] It Welcome home software dot com.

John Lariccia: [00:41:41] And similarly you can find our job board there. We’ve gotten to this point with absolutely no marketing department so I am actively building a marketing department. We are looking for more enterprise account executives, we are looking for more customer success people. So we are hiring to to serve all of those clients.

Joey Kline: [00:42:03] Excellent candidates and customers alike Capital on Tap and WelcomeHome. Shameless self self-promotion. Zoe and John, thanks a lot for joining us today.

Zoe Newman: [00:42:14] Thanks, Joey. Thank you so much

Joey Kline: [00:42:15] And thank you everyone out there for listening to Tech talk. Have a great one.

About Your Host

JoeyKlineJoey Kline is a Vice President at JLL, specializing in office brokerage and tenant representation. As an Atlanta native, he has a deep passion for promoting the economic growth and continued competitiveness of communities in and around Atlanta, as well as the Southeast as a whole.

He has completed transactions in every major submarket of metro Atlanta, and works primarily with start-ups, advertising/marketing agencies, and publicly-traded companies. With a healthy mix of tenacious drive and analytical insights, Joey is a skilled negotiator who advises clients on a myriad of complex real estate matters.

With a strategy and business development background, Joey is first and foremost a pragmatic advisor to his clients. Most recently, he was the Director of Business Development for American Fueling Systems, an Atlanta-based alternative energy company.Tech-Talk

While at JLL, he has become a member of the Million Dollar Club, and has built a reputation as an expert on the intersection of transit-accessibility and urban real estate. With intimate involvement in site selection and planning/zoning concerns, Joey approaches real estate from the perspective of the end user, and thus possesses a unique lens through which to serve his clients.

Joey holds a Master of Business Administration from Emory University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a founder, board member, and the treasurer of Advance Atlanta, and also sits on the Selection Committee for the Association for Corporate Growth’s Fast 40 event. In addition, he is a member of CoreNet and the Urban Land Institute. Finally, he is part of LEAD Atlanta’s Class of 2019.

Connect with Joey on LinkedIn.

Jeff Curwen With Washington State Chiropractic Association

by

WSCAJeff CurwenJeff Curwen, Executive Director of Washington State Chiropractic Association.

He’s a career nonprofit manager with a passion for professional education and program management. He brings a wealth of strategic planning, and individual and organizational development experience to the WSCA having worked with professional trade associations and charitable nonprofits all over the United States.

Jeff holds the prestigious Certified Association Executive designation and a Master in Applied Ethics from Arizona State University, focusing on public policy and nonprofit management. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Justice Studies and Political Science from the University of Idaho and studied law at Whittier Law School.

In addition to his professional pursuits, Jeff works with several organizations around Puget Sound. He is a volunteer and former board member and vice president of Pasado’s Safe Haven and the risk management advisor to a student group at the University of Puget Sound. Jeff lives in Tacoma with his wife, Beth, their two cats, and their dog.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Membership acquisition & retention
  • Healthcare & healthcare policy
  • Association role during the pandemic
  • Affinity programs
  • Continuing education & professional development

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:19] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Jeff Curwen and he is with the Washington State Chiropractic Association. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Curwen: [00:00:33] Hi, Lee. Thanks for having.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Me. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about the Washington State Chiropractic Association. How are you serving, folks?

Jeff Curwen: [00:00:41] Yeah, well, the Washington State Chiropractic Association represents all chiropractors in the state of Washington, whether there are dues paying members or not, because our work benefits them either way. What we do is we advocate for the profession, both in Olympia with the legislators and on the national level policy wise. Additionally, we provide all kinds of continuing education opportunities for them, as well as business networking opportunities.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Now, how did you get into this line of work? Were you always involved in association work?

Jeff Curwen: [00:01:14] No, I think just like anybody else in the association world, I kind of fell into it. I, I went to law school with the intention of becoming a lawyer and realized that that was just definitely not the life that I wanted to have. And so I left. And then I found a job working initially in education for an association, just doing continuing professional education. And after a few years, I kind of showed that I had a knack for it and moved into different areas of association management, finance, executive management, marketing, all of those things, and just worked my way through a number of different associations. And finally, I’m here.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:55] Now having kind of been involved in other organizations. Is it do they have similar challenges? Like do you have the same kind of member engagement or member service challenges that you have with this group that you had with previous groups?

Jeff Curwen: [00:02:10] Yeah, actually, the one thing I would say is the same, no matter what association you’re talking about is you’re going to have your small core group of members that are totally 1,000% engaged and they are they’re living the association just as much as the staff do. But then that’s maybe 2% of your of your association. The rest are people who definitely see the value in the association. But they’ve got other things going on. They’ve they want you to demonstrate how constantly how the association is doing something for them. And that’s good because that’s what we’re here for. But yeah, it’s there’s varying levels, but mostly it’s, it’s all people who are going to rely on the staff and those that small core group to to run the day to day.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:02] Now when you have kind of that small super fan group, how do you make sure that they’re getting served to the level they need to be served, but also not just kind of succumb to that squeaky wheel gets the grease thing and miss out on other areas where you can be serving a larger amount of the members or potential members.

Jeff Curwen: [00:03:23] Well, that’s a good question. I would say that my answer to that is you provide the same service that you do to them, that you do to everybody. You just provide excellent service. And you know what? What they come to expect is rank and file members is what they get as that core hyper involved group of members. And maybe you just speak with them on a personal level a little bit more often. But other than that, you just got to give them the same great membership experience and make them feel like being a part of the association is just a part of their professional practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] And then how do you kind of push that value curve in terms of, you know, you’re doing a lot of advocacy with policy and things like that that might be kind of in some ways invisible to the typical member. And they have pressing needs of I need another customer, you know, I need to figure out more ways to create different revenue streams. You know, they have more maybe practical challenges. How do you kind of have that balance of the advocacy as well as that kind of best practices on how to run a successful chiropractic practice?

Jeff Curwen: [00:04:35] Yeah, I would say that this is this is an area where the pandemic really gave us an opportunity to shine, whether we wanted it or not. It was that when when the lockdowns hit and when everything was was shutting down and it was, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve, initially everybody was like, well, yeah, okay, we’ll just get through this two weeks. This is going to be low business. But then, of course, that that didn’t turn out and businesses just started shutting down left and right. And because chiropractic is in health care, we we are. A service that cannot be shut down. But as we see from some of the other health care professions during that time, at least in my state, for instance, dentistry, they got shut down completely. You could not see your dentist ever, period during the lockdown. Chiropractic, a lot of people think, well, that’s kind of a luxury service. It’s not something that I really need. No, chiropractic is an essential service because one thing that we saw was at the height of the pandemic, a lot of other providers were turning away non-covid patients just saying, sorry, we’re up to our up to our limit with COVID. I’m sorry you got the common cold, whatever, or you got back pain or whatever, you got to go elsewhere. And that’s one one area where chiropractors really shined, at least in Washington, was being able to provide that alternate source for diagnosis and referral, because if another doctor wasn’t going to take you in just because you weren’t complaining of COVID symptoms, how are they ever going to find out if there was something else wrong with you? Somebody who is trained to diagnose had to actually examine you.

Jeff Curwen: [00:06:23] And that’s one area where chiropractic is really able to shine. Now, what we provided for them throughout that time was constant monitoring of the almost daily changes in guidance and mandates from the state, determining who could be open, who could be open when, how many people could be in your office, what what compliance issues the state was going to require for you in order to remain open. And really, it presented an administrative burden that no business owner really had the time to to sift through and to analyze every single day to make sure that they were still in compliance. And that’s really where the association stepped in and pick things up for a period there. I was working seven days a week, probably 20 hours a day, and most of most of what I was doing in that time was reviewing orders from the governor’s office or from the secretary of state and analyzing them and determining what exactly you had to do to stay open and then communicating to the membership what they needed to do, how they needed to do it in order to stay in compliance, but still be able to serve their patients.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:40] Now, having done something that monumental during that chaotic time, was that something that the members were like finally kind of, Oh, I get it now, this is why I pay my dues. This is why this is important. I mean, because that becomes a life or death of the survival of that business. If they didn’t know this information in the in the real time manner that you were delivering it in.

Jeff Curwen: [00:08:06] Yeah, definitely. I think they really saw the benefit of that. And I think that kind of bore out in our our membership numbers because for a period there and I would say the second half of 2021, we maintained our membership numbers throughout the pandemic, but really right around mid 2021 we saw like a 25% jump in membership. And I think it was really just the message got out. People understood that, hey, the reason you’re open right now is because you’ve got you’ve got the WCA staff on your side and we’re running interference for the state. We’re giving you the tools that you need to stay open. And I think I think enough of those really hyper involved members saw that and started having those conversations with their colleagues saying, hey, you know, you need to you need to contribute, you need to get involved because this organization is here and your livelihood depends on them being open.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:10] So now, now that we move past the pandemic, is your efforts helping in regard to more chiropractic friendly health care policy from maybe the state and nationally?

Jeff Curwen: [00:09:27] I would say definitely, yes. We we were able to forge some new relationships with other provider types throughout the pandemic. And we’ve really seen referrals greatly increase in the last year, year and a half. And really just those conversations about collaborating on various policy objectives, those conversations that maybe didn’t happen in the past just because either other providers didn’t really understand chiropractic or they didn’t they didn’t know how we could work well together. They saw the messaging that we were putting out to our membership and they saw that, hey, every single chiropractic office I walk past, they’re not they’re not closed down, so they must be doing something right. And so that kind of opened them up to having new conversations with the association and new opportunities for us to collaborate on policy objectives and legislation and hoping that that just kind of stays alive and and continues after the pandemic is completely over. But I guess time will tell.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:37] And can you talk about your affinity programs? How how is that working?

Jeff Curwen: [00:10:45] Yeah, we we have worked closely with a number of our corporate members to just kind of determine what products are our members need that their patients are are going to buy and and large numbers and we we work out ways of doing revenue shares that help support the association so that we can kind of defer payment from from members who are maybe struggling or or starting out in practice and can’t necessarily afford to be active dues paying members, but want to have that that connection. And they want to they want to support the association in any way they can, where they can do so through our our preferred vendors who have affinity programs with us.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:34] Now, is that something that’s just part of your partnership agreements, that there has to be some form of an affinity program, or is that just the level of partnership that includes affinity programs?

Jeff Curwen: [00:11:45] No, it’s entirely on the corporate members and whether or not they are they’re willing to do something. And if that’s if that’s something that they find value in. And we’ve been lucky enough to to have a lot of corporate members who have who have wanted to step up and say, hey, I need to find a new way that I can support the association because I’m seeing my business soar because of what your your members are doing. And if they’re not if they’re not paying it back to the association, I want to make sure that that we can do that on their behalf. And we’ve had some some really great corporate partners that that have done that.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:23] And that’s a pretty creative solution to create that win win for everybody.

Jeff Curwen: [00:12:29] Yeah. And actually we the one that we we had are probably our our most active affinity program where there’s a company called my Triad Air. And that’s actually their tagline is it’s a win win win. It’s a win for you, it’s a win for your patients and it’s a win for the association as well. So we’re in the middle of our conference season right now and our our corporate partners all getting an opportunity to to go up and address the audience at various points. And that’s the tagline which my triad areas, they get up there in front of the audience and say, Hey, it’s win, win, win, why aren’t you doing it right?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:06] And that’s a pretty compelling argument, I think. How has how do you feel your association is doing when it comes to continuing education and professional development? I know that’s an area that a lot of associations want to kind of do a really good job. And then it’s an important kind of pillar of the reason that they’re there.

Jeff Curwen: [00:13:29] Yeah, it’s it’s always been a foundation of what the association does. Chiropractic is a little bit unique in that much of our continuing ed has to be hands on just because of the, the nature of chiropractic. It’s, it’s a hands on profession. And so these last couple of years we’ve had to transition primarily to to virtual learning just like everybody else has. And thankfully, we’re we’re on the way back to going back to how we were pre-pandemic. But we’ve had to find new ways of delivering education to our members. And that virtual format and new ways of being able to do that, that hands on type of thing. And I mean, it works out to being, hey, if you’re going to watch this program, you need to have you need to have your your practice patient. To you so that you can you can do your hands on step by step as we’re we’re doing this in the program. But yeah, it’s just been a learning learning experience. And we have we have found new ways of reaching out to members who don’t necessarily make it out to our conferences and making sure that they’re getting the same type of education that we offer to all of those other members as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] So do you have any advice for other leaders of associations to engage their members and maybe, you know, maybe something you’ve learned when it comes to getting a member to join and to stick around?

Jeff Curwen: [00:15:13] Yeah. Experiment. Don’t be afraid to experiment. There’s we all have these crazy ideas floating around in our heads of what’s going to be the next biggest thing, what’s what’s going to work best. And you’re never going to know unless you actually try it and understand that more than half the time, you’re going to fail. Just be be willing to fail, you know, try out the new things. And because you never know which one is going to be the next revolutionary one.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:43] Yeah, I was just. It was funny you bringing that up because I was just talking to my team about that is we’re trying to reframe, failing to learning and using experimenting as a kind of bridge to that where you’re not, you know, trying and failing this early, you’re just experimenting. And that experiment told you not to do that. And it’s just you have you have to build in knowing that not every experiment is going to be a winner. But you have to experiment because there are going to be winners somewhere along the line.

Jeff Curwen: [00:16:14] Exactly. Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:16] But that’s a mindset shift. I mean, a lot of people are so afraid of failing that they don’t try anything new. They just keep doing whatever was done before.

Jeff Curwen: [00:16:25] Exactly. I mean, I think we have a in the association world, we’re we’re so very calendar driven and we know what we do this time of year. Last year, what we did this time two years ago and it’s conference season so this is what we’re supposed to be doing right now is conferences and we can kind of set these other things to the side because historically that’s what we’ve always done. Well, you know, you just need to you need to kind of get out of that pattern and accept that change happens. It’s always happening. You need to embrace that and do things differently. You can’t do things the same way you did them 20 years ago. That just doesn’t work anymore. So try out the new things because you never know what one is going to stick.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:11] Now what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jeff Curwen: [00:17:15] Well, like anybody in the association world, I need more members that we always need more members. I won’t rest until I have 100% of of eligible member prospects on my rolls. But really just getting the word out about the importance of all the different health care disciplines, particularly during times of emergency like we’ve had for these last two years, and understand that there are there are resources out there to help you and it’s not always going to be your your primary care physician, but there’s always somebody out there who can help you think outside of the box and take control of your health.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:58] So if somebody wants to learn more about the association, what’s the website best way to connect with you or somebody on your team?

Jeff Curwen: [00:18:05] They can contact us by going to our website Chiro Health dot org and they can contact us directly by email WCA at Chiro Health dot org.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:17] Well, Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jeff Curwen: [00:18:21] Thank you, Lee. I really appreciate the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

 

Hank McLarty With Gratus Capital

by

Gratus CapitalHank McLartyHank McLarty, Founder and CEO of Gratus Capital.

His obsession with truly knowing his clients and their unique needs led him to start Gratus in 2005 and remain the firm’s driving value.

A thought leader in the industry, sought-after speaker, and recipient of numerous awards and accolades throughout his wealth management career, Hank has been recognized by Forbes on its annual Top Wealth Advisors list from 2016-21 and as a Forbes Best-In-State Wealth Advisor for Georgia in 2019-2021.

Connect with Hank on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Gratus’ commitment to community service
  • Hank’s involvement in Make-A-Wish Georgia
  • Team growth at Gratus over the years and during the pandemic
  • Atlanta as a great hub location and what has led to Gratus’ success in Atlanta
  • Gratus as one of the older RIA firms
  • Gratus’ multi-year standing on the Forbes

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] We can’t here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Hank McLarty with Gratus Capital. Welcome, Hank.

Hank McLarty: [00:00:50] Thank you, Lee. Good to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:52] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Gratus Capital. How are you serving, folks?

Hank McLarty: [00:00:58] Well, we’re a full service wealth management firm that I started the firm 17 years ago after a 15 year career with a couple of the big banks that I started at right out of college. So I started grad capital in 2005. And primarily we focus on business owners because I built a firm. The whole goal of starting the firm was to create a team of experts in the areas that affect business owners as they’re building their company and getting ready for some kind of transaction, either a partial sale or a complete sale of the company. And so there’s all kinds of aspects, not just investing, but financial planning, tax strategy, transaction planning, trust and estate. These are issues that in my career I have found to be kind of the hot buttons of what business owners deal with. So I, I set out by building the firm to create a team that could address all of these issues in-house for the client. And that has led to quite a bit of success over the last 17 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:01] Now, at the beginning, what was kind of the thinking behind focusing in on that niche? There’s a lot of obviously for wealth management, there’s a lot of places you could have focused on why was helping business owners kind of have successful exits in successfully managing their money? Why was that important to you?

Hank McLarty: [00:02:22] Yeah, good question. So Will, really it emanated from the fact that I found myself after five or six years of being in the wealth management business, I kind of looked around at my clients and the majority of my clients were business owners, so it kind of created its own focus, if you will. One of the things I love about working with business owners is they appreciate hard work because most of them, most business owners have been through good and bad times with their company. They’ve had to roll up their sleeves and really put a lot of effort into getting the company to a successful stage of some kind of partial sale or an entire sale. And as a result for that, I have found that they have a very high appreciation for someone that works really hard and takes really good care of them, maybe more so than someone that is inherited money that they didn’t work for or things of that nature. So I like I like working with the wealth creator because they tend to have a much greater appreciation for the attention to detail and the aspects that we bring to the table.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:26] Now, when you are working with people who own businesses and a lot of times their wealth is kind of tied to their business, is that kind of an area? You have to manage their expectations because in their head they might think their business is worth, you know, ten X and then a buyer might think it’s worth five X and it takes maybe some adjustment on the owner’s part to really understand why that is.

Hank McLarty: [00:03:51] Yeah, I think that’s part of it. I mean, I have actually found that a lot of business owners throughout the life cycle of their business, they’ve had some valuation work done. So they understand typically a pretty good feel for what the value of their business is. I think actually along those lines, though, probably the hardest thing being a business owner and transitioning into a liquidation or partial liquidation is an entrepreneur or business owner is used to being in control of all aspects. You know, if they they need to make more money, they just work a little harder in the business if they need to have higher cash flow. If the business is successful, they can take more money out of the company. So basically they’re kind of in the control panel able to turn the dials and do what they need to do when they go through a transaction like what we’ve been talking about. You know, they end up working with someone that they’re no longer in control, meaning that if they work with our firm, we’re selecting the investments and obviously discussing all of that with them, but we’re making recommendations on how to set up their wills and their trusts and how to do some pre transaction planning to save taxes using some different techniques when they sell their business. And then ultimately we’re kind of in charge of their cash flow. So it’s our job to manage the money and select the investments that provide a good, solid, safe return. A line I like to use is typically entrepreneurs have built their wealth by being very concentrated in one company or one stock, so they’ve had a lot of risk but a lot of reward there. Once they built that wealth, then the way to maintain the wealth is through diversification and working with a team that they can trust because they’re no longer in control of every aspect of it. So that’s a huge transition for them to go from running the show from top to bottom every day to having to trust a team that’s handling a lot of things for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:38] Now, What types of conversations are you having nowadays with folks, with the people who have maybe pulled the trigger and have recently retired and now they see all that work and like you said, their lack of control in a chaotic financial situation that’s occurring right now.

Hank McLarty: [00:05:56] That is an active part of discussions right now. Yeah, I think I’ve been in this business for 30 years, so I’ve been through lots of bear markets and lots of down cycles with with the economy and recessions and so forth. And so I have 110% confidence that we’re going to get through this in the next six to 9 to 12 months, maybe sooner. But transitioning that confidence to clients through our team who have recently had a liquidating event and they’re no longer in control, that takes a lot of mentoring and coaching and communication and and a lot of empathy, trying to understand the client’s position and where they’re coming from. And even though I know 100%, everything’s going to be fine, that the client needs some some reassurance of that when you go through times like this. So that can be everything from just vocabulary and counseling through discussion that can be showing really strong historical charts and data that can tell the story as well to clients to ease their mind that the market’s going to be just fine. And then a lot of that has to do with really understanding that client’s risk tolerance and where they should be invested and selecting the investments that are going to be most suitable for them. Because oftentimes when the market’s going up, everybody thinks they’re aggressive until the market goes down and they realize they’re really risk tolerance. Is very low. So getting that out of clients and creating the right portfolio to generate the cash flows and the and the growth that they need, while also combining what they’re able to handle on the downside of the market.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:34] And that’s why it’s so important to have a trusted advisor like you and your team kind of having these conversations because the psychology of this is real. You know, when you’re investing, when you’re in that stage of your life, when you’re investing, you know, a down market is you’re buying things on sale. But when you’re kind of spending all of your nest egg, then you start freaking out a little bit. And if you don’t have somebody with a kind of a steady hand, it can be very stressful and you could make impulsive, really bad moves.

Hank McLarty: [00:08:09] Yeah, 100%. And I think no matter how sophisticated an investor someone is when you’re talking about for most people, their family is the absolute number one most important thing. But in my business, you know, the wealth management that we manage, the wealth and the assets that we manage for clients are a close second. And that’s not because the clients are greedy or only focused on money, it’s because they’ve spent their whole life building this this principle or the wealth that they’ve created. And that principle is going to either make them successful or unsuccessful in the goals that they’ve set for their family, for themselves, for for the next generation and other generations that they may be planning on leaving assets to and their family. And so if this isn’t done right, then something that’s almost as important as their family can end up being a very negative situation. So I think being successful in this business means being able to treat the assets and the planning and the strategies that we implement as if they’re your own. And then you can really kind of take on the role of the client, put yourself in their shoes, have the empathy that’s necessary to work with them and get them through times like this.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:23] Now, you mentioned that you’ve been in business for a hot minute and you’ve been serving the Atlanta community for a while. Can you give some advice for other business owners when it comes to kind of putting together a team? Immersing yourself in the community and then kind of having your team and culture really believe in that big why? And that the the importance of the mission and then how altogether you’re much stronger than any one of you are individually.

Hank McLarty: [00:09:54] Yeah, I love that question. Sure. So one of my roles as the CEO of Gravitas Capital is to drive the culture, and I take that role very seriously. So we have a vision for our firm that includes ten exiting our company over the next ten years. But there’s two other components to the to the vision. I want us to ten x our company over ten years, which is not typical but not unheard of. But if we can ten x the company over the next ten years, while at the same time our client experience even gets better and our client experience is, is we use Net Promoter score data to rank our client experience. And so our client experience is at the very, very high end of our industry. And so we’re measuring that. And usually when a company is growing rapidly, the client experience and the team member, the people on our team, their experience suffers because you get so focused on earnings and growth and things of that nature that you take your eye off the ball with culture and clients. And so I want to grow the firm ten X, but I want our client experience to even get better, which is going to be difficult because it’s very high as it is now, according to our clients. And I want our team to be raving fans of where they work. And so in order for us to achieve all three of these kind of prongs of my vision, it’s going to take every bit of leadership skill that I have.

Hank McLarty: [00:11:24] And that’s why I set this vision for our team to kind of have a North Star that we’re working towards and to keep them motivated and focused. And you would be shocked at the number of people that we interview because we’re hiring regularly to accommodate our growth, the number of people that we interview that when we tell them about our vision and how we live out our values and how important our values are to our culture. And these are things that I talk about with our team daily. You would be shocked at the number of people we interview that say, I haven’t talked to any companies that have a stated vision or I haven’t talked to any company that really talks a lot about their culture and their values. And it’s the number one thing we lead with when we’re talking to potential new team members at our company. So I think keeping people motivated and focused on us being able to accomplish this vision as a team, but we will never accomplish it as a group of individuals is a message they hear from me regularly. But we live that out and we give out awards for our culture. We give out awards for our value, and it’s something our values and it’s something that we’ve translated into community service projects and other things that we do as a company to give back to Atlanta, which has been so good to us over the years.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:33] Can you share a little bit about how you are immersing yourself in the community and maybe talk about your work with Make-A-Wish, Georgia, and how that was chosen as an area of focus?

Hank McLarty: [00:12:47] Sure. I’ll start with Make-A-Wish only because I got involved with Make-A-Wish long before I even started Gravis Capital. So my my oldest son is 26. He’ll be 26 next month. So when he was born, I actually got involved with Make-A-Wish and I was really just looking for an organization that. I really like to see the impact of the time, effort and money that I put into a nonprofit and would make a wish I could meet the kids. I can meet the families, and I could I could see a difference that I was making by by paying for wishes or granting wishes and being kind of the financial engine behind that particular wish that I paid for. So I actually got to meet the people that I was impacting, which is a really big deal to me, rather than just an organization doing good. But I can’t really see the impact I was personally making. So Make-A-Wish has been my focus since 1996, so for quite a while and it’s very near and dear to me. I was the chairman of Make-A-Wish, Vice Chairman. I’ve chaired many of their events and so forth, but at this point I’m no longer allowed to be on the board because I’ve served on the board for too long. So now I just help them raise money. But I love working with the kids and the families. It’s a it’s a big deal to me. And so as you transition that to gratis, you know, why the community service work that we do, I think it’s just mainly there’s several things I want our team to realize how fortunate we are and going out and stocking diapers for mothers that don’t have the money to pay for diapers or doing gardening work in Piedmont Park, or I could probably name 50 different entities that we volunteered and worked for, but we do it every three months.

Hank McLarty: [00:14:29] We close the office every three months, and our team picks which the which community service project we’re going to do. And we go out, everybody in the office and we work all day long and we take lots of pictures and videos and then we share with our clients each year the different portfolio of pictures of the different community service projects that we did throughout the year. So it’s become kind of ingrained in our culture as a fun day for us to go do some work and then go have a margarita and some Mexican food afterwards or something like that as a team and get a bite and something to drink and kind of hang out. So it’s something we all look forward to, but it’s really a way for us to give back because everybody in our firm is fortunate in some way or another, much more so than many of the people that we serve when we do these projects. And it kind of makes the things that are important come to light on those days where sometimes we get bogged down in the day to day work.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:27] Now you, as you work with so many business owners here in the metro Atlanta area, do you have kind of a feel for the Atlanta business ecosystem? Is there is how do you see it comparing to maybe other areas in the country?

Hank McLarty: [00:15:46] Yeah. So, well, we do have the majority of our clients are in Atlanta, but we have a very large client base in Palm Beach, Florida, also in North Carolina. We have clients all over the country, but the predominant highest percentage of clients in one area would be in Atlanta. So so I think that does give me exposure to other markets with other clients where it is easy for me to answer your question with a little bit of a comparison, I think Atlanta is just full of energy. It’s a very transient city, a lot of headquarters here from companies from all over the country, which means a lot of people in Atlanta from all over the country. Believe it or not, I was actually born here in Atlanta. So I’m one of the few in the Atlanta area that’s actually from here and a native of Atlanta. So, you know, Atlanta just kind of got a new fresh feel to it. There’s a lot of new businesses in Atlanta, a lot of new ideas, lots of technology, incubators coming out of different schools and different areas of the city. So it’s just kind of an up and coming area. Lots of movie production here. So there’s just a lot of energy and kind of fresh ideas. It’s a great place to work from because it’s so easy to get from our our airport all over the country, pretty easy with direct flights. So there’s a lot of things that contribute to that. To this being an environment is a great place to kind of start a company, attract talent, build your talent and things of that nature. So I do think that Atlanta, if you were going to start a company with a fresh idea, Atlanta’s a great geographical location to do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:22] Yeah, I think that the diversity of the economy really gives us a leg up where a lot of communities have maybe one or two main industries are Economy is so diverse, like you said, from film to music to, you know, technology with Georgia Tech here and the incubators that are coming out from the tech area, it just really diverse so that if one area is struggling, there’s going to be another area invariably that’s going to be doing well. So I think that helps us kind of stay strong no matter what’s really happening in the economy.

Hank McLarty: [00:17:57] Yeah, agreed. Agreed.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:01] Now, so you you mentioned earlier that you’re looking to ten X growth moving forward. What can we do to help? What do you need more of.

Hank McLarty: [00:18:12] Business owners now? I think we’ve developed in addition to being a a well rounded, well balanced wealth management firm, one of our areas of expertise that I don’t see in a lot of other firms is we’re we really have a high expertise and concentrated risk, meaning someone that has most of their net worth tied up in a stock with really low basis that we can hedge or use some creative and sophisticated ways to to diversify that asset that takes some expertise and knowledge of options. And when I when I say options, I mean like stock options and trading options. So there’s there are some areas that that while I say we’re very well rounded and the trust and estate and tax and asset management all that there are some areas that are driving lots of clients to us right now and one of those primary areas is concentrated wealth or being able to help people diversify out of positions that are otherwise very difficult to do due to taxes or other issues with the market that we don’t have time to get into now. But that’s one of our areas of expertise. And so we are getting lots of interest from clients all over the country coming to us by word of mouth because of that specific area.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:35] And is there a story you can share? Don’t name the name of the person, but maybe they came to you with some challenges and explain how you were able to help them overcome them.

Hank McLarty: [00:19:44] Oh, gosh. Oh, there’s so many stories there. Yeah. You know, I think one of our clients is the chairman of a very, very successful publicly traded company. And I think that that particular relationship is one that illustrates kind of everything we do. So we that that particular client has children and has grandchildren. And so we have had to help him navigate getting liquidity in the stock that he is the chairman of the company for. We have had to completely reorganize and rework all of the trust and estate documents to make sure as much of his family’s assets as possible or transitioning to different generations in a tax friendly way. And, you know, with that comes obviously as someone at his level, he’s got lots of investments that we’re monitoring and tracking for him, some of which we have that he made on his own. But our job is to look at everything the client has, whether we recommended it to them or not, and kind of be able to put our finger on the big picture of what he’s doing and make recommendations around that. So it’s an all encompassing, almost a family office type situation of what we’re doing for he and his family.

Hank McLarty: [00:21:06] And I think we have saved them millions and millions of dollars in estate, potential estate taxes. We’ve saved them millions of dollars in tax strategy. And, you know, according to the client who has worked with lots of wealth management firms and and lots of different investment options over the life of his career and so forth, you know, what we’ve been able to do for him, according to him, is is some of the best work that he’s ever dealt with. And so we’re proud of that. And obviously, we want to make sure our clients are happy and that their experience is great. And he regularly confirms with us what his how his experience has been with our firm. So we have 700 different households that we work with, give or take a few, so around 700 households that we work with and each one of them is important to us. So I could I could easily have 700 different stories for you, but that’s the first one. When you asked me the question that came to mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:04] Now, is that the kind of the sweet spot of an ideal client is somebody that’s working on or with a public company? Or do you have business owners of all sizes?

Hank McLarty: [00:22:16] Now? I would actually say the majority of our clients are actually private business owners that have built a company themselves. You know, they started it with an idea, built it up, and these companies range in size from small to a hundreds of millions of dollars in value. And typically the majority of our clients are more private based companies where they’re being pursued by a private equity firm or another company that thinks it would be a good strategic fit for them to acquire the company or a part of it. And we help them with the planning of that, how to make sure they minimize taxes and make that transaction as efficient and productive as possible for them. And then we take them beyond that. And to the now, we’re the cash flow generating engine for that particular client. We’re making sure that all their the things that they want to achieve and they’re in their lifestyle month to month, year to year and so forth, that we’re able to provide the resources for them to do that with and give them the planning and the confidence that they’re able to get all of this done without having to worry about it too much. Our goal is for our clients to have peace of mind and be able to make good, well informed decisions about their assets and their wealth. And so, yeah, but again, most of our clients are actually working with private, private companies.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:37] And if somebody wants to learn more, what is the website? What’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on the team.

Hank McLarty: [00:23:43] Yeah W WW dot greatest capital dot com great US capital.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:49] Good stuff Hank thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you now.

Hank McLarty: [00:23:55] Thank you Lee I enjoyed it and I appreciate the time on your show.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:24:05] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by On pay. Built in Atlanta on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at onpay.com.

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Amanda Montanez With Savills

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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Amanda MontanezAmanda Montenez is an Assistant Director at Savills. She focuses on industrial and office tenant representation and can help with other commercial real estate requirements–dispositions, acquisitions, portfolio management, etc. She looks at real estate transactions from a financial and operational perspective. Her team has other services, including business incentives and site selection to provide a full spectrum experience for her clients.

In her free time, you can find Amanda surfing, doing acro yoga, hiking, and playing volleyball, golf, tennis, and football. Her friends say she has a CANNON for an arm! It’s safe to say, Amanda is an Energizer Bunny who’s always ready to go play in the sun.

Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Amanda and Savills
  • The South Florida economy
  • Industrial and office real estate sectors transforming in the next few years
  • Changing business models upon changing labor markets and inflation

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

Amanda Montenez: [00:00:32] Hi, Lee! Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. But before we get too far into things, tell us about Savills. How you serving folks?

Amanda Montenez: [00:00:41] Savills is a global real estate firm headquartered in the US and New York and globally in London and then here in the States, we are focused on the tenant representation business. And what that means to us business owners is that I’m representing you in your real estate transactions, not the landlord. You bring a lot of value in our lease transactions, mostly as well as acquisitions and dispositions of real estate.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So you’re an advocate for a person that’s looking to lease commercial real estate?

Amanda Montenez: [00:01:16] Yes, exactly. Or acquire or maybe they have too much and they want to get rid of it so we can help them out there.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:24] And what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Amanda Montenez: [00:01:28] Good question. So I actually had studied dietetics in school, which is clinical nutrition, and found myself not wanting to be in a hospital all day long, instead wanting to do some kind of consultancy work where I could be out in the world meeting people and really helping and where my schedule was different. So I got recruited by Savills to join the industrial real estate team, and I focus a lot of my time on food manufacturing, food distribution, but not exclusive. That’s just what I like. For example, we’re working with a lot of logistics companies, some health care manufacturers and even some aerospace companies.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] So when it comes to commercial real estate, there’s kind of niches within that niche, right? So like you mentioned industrial, you mentioned office. Are there other types of kind of specialties within the the niche of commercial real estate?

Amanda Montenez: [00:02:22] Yes, you’re right on. So we have Office Industrial, which you mentioned, there’s retail, which Wal Mart think of and Arby’s that you’re walking into McDonald’s. There’s hotels that would be considered commercial multifamily. So if you were a student once and you lived in a dorm room, that’s a multifamily commercial property.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:46] So in just as you’ve been working in this space for a while, you’ve kind of gravitated to this for a certain reason or you just got good at this. How did you land where you landed?

Amanda Montenez: [00:02:57] Yeah, so I I’m a very curious person and I just gravitated toward the industrial real estate because when you think about it, everything you touch your pen, your phone, your brush you used to brush your teeth has gone through a warehouse at some point in its lifetime of being a product. So I’m always curious. When I’m driving down I-95, I’m looking at trucks and I’m wondering, Oh, where is that going? Like, I wonder what’s in there. So that’s really how I’ve stayed in the industrial industry, if you will.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:31] So how is that industry doing in the South Florida economy? How are you bullish? Are you kind of nervous? You know, there’s a lot of stuff that you’re reading about and hearing about regarding the economy, but how is the South Florida kind of commercial real estate doing?

Amanda Montenez: [00:03:48] South Florida commercial real estate is very strong. If you’re a landlord, you’re having a great year. Vacancy rates are historically low, like below 2%. If you’re a tenant, it’s a little scarier. And that’s who I service is the tenants. It’s a little scary, right? You’re going to have to start planning way ahead of time a year at minimum before your lease expires to plan. What am I going to do in the next year? Rates are going up. Astronomically. We’re talking 20% in a quarter, 50% in two quarters. And I’ve seen even rates being proposed at more than double than what they’re currently paying. So landlords having great year tenants, not so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:41] Now, at what point in time, if I am right now I have a lease, everything seems fine, but I know maybe it expires in three or four years. Is this something where I should start having conversations with you or somebody like you today, even though it’s a way off, but just so that I can start kind of getting my ducks in the row and planning for a future that, you know, who knows what it’s going to be like in several years. But do you want to have more conversations with folks, even though maybe there are leases and ending tomorrow, but it’s ending soon at some point.

Amanda Montenez: [00:05:15] Right? Yes. We always say leases. You have to do something. You got to close your business. You move out or you renew for the most part. So, yes, three, four years, that means you might have just started a lease. Typically, they’re about five years to seven years, maybe ten. Right now we’re seeing a lot of seven year proposals. But I would say why not be prepared? Why not start exploring your options? Maybe you have a sudden need to double your warehouse space or you acquire a company and you haven’t even thought about the real estate. But where are you going to put all these people that need an office space? Right? So always good to have an advisor on hand. Always good to be planning because I’m thinking about real estate every day. But business owners typically aren’t thinking about real estate every day. So I think get an advisor as soon as you can.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:10] And in the case of you or somebody like you, a tenant advisor is somebody that I’m not actually paying for you. Right. This has just taken off. Your commission is handled during the transaction.

Amanda Montenez: [00:06:23] Yeah, that’s right. So typically for a lease transaction, as we’re talking about, we split the fee with the listing broker and the landlord is paying that if you decide to not use a tenant representative instead of sharing that same fee, we will just go direct to the listing broker. So really, you’re not saving any money by not using a tenant rep. You’re just maybe missing out on some terms or some language might have been written better without using a tenant representative.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:00] Now, can you share some advice or maybe some things that have come up with you as a tenant advisor? How you’ve actually helped save your client’s money or helped actually make them have a better deal? Because you like you said, you you know, this stuff like the back of your hand, you’re in this business 24 seven where I’m doing this every, like you said, seven years. So I’m not an expert by any stretch and you know where all the kind of landmines are. Can you share maybe one or two examples of, Hey, do this instead of that or this You you can negotiate here or you can’t here.

Amanda Montenez: [00:07:35] Right? So a lot of my work is really deep financial analysis and based on the language of the contract, are modeling changes quite significantly. And I’ll tell you a quick summary of a project I’m working on now is with a company who is in about, let’s say, 50,000 square feet and they need more space, but the current building they’re in can’t take them into the adjacent space. So we’re in a situation where do we stay where we are and expand into a different space, or do we just take an entirely bigger space altogether somewhere else? And when we do all of these models things, for example, one park might be at. $19 a square foot and another park might be at 12 or $14 a square foot. And over five years, with that much square footage, that comes out to a difference of well over $4 million. And so when you’re able to analyze the bigger picture, analyze all your options in a macro sense versus just micro. Okay. $14, $19, that’s a $5 difference. No, it’s really a difference of term of total occupancy costs. We’re looking at how much does it cost you to move and that’s included in the cost savings. So it could be staying. Might not cost you too much today, but over five years it’ll cost you a lot more than leaving and taking up the upfront moving expenses to get into a separate facility.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:20] Now, what about, like, I’ve heard of these things called opportunity zones or certain parts of the community that are maybe tax advantaged or there’s a benefit for moving into one part of town than another. Do you help in that area as well, Like identify that or explain how that might be beneficial?

Amanda Montenez: [00:09:39] Yeah. So our business incentives groups, they can help us with. On a zip code by zip code level, determining how much incentive money might be available in those zones, as well as depending on the number of jobs that you’re providing or the level of revenue that you’re contributing to the area that kind of determines how much incentive money there is in those zones.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] And working with a firm like yours, you have like your team is large, you have a lot of resources that you may be an individual tenant rep wouldn’t have at their disposal that you do.

Amanda Montenez: [00:10:21] Right? Yeah, We’re a global, global firm and we have experts. For example, I work with my close friend and colleague Wayne Keys out in our L.A. office and we are able to collaborate on deals where I’m in South Florida and I might say, Hey, Prologis is doing kind of this tactic. What are you seeing in California and kind of share strategies that we might not know otherwise if we’re not able to collaborate on such a national level?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:55] So for you, what’s the most rewarding part of the job?

Amanda Montenez: [00:11:00] My favorite part is really being able to influence these business owners decisions, right? If I’m able to save them $5 million over ten years, a $5 million increase on the lease is effectively, if you want a 10% margin, $50 million of revenue, that they don’t have to figure out, how am I going to make 50 million more dollars over the next ten years? And I just get a lot of satisfaction from being able to start with an idea and start with a complex issue and then turn it into a solution that’s tangible and, you know, keep them coming.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] So you mentioned your in the industrial and office space. Is there kind of an ideal client for you? Like, what is your ideal prospect look like?

Amanda Montenez: [00:11:55] Yeah, So my ideal prospect looks like anybody and everybody who’s occupying a warehouse. So it could be a food distributor, it could be an electronics distributor, it could be a third party logistics company, maintenance repair organization, a manufacturer. Now, manufacturing is actually a tricky situation. Those are really hard to move. So if you want to move, you really have to start planning. And that kind of goes back to that question of three or four years in advance. If you’re in manufacturing and you’re seeing growth, you’re seeing that maybe my operation here is quite efficient. I might need another building. Three or four years goes by in a blink. It is not that much time. So those are kind of my ideal clients. And then I guess a little flashback to a question that you asked earlier.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:48] And so are are your clients people that are in South Florida that are moving from one location to another, or are your clients people that are just moving into the South Florida market for the first time?

Amanda Montenez: [00:12:59] Both. So since we’re a national company, we can help clients expand into other states or we can help clients within South Florida specifically who might have that lease expiration, might want an additional office and additional warehouse, or might be wanting to get rid of excess real estate that they don’t need.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:20] Is there a certain industries that you find is a good where South Florida is a good sweet spot where you might be able to help them?

Amanda Montenez: [00:13:27] South Florida. It tends to be heavy on aerospace, really. If you go up north, you see the space coast is quite busy out there. And then if you keep going farther north and to Georgia, you have some aviation manufacturers out there. And then if you go farther north, like into Charlotte, you have Honeywell out there headquartered there. So I think the East Coast is pretty heavy on aerospace and then a lot of logistics companies. We have three huge ports, right? The airport of Miami, the Port Everglades, and then the Port of Miami itself. Not to mention we have Port Tampa and then Port of Jacksonville. So those industries, aerospace, trade, logistics, huge for me and for South Florida in general.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:16] And when they have that many ports, they have lots of stuff that have to get on and off of boats. So they need places to put it right.

Amanda Montenez: [00:14:24] Yes, that’s right. So just a little tidbit. The Port of Miami. Ah, the airport sorry, the airport is actually planning a five story vertically integrated cargo center to be delivered in 2027. The port right now has some goals to increase the number of imports. And like you’re saying, it has to go somewhere. And we don’t have land in South Florida. So where is it going to go? It’s going to go up. So those are some some plans that are happening. I’ve been talking to developers and listing brokers about, okay, we have some land, we can’t go too far west. The Everglades are there. We can’t hurt the wildlife. When are we going to start going up? Developers are a little reluctant right now to start going vertical. It’s expensive. Not to mention who’s going to be able to afford to occupy those spaces. So we’re seeing development is being very cognizant of what’s going on in our environment, what’s going on economically and being a little slower than in the past two years. We’ve heard like warehousing this, warehousing that like, oh, it’s just hot, hot, hot. I think it’s going a little less red hot, but still very strong.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:44] Right? I mean, the demand is there, the need is there. I mean, something’s got to give.

Amanda Montenez: [00:15:50] Yes, something’s got to give. But you can’t be careless about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:54] And that’s why they need experts like you advising them. If somebody wants to learn more about you and your work and what’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Amanda Montenez: [00:16:06] So I’m available via cell phone and everybody who’s listening here, write it down. 9167405485 and my email as well as LinkedIn. And I’m actually trying to start a South Florida Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals roundtable, and that is a national supply chain network of professionals in the industry. We don’t have one down in South Florida anymore. So if they want to get in contact with me about either real estate or supply chain in general, happy to be a resource.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:44] And your company’s website.

Amanda Montenez: [00:16:47] My company’s website is Savills s a v i LLC dot com. That’s our national or international website. Us website savvy lols dot us.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:02] And then from there they can find the Miami office.

Amanda Montenez: [00:17:05] Yes, that’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:06] Good stuff. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Amanda Montenez: [00:17:13] All right. Thank you so much for the compliment, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:16] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on South Florida Business Radio.

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