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Brent Barbee With Conquer

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Brent Barbee With Conquer
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After 17 years in advertising/media industry, as President and Co-founder, Brent Barbee launched Conquer in the summer of 2015. The media agency is a response to a growing media marketplace, largely fragmented across TV, digital and social platforms.

The vision for the company is to provide principally driven planning that leads to intelligent buying solutions across all media. Conquer serves clients across the country from offices in Atlanta, St Simons Island, Indianapolis, and across Michigan. Client categories include but are not limited to: consumer packaged goods, non-profit, and entertainment brands. Brent lives in St Simons Island, GA with his wife, Tonya, and three children.

Connect with Brent on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Conquer
  • Media strategy and macro-media categories
  • Media budgeting and spending
  • Media attribution – Marketing Science

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor are 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 Brant Barbee with Conquer. Welcome, Brant.

Brent Barbee: [00:00:43] Thank you, Lee. Great to be here.

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

Brent Barbee: [00:00:50] Yeah, So conquer is a media agency. Specifically, we like to say a paid media agency because we deal with the strategy of placing ads and the execution of getting that done for our clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] So what was the evolution of the idea? Have you always been involved in this line of work?

Brent Barbee: [00:01:08] You know, really, I have most of my career. I’ve been in some sort of media work or advertising work. I started in ad sales, TV ad sales way back in late nineties, early 2000s, and then went agency side with a full service agency. And out of that we actually birthed Conquer in 2015. That’s right here in Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] So from a standpoint from a client standpoint, are they coming to you to just solve this specific problem or better? What would be the problem they’re coming to you to solve?

Brent Barbee: [00:01:38] Normally we like to sort of partner at least over a year’s time with them go on the journey of kind of executing, you know, the media aspect of their marketing plan or, you know, maybe more involved just overall would their marketing plan. But the relationships really like a partnership, I like to say. I mean, we have a seat at that table, talk through their various challenges, maybe with what they’re trying to accomplish with marketing and then, like I say, like to try to mediate ties, those business goals and to things that we can put out into the marketplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:08] Now, isn’t media part of every marketing strategy? I mean, you have to get your message into the hands of your possible consumers in some means, and media usually is that path.

Brent Barbee: [00:02:20] Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, it depends on you’re right there’s some there’s some lever there whether it be I think some lean into the PR side of getting their message out and others have a a very methodical budgeted media budget and they fully expect to spend money to to get the word out and and they want to measure that return on investment. So we’re really on that side of the the budget. We’ll advise on what the budget should be, you know, based on what they’re trying to accomplish. But oftentimes the client will have a budget, a specified budget, which will then begin to divvy up and we get the media exposure they need with that budget.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:02] Now, is there a niche you serve? Are you do you have a sweet spot in terms of industry or types of clients you like to work with?

Brent Barbee: [00:03:09] Yeah, I think we’re sort of all over the map portfolio wise, which is great because we can kind of weather any type of like weird industry trends and things that could arise if we were more so a specialty agency. But we I would characterize our client base is sort of an emerging brand, a challenger brand type situation most of the time where we’re taking on a much larger ed in the space. But we deal with national brands and we deal with those national media brands to get those. Those media plans taken care of?

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] Are they mostly B2C or do you do some B2B?

Brent Barbee: [00:03:48] Mostly to see. Yeah, we have a wide range. We work with consumer product know we’ve got CPG brands like Farm Rich and CPAC that are fun kind of frozen food snack brands. And then we have some more sort of interesting things like Arkane, which is a which is an attraction in northern Kentucky, you know, south of Cincinnati. That’s a literal place you can visit and see how big that you know. Noah’s Ark actually was. And it’s a it’s just amazing. You know, we work with faith based, we work with CPG, we work with a lot of different types of clients. That’s a lot of fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:32] Now, when you’re having those initial conversations, are they coming to you because they’ve had a media partner and it’s not working out or they’re coming to you maybe for the first time to do an extensive media buy or media expansion?

Brent Barbee: [00:04:49] Yeah, I think it’s both. I mean, we definitely have some that are unhappy with maybe who they’re they expected to do this for them and they’re looking to to make a change. And then we have others that are sort of living the you know, 50% of this must be wasted. I just don’t know which 50%. So can I get a better idea by hiring someone like us to come in? We do some auditing services that are just that, you know, we look at what they’re currently, you know, what they currently have on their media plan and active and, you know, are there things that they could be doing better from our perspective. And so a lot of the times that’s how our relationships start. It’s just trying to scratch the surface of the problem and then and then dig deeper once we all have done that due diligence.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:37] So the first step in an onboarding situation is to kind of audit where they’ve been. And then my maybe kind of understand, hey, was the problem in the last thing that you did a function of the content quality or creative versus where it was and the frequency was shown in that environment?

Brent Barbee: [00:06:01] Exactly. You know, all things are considered certainly, but media, when you measure it, it gives you a great idea, especially in the digital space. Now you can see what messages were responded to, had more engagement, which ones really didn’t gain the traction that you want and and how to maybe introduce some new strategies based on other client work we’ve done that could help them because there’s some similarity there.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:26] So how does one kind of track the effectiveness of any given media outlet when it comes to a purchase, especially in consumer products? Like if I pick up that frozen food at Publix, how do you know I did it? Because I saw the ad on, you know, on the Kelly Clarkson Show versus the ad that I listened to on, you know, some radio show I was listening to on the way to the Publix.

Brent Barbee: [00:06:57] Sure. Yeah. You know. There are definitely very there’s there’s a lot of definitive ways you can measure And we we always caution though, to not. To not be over so concerned with measurement that the message doesn’t cut through. So, for example, you’re making it harder on the can for by punching in a code or doing some certain things just so you’ll know that it worked. But today’s media market has gotten way more tricky in that way. You can promo codes have become more prevalent, you know, scanning QR codes. There’s things that we can do that the consumer can appreciate that. We can also get a good indication that that media program is working. And, you know, in the instance also with retail, many of our retailers also have their own retailer specific media now that really connects those dots more effectively for us. So we like to incorporate those tactics to not only does it reward the, say, Kroger customer, but it also gives us a good indication or precise indicator that that works.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:12] So now in your work, you refer to what you do as marketing science. Like what percent is science and what percent is art? And when it comes to creating advertising that sells.

Brent Barbee: [00:08:28] Sure. I think a lot of the science part, whether it be doing audience research or testing audiences in the digital space to see if they’re responsive, that can be scientific. We try to take information to and from our past plans and see if it’s helping us predict maybe tactics and media add weight that would be effective for this. Our next wave of media. So it’s we’re it’s an information loop, if you will, that we’re educating ourselves on and becoming better as we as we move forward each time. The art part, that’s really, you know, can we measure some of the message? Are we doing AB testing between images that we can see which one the consumers seem to respond to better than the other? And then sometimes, yeah, there’s just kind of a persuasive magic that a great creative director applies to a message that it’s hard to measure. But that’s everyone knows that it was sort of the artistic approach that that helped it stand out. So there’s a little bit of everything going on and working together to to make an effective ad plan.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:43] Is there any advice you can share for entrepreneurs or business owners listening right now? Is there any low hanging fruit that they can take advantage of themselves?

Brent Barbee: [00:09:53] Sure. I think, you know, the interesting part about today’s media market is that many things are becoming, you know. Many things are are able to be managed by an independent entrepreneur. Maybe it’s somebody on their staff, but those platforms are set up so that it doesn’t require necessarily a specialist to do it in its simplest kind of basic starting form. Getting started form Facebook advertising, for example, or Instagram. All these paid social vehicles and LinkedIn to are fairly turnkey and really built to help. Those that really don’t have a tremendous amount of expertise in this space. You know, they they’re training you up. They want you to be able to use it and to empower it for your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:46] So do you treat when it comes to media like do you treat a Facebook or LinkedIn ad campaign in a similar manner you would as a television and or like a more traditional media? Or are they.

Brent Barbee: [00:11:02] You know, sort of I think the you know, with LinkedIn, for example, you know, it’s it’s a platform that allows you to reach out to individuals. I think, you know, there’s a flooding of LinkedIn right now that is probably becoming a little annoying to some people. And some of the ways that you can be sort of solicited on that platform. But it is a very sophisticated social media platform. And if you if you embrace some of the things that they’ve built to help you reach out, say, be to be you can really be precise with it. And yeah, I mean I think you have to think about about it sort of like a TV spot, but it can be even more personalized because of the platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:45] Is there a story you can share, maybe a success story in terms of working with a client and maybe share, you know, it’s the name of the client, but share the problem that they had when they came to you and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Brent Barbee: [00:12:00] Sure. I think where we really see some tangibility oftentimes is when we’re trying to capture leads for a client that can then be handed off directly to their sales force or, you know, whomever they wish. And we’ve got numerous stories, really, of where we’ve built subscription bases and a very flywheel snowball kind of build month over month. And it’s very measurable and it’s just really rewarding to see, I think, for our media planners and buyers and also the client can see that there’s a tangible. Affect to their advertising, whether they had somebody opt in to give their their number or email or whatever to engage further. We’ve had several like that that have been trial subscription base that have worked out really well through the power of media.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:55] Now when you’re working with somebody sales funnel, how do you kind of maybe score the value of a lead that comes in that’s at the top of the funnel that maybe agrees to join a list and then they work their way through the funnel to the final part where they buy something. Do you kind of give. That person or different score as they work their way down, or is there more value to being, you know, at different parts of the funnel in terms of what the client expectation is?

Brent Barbee: [00:13:33] Sure. I think, you know, as media planners and buyers, we think about the funnel a little differently and that each stage of the funnel requires almost a different tactic, paid media tactics. So, for example, at the top of the funnel, you would have more broad awareness that maybe our TV tactics and broadcast or what have you that are a little harder to measure, but we know they’re getting through. And then as the individual often opts in and we get more information on them and they say they’d like to know more about the product or what have you, then we switch tactics to nurture that lead. But we also have things going on at the stage of the funnel, even if they haven’t opted in that are a little closer to home, whether it be, again, as I mentioned, maybe on a social page, you’re reaching out to them in a more personalized way or that’s the way it feels. And then even down to the bottom of more conversion where this person is literally maybe typing their information into an ad unit and it’s very transactional and it’s the completion of the funnel until the the salesperson, if you will, would get in contact with them or they make the purchase themselves on an Adidas type site.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] So if you had that kind of equation, so you have an awareness, you have a nurture, you have a conversion, you have a purchase, like is an awareness, like, you know, a value of one say, because that’s the beginning. And then a purchase is a valuable value of 100. Like, how do you how would you kind of measure that or would you use different way to measure that, that kind of journey?

Brent Barbee: [00:15:15] Yeah I think, you know, with we talk funnel, you know, we want to be as efficient as we can On the broader reaching topic or tactics, You know, we look at things like cost per thousand, cost per thousand impressions or what’s that going to cost us? That’s kind of a common metric we use when we’re buying media. And then as we may be willing to pay a little higher CPM as we get to tactics that are a little more precise and have a higher likelihood of conversion down the funnel, maybe that CPM for that tactic can be higher than maybe the 7 to $10 we were willing to pay for the broader reaching, if that makes sense.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:59] So you always use kind of a cost per thousand as the guide.

Brent Barbee: [00:16:05] Sure. Yeah, that’s certainly a buying a buying metric we look at. And to keep ourselves accountable, you know, we don’t want to overpay and something that’s going to be less targeted.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:16] But also you want to at some point somebody has to buy something. So having lots of impressions of people who never buy anything, even if it’s cheap, isn’t a good value in the long run.

Brent Barbee: [00:16:27] Exactly. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:29] Now, how much of your work is spent kind of managing the expectations of your client? Because I would imagine, you know, a lot of people think that, you know, if I do this, I should get a return at the end, even though, you know, you’d like to get a return. But there’s no obvious guarantees on anything. Yeah.

Brent Barbee: [00:16:46] Yeah. I think we’re really trying to set expectations. You know, you ask, you know, how much time is spent managing those expectations? Well, a lot. You know, we have an entire vertical on our team, you know, account strategy that, you know, deals with primarily deals with client interface and keeping us accountable to the business objective we were setting out to accomplish. And but we answer it with a lot of communication. We answer it with a lot of on the on the front end, setting a a metric or expectation that we can all sort of rally around as as a reasonable expectation to reach or if it’s a stretch goal. We all agree this is a stretch goal. We’re going to test this a little bit, you know, and then we communicate via like dashboard visualizations frequently. And that may mean weekly with some and maybe a little less or a little more with others. But communication is really the key. And it is it’s a lot of our time. But but, you know, we’re meant to be a partner and a good steward of their dollars. So we definitely open the doorway to communication. And like I said, we provide them a dashboard and everything that they can even log in on their own oftentimes to check up on things.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:05] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Brent Barbee: [00:18:10] Well, I think, you know, we’re we’re on a we’ve got very ambitious growth goals every year. We’ve had a tremendous trajectory since 2015, and 2023 was our biggest year. I’m sorry, 2022 was our biggest year yet. So we just really want to keep the momentum rolling and more introductions to to to partners we could work with. It’ll be great. I hope you know this. We definitely want to grow in Atlanta. We want to we’re we’re HQ here, but we’re working with brands all over the country, so. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:43] But yeah, a good a good client for you is the actual brand or is it do you work with marketing agencies that don’t specialize in media as as in-depth as you like? Who is that good client for you?

Brent Barbee: [00:18:59] Yeah, that’s a great question. I appreciate it. We work directly with brands and then yes, we work with other agencies, several here in Atlanta and other areas of the country where they that’s one of the things one of the things that isn’t under their roof and that’s paid media. So we many times will come in as that paid media partner to complete sort of their account management team. And and those those have been really fruitful as well. And we’ve had relationships like that for years. So yeah, I encourage other agencies love to network with them and find out how we can help them, even if it just means coming in and again giving them kind of a consultancy of of approach. We have we’ve worked with some brand strategy agencies that just want to know could media solve this problem? And those are fun meetings and fun relationships as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:54] And then the paid media, you’re not just you’re not excluding social media, right? So paid media could include the social media platforms as well, right?

Brent Barbee: [00:20:05] Yep. Every social every social platform has paid ads there. Some are better than others, but they certainly monetize their platforms that way. And so we just feel like, you know. We want to be a good partner to those platforms, even by by doing those ads well for clients. But as I mentioned, you know, a lot of those you can kind of go direct to and test it, but it sooner or later it becomes a full time job when it when it begins to work for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:38] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website.

Brent Barbee: [00:20:44] Sure it’s conquer WW dot com so conquer worldwide or conquer WW.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:52] Well Brant thank you so much for sharing your story today you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brent Barbee: [00:20:56] I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:58] Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Kelli Kedis Ogborn With Space Foundation

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Innovation Radio
Innovation Radio
Kelli Kedis Ogborn With Space Foundation
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Kelli Kedis Ogborn drives organizational and product growth through leadership roles in disruptive technology commercialization of space and defense innovations. With extensive experience in R&D and cutting-edge technology applications for the U.S. government and private sector, her qualitative and quantitative methodologies guide organizations that are transitioning from development ecosystems to market capitalization.

As Vice President of Space Commerce and Entrepreneurship at Space Foundation, She leverages her expertise to spearhead Space Commerce Institute, an initiative designed to deliver informed insight and actionable programming to help companies and individuals find their market share and grow within the burgeoning space economy.

Prior to joining Space Foundation, Kedis Ogborn was President and Chief Operating Officer of Advanced Rockets Corporation (an aerospace company specializing in hypersonic flight), President and Chief Executive Officer of H.S. Dracones (a consulting company specializing in technology commercialization) and was contracted as the Congressional Liaison to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In the DARPA liaison role, she provided advice to senior leadership and technical offices on Congressional engagement strategies to maintain the agency’s position and reputation as a premier science and technology organization.

She is an often-published author on the market applications of innovation and has worked extensively as an authoritative voice within the emerging space economy – qualifying and quantifying the economic drivers and technology trends driving the industry forward and shaping its investment potential and growth. She is a frequent panel reviewer and technology assessor for commercialization merit of government R&D proposals, mentor for entrepreneurs, and speaker for STEM initiatives.

She holds an International Security and Conflict Resolution Bachelor’s Degree from San Diego State University, a Political Science Bachelor’s Degree from Stockholm University, and a Master’s Degree in Government and Security Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She resides in Washington, DC.

Connect with Kedis on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] You’re listening to Innovation Radio, where we interview entrepreneurs focused on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Innovation radio is brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs the Levein’s Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founders journey from Birth of an Idea through successful exit or global expansion. Now here’s your host, Lee Kantor.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] Lee Kantor here another episode of Innovation Radio and couldn’t be doing this kind of work without support from our sponsor, the Levine Center of Innovation. Today’s show is going to be great. I think you’re going to enjoy listening to our guest and learning quite a bit. Today on Innovation Radio, we have Kelly Kedis Ogborn with Space Foundation. Welcome, Kelly.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:00:53] Thank you, Lee. I’m really looking forward to this conversation and talking about all the wonderful things happening in space.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:58] Yeah, we’ve talked a lot about what’s happening on Earth, so it’s time we get beyond that and understand what the possibilities are out there in space. But before we get too far into it, tell us about Space Foundation, how you serve in folks.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:01:12] Absolutely. So it’s it’s a privilege to join you today and be able to talk to your audience. So Space Foundation has been a long standing pillar within the space community. We’re actually turning 40 years old this year. So it spanned four decades. And we really are the vanguard for information, education and collaboration across the global space ecosystem. And so what that means is that we provide really diverse products and services to help the totality of everyone trying to scale and grow into space. And what most people know is for is the Space Symposium, which is a annual conference this year. It’s going to be in its 38th year. That happens every April in Colorado Springs. And what that does is it’s really widely attended with all cross sections of space. So everyone from national security, academia, commercial and civil come to really talk about the policy and the evolution of where space is going. And then we also on the other side of the House do a lot of really robust K through 12 education. We believe that space really begins in the classroom. And so being able to educate and inspire students about how to get involved in the ecosystem and what skill sets and background scale is really critical for us. And then where I fit is sort of in the middle of those two. So I am the vice president of Space Commerce and Entrepreneurship for Space Foundation. And what I really focus on are the startup startup ecosystem and the entrepreneurs and also the high growth companies that want to both qualify and quantify where space is going and create roadmaps for success. So I get the really fun job of being able to forecast market trends and tech trends and and figure out insertion points for companies so they can be successful in scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:58] So how has the evolution of the industry gone over these 40 years that you’ve been around? I would imagine if some point it was kind of government was the impetus to exploration and had the means to do some of these things. But nowadays it seems like there’s more entrepreneurs getting involved into this area. How have has it evolved over the years?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:03:23] Absolutely. It has evolved tremendously. However, there is still a lot of room for growth. And so what I mean by that is you can really think about it in three different ways. You can look about the government strategic role, you can look at investment profiles and also entrepreneurial tech activity. And I’ll I’ll touch on all three of those. So from a government aspect, you’re absolutely right. I mean, our space race started with the launch of Sputnik one in 1957, and really that’s what propelled the United States to get involved in space activities. And at that time, really from the 1950s until the early 1990s, all activities within space were vertically integrated and aligned with government priorities. And so the government really, from a national security perspective, set the direction of where they wanted to go. And so exploration and technological progression were sort of secondary to that space posturing because as you can imagine, it was very important for us to be to be first and to be the most long standing. But since then we are really moving away from this era of Apollo is what I like to categorize it. And the Apollo era was really critical because it really did give us our modern day space industry. But now we are moving into the era of Artemus, which calls for more collaboration as well as competition. But if we are collectively as an ecosystem, trying to go back to the moon, partially for posturing, but mainly right now it’s to conduct research missions, it’s to establish lunar outposts and then really use that use the surface of the moon as a leverage point to jump off into other orbits and also Mars and eventually go to Mars. It’s really critical to involve both government and the commercial world. And so now we’re seeing a little bit less vertically integrated from government direction down commercial up to now, the government really setting the strategic direction, but the commercial companies.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:05:26] He’s really interpreting what that means from a business opportunity and scaling into it. The second piece of that is if you just look at funding right now, space is really exploding. So this year, the space economy number was cataloged at $469 Billion and it’s projected to reach 1 trillion by 2040. And so 2040 is really not that far along. And 469 billion is very close to half. The other piece, too, is that we are, as an industry, 55% higher than just a decade ago. And what’s driving that is a lot of this in private investment into the ecosystem. Last year there was about $10 Billion of Private investment. And what’s interesting about it is that it was diversified not just on orbit. So traditionally investment would go toward your large scale satellite systems in geosynchronous orbit. But we are now seeing investment for low earth orbit, which is very, very close to the Earth’s surface for a diversity of types of technologies and business opportunities. And so the diversification has really made it exciting. And then on the technological side, one of the things that I always say is that the future of space will be anchored by familiar segments, but really defined by these emerging markets. And every day we see these new companies and ideas and capabilities coming online that as an industry we want to figure out what to do with them and and fold them in. And so it’s really starting to make people think more creatively about the future of space and how it can really encompass established space businesses and these young, agile, creative minds.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:10] Now, is that why it’s so important to engage younger people in the possibilities of space and working in this area and thinking creatively about this area? And and I would think that at some point that the creative class, the authors, the science fiction writers or dreamers or the, you know, people who make movies about space, all of those play kind of a role to inspire people to get involved and see the possibilities within space. And then you have, you know, the telescopes, the Webb telescope, the Hubble, that it’s out there showing you these amazing pictures of of worlds you can’t even imagine or years ago you didn’t even know existed. Like, how does that all come together and play? Because in order to have that growth, in order to have the ability to do all those things down the road, you need talent to be able to execute on that.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:08:06] You do. You need talent and you need agility are probably two of the main things. One thing that we benefit from in the space industry is that there is no shortage of very intelligent, driven people. And so you see this creativity kind of permeate throughout the ecosystem, whether it’s from a government agency or someone from who’s like a really established industry rep down to your entrepreneurial mind. So we benefit from that fact. We also benefit from the fact that space is really cool. It’s not that difficult to work in an industry where it it’ll always attract people because no one’s going to say that it’s boring. So we at least have that baked in interest. One of the things that I often think about so I worked at DARPA for eight years and one of the directors I worked for would always say that what was once science fiction will often become science fact. And you are seeing that a lot of times with the space ecosystem. And like you said, you know the things of sci fi novels. A lot of times you just need the technological maturity to catch up with the wish of the future. And we are really at this precipice where when commerce activities become a thing in low earth orbit, which we are actually pretty close to doing, because what’s required to allow that to happen are really more sophisticated launch capabilities in terms of making them cheap, routine, ubiquitous, all of those things.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:09:35] It’s going to open up a tremendous need for creative ways to store energy, because if you’re going to power something on the moon, you’re not going to have outlets in the wall. It’s going to look at creative ways of manufacturing and refueling and all of these other areas that have people have been thinking about and dreaming about. But now it’s becoming more possible. And so getting as many industries involved and recognizing that there is a place for them in the future space ecosystem now, I think is really critical because once the possibility is there, we want everyone to be able to take advantage of it and also to be able to bring their inventions to us. And so one of the things that I think is extremely exciting is that I talk often about this concept of space adjacency. And really what it means is recognizing these secondary and tertiary markets and. Industries that are going to be relevant in three, five, seven years. So once we have lunar outposts, what do the creature comforts look like? What is the environmental assessment around it? What are the textiles need to look like to keep humans safe for long duration missions on the moon? So these industries all have a heritage to space and I want them to be able to self select in and find their path within it.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] So right now is that like you mentioned, textiles. Is there a budding textile in space startup or industry kind of somewhere out there going, Hey, we already do this here like it would, We could do it there. We just don’t know. We all know what kind of the needs and the stressors are there and how we can serve that niche market. Are there people today doing that or thinking like that, or is that something that once it happens, that will then be the catalyst to spur that type of thought and activity?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:11:28] The goal of what I do at SpaceX Foundation and what we’re going to what we’re going to be doing with level five space dock at the Leaven Center. And I know we will talk about that later, but is to get people to start thinking like that. So one of the things that I often do is I do this sort of space economy one on one talk and it talks about economic trends, market drivers, technologies that are really on the precipice and the forefront of really shaping the ecosystem. And the goal is for people to self recognize that their idea or their technology is relevant. Some of the industries that I have talked to, to your point about them thinking about it, one of the major strategies for some folks to think about is the strategy of pivoting. So even though you are not already in the space industry, doesn’t mean that you don’t have a product or service that can very much be tweaked in a very particular way, ruggedized in a very particular way for the conditions of space. And so when when I work with these entrepreneurs and these high growth companies, I’m also looking at established companies in potentially different industries that have a very, very relevant connection to the future of space.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:40] So like we mentioned, textiles, that probably isn’t the first thing that would come to mind from a person thinking about, oh, if we, you know, are in space, we’re going to need this. What are some of the other maybe things that are or you can clearly see as needed, but a person here may not think of it as relevant to space, but it could be.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:13:03] Absolutely. And before I get into that, I’ll actually do two qualifying thoughts, which I think are important for people to to distinguish how to think about space. So the space market really has two pieces to it. There’s the space to space market and the space to earth market. So the space to space market is goods and services produced in space for use in space. So these are going to be things that are more far reaching, things that are created on the lunar surface that can then be flown from that from the moon until Mars and other other aspects. But then there’s the space to earth market, which is the production of goods and service and space for use on Earth. And that market is a 95% of the space ecosystem. So it’s everything that touches us. It’s telecommunications, it’s broadband, it’s anyone who invents an app that has a time stamping feature or a GPS feature, you’re interacting with space data and space technology every day. There’s also a plethora of space technology spinoffs that have permeated our daily lives, like baby food and the Black and Decker drill, or now it was a lunar drill, Now it’s a vacuum. Also, invisible braces came from space technology. So I want to first level set with our listeners that they touch space at least 13 different times a day, and they may not realize it in terms of the future and these sort of how to think about the technologies and connections.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:14:32] Some are tech driven and then some are deeply human. So some of the areas that are really budding, I already mentioned textiles, but the area of fashion design and seamstresses. So it’s no shock to anybody listening that, you know, commercial space flight for space tourism is becoming a thing. And so when that becomes a reality, there’s an esthetic that is going to be assumed that comes with that kind of activity. But also if you have everyday citizens that do not necessarily meet the rigorous health standards that astronauts need to go through, you need spacesuits that are going to keep them healthy and safe. We’re also looking at advancements in augmented reality and virtual reality, as well as any sort of automation and artificial intelligence that’s going to be critical for certain space missions. But also people are deeply human and. So if we are asking them to give up life on Earth and go for these great exploration means on the moon and Mars and beyond, we need to keep them sane as well.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:15:37] One of the interesting things that has sort of, I think, hampered some people’s thoughts when they have simulated different Mars missions. It’s not the technological piece, but there’s crew mutiny about five days in, and it’s because you have people in dark spaces with strangers really kind of left to their own devices and their minds can start to wander. And so looking at creature comforts, how can you connect them back at home? How can you keep them healthy and safe that flies into biometrics or telemedicine? All these various areas that we take for granted on Earth but are extremely critical in space. Another way is manufacturing techniques. So there have been a lot of advancements in additive manufacturing and 3-D manufacturing. But one of the things that is truly going to allow space to thrive is if you take Earth out of the equation. And what I mean by that is that when you can when you don’t have to rely on things getting flown to you from the Earth’s surface, you really can then grow the sustainable ecosystem in space. And so being able to print your own machines and print your own electronics and things like that are really critical aspects that are going to be very necessary.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:47] Now when you’re in space and you have a need to build something or a place for someone to live or stay or play. How does not having gravity come into play of this? Do you need the same types of materials, or is it something that because there’s no gravity, you can get away with less materials or they have to be strengthened in this way instead of the way it is with the current gravity situation here on Earth?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:17:16] Yeah, that’s a great question. Those are definitely some of the conversations happening in terms of the in terms of the infrastructure and design and what these habitats look like. I am not a materials expert, but I do know that those those come into play. Also, what’s interesting about the surface of the moon is that there’s a lot of rare, rare earth materials that can be mined and then utilized for different type of building properties. And so there’s a lot of opportunity. It’s just what do you design those habitats to look like? The other piece too, is not so much for Lunar Outpost, but more for these long duration Mars missions, which I think is a community. And definitely from from Elon Musk perspective is where people are pushing. There’s still two very varying schools of thought on how people would live, whether they live underground or they live in these domes like we saw in The Martian. And so I think we’re still having those hypothetical conversations that will then turn into more, more practical conversations as we get closer to that becoming a reality. Right now, it’s more figuring out what’s going to be necessary and put the pieces in place and then the building will come.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:27] Now, has there any been has there been any like kind of surprises or maybe accidental inventions from like folks on the the International Space Station where they have to amuse themselves in some ways? Have they invented some games for zero gravity? Have they come up with some ways to pass the time that maybe was unexpected that they just figured out because they were they’re stuck with each other looking at each other for so long?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:18:57] Oh, I’m sure I don’t have any good, good answers to that. But I’m sure I always find with humans they the creativity and imagination never ceases to amaze me. Also recently, I had the pleasure of visiting Johnson Space Center out of Houston, where Mission Control is. And it was really fun to see because they have a 24 hour live cam on board the ISS. And so I was able to see some of the astronauts repairing spacesuits and doing all of these other things. One thing I can say about just accidental inventions, I mentioned baby food as a as a spin off from space technology, but that was actually came out of the need to create nutrient dense food for astronauts while while up in space. And then they realize that a lot of the same packaging and, you know, preservation and preparing of this food could be really helpful to infants. And so that’s how baby food came about.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:54] Yeah, humans are pretty creative and they figure things out, you know, especially when their life depends on it. You know, that’s really a good impetus to solve some problems.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:20:04] Yeah, Well, and one thing I’ll say, too, that’s a wasn’t a creation in space, but it definitely came from someone in the space industry. The Super Soaker was actually developed by a a former NASA fluid dynamic expert who was trying to create a more fun summer gun for his children.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:23] Now let’s talk a bit about the Levein’s center of innovation. How do they play in this ecosystem?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:20:30] Yes, So the Levein’s Center is one of our strategic partners, and we recently launched Level five Space Dock, which is one of their initiatives that we really want to connect the entrepreneurs with the Levein’s Center and have the Levein’s Center be this beacon of economic opportunity and and space opportunity within Broward County. But really looking at Florida more nationally and then globally as well. And so what we’ve established is a series of programing to help connect the entrepreneurs to the greater space ecosystem and train them for insertion and scalability. So we are going to be doing everything from very much space focused cohorts. So following their structure of their founders journey, which is very prosperous and very successful, already at the Levein’s Center, we created what I like to call a space wrapping on top of it. And so taking the structure, we added space business lessons to help entrepreneurs be able to find where the relevant insertion point is, figure out what their framework is. Figure out scalability. How do you think about partnership? How might you go about investment? And we have different programs designed for different maturity levels of companies as well, because some people are just thinking about the idea. Some people actually have a prototype. Going back to what we said earlier about the strategy of pivoting that they might want to maneuver into into the space industry. And so we really wanted to be able to meet the entrepreneurs with the right resources at the right time. And so we have our first cohort actually launching February 28th, which is the IDA cohort, and then the space incubate cohort is following with the start date of March six.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:22:15] And these cohorts are going to continue throughout this year. There’s going to be different versions of them and then into next year. And then we’re also going to be doing very different sort of space. Space events and space panels. And so we’re going to do various panels, one on space medicine. So how do you think about the future of medicine? How can industries help create this framework of what’s necessary for. For its growth and sustainment? We’re going to be looking at the industry of satellites, which really right now is one of the major backbones of the space ecosystem. And then also looking at a lot of these other far flung but relevant capabilities that are going to be necessary for the future of space. And so there really is something for everybody, and they have just been so wonderful. What I love about. John, who leads the team, is that he very much approaches problems like I do where nothing’s off the table. And so it very much has been this creative process to figure out how we can bring the most impact to the entrepreneurs they serve, but then also have the Leaven Center be this flagship for people within Broward County. But then also we want to get the word out so more people can take advantage of the services.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:26] So, Kelly, what do you need more of? How can we help you in Space Foundation?

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:23:33] That’s great. I appreciate that question, I would say. Just more people to take a chance on space. And what I mean by that is going back to a comment I meant earlier or I said earlier, rather, is that nobody thinks that space isn’t cool. The problem is, is a lot of people don’t recognize that their background, their skillset, their their capability, their technology fits within it. So they might write it off and just say, okay, well, I’m going to monitor space from a enthusiast point of view, but not actually figure out figure it out from a business point of view. And so I would encourage them to look at Space Commerce Institute, the entity that I run to learn about how to think about space and how we want folks to grow. And then for those in Broward County, definitely check out the level five space resources we provide, because as I mentioned, there really is something for everybody. I’m a firm believer that entrepreneurship is not a one size fits all. There are very unique challenges that each company has, and so we want to be able to serve them where they are in their particular journey and help them succeed.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:42] Right. But I think it’s so important to have somebody like you and the folks that live and to show people the way and help them connect dots where they might be the exact right person, but they’re just not seeing it. Or they think the timeline’s too far and they can’t play yet. And but somebody has to be there to kind of show them the path or at least show them that it is possible. And to at least expand your thinking into this realm, because without those types of partnerships and without those types of relationships, it’s going to take even longer. You’ll have to build them from scratch. And there’s already so many people doing so many amazing things here. It’s just a matter of them opening their mind and connecting some dots so that they can see what’s possible.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:25:29] Absolutely. And the point that you made is, is so spot on about people thinking that the opportunities are too far in the future. And one of the things that we really try to do is create a practical roadmap with very tangible elements and resources, because as you know, because you’ve worked with tons of entrepreneurs and businesses, is that even if something isn’t going to be possible as a business case for five years, there’s still things that you need to do now to prepare yourself for that. And so what I like to illuminate from a space perspective is being able to balance this altruism and excitement for where the future is going with real pragmatism for what’s going to create ROI now. But for these companies that may have a technology and capability that will be really relevant, let them know exactly when their insertion point is and what they need to do now in terms of establishing partnerships or potentially tweaking their tech development timeline, there are really critical things that they can do to prime the path so that when the opportunity is there, they’re ready to jump as opposed to waiting and then being a bit too late to the game. Spacex is really attracting a lot of people right now, which is very exciting. I always say there’s really no better time to become part of the space ecosystem. And so the more people that we can get to recognize that it should be part of their business path now, it will just serve them better for the opportunities to come.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:54] So if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on the team, what is the coordinates? What’s the website? Our best way to learn more.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:27:01] Absolutely. I appreciate that. It is Space Foundation dot org slash CI that’ll take you directly to our Space Commerce Institute web page. And then you can you can browse content. We have programs and services that we offer and then we also have an element on there which is free content called the vector. And what the vector is, is I have a conversation every month with different individuals on topics, trends and inventions really driving the space ecosystem. So it’s one way to to help individuals to start to think about the opportunities. There’s also a form on there and it comes directly to my inbox. And so I invite everyone to to fill it out. Please connect. I really believe that, like one of the greatest joys of my life is seeing people succeed and seeing their ideas become a reality. And if I can play a small part in that and help them create a strategy around it, that’s really good for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:57] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:28:03] Well, thanks, Lee. And I think that these kind of conversations are really, really important, because for entrepreneurs, I’ve worked with entrepreneurs for a long time and businesses that are looking to scale and sometimes, you know, in the. Confronted with too many options, you sort of get analysis, paralysis. And so being able to actually break down where people should focus or even opportunities that they didn’t know were illuminated to them, I think is really important.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:32] Yeah. Something I heard a while ago was sometimes you need help, but sometimes you need a helper and you need someone to kind of be your Sherpa to guide you through some of these things that to that helper. It’s very obvious and clear, but to you it seems difficult or impossible. So to have a human being that you can interact with that can say, Hey, just tweak this thing a little and you’re you’re almost there. Like that’s that can make the difference between somebody taking action or not.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:29:04] Absolutely. And one of the things that I’ve really stressed with my team to and this is why I mentioned that the form submission comes straight to my inbox and my team’s is I was a consultant for seven years prior to joining the Space Foundation, and I very much believe in what you said is that it’s that human touch and the necessity to sometimes cut through the red tape and answer a question. And so for anyone who contacts us, we always, always respond, because I understand that it takes a big step to even reach out and ask for help. And if we can help illuminate an opportunity, point them in the right direction. I don’t like just responding with generic emails, and so I firmly believe that it’s important to offer that that warm hand and that warm guidance.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:49] Yeah, Well, thank you again for sharing your story.

Kelli Kedis Ogborn: [00:29:53] Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:54] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Innovation Radio.

Caitlin Stella With Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital

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South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
Caitlin Stella With Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Caitlin Stella, MPH is the CEO of Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. She began at UCLA’s Autism Center where she also managed an epidemiologic study in California. After completing her Master of Public Health (MPH) at UCLA, she joined PwC’s healthcare consulting practice.

Prior to joining Joe DiMaggio, she was the Chief Administrative Officer at UCLA Health for Mattel Children’s Hospital. She is a Board member of Make-A-Wish, the Museum of Discovery and Science and Jack and Jill and is a member of the Junior Achievement Circle of Wise Women.

She was included as one of 113 great leaders in healthcare by Becker’s Hospital Review in 2022. She serves on the Broward Economic Council and belongs to YPO and IWF. She Chaired LLS’s Light the Night in 2020 and 2021 and is Chairing the 2022 Heart Ball with her husband, Todd.

Connect with Caitlin on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How the pandemic-driven migration of families to South Florida has impacted the business of healthcare
  • New opportunities for innovation through technology, to provide high-quality patient care
  • Lead with Love – management style, with kids and parents navigating a highly complex healthcare landscape, and via creative fundraising campaigns

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 Canter 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 Caitlin Stella with the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. Welcome, Caitlin.

Caitlin Stella: [00:00:34] Hi, Lee. Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] I am so excited to be talking to you. For the two people out there who don’t know, tell us a little bit about Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital. How are you serving folks?

Caitlin Stella: [00:00:46] Absolutely. Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital has been a part of the community for many years. I think we’ve been around I think 30 years is the anniversary. And we started as a small pediatric unit inside Memorial Regional Hospital. And then Joe DiMaggio lent his name to the hospital in 1992. I can tell you that story, actually. It’s an interesting one. And then we’ve grown over the years, first into a freestanding four story children’s hospital, and we just added four more stories to the children’s hospital. So we now have 216 beds where a quaternary center, we do everything from broken bones with a nationally ranked orthopedic children’s orthopedic program largest in the state. We have a nationally ranked cardiac program. We do heart transplants, one of the only two programs in the state. We do kidney transplant, neurosurgery, oncology, everything in between. So we have a variety of medical and surgical specialties that we serve families all throughout South Florida and beyond. We also have a large facility in Palm Beach County in Wellington, and we’re actually opening another facility, not a hospital, but ambulatory services in Miramar. And we’re continuing to grow. We have offices all over the tri county area. So yeah, it’s a very special place. We’re also very well known for our patient experience. We have a very unique patient experience here at Joe DiMaggio. We were actually the first children’s hospital in the world to have a designation called Plain Tree. It’s from an organization called Plain Tree, which is about person centered design, which means that we design all of our programs and services around the child and the child’s needs developmentally, the needs of the family, and then the needs of the team. But the child is the center of everything we do, and we have really outstanding different kinds of designations and awards related to our patient experience because it’s very, very unique. And we often hear from kids that they feel like they’re not in a children’s hospital and they want to stay. So I feel like we’re doing a good job now.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:05] Why is it important for a community to have a children’s hospital like Joe DiMaggio, like instead of just having a pediatric center as part of another, you know, a subset of a of a larger hospital? Like, why is it important to kind of have its own space?

Caitlin Stella: [00:03:21] It’s extremely important. So first and foremost, children are not little adults. So environmentally, it’s very important that we have a space that is developmentally appropriate for kids of all ages. So an environment that’s not intimidating or scary, things that are anxiety reducing and sort of like a whole infrastructure of services and programs that really help prevent children from being afraid to come either to this hospital or any hospital, because you really are setting the stage for especially for kids that have chronic illnesses. You really can have medical trauma over time if the environment is not appropriate for the child and the care. And I can tell you many stories of examples of things that happened to a child in a place that was not set up to take care of a child. It sometimes can prolong treatment and certainly create more fear and anxiety than necessary. So that’s why being in a children’s hospital, particularly like ours, which is separate and it’s only children, allows us to create a very unique space where things happen that wouldn’t necessarily happen in an adult hospital. Sometimes I think they should. But just creating fun, creating distraction, creating activities that have much more to do with development, like things like art therapy and music therapy, fun making, making things as fun as they possibly can be, even if it’s a really difficult time. So it’s a very important that we have all of that infrastructure and services and programs that are set up for a child and their needs.

Caitlin Stella: [00:05:03] And some kids have many specialties. So like if they have a particular diagnosis, they need to go see multiple doctors or they need to come. For multiple treatments or some of them come here regularly, once a week, once a month or whatever. And it’s very distracting, not only for their own structure of their lives, meaning school and friends and siblings. So it takes them out of those norms and they have to come to the hospital. So we like to incorporate those things back in so they don’t feel like they’re missing any part of the structure of their lives that make kids kids. So we have a lot of those things in place, including our own school teacher. He’s here full time. They’re able to stay on task if they’re going to be here and they don’t miss any of their studies. We have lots of outside programing that comes in that’s enriching, entertaining, entertaining, educational. And we bring in a lot of things like yoga therapy or yesterday we had a theatrical performance. So there was something for kids to do to get out of their rooms. And we let them drive around in their own little cars so they can have some fun when they’re getting around and freedom and control and all of those things. So it’s a great place and it’s a very unique place. Of all the children’s hospitals I’ve been in.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:23] Now, as a leader of an organization like that, is it? I don’t know. I don’t know if strange is the right word, but in in a children’s hospital environment, all of those things you describe sound wonderful and they seem like perfect makes perfect sense that you would have them there. But for adults, you wouldn’t even consider that. Like you’re trying to get the adult in and out of there as quickly as possible. Like how why is there such a disconnect between how we think it’s appropriate to care for children and how we think it’s appropriate to care for adults?

Caitlin Stella: [00:06:58] I got to be honest with you, I don’t really know because I actually really have been a proponent over the years of looking at children’s hospitals as a model for things to integrate into adult hospitals to help with care. And I’ll give you an example. There are a lot of populations that are similar. I mean, you think about, you know, very elderly adults, older adults that have sensitivity to touch. They might have thin skin, they might be hard to get an IV into. They might be seeing multiple specialists, They might have dementia and have a hard time understanding things. So you have to explain things to them in a certain way. You might have cultural issues, you might have linguistic issues, you may have. So what what we do in the Children’s Hospital is very much about providing tools and techniques for, for example, if it’s if it’s a baby and we need to put an IV in, we use different kinds of equipment and we use different kinds of approaches and we use specialized team members. And so so that we minimize pain. And we only have to give the child the IV one time. I don’t know why we don’t do that with with older adults are very similar. They have very similar issues physically. Same thing with understanding what’s happening to you. So with children in a children’s hospital, if you’re diagnosed with cancer and you’re four years old, how we explain it to you and what we show you so you understand what’s happening to you and the techniques that we use with child life specialists.

Caitlin Stella: [00:08:29] And that’s a role that only exists in a children’s hospital. And it’s really there to explain to the child and developmentally appropriate terms what’s happening to them. How we explain cancer at age four is different than how we explain cancer at age 14. To me, that’s very similar to how you would explain what’s happening to, like I said, someone with dementia, someone with a developmental disability, and I’m talking to adults, you have to really think of like developmentally what’s appropriate and that goes through the entire lifespan. So to be honest, I’ve never really understood why we only have those kinds of things here. I’ve been a big proponent of trying to pilot some of those same programs in the adult hospitals. And I have to say in the health system where part of memorial health care system, we actually do quite a bit of that because we do have music therapy and art therapy and even animal assisted therapy even in our adult hospital. So I think we do a good job and I think adult medicine is starting to adopt some of those practices, but they’ve been long standing in children’s hospitals.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:32] Now, is your background always been with children?

Caitlin Stella: [00:09:36] Yes, my undergraduate degree was in child development, so I studied that. I come from a big family too. I’m the second of seven kids, so I kind of I grew up in a learning lab of child development. My mom’s a teacher, so we always were very well educated and always had activities that were age appropriate in my house. But then I also have a master’s degree from UCLA in public health, so I kind of married child development with public health. And then, yeah, I pretty much have worked in children’s hospitals my whole career. I did some consulting over time with some adult hospitals and different like some health care insurance companies and biotech companies and pharma and stuff like that. Because as I was going through my early days of my career, I really thought that was the way to learn the health care system. So I worked for C and I was a consultant and it really was a great education because it kind of I started my career in the Autism Center at UCLA. I got my master’s, I went into consulting. I learned sort of the US health care system, if you will, living all over the country as a consultant and really then went back to the children’s hospital environment at Children’s of LA and then back at UCLA and now here at Joe DiMaggio. So I’ve always kind of found my way back to the pediatric environment, which is really what I love. I mean, I’m a kid at heart. I will tell you, I’m not my friends will tell you I should say that that I am not your traditional CEO.

Caitlin Stella: [00:11:10] I like to talk to the kids. I like to look like I like approachable. I don’t wear suits. I try to play with them. I try to get them to tell me how their experiences are. I want to hear from them firsthand. Do you like the food? Are you comfortable? Is your bed comfortable? Have you made friends here? Do you go to school? Do you like it? Just the comforts and actually they inspire me. I love talking to the kids because as we were doing our construction project, for example, we had planned out quite a bit of the space. But as I talk to the children here and knowing that the weather in South Florida is beautiful, we decided that we would incorporate an outdoor play space into our construction When we added the four stories because many of the children told me that they want. To go outside. They wanted to go outside and do their rehab. They wanted to go outside and take a walk. They wanted their parents to go outside with them or their family members. And so we incorporated that into our plans. Same thing with like our play space. So the hospital’s very dedicated, and the theme of the building is the healing power of play. And we decided to not only put play rooms on every floor, which we have on our units, but then we decided to go all in and we built a Garth Brooks Teammates for Kids Child lives zone, which is a whole zone for really enriching activities so that children want to leave their rooms and go and socialize, which is really important because you can get very isolated here when you’re in a hospital by yourself or with your parents, and it gets very isolating for the whole family.

Caitlin Stella: [00:12:50] So the zone is great because it’s kind of like it reminds me of like being on a cruise or something where every day you get a laundry list of of different activities that are happening in the zone and you can choose, Do you want to come up for the theatrical performance? Do you want to come up for the game show? If you don’t want to come, but you want to participate, you can do it from your room. We have something called Jodie TV and you can watch the game show on TV and we’ll bring you a prize if you win. So it’s a way for them to engage and socialize. And it’s really been beautiful to watch because I go up to the child zone every day, and if you just hang out up there, you’ll see kids wander in for the first time and they’re like, Wow, this place is awesome. There are video games, there’s air hockey, and then there are things that are really meant to be more medically, like educational. There’s no we’re not. It’s a no white code zone. It’s only for play. But they can go up there and have some fun, which I love to watch.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:48] Now, one of the challenges in leading a health care facility like yours is fundraising. How do you found that you’re this empathetic management style In this empathetic way you treat your patients and their families has helped in the fundraising area is that you kind of cement that bond with the people who are financially supporting a lot of the efforts that you have ongoing in order to keep growing and keep serving the community.

Caitlin Stella: [00:14:21] Absolutely. I do believe that anybody that’s had an experience here at DiMaggio Children’s Hospital with any of our services at either at the main hospital or at our outpatient locations, it’s very common that you speak to someone in the community and they’ve had someone in their family or know someone who had some kind of experience here, either their baby was born here and they were in the nick. You their child broke their bones. Someone had major surgery. We do a lot of like air and ground transport for trauma. So maybe you had a tragic story of a child that did well here. Or so there’s I feel like this community, many, many people have a story that goes back to some interaction that they had with Joe DiMaggio and what just what a great place it was, no matter what. Sometimes the outcomes aren’t optimal, but they had a good experience with the team or the environment, or they felt that love, they felt that environment, they felt that that feeling that I’ve described, where we try to have that empathy and everything that we do. And I do believe that there is there’s a perceived value in that, like parents and family members and the community at large appreciate that this resource is here. I always say that we’re very fortunate to be the community’s children’s hospital, and the community’s also very fortunate to have such a special place here, and that has translated to more support for the hospital. As we’ve grown and we’ve had our capital campaign. We have a capital campaign going now called Catch the Love. It’s help us grow this building. It’s going to continue to help us grow services like behavioral health and expand our emergency services. And so we’re continuing to raise money. But I do believe that this community does value that because people have had an experience here and they have felt that environment or they felt that empathy for their own family or know somebody. So it definitely has helped.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:14] And then as we’re coming out of the pandemic, I’m sure the needs haven’t diminished. You know, where South Florida is such a high growth area, people moving from all over the planet to South Florida, you know, to handle such a diverse population, you know, in the numbers that are there, it must be challenging by itself.

Caitlin Stella: [00:16:36] Oh, yeah. I mean, the community continues to grow and grow and we definitely have seen people move from all over. And actually we created a program called the Concierge just to help with that exact thing, because some families that are moving here have children with known health care needs. And so when you move to a new city, the first thing you do when you have a kid with a chronic illness is fine Children’s hospital, you’re going to make your home base. So kids here is just great because it can help you get plugged in to the right specialists and the right treatments. And if there’s something ongoing, know, like I said, we have kids that are here regularly, so kids here has been great. And even if they’re from out of town or maybe they live here part time because, you know, we have a lot of seasonal people here, too. Again, we’re able to kind of have a resource for them to get their care down here for whenever they’re here. But that that’s one aspect. The other aspect is it’s really shown us that we need to keep growing our services with the population’s growing, the population of children are growing and in certain areas because, you know, South Florida is not really all that easy to get around. Sometimes if you don’t have convenient care close to home, then it makes it really difficult. And like I said, it’s very disruptive for a child to leave school and keep driving to the hospital or not be able to participate in sports because they have to go to the hospital for care every week, you know. So we like to bring our services close to home so we have more and more outposts in the community so it’s less disruptive. And we’ll continue to do that based on community needs.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:11] And you mentioned the good weather. They’re going to take advantage of it through those outdoor areas. I mean, the good weather also, I’m sure, is a reason there are so many air visits because people are playing and they’re, you know, getting hurt maybe more often. They are in other communities where it’s not perfect weather, you know, every single day.

Caitlin Stella: [00:18:30] Yeah. You know what I’ve learned? I’ve been all over the country, and especially when I consult in children’s hospitals, kids will find a way to get hurt, whether it’s snow or ice or if it’s the beach or whatever. But no, it is true. I think that is one of the reasons why our our Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital Orthopedic Institute. And then also we have a program called Under 18 U. 18, which is our sports medicine and rehab program. It is the largest in the southeast, if you ask me. I mean, I think that it is it’s an absolutely a top program. It’s it’s ranked nationally by US News. And we do more surgeries than any other program in the state. We have our own sports medicine rehab program just for kids. And actually, that’s a that’s a perfect example of how it’s not apples to apples when you have adult services with kids services, because, for example, you know, when a child breaks a bone or has a severe orthopedic injury, how it’s managed because they’re still growing is very different than how you would treat it in an adult that’s already grown. So we tend to do things in a way where we’re going to try to avoid long term impact. That’s not positive. So maybe we do more bracing or we do more monitoring and then we do surgery as needed versus or sometimes surgery is the preferred route because you’re going to have better outcomes long run. But adult providers tend to do what’s good for adults. So if you if you bring a child to an adult or a pod, for example, or orthopedic surgeon, you’re going to get treated differently because it’s just a different approach, different training. So I think that it is absolutely true that that’s why that’s one of our biggest programs, because there are a lot of kids, are a ton of sports sports programs, sports competitions. So, yeah, I mean, that definitely is part of the reason why we’ve continued to grow.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:24] Now, are you seeing any trends or innovation coming up or on your radar now that maybe wasn’t there when you started?

Caitlin Stella: [00:20:35] Yeah, for sure. I mean, science obviously continues to move in terms of evolution and innovation. So we’re seeing a lot more things in children’s health care that are less invasive. So we have a growing cardiac catheter catheterization program that is actually a lot of new devices, a lot of procedures that can be done without doing open heart surgery, which is a great thing for kids. You know, definitely less invasive, definitely less downtime. So and that’s all a result of a lot of scientific innovation. So we’re seeing things like that even within neurosurgery or neurology, neurosciences, a lot of new treatments for things like epilepsy. So there’s also a trend now for more wearable technology for kids, which gives them a lot more freedom. So you can monitor their monitor them at home. Even within the hospital, we’ve tried to, wherever possible, have wearables that. Prevent them from being kind of tethered to their bed or so they have freedom to move and ambulate and walk around. So I think there’s a lot of cool innovation coming with children’s health care. We’re actually part of a national technology accelerator for children. It’s called Kidz X and it’s kind of like Space X, but kids X and we actually get to review and pilot a lot of different programs and services.

Caitlin Stella: [00:22:02] Some of them are things like apps, like we actually we’re fortunate to be part of a pilot study for an app that monitored a child’s tone of voice to see if they could predict depression. And it’s interesting because there was evidence within the research that was developed by the app developers and the company that that was there was a predictive model there. So it actually was very interesting to put that into use for something like predicting when a child was going to have a depressive episode and intervening before it happened. So we do a lot of cool things here, and I’m proud to say that even though we’re not part of a university, we are very much an academic institution. We have our own graduate medical education program with our own medical residents. We’re creating fellowships, we do research. So and I actually think sometimes we’re more nimble and more free because we don’t have that at university model. But it’s fun to watch, like the evolution of science and innovation come forward for the benefit of kids.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:07] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Caitlin Stella: [00:23:11] Well, I will say that actually philanthropically, that’s probably the most important point to leave you with, because I think that there are children’s hospitals are a great resource for a community. But oftentimes, first of all, Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, we take care of all children regardless of their ability to pay. So the only way we can really do that is similar to places like St Jude follows the same model. They are able to provide what they provide because they do a lot of fundraising. It’s the same exact thing. So we need that philanthropic support. I always tell people, if you’re going to give a dollar to St Jude, give ten to your local children’s hospital because kids are going to end up coming here for everything, not just cancer, which is what St Jude treats. But that’s just an example. I think that in general children’s hospitals are a really important structure in the community and when you have one and you have a good one, like an amazing one like mine, like Joe DiMaggio, it’s really important to continue to support it, even if it’s with time.

Caitlin Stella: [00:24:14] Some people volunteer. We have a school program called All Stars where the school adopts Joe DiMaggio as a charity of choice, and they do service projects for us, which means our projects with the kids, they come and donate things they do. They read stories. They they’ve done a lot of cool things with our kids over time. But whether you volunteer, whether you give in-kind, whether you give financially, I think it’s just really important to support hospitals like Children’s Hospital and take care of all kids in our community. And we also have a really great relationship with Boston Children’s Hospital. We’re affiliated with them and we are able to if a child has a very rare disease or a family needs to have a consult, a second opinion, whatever, we can facilitate that with our local partner. So again, it keeps kids close to home. It keeps their schedules regular, it gives kids exceptional care. And we’re only able to do those things with the support of the community. So that’s what I will leave you with for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:15] And if somebody wanted to do that and support Joe DiMaggio, what’s the website and where should they be looking on the website to find ways to plug in, whether it’s to volunteer, whether it’s a donate, whether it’s a get involved in whatever manner is appropriate?

Caitlin Stella: [00:25:31] Yeah, We have a very simple website for that. It’s JD.com backslash. Give, give, give. So if you’re looking to give back either through a donation or you’re looking to give back through volunteerism or all of our programs like the ones I mentioned, like all sorts, like things like that, corporate giving, corporate matching, things like that. It’s all, all the information is available on that website. Jd.com Backslash, Give good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:59] Well, Kaitlin, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for doing what you’re doing and sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Caitlin Stella: [00:26:07] Well, thank you. And thank you for letting us tell the story of this special gem that we have here. So I appreciate the timely.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:14] Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio. Yeah.

Steven Gu With GU & COMPANY

by

Steven
Atlanta Business Radio
Steven Gu With GU & COMPANY
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Steven Gu, CEO of GU & COMPANY, a none traditional CPA & Business Advisory firm that offers Tax Planning and Outsourced CFO services to small and medium businesses. 

He is a Tax Strategist who gives clarity and certainty to taxes for business owners. He is both a CPA and Tax Attorney (non-practicing) with more than 15 years of experience in taxes and accounting, and a Big4 Accounting firm Alumni. Steven loves to talk about Saving Money on Taxes and enjoys translating tax and accounting for entrepreneurs. He does that by helping navigate tax laws and accounting principles and speaking Entrepreneurs, not Accountants or lawyers .

Steven’s CPA firm offers a proven 7-step system to legally reduce small business taxes by average 46-100%. He also acts as Fractional CFO working with entrepreneurs to grow their businesses to the next level.  He helped entrepreneurs grow from $2M to $20M within 13 months, and assisted SAAS client achieve high 8-figure exit within 2 years.

He is the author of the book: “Tax Saving Strategies – 90 Strategies to help grow your business, build personal wealth and pay less taxes”. He is a member of Georgia Society of CPAs (GSCPA) and National Asian Pacific American Bar Association.

Connect with Steven on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Tax Planning
  • Tax Saving Strategies
  • Tax Efficiency for Wealth Building
  • Why Riches pay zero taxes

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] 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 Atlanta Business Radio, we have Steven Gu with GU and Company. Welcome, Steven.

Steven Gu: [00:00:43] Haley Thanks so much for inviting me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your firm. How you serving folks?

Steven Gu: [00:00:51] Okay, we are a CPA firm, by the way, structured our firm a little bit different. You know, majority of the small CPA firms, they are more, let’s say, tax compliance focused, basically, you know, helping people file their returns. By the way, a little bit different. We are focused more on the tax planning. The I don’t know if you know the difference between tax preparation versus tax planning.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] I’ve interviewed a lot of people over the years and a lot of CPAs, and like you said, a lot of CPAs, their only concern is doing your taxes and you give them information, they fill out a form, and that’s your whole entire interaction with them.

Steven Gu: [00:01:33] Exactly. So majority of the CPA firm, then, just like you said, there’s a focus on compliance. And basically, you know, you’ve got information after the year end, right? You give them your W-2 1099 and the financial statement, Then they calculate those. They’re putting the software calculator for you clean up and then they send it to is that’s what the tax preparation is. But our work is we are more focused on the planning. We do it before the year end. We look at your personal tax situation, look at the business tax situation, and then look at the most recent regulatory changes, right? Look at your legal entity. Structure is a C Corp partnership schedule C, Inc. Which one? What were the best? We look at a retirement, look at the insurance, look at the most recent tax or changes in Information Act Chaos Act Trump tax cut all those. Then we come back with certain strategies, certain actions the taxpayer have to do. They have to change the fact so that they can change the result, right? Once they implement those strategies, then we were able to help them to save taxes at the end. So that’s what we do. That’s how we structured our business.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:45] So does that mean when you’re working with a client, you’re not just waiting until probably around now to just get a pile of documents so that you can input that data into a software program to spit out a tax return that you want to have conversations with your clients throughout the year. So you can kind of maximize the tax situation for the behalf of the client and also at the bottom line, make them more money at the end of the day.

Steven Gu: [00:03:18] That’s exactly right. So why don’t we if you think about it, in a lot of CPA firm, there was say we would do a year end planning, that’s very common. But typically, you know, you probably personally experience that, too. That’s a year in the planning. But what are the year planning means? For lots of time they will say, okay, sorry you made it too much money this year. You have to plan to write a bigger check in January, right When you pay your Q four, when you pay your Q for estimated tax payments. Right. That’s what are their tax planning is. But instead of doing year, year end planning, we are focused more on a year round tax planning. If you really think about it now, if you want to really proactively manage your taxes, there are multiple touchpoints either in in March or April. You have to think about do you have to file your extensions for your business or your personal return? And then if you file those, then you have to file your return in September or in October. Those are for touchpoint already, but you as a business owner, you are required to calculate your estimated tax payments every quarter. You have to use update to make those quarterly estimate tax payment, right. So add those before that’s a touch point. And besides, no, during the year, your personal tax situation will be changed. You probably, you know, your kids went to school. You probably you think about a purchase and other rental properties or you’re going to sell your residential house. Right. Or your business situation could change. Right? Are you adding the partners? Are you going to invest in another entity? Do you do lots of research and credits? Do you have any cost by or are you acquired building? Lots of things going to happen during the year? So our our way is why you do get the planning when you do the year and the planning, things already happen. It’s too late to change anything. So we have to focus on year around tax planning and that’s how we serve our so our approach to serve our clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:19] Now, who is your ideal client? Are they business owners? Are they just wealthy people or are they executives at corporations? Like what’s your ideal profile of your ideal client look like?

Steven Gu: [00:05:33] It might be small to medium business owners because for w to owner, really they are not too much you can do to save your taxes, right? You have W-2, you pay taxes and max only a few things. Maybe you max out your 41k but really not too much deductions you can do. But for business owners, you can do the other. Lots of strategy available. As a matter of fact, I have I wrote a book called A 90 Strategies. Those are common strategies you can every business can consider and help them to max the deductions and reduce.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:08] So if you’re a business owner and you’re listening and your CPA isn’t suggesting some of those 90 deductions, it might be time to think about getting a new CPA. Right?

Steven Gu: [00:06:22] Exactly. It has to be a very proactive. And if you think about I always use this example to tell my clients, but really, you and me, we are paying more prime membership fee than Amazon. Pay these taxes. I back in 2000, I think Tucson to 18, Amazon paid zero taxes despite their revenue was close to $20 billion. They paid us zero taxes. Not only they paid zero taxes, they received a $125 million tax credit back. Right. So what does this means? This means your tax liability. It’s not a function of tax preparation, but it’s a function of tax planning and a function of proactively how do you proactively manage your taxes. But for big a company like Amazon, they have maybe hundreds of tax advisers helping them to do tax planning. When I was with Big Apple and in my background, actually, I was a I was both a tax lawyer and a CPA. My firm is a CPA firm, but I have a I went to law school and I have a I’m a tax lawyer. So when I was working for bigger four in the Amazon in a bigger company, multinationals are our clients. You know, they pay us lots of lots of money to just do the tax planning. We call the tax advice advisory work. Every big four, I think every Big Ten large accounting firms, they always have a special group. They call it a tax advisory group. That typically is not a group. You see lots of tax lawyers, lots of CPAs, and they just do tax planning. And that’s how they save money. They think about how we are to put their IP through to register a foreign company at a Cayman Island, how to do the treaty shopping. That’s how they save taxes. It’s all about tax planning. It’s not about just tax preparation.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:20] And then part of that, you mentioned the words tax credits. There’s opportunities to leverage tax credits to your benefit if you know about them and if you know how to, you know, put your business in the right position to take advantage of them. But that’s not something a typical business owner would know by themselves. That’s why you need to hire an expert to help you through that, because, like, I don’t think the IRS are necessarily bad guys trying to just take all your money. I think there’s a lot of opportunities there and they give you a lot of opportunities to save a lot of money or even, you know, get some tax credits. But most people just don’t know about them.

Steven Gu: [00:09:03] Exactly. I always tell them our client is actually loves you, always loves you. Here’s why. And if you really look at the tax law, the tax law is actually written to reduce business owners taxes. But tax code is nothing but a collection of juicy tax deductions and credits and incentives for business owners. And there’s the other tax policy behind that, because the government wants to let’s say they want to develop low income community housing. They wanted you to invest. They wanted to develop the you know, in our chamber, there’s the area called the Opportunity Zone area. Now, because they wanted they want to develop that area. So that’s why they give you incentives. I don’t know if you heard about a, quote, opportunity zone. Let’s say if you have capital, can you sell your sell your portfolio? You sell, sell, sell a property. You have certain capital gain. Now, you can put those capital gains into those opportunities zone area and you do not have to pay your capital gain immediately. Your capital gain. You’ve got to get it deferred after you hold that for a few years, typically more than seven years, you get addition of 15% discount. So let’s say you have $1 million. Now, after seven years, you only have to pay. You only have to pay capital gain on the $857. Right. Get it deferred or get it deduction. And what’s even better, like if you invest in the opportunity zone, let’s say you invest in another business and you started that business after ten years later, you sell that business, you get you make additional $1 million. Those $1 million are exempted.

Steven Gu: [00:10:42] You do not have to pay taxes. But. And why? Why, why, why the government give you those incentives? Because they want to develop those areas. But let’s for example, let’s give you another example. And this is how I saved my client close to $10 Million Taxes. And if you you have a small business, especially for like hypergrowth or your technology company grows very fast and you have potential, very big exit. It’s always it’s it’s always better idea to consider what entity structure you want to you want to establish. But for example, if you do Inc but then we allow you to make so called small business entity election right under that. Once you make that election, if you exit, you can you can exempt, you can get exempt, you can get the sum of up to $10 million. We have be exempted from taxes. Right. So why the come and try to give you that instance? Because they try to encourage people to to invest, to invest a startup startup companies and to hire more employees. So they are always the tax policy behind that. Let me give you another example. For example, if you export, right, they give you equity. They allow you to establish another almost like paper company. You can sell the product to that company. And if that company export to another to to foreign buyers, you can get a reduced rate. And there’s another one called an. Like what a cute text. Right or so called an intangible. If you sell intangible products to other countries, you get a reduced taxes as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:35] Now, when you’re working with somebody and you’re part, I think in your mind, you want to be a partner, right? You want to be part of their trusted advisory team. You want to be somebody that they are looking to for advice throughout the year. Do you also work with. Because I’m sure a lot of the business owners you work with, they also have financial planners and wealth advisors. Is it something that you work with those people as well to communicate, at least to understand what’s happening on that side so you can really kind of do have more information to do what you need to do to help your client?

Steven Gu: [00:13:15] Absolutely. Absolutely. We actually we work with financial advisors very closely. We partner with very big companies and Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, all kinds of typical financial advisors. And I think the tax advisor, should it be considered as part of the financial advisor, because for tax, it’s one tax is a very important way to help people to build up their net wealth. I don’t know if you heard of Tony Robbins wrote a book about like a Money Mastery game. Money like the Math of the game. What’s a pretty 600 pages book? But in his book, he argued as that a tax efficiency is one of the simplest way to continue to increase the real returns over your portfolio, and that tax efficiency equals faster financial freedom. And if you read the book, they are that list. He spent at least the two chapters talking about taxes and. If you really think about this, how much tax we are paying to think about, you have to pay income tax. We have to pay real estate tax. We have to pay sales, use tax, write all those tax as as up together. That’s almost like a 50%. Goes to the Texas. Right. And if we really think about that 50%, let’s no, let’s discount a little bit. Let’s say so for small business or just average taxpayer, at least you would pay 40%. Right? If you really think about that, 40% means, you know, that is. 3 hours a day. 40% times eight. Right? Right. That’s about 12 hours a week. Okay. And let’s say average America works for 30 years. Let’s say you just start a 30 and you retire to 60. That means you spend 12 years out of your 30 years working for IRAs alone. That’s like my lifetime prison. Right. That’s how much damage is a tax cost to yourself, if you think about it. You you go to work. You know, you spend 3 hours working for so long.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:36] Yeah. And that’s why that’s why you need to have experts and trusted advisors that can help you, because all you do every day is think about this, where a business owner is thinking about their business. You need somebody that’s kind of watching your back when it comes to this type of of the expertise that you have. It’s not something that a regular person I don’t think can do, you know, with a TurboTax software program as well as somebody with your experience and knowledge and team behind it.

Steven Gu: [00:16:10] Exactly. And the number one reason we feel small business owners are overpaying tax, it’s because of their mindset, because they don’t know the difference between tax planning and a tax preparation. Right. And they didn’t realize the impact, how much how much impact they’re going to cause to their really, you know, to their net worth build up and. I would go back to the Tony Robbins book one more time. They are one example. It’s very sort of very impactful. When I read it, he said, Suppose let me let me do a calculator. Let’s do a quick mass. Supposedly you have $1 and you get 100% return every year. So you can have $1 for a year, $2 next year, and a $4 in the 30 year and $8 for the fourth year. Right. Continue the math after 20 years. Guess how much money you have? Cumulative amount. Let’s give it a wider.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:12] I guess it’s it’s a big number because I know the power of compounding is the secret to success. So I don’t know the number, but I’m sure it’s very, very, very large.

Steven Gu: [00:17:25] Let me give you a multiple choice. Okay. Do you think it would be between 10000 to 50000 now?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:34] Hundreds of thousands to a million.

Steven Gu: [00:17:36] Okay. You’re very close. It’s $1.07 million. 100% of tank company in 20 years, $1.07 million. But if you have to pay tax 30% tax every year, same formula, you get $1, you pay 30% tax, and then you get a double double return and then you pay tax every year. So 80%. Guess how much that a number where.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:04] That number would be? Is it not just 30% less?

Steven Gu: [00:18:09] No. You have to pay every year.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:11] Oh, so every year. So that’s compounding as well.

Steven Gu: [00:18:14] Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:14] So what? 300,000.

Steven Gu: [00:18:20] Not even that. It’s 27, seven, 27.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:25] Wow. So you’re doing all that work and you’re not getting the return you could if you had better advice.

Steven Gu: [00:18:31] Yeah. So the tax that could cause a 50 time difference is on your. By $27,000 versus 1 million. Close to 50, 50 times differences. That’s why Tony always in his book, he always argue like tax. Tax efficiency is so important because it is going to cause. Like 50 times differences. If you can manage to grow your wealth at a tax free or more tax effective way versus you pay tax every year, that after 20 years the result will be huge.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:06] So if somebody wants to learn more about your process and your firm, is there a website they can go to to have a conversation with you or somebody on your team?

Steven Gu: [00:19:19] Yeah, they can go to my website. Gq As a lot of you go to CPA group dot com, or they can email me at a Stephen at GQ. Cpa group dot net. And if they give if they’re right, if they include a business rate of X and I can I can give them a free assessment.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:38] Great. So, well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Steven Gu: [00:19:44] Thank you for inviting me. Appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:46] All right. This is Lee Kantor Wilson, Next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Andrew Koenig With CITY Furniture

by

South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
Andrew Koenig With CITY Furniture
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Andrew Koenig graduated with degrees in Finance and Accounting from Elon University in 2005 and received his MBA in Entrepreneurship from Nova Southeastern University – Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship. He began his full-time career with City Furniture in January 2006 in the Receiving Department unloading furniture on containers, and has worked his way up through the company and in almost all divisions of the company. He spent a significant time streamlining the Operations Department in the first 8 years of his career to become one of the industry’s best.

Currently, he is serving as CEO of City Furniture, overseeing all departments of the business. Shortly before joining City Furniture, He studied Lean Philosophy at Toyota’s headquarters in Toyota City, Japan. After learning from Toyota and other Lean companies in the United States and abroad, he introduced Lean Thinking to City Furniture in 2007. Ever since, City Furniture has been on a Lean Journey to create a culture of mutual trust and respect, teamwork and a deep sense of urgency to continuously improve. Since the implementation of Lean, the company has seen many major breakthroughs in turnover reduction, operational process improvement, customer experience, safety, associate satisfaction, strategic planning, financial success and much more.

The journey is never over and Andrew & Sr. Team are working very hard to implement Lean Thinking throughout the company which is now been renamed as “The City Furniture Operating System (CFOS).” He is extremely lucky to have 1 amazing wife Deana (who he met during his MBA) and 3 beautiful kids (Aaron, Daya, & Christian). He is the son of Keith Koenig & nephew to Kevin Koenig, the founders of Waterbed City in 1971 which ultimately converted to City Furniture in 1994.

Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn and follow him on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • CITY’s 5% Giving Pledge
  • 2040 Green Promise
  • CITY’s sustainability journey
  • Cybersecurity

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 Andrew Koenig with City Furniture. Welcome.

Andrew Koenig: [00:00:32] Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me, man.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about city furniture, how you saw them, folks.

Andrew Koenig: [00:00:40] Sure. City Furniture is a 51 year old home furnishings retailer here in South Florida and also central Florida. Started as waterbed city retailer in 1971. My father and my uncle were a couple of hippies selling water beds, and it turned into city furniture in 1994 when water beds got uncool and we shifted into full line home furnishings. And we’ve been city furniture ever since.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] Now, what was that transition like? Was that were you involved at the time with the organization?

Andrew Koenig: [00:01:10] No, no, I was not here. But I can tell you, we put all of our all of our dough on the line in a bet to transition from water beds to city furniture. And our first store to the right of us was Levitz Furniture, the number one furniture retailer in the country, and a startup called Rooms to Go that we all know is a big retailer throughout the Southeast United States and proud that our little city furniture concept has succeeded since then. And number one in South Florida. So we’re really proud.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] How do you what do you attribute that kind of the ability to make that transition and go from a niche business to kind of more of a mass business and still keep a culture and kind of the the work you’re doing in in the community? How do you how do you keep that all going?

Andrew Koenig: [00:01:55] Sure. So my uncle, who was the founder of our business that pulled my dad and he was a natural entrepreneur, he was saved his money as a bellman to open up our first store, sold yo yos on the street corner. Just very entrepreneurial. So what got us through that transition from water beds into a full line home furnishings retailer was just the entrepreneurial spirit that is our number one corporate value at city. I’ve always evolving, always moving towards where the customer wants us to be next, and that’s just who we are. And we’re very blessed that we have a fantastic team that, you know, we take things head on as a city family, we call it, and they did a fantastic job transitioning and clearly they’ve done a great job. And now we’re continuously evolving as every year customers change needs the community change and we evolve with it. So that can’t be difficult for us. That needs to be part of who we are.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:49] So it becomes part of the culture in the DNA of the organization 100%.

Andrew Koenig: [00:02:54] Yeah, that’s, you know, other corporate value that we have is continuous improvement, you know, teamwork, family, spirit, you these are all things that just keep us constantly evolving over time.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:04] Now, how does that work in terms of the employees? How like was there are ways that you can measure that or demonstrate that?

Andrew Koenig: [00:03:12] Sure, we are very data driven, so we have a fairly large data analytics team. So we’re always measuring our associates satisfaction. All the KPIs, whether it’s customer externally related like surveys and brand research studies, but we also measure internal customer satisfaction, you know, how accounting serves, you know, the sales associate or how marketing serve sales. So we have a lot of metrics to measure our performance. We believe in that philosophy of you. You know, you don’t you can’t measure or you can’t manage what you don’t measure. So so we’re we’re a continuous improvement house and we use data to solve problems and improve things. And sometimes that’s culture related. And we have a lot of metrics along those lines.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:56] Now, part of your culture is a giving pledge. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andrew Koenig: [00:04:01] Yeah, I’m real proud of this one. So my father, my uncle were a couple very religious guys and always believed, you know, as they grew the business and got some success, they wanted to give back to the community. So we’ve been giving back to organizations like Covenant House for 40 plus years. So but the story about the Giving Pledge is about five years ago. I remember looking into our financials and seeing how much donations we were giving. And I remember talking to my dad. I’m like, Dad, we got to tell the story. You know, my generation, I’m an older millennial, needs to be aware of what, you know, the companies that they choose to buy from are doing for the community. And and the story goes that, you know, I pitched them on, hey, let’s brand this as a strategy of 5% giving pledge pledge, and let’s make a public announcement to the community that we’re going to make give back a minimum of 5% of our profits every single year. The five categories we focus on are health. So that could be like American Cancer Society or the American Heart Association.

Andrew Koenig: [00:05:09] Unfortunately, my our founder, my Uncle Kevin, passed away from heart disease. A mom passed away from cancer about seven years ago. So those are really big causes. We also focus on service. So giving back to women and men that serve our communities or serve the US. You name it. And the military. We also support education, know like colleges, junior achievement, South Florida, you name it home, which would example that would be like Habitat for Humanity. And what’s the last one? Health service. Oh, diversity would be another core value where we’re partners with One Pulse Foundation in Orlando and the Heritage Foundation and several others there, Urban League. So we’re trying to get back in areas that we think are in need for the community and that fit within those five pillars. And, you know, as our business continuously improves and grows and our profitability grows. We have a big community team that works really hard to make sure we give back properly and keep keep my Uncle Kevin’s spirit alive and making sure we’re we’re living our purpose, which is to enrich people’s lives and make the world a better place.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:16] Now, when you’re deciding which nonprofit to support, how how do you go about that? Are you listening to your employees, your customers? How does somebody get on one of those lists?

Andrew Koenig: [00:06:27] All the above. But we’re also listening to the community. We’re also reflecting on who we are as a business. What are some of the problems we’ve personally experienced? You know, again, it was it was a very difficult time when we lost my Uncle Kevin. It was very difficult for my father. So you’d imagine heart diseases is it just happens to be the number one killer of Americans even more than COVID. Even during the pandemic, we didn’t see enough work being done there. So we partnered American Heart. Same thing with the American Cancer Society. When my mom passed, I was very devastating time for our culture and our team. She was like the matriarch of our business. And to honor her and what she’s done for us over the last 40 plus years of being the matriarch, we wanted to go all in on the American Cancer Society. So, you know, it’s a bit of who we are. It’s a bit of community needs. It’s a bit of what our associates and customers want. And we do the absolute best we can to spend every single penny as wisely as possible. But we’ll listen to all our organizations and their needs. And, you know, I get on calls with a lot of them, and we do the best we can to serve as much as we possibly can. So I hope that helps.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] Now, on top of the Giving Pledge, you also have a promise regarding sustainability. Is that totally separate than the Giving Pledge or that’s in addition?

Andrew Koenig: [00:07:40] Yeah. Yeah, that is separate. Our 5% giving pledge is strictly giving in in charitable aspects. The 2040 Green Promise is our promise, public promise that will be carbon neutral by the year 2040. And we’ve been on a journey to be a very green organization for probably 20 years. We had one of the very first Styrofoam liquified technologies that liquefies and melts and hardens Styrofoam and turn them into I think crocs are chairs and you name it. So 100% recyclable and safe. About ten plus years ago, we we invested in our green fleet. I’m happy to say our entire fleet is 100% renewable, compressed natural gas as well as renewable natural gas. Essentially, the Department of Energy considers that a green energy, and it’s about 67% less emissions than any other truck you’ll see on the road. I’m proud to say 2021, we were the we were ranked the greenest fleet in the entire United States amongst all fleets. I’m talking like police departments, air Force ups, you name it. And that was a really big honor for our business. We only build green buildings, LEED certified leadership, energy, environmental design buildings, or Energy star certified buildings. So we’ve been doing that for over ten years. So we’ve always been very green forward. And, you know, it’s the right thing to do for the planet. It’s the right thing to do to attract customers and make them feel proud of their purchases. It’s also a great business cause a lot of these efforts actually have helped us save a lot of money. To give you an idea, you know our fuel costs members remember this past summer fuel diesel prices went up to like five or six bucks a gallon. You know, we were substantially below that. I’d say the number, but it’s substantially below that. And so, you know, it’s harder work to execute green strategies and go after this, but there’s actually a really solid ROI. Most areas and so we’re on our journey to be carbon neutral and we’re real proud of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:54] Now, what was it like kind of being part of a family owned business, a family run business? Is there anything like was it kind of assumed that you would be leading it at some point, or was that something that you decided at some point to to get back involved with the organization?

Andrew Koenig: [00:10:15] Yeah. So so actually, in college I tried to go pro in golf, so I was a big golfer in high school, and I always dreamed of being a professional golfer until I started playing some of the top five schools in our country. And I was like, whoa, You know, I played for like a top 50 school, you know, as a starter. And I remember I remember playing some of those players and I was like, wow, that guy is on another level. And so I remember in college saying, okay, I need to I need to get a real job one day because I don’t think this is gonna work out. So but I was always very competitive and very I’m very you know, once I find something I love, I’m all into it. And actually, in an accounting class in college, I fell in love with business. And I fell in love. I didn’t realize business was as competitive as sports. And I have like, you know, I have a competitive spirit. My dad has a competitive spirit. And I guess my and then I started learning more about business. And that really that really sparked a passion in me, in the business world. And then coming out of college, I really wanted to learn everything I could about City.

Andrew Koenig: [00:11:21] And I really I found I loved our industry, I loved our business, I loved the business my father built. And I see a lot of opportunity to take this business very far into the future and do a lot of really special things. And I also what I also found is I really love our people. Like, you know, my father and my uncle really built a special culture here at City that, you know, it was not it was very hard not to fall in love with. So, you know. So, no, I started in the receiving docks in offloading furniture. I spent several years in the warehouse on the ground floor. The reason there is I never felt like I would earn the respect of our operations team if I didn’t know the work, do the work and be there side by side. So I was a delivery driver for many months. I worked overnight. I remember my my now wife was my girlfriend at the time. She didn’t really think I was going to work at 930 and coming back the next day at 9:00 in the morning. And so she was like, Oh, you must have another girlfriend. But but no, I’ve worked all the tough shifts and worked a lot of different departments in in.

Andrew Koenig: [00:12:27] It’s helped me become a better leader. And my father did not give me anything. I had to work for everything I got. But I’m an ambitious guy and I was fortunate to learn from a lot of great leaders in our organization. That helped make me pretty solid. And, you know, I but but I feel, you know, over the years, I really was a student of the game. And over time, when I felt like I was capable of taking on more, you know, luckily I got those opportunities and it just naturally happened this way. And I’m proud to be where I’m at. And I’m also very proud of BCO because I get to give my dad some time off. He’s worked 51 years and he’s a chairman and, you know, you know, if you work 51 years at City and, you know, building this thing, you deserve some time off. And I love seeing that he’s not working as hard as he used to. And I’m happy to take on that workload for him because, you know, I wouldn’t be here in this situation for my family and my city family if it wasn’t for him. So I’m proud to take on some of this work for him.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:28] When you were growing up, how did you view the city? Was it something like, Oh, that’s my dad works there and and you were just, you know, obviously you were aware of it, but it wasn’t like that. Curious. But it wasn’t until after you were in college and kind of saw like, Hey, there is something there for me and there’s a way for me to contribute.

Andrew Koenig: [00:13:49] Yeah. I mean, I as a kid, I always thought it was cool and I thought it was interesting, but I definitely thought sports were more cool or more interesting. And I didn’t really didn’t really fall in love with the business until college, when really that accounting class really kind of woke me up and said, Hey, there’s an industry here. Hey, there’s, you know, this this is an opportunity to build something really fun. And so I always thought what he built was very special in the culture was really special, But I didn’t really see the fun in work when I was a kid. And I think that’s something that the world needs to do a lot better. Job at work can be a lot of fun. Like I love what I do. I, I know our team really works hard because they enjoy who they do it with. It’s a fun work experience. The challenges every day are fun and we’re all we all on a mission and a vision and got great purpose. And you know, it’s just work’s a lot more fun when you when you have a great team and great culture and great opportunity. Then I think that I learned when I was in high school, you know what I mean? Or when I heard about work. It sounds horrible work. Oh, you got to work hard, you know. You know.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:01] Especially comparing it to golf.

Andrew Koenig: [00:15:03] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, but but as soon as I realized the work was fun and challenging in.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:12] And has meaning in impact, I mean, you’re what you’re doing is impacting so many families through your employees and the joy you’re bringing to the customers. It’s it’s a gift. A lot of the stuff you’re doing and the reframing of that, I’m agreement 100%. The young people have to see the joy of work and the personal satisfaction and the impact you’re making in the families and the community. I mean, that stuff’s real.

Andrew Koenig: [00:15:38] Yeah. There’s there’s nothing more proud to know that. You know, I’ll start with the product side just to provide just amazing product. You know, our product is in factories where, you know, right down the line is RH or Williams-Sonoma or Pottery Barn. Some of the some of the highest end brands you could think of. And we’re able to provide that product substantially, you know, 70 to 80% less and pass on that value to our customers. My father and my uncle always they they have very humble beginnings. They didn’t come from money. You know, they they were they had to work the work through college and keep themselves afloat. They probably started working when they’re 12 years old, you know, So they understand the value dollar. And our business is all about creating or developing amazing product, amazing style, amazing quality at affordable and strong values for our customers and and a fun and exciting environment. So after you find the product you love and the price, you’re like, Wow, that’s amazing. Then you have a great sales associate and delivery experience. It just makes our entire shopping experience something very special. And when when city succeeds, you’re absolutely right. When we grow and financially we can do more. The fact that I have more dough in the bank account to give back to American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Junior Achievement, Habitat for Humanity, you name it.

Andrew Koenig: [00:17:05] Some of these causes that are just greater than anything I could ever do. You know, I think these people are angels, what they do and and the fact that we can financially help them out and support them is just it’s a dream. And and I’ll never forget the story if I just add I remember we’re we’re trying to raise money for the American Heart Association three years ago and and I’m and I rarely ask our associates to participate. I think once a year it’s always the American heart, you know, and I don’t ask for much. It’s a buck, whatever you want to help out. Of course, we ask our customers and we raise money with our vendors and all that good stuff. But I remember this this guy walking out in the warehouse worker walks up to me, he says, Andrew, I’m sorry, man. I just I just don’t have a buck to share right now. I go, Bro, I love you, man. That is so nice that you actually came up to me to tell me that. Number two, you don’t have to worry about it. You work at Citi, like the better our company does, the better you do helping our company, the better city does, the more money we have at the end of the year to give back to these charities and these organizations.

Andrew Koenig: [00:18:05] And his eyes just lit up. He was like, You’re telling me I’m by me working here and helping like kick butt Today in the warehouse, I’m actually helping American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, all these guys. Yes. And he was like, wow. Like, he was like, you know what? That’s amazing. Thank you so much. Like, and it’s true. So a lot of our associates, we have 3000 plus associates know that. And our sales team, we’ve got about eight, eight, 900 sales associates in our stores right now. There right now, this first quarter of this year, they’re trying to raise $500,000 for the American Heart Association with our test campaign. So, you know, our our culture is very special. Like we definitely believe we’re we’re doing more. Right before I came to this meeting or this podcast, I just left another meeting in. It was for the American Heart Association that we’re trying to raise. And I ended the meeting saying, let let’s save some lives. Like what? It’s not a marketing campaign. Your marketing campaign is actually saving lives. And we truly believe that. So that’s just one example of many about what we’re we’re doing here at City.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:06] So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more talent? You need more employees, you need more customers, You need more causes to help. How can we help you?

Andrew Koenig: [00:19:18] Oh, man. So, you know, we’re an open book. So, you know, number one, I’d say, hey, give me give me anybody out there listening. Give me ideas to help make us better, how to serve our customers better, how to how to be better. And in return, our company will continue to grow and we’ll be able to give back more. So I think I’m always asking anybody, I’m interacting whether you’ve shopped with us or or whether you didn’t tell me how I can improve, how we can improve to be a better retailer and or home furnishings retailer or anybody listen in that. You know, could provide me advice on how to run our business better, how to create better culture, how to have better technology or better supply chain. You know, I’m all ears. So, you know, I try to network as much as possible and and connect with as much as possible to learn from everybody. We’re a continuous improvement organization. And how everybody can help me, how you can help me is help me be better and give me ideas. Never hesitate to be honest and direct with me on on where we can improve. Or if you just have ideas while wild, crazy ideas. They’re all welcome. So that’s that what’s that’s what I need.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] So if somebody wants to learn more about city and trying to location near them, what’s the coordinates?

Andrew Koenig: [00:20:41] Well, the website is a good one. You can learn a lot about us online and obviously shop with us online. But we have a corporate social responsibility report. We have about US page. We have a lot of branding information there that really explains who we are as a business and where we’re going and what we’re trying to do. Of course, you can go to your local city store. We’re pretty much within 50 minutes of everybody in South Florida and now Orlando and about to be Tampa. We got our first store there in Tampa. But so, yeah, we’re not too far away or anybody can reach out to me at Andrew Kay at City Furniture dot com. I share my email with everybody and I’m happy to take any feedback calls, network, you name it.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:21] Well, congratulations on all the success. You must be doing something right. You win an awards and all different categories all over the place. So congratulations and you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Andrew Koenig: [00:21:33] All right, back at you. And thank you so much for having me on. And I wouldn’t be here. And without my amazing city family, it’s all them. They’re kicking butt every day. I’m so proud of them.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:42] All that city furniture. City furniture dot com. To learn more, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on South Florida Business Radio. He.

David S. Rose With Gust, Inc.

by

Innovation Radio
Innovation Radio
David S. Rose With Gust, Inc.
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David S. Rose, Founder and Executive Chairman of Gust.

He is an Inc. 500 CEO, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist and best selling author who has founded or funded over 100 pioneering companies.

He has been described by Forbes as “New York’s Archangel”, by BusinessWeek as a “world conquering entrepreneur”, by Crain’s New York Business as “the father of angel investing in New York”, and by Red Herring magazine as “patriarch of Silicon Alley”.

He is the New York Times best selling author of both Angel Investing: The Gust Guide to Making Money & Having Fun Investing in Startups and The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business.

Connect with David on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Exponential technology growth (the Singularity)
  • Angel Investing
  • Current economic market
  • Startup ecosystems
  • Effect of automation on fundraising

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Innovation Radio, where we interview entrepreneurs focused on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Innovation radio is brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs the Levein’s Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founders journey from Birth of an Idea through successful exit or global expansion. Now, here’s your host, Lee Kantor.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] All right, Lee Kantor Here another episode of Innovation Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, the Leuven Center of Innovation. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Innovation radio, we have David S Rose and he is with Gust. Welcome.

David S Rose: [00:00:45] Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about gust how you serving folks.

David S Rose: [00:00:52] So Gust is the global platform for the entrepreneurial finance world. So we’ve been around for almost 20 years and we connect all the world’s startup companies to all the world’s early stage angel investors. So we are used on the one side by many of the world’s largest angel investment groups to handle all their applications for funding. And on the other side, we’re used by millions of founders to both create their companies, spin up and incorporate their companies here in the US, and then connect them to all of these investors and accelerators who are looking for innovative companies.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] Now are there right now a lot of incubators, accelerators, innovation centers. Is this something that you’re seeing that’s trending upward?

David S Rose: [00:01:35] Oh, absolutely. And the the whole world of accelerators is a relatively recent development. As recent things go, there are only maybe 15 or so years old and you’re seeing an increasing number. There are literally many, many hundreds of accelerators around the world. However, they are not all the same. There are a handful of top accelerators that are sort of household names and a developed reputation over a dozen years. There are another handful of newer accelerators associated with really great organizations that are spinning up rapidly and developing reputations. And then there are a lot of other ones that are people are trying, but they really haven’t been as successful and may not provide quite as much value.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:18] Now, is it something that is always or typically associated with universities or is some of them just private ventures?

David S Rose: [00:02:26] Oh, no. They’re actually the original accelerators. The very first of them was something called Y Combinator, which is still going strong and still toward the top of the heap. And that was just started up as a purely independent program to help founders who had gotten started accelerate their their activities. And then that spurred another a number of other accelerators that were purely independent accelerators. And so after a few years when the world saw companies coming out of these accelerators that were clearly taking advantage of the contacts and the skills and the training and the mentorship and the peer grouping that they had met at their accelerator, many organizations, both universities and businesses, said, Hey, we can really leverage what we have to help startup companies and therefore go ahead and and created their own accelerators. And so because of that, you’ve seen a number of universities have their own accelerators, you’ve seen companies, large banks and and manufacturing companies create accelerators. And so now you’ve got a pretty wide range from independent standalones to ones affiliated with the universities, ones affiliated with major innovation centers like Van and the like.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:34] Now, is it something that is skews towards technology firms or are there accelerators and incubators for firms in any industry?

David S Rose: [00:03:44] Yes and yes. And the answer is they do tend to skew towards access to technology because they skew to the kinds of companies that are suitable for outside equity financing from angel investors or or venture capital funds. And in reality, because starting a company is so risky, the only companies that are really viable for that outside equity funding, which is taking a lot of risk earlier on, are companies that can grow very, very rapidly and grow very, very big. And those companies tend to be technology companies because technology lets you scale and start small and grow big and the like. And so therefore, yes, most of these things are technology. However, the second yes is technology, which started out just being manufacturing chips and computers and then software and stuff like that has itself expanded over the last several decades. And so now everything is affected by technology. And what that means is you’re now seeing accelerators across the entire universe of things. There is what is known as as agricultural technology or agtech or food tech. You have urban tech proptech for real estate, fintech for the financial institutions. And for example, the romance center has got a. Accelerator coming up and called Spaceport, which is all about space technology. And so while you can have things like agriculture, it typically when you look at these accelerator programs, they typically are technology or scalable business models applied to a particular domain.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in these early stage companies?

David S Rose: [00:05:23] My back story is I was born to this. I am actually a fifth generation serial entrepreneur myself. So I grew up with the idea of starting companies and entrepreneurial activities as sort of my my, my lifeblood. Back in the dot com boom in the 1990s, I was a finalist for the NY Entrepreneur of the Year award. My father won it in 2002. My father is currently 93 years old and is going strong and won the Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002. So that gives you some of the background there. But interestingly, on the other side, I am actually a third generation angel investor because my great uncle, after whom I was named the first David Rose, was actually one of the first angel investors in the mid 20th century. He was the angel investor behind things like the portable kidney dialysis unit, vascular stapling, hyperbaric operating chambers and the like. As a matter of fact, the main street of the Institute of Technology in Israel is David Rose Avenue. So I have a multigenerational history in both starting up companies and in investing in early stage companies.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:35] Now, any advice for the person that’s just getting started in angel investing? Are there some do’s and don’ts?

David S Rose: [00:06:42] Oh, there are. There are quite a few things about getting started in angel investing. As a matter of fact, I wrote a book about it, which is become a New York Times bestseller and is sort of the standard textbook on how to be an angel investor. And it’s called very imaginative title Angel Investing the Guts Guide to Making Money and Having Fun Investing in Startups. But the answer is just don’t do it blindly. Angel groups Groups of angel investors are a wonderful place to get started because it gives you a sort of instant peer group of people who’ve been there ahead of you, and you can ride along their coattails and watch what they do and leverage their deal flow and pool your resources with them to get started. If you start, start investing by yourself, without that kind of infrastructure or training or experience, you’re almost guaranteed to make a mistake because angel investing A It’s as bad as risky as things get. Doing it without a background or an out and understanding of how the economics work, what the time frames are, what standard terms are, what is, what else is happening in the industry. You’re almost guaranteed to fail if you try and do it on your own just starting. And that’s why we always strongly recommend that you work with a either a local group of angel investors or do some reading or find out more about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:55] And if you’re trying to join a group of angel investors in your community, is this something that you just Google Angel Investor Group and then nowadays there’s some one in every community? Or is it something that only in kind of the larger cities?

David S Rose: [00:08:10] No. Well, it started out originally back in the you know, the very first groups were started in probably the 1990, early 1990s, and they grew and grew from them. Today is the Angel Capital Association, which is the national umbrella organization of angel investment groups. And so you could go to Angel Capital Association dot org, pretty long name there. And they have a list of all their member groups, hundreds of groups around the country. If you want to cast a little wider net, you can go to August. On August G ust gusta, we actually have a directory of hundreds of 750 angel groups that you can look for over there, or you can just sort of Google it. But finding a group that’s either on dust or a member of the Angel Capital Association is a great place to start because those tend to be vetted groups that have been around for a while and or serious players, other people who call themselves an angel group may or may not actually be an angel group.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:08] Now, is the expectation different or the mindset different for an angel investor than, say, somebody that historically has invested in something like real estate or developing or things like that?

David S Rose: [00:09:20] Oh, yes, indeed. It absolutely is. My my other background actually is in real estate. And I’m these days I’m the CEO of the US real estate market. So I have a lot of experience in real estate as well. And believe me, they are very, very different. Investing in early stage companies is wildly risky. It takes a very long time. It tends to be binary, which is you either tend to lose your money or you tend to make a lot of money in it. It doesn’t pay anything along the way. While you’re waiting for you’re waiting for the good times to come. And so that’s angel investing real estate. On the other hand, you tend to buy a building or invest in a building, and it pays. Distributes, you know, every year or quarter or whatever. So you may often get distributions depending on what you’re investing in along the way. And typically it’ll take, depending on how you’re doing it, if you’re investing in a fund, for example, you can sell it at any time, more or less. So it’s a somewhat liquid, whereas in the case of angel investing, the average holding time for an angel investment in the United States is between nine and ten years. And from the minute you invest until that exit happens, not only do you not get any additional any cash out along the way, you can’t take your money back or take it out even if you really, really need it because it’s completely illiquid. And very often you’ll be expected to make another follow on investment because the company didn’t quite do what it hoped it would do with your initial investment. So angel investing is really crazy. Making it can be very risky. It can be remarkably rewarding if you do it and you do it right and if you know what you’re getting into. But no, it is unlike any other kind of investing now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:01] This world of entrepreneurship, are you seeing a trend towards more people opening their mind to the possibly of themselves as an entrepreneur? There was a time maybe it was even now a decade or two ago, where the thought was, when you’re a young person, you’re going to go get a job. You know, you’ll stick with that job for a while. But today it seems a lot more chaotic and a person’s career takes many turns. Is entrepreneurship kind of the path that more and more people are opening themselves up to?

David S Rose: [00:11:33] Well, the idea of entrepreneurship is something that has gained extraordinary currency recently. When I was I mean, I’m not that old, but when I was in school there was not one single class course club or activity with the word entrepreneur in it. Whereas today you can’t walk down the street without finding yourself in front of some program or club or group or magazine or something about it. So what we are seeing is a remarkable societal openness towards being an entrepreneur and starting companies. That being said in the United States is certainly an entrepreneurial society, and that’s one of the things that differentiates us from most of the rest of the world. And people have always been starting companies. However, I would caveat that with the fact that not everybody is cut out to be an entrepreneur. It has nothing to do with race, color, creed, age, national origin, anything else. I know entrepreneurs who I mean, my close friend and mentor and role model, Norman Lear, is now 100 years old and is still starting new things. My father is 93. I recently invested in a company with a guy named Peter Sprague, who I think is 88, so there is no age impediment to doing it. I’ve invested in young kids and old people. However, it takes a certain kind of mindset. It takes the ability to be able to stomach some risk, to be able to have confidence in yourself, to bullet through, to to be able to start something when nobody knows you can nobody can tell you what to do.

David S Rose: [00:13:02] And so in reality, of all the people in the world, it’s a sort of a bell curve, right? Some some people are more entrepreneurial than others. The people who tend to start companies fall in generally into sort of the top 5% or so of the world or one 5% towards one end of the entrepreneurial world, you know, 1%, 1% or 20% of the of that 5% are people who are natural born entrepreneurs. They were born to do this stuff. And they’re the people who will be starting companies as a six year old. Right. And you find them and, you know, I’m one of those guys. My father is one of those guys. There are people like that of all kinds. And in all countries as well. The other majority, 80% of people who start companies, however, are what I call self-made entrepreneurs. And these are people who are entrepreneurial, but they have experience in their domain and their business area with a particular technology or or marketplace. And they see a need and they they they take a survey of what they who they know and what they have and what their ideas are. And then they create a company to fill that need and they actually can grow really, really big. And so that’s the majority of people we see starting companies. But the answer is there is nothing stopping anybody in general if you are otherwise attuned to being an entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:23] And is that why it’s so important to have things like the Levanon Center of Innovation, places where you can go and be around other kind of like minded people, other mentors, people that can kind of guide you if you have that spark, you know, whether it’s your own idea. If you’re a creator like that or you’re a see an opportunity in the niche, but to have a place where you can go that can help you create that infrastructure, you need to be successful.

David S Rose: [00:14:56] Absolutely. I mean the Levant center for. Or your listeners who haven’t been there. I mean, you have to go there. It is literally mind boggling. I’ve been around the entrepreneurial business, as I mentioned my entire career, and I run this platform that has got more power than anybody else in the world. I have never been to a place like Lemon. It is truly mind boggling. I mean, it’s 54,000 square feet. They call themselves or actually somebody called them and they’ve adopted it as their tagline as an entrepreneur’s theme park. And that’s exactly what it is. I mean, they have the people, the startups, the mentors, they have the technology to create your own podcast. They have the technology to to do your pitches to investors. They have pitch nights, they have accelerators, they have they’re building a whole 3-D studio for motion capture. They have a make a robotics lab. They have you know, it is a truly unbelievable place. And most importantly, what they have are other startups, other entrepreneurs who are starting companies, entrepreneurs who are in their universe, people like me who come down and mentor and talk and teach and lecture. They have this great accelerator program which has multiple levels, so they are big enough and they have enough tools and mentors. And in a universe to have not just one accelerator program, but multiple ones, ones for pure startups. And with the idea stage and ideation stage, ones that have just gotten started and are accelerating, ones that are later stage and need help expanding and growing, then they’ve got specialized ones. First for the space industry and other things. So for any entrepreneur in the area or frankly even out of the area who is looking for a place for support and inspiration and people to help them on their journey, the center of innovation is a truly mind boggling place.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:53] Now, in your work, is there any story that stands out for you working with an entrepreneur, maybe mentoring an entrepreneur that you can share that you were maybe help them get over a problem that they might have thought was insurmountable, that you were able to add something to based on your experience that help them get to a new level?

David S Rose: [00:17:14] Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t take credit for it, but, you know, I mentored and worked with founders for four decades. And I’ll give you one interesting example, and that’s a team. When I was judging the NYU Business Plan competition up here in New York many, many years ago, one of the teams that was presenting in this university affiliated business plan competition was a techie and a guy who did presentation design for for a law firm. And they were both comic collectors, comic book collectors. And they said they thought that there was a business for comic book collectors in helping to organize your collection software, to organize your library and a news feed to find out what was new, what new comic books were being released. And by the way, they all bought their bought their comics at the local comic book store like you saw on the Big Bang Theory. And those guys didn’t have any software. So maybe you could do software for the comic book stores that could tie into the software for the comic book collectors. And they were really energetic and knowledgeable. Clearly, I’m not a comic book guy, but they were. And so and they had a great plan, a great presentation.

David S Rose: [00:18:21] So we actually they actually ended up winning the business plan competition. We suggested that they apply for funding to our angel group, New York Angels. So they applied for funding to York Angels. I invested in them. We led the round. The company was called Comixology. And cut a long story short, a number of years later they were in position when the iPhone came out to let you read comic books on your iPhone before anybody knew that the iPhone was going to be very big. And so they did deals with Marvel and DC Comics and so on, and they became the way to read comics on your iPhone. And so eventually, when digital books came into play, who’s a big player over there? As Amazon and Amazon looked at them and they and these guys, my little teeny company, owned the marketplace for comics, and so they ended up being acquired by Amazon. And today, if you are a comic book reader, you will likely read your comic books on Amazon’s comics platform, which is called Comixology, which started out as a couple of guys in a garage at the NYU Business Plan competition.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:19] Well, amazing story. And another example of you set out to do one thing and you might end up doing something else that’s tangential, but you have to start somewhere.

David S Rose: [00:19:29] Yep, we call it pivoting. And I don’t know of any company that didn’t pivot. I mean, whether you’re talking about Amazon, which started out selling books to and now becoming the world supermarket, whether you’re talking about Uber, which a fundamental limited partner was the first investor in Uber when they were simply dispatch software for local black car services in San Francisco before they changed the entire pace of transportation. And so you never know where you’re going to. But if you’re a good entrepreneur, you start trying to solve a problem. And then, as you said, no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. And the corollary to that, of course, is no business plan survives first contact to the market. But once you do find out what your MVP is, your minimum viable product, and you see how people and your users are reacting to it, you then pivot and you adjust and you tweak. And that’s the entire essence of the Lean Startup. So there’s a book called The Lean Startup Methodology by my friend Eric Reese, which is all about how you start Don’t make a giant plan and a 15 year product roadmap. Just start doing something. Get it out there into the hands of your clients and customers, see what they like, what they don’t like, and on the basis of that feedback, tweak the product and or build something else or go in a different direction. And that’s ultimately how you build something that can sustain a large market.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:50] Now, for the startup founders out there, is that your biggest piece of advice? Because taking action and starting, you can’t beat that. That’s a that’s non-negotiable.

David S Rose: [00:21:01] One, if there’s one piece of non-negotiable advice, it is just start. I mean, literally, you know, I joke that there are four kinds of entrepreneurs. There are the natural born entrepreneurs. I mentioned the self-made entrepreneurs. I mentioned there are survival entrepreneurs who will do whatever they have to do to put food on the table for their kids. But then the fourth group we call, it’s really three and a half because we call that fourth group the Want for Pioneers. And these are people who talk a very big game about starting up and they read all the books and they namedrop Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and so on and so forth. But they never actually start a company and you can’t get anywhere unless you start. And so the one piece of advice to anybody listen to this podcast is if you think of yourself as a founder, if you are thinking about starting something, just do it. Just start. Don’t wait for funding. Don’t wait for somebody telling you it’s okay. Don’t wait for a class, Don’t wait for a sign from above. Just start. And as rough and tough as it is, as you get started, you’ll find something.

David S Rose: [00:22:04] It may not work at all. Or it may work with a little teeny tweak, in which case tweak it and then try it again. And eventually you will find just enough success that you will have the the psychological support from yourself to keep going. And then along the way, you want to reach out to people, find co founders to start a whole company often will take to not a one person job or three. Find out if there is support near you from things like the Levant Center, which is a remarkable place to find peer support and office space and tools and services and all kinds of things for founders when you’re ready, but not immediately because you will not get funded by Angel immediately. Find local investors through a local angel group. But angels will not fund an idea. Angel investors only fund a company that has actually started doing something. So start doing something as tough as it takes, as dangerous, as crazy as leap as it sounds. Just start and then that’s the way you get going.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:02] Now, you mentioned fundraising a little bit. There was a time, at least in the mythology of this industry, in this world of funding off of a napkin, an idea on a napkin. Are those days over? Is it now kind of bootstrapped first, have some, you know, sell somebody something before you start fundraising? And is that part of the trends that you’re seeing in fundraising moving forward?

David S Rose: [00:23:26] Yeah, The problem is that was really a mythological day, right? I mean, that was in mythology, something that didn’t actually happen. And so it became a cliche because it happened just enough. It happened once or twice, and that became a famous story. And then everybody assumed, Oh, I got fucking on the back of a napkin. But in the real world, that was never a common way of doing things. I mean, for a little bit of time in the late 1990s, during the dot com boom, the world was crazy enough and there were potential investors who didn’t want to lose out on a good thing. And so they didn’t have they had no idea what they were doing. And so if somebody came to them and said Internet, they would say, Here’s some money. But that was again, it was few and far between companies, but it just never got funded. People lost a lot of money. And then after that, they sobered up. And so certainly for the last 20 years, even, I mean, right now we are going through a particularly tough time in the market. During the global financial crisis, there was a tough time between those times. There have been better times and there likely will be so. But whether it’s a good time or a not good time, investors are looking for traction and so they don’t look frightened. Investors simply don’t fund ideas. And so you can spend all day long talking great idea of drawing things, sketches on a napkin and you will not get funded.

David S Rose: [00:24:43] Instead, if you go out and do something, get the thing started, and then find out that, hey, you’re actually doing something that somebody else finds interesting. That’s what investors invest in. And when investors say traction, it’s really interesting. It’s not at all what founders think of as. You have to wonder what destruction mean. They’ll likely say, Oh, I filed for the name of my company. I incorporated it, I wrote some code, I brought on a founding partner. People said nice things about me, you know, all those kinds of. I registered the trademark. I got a patent. As far as investors are concerned, none of that is traction, believe it or not. Instead, as far as investors concerned, traction can be defined as something outside of your control that shows that somebody else is willing to assign real economic value to what you’re doing. So the bottom line is, of course, therefore, by that definition, the best traction is sales. And so if you have profitable sales, that’s a great thing that investors love to see. And anything less than that is going to be getting farther away from what they hope for as traction people who are beta customers or pilot customers or whatever. But that’s the kind of traction that investors are looking for.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:59] So now regarding just what is it that you need? What can we be doing to help you?

David S Rose: [00:26:06] Well, you can help spread the word because Gusto is this great platform for starting a company. If you are one of these founders who is looking to get started. The best way to get started is actually with a platform we have called August launch, which is the way you launch a company. It’s I joke that it’s almost an IQ test because if you’re starting what you expect to be a high growth, venture fundable company and you don’t start this way, you bet. Such a big bet that it makes me question how smart you are, because literally for $300 to $300 for a whole year, you can you press a button and Gus spins up the company for you. Literally, we incorporate you as a Delaware C Corp, which is the kind of thing that investors need to see before they will fund you. We filed with the IRS to get your new employer identification number. We foreign qualify you in your home state. We set up your cap table. We issue your shares of stock to your founding team. We do all the basic things that it takes to actually get you started and then through other things as you go along, we help give you literally 100,000 bucks worth of discounts to all kinds of tools and services. We’ll help manage your equity and write your option plan and get you a checking account and introduce you to an attorney who will give you a free legal work and so on and so forth.

David S Rose: [00:27:23] And so Gus launch is the platform that is ideal for founders. And when we show this to a first time founder, they’ll say, Wow, that sounds really interesting when you show it to any founder who’s actually started a business before. What’s very funny is they have the exact same reaction I actually have a framed on over my desk because they say the exact same literal words. And those are quote unquote, Holy shit. Where were you when I started my last company? I would save 100,000, end quote. So the best thing you could do for us is to help get the word out, because if you are a founder who is thinking of launching a company that you expect to get funded by angel investors or VCs run, do not walk to gusto dot com and g ust dot com and you’ll find all kinds of both free tools and guts launch which will help start up and incorporate your company. And you’ll also be able to find when you’re ready for it access to investors and apply to accelerator programs and all kinds of things for that because that’s what we do. We support these early stage founders.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:24] And then on that site, will you also find maybe opportunities to partner with other innovation centers or accelerators? Is it a resource like that?

David S Rose: [00:28:33] You will search. If you search there, you will find the Levant Center, and if you actually apply for the Levant Center spaceport, you’ll find yourself on just as well, because we’re powering that accelerator program for them. So absolutely, it’s it’s a great place to find the ecosystem and to and to start a company.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:51] So one last thing before we wrap. How do you feel about the economy? Are you bullish right now? Is this an opportunity for a lot of folks? Because a lot of people, you know, they like to wait and hide and until a bell rings, it tells them it’s time to start again. How do you feel about this?

David S Rose: [00:29:07] Well, the interesting thing is, you know, for who? Right. There are all kinds of people involved at all stages. And so if you are a current company in the early stage startup world who raised, you know, a first round of cash, say, a couple of years ago at a nice high valuation, expecting that you be able to do an even bigger round right now, this is not a good time. You will find a lot of trouble raising around If you were somebody who hasn’t raised around yet and you read stories about those other guys and you have dreams of people investing in your company and giving you millions of dollars at a $20 Million valuation, you’re also in for a disappointment because that’s not going to happen either. But if you are somebody who sees a real need and an entrepreneurial need and you’re able to get your act together and get started and just do something. Just get started, even if it’s really, you know, small and beginning stages and you can bootstrap yourself without a lot of money. This is a perfect time to start a business because by the time you are ready for an angel investment round or a VC round in a year or 18 months, two years, when you’re ready, that will be the beginning of the next boom cycle and you’ll find investors there to fund you because you will have had traction that that they can see based on what you’ve done these last couple of years. So this is a great time to start a business. It’s not really a great time to get a business funded.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:33] Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

David S Rose: [00:30:39] My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:41] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Innovation Radio.

Intro: [00:30:46] This episode of Innovation Radio was brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs, the Levant Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founders journey from birth of an idea through successful exit or global expansion. If you’re ready to launch or scale your business, please check out the Levant Center of Innovation by visiting Nova edu forward slash innovation.

Gwennetta Wright With Xpert Tax Service LLC

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Gwennetta Wright With Xpert Tax Service LLC
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Gwennetta Wright is a seasoned entrepreneur and celebrated author. An award-winning business woman, Wright’s ability to reflect a passion for service in order to reach success has become a flagship component to her brand as a tax professional, business strategist, realtor and media spokesperson. Known for her ability to project manage multiple and complicated professional endeavors, she utilizes her resources and talents to empower others and provide accurate and sound advice to other businesses. Gwennetta, herself, owns Xpert Tax Service LLC, Pretty Essentials and she is the CEO of Reach 4 Your Dream Inc.

Further, she is also a realtor with Prestige Property Broker and host of her own talk show Gwen’s Business Corner on Fox 54. While work is important, Gwennetta has a vested interest in helping others polish their efforts by acting as a philanthropist and community-based liaison and mentor. Her strong reputation within the business world and involvement within the Georgia community compliment her tireless passion for service.

She has helped lay the foundation for a variety of small businesses, as well as dedicating her time and attention to various issues for at-risk youth. Her professional ambition and accomplishments are embedded alongside her religious views, which help others discover not only how the Lord’s lessons in life can turn into one’s biggest blessings, but also how serving others helps both community and businesses grow.

Connect with Gwennetta on LinkedIn, and Xpert Tax Service on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Taxes
  • Business
  • Media
  • Faith

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] 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 thank our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Gwennetta Wright with Xpert Tax Service. Welcome.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:00:45] How are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am doing well. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to, especially this time of year. It’s so important. Tell us a little bit about expert tax service. How are you serving folks?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:00:54] So it’s for a test or. Thank you first for having me on. It’s Express Service is a tax preparation company where we help individuals and small business owners that are single member LLCs and sole proprietors save money when filing their tax.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] Now, what’s your back story? Have you always been involved in this line of work?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:01:15] I’ve been doing it for a long time now. I’ve actually been doing it for 19 years this year and business for the last 17. So I’ve been doing it for quite some time now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:28] Now, what is it about kind of this this line of work serving the business community when it comes to taxes that is so important to you? Why did you get involved in this line of work with taxes?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:01:41] This is very important for me because I think as even individuals, but especially small business owners, we take the lack of what taxes and how it affects our lives very likely. As a business owner, it’s very important for you to know, like your bottom line when you’re operating your business and how your taxes up that that. So for me it’s just important that I get out the education not just preparing taxes for people, but making sure they’re educated about their specific tax situation so that they’re not faced with getting leaves on their homes on so much to the IRS and then not knowing what to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:24] Now, have you always specialized in helping business people?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:02:28] Yes, I have. I have a passion for business people because I’m a business owner myself, and when I first started in business, I didn’t have anyone to really educate me really on business or on my taxes. You see so many like celebrities, influencers going to jail or facing tax issues because the lack of education. So for me, it’s very important for small business owners to understand their taxes.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:55] Now we’re in January, the end of January. Is there something that I should be doing right now that can help me with my taxes?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:03:03] Well, as a anybody, like an individual or small business, you should be gathering your documents. I say make a list of everything that you have going on last year that could affect you tax wise and make sure that before you go, try to file your taxes, that you have all your tax documents so that way you don’t have any issues later on because you love something. I’ll also for like my small business owners, definitely start crunching your numbers. If you have not kept up with your bookkeeping as far as what you have coming in each month and what you had going out each month, start gathering those numbers so that you are taking advantage of all the deductions that you can take as as a business owner and as an individual.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] Now, is it too late for me right now to make any moves or do I still have time to do certain things?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:03:56] It’s really kind of too late for the 2022 tax season, but it’s never too late to be preparing for next year. So one thing is for like individuals that have just start, you know, check your withholdings. What I’m seeing a lot of in tax season has just started is with a lot of individuals not paying no money in taxes. And what that is causing is for a lot of people to end up only when they possibly then want to or they might they might want it more money in their check. But they’re not just getting more money in their check. It’s causing them to. Oh, so start checking your withholdings so that you are prepared for the next upcoming tax season and you’re not faced with that issue.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:44] Now, How do you help the the people that you know how so many people nowadays they have a bunch of side hustles and they might have money coming in from all different places. You know, maybe they have an Etsy shop or maybe, you know, some people pay them through Venmo. How do you keep track of all that stuff?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:05:02] So well, a lot of those vendors like Etsy and Venmo, of course, you can write reports for them at the at the beginning of the year monthly to see what their transactions are as far as what you brought in. So again, it goes back to when I said like making a list because we do have a lot of people that. They sell products and they sell on different platforms. So keep in mind all the places you sold something or you did business somewhere and then go into each one, run a report from January 1st, 20, 22 to December 31st, 2022, and get your total for each one of those platforms.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:46] Now, is there something that you when you were working with your clients that you see all the time where you’re like, Man, if they would have done this one thing, this could have saved them so much, either money or time. Is there anything that you see over and over from folks that if they would just make a couple little changes, it would make their life so much easier?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:06:06] The funniest thing is pay your taxes. That will make your life so much easier. The worst part of it is, of course, nobody wants to pay taxes. We don’t want to give our money to the government. I mean, that’s who wants to do that, right? But if you go ahead and pay it, then you save yourself time and and heartache and anxiety at the beginning of the year when you’re scared now that you got to face a tax bill. And that’s for, again, individuals and small business owners, because ill employees, if you’re an employee and you’re allowing them to go ahead and take what they’re going to take out during the year, then you’re not worrying about whether you’re going to face a tax bill at the beginning of the year. And now you’ve got to own the risk. And same thing for small business owners and small business owners. We a lot of educated to know that you are responsible for your own tax bill. In order for you to take care of that, you have to pay your taxes quarterly. So go ahead and put some money into to your taxes. Nobody wants to do it. But guess what? The government is going to get their money regardless if you pay it now or later. So save yourself some heartache and just go ahead and let them get it now.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:20] Now, was there anything because of COVID? Is there was there opportunities for folks that they could take advantage this year or not?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:07:31] Now, that’s the sad part about this year. So the sad part about this year is the fact that the last two years we have had so many. Credits that have benefited both individuals and small business due to COVID. And unfortunately, in 2020, to this up, this tax is a lot of those credits have went away and people are seeing way smaller refunds than they have seen in the past two years. So that’s why it’s going to be important for you now to be looking at ways that you possibly could, you know, help increase your future taxes, because this year, unexpectedly, people are not going to be used to how they reduced all the different credits that they have been getting due to COVID for the last two years. So refunds are actually smaller than they have been in the last two years. But, you know, it is what it is.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:33] Right? I mean, it couldn’t go on forever. Right?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:08:36] Right. It can go on forever. And the boat has stopped. But, you know, so now you have to be careful.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:44] So if somebody wants to work with you, is it like can they just show up at your door with a box full of receipts and documents and then you you just fix everything for them? Or is it something where if you want to work with you and your team, that they you know, it requires regular check ins and keeping you up to date, maybe sharing their QuickBooks or whatever service they’re using with you so you can kind of help them along the line.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:09:13] So for me, I do take walk ins, but if you come with a shoe box and you want us to go through your documents, you know that’s going to be additional fee because it’s really your responsibility to keep up with your bookkeeping and have someone to do your bookkeeping during the year. But we will assist if you have not been able to do that. We do take walk ins, we prefer appointments and we also have virtual services. So it doesn’t matter where you’re living, you can submit your information to us via our website at W WW expert tax services dot com and it’s spelled with Asperger’s spelled with the X and you know the only thing that we require is making sure that you have your documents and all the information that you’re going to need for us to prepare your taxes.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:02] So if, if somebody needed help with bookkeeping and keeping track of that, you have a service that can help them with that along the way. So that way it makes their taxes pretty easy at the end of the year.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:10:13] No, we don’t actually do bookkeeping at my particular company, but we do have some partners that we can refer them to that can assist them in their bookkeeping for the year. But if you have not kept up with your books for the years, then we’re able to assist you to try to get your numbers together for you for this particular tax season. By you either share again your QuickBooks sign in or your bank statements will go in and we’ll reconstruct and pluck your numbers for you so that you can have the most accurate tax return possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] Now, it’s important for business owners to be more proactive, right? Like the you shouldn’t be just showing up with a big pile of papers and then hope to make a move. If you if you have a partner with your tax service, you should be able to have them help you decide, Hey, maybe you should buy this, or maybe you should start an account over here. This is a better way to spend this money, right? Like you want to be their partner.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:11:13] All right? So we want to make sure that there they are in order. And we do consult you and do sessions with you as far as helping you to do it, if you need to do it yourself. I actually offer a money planner for small business owners that can help them keep up with their income and expenses monthly, yearly and daily. So I do offer that and then we do assist in helping them get someone to help them and making sure that they are keeping up with the information. We just don’t do ongoing bookkeeping specifically at my company.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:54] Right. But you. But it makes everybody’s life easier if they have that organized.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:11:59] Correct. It definitely will.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:01] And it probably saves you money in the long run because you don’t have to have somebody just going through all that paperwork. Right. So you’re doing a little bit each month. It’s a lot easier than doing a big pile once a year.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:12:13] Yes. And that’s that’s what I’m an advocate for, making sure that people definitely keep up with their their books monthly instead of waiting till the beginning of the year.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:23] So now what’s your favorite part of the job?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:12:27] That at one more time.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:28] What’s your favorite part of the job?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:12:31] Oh, my favorite part of the job is educating people and making sure that they understand, again, their taxes. I understand their business, understand their bottom line, and to put them in a position to win in their business. I also love when I have the opportunity to introduce different things to my clients and that can help them in saving money when it’s time to come to their taxes.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:00] So now, is there a story you can share of you working with a client that you help them get to a new level?

Gwennetta Wright: [00:13:09] Well, I can share a story with you in reference to clients who maybe, you know, had a small business and they had issues with the IRS and they was audited. And I was able to successfully, successfully make sure they walk away with not on the IRS anything and being able to make sure that there was they was able to represent their business and their finances to the IRS where they walked away with $0 owing them. And my go ahead.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:43] And that’s that’s why it’s important to partner with an expert like yourself. Right. Because you can’t just go to QuickBooks or, you know, TurboTax and get this kind of help. You need a professional.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:13:58] Exactly. And that’s the that’s the thing you said. Or then, you know, it’s very important for you to understand the tax laws. The computer can do anything. You can patent anything on a computer. But is you putting the correct information based off the law? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t understand that, because when the IRS comes knocking at your door, you can’t say, oh, what? Turbotax told me that I supposed to get the credit because you’re actually responsible for what’s on your documents. So it’s very important for you to hire a tax professional so that you understand what the laws are and what you are entitled to when it comes to filing your taxes.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:40] So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team one more time, that website.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:14:48] They can go to w w w x expert tax services with the s on the n dot com and experts start with the x and not an e. You also can follow us on social media. I do a tax talk weekly because like I said, I love educating people about their tax situation. So I do a tax talk weekly during tax season on my Facebook expert chat service.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:13] Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Gwennetta Wright: [00:15:19] Thank you so much. And I appreciate you having me. I appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

About Our Sponsor

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David Pettit With LIME Fresh Mexican Grill

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South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
David Pettit With LIME Fresh Mexican Grill
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2A natural entrepreneur, David Pettit owns and operates five LIME Fresh Mexican Grill locations across South Florida. Over the past 17 years, he has supported the brand’s evolution through franchise development and construction and by focusing on human resources and accounting.

Throughout his career, Pettit has encouraged internal professional development among his teams and prioritized giving back to the community through the LIME Chips In initiative. Prior to his role as a restauranteur, Petit opened a financial services firm in 2002. Pettit graduated from the University of Georgia in 1997 with a degree in finance.

Follow LIME Fresh Mexican Grill on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • LIME over the last 15 years
  • Pembroke Gardens
  • LIME’s company culture

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the business radio 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 David Pettit and he is with Lime Fresh Mexican Grill. Welcome, David.

David Pettit: [00:00:35] Thank you. I’m glad to be here. I appreciate you having me on your show.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Lime. I know you’ve been in the market for a while, but here are things are growing.

David Pettit: [00:00:48] Yeah, it’s been a great ride. I mean, we’re in the process right now of celebrating our 15 year anniversary at our Pembroke Pines location, which is the first was the first franchise location in the brand. To take listeners back a little bit to the history of line. It started in 2004, the South Beach location on Alton Road, which is a corporate store. My business partner and I, Nick Burrows, had an opportunity to partner in a corporate store with the original founder back in 2005, which was in North Miami Beach. And then subsequently we had a desire to franchise. And so I come from a financial services background. I own a financial services company here locally in South Florida. Nick actually is a CPA and comes from an accounting background, but who knew what we had the desire to get in the restaurant business. And so we approached the owner, John Kunkel, and we were partners with and said we’d love to franchise. And so back in 2007, in December, we opened the first Lime Fresh Mexican grill location in Broward County. But it also happened to be the first franchise location in the brand’s history. And so from there, the brand has grown. We’ve been involved in both owning and operating off and on nine different locations. Currently, we own five. There’s an additional eight locations in Dade County owned by another franchisee, and there’s one location open in Orlando and a second one on the way. So the brand is healthy, the brand is growing, and over the last 15 years we’ve got a lot of successes and we look forward to celebrating that actually here on February the fourth at our Pines location, which should be a great event.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] Now let’s talk about just going from a business owner, and you weren’t in the restaurant business, so you were something was attractive to you. What kind of caught your eye on on the first lime that you were like, Hey, you know what? This is something I want to get involved in because I’m sure in your life you’ve been to lots of restaurants and you didn’t have those conversations with the folks in any of the other ones.

David Pettit: [00:02:58] Yeah. So you’ve got a little bit of an interesting perspective with Lyme. I actually got to know the owner through the financial services practice. I was always into having food that was of great quality but at a good price with good service. And so those are kind of the three things that led me to see, Hey, lime looks attractive. And then from a business perspective, from the time the doors open, they were extremely busy. So you put that combination together as an entrepreneur with a good product, with a good business. It certainly peaks your interest. And so we kind of like I set out an opportunity to invest from a financial standpoint in the second ever location in North Miami back in 2005, and that gave us some insight into the successes that Lime look like was having, but also looked like they were going to have. And so we then kind of went head first, opening the plan, the Pembroke Pines location, and then subsequently a few years later opening in Plantation and then kind of going north from there.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] So and initially, were you thinking at all times, okay, this is going to be a franchise, so I’m going to build systems and documentation in order to replicate and to have somebody else be able to run this, you know, out in the wild without our help. Like, what was your thinking always kind of to scale or was it something that just organically grew when you were seeing the demand of those initial locations?

David Pettit: [00:04:33] Yeah, I think there are always a vision to try to scale it, but at the same time we always wanted to do it properly. So certainly the systems were put in place from the very beginning because if you want to run a restaurant successfully, you’ve got to have those systems in place. And so they were in place. And as we continued to grow and went from one or two units where you kind of can micromanage as an owner and make sure that all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted to now going to managing seven, eight, nine locations, you’re now in a position where you’ve got to make sure that you have systems in place that can be replicated. So when a guest goes from store A to store B to stored C, it has the same feel as it did from the original unit all the way back to 2004.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:25] Now, do you have any advice for other business owners that are thinking about scaling to help them scale the corporate culture, the company culture, so that it does feel the same, so that people are are kind of the customer experience feels the same wherever they go.

David Pettit: [00:05:42] And I think that’s a great question, and I think it’s something where we’ve had a lot of successes. Certainly there’s been a learning curve as well. I think the main thing that we’ve done that’s been really important is to use a baseball analogy. We’ve kind of built ourself like a triple A, a, a, a single a team and then kind of work those employees up to the majors. We have a lot of homegrown talent. And so we’ve taken a lot of our early employees. We’ve kind of identified the best of that group, move them into a shift leader role, kind of went ahead and identified the best for that group, then moved them into a management position and then from that group identified our general managers. And so I think one of the proudest things as an owner that Nick and I take away from this entire experience over the last 15 plus years is the fact that we’ve been able to take some of these hourly employees, move them through this system. And today, all all of our general managers at the five locations that we own and operate, all were once hourly employees. And a number of them have been with us from now more than ten years. In fact, the general manager that’s in our Pine store was an hourly employee who moved up through the system. And now, 14 years later, she’s the general manager.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:04] Now, does that same strategy help you get franchisees, new franchisees, or is it something that franchisee coming into a line has to understand? Okay, if you want to scale the way the owners have scaled, you have to be patient and grow your own.

David Pettit: [00:07:23] Yeah, well, I mean, certainly you want to bring the culture. So, I mean, obviously you’re trying to impart your knowledge to any of the units, whether they’re corporately owned or franchise. We we have meetings all together, corporate and franchisees, on a fairly regular basis. We actually do a bi weekly call. So I think one of the things we try to do within our organization is on a quarterly basis, we try to go ahead and get our staff, our owners, our HR department and our catering folks all in a room with the people that we identify that could be promoted soon. And so it allows them to hear, to kind of hear from the horse’s mouth, like, here’s what we expect. And so we want to again, go back to delivering a great product at a great price with great service. And we feel like if we do that consistently, it builds sales. And certainly it’s built the growth of lime over the last 15 plus years. And so I think one of the other things that’s really important as we grow is to continue to see our menu evolve. And so there’s a pretty big emphasis right now on that to kind of take all the things that are great about lime and obviously continue to use those. But then also we’re always looking to add things that are better where we can improve and bring new flavors and new tastes and to our guests that they might be excited about.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:51] Now, as you expand throughout Florida and eventually, I’m sure to other parts of the country, are you enabling some of your franchisees to maybe experiment or make suggestions to corporate so that you can kind of use what’s happening in their region or area to help grow your menu?

David Pettit: [00:09:10] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s always there’s always feedback and there’s always innovation. I mean, a lot of our best suggestions have come from guests and from our staff. You know, you have staff who have been with you a long time and they want to experiment and say, Hey, what do you think of this? And what do you think of that? So we’re able to take a menu item where usually a lot of times able to run it as an LTO or a limited time offer so that we can get a temperature for how our guests feel about it. And then if it’s something that they really like, then we’ll move it on to our menu on a permanent basis. And so certainly as you grow, you want to take more and more of those suggestions into account. And the more people feel involved, the more employees feel involved in any organization, I think the more buy in you get, the better culture that you develop.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:59] Now, how does Lime immerse itself in the communities that you serve?

David Pettit: [00:10:05] Yeah, that’s always been a really big part of the brand. I mean, going back 15 years for our Pembroke Pines store. One thing that Nick and I really wanted to focus on is how we could give back to our community and really be involved. And so we really focused on three things. I would say we focused on sports teams, local sports teams for youth. We focused on schools and we focused on non-profits that were some things that we were excited to support. And so through that, when someone went out into the community, their kid, they’d go to their child’s school and they’d say, Oh, well, I’m sponsoring here. And then they would go to their youth sports team and their name would be on their jerseys, and then they would go to their local nonprofit and they’d be like, Oh, I’m here as well. And so even if they’ve never tried us it, then they were like, Hey, you know what? Let’s get these guys and try. They’re doing a lot of good things in the community. And so that really drives a lot of what we believe and what we’re trying to accomplish is trying to give back to those around us. And we’ve been very blessed and fortunate with the business that we have. And we’ve had that opportunity over the last 15 years. And there are schools and there’s youth sports leagues and nonprofits that literally for the entire 15 years we’ve been plugged in with and we keep adding more locations. And I encourage listeners, if you want us to be involved with any of those type of entities, you can reach out to us through our website and we’re happy to do family nights. We do those on a regular basis. Well, we’ll give back part of the sales to that organization, and then we’ll also do outreach sponsorships with other locations and organizations. But that’s certainly been a big part of what life has done over the last 15 plus years now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:54] Are you doing anything to celebrate the 15 years at the Pembroke Gardens location? It’s like a big event.

David Pettit: [00:12:03] Yes, we’re doing a couple of things. For the 15 days leading up for the 15 years, we’re actually offering three legacy menu items to our guests at $6, which was the original kind of menu price. And so we would encourage our guests to come out and give some of those a try. But in addition to that, and I think just as important, all day on Saturday, February 4th, we’re going to be having a big celebration, a street party at our Pembroke Pines location. Well, music, love, stuff for your kids. And a lot of that information is out on Instagram or Facebook and our website. But it’s going to be pretty much you come out from 12 in the morning and 1:00, 2:00 all the way through ten or 11:00 at night. We’re going to have things going on, celebrating everything that the is accomplished, celebrating everything that this store has meant to the brand. Like I say, we have a number of employees that have been with us for more than ten years, and we have a few that have been with us almost since inception. So to celebrate their successes and what they’ve accomplished is something we look forward to, to do. And I know that we’ve impacted a lot of people over the last 15 years. We’ve had thousands and thousands of guests come through our store, and so we would invite them to come out and celebrate with us and have a great time.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:22] Now, are the wins in this business as rewarding, more rewarding, a different kind of rewarding for you than it is in the financial service business?

David Pettit: [00:13:32] Yeah, I would say completely different. I mean, I think in this particular business you’re trying to deliver that great food. That leaves an impression and people’s mouth and minds with every bite and you’re really trying to deliver great service. And so there is some overlap, but I think it is quite different. And I think the successes in the restaurant business, like I say, are small. Kind of one guess at a time. But at the same time, you have an opportunity not only to impact your guests, but I think a lot of fulfillment comes for us from impacting our employees. Again, trying to create a great culture, trying to take care of them, trying to make sure that not only their pay but their bonus structures are extremely competitive with some of the larger companies out there taking care of our families with turkeys and gift cards at Thanksgiving and bonuses at Christmas. And so I think our employees have come to expect that. But I also think at the other time, it’s something that we really enjoy doing for them to reward them for all the hard work throughout the year.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:43] So if somebody wants to find a Lyme location near them, what is the website? And if they want to attend this event, I’m sure it’s on there, but the website.

David Pettit: [00:14:52] So it’s going to just be W.W. line fresh Mexican grill dot com. You’re also going to hit us up on Facebook or Instagram. But yeah, on the website you can actually find information about being hired. You can check out all the locations, You can come in to any of our locations at any time. We’re always looking for great new talent. It’s definitely one of the biggest challenges in this industry is just finding good talent and then obviously keeping that talent, developing that talent. I think, like I said, we’ve done a good job of it. A lot of our all of our general managers and a lot of our managers have kind of worked up through our system. And so there is a lot of opportunity for those who would like to be employed here, and they can certainly check all those locations out on our website.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:35] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

David Pettit: [00:15:44] Yeah, no, thank you so much for having us. And yeah, we look forward to everyone continuing to come into our locations and join a great meal at a great price. And we look forward to celebrating the 15th anniversary on February 4th at our Pembroke Pines location.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:59] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio.

Mandy Aran With Insight Food Group

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South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
Mandy Aran With Insight Food Group
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Mandy Aran is the CEO of Insight Food Group.

He is sought out as an industry expert in the food & beverage category. With more than 40 years of experience, he has spent his career building, executing and creating brands for a host of companies, including The Coca-Cola Company, ARAMARK and Naturipe Farms. He has developed long-term professional relationships and leverages these connections.

At Insight Food Group, Mandy brings together all facets of the food & beverage industry. From the color on the package to the quantity in the carton, his obsession with product perfection drives success for his clients.

Connect with Mandy on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Challenges
  • Marketing skills
  • Best use of skill set and where to start
  • Transactional world versus reality

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the business radio 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 Mandy Aran and he is with Insight Food Group. Welcome, Andy.

Mandy Aran: [00:00:34] Thanks, Lee. Thanks for having me on the show.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Insight Food Group, how you serve in folks.

Mandy Aran: [00:00:41] Well, Lee, it’s funny that you use all your life experiences to bring together a vision and an idea. Inside Food Group was started just a few months ago, and really it’s kind of taken off for me with business consulting and with product representation. We’re single proprietor here, but what I bring to the table for my customers is that quote unquote insight into the food business. I’ve been involved for over 40 years in the business, and I have experience, as I like to say, from the lunchroom to the boardroom. So I’ve been there, I’ve sat there, I’ve talked to people, I’ve listened to people. And the company is based on providing that concierge white glove service to those handful of customers that developing.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:34] So now, in your background, had you previously worked for large enterprise level companies or startups or like what’s your background?

Mandy Aran: [00:01:42] My background really started in the food business with a wonderful gentleman that was really a mentor to me. Dick Berberian was his name. He’s since passed. But, you know, Dick was an old school, hard core gentleman that taught me the foundations of the food business. From there, I moved on to national account representation for apparel companies. And then from there, I moved on to servicing the food and beverage industry, working for Coca-Cola, North America here in South Florida, and then through Atlanta, the Atlanta office. I’ve always been involved in national accounts. I’ve had national exposure. And what I bring to the table for those customers is that ability to channel down all that big company thoughts and put it in a capsule or in a shell so that companies today can take advantage of my experiences and my expertise in the food and beverage industry to bring their products to market, to give them guidance on strategic activities, what they need to be thinking about not only today, tomorrow, but a year from now and three years from now, and really lay a good foundation for them to succeed. I gain no more pleasure in this world than having my customers succeed because it makes your planning and your representation of them whole. You’re giving them an idea. You’re giving them a concept, something to think about in their packaging. They execute it and then it’s successful. There’s no more glorious times for us than when that occurs.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:23] Now, in your mind, in today’s world with what you’re doing today, are you are you targeting as clients these enterprise level mega companies like a Coca-Cola, or could it be a smaller scale business that’s just getting started? Like in your mind, do you have a vision of who that ideal client fit is for you?

Mandy Aran: [00:03:45] It’s funny you mention that. Lee Right now, I just finished a consulting project for a very nice food company out of Spain that wanted to bring or is bringing their products into Florida. So I help this medium sized company with a strategic plan for how to launch their products with who the customer base is, who the distributor base is. I gave them my recommendations on packaging and product and design and so on and so forth, and that’s just one example. Lee I come from humble beginnings. My parents came from Cuba in 1962, and there was ten of us living in a one bedroom apartment. So when those kinds of things happen, you kind of get humbled. And when I look back at those times right now, I am a startup. I am focusing on those medium range companies that have an idea of what to do, but need that little extra advice or strategic planning to get their products not only launched in a certain area, but make sure that all the packaging is correct and all the designing is correct and it meets all the necessary regulatory excuse me, regulatory items that come up having to do with foreign product. But one of the things that I am passionate about and I’m in the. Says the planning is to develop a workshop for smaller startup companies that can come to someone like me that’s got that experience at the big boy level, let’s say, and I can channel that down to them and talk to them about the key items that they need to be thinking about startup companies today.

Mandy Aran: [00:05:35] You know, they can start anywhere. They can start in your garage and your basement in your living room, and they’re so focused on the product and making sure that the product is correct that they forget the sales side of it. Okay, your product is beautiful. You’re going to sell it to who’s going to distribute it for you. How much money have you set aside for marketing? What’s your your plan on on advertising? What are you going to have to offer these customers to really make your product shine besides the quality of your product? So in the near future, I will be hosting these workshops where I’m also bringing in another party into it, a company called Red Sky Communications, so that that way we cover two ends of the fence forum. We cover the business and the sales side and then give them some advice and some affordable pricing on how do we put this all together and how do we bundle it so that when you go to market, you’ve got your best foot forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:40] Now, these companies that you aspire to work with, are they international companies that are looking to come to America? Are they American companies that are looking to go international? A combination.

Mandy Aran: [00:06:52] It’s a combo platter. Li Mostly it’s the international companies that want to come into the US on one front that be that would be my consulting side of the business. I also represent brands out in the trade to place their product in supermarkets, whether they’re big box stores, convenience retail or your typical club store. It all depends on the functionality of the product, the packaging and whatever the vision of those customers are.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:24] Now, there are so many folks out there that especially with the advent of the Food Network that are dabbling in food and beverage on aisle, let’s call it a a festival level or a farmer’s market level right there. You can’t not go to a farmer’s market and see some independent person with a dream that’s selling something. Do you have any advice for that person at that kind of micro level on some do’s and don’ts if they aspire to get to the level you’re talking about?

Mandy Aran: [00:07:57] The most important thing is to develop a business plan. What do you envision the company doing? What are your key attributes that give you strength? What are the attributes that make your product? Or service better than the other guy. The one thing that the food market is is flooded. There’s thousands of companies coming in. How are you going to make your company different? Is it going to be packaging? Is it going to be flavoring those farmers markets companies? When you start like in these workshops that I just discussed? That could be your next Amazon, that could be your next potato chip company. It could be anything. If you follow the passion of those folks and the dedication and you give them sound, solid business advice. Help them think strategically. Those could be the next company that are just blowing product out of the stores and you help them get there.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:04] Now, in your work, can you explain to the listener what an engagement would look like? Say there is somebody listening now that maybe is in another country and they have a brand there that’s doing pretty good and they have dreams of coming to the US. What are some of the things you would ask them? What are some of the things they would need in order to work with you in order to have their best chance of success?

Mandy Aran: [00:09:31] Lee First of all, especially in today’s world, there has to be some sort of governmental certification as to quality and food safety. It’s critical. Any. Operator that you go to, whether it’s a distributor or if you’re going directly into a retail chain, there has to be certain standards that have to be met. And in certain cases, you’re better off exceeding those standards than having the bare minimum. So they have to think about quality and food safety, number one. Number two is being able to present your product to the FDA and your ideas of what the packaging looks like, the ingredients. There’s certain things that need to be on that packaging. So you need to button that up and make sure that your packaging is in line. And then it’s it’s the brutal reality of do I, Mandy Aran and inside food group think that you have a chance. The one thing that I’ve done in my consulting projects has been I’m not here to tell you whether your product is going to sell or not, but these are the requirements that you need in order to do it, number one. And then I’ll give you the brutal reality of whether I think you have a chance or not. Now, I don’t do that arbitrarily. I don’t take that lightheartedly, but there’s got to be a rhyme and a reason to the product. And. How you present your story on that product to your supplier or to your soon to be customer. There’s got to be a story to it. People love stories. You and I live on stories and being able to portray that message and communicate whatever that company is looking for in their message and in their branding, because packaging and branding all kind of worlds into one pie. And those items are critical for them to know.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:40] Now, when you’re working with somebody, is there a kind of especially from another country, is there do they have to be at a certain level of maturity, like a minimum sales, annual sales that you’re looking before you take them on or or will you talk to them? You know, if they’ve met that minimum requirement that you said that they have some governmental approval or that they have this food safety part buttoned up.

Mandy Aran: [00:12:07] There’s a reality of all of this in the food business, and it’s really no different than any other business, right? You’re not going to get a second chance to make a first impression. Now, envision you going through this whole FDA approval. You get your product approved, you package it, you send it over to the US. And you start the distribution of your product into a client, into a retail chain, into a distributor. And then you run out of product. So it’s not only that initial order that you have to think about and project, but it’s also that follow up to your business. You’ve got to put some boots on the ground, you’ve got to market your product, you have to get people excited about your product. So part of what this whole inside food group does is it’s a collaboration between the supplier and the end customer to create a joint forecast of, okay, where do we think we’re going to be with this? How many stores do you have? How much space are we going to garner? And then you automatically place that first order. You put a 50% back up order immediately following right after that. But you need to have product stateside so that your supply chain doesn’t disrupt. You go into any supermarket today and it’s. It’s tough to see sometimes. How can you not have eggs, for example? How can you be out of blueberries, for example? It’s because that supply chain has to take into consideration time of travel, intermodal travel as far as getting your product from the ports to the distribution center.

Mandy Aran: [00:13:53] There’s a whole network of things that have to happen in the background so that you keep that supply chain full. But that really starts when you engage with the customer and you build a joint forecast of where you think this product is going to go. How much sales are we going to have? And then you got to hit the streets. You’ve got to go out. You’ve got to support your product. You have to create your your ad calendars and your planning so that you are in a position to win. And the rest is really up to the customer. If they don’t enjoy the product, if they don’t. Like the packaging, they’re not going to buy it. And then you’re going to be having a separate discussion after that. But it’s all in keeping that pipeline of product full so that when it does take off because the retailers are putting trust in you, that you’re giving them a salable product. They like it. They, they, they feel that you will have the sufficient shelf movement in the rings that the register with the product. So it’s a matter of putting all those years of experience into a into a little bundle and making sure that you’re covered at every step of the transaction. And then. Sell.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:09] Now, is your work primarily the strategic thinking part of this to help them understand what they’re getting themselves into? Or is some of your work also transcend into the boots on the ground to help them actually get their stuff in the country, in a store, get them some distribution or partners that can help them, you know, actually sell an item here in America.

Mandy Aran: [00:15:34] Lee, part of the service of the company. You know, the company is based on three really beacons of of of productivity. Right. Beacon number one is the brokerage business. So I will buy and sell items, whether it’s fruit, vegetables. And those companies have a need for that product for their manufacturing. So the same process I just described of making sure you have enough product in the pipeline applies to their. The second facet of the company is Brand brand ambassador. So I do represent companies out in the trade. There’s a local Kombucha company here in South Florida called Radiate Miami that I am working with in that startup company role that they have, and I’m helping them with product placement, helping them with how to think strategically, and then obviously selling the product to retailers and putting it on the shelf. And the third part of the company is obviously the business consulting piece, which is is really a soup to nuts part of the business as far as where are we today, where do you want to be? What do we need to do to get there?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:55] So what do you need more of today? How can we help?

Mandy Aran: [00:17:00] Well, being a startup, you know, there are certain things that, you know, I’m learning by by default, you know, the fact that I have a different pace now and can be more strategic helps me make those customers understand that what I bring to the table is the experience of going through all these processes, making all these mistakes, and that I can offer them that personalized, like I mentioned, white glove concierge service to make them successful. So the best way for them to do that is to contact me through my website Inside Food Group, or I’m also on LinkedIn and, you know, start those conversations. Let me feel and hear the passion that you have so I can tell you how we can turn that into results.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:54] Well, Mandy, congratulations on all the momentum thus far. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Mandy Aran: [00:18:01] Well, I appreciate the time, Lee, and all the best to you and the organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:06] All right and that’s insight food group dot com in c. H. Tf0o. D. G. R. O. U. P. Mandy, thank you again for sharing your story.

Mandy Aran: [00:18:19] You thanks for the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] All right. This Lee Kantor will sail next time on South Florida Business Radio. He.

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