Business RadioX ®

Amir Helmy With HealthAppy Tech LLC

by

Amir Helmy
Atlanta Business Radio
Amir Helmy With HealthAppy Tech LLC
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HealthAppyAmir HelmyAmir Helmy is a recent computer science graduate from Georgia Tech, and CEO of HealthAppy Tech. Since high school Amir has been interested in pursuing research related to epilepsy and mobile health, and published research related to mobile fall detection algorithms.

While in college he refined his computer science skills and specialized in research on mobile health algorithms and signal processing. He also published research in mobile health algorithm development. Most of these publications are specific to epilepsy and seizure detection.

Through Georgia Tech’s Create X startup launch program, Amir founded HealthAppy Tech was able to take the research to an initial prototype, called Epipal. Since then the Epipal patient prototype has over 10k+ downloads and has been received well by users

Epipal is now at a pivotal inflection point and has much room for innovation and improvement. After graduating this past spring, Amir has started working full time on the HealthAppy Tech project.He is excited to be taking his technical background and extensive research expertise in this domain in a commercial direction to lead this company to improve the lives of millions living with epilepsy and their families.

Connect with Amir on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Current status and success and failures
  • Their customer discovery to current pivot realization/journey
  • The impact their company aims for
  • The grand vision when their company is successful
  • The unique use of machine learning and AI in their platform

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Atlanta Business Radio and these are my very favorite episodes the Gesu any radio episodes. And today on the show we have Amir Helmy and he is with HealthAppy Tech LLC. Welcome, Amir.

Amir Helmy: [00:00:48] Thank you, Lee. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about HealthAppy Tech. How are you serving folks?

Amir Helmy: [00:00:56] Yeah, absolutely. We are a health tech company. We produce we make software specifically. Our mission is to create software that helps families with neurological diseases or families with an individual with neurological diseases. More specifically, right now, we are focused on the epilepsy community. So we develop family centered software that helps epilepsy families live safely and get peace of mind by managing their loved one’s epilepsy effectively.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did you get started in this kind of direction?

Amir Helmy: [00:01:30] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m now graduated from college, but the story actually goes way back to when I was in high school and I had a classmate who had epilepsy and I could see how they were trying to how they struggled to stay safe and manage their epilepsy on a day to day basis with their family. And when the science fair rolled around for for the high school, I was into programing at the time, just basic mobile apps like car racing games, things of that nature. So I knew how to use the sensors in the phone and I started doing research with individuals at the University of Florida where I went. I went to high school in Florida into using a smartphone to detect seizures. And that research continued into my college years when I moved to Atlanta and I ended up we’re now taking that research that was on seizure detection, mobile algorithms for for epilepsy safety and making it commercial through this Apple family platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:30] So was that the first time that people had used their phone as a way to even detect that a seizure was happening?

Amir Helmy: [00:02:38] So there is quite a few. There’s been a lot of research on seizure detection, actually. However, most of the research that is done involves specific devices, you know, custom wearables. And so those can be like a very common one is the empathic embrace. Watch. Those are hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And they also require a really expensive monthly subscription. And their accuracy is kind of vary it varies depending on the individual with epilepsy if it works for them or not. And so by being a software only solution, we actually wanted to purposefully stay away from any hardware so that we could also provide something that’s affordable and accessible to many individuals in the epilepsy community, also specifically families that are in underrepresented communities that have a loved one living with epilepsy. Sometimes they can’t afford those very expensive monitoring devices. So we are we were the first ones to develop a mobile algorithm for seizure detection software, only using a phone or ubiquitous smartwatch. And we’ve continued to refine it throughout the years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:47] So you’re kind of leaning on the technology and the accelerometer of the phone?

Amir Helmy: [00:03:51] Yeah. So I mean, over the years, even just doing research in this space, we’ve seen everyday smartphones and everyday wearable devices become more and more capable. So, you know, back in back when we first started this research, we were just using the accelerometer sensor in the phone. And then then we added the gyroscope. And now you can start also incorporating other modalities like heart rate from everyday wearable smartwatch if someone has that. And then also you can look at different there’s activity recognition APIs that, you know, Google and Apple have come up with. So you can put them in sequences alongside these accelerometer readings and these other sensor readings like heart rate readings, and have a pretty good algorithm at trying to classify whether there’s an emergency event with high probability or not. So yes, originally it was just accelerometer sensor in the phone and that’s like the core of the algorithm. But we also added other modalities through our iterations.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:47] And so it’s relying primarily on the phone or the watch device. Does it also like kind of pair, like if they have a Fitbit or a woop or one of those more robust kind of fitness trackers?

Amir Helmy: [00:05:02] Right now, we don’t have the capability. We haven’t we’re not compatible with those devices that you mentioned. It’s the everyday the wear OS for Google. And then now we’re developing also the iOS and the Apple Watch version as well. But I think a lot of these devices are going to be on similar operating systems soon, so we should be able to be compatible with them. But yeah, it does depend. Like the either the phone has to be on you or your watch has to be on your wrist or both. Rhythm will work in terms of detecting dangerous epilepsy event.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:33] Now, what stage are you at right now? Do you is this out in the wild yet? Do you have beta folks testing this?

Amir Helmy: [00:05:41] So what’s interesting is we actually took the algorithm that I’ve been discussing for a while now and we put it in an application that we put live on the Google play store. It’s called EPI Pal, and it’s a patient facing version of the application. So individuals with epilepsy would download it. We would detect their seizures, help them have a digital journal for their events, which is really important when they go to see their care provider or doctor for improved treatment, we would help them with their medications, give them analytics, all these kinds of things. And that application got actually over 10,000 downloads and it’s rated over four stars in the Google Play store, and it’s been there for a year or so. But one thing that’s very interesting that we realized in talking to a lot of our customers, our users of the application and going to different epilepsy events and talking to families is we realize that epilepsy, safety and management is we kept coming back to this this realization that epilepsy safety and management is really a family effort in many, many cases. So we wanted to really approach the problem the correct way.

Amir Helmy: [00:06:42] And so right now we’re actually kind of rehashing what Apple is and we’re taking it down from the Google play store and we’re doing something new, which is a family facing platform for individuals that are familiar with Life360. That’s kind of like a similar, analogous, you know, the structure of our application that we’re putting out now that we’ve realized that epilepsy management and safety is the most is most effective when the family is all working together and it’s collaborative, we’re onboarding families into our new platform in digital family circles. So a lot of the features from our previous application that was live will carry over. But the stage we’re at now is we’re developing we’re pivoting slightly, pivoting based on our extensive experience in this field, actually launching a reasonably successful product, getting feedback. And then now we’re pivoting to what we believe is an even better solution for this community. So that is still in the development and beta testing stage right now. Hopefully it’ll be live within a month. Now, family platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:41] The family platform. So if I have epilepsy, I have the app on my phone, I’m having a seizure. Is it something where now that’s also notifying my circle?

Amir Helmy: [00:07:52] Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a couple of benefits from having this family circle, digital family circle onboarded. So let’s say, like you’re an individual in high school, like my old classmate who has epilepsy and, you know, your family. Yes, of course. If there’s if a seizure is detected, your family will be notified. Not only that, based on the cycles and patterns of individuals, particularly particular epilepsy, we can also predict seizures a little bit beforehand with some new research that’s come out. You know, we can kind of raise like a yellow or orange flag if, you know, certain indicators match up for for a potential seizure, that’s going to happen. So there’s prediction and detection and then there’s other safety features as well that are family involved. So a family can passively if individual with epilepsy allows for it, they can passively check on or monitor the individual with epilepsy without bothering them with a passive check in. And also every day management becomes collaborative with the family platform. So there’s a shared journal which is really, really important when it comes to epilepsy, sharing a regular journal of what’s happening, how you’re feeling, your medications, your auras before a seizure, your epilepsy events with your doctor that has become collaborative. So a patient with epilepsy can input their information, but also that information can be supplemented from those closest to them that really have a sharp eye on what’s happening with their loved one’s epilepsy.

Amir Helmy: [00:09:19] They can supplement information, they can take videos of seizures and upload it as well. The thing with epilepsy is oftentimes during seizure events, because it’s a brain related disease, is individuals will forget exactly what happened or how long an epilepsy event lasted, or if they took their medication or not, they can be very hazy coming out of a like after a seizure, the state after seizure. So, you know, having a platform that gently reminds the family to input really important information helps put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Later, when a shared journal is shared with a doctor, for instance, medications is also become a collaborative family thing where family can remind gently or monitor, you know, from a distance the medication adherence over time. So if there’s an adolescent with epilepsy who is slowly gaining their independence and living a free life, the family can have the peace of mind as they monitor the manage and manage, help manage the epilepsy from a distance digitally. And also they have all those safety features. So they know if an emergency event, seizure event is going to happen beforehand or during a seizure event. And then also their loved one can have the. That they need and want while also staying safe.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:34] Now, do you have any advice for other founders? It’s a it’s fantastic that you’ve gotten an idea off the ground, out of your head into real world. And then you you know, you were running with it. And then even though it was successful, you kind of paused and reevaluated and decided to then kind of pause that and then go a different direction. Can you share some advice for other founders when it comes to doing that type of a pivot? You know, a lot of folks who are on a path and are getting any kind of hint of success are kind of always doubling down on that. But you chose to kind of reevaluate at that point and then chose a different path. Can you talk about that, how that decision was made and and how you kind of looked at the trade offs of of going a new way?

Amir Helmy: [00:11:24] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, the first thing I would say that was effective for us and, you know, obviously, we’re still kind of early on in our company. So hopefully, you know, the pivot pays off and we end up making a really good impact in the epilepsy space and the health tech and neurological disease space in general. But the thing that really made things clear for us was talking to individual our our customers, talking to individuals and families with epilepsy, you know, going to getting, getting as they like, getting out of the building, whether that’s virtually reaching out to people, everyone that would email us with an issue, we would ask to chat with them about their experience using the application. We would do a lot of customer discovery even after our product was live. And we would we also saw, you know, for us, we kept a good eye for software, which is something that’s super important, is retention. So we kept our eye on the retention and we saw that while the retention was okay and good, we felt that it could be better. So we felt like a key piece of the understanding our customer was missing. So we made an active effort to get out there and talk to everyone that we could.

Amir Helmy: [00:12:43] We went to epilepsy events here in Atlanta and we just talked to families and individuals with epilepsy. And it just kind of became really clear the approach that we needed to take. And furthermore, what helped also solidify this pivot was being validated by the not only just talking to the customers and coming up with with the idea for for taking this new direction on our own and then just going for it. But we also validated by some of our close testers previously they really liked this idea. And also professional foundations like the Epilepsy Foundation awarded us like an innovation award this year for the idea behind this pivot. So all the validation that came from the customers, you know, really trying to discover the truth about individuals and families with epilepsy becoming obsessed with that, you know, really shed a light on a lot of insights and angles that we weren’t didn’t know before. And then the validation from the professional foundation just kind of hammered it home that this is what we need to do, and now we’re pivoting and we’re all in on this new direction and we’ll see how it goes.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:05] Now, can you talk a little bit about your experience with Main Street? How has that been? What inspired you to apply for that and what have you gotten out of it?

Amir Helmy: [00:14:16] Yeah, absolutely. So my my involvement with me should actually started with my brother, who’s my co founder and a student at GSU, and he became aware of the mainstream program. And it just seemed like a really good opportunity to mingle with other really great entrepreneurs. And kind of at the same time that we applied for the mainstream program was when we started to think of this pivot. And so kind of building from the ground up, we got a lot of benefit from the mentors that were in the mainstream program. I think that’s the that’s the biggest thing. What I was really impressed with the Mainstreet program is the quality of the mentors that are there from MK, who’s leading it, and his really no nonsense, straightforward advice that gets things moving quickly to David Eckhoff and other people that have come and talked at the Main Street program and closely work with us. You know, they’re seasoned vets entrepreneurship and they take things from the bottom up. They you know, they really lay down, I think, a solid groundwork for for for building a successful MVP in business. And when we were going through that pivot, customer discovery and taking a new approach to building our MDP was really important.

Amir Helmy: [00:15:44] And those are the mentors that are at the Mainstreet program really helped a lot and kind of helping us recognize what’s necessary, what’s unnecessary mistakes in approaching customer discovery and making assumptions about your customer and really the truth behind your customer and moving fast as well, you know, and keeping us on track and accountable to our goals. So yeah, if I had to just say one huge thing about the Mainstreet program, highly recommend because of the quality of people that are running it. Are involved in in mentoring the companies along. They really care about not only the success of the companies, but I feel like the growth of the entrepreneurs as well as like to have the proper mindset to approaching identifying problems, solving problems and building businesses around that. So I would say a lot of the seminars and advice that we’ve gotten from the mainstream program is really invaluable, not only for the startup that we’re currently doing, but for myself and my co founder, my brother, as you know, young individuals who want to be entrepreneurs long term.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:01] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Amir Helmy: [00:17:05] Yeah, absolutely. At this at this point in time, right now, we’re kind of looking for I mean, we’re we’re beta testing in the epilepsy space. So if there’s families out there that are listening to this, perhaps that have epilepsy, please reach out. And we would love to talk to you and have you onboard the platform a little bit early. Any feedback and advice that we can get from even if you don’t have epilepsy, but if you’re an expert in UI or UX, it’ll really help the community as a whole going forward. Also, partnerships and investment. We’re looking to raise money soon, probably in the next coming months. We have some non-dilutive funding and grants right now. And so with that leverage, we think that raising around maybe strategic soon and then partnerships as well. So other individuals that have run successful health tech companies, if they have advice, people that have been through the FDA regulatory process as well or done work with pharmaceutical companies because at the end of the day, also, a lot of the data that we collect on our platform is really useful to clinical trials and validation or efficacy of certain drugs for epilepsy, because that’s how epilepsy is managed. So yeah, partnerships in that, in that regard, people that are in the form of space or have worked with pharma before and gone through the FDA regulatory process, if they would reach out with their input, advice and guidance, that would be hugely helpful.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:41] So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or somebody on the team. Is there a website or a best way to get a hold of you?

Amir Helmy: [00:18:47] Yeah, absolutely. Our website is still being updated, but there is a live website health app dotcom, just the name of the company dot com. And also on LinkedIn, you know, you can connect with me directly and my corporate email as well is just my name at health dot com. Feel free to reach out.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:09] Good stuff. Well, Amir, congratulations on all the success and the momentum. You’re doing important work. And we appreciate you.

Amir Helmy: [00:19:17] Appreciate you. Thank you for having me on and for for encouraging us along our journey as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:22] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on GSU. Any radio?

Intro: [00:19:32] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on paycom.

 

Maria Castro With Love Purse

by

Maria Castro
Chicago Business Radio
Maria Castro With Love Purse
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Firmspace-sponsor-bannerLovePurseMaria CastroMaria Castro, Founder and CEO of Inspiration of Love Purse, a nonprofit that is “putting love on the shoulders of women in need, one #LovePurse at a time” and has collected and gifted almost 7000 purses since March 2021. Donations have been distributed in Illinois, Texas, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Missouri, Mexico, Canada, and the Ukraine. The idea for starting this mission was to help women in domestic violence, homeless & human trafficking shelters realize that they matter, they are respected, thought of, and loved. Maria believes that sharing your Tx3’s #TimeTalentsTreasures is a requirement and not an option in life.

She currently serves as the Chairwoman for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Chicago Chapter, Telemundo Chicago’s Action Board, Women’s Business Development Center’s Advisory Council, A Silver Lining Foundation, and the DePaul Art Museum Board of Directors. She is a co-author of Today’s Inspired Latinas Volume V, Today’s Inspired Leader Volume II, Hispanic Stars Rising, A New Face of Power Inaugural Edition and the author of Kindness (part of the Word Power Series Collection). Maria has served as a panelist, moderator, keynote speaker, and MC for numerous events and as a speaker for Latina Talks (New York Times & Chicago).

She has received numerous award acknowledgements; Negocios Now 2019 Who’s Who Hispanic Chicago, 2019 Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’ Hispanic Catalyst Champion, YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, People with Disabilities Champion Award from Seguin Services, Corporate Visionary award from El Valor, 2020 Hispanic Style Latina of Influence, 2020 Today’s Inspired Latina’s Woman of the Year Award, National Diversity Council’s 2021 Top Latino Leader, 2021 Chicago Latina Expo Business Leader Award, International Women’s Day 2022 Honoree, Negocios Now 2022 Who’s Who in Hispanic Business and the 2009 proclamation of Maria Castro day in the City of Aurora.

Connect with Maria on LinkedIn and follow her on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The start of the Love Purse
  • Their mission
  • Inaugural Gala
  • Number of purses they have donated

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firmspace.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kantor. And before we get started, as always, today’s show is sponsored by firm SpaceX, thanks to firm Space, because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we’ve got a really good one for you today. On today’s episode, we have the founder and CEO of Inspiration of Love Purse. So please welcome Maria Castro. Welcome to the show, Maria.

Maria Castro: [00:00:46] Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.

Max Kantor: [00:00:49] I’m excited to talk to you and learn all about Love Purse. So let’s jump right in. What is Love purse? How to get started.

Maria Castro: [00:00:56] Oh, my gosh. So Love Purse is actually a mission that I say helps us to put love on the shoulders of women in need, one love purse at a time. And back during the pandemic last year, in March of 2021, I was speaking to a person who probably is so very well known here in Chicago, Nellie Vasquez, Roland, who is the founder of A Safe Haven in Chicago, which is a homeless shelter. And she mentioned to me a need that they had and basically just said, you know, we could really use some help and gathering some toiletries for the women, especially, that were coming in in droves because they were being locked down with their abusers and they had lost jobs in the service industry and so on and so forth. And so I just basically said, go ahead, send me the list and I will do the best that I can to get some stuff for you. But let me figure out how I can reach out to my enormous network of people that I know. And hence, here we are today in 2022, and we are surpassing 7000 purses filled with toiletries for women, not just here in Illinois, but around the world, actually.

Max Kantor: [00:02:12] Wow. So something that I find interesting about it is obviously you can put toiletries in so many different things, but you decide on the purse. Why did you pick purses?

Maria Castro: [00:02:22] Well, that’s a great question. So a purse is not just a purse. And I say that because all of us women who have for so many years carried the same purse perhaps. And in there you have everything from your kids trinkets that they’ve made you from school to pictures of your parents or grandparents or grandkids. In the case of my mother, who always has a rosary in her purse to pray for someone, it’s very special to us. And when you have to leave in the middle of the night, you know, because of danger and you walk out with nothing but the shirt on your back, you lose that and you don’t have that. So this really signifies you have that back, you have hope again. You have the faith in people again versus just running out and not having anything. Now you have it filled with all the toiletries that you don’t have to share with somebody that you can actually have as your own again, so that you can start that all over again and gather those trinkets and gather those pictures and what have you. It signifies so much more than just fashion.

Max Kantor: [00:03:31] So you’ve mentioned toiletries a couple of times. What types of toiletries are best for a love purse? Purse.

Maria Castro: [00:03:39] Okay. So my question to Nelly when this happened was send me a list of what each person needs when they arrive at your shelter. And that was everything from shampoo full-size mind you, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, feminine hygiene products, slippers for the shower, a washcloth. I mean, all the things that they need, the moment that they enter that shelter that they need to have for themselves. Because because of CDC guidelines, you can no longer share those. And so it’s vital to a person, not just a woman, but a child or husband, whatever. It’s vital to have those pieces of toiletries that you need when you walk into that particular shelter. And so that is one of the most essential parts. But the most important part is the note of inspiration that we absolutely, positively have to have in each purse. And that is just a written note to the woman telling her that she matters, that she is somebody that she’s loved and she’s thought of and she’s paid for by the person gifting that purse to her.

Max Kantor: [00:04:52] I love that you guys do that. When I read that on your website, it’s so special. I mean, just giving a purse, it’s. Giving, you know, these these women, it’s almost like it becomes a part of their personality. It gives them something to represent them. And then when you give that personalized note, it’s just that extra touch. So when you were developing the idea for Love Purse, how did the idea for the note of inspiration come about and why do you feel it’s so important to include that?

Maria Castro: [00:05:20] Thank you for asking that, Max. So the day that I went out and bought like seven of everything that was requested from Nelly, I thought to myself, I watch all these purses. I rather I watched all these bags filled with things. And I thought to myself, I can’t give somebody who already feels down on their luck and feeling like they’ve been really beaten down, like just this plastic bag. It made no sense to me. I thought if that was me, I wouldn’t want it to come in a plastic bag. So I thought about that for a few seconds and I said, What if I go on to Amazon and I find some really nice size purses that can fit all of these full sized toiletries in them? And I did. I went to Amazon and I bought all these purses and I was filling them up. And as I filled them off, I thought to myself, what an inspiration this will be to somebody on the receiving end. However, what if I added a note just letting them know that they matter, that they’re beautiful, that this too shall pass one day? And I thought, I’ll do that. And so I wrote all the notes I throw through it, all of the bags, all of the purses. And I thought, Wow, I was so excited about it. And I felt my love personally going into each and every single purse I was feeling. And I said to my husband, I go, You know what? This is a love purse. This is filled with love from me to the person who I may never meet in my lifetime, but nonetheless it is filled with my love. It’s a love purse. So I ran to my local printer, asked him to make a T-shirt that said Hashtag love purse on it so that I could put it out on social media and hopefully get people to realize the importance of this. And certainly, you know, that this was a need that we needed to feel as women empowering women. And so I did. And honestly, I had no idea what would happen after that.

Max Kantor: [00:07:29] Totally. So you guys, you started in Chicago. How did you start expanding to other cities and like you said, around the world?

Maria Castro: [00:07:37] Well, and that’s because of the unbelievable social media that we have today. Right. So I’m over 60 and I’m not technically savvy whatsoever, I can tell you right now. But when I started posting it and putting it on LinkedIn and on Twitter and on Instagram and Facebook, I started getting all of these people responding and saying, Oh my God, I just saw this. Oh my God, my friend posted this. Oh my God, my friend donated a purse. And I started getting inquiries from Canada, from Mexico, you know, from Tennessee, from Texas. I mean, it was amazing. And they were saying, we love this, we love this. How can we be a part of this movement? And I thought, well, you just have to collect some purses and toiletries and tell me what shelter in your local market needs to be helped. I would look them up to make sure that they were a 563 in good standing. And if they were, which all of them were, I would say, wonderful, let’s go for it. And then they would in turn act as an angel ambassador in that particular city or country and start passing out these purses to women in need.

Max Kantor: [00:08:58] Gotcha. Well, that was going to be my next question is asking what an angel ambassador is. And I love that term because you know what you all are doing. You know you’re doing the work of angels. So it’s the perfect name.

Maria Castro: [00:09:11] Oh, my God. You know what? This would not be 7000 purses plus today had it not been for the angels that I have out there. And I had to call them that because that’s what they are. They hold that title so proudly and they have helped me so much to get the word out, to get purses in that particular country or city and just have been like, how what else can we do to help you is basically the question, not how can we help you, but what else can we do? And I think that when you put something out there in the universe that is so universal to somebody that is in need, it just becomes kind of it gets a life of its own, really. And I could not do this work with. Out the village of people that are helping me.

Max Kantor: [00:10:01] Now, you all have your inaugural gala coming up. Tell me a little bit about that.

Maria Castro: [00:10:06] Oh, my gosh, Max, if I could just scream from the mountaintops, I would. So October six, it’s a Thursday evening at this beautiful mansion in Elmhurst that we found that has a brick road leading to the entrance. We are hosting our first inaugural event, which is called There’s No Place Like Home because there really is not. And the theme is The Wizard of Oz. And so the yellow brick road that will lead to this entrance and the doors open. And you have everybody there from Dorothy to the scarecrow to the Good Witch and the Bad Witch, and it is just going to be a magical night. And we do have a amazing keynote speaker who is a man, former Super Bowl champion who has gone through domestic violence with his own mother. Dennis McKinnon, he will be speaking as our keynote speaker and be really re speaking on behalf of men who have gone through this trauma themselves with their own mothers. And so I think that the night will be not only magical, but it will just be so profound to hear it from somebody who is like a well known Super Bowl champ that he, too, had gone through this with his own mother.

Max Kantor: [00:11:24] Yeah, well, it sounds like an incredible event to get everyone together and talk about this common goal that you all stand for. So for people who are interested in learning more about the gala or attending it, how can they learn more?

Maria Castro: [00:11:37] Oh, my gosh. So w w w dot love dot org. We absolutely would just love for anybody and everybody who’s listening to come and support us. The need is so great, Max. I wish that I had enough to go around, but I don’t. And so my goal is to certainly surpass 50,000 this year, although we’re only at 10,000. But I really want to help anybody and everybody out there, whether it’s human trafficking, homelessness or domestic violence. We hear you. We see you. And we want to make sure that somehow or another we help you. And so for those who can’t make it to our gala, donating $5, $20, $100, it doesn’t matter, because all of that goes to the mission. I keep nothing from that. Everything that I get, I put toward buying more purses, buying more toiletries, and just really getting the word out to make sure that we help women in need.

Max Kantor: [00:12:36] Now, Maria, I ask every guest who comes on Chicago Business Radio this question, and I can anticipate what your answer will be, but I’m eager to hear it for you. What is the most rewarding part of what you do?

Maria Castro: [00:12:51] Oh, my gosh. Well, I have to say that it’s the women on the receiving end that I hear stories from now. You have to understand that when a woman is in a trafficking shelter or a domestic violence shelter, it’s very private. So I don’t get to meet them face to face. But I hear the stories from the executive directors or the CEOs from the organizations that tell me on a regular basis what the effect is on these women. And that is that they feel hope again, that they feel that somebody cared, that somebody loved them that didn’t even know them and is sending them this love and this purse. And so when I think about all the women that we’ve helped and we’ve helped more than 7000 today, in one year, I think to myself, I got this like my board and I my angel investors, we got this. So if anybody ever has a doubt that if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, then they have no idea. Because that is so true. The mom is the one that holds the family together. And when she is in despair and she is in need, when she receives something that kind of gives her an indication that things will be okay, then she’s okay. And we have to make sure that we understand that because I have seen a few of them. And when their children see how happy the moms are to open these purses, to read the notes, to smell the, you know, the shampoo and conditioners and different things, they’re so excited for their moms because they see their moms happy again. And I think that we have to realize that again if mama happy and nobody happy in that house. So I’m just ecstatic that it has gotten to the point where it has. But again, I’m very grateful to my board of directors, to my sponsors, to the people who have stepped up and said, I want to help.

Max Kantor: [00:14:49] So if any of our listeners are interested in either donating purses or buying purses for love, purse or toiletries or anything like that, how can they get involved?

Maria Castro: [00:14:59] Oh my gosh. So our website has everything on there. We love dot org. It has all the toiletries needed for each and every individual purse. It has a link where they can go and buy purses under $20, which is what we request. Really, everything is on there. All they have to do is just check on it and they can always email me at Maria at Luv dot org and I’m happy to respond to anybody that reaches out.

Max Kantor: [00:15:24] Well, Maria, it’s been such a joy to talk to you. I mean, you’re doing amazing work in the community. You have such a big heart and just honestly, it’s been such a pleasure getting to interview today on Chicago Business Radio.

Maria Castro: [00:15:36] Thank you so much, Max. I appreciate the opportunity. And hopefully people will hear it. They’ll realize the need and they’ll reach out.

Max Kantor: [00:15:43] Absolutely. And thanks to you for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:15:53] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by farm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firmspace.com.

John Wensveen With The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation

by

Dr. John Wensveen
South Florida Business Radio
John Wensveen With The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Dr. John WensveenDr. John Wensveen, is Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University and Executive Director of the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation responsible for overseeing a multimillion-dollar public-private partnership to support the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in Broward County and South Florida.

John’s higher education experience includes faculty and senior leadership positions at Miami Dade College, Purdue University, Dowling College, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. John’s entrepreneurship and industry experience include senior leadership positions at Mango Aviation Partners, Radixx International, Airline Visions, InterVISTAS, Marriott Vacation Club International, MAX Jet Airways, and Canada 3000 Airlines. John earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in International Air Transport and Business from Cardiff University (United Kingdom) and a B.A. in Geography and Transportation Land Use Planning from the University of Victoria (Canada).

Connect with Dr. John on LinkedIn and follow Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Trends in Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
  • World’s first theme park for entrepreneurs (Levan Center)
  • South Florida Space Day (Oct. 12)
  • South Florida Innovation Day (Oct. 26)

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: [00:00:13] 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 John Wensveen with the Allan B Levan Center of NSU, Broward Center of Innovation. That’s quite the mouthful, John. Welcome to the show.

John Wensveen: [00:00:38] Hi. Hey, it is quite the mouthful. Thank you. And we can just call the Levan Center to make it easy for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Thank you. So tell us about the Levan Center. How are you serving folks?

John Wensveen: [00:00:49] So I have the most incredible job in the world. I personally believe I’m the chief innovation officer at Nova Southeastern University, but also executive director of the Allan B Levan and NSU Broward Center of Innovation. And what I’ve been able to do is tie my roles into one and my job and my team’s job is to completely disrupt South Florida as a region around the three themes of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. And what we’ve done is we’ve actually built the world’s very first theme park for entrepreneurs, and we have figured out how to reverse engineer this, because the success of an entrepreneur, literally from birth of an idea right through successful exit of a company or global expansion. And what we’ve done is we’ve designed and built a 54,000 square foot theme park, which is about the same size of a bed, bath and beyond, just to put it in scope. And within it, we’ve created this amazing infrastructure that allows us to create customized programs and events and wraparound services where we essentially have a giant collision station that for the very first time in our nation and around the world, entrepreneurs are forced to collide with academia, industry, government funders, wraparound service providers, professional networks and a whole lot more. And our real job here is to be an economic development engine for South Florida that has local, regional, national and international impact that ultimately creates new businesses and scales those businesses and make sure that they’re sustainable, which then results in the creation of new industry here in the region, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] Now, you mentioned that this effort is in disrupting kind of the way things are being done currently. Is there like what was the genesis of the idea and where are you getting your methodology to kind of at least test the water in this manner?

John Wensveen: [00:02:33] Well, it’s really interesting when you look at the trends and challenges around technology. Generally speaking, globally, there are all kinds of trends that are occurring. And what’s happening is you’re seeing more and more creation of what we would call incubators and accelerators, where you incubate ideas and then you accelerate those ideas into commercialized enterprise. And what happened about four years ago, there was a philanthropist here in South Florida, Alan Lavan, that had an amazing conversation with the president of Nova Southeastern University and said, we’re really concerned about the future of talent and really the qualified, skilled talent for the future around the theme of technology. Where are we going to create those skills? How are you going to recruit them and retain them here in our region and to to accelerate? What happened was that conversation then made its way to Broward County. And at that time, the mayor and the commissioners listened to this idea of the possible creation of end quote and Innovation Center that would be located here in Fort Lauderdale. And it was a unanimous decision to move forward in a public private partnership was formed where both NSU, Florida and Broward County came together and financially CO invested into the creation of this concept. And then I was recruited into the position two and a half years ago and really understood what that vision was. And then we grew that into something much bigger, knowing that there are a number of trends and challenges and opportunities that needed immediate strategies, not just locally but in the US and then internationally.

John Wensveen: [00:04:04] And with that said, it was let’s go and figure out what that infrastructure or tool will will look like. So we did a thorough analysis, literally international research, and we found that these incubators and accelerators were what we would call one and done programs where they may have focused on an idea and then the entrepreneur leaves them and then they go off onto their own journey without the support that they required. And we realize that that was a true opportunity for us here in South Florida to, number one, link the whole region collectively so that we act as that gorilla glue that identifies all of the stakeholders and opportunities and required infrastructure that we need to be that economic development engine. And then we built it all under this one roof and we technically opened our doors on April 27th. This last year, a little bit slowed down with the COVID situation where we had to go virtual for our programing and various types of events. But in that short period of time, we were already shown that we’re disrupting the market around the creation of new technologies and a new talent skills pipeline. To support these emerging tech sector opportunities. We’ve created new companies, new jobs. We’re scaling these businesses. So it’s just been phenomenal.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:16] So your mission is to take them not just from an idea to a launch, but to an idea from launch to growth to maybe even post growth to legacy, to come back and then mentor and then kind of repeat the process. So you want to like have the whole life cycle of the entrepreneur at least playing in your theme park?

John Wensveen: [00:05:37] Exactly. I mean, you used the correct word, their life cycle. And there are a lot of pieces of infrastructure throughout the nation that truly focus on small business and help the small business owners and entrepreneurs to launch their business and hopefully sustain their business. But there are very few resources anywhere that really allow that small business to go to the next level. So we provide access opportunities that allow that to happen and truly scale. So we’re focused on not necessarily the small business we’re focused on. Well, how do you create that small business into a national international organization, or how do you create a franchise model out of out of that? You think about things like Kindle as an example that came out of an innovation center. Other things like Uber Eats and Lyft and and and things like that all came out of innovation centers. So how do we create that next Amazon, if you will?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] Now, one of the advantages, like a Silicon Valley has they have a density of entrepreneurs and the density of startups happening so that invariably as they fail, which a lot of them will fail, there’s a place for the the entrepreneur to land and maybe do a mash up with somebody else who has something interesting going on. How are you addressing kind of some of that or a way to jumpstart some of that density so that the entrepreneur doesn’t take one shot and fails and then just says, well, maybe I gotta get a real job.

John Wensveen: [00:07:03] Mm hmm. Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned Silicon Valley, because sometimes in recent times, we’re finding that we’re now being called the Silicon Valley of the East. And I and my feathers go up whenever I hear that, because we are not and nor should we ever be. So Florida is a very unique region. And it’s interesting when you look at Miami-Dade County, Broward County, Palm Beach County, everybody has a very similar agenda. And one of those agenda items is to become a designated technology hub, just like Silicon Valley did. And when you look at national rankings across the United States, all of the cities that are ranked as a technology hub are actually ranked as cities, with the exception of the Silicon Valley area. So that whole Greater San Francisco area is one region that’s defined rather than just a city. And the other area here in South Florida is the track that we’re on is that this whole region will become a defined technology hub. And Silicon Valley, you’re absolutely correct. They have all of this infrastructure, they have density, and it’s very unique and they have an entire ecosystem. But what’s also interesting is a lot of trends are now showing there’s an exodus out of Silicon Valley and that infrastructure is actually starting to break up and in the future is a little bit different than the path that we’ve historically been on. So what we’re doing is we’re certainly adapting from some of the successes of Silicon Valley, and then we’re creating those opportunities here in South Florida, but also recognizing that we have to create our own set of parameters because we’re a completely different region than anywhere else in the country, even county by county, by county. But it’s on its way. And a lot of that Silicon Valley talent and knowledge and resources is now flowing right here into South Florida. That exodus is moving in this direction.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] Now, are there going to be some specialties that that you’re targeting, that, you know, some niches that you’re saying, okay, we want to be best in class in, you know, A, B and C? Are there some areas of technology or business that you want to be the go to place for that to occur?

John Wensveen: [00:08:59] Yes, absolutely. So I would say that we’re planting a number of flags that are really reinventing what we do here in our own region. So originally when we started with this concept, we were going to be focused on what we call the defined targeted industries in South Florida, really the high wage, high growth sectors. And then as we began to get more involved in what we were doing, we realized that we should move away from targeted industries and really focus on what we call digital economies or economies of the future. And with that, we realized that technology is the underpin. That’s what’s linking all of this together. So in terms of focusing on specific industries, we’re not we’re really focused on technology because technology supports every industry and will only do so more as we move into the future. So the flags that we’re planting are around things like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, spatial computing, which most people are not familiar with. And there’s an amazing opportunity there. And then another interesting thing that we’ve done is we realized that South Florida is completely disconnected from the space sector, but there are so many businesses here in existence and future businesses that with a slight pivot, they can support. Court space, and we found that the opportunities to enter space, the barriers are coming down because of the privatization and commercialization, and there’s more of a need for the small entrepreneur to support that sector. So that’s one of our unique specialties. And in fact, on October the 12th, we’re launching the very, very first South Florida Space Day, and it will be a collision station bringing those stakeholders together through the South Florida region, but also the state of Florida, where we have partners here like Nassau and Space Florida and the Space Foundation, who’s a very strong collaborative partner with us, to create that awareness and show what those opportunities are.

John Wensveen: [00:10:48] And then again, mix the private and public sectors together so that we could actually move forward and that space slide right here. And then the other one that we’re planting is cybersecurity. And this is a huge one. Cybersecurity is probably the most important piece of technology that we can talk about right now. And if you ask a sea level executive what keeps you up at night, they usually say there’s two things. One, it’s cybersecurity. Is my infrastructure safe, and the other is around talent. And how do I find that skill, talent to support my industry? And what we recently did is we opened up a military grade cybersecurity range. And I would like to say that it is the most powerful resource of its kind in the southeast region of the United States that allows NSU to create new programs around cybersecurity to fulfill those talent needs, but also to work with other academic partners, industry and government at all different levels from from a training perspective at the entry mid and advanced levels, but also to allow you to simulate real life scenarios so that you can be reactive and proactive within your own industry environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:48] Now, you mentioned this kind of partnership, public, private. Obviously, you’re housed at a university. Is there an opportunity for businesses to kind of partner with NDSU maybe and say, okay, you know what, we don’t have enough cybersecurity folks. So can we help you develop a curriculum or some classes that will help educate your students in this and then give them kind of a direct pipeline to us or other companies like us to further their career?

John Wensveen: [00:12:21] You’re absolutely speaking my language. And sometimes people will look at me and say, What is this guy talking about? When I tell you? What I’m about to say is that there’s a huge disconnect between academia, whether it’s a public institution or a private institution and industry. And for years, the academic world has dictated to industry what they think their needs are. And then industry is turning around and saying, that’s not correct, or our needs are X, Y and Z. So infrastructure, like the pieces that we are building, allow us to be the bridge that connects the academic worlds with the worlds of industry and government as examples. And then we can find out what is it that industry truly needs. So in this particular case, that’s a cybersecurity expert, but I’m not getting the right knowledge and skills or personality out of these academic programs. We then create opportunities for industry and academia to co-invest with one another so an industry partner could come to us and say, Here’s our need short, medium and long term, how can you help us? And then we as an institution and as an innovation center, they can say, okay, we’ll co-develop that curriculum.

John Wensveen: [00:13:27] You invest into the infrastructure with us and then we’ll create those pipelines that you so desperately need. And we make these long term co-investing strategic partnerships where we’re not just sitting around a table having a coffee and a bagel, we’re actually walking and talking collectively together. And that’s a it sounds like it’s an easy formula for some of the challenges that we have in the world and reality. It is we just need to do a better job all over the world to make sure that industry and academia are coming together as one. And if you look at the data, academic institutions globally are actually decreasing. So every day there’s there’s an institution closing its doors while the corporations are now developing their own training, their own universities in-house to create the talent and the skills that they require if they can’t get it from from other means. So there’s a huge transition occurring in this world right now. And I think you’re going to see more co-investors, strategic partnerships, where we we collectively think as one rather than not being on parallel paths with each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] Now, are you seeing any trends regarding at least the mindset of entrepreneurship amongst young people? Is are they kind of at least changing their thinking from I’m going to get a job to I’m going to bet on myself.

John Wensveen: [00:14:44] So if you ask me that question 2 to 2 and a half years ago, my answers would be a little bit different than they are today. And I think that the the COVID global pandemic has really altered the pathways that a lot of young people are on. Their way of thinking and doing has changed. And some will say it’s just the fat and others will say that this is the way of the world moving forward. And what we have found with this whole, quote, great resignation is that just the attitude and perspective of people, generally speaking, has changed where they have increased demands in terms of what they want with their day to day lifestyle, how they work, how they think, how they do, if you will. And I think there are some cons that have come with that. And but the pros is that people are learning to reinvent themselves. So we go through these phases of survive, adapt, recover, and now we’re in that rethink mode. And it’s entrepreneurs at all levels from from young minds trying to do something with creating a business to to more established entrepreneurs that have been successful or not successful throughout their own journey. And what we’re finding is that the COVID situation created new business opportunities and most of those being virtually accessible. So there are new types of businesses, new types of industries, new types of economies requiring new types of mindsets and skills that we would probably have never addressed if the pandemic never did not occur.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] Now, is there an effort to maybe educate younger and younger people about this entrepreneurship mindset? Because to me, that’s almost a must have that you have to you have to change the way you’re thinking, even if you’re going to get a real job in terms of working in an enterprise. If you could think of your boss as your client, it changes how you behave and it changes how you think. Are you seeing any of that happening where that kind of mindset training or at least opening their mind to that type of thinking is trickling down through college, through high school, through even middle school and elementary school.

John Wensveen: [00:16:48] Elaine I think it’s an international impact that’s starting to happen, and I think that some regions of the world are probably further ahead than we are here in in North America, where a mindset is something that you have to educate and create awareness about. And there’s always been this belief that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be born with it in your blood. You just can’t become an entrepreneur. You’re born with it. And I completely disagree with that. I don’t think a lot of people even understand what entrepreneurship is. So that so what we’re doing specifically with the lab and center of innovation is we actually have programing around seminars and workshops and eventually certifications. And as part of what we call our Founder’s Journey program, which are very complex, very categorized multi week programs, the innovation mindset is introduced and we start with, well, what is innovation? It’s, it’s a word that people use all the time, but they don’t necessarily understand what it means and that anybody virtually can be an entrepreneur, even if they don’t think so. But it’s part of our mission is to be able to educate and explain what that is and show what that pathway looks like. Even if you’re an employee in corporate America, you still are an entrepreneur in many cases and only refer to that as entrepreneurship. So how do you build companies from from within? So everybody that crosses my path, I look at them as you’re an innovator, you’re a disruptor, you’re an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur. But there is a way to to educate. And the global trends are showing that more and more of this innovation mindset and entrepreneurial mindset is being embedded into curriculum and more hands on experience and exposure to networks that maybe you didn’t have access to before.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] Now, what about the underserved folks that aren’t maybe, maybe aren’t there aren’t as many numbers of them in maybe the engineering schools, the technology innovation area, or there an effort, an outreach for them to at least learn or get a taste of this. So then that might alter their not only their career path or their future, but also their family and their community.

John Wensveen: [00:18:51] Absolutely. I think the key word there is accessibility. And many of these underserved zip codes and demographics simply don’t have awareness or maybe they don’t even have the technology to be able to learn about certain things. So if you look in South Florida about the percentage of people that don’t even have access to the Internet, it would blow your mind where everybody just assumes that you are from a technology perspective, can access anything you want. And the reality is that’s not true. So what we do with our own programing is we actually work with different types of organizations in the public and private sectors to to go into those communities and bring those communities to us. But we’re taking that even a step further. We recently received a a federal grant where we will now build an innovation center on wheels. So imagine bringing your innovation center into those underserved communities, but also creating bridges of opportunity to bring them to you. So as part of our outreach, we will be going into the South Florida region, to the underserved areas, to the underserved demographics, to increase accessibility in terms of opportunity. And some of the best entrepreneurs in this world come from from those types of zones or demographics. And our job is to find them and figure out how we can accelerate their success.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:08] Yeah, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there because there are such consumers of technology, but they’re not creators of it. And there has to be a path for them to to be the creators and that kind of next generation of entrepreneur.

John Wensveen: [00:20:22] Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that we sometimes ignore is what the life cycle of that entrepreneur looks like. So let’s start at the very beginning. How do you get to those young children so that they understand that there’s a pathway? And I’m a firm believer in using a baseball diamond as an analogy that most types of programs out there look at the baseball diamond, and if you can get the batter to first base, then that’s success. And then hopefully they get to second and eventually cross home. We look at things a little bit differently, so we measure success of an individual right from the very beginning before they do anything. So they’re batting at the home plate and we figure out how do we get you to third base first, then second, then first, and then ultimately to where you started. And by doing that, we create a very strategic map, if you will, that also allows like a highway. And we what we do is we provide off ramps or exits so that if you come into a challenge while there’s an off ramp, it allows you to get back on that on that highway. And that’s a model that’s never been completely perfected. And we’re going to do our best to make sure that we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:26] So you’re kind of keeping the end in mind and reverse engineering to to the beginning?

John Wensveen: [00:21:33] Absolutely. And we’ve already got a number of examples where we’ve actually steered some people back onto that pathway. And there’s some really interesting successes coming out of the Levant center of innovation right now and NDSU as a as an institution. And it’s changed people’s. Lives right down to faculty within academic disciplines. A lot of faculty, they may concentrate on research or writing a white paper or going to a conference, not even recognizing that the research that they’re doing can actually be commercialized. So we’re developing that programing infrastructure too, so that they have more of an innovative mindset and can think more like an entrepreneur so they can actually commercialize on that research.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:08] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

John Wensveen: [00:22:12] Oh, we need a lot of things. So I think the thing that we probably need the most help with is just simply awareness. How do we let the world know that this incredible resource exists right here in South Florida? And the best way to do that is to truly invite people to come and see it. So you can see videos and you can see pictures and you can hear about things. But when you come here, you truly do walk into that theme park atmosphere. And I would say that 99% of all individuals that come through when they get to the last space on a on an official tour, say, oh, my gosh, wow, you’ve thought about everything. How do I get involved? And there’s something for everybody. It’s not just the entrepreneur, it’s the entire ecosystem that makes that entrepreneur successful. So how do we do more outreach to find those entrepreneurs, and particularly at the early stage, how do we find those investors? And from all the different angles that exist out there, from the angel investors to the venture capitalists, how do we find those professional and social networks that we can embed in here? And how do we find more mentors and program facilitators that are looking to give back to that community to to make individuals successful? But it’s really awareness at the end of the day.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:18] So if somebody wants to learn more about Space Day or Innovation Day or anything about the Lavon Center as their website, what’s the best way to to learn more or get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

John Wensveen: [00:23:30] Sure. So the best way to get a hold of us is to go to our website and it’s Nova and Nova edu is slash innovation and I’m all over LinkedIn. That’s my big social media platform. And I encourage people to to send a link to me and we’ll connect and, and I’ll get my team involved. And October the 12th is the very first South Florida space dates and all day event bringing in the space world here. And then October 26th is the very first South Florida Innovation Day, where we’re bringing the whole innovation community and South Florida together. And that is a partnership with Emerge Americas, which is a very substantial event that takes place every April in Miami. And they’re a great partner to help promote and support us with that particular event on October 26.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:14] Well, congratulations on all the success, John. You’re doing important work, and we appreciate you.

John Wensveen: [00:24:20] Well, thank you, Lee. I appreciate you as well. And thank you for helping spread our message.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few at South Florida Business Radio.

Shawn D. Smith With 1 True Health – Care Management

by

Shawn-Smith
Startup Showdown Podcast
Shawn D. Smith With 1 True Health - Care Management
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1truehealth

Shawn Smith is the Chief Executive Officer of 1 True Health – Care Management. He has over 35 years of experience in corporate operations, executive management, sales/marketing, and business development, primarily in the healthcare, public health, emergency response, humanitarian aid, and information technology industries.

Shawn has a proven ability to understand market requirements and to design and deliver strategic solutions. He has coached, mentored, and led corporate teams. He has managed large-scale operations and delivered to the satisfaction of clients.

Shawn has a strong record of accomplishments with start-up and high-growth Healthcare Information Technology companies.

He has led organizations with software solutions for syndromic surveillance, emergency response and disaster relief, inpatient clinical management, emergency department information management, post-acute care, senior and assisted living, and revenue cycle management.

Connect with Shawn on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Virtual First Preventative Care.
  • The difficulties in communication and engagement between Medicare-aged patients and healthcare practitioners
  • The effects of COVID social isolation and loneliness are reported to be particularly acute among older adults.
  • Chronic Care Management and Remote Patient Monitoring are two key service areas for 1 True Health.
  • Patient’s expanded “Care Network”.
  • Providing Social Impact in rural communities.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] We’ll come back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly 120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web three, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Shawn Smith with One True Health. Welcome.

Shawn Smith: [00:00:59] Thanks so much, Lee. It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Well, before we get too far into things, can you share a little bit about one true health? How are you serving folks?

Shawn Smith: [00:01:08] You bet. Well, once your health, we are a virtual we’re a technology enabled clinical services company, and we’re based in Austin, Texas. And we focus on providing virtual first preventative care through delightful services and intelligent software, primarily focused on Medicare eligible seniors suffering from chronic conditions.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:26] So what does that kind of. Can you share a little bit about your vision of virtual first preventative care? What is that what does that kind of mean for the for everybody?

Shawn Smith: [00:01:35] Absolutely. Well, it’s a couple of facts to throw at you here. First is chronic and acute conditions are really the nation’s number one health problem. 90% of the annual spend is related to some form of management of chronic or acute conditions like hypertension, diabetes, cancer, heart disease. And that really, really affects our seniors. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recognize the problem. And so for 43 million Medicare eligible seniors, 65 and older, that suffer from two or more chronic conditions, they created a monthly wellness checkup program, but less than 1.5% of eligible seniors participate in this. And that’s a problem because chronic conditions require additional attention. And especially with this fact, 40% of American seniors haven’t seen a physician in person or through telehealth since the start of COVID. So we literally have a silver tsunami of problems headed to our health system with with the management of of these chronic conditions. And that’s really where we focus is in the era of COVID when people weren’t seeing their their doctors. And really since Covid’s waned, they still aren’t on a regular basis going back and seeing their clinicians. We need to provide a virtual first approach to give the seniors the information they need to to get healthy and to stay healthy.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] And ironically, so there’s programs in place to encourage them to have this kind of engagement. But they’re just kind of choosing not to for a variety of reasons, like, you know, they don’t have transportation or they can’t or for whatever reason, they’re not able to take advantage of this kind of engagement. And you’re trying to solve that problem through technology?

Shawn Smith: [00:03:13] Well, we’re definitely trying to solve it through technology. But but, Lee, really, the the the issue let’s let’s talk pre-COVID. Certainly in rural communities, access to care, as you’re indicating, has been a challenge. Transportation issues, other social determinants of health issues were were a play and still are today in the in the pandemic and endemic era that COVID brought to us. But there was a transition more to telehealth as a way to kind of connect with patients. But that even though that technology has been there, many, many patients don’t really they’re not even aware that this there is a reimbursable program that insurance, Medicare and even private insurers would pay for them, spending time with someone to help them through their health and wellness strategies. That’s that’s literally 1.5% market penetration. So it’s literally a matter of the fact that the providers, the regular standard health care protection practitioners, your primary care doctor, your specialists are not staffed now to engage with connecting with the patients in between in-person encounters. So there’s such a need for virtual care and the patients just don’t know what’s out there. So that’s what we’re trying to do is to to make sure that we can connect with them and to extend the clinical practice into the home so they can receive the additional attention they need to manage chronic and acute conditions.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:32] So you’re trying to be the matchmaker between the medical community and the end user?

Shawn Smith: [00:04:38] Absolutely. That’s a great way of putting it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:40] So now is part of the disconnect from the end user standpoint that they are just not aware that that this is possible or they don’t feel comfortable with it? Or is it once you kind of flip that switch in their head that it’s available, then they’re all gangbusters and they’re doing it all the time.

Shawn Smith: [00:04:58] Well well, fortunately, most of the the senior population, you know, every single baby boomer aged person will be Medicare eligible by the end of this decade. And that older elderly population tends to follow the instructions that they receive from their doctors. So if their doctors are aware of this program and they say you’ll benefit from from participating with one health in this delightful service, it becomes very sticky and they comply and they do receive good assistance. We’ve had great testimonies from diabetics with lower agency levels, with people suffering from obesity that are have experienced good weight loss for people that are hypertensive, that have. A lot lower percentages in terms of of their diastolic and systolic readings. We’re really making a difference when you provide and give them the attention they deserve. But to your point about the clinical practices, again, you’ve heard of the great resignation, right? During COVID health care organizations lost staffing. We’re some statistics say now that we’re about 200,000 nurses shy of where we need to be as an example. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a large health system all the way down to a small primary care practice in rural America. They just don’t have the staff to be able to engage the patients in the home where they’re spending most of their time and they’re having difficulty getting those patients back into regular encounters. So our kind of service, you call it a matchmaker that I haven’t heard that before, but it’s a really good one. It allows us to go to the clinical practice and say, you can offer this service to your patients. You don’t have to worry about staffing. We’ll provide a white glove, turnkey clinical service, delighting your patients that helps to engage them, improve their health and get them back in to see you on a regular basis, which is what it’s all about, that engagement that’s needed in health care, especially for the senior age population.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:45] Are you kind of doing this as a white label for them? So it appears that their practice is providing the service, or is it something that it’s your brand that they’re kind of using?

Shawn Smith: [00:06:56] We are happy to white label. So in some of our cases, the clinics are are asking us to answer the phone with with their name, Dr. Ramirez’s clinic. We’re great to talk to you, Susie. And in some cases, we’ve got larger organizations that say there’s benefit to to the partnership and the brand. And this is this is our partner one to help doing it. So it just depends on who our client is as to whether or not we white label it. But we certainly provide that as a service.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:21] Now, is this a service, your relationship, your financial relationship is with the medical practice?

Shawn Smith: [00:07:29] That’s correct. So again, if it’s a clinical practice, a hospital, a health system, we’re getting a lot of attention right now through our existing resellers and partners that have hospitals, especially in rural communities. And in Texas, for example, where we’re based, that relationship is there. So we are basically coming alongside and saying, you’ve got patients transitioning out of your facility from from a procedure or from a visit to the emergency room. We will help provide that transitional care and then we’ll provide care for chronic chronic conditions, chronic care management, or we’ll also offer remote patient monitoring, helping patients with the devices that measure their acute conditions, like a blood pressure cuff for someone suffering for hypertension or a glucometer for a diabetic. So those are the levels of services we provide. And again, we can follow the patient out and deliver the services on behalf of their hospital or clinic or clinical practice, and to do so in a way that delights them and gets some reengaged in a proper way back into that facility.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:30] This seems like a no brainer because of the emphasis, especially on the emphasis of outcomes. Nowadays, this is almost like an insurance policy to help them get the outcome that the patient is expecting.

Shawn Smith: [00:08:43] Oh, well, you’re absolutely correct. I’ll throw another stat at you. You know, 26% of hospital readmissions are due to medication errors. And a lot of that has to do with the the patient that’s walking out of the facility with a stack of instructions in their hands that they either don’t read or don’t understand. And there’s no platform to necessarily engage them. So to have a service where we can communicate with the patient in post transition from a facility, help them with their instructions, help them to be compliant with it. And then here’s where we are. We are a technology enabled service. We also have the ability of providing information in terms of a comprehensive care plan to tell them, These were your instructions, here’s what you need to do to get healthy and to stay healthy. And then we provide technology in the form of a digital companion, conversational AI or a chat bots that can engage with the patient in between encounters to say, for example, you were supposed to walk 10 minutes today. Did you? Patient could say, Well, no, I didn’t. Well, the system could then say, Can you walk today? Well, no, I’ve got leg cramps. Well, do you need information on leg cramps that we can provide? Do we need to connect you with with your with your doctor? All of these things that we can do to help make it more sticky in terms of patient engagement and compliance with protocols that were given by their doctors, helps them again to get healthy and to stay healthy. So I agree with you. It’s a no brainer, but it’s a unique combination of service and technology that engages that patient and gets them on the plan to health.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Right. And I think that if it’s framed correctly at the beginning, then I think that the patient is going to feel less intimidated to ask a dumb question or I don’t want to bother the doctor or this, you know, I’m not going to go in for this little thing. Let me check, you know, wait a few days to see if it gets better by itself. If you can kind of lower that intimidation factor and make it easy and you want to have conversations. And interactions. Then they’re going to be more apt to use it and take advantage of it.

Shawn Smith: [00:10:42] Oh, I completely agree. So. So in our service. Most of the care is provided by a person we call a care navigator. Now, in the Medicare world and in private insurance for chronic and acute conditions, you don’t have to be a licensed clinician to deliver that service to a patient. You only have to be under the patient’s record and the care plan has to be under the review of a licensed practitioner. So in our case, we have medical students, we have church ladies and soccer moms who we have maybe have some expertise and knowledge in nutrition or exercise and what they don’t have in terms of knowledge, we train them through our care coordinator, Beth Sims, who used to run the health and wellness program for a for a multibillion dollar energy company. So we have the staff and the ability to come alongside and make this a less intimidating encounter for patients. So we literally build relationships with our seniors where they’re excited to communicate with us on a monthly basis. And often many of our patients desire more attention. So we also offer a subscription service where they can receive weekly or even daily attention and interactions with our care navigators. And that’s, again, by video or by voice. But again, we have that digital companion, that technology approach, even in between our video and voice encounters that really can create a relationship again and to help a patient, if they’re struggling with with their with their their diet, if they’re need assistance, with exercising in the right way, if they’re having difficulty sleeping, if they have some stress related issues, maybe social isolation and loneliness and anxiety issues post COVID, these are all the areas that we can help with. And and that’s that combination of a delightful in-person service that’s not intimidating and technology to help them stay on the plan that is of a real value to our to our patients.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:35] Now, does the service kind of is it possible to expand the service outside the patient into the family? I know when I was dealing with senior parents for a period of time, I was part of the team and I wasn’t, you know, in the same room with my parents at the time. So is there a way to expand kind of at least the communication element of this so I can help and I can be part of the team to help make sure that my parents are getting a good outcome?

Shawn Smith: [00:13:05] Well, Lee, I’m glad you brought that up because I’m in the same boat. I’m 57 years old. I have a part of that sandwich generation. The sandwich generation, 9% of adult Americans like me have a child still in school. I have a son in college, and I have a mom who’s 81 years old in assisted living. And boy wouldn’t what I wouldn’t give to be able to understand exactly what her care plan is and to participate in it. So that’s exactly what we do on the technology side of one to health is to roll up our encounter information into a personal health record and a comprehensive care plan that can then be shared with everyone in the care network of the patient and the care network we define as family members, caregivers that may or may not be family health care practitioners. You know, it’s why is it kind of a little bit of a dovetail here? Why is it that if I’m based in Austin, Texas, and I travel to Florida, I could go to an ATM and get a pretty accurate information on the side of the street of my financial information. But if I get hit by a bus in that street outside of my own community, that hospital is likely going to have no information on me or how to take care of me. Medication, contraindications. Past Encounter Information. We need to do a better job through technology of giving the patient a complete view of what’s happened to them in the past and then that care plan that they need on a go forward basis to to maintain their health. And that’s that’s what we’re doing with respect to one health on the technology side. And absolutely that’s shareable with family members, caregivers, other members of the care network.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:40] Now have we’re talking about how nice this would be to have and the people appreciate it. Are there stats to say that when this is in place and it’s implemented and people are taking advantage of it, they are truly getting much better outcomes that they are really kind of benefiting in. It lowers the cost for the medical institutions and it’s also lowers the cost for the patient and they get better outcomes. Like I would imagine that that happens as well.

Shawn Smith: [00:15:11] That is absolutely data that we are collecting today. We’ve we have it’s not just anecdotal, it’s real data. Again, I mentioned lowering A1 C levels for diabetics being able to to improve and lower blood pressure for hypertensive patients. We’re we are very, very involved in under patient consent to be able to collect information that that would produce trends and and to then disclose. Those trends over to the organizations that we’re partnering with for for their patient base. So, for example, we were recently endorsed by an organization of rural and community hospitals in Texas to do a pilot for 250 diabetic patients post transition from a hospital in rural Texas. And they want six months worth of data collected so they can then present that back in an educational seminar at their annual conference to all 160 hospital members. So it’s important for each of those facilities that are that are providing patients into our delightful service to be able to have the outcomes information that proves that there is a less recidivism back into the facility, that proves that we’re improving the health and wellness of their patients, that proves that they can be reengaged in a accurate and sustainable way back into the health system that is more cost effective and not a hair on fire 10,000 visit into the emergency room. So when you have that kind of information than the the payers of the world, the insurance companies are excited and get involved and will support the transition of patients into services like ours. So that’s really, really critical for us to collect that information.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:46] Right. And in those rural and remote areas where there is an access, this becomes a must have. This isn’t a nice to have anymore. This is kind of their lifeline to medical support and help. So this is not a non negotiable thing at some point, isn’t it?

Shawn Smith: [00:17:06] The need for virtual care in rural communities was already very, very big prior to COVID. So there are many, many people in again in our state of Texas that that might drive 45 miles, 50 miles, 60 miles to get to their doctor. And in the case of emergency situations, some of those smaller facilities weren’t really staffed or capable of doing providing the care that they needed and certainly weren’t getting the patients weren’t getting access to that care through through telehealth to help prevent them from having an emergent situation that would take them to the hospital. So it was really important already to have access through virtual first preventative care. It’s even more important now through COVID with the lack of attention that patients have received in both rural and urban communities. But but I’ll follow on with with one other thought in that area. One of our resellers is Hasa HASA is the largest health care information exchange in the state of Texas, 57 hospitals, hundreds of clinics associated clinical practices, mostly in rural communities. And for them, the idea of using technology and a service to engage the patient and to provide them with details that, again, prevent the need for them to be traveling to a very, very expensive visit into the facility is huge. It’s a game changer for rural communities. And and by the way, we love organizations like Casa Torch, which is the Texas Organization of Rural Community Hospitals. We love those organizations because it’s a fact that lower income seniors and seniors of color, especially in rural communities, have less access to care, less less access to actual information. And we are about providing that social impact in terms of our service. In fact, part of what we do is when someone subscribes to our service, we provide a free monthly wellness checkup for a person in an underserved community. So it’s part of our heart and our passion, especially in rural America, to provide that little service that is just difficult to get even prior to COVID and so incredibly important today.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:12] Now, do you have any advice for other founders who are dealing or relying on resellers as part of their growth? Is there some advice you can share about how to build those relationships, how to kind of get to know these folks when you don’t have something that’s been around forever and they’re, you know, it’s new to them.

Shawn Smith: [00:19:32] I’d say get to know your market. What would be my first bit of advice and it it sounds like it’s a no brainer and something that everyone thinks about. But but I’ve found and by the way, just this is my fourth startup. Once your health is my fourth, fourth startup, I’ve had the pleasure of being the CEO and the entrepreneur on three other organizations that were in the in the health care digital space, where, where we designed productize and monetize digital health solutions. And so this comes a bit of advice from experience. The organizations that spend the time on market research and spend the time, the money on getting to know their market, to figure out what it is that they have to sell, who’s going to buy it for how much and what value does it provide and who can they partner with in order to to get more traction is well worth the time in the money for for an entrepreneur. So if that’s not already baked into the budget, I would say that that’d be the first thing that that advice I always have, especially about connecting with other potential resellers. You can’t figure out who’s in the market that you need to partner with in. Until you better understand the market and then start looking for personnel that you can bring to to the party, if you will. So, for example, our chief sales officer had over 35 years of experience in digital health sales to hospitals and health systems. What a great place to start is to bring someone in with that kind of experience and those those connections and that network to be able to help you not only understand who your customer base is, but but how to immediately connect with people that can make a difference in bringing sales to your company.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:09] Good stuff. Well, how did you hear about Startup Showdown and Panoramic? How did they get on your radar?

Shawn Smith: [00:21:16] Well, again, since it’s my fourth startup and we were moving from our own founder and friends and family round into a seed round, I started looking at some of the institutional investors that are that are in the marketplace. And in Atlanta, Georgia, a good, good friend of mine that’s with a venture capital, I’d actually actually recommended panoramic ventures in the startup showdown. He said, Well, you know, the VC that I’m speaking with are, again, good friend of mine went to to Rice University, like I did in Houston. And they don’t focus they focus more on on fintech and cybersecurity. So health wasn’t their area, but they recommended panoramic and the startup showdown. And what a great opportunity to get connected with with a VC that that really can make a difference in the growth and the scale of your of your organization. And I think that’s what panoramic is doing with the startup showdown is they’re identifying a lot of companies with really unique technologies, with with great digital health applications, with technology enabled services like ours, and giving them the opportunity to take advantage of their own experience and their own network to help you scale and grow.

Shawn Smith: [00:22:25] And and that’s what we really love about panoramic since we’ve gotten to know them after winning the startup showdown is as one of their companies is that they’re true operators they really have the experience and the understanding and their goal is to help you to be to scale to a series, a round and beyond. And but they’re not just you’re not just folks providing money and they’re not just guys that are sitting on the board and saying, Give me your metrics. They’re really folks that want to be involved. They have the experience, they have the connections, they have the network, and they’re just fantastic partners. And that’d be another bit of advice for for a startup company is find the right partner financially that can understand your business and fill in the gaps in areas where you need help with. Make recommendations, advice, counsel on other partners, on on potential customers, on other people that might help to extend your funding. And I believe and know that that’s who we have in a partner at Panoramic Ventures.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:22] Yeah. It’s like you said earlier, relationships are important, so choose them wisely. Right? So if somebody wants to learn more about one true health, what is the coordinates? What’s website? Best way to connect with you or somebody on the team?

Shawn Smith: [00:23:37] Oh, thanks for asking. So the number one true health.com is our website and you’ll get a great view here of what we do to engage patients that are consumers, that people can actually register or schedule a call. Become part of our family. And as far as as my own email address, Shawn Smith, SJW and Smitty at one True Health and I’ll be more than happy to connect and answer information or if there’s somebody else in our organization like our chief sales officer or someone else that can be of service, we would be more than happy to to make that connection.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:16] Well, Sean, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Shawn Smith: [00:24:21] Thank you, Lee. It’s an honor to be here and all the best to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:23] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:24:29] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown DC. That’s Showdown Dot DC. All right, that’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

JT Trujillo With hand+sum

by

JTTrujillo
Atlanta Business Radio
JT Trujillo With hand+sum
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handsumJTTrujilloJT Trujillo, CEO & Founder at hand+sum

2023 MBA Candidate at Emory Goizueta Business School

JT Trujillois a first-generation Colombian-American as well as a first-generation college grad. He is married and has three little girls. He is a grad student at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Coming from a banking/FinTech background and he leaned on his professional experience for class projects at GSU. Little did he know, he was onto something. Through this business idea/plan he wants to change the way under-represented minorities (URM) and the underbanked population perceive the financial industry and how they can access borrow money.

Connect with JT on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Vicious cycle of pay day lending
  • Lack of equitable credit market for minorities and immigrants
  • Credit
  • Alternative methods of lending/borrow/credit
  • Pay day lending industry/practices bogging down URM’s
  • Different versions of P2P lending
  • How social media and online forums are helping to create new ways of borrow/requesting a micro-loan

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kanter here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is a very special one. It is our Gsu eni radio edition and it’s going to be a good one. Today on this show we have JT Trujillo and he is with Handsome. Welcome JT.

JT Trujillo: [00:00:46] Hey Lee, Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your company. How are you serving folks?

JT Trujillo: [00:00:55] Yeah, absolutely. I’ll definitely go into that. So handsome is an alternative lending solution for payday lending. The three components behind Handsome are that it offers fixed rate fees rather than high interest rates. It allows customers to earn discounts on those fees, like depending on what their journey is throughout the loan and then as well as the funding takes place. Almost immediate leveraging some of that a to a the account debt account technology kind of like when you Zelle someone you get the funds almost immediately so yeah handsome is on a mission to provide more affordable lending solutions to the underrepresented minorities.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:40] Can you explain for the listener who isn’t familiar about kind of this payday lending? How does it work? Who do they target and why it can be? On one hand, it’s helpful, but it can be detrimental in the long term.

JT Trujillo: [00:01:54] Yeah, absolutely. So payday lending actually leads a lot of families into a vicious debt cycle. So I like to say and there’s statistics backing this, that there’s like a dual credit market. So typically individuals that have good credit earn anywhere over 60,000 a year. They can go into a regular financial institution like a bank or credit union, ask for a personal loan or maybe like a credit card, and have pretty reasonable rates. Now coming to payday lending. What really inspired me was this statistic that kind of scared me is that there is an only 37 states allow payday lending and there are more payday lending storefronts than there are McDonald’s in the entire US. And so payday lending actually targets the underbanked community. And basically you just go in there and to apply for a loan anywhere between typically it’s between $100 and $400. And they just take your pay stub and they give you, you know, sometimes up to 50% or more of what your actual earnings are for that pay cycle. And so what happens is that a lot of individuals are just going in there to either bridge the gap, kind of like my parents were. And what happens is that it catches them in a debt trap because when their next paycheck comes in, they have other expenses to pay and it makes it really difficult to pay that payday loan that they have outstanding. And then it just becomes a constant cycle of just paying that. Most payday loans are actually borrowed about nine times, so that’s where that industry is and it’s a pretty big one.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:39] Now, what are the choices for people if they don’t go payday lending? Where can they go or is there nothing else? Is that the best move they can make?

JT Trujillo: [00:03:53] Yeah, the only other options that they have are borrowing from friends and family, which can bring a little bit of shame. There are some fintechs that are out there that are coming up with some sort of anonymous ways of requesting funds from friends and family. But, you know, they don’t they’re not really they’re left in the dark. They’re left behind by some of these financial institutions. So they don’t really have a lot of options other than that. So payday lending, although it is a vicious cycle and it does trap people in a vicious cycle of debt, it is a necessary tool. There’s just a lot of improvement in ways that it can be done better.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:31] Now, if you were to look at it through the lens of the payday lender, how do you think they’re kind of justifying the high rates? Like what’s their rationale for their high rates?

JT Trujillo: [00:04:45] Yeah, good question. So from a business perspective, there is a little they’re taking on a lot of risk. So a lot of these individuals either have a very short credit history or if not, they have pretty bad credit. That’s why they don’t actually pull credit to verify these loans. It’s more based off of income. So some of these interest rates can go up to 396% and that’s an API. So it’s pretty scary how high these interest rates can go as well as the hidden fees that are associated with payday loans. So maybe you might take out a loan for $100. And you know, if you roll that over or request an extension, there’s a fee for that. And then on $100 loan, you can end up paying. Act like $250 for just that $100. So I do think that the business is look at it from a high risk perspective, but there’s still so many other components in ways that you can make that better and more affordable for people who are already having a tough time affording life.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:48] Now, you mentioned a personal kind of maybe impetus that got you into this space. Can you share a little bit about that and what your solution is to help kind of alleviate some of the pain?

JT Trujillo: [00:06:00] Yes, absolutely. So I used to actually be a customer of payday lending early on in my adulthood. I wasn’t making a lot of money. I didn’t have the the tools and the education to know how to and understand money and how to manage it. And so I did go to a few payday lenders and I experienced that vicious debt cycle myself. And so it was just difficult. It was like playing catch up every time. But even before that, I’m a first generation Columbian American, and my parents immigrated to this country and we lived in a low income neighborhood and community. And I saw that despite that fact, a lot of individuals worked really hard. They they worked odd jobs. They worked multiple jobs. And they would pay their bills on time. And sometimes they just needed a little bit more to get them over the hump until they received another paycheck. And they would turn to these payday lending storefronts and it would just be a trap. And sometimes it was just money to put food on the table, to keep the lights on, you know, to pay for tuition. So it made it really, really difficult. And then fast forward to being at GSU and my entrepreneurship class. I’ve I just heard this scary statistic that, you know, over 67% of the adult population in the US can’t afford a $400 emergency. So that quickly, you know, just inspired me and made me so enthusiastic to find a solution to this that would not only help, you know, individuals such as myself and my family, but, you know, so many other Americans that need an affordable alternative solution to payday lending. So that’s where Handsome came about.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:48] So how does it work?

JT Trujillo: [00:07:50] So handsome. So the way that the Hansell works is that you apply for a loan anywhere between $100 and $400. Now, what I’m working on right now is trying to structure an algorithm that would help alleviate some of that underwriting. So there’s some financial components that in, you know, an applicant would have to submit. We would look at some of the financials so we won’t pull credit because it’s historically known that, you know, some of these individuals will qualify for certain loans. And rather than digging their credit, we’re trying to pull from other sources to underwrite them and get them a loan and approved. And then after the approval, after they’ve been their financials have been reviewed, if they can’t receive or qualify for the entire loan, then there will be a counteroffer made rather than just a straight denial of the loan altogether. And then after approval, once they sign in and basically finalize the documents, the funding can actually take place almost immediately, which is needed and always overlooked because some of these individuals are in a pinch in the middle of the night, or they get off on a late shift, their car got towed, sometimes their cars break down in the middle of the night and they just don’t have anything else to get them through the next pay period.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:10] So who is your underwriter or funder?

JT Trujillo: [00:09:14] So that I don’t have one yet. So I’m doing everything manually right now. And that’s what Main Street, that’s where Main Street came in. And I’ve been guided and mentored a lot as to what our other solutions. So right now I’m doing a lot of this work manually, so I don’t have any partnerships just yet. Hopefully that’s what I achieve to do. That’s what I’m hoping to achieve when Demo Day comes around in October.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:41] So do you have targets like who would be an ideal partner for you? Or is this something that can be done, maybe peer to peer and do some sort of, you know, crowdsourcing for the the people that are lending?

JT Trujillo: [00:09:56] Yeah. So I actually thought about the idea originally as a peer to peer lending, but then there’s a lot of regulations that comes around the peer to peer because then you have both sides. You have to appease both sides, not only just the borrowers, but also the lenders, and it just makes it a little bit more complicated. So I am hoping to target a partner that I can actually receive some of the funding from and maybe process the loans through that way on a short term loan basis, almost like Squarespace does with some of its. Like some of its vendors and stores where they might have a short term loan of three days to pay back, you know, X amount of like X amount of revenue. So all the other streams of revenue that they’re getting through three days, they’ll get a loan and then they pay it off. So that’s that’s what I aim to achieve.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:49] So how did Main Street get on your radar? How did you get involved with that program?

JT Trujillo: [00:10:55] I was actually a student at the time at Georgia State University, and I was taking an entrepreneurship class and my professor, Arthur Stepanian, at the time, he made me aware that there was a school, not only just an incubator, but then there’s an accelerator. So there’s launch JSU and then there was Main Street. And he after I submitted my project and my idea, he thought it was really mature for the, for just a simple school project. And he and he really taught me that maybe I should use this little, I might have caught lightning in a bottle. And he thinks I should definitely develop the idea. So I took him on and I took his word for it and I applied to Main Street. I wasn’t sure what the outcome was going to be because I was still a student. I was applying to business school and I’m a father of three, so it was a lot to juggle. But then, you know, after the interview process and the and the first couple of rounds, I was I was admitted. So, yeah, that’s how Main Street came on my radar.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:58] So prior to that, were you thinking your career path was going to be a guy to get a job at a, you know, an enterprise level organization and just follow a traditional kind of career path. And now you’re into this world of entrepreneurship.

JT Trujillo: [00:12:12] Yes, exactly. I thought I graduate from Georgia State, go back to work and basically, you know, a nice, cushy, remote job or, you know, something of that sort. And but then once I got every day I work at this at Handsome and chip away at it and understand, especially with the pandemic as well as inflation and everything that’s going on in society right now. And the current in in the news, it’s like, you know, more than ever, so many individuals are in need of a product like this, you know, just to get by.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:51] So has it been how you imagined? Is it harder or easier? What have been some of the challenges?

JT Trujillo: [00:12:58] Yeah, that’s a good question. I can definitely say it’s been a lot harder, but Main Street has definitely helped in providing a lot of mentorship, a lot of guidance and direction, if there’s any support that we need or any question. The entrepreneur in residence as well, some of the other mentors that are part of the program, it’s very easy to reach out to them and and kind of say, hey, I’m lost or reach out to your own cohort. We’re very close and we have like a Slack channel, you know, for all of us. So yeah, it’s it’s been hard and I thought I was the only one struggling. But it’s nice to hear from the other founders that they’ve run into a lot of hurdles and obstacles, and you’re very ambitious as an entrepreneur and you think you’re going to achieve a goal and like a week and it really takes a month. And so that’s one thing that I’m starting to realize. You know, there’s always you know, you have to plan for one step. It’s going to take multiple steps to get there.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:57] Now. Do you have any advice for other startup founders?

JT Trujillo: [00:14:03] Never stop working. That’s always my key piece of advice, because when you stop working and you put your startup down for a second, that’s when doubt starts to creep in and you have all those other voices and there’s just so much noise that comes in, even if it’s just an hour a day or 30 minutes a day, just getting ahead on something, I would definitely just say, never stop working.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:27] Now. What do you need more of? How can we help?

JT Trujillo: [00:14:33] I guess. I mean, what do I need more of? I mean, more than anything. Capital, for sure. A nice software developer, CTO would help too. But no, just a platform of choice. I think that just the awareness that there’s actual there’s a big need that needs to be filled and just using this platform to kind of just spread the awareness on payday lending and how many Americans actually need help just to get by and put food on the table. That would that’s just that’s helpful enough.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:05] And when you were saying that it’s not that they need loans for $1,000,000, they need loans for a few hundred dollars. So, I mean, it seems to me like this is a dream that could come true if you have the right players involved.

JT Trujillo: [00:15:20] Yes. Yes. My goal is not behind this idea. I mean, I am a for profit business. This is not a for profit organization. But I do want to provide underrepresented minorities with the option, you know, seeking just they don’t have to go and and put themselves in a vicious cycle of debt and really, really disrupt their family’s livelihoods just because, you know, they need a few hundred bucks. This is going to be easy. And so, yeah, I definitely look to achieve and bring a solution to the market that would help all these families in need.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:00] Now, how many do you have any idea of the number of people that are underbanked?

JT Trujillo: [00:16:06] There’s about 12 million Americans that are underbanked, and then there’s even more that are just unbanked altogether. But yeah, 12 million Americans in the United States just have a simple checking account with a debit card. And there’s so many other alternatives. There’s so many other products and solutions to their financial needs that can be offered to them. But sometimes they feel like they are just left behind and just written off just because they might not make more than $60,000 a year. But as we know, with inflation now, 60,000 is a lot different than it was just a year ago or two years ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:44] Right. And if there’s more of these payday lenders in more locations than McDonald’s, there must be a lot of demand for the service because they’re not opening up storefronts just for their payday.

JT Trujillo: [00:17:00] Lending is a $46 billion a year business. So they are they are definitely around. And they’re they’re making a lot of money. And the sad part about it is that only about 14% of individuals who take out these payday loans can actually afford to repay it. So, you know, it just goes to show that those hidden fees and those high interest rates, also the individuals just don’t know what they’re getting themselves into with payday lending. I know my family didn’t, you know, speaking a different language. They thought it was just a quick loan. They didn’t understand that when you borrow $100 in two weeks, it’s over $150. They didn’t understand that component.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:42] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about Handsome, get on your radar. Maybe have a conversation with you more, learn more. What is the website? What is the best way to connect with you?

JT Trujillo: [00:17:54] So I am still in the process of launching the website, but you can go to you can visit Handsome IO. If not, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Jt Trujillo You’ll, you’ll definitely find me under there. But yeah, those are the ways to connect.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:11] Well, JT, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

JT Trujillo: [00:18:16] Thank you so much for having me, Lee. I really appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:19] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you on. See you all next time on GSU Inai Radio.

Intro: [00:18:27] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on paycom.

 

About Our Sponsor

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

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

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Spark Stories Episode 19

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DarleneDrew
Spark Stories
Spark Stories Episode 19
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Darlene_DrewDarlene Drew is a public servant.  She’s a Leadership Trainer and the CEO/Owner of Leadership Conditioning, Personal & Professional Development, LLC.  She’s a Certified Leadership Trainer, Professional Speaker and Executive Coach with the John Maxwell Team.  Darlene helps businesses, companies and organizations by helping leaders develop leaders

Darlene’s passion is “building up people,” through teaching, training and speaking.  Her guiding life and leadership principle is, “Don’t teach what you don’t know, Don’t lead where you won’t go and Don’t ask for what you won’t give.”  Lead Well!

Darlene has been a public servant through employment in law enforcement which began as a Correctional Officer where she was initially told, “You’ll never make it!” Having decided to “make it,” she continued this career path with a focus on making the field better for staff and inmates.  Throughout it, she was asked interesting questions, some of which were: “Why are you here? What should we call you? Why do you do it?” These were all learning and teachable moments from Darlene’s perspective to do what she loves: learn, teach and train.   She placed her focus on effecting change, mentoring and developing staff and inmates.

Connect with Darlene on LinkedIn.

 

About Your Host

sparkstories2022

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks is a personal brand strategist, trainer, mentor, and investor for women entrepreneurs. She is the founder of She Sparks, a brand strategy design consultancy.

Using her ten-plus years of branding & marketing experience, Dr. Sparks has supported over 4,000 women entrepreneurs in gaining clarity on who they are, what they do, and how they can brand, market, and grow their businesses. Using her Brand Thinking™ Blueprint & Action Plan she gives entrepreneurs the resources and support they need to become the go-to expert in their industry.

Follow Dr. Clarissa Sparks on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Glyn Hughes With TIACA

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South Florida Business Radio
South Florida Business Radio
Glyn Hughes With TIACA
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DTLLogo-Blue-Bannerv2Glyn HughesGlyn Hughes has been involved in Air Cargo for over 37 years having started his career with British Caledonian in the UK. He joined IATA in 1991 and become IATA’s Global Head of Cargo in June 2014, where he had overall responsibility to deliver the agenda agreed by the Cargo Committee to support the Air Cargo industry.

In February 2021, Glyn joined TIACA as its first Director General where he will work with the Board to deliver the organization’s vision for a safe, profitable, and united air cargo industry that embraces modern technologies and practices to sustainably and fairly serve trade and social development worldwide. Priority areas include safety, security, digitalization, and innovation.

He is dedicated to developing collaborative relationships and is a firm believer in supporting the next generation of industry leaders and innovators. Glyn spends a large amount of time on outreach programs with training and other educational establishments.

Connect with Glyn on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The role air cargo logistics plays in the global economy
  • The role Miami airport plays in US logistics
  • About TIACA
  • The TIACA Air Cargo Forum
  • Supporting sustainable developments

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 Glen Hughes with TIACA. Welcome.

Glyn Hughes: [00:00:32] Thank you, Lee. It’s a pleasure to be speaking with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] Well, I am so excited to learn about your organization. Tell us a little bit about TIACA. How are you serving folks?

Glyn Hughes: [00:00:40] Well, what we’re doing in TIACA, let me just explain what the acronym stands for. It’s The International Air Cargo Association, and we are a global association based in South Florida, in fact, based at Miami International Airport. And we represent the entire logistics supply chain that deals with air cargo. Most people, when they see an airplane fly, they think of the people sitting on that plane flying to their holidays to see family. But what they don’t possibly realize is that what’s also flying on that plane could be millions of dollars worth of pharmaceuticals, vaccines, cell phones, computers. Almost anything that we use in our daily lives is going to be flying on an airplane at some point.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:20] So when a regular person is flying, you know, to a city for vacation in the cargo hold, there might be commercial products also on board as well.

Glyn Hughes: [00:01:30] Absolutely. Yeah. And in fact, from a from a global value perspective, global trade is roughly about $18 trillion, about a third of that, in fact, slightly more than a third, about over six and one half, nearly $7 trillion worth flies on airplanes. Some of that flies on dedicated cargo airplanes that you see the likes of FedEx and UPS operating, but also the American Airlines, Delta, United, they’ve all got very large cargo divisions which are carrying billions of dollars worth of cargo in their what we call them, their bellies. So it’s literally underneath the passenger seat, an incredibly valuable part of the global economy, the US economy and also the Floridian economy.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:12] This to me is another example of how logistics and supply chain are like invisible to kind of regular people and they’re so vital to the communities they serve. Can you talk about kind of how this association came about? Like what was the was this has this been around since the beginning of air travel and air, the use of airplanes?

Glyn Hughes: [00:02:34] Well, I’ve been around in aviation for quite a long time. People often say, did I know the Wright brothers when they were in Kitty Hawk? I haven’t been around that long. But it’s it’s it’s nearly 40 years that I’ve been involved in in aviation, and T.A. has been around even longer than that. It it really sprung up because very much associated what you said a moment ago, really, about the fact that everyday folks aren’t always aware of of what logistics does because it operates behind the scenes. People see it when the guy knocks on the door and gives them their parcel that they’ve ordered on Amazon, but they don’t necessarily associate everything that happened prior to that parcel coming to their door. And so when it comes to lobbying governments, working with airports, working with regulators, working with manufacturers about the need for industry efficiency, for solutions and standards that can actually work to pick up a piece of cargo. The other side of the world and basically fly it in the safe, same condition of which it originally entered the supply chain requires a global voice. And this is really what TR does, is it brings together members. Our members are airports, airlines, ground handlers, trucking companies, all sorts of people associated with logistics. And then we can represent them collectively and try and ensure that the industry is is safe, effective and efficient.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:57] Can you talk a little bit about because this to me is fascinating in terms of there are so many moving parts literally and there are so many different ways to move, you know, cargo from one place to place. So, you know, you have ships, you have trains, you have, you know, trucks, and now you have air. How do you all play together? How does how do you kind of keep track of a of a box from point A to the endpoint of the consumer? Like, it seems so complex. There are so many, you know, variables that you have to deal with.

Glyn Hughes: [00:04:32] Exactly. A great question because, of course, again, we associate ourselves as passengers. If we want to move to go on vacation, we effectively get ourselves from our house to the airport, whether or not we use public transport, taxi, our own vehicle or whatever. We then walk through the airport, we walk onto the plane, we get off the plane, we then somehow get ourselves to the destination hotel or people were visiting. But if you’re a piece of cargo that can’t walk or talk, you’re going to need to rely on something to make sure that those boxes, crates, cartons, whatever, get to where they need to go. So we have to use advanced technology. Sometimes some of the cargo, which is extremely precious, if you think, for example, COVID vaccine, COVID vaccine has basically been flying on airplanes for about 190 countries. Much of that vaccine has to be maintained in precise temperature conditions, flying sometimes to very hot environments, some environments which don’t necessarily have a strong infrastructure. So we can use data sensors that travel with the cargo, that can transmit information, that can record the temperature that the cargo was moving in. For secure goods, if you’re moving gold bars, diamonds, other things of value, you want to make sure that there’s no tampering. So we use a lot of digital connectivity to exchange information so that people on the supply chain knows what’s coming. We can then communicate with customs and other regulators to ensure that the cargo is cleared and is approved to go into a particular country or acceptable to export. And then, of course, as I say, we monitor the condition throughout throughout the journey. So it’s a combination of using high tech and great procedures and a lot of very dedicated men and women who work pretty, pretty solidly during some very tough conditions to make sure the precious cargo moves when it needs to be moved to where it needs to be moved to.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now with the kind of the acceleration of technology and things like blockchain and how does that play into all of this? Because in some ways, some industries are slow to move and lean into technologies and others are faster. Where do you see kind of logistics and supply chain when it comes to leaning on newer technologies to solve some of these complex problems?

Glyn Hughes: [00:06:54] Yeah, I would actually say that that historically we were probably a little bit slower than what one would have considered the norm or the accepted standard. But it has to be said that during COVID, when most of the world was kind of shuttering in place at home, etc., the logistics industry was working 24 seven, moving PPE around, and then moving vaccine and moving other medical things around. And then digitalized solutions really accelerated in terms of adoption because the information, even simple things in the early days of COVID, people didn’t want to hand over pieces of paper because they weren’t sure where was that piece of paper safe. So transferring digital information was a way of cutting down on that human to human interaction. Then it was a way of accelerating information flow. So the airports were aware of what was coming towards them so they could prepare in advance rather than wait to see and then react. So it was a way of making the system more efficient. Customs and other regulatory agencies say, Well, you know what, we would like to get information electronically so we can make sure it’s safe to fly. So there’s a lot of countries now in the US was one of the first in this area where you submit electronic information before the shipments are moved so that the regulators can actually assess and say, yep, I’m happy for that to enter my country. So I would say that, you know, the latest adoption of technology has really accelerated in the last couple of years throughout the logistics and air cargo space, and we expect that to continue.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:25] Now, how do you feel that South Florida is doing when it comes to its role in the United States logistics? Is it something that the airport is is kind of rocking and rolling or is it something that, hey, you know what, in a perfect world, you wish there was more of this or that?

Glyn Hughes: [00:08:46] Well, and I first of all, have to say, despite my accent, I actually grew up in south Florida. So I’m a kindred spirit.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:53] It sounded like a Kendall accent.

Glyn Hughes: [00:08:57] Well, I grew up in West Palm and then in the latter years lived just north of Fort Lauderdale. Now I’m based in Europe, but our association is based in Miami. And I say this with with no doubt whatsoever that anybody is going to contradict me, that Miami International Airport is without doubt one of the world’s leading airports when it comes to air cargo. In fact, it’s the second. In fact, I think it’s the largest airport in the US for international cargo movements. If you look at domestic, you’ve obviously got FedEx and UPS at Louisville and Memphis who move more domestic cargo. But MIA is the largest international cargo airport in the US. It is the gateway to Latin America. You couldn’t you just couldn’t imagine how many flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables actually come through the airport. The conditions at which they store them and move them is exceptional. And just from a number perspective, and this one is actually I look this up earlier and it’s quite staggering when you think of the size of Miami Airport versus the rest of the state. 40% of Florida’s trade with the world goes through MIA International Airport by value. So if you think Miami Port, you’ve got a wonderful port there. You’ve got wonderful ports in Jacksonville, you’ve got wonderful other airports Orlando, West Palm, Fort Lauderdale, etc.. But the importance of MIA internationally for air cargo is tremendous. And as I say, 40% by dollar value in terms of Florida’s trade with the rest of the world is pretty, pretty exceptional.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:30] Well, let’s talk a little bit about. Like a day in the life of your association. How do its members kind of participate? Who is the ideal member? And, you know, what is some of the benefits of being part of the organization?

Glyn Hughes: [00:10:46] And a great question. First of all, who is a member? Anybody that is associated with logistics. So, you know, it can be somebody that just owns one van and they they do a delivery round. Or it could be an airline that has 400 aircraft. It could be airports. It could be, as I say, trucking companies, grain handlers, technology providers. Anybody that’s involved in this great industry is welcome to join the family. What we then do and and our role has to be pretty fluid. During COVID, for example, when people were trying to move things around the world, we were instrumental in making sure that closed airspace in certain countries were open so that the cargo coming in could land safely and help to distribute and save lives of the citizens of those countries. And also bringing in, as I say, important things like food when it comes to humanitarian situations. We work very closely with a lot of agencies like UNICEF and others to make sure that we can help where there are disaster recovery situations and that the access they need to capacity, we can we can match with people who own that capacity. And those are kind of urgent type of reactions.

Glyn Hughes: [00:11:54] But then on a more day to day basis, we work with the entire industry looking ahead, how we can tackle, excuse me, some collective challenges like right now. The sustainability question is one that’s huge. And for us, sustainability is not really just the environment. It’s about looking after the planet, looking after the people, and helping global prosperity. And when it comes to things like recruitment, you know, this industry is is is a growing industry and it needs to attract and retain and develop a lot of young talent, as well as return to workers. And we need to make sure that the workforce out there is is aware that this great industry is there and the benefits that it can bring to global society and to local society. So we have a lot of roles or a lot of activities about industry promotion, working with universities. We’re putting on a big trade show later on this year actually in Miami. So we do a lot of outreach and do a lot of white papers and whatever we can do to help the industry grow because this industry is supporting effectively the global community.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:01] Yeah, I think when you especially when you talk about next generation workforce, it’s it’s just not on the radar of young people. I think, you know, when when kids are playing, they’re not like, I’m going to be the supply chain person, you know, like I’m going to be in logistics. You know, that’s not a role or a career that it’s top of mind. And I think it’s so crucial. I think there has to be a lot of coordination between public and private and and especially the universities to develop curriculum that is going to help solve that workforce challenge that, you know, as more and more things and people move logistics plays a bigger and bigger role.

Glyn Hughes: [00:13:41] Absolutely. I mean, that is incredibly well said, Lee. And if you don’t mind, I’m probably going to quote you going forward, because that was really eloquently put. I mean, a lot of people just think when they say logistics, they think are delivery driver. Well, that’s that’s one part that’s an important part. But this industry also has huge investments about autonomous vehicles. If people like playing with drones in their private life, come and work in this industry and develop drones that can fly in the Canadian frozen outback or into the Brazilian Amazon rainforest or throughout Florida, doing drop offs, doing humanitarian drops in in Africa, we’ve got advanced robotics. There’s people designing the next generation of technology, even things like social media and modern communication platforms, solution designing. I mean, this industry is so diverse, fleet planning, equipment purchasing. I mean, these modern aircraft are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So people are actually applying incredibly, I would say, well considered strategic plans for how to make the aviation economics work. And just the idea of moving something. Let’s take wildlife, for example, conservation programs. If people really want to focus on how they can support cons of conservation, not conversation, but conservation programs for wildlife. Air cargo is at the forefront of this. It helps in breeding programs, but to move delicate wildlife again from one side of the planet to the other requires incredible precision planning and animal welfare. So these are all really intensely important and valuable roles that this industry can offer people.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:22] Yeah, I think that there just has to be a more awareness for young people to see kind of that side of it. Because it is. Leveraging bleeding edge technology to really make a huge impact in whatever area that they’d like to make that impact in. Like you mentioned, wildlife conservation, you know, play with drones and robots. I mean, it’s not your grandfather’s supply chain or logistics where there’s, you know, people in warehouses lifting boxes and stuff, like more and more of that is becoming automated and robots are doing that kind of work. And you need this brainpower to really kind of take this another step forward.

Glyn Hughes: [00:16:02] Absolutely. And again, you know, you hit the nail on the head when you said it’s not about just the boxes, it’s not about moving one box from A to B. This industry is actually focusing on the value that’s inside that box. And if you gain if you want to picture people giving over engagement rings, wedding rings, flowers on on Mother’s Day, flowers on Valentine’s Day, all these are activities which we take for granted. But if it wasn’t for our cargo, they wouldn’t be possible. And these are the powerful images that we need to instill in that next generation, because they can truly make an impact on their local community, as I say, and the global community. And in fact, we’re going to be holding this event in Miami in November. And we’ve dedicated the third day of our event to what we call Careers Day. And we hope that any university or high school or even just individuals that are vaguely interested in this area to kind of come along to the Miami Beach Convention Center. It’s a free event. We’re going to have about 5000 people attending with 200 different exhibitors and conference program and world class speakers. And it’s it’s free for people to come along and introduce themselves and just kind of hopefully go away with an aircraft model or two and and hopefully a vision and a dream of how they can impact this industry in a positive way.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:20] Well, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you. If somebody wants to learn more about that air cargo forum that’s coming up in November or any of the other events that you have going on throughout the year or become a member, what is the website? What is the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Glyn Hughes: [00:17:38] Right. That’s a great question. The best way is to go on to our website. It’s T aka dot org. So t a c a dot org. The event, as I say, in Miami Beach Convention Center is November 8 to 10, the 10th. It’s the Thursday is the day we’re opening up for Careers Day. And we’re also going to have some giveaways for students and and raffle off some iPads and other equipment, etc., as is we. We know how to hopefully keep their attention going. Anything related to technology, they’re the front of all of that. So we hope we can help them as well with some latest tech.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:10] And that’s IAC a dot org. Glenn, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Glyn Hughes: [00:18:19] Thank you very much, Lee. I really appreciate giving us the opportunity to speak to your great audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:23] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will sail next time on South Florida Business Radio.

 

Marcus Cooksey With DUKE.ai

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Marcus-Cooksey
Startup Showdown Podcast
Marcus Cooksey With DUKE.ai
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MarcusCookseyMarcus Cooksey, CEO and Founder at DUKE.ai., has 25 years of software development experience, along with a broad range of expertise related to embedded systems design and software development of real-time applications. Previous roles included, Applications Engineer for TI’s VoCable, IPPhone, ThinClient and Automotive Infotainment product lines and Business Development Manager (China/Taiwan) for Texas Instruments’ ADAS product lines.

His entrance into the technology world was built upon years of working as a UPS loader and sorter to subsidize my college tuition. He returned to his trucking roots in 2015 and founded LUI Transport, LLC. LUI Transport grew from a single truck to five trucks in 2019.

The inspiration of DUKE.AI occurred while attempting to manage financial bookkeeping and accounting using software tools available at the time.

Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn and follow Duke.ai on Facebook

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Tech background
  • Transportation
  • Problems in transportation workflows today
  • Challenges to overcome in starting/running DUKE.ai

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown podcast. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Marcus Cooksey and he is with Duke.ai. Welcome Marcus.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:00:59] Hello, Lee, how are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:00] I am doing well. I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Duke AI. How are you serving folks?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:01:07] So we’ve created a virtual bot and that virtual bot is responsible for processing documents specifically in the kind of legacy mundane kind of world of transportation and logistics for applications such as payments, load order, entry bookkeeping and accounting and invoicing.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So how did you get into this line of work? What’s your backstory?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:01:29] Backstory is my background is in computer science engineering. I was part of our automated driving, self driving solution at a Fortune 500 company. I was building solutions for business in China and Taiwan, kind of growing that business there. But I also had a fleet of trucks, so I had five trucks that I was running at the same time. And I was fascinated with how archaic documents processing payments was done at that time using humans before Duke was invented. And so I took kind of the vision based learning that’s needed for self-driving cars to apply that vision types of machine learning for reading documents and processing them like a human would do it.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:10] Is this the first time you’ve led a startup, or were you always working kind of in a corporate setting or a technology startup setting, but not as the leader?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:02:20] Absolutely. So even within working in the corporate setting, I’ve always were on kind of skunkworks projects and so forth. So I led a project that involved natural language processing. So it was one of the first what they call digital assistants, voice activated digital assistants. But yeah, this was my first time with my own personal tech startup. Now my trucking business could be considered a startup and as well. But in terms of technology, this is the first time.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] Oh, so your trucking business was kind of a side hustle for you?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:02:51] Yes, indeed.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:53] And that’s where you kind of combine kind of your technology background with what you were doing, boots on the ground with the trucking.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:03:00] Yes, absolutely. So I saw the inefficiencies in transportation and I became more fascinated with applying kind of what I knew around self-driving cars to creating kind of this virtual bot that processes documents.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] Now, when you had the idea, did you like how did you kind of get some traction or at least some clues that maybe this was a solution that could scale?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:03:23] Yeah, I needed to know that it was practical because I knew, unlike, you know, self-driving cars, the, you know, the rules in vision based applications with cars are kind of well known. You know what a human looks like a vehicle lane markers. But in transportation, you could have thousands of different documents, formats, the orientations, all of those different things that makes processing and document difficult. I need to prove that it works. So I did some little experimentation at home on my own, did some prototyping, tested with a variety of different documents to see if I could actually lease, extract the data data and then do some contextualized learning and then pull out the key data. When I was able to do that on a across a few documents, I got confident that I could actually implement this and make this do it on a broader scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:15] Now, was it difficult when you attack a problem like this and you have kind of legacy businesses that have been doing things the way we’ve always been doing it? There are a lot of times hesitant to change. Was it difficult to open their mind to the possibility that you were offering?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:04:31] Absolutely. I remember being in a meeting and I told them that our virtual bot could process documents accurately nearly 99% of the time. And he was very skeptical and pretty much walked me out of the door because he recognized how difficult the problem was and he was a little skeptical. I think most people, you know, in this industry, maybe it’s just because of just their their backgrounds or understanding how hard the problem was. They were very skeptical. And so when you you know, in this case, you actually have to do the proof in the pudding to really bring people on your side and make the believers.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:09] Now when they’re processing it kind of in a human way. Isn’t kind of the errors and mistakes way more prevalent than your way?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:05:17] Absolutely, yeah. I mean, the attention span of a human to do some repetitive, mundane task is very short. We don’t realize it, and we’re prone to do errors on a regular basis. But I think it’s like self-driving cars. You know, when I was doing that, people are hesitant of even given that control. All of a vehicle to a to a to a robot. Even though we know humans are prone, 90% of the errors or accidents are caused by humans. And the same would apply for processing documents, the introduction of human error into the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:54] Now, how were you able to get kind of those first companies online to beta test and to even, you know, explore the possibilities of your solution?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:06:05] Now. Fortunately, we even though the the platform can scale to other applications on the enterprise size. Fortunately we had a an app and so I think the app gives you a quicker way to connect with customers by having them to download it and experiment with it and then eventually become paid customers. So by having that app, it gave us the feedback loop that we needed that customers were interested or certain things were not working right and improvements we had to make versus having to go to a larger company and convince them to integrate this. So we were able to get some test learning through the mobile app we have.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:44] And then once they did that, they were getting more and more confident with your solution.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:06:48] Absolutely right. So the mobile app does what you would say, the bookkeeping part, right? So now think about a trucker who’s an owner operator. He’s on the road. He doesn’t know anything about accounting. And so now he just connects to his bank account and uploads receipts or invoices or send them via email to a virtual bot. And it handles it like a human would. So it automatically categorizes, it generates charts of accounts, generates reports, profit and loss statements without the driver even changing and modifying anything. And so we had to refine that. But that learning taught us that we could have further applications beyond just the bookkeeping part, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:26] And once they feel comfortable there, then it’s easy to kind of nudge them into more and more adjacent services.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:07:33] Absolutely. So now we’re offering other products such as invoicing. So now they see it on the bookkeeping side and they’re like, okay, now you’re doing something more serious, like payments. Can this virtual bot now handle my payments in invoicing on my behalf and doing all of the checks and aging and so forth? And so now they’re gaining more confidence around its ability to handle payments as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:00] So now has this started to evolve beyond kind of the side hustle and now this is your main gig? Or did you are you still kind of in two camps here?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:08:10] Oh, absolutely not. No. It’s impossible for me to go to two camps. I am fully in I’ve been fully in now for three years. And now we have employees that work at the company. And so, yeah, I spend all of my time on for the most part.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:26] So now as leading a tech company that you are any kind of surprises or is it how you imagined.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:08:35] It, didn’t it? Oh, so many surprises. You know, I tell people there’s not a straight line in a startup. You envision it being a straight line, but it comes with a lot of curves. I wouldn’t have known that Covert would have occurred. I couldn’t have known that retaining employees, no matter how smart they were, we’re going to be an easy thing to do. So we had to come up with clever ways to survive through all of these different situations competition for top talent, creating our own apprenticeship program to offset that, it’s just been I won’t say it’s been easy, but I have developed all types of survival skills that I didn’t have before.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:19] Now, for a lot of founders, they have advisors and their mentors. Were you able to kind of benefit from that? Did you have advisors or mentors along the way?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:09:31] I’ve been very fortunate. That has been the difference maker. My co-founder, Vishwanath Gupta, came on with me. We were colleagues at T.I. He came to help me on the technical side and then we brought in some other individuals that were friends of mine on the CFO side. And then along the way, as we participated in different events, networking events, I brought on an who knew the industry, who could coach me well and help me identify key talent to help make our product even more robust and complete. And that has been significant, more so than sometimes the sales or even money. You raised that advisor. Committee board as is very pivotal, very important.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Now, when you when you have the idea for a service like this, did you know you were going to get a co founder or was there something was a part of you saying, hey, I think I can do this on my own? Or were you always saying, okay, I need a co founder? And if so, how did you kind of go about choosing the co founder you have?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:10:39] It is funny. We chose each other. My co-founder and I and we didn’t start the company until we both found it. We both kind of chose each other, so to speak. We were at a launch in 2017. He was talking about what he was doing for his wife’s medical practice, and I was talking about what I was attempting to do with my trucking company and both of them were very similar. Im trying to automate documents around medical back office and me for transportation. And so once we agreed that we both had the same goals and objectives, we formed the customer, the company do guy. So I don’t think I would have formed the company without a co founder.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:22] And so when you were negotiating with the co founder and getting kind of aligned on values and vision, can you share some advice on how to have those kind of those conversations? Could be difficult and you have to kind of address things good and bad and ugly moving forward in a future that you’re not aware of how it’s going to play out.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:11:42] Absolutely. Fortunately, we had the same corporate values because we came from the same company. So we had similar work values in terms of our, you would say, social values, even though we’re from different nationalities. He’s from India and from the United States. Our core values of believing in people and cultivating people, we share that in common. And then the desire to do something in AI that we shared in common in terms of passion and technology. So for for me, I was fortunate that I didn’t have to go shop with someone because I had a person within my network that I continued to talk with, even though we were in divergent types of. Applications of AI and data science. We were able to come together and settle on what we thought was which was a trucking problem to be solved more so than the medical problem. And then I think that that has paid off. It’s been a good bit.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:46] Now, you mentioned the challenge of attracting and acquiring talent. Was that difficult to kind of transfer your vision, dream and the you know, the the monument you’re trying to build to other people?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:13:00] Absolutely. I mean, you’re talking about a very, very difficult. Solution. The answers don’t exist. There aren’t any boxes that you can open up that tells you how to process documents, how to create workflows, how to do it across a cloud, and how to do sales and marketing. And there’s no books. And so it’s a first time founder. In terms of tech, there are things I didn’t know. Right? And I’m learning on the fly and the team doesn’t know. Right. And so they have to believe that. And that’s some of the challenges that that they had. Some of my team members couldn’t trust the decisions that we’re making, and we ended up losing some some talent. And so we ended up doing that. Lee is is coming up with another way because we always think about jobs being taken from AI. And one of the things my co-founder and I challenged is challenged ourselves is is that, you know, why don’t we go out and find people who are just hungry? And let’s train them around data science and AI. And we found that to be a better pipeline than trying to go find someone who works at Facebook or Google as like we were doing before and cultivating those individuals.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:13] So you’re kind of growing your own talent.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:14:15] Yes. And that comes with challenges as well, because now it’s the same thing they don’t quite understand. They’ve never been on projects. Certain projects that my co-founder and I have had. But we could we’ve learned that it’s possible to cultivate individuals and grow them, you know, kind of within both in the culture as well as the technical skills they need.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:38] Right. And in a lot of industries, they, you know, they hire for attitude and trained for skills.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:14:45] Yes, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] So how did you hear about startup shutdown and panoramic ventures?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:14:53] You can call me a fan of Paul George. I have been been watching his activities both on LinkedIn, on Instagram. And I was part of the Tech Square Lab Pitch event some years ago, back in 2019, when he was I don’t know if he was if he’s still managing it, but at that time he was director or he was involved there. And so I continue to observe him. So when the opportunity came, I applied for the startup showdown that they had in Austin.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:24] And then what part of that experience was most beneficial?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:15:30] It was the mentor session that was really good. I had one particular mentor. She really broke down and asked some good questions on my pitch deck and I revised it. She didn’t quite know who who were my customers. It wasn’t a parent. And really we had two customer bases, both the small businesses and enterprise banks. But it wasn’t clear. And it was a simple change into on one slide that actually identified both. And I think that story was able to resonate with even with the judges, because they could see that we’re we basically have a symbiotic growth between two customers. It’s not limited to one. And so that feedback she gave me, I think, really set the stage for really defining who our customers were and how we were targeting.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] So what’s next? What can we do to help?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:16:28] Yeah. I mean, at this moment, I always tell people we built the engine. Right now we are building the assembly line. We want to get document processing into the hands of big carriers, banks in the transportation industry. Software platforms. We are a platform that plugs in and integrates into any solution. And so we just now need the assembly line, which is the cells we model ourselves. After that, they have this quick, easy way to be able to download their SD cards, their apps and so forth, and quickly develop. And that’s kind of the vision that we have too, is because in transportation there’s a lot of costs associated with operational costs. Of course, fuel is one of them today. And so what we offer is the ability to reduce operational costs, create cash flow, while also giving business insight. And that’s an, I think, a new, compelling solution or vision. I wouldn’t even say vision. It’s just a new way, a new paradigm that we’re introducing into transportation and transportation. So we just want to get this disseminated to everyone in the industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:39] And any advice for a founder of a startup that’s like you that’s trying to kind of go into a world that has a legacy way of doing things and you’re really kind of trying to disrupt it. Any advice for that person on how to frame their offering in a way that allows people to open their mind to it?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:18:00] Yeah. Trucking is tribal, and I didn’t understand that at first. So you must understand the tribal nature of whatever industry you’re going through. So there’s, there’s I wouldn’t use the word gatekeepers, but understand the culture. Right. And it’s not even just your product, what concerns the customer and it’s not even the product that you’re offering. It could be the fact that the restrooms that they go to or the gas stations that they go to or they can’t find parking are issues. Understand everything about the industry and not just the small part you’re solving. And now that makes you more credible and able to empathize with all aspects of the business. So understand that’s the first thing I would say is really respect the tribal nature of the industry you’re going into and then to be ready to pivot, right? You will pivot in some kind of way and unless you’re just fortunately fortunate. And so in order to pivot, you will need to have good advisors to help you to understand the other applications. So you need great advisors, you’ll think you need money and you do. But advisors are really pivotal and critical.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:15] Yeah. And to be able to discern who has the better connections and advice within that money is an important consideration.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:19:27] Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:29] Now, Marcus, who is the ideal prospect for your service? Who do you want to meet more of?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:19:38] We’d like to meet more banks that pay carrier’s truckers, but we also like to work with other software services or software companies that service the carries the truckers to integrate the technology into their platforms.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:59] So if somebody wants to learn more about Duke, what is the website? What’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Marcus Cooksey: [00:20:06] If you want to learn more about the product, you just go to the website. Duke I we’re on Instagram. Duke I Facebook. Duke Guy And I’m on LinkedIn. Marcus Cooksey And, and in fact, on our website, we have a direct if you ever want to schedule a meeting with someone from my team, we actually have a direct free scheduling so somebody could reach out to me if they have a question about starting a business or anything other than the app, they can find me for those resources.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:36] Well, Marcus, thank you so much for sharing your story today and congratulations on all the momentum you’ve got going on right now.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:20:44] Yeah, and thanks for the startup showdown and Panoramic Ventures for believing in the vision that we have. We’re like I said, I’m a fan of Paul Judge and everything that he’s doing in the tech scene. And so, you know, I’m kind of. Sometimes you just need visionaries and you just watch them and model them. And so some of that is what I do is kind of watch what he does. And so I’m thankful for the opportunity and their belief in what we’re doing here at Duke. So thanks for having me, all.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:12] Well, Marcus, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Marcus Cooksey: [00:21:17] Thank you, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:17] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:21:23] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Start Up Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup Showdown Pitch Competition Visit Showdown B.C. That’s Showdown dot B.C., right? That’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

Lori A. Manns With Quality Media Consultant Group LLC

by

Lori Manns
Atlanta Business Radio
Lori A. Manns With Quality Media Consultant Group LLC
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QMC GroupLori MannsLori A. Manns is president of Quality Media Consultant Group, a consultancy firm providing value-based, solutions regarding advertising, marketing, and sales strategies for optimal business success. Lori specializes in helping entrepreneurs and small business owners gain more clients, generate brand awareness, and grow sales. As a master business strategist, Lori’s mission is to help one million, purpose-driven, entrepreneurs to monetize their expertise and achieve trailblazing success. Because of this mission, she founded the Trailblazer Business Academy, a consultancy program to help entrepreneurs build and scale profitable businesses.

Lori is a published author and professional national speaker. She hosts nationwide events educating entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, and sponsorship procurement. Since establishing QMC Group, Lori joined the esteemed Forbes Coaches Council and is a regular contributor to Forbes.com. She was named 2017 “Business Woman of the Year” by Transforming Women Entrepreneurs (TWE), and has been featured in Who’s Who In Black Atlanta from 2010 to 2021. Lori has received numerous other awards from national organizations and local municipalities. Prior to QMC Group, Lori worked for WVEE and WAOK as Senior Multi-Media Account Manager for 13 years.

In addition to being an entrepreneur, Lori demonstrates her passion for philanthropy as president of Live Healthy & Thrive Youth Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to children’s health. Manns holds a bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from Auburn University/Montgomery. Her professional affiliations include Dekalb Chamber of Commerce, NAACP, and Leadership Dekalb. Lori currently resides in the metropolitan Atlanta area.

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Sponsorship as a topic that entrepreneurs should learn about
  • The misconceptions about getting sponsorship
  • The advantages when working with sponsors
  • Sponsors expectation from us if we want to partner with them
  • Helping entrepreneurs learn about sponsorship

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Lori Manns with Quality Media Consultant Group. Welcome, Lori.

Lori Manns: [00:00:42] Thank you, I’m so happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m so excited to catch up with you. For those who don’t know, share a little bit about Quality Media Consultant Group. How are you serving folks?

Lori Manns: [00:00:51] Well, we are a business consultancy firm specializing in advertising, marketing and sales solutions to help small business owners grow and scale their businesses for maximum impact and revenue.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:05] And today, we’re going to talk about a topic that probably not a lot of small business people consider as a go to move at first. And you’re saying maybe they should and that is sponsorship. Can you talk about what that is and how entrepreneurs can leverage that?

Lori Manns: [00:01:21] Absolutely. You’re absolutely right, Ali, because a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners don’t realize how big of an industry sponsorship really is. It’s 25 billion annual dollars are spent in the world of sponsorship each year. And a lot of times we think of like the natural things for sponsorship, like sports teams and entertainment concerts and things like that. But they’re major corporations, Fortune 500 corporations that work with entrepreneurs and small business owners all throughout the year. And so sponsorship is basically selling the exclusive rights to a company to partner with your organization or your small business in exchange for media. It could be anything. It could be media that you give them. Like if you have advertising on a platform, you could also exchange for signage, you could exchange for digital assets. There’s so many things that you can add in your sponsorship arsenal that a sponsor may be interested in. And so that’s why I like to talk about this topic as a possible revenue stream for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:47] Now, if somebody says, Hey, that sounds interesting, what would be some baby steps they can be doing today to make their company or service or platform more attractive to create these sponsorship partnerships?

Lori Manns: [00:03:04] That’s a great question. One of the things that I always tell my clients is to increase your brand awareness, and that is because most corporations do not need us to help them get the word out about their businesses. But they do have initiatives that they want to penetrate in their target market and they want brand loyalty. And so as a entrepreneur who’s interested in working with sponsors, if you have penetrated your target audience and created brand awareness for your company and you have some engagement, whether that be through social media or whether that be your website or whether that be a blog or podcast or whatever it is that you have that you utilize to create brand awareness for your company, then that is an asset to a sponsor. It shows that you already have a audience that they can tap into and potentially get some brand loyalty through you and through a partnership with you. So that’s the first thing work on your brand awareness.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] And then how do you even identify the right person in the organization to have these conversations with? Is there a director of sponsorship in companies or is this an advertising function or a marketing function? Like who is the person that makes this buying decision?

Lori Manns: [00:04:33] Well, that’s also a great question. It’s going to depend on what it is that you’re trying to get a sponsorship for. And so there are many departments within a corporation. For example, if you are. A small company or an entrepreneur, and you are a human resource consultant and you work with businesses to help them get their human resources department up and running. Well, then you want to talk to somebody at a corporation who’s in the human resources department or possibly supplier diversity. So it just depends on what it is that you do. And what it is that you’re trying to get a sponsor to fund as to who you would talk to within that corporation. So that’s why you need to work with a professional consultant and coach like me. So you could be trained on precisely who the person is that you want to talk to, what you need to say to them in order to be attractive to them so that you can position yourself as an asset and show that you have some synergy with that company and with their goals so that you can demonstrate that alignment and they would be more attractive and attractive to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:56] So what’s your backstory? How did you get into this line of work?

Lori Manns: [00:06:01] Well, I spent 19 years, almost 20 years in radio sales and marketing, and I worked for two stations in the Atlanta area. One was Cox Media and the other was CBS at the time, and CBS is now Odyssey. But I sold radio advertising and also digital assets because we had the Internet and streaming and live streaming as well. So selling radio advertising and digital assets to major corporations gave me the experience to know how to navigate the world of sales as it pertains to sponsorship. And when I became an entrepreneur in 2009, I decided that this was a topic that a lot of small business owners, especially the micro business owners and solo entrepreneurs, they had no knowledge of. And so that’s why I wanted to educate them about ways that they could partner with local companies in their area, as well as corporations, so that they could develop a revenue stream that would really help them grow their businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:21] Now, you mentioned that one of the key points is to emphasize brand loyalty over brand awareness on behalf of the enterprise sponsor partner. Are there any other kind of do’s and don’ts that you would recommend a entrepreneur or a small business kind of taking advantage of when it comes to building this kind of sponsor package? Is it a one size fits all or is this something you’ve got to kind of customize for every conversation you’re having with an enterprise level sponsor partner?

Lori Manns: [00:07:54] Well, I believe it’s something that deserves customization. I wouldn’t go in to one corporation with the same pitch that I would go in with another because you actually have to do your homework to develop that sponsorship proposal based upon what their unique needs are. And you don’t want to have a canned sponsorship proposal that you send out because they truly may not be attracted to that. And then again, they may. It just depends on where they are in terms of their goals and initiatives. So one of the things that you can do is to. Always have some recommendations, testimonials and case studies that you can provide to a sponsor to demonstrate your expertise in the area where you navigate. So whatever industry you’re in, whatever area that you represent in your business, whether it’s a niche or whatever it may be, you must have some case studies and testimonials and recommendations from satisfied clients and or partners that you have collaborated with in the past to demonstrate your reputation, your work ethic and all of that good stuff so that you can show your credibility and show your level of expertise. Because once again, a corporation, they have the brand name behind them, they have the big dollars behind them. And they also have a lot of you know. Protocol procedures and whatnot that they have to follow to be able to justify why they worked with a entrepreneur like yourself or a small business like yourself. So if you have some of that due diligence that you’ve done to demonstrate your expertise, your credibility and your reputation in the marketplace, that’s always going to put you above some of the folks that don’t have that.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:02] Now, what about in terms of the deliverable back to the sponsor? What are some of the expectations they’re going to have from us if they’re going to if there is to be a good, healthy partnership?

Lori Manns: [00:10:16] Well, those deliverables can vary. And again, the basics, you know, people always think, well, we’re going to put their logo on our marketing assets. Well, they don’t so much care about that. That’s like gravy. But you really have to get in there and and do a real analysis as to what’s going to move the ticket for them. Are they looking for return on investment or are they looking for penetration in the market just to help them promote a new program or a new initiative? So it just depends upon what they’re looking for as to what deliverables you should be promising them. But of course, you know, one of the things that all sponsors like is media. They like to get their name out there in the public and make sure that they have some penetration in the media.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:11] And then when an entrepreneur is working with you or do you work primarily with entrepreneurs to help them get sponsorships, or do you work with sponsors helping them match up with the appropriate entrepreneur?

Lori Manns: [00:11:25] I work with entrepreneurs to consult with them about how to get sponsors so that they can establish relationships and get sponsors on their own.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:36] So are you doing that via, you know, kind of hand-holding, consulting to help them individually or is this group or do you do events?

Lori Manns: [00:11:45] I do events and group as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:49] So how does it work? Do you have an upcoming event or is there can you explain what what a session or a workshop looks like with you and your team?

Lori Manns: [00:11:59] Absolutely. I have an event coming up called Sponsorship Sales Secrets Live, and it is September 23rd and 24th. And it’s a virtual event where I teach entrepreneurs how to get sponsors and grow their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:15] And then what? Like, what can you expect by attending this event?

Lori Manns: [00:12:20] Well, they are going to get practical tools, tips and strategies for how to sell. The first day we do sales mastery and the second day we focus on sponsorship selling, and they’re going to get actionable strategies and tools that they can implement that day and learn how to go out. And first of all, who to target, how to sell, how to overcome objections, how to get to the right decision maker. There’s a ton of information that I share over this two day event to help entrepreneurs get sponsors and grow their businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] And then the two day event. How many is it? An hour a day? Is it all day? Like, what’s the.

Lori Manns: [00:13:02] Well, it’s Friday and Saturday, September 23rd and 24th from 10 to 3. So it’s 4 hours. We take a break at noon and then we come back at one. So it’s 4 hours of great content. It’s a working seminar where I also give you some assignments and I do some hot seats and basically go over your sales pitch and your sponsorship pitch right there on the spot. So you walk away with knowing how to put that pitch together.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:35] And you said there’s still space available if somebody wants to attend.

Lori Manns: [00:13:39] Absolutely. There’s still space available. And I would love for everyone to check it out at sponsorship sales secrets.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:49] Sponsorship sales secrets dot com. And if you go there, you can check it out. And again, like, do you have like how how sponsor ready do you have to be is that somebody that could just be considering this or is somebody that’s totally new or it’s for veteran sponsor people?

Lori Manns: [00:14:08] Well, sponsors want to work with you at any stage as long as you can demonstrate what I said before, some brand awareness and credibility and interaction with your target audience, whether you’re just starting out or whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur, you can pitch sponsors. And so it’s the gamut because when I first became an entrepreneur, I did not have a track record. I had only been in business a year, but I was able to still get sponsors. So it’s not something that only experienced entrepreneurs can can use that as a revenue stream. It’s for anybody.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:50] So if in your career thus far, is there a story you can share, maybe a client you worked with that you helped get a sponsorship and take their business to a new level? You don’t have to name the name, but maybe explain what their service was and how they were able to build this sponsor package to attract the sponsor.

Lori Manns: [00:15:10] Yeah, well, I’ve had clients in various industries throughout the years that I’ve coached and consulted with. I had one entrepreneur who had a nonprofit that focused on financial literacy for young people, and she came to this event and just by the information that she learned while she was there, she took what I shared with her and what I taught at this very same conference that I’m talking to you about today and was able to go out and get a Fortune 500 company to sponsor her nonprofit. And that happened within just a couple of months after she left the Sponsorship Sales Secrets Workshop that I am referring to.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:00] Well, congratulations on all the success again. Could you give the coordinates for your firm if they want to learn more there and this event.

Lori Manns: [00:16:09] Yes my firm is quality media consultant group and you can find us at WW W quality media consultants dot com. And also this event is called Sponsorship Sale Secrets Live. It’s taking place September 23rd and 24th virtually. And so that means you can join from anywhere and you can register at sponsorship sales secrets.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:38] Well, Laurie, thank you so much for sharing your story, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

Lori Manns: [00:16:44] Thank you. Lee Canter, you are awesome and I just love Business RadioX and you guys do a great job. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:51] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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