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Amy Hager With Association Rockstars

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Amy Hager
Association Leadership Radio
Amy Hager With Association Rockstars
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Amy HagerAmy Hager, Co-Founder at Association Rockstar.

She is a true marketer at heart, uses her years of expertise and her go-getter personality to relate and apply business strategies across many businesses and industries. Her love of small businesses and the community is reflected in her work; driving revenues and new engagement tailored to a business’s strengths and breaking down weaknesses with strategy and tactics is Amy’s superpower.

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Build marketing and sales teams in non-profits and associations

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

Amy Hager: [00:00:31] Hey, thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] I’m like, so I’m so excited to learn what you got going on. Tell us a little bit about association rock stars. How are you serving folks?

Amy Hager: [00:00:39] Yep. So Association Rock Stars is a online community where we’re really focused on singing the praises of those unsung heroes. There’s a lot of association professionals out there who are CEOs and working in different communities for different movements and missions. And we really think they all have a unique and different story to tell. And so we’ve brought them together and created a interview series that we do every single month, and we really just try to find these unique stories in the different communities of which we all live in.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:14] And then what drew you to associations? Why did you decide to focus in on that group?

Amy Hager: [00:01:19] Yeah. So my personal story of my association journey, because I feel like, again, they’re all so different, is I actually used to work for a publishing company as their PR director, and my main job was to belong to all of our local chambers and our local associations like Kitchen and Bath Association and everything along those lines. And so when I made the move out to Washington DC back in 2008 with my husband for a job change, I was moving to the Mecca of the association world. Everybody is in DC who’s an association. And so I started to work in the marketing and membership and events areas, and as I continued to grow my career and move into the executive director role, I was one of those executive directors that was out there just working so hard for my members and for my industry and didn’t really get a chance to connect with other executive directors who were working super hard for their industries. And so when I was presented with the opportunity to kind of create association rock stars with our co founder, Lowell Applebaum, it was just, again, this this chance to bring people together who are really champions for their association, because sometimes it is that alone feeling. You feel like you’re the only executive director of the organization and you’re going through a lot. So opening up the conversation so that they can collaborate and come up with solutions together because being a CEO sometimes is very, very lonely.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:53] Yeah. And I think that in today’s day and age, it’s much better to be investing in community than it is audience necessarily, which is kind of a slight departure for folks in in kind of marketing and the marketing world to invest in building a community where people can work together and collaborate and help each other. It’s it’s refreshing.

Amy Hager: [00:03:17] Well, and I think when you get a community of like minded professionals together, it is refreshing. You have the person to cheer you on when you need to be cheered on or to cheer with when you’re celebrating something. And I do think that through conversation, we become a lot more clear on what we should be communicating or how we could be communicating, or where we could be communicating a message. So I totally appreciate you nailing that on the. Headlee It is a different way that we think about marketing than what the traditional was communicating to an audience and broadcasting your message everywhere and instead focusing on building that collaboration, who’s really behind a movement. And sometimes the movement is the individual right. But a lot of times it really is that larger movement where we’re trying to better the lives of of the industry that we’re representing.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:14] Now on this show, we are talking to association leaders and we’re trying to share with them some best practices and maybe some tips and tricks that other association leaders have gleaned over the years. One of my I don’t want to say concerns, but it’s something that I’m trying to keep an eye on, is the attracting of young people into the association world. I think a lot of young people are cynical and aren’t embracing and leaning into associations and really taking advantage of the opportunities that they offer a young person, especially in a career. Do you have any advice for leaders of associations that want to kind of open the doors to younger people because they become the pipeline of of leaders, of future leaders, of the association? And if you ignore them for too long, you’re going to have a problem at some point.

Amy Hager: [00:05:07] Yeah, no, I think one thing that I’ve really honed in on as a leader of an association and as a leader of a team and staff and those. New generations coming in to the workforce. You know, I really feel that as an association leader, I have been asked to be a jack of all trades all the time. I need to be good at writing. I need to be good at speaking. I need to be good at video. You know, I need to be good at graphic design and putting together events and all the things. And I think what we’ve really unfortunately done by becoming a jack of all trades and trying to be really good at all these things is we’re spreading ourselves just way too thin. And so as this new generation is coming in and what I think current leaders need to really look at is what is the strength of that individual that’s sitting in front of you? What do they what do they bring to the table? Because a lot of young people are bringing amazing experiences, great new thought leadership to the table, but they’re just not being asked, what is your strength? Where do you rock at? What do you rock at? How do you want to create content? Do you want to create an audio file or a video, or do you want to write or do you want to do graphic design? And so instead of having these job requirements where they’re so spread thin with every single task, doing all the things, if we can micro task and we do this with our volunteers, a lot of times now I don’t know why we haven’t thought to really implement this one with our staff, especially newer staff. But I do think that that’s really a different approach to look at bringing on the newer generation is allowing them to thrive in their strengths and not telling them to be the jack of all trades that we were forced to be in.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:00] So what is your superpower? What is it that you bring to the table that really can help another organization get to a new level?

Amy Hager: [00:07:09] I would definitely say that the approach that I’ve been focusing on to help organizations market to the community and the like, I didn’t know you were going to mention how strong and how important communities are in marketing, but really to be able to attract those who can get behind a vision and a mission and actually repel the ones who aren’t the right ones, who aren’t going to be on that mission or vision with you. And once we really look at the attraction and the repel type marketing, tapping into your team and allowing them to especially market an organization market and sell an organization based off of their strengths and really shifting that narrative. That’s where I’m seeing the most success with the associations that I’ve been working with in adjusting their marketing implementation strategy. When you look at your staff and what you’re actually trying to achieve.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:09] And when you do get clarity of a true north or what the ideal person looks like, it is easier to say no to things and to recognize when you’re kind of stretching in areas, maybe you shouldn’t be stretching and you’re kind of compromising in places you maybe you shouldn’t be. I think that’s a key point to know not only what the person looks like, but also what they don’t look like and to to avoid those people.

Amy Hager: [00:08:37] Well, and I think, too, that there is an association for literally everything out there. Right? There’s a nonprofit association for everything. And so if that person sitting in front of you isn’t the right member for you, they will find support somewhere else. There’s plenty of people out there who need to belong to a community of like mindedness and who need to belong to a mission and a vision of how we’re going to move forward and whatever the industry is. Right. And so I think as leaders, again, we tried to not only ourselves be jack of all trades, but a lot of times the associations started to become the jack of all trades. And so if we really focus our niche on what our organization does really, really well and how we make that positive impact on the member’s lives, and we focus on the thing we do well and we help those who need that thing. That is your ideal member right there. And that’s who you need to be marketing to.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Right. And those are the people that you have to be investing in and leaning into rather than trying to to fix somebody or to, you know, kind of force a square peg into a round hole.

Amy Hager: [00:09:47] Yeah, most definitely.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Now, in your career, I’m sure there’s been ups and downs. Do you mind kind of sharing a challenge that you went through or maybe a mistake that you made that you were able to overcome and maybe got you going in the direction that you are now?

Amy Hager: [00:10:02] So I would say one of the mistakes that I made is when I was at an association where I was the only staff member and really did a great job of talking to. The members and talking to prospective members and figuring out their biggest pain point in their need because the association was spread way too thin. We are doing lobbying, we are focusing on marketing, we’re doing inspections and making sure that there were these industry standards that were being held. And when it really boiled down to what the actual member wanted, they really wanted help marketing. They really wanted help getting foot traffic into their businesses. And so when we switched the organization to focus on that, it was a great micro niche. I think the mistake that was made and this was a mistake on my part and by the board is we really structured the offer and the benefit of being a member based off of the benefit of my marketing strengths. And so when I left the organization and they couldn’t find a marketer who was a like minded marketer that I was, it really left the organization into a pinch of do they hire that square peg to fit in this round hole and try to make this person be what the organization needs them to be? Or does the organization have to shift and go back to spreading itself then being in all these different places? And so the one thing that really turned my perspective is making sure that we do have other professionals in, I guess, entering the workforce who see this new way of creating a association and making it sustainable by niching down.

Amy Hager: [00:11:52] Who agreed to that? Because it’s kind of hard to come across, but I think it’s slowly making a shift and I’m seeing this a lot better. And this was back in 2015, 2016. So we’re quite a few years away from there and also have experienced a lot different experiences. But it really did show me that we’ve got to make sure that we’re starting to get a shift of the leadership, either thinking differently of how to run the organizations who are currently in those positions or attracting future leadership who see it that way as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:27] Now, in your career and where you’re at today, when you made the shift to this community oriented marketing style, when did you start seeing kind of the breadcrumbs of, Hey, we might be on to something here? This is starting to resonate. This is I feel better about it. The people we’re serving feel better about it. When did you kind of get the hint that you were on to something?

Amy Hager: [00:12:51] I would say. Pretty instantly with the current members, with those really active ones who are going to tell you what they think no matter if it’s good or bad. It was very instant with them, with the potentials and with the people who have left the organization. It took about a year. It was an overnight success, and it took a lot of breaking down barriers that were not that old organization that was doing too much and trying to do too many things, and that we’re really focused on helping this piece. So I would say instantly with the members who were super involved, but it did take about a year and it did take a lot of one on one meetings for them to really gain the trust of the organization again, because they felt that they had been burned or they felt that the organization didn’t meet what they needed. And so building that one on one trust and building then those champions within the organization to help spread that message was super key. Because if I tried to do it again as the staff of one all on my own, we would have never achieved it. So it really was making sure that those who truly believed in the mission really saw the vision, were also equipped with the tools to then talk about that and really enroll other people into this new vision, into this new movement, into this new way of thinking, and get them to join onto that movement with us in when we built the movement, of course we had their input before, so it was kind of easy because that’s what they said they wanted. But it was getting them focused on that one pain point within business that an organization or an association can really help them do.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] Now, can you share a story? Obviously don’t know the name, but maybe share the challenge that the association you were working with had and then how you were able to help them get to a new level.

Amy Hager: [00:14:58] So I think again, when it comes to recruiting members and getting members behind that movement, if if it’s too widespread, it’s it’s too hard for everyone to buy on. And so when I’m working with organizations now, we really want to hone in on, on, on that process and on the results that you’re going to get from interacting with us. And a lot of times we focus too much on the oh, we have a conference. Oh, you can come network. Oh, you can come do this. You can do that. If we really scale back on the I call it the boat. So we’re selling the boat like the peanuts of the boat, the captain at the boat, the music that we’re going to listen to on the boat. And if we really talk about the results from being in the organization, the results from working within community, the results of how we’re moving this mission or this vision forward when we’re able to really have those higher level conversations and get out of the weeds of the how to and get into the result conversation, that’s where you really see the turn of the members who want to be there because they’re on that vision with you. They’re not there because they want to go to networking events or they’re not there because they want to have that trip to Orlando to your national conference.

Amy Hager: [00:16:24] Right. You see the turn in your membership becoming quality and more invested in investing more of their time and their business into the organization because of that overall movement. And so how I’ve seen this work out, organizations now, again, it’s a different way of thinking. You really have to reprogram the conversation and you have to reprogram the person who is sitting in front of you of how they see the organization. And it’s it’s definitely, I would say, like an educational type campaign, right? Letting them kind of build that like love and trust factor with the organization and and see that their business is going to benefit or their individual professional development or whatever the certification might be, will benefit from being in that organization. But I think shifting the conversations leave from instead of all the little the little cool, fun things that you get with membership and you know, you have a three page long list of all of these things. If we talk about the results you get by being involved in this community, being involved as a member and being a part of this organization, you will see the up level of that membership.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:42] Yeah, I think it’s funny that a lot of associations, they forget to ask what the outcome that the member desires is and they’re adding all these features in and what they. Membership perks, and they’re not really having conversations with the members to see what they’re really trying to get out of this.

Amy Hager: [00:18:02] Exactly. Very true.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:05] Now for you, what is the ideal association for you to work with? What what’s the profile of a good fit client for you?

Amy Hager: [00:18:14] I would say really the organizations who are working on serving their business, usually business based organizations. Even though I’m a certified association executive SCA and I also hold my IOM Institute of Organizational Management designation, and I believe that those trainings and those professional, professional development opportunities have really helped me in my career. I know that my strength lies within organizations who are really supporting businesses. So I really love working with local chambers, working with travel and tourism industry businesses and hospitality organizations, and really helping them connect that larger business community of how do they help those members? How do they help the members grow with foot traffic? How do they build the the economic developments that need to be built within a community to support business? So that’s really kind of where I thrive.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:19] Now, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the coordinates website, LinkedIn, things like that.

Amy Hager: [00:19:27] Yeah. So if you literally just look up Amy Hager it’s a y, h, a g e are either on LinkedIn, Facebook or if you Google. I do have a website. Amy Hager Solutions to get to the Association Rockstars. You’re definitely going to find us on Facebook. That’s where our major group lives. And then we also have association rock stars dot com, which you can read about our rock stars. You can listen to our interviews on our podcast. So if you got iTunes or Google Play, we’re there. And then also on YouTube, we’ve got all the interviews housed there as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:05] Well, Amy, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Amy Hager: [00:20:10] Thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:12] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.

 

Chris Williams With VPPPA

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Chris Williams
Association Leadership Radio
Chris Williams With VPPPA
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VPPPAChris WilliamsChris Williams, CAE serves as the Executive Director of the Voluntary Protection Program Participants’ Association (VPPPA), a 501[c](3) association representing participants and stakeholders in OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program. Chris has served as an association leader for more than 20 years, leading membership growth, program development, and safety & health for a variety of organizations.

Connect with Chris on Linked and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Association leadership
  • Membership growth
  • Governance, safety & health
  • Program development
  • Emerging leaders

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:19] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Chris Williams with the VPPPA, which is the Voluntary Protection Program Participants Association. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Williams: [00:00:36] Thank you for the welcome. I appreciate that. And I apologize for the mouthful there. It was a VPPPA.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:42] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about the association, how you serving folks?

Chris Williams: [00:00:47] So VPPPA has been around now since around 1984 or thereabouts, going on 40 years here we serve. The best way to put it is we were started as the Association for OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program participants. What that is, it’s a compliance assistance program for all industries that companies are involved in basically the best of the best in terms of safety and health programs. And as we’ve evolved over the years, the association has focused more on all companies. What we mean by that is there are other safety associations out there that represent the safety and health professionals and the companies that that really are striving for that VPP star designation. And also to be the best of the best, the world-class companies, we bring them into the fold as well instead of focusing just on that VPP program. So that’s as I’ve mentioned previously to a number of folks that are listeners here that I’ve worked with directly. We like our name Voluntary Protection Program Association, love it. It’s a mouthful. So we go by VPPPA because we represent, as I said, the best of the best in terms of safety and health.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:47] Now, when you have safety and health as the forefront of the mission, do you spend a lot of your time kind of in education mode where you’re just trying to share these kind of best practices?

Chris Williams: [00:02:00] Oh, certainly. In fact, our main focus as a5c3 is the education, not just of our members in terms of evolving their safety and health programs, but also industries as a whole. That’s construction, manufacturing, industrial, petrochem, everyone down the line from companies like Amazon all the way to Honeywell and some of the energy generation companies into the construction field as well. The education, it really starts with our safety convention, our symposium. That’s usually every August this year it’s in Washington, D.C. So coming up here soon and we focus on, as I said, not just educating the industries that we focus on, but helping them to connect and helping them to share their best practices. The popular saying from a safety and health perspective and I’m a safety and health person by trade. Previous experience with associated builders and contractors as director of Safety and Health, my father’s been a construction forever. We talk about until we get to zero incidents worldwide, we’re never going to have the very, very, very best program we can have. We need to keep evolving that program to continue to focus on helping all industries and all workers go home at the same or better condition in which they arrived. And that’s our primary goal.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:04] Now, how are we doing? Like what is the kind of state of the industry right now, in your opinion?

Chris Williams: [00:03:10] State of the industry, safety and health? We are better than we have ever been. I can tell that. I can say that with absolute certainty. You know, I’m old enough to remember back back in the nineties, safety culture was give a great example in terms of fall protection in construction. It was wear body belt. Well before that it was well, if you feel bad things are going to happen, you’re most likely going to perish. Then it was Wear Body Belt and if you fell, well, okay, you might be paralyzed from the waist down from the nineties. Oh, we evolved in that piece of equipment, evolved into a full body harness, which protects the wearer from serious injury. And so as we evolve safety in health, we’ve reached a point now that, especially with EPA members, are lagging indicators for our members, or at least 52% better than industry averages across the board. And while that’s great, as I said, one of the things that we as an association focus on, we continuously try to educate and share those best practices with our members to get that number to absolute zero. In terms of incidence every hour, our primary resource, our best resource we could possibly have are our employees, our workers out there. And our goal is to make sure that every one of them goes home safe.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] Now, do you find that the the companies you work with, a lot of companies, obviously, people are our most important asset and they there’s a lot of lip service towards that. But practically, you know, when the rubber hits the road, are you seeing them as maybe motivated and inclined to take action when it comes to safety and health as you’d like? Or is this something is it getting better? Like, where are we at from that standpoint?

Chris Williams: [00:04:45] That’s that’s a great question with VPA members. Our members, as I said, are always striving to be the very best. The best, and that’s what we look for. But as as we’ve expanded as an association and evolved our mission, some of those companies, sadly, there are companies out there. We see them in the news all the time that that they pay that lip service to. Yes, we safety is our priority. And yet you look at their their safety performance, it’s simply not there. And as we’ve evolved our association, our focus is to bring those companies in. We want those company. Used to join us. We want those companies to be a part of VPA so that they can learn and apply those lessons and get better. You know, we see them anytime I see a company and this is personal opinion, not a VP. Again, my safety backgrounds come into play here whenever I see a company or a person talk about safety as a priority. I always question that because priorities change. My priority for the longest time, every every January 1st, is I’m going to lose weight. And every March 1st, that priorities got. It’s changed. There’s something else to put out there. Safety to our members and our association. It’s a core value. It’s what we are. Our businesses, our members build their business on, their model on. And when I worked in construction, there are a number of companies that you talk about lip service say that their statement is essentially we will not perform any task if it is not completely safe. But those companies walk the walk. And our goal as an association of VPAS to bring members on board, to get them to where it’s walking the walk, in addition to talking the talk and to raise that boat with you, we talk about rising tide lifts all boats. That’s our association’s mission now and then.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:20] So, you know, you’ve been doing this for a minute and it sounds like it’s trending in the right direction. And do you think that just by kind of holding up the examples of the people that are doing it well and then I don’t want to say shaming, but just making the public aware of the people that aren’t doing it as well or could improve. Is that kind of the lever that you need to get more people prioritizing safety and health? Like, what are the levers you have to pull to, you know, encourage more companies to really walk the walk?

Chris Williams: [00:06:53] So it’s interesting to say that when we talk about shaming companies and that’s certainly been been something that that is an industry. And in terms of other agencies as well, they’ve worked towards, you know, it’s we bring attention to the company that’s not performing well. The reality is what we found in safety and health is that for the longest time I said the culture change is really started back in the nineties. I use the fall protection example, but the reality is safety is a culture. As the cultures of cultures evolved from the nineties, we realized that the culture of the generational leadership style of tell somebody to do something and let them do it, make sure they do it and come down on them hard. If they don’t do it the right way, it’s changed instead of shaming. Now it’s we work with not just employees but companies and say, listen, we understand these are things that are happening and we have the solutions for you. We can get you to where you need to be. Let’s work on that together and bring you up to speed so that you’re not going to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. You’re going to have employees who want to stay. You’re going to have employees that are working safe and understand the importance of safety because it is a cultural issue.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:00] So you’re finding that by bringing attention in a positive manner to the people that are doing it well and holding them up and spotlighting them and using them as an example, that brings more people into the fold.

Chris Williams: [00:08:13] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I’ll say this, our safety symposium we have every year, we have a large portion of our sessions dedicated, like I said, to sharing best practices and sharing our award winners, success stories, the best, the best. Again, showing how they’ve done it. That said, we also, from a safety health standpoint, know that we need to the best way to put this is most people their safety. Why why they do what they do, why they work safe. It stems from a catastrophic incident, a tragedy beyond explanation. And people that have gone through that loss, that have gone through either a death penalty on the job site or a serious injury with one of their employees. You can see the change there. And so what we also attempt to do is, is we bring in speakers that have have gone through that safety. Why? Because the last thing we want a company or one of our members to have to go through is that catastrophic incident to finally realize. So we try to duplicate that condition as much as possible and then promote the best practices after that and say, listen, this is something you never want to have to go through. Here’s how you never have to go through it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:20] Yeah, because the people have lived through it. They, they know the importance, but they had to experience that devastation in order to really have it kind of sink in and probably make that cultural change. I mean it sadly. But you want to learn from their pain, really, so that you can eliminate the pain going forward for others.

Chris Williams: [00:09:41] Absolutely. I had a great conversation with one of our closing session speakers yesterday about this very topic, and she used to work at NASA during the Columbia disaster and said that NASCAR, and rightfully so, USA, has an exceptional safety culture. But unfortunately it was the Columbia incident and Challenger before that that there were slips. And in our profession, when there slips, it’s catastrophic. And so our mission is to avoid help companies avoid those slips.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Yeah. I mean, it’s one of those things where, I mean, you’re dealing with human beings. So mistakes. You know, humans make mistakes. But if you can, you know, get to the heart of the systems and make sure that you’re catching some of these potential mistakes before they can happen systemically, then you can really make an impact and then you can prevent some of this.

Chris Williams: [00:10:33] Absolutely. And incident prevention in any industry is always a tremendous asset. And it’s something that we preach incessantly and for good cause. And it’s it also comes down to when we talk about culture as we’ve seen this this cultural evolution in safety and health. As I said, it went from. Do the job, get it done back it back up until OSHA was created back in the early seventies that it was all right. You work safe. But that was it. You were responsible for your own safety and you are still responsible for your own safety and the jobsite you’re on. But the cultural evolution we’ve now started to focus on in the early 2000s, and it’s been tremendous in terms of helping us get this message across, that it’s not just about you working safe, it’s about you watching out for the people around you to make sure that they’re working safe. And we’ve accomplished this. And in a way that I don’t think anybody, if you’d asked them 25 years ago, would have said this is possible, but we’ve accomplished it by. By having family days, by especially in construction, shutting down the job site and having families commit so that I, as an employee of the company, I as a steelworker, I as a carpenter, I as a laborer can see that the person working next to me has got got a wife and kids, got a husband and a child.

Chris Williams: [00:11:44] They’ve got parents. Those are the people that they’re working for. And so what we’re doing from a cultural standpoint is reinforcing that you’re not just responsible for your own safety, but you need to make sure that the person next to you continues to work it because they’re going to go home to a family. And if there’s that catastrophic loss, that safety, why that happens and we never want to see it, that’s where the loss is going to be felt. And I can this is a topic that I’m very passionate about because in my previous career with ABC as director of safety there, I had a member who shared a story with me from back. Back in the early 2000s on one of their job sites, a crane collapse killed a young man. Unfortunately, it was their safety. Why? And on a Facebook every year, we unfortunately have the parents of that young man. They post every year how much they miss them. And we’re now 20 years on from that. And it never we never want to have to see somebody go through that. And that’s why we do what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:36] Right. And by including the families you are, you know, you’re kind of demonstrating the stakes like it is in Bob. There’s Bob and his kid and his wife and his, you know, grandkid like Bob’s more than Bob. So, I mean, the stakes are high. And everybody, it sounds like it’s very holistic. And I mean, I remember when I was in school and we’d read books about what it was like a hundred years ago. I mean, it seems like we’ve come such a long way because of, you know, organizations like yours that are really kind of giving people the tools to be better. And it sounds like that we are making progress. This isn’t a dream that can’t come true. I mean, with people kind of can learn from your association and the members and really can make a difference. And it sounds like it is.

Chris Williams: [00:13:25] Oh, absolutely. I pinpoint back and you can’t pinpoint a date, but when we when we realized that we could throw all the money and all of the best practices in terms of technical knowledge, in terms of personal protective equipment prevention to design, we could throw all of that technical knowledge into safety and health, but still not reach our goal. Once we figure it out, we need to include the human component. That’s when it really started to click across all industries that once we got the human component in there, realized that behavior really does have an effect on how somebody works. Not only that, the conditions they face off the job and we started to focus on employee wellness outside of the outside of the job, the workplace. That’s when it really started to shift. To get us to the point we’re at now. There’s still a long way to go, don’t get me wrong, in terms of any any any injury on any job site or any plant, any manufacturing facility is one too many. And as we still need to focus on that improvement, but we’ve come so far in the past 25, 30 years just from that. And then even before that, the famous photo of the New York skyline, the steel work is sitting on a steel beam. There’s I see that photo today. And I still my heart stops because, number one, I’m afraid of heights. Number two, there’s I can’t even fathom having someone at that height with absolutely no fall protection. And we’ve come so far and we’re so safe that I think workers from that day and age would be astounded to see where we are at from a safety and health standpoint. Again, there’s still some we still have to get to that zero.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:00] Now, are you finding that today’s generation of workers, you know, they’re elevating maybe mental health as high as physical health when it comes to their workplace experience?

Chris Williams: [00:15:14] Oh, absolutely. And we’ve started to see our members, VHP members are at the forefront of recognizing that employee wellness is critical to not just working safe, but the employees long term success in health. And we focused on, especially with our association. In fact, when I started I’ve been here about a month now. Like I said, my background is in safety and health. But it was amazing to see how proactive not just our members have been, but also the association itself in terms of focusing on that, you know, we have members that that will have mental health days for their workforce that say the force them to take the day off. And we do that as an association as well. We tell our employees, my team, listen, once a day or once a quarter, you’re going to take the day off and we’re going to pay you to take the day off. And we want you to go do anything that’s not work related. Because if you’re not mentally sharp and this is not just from the association standpoint, from a workforce standpoint in general, if you’re not mentally sharp and ready to go, that’s a mistakes happen. And again, in our in our industry, in safety and health, one mistake is catastrophic, can have catastrophic consequences, not just for you as an individual, but for those working around you.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:23] Now, is there an example you can share? I know that this is kind of new for you in this role, but maybe an example you can share that illustrates the change that can happen when a company leans into safety and health in terms of just better results and better maybe retention and better just, you know, you’re just a better organization when you lean into and elevate safety and health, not from lip service, but to actual action where you are kind of watching the back of your people.

Chris Williams: [00:16:56] Absolutely. And I can show you a recent example. I came over to the EPA from the Association of the Wall Ceiling Industry and Administering the Safety Awards there at a company when I started about five years ago that I talked to you guys, you’ve got a pretty good program. Why don’t you apply for a safety awards? And they said, well, you know, we’re still working on our culture and we still have some issues and some of our some of our officers, we want to make sure that we’ve got them on the right path. And so we brought them aboard the safety committee. And this is now three years ago, they applied for the first safety award they want for one of their offices. And they said, why don’t you apply as a whole company? They said, Well, we still have work to do. And that recognition, we haven’t earned it. The sea change from them when they applied last year and won our highest award at WCI was phenomenal from when I had started working with them. It wasn’t just the tangibles of employee retention, and the employees absolutely raved about their involvement in the safety and health program. It wasn’t just the increase, the better performance in terms of their lagging indicators. It was the fact that safety and health have become an absolute obsession with the company, whereas before it was, as I said, a priority. Now it was something that they strove for 24 seven. It was something that was at the forefront as a core value in everything the company did.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:17] Now, any advice for maybe other association leaders out there that are like you? You’ve been in this space for a while, but now you’re taking over a new association, how you can kind of, you know, maybe your first hundred days, how you kind of went about joining this association and kind of making a plan to make the largest impact you can.

Chris Williams: [00:18:42] That’s a loaded question, Lee. It’s like I said, I started here about a month ago, but in reality. Started when I was announced that I’d accepted the positions that was back in May. And so some of my advice is that when the opportunity arises, seize it for those out there looking to take that that top seat, that CEO, that executive director position, but start laying the groundwork for success even before you start that. That’s engaging with the executive committee and the board, getting to know what their goals are for the association, getting to know what the rules are, speaking with staff when the opportunity arises. Being able to really explore that relationship and build that relationship from a foundational standpoint with them from the outset. Because I can tell you when I started, I started July 1st and it was a half day and then July 4th was a monday. So all right, I’m in the office for 3 hours and that’s it.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:31] You eased into it?

Chris Williams: [00:19:32] Yeah, I remember. I won’t remember any any faces or names the next week because there’s there’s three and a half, four days in between. But because I had gotten to know everyone, because I’d had those conversations with both volunteer leaders and staff, it really sets you up for success and what you’re looking at, especially in the first 100 days. One of the things I’d recommend for anyone that’s interviewing for a position like this, the question always comes from the interview committee, the nominee, the committee, it’s what would you do in your first 30 days or 60 days or 90 days? No, it’s the first six months minimum, because the first 90 days in this position are spent learning. It’s that that old that old adage of children should be seen and not heard. Well, executive directors and CEOs, in the instances where they can they should be seen heard only on occasion, but absorbing as much information as they can. Because if you go into it with why I’m going to change X, Y and Z immediately, that’s that’s not possible in associations. I think we we all know the pace that associations move and on change, it’s it’s not quick and that’s fine. But we also when you go into it with that mindset, I’m going to make these changes immediately. In my first 90 days, you start to lose staff the buy it in. It’s critical to earn the respect of your staff, your team from the outset and also their buy into your vision for the association. That’s a more long term goal. So never, never go with that first 90 days. So it’s the first six months because it takes six months to build those relationships up.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:03] And you have to manage the expectations of the board in that regard as well, I’m sure.

Chris Williams: [00:21:08] Absolutely. It’s unfortunate. Vpas is in a really good position. Obviously with the pandemic coming out of this, there’s still uncertainty around many associations or is included in terms of attendance at our upcoming safety plus event, in terms of how things will look when we’re fully out of the pandemic, knock on wood. And so keeping that in mind, it’s it becomes one of those challenges of you don’t want to say, oh, we’re going to have 3000 people at this event realizing that the market conditions simply won’t support it. Or, again, coming out of a pandemic, there’s still uncertainty and there’s still travel restrictions. So it’s it’s not necessarily the old under-promise, overdeliver, but be realistic in your expectations. Don’t. My advice is don’t don’t go into it as I know I can make these changes and we’re going to do tremendous work and we’re going to succeed right off the bat. No expect that. As I said, you’re learning as you come into it and especially that first six months, make sure that the board understands that. Yeah, you need to take that six months to really be integrated into the association. And that’s not just the operations but the history of the associations, what the association has done before, and then laying out that vision in conjunction with your board of where you want to take the association, what you see the opportunities as being.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:22] Well, Chris, if if there’s people out there that want to learn more about the association, what is the coordinates or the best way to connect with you and your team?

Chris Williams: [00:22:31] Absolutely. I can always go to our website VP dot org. It’s got all of our contact information and if any, any aspiring leaders want to reach out to me. I’ve been on this journey now for 22 years and it’ll never stop because I love associations and also safety and health and they like advice and in this position they can always reach me. My email address is C Williams at VP dot org.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:52] Well Chris.

Chris Williams: [00:22:53] Remember three.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:53] Ps three PS V three PS in an A. Exactly. Well, Chris, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Chris Williams: [00:23:02] We appreciate the opportunity. Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:05] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on the Association Leadership Radio.

 

Aarti Sahgal With Synergies Work

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AartiSahga
Atlanta Business Radio
Aarti Sahgal With Synergies Work
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AartiSahgaAarti Sahgal is the Founder & CEO of Synergies Work – the only nonprofit in the U.S. that enables entrepreneurs with disabilities to build sustainable businesses. We do so by providing end-to-end business solutions and bridging the opportunity gaps between the disability and the business community.

Synergies Work is a personal mission that stems from the life experiences of Aarti Sahgal. As a parent of a child with Down syndrome, she is constantly challenging the soft bigotry of low expectations that excludes people with disabilities from living their true potential. Aarti has been working for more than 17 years on building inclusive communities and workforce strategies for individuals with disabilities.

Aarti is the President of GA APSE(Association of People Supporting Employment First) and is on the board of the state Rehabilitation Council.

In her previous avatar, she worked for 14 years in advertising & marketing. She has a Master’s in business Management from one of the top management schools in India.

Connect with Aarti on LinkedIn and follow Synergies Work on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Synergies Work
  • The Ideato Incubation (i2i) program
  • The mission behind Synergies Work so important
  • The ImpactGrants

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.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Joe Delatte With Home Clean Heroes

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JoeDelatte
Franchise Marketing Radio
Joe Delatte With Home Clean Heroes
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Brought To You By SeoSamba . . . Comprehensive, High Performing Marketing Solutions For Mature And Emerging Franchise Brands . . . To Supercharge Your Franchise Marketing, Go To seosamba.com.

JoeDelatteJoe Delatte, President at Home Clean Heroes

Whether it’s business ownership, management or sports, a coach’s main job is helping individuals and the team reach their full potential.

Joe spent his entire career building and sharpening skills in business management, leadership, strategic marketing, sales, product development, process improvement and creative thinking. Along the way, he held key marketing positions for several large communications players, including Landmark and Cox Communications.

He also owned and operated a home services franchise that quickly became one of the area’s highest quality and well-known home services companies.

Now as the President of Home Clean Heroes, he gets to put it all to work coaching their franchisees and corporate team to help them each reach their full potential and their personal dreams.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Home Clean Heroes
  • The brand’s summer signing event

John Howard With Use Slingshot

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JohnHoward
Atlanta Business Radio
John Howard With Use Slingshot
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UseSlingshot

JohnHowardJohn Howard, Founder at Use Slingshot LLC

John talks about bootstrapping and getting to profitability in your business. He runs a swag company.

Connect with John on Linkedin and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

John Howard: [00:00:50] Hey, how’s it going?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] It is going well. Before we get too far into things, tell us about you. Slingshot, how are you serving folks?

John Howard: [00:00:58] Yes. So basically we work with startups and agencies and companies like Adobe and help them give swag to their people and make that super effortless.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] So swag, can you explain what it is and why it’s important?

John Howard: [00:01:12] Yeah. So apparel, gifts, little knickknacks, but things that make your people feel good, that’s either internal your employees or external being the people you’re trying to serve as customers or leads. And it’s important because they want to feel love, they want to feel heard. And showing this kind of admiration for them during a deal or doing an onboarding for a customer or employee is very important.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:37] So this would be different than than what I would see at a trade show where they have, you know, a jar of pens or flash drives.

John Howard: [00:01:47] Yeah. So those things we consider a little bit kitschy, but they do work, so we try to actually make sure the experience that means the package, the handwritten note, how it feels, what it’s paired with is an experience that they feel not just something they pick up and throw in the bag and forget about. So it’s all delivered directly to their doorstep. And so trade shows can actually send this from the trade show just through a QR code without having to worry about how that gets lugged around and thrown in the trash later.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:14] So you are trying to elevate kind of this industry a bit?

John Howard: [00:02:18] Yeah, it’s it’s not that it’s antiquated, but usually people are going for quantity, not quality. So customers come to us for that higher experience because you’re competing with their closet, you’re competing with their wardrobe. And so you want them to pull out the thing that really means something to them. So instead of sending just a bunch of things out into the wild with no tracking, we help you elevate not just the items themselves, but the experience when it’s opened and the follow up behind that to make sure they’re onboarded or go to that next step. You want them to.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:47] Now, how do you help your clients kind of determine if it’s even possible, like an ROI for something? Because I’ve been to a million trade shows and some of this stuff, I’m like, how can they, you know, what’s the ROI of, you know, a pen or a flash drive.

John Howard: [00:03:05] Right? They already have marketing budget for this, which is funny. But the baseline for years and years and years historically has been brand awareness. Basically. I hope they really have my shirt on. I hope they pull my pen out to use that and remember us. That’s the baseline. What we do is create a funnel, just like a marketing funnel, and when someone goes to redeem your gift at the end of that, they’re asked for an action that could be jump on a call with me. Schedule a Zoom call, download a PDF about our sales products. Or it could be somewhat internal, like go to the next step of onboarding. So we really measure that and measure those click through rates so we can actually put real numbers to the impact, not of the item itself, but of the emotional transaction that just took place.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:46] So this really are the item, really isn’t the important part. It’s the relationship that’s the important part. And these are just a means to an end to build and nurture existing or new relationships.

John Howard: [00:04:00] Right. Yeah. And then we the high end stuff allows it more to be more shareable, naturally. So we try to create that organic sheer ability. But yes, it is not the item itself inherently. It is that whole experience. And then being able to track that in some kind of way, that relationship is there in and out of our forms in 15 seconds. So it’s a really quick transaction and then they’re asked to do something optionally. So those click through right through those conversion rates that more traditional marketers would measure can actually put to real dollar spend and really measured that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:30] So what’s your back story? How did you get into this line of work?

John Howard: [00:04:34] Yes, my last company was Black Airplane. It was a design agency in Atlanta. And so I sold that to two people back in 2017. I stayed on for two years and I saw that our customer swag, we just didn’t slap our logo on it. We tried to make it real experience internally. People love that. And so I wanted to go back into building another project or another business. And so once I left there in March of 2020, historically a bad month to leave, but had no idea. We started this new company and it’s been great because everybody’s been distributed. A lot of people are trying to reach people they could not normally reach, and we shipped to 88 countries last year. So it’s not just here locally in the United States, the world has been impacted with distributed teams both in a good way and of course, historically otherwise. You all heard about.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:19] Now when you kind of made the leap into this industry, did you have kind of some breadcrumbs or some clues? It’s like, Hey, this is something that could work out. We’re starting to get traction. What were some of the earliest kind of hints that you were on to something?

John Howard: [00:05:37] Yes. So I’m a big believer. Again, I sold an agency I’m big believer in like UX and research and discovery before you actually start something. So I went and met with a lot of companies here in Atlanta just to say, Hey, let me buy you coffee, just not pick your brain, but just sit with you and find out what your industry does currently with this. And so there was obviously an incessant need that nobody had a full time job doing that. It was pretty much the number one identifier that people were being asked to do this job and hand out swag and put together these packages and run to the post office, deal with the customer service, all of that kind of stuff, and gathering the stuff in spreadsheets. And they weren’t paid to do that full time. They were paid normally to be people ops, meaning focus on my people and make them happy. This was a small subset of the job, but it took out an enormous amount of time. So it was a really easy win for us to say, Hey, what if we relieve that part of the process for you?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:23] And then once they kind of raise their hand and say, sure, we’ll give that a shot. What were some of kind of the the earliest iterations of what swag could be for like an early customer?

John Howard: [00:06:36] Yes. So actually one of our first companies luckily was Adobe. And so they’re a big company like Photoshop and Illustrator and XD. I had met them when I had my agency at a at a conference. They took us they flew us all out there, a few of us designers to LA to do a new product demo. And so while I was there, I had already been working on this, conceptualizing it. So I said, Hey, who’s your people ops person? Are they here? I just I don’t need to meet them, but just to know who they are. And somebody said, No, no, no, let’s actually go up there and meet them. And so they took me up front to meet this person. So I guess it was serendipity in a way, but basically got to talk to them and six months later we finally won them and we kicked off our major product that we have now. So it was kind of easily validated, but we had spent a lot of time to get all that prepped, a lot of research to build the product. I mean, that first version was built in and done with no automation, but the customer didn’t know. It was built in a weekend through web flow and WordPress, a few other products.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:34] Now, when you’re working with a client that maybe hasn’t invested in swag in the way that you deliver the experience, like what is that kind of onboarding? Or what are some of the questions you’re asking them and they’re asking you about what it could be and what it’s going to look like.

John Howard: [00:07:50] Yes. So we ask people like, what’s your audience? Who are you trying to reach? If they’re asking us, hey, we’re trying to make our employees feel more love. Well, of course, that’s the baseline. You want them to feel great, but we’re trying to push them into that next step. Well, the next step is I’d love them to tell other people about this company how awesome it is so we can build on those call to actions for that. If it was an external person like, Hey, we’re a sales team, we’re trying to drive more sales, like, how could you help us? Well, of course you could just buy swag and give it away, but let’s actually set up a funnel to get those people to jump on calls. They’re already interested in you. They’ll get some really nice swags for free, and then you can have them jump on a call and then maybe they’ll they’ll give you 15 minutes to talk about that. Since our click through rates are really high, that works out well. So we really try to discover what your audience, what’s your end goal, not just brand awareness. They’re holding your gift in their hand, but what are they actually trying to achieve with this and that? That really helps them elevate that. That’s why we charge for that’s why we’re different services, because we really try to position the swag to do something and to be meaningful.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:46] And so what do you need more of? How can we help you?

John Howard: [00:08:50] Yes. So always leads relationships. We are we’re we’re pretty much humming now at this point. But it’s been a long road. So anybody else has been in this industry or that is just interested in what we do. It’s always fun to have a conversation. I love meeting new people. I love trying to discover better ways that we could use our swag and maybe help other companies elevate this or just talk to other marketers. People that understand the business of marketing, that want to talk about how we could get better about that and more efficient in the way that we use swag to do the same things they’ve done traditionally for years now.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:24] Swag, it sounds like swag could be pretty much anything, right? This is just a means to an end of kind of serving somebody and building a relationship, nurturing a relationship. So what are some of the crazy swag items that you’ve seen out there have used for clients?

John Howard: [00:09:41] Yeah, we’re a lot different than our competitors and the fact that our stuff is much more high quality and you can print in different locations. We don’t do the low quality printing. There’s different types of ways to print on materials, but we do everything. There’s like 1500 items that we’ve done historically, but even stuff is crazy. As last month we had a company called Loops, and so they’re a marketing company. They have nothing to do with the word loops or Froot Loops. We said, Hey, what if we did something crazy and created a viral marketing cereal box for y’all? And so we actually went out and got the cereal. We got the boxes printed and procured. We got a 3D printed. What do you call those things? They are decoder ring and had it solve a mystery so you could pull up this prize and solve a mystery. And through that, you got another prize, which is a hoodie. So it made it an adventure, it made it go viral, and it really helped that company do well. And they actually trended top ten on product hunt last month when they launched this product with us.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:32] Now, when you’re working with your customer, is this something that they’re, you know, getting 1000 of these products, 100 of these products, like what is kind of what what’s kind of the number they’re getting from you? Is is it in mass or is it really kind of targeted like a sniper for a specific group or the type of person?

John Howard: [00:10:56] We’d recommend never over buying. So we really tried to position it based on the audience or the event you’re trying to attend or reach out to. Like in the case of loops, we have them order 100. It was a micro release, so basically only 100 of them were out there and it created more buzz because of that. So we do that or we could do large campaigns for camps or tradeshows, etc. So it really doesn’t matter. It’s kind of based on the item first. Like most of our items start out at minimum order quantities of 25 and there are certain items like pins like you mentioned that that could be like 1000 you have to buy because they’re so cheap. That’s just the minimum order quantity. So it really depends on the item and it depends on the audience and thing you’re trying to reach.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:34] So this this second venture for you to go from a design firm to this, this is still you know, you’re still kind of scratching that creativity itch. You’re still using your skills in just a slightly different way. Congratulations.

John Howard: [00:11:49] Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. So basically I love SAS businesses, but I love something about the brick and mortar and the agency consultative business. So this is a good blend of both. We actually have a physical space in Acworth, Georgia, so about 30, 35 minutes north of Atlanta. But we also were able to build software around that. So our platform on top of it is amazing, it’s magical and it’s a subscription platform. But the swag itself and all that is still the old school physical way of doing that. We’re just really good at that part of the process.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:17] So who is your ideal client?

John Howard: [00:12:20] We love Adobe’s. I mean companies like that, we have agencies that are small, it really doesn’t matter as long as we’re seeing value from you giving away the swag and it’s measurable, it’s a great client. But somebody like Adobe, we basically started with one account and we’ve spread to 13 different business units. So that’s all about word of mouth. So again, it’s fun to go into one company and kind of spread a different departments when they have 18,000 employees. That’s a big deal. So we’ve we’ve done that really, really well. It’s all been by word of mouth, but also we have lots of small companies work, work we work with. We mentioned before that just have cool ideas that are willing to take chances and move the needle a little faster than some of the monoliths. And so it’s been a lot of fun. There’s a lot of there’s a good wide spread of people. Everybody needs swag and everybody wants to give it away more effectively and not do the work.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] And if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s a website?

John Howard: [00:13:10] Yeah use so USD slingshot dot com good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:16] Well John thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

John Howard: [00:13:20] Awesome. Thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:22] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:13:28] 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 add 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.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Shondell Varcianna With Varci Media

by

ShondellVarcianna
Atlanta Business Radio
Shondell Varcianna With Varci Media
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ShondellVarciannaShondell Varcianna is the owner of Varci Media. A content writing company that helps financial institutions save time by writing content that speaks to their target audience. Shondell and her team have transformed their clients blogs into a solution provider for their customers.

Connect with Shondell on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Writing content for a particular group of people
  • The importance of having a strategy on how you’ll promote your content
  • Be consistent with publishing content
  • Only publish content that speaks to your customers and your target audience

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Land of Business Radio, we have Shondell Varcianna and she is with Varci Media. Welcome.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:00:49] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about varci media. How are you serving, folks?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:00:56] Yeah, we’re we’re a content writing company. We write blog posts, newsletters and web pages for financial institutions.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] So what’s your back story? How’d you get into this line of work?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:01:07] Okay. I’m originally from Canada. I was born and raised in Toronto and my whole career was actually in banking. And when I was 20, I had purchased my first property and I purchased a second one at about 25, and I paid both mortgages off when I was 31. So my girlfriend suggested that I start helping people do the same thing, and she suggested that I start blogging. So I thought, Wait, that’s not a bad idea. So I started a blog and it became popular and over time, magazines and radio stations started contacting me, wanting to hear my story. And that led to companies reaching out to me and wanting me to write for them. So that, in a nutshell, is how the business got started. I was still working my full time job at the time and didn’t have enough time to write, so I started hiring writers and then the business just kept growing. And then I, you know, I quit my job and moved the business to Atlanta, Georgia, which is where we are today.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] And then these financial organizations that hire you, are they like kind of large institutional banks and things like that, or are they smaller, like financial advisors? Like who is your ideal client?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:02:19] Both, actually. So we we work from the largest institutions to the local credit union, so we don’t write for financial advisors. It’s just financial, mainly banks, credit unions and mortgage companies. That’s our ideal clientele.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:35] And then if they’re not working with you, how are they kind of attacking this content problem or do they not see it as something that they should be doing?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:02:43] Well, normally with our clients, we don’t do a lot of convincing in terms of content. So if they don’t kind of understand the importance of content, we don’t do a lot of convincing. We kind of want them to come already with the idea of knowing that content is important. So by the time they come to us, they’ve seen us somewhere online or seen us or heard us on a podcast or seen us at an event. And they usually come already understanding that the importance of content, the institutions that don’t outsource typically have an entire department that does different kinds of marketing. The content is one component of of marketing because of course, you know, there’s there’s so many other ways to market their services. So content is one component and the ones that outsource are typically the ones that just don’t have the staff to write content and or they just they have the staff, but they just don’t have enough time. So those are the two reasons why they’ll typically outsource.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] Now, one, when one of these institutions raises their hand and say, Chandel, we’re ready, we’d like you to kind of help us be better in this. Are the topics kind of similar from institution, institution or do? Or is there really kind of different types of content that are appropriate for these different types of institutions, you know, but to the layperson, they kind of all look similar.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:04:15] Great question. So the content is always based on who they’re targeting. So we don’t believe in just kind of writing what you think is trending or what’s happening. The content should always be tailored around being a part of the conversation that your ideal customer is already having. So the questions that your target audience has, the complaints that they have, the misconceptions that they have, those are the that’s the type of content you should be creating, addressing their pain points, addressing their concerns, answering their questions and things like that. So different institutions are targeting different people. So if they are targeting the same people, they still may have different questions because they’re in completely different markets. So, you know, somebody a first time homebuyer in New York City may have different questions than a first time home buyer in Columbus, Georgia, just because it’s two completely different markets. So we will be speaking to different people all the time simply because there are different audiences in different markets and different products and people want to know different things. So the content should always be tailored around what their ideal customer wants to know.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:27] Now how do you help? Your people that are doing the writing kind of captured the voice of the company you’re working with, because I would imagine while they are all, I would imagine somewhat similar in the sense that they’re serious and they’re not kind of irreverent at like some maybe some of them are, but I would imagine that’s the exception. But how do you capture the voice of the company through kind of your writers like that seems, you know, so it stays consistent with their brand.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:06:01] Yeah. Wonderful question. And that’s a great question because we we always come in at under as ghostwriters, like by the time we start writing for our clientele, they already have a lot of content either on their website, they’ve got brochures, they already have their own voice. So we are coming in as ghostwriters. So we start before we even start writing. We, we do a client content brief with each of our clients and it’s like a seven page questionnaire that we go through with them. And it gives us a lot of background information on who they are as a, as a corporation, who they are as a brand. What kind of message are they wanting to relate to their ideal customer? And then we also have to get to know their ideal customer because they are speaking to the ideal customer. And we’re trying to bridge that gap between what the institution has, the products and services and what their ideal customer wants. We’ve got to bridge that gap. So we do a lot of behind the scenes work before we even start writing, and then we stop their website, of course, because that is going to give us and their marketing material and their brochures a lot of the content that they already have.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:07:07] We have to study that to get their voice tone, format style to how they want it. And we ask a lot of questions about those things before we start stocking their website as well. So that’s how we get their voice, right. The other thing too is we also come 90, I would say about 90% of our clients, we come up with the topics for them. So we will come up with the topics for them based on what they’re focused on, based on what their ideal customer wants to know. And we’ll also come up with an outline before we even start writing. So we create an editorial calendar and that includes the topics as well as an outline of what’s going to be written in each piece that is approved by our client before we even start writing. So they’re very aware of what’s going to be in each piece. So it is in line with who they are and the message that they’re trying to relate to their ideal client.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] Now, in this case, is your writing kind of B to B to C or is it B to B to B in the sense that you’re the people you’re writing for? Are they kind of just individual people that might be interested in a bank or credit union? Or are they somebody part of a company that’s saying, okay, I’m going to use this bank, this I’m changing bank. So this is kind of more of a business decision than a personal decision.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:08:26] We write for B2B and B2C, so B2C is the majority of the content we write. So it’s the the bank, the mortgage company or the credit union writing to their customer who’s going to be buying a house, getting a car loan, getting a credit card, getting investments. So that would be B to C. So we’re typically writing for them. And then we also write for mortgage companies that are targeting brokers. So that would be B to B, so they’ve got their own brokerage and we do write a lot of content for brokers as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:55] So that’s similar, but different because the tone, I would imagine would be different.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:09:00] The questions and everything is different. The broker is not really wanting to know so much about a particular area, school districts, things like that. They were wanting to know how quick can I get my loan approved for my particular client? They want to know the different mortgage products that are out there, the minimum credit, credit scores, so that they can offer that to their particular client. So those the audiences are completely different. The questions are completely different. So the content would be completely different for those two audiences.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:34] Now, when you’re now, let’s talk about maybe some advice for the listener who is thinking about, you know, kind of using this content marketing strategy, which obviously you believe heavily in, right? You don’t believe the written word has. That’s a fad, right? Like the world isn’t going to turn exclusively to Tik-tok for information. Right. You still believe in the written word?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:09:57] It’s actually I actually believe in many forms of content. We just focus on the written word. But I believe in video. I believe in audio, which is what we’re doing right now. I think that you need to provide it all to your audience because you never know how your audience wants to consume content. Some people prefer to read, some people prefer to listen, some people prefer to watch. It’s kind of like when Amazon used to just sell books and then they now they sell Kindle. Now, now you can read the book on your phone and now you could also listen to the book through all. So they’re just providing many ways for their audience to consume content. So we’re focused on the written word, but I believe in it all. I think you should be providing as many ways and make it as easy as possible for your ideal customer to consume content. I do video to get clients, so it’s not again, our company is just written, but I believe that you should you should never limit yourself to how you market because as I said, you never know how your your ideal customer wants to consume content and you always want to make it as easy as possible for them to consume your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] And then what do you feel about are there rules of thumb when it comes to how often you should publish whatever it is, whether it’s print or video or audio? Is this something that should be happening multiple times a day, once a week, once a quarter? Like what’s a rhythm that makes sense to you and this niche that you serve?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:11:22] I would say multiple times per day on social media, a minimum of one a week on your website. Blog posts can be repurposed and broken into two weeks worth of social media posts, so I’m really big on repurposing content as well. Just always remember, especially if you’re focused on organic content, the more you publish content, the more your audience sees you. Unless you’re getting more high level than you’re doing ads where you can actually target and be very specific with who sees your content. If you’re focused on organic, you’ve got to post often because you’re all of your followers do not see all the content that you post. They’re not always online at the time you post it. Some of them may not even be online for a few days. So the more you, the more you post, the more attention you’ll get on your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:09] So you have to create kind of that brand ubiquity so that you want to feel that you want your customer to feel like whenever they look around their names, they’re so reminds them because you never know when they’re going to buy or want to be in the market to buy 100% correct.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:12:23] You never know if they’re ready. They could be ready in six months, but it’s also brand awareness as well. And at the same time, while you’re publishing multiple pieces, you’re starting to create that know like and trust factor, which is what we all need in order for people to do business with us. So over time, as you’re educating your clients, as you’re producing videos, you’re producing written content, as you’re producing audio, they’re getting to know who you are as a brand, and then they can determine whether they even like you, because if they don’t like you, they’re of course they’re not going to do business with you. But all of that helps to build that relationship with your ideal customer so that when they’re ready, you’re right there to help them with their mortgage needs or investment needs or whatever.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] Now, how do you when you’re working with a client, maybe early on, how do you kind of manage their expectations when it comes to the results of your work? Because this seems like a long term play, that this isn’t something like you write a post and like, Hey, where’s the customer that came from that like, you know, it’s not like kind of a direct line between one article and then a client like this is something it sounds like it’s a long term investment that you’re really investing in your brand and educating people over time so that eventually you win them over when they are ready to buy.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:13:37] Yes, I believe that. Excuse me. And we’re really transparent that if they’re needing immediate results, then you’ve got to do some type of paper click ads or Facebook ads. You’ve got to you’ve got to pay for some type of ad spend in order to get the immediate results. The organic content is always a long game because it that’s part of building the relationship. And I think you should be doing both. I think you should be doing pay per click ads, social media ads, as well as organic because the organic is good to nurture the long term relationships. You never really want a client who’s just going to come and give you a checking account and then not bring them more, not get a mortgage with you or not get some credit cards or not get a car loan like you want the whole gamut of products with them. And that typically will come through relationships, through how well they know you, how well they like you. Do they trust you to have all those products with you? So that will come typically with the organic content. So I think you should always be doing both.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:43] And is it one of those things where maybe the person who is responding to an ad might be more transactional minded, where the person responding to an article might be more relationship minded?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:14:53] Exactly. Exactly. So and that’s the reason why I think both the you know, the pay per click ads will get the immediate client, but you want to keep the client. And if you’re constantly educating people and when I say educating, I’m more I’m more addressing their pain points. So especially with financial institutions, because you can have customers from 18 until retirement. So if you stick with them along their journey, there’s really no need for them to leave if you’re if you’re helping them along the way. So it’s it’s when they get upset or when they don’t feel like. You’re there for them, then they jump ship. But I mean, when you think about it, once you once you start banking with an institution, you’ve already registered all your bills to get paid with them. Like it’s it’s a hassle to leave and it’s easier to just be with who you already have an existing relationship with. But because there’s so much competition out there, if you’re not part of their journey, if you’re not continuing to build that relationship with your audience, they will jump ship simply because the rates are lower. Or they didn’t even know that you had to have a particular product. But another institution has been in their ear, you know, every week or every day, so they naturally just gravitated towards them. So if you’re as long as you’re a part of that journey and and you’re thinking long term, long game, you’ve you should always have a good relationship with your ideal customer and continue to deepen those relationships so that you continue to get the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:20] Now, can you share a story? Obviously don’t name the name of the institution, but maybe they came to you. Maybe they were a little skeptical. Maybe they were burned in the past and they were a little gun shy. But when you started working with them, you were able to take them to a new level.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:16:35] Yeah, we hear some great stories. There was an institution that we were working with, we’ve been with them for. We’ve been working with them for a few years now. But we when we started with them, they really wanted to capture the first time homebuyer in their local area. And we I suggested that we start writing a series of first time homebuyer posts so they would come back. Once they subscribe every week, they would they would get a new a new post about the next step in the home buying process. And about eight months later, the marketing director contacted me and she was telling me about a young lady who bought their first her first home. And she was she she came to them because of the blog post that we wrote and she subscribed. And every week she would get it. And she was thinking about buying but wasn’t sure. And we went into everything. We went into minimum, minimum credit requirements, the minimum down payments that you have different things to look for, different things you should look for when you’re wanting to move into a different area. If you have kids, how to look up school district ratings and all that kind of stuff, like we we went through the whole gamut of what you need to go through at the very beginning to actually the closing day and then moving in and then, you know, things that you need to be aware of, maintenance issues that could come up if it’s not a brand new home and things like that. And she had ended up getting a mortgage with this institution, moved in and came back and shared with them that she was the first person in her entire family to ever buy a home, and she didn’t think it was possible.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:18:09] And as she started reading some of the information that the institute well, some of the stuff that we wrote, she started to educate herself on what was required to buy a home, and she didn’t even think she qualified. But when she started reading the posts on, you know, the minimum down payments, how much you should, how much you need in closing costs, things like that. She started to think, You know what, I’m in a position where I think I could apply. And she applied. Got it. And now she’s living in her, you know, her dream home. And she’s a single parent. So, you know, that was one of those feel good stories where and we don’t always hear these stories. We don’t always hear the feedback when it comes to people buying their first home and things like that. But the feedback we normally hear is, you know, because we’re very big on results. So a lot of times when we write content, they’re doing some type of search engine optimization as well. So we want to know things like, you know, what keywords are they focused on? Are the clients converting? Are they clicking the call to action? Are they staying on the page or are they clicking the internal links? That helps us to know if the content is engaging. So we look at that. That’s the kind of result, the information we get. But those feel good stories when the client’s customer comes back and shares those things with us is heartwarming for all of us, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:26] The impact is real. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s it’s indisputable the impact, that’s for sure.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:19:32] Oh, yeah. And I was raised by a single mom. So that particular story really hit home with me because it’s, you know, it’s a huge purchase. But at the same time, you know, when when when a little child sees a mother stretching out and buying a home, then that little child could now start to believe in themselves and say, well, if Mommy did this, maybe I can do this, maybe I could dream bigger. So that was a beautiful story.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:56] Now, before we wrap, you’ve achieved so much and you have an interesting Facebook group strategy. Do you mind sharing a little bit about how you marketing and go to market to find your, you know, target audience and get business from them? Do you mind sharing that Facebook group story, the strategy?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:20:15] Yeah. So we we we don’t use Facebook groups to get our clients, but our clients use Facebook groups to gain clients for themselves so I can share. What we do and what our clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:29] Okay, sure.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:20:30] Yeah. But yeah, we actually get the majority of our clients come from LinkedIn. So remember I was saying, well, I don’t know if I did say it, but you should always be where your target audience is. That’s where you always have to be. That’s where you should be focused. Our target audience is on LinkedIn, so we have a complete LinkedIn strategy for Reach Out. I post on LinkedIn every single day. I comment on my ideal customers post every single day on LinkedIn. So that’s just part of building my brand. The team does that as well. We’re very strategic when it comes to LinkedIn, simply because our ideal audience is there for Facebook groups. What I suggest for and this is for institutions that are not and not even just institutions like anybody can do this. But if you are trying to find out what your ideal customer wants and if they are on Facebook, Facebook groups are really, really huge for that. So for our our our clients, they let’s say they’re focused on home buyers or let’s say our ideal customer wants to target people who buy rental properties. So I would suggest that they join Facebook groups where investors are in there. So and they’ve got a bunch of different Facebook groups where people are wanting to buy a house, people are wanting to buy rental property.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:21:50] So join those Facebook groups where your ideal customer is. Once you get into these Facebook groups, just be a fly on the wall. Just listen to what people are saying for a few months. Look for patterns, look for common questions that people have or similar questions. Look for complaints that what are people complaining about? Look for misconceptions? What are people confused about? What do they think? What are they saying? But it’s incorrect. And your content should be focused around those things that your ideal customer are complaining about, questions they have in misconceptions. Now, if you could provide value, if you can answer some of the questions that people have in these groups, if you could address some of their complaints, do that. Don’t. You can’t sell yourself in a lot of these groups, but you don’t need to. If you’re answering enough questions, then on your Facebook page, whether it’s your business Facebook page or your personal Facebook page, it should be decked out. And what I mean by that is it should have exactly what you do. Contact information. Easy, easy way to get a hold of you. All of that should be on your Facebook page exactly what you do.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:22:53] Because oftentimes when you’re commenting in these groups and people see you a lot, they’re going to click to your Facebook page and probably raise your hand and contact you and ask, Can you help me with a mortgage or are you familiar with this particular product? This is my situation. Can you help that? That’s typically how it goes and at the same time, you should be creating content, addressing what they’re talking about in these groups. So it’s a holistic approach. Then you can take it a step further and if you want to get into some search engine optimization, the same things that they’re talking about in these groups, look for Google keywords that match them, and now you can start a search engine optimization strategy. You can also, if you want to start doing Facebook ads, you can also start doing Facebook ads around the complaints and the concerns that people have in these groups. And you can target the same people in these groups. So Facebook groups, in my opinion, are huge for research and for finding topics to to write about, to do video about that will address the pain points that your ideal audience has.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:56] Well. Shontell Congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to learn more and maybe get on your calendar or, you know, find out more about your organization, can you share the website?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:09] Yeah. And thank you so much. Yeah, our website is vast media, VA, RC Media and my my handle everywhere is Shawn del Valle. I’m on LinkedIn most often, but I’m on Facebook as well. I’m on Instagram, not so much on Instagram, but LinkedIn is where you can get a hold of me the most.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:28] And then at your website, medium.com, there’s you have a blog like you have a lot of a lot of education there as well.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:38] Yes. Yeah. There’s a lot of free stuff. You can download our blog content checklist. We’ve got a guide, we’ve got blog posts there. I post a lot on LinkedIn as well, so we’re always providing some type of educational piece to help you with your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:52] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:56] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Felton E. Lewis III With Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association

by

Felton Lewis
Association Leadership Radio
Felton E. Lewis III With Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association
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Felton Lewis Felton E. Lewis, President and CEO at Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association.

He has been in the Insurance Business for 45+ years. He is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business (Air Force). They pivoted to PPE Equipment when the Covid-19 Virus came and now that it is abating we are getting back to our Core Values and seeing the need to provide assistance to Ride Share Drivers.

Connect with Felton on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Drivers are not employees, independent contractors.
  • Drivers have no benefits, health insurance, dental insurance, disability etc.
  • Drivers Safety is at risk from some violent passengers
  • Many female drivers have been sexually assaulted
  • Protecting drivers and providing them with benefits they need for them and their families

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Felton Lewis III, and he is with the Rideshare Drivers Association. Welcome, Felton.

Felton Lewis III: [00:00:34] Thank you, Kan, appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Rideshare Drivers Association.

Felton Lewis III: [00:00:42] Well, we started it. We had a vice president of diversity working with us, and then she went to Lyft and as a service-disabled veteran on business, she said she thought she can get us a meeting with the founders of the company. And so we started the Rideshare Drivers Association to benefit the 1.5 million Lyft drivers, although there are more Uber drivers than Lyft drivers. But we had someone, Brinda Smith on the inside that Lyft, so we proceeded to offer it to live and we met with them a couple of months ago and the founder and a couple of the members on their board and we let them know, in fact, we have a Lyft driver, Freddie Stewart. And on my LinkedIn post, his comment, they said it would be good if he could give his experience with Live and what happened with Mr. Stewart. He’s been with Lyft for over six years, over 10,000 rides that he’s picked up. But last December his wife died and his wife had all the family benefits. He has a 12 year old daughter, so the health insurance, dental and all of that came through her employer. And as a Lyft contracted employee, he has no benefits. So when she died, he lost all the benefits.

Felton Lewis III: [00:02:04] So it left him and his daughter trying to fend for themselves. So we let him know that if he could give us some video of his experience that we could share with the founders of Lyft, that it might assist. And Brenda thought it was a great idea because now you have a Lyft driver for six years, 10,000 rides, given his experience. And since none of these companies, they don’t want to be their drivers title employees, they’re subcontractors, they’re independent contractors. They’re 1099 employees, not even employees. They’re just 1099 person. So if they get hurt on the job, if they don’t have any, there’s no workman’s comp that covers their injuries or anything because they’re not an employee. So we presented to the founders in the group that we have a program that will provide their members health insurance, dental vision programs and disability, and they can do it based on number of years. They spent like $1.5 billion to retain and recruit drivers last year. And we said would it be a lot less to just reward drivers for their faithful service by allowing them to have shares that the company would pay for? But the driver is getting it as a tool for faithful service to live.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:30] But but then they become a member of your association and you’re handling kind of the benefits and the insurance.

Felton Lewis III: [00:03:37] Yes, sir. Yeah. They become a member of our association, so we have little packages that we can put together for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:43] So did they go for that? Did Lyft go for that?

Felton Lewis III: [00:03:47] Well, what happened? Their stock went down. And they dropped everything. They stopped talking to us. So I told my son, I think we ought to approach Uber because Uber has more drivers than Lyft. And Uber has a health insurance program that’s horrible. It’s $10,000 deductible, 15, 20,000 deductible in a driver. Can’t I mean, the deductible will put him in bankruptcy. It doesn’t make any sense. So my son said, well, let’s just wait to see what happens with Lyft. And like I told him, well, I’m a service disabled veteran and I’m not used to having people put us on hold for months at their pace, I mean, especially since there are opportunities for others. So we haven’t cracked a nut yet. We haven’t been able to have Lyft or Uber say, okay, well, we’ll provide some kind of incentive. Stay with us for X amount of years. You get this complete, so many drives, you get that we just haven’t come to a meeting of the mind. They realize there’s a problem. In fact, many of the women and drivers are being assaulted. Fact Lyft is being sued because women drivers have been sexually assaulted.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:14] Now, what about going directly to the drivers and just not going through these big organizations? Because there’s a lot of I mean, there’s Uber and there’s Lyft, but there’s DoorDash. There’s lots of other driving and rideshare apps out there. I know those are the largest and most active, but there’s a lot of people doing this kind of work. So wouldn’t anybody doing this kind of double sided market work?

Felton Lewis III: [00:05:38] Yeah, they would benefit. But it’s not like they make a lot of money, you know, to be able to afford the health insurance package, even the US dot gov, you know, they get low premiums but the same thing with them, they get a high deductible and the deductible is what kills you ten, 15 to $20000. You just can’t afford it. If you get a hospital bill and it’s $10,000 and you got a $10,000 deductible, that’s that’s your bill now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:12] So you have an association right now or you’re trying to start an association. Do you have any members thus far?

Felton Lewis III: [00:06:19] No, we hadn’t promoted it. We just went and get the AI in the articles and corporations and whatever because we were trying to get. One of the companies to say, okay, well, just have your members come to our association and we’ll provide the benefits, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:37] But then that would require them paying you.

Felton Lewis III: [00:06:41] Well, they’re paying the drivers. And if if it’s a benefit to retain, I mean, rather than spend 1.5 billion to try to retain drivers each year, I mean, it would be a lot less the program that we’re offering now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:56] If you went directly to each driver, how much would it cost the driver?

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:02] Depending on the basic package, $49 a month would get them free prescriptions, telehealth, one dental, which is a dental program.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] Right. So $49 a month, they can afford that.

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:22] Yeah, but it doesn’t give them health insurance.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:25] So how much to get health insurance in that mix?

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:29] No, we’re talking about three, 405, six, $700, depending on the size of the family.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] So that’s where it becomes where it gets more expensive. So it’s less affordable for these folks.

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:44] Yes. Yeah. And we’re trying to see if the company realized they’re benefiting from the drivers, providing a service to them and they’re making millions, billions of dollars doing what they do. Why not? Instead of spend 1.5 billion to try to recruit and retain drivers, why not give your faithful drivers like Freddy Stewart, who’s been with you six years and 10,000 rides, give them some type of incentive to stay with you. Make it worthwhile for them to keep.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:21] Right. I mean, but you’re asking them to make this business decision. And obviously, they’ve chosen not to. But you have if your mission is to serve rideshare drivers, then you really don’t care who pays for the the premium. Right. So you can get a sponsor to kind of co-brand your association. That’s not just Lyft. It could be anybody. It could be, you know, some restaurant chain. It could be it could be anybody. It could be your insurance company. I mean, there’s lots of folks that can afford that want they would want these drivers as clients for them. I mean, why not expand beyond the two big rideshare companies? I mean, they obviously don’t have an interest in doing this. Why don’t you just find somebody else who would benefit from having relationships with millions of rideshare drivers?

Felton Lewis III: [00:09:13] Yes. And like you said, there’s Instacart. There are a whole lot of different rideshare, Walmart, cab people delivering groceries, Myers, Kroger’s, and so all of them independent contractors like Uber drivers and Lyft drivers.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:32] Right. So there must be a reason why that all those big companies are going that way. And the reason is probably they have a lot of drivers and they don’t have to pay anything and then they’re going to get them. But they know they churn through them because they can’t it’s not sustainable for a long periods of time. But there must be other companies that would benefit from having relationships with millions of drivers?

Felton Lewis III: [00:09:56] I would think so. Even Domino’s Pizza, you know, all of them now everybody is delivering. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:03] Right. So now for you, starting an association, I mean, this is a noble cause for you to help all these millions of people that are really struggling out there. I mean, they’re making they want the flexible hours. They want to be able to turn on and off the app and work whenever they feel like it. And they make, I guess, they think is a fair it’s a fair trade for them to make the money for doing the work they’re doing. But like you said, they don’t have any benefits, they don’t have insurance, they don’t have disability, they don’t have all these things that a traditional employee would have. What kind of was the catalyst for you to get involved in helping all these people?

Felton Lewis III: [00:10:43] Freddie Stewart He grew up with my son here in Battle Creek. He’s in Denver, Colorado.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] So you knew him? It was personal for you?

Felton Lewis III: [00:10:51] It was personal, yeah. And his wife had died and he had a 12 year old daughter and he had no benefits.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:59] So now starting an association, though, that’s a big undertaking. Had you ever been involved in associations before?

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:07] Oh, yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] So you’ve been involved in associations. So you knew how it worked and you knew how to get one set up and you knew how to kind of fund it.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:18] Yeah, I’m not a spring chicken. I’m 80 years old, so I’ve been around the block a while and I’ve been involved in accounting and business law and self employed for over 50 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] So so you know, as being self employed that that lifestyle doesn’t come with benefits usually.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:37] Right? Right. But if you make enough money, you can buy the benefits, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:11:40] So you think the challenge for drivers are they don’t make enough money to buy the benefits.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:46] Right. Without some support from the company that’s benefiting from their labor? You know, I mean, these guys are I mean, and if you I mean, Lyft and Uber now have a program where you can lease one of their cars, but it’s astronomical. I mean, that’s ridiculous. And then if you buy if you use your own car and the engine blows out. How do you replace the engine of the transmission? How do you keep your car service? And we offer that as a benefit to a company called High Speed X that offers oil changes, express lube and things like that for the drivers to.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:27] Right. So you’re trying to kind of put together a package that has all of the things that a driver could benefit from having.

Felton Lewis III: [00:12:34] Yes, sir. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:36] And it’s just a matter of getting more drivers to either sign up for it and pay the price and pay the money for that or partner with another organization that has the funds that will sponsor, in essence, each of these drivers.

Felton Lewis III: [00:12:49] Right? Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:52] Well, that’s a tough it’s tough. That’s a tough one. I mean, you know, you’re you’re asking for these companies to invest a lot of money and change their business plan. So, I mean, it’s going to be a.

Felton Lewis III: [00:13:03] Challenge when I have to do it anyway, because so many drivers have been assaulted, especially females sexually assaulted. I mean, if you go on Uber and you see you just put in a search or a rideshare drivers or Uber drivers, Lyft after that has been assaulted. Even killed. In fact, like I said, there’s a big billion dollar lawsuit against Lyft now because it’s not one or two. It’s several hundreds of female employees being sexually assaulted. So they don’t have any kind of protection, any kind of benefits.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:41] Right. But there’s also lots of people signing up for this app because they want the flexibility and they want that fits in their lifestyle. So, I mean, the companies will change when there’s a reason to change. So thus far, the pain of all of that isn’t greater than the pain of just getting new a new driver.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:04] Right? Correct. But now they have this suit against him, you know.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:10] Right. But I’m sure that’s not the first suit. I bet they’ve been sued since day one.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:15] Probably problem. And they feel as though they have the lawyers and the legal to settle. Without losing any benefits or the company going out of business.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:33] Right. I mean, those kind of large businesses, it becomes a math problem, really. You know, which one is the thing that is going to cost them more.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:44] With cost more? Yeah. And about the dollar.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] And then right now it’s cheaper for them all to be 1099. That pain isn’t greater yet. At some point, maybe with government regulations or different states changing the rules about 1099 independent contractors versus employees. Then the pain.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:05] Necessary movement now to unionize in New York and California. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Right. But we’ll see. I mean, that’s a I mean, it’s those examples have been few and far between.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:17] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:19] So you got your work cut out for you, Feldman.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:23] Yeah, but we are right. We’re we’re taking our time, but we’re not in any rush to, you know, create any strikes between us and the companies or us in the drivers. It’s not it’s like, here’s a benefit from someone who grew up with my son who works at.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:43] Lyft right now. What about just kind of getting a bunch of drivers on the wait list to show to all these larger firms like, look, I got a million drivers that want this. You know, you’ll have a lot more compelling case if you have a whole lot of drivers signed up, you know, for this program.

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:03] That’s a great idea. Never thought of it. Yeah. We can present it to them that we have x amount of drivers who are in need of this program and they sign a little document. We have that showing that they would love to have.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:21] It right if they had it, they they’d take it, you know, kind of thing.

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:25] Right. Right. So great idea.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:27] Well, that might help you get the momentum you need. So you got to just get in front of the drivers and just offer it and say, hey, if this existed. Would you sign up for this?

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:37] Yeah, well, and that’s the key is how do we get to the drivers? I mean, even though I’m on LinkedIn and I have 30,000 connections, I have very, very, very few Lyft and Uber driver connecting. I don’t know if they use LinkedIn, I don’t know what how do we get to them?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:56] Right. That’s the that’s the secret. I mean. I mean.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:02] How do we get to them to let them.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:04] Know? Right. Because a Lyft driver or an Uber driver is probably not putting that on LinkedIn because they probably just do this as a side hustle. They have another job that they’re just trying to squeeze in a few hours here and there.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:17] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:18] Between their other job?

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:20] Yes, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:21] So that is going to be a challenge. But there might be kind of Facebook groups or other LinkedIn groups for Uber drivers or rideshare drivers where they hang out.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:33] Okay. We’ll check it out. Check it out.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:36] So any advice for someone who’s starting a brand new association of how to get those initial members? How do you get people kind of engaged with you at the very earliest stages?

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:50] Well, we thought if we go to the big companies, that would be the way to do it, because they have the people. But it hasn’t worked that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:00] Not yet. But any anything in your 80 years of of life and the other associations you work with, like how do you get those initial members? Or How do you find those people?

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:12] Well, we have constant contact. We have different types of email. But, you know, then you’ve got to pay for that service. Godaddy the same thing. We have like 12,000 disabled veteran emails. We thought we start out with the veterans and and what they’re asking is exorbitant just to send out emails.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] Yeah. I guess that’s how you get them one at a time, right? I mean, there’s no easy way of getting them.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:41] No easy way to get them. So if some company unless the company said, well, here’s the new program.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:47] Right. If they endorse it and then offer it to their people, then that’s kind of a shortcut. But otherwise, it’s one at a time.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:55] One at a time. Yes, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:56] So I.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:57] Appreciate.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:57] If somebody wants to learn more, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:03] On our website, lab references. Dot com or they can email me at fell fl3 at live references dot com or they can call me at 2697198797.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:20] Well, Felton, I mean, you’re fighting the good fight. Best of luck. And thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:26] I appreciate you, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:28] Thanks, Lee. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:34] Thank you. Bye bye.

 

Spark Stories Episode 16

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SparkStories20225
Spark Stories
Spark Stories Episode 16
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Cindy AbelCindy Abel is an intuitive entrepreneur determined to make a difference in the lives of young women. As a co-founder she has created liv2Bme a positive, supportive social app for teen girls that inspires healthy self-images through kind interactions and meaningful connections. She has seen first-hand how social media interactions can affect girls.

liv2Bme is being created as a positive place online where girls can connect with peers who have common interests, goals, and concerns. liv2Bme strives to be safe space for girls as they share the ideas, thoughts, and images that define them. And the liv2Bme dream is to build an online community that understands how to express honest feelings in a way that respects other.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Spark Stories, where entrepreneurs and experts share their brand story and how they found their spark, the spark that started it all.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:00:13] Welcome to Spark stories like business radio brought to you by the Atlanta Business Radio Network. Every week, entrepreneurs and experts share the stories behind the brand who they are, what they do, and why their brands matter. I’m your host, Clarissa Jaye Sparks. In our own series, we dive into the everyday operations of inspiring business owners in our community. You can listen live on Saturdays at 10:00 PM or the rebroadcast at WW dot Business RadioX dot com. Today we’re going to talk about social media and women entrepreneurs. How can we leverage social media? Please allow me to introduce one of our amazing community leaders who owns it, Cindy Abel. She is an intuitive entrepreneur determined to make a difference in the lives of young women. As a co-founder, she has created Live to Be Me, a positive, supportive social app for teen girls that inspires healthy self images through kind interactions and meaningful connections. She has seen firsthand how social media interactions can affect girls lives. To Be Me is being created as a positive place online where girls can connect with peers who have common interests, goals and concerns live to be made strives to be a safe space for girls as they share their ideas, thoughts and images that define them. And the Live to be dream is to build an online community that understands how to express honest feelings in a way that respects others. Cindy is taking the step to launch your company and you’re brave, braving the world of entrepreneurship. I have three questions for you. Please tell the listeners who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. Please introduce yourself.

Cindy Abel: [00:01:59] Well, I’m Cindy Abel and I started Cofounded liv2Bme with my partner Tasha Marks. We started this because as moms with teenage girls, we had a really big gut feeling that something was wrong with social media when they first started using all the tools that are out there. And a mom’s gut usually is directed by the actions that they’re seeing with their children and their friends. So for us, we saw a lot of exclusionary behavior. We saw, you know, girls trying to attain perfectionism. And if they didn’t get 100 likes in an hour, they take down their post off of Instagram. So just some behaviors that as a mom were disturbing to us, quite frankly. When we started this, it was a few years ago, and we we started with a website for girls to test out, you know, the idea that there could be a community that was positive and supportive and sort of embrace this group, think of being together, doing something good. And we really felt like we saw a lot of things go on in that first iteration of the website that spoke to that it. The company went on pause for about six years. And in 2020, you know, one of the challenges we had early on when we were discussing this topic with different people in the community, other businesses, was there wasn’t a whole lot of data supporting our moms gut feeling.

Cindy Abel: [00:03:37] There wasn’t data out there readily available saying that there was something wrong with social media, that it actually was creating mental health issues like depression, anxiety and increase in body image issues and eating disorders. Those kind of statistics that if you’re familiar with the news today, we’ve been bombarded in the last year with the Wall Street files and the Facebook whistleblower who have brought to our attention that. Facebook itself has been doing research for years about teenagers. They wanted to understand why they were losing market share to Tik Tok and Snapchat. So they started doing their own internal research. And what we now know is that one in three teen girls has body image issues because they use the Instagram app. So it’s no longer in a place where I have to dig to find the supporting information. It’s out there, there’s research available, and so live to be me. A couple of years ago, when we decided to start this back up, really became an effort to turn the social media model as it exists today upside down. What we wanted to do was create a place that felt supportive, kind, authentic, where girls could go into a community and talk real about real issues they face every day and receive valuable feedback and advice from peers and mentors. So our community, we created the minimum viable product version of the app so that we could test out our concepts and ideas.

Cindy Abel: [00:05:20] We knew that this app needed to be an app that was research driven and data driven. We wanted to make sure that girls got on our app and actually felt better as a result of using it. And as a result, today we have partnerships with the University of Georgia. We’re involved in research studies to make sure that we’re doing just that. We’re social enterprise company. We believe that our our first priority is the teenage population that we’re serving. And we want to make sure that we’re making a positive impact on their lives given all the mental health challenges that are out there right now. So while we’re not a mental health app, we aim to improve the mental health resiliency of teen girls. The community is for 13 to 18 year old teens, and we have a model, a business model that includes community mentors or moderators that actually go through training their college age females, which in our future business model, when we are actually live out there in the world, will train these young women to in mental health resiliency and mentoring best practices concepts so that the mentors that are actually just a step away from where they used to be as teens themselves are the ones that are being the mentors for the teenagers in the community.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:06:47] Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that, Cindy. You made several interesting points that I kind of want to circle back to. When did you first start the organization?

Cindy Abel: [00:06:57] We first started the first iteration of the organization in 2012 and 2012.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:07:02] And when did you pivot and rebrand?

Cindy Abel: [00:07:05] We pivoted and rebranded in 2020, 2020.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:07:08] So you had been in operations for quite some time. What? Determine you and your co-founder to say, you know what, we need to pause, reevaluate, rebrand and relaunch.

Cindy Abel: [00:07:22] That’s a great question. And really, it’s more about life and circumstances in life than anything else. We were out there pitching our idea and the investment community in Atlanta. And back then I as I mentioned before, there wasn’t a whole lot of people that understood social media, especially older people in the business community that, you know, are the investors out there. So that was a challenge. That was a big challenge. We didn’t have supporting data, so it wasn’t like we could go out and Google, you know, what are the issues that are facing girls out there that are using social media today? So we you know, we had a lot of challenges at the beginning. And so, you know, my co-founder and I both had other things in our lives that we were doing. We’re both very involved philanthropically. We have I have three kids. She has two kids. We were in the high school, middle school, high school years send off to college years. You know, my business partner took on another job, a full time job to support her family. And I had several things that were coming my way as well that I had to say yes to.

Cindy Abel: [00:08:38] An example of that is in 2016, I was the interim CEO of Hands on Atlanta for for a while while we were looking for a new leader. And that sort of took my life over for a while. My husband ran for Congress one year, so I was really the supporting arm of that from a business perspective, like uplifting the business behind that. So we just had some other things that kind of took us off the path. And I think as we, you know, my husband and I sold our we have had an IT technology company in the Atlanta community for 23 years, and that sale was official in 2016 as well. So there were just a lot of changes and a lot of things going on in both of our lives. And in 2020 we looked at this organization and said, Wow, it seems let’s do a little research, but it seems like it’s more relevant than we ever thought it was and we came back to it.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:09:36] So very good. So again, you saw a need in the market and you said, you know what, we can pause, we can revamp and relaunch what you did, but you brought up look, you’re already making several interesting points, something that women entrepreneurs struggle with in the very beginnings. The early stages of their business is work life balance. Now, you said you took on the role of a CEO, your wife, your mom, your community leader. What advice would you give our listeners about work life balance or does that really exist?

Cindy Abel: [00:10:11] You know, I grew up when I graduated from college. I started my career at Andersen Consulting back then, which is now Accenture. The the the world of a consultant as a single person at the time was a great place for me to start my career as I married and started having children. The the reality of living in that world as a career person really was challenging. And I think the same challenges exist for many, many women today that want to have the balance of having a family and a balanced life in that family versus still having a career. So I think oftentimes I applaud women that stay home. I applaud women that are still working, that are balancing children. I applaud women that never had a family and just pursued their careers and their dreams. There’s so many different stories out there about, you know, women and their struggles just to be in a career and advance the career. I my personal story is that I have three children. I wanted to make sure, you know, it was very, very important to me. I grew up in a rather dysfunctional environment when I grew up, and it was really important for me to make sure that I was present for them. And so when we started our own company, Able Solutions, we really focused. My husband fortunately had the same value system. We really focused on making sure I could keep my foot in the game. But you know as well, try to do both. But, you know, let’s let’s face it, it’s still challenging. It doesn’t matter who you are.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:11:54] It doesn’t matter who you are. We all have a different path that we have to take. And that’s it’s so important to applaud women and not have comparison syndrome. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other. So I think that’s very important to keep that in the forefront of your goals so that you. Art so you can still move forward and still live the life that you deserve. Live to be, yeah.

Cindy Abel: [00:12:18] Live to be.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:12:20] Live to be. Which is really good. Now, when you were starting, you talked about having the data. Let’s talk about how important having the facts before you actually go to the market.

Cindy Abel: [00:12:32] It’s something I think a lot of. I’m not sure. I just think a lot of people place emphasis on when when you’re in the business community, it’s really, really important to be data driven and you can have a phenomenal idea. But to build something and just believe that people are going to come is probably not a very smart way to start.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:12:57] And so the Field of Dreams Building They Will Come doesn’t always work.

Cindy Abel: [00:13:01] I don’t think it always does work in a practical way. I mean, we we knew that at our first iteration of this whole idea is, you know, we saw first hand we could talk about it all day long. But, you know, if we didn’t have concepts that really drove the audience to want to be in our community, then it wasn’t going to be successful. So we’re really driving this second iteration of the app around data, around understanding the needs of teens. We have a business partner, Robin Farrell, and her husband Tim, who have a company called Sharpen, which actually has mental health resiliency content that they’ve been building for years, research and evidence based content. And we’re partnering with them under the notion of we want to infuse those positive mental health resiliency tactics in our community to again, add to the data that we’re actually making somebody feel better as a result of using our app.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:14:05] So is that what separates you and that’s your differentiator from other apps or other programs that are out there?

Cindy Abel: [00:14:14] I think so. I think several there’s three what I consider key differentiators. One is that we really want to to solidify this concept around group think if you create a community where everybody has a certain mantra that they live by, I think we have all experienced it in the business world. We’ve been in environments before where we’re coming in new and we don’t really understand the scene or what’s going on in the environment that we’re in from a business perspective or maybe from a, you know, you’re entering into a board member or some kind of volunteer engagement with a nonprofit organization where groupthink kind of takes over and you question yourself because you don’t have the institutional knowledge of the organization maybe, and you rely on others for that. So in our groupthink world, we really think that there’s a world where a community of girls can come together and self-police themselves, knowing that the community is about one thing and that’s empowering one another. The second point is this mental health resiliency content, and the idea that we want to improve mental health outcomes were not a mental health app. We’re a community.

Cindy Abel: [00:15:30] But that doesn’t mean that that’s not at the forefront of our minds is improving anxiety or the feeling of being alone in a world where all our teens are so very connected. But yet there, you know, the research is showing they’re feeling more lonely and disconnected to than ever. So creating that environment in that space. And then the third differentiator is we’re really focusing on this mentoring impact. There are tons and tons of data points out there about the benefits of having mentors. You know, we’ve experienced it maybe later than some of the younger generation that’s coming into the professional world now. It would have been great if I had a mentor when I entered the corporate world. I didn’t have that. But even more so when the numbers out there tell you that if you’re mentored as a teen, your chances of being successful later on in life go up tremendously. So this concept around having mentors in the community that have just lived the experience of being a teenage girl and making sure that those young women that we hire are trained to be as helpful as possible.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:16:47] Those are great differentiators and putting that out to the market, how do you attract your teens?

Cindy Abel: [00:16:55] I believe that that’s going to be the most challenging part of our app. It’s not that we don’t have interest at all when we talk. We’re out there talking to nonprofits right now. We’re out there talking to educational institutions. There is a lot of appetite for this. There’s a lot of appetite. There’s a lot of teens out there looking for alternatives. We know that there’s evidence out there to prove that. I think that it’s important for us to just make sure that we create an experience and listen to this audience about what they want. So we started a pilot program this summer. We are not only, you know. Asking our community of beta testers what they want in the app, what they like, what they don’t like. And we’re frankly, I’m just going to be honest, we’re minimum viable product. So it’s not that snazzy. It’s certainly not Instagram right now or tick tock.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:17:53] It’s on its way.

Cindy Abel: [00:17:54] It’s on its way. So we’re we’re looking to the future to build something that’s compelling like that, but in a positive way, a way that engages the community in a healthy way and not in an unhealthy way, which a lot of the algorithms out there on the current social media platforms do. So I just think, you know, we’re primed with trying to get people on the app to inform every decision that we make.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:18:20] So out of your beta and your pilot testing, what has been your greatest learning?

Cindy Abel: [00:18:27] It’s been really interesting at this first phase moment of our pilot. You know, our initial thing was we had to go out and find mentors. We had to find college age females that this concept resonated with. And we are keeping the initial test of this very small intentionally. We want to know our community and we, you know, put the feelers out there to a lot of local universities. We have a really close partnership with the University of Georgia Department of Public Health, and we’ve used a lot of their interns to help us build the infrastructure around the app. But we also have some mentors that are from the Emory community, Kennesaw, Georgia State. And it’s really inspiring to me when these young women applied to be mentors on our app, just the type of things that they said and the reasons that they were doing it. You know, whether they had a younger sister that was still in high school that they saw being influenced by social media in a way that they didn’t like or had body image issues. There’s one young woman that she herself has gone through struggles with an eating disorder, and she just wanted to be part of a solution to help her in her journey to recover. So everybody’s got such a great story and it’s really inspiring to me to see these young 20 somethings come forward and really want to jump in and be part of some movement that’s that’s helpful to younger people.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:20:01] That’s awesome. You mentioned institutions like Emory, UGA. Let’s talk about the important importance of partnerships. Yes.

Cindy Abel: [00:20:11] For a startup company that’s pre-revenue. I’m I’m very fortunate that in the last six months, I have my first private equity investor. She’s invested in the company. She remains she does not want to be known, but she is a wonderful, wonderful person. She really believes in what we’re trying to do. And she also has three daughters of her own, so it really resonated with her. But the partnerships in the community have been what’s enabled us to propel forward as a pre-revenue company and somebody that is is doing all the day to day legwork myself and somebody that doesn’t necessarily have like you do a great marketing, in-depth marketing background. I know that I have to reach my audience on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok, because 15 million women between the ages of ten and 19 in the US alone are on one, two or all three of those platforms. So I need to be able to reach them and communicate about the app and I needed expertise. So the university system has proven to be an invaluable partner to me. It’s where I found my marketing interns that run my social media Instagram feed have helped me build my following from 300 to 3000.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:21:37] Oh, look at you.

Cindy Abel: [00:21:38] Yes, none of that I would have been able to do on my own. And my interns have been just wonderful. And then the public health interns that are really vested in this whole concept and trying to build the infrastructure around the app and make sure that it’s researched and data based. So the universities have been extremely helpful as partnerships to me and the nonprofit community as well.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:22:05] Right? So through this conversation, I realized that you have several target markets, not only girls, but even like I said, your secondary partners with the university, with public health organizations to mental health organizations, and it’s all data driven. So thumbs up to you for putting in the work. A lot of the time people like to start on Instagram and Tik Tok with all of the social media platforms, but don’t do the back end to support their growth. So look, again, so I applaud you for that and live TV, you guys are doing a great job and it’s going to help you to continue to gain traction. So that’s I guess with having your interns, you’re building partnerships, you’re building community. You’re building. A system that can live on from generation to generation after after you leave here. Yes, exactly. And that’s a part of developing and growing women and doing that during doing that through mentorship. I think a lot of us lack those opportunities to have someone to go to and say, hey, this is I need help in this area. And Cyndi, you have not been afraid to ask for help.

Cindy Abel: [00:23:21] I have asked for a lot. And I’m fortunate I’m very fortunate that a lot of people the idea has just resonated. And I think so many people have stood up to introduce me to people, you know, you know, and I know how important networking and communication and connections are in our community. And I’ve reached out and not been afraid to ask. I have to ask for help. And I’ve just been really just blessed with so many people coming to my aid. Yeah, you know, I have one intern, and this makes me so happy. When she started with me marketing intern, she told me that she wished she had a community like this when she was young because she is the daughter of two immigrants and they came to the US. So she’s first generation college and she really didn’t know how to navigate anything. And she said had she had a community like this to ask questions or to find people to lead her, she really would have been helped a lot. So yes.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:24:28] That’s a good thing. And speaking of community, how can my community support leave it to be?

Cindy Abel: [00:24:36] You know what, you already are. Thank you for inviting me to come today.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:24:40] Okay, great. We start there.

Cindy Abel: [00:24:43] I think, you know, there’s just not understanding all you know, I’m a I’m really good at technology, I feel like. But there’s a lot of technology. I don’t know. You know, I I’ve been studying social media and technology for a long time. So I’m really looking for partners in the community that really want to create a new type of social media that changes the way we value our teens instead of profiting off of them by, you know, feeding them algorithms that are not good for them and, you know, companies capitalizing on that and making a lot of these tech giants rich when they know that some of the stuff that they’re doing is inherently causing harm, but just finding those technology partners out in the community that are really engaged in these conversations. There’s a nonprofit organization called Center for Humane Tech, which was really the catalyst when I first started doing my early research in 2020 for, you know, giving me the ammunition I needed to move forward. They have on their website something called a ledger of harms, and they were talking about all the issues I’m talking with you about today. So finding the community, your community, you know, you have a lot of connections in the community. I like to share my connections with other people, but I just think staying involved, you know, I’ve it’s been suggested that I need to start exploring going to some of these conferences out there that are talking about these issues. And I’m looking at a lot of ways to, you know, invest in that as well. So.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:26:28] Yeah, visibility is very important. And, you know, your social enterprise and this is indeed a social dilemma. It is. And you have found you identified the problem, you’ve created a solution, and now the end users or the girls are going to benefit from the data and the research that you are driving from these higher education institutions as well as these community service organizations. So again, we applaud you for recognizing now, I guess I know it’s going to come up because it comes up all the time for me when you’re niche focused and you’re targeting girls. What about the boys?

Cindy Abel: [00:27:13] Yeah, it does come up a lot. Yeah. Lived to Be Me is a name that allows inclusivity. So maybe one day it’ll be, you know, my son says that this is necessary for girls, but he says there are needs for boys, too. But, you know, he likes to tell me often that young women and young men use social media very, very differently. Okay, girls are we’re more emotional creatures. We like to talk to our girlfriends about the issues that are deeply affecting us. And we face boys are a little, as he says, you know, closed on those topics. So. Not that that’s a good thing. But, you know, we’ve had a lot of recent discussions in the media as well about COVID and mental health, the mental health crisis. You know, the American Association of Pediatrics, if I got that name right, I hope I did. That organization has come out saying that we’ve got a crisis we’ve got to address with young people in this country and so many aspects. And that’s boys and girls, boys. So yeah. So it’s not that I don’t care about the boys, it’s just I felt that as initially I needed a focus somewhere and I felt like this was my greater understanding given that I came, you know, equipped with two daughters that were short their friends and they were showing me their needs.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:28:40] I get it. I have a running joke here, which she sparks, and I like to say he sparks, too.

Cindy Abel: [00:28:45] That’s great.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:28:46] Yeah. So we touch everybody when there is a need for those who aren’t as far along on the journey of entrepreneurship and then development of their product, what advice would you give?

Cindy Abel: [00:28:58] You know, you get you get so much advice along the way, really good intentioned advice. I’ve had conversations that I didn’t like to hear, you know, conversations with a social impact investor that says there are a lot of great smart people out there trying to, you know, solve similar problem to this. What makes you think, you know, you’re the one to do it? And I, I just carry on every day knowing that I might be a small cog in the wheel. But if I can make a difference in the life of just, you know, a couple of teen girls and some mentors, I consider that successful. And the reason I chose the social enterprise route from a business model perspective, which is what a lot of people refer to right now and in the community as B Corp was because I wanted to differentiate myself. I want to I want to make a profit and I want to make a profit so I can sustain the business, but also so that I can give back in areas that I need to give back in. So supporting those nonprofits out there that might not be able to afford technology and might might need a hand. So, you know, in order to do all this, honestly, Clarissa, one of the biggest the biggest, biggest challenges I have is raising capital. Right. And I need to raise that capital pretty immediately for the next iteration of the app, which, you know, will hopefully prove to be just a great version that we can release to the public and start getting into people’s hands. So.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:30:38] Yeah, okay. Yeah. Capital is a common issue for most early stage entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs, and particularly when we’re going out to pitch our ideas. So we’ll keep that in mind. So lastly, you know, how can we learn more about you, more about the organization so that we can hopefully get you some funds?

Cindy Abel: [00:30:59] Yeah. Thank you. You can go to our website Live to be me, live the number to the letter B and that name originated from my co-founders daughter’s email address. So she, you know, had an email for her daughter when she was traveling an AOL account. I think it was AOL. Right. But our website has a lot of information. I’m open to be contacted. I’m an open book. You can go to my LinkedIn profile and my my email is out there. I’m looking to connect with anybody that has an interest in this topic.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:31:39] Yeah, sorry. So we know where to find you now. So thank you for sharing who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. Here on Spark Stories, we celebrate business owners today in every day listeners. Please remember to support local businesses and express your support on their social media platforms. Thank you and create a great day.

Intro: [00:32:01] Thank you for listening to Spark Stories. If you’re looking for more help in gaining focus, come check out our website where you can find episode show notes, browse our archives and access free resources like worksheets, trainings, events and more. It’s all at WW she sparks.

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.

Jason Burchard With RootNote

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Startup Showdown Podcast
Jason Burchard With RootNote
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rootnote

JasonBurchardJason Burchard is a co-founder at RootNote where they’re using data to help digital creators build better businesses.

Prior to jumping into the complex world of creator data, he co-founded one of the first equity-based investment firms that invests directly into creators, worked at a seed stage social impact venture capital firm in London, and consulted as a senior consultant at a Texas-based consultancy.

Jason holds a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and MSc in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About RootNote
  • The creator economy
  • Importance of data

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 web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a fun 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 Jason Burchard with Rude Note. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Burchard: [00:00:55] Hey, Lee, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Route Note. How are you serving folks?

Jason Burchard: [00:01:02] Yeah, so we’re building a business intelligence product for digital creators. There are over 640 million people in the world with over 1000 followers of what you would consider to be nano influencers. And we live in this crazy world today where literally anybody can build a brand around digital content. One of the things that we’ve kind of recognized over the past few years is that these creative businesses. They basically operate at the intersection of creativity, which is obviously paramount to the business and then data. And as you can imagine, the vast majority of creators who are building brands around the content, they’re not data scientists, they’re not data analysts, but they have to use it in their day to day business. So we we’re building a SAS product that makes data analytics and intelligence accessible to literally anyone and helps digital creators make better decisions using data.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] Now, a historically hasn’t I mean, people have been talking about data, big data. You know, this conversation has been going on for a long, long time in that regard. But when you kind of add an add on the creator piece and that creator is and I’m sure you’ve cast a wide net on who a creator is. Right? That could be a musician. That could be an artist. That could be a blogger like that. That term fits a lot of folks. How do you help them not only just capture the data, but make kind of actionable decisions based on the data? Because the data has always been there. It’s just a matter of how do you find what’s important and kind of ignore what’s not important and not get distracted by things that seem important but probably aren’t important?

Jason Burchard: [00:02:46] That’s a great point. It’s one of the challenges that we’re we’re kind of faced with in 2022 is that there is a ton of data that’s available. Huge corporations have been facing this forever. And the reality is that anyone who’s trying to build a business around their content, what’s e-commerce and everything else, they have to be paying attention to social media numbers, engagement across multiple platforms. If you are a podcast or you’re creating music, you’ve got to be paying attention to who’s listening to you on Spotify or Apple or Pandora or all of the different content streaming sites. If you’re a live streamer, you’re looking at what your average watch time and view time is on Twitch. There are all of these very complex analytics that factor in in a business that ultimately you need to understand one kind of looking at what’s actually driving revenue when wherever we’re looking at somebody’s Shopify, their E Commerce platform or their MailChimp email is really understanding kind of what those metrics are. And you really hit the nail on the head there. The question is, how do you actually make all of this data actionable? And one of the things that we realized early on is because data is all over the place, it’s really, really hard to even understand where to begin. So the first step in what we’re first kind of solving is just that challenge of getting all of this data into one place just like any other company or business would need. And the second part of that is making data actionable.

Jason Burchard: [00:04:10] One of the first things that we’re doing there is we’re helping creators build out their suite of products. And services are what we’re calling a creator stack. As you can imagine, there is so much information out there about different products and platforms and services, and anyone running a small or medium sized business can tell you how overwhelming that process can be. So the first thing that we’re doing is using data and generating basically the ability and kind of telling people what other platforms and products and services that they can look towards that will help them. From there, we’re diving deeper into engagement, analytics, benchmarking. One of the fundamental questions that we want to enable every user to be able to answer is just simply, is this working? And I challenge you to ask the vast majority of creators if they can tell you whether or not a particular strategy is or isn’t working without really diving into that data. So that’s moving beyond just kind of the stack building. We’re getting into more of the kind of prescriptive and predictive analytics when it comes to forecasting future earnings and understanding what some of those kind of key revenue drivers are. And eventually, obviously, we’ll be going full circle and in the end cost data as well so that we can start looking at ROI on various marketing campaigns and initiatives. But it all starts at one place and that’s that’s getting the information into a centralized location.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:39] So how did this problem get on your radar to solve? Like, what’s your back story? How did this subject matter become of interest for you?

Jason Burchard: [00:05:50] So if you would have asked me five years ago if I would be building a SAS platform, I would have told you no way. I actually started my career in consulting later, work in social impact venture capital and based on my experiences, experiences in those areas, I got really fascinated by this idea of building an equity based investment model for investing in creators like startups. So my initial kind of objective with being an entrepreneur was to help scale a more capital efficient model for kind of supporting creative entrepreneurs. What we learned in that process was that there is this huge, huge challenge with data creators. We’re doing very complex businesses around multiple recurring income streams, and nobody had a great picture of their kind of company when it came to data. So that’s kind of what inspired us. We were actually looking for a solution ourselves to help kind of consolidate all of this data. As I was doing due diligence and trying to help our portfolio companies understand how they were doing. And we couldn’t find anything out there in the market. And once we realized that this was a really large problem that we weren’t facing alone. And then no one has built the solution yet. We decided that it’d be a good opportunity for us to take it on.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:16] Now, when you’re dealing with creators, you’re not dealing typically with, you know, the hyper technical person. This is a person that, you know, wants to create something and wants to focus primarily in their dream of dreams, to be a creator and not be a data scientist, like you said, are you able to is your platform or do you aspire for your platform to be something where that this creative person can say, you know what, if I push on these three levers, I am going, my dream will come true, you know, or if I avoid this lever over here, that’s going to be better than than doing something else. Like it’s simplified to the point where I know kind of what to do each day.

Jason Burchard: [00:08:00] Yeah, that’s a great point. One of the things that we really want to be able to help people do is just understand what is and wasn’t, what is and what is not working. Because as you can imagine, the challenge of running a business around content is that it’s incredibly time intensive and you really don’t have a lot of bandwidth to spend on digging into the finer details. So our mission is to make data analytics accessible to literally anyone and make it as easy as just plugging in your data and getting started from day one. One of our advisors and investors likes to think of the product as a as a data scientist in your pocket. And obviously we have a ways to go before we get into the full functionality and building everything that we can out with ML and I. But yeah, the basic tenant is going to be using using data to help creators make better business decisions in a way that’s very easy to understand and use. Obviously, we’re building a B2B product because we do see creators as small and medium sized businesses, but the B in this case behaves a lot more like a C or consumer. So the challenge is building something that is so simple and easy and intuitive to use that anyone is comfortable trying it, but also complex and robust enough to handle the challenge of doing real technical data, insights and analysis.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:32] So walk me through. I’m a creator. How like, what do I do to, you know, input data into the system? And then what is kind of a dashboard or some of the actionable information going to look like?

Jason Burchard: [00:09:47] Yeah. So we think about data and kind of three different buckets. We think about social data, we think about streaming data, which can be any type of content streaming data. And then we think about revenue data. And so as a creator, whenever you first sign up for the product, you’re effectively invited to go over to the My Accounts page, where based on the platforms that we currently integrate with and support, you can start going down the list and connecting your accounts. This is the MVP version of our product. We’re actually getting ready to launch version 2.0 of the product where in addition to connecting accounts that you already have and that you are currently using, we’re actually starting to build in the ability for us to recommend date recommend platforms based on what we know about your career. One of the other challenges that most creators face, and I think what a lot of intelligence and analytics platforms fail to provide is context to data. So one of the things that we’re doing from a very early stage is we’re enabling creators to go in and set goals around specific KPIs, whether that is growing, let’s say a specific social media channel like TikTok or it’s reaching a certain number of streamers on a platform like YouTube or Spotify or Twitch, really providing context to that data so that we can also start curating content specifically kind of educational walk through content that we actually create ourselves as well on how to do things to enhance whatever platform you’re targeting or going after. So those are the first kind of initial insights, is providing context to data, providing education around that content, and then also helping creators to build out their, their, their stats in the future. In the near future, we’re going to be effectively scaling some of the things that we’ve been doing on a manual basis. We’re actually we’ve been going in and running some very specific analyzes on creator accounts and making very specific recommendations. We’ll be building that into the actual tech stack itself as we continue this journey from our pre-seed to seed state.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:04] So now say I’m on TikTok and that’s my platform that I use and I’m trying to obviously grow my followers. I’m trying to monetize in some manner, I guess by advertising. I guess that’s a typical way and say I have a million followers. What is some of the information that you’d be able to glean from that? And what like are you going to tell me, oh, you know what, you should post, you know, ten times a week, not seven, or you should post try posting in the evening more, not the morning or partner with these five influencers. Like, like what type of information is going to come out of your, your platform?

Jason Burchard: [00:12:45] Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you know, first and foremost, obviously, the engagement that we can glean from TikTok, so so follower growth, engagement data, one of the things that we’ve recognized from an early stage in our early beta test is that the vast majority of creators, they don’t know how they’re doing relative to how they should be doing. So if I say, Hey, Lee, you’ve got a 5% engagement rate on TikTok, you’re sitting there thinking, okay, great. I think maybe, is that good? Is that bad? And if you’re not truly familiar with the platform and how things work in reality, that that’s not that great. Tiktok generally has a much higher engagement rate. However, if I said, Lee, you’ve got a 5% engagement rate on Instagram, you know, you should be jumping up and down because that’s that’s incredible. And so helping kind of understand how the creators understand that question is what you’re doing in this platform specifically working. And then if we can target those areas, once we’ve identified what your engagement rate is, that is the opportunity to go in and say, hey, you know, you are you’re doing great. You’re you’re compared to everyone else. You’re right on track. You’re you’re doing fantastically. Keep it up. Or if we know that you’re kind of over under indexing based on the data that we’re saying we can start recommending area of improvement. Now as far as the you should post more, you should post less. I think there are some other platforms out there that are doing a great job of that. We certainly do want to get into that space as well. But for right now, it’s more about comparing your engagement rate on tick tock compared to that to your engagement rates on Facebook and Instagram. And then looking at some of your other various channels, whether that’s your YouTube or or Twitch or Shopify or we’re finding that we can be most helpful right now to users who are building their their content across multiple platforms as opposed to necessarily just one platform specifically.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:52] So you’re giving me context in terms of how I’m doing relative to how others are doing in the same platform. So I can say, you know what, maybe I should invest more time here than there because I’m already getting more traction there.

Jason Burchard: [00:15:06] Exactly. And it’s one of those things, if we are able to create an account for you and then we recognize that you haven’t connected your email list, that actually gives us an opportunity to start kind of telling you about other products and services, whether that’s MailChimp or SendGrid or there’s tens to hundreds of them at this point of different email providers where you can start focusing on building your brand outside of just one specific channel. Because the reality is, is as a creator, the more that you can do to own your audience or your community or your data, the better. Position you’re going to be in the long haul when it comes to ultimately monetizing your brand.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:52] Yeah, if you can figure that out and really encourage creators, I talk to them all the time and that’s one of my big pet peeves is you’re going to have to bring as many people off any of these third party platforms as possible into your own ecosystem. So you better figure out a way to do that.

Jason Burchard: [00:16:08] Absolutely. It is about building organic, true relationships with a niche community. And it’s it’s been said over and over again the value of having 1000 true fans, you know, 1000 true fans who are paying $100 a year, you know, it’s $100,000 a year as a creator. So it’s one of those it’s not a small opportunity for the ones who can capitalize on true community and relationships.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] Now, when you built this business, you built it with your brother. Can you talk about how that came up and kind of maybe share some advice about going on an adventure like this with a family member?

Jason Burchard: [00:16:55] Yeah, absolutely. I would say my brother Jeremy is amazing. Fantastic. We’re very different. I think that’s one of the reasons why we work so well together is that we we have very different backgrounds. Jeremy has actually been a professional creator for over a decade. He’s got a band, he’s on Spotify, YouTube. He actually just completed an accelerator program run by a large creator, economy focused company. And he’s very much a thought leader in this space. He’s been a music journalist as well and interviewed everyone from Leon produced Taylor Swift and in between. So he is very much our kind of ideal user and use case. So working with him provides a level of context that I am incredibly grateful for that we have. He is a frequent beta tester of a lot of new features of these different social platforms and backends of different products. So I think that through him we have a very good eye for the problem and lens as far as as working together. As I mentioned, we are very different, which I think lends itself well to a very collaborative relationship. I like to describe myself as the spreadsheets and PowerPoint guy, and he’s he’s the technical title’s chief creative officer. So he writes all of our original content and everything kind of relevant to the creatives that we’re serving. So as far as advice, you know, we I think we’ve always had a unique relationship. I think that one of the things that I’ve had to learn is not to be not to be the big brother, let’s be the business partner. So I think I’ve had a few missteps in that regard, but I’ve learned over time how to kind of separate the two things. And I think one of the challenges is always separating. Work from personal and family. And that’s I mean, I’ll be honest, I don’t think we’ve done a great job of that. We most of our conversations do rely or revolve around the business, but trying to get better at separating those as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:14] Yeah, I’ve done a lot of shows with family owned businesses and that dynamic, you know, of turning it off at the holidays, you know, with your family around you or other siblings. I don’t know if you have other siblings that aren’t involved in the in this. You know, it gets a little tricky. And, you know, you have to be mindful and you have to, you know, kind of walls around things just for your own mental health.

Jason Burchard: [00:19:38] Absolutely. And what you bring up about mental health is paramount, because obviously, you know that there’s nothing there’s nothing fast about building a company or a startup together as much as we’re led to believe, it’s a pretty long journey. So and I will say to you, it’s been great having a co-founder who I’ve had the luxury of knowing for, I guess, 33 years, 32 years. So I think that there are benefits to that when you really understand how somebody works before you have an opportunity to actually work with them in a professional capacity.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:21] Yeah, I mean, you get you get the benefit is obviously the trust is there and the watching of each other’s back is there. The negative might be that sometimes you’re fighting about issues that took place when you were ten and it’s just a, you know, kind of a new version of that.

Jason Burchard: [00:20:36] Yeah, there’s there can certainly be some ingrained behaviors from growing up together, but yeah, so, so far, so good.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:47] Now talk about why you decided to take part in Startup Showdown. How did that get on your radar and why was it important for you to kind of go through that process?

Jason Burchard: [00:20:56] Yeah. So we’re we’re we’re based in Nashville, Tennessee, and we’re always looking. Obviously different opportunities to work with different partners and obviously throughout the US but also in the Southeast and panoramic popped up on our radar as an individual, an innovative fund based out of Atlanta. And we kind of stumbled upon them and then saw that they had this this startup showdown kind of pitching competition and seemed like a really interesting opportunity for us to get out and get in front of a new audience and really just kind of test our ideas, test the pitch and kind of see what the general reception was to it. So yeah, it was a great opportunity to get out there and I was thrilled to hear that they were launching a podcast and have continue to the narrative and the journey of sharing startup stories.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:54] So what was kind of the most beneficial part of the startup shutdown process? Was there anything, any kind of intel you gleaned or anything that you were able to say, Oh, that’s really good. Let’s focus more on that or less of this.

Jason Burchard: [00:22:09] Yeah. I think I think anytime you have the opportunity to really work with a team who is used to seeing thousands and thousands of pitches and refine your pitch in front of a team, I think it’s fantastic. That was a great opportunity to get in front of them in multiple rounds and get constructive and helpful feedback. I think as founders we can live in an echo chamber sometimes and so it’s nice to get that that outside perspective in a really safe and encouraging environment. And then as far as kind of post pitching competition, it also led to some visibility. We actually met a journalist who ended up wanting to write a story about us after the competition, and that actually ended up turning into some organic relationships with strategic investment partners. And it ended up kind of really broadening our visibility in the greater Atlanta area, which was fantastic for us. Obviously being based in Nashville.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:16] So what’s next for root note? What do you need more of? How can we help?

Jason Burchard: [00:23:22] Yeah, well, thank you for asking me. We are in the middle of actually closing out a pre-seed round right now. We’re getting ready to launch the second iteration of our platform. So we’ve been experimenting with our MVP for the past year and have gotten some really incredible feedback from our early beta users, and we’ve been incorporating that into the next launch of the product. So very excited to get that out there. We were getting ready to release a mobile version, which we’re incredibly excited about. Obviously, working with creators is very important and then excited to get this fundraising round close so that we can get back to get back to building and to the business development.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:06] So if somebody wants to connect with you or your team or take a look at Root now, what is the website.

Jason Burchard: [00:24:12] Yeah, the website is going to be WW W dot root node dot co. So that’s dot co. And then they are also free to email me at JSON at root noko as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:26] Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jason Burchard: [00:24:30] All right. Thank you so much for giving me the time. We.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:33] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:24:38] 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 VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right, that’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

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