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Gary Decker With Win Moves Coaching

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WinMovesCoaching
Coach The Coach
Gary Decker With Win Moves Coaching
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GaryDeckerGary K. Decker is a Certified Professional Leadership Coach and the President of Win Moves Coaching. He has empowered business teams and leaders throughout his accomplished career across Finance, IT, HR, Legal, Communications, R&D, Supply Chain, Sales, and Marketing.

Gary helps business owners, leaders, teams, and team members navigate opportunities that allow them to thrive. He helps good leaders be great! Win Moves Coaching offers one-on-one, team, and peer group coaching programs in four primary focus areas: leadership, success, agility, and purpose.

Connect with Gary on LinkedIn and follow Win Moves Coaching on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Leaders dealing with the great resignation
  • Job changers finding they need to do
  • Help people with change
  • Three most important attributes of a leader in 2021

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 Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com to learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have Gary Decker and he is with win moves coaching. Welcome, Gary.

Gary Decker: [00:00:43] Thanks, Lee. So glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about when moves coaching. How are you serving, folks?

Gary Decker: [00:00:50] So my focus as a leadership coach is helping good leaders be great. We all have challenges, we all have opportunities, and I just help people sort through that and find their vision and their mission and their purpose.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Now what’s your back story? How how did you get involved in leadership coaching?

Gary Decker: [00:01:12] So I have a I have a long corporate career. I have more than thirty five years in leading and developing teams all around the world in a variety of functions in. I started my career in finance. I was a CPA at one point in my career. I then moved on to leadership roles in I.T. and in HR. And I’ve really worked to, as I said, develop teams and leaders all across a whole variety of functions and locations and geographies. So I’ve been coaching, it’s been part of my life and my DNA for that entire time from my first days in public accounting. Over time, I got involved with some organizations that do certifications and do training, and I ultimately got my professional certification in coaching and then went into it full time. I dabbled part time and had had side hustle going on in coaching for a long time, but I went full time into my business in early 2020.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:18] Now, can we talk a little bit about how when you were a CPA? Yeah. So obviously you were as a young person saying, I’m going to be a CPA at some point and you were going to choose that path. What attracted you to that? And then at what point did you say, You know what? I think there’s more to me than this, and I’m going to kind of branch out a little bit.

Gary Decker: [00:02:40] Yeah, it’s a great question. I went into a public accounting because I knew that it would expose me to a wide variety of clients and give me exposure to business and and and professionals that I didn’t have as a young person. And it’s exactly what happened. I had I had major clients each quarter of the year. I had a different major client and a variety of industries. All kinds of things. I’m a continuous learner have been since day one and I and I just loved that exposure. And when I realized that coaching was for me, was literally the first week of public accounting, when they sat down and said, OK, well, this is our this is our counseling process. We evaluate you after each job that you do, you have a discussion with your supervisor and then it goes up up the chain, so to speak, and we give you feedback. And then I got to do that with people that were assigned to me as a leader on different engagements. And it just really resonated to me the ability to get feedback, to act on feedback, to give feedback and help people develop and grow. And I’ve just taken that in every role that I’ve had ever since.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:58] And then you’ve been able to kind of expand the breadth of your knowledge so you can serve people in a variety of roles, not just finance and accounting.

Gary Decker: [00:04:06] Absolutely. When I went into leadership in the IT organization, we were in the midst of rolling out major system projects all over the world. So we were putting together teams, a very intensive effort of evaluating talent, internal talent, consultative talent and assessing them. And we had to build a very flexible environment to do that. So that’s where I created a career coach and counsel in my organization at the time. And that’s when the coaching that I got exposed to the coaching certification programs and it really it really took off and I got some. I replaced some of my letters, if you will, with with new coaching certification letters.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:47] And I would think just from a foundational standpoint, having that finance background really helps you in no matter what area you’re helping a client with, because you, it always goes back to the numbers at some point.

Gary Decker: [00:05:01] Absolutely. It’s the foundation of everything and and to be able to talk with a leader now and have that basic understanding of really all components of their business, it’s really, really helpful.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:14] Now what are you seeing in the marketplace? You’re hearing a lot about this period of time. We’re in this transition out of the pandemic, hopefully as soon as possible. And there’s this great I think they’re calling it the great resignation happening. A lot of people are reevaluating their priorities, changing careers or just pulling the ripcord and just saying, Look, I’m going to hit pause and I’m going to just regroup here a little bit. Are you seeing that? Is that accurate in the in the markets you’re dealing with? And how are the leaders kind of handling this kind of if it’s true, this kind of great resignation?

Gary Decker: [00:05:48] Yeah. Or. Great reshuffle, there’s a few buzzwords out there about it. It’s definitely happening, I see it a lot. And I guess what I’d say is good leaders that I see or leaders that are effective, I shouldn’t say good or bad, but leaders that are effective are listening to their people and really, really trying to get input and feedback and adapt and find new models of working, find ways to give feedback to people in a more effective way, I think. I think employees, from my experience, what I’m seeing is that most people that are leaving a job or a company are doing so because they’re not feeling connected, they’re not feeling heard. So the leaders that are less effective are unfortunately kind of holding on to the old way and waiting kind of waiting for it to come back. I’ve actually even heard leaders say things like, well, once once the the assistance money runs out and people really need a job, they’ll come running back. And I find that an interesting approach for a leader to be hiring desperate.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:00] Right? That speaks to their culture, I would think.

Gary Decker: [00:07:04] I think so, too, I think. I think it speaks to a lot. Leaders are really being challenged in this time to think about how they can influence and and give feedback to employees in a way that’s not, you know, foundation on face time and control and things like that. So it’s definitely a time of everybody’s learning this new dance, so to speak.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:29] And you know, there’s a saying that people don’t quit jobs, they quit. Bosses, are you seeing this kind of at the heart of that as well?

Gary Decker: [00:07:38] Absolutely. Absolutely. And I’m seeing the opposite. I’m seeing I talked to leaders and ask them about this kind of thing and the impact. I’ve gone to different organizations and and you look around and there’s there’s like no impact there. People are running around doing their jobs, happy to do their jobs. Those were the people that were like that before anything changed. Those were people that were sensitive and empathetic to their employees before anyone heard the word pandemic. So it’s without a doubt it’s it’s that type of leader that is continuing to be successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:18] It’s one of those moments, I guess, in time where you know, where they say the when the tide goes down, then you can see who’s wearing their bathing suit or not. This is a time where you’re seeing whose company culture and their people are really kind of practicing what they preach when they say their people are the most important asset. I mean, the the numbers or the numbers. If a bunch of people in your firm are quitting or have had enough, that might speak to what’s going on kind of as part of the culture of your organization?

Gary Decker: [00:08:48] Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, that great Warren Buffett quote. You don’t know who’s skinny dipping until the tide goes out, and without a doubt that’s that’s happening. And you see it. And some leaders are having a real hard time identifying that and valuing that. So I love working with those kinds of leaders and helping them broaden their, you know, their vision and and think through some more flexible approaches.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:15] So now let’s talk about the leader. Like, say, something has occurred all of a sudden there. The turnover is extremely high. All of a sudden they’re seeing a lot of turnover where maybe historically, for whatever reason, they hadn’t been seeing this degree. Maybe there were symptoms, but maybe not to the degree that it is today. What is some advice you can give that leader to say, Hey, you know, we’re going to have to triage this right now, but here you’re going to have to kind of lay some foundational groundwork in order to really get through this.

Gary Decker: [00:09:43] Yeah. Well, one of the key things as a coach, I don’t typically give advice, so to speak, unless you know, the door is open and we do coaching where I will try to pull out from that person, what it is that they see and what they see as opportunities. And and sometimes I see many leaders will kind of knee jerk to, oh, I guess I have to pay more money. And yeah, that’s part of it. There’s a competitive component in compensation, but I’ll try and ask them and get them to think through. Are there other things that may be? Would be valuable to people, things I’ve seen creativity around the hours that they’re asking people to work, sharing roles in some cases where that might work. Thinking about other ways to provide development opportunities for employees. But I really try to get the leaders to to kind of think that through themselves, if they’re stuck in, there’s nothing I can do. And I’ve seen this as well. There are organizations that just can’t hack it.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:57] And then but so I mean, obviously, they’re going to kind of self all self author their destiny, but you’re going to be kind of hopefully opening their mind and maybe asking questions that open their mind to have them go down some productive path.

Gary Decker: [00:11:13] Absolutely. Absolutely. Try. And you know, I work a lot with people’s mindset and why are they stuck with that feeling? And you know, sometimes there’s a bad past experience that there’s no guarantee that that’s going to happen again. Or there’s a judgment that they’re kind of putting on top of their employees. And again, with empathy is a big part of this. And we learned a lot in in the depths of like when people in many companies had the opportunity to work remote and we all literally saw into each other’s living rooms and saw what was going on in people’s lives. We could. We had the chance to be more empathetic and and when when leaders can adapt to that and take that on and really see the really seek the ways that their employees want to be and have flexibility, that’s where that’s where it pays off.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:14] Now are you seeing this remote work? You know, obviously there was a need for it to be, OK, this is how it is now. This is the new reality that we’re living in. And now, as the pandemic is kind of waning a little bit and people are getting more comfortable of being face to face again. All of that, I trust my employees to be remote. Everything’s great as a remote is now kind of morphing into some hybrid version of remote. Because the workers obviously love remote, the leaders may not love the remote as much or feel like ultimately that’s the way to go. So now they’re kind of trying to have it both ways. How are you seeing that kind of evolve as we get through this pandemic?

Gary Decker: [00:12:57] Yeah, I think I think for the most part, and there’s always exceptions, but for the most part, employers that are not allowing some kind of flexibility are struggling to find people or will be continue to struggle to keep people. Most of the people that I interact with want some version of flexibility and and they’re frustrated by the fact that we prove that it could work. We prove that most organizations were more profitable, more more efficient in their operations. People were unshackled from having to commute and to, you know, do their hair, fancy or whatever you want to. You want to say people felt a lot of freedom and flexibility from that, and they’re demanding that in in the large part and leaders again, to my view, in my experience, effective leaders are are adjusting to that. Now do you see others? There are, I think there are some pride issues and some other non organizational matters that come into play.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:07] Now, one of the benefits of a remote workforce was that your workforce can be anywhere, right? Once you switch to some sort of a hybrid where you have to come into the office some of the time, you can’t be anywhere anymore, like you can’t have an employee, you know, a thousand miles away and then popping in on a Friday meeting on a weekly. I guess you could, but I mean, I don’t know how sustainable that is over time. But are you seeing that by saying that it’s hybrid? You’re basically saying that you’re you’re not, you know, then the world’s not your oyster when it comes to talent anymore, it’s still localized.

Gary Decker: [00:14:40] Yeah, absolutely. It’s exactly right. And I know some employees and some organizations struggle because of folks that moved away and or came up with some alternative arrangement, and now they’re stuck with the decision. Do I let them stay that way or do I force them back? And again, that’s not a that’s not a one size fits all answer, either. And and the leaders that I speak with, I asked them outright, well, what would be the downside of letting them stay where they are? And sometimes there’s an answer that makes sense. Oftentimes there’s not.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:23] And then so this is kind of a case by case basis for every organization, right? They’re going to just have to figure this out in the best way that they can. I mean, and it’s going to be interesting from the employee standpoint. I mean, in this probably contributes to this great reshuffling or resignation is the fact that, hey, I like living in my hometown with my immediate family and just being remote and getting my job done rather than living in this high priced city that I’m struggling and barely making it. And so my quality of life is not as great. So why can’t I have it both ways and each organization is going to have to answer that question?

Gary Decker: [00:16:02] Yeah. And it’s not just like, by the way, it’s not just like, Oh, this is cool. It’s usually because they’re getting help with child care, right? Or or they’re helping take care of an elderly parent or sibling. Or, you know, there’s people found. You know, that’s I don’t know. Maybe, dare I say, one of the upsides of pandemic is we all found out what’s important for us to care for. Right?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:27] And so now are you seeing any trends of how this is going to play out or is this literally a case by case basis in every organization is going to just kind of navigate it the way that works for that organization for good or for bad?

Gary Decker: [00:16:41] Well, I think the trend is, yeah, it’s a big case by case. From what I’m seeing is there’s without a doubt more of a general push to get back to in-person as much as possible. There is, you know, there’s still questions out there. There’s still, you know, the vaccine for young people is just starting. So I think there’s a lot of of still some hesitancy to push real hard on it. And a couple of organizations, I don’t I don’t personally work with any, but a couple I’ve read about forced everybody back and then said, you know, they pulled back from that. So I think we’re still very much in a transition and maybe through this winter, that’s going to continue, but it’s going to be interesting. You know, I talk about what’s new in twenty twenty two. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out. I really do think from what I’m seeing is the war for the best talent is going to require people to allow some version of flexibility.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:42] Yeah, I mean, just the fact that so many people were willing to quit with nothing as a backup plan just shows you how important this is. They’re not they’re not compromising when it comes to this quality of life that they were enjoying for so long.

Gary Decker: [00:17:57] Absolutely, absolutely. And they and again, as I said earlier, they need to. The child care question is huge the the pressures on the child care industry to staff and be ready for this or are there’s a lot of challenges there as well. So there’s there’s not a foundation for folks that they can rely on like they’re there was previously.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:17] Now when you’re working with a firm, is there a typical point of entry? Like, are they asking you to come in to solve some kind of urgent thing right away and then that expands? Or is it kind of it can come from anywhere? The way that an organization engages with you?

Gary Decker: [00:18:34] Yeah. So typically so as I as I describe, my ideal client is someone or an organization, either a person or an organization that knows they have a particular challenge. And they come to me and we talk about it and we we develop a plan of action around that challenge. It’s communication or leadership or something like that talent. But my my favorite is working with folks that don’t kind of sense they have any challenge, and we discover together that there are things there that that they don’t necessarily have addressed, or we start in one direction and uncover very common uncover that there’s something else that we need to we need to talk about.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:19] And then the way you deliver your services is a primarily one on one or is a group coaching you do workshops.

Gary Decker: [00:19:25] It’s all of the above. It’s primarily one on one, but I also do workshops and group work as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:31] And then it’s industry agnostic because of your background.

Gary Decker: [00:19:35] Yeah, absolutely. You know, and and I I market myself as a leadership coach, to be quite honest. And you know, it’s a little secret. Don’t tell anybody, but really anyone’s a leader, someone who has a direction that they want to go in and wants to get there. So I work with folks in all kinds of backgrounds and all kinds of situations.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:57] Now is it primarily senior leadership or are you seeing some organizations kind of have this coaching trickle down to middle management or below?

Gary Decker: [00:20:06] Good ones do. I mean, it’s the good. Organizations are seeing that, you know, in all honesty, we all could use a coach, I have a coach, we all could benefit. You know, the best, the best athletes in sports all have multiple coaches, right? We all can benefit from somebody outside of our day to day that can help us see something we don’t see and improve upon it. So good organizations are offering. I’ve I’ve worked with some organizations that offer this as a perk to their employees. One of the challenges there is that sometimes the leaders have a kind of a vested interest or a thought how they want to apply that that’s not how it works. If it’s really a benefit or a perk, the employee is going to get the benefit that the employee wants to get, not at the direction of the leader.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:55] And sometimes that coaching is going to reveal maybe this isn’t a good fit for the employee. Absolutely. So that’s part of the the unintended consequence of that.

Gary Decker: [00:21:05] Yeah. No, that gets a little tricky sometimes. Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:10] Well, and ultimately, that is good for the organization because you want best fit, you know, just like you want best fit clients, you want best fit employees.

Gary Decker: [00:21:18] Absolutely. It’s funny. I I always practice that as a leader in in my corporate work. When, you know, other managers would be like, Oh no, I think, you know, I think Susie’s out looking for another job. I would approach that differently. I would I would say, Well, I think that’s probably good because at the end of the day and I had this at various points of my career where I had opportunities, I had to look side by side at what I’m doing now versus what I could be doing. And I want people that are sitting in in my organization that want to be there, right? And so to your point, if they if they don’t want you for whatever reason, I’m going to help them get to where they want to go.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:00] Right, that’s your job. I mean,

Gary Decker: [00:22:03] And it’s healthy, you know, right? It’s not good for the organization if they’re in the wrong place, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:22:08] And yeah, it’s an interesting time. Well, congratulations on all the success. If there’s an organization out there that wants to learn more about your practice or get on your calendar, is there a website?

Gary Decker: [00:22:19] Absolutely. Win moves, coaching, win moves, coaching and just contact me there and I’d be more than happy. I always do free consultation, and it doesn’t make sense to go anywhere unless we agree we’re a good fit for each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:36] Well, Gary, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Gary Decker: [00:22:41] Ali, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time and and and I hope you have a great day.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:47] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Ash Merchant With Lionheart Partners

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AshMerchant
Coach The Coach
Ash Merchant With Lionheart Partners
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AshMerchantAsh Merchant is a business advisor, coach and senior executive fluent in a diverse range of topics in human capital, risk management, total rewards, workplace trends and diversity.

He currently serves as the Founder and President of Lionheart Partners, a firm specializing in Advisory Services, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching for clients in the US and around the world. Ash has developed a 27-year career through executive and partner-level leadership roles in the professional services sector.

He has served clients across a variety of industries with a main focus on serving C-level executives, various business unit leaders and their respective teams. Ash has successfully built a reputation of coaching and developing others while also taking exceptional care of client relationships.

His area of expertise is anchored in teaching clients how to effectively create, develop and maintain productive relationships in order to accomplish challenging business and personal growth results.

Ash has a proven track record in collaborating across domestic and international geographic regions to serve clients with excellence. He quickly assimilates into new environments and has keen understanding on how to mobilize teams and motivate others across multiple departments and functions.

Ash is a frequent collaborator with Leadership Foundry, a premier leadership and advisory consortium based in Atlanta, GA, to offer a variety of services including high potential leadership development and executive team development. A graduate of the University of Georgia- Terry College of Business, Ash also earned his Master of Business Administration degree from the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University.

He lives in Johns Creek, GA with his wife, Beth, and his sons, Will and Nate.

Connect with Ash on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Career Risk Management
  • Developing Authentic Relationships

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 Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Tell you on the show we have Ash Merchant with Lionheart Partners. Welcome.

Ash Merchant: [00:00:42] Hi, Lee. Glad to be here!

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Lionheart partners. How are you serving, folks?

Ash Merchant: [00:00:49] Sure. Thanks, Lee I Lionheart Partners is basically in the business of really two things, and that’s business advisory work and leadership development and executive coaching. So on the coaching and the leader development side, I work with mid to senior level executives and C-suite executives on helping them to get better, sharper, more effective with their teams in a corporate setting. And then on the business advisory. Part of my business, I serve as a brand ambassador to a couple of different companies where I help them grow their organizations.

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

Ash Merchant: [00:01:29] So my back story is I spent a little over 20 years in the corporate world and worked for global companies, worked for Fortune 200 Company and really just built a traditional corporate career, had a couple of entrepreneurial detours along the way. And then in twenty eighteen, I left the corporate world, decided that I wanted to take my family and my family, and I decided to take a midlife gap year where we traveled the country and lived in an RV for a year. I was able to step out of the corporate world for that year and really get some definition and some clarity around the kind of work that I really love doing. And that was being with people and representing great brands and really coaching and guiding leaders. So upon our return is really when Lionheart partners started to grow and and really take off and I decided, you know what? I’m I’m OK with stepping away from the corporate world, but still serving the corporate world as an entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:37] Now what was that transition like for you? Just personally? Because going from being part of the large enterprise to being kind of your own boss in this kind of manner is risky for a lot of people and is not the smoothest transition for a lot of people. Was it smooth for you? Were you able to kind of navigate the waters from going from, you know, having a very deep bench of support to kind of being on your own and the kind of building as you went?

Ash Merchant: [00:03:06] Yeah, it’s a great question, Lee. And really the the things that I was used to in the corporate world where not only support but also frequent collaboration with a fair amount of people. And when you are a solopreneur or you start out on your own, it’s it can be very lonely feeling at times and at times. And what I found was I missed that and really have had to be a lot more thoughtful and intentional about creating opportunities where I’m able to collaborate with people, I’m able to work with groups and teams of folks to help replicate that. Of course, as an entrepreneur, there’s the risk-taking element to it. You’re basically going from some level of fixed salary or a fixed guarantee of income to the roller coaster ride of bootstrapping the company and getting it up off the ground. So that certainly from a pure timing standpoint, when we got back from our trip, it was the summer of nineteen and seven months later, we found ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic. So launching a business and growing a business in that environment certainly had its share of ups and downs and some uncertainty there.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:19] Now what does it look like when you’re dealing with your executives that are part of these larger organizations? What’s the temperature there? How are they feeling about what they’re seeing around them selves when it comes to the chaotic navigation of these kind of, you know, probably once in a lifetime time. So we’ve gone through over the last couple of years.

Ash Merchant: [00:04:41] You know, it’s interesting the the vast majority of the executives that I’m speaking with right now certainly have have gone through the just a strange and uncertain time that we had with regard to COVID. But even coming out of it, what has become front and center for many of my clients is this issue of retaining their best talent and continuing down the road of successful transition planning, succession planning. If you want to call it that and really getting this next generation ready to to take the reins. The recruiting market in many industries is hot right now. I would say that there’s a lot of a lot of folks that are back in the money truck up and they are poaching talent, and that’s pretty heavy on my executives minds right now and then.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:34] Are they seeing kind of a strategy that allows them to navigate this great resignation trend that we’re seeing in the marketplace, where lots of people are just pulling the rip cord and saying, you know, OK, life’s too short, you know, enough’s enough here. Let me take my break, and maybe they are going on their own version of your sabbatical, but they’re definitely pausing.

Ash Merchant: [00:05:58] There’s certainly some of that. I think what what we have to be careful of is that companies don’t actually lose sight of what the roots and the foundations were that actually kept people at those organizations. And I think it’s easy to it’s easy to throw down the card of, hey, we’re going to move to one hundred percent remote workforce or distributed workforce or the option of that. The reality is most companies are not suited for that 100 percent remote environment. And frankly, most employees, you know, unless you’re in a field that that’s the norm coming to an office, being in a location, maybe it’s not five days a week, but to but to go completely away from that. I don’t think that our economy is is going to be indicative of that. I think there are a portion of people that are going to take advantage of that in a good way. But I do believe that people still enjoy coming to work. People still enjoy the just even the informal banter or perhaps collaboration that takes five minutes versus, Hey, I need to go into somebody’s calendar. I need to schedule a 20 minute meeting on Zoom that just feels a bit sterile when it comes to relationship building and really just overall relationship management.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:22] Now, do you think that that’s generational? Do you think that the young people that have been born and raised on this kind of digital lifestyle and this kind of asynchronous conversations feel the same way?

Ash Merchant: [00:07:35] I think some do. I think what’s missing is, and I had this conversation with a client of mine is law firm, and we were talking about younger colleagues in the junior colleagues that are just sort of coming into the firm. And while they are used to a little bit more remote and perhaps more digital based work, what’s missing for junior colleagues is the ability to be coached and mentored and guided by perhaps senior level colleagues or even mid-level colleagues that there’s no substitute for doing that face to face. And I think it’s OK to have folks from a flexibility standpoint. But when it comes to really spending time and showing the ropes to our next generation, there’s only so much of that, in my opinion. And I’m a Generation X guy, and in my opinion, there’s only so much of that you can do in a remote setting.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:34] Now, part of your services are executive coaching. Are you finding that executive coaching is more and more prevalent throughout the organization rather than just at the highest levels nowadays?

Ash Merchant: [00:08:45] I think it’s starting to pick up speed at mid-tier levels. Certainly, it’s always been around for the senior most, you know, the C-suite and maybe one level below the C-suite. But what I’m finding is over the over the last few years, it’s that middle tier of of leaders that these are future officers of the company. These are future major decision makers within an organization and companies that are actually investing in that level right now. They really stand to benefit over the next decade or two as they prepare their leaders for bigger and better roles.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:22] Now, are you coming into organizations to help them kind of implement and set that up so that it can trickle down throughout the organization?

Ash Merchant: [00:09:31] We do, and we have conversations, and I also collaborate with other partners for these conversations. And you know, it’s funny when we talk about this type of work. Oftentimes the the phrase that’s thrown around as well, that’s that’s really soft skill development and and my biggest pushback on that is there’s nothing soft about these skills. I mean, these are these are tough and difficult skills to learn around emotional intelligence and executive presence and learning agility and resilience. I mean, these are these are not just loosey goosey terms that that we use. These are these are skills that oftentimes they might even trump somebody technical expertize. If you’re able to get work done because you have a high degree of emotional intelligence, or perhaps you’re just more savvy at dealing with executives.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:24] Now, do you think that those executives that are a little more skeptical about that feel that this is something that that budding leaders should be bringing to the table on their own? Or like, where do they think they should have gotten this kind of training?

Ash Merchant: [00:10:37] I think there’s a mix of it. You know, sometimes external candidates that come from other organizations that actually placed a higher priority on it. I think executives sometimes will expect that, you know, this is why we hired you. This is where you came from XYZ Corporation. That does this very well. But I do think that there’s there’s pretty widespread recognition right now that these are skills that do, in fact, not only need to be taught to some who’ve never been taught them, but reinforce to others who who maybe they have had it in the past, or maybe they have had exposure to it in the past. But like any training or development, it’s only as good as what gets reinforced on an ongoing basis after the training is done.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:20] So now in your work, you mentioned that you have a variety of kind of offerings advisory services, leadership development and executive coaching. What is usually the kind of the initial point of entry for you?

Ash Merchant: [00:11:34] So for the leadership development and the coaching work, it tends to be with business unit leaders, it tends to be with the heads of HR, it tends to be with what I would call anyone that sits in the C-suite that has recognized within their organization that there’s there’s a gap in terms of leadership or or some type of executive development. Types of folks that I’m dealing with tend to be presidents. Cfos rose in some of the larger companies. And then, of course, in the midsize or perhaps the private companies, it tends to be more the owners of the principals of the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:12] Now what are kind of some of the breadcrumbs that lead those executives to say, Hey, you know what, we should be calling the Lionheart, folks?

Ash Merchant: [00:12:21] Typically what what breadcrumbs I would say is, let’s say, for example, you have a leader that’s new in the role and somebody that’s probably been promoted a little bit, maybe a little bit ahead of schedule or maybe it’s their first time in that particular type of role. I tend to be brought in when it comes to helping leaders adjust and really get settled into a new role. I also tend to get brought in when there are situations where. We want to take leadership teams or senior level leaders to a next level. Maybe there’s a level of performance that has been historically good or maybe even very good, and leadership might bring me in to help get that leader to, OK, how do I take this up a notch? How do I take this up to the next level?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:13] Now, can you share a story of maybe one of your clients where you’ve had? I don’t want to say the largest impact, but maybe the most rewarding for you impact that you kind of move the needle in their business. Obviously, don’t name any names, but just maybe tell the back story that the challenge that we’re facing and how you came in and and kind of help them get to this new level.

Ash Merchant: [00:13:35] Yeah, happy to. I had really a wonderful opportunity over the last year to get to get to work with a medical device organization and then and was brought in to help a handful of their leaders to. And one in particular who just was very good on the technical side of things. I mean, nobody was going to beat this person in terms of technical acumen and and really understanding what that business was all about in the technical nuances to it. But as people skills were were sometimes rough or sometimes perceived as just not not as effective as you would want them to be. And so they’re they’re head of global manufacturing, brought me in and said, Hey, listen, you really do like this person a lot, and their contribution to the company is significant. We really need to help them really delegate more to their folks, really bring their bring their teams up in terms of performance and really help help this person not just be the superhero that puts on the Cape every time, but how do we amplify his his team leadership effectiveness? So over the last several months, I’ve had a chance to work with this particular gentleman, and in our sessions, you can just tell that over time, he’s starting to implement some of the ideas that we’re talking about. And they’re not my ideas. I’m asking any good coach will tell you that it’s never about the coach’s idea or the coach’s recommendation or consulting to that client. It’s about the coaches ability to ask the right kinds of questions to draw out the solution that the person most likely already has inside of them. They just need to find it. And it’s been incredibly rewarding, rewarding to see this person just sort of come into their own and uncover and unlock those solutions himself.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:38] Now, are you working primarily in a specific niche or is it kind of industry agnostic? Your work?

Ash Merchant: [00:15:45] I’m industry agnostic. I mean, my background professionally is in the professional services organizations, consulting organizations in that so as a as an industry area of expertize, that’s always an area that that I’m anchored in, and I could probably provide just some industry specific nuances around that. But outside of that, the beautiful thing about coaching and being an executive coach is many of the issues are in industry agnostic when it comes to how people are leading teams, how people are building executive presence, how they’re building their leadership brands, that that tends to not have leadership, it tends to not have industry requirements around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:33] Now any advice for the the budding coach out there that maybe isn’t an enterprise level role right now and is thinking of making the leap to being an entrepreneur, any kind of things you could share that might kind of smooth that transition.

Ash Merchant: [00:16:48] I think the biggest I think the biggest thing for folks is know what you’re good at. Know what kind of conversations you’re going to be good at. If you have particular areas of expertize within your organization right now, know I was having a conversation with a budding coach who’s coming out of the health care industry. And the comment that I made to her recently was, you have such domain expertize in this area, and health care tends to be one of those industries that really prizes that and really values people that are coming in with health care experience. And and I said, dig into that and really show people what kind of domain expertize you have and how that can, how that can benefit your client.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice and maybe get it on your calendar, is there a website?

Ash Merchant: [00:17:39] Absolutely. Please visit me at lionhearted partners and I’m active on LinkedIn as ash merchant and happy to happy to respond via email as well. Ash at Lionheart Partners.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:55] Good stuff as well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Ash Merchant: [00:18:00] Lee, thanks so much. It’s a pleasure being with you today.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:03] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Patricia Karam With Mission Recruit

by

MissionRecruit
Atlanta Business Radio
Patricia Karam With Mission Recruit
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PatriciaKaramAs the CEO & Founder of Atlanta-based Mission Recruit, Patricia Karam is the driving force introducing human design to corporate America.

With more than a decade of experience working with Fortune 500 companies nationwide, she launched Mission Recruit with the vision of delivering best-in-class services by combining the sophistication of a large recruiting company with the heart and personalization of a smaller staffing agency.

Her extensive background in the industry started with a corporate recruiting career with a global leader in the IT staffing industry before transitioning to national staffing, as well as positions in strategy and philanthropy.

Her strong entrepreneurial spirit is a result of her parents’ influence, immigrants from the Philippines, who taught her life’s most important lessons – and above all – the significance of giving back.

Connect with Patricia on LinkedIn and follow Mission Recruit on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • History of Mission Recruit
  • Mission Recruit as one of USPAACC-SE’s Top Ten Asian American Businesses

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by on pay built in Atlanta. On Pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at onpay. 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 Patricia Karam with Mission Recruit. Welcome, Patricia.

Patricia Karam: [00:00:50] Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:53] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Mission Recruit. How are you serving, folks?

Patricia Karam: [00:00:58] Yeah, of course. So I started Mission Recruit about two and a half years ago after giving birth to my third child. So at Mission Recruit, we are a recruiting services firm, so we have three primary pillars. First is foremost best in class recruiting services for a midsize and Fortune 500 companies. Second is our mission to give back. So we partner with a local domestic violence shelter and human trafficking center to donate back for every placement we make. And then thirdly, to keep the human and H.R. through human design. So we’re really excited about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:35] So tell us about that last pillar. How did that come about?

Patricia Karam: [00:01:39] Yeah. And you know, that’s kind of our pivot pillar if you think about 20 20 and how we can change with the times historically with personality assessments, it’s a long questionnaire. And usually when people respond or answer the questions, people think of leaders in mind or what the company would want an employee. So maybe consciously or unconsciously, people don’t have the most authentic answers. And that’s why I really like human design, especially with everyone working remotely. I feel like it’s very important to keep the human in H.R.. So what human design is? It takes the eastern and western practices, principles and science to create your unique human design profile in. There’s five specific types, which I have a human design expert on team who leads these, and we offer it through individualized PDFs as well as workshops for team members. So it’s really exciting.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:45] And then, as you mentioned, as a lot more organizations are going remote to have this kind of congruent culture fit is so much more important. I would think now it’s always been important. But now it’s even harder when you know humans and humans aren’t interacting face to face, it’s all done remotely. You really have to be mindful about this.

Patricia Karam: [00:03:06] Oh, exactly, exactly. And that’s why I think it’s so important, because I believe I truly believe human design helps you professionally, but also personally to understand yourself and how you work with others and understanding everyone else’s human design type, especially if you’re a leader. And if you’re looking at your team, it’ll help you as a leader, figure out how to motivate team members specifically based on their design type.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:31] Now, can you talk a little bit about your back story? How did you get into this line of work?

Patricia Karam: [00:03:36] Yeah, well, I don’t want to date myself, but when I graduated from university back in the 2000s, I remember the hottest trend was pharmaceutical sales, and I wanted so badly to be in pharmaceutical sales, but instead I got an internship with Intuit, which I’m so thankful for because I love the IT industry. And so I started there, and eventually I realized I wanted to be more, more interacting with humans. So I I got into it staffing, and I worked everywhere from the largest I.T. staffing firm in the nation to the largest staffing firm globally to a small mom and pop shop. And I realized I saw what didn’t work and what didn’t work, what did and didn’t work, and I just decided to create my my own with the intention to give back also.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:31] So now what kind of drives you to have this kind of philanthropic portion of your business? Like why is that such a core part of the DNA of the firm and not just something that, OK, this is something I want to do on the side, but to actually incorporate it as part of the organization?

Patricia Karam: [00:04:49] Oh gosh, yeah, that’s a really great question. And I think it’s I think a lot of it has to do with being first generation here in the States. My parents are from the Philippines, and so I saw what it looked like to not be as abundant when you first move over here and they really worked hard to give us a really great life. And along the way, I’ve heard stories friends who’ve been involved with domestic violence and human trafficking. It’s huge in the Philippines. And so I thought if I if I can create a company and be abundant with my company, why not give back? There’s there’s no harm in that. So that’s. Always been something important to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:32] So now, how has it been for you kind of creating this firm around, you know, around these kind of key core values to you and also just being an entrepreneur as as opposed to coming from, like you said, you work for some of the largest companies in the industry to now doing your own thing. And you know, that’s a different kind of experience.

Patricia Karam: [00:05:58] Yeah. You know, it was really big for me to offer a more personalized solution when you’re working for a company that’s too big, which there are great, huge companies out there, of course. And a lot of huge companies are my clients. But I just wanted to give an individual approach a more authentic approach where I could be myself, and that would be OK. And I also wanted the freedom to do do anything I wanted in this role, too. So it’s been a lot of fun for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:25] But how has it been from kind of when you’re working for somebody else, you’re kind of a cog in the machine and then now you’re running your own firm and you’re deciding kind of what’s what and where everything goes. So. Has that been a challenge or was this a smooth transition to working for yourself from working with a larger enterprise?

Patricia Karam: [00:06:44] You know, it’s always a challenge. And and when you go from having a great salary to doing it yourself, you know, that’s a lot of investment and a lot of risk. And I definitely wasn’t making as much I was as I was used to when I first started out. But with great risk comes great reward. So I think it I think overall it’s been really great. But yeah, it was very hard, especially. I was my second year during the pandemic, but we were still able to be profitable, which I’m super thankful for.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:19] Yeah. Now do you have any advice for other kind of entrepreneurs that are thinking about making that leap from having a corporate job to going out on their own? Like what? What would be some advice around recruiting team members to join you on this adventure?

Patricia Karam: [00:07:35] Yeah, I would say do it in the staffing industry. Specifically, you have a non-compete, so you have to make sure to abide by that non-compete. But I would say start while you can. And when when your company becomes more profitable and it’s right financially, then turn in your notice. But I wouldn’t I wouldn’t quit until you’re you have something going financially.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:01] Now, recently your firm was recognized as one of the top 10 Asian American businesses. How did that come about?

Patricia Karam: [00:08:10] Oh yeah. Oh gosh, what an honor that was. I I have a client who, a client and a friend who is on the board and she nominated me. And when you’re nominated, they go through a review process. And I think because I was able to pivot and I was able to introduce human design and also philanthropy, I think that I was chosen to be one of the top 10, which is a huge honor, especially because the month that I received the award was the same month as the Filipino-American History Month in the U.S., so it was very cool.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:45] Wow. That was kind of serendipitous. Now talk about your decision to become a certified woman business enterprise. Has that helped you in your kind of in finding new clients and kind of separating yourself from others?

Patricia Karam: [00:09:01] Yes, absolutely. Actually, this was another reason why I wanted to branch out on my own because I realized companies, especially these huge Fortune 500 companies, have diverse spend. So this is also another recommendation if anyone’s looking to start a company. If you’re in any way diverse minority woman, veteran owned, any type of diversity, you can obtain a certification. I would highly recommend it because of the diverse spend budget that companies have. So, yes, I have been able to get in a couple of my clients specifically because of the certification.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Now, who is the ideal client for you? What is the kind of the perfect fit for your firm?

Patricia Karam: [00:09:41] Oh yeah. Any and all. So usually we place high level I.T. professionals as well as executive level, and I do some marketing and sales, so it could be anywhere from startup to midsize to Fortune 500 companies. I welcome all clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:59] And then the pain they’re having is they’re just frustrated. I mean, in this kind of job market is it’s extremely challenging and it’s hard to do it on your own. So that’s why you would kind of partner with Mission Recruit to help you fill those hard to fill roles.

Patricia Karam: [00:10:14] Absolutely. Not only that, but we also screen for culture fit. So you have some companies who want heads down in other companies who want someone who’s collaborative. And so we also help with not only the technical fit, but also the culture. All fit.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:31] So that sounds a little different than some other recruiting firms.

Patricia Karam: [00:10:35] Yeah, you have some that just for every opening that would send 10 to 15 resumes. It’s really, really our responsibility and core value to only send the top two to three candidates per opening because we want to save time for our clients. That’s that’s the whole purpose.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:54] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your firm or get a hold of you or somebody on the team, what is the website?

Patricia Karam: [00:11:01] Yes, it’s mission recruit and we’re on all the socials and I would love to hear from anyone and everyone.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:07] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success.

Patricia Karam: [00:11:11] Thank you, Lee. I so appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:13] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Dominic Vogel With CyberSC

by

CyberSC
High Velocity Radio
Dominic Vogel With CyberSC
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DominicVogelAs Founder & Chief Strategist at CyberSC, Dominic Vogel holds a proven track record within cyber security across multitude of industries (financial services, logistics, transportation, healthcare, government, telecommunications, and critical infrastructure).

Dominic actively participates in the Vancouver security community and is a well-respected cyber security expert for appearing on media news outlets across North America and Internationally on BBC World News. Dominic is highly regarded as a cyber security thought leader and was recently appointed to the BC Provincial Cyber Security Advisory Committee.

Dominic focuses much of his energy on providing strategic security leadership to technology start-ups and small/midsize businesses to proactively solve their cyber risk challenges. He strives to provide practical cyber security advice to his clients and actively turning the security consulting world upside down.

Connect with Dominic on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Cybersecurity
  • Every kind of industry is at risk
  • There are ways that you can protect yourself and and not become a victim
  • Cyber ethics

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 high velocity radio

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor hear another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is an important one today. On the show we have Dominic Vogel with CyberSC. Welcome, Dominic.

Dominic Vogel: [00:00:23] Thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about cyber S.C. How are you serving, folks?

Dominic Vogel: [00:00:31] Well, I like to see that we serve the lifeblood of the economy. We work with small and mid-sized organizations right across Canada, the U.S., and really help business owners and executives grapple with with cyber risk because it just keeps growing by the day.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] So now do you mind educating kind of the listener about the threat of cybersecurity? It’s in the news. A lot of people. It happens so frequently they may not understand the prevalence, and they may not understand how it can impact a small business. It’s not just the big guys that get hit with this.

Dominic Vogel: [00:01:06] Absolutely, you know, and it’s a strange paradox of sorts in which a lot of people, especially the small midsize business community, they don’t really understand that actually, globally, the vast majority of cyber attacks are focused on the small and mid-sized organizations, and it’s very much an existential risk for them. You know, mainstream media may cover, you know, the big data breaches from big, big companies, big organizations, Colonial Pipeline, what have you. But for every, every big company you see experienced a data breach. There’s about five to 10 smaller ones that aren’t in mainstream, but they go out of business because they don’t have the war chest to survive a cyber attack or a data breach. And one of the most prevalent threats right now, especially among small mid-sized organizations, is something called ransomware. It’s basically like kidnaping the twenty first century where your IT systems, your data basically held hostage and you have to pay a ransom in order to regain access to that. And it’s like a digital wild fire right now. Says organizations are just getting hit left, right center with it.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] And then, while every kind of industry is at risk, this is especially dangerous for financial services. Supply chain health care, I would imagine telecommunications. Anything that deals with the government or infrastructure I would imagine are really. This is not a nice to have. These are must haves.

Dominic Vogel: [00:02:30] Oh, absolutely. I tell you that the the magnifying glass is even brighter or the scrutiny is even tighter in those sectors. But one of the things I often tell people is that we live in a digital economy. Pretty much every company relies on its data, whether it be manufacturing companies, whether it be a five person company. If you lose access to your data, the ability to access key IT systems, you’re unable to do business. And if you’re unable to do business, you’re unable to serve your customers. If you’re unable to serve your customers, you’re not making money. And I always jokingly say that unless you’re selling tacos on the back of your Volvo and all cash deals, you are a digital company. That’s just the economy in the world we live in today.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:16] And then to educate the listener about the people who are kind of doing these kind of deeds. It used to be, you would imagine, some kid in the basement, you know, eating Cheetos and drinking Red Bull and just doing this as a prank. But these are these are sophisticated players here. This is their job. They approach this like middle management, right where they’re going into office buildings with whiteboards, and they’re brainstorming to try to find the most effective ways to penetrate a system.

Dominic Vogel: [00:03:49] You’re absolutely right. I mean, you know, well, all of us are stuck in what I refer to as nineteen ninety five level thinking when we when we think about cyber criminals. That was absolutely true back in the mid 90s and into the early 2000s. It was mostly just disgruntled teenagers wearing hoodies in the in their mother’s basement. That’s not true anymore. What we’ve seen, especially over the past 10 years, is a rise of what I refer to as the professionalization of cybercrime. Every single criminal syndicate organization in the world invests heavily in being able to commit cybercrime. Cybercrime has actually surpassed the drug trade as being the most profitable crime throughout the world. The reason being it’s safer. It scales a heck of a lot better than drug trafficking. You can commit these crimes anywhere in the world, and being caught is the risk there is really, really low. So that’s what we’ve seen just so much money being invested by criminal organizations because cybercrime is such a profitable crime for them. And that’s why I often tell people now is that we have to understand we’re not going up against the amateurs, we’re going up against professionals. So organizations keep taking an amateur approach to cybersecurity. Well, it’s like any amateur going up against a professional in anything you’re going to lose 10 times out of 10.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:07] So let’s give the listener some relief. There are ways that you can protect yourself and and not become a victim. Talk about cyber ethics and how you’re actually helping people prevent some of this and so that it doesn’t impact their businesses.

Dominic Vogel: [00:05:24] Absolutely. And I’m a big believer in doing the basics and doing them well. You know, a lot of people think about cybersecurity. It means, oh, we have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on state of the art security and firewalls and what have you. That’s really not the case. You know, it’s really just a matter, a case of embracing what I refer to as cyber hygiene and doing those basics and doing them well. And that’s where an organization like ours, like Cyber, see where we come in. We work with whether it be a business owner, CEO, CFO, CEO, someone who is ultimately responsible for the well-being of their organization. And cybersecurity falls on their shoulders. But it’s not something that they truly understand. And we go in and we really go through a what we refer to as a maturity process to be able to identify what are the most critical data assets in your organization. Do you know where they are? Do you know who has access to them? And we start building security controls around that thing and just doing some basic, basic stuff. One of the things which I always talk about if your listeners take any practical tidbit away from our little chat here is that they need to embrace what’s referred to as multifactor authentication. And that’s where you’re no longer just using a username and password to log into a system where you’re using username, password and another form of authentication. So that could be a one time code that gets sent via text message or via email to your phone. Perhaps you have what’s referred to as an authenticator app on your phone. It’s really just adding an extra layer of security, and that is one of the most effective techniques that people can embrace right now in terms of lowering their cyber risk for their organization. And for the most part, it doesn’t cost anything. Most of the systems, especially their online systems, whether they’re using for email or for remote access, those capabilities are generally built in. Most people just aren’t making use of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:12] Now, in the work that you’re doing, you’re obviously protecting data for your clients. And and this is something that the client obviously has a need to protect the data. That’s important, but it isn’t. The value you provide goes beyond that, doesn’t it? Because of if my data is protected well and I can show that if I was to sell my company, if I wanted to merge with another company, I would imagine that my company is that much more valuable that I’ve checked that box in terms of the due diligence of whoever is my purchaser. And so I would imagine this is more than just an insurance policy. This is something that can really. It’s not an expense. It can really improve the value of my company.

Dominic Vogel: [00:07:58] And it’s so great to hear you bring that up where you go. And that’s really it’s about adding value to your business. It’s about supporting the growth of your organization’s business. You know, this is especially true for even even before you even get to the point, maybe even selling or having your company acquired. You’re happy to be on business to business, especially if you sell to. You mentioned the government sector. If you sell to within regulated industries like financial services, you’re selling to Fortune five hundred Fortune 1000 companies. If your company is able to actively demonstrate in a quick fashion what your security capabilities are, that puts you at a competitive advantage compared to maybe your one of your competitors who is not investing proactively in cybersecurity. And we’re really seeing that right now as large organizations are digging deeper, they’re doing greater due diligence on the vendors that they rely on, and they’re saying, No, sorry, we can’t do business if your company isn’t able to demonstrate its cybersecurity capabilities. And we’re seeing that more and more with mergers and acquisitions, as well as part of due diligence. For the longest time, it’s always been let’s do the financial operational personnel due diligence. Past few years, we’ve seen cyber risk due diligence become increasingly more common and the organizations doing much more digging there. So if you want your company to be acquired successfully, especially one of those more regulated spaces, you need to be investing in cybersecurity now. It’s going from not just being, it’s going from being a table stakes item to being a source of competitive advantage in value and growth for your organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:34] Right. And like you mentioned in some of these heavily regulated industries, this is a must have. You can’t even do business because you’re putting everybody in the network at risk by you having places that can be kind of penetrated. Now that gives the bad guy away in to everybody.

Dominic Vogel: [00:09:51] That’s that’s exactly the case, you know, and there’s a watershed moment when Target, the large retailer, experienced a data breach. And I’m going to say that was about 10 years ago. It wasn’t actually target that was compromised. It was there. Each vac vendor, which is which was a mid-sized organization, they were compromised. And then there was through that access to target. The target ended up being compromised. That end up being a watershed moment because it was at that point forward. And with each passing year, the scrutiny has gotten tighter and tighter, where the large organizations started really clamping down on the vendors that they rely on day in and day out. So that was a turning point, especially over the past year. We’ve seen those screws just get tighter and tighter and tighter to the point where, again, if you’re in a regulated space, it’s table stakes and more and more so in other spaces, it’s becoming a source of competitive differentiation.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:45] Now is this something that only the big guys can afford? That you have to hire a chief technology officer or a CIO or somebody that is just, you know, 24-7. This is all they’re thinking about that if I own that five person company, I can’t afford to, you know, take 20 percent of my personnel and put them on this. I, my business is too small to do that. Is your solution something that that the small guy can take advantage of it? Or is this something that they got to kind of grow up a little before they can afford to deal with this?

Dominic Vogel: [00:11:24] No, and I appreciate you bringing this up. I mean, that was very much the genesis for our organization we saw in school almost 10 years ago from when we started the organization was that the the little, the little guys, the little organizations, they were being priced out of getting good, actionable guidance and advisory capabilities from organization, those security organizations and security vendors. That’s when we started and we saw that there’s an opportunity to really help this fall in mid size market. They should be able to access that. That’s where our services and there’s two sets of services that we provide. One is we provide fractional or virtual cyber risk leadership. You’re absolutely right in that every organization should have some form of cybersecurity leadership. But not every organization doesn’t make sense to have a full time employee there, especially when your chief information security officer. Their average salary is anywhere between one hundred and fifty K plus, you know, and that that can be a lot for someone to take on, especially a smaller organization. So that’s where our services you’re able to tap in to instant experience cybersecurity leadership at a fraction of the cost. You’re able to have someone hit the ground running and take that security portfolio for the organization. So that’s something that we absolutely love love doing for our clients. The other thing that we have, it’s it’s a it’s a course for I refer to as microbusinesses. So this is for organizations that have 10 employees or fewer, maybe even our advisory services, maybe a little too to rich for their liking, at least at this point in time, they’re able to designate internal cybersecurity advocate and they go through our training course, which is a series of videos and worksheets and guidelines, things which are being narrated and by me, and we guide them through how they can at least start building. Cybersecurity program and foundation that their organization and that’s the price of the spot where it’s just an investment of a few hundred dollars and they’re able to get started right. So we love being able to help and make cybersecurity cost effective and available for any organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:32] Now this kind of protection is something that a lot of people procrastinate because, oh, nothing bad happened today. You know, it’s like one of those things you you don’t need it until you need it. But this is something I think you have to proactively stay ahead of because everybody is so vulnerable.

Dominic Vogel: [00:13:51] You’re absolutely right. And so the real world analogy I always give is, you know, think about a doctor who is trying to encourage a patient to change their lifestyle. They know that a heart attack is coming. They know that this person’s going to have a massive stroke because they’re not exercising. They’re not taking care of themselves. They’re eating Burger King four times a day. They know what’s coming, right? So you can you can either how we view ourselves from a security practitioner point of view, we know that there are organizations that ultimately it’s going to they’re going to get hit by data breach or ransomware or what have you. And like you said, there are those who understand the need to be proactive. But then there are those who will always react. And the thing that I always want to tell people is that after a negative event or after a significant data breach or security incident, it’s always more expensive. The road is longer to recovery. Just like if the road to recovery before you have a heart attack is easier compared to the road after you have a heart attack, and that’s assuming you’re lucky enough to survive.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:54] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. If somebody wants to get a hold of you or somebody on the team or just learn more about the service, what’s the website?

Dominic Vogel: [00:15:02] The website is cyber SD like South Carolina or Santa Claus, or just the letters s c, or they can reach out to me on LinkedIn. Dominic Vogel or find it the company page Cyber Etsy on LinkedIn as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:15] And that’s c y b r s c.

Dominic Vogel: [00:15:19] That’s correct. Sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:21] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work, and we appreciate you.

Dominic Vogel: [00:15:26] Much appreciated. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:27] All right. Lee Kantor we’ll see all next time on high velocity radio.

Hector Correa With After College

by

Coach The Coach
Coach The Coach
Hector Correa With After College
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Hector Correa, the founder of After College, is a business consultant and professional coach with 20+ years of international experience implementing large-scale technology solutions in industries as diverse as utility providers, banking, marketing, retail, beverage, and construction.

During his consulting career he’s had the privilege to work with some of the most important companies in the US and Latin America such as Walmart, Grupo FEMSA, Kraft Foods, Banorte, Tyson Foods, SaraLee to name a few.

Hector is a also a professional coach. As an executive coach, he works with CXO’s from the US, Canada and Mexico to help them find new opportunities, expand to new markets and tackle the challenges of multi-cultural markets.

As a personal coach, he works with CEO’s, entrepreneurs, college and high school students in Mexico and the United States where he helps them identify their passions and turn them into a successful business or career. He has worked with high schools in the United States supporting students from minority groups as a mentor.

He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the State University of New York, and he is a Fulbright Scholar.

On his spare time, he works with non-profit organizations in Mexico, the United States, and Africa to create education opportunities for young students from disadvantaged communities.

Hector is a member of the Board of advisors of IMSA Fund (Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, one of the most recognized STEM High Schools in the US), he is also a Board Member of The Dandelion Philosophy, in South Africa and collaborates with Educando by WorldFund and Promesa Educativa para México.

Follow After College on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Choose the right companies to work for
  • Choose the right profession to get into

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 Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show. We have Hector Correa with after college welcome Hector.

Hector Correa: [00:00:44] It’s a pleasure to be here, Lee, thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about after college. How are you serving, folks?

Hector Correa: [00:00:52] Well, you know, After College is a organization that its its main purpose is to serve the students, high school students or tourists in the early college stages to really help them find an answer to a very important question, which is what do I want to do with my life in the future? What is it? What is the career, the professional path that I want to follow? And as you know, a lot of our young students, when they’re in high school or early years in college, they’re still trying to figure out a lot of these questions. So after college, we created after college to help students get an answer to that question through coaching, counseling and webinars and workshops that where we give them tools and a methodology we developed to help them find the right answer to that very important question.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:46] Now, as part of the mission, not only kind of giving that student some direction, but also giving them the tools to, you know, choose the right college or choose the right companies to work for or choose even the right profession to get into.

Hector Correa: [00:02:06] You know, we actually take two steps back from that question because, you know, let me tell you that I’m a father of three. Two of them already in college and little girl in high school. And what we what I found when my kids were going through that same process is there’s a lot of resources about finding the best college for you, finding the scholarship money, finding support, even guidance through the admission process and sats and all that. But our approach is actually taking two steps back from that point and really help the students ask the right questions about what they really want to do. And the reason for that is because my kids, at some point they were they were not really sure what they wanted to do. And I do have a lot of training as a coach, as an executive coach for companies. And I noticed that a lot of these questions had not so much to do about what school I want to go to, but really what I want to do through some research that I did with my first son that went to college. You know, there is a statistics from different universities that show 80 percent of college graduates still in their 20s. 80 percent. There are still in their 20s, they don’t like what the career path that they are in now. So these are kids that finish college and at most have maybe five six years in their professional lives and they realize they don’t like what they’re what they study. They don’t like what they’re working on and they’re trying to find something else so that that is a devastating statistic. So what and what is what we saw is that there is really not a lot of support for students to really answer the question first. What do I really want to do before I even think about, you know, I’m going to go to this school and I’m going to get these grants, or I can apply to this financial aid and my sats and of all those little things you have to do to get into college.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:24] So now what are some of the things this young person can do to kind of get a better handle on what is a good fit for them, personality wise, aspirational wise. You know, that’s going to be fulfilling and and make sure that they don’t make that mistake and fall into that, you know, kind of vast majority of people who seem to have chosen the right the wrong path.

Hector Correa: [00:04:51] That so, you know, the focus of our workshops and our methodology, like I said, I actually it came about because using all my coaching skills and all the knowledge that I acquired my coach in training, that I apply with entrepreneurs and business owners with the companies that I work with, I had to work with my son identified. Um, really, you know, the interests and needs that you need to fulfill in order to be happy, I mean, at the end of the day, no matter how much what you make in any profession, right, you’re not, you need to be satisfied and you need to be happy. So what I did with my son as I was guiding them is using a lot of the training that I learned from coaching courses on human psychology. And the human psychology is a branch of study in psychology very well documented that basically teach you, teaches you and teaches you how to apply with your clients. Some techniques so that they discover what are the most important human needs and what is missing from their life, whether it’s in business, whether it is in your personal life, relationships or at work. What is missing in their daily life that is not satisfying those needs. And therefore, you know, they either feel unhappy, they feel dissatisfied or they just simply don’t feel that they are in the right place. So that same approach I took with my kids and I started developing these workshops. So the workshop focuses on helping the kids be aware first, because for them is this is something completely new, completely foreign to them. Be aware of what are the the basic human needs. Help them understand what are the most important needs for them. How do they satisfy them? And what does what do they need to look for in a profession in the future so that they keep satisfying those needs and therefore keep them happy and satisfied and engaged in the long term? So that is the main core. The core topic of offer workshops.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:09] Now are the workshops geared only for the student, because sometimes the parent has their own opinion and sometimes has the influence that they are, kind of they think they’re helping their kid, but maybe they’re guiding them down, maybe not the optimal path.

Hector Correa: [00:07:27] Oh, absolutely, that is a very important topic. We have also workshops for parents as well where we actually help them understand. Through their or internalization of the human needs, we share with them the same knowledge we share with them, the same information about the six human needs. But then we also put parents in the context of all the pressures that their kids are going through, and this is a topic that we also discuss with the students, you know. It is a very stressful time for high school kids, especially the junior senior years. And even for some kids that are already in college, it’s a very stressful time because there is pressure from everywhere, right? Parents have expectations from their kids, siblings, family, the boyfriend or girlfriend. You know, they’re surrounded by all these expectations that they feel they need to meet. And it’s very easy for the kids to just, you know, give in or or put their their feelings aside in order to satisfy other people’s expectations. And as parents, you know, we get that all the time. So parents, we have a course workshop for parents. We have a workshop for students in which we teach them the same basic principles. But then for parents, we help them guide, give them the tools and a process to help them guide their own children through the process of selecting something that is great for them. That will be the best match, the best fit for their son’s interests and needs, and not so much their own. I think that most parents are well-intentioned parents. They do want to see their kids happy and satisfied the long run, even though sometimes that means they don’t have to follow the path that we have set in our minds for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] Now are you working also with, you know, guidance counselors and career coaches to give them the tools to better serve their clientele?

Hector Correa: [00:09:31] We usually work with schools and high schools in the U.S. and Mexico and Latin America. So we do have some schools that are open that and we include some of the counselors and guidance, people that are currently in the staff and we train them or we invite them to the workshops and the seminars. But in some cases, the parents or in most cases, actually, I will say more than half the time, more than 50 percent of the time parents approaches and students approach us directly, not through a school, because as a father? Ok. He’s a senior where in the beginning of the last semester and my son is still there, said, No, my son, my daughter is still don’t know what they want to do. And you know, we have college applications and deadlines in front of us and we need help. So more than half the time, it is parents and students that approach us directly. But when we do have some partnerships or some agreements with some high schools in the U.S. and Mexico. And in those cases, we do involve their counseling staff and they are very helpful in also doing follow up a little more detailed follow up after or workshops are complete.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:58] Now what is the kind of the the temperature in the minds of these young people? Are they optimistic about their future or are they excited or are they thinking they’re going to be entrepreneurs? Are they kind of thinking that jobs are just a means to an end? Like, what’s their feeling about a career?

Hector Correa: [00:11:19] You get a little bit of everything. There are kids that are really enthusiastic and, you know, also there are kids in very different levels of what I call the decision making process. There are kids that are already very well convinced and defined about what they want to do. And there are kids that are really in a very early stage and they don’t have any clue about what they want to do, right? They could do many things, but nothing seems to catch their interest. So we have kids in all the spectrum of what you just mentioned. We have kids that are very optimistic, kids that are very pessimistic, kids that are very down to earth and not have a very clear idea of what they want. And they just need confirmation or they want reassurance that they’re in the right path. And kids that don’t have any idea of what they would like to do. So. We have a wide variety of opinions, perspectives in these workshops, and that just makes it interesting. I think that it is very helpful for kids that are already very convinced or have done a lot of due diligence in defining a career path is very helpful. Is very gratifying to see them. Oh yeah, I I I knew this is what I wanted to do, but now I really feel 100 percent sure that this is what I want. And kids that they don’t have any idea at the end of the workshop say, You know, I, I know that this is what I need to do to keep me satisfied and keep me happy. And I have different options that I can follow. But all of these options, I know why I want to follow them. I know what they could give me, and I know now that this if I choose any of these options, this will be a good fit for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:16] Now, any advice for young people that they can do on their own, like right now, something in action they can take today that can help them, you know, make a better decision and then maybe also a piece of the device of something maybe they shouldn’t do.

Hector Correa: [00:13:32] Sure. You know, I would say something they shouldn’t do. Don’t jump too fast into the process of finding a school. Um, and I know this is hard, you know, when I went to college, I have the opportunity to go to a really good school, but when I went to college, the pressure, I don’t remember the pressure being such as it is today. Uh, today kids are starved. Well, parents, the schools, everybody around, and it started talking about college much earlier than I could remember. And then now colleges have all these early decision applications and they start recruiting kids almost a year and a half earlier. So. It is easy for a student to get carried away by all this noise, by all this pressure around them. I’ll say don’t jump so fast into the cycle of what? What are the schools that I can afford? Can I get money? Can I get grants? Where are my S.A.T. numbers and all that? Take a breather. Don. And before you even start talking about that. Take a good look at yourself and what are the things that make you feel happy and satisfied on a daily basis? One of the areas in workshops is that. We have activities with the students in which we really make them think what really makes you feel happy? What activities in your daily life make you feel happy? What activities in your life when you start doing those activities? You know, time flies and you are so engaged in that activity that you forget that you already spent five hours in the day, but you are so engaged that you lose track of time.

Hector Correa: [00:15:32] And that process of discovery. It’s one of the first steps that students need to do to understand what are those things that keep them engaged, satisfied and then try to find ask around. What you should do is ask people in different professions. If you think you want to be an architect, go and talk to an architect, go, you know, maybe you don’t know when directly, but I’m sure your mom or your dad do know someone in that profession. Why do you want to be a pharmacist? Go to your pharmacy, talk to your local pharmacist. You want to be, you know, an engineer. Try to find those figures with experience in those fields so they can tell you exactly what they do. You know, I had cases where kids say, Oh, no, I’m going to study, I want to be a doctor because I’m in love with Gray’s Anatomy and I can help but say internally, Oh boy, you’re in for really a real reality check because it is not professionals are not what you see on TV. But you know, it’s because kids don’t go and ask. So those will this will be the two things that I will recommend kids to do. Ask other people who are already professionals in the areas of interest to do. Take a look to think deeply. Think about what are the things that you really enjoy doing. And not to jump so fast into the circle of trying to find a school, trying to find grants and sat scores and all that.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:11] Well, Hector, if somebody wants to learn more about your programs and events, what is the website?

Hector Correa: [00:17:18] Well, our website is after that college dot com. You can find us there, you can also find us on Facebook. You can search for after college. We have a Facebook page and on your website after that Polish dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:33] Well, Hector, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Hector Correa: [00:17:39] I appreciate your time and the opportunity to share what I do with your audience, I think is a great opportunity to thank you for that.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Gavin Cicchinelli With PrimeRevenue, Inc.

by

Gavin Cicchinelli
Atlanta Business Radio
Gavin Cicchinelli With PrimeRevenue, Inc.
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Gavin CicchinelliGavin Cicchinelli is PrimeRevenue’s Chief Operating Officer, responsible for leading transformation across the company’s corporate and operational strategies, implementing go-to-market growth execution, and driving commercial expansion that aligns with PrimeRevenue’s core business.

Prior to PrimeRevenue, he served as President and Chief Revenue Officer of Integrated Solutions at TSYS, a publicly-traded global payment processing services company acquired by Global Payments (NYSE:GPN) in 2019. Gavin has over 20 years of leadership and executive experience along with a deep understanding of the payments space.

Connect with Gavin on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The PrimeRevenue SurePay Platform
  • Benefits and advantages of the platform
  • The difference of the SurePay platform from other B2B payments platforms
  • PrimeRevenue expands into the B2B payments market

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay built in Atlanta. On Pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at Onpay. 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 fun one today on the show, we have GavinCicchinelli with prime revenue. Welcome, Gavin.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:00:41] Thank you, Lee. Great to be here. Appreciate the time to chat.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us a little bit about prime revenue. How are you serving, folks?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:00:51] The prime revenue. We are a working capital and B2B payments organization for the global supply chain. We are fintech company that buyers and their suppliers utilize and plug in to to be able to transact on time and early payments. So we are a global payment rail that facilitates cash flow.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:13] So what’s the back story on prime revenue? Was this how you were always set up to be or is it something that’s kind of evolved to this point because fintechs always kind of evolving and pivoting

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:01:25] And a great question. Actually, yes, our underlying technology has always been built on a gateway payment rail, which is the fascinating part of our organization. So from a fintech perspective, we were kind of born out of natural fintech. From there, we’ve continued to add and generate investments into the product and the platform and expand across global reaches that over the last 18 years of prime revenue as an organization has built a pretty tremendous global payment rail, if you will, for again on time and early payments for anyone who has a supply chain and any large buyer client or small buyer client who has a need for working capital.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:07] And then now, tell us about this sure play SURE-P pipeline.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:02:12] Sure. So very exciting. We just sent out a great press release last week on our release of our new sure paid platform. And what that really means is that the paid platform is an easy to use marketplace, if you will, of our products. There are three core products that sit within that platform. One is called supply chain finance, which is a traditional long term working capital solution that’s been used for years and years and years and the trade finance markets. The second is dynamic discounting. That is an opportunity for our buyer customers in their supply chain to be able to offer discounts to their suppliers in exchange for an early payment. And then our most exciting and recent release is our on time payment. This is where we’ve really taken a massive investment this year in our product platform to start to solve account payable problems for buyers and suppliers and how they interact within the supply chain and getting on time payment. So if a customer, for instance, a supplier, has an agreement, they’ll get paid in 30 days for the products they sold to a larger entity. They’ll onboard to our platform and we’ll make sure and ensure that the accounts payable process pays them exactly on time in 30 days. So there’s no cash flow issues. So that’s our most recent release in the broader, sure paid platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:37] So when you’re kind of launching a marketplace like that, it’s a chicken and egg. Is it difficult for you to get both sides of the equation involved on the platform?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:03:47] Wonderful, wonderful question. The unique advantage that we have as prime revenue is again, after 18 years of really establishing a long term name in the traditional trade, finance and supply chain finance market, which is again a fancy word for just working capital early payment, if you will. We have been able to build such a tremendous network of incredibly valuable customers and clients where the evolution of this pay platform came from is direct feedback from 18 years worth of working with our customers. We realized that we could solve so many additional problems with our with our product that we, with some investment just hadn’t done in the past. So in our scenario. The good news is it hasn’t been the chicken and egg per say. We built a great foundation that now we can just continue to solve additional problems for not only our existing customers, but any customer that’s got to count payable issues across their supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:44] Now, when you say any customers that any customer of a certain size or is it truly any customer?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:04:50] You know, it’s truly any customer. You know, we typically we work anywhere from customers that are, you know, 50 million in annual revenue up to well over two billion in annual revenue. So our our platform is scalable, especially in the on time and account payable platform. Supply chain finance, you know, does have a third party component with our banking that has to be qualified. But for the Sherpa platform and our B2B payments process, it really is scalable for any customer that’s got a supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] So now talk about the Atlanta fintech scene. How have you seen it evolve?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:05:29] Oh, that is a question that I could talk about for hours and hours and hours. Atlanta has become a tremendous hotspot. I don’t know what the most recent percentage of payments that flow through Atlanta is on a global scale anymore. I know at one point it was somewhere around 70 75 percent of the world’s transactions. Through Atlanta. So, you know, we’re happy to be Homestead in Atlanta, continuing to grow, invest and provide career opportunities for the Atlanta market. We continue to offer and we have actually open positions now as well, so please check out our website for that. But the expansion of fintech and payments in Atlanta just continues to to grow. I worked for a couple, even former organizations there in the Atlanta home base, so it’s exciting to see not only the growth of payments, but the expansive growth of Atlanta kind of becoming that hotbed, if you will, for fintech and B2B payments.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now, why do you think that that ecosystem within fintech is so strong in Atlanta?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:06:34] It’s it’s talent. It is resources. And you know, what a what a great place to be in Atlanta with, you know, just able to travel to a lot of different global continents. You know, we have offices in Hong Kong, we have offices in in Europe and London. We’ve got an office in Australia. And so, you know, you think about being able to to kind of centrally locate and work across the globe. Atlanta is a great spot, not only time location, but to interact with other fintech companies that also operate in some of those markets. It just really creates a great unity across our buyers and our partners and our vendors.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] So now how how does the crypto kind of excitement impact what your work like? Is there anything in there for you or is that something you’re looking at or part of a roadmap?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:07:28] Sure, great question. We get that question a lot from any time you mentioned payments. The next question is always crypto and all of that. Here’s what I would answer is is the space that we’re playing in today. The short answer is no. The part of crypto that does make sense is more the ledger based, you know, infrastructure of seeing where a payments made and how that continues to evolve and more of a ledger based payment system and methodology. But today, the problems we’re solving with our Sherpa platform are not crypto related. They’re truly solving for manual processes that a lot of supply chains are working through today and making them automated so that you gain efficiency in how a buyer customer pays all of their suppliers that they buy products from. And so we’re really excited about not only that continued automation, but then if there’s ever a need lead for one of those buyer customers to have to unlock capital to make investments in their business, we’re able to do that as well and provide what I would say on a massive giant scale. You know, large cash advances, if you want to think of it that way to not only suppliers but to buyer entities, you know in how they can unlock capital and ultimately reinvest. So we’re solving a different part of the ecosystem beyond the crypto.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:46] So now what is kind of the problem that they’re having right now, where your solution is, the solution for them is like, are there symptoms where if they are having kind of certain issues that they should contact the prime revenue folks like, what are some clues that there might be a better answer to what they’re doing?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:09:05] Oh, great. Great question. Thank you for that. I’m going to answer that in two ways. If you’re a customer meaning a supplier and you’re selling your products to larger buyer entities. Our platform has an accounts payable process in it that your buyer and you as a supplier can join our platform and the buyer will pay you through our platform versus manual and checks versus wondering did they approve the invoice of all the products that they bought from me? Oftentimes, a supplier will submit an invoice for thirty thousand units. You know that somebody bought from them and the visibility of when that invoice got approved for payment. And when the payment is scheduled to be made is kind of a black hole for a lot of companies right now. So that’s where our platform gets to plug in those two connective tissues and say once an invoice is approved by the buyer entity, the supplier who sold those products gets to see that entire visibility cycle of when the payments come in, when it’s going to be in their bank account and when that invoice got approved. The other client and customer that would be a great opportunity with love and opportunity to talk to is if you’re a buyer entity that you buy products from other suppliers, we’ll put your entire supply chain on our platform.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:10:25] And will tech enable your entire supply chain? And what that will allow you to do is pay all of your suppliers through our platform in one fell swoop. Generally, we’ve seen in the research that an average invoice in a manual nature that a buyer has to make costs about 15 dollars per invoice give or take. Our platform can save substantial money and doing that through the automation of it because you’re not having to answer and field thousands of phone calls in a month from all of your customers, saying What am I going to get paid? Is the check in the mail. Did you approve my invoice? And then lastly, we you know, we are a great place for a customer and a buyer to come if they’ve got a need to run a supply chain finance program where essentially, you know, we can help a buyer unlock working capital to go reinvest back in their business. So we like to think we really run the gamut of what the B2B payments ecosystem needs, whether it’s early payment through supply chain finance, dynamic discounting or on time payment through really our platform solving account payable processes in the supply chain.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:28] Now what percentage of folks are doing this still manually? That kind of. Shocks me a little bit.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:11:35] It did us as well, which is, you know, kind of hence the launch of our platform. You know, I don’t know the numbers exactly, but as of as of late, I would say on a global scale, it’s still about forty five percent to 50 percent of buyers and suppliers are communicating in a manual nature. In fact, what we’ve heard is we did diligence with even our own customers, meaning our own buyer clients as a customer. Is that in most cases, the buyer customer is using a different supplier portal versus a different invoicing vendor versus a different vendor for supply chain finance versus a different vendor for dynamic discounting. So you can kind of see the picture that I’m painting, you know, really, our platform is a one stop shop now. And so that’s where helping to solve not only the fragmentation of multiple vendors, but the 40 to 50 percent of folks that are out there still handling manual payment processes and mailing checks. You know, a big challenge for buyers is that to get all of their suppliers, let’s say you have a thousand suppliers you buy products from across the world validating the bank account to make sure it’s the right bank account to pay in an automated fashion. Just imagine that process across a thousand suppliers in your ecosystem. We take that lift off and we handle all that for you. So if you don’t have validated bank accounts, you can never get out of the stage of cutting manual checks and having a manual process. So just those simple steps along the way is really how our short paid platform solves problems.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:05] So what’s next for you guys? How do you see twenty twenty two? What’s your forecast especially? I mean, I know you’re using the word supply chain maybe differently, but then what’s in the news with the supply chain? But it sounds like there’s a lot of turbulence in that world.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:13:23] There is. That’s a great, great point, and that’s actually where we can help to eliminate some of that friction. You know, when there are restrictions in supply chain, we can help to unlock capital. So if you’re a buyer entity out there that are having challenges in getting, you know, your suppliers have the right products, have enough products, demand of products give us a call because we can definitely help unlock capital to infuse that back into your supplier and supply chains to free these things up. But what’s next, really for us in Twenty Twenty Two is really continuing just to accelerate our pay platform. We’re very excited to go to create and deliver ongoing value to our supplier, customer and our buyer customer in solving working capital and on time AP payment solutions. So we’ve got, you know, since the press release, just an immense response, you know, from not only new customers, but our existing customers saying, Hey, tell me more about this. We’re excited. We’ve known prime revenue has done great things for the last 18 years. But but we want, you know, we’re hungry for more products from which you guys have on your platform. So we’re going to be busy in twenty twenty two. No doubt.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] So if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s a website?

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:14:39] A website is prime revenue. All one word. Check us out, there’s a contact us form if you’re interested in learning more and buying the platform and what the platform can do for you to solve a problem. If you’re looking for a career opportunity, check our page out there as well for careers and see what positions we have. But we’re in a very exciting time and a cool, transformative time for us as an organization in the world that we live in. So please check us out.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:08] Well, congratulations on all the success. Thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Gavin Cicchinelli: [00:15:13] Thank you, Lee, for having me and have a great Halloween. All right,

Lee Kantor: [00:15:16] This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Tim Fagan With 1-800 WATER DAMAGE

by

1-800WATERDAMAGE
Franchise Marketing Radio
Tim Fagan With 1-800 WATER DAMAGE
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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.

TimFaganTim Fagan is the President of 1-800 WATER DAMAGE (a property restoration brand) and Blue Kangaroo Packoutz (a contents restoration brand), part of the BELFOR Franchise Group family of residential and commercial services franchise brands based in Ann Abor, Michigan.

He has been in the restoration industry for over 25 years, having been the CEO of a local water mitigation/contents company that was purchased by BELFOR Property Restoration, the world’s largest property restoration company, in 2010. He has managed emergency losses in residential, hospital, university, business, manufacturing, multi-family and K-12 school facilities.

Follow 1-800 WATER DAMAGE on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The franchise culture for 1-800 WATER DAMAGE and Blue Kangaroo Packoutz
  • Types of franchisees are you looking for to grow the system
  • Difference of 1-800 WATER DAMAGE and Blue Kangaroo Packoutz from other restoration franchises
  • The training process for new franchisees
  • Advice to an aspiring franchisee looking to join a service brand

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio, 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 that’s SeoSamba.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have Tim Fagan with 1-800 WATER DAMAGE and a blue kangaroo packoutz. Welcome,Tim.

Tim Fagan: [00:00:45] Thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Let’s start off with one eight hundred water damage. Tell us about that franchise.

Tim Fagan: [00:00:52] Well, that’s a franchise that primarily responds to residential and commercial water losses, and they dry out the play, they dry out the houses or dry out the buildings. And then many of the times we put them back to pre lost condition, depending how much damage is done. But most of the time the franchise can, can, can work with the homeowner or the business property manager to get the place back to pre lost condition.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] So now was this company developed as a mom and pop and then turned into a franchise? Or was it built to be a franchise all along?

Tim Fagan: [00:01:35] No. It started in in the nineties in Seattle as a as a mom pop, and they developed some marketing. Strategies, particularly among plumbers, marketing plumbers, because plumbers often are some of the first calls when water damage does take place, and then they developed a franchise and the franchise grew and then 20 15 fell for franchise group purchased one eight hundred water damage.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] And how many units are there?

Tim Fagan: [00:02:12] There’s ninety three units and about one hundred and seventy eight territories currently.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:20] Wow. So is the growth across the United States or is it in certain regions?

Tim Fagan: [00:02:27] I think it’s across the United States. I mean, I can’t point to one region of the U.S. and say, Hey, we’re growing in the southeast, but not in the northwest or et cetera. It’s all over the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:39] So is the water damage typically from flooding or like, like you mentioned, a plumbing problem?

Tim Fagan: [00:02:46] Yes, all the above. Sometimes cat events, catastrophe events where you have significant localized flooding. Sometimes you have like in the Texas Oklahoma area last year where they had or this year actually was, I think it was in March of this year where they had extensive cold and pipe freezes. And then you have, you know, any time there’s water that runs into a building and that’s almost every building we have now. It is an if the pipe is going to leak, it’s when whether that’s fire suppression systems or toilets or sinks or ice maker’s lines that go to refrigerators. They all release water at some point or another.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] And then is the franchisee? Typically, the plumber that this is another revenue stream for them, or it’s somebody that works with plumbers.

Tim Fagan: [00:03:49] No, it’s it’s rarely a plumber that’s that’s the franchise. Most of the time they will work with plumbers, they’ll work with insurance agents, they’ll work with property management companies to get referrals. Sometimes they get referrals online from people searching online so they they won’t get they won’t get all their referrals from one source.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:16] So what is their kind of background? Do they have to be? Is this like a hands on thing or this is somebody who hires the folks who go in and and deal with the damage?

Tim Fagan: [00:04:27] So the background of the franchise here all over the board, usually there’s a couple of things that we look for when we talk to them and they show interest and then we, we we interview them and recruit them. And and we look for a few things. One, because this is a twenty four seven business. It’s not like normal businesses, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] Like this isn’t if you only want to work in the mornings, this is right. This stuff happens when it happens,

Tim Fagan: [00:04:57] It happens when it happens. And the expectation is that you’re going to respond immediately to to people’s needs. So their ability to adapt. I mean, typically people that like working nine to five and that’s it, you know, and they hang the shingle and says. They don’t do real well.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] I’d imagine that it’s not conducive to that kind of it’s not a lifestyle business. This is like you’re on call all the time.

Tim Fagan: [00:05:30] Yeah, and it is a lifestyle and what drives? You know, you said what? What attracts people to it if if you have that help or heart that helper gene that you always wanted to to help people, you know, some of the same reasons people get into nursing or get into first responder being, you know, being a, you know, in an ambulance or law enforcement or. By your service, those kind of those kind of people, teachers, they love this kind of business because, you know, you get paid to respond and you get paid pretty well for making somebody’s worst day. Ok? Again, in a very in a fairly short amount of time.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:17] Right. That’s a great way to frame it because it’s probably best suited for the folks that kind of go into the who want to go into those situations and help and really, like you said, kind of make that person’s worst day, a good day, you know, to make it more manageable and to see a light at the end of the tunnel because every day I’m sure folks are just really appreciating them. And for the work they’re doing, how they just got them out of a bind.

Tim Fagan: [00:06:44] That’s right. And that’s what motivates them. And that’s why they get up at 2:00 a.m. on those cold winter nights and say, Hey, I got to go Honey, I, we got a water damage on the other side of town and and that really is that’s what what energizes them and gives them endorphin rushes.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:02] So now is it hard to find those folks or are they finding you because they’re searching for this kind of opportunity?

Tim Fagan: [00:07:10] Yeah. I mean, for the most part, they reach out to us. We have no idea if they’re interested at all. They find us online or they find us through a business broker and then we get a chance to talk to them about what are you looking for? And I can’t tell you how many guys we have in the system that were former corporate accountants or, you know, or owned franchisee franchises that that did tax accounting or something. But they want something that is a little more. The where they feel that they’re making a significant

Lee Kantor: [00:07:49] Difference, right, because it’ll have an impact like this is something that you see what it looks like today and then tomorrow it’s going to look a lot better and you and you can say, I did that.

Tim Fagan: [00:07:59] Yes, that’s right. Yeah, it’s a lot like we have six kids at home and my wife mows the lawn. And it’s because she says that in a short amount of time, it makes a big difference and it’ll stay that way for a little while. And that’s some of the same reasons that that our guys get into this business is that in a short amount of time, you’re right, you get it can go from chaos to order and put make a frown from a frown to a happy face on a customer’s smile.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:31] So now let’s talk a little bit about blue kangaroo pack outs. What does that franchise?

Tim Fagan: [00:08:36] So that is along the same lines on an insurance deck page, which is a cover page of an insurance policy and often talks about your structure, which is basically if you took a building or a house and it tipped it upside down and shook everything out of it, anything that fell out with the contents that’s called personal property in your insurance policy. And the stuff that didn’t fall out is called structure. And so we handle and move kangaroo pack outs. The personal property stuff that may get damaged in a in a claim in it, whether it be a fire or a flood or a sewer backup or a skunk, you know, ran through the house, they don’t happen. That doesn’t happen very often, but it happens often where a dog gets sprayed, a pet gets sprayed by a skunk and the dog runs to the house and and rubs on everything because he’s trying to get the mask off of them. And then ultimately, those are not very good days for those homeowners. But thank God, there’s there’s people like us so we can come in and and either clean it on site or remove that furniture and get it ozone treated and clean and then deliver it back to the homeowner.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:01] Now is that franchise, the franchisee, the similar kind of personality, the person that likes to go into a crisis and help and then really make a difference in a short period of time?

Tim Fagan: [00:10:11] Absolutely. And they do just in a different way. And while it’s a twenty four seven business, the occurrence of getting called outside of business hours is much less than it is at one eight hundred water damage.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:25] Right. So when you’re tired of waking up at 3:00 in the morning, you can go over to Blue Kangaroo and then, you know, that’s more of a normal kind of workday situation.

Tim Fagan: [00:10:35] Typically, it is. But disasters happen as we all know at all times, and you still need to have an on call crew that you can mobilize at a moment’s notice. Sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] Now talk about the training. Is the training similar? Obviously, there are different things that they have to do, but it sounds like you’re dealing with a same type of personality of an individual. Is the training kind of along the same lines?

Tim Fagan: [00:11:04] The training in both cases sort of share similarities first and then I’ll see your differences, so the similarities is that both of those trainings take place with a combination of hands-on and classroom. Bell four has a state of the art flood house that we built from the ground up and not only built for property restoration, but pack outs in one 800 water damage train in that house and that house has been flooded. Oh boy, I know upwards of 50 times. Each time with over twelve hundred gallons of water, so we work on a real house, both from a contents perspective and packing the house out, you know, and securing the furniture and getting into a secure environment or a stable environment as working on that. Working on the house and the water damage itself on the structure side, including. So these are all things that that kind of make this the training unique. So when they get out of our 13 day training, they’re ready to hit the road. Now they don’t have the relevant experience. They have some because they did, you know, a pack out or a water damage at our flood house.

Tim Fagan: [00:12:35] But they’re there ready to hit the road with the equipment that they need. And then with the support behind them, they just call for help if you need it. It seems to work out very well. And again, I mean, my background as a school administrator, I mean in a degree in teaching and two master’s degrees in educational leadership. I mean, I know that people are different kind of learners. Some do a great job in the classroom and they can learn a lot from a teacher in a classroom or from opening a book. But there’s a great population of people that are kinesthetic learners that learn hands on, and that’s how they best learn. And so the classroom, we kind of introduce them to the concepts, but then we we take them right from there to the flood house or to our store number one. It contents back out in Mount Clemens, Michigan, and then they get actual hands on guided practice training. So it it’s very effective and it works out real well.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:39] And then even if even if they just started and they had gone through your training, I’m sure if they ran into a situation, one of the the benefits of being part of a franchise network like this is that there’s someone to call that’s probably seen it and done it already.

Tim Fagan: [00:13:56] Well, and again, that’s back to the lifestyle. So the regional business coaches that we have. Guess what field they came out of the restoration field. So they know what it’s like to answer the call at 2:00 in the morning or 3:00 in the morning or during your kid’s birthday or a holiday. And yeah, that’s that’s an expectation that we have is that, you know, and including myself, you know, my phone never goes off because when they need help, it’s typically now it’s not like, Hey, call me on Monday morning, but I’m in the middle of a job and I need some support. And it’s also great thing about being part of the bell for family is that there is no job that we have to turn away from that is too big or too complex, or nobody in the company has ever done that or knows how to handle that. We have a tremendous network out there of the world’s largest property restoration company, largest by a lot, not by a little. And so that that network, they tap into that network and there’s there should be no jobs that we turn away from because of because we’re we’re a little bit intimidated by it.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:18] Now is there an incentive for potential franchisee to combine both of these brands?

Tim Fagan: [00:15:26] There there is. We rarely I can’t think of anybody who’s come in and tried to learn both at the same time. We do have franchisees that have started with one, and most of them are in the 800 water damage. They start with that and then they find out how much of the contents work. They’re referring out. And if I could do that myself, then they they end up buying into an eight hundred water or eight or blue kangaroo pack outs and combine that with their eight hundred water damage business. And those have been really successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] So now what is the trend for your firm the rest of the year? Are you kind of bullish with how this year is ending and how next year’s beginning in terms of growth?

Tim Fagan: [00:16:17] We’ve had tremendous growth, both growth in our average office and grow sales. I mean, if you were to look at our gross sales from 18 to today, you would not be able to see that there was a pandemic in the middle of it. You would think, Wow, that’s a that’s a heck of a hockey stick growth of that franchise. So. And that growth continues as we look in the franchise development or the sales funnel for more franchisees coming in, that funnels fairly full. And so, you know, and then at least foreseeable future, we’re going to continue to add franchisees to the system and and putting new owners through our training.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:08] Yeah, because these kind of issues, they don’t care if there’s a pandemic or not.

Tim Fagan: [00:17:13] No, I mean, they don’t care if there’s a recession exactly like this. This still happens. People typically will still buy insurance for their property because for the value that they get in the peace of mind, they get for having insurance to protect their property. So that will still be there regardless of what you know or irregardless of the of the economy out the window.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:46] So now, if somebody wants to learn more about either of these opportunities, is there one website or two websites?

Tim Fagan: [00:17:54] Well, they can go to the you can go to either one of the Blue Kangaroo Accounts website or the one 800 water damage website, or if they want to see what other options are available through Bell for Franchise Group, they can go to that website as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:13] Well, Tim, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Tim Fagan: [00:18:18] Well, thank you, Lee, and thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:21] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

 

Todd Stephenson With Premier Chicago Real Estate

by

ToddStephenson
Chicago Business Radio
Todd Stephenson With Premier Chicago Real Estate
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Firmspace-sponsor-banner

PremierChicagoRealEstate

ToddStephensonTodd Stephenson is the owner and sponsoring broker of Premier Chicago Real Estate. He has over 10 years of experience in real estate sales and consulting, property management, and real estate investment management.

He has also represented distressed homeowners in working toward solutions by either advising on short sales or helping them work through loan modifications. At Premier Chicago, Todd specializes in residential and commercial sales in addition to real estate investment management.

Prior to working in real estate, he worked in the advertising and technology industries. With more than 15 years of sales experience, his responsibilities have included marketing, business development, and client relationship management.

Todd earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Kentucky State University. He was born and raised in Chicago and continues to be an active member of his community.

Todd currently resides in the Beverly neighborhood with his wife and son.

Connect with Todd on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Opening Premier Chicago Real Estate in the midst of the pandemic

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois, it’s time for Chicago Business Radio brought to you by Firm Space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to FirmSpace.com. Now here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kantor. And before we get started, today’s episode is sponsored by firm SpaceX. So thank you to firm SpaceX because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories that we do. I’m excited for today’s episode. We have the owner and sponsoring broker of Premiere Chicago Real Estate, so there should be a good one. Please. Welcome to the show, Todd Stephenson. Welcome to the show, Todd.

Todd Stephenson: [00:00:49] Max, thank you, thank you very much.

Max Kantor: [00:00:52] Tell us, let’s jump right into it. How are you serving, folks?

Todd Stephenson: [00:00:55] Well, my company we are a boutique boutique real estate firm here in Chicago Land, specializing in residential and commercial real estate throughout the city and the surrounding suburbs, primarily working with, you know, first time home buyers, sellers as well as investors with purchasing real estate throughout the city.

Max Kantor: [00:01:17] Gotcha. So I know reading your bio and stuff, you weren’t always in the real estate business. So what drew you to that industry?

Todd Stephenson: [00:01:24] Well, you know, I did not start on the real estate business, but it’s always been a passion or an interest of mine since I was younger, got out of college, kind of went in another direction with sales and the corporate environment, but just kept calling me. It was something I always wanted to do and, you know, serve people and help people. So, you know, a few years within the sales environment, I got out and got into real estate finally.

Max Kantor: [00:01:50] Gotcha. Gotcha. And so you open this business during the pandemic, what was that like?

Todd Stephenson: [00:01:56] Yeah, we opened it 20, 20. It’s like, like again, it’s always something I had an interest in doing, always something I plan to do. But just like anything, you got busy with work and you kind of put things off and then obviously the pandemic hit. And timing is everything right? And it was, you know, just with the pandemic, it kind of allowed me that pause to really focus and step out to do what I really wanted to do was start my own brokerage.

Max Kantor: [00:02:21] Gotcha. Gotcha. So how did industry trends change before, during and now what kind of post-COVID? I know it’s still going on, but how have you seen those trends shift?

Todd Stephenson: [00:02:34] Well, you know, right, right before COVID hit, we saw a trend in as far as like the interest rates with the home buying market. So, you know, mortgage interest rates were kind of kind of getting lower there, then the pandemic hit. And then obviously things went on on a standstill. But I think the trends kind of changed with. You know, more people wanting to take advantage of the low interest rates within the mortgage market and the low. I kind of just just rambling on here, but they wanted to take advantage of the low interest rates they shifted to. Once the once the market shifted, it was low inventory, so you kind of push prices higher. So we’re kind of dealing with more or less a seller’s market now where, you know, basically you have an influx of buyers, buyers competing for a lot of inventory because it’s very low inventory. So the sellers have basically the pick of the litter. So they’re able to kind of list their price and then get multiple offers at or above. Ask with their with their with their sales price. So we see it’s kind of a a tricky market now if you’re dealing with buyers. But if you’re dealing with sellers, you know you’re able to get at or above as so. It’s a great time to sell. Great time to buy. But again, with the low inventory, it’s kind of rough with finding properties out there, but that’s kind of what’s going on in the residential market right now.

Max Kantor: [00:04:07] Gotcha. Gotcha. Now why should a seller work with your firm?

Todd Stephenson: [00:04:15] Well, our goal is to be able to obviously its customer service quality. We want to make sure that we respond in a timely manner, be able to kind of not only respond in a quality manner, but be able to kind of list the price at proper proper list prices. So when you when you get somebody selling, you know, you don’t want to over oversell and under-deliver. So our goal is to make sure we’re doing our due diligence, getting the proper pricing strategy for the market and making sure we get enough buyers within the door to actually get competing offers. That way, we can’t get a quality price at or above what they’re looking to get when selling their property.

Max Kantor: [00:05:01] You mentioned that you work with a lot of first time homebuyers, so I’m sure a lot of people listening to this might have never even looked into buying a home. But listening to this, they become interested. So what are some common kind of beginner concerns and questions that you have seen with new home buyers? And how do you address those?

Todd Stephenson: [00:05:22] With new homebuyers, I mean, their biggest their biggest concern is, is this is, you know, most people only buy one home within their lifespan. So this is the biggest investment in their life. You’re talking about taking the average sales home. I mean, home sales price in Chicagoland is around two hundred and fifty thousand. So when you’re thinking about getting a mortgage, that’s a hefty price tag. So you want to make sure you can afford the property be what to look for. You know, as far as like, you know, again with it being your biggest investment. You know, what are some of the things that you’re going to have over the next five, 10, 15 years as owning this property? You know, what are some of the the structural things that you may need to look for, et cetera? So you know, it’s, you know, homebuyer. I mean, home ownership is very key to kind of be aware of some of these things as far as, like, you know, condition of the property when going into it, you know, how much can you afford? What are some of the do’s and don’ts? You know, as well as like how to take care of the property over the initial, you know, time that you own the property. So those are some of the initial things that you kind of look for into a home.

Max Kantor: [00:06:29] Yeah. Well, you know, home buying such a big decision. So it sounds like you do a really great job at easing people into making such a large decision and helping them with it. You mentioned that you help buyers in the Chicagoland area and sellers. So what neighborhoods are hot right now? Where are there still good deals in that area?

Todd Stephenson: [00:06:50] It’s quite a few in Chicago woodland being one of the hottest neighborhoods, not only in the city of Chicago but as well as the nation. It’s one of the fastest growing and appreciating neighborhoods across the nation, so I think woodland is a great place. You know, West Loop, it’s a ton of new development and properties going up in West Slope, South Loop. Those are some of your hot areas right now. But I like those three areas, primarily when it comes to To the Fast, one of some of the fastest growing and appreciating hot neighborhoods within Chicago.

Max Kantor: [00:07:25] Now does your firm do only residential or residential and commercial?

Todd Stephenson: [00:07:30] We also do commercial. I work, I do some small commercial. I do. I work with the Cook County Land Bank, whose primary focus is also help revitalizing neighborhoods with some of their commercial properties. So I work as a commercial broker with them, and I help them kind of sell some of their commercial inventory within the south and west side of Chicago.

Max Kantor: [00:07:54] Gotcha. So you’re you mentioned you’re relatively new, started last year in 2020. Do you have any kind of success stories that you’re proud of that you would want to share?

Todd Stephenson: [00:08:06] Oof, that is a great question, I mean. I mean, it’s quite a few, I mean, I don’t know where I mean, could you maybe be specific with that like any like residential commercial? I mean, what are what are you?

Max Kantor: [00:08:18] Maybe a time that you helped a first time homebuyer that was really impactful to them or to you.

Todd Stephenson: [00:08:26] Yeah, I mean, I want to think of something that’s fresh off hand helped a VA seller. We listed his pride. I mean, it’s property and floss more, which is a southern suburb here in Chicago, have been going back and forth for a while. But we listed his property and within a week of listing the property again. When we’re talking about pricing strategy, we priced it right. Got enough activity in traffic through the door of the first weekend. We had an offer that following week. So I would say within a matter of five to seven days, we had had an offer on multiple offers on his place, but we had an offer. I think it was just over 15 K over apps. We were asking three twenty. We got three, thirty five for that place.

Max Kantor: [00:09:12] Wow. And is that is that quick? Is that I don’t know the the timeline for things like that. So is that faster than usual?

Todd Stephenson: [00:09:20] Yeah. Within the market, like I said, this market is, is is is key. You know, it’s very it’s very hot right now. So if you got a quality like I know the sellers have an advantage. So that is pretty fast seven days, you know, I mean, you’re looking at, you know, generally within the first few weeks is when you get the most interest in a property, when you list the property. So, you know, if you can get an offer within that first seven days, that is that’s huge. But generally, you know, the activity starts to starts to die down a little bit after like 30 days of being on the market. So if you’re 30 days, you know, you start to see less activity because it’s not as fresh in the market, but to get a get multiple offers. We had like three or four offers the first weekend and like I said, we accepted one point K over s, which is it’s pretty, pretty good this market.

Max Kantor: [00:10:11] So I want to ask you about some tips for first time homebuyers. Something like, you know what credit score should they be looking to have? How much do you need for a down payment, things like that.

Todd Stephenson: [00:10:26] A down payment, I mean, they have programs out here now where you can do FHA or even conventional products with as little as three to three and a half percent down and credit score. That’s a good question. I mean, you know, I think some lenders can go, you know, somewhere around like the 600 range. You know, obviously the better credit score, the better interest rate and terms you’re going to get. But I think somewhere around the six hundred credit score would suffer. I mean, it depends on the mortgage company, but generally maybe around six hundred plus you can get a mortgage with three and a half percent down. Fha.

Max Kantor: [00:11:03] Gotcha. So on this show, Chicago Business RadioX, we love to highlight and spotlight local businesses, which is why I’m so glad I get to talk to you today. So as a local business, you know, what do you need more of? Do you need more buyers? Do you need sellers? How can our listeners help you?

Todd Stephenson: [00:11:21] Well, both buyers and sellers are key to our business. You know, you can’t obviously have one without the other. I love working with buyers because it’s helping them realize the dream of home ownership. And you know, sellers, you know, obviously they’re selling their property to move on to whatever their next opportunity is with their business, you know, downsizing or getting or relocating to another area, or maybe even getting something bigger because their family is expanding. So I would say both buyers and sellers, you know, are both key and our market.

Max Kantor: [00:11:54] And and finally, I got to ask you what is the most rewarding part of what you do?

Todd Stephenson: [00:12:01] Just being able to help others, you know, I’m always open to lend a helping hand for me. You know, dealing with buyers, like I said, it’s very rewarding because, you know, some of them may, you know, like their lifelong dream. It may have been owning a home. And just to be able to see them get to the finish line and be able to own the home that they truly dreamed about or, you know, always want it is rewarding to me. And then, like I said, you know, even helping sellers, you know, whether if it’s downsizing, you know, growing or expanding or relocating, I know that it’s key to be it’s I feel it’s very rewarding to be able to help them achieve their goals. So it really is just helping, helping others, helping people.

Max Kantor: [00:12:42] So Todd, if there’s a buyer or seller or just someone who’s interested in learning more about your firm, how can people contact you? What’s your website and or social media?

Todd Stephenson: [00:12:51] Well, I do have our website. They can visit us at W-w-what for mayor of Chicago Real Estate, and we do have an Instagram recently is at Premier Chicago are as a real e as an estate.

Max Kantor: [00:13:07] Great. Well, Todd, thank you again for being on the show today. It was excellent to talk to you.

Todd Stephenson: [00:13:13] Same here, Max, thanks for having me.

Max Kantor: [00:13:14] No problem at all, and thanks to you for listening and we will see you next time on Chicago Business Radio.

Intro: [00:13:23] This episode is Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm SpaceX, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to Firme Space.com.

 

Angie Licea With Global Travel Collection

by

Angie-Licea
Atlanta Business Radio
Angie Licea With Global Travel Collection
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Angie-LiceaAngie Licea is President of Global Travel Collection, a division of Internova Travel Group, which includes the company’s high-service, premium and luxury travel businesses.

In addition to Protravel International and Tzell Travel Group, luxury brands Andrew Harper Travel and R. Crusoe & Son also reside in this division.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • about Global Travel Collection
  • How travel advisors help with corporate and business travel

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by on pay built in Atlanta. On Pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at onpay. 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 fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the Atlanta Business Radio. We have Angie Lecea with global travel collection. Welcome.

Anglie Licea: [00:00:51] Thank you so much, Lee.

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

Anglie Licea: [00:00:58] So we’re very excited, first off, that we’re coming into your guys’s community. But to start, global travel collection is the world’s largest, most sophisticated community of travel industry agents and agencies. And so what we’ve done is within our Inner Nova parent group is created. Operating companies, the operating company Global Travel Collection, focuses primarily on luxury, leisure and bespoke corporate travel, as well as entertainment and production business travel business.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] So now how are how’s the. Can you give us just kind of a general where we’re at with the travel in the world today? It seems like it changes almost on a daily basis. Some countries are open, some countries aren’t. How do people even plan for travel nowadays?

Anglie Licea: [00:01:49] Yeah. So it’s a good question. Last week I was asked What can what’s the most consistent thing we can count on in twenty two? And I said inconsistency. So a little bit cheeky. But yes, it does change every single day. The good news is volume is picking up fairly substantially and there’s a couple of primary drivers to that. One of the driver is the actual vaccination for family members or for children. So, you know, in many cases, parents were able to go. Children weren’t in many countries. You couldn’t travel unless you had a vaccination or you’re willing to quarantine for 10 or 14 days. So the announcement of the fact that the vaccine is going to be available to younger folks is a driver of volume increase, albeit that is relatively recent and then the opening up of across the waters for Europeans to come over to the United States. Volume is growing. It’s growing at a decent pace. Are we anywhere near where we were in 2019? No. As an industry, we’re probably running somewhere around the 60 to sixty five percent range of 2019. But the good news is volume is increasing. It’s increasing steadily day after day, week after week and month after month and barring any particular huge flare up in the coronavirus. I think that for me, I would forecast my group would be back at 2019 levels early, late, twenty two or early. Twenty three.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:18] Now, I would think this is a good time for your business in terms of showing that there’s value in working with a travel advisor instead of going at it yourself. I would think that now people want to have an expert to kind of help them navigate this.

Anglie Licea: [00:03:37] Yes, for sure. First off, I’d start back to when the pandemic happened, you know, for for many of these advisers, they were the unsung hero within this whole pandemic because we had thousands and thousands of thousands of travelers stuck in different parts of the world trying to get home. People would purchase very exquisite vacations that they were trying to get refunds for. And these advisers, starting in March of twenty twenty, were basically working for free or at a loss for months on end, trying to get their their travelers back where they belong, trying to get them refunds, sitting on the phone for hours. That in itself should show the consumer base when it comes to somebody having your back. Travel advisors have your back, but also when you look at the complexity of travel today and moving forward, you know, going back to you just get on a plane and you really don’t think about things that other than maybe your visa or a passport, those days are gone for for the foreseeable future. So, you know, in this, travel agents have always been consultants helping consumers find the best location for the best value. You know, making sure that the endless, you know, a to z of the trip is is accommodated for and that the travel agent is thinking of the questions that a consumer has not even thought to ask yet, right? That kind of summarizes a trial, an advisor. And then you late layer the complexity of the pandemic. On top of that and the changing of protocols, what do you need? What’s the paperwork? The paperwork for each country is different. So could you imagine a consumer or a traveler trying to navigate the issues with the coronavirus? What documentation is required? Where do I get the paperwork? What if that protocol changes? And then plus on top of that, just the fact that we are still dealing with occupancy and capacity constraints, you know, spaces of where to go, where to travel, where to stay are limited as well. So all of those things are encapsulated in the value that a travel advisor brings to a traveler or a consumer.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:52] Now how has the how has the shakeout in the industry for travel advisors been? With the advent of so many of these online places where you, it seems there are, I’ll just say they make it seem that it’s possible and doable and almost easy to just do this on your own and you don’t need a travel advisor. It’s been my experience. I prefer personally to always have an expert at hand because I I want someone who’s already been there and done that and knows what I don’t know because they’re dealing with it every day. But I would imagine a lot of the public thinks this is something that they can do on their own.

Anglie Licea: [00:06:32] Yeah, I think there’s a fair amount of people who think they can do it on their own. But you know, I like to say you hire a personal trainer to learn to work out. You hire a nutritionist to learn how to eat you and hire a financial analyst to help you with your money. Travel is not inexpensive, why would anybody not take the available expertize of somebody who knows and exactly to your point, who’s been there, who’s done that knows what the pitfalls to watch for and knows what the advantages are? Why wouldn’t you be using the expert? These are not just jobs to these people. These are this is their career. This is their life, career, and they are absolute experts in this space. So, you know, the online space, they’re doing their job, their marketing, because they’re trying to say, you don’t need an adviser. They’re doing their job. But in reality, exactly to your point, why wouldn’t you use an expert and avoid the pitfalls? Understand the questions that you should be asking. It’s just to me, it’s sometimes it boggles my mind to think why people think that they shouldn’t use an adviser, but each to his own. If it’s me, I’m calling an adviser for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:45] Well, I think that to your point about it, it’s not only is it expensive, but it’s to make a mistake based on somebody has a persuasive web copy on an internet that you were in three o’clock in the morning looking at without knowing kind of having boots on the ground and having been there and known, Hey, that’s in a terrible neighborhood. I’ve seen people like book hotels that are nowhere near where the anything is because it was inexpensive and it seemed they made it seem like it was a suitable choice.

Anglie Licea: [00:08:19] But they make it seem like it’s just around the corner when in many cases it’s not so. Yeah. Leigh, I agree. I think you’re doing a great job in helping us send the message just in your commentary on what you’re saying, because in the end, these guys do know what it’s like to have boots on the ground.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:37] Right. So I mean, this is one of those things. It’s kind of I don’t want to say it’s a pet peeve, but it’s one of those issues where people think they’re they’re saving some money, but they’re not because one mistake is going to cost you. It could be way more than money. I mean, it could be you’re stuck now there for two weeks, and there’s all these unintended consequences of making a mistake.

Anglie Licea: [00:08:57] Yeah. Or just wasted money on things that you thought you were going to get that you’re not going to get. I mean, who’s going to go fight that battle if you show up your hotel at 10 o’clock at night and they say, I’m sorry, we don’t have space, you’re on your own if you booked it on your own, if you booked it with the travel advisor. They’re there to help you resolve the issue for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:15] Now in your role as president is part of that role, attracting travel advisors to the company and partnering with travel advisors. Or is it just helping get the word out with enterprise level companies and people that want to use the travel agent?

Anglie Licea: [00:09:33] Yeah. So I think it’s all of the above. You know, we’re very particular in our organization as to the advisor that we’re looking to attract. So we always look to grow our advisor population, but we don’t want just every advisor. We want advisors that are going to add to our portfolio, add to the value, add to the level of expertize. So for example, if somebody is, you know, we we find an advisor that’s a specialist in Bucharest and Bucharest is a hot place right now in a lot of our advisors maybe don’t know it. That’s a great advisor for us, right? But we don’t want just any advisor. We want advisors who are going to add value to our consumer base, to their consumer base and to the agent population as a whole. From doing more to create volume and travel, we’re doing a lot around thought leadership and exposure to the value of a travel agent. Hence, our recent campaign book Human to really show the value of the Advisor. So we’re looking to bring in advisors to grow our portfolio, but we’re also looking to bring in new consumers that the advisors can support.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:42] And then that ideal consumer. Is it somebody at the corporate level or is it an executive? Is it for personal travel or business travel? Both.

Anglie Licea: [00:10:51] Yeah. So all. So in our segmentation, the beautiful part of Nova, which is our parent company, as I say, we have a place for every traveler that wants to travel. So within our segmentation, right, we have primarily bespoke corporate travel. We have corporate clients, we have a lot of high end corporate clients and then executives of corporate clients. So we certainly target the corporate space. A very hot area for a lot of travel agencies. Certainly for us is production and entertainment. So attracting those, you know, these companies that are producing new films and new TV programs and handling the production travel for them or even top entertainment, musicians, singers, actors that you know are are these very iconic individuals in their space also do a ton of business for us. So we really would. In our group, we have those four areas that we have high focus on. We’re also looking at focusing on expanding in the honeymoon and romance area as well as health and wellness. I truly believe Leigh will be one of the top verticals for types of travel in the future. Then, coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people said, I want to try to find peace and balance, and that health and wellness segmentation is growing substantially.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:14] The allocation?

Anglie Licea: [00:12:16] Oh, the health and wellness. And then the I’m sorry, you said,

Lee Kantor: [00:12:22] Well, I said the word allocation where you’re going to play and you’re trying to kind of recharge.

Anglie Licea: [00:12:28] Oh yeah, for sure. We we have a lot of people who I kind of joke about it. We have this thing where we say it’s like the getaway vacation and it stays in the place where a lot of people have been in their home with their families for all these months. And they’re saying, I want to get away and I want to go play. So I think that plays into your space, too. A lot of people have really assess that, reassess themselves. They’ve reassessed what value is. And then in some cases, going out and just having some fun and relaxing is really important to consumers today. And so we are seeing a lot more in that sort of fun play space. It doesn’t have to be a big serious vacation. It might just be a weekend away, but it’ll be relaxing.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:10] So say I’m an executive at an enterprise level company and I want to work with global travel collection. Is it something that I have kind of an account person that’s on my team that says, Hey, my family and I want to go, you know, and I know all around the world trip and then and we just start talking about it. Is that how it works like or is it? I go to a portal and I figure it out? Or how does it work?

Anglie Licea: [00:13:38] Yeah. So if somebody would like to do business with this, we have multiple websites across our different brands global travel collection. We have pro travel zel travel in the no experience. Andrew Harper. So any of those brands that somebody might be familiar with or again could go directly to global travel collection, they can launch an inquiry directly from the website. And then what we would do is match them up with an advisor. And then the advisor would become their consultant or consultation for whatever trip that they have now and into the future. The interesting thing about travel agents, Leigh, is it’s much like a hairdresser, right? So people will follow their hairdresser, they will once they find a hairdresser, they like they’re with that person. For life, travel agents are much the same. Once you find a travel agent that you trust and you know, has your back and could take care of things they stay with with the advisor for years and years and years. So we’re ready and waiting for all those inquiries to come in through either our website or reaching out to one of our eight hundred members.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] So now why did what was the impetus for the move to Atlanta?

Anglie Licea: [00:14:51] So Atlanta has been an area that we’ve been very, very interested in for a long time, and it just so happened that we had a group of advisors that are long standing members of the Atlanta community, you know, in the Buckhead and the, you know, the Ansley Park sort of areas and their institutions in the community. And they had an interest in joining us. And we we jumped at the opportunity at the very first conversation when they said, Look, we’d like to have a conversation with you guys. We were committed at that point to build an office and grow the office in the Atlanta market. We love the Atlanta population and we truly, truly believe it’s an area of major growth for us. So the impetus was these advisors saying, Hey, we like you guys and we were like, We really like you. And then the want and the need for us to build something in Georgia, which we wanted to do for a long time. It was a match made in heaven, for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:58] Now what is the strategy in terms of having an actual office when so much of this stuff is can be done online or over the phone or on Zoom? Is it something that you’re trying to encourage this kind of face to face relationships and real personal?

Anglie Licea: [00:16:13] Well, I think in two parts for for an advisor, particularly, there’s there’s a fair population of advisers who don’t want to work from home, they want to go into a business environment and then we still have a large number of consumers who like to come in and sit down to plan their trip. So, you know, from from the need of the adviser as well as the need of the consumer, you know, to want to connect physically, personally, it was important for us to have a presence now. There’s still a fair population or a large population of people who don’t mind doing things via text or email or just a phone call. And for those people, you know, we have that solution too. But we did want to accommodate the need in the Atlanta area. For those consumers who still physically want to come in, have a seat, have a chat and plan something out with the adviser directly.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:05] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need more people that want to connect with global travel collection? Do you need more advisers both?

Anglie Licea: [00:17:15] So there’s advisers who are thinking that they feel like this would be a great place for them, the global travel collection or organization? We’d love to talk to you if there’s consumers who are planning travel on their own and they’re kind of questioning, is this something I should be doing on my own? My goodness, this is so complex. Why am I thinking about doing this on my own? Please reach out to us because we have the most amazing advisers around the world supporting our customers today, and many of them are sitting right in your backyard in the office. We’ve just opened and then.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:52] Is there a fee to be part of this? Are you a member of global travel collection or is this something that the fees are just built into the each individual travel?

Anglie Licea: [00:18:01] Yeah. So it depends on the the travel type. So, you know, simple air car and hotel. Sometimes advisors will charge a nominal fee or no fee. Sometimes it’s is very extensive 200 day around the world trip. There may be a planning fee, but I would guarantee you that the money and the trouble that could potentially be charged is far offset by the value that the consumer gets by working with an advisor, working with an advisor. We don’t have a set fee and say, OK, if you’re going to talk to us, it’s one hundred bucks. That’s not how I travel advisor works. They assess the environment, the situation, and then there’s a consultation conversation about what, if, if a fee is charged, what that fee might be.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:45] So you don’t you’re not a member of global travel collection and then you’re you get access to stuff. This is just if I call global travel collection, I book a trip, it’ll be a transparent fee in there or or it’ll just be absorbed as part of the travel.

Anglie Licea: [00:19:01] Correct. But also leave from a from a total leverage standpoint. Inter Nova’s our parent company. We have we’re one of the largest agencies in North America, so our ability, our buying power is quite strong. So even though somebody wouldn’t necessarily need to sign up and be a member of global travel collection, there are tremendous benefits in the form of discounts, enhanced amenities, you know, just an expert advisor knowing how to price something effectively. There’s tremendous value with somebody doing business with us versus maybe a smaller agency because we do have the leverage of our parent company, which is which is amazing,

Lee Kantor: [00:19:45] But it’s one of those things that it’s best suited for some level of complexity rather than, Hey, I’m just flying down to visit my folks in New York and I just need an airplane ticket.

Anglie Licea: [00:19:57] No, I think that there’s value to that as well. It just depends on the consumer’s comfort level. That’s what should drive a decision if you’re a first time traveler and you’ve never booked an air ticket before. Probably best to use an advisor if if you don’t want to be troubled and you just want to like what I do, I just send three sentences I need to go, This is the date. This is how much I want to pay APR and my travel agent takes care of everything. So it really depends on the individual. The complex, the more complex, the more the advisor is needed. But that doesn’t mean even a simplistic trip somebody shouldn’t consider using an advisor.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:37] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success, and thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Anglie Licea: [00:20:43] Well, thank you and thank you for helping us share this story. We appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:47] All right, this is Lee Kantor will sail next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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