Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Tom Irby With TIrbo Executive Coaching

October 12, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Tom Irby With TIrbo Executive Coaching

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With 35+ years of experience in ownership/C-level executive, sales, operations leadership, and business coaching, Tom Irby have a proven track record of pioneering the road to recovery for businesses who are experiencing challenging cash situations and detrimental business trends; his passion is to assist in the creation of goals and establish a clear, concise plan, then make it happen.

Tom has made a meaningful impact in many forms throughout his professional career including leading financial turnarounds, cultural shifts, navigating business sale conversations, and the cultivation of personal and group excellence through business and life coaching.

Notably, Tom served as the President, CEO for AcuScribe Court Reporters from 2007 – 2014 and navigated a substantial global recession in 2009 by restructuring debt, reducing costs, growing marketing initiatives and the geographic base of the business, and increasing the amount of services offered to the client base. After the recovery from the financial crisis Tom sold AcuScribe Court Reporters to Veritext Legal Solutions, the largest court reporting firm in the world, in late 2014 as their first office in the state of Texas.

Out of the 35 years as a business professional, 17 years were spent coaching, mentoring, and leading 50+ business owners across an array of industries – from startups to companies valued over $30m – with tangible success and a passion garnered from his unique personal experience, resilience in overcoming failures, and the lessons learned along the way. Through a combination of several decades of experience along with being a knowledgeable Traction/EOS facilitator, building a culture of accountability and transparency has shown to produce consistent results.

Other notable ventures include the successful sale of Austin Payfones, Inc. in 1999, the responsibility at Silicon Services Consortium of driving sales growth from $1m to $10m in 3 years, and the effort in taking a PC startup, CompuAdd, and growing it to $500+m over a nine year period.

Tom has a wife, two sons and resides in the outskirts of Austin, Texas. He is a family-man, avid outdoorsman, and a sports fanatic – servant leadership comes naturally to Tom, however, his life experience has allowed him to develop an innate ability to analyze a situation, dive into the details, and provide realistic solutions to challenging problems whether with loved ones or the businesses he serves.

Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Owner focused coaching
Strategic planning for leadership teams
Importance of a clear person vision
Importance of laser focus on accountabilities and Org road map
Importance of building an A+ leadership team

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker1: [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 Tom Irby with tirbo executive coaching. Welcome, Tom.

Tom Irby: [00:00:43] Hey, Lee, how are you today?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am doing great, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Turbo. How are you serving, folks?

Tom Irby: [00:00:51] Well, I’m kind of real active kind of in the Central Texas area, specifically Austin. Real involved with a lot of smaller to medium sized businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] And how are you defining small to medium size? Everybody seems to have a different definition of that.

Tom Irby: [00:01:09] I know it’s a great question. And and you know, quite honestly, it’s all over the map for me. But if I had to narrow it down, I’d say that it’s really kind of in the net one million to 50 million range, and I really do enjoy startups as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So sometimes you work with folks that maybe don’t have any clients at all or they just have a good idea.

Tom Irby: [00:01:30] You know, it’s not at that stage. I typically like to work with people that already have something on the ground, having to have a product or have a service they’ve launched a pre-launch is not really my focus.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:43] So once they’ve launched and got some traction and maybe have hit a roadblock or two, then you come in to help them guide them through that.

Tom Irby: [00:01:51] That’s right. That’s right. That’s where I really kind of feel like I can add the most value.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] Now, having done this for a minute, have you kind of found some mistakes that folks kind of make when they hit that first roadblock or two?

Tom Irby: [00:02:05] Yeah, you you typically see a lot of different a lot of similar patterns. And you know, when somebody starts a business they have, they feel like they have to do everything at once and and they quickly get overwhelmed with all the different things to do and don’t really have a sense of priority or a clear vision of where they want to go.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:27] And then how do you kind of help them with the vision because you you would think, you know, somebody who has a business knows kind of what they want, how they want the story to end? Are you saying that sometimes maybe they get started and then it just kind of evolves into something else, or it turns into something else based on the clients they’re getting at the time?

Tom Irby: [00:02:49] Yeah. I mean, I think it’s it takes so many different forms, Leigh. It’s really hard to kind of put them into one one category, but the best way I could describe it is, you know, a lot of business owners, they feel like the harder they work, the sooner they’re going to get the result they want. But the reality is they don’t always know exactly what they want. Now some business, some people that start a business have it very well thought out and have a very solid business plan. But a lot of existing businesses, they tend to be more reactionary and less proactive. And so really getting owners to take a step back and get clear on a vision and a path and where they want to go is what I really try to do more than anything is is really get them by the neck and collar and pull them out of the day to day stuff and really kind of assess where they are now.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] When you’re talking about vision for most owners or at least in smaller entities, there’s kind of a that vision might bleed into both their business and their kind of personal life. How do you help them kind of separate the two? Or if that’s appropriate, or combine the two, if that’s appropriate?

Tom Irby: [00:04:05] I love this. I love this discussion. This is a discussion that gets gets me excited every time I venture into it, because really, what most business owners do, it’s like they’re on a hamster wheel. They feel like they’re so they get so focused on the business side of things. They they neglect the personal side. And so the best way to for me to describe it is to use an analogy. And so if you think in terms of a bicycle, you’ve got the front wheel and you’ve got the back wheel, the front wheel goes up to the handlebars or hands on the handlebars and it turns the wheel the direction you want it to go and the back wheel you pedal the chain in the sprockets, drive the back room and it pushes the bike wherever the front wheel is pointed. So if you take that analogy and then lay it over the top of business, the front wheel is your personal vision. And so I really try to work with owners to get clarity about what they want to do, where they want to go, what their passions are, what their special interests are, or what, what their their personal family goals look like, and then go back to the business plan, which is the back wheel and spend time to make sure you reconcile that.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] Now, when they become out of alignment, what are some what does that look like for folks?

Tom Irby: [00:05:26] Well, when they when they when they get out of alignment, it’s typically that either they’ve forgotten their personal vision or they never really fully bought into it or developed it. And you know, that can look like so many different things. You know, like one thing that I find pretty consistently is that it kind of feeds back into whatever their organization looks like. And more specifically, leadership, if they’ve really done a good job of building a leadership team or not, that is in. I can’t tell you how many times that really is kind of the core issue.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:02] And then when you’re working with an entrepreneur, do they have to kind of have the self-awareness and humility to no one say, Hey, I need help, but no two to even recognize that this is something that’s permeating not just themselves as an individual, but their entire leadership team.

Tom Irby: [00:06:24] Absolutely. I mean, you really kind of nailed that one. I mean, you know, for for this profession of coaching, if you don’t have somebody that has some level of humility and desire to learn and be coached, it’s just a waste of time. So, you know, it really it really does. The amount of success that I can have in an engagement really depends on how coachable the the owner is.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:55] Now, what’s your back story? How did you get involved in coaching? Is this something you’ve done your whole career or is it something that’s evolved as you’ve grown?

Tom Irby: [00:07:03] It’s completely evolved. You know, I’m really more of an entrepreneur and a business owner. I’ve I’ve been involved in several companies over the years and it was really, you know, I’ve owned a couple of companies, sold a couple companies and really, I became a member of this organization in Austin by the name of Tab, the alternative board where business owners get together with frequency and it’s facilitated. And over time, I ended up being becoming a facilitator and doing that kind of as a part time deal. And after I sold my last business, I decided, You know what? I’m going to dove head first into this coaching thing. I enjoy it so much and I enjoy working with business owners, and there’s nothing more gratifying than seeing a business owner find success, know for all the employees and all the families associated with it. So it really has been kind of an organic path for me now.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:03] What did you like about the structure of Tab?

Tom Irby: [00:08:07] So the structure of Tab? You know, if I had to, I’d go back to the personal vision piece. It’s about the individual before the business, and that’s kind of the cornerstone discussion that we have over and over again with members. If we if we do a good job understanding kind of the personal vision side and then craft the business plan, then that’s that’s a great thing. But I’ll tell you the other thing, and I don’t mean for this to be a plug about tab as much as a plug for peer to peer and boards, you know, for the importance of owners to be around other owners. The way a group of owners sits in a room and talks to each other is very different than when they sit in a room and talk with anybody else. Because in most settings owners, when they’re dealing with people, these these conversations, somebody wants something from this owner. It’s either time or money or budget or or contract. There’s always some sort of other motive, but when you go into a peer to peer board like tab and you get a room of six or seven or eight business owners from varying industries, the the honesty and the the the amount of of dialog is something that’s really, really special.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:30] Now when folks kind of do this for the first time, any advice on how to do it in a way that. Gets the most out of the experience, because to me to do this as an entrepreneur and then not only do I have to be vulnerable to a coach as an individual, that seems like a hard thing by itself. But then now I’m in front of a half a dozen to a dozen other people. How do you kind of coach your people up when they aren’t a peer to peer environment like this to lean into it? And just kind of. Let the group help.

Tom Irby: [00:10:09] Yeah, it’s an awesome question, and I’m in my mind, as you were asking the question, I was thinking of several different owners that have come through the tab experience. And I’ll tell you, some have not been successful and some have been vastly successful. And I think the way, the way, the way I try to work with them is, you know, and you know, my role is not to be the nice guy as the coach. My role is to hold them accountable in my role is to be as honest and forthright as I can. And so, you know, for me, it’s all about staying true to my role and leaning into the hard decisions. Excuse me, the hard discussions, because if I don’t lean into the hard discussions, then I’m not really kind of playing my part. And so that’s that would be my answer on how to deal with people as they’re coming into this. You know, they have to kind of be open to the idea of facing these hard discussions.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:17] And on one hand, you would think that that’s obvious because if they have it all together, they wouldn’t necessarily need or want this kind of interaction. That is, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s revealing and it’s kind of helpful. Right. But if they thought they had all the answers, they wouldn’t even, you know, entertain doing something like this.

Tom Irby: [00:11:37] Yeah, in the members that have done the best and gotten the most value are those people that really come to the board with what they don’t know. The members that get the least and have not done that well with this organization are the ones that come to the board with everything they know. So they show up and they they talk about all the stuff they know. And it’s really the ones that come to the board with what they don’t know, because if you’re if you’re sitting in a room with, you know, six, seven, eight other business owners, it’s really it’s really a valuable it’s really there’s so much knowledge and so much to gain. And so bringing an issue or a challenge or a topic or a discussion or frustration or an idea to that group of of of owners is really kind of where the value exists.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:30] Now you mentioned that it’s easy for an owner to get overwhelmed with all that is kind of required of them to lead. Is there any kind of low hanging fruit that you would recommend an owner kind of do. Maybe there’s some self-care you can recommend an owner be doing. You know, on a regular basis to help them manage that overwhelm.

Tom Irby: [00:12:56] You know, I think a lot of what I do, Leigh maybe leans into life coaching too, because it’s hard to to really remove one from the other. So. So for example, if there’s an owner that’s struggling kind of on the business side of things, in whatever respect, you know, whether it’s whether they’re just not profitable or they’re struggling with with with leadership or whatever it may be. A lot of times, you know, it’s it’s work life balance or it’s it’s, you know, they’re not as physical or fit as they need to be or they’re not taking time off or they’re not they’re not paying attention to their personal vision. You know, I keep coming back to that, but there’s there’s reason for it. You know, so if if they kind of get refreshed around, OK, this is who I am, what I’m about, and you know what? I need to work on these areas of my life outside of business as they work on those, it gives them kind of renewed excitement about what their business is. And the other thing is is to really reset and get structure around what their business plan looks like. I’m I’m really huge on on having some sort of planning system and in and visiting that system with frequency and cadence with your leadership team, and that allows you to kind of make sure that, you know, we’re working on the most important things right now that lead to this place on the horizon that we’ve identified that we want to get to.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:27] Now, are there any kind of symptoms that that suggest that you might have a problem in your organization, like from a leadership standpoint or a strategic system standpoint? Are there things that are happening that maybe you’re not seeing as a big deal, but to you as a coach? Go, Hey, that’s a big that’s a flashing yellow, if not a red, and then the owner might be just not seeing it as that.

Tom Irby: [00:14:52] Yeah, definitely. So I’m I’m a big analogy, guy, so I apologize. I keep I keep jumping into analogies. But one of the things I like to think about is all businesses. Basically, if you think in terms of a wide road that has guardrails on either side of the road, all businesses kind of try to navigate as close to the middle of that road as possible, but they all have a tendency to kind of swerve and they’ll hit one guardrail and hit another and they’ll be one or two tires off the road with frequency. And so when I notice businesses and business owners really kind of hitting the rails and having wheels off the road per say, that tells me that they don’t really have a good system in place, a planning system or they they don’t have clear accountabilities in the organization. So that’s where I’ll go back and say, let’s really kind of reassess, what are your goals? What do they look like? What’s the plan to get there? Who’s accountable for what and try to narrow that road a little bit and narrow those guardrails a little bit, so they’re not swerving quite so broadly back and forth. So that’s kind of how I notice if somebody’s in trouble.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:03] Now, in my experience, I would prefer systems over goals because the system to me is like a machine that’s going to give me an outcome that I desire. Whereas a goal, there might be lots of ways to hit that goal, some of which might be productive in the long term, and some are not. How do you help your coaches kind of build the systems they need in order to be successful?

Tom Irby: [00:16:32] I really encourage. I’m a big attraction guy, I don’t know if you’re familiar with traction in iOS. Sure. And I’m a big traction guy and I really advocate it and and I work with with a bunch of the organizations I’m involved with in their yearly and quarterly and leadership teams. But to me, that’s really kind of the best system I’ve seen. And if they don’t have, if they don’t have traction, they have something similar. It’s really just it’s really just trying to encourage them to stay true to the system and, you know, and really try to get everybody operating off the same playbook. And if you’re familiar with traction, which sounds like you are, you know, the the thing that that I love most about it. One of the things I love most about it, it really tries to break your world and break everything into 90 day worlds. You know, don’t think in terms of these long goals that are so often the distance. You can’t see how to get there. You really got to break it into smaller pieces and manage those along the way to get to that point.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:39] Now, can you share a story of maybe one of the clients you work with? Obviously don’t name their name of the company, but explain like the challenge that they had when they came to you and what you did to help them overcome and maybe get to a new level.

Tom Irby: [00:17:53] You know, this is this is this is fun for me. If you could see me right now, you’d see the big smile on my face. So I literally just got off the phone with this client and I’m going to make reference to it. So maybe a decade ago, I started working with this fellow and he’s a he’s a CPA and he was just kind of starting off and he was maybe a year or so into the business and he’d taken on a partner and this partner. I forget if it was a 30 or 40 percent partner, but the partner was, you know, didn’t really participate, didn’t do the heavy lifting, didn’t put in the hours and my client was putting in all the hours doing all the work and and and then we started working together. And so I really started leaning into this issue of a partner having all the good and not really doing any of the heavy lifting. And over time, my client started getting irritated with me, and so he started referring to me as freaking Tom. And so at first it was it was. He was a little upset how hard I was leaning into this discussion, and over time, it’s kind of become a funny thing. And now he calls me freakin Tom all the time. But but so but the net net is, you know, he he had a partner that really didn’t deserve that amount of equity and didn’t earn that amount of equity. He’s since navigated through that. He now owns the company fully. We worked all the way through that. It’s led to explosive growth, explosive profit and explosive wealth for him. And to this day, he still calls me Freak and Tom.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:30] Good stuff now, is there any industry that you typically work in, or is this pretty much industry agnostic, your work?

Tom Irby: [00:19:38] I’m very industry agnostic. I I’ve I’ve worked and owned businesses in different industries. To me, 70, 80 percent of businesses, the same. You know, it’s that 20 or 30 percent is kind of domain. And, you know, I can typically navigate around that. So really, it’s more around kind of the size of the business and really the, you know, the the desire for the owner to to learn and be coached.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:10] Now do you find your work touches like more operations or sales or leadership or all of the above

Tom Irby: [00:20:19] All the above? I kind of like it all, you know, and it’s almost it’s kind of a blessing and a curse, all at the same time. But I I would say that I’ve spent the early part of my career really in the sales and revenue driving revenue side of the world, and that’s really where my deepest passion is. But I’ve also spent a lot of time operationally, and it really it really is important for me to kind of see the whole picture in in order to see the whole picture, I need to understand a little bit in each each area.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:51] And in today’s world where talent is, it seems like there’s a talent shortage in terms of a scarcity of leaders that want to do the hard things that you mentioned earlier. Is there any recommendation on how to build that kind of. Super leader team. And like you mentioned, how to maybe free up somebody’s future if they’re not, you know, they might have the title, but they’re not doing the work of the leader that you need.

Tom Irby: [00:21:24] Yeah, I mean, that’s a great problem, I mean, it’s a great question. I mean, it’s obviously it’s a big problem out there, but you know, I think the the one thing that that I see over and over again in this, this is not just leaders, it’s really kind of all employees, but leaders certainly fall into, you know, I like to think of of the development of a of an employee kind of in a three legged stool. The first is kind of the recruiting process. You know, if you really do a good job recruiting the right person, then that’s kind of one of the legs. The second leg is the on boarding where you really are very clear about, OK, this is what you’re going to do and how it’s going to look and what we’re going to talk about and when we’re going to talk about it in the third leg is really the ongoing management of that person. And so if you really do all three of those things, it leads to longer retention and better, better employees. And I think that fits into the leadership piece as well. You know, so you’ve got to invest in them. You’ve got to find the right people. You’ve got to spend time with them. You’ve got to invest. And the other thing is, if they’re not a good fit, then you’re not doing anybody any favors keeping them around. Don’t don’t really allow things to linger too long way.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:37] And then that top of that funnel of choosing the right person is critical. I mean, it’s it’s a lot easier to coach up the right person than it is to coach up the wrong person.

Tom Irby: [00:22:48] No doubt.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:50] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about you and your practice and get on your calendar or maybe work with somebody on your team, what is the best way to do that? What’s the website?

Tom Irby: [00:23:01] Well, the best thing to do is to reach out to me, either via email or phone. You can also go through the The Tab Austin website, but my email is Urbi at gmail.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:17] And if they want to connect with you on LinkedIn. Tom Irby, is that the best way?

Tom Irby: [00:23:22] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:23] Good stuff, Tom Wolfe. Congratulations on all the success you’re doing. Important work and we appreciate you.

Tom Irby: [00:23:28] Thank you, Lee, for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:30] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll sail next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Jan Barnett With Another Broken Egg Cafe of America

October 12, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Franchise Marketing Radio

Jan Barnett With Another Broken Egg Cafe of America

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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.

If there were a restaurant marketing Hall of Fame, Jan would be in it. She has survived with flying colors over 35 years in a tough, competitive and ever-changing category.

Most recently Jan served as Vice President of Marketing for The Egg & I Restaurants where she was instrumental in growing the brand from 30 restaurants to over 115 restaurants in less than 5 years.

Prior to joining The Egg & I, Jan served as president of Integer QSR, the third largest field-marketing agency for McDonald’s in the U.S.

Prior to joining Integer QSR, Jan was a partner and vice president for Foote, Cone & Belding where she worked on the Taco Bell account during the launch of its successful 59/79/99¢ value campaign and the rollout of its late night and 24-hour initiatives.

Follow Another Broken Egg Cafe on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Restaurant of the future after COVID-19
The drivers of change for restaurants in a “new normal”
the future of brunch
Role of off-premise in our future
Difference of emerging growth brands from other brands

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio, brought to you by SEO Samba 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 fun one today on the show, we have Jan Barnett with another broken egg cafe of America. Welcome, Jan.

Jan Barnett: [00:00:42] Hi Lee, how are you doing?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] I am doing great. I’m so excited to learn about another broken egg. Please tell the listeners who aren’t familiar about your concept.

Jan Barnett: [00:00:52] Absolutely. So we are a breakfast and brunch daytime only cafe concept with approximately 80 units from coast to coast and literally just serving breakfast, brunch and lunch. And we also have a full bar as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:12] Oh wow. Can you share a little bit about the history? Did it start out as kind of a mom and pop and then just organically grew into a franchise? Or did it start as a franchise? It was built to be a franchise all along?

Jan Barnett: [00:01:24] Great. Great question. Actually, we started in Mandeville. Louisiana, twenty five years ago, next month, and it was never meant to be a franchise, it was the Broken Egg Cafe and the franchise, or I’m sorry, the founder Ron Green would just get so many inquiries from people about when are you going to open another one? So he thought, Well, maybe let’s give this a shot. So he opened his first franchised location in Destin, Florida, and he called it another broken egg. So the rest is history.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] And then from there, just kind of the people who were going there to eat, they were like, Hey, you know, in my town, because Destin is kind of a touristy place. They were like, in my town, there’s none of these like this. So then let me open it. Is that kind of did growth come from that?

Jan Barnett: [00:02:16] Yeah, you’re spot on, right? That’s kind of one of our best kept secrets. Or maybe not is building flagship locations and seasonal parts of the country where we do see a lot of tourism and then we get inquiries about bringing the brand to their home town and we’re franchise dominant. So certainly, we’re looking for franchisees around the country. So those folks that are willing to franchise and open in their. Markets, we are happy to assist with that, but a lot of folks do first try the brand in many of our seasonal locations.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:51] So now how did kind of the pandemic impact your restaurant? Some restaurants were able to kind of pivot pretty good into a, you know, either curbside or or some sort of a delivery. And others struggled a little bit. How did your restaurant do?

Jan Barnett: [00:03:11] Well, actually, we did pretty well. We were only able to keep five of our locations, so five, let’s call it out of seventy five at that point coming into April 20 20 open. And that was strictly with takeout and delivery only which we did not do prior to COVID. I mean, brunch is certainly an exponential day part. So it was all about coming into the cafe for your Benedict and your Bloody Mary. So clearly we had to move quick to get in to off premise and why we kept the five locations open that we did to test various initiatives. So coming into mid-June is when we started to reopen all the cafes and some various form of capacity. Some could do dine in, majority were just takeout. However, by the time we got into September, October of 2020, our premise was generating so much incremental business we were comping. Uh, twenty nineteen and really, we have been positively comping since October of twenty twenty, comping twenty nineteen. So great learnings. Would we do it again? Heck, no, who would butt out of bed came good for sure because we would have never contemplated off premise without COVID.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:28] So then moving forward, that’s going to be part of the playbook.

Jan Barnett: [00:04:33] Absolutely, I mean, off premise is going to remain a big part of our presence, a dominant factor in our marketing, and in fact, we’re even expanding our off premise support to include catering. We’ll be launching Easy Cater next month to capitalize on that holiday catering time period. And then we’ve been dabbling in alcohol to go. So many of the states allowed alcohol to go during COVID, and many of them are continuing to allow it. So we are going to launch that nationally, not only alcohol kits, but individual cocktails to go as well. So yeah, it’s going to be a big part of our marketing moving forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:15] Now is there any change in the size of future restaurants or is or is it always going to, you know, because you’re going to experience it is such a critical part of the brand.

Jan Barnett: [00:05:28] That’s a great question, Lee, and at one point we even dialoged do we look at a smaller footprint? However, what we’re seeing is our premise is not cannibalizing. In in cafe dining at all. So, no, at this point, we are not planning to downsize the cafes and in fact, our business is growing so much. And as you look at our premise contributing a quarter of a million, some degrees more than that per average cafe. I mean, what does that do actually to the size of the kitchens? And do you need to have a second line at some point, also just to the size of the bar area or the host and area where we’re actually having to stage to go order? We kind of look like a Chinese restaurant of sorts as we’re starting to figure this out in terms of how to manage all the off premise orders, which are just significant and growing.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:20] Now it sounds like you’re really you’re almost disrupting kind of the future of brunch, are you? What kind of innovations are you kind of building around the concept of brunch?

Jan Barnett: [00:06:32] You know, right now we’re really focused on technology, and I know many restaurants are as well, but we looked at technology pre-COVID as more security, so firewalls and chip readers and as we moved into Culbert, it moved into QR code Table-tennis. I mean, we’ve always used it for training and then we have CDs, but we really hadn’t focused technology on sales. Building loyalty frequency drivers, that’s where we’re going to focus now in a big way. Actually, we’re launching with wisely coming up here Real Soon, which is an amazing firm that’s allowing us now to really deep dove into our guest database and learn more about our guests and how to almost mark it one to one to our guests. Be the dine end user exclusively and off premise user cocktail purchaser, seasonal selections preferences. So that’s where we’re really taking the brand into the future is learning what the guest wants and then providing them with the right message, the right product at the right time. It’s going to be game changing. Honestly, for us

Lee Kantor: [00:07:43] Now, as the chief marketing officer, is your work primarily on building the brand of another broken egg café or is it kind of helping also in the area of identifying and attracting franchisees?

Jan Barnett: [00:07:57] Great question. And actually, I work in both. So certainly driving same store sales is a big part of my job, but also system wide sales and increasing the footprint of the brand actually lifts all boats because as we build more locations, it drives incremental awareness across the country and additional trial for all of our franchisees. So that’s a big part of what I do as well is franchise development.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:27] Marketing now has the ideal franchisee changed, you know, pre and post pandemic or is it kind of a similar person?

Jan Barnett: [00:08:39] You know, that’s another great question coming out of COVID, which literally we’re just now doing right, if you’re thinking about it, I think prospective franchisees clearly were skittish moving in to restaurant ownership. Suddenly, it started in April, continued through a lot of last year into 2020. We’re starting to see that prospective franchisee emerge and start to show interest again in the restaurant industry and specifically in our brand. And yes, it is changing. What we used to see was more and we still love this is the local restaurateur that’s wanting to open one of our cafes in their individual market. But now what we’re starting to see more and more are the multi-unit franchise organizations wanting to expand their portfolio. They’ve seen the growth pre-COVID in breakfast, which was one of the only growing day parts in the restaurant industry for quite some time prior to COVID. And then brunch is coming out of COVID in a huge way. So that’s where we’re starting to gain the interest of those multi-unit franchisees that might have a five guys or a jack in the box or other brands, but don’t have breakfast in their portfolio. So we’re starting to hear from more and more of them.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:01] And in certain markets, are you seeing kind of an opportunity from a real estate standpoint to for those folks to say, OK, this is a good spot for brunch?

Jan Barnett: [00:10:13] Most definitely, and we have very specific criteria that we look for and those sites are becoming more available. I mean, the unfortunate part of COVID as we’ve seen a lot of closures, restaurant closures around the country. So yeah, that is opening up opportunities for us and for our franchisees to get in and get that prime real estate. We’re only open seven hours a day, but we still want to be in that a spot to generate the sales that we need to generate to drive the strong ROI. And we’re seeing our sales just explode, which is really helping our ROI. But yeah, absolutely. The occupancy costs are improving to some degree coming out of COVID.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:58] Now are you seeing an opportunity since you are only open a few hours a day to use the facility as a ghost kitchen for other other things later in the day?

Jan Barnett: [00:11:08] Actually, that is not something yet, and it never say never because I said never to off premise and clearly ate those words. But what Ghost Kitchen we’re not planning to do that right now are concept tracks, franchisees and employees that like to be done at two o’clock in the afternoon, and they can make the same money in a seven hour shift that they would in an evening or dinner shift where they’re away from their family late at night. We’re just not looking to use our facilities beyond what we’re doing currently today. Now, maybe ask me a year from now and would we reconsider that? But today? No, I mean, it’s been very successful for us and we do more than a seven hour a day, then some of the family dining competitors do in 24 hours.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:51] Wow. Now are you seeing because of this, I guess the talent challenge that a lot of folks are having? Are you having that same challenge or is it because you have such a limited hour that it’s attracting certain people that that works perfectly into their life, right?

Jan Barnett: [00:12:11] Perhaps we’re seeing less of a challenge than others? Hard to say. I mean, we have this has been the most challenging staffing season ever. I mean, it really started back May, June. We’re just now starting to tell upright. So five to six months of staffing, increased hourly rates, everything that you’re hearing across the restaurant industry, we have certainly not been immune to. But I can’t tell you that we’ve survived better than anyone else because of our hours of operation which people do like. But there are some people that can’t be at work by 7:00 a.m., either, for the most part. Now we’re back upside, right? From a staffing perspective

Lee Kantor: [00:12:55] Now for getting back to the ideal franchise, you mentioned that a lot of kind of I call them professional franchisees are kind of adding your concept to a portfolio of already existing kind of food service. Are you finding that there’s an increase in that classic franchisee of that retired exec or displaced executive that wants to get more control of their own kind of financial future? Is that are you seeing kind of an influx of that because of the, you know, because of the pandemic, a lot of layoffs and people resigning?

Jan Barnett: [00:13:31] Right. And we certainly saw that in the Great Recession, you know, coming out of that. Yes and no, I I think we’re still early coming out of COVID for that individual to be looking to invest because of the risk or perceived risk, if you will. To invest there. Your entire livelihood into a restaurant brand versus the multi unit, which understands risk and they’ve been through other. Bad times before, certainly nothing like this, but they know coming out of it. That we will come out of it, so I think we’re seeing now because you had asked what the changes that we’re seeing, we’re seeing more multi unit than we are the mom and pop. I think that as we move into twenty twenty two will change and we’ll start to see that mom and pop come back in to the pipeline from a franchising perspective, but we might still be just a slight bit premature.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] So is the idea of franchisee then having some kind of restaurant experience preferred? Or can it be, you know, this person that just, Hey, I had a corporate job and I want to control my destiny? Is that is that it must have? Or is that a nice to have the restaurant experience?

Jan Barnett: [00:14:51] It’s a nice to have. Most definitely, not everyone of our franchisees have had restaurant experience and in fact, some of our best, most successful, I should say, franchisees didn’t have restaurant experience. So I mean, we really our kitchens are such that we’ve created them so that Bubba can work and we don’t have peers in our kitchen. So we’ve tried to simplify that but still create an awesome menu. And so, yeah, I think. We’ve got a combination of both that can be successful in this brand.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:27] Now how how important is kind of menu innovation like are you always kind of pushing that and, you know, creating more seasonal and, you know, localized kind of versions of the meals?

Jan Barnett: [00:15:42] Yes, many innovations at the top of our strategy plan, for sure. Majority of first time users coming into the brand site the menu as the reason for coming in and then our visit frequency is significant, like three point seven times per month. So offering variety to those frequent users is also important. And seasonal. So we have three different three seasonal menus per year, plus a holiday menu. So yes, that is very important. And then we also do the same from a cocktail perspective. So not only entree, but cocktails are very important to us as well. Like I said, we have full bar. So that gives us a lot of leverage, we’re not just bloody marys and mimosas. Mm hmm. So we’re pushing a lot now. Margarita, it’s just amazing. We used to buy tequila by the bottle. Now we buy it by the case. Our brunch blueberry margarita is just like, wow flying off the shelves. So it’s been interesting to see the evolution cocktail over the years now going into the brunch category.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:46] Now for you as a marketer, what is more rewarding, seeing that kind of the individual restaurant sales increasing or, you know, seeing the new franchisee numbers increasing?

Jan Barnett: [00:17:01] Oh, wow. No one’s ever asked me, I, you know, I would say it’s a combination of both. Because we won’t generate increased franchise sales without same store sales growth. And happy franchisees. So really, driving the same store sales numbers is critically important to overall success. And I’m equally rewarded by both. Yeah, I love seeing us grow the footprint, which we’ve been doing exponentially now for the past several years. So that’s also rewarding, but I also love seeing our existing franchisees be so successful. So both.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:40] Now any advice for the marketing folks that emerging franchises. Any advice for them to attract new franchisees? Anything you’ve learned over the years, that is a kind of go to that helps kind of get a the escape velocity that a new franchisee or new franchise would need to, you know, kind of get that critical mass, right?

Jan Barnett: [00:18:05] Well, I think number one is obviously success and experience and having a proven concept, which I realize takes a little bit of time to do. But the other and critically important thing to us as having happy franchisees, existing franchisees, they sell the brand. I don’t I mean, it’s really prospective franchisees are calling or visiting our cafes and speaking directly to our franchisees, and our satisfaction ratings are off the charts. They love the brand. They love the support they get. They love the menu. So to me, that is one of your most important success criteria is keep your franchisees happy. Grow your brand. Grow your sales. Never get complacent. Never say enough is enough. Ellen, listen, always listen. Our franchisees there, they’re obviously working the cafes. We’re sitting in a corporate office. So listen, learn and then lead.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:09] Good stuff. Well, Jan, thank you so much for sharing your story today. If somebody wants to learn more about the opportunity or another, a broken egg, another broken egg near them, what’s the website?

Jan Barnett: [00:19:20] Another broken egg?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:22] Good stuff. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jan Barnett: [00:19:27] Thank you so much for having me, Lee. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:30] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

Caroline Rash With CRVAS

October 11, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Caroline Rash With CRVAS

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Charlie Rash began freelancing as a consultant and virtual assistant in 2016 and soon CRVAS was founded as a boutique consulting agency specializing in identifying business needs and implementing operational services.

As CRVAS quickly grew, Charlie brought his wife Caroline on board as the President of CRVAS to help meet the increasing demand.

As entrepreneurs themselves, Charlie and Caroline understand the balancing act of running and maintaining business operations, which is why CRVAS was created to help business owners lighten their load.

Follow CRVAS on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Challenges in working remotely as a company
Challenges in working remotely from your clients
How do you maintain a work/life balance
Challenges in running a business with spouse

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 going to be a good one today on the show we have Caroline Rash with CRVAS. Welcome, Caroline.

Caroline Rash: [00:00:23] Hey, how are you doing today?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] I am doing great. I’m so excited to learn about your business. Tell us about service. How you serving, folks?

Caroline Rash: [00:00:30] Yeah, absolutely. So my husband started this company a little over five years ago and I joined him, and it’s just kind of snowballed ever since he started just doing like virtual assisting for people all across the world. I think he had clients in Europe and in the United States. And then I joined in and we just started growing our team, and now our company largely does what I kind of I like to joke with like consultants. Plus, like we consult with businesses, we see what they need and then we implement what they need. So we kind of make a plan and implement it and just help businesses who are at sort of a turning point and just need help to move forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] So now this kind of business, there’s a lot of competition, I would imagine, for folks all over the world that are competing for your team for these kind of projects. How did your husband get that escape velocity to even just get the building business going at first?

Caroline Rash: [00:01:27] Yeah, absolutely. We really emphasize relationships, and I think that’s just kind of been our key is we’re very personal and typically when we get a client, it’s because we’ve had some really good conversations right off the bat. And it’s just a lot different than some companies who kind of do a slightly more scattershot approach just to find anybody that they can, you know, like we really try to get to know people and get to know the pain points in their business and build those relationships. And I feel like that’s kind of what makes us stand out.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:58] Now what are some of the activities that clients hire you to help them with?

Caroline Rash: [00:02:04] Well, we do, you know, smaller tasks for sure, like email management and scheduling and that kind of more assistant type tasks. And we pride ourselves on how we do that, for sure. But we also do larger scale things. If you need your business to run more efficiently, if you need to figure out a program that’s going to help your business run better or just systems and operations that kind of like larger scale tasks we offer as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:32] And then you mentioned that you get to know your clients, can you talk about what that initial conversation or that discovery period where you’re trying to kind of see where you can fit in and help? What does that conversation look like at the beginning?

Caroline Rash: [00:02:46] Well, it really is just asking a lot of questions right off the bat. We really need to understand you and your business and what you need before we’re going to even make any kind of pitch to work with you because we want to make sure we’re the right people for you. So that’s kind of the key is just getting to know you and any kind of issues you might be having before we even try to jump in and help you.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:12] Now, for some of your clients, is this the first time they’ve worked with someone virtually in this manner? Or is this somebody that or your clients, typically people who have had a lot of these people come and go in their career?

Caroline Rash: [00:03:25] It kind of depends. We have some clients that are really small businesses who are just now branching out into getting outside help with their business. So it is very new for them and we have to, you know, kind of be like, OK, well, this is how we do a Zoom meeting kind of kind of conversations. But we also have larger scale clients who are very tech savvy and tech oriented where it’s just another Tuesday for them. And we they hand us a spreadsheet they’ve already built. They want us to implement it, that kind of thing. So it just kind of depends on the scale of the client.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] Now, do you have any advice for folks that are hiring a virtual assistant, maybe for the first time? Or just what is a good process to work together? Well, what would be like if you were going to draw up your ideal client? What would you kind of say? These are the do’s and don’ts on how to work with us?

Caroline Rash: [00:04:18] I would say, excuse me, I would say communication as far as regular meetings. One of the things we really recommend with our clients is especially if you’re in a growth phase is having what we call stand ups. So like every day or once or twice a week, having just like a quick 10 minute meeting to touch base because you’re not seeing each other in person at the office like it used to be in the past. So setting up those regular like Google Meet or Zoom meetings or anything like that, we definitely recommend that. And we also just really recommend not making assumptions. You know, a client might make an assumption that we’re doing something, and if we’re not communicating well, we might not be. We might just need to make sure that we’re all on the same page about what the next steps are and what needs to happen. So communication and not making assumptions are the two biggest things I recommend.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:17] Now, how do you kind of help the client and the person doing the work really get crystal clear on what is the deliverable and what is the outcome they desire? Because a lot of times people think like, Oh yeah, I want this to happen, and then the person hears that, but they’re not exactly sure what that means. And then, you know, it’s it’s that kind of miscommunication, I guess you were referring to. But how do you help them kind of get clear on what they each mean in a safe way that they all feel comfortable doing that?

Caroline Rash: [00:05:51] One hundred percent. I think it’s kind of a therapy thing that I’ve learned in the past in my life, but I try to implement it with my clients as well as kind of repeating back to you what I thought you said. So if you tell me that this is what you’re hoping for, this is what you’re aiming for. I want to repeat that back to you and be like, Hey, so I heard you say that this is what you’re wanting. And so this is how I’m thinking I’m going to bring that about. And I think that’s just like a helpful communication tool because they might go, No, that’s not really what I was hoping for. You know, it kind of opens up the floor to make sure everything is super clear.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Right. That this is what I’ve worked with virtual assistants throughout my career, and this happens more times than I’d like it to happen, but it’s I think that that going back and forth and really being kind of granular at first to understand, OK, this is what I’m trying to accomplish. Kind of the big picture and then how you do this is less important to me as long as I’m getting this result at the end. But then you don’t want a month ago buy and go, Well, where’s my result? And then, you know, this person’s off in left field and they didn’t, you know, come close to what I was trying to get. So it’s a regular check ins, the regular kind of deliverable. So that is something delivered so I can see. Yeah, that’s right. Or that’s not right. And then do you do that as an organization? Is there like because I’m working with a virtual assistant? I would imagine as an organization, I’m hiring you and you’re hiring the assistant, right?

Caroline Rash: [00:07:24] Yeah. So we work in teams. So when we have a client, we kind of assess their needs and we assess who on our team has the the the strongest capability to handle that particular client. We really appreciate our our contractors and their skill sets. And so we say, OK, so-and-so over here would fit really well with this client. And then they they have a team, so they they make sure that they’re all communicating. But I might not necessarily be privy to every detail of what they’re doing, but I have a trusted member on my team who is making sure all of that communication is happening.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:04] And then you’re the person. If there’s an issue, I go to you and then you work with the assistant.

Caroline Rash: [00:08:10] Yes, absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:11] And then and I would imagine in growing this business is a chicken and the egg thing where you need to have assistance at the ready, but you’ve got to keep them busy. So how do you kind of work from that end of the continuum and in kind of attracting and keeping assistance?

Caroline Rash: [00:08:29] I will tell you that has been for sure one of our biggest challenges. We find ourselves facing the problem of needing more bodies all the time, and it’s a problem. But it’s also great because it means our business is thriving. So it’s something we’re thankful for, but it’s definitely a challenge. So we pretty much right now just have like running, hiring and we have somebody on our team who is great at like the hiring process and interviewing and making sure we always have candidates that are kind of in our back pocket that if we if we take on a really big client, we can make sure we have enough people at the ready for that.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:07] And then I guess your your assistants are your clients and your clients or your clients. Everybody’s a client, but you got to make sure everybody is happy, right? That’s part of the challenges of running a business like this.

Caroline Rash: [00:09:21] Yeah, it is. And that’s kind of it’s definitely a challenge. So we we don’t have those water cooler moments like you would get in a standard office setting. So we have to work really hard on building that culture and building those relationships is extra difficult virtually. So we make sure we have like regular check ins with our people too on our team, not just our clients externally. So that’s definitely a big part of what me and my husband do on any given day.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:56] Now, culture in an organization is something that, whether you are mindful about it or not, is going to happen. What are some of the values and key components of the culture at service?

Caroline Rash: [00:10:08] Well, we really want our team to know that we would not ask them to work more than a standard 40 hour week if they choose to. That’s they actually have to get that time approved because like, we really want to make sure people are being careful with their, you know, their mental health and like their family life. If anybody says, Hey, I’m going to take a day to go do something on, my team texted me was like, Hey, my coffeemaker broke, and I really want to go to this nice store to go get a new one. Can I take the day off tomorrow? I was like, Please, do we all need coffee? Like, we really value that sort of personal time and just sometimes you just need a day. So we try to really offer that to our team and make sure everybody feels rested and ready to go.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:58] Now what’s been the most rewarding part of this adventure? You know, you have an entrepreneur started something from nothing. Now the spouse is involved. Now you have kind of a family business and now you have workers and clients all over the place. What’s been the most rewarding part of the adventure for you?

Caroline Rash: [00:11:16] I think for me, it really has been our team. We have been so blessed with the people on our team. We there are people on our team I cannot imagine doing this with. It’s just the collaboration, the laughter, like the the ability to just relate to each other and work towards a common goal has been just such a gift and we are so thankful for that.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:41] Now you’re able to help your clients kind of gain more time. But you’re also able to help your teammates kind of gain a lifestyle that fits into their world and without leaving the house. What is a good assistant look like for you? What type of qualities are you looking for in an assistant for service?

Caroline Rash: [00:12:02] I think the main qualities are just like being creative and having critical thinking skills, like being able to take a problem and really look at it from all angles and make a solution without kind of having to be babysat throughout the process. It’s like somebody who I can trust to meet challenges head on and handle them is somebody that I would really value having on our team.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:29] So not just the person that’s like, Oh, give me a checklist and I’m going down the checklist. I’m not thinking, I’m just doing these 10 things you told me to do. You’re you want someone that maybe is another level higher of thinking and processing and project managing

Caroline Rash: [00:12:45] A hundred percent whenever somebody from my team says, Hey, I have thought about how we could do this better, I’m thrilled. That’s ideal for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:54] Amen to that. I mean, I think we’re all looking for that type of engagement and caring enough to think outside of the ten point checklist.

Caroline Rash: [00:13:04] Certainly, certainly.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:05] And so what’s next for you? What are you? What is kind of your growth plan look like, you know, through the remainder of this year and moving forward?

Caroline Rash: [00:13:15] Well, right now, one of our things is we’re really trying to emphasize our like our current clients, like we want to really make sure that they’re happy and get all systems go on them so that we get into a great rhythm because we’ve been growing really fast. So we want to make sure we’re in a good rhythm with our current clients, but we’re always looking for more. So we have a lot of networking ahead of us and a lot of just connections to be made, and we hope to keep growing at the rate we have been and that would be obviously ideal for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:50] Now are your clients like what kind of what is the what do they look like? Are they professional services or are they solopreneurs? Or are they creatives or are they coaches? Like what is? Is there a kind of a typical client or is it it can be anybody?

Caroline Rash: [00:14:06] Really, what I like to say is that it’s anybody who’s sort of at a crossroads. So if you have your own business and you want to grow it, but you’re not really sure what the next steps are or you don’t have time or for you if you have a business idea, but you don’t know how to get it off the ground, work for you. It’s really if you even if you’re just a freelancer and you just need help, it’s just if you are at a crossroads and something has to be done in order for you to meet your personal goals. That’s when we come in.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:35] And then so like if I have an idea for a business and I come to you and say, Hey, you know, I don’t know how to make a website or I don’t know how to make a landing page, or I don’t know how to, you know, put an email campaign like that’s something you can help me with. Or is it is it that kind of tactical or strategic as well of, you know, I’d like to do something in this industry and then you can help me kind of strategize like where to or is it all of the above?

Caroline Rash: [00:15:05] I want to say all of the above, really, it’s it’s if you I don’t know if you have a problem that we personally like, nobody on our team knows how to solve. Specifically, we are going to work our tails off to find somebody who can do that and bring them on. So if there’s like a particular tech program that you’re wanting to implement and none of us have used it before, we will find somebody who who can, you know, like we’re going to, we’re going to meet those needs as best as we can within our team. But I would also say the strategy part is is definitely something that we do. We want to sit down and and talk to you and think, like how? How can we how can we grow this? How can we what are steps we could take today that will start impacting tomorrow for you? So that’s that’s definitely something that we offer as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:57] And then as part of the team right now, like if I wanted help with social media or kind of website stuff, you have a team, you know creatively that can execute that. That’s kind of the basic day to day stuff you’re doing.

Caroline Rash: [00:16:12] Yeah, absolutely. I have like when you say that, like social media, I can think of somebody on my team right now who I would set up a meeting with you for at the moment. So it’s we definitely have a great pool of people to pull from, but there’s always going to be challenges. Come up that we’re not certain how to handle and we will make sure that it gets handled regardless.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:33] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team. What’s the website?

Caroline Rash: [00:16:42] It’s W w w dot service and that is spelled CRV as

Lee Kantor: [00:16:47] C r Venus. Caroline, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Caroline Rash: [00:16:54] Well, thank you so much for your time.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:56] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll sail next time on high velocity radio.

Jeff Garrison With Results On Purpose

October 11, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Jeff Garrison With Results On Purpose

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Following an early career in insurance operations, Jeff Garrison started a recruiting firm serving the property and casualty insurance industry. He built a profitable firm which he sold in 2008.

Like any other business, a profitable recruiting firm is built on great people led well combined with solid marketing and business development. Jeff invested a lot of time, energy, and money with coaches and industry gurus to build these aspects of his firm. He took everything he learned to develop Sales Habitudes, a sales training, and coaching platform.

Recognizing that the most effective thing to help small and medium-sized businesses grow was to develop leadership teams, Jeff develop Results On Purpose, a business coaching and leadership team development program for entrepreneurs.

Jeff now spends over 120 days a year on the road working with business owners and their leadership teams from coast to coast.

Jeff has also been married to the same woman for over 30 years, has five kids, and has a “hobby ranch” where he lives in Southern Iowa raising grass fed beef.

He is a graduate of both Knox College in Galesburg, Il, and Drake Law School in Des Moines, IA.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Some consistent patterns holding the business back when starting to work with an owner and their leadership team
Growth patterns of every team

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 fun one today on the show, we have Jeff Garrison with results on purpose. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff Garrison: [00:00:42] Hi, welcome. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about results on purpose. How are you serving, folks?

Jeff Garrison: [00:00:48] Well, results on purpose is a system of teaching leadership teams, owners and leadership teams how to plan and execute and build culture and do performance coaching. Now all wrapped into one, so they learn the system and then we have ongoing coaching to help them do that. And, you know, every client doubles, triples their business and more.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Now I’m sure the name of the firm wasn’t created by accident. Can you share why you chose the words results number one and on purpose number two? I would imagine in your work you’ve seen some folks get some results and not exactly know why.

Jeff Garrison: [00:01:42] Yeah. You know, we can grow our businesses. We can achieve some of our goals. But often we’re we’re working way too hard to get it done. And you know, that sometimes has the accidental part. But we chose results in the name because that’s what we focus on. There are so many folks that are busy. They believe that the things that they do, the activities that they have in their job, that that is their job. But really, every job exists from the receptionist on up to the CEO to achieve a certain result. And often we don’t know what result our company expects from us. So we start with that and then we’re, you know, we measure it, we hold people accountable and that’s the on purpose part.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:41] Now, how did you come to this because it sounds I mean, it sounds obvious when you say it, but I just know too many people that I’ve seen too many things to to have seen what you’ve said is actually 100 percent true that people are just doing things and they’re not really kind of. They just had did it yesterday. So that’s why they’re doing it again today. And they kind of maybe have lost focus of what their original result was that they were even after.

Jeff Garrison: [00:03:12] Yeah, and it’s throughout the company, and I’ll give you a really recent example, I had a client give me a call last week because he had hired a person in a front line position and calling to say, You know, I’m not sure it’s working out. We’re having some issues. She’s not showing enough initiative was kind of the global phrase he used and. And so I asked my client if he had shared with her exactly what result he wanted from her. Why does her job exists and what does it look like for her to be getting that result? And you know, the answer is, well, he kind of skipped that part. Well, go back and do that. And then, you know, let me know how that changes things. And it was really simple. And, you know, I did get feedback that things are great. And so, you know, it’s just that idea. We don’t we think about positions. We don’t think about why they exist. We don’t think about what the companies really trying to achieve and put that into action. We’re just doing stuff now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:31] When you start working with a new client, is this something that you look at the business holistically as a whole and then get granular to each and every kind of process and person in the team?

Jeff Garrison: [00:04:43] I work with the owners and their leadership teams and then teach them how to push this stuff down to their direct reports and so on. So the implementation and and teaching starts with those what are typically four or five people and it and they have to figure out themselves what results they own as the, say, the finance leader or the sales and marketing leader or or the operations leader. And and when we talk about owning results, we’re really talking about very high level. If you can’t explain what result you own for your company in a sentence, then you’re getting too detailed.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:31] And then so there are some activities you go through with the leadership to kind of really hone in on maybe the things they own, maybe the things that they shouldn’t be owning and and then kind of helping them move around the pieces on the chessboard.

Jeff Garrison: [00:05:46] Exactly. We essentially build an ownership chart. We identify what needs to be owned in a company, what results need to be done and figure out who needs to own those things we can’t have. We can’t expect results and not have somebody in charge of seeing that we get them. It doesn’t mean that they do everything. It’s just that, you know, somebody makes sure it’s happening. And you know, when those things are clear and we put measurements around it, you know, that starts to help smoke out what the problems are with getting the results that they want in it. It may be processed it. It may be just defining what we need. It may be that the people who are responsible for getting those results really aren’t the right people for that. They’re not wired or they haven’t been trained, or they may not have the tools to get the results that you want. So when we do this, it smokes out a lot of other problems that the company needs to fix.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] So now what is kind of the engagement look like with you? What’s the first let’s start at the beginning? Like, what’s the pain that the client is having? Do they even recognize that they’re kind of a little out of whack? Or is it something that something is specifically happening like, Oh, sales are down? Let me call Jeff, or I can’t. I can’t keep any of my employees. Let me call Jeff.

Jeff Garrison: [00:07:20] It’s, you know, thus far, my business has been 100 percent referral. And what’s happening is they’re looking at somebody they know and seeing what’s happening in their business and they start talking about it. And then they’re referred to me. And usually they they may not have something specific. They just know that their business is not clicking on all cylinders or that they’re feeling stuck. They haven’t progressed like they thought they would or for owners. A lot of times it’s they’re stuck in the weeds and they’ve got, you know, little personal freedom. They don’t have the freedom that they thought they would have when they became an entrepreneur and started a business. So more often, it’s not that they know that something specific is wrong. They just know that things aren’t right.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:18] Now is today’s world where there’s a lot of kind of remote work and you’re you’re not kind of in close contact with folks as much as you had been in the past, and a lot of people are working kind of in an island, really, you know, they’re they’re connected to the company, but they’re not seeing it in the in the frequency they used to. And they they’re not having kind of these accidental collisions that they might have had in the past is to me that you would need to be so clear on expectations and the results you’re after. Or else something can really get off the rails pretty quickly with a miscommunication and not being caught. And then, you know, days turn to weeks like it can turn into a bad outcome if you don’t get this right, and it would seem like your kind of methodology fits perfectly with today’s hybrid remote working world.

Jeff Garrison: [00:09:08] Yeah, it does. And and for me personally, I have not stopped seeing all of my clients in person. I work with the leadership teams all together for full days and in state in person, but in helping them deal with remote workers. It’s, you know, with remote workers that leaders often have this question What are they doing? What are they doing with their time and when results aren’t exactly what they want or things aren’t timely, they start getting stuff into their head, you know, are they working? What are they doing? And what we’re finding is that just there’s a misalignment in expectations. A lot of time and leaders can easily jump to conclusions that aren’t accurate. And so when we go back and we make things really clear for everybody or help them to make things really clear here, the results that we want, here’s what it looks like when you’re getting those results. Here’s what we might measure. You know, where’s the proof? And if if that’s good, everything’s good, we don’t worry about all these silly details.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:29] So now is there any advice you could share with the listener right now? Is there something they could be doing like today with their team? Some easy thing to implement, maybe a baby step in this process, or at least open their mind to thinking in this manner?

Jeff Garrison: [00:10:45] Well, to start with, I would say for everybody, just talk more with your leadership team and on down. You know, we often don’t appreciate as business owners that the people working for us don’t know what’s in our head. You know, we what our vision is, where we’re trying to go. What we want to accomplish. And how we want to impact our communities in the world and and what’s in it for the people helping us do that. And you know, that’s where I tell people to start is, you know, really think about what your business is trying to accomplish, the impact that it’s going to have and how does that affect your employees? And be sharing that with them all the time and then start, you know, communicate what part they play in getting that done. And some people won’t be excited about that. And you probably ought to find a way to get them out of the way or out of the company and replace them with people who are excited about what you’re trying to do. It’s, you know, when everybody’s excited about what, you know, the bigger picture and when they appreciate their role in that, that is simple enough to make things a lot better for you. It kind of releases people’s initiative and motivation, all moving towards a single goal. So now when you’re working, it’s not. It’s kind of it sounds complicated. It’s not. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time you just start talking and repeating, you know where you’re heading.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:35] Well, I think when you reframe things and focus on results and you start drilling down and say, OK, everybody, no matter what they’re doing, there’s an expectation of a result to just kind of just define, even at people who might not think that their work has maybe a measurable result. Is there some, some jobs or job functions where it’s more difficult than others to really say, OK, the result of your position is this like you’re like some administrative roles? Is there a way to kind of put measurements on those?

Jeff Garrison: [00:13:12] You can probably, yeah, you can get creative about those things. But, you know, some things are it’s OK for them to not be quantitative. They can be qualitative. I’ll give you an example. I use a lot to illustrate this idea. You have probably called the customer service department for your cell phone carrier at some time. And you know that person, they may have answered your questions or solve your problem, but at the end of the call, you didn’t feel great about the call. When I share this, I usually get head nods from people. Yeah, I’ve experienced something like that. And but that person who helped you, if their supervisor was standing right there and ask, how did the call go? They’d probably say, great. I answered their questions. I solved their problem. I’m going to the next one. And they think that solving your problem was the result that the company wants. And really, if the company were to define it well, what they want is a great relationship with their customers. So how they solved your problem might not have been great. They might have gotten it done, but they did not enhance the relationship that you had. And so that’s just a misunderstanding of what the result they have. And that thing that right there is not quantitative, it’s it’s qualitative, but even sharing that with the person. It’ll change the way they talk to people on the phone. You know, they might be a little bit more personable when they’re thinking, I’m trying to make this person love our company, that that kind of thing. On the flip side, you’ve probably had these kind of phone calls where you didn’t get your problem solved, but actually you enjoyed the conversation with the person that was trying to help you. So, you know, does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: [00:15:19] Yeah. Well, that’s I mean, I think that I’m just trying to give a frame for the listener to think about their own business and how there are some things that you can count and then some things that maybe you shouldn’t be counting and you’ve got to kind of define what it is the result, the outcome, what outcome are you trying at the end of the day, do you desire? And then being clear on that and communicating that to everybody involved and that way you can. Somehow measure that and that, and that’s where I guess it gets tricky for business owners, where when it is subjective, like you said, the employee thinks, you know, high five, I killed it and then the customer’s angry and the owner’s like, what happened? I thought we just we did good. And you know, it’s just not being clear on on what it is that is truly important.

Jeff Garrison: [00:16:14] Yeah. Yeah, and you asked for your question was about a baby step, and I know that that’s not necessarily a baby step and you know, the long term steps, so to speak of this is when you’re when you’re doing this. It does smoke out the people who can’t get it, you know, they’re just not wired the way they need to be for the the role or they don’t care. They they need to be coached either up or out of the organization. And this is sort of a long term thing, and this is where our coaching comes in to help leadership teams define these things for themselves, you know, get it right, communicate it well and then do the performance coaching with those folks to make this stuff true for their company.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:12] Right. And I think at the heart of it, that’s what you’re really trying to do is make sure that the leadership and the whole team is aligned and they’re all kind of have the same vision of what could be and should be. And then the sooner you identify the folks that aren’t a right fit and replace them with people that are, that’s probably where in the growth really can happen rapidly.

Jeff Garrison: [00:17:33] Yes. Yeah, that’s that’s a big part of it. And that’s sort of the everyday operational culture building side that we work on. That’s sort of in the business stuff. There’s also the on the business stuff, and that’s really about the leadership team hitting their own goals, those things they need to achieve to keep moving the the business forward. And you know that that’s a different thing and we do help them set the long term goals. What’s the big picture and then chunk those down into really 90 day sprints that we call deliverables. We don’t call them goals because goals implies that, you know, maybe you’ll get it done. Maybe you won’t. We’re trying to. But a deliverable is something that as a leader, you deliver and we get our clients into this rhythm where every quarter as a leadership team, they might have four or five deliverables and they they have to get it done. Or we lose what’s called compounding effort. You know, that opportunity to finish and make a new investment and deliverables and get that compounding over time. But at the end of a few years, if you’re operating this way, your leadership team might have gotten, say, 30 or 40 significant things done on your business. And that really accelerates the growth of the business when they’re that focused and getting things done. And that process itself will also smoke out those leaders that are able to plan and execute and those that are not and often those that can’t wind up volunteering to move to a different role off the leadership team or leaving the company because they know they’re not getting it done now in the business and on the business aspects of what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:41] Now, when you say deliverable, what’s an example of a deliverable is that like a sales number or is that an activity? Like what is how is a deliverable defined?

Jeff Garrison: [00:19:51] It is anything that needs to get done. You know, working on the business, for example, where a lot of companies start is they don’t have their key processes documented. So, you know, a deliverable might be to document, you know, a customer service process or a product development process or something to get it done and get everybody following that process. It might be, you know, maybe we need a technology upgrade. So how far can we get in the next 90 days on that thing? It’s whatever the business needs. It might be exploring a market could be buying a new piece of equipment. You know, I have a a client in in Washington, D.C. It’s just one that comes to mind was redesigning the manufacturing floor for greater efficiency. So in 90 days, they want to have their study done and know where they need to be moving equipment and supplies to move faster.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:16] But it’s things that can be that you control, rather than things that you might not be able to control, like a sales goal like.

Jeff Garrison: [00:21:24] Right? Yes. Yes. And sales goals selling should be part. It should be an indoor business thing, part of the everyday activity that those people who own the business development results do. So, you know, that’s that’s more about managing their own personal results in the company and not so much in on the business thing that’s in the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:54] Right. So you want to control what you can control and create tight processes so that you’re getting the you’re achieving the goals that you have set forth. But the process is more important than the goal because the process is the engine that drives that. Yes. Now do you work in certain industries or niches or is this something that is kind of industry agnostic?

Jeff Garrison: [00:22:17] It is definitely industry agnostic. Again, it’s since it’s been by referral. From the beginning, I’ve gotten a chance to work in a variety of manufacturing and service businesses, financial businesses. It’s kind of all over the board. The thing is, is obviously different industries have their nuances and there’s there’s things you need to know and do to succeed in that industry. But in the end, most of your success boils down to the time tested blocking and tackling business things that you do and getting the right people in place to do them. So if we can help with those things that the last say, 20 percent of the equation becomes pretty clear to owners and their industry specific stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:27] Well, congratulations on all the success. It’s a great story, and it sounds like you’re doing really good work. If somebody wants to learn more and get a hold of you or somebody on your team, what is the website?

Jeff Garrison: [00:23:40] It is results on purpose.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:44] Well, Jeff, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jeff Garrison: [00:23:49] Thank you very much, Leigh. I enjoyed the conversation.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:52] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Nicole Reina With Mindset Coaching for Heroes

October 8, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Nicole Reina With Mindset Coaching for Heroes

00:00 /

Nicole Reina is an orally deaf individual with just 2% hearing, relying solely on hearing aids and lip-reading to communicate.

A survivor, Nicole overcame years of emotional and physical abuse from both at home and school that eventually manifested into mental stress while in early college. Using several tools and programming techniques to help heal her mind, she later successfully transformed her life and overcame all odds.

Early on, Nicole achieved remarkable milestones. Among other degrees, she earned her MBA from FIU in Corporate Finance and International Business in 2018.

In 2017, Nicole and her husband John built an award-winning traditional commercial cleaning business called Amaze Clean Janitorial.In less than four years this company became one of the largest family-owned commercial companies on the East Coast with operations from NC to Florida.

As a result of her success, Nicole was introduced to the Law of Attraction in 2020 and was hooked. In early 2021, she became a certified practitioner.

As a mother of two beautiful daughters, Nicole developed a passion for helping parents of challenged children see the role they play in a whole new light. Challenged children live in a constant state of frustration, which can have a negative impact on the parent’s well-being on an unconscious level.

Through her coaching, Nicole works to raise the level of consciousness of the parents through confidential discussions and workshops, which enables them to co-create a healthier and more productive life for their children.

Through Nicole’s remarkable insight on the Law of Attraction and how it affects daily lives, she helps bring joy to those who struggle with finding it.

Additionally, Nicole has mentored countless business professionals and provides consultant services, training workshops and speaking engagements to companies seeking to improve their Diversity and Inclusion awareness.

Earlier this year, she joined the John Maxwell Team and became a certified Speaker, Coach, and Trainer with the dream of Changing the World by impacting the limiting perceptions of challenged individuals that exist in society today.

During her spare time, Nicole loves to spend quality time with her husband John and her two remarkable daughters, Natalie and Catalina. She is an aspiring author with her first book in the making.

Her hobbies include reading, writing, drawing, meditating, and bringing inspiration to others. She currently resides in Tega Cay, SC.

Connect with Nicole on Facebook and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Law of Attraction and How It Pertains To Business And Personal Life
The Law of Attraction to Work in favor
Steps To See An Immediate Impact On Personal and Business Endeavors

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 B.R. Ambassador 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 today on the show, we have Nicole Reina with mindset coaching for heroes. Welcome to call.

Nicole Reina: [00:00:45] Hi, thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Before we get too far into things, can you tell us about your practice? How do you serve folks? How how do you do your coaching?

Nicole Reina: [00:00:55] Oh, how do I do my coaching? So let me first off by introducing myself as a hearing impaired individual, so I really do appreciate you allowing me to the I could repeat yourself, but basically my my coaching I’ve done I I passionately help parents or children with disability. I work with them to help raise the level of consciousness through understanding the children’s frustration that they go through on a daily basis. Because when you’re dealing with a disability, a lot of times you think fluctuation, it affects the vibration that you are under, and the children really have no other way to express themselves, and they usually go to the potion that they love. And my aim is to keep the pilot that it is never about them. It is always about what the children are going through. So it is my desire to help them understand this process. So then when the children does have some kind of an output based on what they’re going through now, the parents have a deeper understanding of what triggered it and it never about the parent. Did they call it about what the child goes? Do that kind of the basis of my, of my coaching?

Lee Kantor: [00:02:03] Now is there some suggestions you have for parents that can that they can help their kids right now?

Nicole Reina: [00:02:10] Absolutely. I think breathing is the number one most important thing that we could ever do, because what happens when you breathe and you interrupt the thought process that’s happening in the mind? So any emotion is a manifestation of a thought that you keep thinking. So if the parent is visually witnessing, for example, a child that is going through a moment of frustration or an episode, so to speak, it would really help if they have some kind of a breathing technique. My favorite one is what I call the breathing technique and what that is. Did you take you count your breath going in and you count it up to four second and then you hold it for four seconds? And then when you pull it out, you push it out for four seconds and then you hold it for four seconds. So you do that process for about three minutes. And what happened? Did it interrupt the train of thought and a way to do a vibration? So you’re able to prevent the emotion from manifesting that coming from the negatively acting from what you’re seeing a lot of times the society that we live, then we react in the moment based on what it’s already created. And if we can learn just to step back and be more of an observer instead of taking things personally and the breathing of what helps to interrupt any of those negative thoughts that might be coming from defensiveness. So that would be my number one recommendation is to really find a breathing technique in the moment that helps you to combat the negative emotion.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:39] Now in your life, did you have a mentor or a coach to help you kind of gain this insight and knowledge?

Nicole Reina: [00:03:46] You know what, I think my coach Adidas and the the spiritual guide, I found them just resulting from the pandemic when I learned how to meditate and found a meditation that I’m able to get the inside. Now, when I was growing up to answer the question, I honestly felt alone because a disabled individual is in a whole different world. So when I was born, I was diagnosed with being deaf, mute, mentally handicapped and indictment for the rest of my life. So my story began when I was about four years old. My stepfather, my mom, remarried when I was three. He taught me. He sent me to speech therapy, and he believed that I was going to be an individual that could speak. And he wanted to make sure that I was given the opportunity to be able to hear, which is why they gave me hearing aids and then to speak, which is why they sent me to speech therapy. I went my whole life basically with the ambition that I would become a self doctor-patient individual that can overcome the handicap. And one thing that I really appreciate the most is that in my household, I was never perceived as a disabled individual. I was always treated the same as everyone in my household. I went to a mainstream school. I was really the only deaf child that was in the school, and I would just sit in the front of the class. I learned how to read lips. So I think through that encouragement of myself and really pushing myself to overcome, and I got to be, quote unquote like, normal like everyone else.

Nicole Reina: [00:05:22] It kind of what allowed me to overcome the disability portion. Now, when the pandemic hit, there was a lot of trauma that would be surfaced. And that I found what triggers that really affected me in the way that I was thinking and perceiving how others thought of me. And I believe I spend my entire life, so to speak, looking outside to please others. And I basically forgot how to go inside and to work on myself and really understand what were the triggers emotionally. Because for a very long time, I was not aware of my emotions. They just kind of happen. Whenever the triggers were, I would get frustrated or maybe upset or, you know, one of those triggers one at that moment. So to answer your question, I think that mentorship for me, I never really found anyone that could understand because it depended upon it very different to be in the world of the disabled. It’s a different perspective, and I found that it was hard to investigate and to let everyone know exactly what it was later on during the pandemic. However, when I started a spiritual journey and meditate and I was able to connect on a spiritual level, I was able to find mentors right now. That helping me with my own mindset, that gives me clarity. Not very much appreciated.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:45] Now, when you work with your clients, how what is the the issues they want help with the most?

Nicole Reina: [00:06:55] Right now, the biggest issue is understanding where you are and working on the self-love. I find that in the world that we live in, there are a lot of negative emotional triggers that make them basically prevent people from really living the life that they really want. A lot of the parents that I come across have sacrificed so much to make sure that their children are always, you know, taken care of most of the parents that I come across. They really dedicate all of their time to making sure that the child is what the what I’m looking for like, basically making sure that they’re comfortable, making sure that they don’t get frustrated, making sure that their environment is conducive to whatever their ability is. And unfortunately, when they put so much attention on the disability, they basically make it worse. And what I try to teach the parent is that if they can just see the potential and always focus on the potential and not really focus on what is it really helped. I think that having the hope, the hope that the child is going to be able to sufficiently take care of themselves independently, you know, whatever that looks like, if they can always keep that first and foremost in their mind and ensure that they they understand that whatever happened is nothing about them. It’s always about the children. And if they can separate that emotion from that, it really, really makes a difference because the self-love part is what really affect them. So, for example, a child to go to the pan, I remember with my mom, for example, I couldn’t I couldn’t get my information across the way.

Nicole Reina: [00:08:31] It was coming across and my mom was misunderstanding me. And unfortunately, the communication barrier that it did break with the people, with the unique ability to. And I got frustrated and then sometimes I would even raise my voice so I would practically yell or whatever it was because the energy keep building up. And unfortunately, what happened is the thought that that my mom is going through that for a while. Oh, did I do something wrong? How could I change how I speak? So, you know, Nicole didn’t yell at me, You know, what am I doing wrong? And how am I attracting the kind of behavior? And if that kind of intricate thinking that keeps propelling the energy that there and the conclusion of that it just becomes a very challenging way to live because in all, in all honesty, we all deserve to be happy and we all deserve to find joy. And you can find the joy if you understand that the situation that you end and temporary and find the love inside and really, really dig deep to understand what the child is going through, it’s really all about perception and understanding exactly what the child is really going through because it had nothing to do with them. So I think that the self-love piece is the one that comes up really repeatedly in my session because again, they, for whatever reason, they feel that the child, maybe they don’t love them as much or, you know, they think they have to change in order for the child to improve.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:53] When you’re working with your clients, are you working typically only with the parent or or the child individually or both?

Nicole Reina: [00:10:01] It’s usually with the parent. Now I do work with the children if the added level of the communication, if they’re able to communicate in a higher level of consciousness. So it all depends on where the child is in the life at the moment. Typically, the parent would be the first one that I work with because it’s a journey where the parent both changed your mindset and felt seeing things differently with the same situation that keep popping up. And then what happened there? The pattern felt the way another child, I think, felt improving, and at that point, I can do the coaching with the children. The awareness is raised to a different level.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:38] Can you share a story about a success where you helped a parent with their children or child get to a new level?

Nicole Reina: [00:10:48] Yes, I would love to, actually. Just recently I had a client of mine that was going through a lot. She started her own business, but in the middle of starting her own business, she was going through a divorce. And the reason why she was going through a divorce was because the father or the husband was an emotionally abusive individual. So she was trying to separate from that and creating a new business. And then on top of that, had a child with autism that was also deaf and had cataracts totally blind. When he was a newborn, he had Cadillac and had to have surgery to have them removed. So she was dealing with a disabled child and then also another sibling that was perfectly healthy. So she hurt if she was when the when she decided to get a divorce. Obviously, it was a toxic relationship and she needed to get a divorce in order to protect the environment of what is. However, her insecurities of herself and wanting to start a business and constantly thinking that she wasn’t good enough and that she worried her children because of the default, didn’t love her anymore and the child. But the unique ability to want that affected her the most because the communication is a bit different. So she worried that she was not creating the life that would give him the security that she felt like he needed. So once I spoke with her and she saw that myself, I am, I have to put that feeling.

Nicole Reina: [00:12:17] So I am considered profoundly deaf. So when I shared with her my story and then I explained to her about the perception of the child, and I let her know that when it comes to divorce and it comes to other situations that are really not her fault, it’s just the environment that she’s in and the decision making. While it does have an impact on the child, I firmly believe that the child still love the parents both way because the child is not really the one that’s involved in the situation. It’s more of the mom and the dad that’s involved in that. So when she learned to remove the fear that the child was even thinking anything of her, what she saw was that she was able to open up her heart and able to make better decisions and not react not to what the child looked like after she would have a situation for the child, for example, that that a fluctuating event when everything was said and done, he would go to her to her and she would cry it out, and she would be it would affect her. And if he would wake up the next morning, still afraid of what would happen if he created that vibration that carried with both. So then the crowd started having more and more episodes. The children are very, very attuned to energy. They can feel it. So whenever the parent acts around them had that negative energy swept off after a few started with me and I was able to change her mindset and to change her perception.

Nicole Reina: [00:13:42] And it did take a few sessions because he had to break the pattern that were already created from youth and youth of whatever her parents were from a child herself. So after a few sessions, she was able to focus on the love and realize that this is temporary and what her child is going through had nothing to do with her as she needed to make sure that she knew that she was a wonderful mom. That no matter what happened, no matter the situation, that the boy started to be distressed, whatever mistakes that she made, it really had nothing to do with how is she doing everything that she can the best of her ability and the country doing the best that she can, that all she can do? And then I found that right after the fact he was so up in the beginning of the session to be very down and depressive symptoms. But then after a few seconds, he come down very excited, very happy, and the conversation would focus more on the success of her child rather than the frustration that she had been going to. So her focus shifted into what was going right in her life instead of what was going wrong. And I think that is the most profound thing that anyone can do, because when you focus on what’s going right, that’s what you create more of.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:54] Wow, what an amazing and moving story. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Nicole Reina: [00:14:59] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:00] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice and get on your calendar and maybe have a conversation with you, what is the website?

Nicole Reina: [00:15:08] My website is I am Nicole Raynox. And they can go on to the website and select Contact Me the button on the website to be able to get onto my calendar. I can also be reached by email, which is Nicole at. I am Nicole Vanderkam, and I believe that the best way to contact me, actually if you are able to find the email. But that would be the place to go to learn more.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:34] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Nicole. And that website, one more time is I am and I see only R e I and a dot com. Nicole Rayner, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Nicole Reina: [00:15:51] Oh, thank you so much and I really appreciate you having me. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:55] All right, this is Lee Kantor Willis Hill, next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Mackey McNeill With MACKEY

October 8, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Mackey McNeill With MACKEY

00:00 /

Mackey McNeill is the Founder of MACKEY, a Cincinnati-based firm offering family-owned businesses an invaluable and innovative combination of coaching and CFO-level financial expertise to help them stop settling for profits and learn to prosper.

Mackey is the author of several books including the award-winning, The Prosperity Playbook. She has been quoted as a financial expert in major media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Money, and USA Today.

Mackey holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with honors from the University of Georgia and is a CPA/PFS (certified public accountant/personal finance specialist).

Her affiliations include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), bcorporation.net, The Goering Center for Family and Private Business, Small Giants Community and Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce.

Connect with Mackey on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The Standard Playbook – Work Hard, Grow Sales and The Bottom Line Will Follow Doesn’t Work
Why Settle For Profits, When You Can Prosper
The 5 New Paradigms to Assimilate
The 3 Freedoms of Prosperity, Money freedom, Time freedom an and Freedom from Worry

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Mackey McNeill with Mackie. Welcome.

Mackey McNeill: [00:00:42] Thanks, Lee. It’s great to be here with you.

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

Mackey McNeill: [00:00:50] Well, I help people prosper. I help them achieve the three freedoms of prosperity. Money, freedom, time, freedom and freedom from worry.

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

Mackey McNeill: [00:01:05] Well, I sort of wandered in from the perspective. I started as a CPA and I, my clients are primarily business owners, and I noticed how much they struggled to really generate a decent return on the investment risk and effort they were putting into their business. So I started iterating and trying new things and seeing what helped and and discarding what didn’t. And over the course of years, I developed a whole system for helping people make more money, keep more money and grow their money. So it’s been a wonderful, lifelong journey that I’ve enjoyed and had a great. Many have worked with thousands of business owners at this point, and it just continues to grow, so I’m excited now.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:53] Do you find that because of your background as an accountant, that you have maybe a better understanding of the numbers part of the business where a lot of entrepreneurs have the passion and maybe have a great idea, but they don’t really have a good handle on the financial aspect of their business.

Mackey McNeill: [00:02:14] Well, that’s exactly it. What I learned early on when I was working with business owners is they often went into business because they were passionate about something, but they didn’t really understand business and they certainly didn’t understand how to make the numbers work for them. They tend to to work hard and try to focus on selling more. And they assumed that they would make money that way. And you know, it would be nice if it work that way. And when you start out, really, let’s face it, you don’t have any customers, so you have to focus on sell, sell, sell. But at some point you have to get a little more sophisticated about, OK, I’ve got revenue coming in. How do I maximize that? So there’s something left over at the end of the day that makes it worthwhile for me to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:57] So now what does that look like? So what frustration are your entrepreneurs or your clients? Are they just just feel like they’re banging their head against the wall? They think there’s there’s got to be more to this. This can’t be what I signed up for. Like what is kind of the frustration where they’re like, I better call Mackie.

Mackey McNeill: [00:03:14] Well, I think there’s several. One, there’s really kind of three drivers that people reach out to us. One is that they’re trying to make a generational transition and if they’re making a generational transition, you know, basically the next generation is buying out the current generation. And so there’s a lot of money that’s got to go from that into new places into somebody else’s pocket. So that becomes a financial challenge for the business. And so to help them build a business in such a way that they can, the business can afford this transition is one way that we get involved. Sometimes we have clients who come to us because they have done everything they know how to do and they’re kind of at their wit’s end. That’s not my favorite client because basically it’s like, you know, a fire hose and we’re putting out fires and it’s an emergency. But you know, it’s always great to see what when they turn around. But it is very nerve wracking when we first get started. And the third kind of client that tends to work with us is people who really are at a point where they’re ready to scale to the next level. You know, there are places in our business where we we’ve developed a sort of level of competence and confidence that we can get to say two million in sales. But for some reason, we’re sort of stuck here. And, you know, it’s often that there may be structural processes and systems, and we’re just not really have the the bandwidth yet underneath us. We don’t have the right structures to get to four million or five million or where they were wherever they’re trying to go. Or maybe they’re at 10 million and they’re having struggles getting to 15 million. So they’re really working on some issue of scale that they’re being having a hard time getting past and usually with the financial tools that we’ve developed in all three of those cases, it helps business owners see their businesses from a different perspective so they can make new choices and really drive the business forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:06] Now, a lot of business folks think profit is really the objective, but in your model, prosperity is what you should be aiming at. Can you explain why that is? Why are you put prosperity ahead of profits?

Mackey McNeill: [00:05:23] Well, when you say I put it ahead, I would say that if you settle for profits, you’re selling yourself short. So, you know, and here’s why is that? I define prosperity as the ability to have money, freedom, time, freedom and freedom from worry. So, you know, you can produce profits by working yourself 60 70 hours a week, and a lot of entrepreneurs go about it that way. But maybe you’d like to have some time freedom too, and maybe you’d like to worry a little less along the way. To me, that combination of having the money that you need, having the time that you’d like to have and being free of worry, it’s really gives us a ground to live better lives, not just to have more money. There’s only so far that you can go with more money. We want to have a good. We want people to have a good life to.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:14] Now, when you’re having that kind of conversation with folks, are you telling them or are they hearing that maybe less as more? Maybe I shouldn’t work so hard. Maybe I should focus more on other things that I’m valuing. So it’s almost like a mindset shift in terms of I always thought the objective was to just keep growing and getting bigger and making more money. And what I’m hearing you say is that maybe you should shift that kind of mindset.

Mackey McNeill: [00:06:44] Well, I I expect everyone that we work with to make more money. Don’t get me wrong. Absolutely. In fact, I would say if they’re not making more money, then we aren’t doing our job and. And so I know that all of our current clients are doing that because otherwise I would be firing ourselves. We would be firing ourselves, you know? So the number one job definitely is to make more money that’s not beyond, that’s not on the table and not improve their profits. But what along the way, we want them to build their team so that they, I call it, stop being a fulcrum where everything has to go through you and rather build a wheel. So build your team so that the team begins to create some energy and to help you build the business and help you grow the business. We use a set of metrics. We teach the people the key management team in the business how to use those metrics so that they can begin to create some energy to drive the business forward as well. So it’s not only the owner that’s doing that, and really that’s where the time freedom comes in and the freedom from worry comes from. I have enough. I have enough information coming to me. We put together a set of reports that are, you know, I’d say, beyond financials, but are also much easier to read than a set of financial statements so owners can very quickly get their finger on the pulse of where their business is. And they don’t have to worry Am I going to make payroll tomorrow? Am I going to be able to scale this business to do? I have the cash flow of working capital to do what I want to do. They have that confidence so they can go about doing the things that they need to do to grow the business free of worry and building their team to help them along the way.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:23] Now what attracted you to the family owned businesses? What about them was kind of, Hey, this I can really make a difference for these folks.

Mackey McNeill: [00:08:35] Well, I think there were too early on I ran into, I’m always a person who I run into a challenge that I can’t solve. It just drives me nuts and I had a business owner that I was working with and he had was a there were, I think, four siblings. This was a second generation business. So the parents had left and the four siblings were running it and they were slowly dying. I mean, the business was dying. The margins were, you know, kind of crushing it on. And I said, you know, you’re really going to have to make some changes here and this business and everybody, all the four there were all brothers. All the four brothers received an equal salary regardless of what they did. And I said, you know, if we’d started paying people based on the marketplace salaries that they should earn based on their jobs, first of all, you would you would have more money. The company would have some profits because we didn’t have any money to plow back, end or kind of reinvent the business. And he said, I just can’t do that. And I said, Well, you’re going to have to choose, I think between whether you keep all your brothers employed at this level or whether you have your business. And he just couldn’t hear that and he went out of business. So everybody lost their job. And to me, it was like, this didn’t make any sense. This was, you know, any family there always the dynamics of things that you think you can or can’t do, the sacred cows, which makes it just all the more challenging because everything is not a business decision. Sometimes it’s a family decision.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:11] Now I’ve been in doing the work that I do. I’ve been involved in shows that focus on family business, and this was completely an eye opening experience for me to understand, like you were saying, that they run. They look like businesses, but they run completely different because a lot of things are in play that a typical business isn’t have to deal with, like holidays or dinner or or, like you said, one sibling doing more than the other. It’s a fascinating, fascinating world.

Mackey McNeill: [00:10:45] It is. It is. And you know, as as time progressed, my daughter eventually joined me in my business, so it became a family business. So then I had the look in my look in the mirror and say, Well, I’ve got these challenges. And so I became even more committed to family businesses. And, you know, I think that the additional dynamics just make it more interesting. And and it is a it’s a I think something like 98 percent of all businesses in the United States are family businesses. People think of it family business as a minor niche, but it’s really a huge niche. And the truth is that I always say that even if you are the only owner in the business, you have a family business because at the end of the day, I guarantee you’re going to go home and you’re going to talk to your spouse about your business and you’re going to tell them your woes and their and how your family does is very much going to depend on how your business does. So the business and family is very much related to each other. No way around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now, when it comes to this kind of talent shortage challenges that are happening now, do family businesses have an even more challenging time because of the fact that if your last name isn’t the last name of the leadership and you’re kind of middle management and aspire to be more, you see kind of a ceiling ahead of you, whereas in a traditional business, maybe you don’t see that.

Mackey McNeill: [00:12:13] I think that all depends on the culture and the business, and I think family businesses can have a culture that allows people to have upward mobility. You know, I know many family businesses that have, for example, strong profit sharing plans that are that are not just retirement plans, but also cash bonus plans that employees can participate in all employees or a certain set of employees. So there are ways to structure the business to give the non-family members a vision of how they can make a great impact. I know another family business that I talked to the the CEO and there are a lot of family members in the business and he’s not family. But he said, I’m very attracted to this business because the family makes it stable. It’s a stable business and he loves manufacturing and he loves working in this industry. But he’d found it to be a situation where the businesses that he worked with in the past were constantly sold to a larger competitor and everything was disrupted. And he said, I want to work for something that’s going to stay. You know, it’s going to stay a family business. I know that my boss is going to be the same boss tomorrow. So there’s advantages and disadvantages. But a lot of the turnover that’s happening, I think very much is related to the culture inside of the business. I think employees and business owners will do much better if they begin to open their books, teach their employees how they make money and invite them into the conversation. You know, it is the days of telling people what they’re going to do and micromanaging or over, and this is the time for engaging and building community in your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:51] Now, in the in the Mackey playbook, can you share a little bit about how an engagement with you looks like? Are you kind of just saying, OK, this is I know you’ve written books and you have a lot of strategies and experience and working with a variety of folks. But what does it look like? An engagement with Mackey and her team?

Mackey McNeill: [00:14:12] Well, that’s what it looks like is we have we start every engagement with a whiteboard session, so we, you know, our job is to help a business owner get where they want to go. So the whiteboard is just to say, where do you want to be? Where do you want to be the next three to five years? Where what is epic for you? What would be over the Moon that you can’t imagine it being any better? We want to know that, and then we want to look and see, do we think we can help you get there? And if so, we’ll prepare our proposal and our system that we’ve developed over the years has a whole cadence to it. In other words, there’s an annual planning process, the strategic planning process, the monthly reviews are all set in, so we understand the services that we’re going to deliver. So we give them give them a price based on the size of their company basically, and how many key employees and key people that we’re going to be working with because we’re bringing the whole team along. So we’ll put together a proposal. They’ll know exactly what they’re going to spend with us, and every contract comes with the 90 day out. So for the first 90 days, well, we’re going to work with you. And if I always say 90 days, you may not be able to see new profit showing up. Yet that’s a pretty short time frame, but you’ll know that you’re on the right track or not. And rarely do we have someone leave after 90 days, but I do like them having that out so their one year contracts with a 90 day out. And and, you know, if we’re not, if it turns out we’re not a good fit, then we bless them and send them on their way. But most of the time they are a good fit and they continue in. Almost all of our clients renew year after year because they continue to grow and evolve and and we grow and evolve with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:52] Well, your background in accounting is accounting part of the services you deliver? Or is that kind of is this primarily coaching and advising?

Mackey McNeill: [00:16:01] Well, I would say that the reason that most coaches cannot be successful in helping people take, you know, actually drive different financial results is because the accounting is lousy. So we have a team of accountants that are internal to our and but we have a set of coaches and they are very different people. A lot of accountants try to become coaches, and I certainly started that way. But most accountants are not cut out to be coaches, let’s face it. But we but the I would say of the business owners I’ve worked with, less than one in 10 have a set of books that’s really usable for decision making. So the first one of the first things we do is a financial systems analysis and we look at where are the places that the financial systems are not up to par that need to be fixed because if we don’t have good information, then we spend all of our time talking about the fact that the numbers are wrong. We don’t want to talk about the numbers being wrong. We want the numbers to be right so we can see where we’re going and see if the decisions that we’re making are producing the results that we want. And if not, what do we change so that we get the results that we’re looking for? So we have to have critical data. So we have a team that’s a great team. They says all they do is work with our clients to help them get their books in order and put their information sets together so that we can. The coaches can take that over and help them drive their business forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:27] And then is there kind of a minimum size you work with? Is it like $10 million businesses or is it one hundred employee businesses now?

Mackey McNeill: [00:17:35] Well, I say for a people get real caught up on sales, but you know, in a professional service environment, say a million dollar professional services firm is actually a fairly good sized firm. A million dollar manufacturing firm would be a micro firm, but I think the smallest business we’ve ever worked with is probably about a half a million dollar professional services firm, but I’ve worked with clients as large as 50 million. So but I’d say our average client is somewhere in the two to six million range when we start working with them. And then there’s outliers from there

Lee Kantor: [00:18:10] And then it’s industry agnostic. I would imagine it’s like a family business typically, but industry agnostic.

Mackey McNeill: [00:18:18] That is true. We’re industry agnostic. We have manufacturing clients and construction clients and service clients. And kind of if there are a few places, I won’t go. But we again, we pride ourselves on the customers that we’re working with. The clients that we’re working with are going to make more money. They’re going to put money in their pocket from engaging us. So if we don’t feel like we can do that, we will walk away. I mean, that’s because we hang our hat on that and our clients tell their friends so we can’t afford to be wrong.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:53] Now is there a story you can share of challenge you had? And maybe it’s maybe it’s the most rewarding in terms of the impact that you made with this firm that you were working with? Can you share something that may be their challenge that they were having? Then they engage with your you and your team, and then they got to a new level.

Mackey McNeill: [00:19:13] Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you a story of a client that we’ve worked with, say, over about 10 years, they actually just made an exit from their business. But when we first started working with them, they were a very large player in their region and they had really done a great job of growing sales again. They were in that playbook of, you know, work hard, grow sales and the bottom line will follow. But the bottom line wasn’t following. And as it does, it often doesn’t. You know, that’s a good start up playbook, but it’s not a good scale up playbook. So they were struggling with their bottom line, and we came in and helped them put together a set of metrics and began to talk to him about how to really measure the right things in their business so they could achieve the bottom line results that they wanted. And over the next four years, they went on to 10x their their bottom line, and they eventually just took over all of that work. And then we did. The next thing we did was we worked with the owners to do financial plans for them personally, and then eventually they decided that they were ready to make some sort of exit.

Mackey McNeill: [00:20:19] So we helped them identify, Well, how am I going to exit? Am I going to sell to my employees? Am I going to sell to a competitor or am I going to sell to an upstream person? Am I going to sell to private equity? What are my options and what? What’s the best marketplace? And then we help them decide on what a broker to purchase to represent them. And we worked with them through all the negotiations on the financial end, and they sold the business for a good five million over what I really expected they would get because they had such strong culture and their earnings were so strong, you know, they could have probably I mean, they would have walked away with a decent amount of money if they hadn’t done that work to build their profits. But by having a company that was so strong and had such good systems and had had the bottom line to this, they were they were moved into a consolidation where, you know, there are four or five companies that are consolidating in that industry. So they would have consolidators are paying a pretty good price even if you don’t have earnings. But if you’ve got earnings, you can get even more so.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:27] So having kind of this CFO level partner as part of your team, I would imagine it’s attractive to a lot of folks. If somebody wants to learn more about you and your practice and your team, what is the website?

Mackey McNeill: [00:21:43] Our website is McCain advisors. That’s GMAC, KFYI Advisors, Advisors, SARS. And we have. There’s also, if you want to just learn more about us, there’s a ton of free resources. We offer free classes on a lot of our how to write malware. There are several classes coming online about how to get ready for twenty twenty one. And we’d love to to see people join us and and take a taste.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:14] Good stuff. Well, congratulations on all of the success you’re doing, important work that we appreciate you.

Mackey McNeill: [00:22:20] Thanks, Lee. It’s great to be on with you. I appreciate your time today.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:23] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Brian Catania With Better Business Bureau

October 8, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Brian Catania With Better Business Bureau

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Brian Catania is the President & CEO of the Better Business Bureau serving Metro Atlanta, Athens & NE Georgia.

Brian is responsible for effectively conducting the affairs of the Better Business Bureau, including providing strategic solutions to drive growth, reduce expenses and improve the end-user experience.

He promotes and maintains a positive relationship between businesses, consumers, and the community and ensures BBB’s businesses meet the rigorous standards of BBB Accreditation. He began his role with BBB in 2018.

Before his current role, Brian worked for AT&T for 18 years. His roles included Strategy & Business Development, Sales & Marketing, Big Data, Program Management, Merger Integration, and Human Resources.

Before AT&T, Brian spent time at several smaller enterprises. During that time, Brian had responsibilities ranging from Sales to Project Management to Human Resources.

Brian holds his MBA from Kennesaw State University and his undergraduate BA degree in Telecommunications from Purdue University. He also has his Six Sigma Green Belt. He continues to grow his capabilities with certifications in Model Thinking from the University of Michigan and Data Scientist Toolbox from Johns Hopkins University.

Brian and his wife Marta are co-owners of My Total Health, a mobile application dedicated to improving the lives of everyone through better nutrition, fitness, and lifestyle choices.

He has done a TEDx talk on the importance of health. He is an Advisory Committee member for the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA).

Brian lives in Atlanta with his wife and three children.

Follow Better Business Bureau on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

About Better Business Bureau
2021 Best Places to Work

About Our Sponsor

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

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

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] 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 Brian Catania with the Better Business Bureau. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Catania: [00:00:42] Welcome, thanks for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, before we get too far into things for the two people out there, I’m sure everybody’s heard of the Better Business Bureau, but maybe they don’t understand exactly how you serve the community and the business community. Do you mind giving us kind of the elevator pitch?

Brian Catania: [00:00:56] I would love to. Better Business Bureau has been in metropolitan Atlanta and North Georgia for over 100 years. And one of the things we do is we want to help set standards for ethical behavior and compliance in the marketplace. We really want to be able to help consumers find businesses and charities they can trust. So a real driving force behind who and what we are is being that leader in advancing marketplace trust. I know you hear me say the word trust repeatedly. That’s really who in what we’re all about is is trying to promote that, that consumer trust in businesses and asking those businesses to abide by a set of standards that that give them that authenticity to be able to, you know, be recognized in the business community. So that’s that’s a little bit about who we are.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] Now, can you tell us a little bit about the history? Did the organization start out as a national organization or was it always kind of local? And then it just expanded to markets around the country?

Brian Catania: [00:01:55] It’s a little bit of the latter. It started kind of locally almost 127 years ago and without getting too boring. Samuel Dubs, the actual CEO of Coca-Cola, was the first to really get this kicked off a long time ago. And when it started 100 plus years ago, Lee, it was really focused on marketing. It was focused on truth and advertising and making sure that folks were advertising in an ethical and honest manner. And what’s happened is, over the course of the last hundred years that’s evolved and morphed into what you see today with the BBB is a broader focus than just marketing its its evaluations of charities and making sure that people who are donating their hard earned money are donating to charities that can be trusted. The same thing with our business community. It’s making sure that consumers have a place to go where they can understand that BBB is helping them evaluate those businesses to be dealing with only the best of the best. So it’s really morphed over the last hundred years, starting with just a real laser like focus on advertising to a much broader evaluation of business in general and those organizations who can really be trusted and supported in the marketplace.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:09] Now, like you mentioned earlier, you use the word trust, and that’s an important component of what you offer both your business and consumer people who use the service. Do you have a take on kind of what how the layperson perceives business? Because at the heart of what we do at Business RadioX is we try to be the voice of business, and our mission is to help tell these stories because we feel that business gets kind of a bad rap and and that they get kind of villainized and they get seen by a lot of folks as these evil exploiters who are greedy. And in my experience, the vast, vast majority of business owners aren’t that way, and I don’t want to be Pollyanna and think everybody is that way. But I know there are some bad eggs there, but by and large, business is a to me a way net positive in a community.

Brian Catania: [00:04:01] I really agree with you, Lee. I think you’ve got two two factions of consumers. You’ve got the altruistic, the folks that really are just going to trust anybody and they’re going to feel good about the business as they deal with until you give them a reason to feel bad about you. And then you’ve got the much more conservative kind of pessimistic consumer who’s probably a little bit more of what you were talking about, which is no matter what you do, they’re always going to be looking for the angle that business is taking on you. How are you looking to work me over? How are you looking to shortchange me? I agree with you haven’t spent quite a bit of time evaluating businesses and understanding who they are. I would say 95 percent of them are honest. They’re ethical. They genuinely want to do right by consumers. You pointed it perfectly. I mean, there are going to be those five percent who sometimes give us a bad name, and that’s the group that we’re really trying to not necessarily focus on. We always want to promote and recognize the champions of good, good behavior and practices. But at the same time, we do want to try and protect consumers from the dangers that lurk.

Brian Catania: [00:05:09] The scam artists, the, you know, the con, the con men that are out there trying to, you know, trying to swindle you. So I’m with you. I genuinely believe 95 percent of businesses are doing their best. They’re trying to make things right. A big part of our business is mediation. We we try to look for Win-Win Solutions, and that’s where we really get perspective on the nature of business and consumers. That mediation process tells us so much about who a business is and it also who are consumers, you know, because we really we. Strive for win win and probably again, 90 percent of the time. Both the consumer and the business who are mediating with us want the same thing. They want to get to the best outcome that they think is fair and almost always we come to positive resolution. But even during those mediation phases, we always have those consumers and businesses that just don’t play nice. And that’s where we hope that as the BBB, we can kind of help facilitate that experience to to end a little more positively.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:10] So now let’s talk a little bit about how each of your constituents kind of engages with you. Can you talk about how a business can kind of raise their hand and get accredited and become part of the Better Business Bureau?

Brian Catania: [00:06:24] Sure. Businesses have the opportunity to they can either come and self nominate so they they approach us or we we do call on businesses to ask them if they would have interest in being part of the Better Business Bureau. And if they do, we put them through a vetting process. So we have a set of eight standards that we ask all all businesses to abide by. You know, can you be trusted? Are you transparent with your behavior with consumers? A lot of different things. But we, you know, if a business shows interest in being accredited with the Better Business Bureau, we vet them on those different standards of trust. And if they meet all those standards, then they become accredited and then they can advertise that BBB seal on their website, on their truck, on their, you know, their door or their window. They, you know, in advertising, they can advertise that their BBB accredited as long as they’ve gone through that process of making sure that they meet all the standards that we ask them to meet. And then periodically, you know, once a year, once every other year, we’ll revamp them just to make sure that they continue to abide by those standards. We don’t want to let them lay dormant. All of a sudden, we find out that we’ve got accredited businesses out there who aren’t abiding by other standards or are out there scamming consumers. So it’s it sounds intimidating and almost overwhelming, but we’ve really streamlined it so that a business can be vetted in in probably, you know, two hours if they’re if they’re interested. And we’re lucky because we have a lot of businesses that want to be vetted, we probably we accredit about 200 businesses a month. We currently got about 7500 businesses in the North Georgia market accredited, so it’s a great opportunity for consumers to be able to leverage those businesses.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:10] And speaking of consumers, how does the better Business Bureau help consumers? Maybe if there is an issue or just the different services you kind of afford to the consumer?

Brian Catania: [00:08:23] Yes, the two, most obviously are. Number one, we have our website, BBB, where consumers can come and visit and they can search for businesses. You know, they can search by name or type of business. They can request quotes from businesses and they can request quotes from accredited businesses or not accredited businesses alike. But the first place where we really try to help consumers is through our website, where they can come and find businesses that they can trust. The second gets to gets to where you were going and talking about, which is, you know, if that consumer has a dispute with the business, they’ve worked with the business and they’re just they have a disagreement that they’re not able to work out between themselves. They can file a dispute with Better Business Bureau and then we get involved in trying to help facilitate that experience. And that experience can kind of take two different, two different paths with accredited businesses. They have agreed when they become accredited to work in good faith with BBB and consumers to resolve all issues. So we get back to the mediation. A lot of our better business bureau representatives are certified mediators in the state of Georgia, so they can make recommendations based on those standards of mediation set forth in the Georgia code. So when we make a recommendation, we like to believe that it takes into account everybody’s side. It’s not in favor of business and it’s not in favor of consumer. It’s a genuinely neutral mediation where we try to help both sides facilitate a solution. We also do mediations and disputes with non-accredited businesses, and while they’re not required to abide by our standards because they’re not accredited, we find that most of the time, like we talked about earlier, they want to do the right thing.

Brian Catania: [00:10:07] They want to be good businesses, so they typically work with us pretty closely. We are not an enforcement agency, so so we do not pass judgments. We do not pass penalty. We really attempt to help consumers and businesses mediate these these issues before they have to get to that phase and before they have to seek, you know, help from the FTC or from attorneys. We really try to help them avoid that because we know that can be costly and really time, you know, a massive time commitment. So those are our two main factions. But we we really. Are expanding heavily, we do a lot in educationally. We do a lot in community outreach where we try to help communities at large. We’ve really tried to take diversity, equity and inclusion as a matter of who and what we are being that we’re in the cradle of civil rights. We’ve really tried to promote small business, minority owned business diversification and helping support them with grants and with programs to help entrepreneurs of of color or female owned businesses. So we’re really trying to expand our footprint and presence in this North Georgia market where we’re more than just accreditation and disputes. We’re education where grant writing, where support for startups and entrepreneurs. So we’re really excited about what we’ve been able to do, but also what we have planned for the coming years.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:33] So now along those lines, how would a company that kind of meets those criteria get involved with some of that education or that help with grants?

Brian Catania: [00:11:43] Well, certainly they can approach us and ask for that help. But we also have a team that’s dedicated to going out into the community and reaching out to those accredited businesses and soliciting their feedback and, you know, surveying them for what they want and what they need and what they’d like to be involved with. We’ve got business profiles on all of our accredited businesses where they can they can express interest in different programs and services that we offer. So a lot of times when you know, a new grant program supported by American Express or Visa comes out focusing on African-American business owners. We, you know, we typically work with those larger partners. We can look at our business profiles and say, OK, we have businesses that have identified as minority owned businesses. We can help facilitate that experience. And really, in a lot of ways, you know, probably 75 percent of our businesses are small businesses, which means they’re 10 or fewer employees. A lot of times they just don’t have the bandwidth or resources to go out and search for all these things. So a big part of what we do is we try to facilitate that experience and take the partnerships we have with these larger organizations who want to help small businesses. And we act as almost a broker to facilitate that. And the more we know about our accredited businesses and even our non accredited businesses, we can help sort of alert them to these opportunities and position these things in front of them.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:06] So Brian, what’s your back story? How did you get involved with the Better Business Bureau?

Brian Catania: [00:13:11] Well, I’ve known about Better Business Bureau for, you know, most of my adult life. I came from AT&T, where I worked for about 20 years, and I was lucky enough to do a lot of different things with them. You know, I did a little bit of human resources, finance, technology, sales and marketing, mergers and acquisitions. And, you know, I loved AT&T. It was a great time, a wonderful, wonderful organization. But I really got to the point where, you know, I wanted to do something that was a little bit more mission focused, and I had never worked with nonprofit organizations before. So I started kind of dipping my toe into the water of what was out there and Better Business Bureau was a perfect opportunity. It allowed me to leverage my background with business and organizational effectiveness, with my, you know, with my want of being able to give back and being able to be a little bit more mission focused in the work we were doing. It was just a perfect marriage. It allowed me to use what I believe are my skills and really marry them up with an organization who I believe has such incredible, you know, incredible goodwill and interest in the community. We talk about businesses and consumers, but we do tons of work with partners and it’s just it’s such amazing work that the BBB is doing. And it really, you know, when I first had the opportunity to talk with the board about it, it just it tugged on my heartstrings immediately. So it was just something that the more I learned about it, the more I knew it was going to be situated perfectly for what I was hoping for.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:46] Well, under your leadership that the BBB for North Georgia was recognized as a best place to work, why was it important for you to, you know, go after that award?

Brian Catania: [00:14:58] You know, it’s probably the most important thing that we’ve been recognized with since I’ve been here. I just I’m a believer that that we are who we are based on the people we have. You know, and to be recognized by by the Atlanta Business Chronicle is one of the best places to work in Georgia. It’s just hopefully it’s a testimony to what our employees believe is a great place to work. I think all the reasons I came to BBB is very similar in nature to why a lot of our our team comes to work for BBB. They believe in the mission and vision, and I believe that’s a lot of the reason why, you know, when ABC came out and solicited organizations for this, I believe our employees responded in force to say, Oh yeah, we’ve got a great organization. You know, I could bore you to death with with how we’re competitive and pay and benefits, and we got flexible scheduling. We love to train and develop our team. We really. But I think if you were to ask me what’s what sets BBB apart as an employer versus, you know, lots of other, you know, the thousands of other employers in North Georgia, I would say it’s our ability to offer Work-Life Balance, you know, beyond the mission and vision.

Brian Catania: [00:16:16] I think people want and need work life balance. They need some semblance of, you know, personal. I don’t want a company to just think about me as an employee. I want them to think about me as a person and what I have outside of business, and I genuinely believe that’s what we do. We give our employees work life balance where I think it’s meaningful to them. They know that they pretty much come to work at 8:00 and they leave at 5:00. Most of the time, I don’t believe they take work home with them. When they go home, they’ve got the ability to focus on their family or friends or just their personal selves. Rarely, if ever, do we work on weekends. Occasionally, we’ll do a couple of things, but we really try to be incredibly respectful of our team in that we we make sure we prioritize their personal lives just as much as we ask them to give to our organization from a work balance.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:08] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need more talent? Do you need more businesses to sign up to be accredited? You need more consumers to hit your website. What do you need?

Brian Catania: [00:17:19] Probably a little of all of that. You know, luckily, we have wonderful talent, we have great talent when we do have openings. Periodically we grow and we bring on some new heads. People who have interest, we’d love to hear from them. They can go to our website bbc.co.uk, and we’ve got a place for them to search for careers. We’ve got opportunities in marketing. We’ve got opportunities and consumer experience, you know, finance, lots of operational impact, lots of opportunities. So we always are looking for for the best and the brightest. And we love to believe that we have a great place to give them to grow and develop. But same thing with businesses. You know, one of the things we want to do is we want to we want to expand our footprint. We believe the more businesses that we can get accredited, the more we can help consumers have opportunities to find trustworthy businesses. And at the same time, we can give businesses access to consumers. You know, we often find that the consumers that come to our site are what we could call trustworthy consumers. You know, there are people that act ethically and responsibly, and they don’t try to take advantage of the system and they don’t try to play businesses. So we could use a lot of everything. We could always use more accredited businesses to expand that footprint and give more consumers opportunities. You know, Metro Atlanta is obviously one of our hotbeds, but we deal a lot in banks and Monroe County with Athens. We go up north into Dahlonega and 4Syte County, and we want to continue to expand that footprint out there.

Brian Catania: [00:18:54] A lot of our more rural partners in northeast and northwest Georgia, where we don’t have quite the impression or quite the footprint, and we need to be better about that. So certainly businesses in those areas, we would love to have them and community partnerships, you know, we want to we want to develop partnerships with with a lot more, you know, Atlanta and North Georgia businesses. We recently secured a really wonderful opportunity with Mercedes Benz Stadium and the Atlanta Falcons. We’re going to host our annual meeting of accredited businesses at the new stadium. And if you’ve never been there, what a remarkable experience. I mean, it is such a cool place. Rich McKay, the CEO and president of the Atlanta Falcons, has been cool enough to say that he’ll do our keynote, but it’s relationships like that. The more relationships we can build like that, the more we can expand our footprint and the more that we can give back to our businesses. Again, I mentioned a lot of our businesses are small businesses. They rely on BBB for marketing. So the bigger impression we can make in North Georgia, the more impact that’s going to have on those small businesses who are accredited with us. So lots and lots of opportunities for businesses, consumers, the community at large to engage with us and for us to engage with them so that we can really give back to all those that trident of engagement.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:17] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, where should they go?

Brian Catania: [00:20:21] Bwbwbwbwb, Dawg. That’s the best place we geolocation. So depending on where you where you come to us from, we’ll put you in touch with your closest BBB. So folks in North Atlantic, North Georgia, when they go to Billboard, they’ll be immediately geolocated to their BBB, which is probably going to be the better business bureau serving Metro Atlanta, Athens and Northeast Georgia. That’s always the best way for them to get in touch with us, and from there they can find lots of contact information if they want to report a dispute, if they want to seek accreditation, if they want to get a quote from a local business, they can do all that. They can learn more about our Student of Integrity program that recognizes high school seniors for their their leadership opportunities and their ethical actions and behaviors. They can learn so much on Lee that again, that’s always the first ingestion point is Göteborg spend a minute or two seeing all the things that BBB does. We like to say we’re not your grandfather’s BBB. There is so much more to us than than there was 50 years ago. And I hope people get the opportunity to take the time to go out there and see that and figure out who and what we are.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:32] Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for doing what you do and sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brian Catania: [00:21:39] Thank you, Lee, and I appreciate you having me on your program is wonderful. I love the fact that even something as simple as your open where you talk about how most businesses are, are good businesses at nature, at such a wonderful sentiment. And I love to hear guys like you that have a real positive influence being able to promote the goodness between businesses and consumers. So thank you for everything you’re doing. And again, thank you for having us on to spend a couple of minutes talking about Better Business Bureau.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:06] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll sale next time on that land that business radio.

Rohit Sinha With SmartPM Technologies

October 7, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Rohit Sinha With SmartPM Technologies

00:00 /

Rohit Sinha, chief technology officer of SmartPM Technologies, leads a team in developing new technology that is transforming the construction industry. Since the SmartPM software as a service (SaaS) product was launched in mid-2019, the Atlanta startup has seen rapid growth, from $0 to over $1.5 million in annual revenue.

Rohit wrote code at age 9 “for fun,” and started a business where he built desktop and web applications for clients at age 12. By age 25, Rohit was managing the delivery and architecture of a $20 million project for one of the world’s largest fund managers.

He went on to develop the architecture of enterprise solutions for multiple organizations, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and founded several technology and software consulting companies.

Rohit holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and computer science from Georgia Tech.

Follow SmartPM Technologies on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

About SmartPM Technologies
Technology for the construction industry
How SmartPM Technologies is making a difference in the industry (both in commercial construction and insurance)
Some key partnerships of SmartPM in the construction and insurance industry
Involvement of SmartPM in Atlanta’s Tech industry

About Our Sponsor

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one, but before we get started supporting to recognize our sponsor on pay without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Land of Business Radio, we have Rohit’s Senhor with smart PM Technologies Welcome.

Rohit Sinha: [00:00:44] Hey, how are you doing today?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] I am doing great, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about smart technologies. How are you serving, folks?

Rohit Sinha: [00:00:51] Yeah, so smart cam technologies. We were founded in 2016. We are a construction project, controls and analytics platform. We analyzed the construction project schedule to really get all of the different stakeholders on the same page and really understanding the data. It’s a fairly large and complex dataset that confuses most people, and we we demystify and give you clarity into what your data is telling you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] So what’s an example of some of the insights that your software helps them kind of glean?

Rohit Sinha: [00:01:28] Yeah. So on a large construction project, you could have thousands and thousands of different activities. So we help you understand how you perform. Right? So at a certain point in time, how much of the project should you have completed and what are some of the risks associated with it? In terms of, do you have a lot more work piling up than you had originally planned for and helping you make sure that you have the resources in mind to really understand that? And then also, if the schedule has changed many, many times throughout the process of the project, we’ll help you understand what are those changes and evaluate the criticality of those changes, whether they were actually impacting what’s driving the completion of the job or not.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] Now, is it telling me stuff after the fact where I’m kind of doing like an autopsy of my project to see where the problems were? Or is it helping me in real time to kind of manage some of the delays that are happening all through the construction industry, you know, regarding supply chain or employee talent and things like that.

Rohit Sinha: [00:02:36] So it can actually do both, right? I mean, you can always ask for the fact load in all your schedules and really get an understanding of how your project went. But our goal is to get you to to really do it more real time where as your project is progressing, you’re updating smart PAM with your latest progress information and it’s telling you how you’re progressing. The whole idea is to get get ahead of the claim, right? So you don’t get into that situation where you’re so far delayed that you have to go through a claims situation. You can avoid that and actually everybody get on the same page and work together. So everybody is successful.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:17] Now. Is it was it built because of the challenges that are happening now or the challenges that are happening now, kind of just a perfect storm for you to help in this regard?

Rohit Sinha: [00:03:32] Yeah, so it’s very unfortunate what’s happening now, but the fact is we were built before before the current situation and the construction industry has been facing delays forever, right? I mean, there have been studies done where seven out of 10 or nine out of 10 commercial construction projects end up overbudget or over time. And so this is actually a systemic problem that existed long before our current situation and current environment, and we were really built to help address those issues.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:09] So now is it helping the person that’s managing the project kind of reprioritize things as they get kind of new information?

Rohit Sinha: [00:04:21] I’m sure it can be used for that. There’s a lot of different uses of smart. You can use it to get a better understanding of how you are progressing. You can get a better understanding of if you are delayed. What are some of the different techniques you can use to to recover some time? Like, for example, you can use the product to test out if we were to get a certain crew in six days a week instead of five watts. What impact is going to is that going to have to my overall job? You can also use it to track to an individual milestone or a phase of the project. For example, if you’ve got multiple buildings and you really would need to get one building done, you can isolate everything in the schedule that’s driving to that completion of that building and say, OK, what are some of the things I can do to optimize here? Right? We are going to be venturing into more A.I. and looking at some of your past projects, as well as automating a lot of the potential recovery situations, evaluating them for some ideal and making some propositions. But today the system enables you to test out some different theories you have.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:37] And I would imagine that this is elevated to a must have in today’s environment, especially because it sounds like in construction especially, it’s like three dimensional chess. And then if one thing has an issue, it has a domino effect for like five other things. And then everything is kind of at a standstill until you kind of overcome that whatever obstacle is. So having all this data and really the ability to analyze it and and make kind of. Better decisions, I would imagine that the industry is hungry for this kind of information.

Rohit Sinha: [00:06:15] Oh, yeah, for sure, and and the domino effect is interesting way to look at it, because that is what should happen. Right? And if you have a high enough quality schedule, you’ll understand that that’s going to happen. Looking at the schedule and as the delay is mounting right, you’ll see an activity pushing out because it’s not progressing as planned and then you’ll see the rest of that activities automatically get pushed out. Now, in a lot of cases, what happens is the quality is missing. Some some of that key information to tie those different subsequent activities together, and things will just not get impacted in the way that they should. And those delays would then cause some other side effects where some, if somebody is managing just by looking at the schedule, they won’t realize that a certain crew isn’t ready to be on site yet. And those delays could could cause other impacts. But one of the other things that our product does is it evaluates your schedule for quality and helps you determine whether it’s structurally a good schedule to manage the job. If there are some structural issues, then you could run into issues that aren’t even necessarily visible in the schedule, but could have easily, easily been prevented with the high quality schedule.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:37] Now, when you’re implementing something like this, is there a pushback from the folks that are the boots on the ground? Because this is another thing I have to input data on, this is now another thing that I have to that’s take me away from, you know, my superpower and the thing I should be doing every day.

Rohit Sinha: [00:07:54] Yeah. So part of the the beauty of what we’ve done is we actually consume your native schedule. So part of the construction contract is some form of schedule CPM schedule that has to be built and maintained and CPM critical pass method. And so what we’re trying to do is not require the boots on the ground to create or maintain another system right there using their existing schedule. And we’re just taking that data and processing it through the system. Now there are some downsides to that. It’s monthly snapshots or in some cases, some of our customers are doing weekly snapshots, which the more granular the data, the better. But we will do based on the data that we get right and we’ll still give you fairly accurate results. And you can always go into smart cam and correct the data so you can get more accurate analytics. But we want to be as hands off and as. Low input as needed, right, so that’s why we want to consume those existing files that you already have.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:07] Now, can you share any examples of how somebody implemented smart PM and they were able to save some money or speed up the project?

Rohit Sinha: [00:09:18] Yeah, so we have a customer of ours. They were looking at actually hiring somebody and building out a full project controls team to really oversee their jobs. They felt like they were struggling in this department. They decided to give it a try, and in the end, their existing staff was actually able to to manage these jobs better. And this was a general contractor as well. We also have some consultant customers that are looking at expanding their business without hiring additional people because the analysis that before would take them days or weeks or months, especially with a very skilled individual that’s now taking them minutes. So they’re actually looking at taking their existing staff and scaling up with them just by making them themselves more efficient. So we have. No. Consultants that are able to do more more work for more clients, we have general contractors who are more efficient at finding jobs and learning more about their their jobs, and a lot of these guys are actually rolling it out across all of their projects. Once they’re saying really the insights and information that they’re getting out

Lee Kantor: [00:10:41] Now, is it better suited? I mean, it seems obviously suited, obviously for commercial construction. But within commercial construction, is it better suited for a certain type of construction or is it kind of industry agnostic when it comes to how it’s deployed in this specific situation?

Rohit Sinha: [00:11:02] Oh, so we have all sorts of different projects. You’re typically in commercial construction, if you have a small project like a tenant set out or something like that, you’re not really going to find a whole lot of use for smart p.m. just because they tend to be smaller weeks or months long project. But really, any larger scale 10 20 million dollar plus job you can use smart for. We have multifamily, we’ve got office buildings, infrastructure, which is roadways and airports, some bus terminals. So we’ve got a fairly large variety of projects in our industrial and chemical plants and things like that. So it’s used across the board on many, many with many different types of projects.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:50] But typically the driver is the commercial construction that firm or the insurance company that is working with it or both and both.

Rohit Sinha: [00:12:02] We have a lot of we have some new partnerships with insurance companies. A couple of them, XXL and Hudson Insurance are the two main ones that we’re working with, where they’re actually pushing their customers to use their introduce, giving us the introduction in some cases, even helping them with a trial of smart pen. Just because the risk is these risks a little bit right? The projects that they’re insuring have a higher chance of being on time and on budget with smart versus without. And then, of course, there’s the commercial construction. Both the general contractors as well as the owners that want to do a better job of managing their jobs are overseeing the job that they’re paying. So really, all stakeholders have purchased a new start.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:59] Now was it strategic to build this here in Atlanta because of all the development and the kind of the infrastructure when it comes to technology? Or that was a happy accident?

Rohit Sinha: [00:13:13] And I would say it’s a happy accident, right? Both the CEO and myself, we both went to Georgia Tech. We both decided to stay back in Atlanta after college and we love it. So it just so happened that we we met and we started working on this idea together. And we have.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:35] Now, how has the has since you’re from Georgia detected, were you involved with ATC? Was this something that you were able to kind of leverage the infrastructure that’s kind of there for you at Georgia Tech?

Rohit Sinha: [00:13:49] Yeah, so we are a company. We also have been through. Mike and Rich, the co-founders, did go through Flash Point, which is a Georgia Tech accelerator. So and as I mentioned, we are a part of a PDC. We do participate with some of their different events and have leaned on them for a lot of their relationships, and they’re always there for us if we have a question. It’s good and we try to help out and give back as much as we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] Now how do you see nationally the Atlanta tech reputation when it comes to construction technology?

Rohit Sinha: [00:14:39] I’m. Atlanta has a has a very diverse talent. People are migrating here from all over. It’s got a low cost of living relatively. And it’s got good colleges and good engineers available. So I definitely see more companies coming into Atlanta and founding in Atlanta, especially as a lot of the startup community grows. And I think construction technology is going to be a big part of it. I remember a couple of years ago I went to a CRT tech meetup and there were a lot more people there than I expected. And a lot of people were focused on some really, really neat things, especially using cameras and different types of beacons to really get a better understanding of the progress of the project, as well as things such as how full are my parking lots and what to do with the parking lot. Once self-driving cars become more of a reality. So I definitely do see a fairly or a fast growing talent pool in Atlanta and the construction technology industry, commercial technology and construction technology as an overall is growing very, very rapidly.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:01] Now what do you need more of? Can we help you any more clients? You need more talent, need more funding. What is it? You need to grow?

Rohit Sinha: [00:16:09] Um, all of the above. Actually, we we definitely need more talent. We’ve been very. Rapidly hiring, we’ve grown significantly this year, but we still still need more, more talent. We’re looking for engineers. We’re looking for a customer success marketing. So really all across the board, we’ve been looking for candidates. We’re always looking for more customers. We’ve last year, we tripled our customer or tripled our revenue and two and a half times our customer base and looking to continue that momentum and keep growing this year and doing well. And yeah, in regards to funding, we we do have around that we’re going through right now. We haven’t formalized it yet, but we are going to be continuing to raise to grow faster.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:04] Well, congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on your team or learn more about the offering, what is the website?

Rohit Sinha: [00:17:13] You can go to, you can visit with us, visit us at WW Smart Contact. We can always give us a call at four four two three two nine three thousand. And if you’d like to reach out to them personally, you can always find them.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:29] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Rohit Sinha: [00:17:34] Thank you. Have a good time to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:35] All right, this Lee Kantor will scale next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Communication Advisor Madeline Schwarz

October 7, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Coach The Coach

Communication Advisor Madeline Schwarz

00:00 /

Madeline Schwarz is a Strategic Communication Advisor who helps quiet leaders speak up in a world of loud talkers and helps corporate teams articulate their vision in clear, concise messaging. Madeline has worked with clients at organizations such as Etsy, Mastercard, The Jewish Museum, Tommy Hilfiger and JP Morgan.

When she’s not coaching or facilitating workshops, you can find her playing legos with her 7-year old, community organizing, and creating playful ways to make communication more fun.

Learn more at Madeline Schwarz Coaching and download Get Clear on Your Message: 4 Easy Steps to Prep for Any Presentation even when you only have 5 minutes.

Connect with Madeline on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Madeline Schwarz with Madeleine Schwartz coaching. Welcome. How are things going over there in the in your empire, your coaching empire, you’re building to help people communicate more strategically.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:00:54] It’s great I have found that even more people want help communicating during a pandemic.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Now what’s your back story? How did you get involved in kind of this passion of yours around communication?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:01:09] Well, my back story is that I have been telling stories in different mediums for my entire career. I started my career in book publishing where I ran the publicity department of a design book publisher, and I placed authors and books on NPR and in the New York Times and other major media. And from there, I made a career change and I moved into display design, where I design window displays and retail environments for big brands like Armani Exchange, Coach Diesel, Nike and Adidas. And our team was responsible for the first contact with customers and our work determine whether people came into the store. And that’s where I really learned how important it is to be able to get a message across in seconds. And what I also saw is that so many creative people are great at one part of their jobs, their amazing creative problem solvers, but they often struggle to get their ideas across, and that was the downfall of so many projects that I worked on. So when I decided to start a business, that’s the problem that I really wanted to solve.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:28] So now are there some low hanging fruit that folks can do a better job at being a more effective communicator?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:02:34] Absolutely. Just practicing presentations out loud, like doing one run through. If you only have time to do one and going through it, taking the time to save the words out loud and find the words before you walk into that meeting, instead of just flipping through your your deck and saying it in your head can make so much difference in how comfortable and confident you come across in that presentation.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:04] Now is your work kind of focused in certain industries, or is this kind of industry agnostic?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:03:11] I work with people across industries, so on an individual level, I help people get their message across clearly and concisely, whether they are giving a presentation, speaking at a conference or introducing themselves to a room full of strangers. And then on the team side, I really work with teams to help them balance out communication so that they’re not just hearing from the same five people over and over again and missing out on the other ideas that the the team brings to the table when you really hear from everyone.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:48] Now are there are some symptoms for people who are leading teams that maybe they’re just not aware of it. They might think that, Hey, I invited everybody to the room here. So I’ve done my part. I can check that box. I’m being inclusive and I’m including people. But while the discussions going on, like you said, there might only be a handful of people who are actually contributing and other people are just sitting silently. Are there some symptoms for that leader to kind of wake them up a little and say, Hey, you, you think you might be including everybody, but you might be missing some people?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:04:19] Yeah. So there are a few things that it’s so important for leaders to think about. One is how they are running meetings. What are their facilitation skills like? Because often they might throw out a question or pose a problem and say, let’s brainstorm. And while that seems like an innocent enough activity, the way brainstorming is traditionally done in most corporate environments is not an inclusive activity at all, because not everyone is able to process ideas and come up with solutions at the same speed. And so that’s one of those scenarios where you often hear from the same people over and over again and you miss out on the rest of the ideas. And I think it’s so important to remember that 30 to 50 percent of the population are introverts and and people are always astounded. Leaders are often astounded when I share that stat. And so when you think about that, you you need to make sure that you are engaging those people and providing time for those people to also contribute their ideas in a brainstorm. And so some really simple things that you can do is instead of just throwing out a question and everyone or not everyone, the loudest people start throwing up the answers instead pose a question or a problem. Give everyone a minute or two to write down their ideas and then start asking for for group feedback. And the other thing for leaders, too, that’s so important, especially if they are on the more loquacious side, is to really tap into their own listening skills so often people might throw out. A question, but they’re not wait for the answer. And and so listening and being comfortable with silence and allowing time for the team to come up with the answer is another really important skill for leaders.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:23] So I’m hearing you say that listening is really an important component of communicating.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:06:29] Yeah, it’s 50 percent of communication, but I think we treat it like the forgotten stepchild.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:36] So now when you say listening, is it just kind of listening with your ears or is it also listening with your eyes to kind of glean cues from body language? You know, there how focused they are there, you know, line of focus, they’re leaning like, there’s they’re listening. It encompasses more than just hearing, right?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:06:56] It definitely encompasses more than just hearing. And I like to think of it as listening with all of your senses. So you don’t want to just listen for the words coming out of people’s mouths you want to watch for all of the visual cues that you were talking about and all of the things that they are saying or not saying between the lines.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] Now in your work, do people you mentioned introverts and extroverts do introverts kind of. Are they self-aware enough to say, Hey, you know, I need some help in this area? Or are they just saying, Oh, well, I’m introvert, this is just my lot in life.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:07:33] So it’s a little bit of both. I do often work with introverts, and when we start our work together, they are often very self-critical and think they are at a disadvantage because they are introverts and that if only they were an extrovert, it would be easier to more effectively communicate their ideas. And one of the things that I do is help them see that it’s just the opposite that introverts have so many powerful skills and can really use their superior listening skills as a competitive advantage in communication. And so I think it’s so important to help people lean into the strengths that they already have instead of trying to emulate a different personality or style.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:21] Now do extroverts ever come to you and say, Hey, you know, I don’t think I’m connecting well with the introverts? Do you have any suggestions?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:08:30] Yes, definitely. So I have one client who I’m thinking of, and while she came to me wanting to work on her presentation skills, one of the other things that we have worked on is her facilitation skills and how to make more space in meetings for other people who might not be as inclined to raise their hand and immediately jump in. And again, this is where. Just making subtle tweaks in your in the way that you’re running, meetings can make a huge difference. So one of the tips that I shared with her and I shared with all of my clients is establishing some community guidelines in meetings can make a huge difference, and one that I really like is one to three and meet. So after you throw out an idea, you need to wait for three more people to speak and and share their ideas before you jump in again. And that’s just a great, really simple way to monitor yourself and give everyone else on the team a way to monitor each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:47] Now, do you find that some folks feel like, look, I got a lot of good ideas here, and how can I help this team if I don’t share all my great ideas? So in their head, they’re kind of I don’t know if they’re rationalizing it, but in their head, this makes sense to keep sharing because they got a lot of good ideas.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:10:08] Yes. And that’s where it’s so important for people to pay attention, not only to what they’re saying, but what are they listening to? Because yes, they might have great ideas and they probably have ideas, but they don’t have all the ideas rather, and they’re missing out on all of the great ideas that the rest of their colleagues or teammates or clients have if they don’t listen for them. And I think that comes down to humility to to and courage to be willing to consider that you might not have all the ideas or you might not have the best ideas and that together you and the other people in the room can come up with even better ideas.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:02] Now we’re talking a lot about speaking and presenting. How does this come into play when it comes to maybe networking and especially we’re in this kind of hybrid world where networking isn’t always face to face like it used to be, but maybe it’s on a group Zoom call, like how does an introvert kind of navigate the waters of networking?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:11:25] Yeah. Well, what’s been interesting during the pandemic and I did a survey in the spring was that just about 50 percent of the people who I talked to in this survey, where I surveyed dozens of introverted professionals, about 50 percent have been taking advantage of being on Zoom that they prefer that that they find it more comfortable to be able to network from the comfort of their home. And then the other 50 percent are finding it more challenging or avoiding it like the plague because they think it’s more difficult to be on video and to not have the benefit of body language and being able to. Read the people in a physical room, so I actually designed a five part framework for introverted and anxious networkers called comms. So five really essential skills that can transform your experience and those are curiosity asking questions, listening mindset and stories. And the reason it starts with curiosity is when you approach networking with genuine curiosity about other people as opposed to trying to sell them something. It really allows you to connect on a more personal human level. And when you strategically use curiosity to pique interest, it can also make the whole process easier. And so I, for instance, a number of years ago dropped the New York City all black, all the time dress code and started wearing really colorful prints to networking events.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:13:15] And that might seem counterintuitive. As an introvert, wear something that’s so obviously makes you stand out. But what it does is it invites people to talk to you. And so the first time I did that, I discovered I no longer had to walk up to strangers and start conversations because the conversations came to me. And that’s just one way that you can use curiosity to really make the process of networking easier. And then. You also use it to ask questions, so introverts might get nervous about talking about themselves and be hesitant to quote unquote brag about their accomplishments. But if they use their curiosity to ask better questions at an event again, this is a way to spark conversations and use the process and really connect with other people. And that leads into listening, which I think of as an introvert superpower. But all of those skills really wouldn’t work without mindset. And so I like in mindset to moving the furniture in your brain. So if you’ve ever moved the furniture in your living room, only you can have all of the same pieces. But if you just move the couch, everything looks different. Your entire perspective changes, and that’s what is different about networking and all areas of communication when you change your perspective and how you’re approaching it.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:50] And then when you’re working with folks, there is the usual point of entry that they have a presentation or something big is happening, and they need some help to kind of make sure they get it right. Is that usually how people engage with you for the first time?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:15:06] Yeah, that is often one point of entry. And then another point of entry is leaders who are meeting teams for the first time, who they’ve been promoted to leading a larger team. And either they have self-identified or their managers have identified that communication skills are an area that they need to grow in order to be more confident and be more effective in their roles of leading other people and being able to inspire a team and get them on board to lead a new direction.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:47] Now, do you find that communication is one of those skills where people just take it for granted that they have, you know, pretty decent communication skills, but when you really hold them accountable to it, they really are lacking some some things where a coach could take their communication style and even kind of the trajectory of their career to a new level if they can really level up in this area.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:16:10] Absolutely, because I think what often happens is people get promoted into positions of. Leadership and managing other people, but they don’t necessarily get any training in order to do that. And that if they have reached a certain level in their career, there’s often an assumption that they are also good at certain skills and that’s not the case at all. And so, for instance, like I was brought in to work with this nonprofit research firm and I was working with their team of data scientists. And so the entire team, they all have PhDs, they’re constantly presenting at conferences and speaking on panels. But their ability level was really uneven and some of the people were struggling to. Get their message across clearly and to answer questions without rambling. And so what I did was design a series of workshops to help them tighten up their messaging. Prepare for panels more effectively and use storytelling as a way to make the data come alive. And as a result, it reduced stress and anxiety on the team because everyone had a game plan to prepare for their presentations. It allowed them to use storytelling to really connect the dots between the the research that they were doing on an individual level, the research that the firm was doing on a collective level and how it impacted the end user. And the other amazing thing about facilitated learning is that those discussions that we had in that room allowed them to learn from each other and learn from how their colleagues had handled real life scenarios when they were on panels or moderating panels, and how to navigate those tricky situations that they too might come up against.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:18] Now, when you’re working with folks in this coaching manner, is this something that once they learn a few key tactics or strategies or mindset elements that then they’re kind of good to go for? I mean, I would imagine and once you learn this, then you’ve learned it forever. This is a skill that you’re going to be able to have, you know, forever. It’s not something that requires, Oh, now here’s a new communication skill. So is it like you come in and help kind of triage whatever that challenge is and then you’re available, obviously down the road, but you’re there. Kind of good to go for a while, I would think.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:18:53] Mm hmm. Yeah. So when I work with people, there are really three key areas that I addressed and that is the messaging helping people get crystal clear on their messaging and why it matters to the audience. The second thing we work on is delivery how to make their content and their material engaging to the audience and really how to create an experience for the audience. And then the third thing which is equally important is the mindset and how communication really is a mindset and how you are thinking about communication determines how you give presentations. It determines how you navigate difficult conversations, how you negotiate and how you lead. And those three things together really skyrocket confidence and build people’s professional and leadership presence.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:55] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, get on your calendar. What is the website?

Madeline Schwarz: [00:20:00] Yes. So they can find me at Madeline Schwartz coaching, and they can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And my last name has no teeth. So it is spelled C h w a R Z, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:20:16] That’s Emma de Belin IESE pH WRC coaching.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:20:23] Yes. And if they sign up for my newsletter on my website, I will send them a really, really nifty tool, which is four steps to help you prepare for any presentation, even when you only have five minutes.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:39] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Madeline Schwarz: [00:20:44] Thanks, Lee. It was great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:46] All right, this is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.