Jon Reid With Tier1 Management Consulting Group

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by Kennesaw State University’s Executive MBA program, the accelerated degree program for working professionals looking to advance their career and enhance their leadership skills. And now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: 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, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Land of Business radio, we have John Reid, who is the managing member with Tier1 Management Consulting Group. Welcome.

Jon Reid: Thank you. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am excited to learn what you’re up to. For folks who aren’t aware of tier one, can you share a little bit about mission purpose? How you serving folks?

Jon Reid: Yeah, so I actually started tier one a while ago to do two things. So think of a silo and you have your small business that’s two silos, one producing one stream of income. The other silo producing another stream. So the first stream is project management business services, helping small businesses and midsize businesses with their processes. If they want to scale, to grow their processes, that they have to change. So one side of my business is mostly project management related state, local, federal government. The other side of the business is more real estate development, teaching people how to be real estate entrepreneurs, how to develop communities, how to build, how to fix and flip, how to, you know, enhance your communities that you live in by real estate investing. Invest. So I have two different silos within the same business model, if that makes sense.

Lee Kantor: Sure. And when you’re working with your clients, do you share with them this strategy? Because in some ways, a lot of businesses focus on one thing and try to be, you know, kind of lean on their superpower. But it sounds like you have two superpowers.

Jon Reid: And I actually keep them separately. So I call myself an alchemist. And, you know, some people say, well, what does the alchemist do? Right? But typically, an alchemist is someone who transforms things for the better. So when I’m talking to corporations or state and local federal governments, my focus is to transform their processes into something better. So I keep all that separate. If I’m doing real estate development, that’s to a different market, a different industry, a different group of ears and eyes. So I have, you know, how we always talk about having an entity, but then having a DBA. So I have two distinct models, but I keep them separate. But I have the knowledge, though, to manage the two because at the end of the day, it’s all about how do you manage projects, right? Be it corporations, federal, state and local government, or real estate development? That’s why that’s how I look at it.

Lee Kantor: All right. So if you want to start with the project management side, let’s talk a little bit about how you’re serving that the group of people interested in that. Who is the ideal client. You mentioned business owners but you also mentioned government. So do you help business owners work with the government or do you help the government with their projects or both?

Jon Reid: Um, it’s sort of both. So I’ll give you a perfect example. With state, local and federal governments, I come in and I help them develop their like a strategic plan. So say they want to do a strategic plan to improve a specific process, say accounts payable or accounts receivable or, you know, auditing. So we, my team and I, we come in, we assess where they’re at currently, and then we make suggestions as to how they can actually be more effective. And that could be using Lean Six Sigma processes or project management processes. But at the end of the day, it is for them to be better process oriented and more efficient. So I do that with state, local and federal government. For small businesses, it’s a little bit different because sometimes small businesses are looking to get government contracts or they’re looking to grow their small business. So we help them in terms of, hey, this is what your foundation should look like. This is the things that you need to do in terms of marketing, legal, accounting. So we help a lot of small businesses in that aspect of it. And then one industry I did not mention to you at the beginning was, um, universities and institutions of higher learning. We help a lot of institutions develop a one year or a five year strategic plan to either increase Retention increase. Recruitment. Increased. Graduation rates. Uh, you know, based on other successful universities. So in that, um, aspect in terms of I call that the private sector, which is, uh, you know, small businesses, companies, universities and institutions, and the public sector is, of course, state, federal and local government. Does that make.

Lee Kantor: Sense? Sure. Now let’s talk a little bit about small business. That’s what a lot of our listeners are, small business owners. Um, is there some advice you can share or some do’s and don’ts when it comes to helping a small business grow? Like what are I would imagine at the core, you’re a believer in process and systems and that that’s instrumental for success. And if you could share some advice or some tips when it comes to building out the right systems and processes to help a small business grow.

Jon Reid: Yeah. So so the number one thing is what access to capital, right. All small businesses have that, that that dynamic. Right? That’s the conundrum. How do we access capital if we’re a small and growing, if we’re a startup or we’re a mid-sized corporation and we need working capital? So number one is access to capital. So when I talk to small businesses, we try to set the foundation up first. Do you have a simple accounting program involved? Do you have, uh, legal, uh, people on your team? Do you have marketing and business development people that can help you out? So number one key is to make sure that the foundation is firm and set first. A lot of people go into trying to get access to capital to grow their business, but they haven’t set the foundation up. Accounting software systems, uh, marketing, business development. And then with the advent of social media, there’s a software that can point push blasts out for you. 3:00 in the morning are all your social media platforms, right? Which is really huge. Like, I’m more seasoned now, and I realize the importance of social media. So one of the advice that, uh, the advice that I typically give people is make sure the foundation is set up first. Your back office stuff before you then go get access to capital. And then if you get access to capital, make sure that your business plan is up to snuff. If your business plan is not up to snuff and you can tell how old I am, right? I’m saying up to snuff. But if your business plan is not, um, doesn’t make any sense. It’s going to be harder for you then to convince someone to loan you money. And so I try to teach individuals that small businesses to make sure that back office and foundations and processes are set up. Now when you go to get access to capital, you have it, but then you need to manage that access to capital appropriately so that now you can grow your business.

Lee Kantor: Now how do you help in the project management side of things like getting the right foundation? That’s important, but how to make sure that not only, uh, once you agree to whatever that process is, to make sure that it’s happening like it’s supposed to. And and there’s some accountability and there’s some compliance. How do you help in that regard?

Jon Reid: So one of the things I do as a PMP project management professional is now you’ve got access to capital and you’re in the day to day operations. Are your operations actually doing what they’re supposed to be doing, like are as you as the entrepreneur or the management team, are you spending more of your time in the weeds just trying to make it happen, or are you or do you have the processes set up so, you know, number one, is it. Let me put together just a quick project plan to the task. And who’s responsible. Here we are. We have this this money. We have a couple of clients. How do we manage that effectively. What tasks do we do individually? How do we ensure that we’re not spinning our wheels ineffectively to actually send the girl to business? Because we may be doing the steps that we need to do to maintain the business. Right. But you’re not actually growing and and the the exit plan for any business is to grow that business such that you could then sell it. Um, get rid of it and then move to another, um, idea that you may want to do, or another business that you may want to do. So we help in terms of setting up the project plan, identifying the task and the resources that you may need to grow, and then ensuring on a monthly, semiannually basis that, hey, let’s we address this and see if we’re hitting our mark and our KPIs, key performance indicators. If we’re meeting our key performance indicators after six months, okay, we’re doing things right. If not, then they may need to, you know, talk to a consultant, someone like me that can say like, listen, here’s your processes. This is what you said you were going to do. But your current your current state says you’re doing this now.

Lee Kantor: Is there a mistake you see over and over when you’re working with teams when it comes to this type of project management? Like, you know, we set a goal and we’re not hitting the goal Is the mistake usually something predictable or is it something? Every time it could be a different thing.

Jon Reid: It just depends. So, you know, you have to go in and do like a. They’re not forensic audits but like an audit. Like if the, if the manager owner managing member principle is doing a lot of the work itself, that means that he doesn’t have time to actually go out and then get more business. He doesn’t have time or she doesn’t have time to do business development. And you need business development to grow your business. So you have to evaluate, okay, well, who’s doing what, where and when. Right. So it’s almost like an audit. So if I find, for instance, say it’s me myself and I’m the it’s my small business or I’m the CEO of a midsize business, but I’m doing finance, marketing, legal, human resources and everything. I’m not actually growing my business because I need to go out and shake some hands and talk to some individuals and grow the business. That means that you need to depend on the individuals who are on your team, right to do the things that they’re supposed to do and tasks to do, right? So I always tell people, you have a you you have a square, you have a square of people in your in that you work with, but everybody’s not in your circle.

Jon Reid: So that means you have to be evaluate the people in your circle. Are we doing what we’re supposed to do to grow this business? And that’s across small businesses, medium sized businesses and even large corporations. I used to be the CFO at one of GE’s and GE, GE capital’s businesses years ago when I was younger, and what we always used to do was like, let’s set a project plan, let’s identify tasks, let’s see where we are, let’s evaluate how we can then grow and spin off and make our jobs a lot more easier. You’re familiar with Jack Welch, right? One of the greatest leaders of any of the corporations, uh, in the country, he used to always employ people he said was smarter than he was. And I thought that was that was that was huge. Just getting out of college. I’m listening to Jack Welch. I’m in GE’s financial management program, and he said that he’s not the smartest guy on the team, but he hired the right people that can help the business grow.

Lee Kantor: And that takes a level of confidence and humility to be able to pull that off.

Jon Reid: Correct. Exactly right. Now you have to depend on your team.

Lee Kantor: Now let’s talk a little bit about the real estate side of your business. Um, what are you working on now? Is there some development going on that you’re working on?

Jon Reid: Yeah. And I’ll give you a quick story on that one. So when I used to work for GE, like I said, GE capital, they moved me down to Alpharetta area to help run their data center, a big IT financial data center. Um, and I met a guy individual who was like, Jonathan, you need another source of income besides your corporate job. And I’m like, no, no, no, I’m good, I’m good. I’m I’m you know, me and my family are good. He’s like, listen, if you want to invest and then grow wealth for your family. Real estate is where you do it. So he you know, he showed me how to start investing in real estate. Fast forward, we started doing free seminars and teaching individuals. How do you invest in real estate effectively so you don’t lose your shirt? Because a lot of us investors at the time, we were doing real estate, but we were losing to at the same time. But it’s a learning experience. So we started teaching people how to do real estate effectively and we did it for free. We we taught this for free. So I started doing a lot of just fix and flips is what they call it, right? You go in, you help a community out by identifying eyesores, buying the eyesore, fixing the eyesore up and then providing an opportunity for a family to buy that, that, that particular house. So I started doing that on the, you know, on the side. And then I got to realize, wait, hold on. I’m teaching people how to do this. I’m doing this on the side.

Jon Reid: Why can’t we then expand this to more effectively create development opportunities in underdeveloped areas. So then I started doing new construction projects. And so now I’ve got a series of new construction projects I do, and also still some fix and flips. I call them where you just buy and renovate and sell. Um, so I’m actually then, uh, helping areas grow by developing them more effectively for the communities. So I have, uh, a couple of projects in Stone Mountain Brookhaven, um, a couple of new constructions that I’m about to do in the West End area of Atlanta, but all for the goal of creating value for the community. Right. And so and I still mentor individuals who still want to get involved and dip their toe into the real estate market, but they just don’t know how to do it. So I still mentor people in that aspect of it as well. And then on our larger end, there are individuals who want to do commercial development. There’s a group, for instance, uh, I’m talking to in North Carolina. They want to develop a 18 home community for, uh, underprivileged and underserved communities. They have eight acres of land to build on, but they need to do a feasibility study. So once again, I utilize my financial background with GE to create a feasibility study to see and determine whether they should embark on this process or not. So should you build 18 homes? Should you build nine homes? Should you build an apartment complex? So I helped the commercial side out in terms of doing feasibility studies, if you will.

Lee Kantor: Now, are you still bullish about the Atlanta or metro Atlanta real estate market, even with the high interest rates? Well, you.

Jon Reid: Know, oddly, the interest rates are actually coming down. Um, and that was a big bane of our existence over this last year, because when the interest rates go up, your pool of buyers go down. And just to be truthful and transparent, a lot of the homes that I had for sale, I hadn’t reduced the prices on them to now get to ensure that the people who are buying them can actually afford to buy them. So. But if you looked at recently, the fed has now cut the rates a little bit. So it’s more reasonable for buyers. So it’s still it’s not a seller’s market anymore. It’s a buyer’s market. So there is opportunity. But you have to concentrate on your location and the price point of what you’re entering into. So and then as you know, we’re coming into a new political environment in which is unsure right now. So right now there’s just some uncertainty over the next six months about what’s going to happen. In my opinion. The good thing is that the feds have reduced the rates. So for buyers, they’re still programs out there for down payment assistance, which is good, has to be in the right price point. So, um, it’s just like with anything if there’s always an opportunity, but you just have to educate yourself on what that opportunity is. It’s going to be in flux in the next six months. But I’m glad to see that the interest rates are going down for the buyers.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Jon Reid: Well, I think what I, what I do and what I’m not good at is more business development. Uh, I talk about helping people to get out of the weeds, but because I have these two silos, I’m more involved in it than than what I can, what I should be. But, you know, I have enough. I have some team members that have got me utilizing more technology, uh, project management technology, like Monday.com. Small business owners can look at that too, or slack for communicating with your team members instead of just traditional email. Um, and so, so utilizing technology and then getting our name out as to how we can help small businesses, medium sized businesses, large businesses grow, I think is the impetus for me like to put the the right foot in front of the left foot, if you will.

Lee Kantor: So what is the pain that this small, medium sized businesses are having now where tier one is the solution?

Jon Reid: So so like I said that I call myself the Alchemist. There’s a lot of people call me that because we actually transform things for the better. Um, we had a contract with the Library of Congress, and we introduced a new software program for them to stop doing things manually and, uh, and, uh, inundated and redundant processes. So a large government agency. Right. We actually help them by helping them transform by utilizing software effectively small businesses. We help them get access to capital. Medium sized businesses. We look at their processes and we say, listen, your goal is to grow. How do you scale effectively so that you can take on the growth? Right. So you may be doing things the same way you have done for the last two years. But now because you’re in a growth mode as a medium sized business, you want to make sure that your processes are in place, that you can now grow effectively without all the pain. So that’s how tier one actually helps companies in terms of all those different industries, um, better enhance themselves for, for the, for the better.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Jon Reid: So my website is actually is www.tr t e r the number one mgmt dot net. My email is uh, I’ll say it and I’ll spell it. John at tier one management.com which is j o n at t I e r the number one mgmt dot net.

Lee Kantor: Well John thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jon Reid: I appreciate you too, for taking advantage of, you know, talking to small businesses and helping them grow.

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