Decision Vision Podcast Series
Decision Vision is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the Decision Vision podcast. The Decision Vision library of episodes can be found here. Decision Vision is produced and broadcast by Business RadioX®.
Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company
Michael Blake is Host of the Decision Vision podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. Mike is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.
He has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Brady Ware & Company
Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.
Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/
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Show Transcript:
Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service, accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.
Michael Blake: [00:00:23] Hi. So, if you’re listening to this program, you’re wondering about this Decision Vision Podcast. My name is Mike Blake, and I’m the first and current host of this podcast that is sponsored by Brady Ware & Company. We are a full-service CPA firm that’s headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. And we also have offices in Columbus, Ohio, Richmond, Indiana, and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where I call home.
Michael Blake: [00:00:48] And I want to share with you a little bit about the genesis of this podcast. We have a great team behind this podcast. I’m the one behind the mic, but we have people that do a lot of work to to put this together to help organize it. And I’m just, for now, just sort of the front talent. But when you set out to do a podcast, you either kind of have this one of two perspectives. One, you just want to get on the air and talk about stuff. And that’s fine. There’s no reason not to do that if that’s your thing, but that’s not necessarily a great use of business time and resources. So, the second reason to do a podcast is you’re trying to bring something to the table, into the market that you think is a little bit different, that you’re contributing a new voice to what is already becoming a crowd marketplace of voices on the internet for content.
Michael Blake: [00:01:40] And why should you listen to this podcast as opposed to some other podcast? Well, I think you listen to this podcast if you’re interested about the thinking of business. There are plenty of podcasts out there that will give advice, and they will tell you that you should do X, or you should do Y. And maybe that advice applies to you, maybe it doesn’t. Probably most of the people who are giving you the advice have the expertise in order to do so, but you don’t really know. This podcast, I think, is different. And that we’re not telling you what you should do, but we’re trying to equip you with the tools you can think about how to do that yourself because, ultimately, that’s what adds the most value.
Michael Blake: [00:02:25] So, if you’re the kind of person that thinks that you’re a thoughtful person about business, that original thought, and that being a thinker about your business is a source of a competitive advantage, then we think you’re really going to like this podcast. And it’s only going to get better over time as we find our footing, and find out the formula that works, and we get more guests, and generate content, but you’re going to learn something.
Michael Blake: [00:02:51] And we hope you’re going to learn something in a way that is not just informative but, also, at least, a little bit entertained. We’re not positioning this as a morning drive-through show or morning drive-time show. But still, if you want people to eat the broccoli, it’s helpful to put some sauce on it.
Michael Blake: [00:03:09] So, why am I the host of this podcast? Well, in one respect, I’m the host of this podcast the same way that I’ve been a little league baseball coach: my qualifications, and I’m willing to do it. I have podcasted in the past. I hosted a podcast called the Startup Lounge Podcast, and we got to about 25,000 listeners.
Michael Blake: [00:03:28] And the thing I really enjoyed about that was the impact that we made in doing that. I’ve had a lot of people, even years after we stopped doing the podcast, stopped me and thanked me for the content we put out there, and that the guests that we put out, and the expertise that we had. They really appreciated it. So, this is a great opportunity for me to, again, get back on the a chair, and give back to the community, and provide some of the great advice, not that I have in my head, but people that that we know in the community have in their heads, and bring the general smarts that Brady Ware brings to the table. And with any luck, whatever we do, whatever we talk about will empower you to make that decision for yourselves.
Michael Blake: [00:04:15] But if you feel like you need a little bit of extra help, that you need some analysis, we’d love it if you contacted us. Yes, we’re an accounting firm, but we’re business people, and we help business people to be successful every day. We help them get out of tough spots. We help them add a zero to their net worth or, sometimes, two zeros to their net worth, and help them and their families be be successful. And the fact that the firm is willing to support this exercise tells you that we’re very interested in helping the success of the community. And this is just simply one more outlet to do that.
Michael Blake: [00:04:54] In terms of my own background, although I worked for a CPA firm and I’m a CPA, I know very little about accounting, only what I needed in order to pass my exams in business school. I’m a business appraiser. And I come to that world having been in venture capital and investment banking for the first half of my career. And so, I’ve been out there doing deals, helping people make millions of dollars, and trying to help them not lose millions of dollars. So, kind of high stakes transactions.
Michael Blake: [00:05:25] So, on the shows I host, I’m naturally going to look through things, look at things through a financial lens and a strategic lens because a lot of our practice and the evaluation practices is seen at strategic lens, but we may very well have other hosts over time that are going to host this program, and they’re going to look at things from a different perspective. And that’s a good thing because there’s rarely one single right answer, there’s rarely one single way to approach thinking about a business problem. And the more perspectives that we can make available to you, the listener, we think the more that you’re going to benefit.
Michael Blake: [00:06:02] So, we hope you’ll listen to as many of these episodes as possible. We hope you’ll like them. If there’s things that we can do better, please contact us. We’re not hard to find. And thanks for putting us on your iPhone, thanks for putting us on your Android device, and thanks for listening to us through whatever your preferred podcasting platform is. Thank you.
