Search Results for: kids care

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia. Brought to you by B’s Charitable Pursuits and resources. We put the fun in fund raising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Pruitt.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] Good fabulous Friday. It’s another fabulous Friday morning. Even though it’s a little rainy outside. We do need the rain and it’s finally getting cold out there. Christmas is just around the corner. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving. We were off last week for Black Friday because the building wasn’t open and I couldn’t get in, so there’s no point having a show. So we again, we mentioned we got three fabulous guests. If this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia, this is all about positive things happening in the community. And normally I start with ladies first, but the two ladies I have asked me to start with a gentleman first. So William Thomas from Golf2Grow, welcome this morning.

William Thomas: [00:01:16] Thank you for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:17] It’s probably unusual for you to get to go first, huh?

William Thomas: [00:01:20] It usually is always me first, though. Honestly.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:22] Oh, it’s all about you, right?

William Thomas: [00:01:23] No, it’s just people want to see me mess up first. There you go.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:26] There you go. Well, you and I have met and talked, and we have a lot in common. We’re both Buckeye fans and. Yes, sir, unfortunately, we didn’t beat Michigan again. But that’s okay, right? You know, we still maybe have an outside shot. So we both have a passion and heart for helping others. So if you don’t mind, share a little bit about your background and we’ll talk about golf to grow.

William Thomas: [00:01:46] Absolutely. So I’ll just start first with my wife just because that’s the major part of my life. My wife and I have been married 22 years. We got married as teenagers. We have literally grown up together. We don’t know life as adults apart from each other. We have four awesome children, a 21 year old or soon to be 21 and 18 year old, a 14 year old and a 13 year old. Our three oldest are girls. Our baby is a boy. He is spoiled rotten and we enjoy traveling. That is probably a big major portion of our life is traveling. We believe in culturing our kids, getting them to understand and experience other backgrounds and lifestyles and and cultures. So we love to travel, especially with our kids, and we enjoy the game of golf as we’ll talk more about. I’m sure that’s at least I do my wife. Likes it from a distance.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:37] Well, you’re also a veteran. You’ve served in the Navy. Correct? Yes, sir. I do thank you for your service. So what did you do in the Navy? What was your.

William Thomas: [00:02:44] My my title and my rating was a sonar tech. But after two years, I was injured and spent the last two and a half years on limited duty in a legal service office, which really helped me transition out the military very well, made some great connections, got into finance and that really, to be honest, started my my career and where I’m at now, I believe.

Brian Pruett: [00:03:04] So we I already know a little bit about this, but you were sharing with Kimberly a little bit, but you were you are from Ohio, but your wife’s from here. So tell us how you got from Ohio to here.

William Thomas: [00:03:14] So my mom got remarried to a gentleman here in Georgia, and I, kicking and screaming, moved to Georgia. I was a big deal in Ohio. I hate to sound pompous, but I was fairly good at athletics. So, you know, I had some clout in Ohio. So coming to Georgia was not fun to me. And to be honest, I had never experienced life in the South. I’d never experienced some of the dynamics that culturally that maybe the South had, especially when I came here. So that was a huge shock for me. But to be honest, Cherokee County is a fantastic county. If you have somewhere to raise a family to, to worship, to play, to start a business, to be involved in the community, Cherokee County is absolutely the place I would not want to be in any other county, to be honest.

Brian Pruett: [00:04:02] There’s a few other counties that have portions of the county. There’s like Cherokee County, but I’ve never met anybody who lives in all parts of Cherokee County who talks about the whole county that way. So, um, all right. So. We’ll get into your business in just a second. But tell me why you just have this heart for helping organizations in the community.

William Thomas: [00:04:23] All right, well, I think it just comes to part of it is I. And maybe this is a bit personal, but at at 17, I became homeless. And it was a challenge for me to graduate high school, not because of grades or lack of effort. It was a lack of an ability to have a place to shower and get to school. And there were people that really, really stuck their necks on the line for me, including my school counselor. That allowed me to live with her the final six months of my senior year so that I could graduate. So I have a just a real heart for taking those who are overlooked, those that have needs that, especially in most cases if you just had a dollar, would make a difference. And in our community, that happens to be a lot of nonprofits that are serving our community, that are underserved, that where there’s needs that need to be met. So I just have, you know, a selfish passion because I know what it feels like to be didn’t do anything wrong, nothing that you had a choice on. You just find yourself in a situation that life is giving you. And if there’s some resources, if there’s some education, if there’s somebody that comes alongside of you, there’s a difference that can be made. So just because I personally experienced some some things, I just want to be able to help the next individual that is going through that. And I understand that I don’t have 30, 40, 50, 60 years of inroads in those services, but there’s organizations that have personally been affected by it that care about that, that if I can just help partner with them, to help them raise money, then they can take their passion and go with it.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:00] Well, you said it was selfish, but I don’t think it’s selfish because that’s why everybody in this room, I think, does what they do. There’s a reason everybody’s involved in the community because of part of their story. I mean, I haven’t shared my story yet on this show. Eventually I will, but I went through some stuff. Three of them were were life things that I shouldn’t be sitting here, but the community was with me and for me. And that’s why I do what I do for the community. So you also are kind of like me. And even though I don’t like golf tournaments doing them, but you like doing them. But you were sharing with Kimberly before we got on the air. You don’t go after the big boys as far as the big bucks and stuff like that. It’s more the smaller community and I’m the same way now. You raised probably a little bit more money than I do, but I average about $1,000 a month. And some of the events that I do, and whether it’s $1,000, $10,000 or $12,000, every dollar imaginable for a profit is goes a long way. I remember the first time when I started this January doing the trivia that I do. The first non profit is footprints on the heart, and they deal with people who maybe families who’ve lost babies. And when I handed her a $1,000 check, I wanted to be more just because of what she does. Right? And she told me she goes, if you hand me a $20 check, it wouldn’t have mattered. And then she said, but you just bought me five caskets for the year, right? It’s amazing when you get to hear that. So share golf to grow what you guys do, and then you’ve got an exciting thing that you just are getting ready to. That’s happening as well. Yes, sir.

William Thomas: [00:07:25] So Golf to grow really started by accident. As I said I like to golf. I don’t use the word love because I love my wife and I like my kids a lot, but I like, like like golf. And I’m kidding. I love my kids, but I like golf. But we were getting ready to head out of town, and I just wanted to have a little get together with some friends. So I asked them, hey, would you guys want to get a foursome together? Let’s go play some golf. A couple minutes later, some of the guys in the same circles texted me and said, hey, we’d like to play too. Can you book another foursome? A few minutes later, I started getting Paypals and venmo’s and and money coming to me saying, hey, book us a foursome too. Well, within a few minutes we’ve got a huge following or gathering of people wanting to play golf. So I said, hey, if we’re going to go out there in this big group, let’s raise some money and give it away. It’s just just, you know, let’s have some competitions, raise some money, give it away. And we were able to raise a substantial amount of money in about two and a half weeks. So my wife said, why don’t you do this for a living? And I said, well, who’s going to pay me to put on golf? Tournaments like that just seems so superficial.

William Thomas: [00:08:32] You know, no one’s going to do that. So we really we actually it’s funny because we’re going to Chicago this weekend. But last year we went to Chicago and we literally had our napkin presentation of the pros and cons of why this business model may work, who we would target, what our compensation would be if we took any. So we sat down and we said, well, there’s there’s a need in our community for non-profits to raise money. And during Covid, which we saw, charitable giving decreased, not because people are bad people because they didn’t have the resources, the extra money, but what they did not stop doing was playing golf. Like the golf courses were still always booked. So I’m like, and my wife was like, if people need to raise money and they’re still going to golf, even if they don’t have extra. Money, they will not cut that expense out. Let’s use the community who one plays golf to small businesses that still need consumers to come in in their in their offices and their stores and their warehouses to benefit these nonprofits. So we really put together a pitch to a couple of nonprofits thinking, you know, we do 2 or 3 this year, and, you know, we kind of see if this is going to work. And within a week and a half, two weeks, I mean, it was can we do it? Can we do it? Can we do it? Can we do it? It’s a no brainer, no brainer, no brainer.

William Thomas: [00:09:42] Can we get on for next year? Can we pay you already now for next year? Can we get on your schedule? Can we get on the waiting list? And it again, it started by accident, but we’ve had this last year we did seven golf tournaments. We had almost 400 golfers attend those seven tournaments. We raised over $58,000. We had 136 sponsors, which like, that’s freaking huge. I mean, excuse my language, but that’s freaking huge. And it’s exciting to know that we get to turn over a check to our nonprofits. There was a comment made by one of the executive directors, and he said to us, and his whole goal was, and I’m not going to share who the nonprofit is, but most of their money comes from Medicaid, so their needs are met. But what they don’t have is their wants. They don’t have updated equipment that their the people they serve need to have. They don’t have the ability to give their staff a two day vacation in Helen, Georgia, so they don’t get burnt out. You can’t promote that. You can’t tell people that, hey, I want to raise money so I can send my staff on a vacation because unfortunately, people get in their feelings about that and they say, well, you’re wasting the money. Well, they need it.

William Thomas: [00:10:46] They have to get a break. They have to get some time off because that stuff gets overwhelming, especially when it’s emotional or physical and things like that. So we’re able to write them a check and get them a check from these sponsors so that he can give his staff a vacation, something he couldn’t promote. But that is much needed to me. That’s that’s daggone cool. That’s awesome. So that is is kind of how Golf day grows started and where it’s at. And what we’ve realized is that there’s an opportunity here in Georgia to really do more than that. Right now, having seven tournaments a year is primarily because of the weather. When it gets hot, no one wants to play golf like in a tournament because it’s a six hour event. Nobody wants to be there. And when it’s cold, no one wants to be out there. So we’re limited to about seven clients a year. That is the maximum that we can do. So we started looking how can we do something year round? And that’s where the Golf to Grow indoor golf experience came out. So as you’ve probably seen on social media, we have leased the space. We’ve got a 4000 square foot building. We are putting simulators in there. We have started our build out, got the architectural designs in and the goal is to be live by February, but that will allow us to take advantage of like days like today, where regular people who just want to play golf but don’t want to walk in the rain or it’s cold or it’s super hot or they don’t have 4.5 hours can come and play, practice, learn.

William Thomas: [00:12:04] But then also we can have year round tournaments. We’ll have four simulator bays in there, so we can be able to bring on on board more nonprofits because we have multiple months we can add to our schedule that right now we just can’t. So we are it’s exciting that we’re in a community where obviously there’s nine there’s nine golf courses in Cherokee County, so obviously that makes sense as far as the business side of things, but that so many people just want to be a part of of meeting a need. And to be honest, when you take a nonprofit and you say, hey, can you help this nonprofit? A lot of people think, well, if I give $100 or I spend an hour volunteering, it doesn’t mean much. So they just don’t do it. But if they get to play golf and know that part of their money goes to that. There, they’re like, oh, I’ll absolutely do it. So it allows people in the community who want to serve, who want to be a part, but who feel like their dollars don’t go far to still want to be involved. And from the sponsor side of things, those businesses in I mean, I’m a I’m a marketing guy, you know, financial guy from just background.

William Thomas: [00:13:06] But for a business to want to sponsor a golf tournament, it makes sense for them. They know that 70 to 90 middle class consumers of products are going to be there, and they can put their service in front of those consumers. So from the the standpoint of the sponsor or the business, it makes perfect sense for them that we don’t have a problem getting sponsors because they understand the return on their investment. They do 500, they do 1000. They have 70 people who make 60, 80, 100 grand a year. Their spouses make 30, 40, 50, 60, 80 grand a year. They have 2.2 kids. They have a house. They have, you know, they need new fences, they need Hvac, they need a roof. They need to get plumbing done. So those businesses want to be in front of those type of people. And unfortunately, other than the nonprofit giving a pat on the back or a thank you, they really can’t give anything back. But when they do a golf tournament, there’s something that that that business can get back. So we found a business niche where the community benefits the services that that need to be provided from the nonprofits, those nonprofits benefit. And then also the golfers get to be a part of that. So it’s just it’s been fun. It’s been awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:08] Well, you talked about your indoor facility, but you also said something you already on a two year waiting list. That’s pretty amazing.

William Thomas: [00:14:14] Yeah, it is pretty cool.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:16] So I shared with us earlier, I don’t know that you guys know this or have listened to my back shows, but Teresa, being from Bartow County, you probably need to know this. I don’t know how many there are in Cherokee County, but there’s 840 nonprofits just in Bartow County. That’s and Bartow County is twice the size or less two size smaller than Cherokee, which is insane. So, um, so I want to go back to your sponsors for a second. So I know some people have said to me with my events, hey, if you become a nonprofit and you’re a nonprofit helping a nonprofit, you find more people giving money because it’s more of a tax write off, it’s the same. It is. And I don’t think people really understand that. Yeah. You know, you’re but it’s. Uh, you get more, I think, by doing something like this for the marketing aspect of the branding aspect than just the tax write off. Would you agree?

William Thomas: [00:15:04] I totally agree. You get I mean, it’s it’s just you get I mean, for me it’s about feels more than the dollars. Like I like the feeling of doing it again. I think it’s kind of selfish, but but like I heard somebody ask me or had somebody asked me years ago, do you give your wife flowers because you like the feeling of her getting the flowers and knowing she liked it, or the fact that she likes flowers and to be honest, give her flowers because I know it makes me feel good, because she feels good that she got flowers. And that’s kind of selfish. But that’s why I do it. Like I like knowing I’m the conduit and that gives me jacked up feelings. So I’m excited about it more than I’m actually doing it for them, doing it for me because of the way it feels. So I think that energy comes through. So when we talk to businesses, when we talk to sponsors, and I don’t have a problem hearing the word no, and I’ll keep asking beyond the first no and the second and the third no. That’s why I’ve been married 22 years, too, because I keep asking. But, you know, I believe in it. I believe in what I’m doing wholeheartedly. So I’m not pitching or selling or convincing or coercing. I’m really believing in what I’m doing. And I think that these businesses, when I, when I’m engaging them, you know, obviously they’re generally good individuals anyway. But but I think they see that through me and through what we’re doing.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:19] Well, you keep saying that it’s selfish, but I like to just tell you that it’s not selfish because you said it makes you feel good, but you’re helping somebody else, even if you’re just handing your flowers, you know, flowers. Wife. Flowers to your wife. I’ll get it out in a second. One of those can’t see past my eye thing, because there are other selfish people out there who do stuff just for them, right? And while you’re doing it for yourself, it’s a different reason. So I just want to say it’s not so. Thank you. That’s very commendable. All right. Um, so let me ask you this. I’ve seen some pictures of you at the Canton Business Club. You do some networking and stuff. Well, there’s another thing we talk about down here is the power of networking. Do you have a positive testimony you can share about networking?

William Thomas: [00:17:00] Certainly. So I’ve BJ Mccranie is a good buddy of mine that he and his wife have become really great friends of ours, and that has nothing to do with business. It’s I got to meet great people, and I have people that are in my circle that I can count on, that I can call upon. I wish I could say there was some business that came out of it. And I mean, I guess there has been maybe I mean, he’s done some sponsoring, some small sponsorships there, but but it’s just a good friend and and to me, man, this. So I don’t want to keep talking too much. But I grew up without my dad, so I got really attracted to male leadership. And like, I don’t cry very often, but if men cry, I cry. And if and if men disappoint me, I get broken. I’ve had some mentors in my life, some leaders in my life that have really disappointed me because I’ve always been looking for male leadership, and I latch on to male leadership. And when they when they disappoint me, it literally breaks my heart. So I look for strong men, strong leaders, and people that I can I can have relationships with and and to me, that’s been the best thing that’s come out of networking is I’ve got some people that I’ve added to my foxhole that if something were to happen to my wife or to my kids, or if I needed something, I had a flat tire or whatever. I mean, just simple stuff that that I know they’d be there. And so that that I wish, I wish I could say, oh, some great business. I don’t really there’s.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:39] All things about networking because I think people have the wrong mentality when it comes to networking. Right? I was one of those first people when I first networked. I was the hungry sales guy. Here’s my card, here’s my card, here’s my card. Let me sell you. Let me sell you. And that’s not it. It’s about getting another person establishing that relationship. And it’s all about them, not you. I’ve got a good buddy who became a good friend of mine from networking, like you’re talking about, named Kevin Harris, and he has a nonprofit, all in, all Out. He listens every week. So I pick on him because he’s the one that I got started about crying. So you talked about men crying when he. So I made him cry four times in one night. So if you’re around him, you’ll probably cry. You’re welcome. Kevin. Yeah. Um, so let me ask you this. You started a business, obviously. Golf to grow. First of all, it’s kind of obviously in the name, but I’ll just tell me why you chose that name.

William Thomas: [00:19:29] Well, I’m big on Alliterations, so I like the double G’s. I mean, I’m just. Our kid’s names are Madison, Mackenzie, Macy, and then my son’s name is an upside down M. It’s William. So we we I’m very big on that. Their middle middle names are joy and grace. I mean, it’s just it’s I’m weird. I like patterns. So it just made sense. And I wanted something to connect it that was different than letters. So I, you know, golf to grow it. Just maybe if we would have thought it maybe differently, there may have been a different name because people ask us, well, do you guys do kids lessons and stuff? And we’re like, it’s coming, but it’s not there yet, because right now we just host golf tournaments. You know, that’s our primary model now. But that it just it was the alliteration and I wanted to separate the words with the number. So it just made golf to grow was was it. There you.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:19] Go. Awesome. So you mentioned obviously you’re already on a wait list for two years, right? Is it just Cherokee County that you’re, that you will serve people or you work with anybody outside of Cherokee County? That’s a.

William Thomas: [00:20:30] Good question. So we do have one that we’ve hosted this past year that was in Fulton County, and that will do again next year. They’re already in the books for next year. And that the primary reason we do that did that is the individual who’s on the board is a mentor of mine that I’ve known for 20 plus years, and I have a heart for what he’s doing in his community. And when he asked me, I couldn’t say no. If it would have been anybody else, I would have definitely said no. I don’t want to drive to Roswell. I don’t want to go that far. And again, there’s so much need in our 434mi² and Jackie County, like, there’s so much need here. So I’d much rather be in Cherokee County and and you know, I guess to be logistically sound. I have connections here too. And it’s, you know, it’s easier for me to engage businesses where I’m actually here and I’m actually engaged and I have some kind of, hey, I’ve used your services or I’ve been there, I’ve passed by or I’ve seen your sign. Da da da da. If I go out to to Fulton County, I don’t have that same that same impact. And, you know, I’m just a regular little guy. Fulton County is maybe above my pay grade. You know, it’s nothing bad about the people there at all, of course, but it’s just it’s above my pay grade, you know? Cherokee County, more of my people.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:49] Right? But if somebody wants to talk to you, you’d probably talk to them.

William Thomas: [00:21:52] To the chagrin of my wife. Yes. Because I’m like, I’ll help you. I can do it. I’ll fit you in the schedule. My wife’s like, no more William next year, you know, or the year after, you know.

Brian Pruett: [00:22:02] So. So let me, without giving away too much of the secrets or whatever, can you just give us a brief rundown of how it looks like when a nonprofit approaches you, or vice versa? Absolutely.

William Thomas: [00:22:13] So we we sit down and my first thing is, is what are your goals? What are you trying to accomplish dollar wise in the timing? What’s your what’s your your ask of the community? Do you want the dollars or do you want to be more known? Do you want golfers to see who you are and what you’re doing, or you’re just trying to to generate money? And neither one of those are bad. I mean, if you if you need money, you got to get money, of course. But if your goal is just to get the visibility out there, that’s important too. So we just find out what their goals are. We find out what their time frame is. We ask our clients we need at least a minimum of six months to get into a tournament. We are not doing it any sooner than that. So if you have a youth mission trip in March, you know next year I’m not your guy. I can’t help you. I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m just not fair to you. I’m not going to do as good a job and I’m going to start stressing and pushing, which doesn’t do anything well for your your cause. So at least six months we go through our fee structure. I am a big fan of being paid based on results. I’ve never been a really good salary guy, even in the Navy. That’s probably why I didn’t stay. Excuse me is I don’t I don’t like getting paid just for my time because I only have so much time. So I’d much rather get paid on my efforts.

William Thomas: [00:23:28] And that’s how our company is compensated. We get paid based on the results we provide. We don’t charge them billable hours. We don’t ask for a $5,000 retainer. We say, hey, if we raise X, y, z dollars, here’s the percentage we ask to get paid so that we only get paid when we produce the results. It doesn’t stick the nonprofit in a hole. They don’t have the money to pay me a $5,000 retainer. I can make $5,000. They just can’t pay me that up front. I need to get paid as the results come in, as they’re getting checks, as they’re getting their compensation from their various sponsors and golfers and things like that. And then we really look at their warm market and who they knew, who they serve and who has served them. If you know, and I tell people, you know, if if my barber was unwilling to give me something to donate to a golf tournament, I’d find a new barber. If I’m going to support you and patronize your business, I’m not asking you to give me a thousand, because you may not have it, but you can give me a gift basket with a free haircut and some lotion and some, you know, some skin cream. You know, if my wife goes to the salon and they’re unwilling to donate something, we’re going to find a different salon. And that may seem. Seem harsh, but. And I tell my clients that if you have people that have done your lawn for the last six years at your place of business or your place of your nonprofit, and they’re unwilling to support you in your golf tournament, you need to find a different maintenance system or maintenance care provider.

William Thomas: [00:24:44] And sometimes that’s kind of a bit harsh, but if you patronize someone’s business, they ought to patronize you back. So we go through and we’ll sit down with our clients and say, hey, who on your board has a business? Let’s try to get them involved. Who do they use for the services that they provide at their home and their place of business, their place of worship at church or whatever it may be. So we generate 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 names of potential contacts that they’re already close to that like them, care about them, love them, have supported them, have given them money before in the past, and then I engage them and say, hey, look, this is what it looks like to be a sponsor in a golf tournament. These are the pros and cons. These are the perks. This is the kind of return on your investment by being involved in front of 70 to 90 middle class consumers and being around, you know, 15 to 25 other businesses that are sponsoring. So you have the opportunity to network and engage as well. So so we really articulate that clearly to our clients. And then we tell them, let us do the work, we’ll do the work. We we will, we’ll ask you permission. If we get a sponsor that comes in, we’ll ask, you know, there’s some nonprofits that say, you know what Bacardi rum Company here in in Woodstock, Georgia, they want to give $1,000.

William Thomas: [00:25:54] But my nonprofit is a church and they don’t want that to be their sponsor. Okay. Let me ask you, do you want this sponsor? No, we don’t want to. We don’t want that local CBD store. Uh, we’re a sports organization or a sports nonprofit. We just can’t be. We can’t have that. But then there’s other ones that are like, I don’t really care. It’s money. We’ll take it, you know? So. But we just go through and tell them what we anticipate, and then we tell them to kind of sit back, wait till tournament day, and then we’ll ask you for volunteers and then we’ll give you a big check. You know, you’ll get gotten checks throughout the month as they’re coming in, but we’ll present a big check. We’ll ask you your reviews, we’ll ask for your thoughts, and then we’ll really do a debrief. About two weeks after, we’ll submit the solicitation report to the state, because I’m licensed by the state to solicit money for nonprofits. It’s a, unfortunately, a nefarious industry of people taking money from nonprofits. I’m licensed to do it. So it’s our company, and then we just see if they want to do it again next year and or if we want to do it again next year. You know, sometimes there’s pulling teeth that happens. Like, I need your list. I can’t call anybody. I can’t reach out to a business if you don’t give me a list. So, you know, we’ll we’ll determine if we want to engage them again. But every one of our tenants have been awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:03] So do you have opportunity for people in the community that maybe. Can support you by volunteering at the tournaments. Is that available?

William Thomas: [00:27:12] We have a ton of people that show up. We have usually 7 to 10 volunteers every week. Some of them are consistent. Some have come twice or 2 or 3 times. So yes, we have and need that. And it’s you know they get they get they get a free lunch. They get to meet some people. They get to hang out on a nice day on a golf course, driving around a golf cart. So there’s worse things that could be done, you know, on a on a tournament day. So. But yes, we we love volunteers.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:40] Awesome. Let me ask you this because I’m sure there are some people that listen to this show that are thinking about wanting to be their own boss and starting a business. What advice can you share for that?

William Thomas: [00:27:50] So I played spades a lot. Spades is my game and I have there’s a saying if you’re going to be a monkey, be a gorilla. Um, and I have a pretty hairy, big audacious belief in myself. I believe I can do any and everything. There’s nothing I can’t do. I mean, I really believe that that I put my mind to or otherwise I won’t do it. Like, the reason I’m not good at pickleball is because I won’t play it. But the reason I’m good at running our business or leading our business and leading my household and being a father and being a husband is because I, I’m I believe I can do it and I’m going to get it done. So I would say the first advice is just believe that you can do it. Whatever your goal is, whatever your idea is, there is somebody and several somebodies that could use that. That vision could use that service could use that, that product. So go, go do it. And then to move everything behind it. I’ve leveraged my dollars, I’ve leveraged my energy. I’ve got my wife on board like I’ve hooked her on it. So, you know, you just can’t kind of tippy toe into it either.

William Thomas: [00:29:04] You’ve got to to get behind it. And then lastly I’ll say tell everybody I, you know, beyond the, the, you know, the tax write off of it. I tell everybody everywhere so I can write off what I’m doing. I mean, that just makes sense. You know, if, if I’m traveling, hey, guess what? I run golf tournaments right off. This food is good. You like golf right off, you know that? That makes sense to do it that way. But but I’m telling everybody, one, because you’re accountable to them. Like I’m accountable to what I said I was going to do now. Like I can’t go back on this. I can’t go hide somewhere. I’ve told everybody, this is what I’m going to get done. So it holds you accountable and and you get people that are cheerleaders you and champion you, you know, that will say, you can do it, you can make it. You’ve come so far. And to be honest, sometimes when the money’s not coming in and everything’s going wrong, those are the things that get you through is you can do it. So yeah, those are those are the three, three pieces of advice I would say awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:01] How do you get the word out other than your networking and your social media and your website? Or how do ways do people how do people find you? I mean, is there do you guys do any marketing for your business?

William Thomas: [00:30:09] So my title is the Director of marketing. I’m not good at it. I really I mean, I we have some stuff on social media, we have some ads that we run, we do some stuff on Google and YouTube, but it’s really been grassroots. It is really being been me engaging initially, some some nonprofits, those nonprofits sharing what we were doing and then those nonprofits contacting me. We have a good problem, which is as I don’t have to market as much anymore, which is kind of weird to say that in just over a year in business, but we just. We just haven’t had to, which is kind of cool.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:47] Well, you’re a niche because there’s a lot of people and a lot of golf tournaments are popular and nobody likes doing them. Now somebody likes doing them and there you go.

William Thomas: [00:30:57] I like it a lot. Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:59] Um. All right. So can you share where your indoor space is going to be?

William Thomas: [00:31:02] Yes, it is in Town Lake behind the Chipotle. So there’s right by Korean barbecue, the K-pop Johnny’s pizza. It’s right there on the corner. It is the largest space in there. Again, it’s 4020ft². As I said earlier, we’ll have four indoor simulator bays. They’re each about 340ft². They’ll have a inside the simulator. There is a cameras in there that automatically records your swing. It shows you instant replay on what your club path club face was looking like. When you hit the ball and made contact. It gives you stats. It allows you to really be able to track all the things that you’re doing. There’s an app that comes with it inside the space. There’s also a bar top, a seven foot bar top that’ll be there. There’ll be TV in there so you can watch and hang out and have some fun. Also inside the space is about a 300 square foot putting green with five holes so you’ll be able to practice. It’ll be a little undulated, so there’ll be some some actual real feel. Putting will have a large lounge members area where there’s 86 inch TV fireplace. It’s going to be really, really cool. Really good space to be and have fun. As far as the food that will have there, we thought about having, excuse me, a restaurant in there, but then we’d be competing against our community, so why not just use the community that’s already there? There’s eight restaurants between Johnny’s and K-pop and My Place and Soho Bagel and Azumi and Papa John’s and. And what’s the what’s the cupcake? Delicious. Or whatever it is down there. So small cakes. So there’s so many restaurants that are already in the plaza that excuse me, we want to just use those businesses. So excuse me. So we’ll be able to, to utilize those, those organizations, those companies, those businesses to, to provide the food. So it’ll be an awesome space.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:43] Awesome. All right. So real quick share how people can get Ahold of you in case they want to talk to you about your services, even though they may be a couple years down the road. All right.

William Thomas: [00:32:51] So I’m really old school. You can call me (770) 883-8493. But for those who aren’t old school like me, you can certainly go to our website, WWW dot golf2grow.com or Golf2Grow indoor.com. Or you can email us at William at golf2grow.com. But I prefer the phone call. I don’t I will respond to an email. It just may take a minute. So you call me, I’ll answer.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:17] So and that’s the number two, right? Not the word spelled out. That’s correct.

William Thomas: [00:33:20] The number two. Thank you. Golf. The number 2 grow g r o w. I’ve had people spell it like they’re from Louisiana. I’m like, what? That this is not this is not a, you know, Tammany Parish. Yes. There you.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:33] Go. There you go. William, thanks for coming and sharing a little bit. Don’t go anywhere. We’re not done with you yet, but we’re moving out to Ms Kimberly Jerguson. Kimberly

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:33:40] Hi. How are you?

Brian Pruett: [00:33:41] Good. Welcome. Welcome this morning.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:33:43] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:44] You realize you’ve known me since, like, 2008, right?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:33:47] I know it’s been a while. Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:48] It’s crazy. Yeah. So you’re here on behalf of Wildlife Action? Yes, but you do a lot of this other stuff within the community. You do hair and all kinds of different stuff. So we’ll get into wildlife action and what you do for them and, and some events coming up. But if you don’t mind sharing a bit about your background.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:34:03] I was born and raised in Cherokee County, so I have a lot of strong feelings to doing things in the community here. I am kind of have my hands in a little bit of everything. I bartend, I work at Gunsmoke gun store, I do hair for weddings and events. I, you know, work for a nonprofits, not work volunteer for a nonprofit. So a little a little bit of everything.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:29] So I’ll just go in and ask this because obviously because you’re from here. But why is it so important for you to be part of the community?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:34:36] Um, I was growing up, I had some things happened as well that I needed a lot of community support with, and the community was always there for me. So it’s important for me to give back and be there for the community. And as he was saying, a selfish reason. My love language is gift giving, so I feel the same way that I’m being selfish because of how it makes me feel. But I love giving. It’s a wonderful feeling. I, you know, same at Christmas, like I’m the person that goes and buys 20 presents a person because I just love giving to people, right? And if it’s for a good cause that, you know, makes it that much stronger.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:16] Well, I think we’re all the same way when we feel like it’s selfish. But again, it’s not because it’s not like you’re doing it just because it’s going to benefit you. Financially or whatever the case is, you’re not flaunting it. You’re doing it for other folks. So again, it’s commendable. So don’t use selfish. All right. So again you do stuff with wildlife action. So if you don’t mind share a little bit about what they do and the organization. And you got some things coming up for them.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:35:40] Yes definitely. Wildlife action of Georgia. We are in Acworth in Cherokee County off of Lake Allatoona as our property. We lease property from the corps. It’s right on the lake. We have a lodge. We have a campground, hiking trails, different lodging areas, archery range, gun range, all things like that. It’s a wonderful spot for families to bring their children. If you need something you know, nice and wholesome to do, you want to be outside. It’s a great learning experience. We have a lot of homeschool opportunities there. I got involved with Wildlife Action through Gunsmoke because we would always do the gun transfers for them for their banquets, and I did that for two years, and then I always helped with the events when I was there. So they asked me to if I wanted to be on the board, and I was very grateful. So I’ve been on the board now a few years and have become the fundraising coordinator. I love planning events and the gift giving, but we are 100% grassroots feet to the ground organization and all monies raised goes 100% back into the community throughout the year. We have one main fundraiser is the banquet, and we use that money throughout the year for summer camp for kids. I use hunt, a disabled youth hunt, a turkey shoot, pumpkin carving, all things like that. So everything we do is free to the community.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:08] So I get to come to the banquet. Stone is actually on board too. So he is a it’s big for I know he loves doing that stuff and he loves being a part of that organization. So which was a great event by the way. So thank you. Um, you talked a little bit earlier before we got on the air that the even the higher ups, you know, most organizations, there’s 1 or 2 people that are employed by the by the organization. But you were sharing that this everybody’s a volunteer, even the higher ups.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:37:34] Yeah. Everybody is a volunteer, even the president. So it’s 100% volunteer. And like I said, that’s 100% of the money raised goes back into the community.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:42] Can you share how the organization got started?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:37:45] I kind of a little bit sorry. No you’re fine. Prepared for that is out of South Carolina and South Carolina. A guy started it, I believe, in 1977, and it started spreading with local chapters across different states. I believe I could be wrong, but I believe there are six chapters in the United States, and with this one being in Acworth, which we actually, just to plug, just got chapter of the year.

Brian Pruett: [00:38:12] Awesome. Congratulations.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:38:14] Very exciting for us. But he felt there was a need in the community, one at a grass roots organization that all of the money raised did want to go back. You know, he wanted to go back into the community 100%, and that’s how he started it. He was very big on wildlife and conservation and preservation of land and animals, which is basically what the foundation is based on. You know, we teach the conservation and preservation. I said, if land and animals, we teach the Second Amendment and ethical hunting. So our slogan is to put back more than you take. So we want everything that we put in the community. We want the community to put back too, you know, so that we all become better. Right.

Brian Pruett: [00:38:59] So how does it look like? How can the community get involved with you guys? I’m sure there’s obviously other than the financial aspect of donating money, how can other people get involved and help Wildlife Action of Georgia.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:39:09] So we always take volunteers really for anything we do. We we also do community service on Saturday, every Saturday. So even if you’re not mandated to do community service, but you want to do something to help, you can come out and help on the property. We always just are upgrading the property and making things look better. Then we always need volunteers for events, as you know, such as summer camp or the turkey shoot. Pumpkin carving the event coming up, we can always use volunteers so you can be involved that way or you can get a membership. The membership, I believe, is $50 a year, and that gives you access to the property all year long as much as you want. So you can come out to the lake and sit on the dock, go fishing. We have fishing poles there for everybody. We have kayaks you can use, so that’s a way you can be involved and you can get a family membership as well for your whole family. And. Really. I mean, in anything anybody wanted to help with, I mean, we were grateful since it is all volunteer.

Brian Pruett: [00:40:11] Before we get your upcoming events, because I know you want to share that. But before we get to that, with you doing everything you do in the community, do you have opportunities to network yourself? And when I asked this question, actually when Scotland was here and she shared that events are networking and they are, you know, you don’t think of like the Canton Business Club, Woodstock Business Club as your typical networking groups, but everything, event wise is networking. Do you have a positive story you can share about networking?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:40:37] Well, one positive story, I mean networking. Obviously. I know you’re from Chad and I know he’s been on the show, but had you not been at the banquet, I wouldn’t be on here today. Oh, there you go.

Brian Pruett: [00:40:50] So there you go. You can thank Stone too for that. So yeah. Awesome. All right. So share about you got upcoming some upcoming events. You got one that was actually I guess supposed to be tomorrow but you’ve moved it. But go ahead and share what that is.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:41:01] So we are having a polar bear plunge on Lake Allatoona. It’ll be December 17th at 2 p.m. it’s a Sunday, basically. I started this last year for a family friend that I went to high school with who has ALS. He was declining very, very quickly. He had just had a newborn, she got pregnant and three months later they he was diagnosed. So he was declining very quickly. And God was just pulling on my heart to do something for them. But I didn’t know what to do. I was scrolling on Facebook. I saw a polar bear plunge in south on the coast of Georgia to raise money for sea life, and I was like, well, that would be really cool to do something like that here, but where would we do it? And I was like, oh, well, we have property on the lake. There you go. That that’s how it got started. So I just, you know, hit the ground running and tried to get sponsorships, tried to get people to sign up. It’s it’s $40 to sign up and includes a t shirt. All that money raised goes to the family we ended up raising. And you were talking about dollar amounts and you were as well.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:42:11] Whether it’s a $20 check or 1000 or 12,000, we ended up raising $2,500 for them. Awesome. And it put her in tears. I mean, you know, she’s like, you don’t know how much this helps. No, it wasn’t ten grand. But for a family that’s struggling, I mean, that’s huge, you know. And then Wildlife Action also gave them some money along with it. So it turned out to be a really positive event. They asked me to plan another one this year. So this year the family we picked is her name is Savannah Bailey. She has cerebral palsy. She was born with cerebral palsy. She is wheelchair bound and she currently needs a she was. Put into a home. Her her main caregiver died. Her mother, and she got put into a home after that where she got third degree bedsores. Her aunt came in and took her in, and now they need their house handicap accessible. Like right now, their shower doors are ripped off, the floors ripped out. So just so they can get her in the shower. She also is looking to get a robotic arm so she can feed herself. So that is what we’re raising the money for this year. Well, if.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:22] There’s any contractors out there too, I’m sure if you want to donate, they’ll help you. They’ll take that to do that. So that would be amazing. For those listening who may not know what a polar bear plunge is. Tell them what it is.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:43:33] Basically, it’s freezing outside and you go and jump in the water. Yes. So the only downside of doing it in the south on the lake is we drain the lake every year. So the lake is lower so we can’t jump off the dock. So we literally just run into the lake, which makes it a little more painful. I’d say yes, but it worked out well. Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:58] Go ahead.

William Thomas: [00:43:58] So for those who are conscious about the tax deductibility of it, if they donate it, it goes through wildlife. It does. It all goes to become a tax right?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:44:09] Yes, exactly. It all goes through wildlife action. The sign up you can go to Wildlife Action georgia.com. And there’s a link at the top of the page saying 2023 Polar Bear Plunge. Everything goes through that through square. So it automatically gives you a receipt from Wildlife Action. Cool. So yes it is tax deductible.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:29] Awesome. Let me ask you this because obviously it’s you are part of founding this. But you’re you’re volunteering and you’re on the board. For those people who are listening, who have thought about, man, I want to be a part of a nonprofit. I don’t know how, but I would love to talk about volunteering or stuff. Just give some advice for somebody, because there are so many nonprofits out there and different things like that. Can you give some advice to somebody listening who might want to do something like that?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:44:55] I would say, honestly, follow your heart and do what you know gives you passion. I have a strong connection with wildlife action because of how it started, how I got involved with Gunsmoke. Obviously, I’m a big proponent of the Second Amendment, and that was one thing that was important to me and to teach gun safety to children. I think that’s overlooked quite often, and that is one thing we focus on is gun safety with kids and just the knowledge and, you know, everything about that. So that was one of the passions that drove me to wildlife action. The other was that it was grassroots, that everything stayed in the community too. So I would say my advice, my advice is find something you’re passionate about. I am very passionate about wildlife action of Georgia.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:45] Well, and you mentioned too about being strong because you believe in the Second Amendment. And I’m sure you have guns and and like I shared a few times on this, you know, like with Kevin that I mentioned all that all in ministries, I can be passionate about helping somebody outdoors or somebody with an addiction or somebody who’s lost a child. But I’ve never personally been in that down that road. So it’s not as strong as somebody who has experienced that and helping them so well.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:46:14] And I will say. Um, I mean, it’s a little personal, but having a gun has saved my life twice, which is one of the reasons I am such a big proponent of the Second Amendment right. I think it’s important. I was a single mom for 13 years and, you know, was the his protector. I felt like I needed to be able to protect myself and my child, and I did, you know, having that right.

Brian Pruett: [00:46:41] By the way, I can’t believe how big he is.

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:46:43] I know it’s crazy going to college. I feel old, I feel old, and he even volunteers too, which, you know, he volunteered at summer camp this year. So even if there’s people listening out there that want their kids to be involved in something, it’s a great organization for that as well. You know, we always can use camp counselors and like just group coordinators at summer camp. It’s a lot of fun, like we do fishing and kayaking and hiking, and we always have guest speakers and, you know, it’s swimming a lot of fun.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:15] You talked about the property being in an Acworth and people were like, well, that’s not Cherokee County. But did you know that Acworth is the one city that’s part of four different counties? Yes. That’s crazy. Yeah. All right. Share about how people can find out the website and things like that. And if people want to help with volunteering or any of the fundraising can, they can get a hold of you. And if so, how can they do that?

Kimberly Jerguson: [00:47:35] Yes. So if you want to get in touch with me specifically for the Polar Bear Plunge, I’m old school as well. You can text me at (678) 697-3349. I say texts because I’m not sure of all the random numbers, but I will answer a text right away. You can also call the organization at (770) 924-7464. That is the president’s number, and he will answer and answer any questions you might have. If you want to sign up for the Polar Bear Plunge, you just go to Wildlife Action georgia.org i.com earlier but it’s dot org. There is a banner at the top that says 2023 Polar Bear Plunge. Just click on that and it’ll take you to register through a square site. It gives you also a description of Savannah and what we’re raising money for. There will also be, as I said, you get the t shirt. We will also have like fellowship and hot chocolate after the plunge and with a silent auction as well.

Speaker5: [00:48:33] Awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:33] I think I know who doing that. Yes. Awesome. Well, Kimberly, thanks for coming on and sharing a little bit of, of your story. And then about wildlife action of Georgia and the things you got coming up. But don’t go anywhere. We’re not done before I come to you, Teresa, I wanted to ask, do you, William, do you have any more golf tournaments this year that you got going on that you need any volunteers or sponsors for?

William Thomas: [00:48:55] We are finished for the year. Okay. Our next tournament is not until March, and then we have 1st March, April and May. So certainly we’ll take sponsors for all of those. And then as you want to volunteer, you know, feel free to text, email or preferably call me.

Brian Pruett: [00:49:11] All right. Sounds good. All right. Now we’re moving over to Miss Teresa Carter from Jazzy Hearts Foundation. Teresa, thanks for being here this morning.

Teresa Carter : [00:49:18] I’m excited to be here.

Brian Pruett: [00:49:20] You are in the process of getting your 500 and 1C3 trying to work on that, but you have a very personal reason why you’re starting Jazzy Hearts Foundation. So if you don’t mind just sharing your story and I commend you because this is very fresh for you, right? So if you don’t mind and you might want to slide that over there, Kimberly. Just know. There you go. Uh, so but I just share your story and what you’re doing. And people need to understand about organ donation, which what you talk about and just a little bit. But go ahead and share your story. Well, I guess.

Teresa Carter : [00:49:52] I should start with my why. Who is Jaslyn? Carter’s her name, but everybody came to know and love her as jazzy. Um, she was born a healthy baby, so I was lucky, blessed enough to be able to have a healthy pregnancy and a normal baby for the first ten months of life, until one day she stopped breathing at school. That was the first indicator that there was something wrong. We found out a couple of days later at. She was transferred to Eggleston and we found out she had restrictive cardiomyopathy, which congenital heart disease is usually found in. One in every 100 children are born with some type of congenital heart defect or disease, which she isn’t one in the 100, but she also happens to be in the 1 in 1,000,000 with the restrictive cardiomyopathy, and was also the youngest that they had ever that they had ever a case that they had ever seen. As soon as they had told me the diagnosis. Of course, the only not necessarily a cure, but the only thing that could be done for that was a heart transplant. And so it was just a matter of keeping her alive long enough to be able to receive that heart transplant whenever the time would come. I say that she was created with great purpose as I started this organization, you know, with great purpose as carrying on her her legacy, which everything about her was just rare, I guess even the multiple times that she went into cardiac arrest, you know, it’s not most people survive from that.

Teresa Carter : [00:51:23] And she did five times survive from cardiac arrest before having that transplant thanks to CPR. And of course, you know, the hospital staff. Some of those times she was already in ICU. And, you know, already being there was a big help too. And the biggest thing, though, that really kept her alive was her having a Berlin heart put in, which was something that was normally created for a different type of cardiomyopathy than what she had. It wasn’t supposed to work for her, but it was. She was wanted to always just test the medical, her, the medical capabilities of what science can do, what her doctors can do. And they were just everybody knew and loved jazzy. And she was just like this big puzzle. They were just trying to figure out because she was just she was different. Her case wasn’t not that any any child’s congenital heart defect or disease is easy, but some a lot of them are. There are certain ways that they know have seen as successful in the past with other kids. And in her situation, there wasn’t a whole lot of options other than the transplant, and she wasn’t going to make it to the transplant.

Teresa Carter : [00:52:26] So they were willing her surgeon was willing to try something different with her, and because it worked, which we were happy, it was a very slim chance that it was going to work. Because that work, she was able to help save the lives of four other kids just at Eggleston alone. Wow. So that’s why, you know, I say that she’s created with great purpose and the medical aspect of things because, you know, it was like a ripple effect because that worked for her. It also worked with for other kids at Eggleston. That’s for other families that were able to experience the most amazing gift on earth, which is organ donation. That’s the most selfless thing that any family can do whenever they’ve lost somebody is to decide to donate, you know, their child’s organs to help save somebody else’s kid that they don’t even know. And so I guess we fast forward. She’s doing good after her transplant for a while. And. There’s a lot of routine, routine procedures and check ups and things that these kids have to go through even after a heart transplant. It’s not it’s not a cure, like a lot of people think it is. It’s just really it’s a bridge to a second chance at life to keep them going.

Teresa Carter : [00:53:34] But I think it’s 80 to 85% of these kids that have these heart transplants wind up needing a second one. The biggest leading cause of death for. Pediatric heart transplant recipients is something that’s abbreviated Cav. I think it’s cardio cardiac allograft vasculopathy. I don’t know if I’m saying that right. I’m not good with all the medical terms, which is ultimately what had. You know, sent her to heaven. But she was. She had. She had developed it so fast, faster than her doctors had ever seen happen before. It also happened so soon after transplant. It normally doesn’t happen until 10 or 15 years down the road after a transplant. This is the reason why they do these routine checkups is normally they’re able to catch. This is a disease that develops in the coronary arteries, and they’re normally able to catch it within in enough time to be able to hopefully relist the patient and hopefully be able to have that patient, you know, another heart if they can live long enough. And in her case, that just happened so fast, faster than I’ve ever seen it happen before. They just had she had her her one year checkup was only a few months before she wound up having this, this disease that came on the Cav. And her coronary arteries were perfectly healthy.

Teresa Carter : [00:54:56] So they were very shocked to see that, you know, that this was happening and that it happened so fast. And they had never heard of it before. So. Now they’re having to reevaluate how they can different ways of how they can check coronary arteries in these heart transplant recipients. And. Well, she actually got talked about at a conference in Chicago that one of her transplant doctors had went to because it had to get, you know, brought up. The issue is you can’t check the coronary arteries more than once a year because it’s an invasive procedure, as a lot of these other procedures that have to get done for these, these kids with ADHD and. So that’s the reason. That’s one of the main reasons why I started this foundation was because I wanted to be able to help to fund research for, for, you know, coronary artery disease that develops in these kids with these heart transplants. And, you know, they’re so young, they should be able to enjoy the rest of their life. And organ donation is such an important thing because it it has its own ripple effect. And when you’re saving one person’s life, well, you’ve also changed the lives of everybody that’s close to that person, because now they’ve. It’s almost like they’ve witnessed a miracle in a sense, because there’s prayers that have been answered and.

Teresa Carter : [00:56:17] I want to be able to make sure that I can. I can be able to keep that going and not have parents that think, you know, my child’s going to be okay now that they’ve had a heart transplant and just be able to give them a new sense of hope, I guess. And. Just to prevent what happened to her to happen to other kids throughout Jazz’s heart journey. Also, she she wasn’t supposed to live as long as she did, and so she was bringing together just a whole community of people that were just always praying for her and. Not even not even just saying, like praying on their own, but literally coming together in groups to make sure they pray for her, praying for her at the same time. And whenever she did come home from the hospital after her transplant, people would just look at her and just in such awe like they had witnessed a miracle because she wasn’t there. The Berlin heart wasn’t necessarily supposed to work for her, and it did. And even though we were stuck in the hospital for about four months, she was still able to receive that heart transplant and be able to come home and just be erased. Sunshine for everybody that she came into contact with.

Brian Pruett: [00:57:23] Well. So. No. That’s right. So how old was she when when she, when she passed.

Teresa Carter : [00:57:30] She was two and a half years old. Okay.

Brian Pruett: [00:57:31] And you said that this was earlier this year, right. Mhm. Yeah. How long ago.

Teresa Carter : [00:57:36] August 28th was when she passed away. Her one year heart adversaries which what we call it was in March of this year and everything seemed to be okay. And that’s why it’s. They know that there’s more research that needs to be done and how they can check coronary arteries in a less invasive way, because it’s obviously now it’s something that that can happen fast and not progress really slowly. And. But aside from Jazzy Hearts Foundation, just wanting to be able to fund research for coronary artery disease specifically for heart transplant recipients, I want to be able to more in depth, be able to share how God, how God played a part in her entire life, and not only just to get to me, because I know for sure that jazzy was sent here just to save my soul. My whole life, I had my doubts about God and kind of going back and forth whether or not he was real and this and that, and my first encounter that I had with him. We were waiting. It was in the hospital. We were we weren’t exactly like stuck per se in there, yet we went in. It was the beginning of 2022in January, and we went because she had had a heart monitor put in because she was having she by then she had already had a few cardiac arrest episodes, and they were hoping to be able to catch some kind of pattern. Well, it was forcing its way out. It didn’t want to stay in there, of course.

Teresa Carter : [00:59:00] So when we went in the first, it was January 1st of 2022. We went in and I really thought it was just going to be quick. We go in, they’re probably going to want to just take it out, reevaluate. Maybe we get to go home in like a week. One thing led to another. She ended up catching Covid, going into cardiac arrest again, and we went. That’s when we knew we were going to be stuck. And I remember being so frustrated one day in the hospital room as she was already asleep, and I was so frustrated and and like, he just came to me. It was like a so loud, like, she is mine. And I had to, you know, realize that I really have no control over what’s going on. I’m really just wasting my energy being so upset. I’m separated from the rest of my family and. That was really the first encounter that I had with God. I remember it really. It scared me. I’m not even going to lie, because I was I remember looking around the room like, what? What is that like? What is that voice? And and it was such a strong feeling. I remember being shook up. And so ever since then, I really since I was stuck in the hospital. Anyway, I really just started, I guess, my spiritual journey, you could say. And. I had more time there, I wasn’t busy. I have two other kids and a husband at home also.

Teresa Carter : [01:00:11] I should have already mentioned them by now, but my husband was at home holding down the fort. And you know, my kids play travel ball sports and we’re very, you know, just active in everything they do. Not just the sports, but even with school stuff, making sure that they’re going to be successful one day. And so I had more time while I was at the hospital just to focus on jazzy and focus on, you know, building my relationship with God. Because I know now that he’s real, because it wasn’t just a voice, it was a whole feeling that was inside of me. And. There was another encounter that I had. I don’t want to share all of my encounters because I don’t want to go too far into detail, but the one that really sticks out the most was one day I was listening to the church. We go to North Point Church in Dyersville, and I’m really grateful that they they always go live every Sunday. The services are. So that way I can listen in sometimes. It didn’t always work out for me to listen in while they were live, but I’m always able to go back. And it was late night and jazzy was already asleep and everything was quiet. And I can just remember just like taking notes, because that’s what I was doing, because I was really just trying to do a lot of learning, and it was like something had just kind of took over my hand.

Teresa Carter : [01:01:24] It was really weird, and it was just like, I remember writing off to the side and saying, you will lead them to me. At the time, I had no idea what it meant. I just was like, you know, okay, I know that didn’t come from me. I knew it came from God. And I just carried on with my studies and this and that, and now that everything’s unfolded the way that it did. I know now that somehow I’m supposed to help people. I really thought it was going to be jazzy. I can this last time we were in the hospital for 28 days this past August. I can remember thanking him in advance every single day because I just the way that she was bringing people together, I had people telling me they were going back to church. They were building their faith in God. We all just knew she was going to come home. Sorry. I can remember thanking him in advance because she was bringing people to God, and I was getting to witness it. So at the time, I thought when I wrote that down that I was supposed to help jazzy do it. You know, because she was going to come home and everybody was going to be in such awe because this unimaginable thing was happening to her. And, you know, she survived yet again, and everybody was going to get to see her. And just look at this little miracle that had from prayers being answered.

Teresa Carter : [01:02:41] Now that everything’s unfolded, I know that, you know, now it’s me doing it and she’s walking alongside me spiritually. But I have to keep that going for her. You know her always just testing the boundaries of what medical science can do. I can keep that going by saving other kids lives. Other family’s lives because it’s, you know, it’s not easy for anybody that’s lost a child, anybody that’s really lost anybody close to them. So there’s just two aspects to Jazzy Hearts Foundation. But I guess the biggest hurdle right now is just really just being able to raise the funds. There’s another nonprofit called Enduring Hearts. They’re on a national level that’s also doing the same thing as far as funding pediatric research for heart transplants. But they do a lot of other studies. Other, you know, research for pediatric heart transplants. But I know that I solely want to focus on the cardiac vascular. Goodness, I’m getting my words mixed up. Cardiac allograft vasculopathy. And they are willing to work with me. I just have to come up with 150 K and they will. Since they already have, they’re already established. They have their own committee of scientists and research cardiologists and things like that. But if when we come up with 150 K, then they’ll willing to work with us through their organization to fund whatever research of my choice, which would be Cav, and be able to have it solely recognized under Jazzy Hearts Foundation. Well, so.

Brian Pruett: [01:04:19] If you’re listening and you’ve got 150 K, you know, we got somebody that needs you. Um, real quick. So I know you’re in the middle of process of starting the 500 1C3 because you don’t have that yet. So there’s no tax benefit unfortunately. People want that. And it should be just because they have a good heart. But but go ahead and share with somebody how they can get a hold of you. If somebody’s listening right now and say, hey, I want to send you something or help you, how can they do that?

Teresa Carter : [01:04:45] Well, my telephone number is probably the easiest calling or text (678) 346-5134. We do have a website. It is jazzy hearts dot fit apparel.biz. We do also have Facebook. If you just go on Facebook and search on there Jazzy Hearts Foundation. We’re still in the very beginning stages. Like I said, my daughter passed away in August and we actually started the foundation the day that we had to go in to prepare for her funeral. Like how all of us have already said just a few minutes ago about doing something nice for somebody makes you feel good. And I wanted to know that I can. What happened to us doesn’t have to happen to somebody else, you know? And so I, I also feel good when you do something nice for somebody else. And that was part of the reason why we started it, particularly on that day. I didn’t want to have to deal with the thought of planning her funeral. So we are registered through the state right now. We’re just a domestic non profit organization, but we will be a 500 and 1C3 very shortly. I recently did a t shirt campaign and the funds that were raised from that were will be what’s going to fund for us to be able to make that happen. Is that still going on?

Brian Pruett: [01:06:02] Can people still go and order t shirts?

Teresa Carter : [01:06:04] That particular campaign is over with, but people can still order t shirts through this website. Jazzy hearts. Dot fit. Apparel.biz. So website is a merch store on there with all kinds of different shirts. Cool sweater like what I have on right now. All kind of different colors. And the proceeds to that, a portion of the proceeds of that will come directly to us. We’re also doing a toy drive. I feel like I have to speak on the toy drive, too. I know there’s a lot of companies that are doing toy drives right now, but this one we started last year. It was Jazzy’s first birthday. Being at home. It was her second birthday. She spent her first birthday in the cardiac ICU. And you know, no parent thinks to spend their child’s first birthday in the hospital and you don’t have anything. We were already there since her birthday is January 14th, so we had already been there a couple weeks, I didn’t. I’m a late planner. I guess I didn’t have like a party or nothing planned yet for her and. The only thing I could get for her was something from the gift shop, and I was in such awe when. Because we can’t sleep in ICU. They have little sleep pods that we slept. We slept in. The parents do. And I can remember early that morning when I got there, her nurses already had it decorated. They had gifts for her. She couldn’t eat because she had just went into cardiac arrest a couple of days ago. So she was on a feeding tube and one of the nurses, she made a it was a little like a smash cake.

Teresa Carter : [01:07:26] You know how they do for one year olds. But she made it with Play-Doh, so that way jazzy can still have something to smash, even though she couldn’t eat it. That was pretty cool, but that was definitely. It was happy tears that day because just knowing that, you know, they they had done that for her and the gifts came from the hospital, not necessarily from the nurses, although I don’t, I don’t know. Some of the nurses might have purchased some of the gifts. I’m not sure. Um, but that was how I found out real quickly that the hospital gets toys donated here and there for different other families. Different occasions, like everything is a ripple effect. You know, everybody, all the families that have come through there, there’s so many of them that give back because they’ve been whoever’s currently there, we’ve been in their shoes. And so I knew that when her first birthday, well, her second birthday, it was her first birthday at home had came around. Her birthday is right after Christmas, too. I was like, well, she doesn’t need more toys. And so we did this toy drive because I know there’s other kids that are still in the hospital that are spending birthdays. They’re just like, you know, jazzy did, and I’ve seen other kids, you know, have to celebrate birthdays in the hospital, and that’s not fun. And it was when they were still having the Covid, you know, regulations and things like that.

Teresa Carter : [01:08:35] And so nobody could come. They did make a special arrangement for my husband and my kids to come, which my husband was allowed to come and go whenever we were. Each patient was only allowed two caregivers at the time, but siblings weren’t supposed to be allowed. But we did get special permission since it was her first birthday for her siblings to to come visit that weekend. So anyways, yeah, we started the toy drive last year and it was. I was really surprised at the turnout we had. It was really cool and it was amazing for me. And jazzy went to go deliver the gifts over there. We did it. They were still under the Covid regulations, so it wasn’t like we got to go out and, you know, see anybody. But just to know that. The other kids that spend birthdays, holidays and I can remember even jazzy getting gifts sometimes on just the really hard days, you know? And even for the older kids, I’m sure there’s I can’t experience that. But, you know, there’s. Because jazzy was so young when she passed away. But they go through other kind of struggles with them being, you know, teenagers and being stuck in the hospital. And. Also, you know, for the kids that are there for a long time because has been had admissions that were significantly long and you have to keep those kids entertained. You know, so they get new toys periodically too. So we just want to make sure that the hospital, the Eggleston, always has a good stock of toys.

Brian Pruett: [01:09:51] So if somebody wants to take part in that, how can they get the toys to you?

Teresa Carter : [01:09:54] The fliers on the website. And there’s different drop off locations in the Bartow County area. There’s also an Amazon wish list on there. The majority of those items on the Amazon wish list are directly from the hospital’s wish list. And then I also added some more stuff on there that were toys that jazzy got while she was in the hospital too. But yes, the events are on that website. Also. Jazzy Heart’s outfit apparel.biz. Another event we have coming up is a fundraiser night at Henry’s, which I know a lot of people are pretty familiar with. Henry’s. Henry’s also, I believe it’s a liver transplant recipient. Is it liver? I couldn’t remember, I remember meeting him at a it was another. What was it? It was for something for the Georgia Transplant Foundation. It was a fundraiser. Goodness. My words are getting scrambled up. But anyways, that’s going to be on January 9th, and we’re going to just kind of do that. Have our family there as a, I guess, birthday dinner, you know, in memory of her.

Brian Pruett: [01:10:53] Well, I mentioned this to you a couple of weeks ago. We had Stone’s wife, Holly on here, and Holly is a kidney donor, so we need to get with her because I’m sure she’d like to be part of that as well. So I love hearing stories like that. You you mentioned something about, you know, the way God works because he does work in mysterious ways. And we never know, probably until we get to heaven. Why things, certain things happen. Sometimes we can look back and, you know, after several years and seeing, oh, well, that’s why that happened. Yeah. But you also and I think, you know, after talking with you and hearing more of your story this morning, your career is dealing with life insurance, right? It’s one of the things you do.

Teresa Carter : [01:11:29] It’s actually that is also kind of new. That started because one of the things with being a transplant recipient, any transplant recipient, any organ transplant, is you have to take certain medications. That’s what they call anti-rejection medications. That’s pretty much helping to keep you alive by keeping your immune system down, to make sure your body doesn’t try to naturally fight off the foreign object, which is the, you know, the new organ that wasn’t there when you were born. So. Goodness, I just lost my whole train of thought just then. I’m so sorry.

Speaker5: [01:12:02] You’re fine.

Brian Pruett: [01:12:02] We’re talking about life insurance.

Teresa Carter : [01:12:05] Yes, I started that because jazzy would get sick pretty often, and so she’d be at home. And I’m actually a private chef slash caterer. I have a catering company also that’s been on the back burner with having jazzy at home a lot. And then of course, being in the hospital, there were times I even had to cancel events because she would happen to be in the hospital again. So I knew that I had to think of something outside of catering that wasn’t that I could do from home, and that’s when I got into life insurance. And I didn’t get to. I remember finishing I got my license. I believe it was before she went in in August this last time, but I hadn’t started my training yet. And so now I’m getting back into that. And so it’s still kind of new, kind of fresh, but that’s a big, near and dear to my heart. Also because we have life insurance on our kids and there’s a lot of, you know, benefits that come with that even, you know, aside from jazzy passing away, just. Knowing that. If something ever happens to me, if something ever happens to them, that you don’t have to necessarily worry there. There’s certain things you don’t have to worry about, but there’s so much more to life insurance than just that. Like even for people that it’s for anybody even. And I remember growing up thinking like, oh, it’s only, you know, rich people that have life insurance. And that’s not the case. And I realize that when I came into my adult life, that it’s life insurance is for everyone. It’s just a matter of having the right, the right agent that can help you with whatever your needs are and work with your budget because you can get life insurance, life insurance on any budget. Um hum. Um, well, that’s.

Brian Pruett: [01:13:33] Important to talk about because you talked about having life insurance on your kids. My wife and I, we had life insurance on my stepkids. But, you know, you never think about. Yeah, I was an adult. I have life insurance, but you should definitely have it on your kids.

Teresa Carter : [01:13:45] Right away, too, because I was, I mean, which normally I probably shouldn’t mention it, but we’re going through a headache right now with Jazzy’s Life Insurance company. But we got her life insurance before we even knew that she had any kind of heart condition. So I remember, like when I was going through the the online course thing and learning about life insurance. And so I was playing around with some stuff, trying to I was like, well, what if we would have waited too long? Like, what if somebody would have tried to, you know, get and she wouldn’t have been eligible for any kind of life insurance because of her just being an organ transplant recipient.

Speaker5: [01:14:15] Right.

Brian Pruett: [01:14:16] So are you still have the catering business?

Teresa Carter : [01:14:21] I do, yes.

Brian Pruett: [01:14:21] So what’s what kind of events do you do?

Speaker5: [01:14:25] Anything.

Brian Pruett: [01:14:25] Anything? Yeah. What’s the name of the what’s the name of the catering?

Teresa Carter : [01:14:28] Reese’s way.

Brian Pruett: [01:14:29] Ooh, Reese’s.

Speaker5: [01:14:30] Reese’s way. All right. Can I ask another question?

William Thomas: [01:14:34] Yeah. Is it all right? Yeah. Go ahead. Have a question. In a in a statement of encouragement, I’ll start with the statement of encouragement so you can answer the question. Okay a statement of encouragement. So I’m a numbers guy and I’m all about life insurance I the last thing you want to do is worry about going back to work, going back to your job if you have to lose a child. So you have to have you have to have money, you have to have resources. So I am I will champion you all day on life insurance. But my statement of encouragement is, is being a numbers guy, I know 150,000 can seem daunting. That’s 12,500 a month which is 3125 a week. I’m a numbers guy. It’s $470 a day if you do it seven days a week. So in 2024, you need to figure out every day how you can get 470. That’s it. Just break it down that way. And because 150 is a ton of money and it’s frustrating and I’m sure you know, you’re like, how am I going get 150? But I’m.

Teresa Carter : [01:15:29] Honestly not even intimidated by that number.

Speaker5: [01:15:31] Like the.

Teresa Carter : [01:15:32] One is somebody I don’t. One of us has said something about not fearing anything. Or was that something I heard on the radio on the way here? I don’t know, but I guess just through everything that I’ve been through, I’ve got when I seriously say I fear nothing and numbers are just numbers. Money is just money, all right? It can always it can always be replaced. I don’t know, and I’m just I know that this is what I’m supposed to be doing, so I don’t feel intimidated. I know that I’ll get away to get 150 K, I believe whatever it takes. And I was just having a conversation with my husband yesterday. Did I cut you off?

Speaker5: [01:16:01] I’m sorry.

William Thomas: [01:16:01] I have a question.

Teresa Carter : [01:16:02] Go ahead. Oh, I had a conversation with my husband yesterday. And, you know, we’re just the type of parents we’ll do anything, whatever it takes to make sure that our kids are successful. Whatever their definition of success is, it doesn’t even necessarily have to be money. You know, just and I feel like and I was telling him this, I didn’t it didn’t occur to me until over the Thanksgiving break that I feel like somehow I’ve replaced jazzy with this nonprofit organization. I spend so much time doing so much learning because I’m new to nonprofit, it’s kind of different. It’s still, I’ve learned that I need to run it like a business, even though I’m not profiting from it. But whatever it’s going to take to make it successful, I’m willing to do. And I love so much that my husband is on board with it, even though sometimes I feel guilty, like I’m slacking being, you know, a mom and a wife at home sometimes because there’s certain things that aren’t getting done. But he’s so supportive and, you know.

Speaker5: [01:16:54] It’s awesome.

William Thomas: [01:16:55] So my question is, have you talked with Point of Dyersville to allow you to raise money through their non profit side so that people can so they can have everything set up on their website. People can give to the church essentially make it a tax write off. And then those funds directly come 100% to you or the organization. Have you talked to your church about doing that so that you can raise money and still. It be a write off for people?

Teresa Carter : [01:17:20] No, I haven’t actually. You’re referring to, like a fiscal sponsor.

William Thomas: [01:17:23] Have have the church just be the conduit through which people give. So right now as not being a a registered 500 and 1C3. People who want to give. Again I hate. And as you said earlier Brian, people should just want to give. But that’s just not how this work. This world works. People want the tax deduction, especially right now with it just being passed giving Tuesday, you’re getting to the end of your contributions. People are finding a way to shelter money, get rid of tax liabilities or just really want to do want to give it away but want the tax benefit of it too. Would your church be willing to allow you to have the funds received through their conduit, and then cut you the check specifically from that? So it doesn’t cost them anything, doesn’t bother them in any way. It doesn’t mess up their books. They receive money. They gave it out as a deduction for them as well. But it allows that individual who wants to give to have it considered a tax deduction for them because it’s going to a non profit, which is the church.

Speaker5: [01:18:13] Honestly.

Teresa Carter : [01:18:14] I did not even think about that.

Speaker5: [01:18:16] That’s what.

Teresa Carter : [01:18:16] I have been what.

Kimberly Jerguson: [01:18:17] We do with the polar.

Speaker5: [01:18:18] Bear plunge. That’s what it.

Kimberly Jerguson: [01:18:19] Is. It’s going through wildlife actions. So it’s.

Speaker5: [01:18:21] Tax I have.

Teresa Carter : [01:18:22] I was trying to look for a fiscal sponsorship because I know the 500 and 1C3 is going to be a little bit of a process. And I was trying to have something like that, you know, before the end of the year, because I know a lot of companies are wanting to kind of more likely to give away money at the end before they got.

Speaker5: [01:18:36] Their taxes and.

William Thomas: [01:18:38] See if they would be willing to do that. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t hurt them. I mean, they don’t lose anything, don’t gain anything. I mean, it’s just they’re the conduit so that they can get their write off. So anything like you said with the.

Speaker5: [01:18:46] There was a.

Teresa Carter : [01:18:46] Reason why certain companies. So I’m not going to say their names. But the couple companies that I did ask, I kind of I just didn’t get a response.

Speaker5: [01:18:53] That’s why.

Brian Pruett: [01:18:54] Yeah, that’s exactly why.

William Thomas: [01:18:56] Yeah. That’s like when we do our non profit golf tournaments, we don’t get the check because it takes away the ability to say it’s a charitable contribution tax deduction. So all of our checks go directly to our non profit. And then they compensate us. We get we get paid. So with the polar bear plunge it’s the same thing. I mean again I wish people would just do it but they want the write off. So they they get to say they’re getting the write off or that jumping in the lake, but it goes through the tax deduction of the 501C3. So that’s something definitely to consider and doesn’t stop you from getting money now and getting more money.

Kimberly Jerguson: [01:19:26] And if not, I know a few people that might be willing to do that for you.

William Thomas: [01:19:29] For you. There’s people out there.

Brian Pruett: [01:19:31] Say, this is why I love this show. It’s exactly why I bring more people on here.

Speaker5: [01:19:35] Instead of just having.

Teresa Carter : [01:19:36] One at a time. You were saying that the other day too.

Brian Pruett: [01:19:38] So I got a few other questions for you. So you talked about. Well, first of all, I’m going to go back to your catering just for a second. If if people want to get a hold of you for catering. Right. You know, I’m sure it’s holidays and things. They may have parties or even first of the year. How can somebody get a hold of you for for catering?

Teresa Carter : [01:19:56] Honestly, just my phone number. I don’t have a website or anything like that yet, but I’m learning all of that stuff now through the non profit organization.

Brian Pruett: [01:20:03] Okay. So I’m going to ask 3A3 part question. It’s all advice that I want you to give people okay. And it’s three parts. The one is it’s going to be very kind of personal. But there may be somebody listening who is going through a certain situation that you’ve gone through with their child. I’d like for you to give them some hope, you know, advice, even if it’s seem, may seem grim on the outcome. It’s really, as you said she was. Helped four other families, right? That’s the first part of the question. The second part is give advice on starting a business, because you’ve done that with your catering and you’re doing that with your life insurance. Right. And the third part is you’re going through the process of becoming a 500 and 1C3 nonprofit. Give some advice on what somebody should do to start a nonprofit. If you can’t remember those, I’ll ask them again. But okay.

Teresa Carter : [01:20:51] The first one is really hitting home because I was going to make sure I said it anyways. I just feel like I always have to tell people that God is going to meet you where you’re at, regardless of what it is you’re going through. He’s going to be with you at the high, the highest part of the mountains, all the way into the deepest lows of the valleys. He’s going to be with you and. There’s nothing you can really do wrong. There’s no manuscript on how you’re supposed to grieve. There’s. However, you feel like you have to get your fix. He’s still going to meet you where you’re at. He’s so good and his goodness is going to come through all of the bad. Everything happens for a reason, and it’s all because of the things that he’s working, things that he’s trying to make happen that we can’t see because we are only seeing what’s happening right in front of us.

Speaker5: [01:21:38] And there’s.

Brian Pruett: [01:21:38] No coincidences.

Teresa Carter : [01:21:39] There’s no coincidences.

Brian Pruett: [01:21:40] Hence the reason they just gave you some good advice about finding a nonprofit.

Speaker5: [01:21:44] To do that. Right.

Brian Pruett: [01:21:46] All right. Second question. Give somebody some advice on starting a business.

Teresa Carter : [01:21:51] Just go for it and be prepared to go through the blood, sweat and tears. You’re not going to get compensated in the beginning. You’re going to put a lot of time and not see not going to reap the benefits of it. So you have to know whatever business it is. What’s your reasoning for it?

Speaker5: [01:22:05] All right.

Teresa Carter : [01:22:05] Why is it important to you.

Brian Pruett: [01:22:07] And the same thing with the non profit. Why if somebody wants to start a nonprofit there’s a lot to do a non profit. More so than I would even say even for starting a business.

Speaker5: [01:22:16] I’m learning that. Yeah. Um.

Brian Pruett: [01:22:19] I mean, you and I sat down and talked yesterday and I mentioned something about insurance for your non profit. That was something you didn’t think.

Teresa Carter : [01:22:24] Wasn’t even on my radar at all. I have insurance for the other stuff for the other two businesses but not for the non profit. Um, I guess I think one of us had already said, I think it might have been you finding something that you’re passionate about. You know, in my case it’s this because it happened to me. I don’t want to be able to help other families. I want to be able to be that support system for them if they need somebody to talk to, too. So I guess if anybody’s listening right now that’s recently lost a child, or if you’re in the hospital right now, if you could give me a call at (678) 346-5134, sometimes it helps just to know you have somebody to talk to. And when it’s somebody that’s outside of your circle.

Speaker5: [01:23:03] Right.

Teresa Carter : [01:23:03] Because I did have that with somebody and it it makes a huge difference.

Speaker5: [01:23:07] Right.

Brian Pruett: [01:23:08] And I mean, it doesn’t matter the time of year. It’s tough any time. But this time of year particularly reach out to somebody if you need to talk to somebody. Yes. All right. Before I get to the last question for everybody, you’re fairly new to the Cardinal Business Club we introduced you to. Right. And so I don’t know if you’ve networked any time before that, but do you have a positive story you can share just from your networking, even if it’s fairly new.

Teresa Carter : [01:23:33] Before coming to.

Brian Pruett: [01:23:35] Anytime, even if it’s now or it’s.

Teresa Carter : [01:23:37] A more recent one. So Scotland that you had mentioned, she’s my husband’s well, she’s my cousin, she’s my family, I love her and I love what she does. But she had reached out to me and told me that she came and spoke on this podcast, and so she thought it would be good for me just to, you know, talk about Jazzy Heart. So I reached out to you, of course. And then you tell me to, you know, you’re inviting me to this Cartersville business club. And so I go there, and when I go there, I meet Paul and his. Well, I didn’t meet his partner then, but I met Paul, who said that he could help me to build a website and be able to continue selling the t shirts, which is him and his partner, Rebecca. That’s where the fit apparel on the the website, like Jazzy Hearts Fit apparel.biz. They’ve built this website for me for Jazzy Hearts, not for me, but it’s for this whole jazzy heart. Community is what I like to call it, to where people can go on there and they can purchase the t shirts and it’s at no cost to me, but they’re getting compensated. And then Jazzy Hearts is also getting compensated, and then the logo is getting pushed around for everybody to see also. And that that all came from just Scotland sending me a text message. And now I have a website and through through just talking with you and you put me on Game Wednesday this past Wednesday about the blink I think is how you pronounce it. And so now I have a digital business card, and I got to meet the manager for the new bank that’s getting this being opened. And I can’t wait to, you know, hopefully be able to work with them. And just it’s networking is it’s just a matter of taking the initiative. If somebody is like, hey, I know somebody that does this or this, they might be helpful for you. It’s just a matter of you taking that one step to reach out to whoever it is that contact is.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:16] Again, it’s not about you. It’s helping other people. Yeah. And Scotland didn’t tell you the story. The reason we know Scotland is because when we did the Northwest Georgia Rising Stars magazine, we did a story on her organization. And that’s been 2018.

Speaker5: [01:25:29] Oh okay.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:30] So all right, real quick, Kimberly, remind remind everybody the date of the polar plunge. And you need to send me the new flier so I can get it up.

Kimberly Jerguson: [01:25:39] Yes, it is December 17th at 2 p.m. at the on Lake Allatoona off of Kellogg Creek Road.

Speaker5: [01:25:46] Okay.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:48] Before we wrap this up, there’s two other questions or one other question that I’d like to do is for all three of you, I’d like for each of you to give either one. You’ve done this already, but one word, one quote, or just a positive nugget that people can live the rest of 2023, which is only a few days left and beyond with. So, Kimberly, I’m going to start with you this time. What do you got?

Kimberly Jerguson: [01:26:12] I’m going to go with our slogan is to put back more than you take, whether that’s in nature or family or faith or anything that you come across in life. Put back more than you take.

Brian Pruett: [01:26:24] Awesome, Theresa.

Teresa Carter : [01:26:28] While I already shared one little nugget, I feel like the other one is don’t be so hard on yourself. Life is just hard in general. And nobody’s nobody’s pain or struggle is necessarily greater than the next. Like sometimes when. I like. I recently spoke to one of my friends and she was saying like she just didn’t. Feel like everybody’s going through something. So I think a lot of us feel like we don’t want to talk about what it is that we’re going, whatever our struggle is, because in my situation, I feel like people look at me like, oh, you lost a child. Like your situation is so much worse than mine. And that’s not necessarily the case. Everybody’s everybody’s going through their own pain and struggles, and based off of their own experiences is the extremity of what it feels like, the weight of what it feels like to them. So just don’t be so hard on yourself. Life is hard. And as long as you’re trying your best, you’re doing great.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:13] William.

William Thomas: [01:27:15] It may be a bit inappropriate, just obviously with our indoor space and the fact that it’s almost the end of the year and you’re trying to push through, it’s literally go balls to the walls. And that’s literally what we’re doing in our space. So there you go. More apropos.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:30] There you go. The other thing that’s a lost art these days is the thank you. So I want to thank each of you, William, thank you for what you’re doing for all the different nonprofits and specifically in Cherokee County. Kimberly, thank you for what you’re doing in the community here in Cherokee and Acworth. You know, it’s Acworth, too. And then, Teresa, thank you for what you’re doing for all the community in Bartow, but also all the families that you and Jazzie have touched. Everybody out there listening. Let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia. Brought to you by B’s Charitable Pursuits and resources. We put the fun in fund raising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Pruitt.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] Good fabulous Friday. It’s another fabulous Friday morning and we’ve got three more fabulous guests. Just a little bit of housekeeping. We will not be here next week on Black Friday because the studio front door will be locked and I can’t get in. So there will be no show so everybody can go shopping and get up early. Hope everybody have a great Thanksgiving. So like I said, we got three more fabulous guests this morning. And this is the first time listening to Charitable Georgia. This is all about positive things happening in your community. And we are going to get started this morning with Ms. Kimberly Brenowitz From Paws for life. I said that right, didn’t I?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:01:15] You did indeed, yes. Awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:17] I always I have to pat myself on the back when I say the right word, because sometimes I mess them up, so. Well, first of all, you have an accent. Where’s your accent from?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:01:25] All right. I was born in Scotland, in the United Kingdom.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:28] Awesome.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:01:28] Yes. Unfortunately, too many years in the United States have sort of, like, kind of put a tinge on it, though.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:33] Well, I still it’s good to me, I like that, I like it. So you guys, like I said, you’re from paws for life, which we’ll get into for a second. But if you don’t mind, share a little bit more about your background and how you got into that, and then we’ll talk about what you guys do.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:01:44] Oh, absolutely. Yes. I’ve always had animals, German Shepherds, horses throughout my entire life. And when I graduated and I came over to the United States for a job, I ended up starting a riding school, and I got a stables in Sarasota, Florida, and started teaching down there, training horses, training dogs. My niece has cerebral palsy, so I would have her friends and family come out and we would do horse riding trails with them. So I got more and more involved in dealing with those with disabilities, and decided that this is something that I really would like to get into more and went to school, got all my designations. I had to do it like over a period of time because I had to, of course, keep working to be able to pay to do that. And then when my husband and I relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, I decided to make this a full time commitment and opened up a 500 and 1C3 nonprofit and have been training service animals since then. Awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:41] Well, I have a sister in Sarasota, so it’s really kind of muggy down there.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:02:44] Yeah, I love it. I’d like to go back, but my husband won’t go back to Florida. No.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:48] Well, they do have soft beaches. I’ll give him that. That’s a nice, soft beach.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:02:51] It’s changed a lot over the years though. So. Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:54] So you guys just train dogs or you have other animals that you train?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:02:58] Okay. So we actually for our service animals, there are only two animals that are allowed under federal law. One is of course dogs and the other one is miniature horses. We also do therapy dogs and they can be any kind of dog is a family pet or a dog that’s trained to go into nursing homes and children’s hospitals. And then the other one we work on is emotional support animals. That can be any basically most like 12 or 13 different types of animals bunnies, guinea pigs, llamas that can be somebody’s own emotional support but doesn’t get the full aspect of service dogs.

Brian Pruett: [00:03:32] I’ve seen a video of supposedly an alligator with somebody’s support animal. I don’t know that I would.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:03:36] Trust that either. I’ve had peacocks and I’ve had snakes and yes. So no, I don’t think I think it has to have feet. Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:03:43] Well, I’ve got a friend who’s Daniel Lathrop. He was on the show. He’s actually a veteran and owns 1041 K9 dog training and stuff. And he used to work for TCA down in Florida, and he was talking about the animals that would come through there that were just. He had a I think he told me there was a ferret. Yes, there was emotional support animal. I’m like, and those guys stink. I had a roommate that had one of those. They stink all the time. So do you have a specific animal that your favorite.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:04:08] German Shepherd has to be my dog of choice. Yeah. And why is that? I love them, I don’t know, I mean, I’ve had German Shepherds in my family since I was, like two years old, and they’re just incredibly smart and intelligent dogs. That’s just for me. But, I mean, all dogs are absolutely wonderful and beautiful. It doesn’t matter what breed they are or what type they are, they all have their own individual personalities. So basically train any type of dog to be a service dog depending on what the disability needs are.

Brian Pruett: [00:04:33] So I didn’t get to actually talk to you and meet you in person at the golf tournament that Buffy and Matt did. And that’s where I met all three of you. And well, I met Buffy before then, but but my my favorite dog that you have was Rufus. Rufus?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:04:45] Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:04:46] Rufus was giving I got pictures, him giving hugs to a lot of people. That’s just awesome. Tell us about Rufus.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:04:50] Yes. So Rufus is a Great Pyrenees poodle mix, and he’s probably about 120 pounds right now. He’s about the size of a miniature horse. And I actually have his sister Jojo. So both of them are very similar. They’re both about the same type of height, except she has more of the curvy female look and he has more of the guy dog long legged, long body look. But his. Yes, they’re both in training to become service animals. And Rufus is just you know, he’s I’ve definitely got to put a blog out for him because he’s just a typical large, bobble headed, black and white mop. That is absolutely just his love.

Brian Pruett: [00:05:24] Well, and like I said, I mean, he was literally giving hugs like he was up on his hind feet, paws on the shoulders. Yep. And that was just really cool.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:05:31] So his trick for the paws on the shoulders is, is basically he’s doing pressure point therapy. So by standing up and putting his paws over your shoulders, he has to have his elbows at one side of the front of your shoulders and his. Risks at the other side so that he’s doing pressure point therapy to help you. Oh, wow. So that’s the reason why we teach the hug one to make you feel good. And the other one is because he’s actually helping you, your body and your mental state of mind as well. So this is some of the things that his task trained for. That’s awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:05:59] Well, I got to tell you, I had an ex girlfriend who had a puppy. Australian shepherd. Oh, nice. And things were starting to go bad with us. And I was at I was at her house while she was at work, still taking care of the dogs when things starting to go bad. And I was in the living room crying, sitting on the couch. And this puppy was a puppy. Like a puppy puppy. He came over and gave me a hug like he was just automatically knew there was something wrong. Something. Yeah, right. That was awesome.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:06:24] So they’re so intuitive. I mean, they’re incredible. I mean, where else, you know, can you get an animal that loves you unconditionally, will listen to everything that you have to say and not contradict you, and can detect all of your medical disabilities and try and help you tell you about it, and then give you the love for it afterwards. I mean, it’s just amazing.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:41] We have a veteran that comes to our church who has a golden noodle. Oh, nice. That’s and he detects when he’s about ready to have a seizure. Yes. It’s pretty awesome. So yeah.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:06:49] That’s a that’s a good one to work with.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:51] We we were talking a little earlier about the miniature horses and stuff like that. So how is it different training those versus the dogs.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:06:59] Actual fact horses can detect muscle movement in a human a little bit faster than dogs can, because dogs detect, first of all, by muscle movement and then by, you know, different things going on and scent, whereas horses are like a few seconds ahead of that. So they are actually more in tune with the human at that early initial stage. They’re just the same thing. They’re just as loving. They can be housebroken. They’re like 28in or 29in at the height. And for somebody who has mobility, for example, the general life of a miniature horse is like 30 years or 35 years, whereas the life of a large Great Dane or something is probably 8 to 10 years. So for somebody who has chronic mobility issues, sometimes it’s easier to get an animal that’s going to live longer, to be able to help them, then to have to go through 2 or 3 dogs versus one, one miniature horse. It’s just that people have they see a miniature horse on an airplane and they go, so a miniature horse in a grocery store, and it’s just something that you don’t see very often, I think because people with disabilities that have to take their animals, either their dog or their miniature horse, with them, it just makes you stand out from the crowd. So I think most people choose the dog instead of the horse, and the horse probably would actually benefit more in a mobility situation.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:15] Well, it’s definitely, definitely a conversation starter too. I’d walk up to somebody and say, can I pet your horse?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:08:20] Exactly.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:23] So do you guys solely work with veterans or do you work with other individuals?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:08:27] No, we work with we work with veterans, first responders, active duty and all the others in between. So and our youngest is three months and our oldest has been 87. Wow. As far as those that we have provided and are actually currently working with as far as service dogs or therapy dogs, but mostly service.

Brian Pruett: [00:08:48] So how do you determine which animal is best for an individual?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:08:53] Okay, so that’s a really good question. The thing is, if like for example, if your goal is that you want to run a marathon, the last thing that we’re going to do is match you up with one, a dog breed that you don’t like, or to a dog that can do like 25ft and then collapse because you’re so exhausted, like a mastiff or something. Masters aren’t meant to run, they’re meant to pull, and they’re meant to be like dragging something and holding you up. So we would place you more like with a dog that is like a husky or something, that that’s going to be able to keep you up. We did have one gentleman who was active duty. He got involved in an accident. He was in hospital at Grady for numerous times, and we provided him with an American, an American dog, native engineered dog, and big dog meant to drag things around and help the Indians when they were moving their wigwams and stuff like that, going back many, many years. And because they felt that he was going to end up in a wheelchair, not being able to use his legs because of the travesty that had happened to him. And it ended up that bringing the dog to him and working with him through his therapy sessions at Grady and everything else, he just rallied from a person that was given a sentence that he may never walk or live again, to being able to say, I have something to live for.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:10:09] And he then started working with his dog, and in about 6 or 7 months, he actually ended up walking out of Grady with his service animal at that time saying goodbye to everybody. He went into rehab for a while. Rehab told him, you’re doing so well, you don’t need to do it. So he actually went back into active duty. And at that point in time we said, you are doing so well that this dog is not the right match for you anymore. So we are going to trade out this big dog for somebody else who needs a mobility dog. And we’re going to give you a dog that’s going to be give you a challenge, going to make you be better than what you are right now. So we ended up getting him a malamute who was definitely full of energy. And we went and we met him and he was eight weeks old at the time and it was a love connection. They just fell in love together. And so the fact that dog and he were back on active duty and they they’d been on tour, they’ve done their, you know, the process. They were down on the, on the, on the wall. They’ve done a whole bunch of things.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:11:06] And he actually now he and his dog can run up and down Stone mountain. Wow. It’s just incredible. From from the beginning to the end of this young man’s life. And he was like 20 when it happened. So it’s just an incredible story of putting the right match with the right person. And just because you have a dog to start off with doesn’t mean that, you know, in five years, where do you see yourself being? So that’s one of our challenges. When we match you, what type of breed do you see yourself being attached to by the umbilical cord for the next 10 to 12 years of your life? And where do you see yourself wanting to be? So right now you’re in this position. Where do you want to be? Do you want to be? Go out and go and swim. Do you want to go out and you know, or do you want to stay home and just play video games? What is it that your goal is? And we want to try and help you reach that goal, using your dog to be able to help you get out the door, do the work that you need to get done to achieve what you want to do at the ultimate end of all of it. So yeah, it’s a great match process.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:03] Are there certain breeds that you can’t work with, or can you work with all and train all the breeds?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:12:08] Yeah, you can work with most breeds. Of course. Some are more stubborn than others. For us, we want to work with dogs that have that stubbornness because we need them to do deliberate disobedience. Which means if you tell your dog to go and stay in that corner and don’t budge till I need you or tell you to do something else, we want to make sure that that dog is going to stay there and is not going to move unless there’s something going on with his handler, his human, in which case he would be deliberately disobedient and he would leave that order to let you know that, hey, I’m going to show you a task because I’m telling you something’s going to happen or you’re going to have a seizure, or you’re going to have, you know, a diabetic low. So any life saving task that the dog has been trained to do, that’s the reason why the dog will disobey. So it has to be really critical. And the dog has to know that this is what I need to do. So most dogs, you know, will go ahead and do that with a lot of training. But that’s why it’s so important when you’re first working with with the animals, is to make sure that you pick the right pick. So here’s an example. For example, if you’re going to find a puppy or a dog for someone who’s a paraplegic. And so you go and you look at the litter of puppies like goldendoodles or Labradors or whatever, and you take each one of the puppies individually in the litter, and you take a piece of paper and you scrub it up into a ball and you throw it across the floor.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:13:20] You don’t want to take the puppy that runs in the opposite direction. You want to take the puppy that runs towards the crumpled piece of paper, picks it up and brings it back to you, because that paraplegic or that quadriplegic is going to need a dog that will pick up the remote or pick up a card on the floor or get, you know, go and get your water out of the fridge. So the abilities at that age and we start doing that about four weeks. You can’t do much at four weeks, but we have a general idea, and it’s about 7 or 8 weeks of that puppy’s age that we think, okay, we’ve gone through the litter. This is the type of breed that this individual wants. So we have a choice. Is there nobody in the litter that’s going to be the right match? Then we wait for the next litter or we find another one. If there is a good match in there, then we’ll take that pup. We’ll work with that pup for a while. If the pup is still being consistent, then we put the two together and we train them together from that point on for the rest of the working life of that dog.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:10] Are there age groups? I mean, you mentioned puppies. Do the dogs get to a certain age where you can’t train them?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:14:16] You can always teach an old dog new tricks.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:18] There you go. There you go.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:14:19] You can always do it for service animals. You know, so many people think that, you know, here you have this dog who’s three years old, he’s got his public access test and he’s tasking under federal law. And that’s the stop. Here’s the dog. This is where I’m at. But the problem is disabilities don’t change. Disabilities keep moving and they alter and medicine changes and lifestyles change. And so we’re with that dog. When we place that puppy with you and we’re available 24 over seven for that individual, that dog is going to change. So they need to go back and they need to do refreshers. They need to add more things. If they change medication then that changes the scent. Because whatever you put into your body, you smell like. And so the dog has to be tweaked a little bit to be able to keep going on and functioning to the best of their ability for their handler.

Brian Pruett: [00:15:04] Well, you know, we were talking I was just asking reason I was asking about the breeds is because there are certain breeds out there, mainly a pit bull that always gets a bad rap, and it’s because people will train them to do what they’re not supposed to do.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:15:13] It’s the human in that element as far as that’s concerned. But I mean, we’ve got some great pit bulls and bully breeds in our program, and they’re absolute marshmallows. So, you know, it’s a stigma, just like Rottweilers, German Shepherds, Dobermans. I mean, I’ve had all of those dogs at one point in my life. And, you know, it’s all a matter of how you handle them, what you give them. You know, the same thing with children. If you beat your kid, you’re going to have a kid that beats other kids, right? You know, if you beat your dog, you’re going to have a dog that’s antagonistic and just it’s just a rough. Round circle. So love always says a lot.

Brian Pruett: [00:15:45] So what does it look like? Is there different trainings? Well, first of all, before I ask the question, do you on the service animals, are there anything you have to do to as Daniel says, he trains the humans. Do you guys have to also train the individuals to work with the service dogs?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:16:01] Yes. So, you know, it’s one of these things is that when we match the pup and we place them with the individual or the young adult dog with the individual, the two of them will be in training with us forever. Okay. Until the working life of the dog is no longer and we either replaced with another dog or they don’t need another dog anymore. But yes, I mean the dogs are the easy part. It’s the human that sometimes causes the problems to get them trained to be able to work with the dog, because by the time our dogs are ready to go out and work in the big bad world with them, they have the capacity of problem solving of a five year old child. And so it’s the humans that have to be kept to be consistent. It’s the humans that have to know what to look for in their dog. And that comes from as far as we’re concerned. That’s one reason why we place our pups or our young adult dogs with an individual, because we want them to each learn their own body language. We want them to be able to say, like, if I place a dog with you, then tell me in two weeks time when you know that that dog needs to go to the bathroom, it’s because you’ve watched that dog and you know the telltale signs and you can read the body language. If you can’t tell me at that period of time whether it’s five minutes after they finish eating or it’s two hours after they finish eating, you and the dog are not living in a good environment together. You’re not functioning together well. So it’s a case of you have to keep pay attention to your dog, and your dog will be contingent, you know, paying attention to you. The dog is the easy part. It’s, you know, it’s the it’s the human in them that have to interact together, which takes the time. So yeah, he’s definitely correct.

Brian Pruett: [00:17:30] There’s the training different for the animals on different types of service for the service animals versus like seeing eye dog or knowing when there’s a seizure about to happen or anything like that.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:17:40] We actually in paws for life USA don’t train for somebody who’s totally blind. I can, but it’s something that I prefer not to do because it’s such a, you know, a different dedicated science because the human and the dog is basically the human who is blind is the one that is directing the dog, whereas in unseen disabilities, which is what I deal with an awful lot, is it’s a case of. A different type of training because even though I incorporate an awful lot of the guide dog stuff, by having the dogs look up to make sure there’s no overhanging branch or, you know, looking down on the floor to make sure there’s nothing that, you know, a curb that they don’t have to trip over. We incorporate all that type of training into what we do for our regular service dogs. I mean, they do everything. I mean, they, you know, we teach them to do a whole bunch of things so that there’s no surprises. And it’s always a case of the what if? What if I’m out here and my dog doesn’t do this? Well, we want the dog and the human to know what to do in any given circumstance. So we just work them through every single procedure that we can think of to, to get them to work as a good team, you know, to be able to get them to fly on an airplane and feel, you know, that they’ve been there, they can do that by themselves to get them to go to a Braves game so that they can go to the game and know what to expect, that the dog doesn’t freak out with the fireworks and all the noise to go to a, you know, anywhere, go to a restaurant and not eat the food off the floor so that the handler doesn’t have to worry about the dog, you know, doing this kind of thing. So it’s an ongoing process that they have to go through everything. And that’s Guide Dog as well as, you know, other service dogs.

Brian Pruett: [00:19:11] It’s funny you mentioned the food on the floor because when we were at the golf tournament, I brought my assistant Lauren with me, and she was helping the check in. And one of your other folks was there with a puppy, golden retriever. Oh yeah. And she was laying next to Lauren, and Lauren didn’t realize it. And she laid her chicken biscuit right down by the dog. And the dog never touched it. Yeah, that’s that’s a very impressive. And like I said, this was a puppy. Yes. So how does the training look like for the emotional support versus the the other.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:19:39] Yeah. So emotional support actually basically it’s still requires a doctor to say yes, you need an emotional support animal. And that is basically to give somebody comfort and be able to sit in their lap or be next to them so that it can release those endorphins in their brain to make them feel good. The dog actually doesn’t do any tasking, and the dog doesn’t have the same rights of a service animal to go anywhere. So with service dogs, they have the right to go everywhere. The general public is allowed to go except for like some sterile environments, churches and private property. The same thing with emotional support animals. The only difference that they now have, I mean, they used to be able to fly now that to a couple of years ago was taken away from them. But now the only thing they can do is they can go and stay in an apartment complex or a rental house that has a no dog policy, and then they can be given the accommodation to go there, but that’s where their rights end. Otherwise, service dogs, they should have the right to go everywhere, even to, you know, into an Airbnb or something else that says no dogs, right? There’s still a lot of people that want to try and say and deny that to somebody. But yeah, the law says they’re allowed to have them there.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:45] So is there a certain when we’re talking about the training aspect of it, does it do you do the same kind of training for that emotional support that you would do for the other kind? As far as like.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:20:55] So emotional support is just working with them. You know, in our program, what we like to try and do is give the dog all the basic and intermediate obedience training. Plus we like to help them with whatever, whatever their disability is, whether it’s anxiety or something else. Along those lines, we like to try and give the dog at least one thing to be able to do for for them as an emotional support. Now that’s not required, but we like to say that this is what we want to do, because we want the dog to be able to help you more than just be a a dog versus the service animal who is trained to do multiple things, cross train to not only help you, but maybe to help your family as well. For example, we have a poodle that’s out there who is looking after a little boy. And so if you’re a mother and you’re changing your son, and all of a sudden you’ve left the diaper rash cream on the table in the kitchen, you can’t leave your child who’s in the bathtub to go and get that. So we trained the dog to go and get it.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:21:55] So it’s actually helping the family as well as helping for the individual. So those dogs are highly trained and and they do more than they actually need for the particular disability that they’re working with because we want them to have an all rounded education. And so if we have a dog in the house, we actually have one dog that there is two young girls, the husband and wife, and the dog is for the youngest daughter, but the dog actually serves everybody in the house. And like one of the ridiculous things is, is that they are constantly dropping clothes on the floor. And so they asked me one day is, can you train him to pick all the clothes up off the floor? And I said, sure. I said it would be a great task for him. So he now picks up all the clothes and he puts them in the laundry, diaper and about. I think it was like four months later the husband calls me and I said, hi, how are you doing? He said, can you teach the dog to pick up all their clothes and leave mine? And I said, no, everything goes in the basket.

Brian Pruett: [00:22:48] That’s awesome. So what’s the kind of wildest animal you’ve ever worked with on the emotional support side?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:22:53] On the emotional support, I would have to say. It was a rabbit. Wow. Yeah, a rabbit. That rabbit gave me the runaround.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:02] Or the hop around as far as he’s concerned.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:23:04] Yeah. Really cute. Yeah. So. Yeah. So rabbit. And I think one of my. I have a couple of favorite as far as service dogs are concerned. Great Danes love Great Danes. They’re great dogs. And of course, Rufus can’t forget because he’s just a joiner. Love forever.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:20] Well, great. And the Great Danes in their name. So we have another family at church who has a Great Dane, and we do a once a year, one day retreat. Excuse me. And they bring him to that. And it was a couple of weeks ago we were at Red top and.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:23:35] Oh, that’s a nice place to go. Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:37] We were in the little, I don’t know, not, not overhang, but it was a little building there. And he’s sitting there on the floor. And of course all the kids are loving on him and stuff. And then he walked over to the adults walk over and he would look up with his puppy eyes and he’d be like, of course he’s bigger than everybody else. But still, those puppy eyes are like, whatever you want. I’ll give it to you. Yeah, yeah. I’m guessing goldfish cannot be trained to be.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:23:59] Well, no, I don’t know about fish. I did have a golf ball goldfish, many moons ago that if you moved your finger around on the outside of his tank, he would actually swim in circles and follow you. Oh, wow. So I don’t know if that’s classified as well. It works for me. I mean, I think every animal has abilities. You just have to know what you’re talking about.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:19] And they all have personalities too.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:24:21] They all have personalities. Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, it’s one of those things. I do know that earlier you were talking about this, this charity and community and everything else like that. So I was wondering if we could. Yeah. Go ahead. About what we’re doing. So paws for life USA is actually having a silent auction tomorrow at its school location at 3100 Roswell Road in Marietta. And all the funds from this holiday bake and basket sale are going to. Proceeds will go towards training a service animal for a veteran or a first responder. So if anybody is out there and wants to do something on Saturday afternoon from 12 to 330, please come round to us. And we’re on the corner of Old Canton and Roswell Road, and we have some wonderful things. We have homemade pies, we have homemade scones, we have pretzels that have been done. An awful lot of the items that we have for auction are being donated by an Air Force veteran, and we have some baskets that are just ready to go for Thanksgiving. They have wine in them. They have glasses, we have British tea basket, we have you name it, we’ve got it. So there’s a little bit of something for everybody. So if you’re looking for that quick and easy gift and you don’t have time to go to the store and you don’t want to worry about looking around through Black Friday, then come to us and get a basket and you’ve saved all your problems.

Brian Pruett: [00:25:43] There you go. Now I’m hungry. So yeah. Do you have any other other events after that that you want to share?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:25:48] So no, I mean that will be probably our final event for the year until we do start in 2024. It’s all right. I know it’s crazy isn’t it. Yeah. So no, that’s that’s probably our last event for the year is the the weekend before Thanksgiving. Every year we have this silent auction and but that’s good. Yes. Awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:06] Well I got two more questions a two part question. And then we’ll we’ll get you to share your information again as far as contact. But so I’d like for you, for those listening who might be thinking about this is a two part question. The first one is who somebody might be thinking about starting their own business. Okay. The other one is a person thinking about starting a 500 and 1C3 nonprofit. What advice would you give those individuals?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:26:30] Okay, so as far as starting your own organization for my side of things, if we talking about wanting to become, say you want to become a service dog trainer or a dog trainer, we actually have a one of our organization is called American Canine Connection. And it’s a post-secondary department of educational certified school. And people can come and learn how to become master dog trainers or service dog trainers. So once they have gone through the one year or the two year program, they then have the ability and the certifications to be able to go out and do dog walking, run a boarding kennel, train dogs for other people and start up their own business and be able to start having a career in a life as far as working with dogs are concerned. So it just depends on how far you want to go up the ladder. If you want to go all the way, then service dogs is the way to go. If you just want to start group training and start something, you can start that in your own home and eventually migrate to having your own facility or renting it. Or you can go and work for an organization that already exists, and there are jobs out there that I’m aware of to be able to go and join an organization. You basically sort of like independent within this organization and train dogs for them and, and get paid. So it’s a great resource and you can do that forever. You can train animals forever. There’s no like limit, you know, and you can’t get fired from your job. You know, you’re training dogs or you’re doing a dog walk. And as long as you’re physically able, you know, you can you can do that.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:28:11] And as far as starting your own 500 and 1C3 in this day and age, yes. If you want to be a charity starting your own 500 and 1C3, it’s there’s a few hoops that you have to jump through legal parameters. There’s an outlay of money that you have to put out to be able to get your licenses and get the IRS to approve you. But for me, I did that back in. I got approved in 2004. It was it was the only way to go. I had done some volunteering for some shelters and different things over a couple of years beforehand, and as a volunteer, I didn’t like what I saw, so I kept on putting my $0.02 in and nobody liked me for doing that. So I thought, well, you know, okay, so I’m going to do this myself. So I went out and I did the research and I opened up my own 500 and 1C3. And I said, okay, now that you won’t let me do it for you, I’m going to do it for me and I’m going to do it for the animals. So that’s how I did my 500 and 1C3. But it definitely if you have a mission and you feel strongly enough about it, you need to go ahead and do it. It’s it’s just a wonderful thing. And for me, I live, speak and dream dogs and I want to help people with disabilities. And so that’s my whole thing I gave up working for with doing accounting was actually my my trade of choice. And I always wanted to train dogs and help people with disabilities. And I’m living my dream.

Brian Pruett: [00:29:30] Awesome. How do you guys get the word out for your for your organization?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:29:35] Word of mouth and client referrals. Okay, we have our website paws for life usa.org. We have our LinkedIn same thing. We tweet anything that we can do like that on our social media. We’re all out there okay.

Brian Pruett: [00:29:51] So again share the website. And then if they want to get a hold of you for anything else, are there other ways to do that?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:29:55] Okay. So it’s Kimberly Benowitz and it’s paws for life usa.org website. Paws for life usa.org and the same thing the same name. Got to put the USA on it though, because there is somebody else out there with paws for life. So make sure you do paws for life usa.org and that’s us. And if you want to reach me directly at (770) 402-0297, I’ll gladly answer any questions that you have. Or you can email me at admin at paws for life usa.org and the four is spelled out f o r. So it’s paws for life usa.org.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:31] Awesome. Well Kimberly, thanks for coming on and sharing. Don’t go anywhere. We’re not done with you yet. So my pleasure. We’re moving over now to Miss Buffy Payne from the Outer Circle Foundation. Buffy, you weren’t able to come with Matt a few months ago because you had an emergency to go to, but you’ve since joined the corporate world to take over more of the Outer Circle Foundation. So welcome this morning, Buffy.

Buffy Payne: [00:30:53] Thank you for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:54] Um, you guys do a lot for the community and stuff. As a matter of fact, the golf tournament you guys put on, you actually gave that money to two other organizations, right? So if you don’t mind, share a little bit about your background and then we’ll get into a little bit more about the Outer Circle Foundation. Sure.

Buffy Payne: [00:31:10] So my background honestly is a security professional. I’ve been in the security industry for 25 years, recently left that with a passion to continue to help others and helping others has been, I think, in my blood, in my DNA all along, even within security. That’s what I did. Help others educate folks. I’m a survivor of domestic violence, so for many years I helped women of domestic violence help them get to a safe place, help educate them, help them see that there is another way to live. And over time, it kind of evolved into this mission, with Matt and I both having that in our blood of helping others. And so veterans and first responders, because we both work so closely with those. And Matt being a veteran, that became our passion, that became the group that we really tend to gravitate towards to help those.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:07] So you talked about the security background, what type of security?

Buffy Payne: [00:32:11] Oh goodness. You name it. It’s everything really. But most of the time when people hear me talk about security, they think, oh, that’s it. Well, honestly, it’s everything but it. Right, right. I know enough about it to be scary, but really it’s more of the Intel, the actionable intelligence, the physical security, the situational awareness, how to keep yourself safe, you know, investigations, things of that nature. It’s all the other stuff that helps keep a company or an individual safe. That’s that is our passion in security.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:45] So just get some advice for somebody listening about what to do for security stuff you just mentioned, who might be a business owner or things of that nature, just a little bit of tidbits of what they need to. Kind of keep an eye out for.

Buffy Payne: [00:32:57] Oh, yeah. So, you know, in this day and age of technology and social media and how easy it is for people to. Overshare. That’s one of the first things I really talk when I talk to organizations is about your social media awareness and what’s being put out there. So often when I go in and talk with leaders of companies, they’ll say, oh, I’m not on social media. I’m like, you may not be, but you have teenagers at home that are or you have a spouse at home that is, and they’re advertising, oh, my spouse is traveling here or there or dad is gone, right? I said, you will be amazed at those around you that overshare, right? You have family dinners, you talk about what’s going on at work and then your teenagers find that interesting. And next thing you know, it’s on social media. So there’s the awareness, even beyond just the person in the seat at the organization. It’s those around them. And then it’s the same within a company, right? You’ve got to have that good balance of education and awareness and making sure your employees understand the balance of what’s appropriate to share and what’s not.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:01] It’s funny because when social media first I remember Myspace, that was my first. I guess everybody’s first was Myspace. And people talking about, well, I’m having this for dinner. Who cares.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:12] Or I’m the I’m in the inner library and who cares?

Buffy Payne: [00:34:19] And now everybody shares everything.

Brian Pruett: [00:34:21] Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, like you said, oversharing. So, um, so yeah. So I guess with that oversharing aspect of it, because a lot of people do share their pictures, they’re on vacation and stuff like that. Yeah, there are things that I mean, other than not doing it, are there any other things they can do to kind of take care and protect them?

Buffy Payne: [00:34:43] Yeah, of course there are. There’s so many things people can do. Right. And one of the stories that is always the fun one to tell, not fun for the victim, was I had family that was so excited to go on vacation taking this two week trip, and they talked about it and they advertised they did their whole countdown on Facebook, going here, going here, going here. Well, they were gone for two weeks. When they got home, their house was empty. So the tagline now is share where you’ve been, not where you are, right? Yes. So it’s great that you’re going on vacation. It’s great that you’re going to be somewhere, but you wait till you get back from that somewhere before you start sharing those pictures and those stories. Right? Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:21] All right. So let’s talk a little bit now about the Outer Circle Foundation. So you guys you had mentioned you work with veterans but also the first responders because Matt was actually both. Yeah. Um, so talk about what you guys do. I know he shared stuff from your now that you’re kind of running things, I guess you would say just share what you guys do and then how people can help.

Buffy Payne: [00:35:41] Yep. So in our circle, our mission is really helping focus on PTSD awareness and suicide prevention. We do also help our first responders and veterans with that transition when they’re leaving the military or leaving that first responder job, and they’re looking for their next step. So we help with that. Education pieces, resume development, how to work the network, mock interviews, things of that nature, things that are much different in the job world versus the military or versus your first responder environment. Matt, being a both a first responder and military, has suffered from PTSD for numerous years, and I’ve watched this and have helped manage this for a long time. And there’s so many treatments out there that are medicine driven and that are not effective. We, Matt and I, went down the road of different medications for him, and he was not a person. When he was on those medicines. He would sit around for hours just in this fog and couldn’t function. And so we went to market and said, there’s got to be a better way. And lo and behold, one of his teammates, a guy by the name of Dr.

Buffy Payne: [00:36:55] James Lynch, is out of Baltimore, and he helped develop the stellate ganglion block. And so that was Matt went and had that treatment. And he’s been an impressively different person just from that one treatment. And so that we’ve got a partnership with Dr. Lynch. And that is one of the things that we educate our veterans and first responders that come to us on is this is something you should consider. This is something to look at. It’s, you know, it’s not a medication. It’s not it’s not these therapy sessions, but instead it is an instantaneous change of life. And we’ve seen numerous veterans go and meet Dr. Lynch and get this treatment. And we’re seeing a change in these behaviors, which is phenomenal. It’s exciting. Right. If we could get out there and get everybody to sign up, we would. As a matter of fact, Dr. Lynch just posted yesterday a program for veterans to come and get the shot for free. Wow. And so we reposted that to our LinkedIn page yesterday so that veterans can see that and get enrolled in that program.

Speaker5: [00:37:54] Matt, when.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:55] He was here, he shared about the experience of being seeing himself on the dock at a young boys. And he said it never happened. And that was the calmest he’s ever felt. So absolutely. That’s awesome. So let me ask you this. Is as a spouse. You said you’ve seen that go through what? First of all, it’s got to be scary of certain aspects of it. But can you share? I mean, first of all, I guess there’s hope. You know, for somebody, a family member or a spouse going through and seeing their loved one do that, share how what they can do and then what how did you handle the situation or how are you handling situations?

Buffy Payne: [00:38:27] Yeah. So with Matt, you know, as being his spouse and seeing the indicators with him, with his short temper or letting something so simple frustrate him, him not sleeping, the nightmares. And they started getting worse. Right when during Covid when life was really uncertain and things were going on, he just became more intensive with everything, and it became to a point where we knew that he had to do something else, right? And the medicines just weren’t working. He would stand up and fall over because the medicines had him so out of his normal self. And then when we went and met Doctor Lynch and talked to Doctor Lynch. And agreed that we would going to do this treatment. And then that same day that Matt had his first treatment with Dr. Lynch. He slept 14 hours that night. Wow, that man has never slept before. And, you know, I woke up multiple times to check him because he slept so well that first night. And I couldn’t believe it. And to see that now is amazing. To see him not overreact to items now is amazing, right? And he, you know, even he sees it, right? He sees his reactions are not the same. So that’s been fabulous right. And he’s just a different he’s just a different person. That’s great. And for him to share that story with other veterans so that they can go, okay, yeah, I see some of myself in that. Right. And from the spouse perspective, the treatment itself is simple, right? It takes less than an hour. The side effects are done. The results are instant. For me, it’s been like a breath of fresh air. Right? Because now I know he’s feeling better. I know that the person he is, and I’m not going to get these reactions to stuff that I would get before.

Brian Pruett: [00:40:26] And I’m sure it’s come a long way, because when when you first heard about PTSD, people were like, first of all, what is that? And second of all, they probably didn’t have I know they didn’t have all the stuff that’s out there now. So it’s a it’s amazing the PR that’s come along. So one thing you touched on that I think is important to to share too, is I talk about, you know, I could be passionate in helping veterans, which I am, but I’ve never been a veteran. Right. So and I talk about this too with a friend of mine, Kevin Harris, with All In All Out Ministries. He went down the road of addiction. So now he’s helping move the addiction, right? I think it’s so important that while somebody like myself, who’s either never been in addiction or a veteran may have a passion for helping, it’s a lot more. Stronger with somebody who has been in that road and now helping those others. Would you agree with that?

Buffy Payne: [00:41:14] Absolutely, absolutely. But you know, it was interesting with Matt, he he’s always wanted to help others, but it took him a long time to realize he had PTSD. He would push it off. That’s in his responses when he would get upset. But that’s just who I am. And I’m like, it’s not. It’s not because I’ve seen you different. I’ve seen you at moments where everything’s fine and I’ve seen you at moments where I think the world is going to implode and to finally get him to recognize he had PTSD and get him to recognize and realize he needed treatment, that was a huge step. And now that he can take that story and share it with others, right. They listen and it is by far more impactful.

Brian Pruett: [00:41:57] And the other thing that that’s another thing to point out that you just mentioned, is that your situation or things that victimize or whatever doesn’t define you, right? It’s how you handle it, the way you can move on and teach others and help others. But it is not a defining moment for you. So, um, all right, so you also have inner circle foundation as well. Correct.

Buffy Payne: [00:42:21] Inner circle solutions. Yes.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:22] Inner circle solutions. Okay. Can you tell us about that?

Buffy Payne: [00:42:24] Sure.

Buffy Payne: [00:42:25] Inner Circle Solutions is a solutions company. We go out and work with organizations or individuals, understand what their risks are and help provide solutions, whether it’s solutions of technology or training or whatever it is they may need. We help bring those solutions to them. And one of the things with Inner Circle, any any work that we do, we give a percentage of every contract to outer circle. So that’s our way that we’re helping support our nonprofit.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:52] Are there certain industries with your inner circle solutions as you work with and the size.

Buffy Payne: [00:42:59] In really any industry we can work within? Right. So with my background and our team’s background, we cover all industries, everything from restaurant to retail to to finance to manufacturing. Right. We have that pretty far knowledge and scope that we can help support any organization. And we do everything big to small, right? So we’ve been working with small churches, helping them build security programs within their churches, which is amazing that our industry has shifted so much that we have to go into churches and help them build security programs. But we are doing that. So there’s there’s no company too large or too small that we won’t take.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:40] When you go to churches, do you guys do anything with like active shooters?

Buffy Payne: [00:43:43] Yes, yes. We are both certified to train an active assailant program and help educate, you know, whether it’s a church or a school or any organization about active assailant, what to do, how to behave, how. What the what to expect in the situation. And it’s it’s also sad that we have to to do that. But you know, the one thing that Matt and I really talk about whenever we talk with individuals, whether we’re in a company, talking to them or at a school or a church, talking to people, when we educate and teach you about security, it doesn’t only apply here where you are, but you can take that same training, take it home, you can take it to the grocery store, you can take it to a movie theater. It applies wherever you are. Security awareness and the training we provide applies at work and in life.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:32] Wow.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:32] That’s awesome. So share about the Outer Circle Foundation, how individuals or businesses can can get involved and help you.

Buffy Payne: [00:44:40] Yeah. So excuse me. Outer Circle Foundation, we have our website, Outer Circle Foundation.org. Certainly you can reach out to us there. And you know, there’s a means to make financial sponsorships or to sign up for volunteer events between now and the end of this year, which is not that far away. Right? Right. We are collecting gifts and we’re going we’re working with two senior citizen senior centers that have quite a large population of veterans or first responders that are there, that we’re going to provide Christmas gifts for them and do some volunteer work in their organizations in December, just helping make sure those in the senior center have a good holiday. And then after the first of the year, obviously we’ll be running towards our next golf tournament, which will be in October. But from January to October, it goes by really quick. When you start planning a golf event.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:36] Well, there’s something in between that too, which we’ll talk about in a second.

Speaker5: [00:45:38] So yeah, we’ll talk about that one too.

Buffy Payne: [00:45:40] And you know, you did you did mention that our last golf tournament, October, that the money that we raised there, we planned to gift part of that to two different organizations. And one of those organizations is Kimberly, sitting here with us today at paws for life. Us. And so what she doesn’t know is we’ve got the final check this morning from one of the sponsors. And so we have for paws for life a check for $10,000. Awesome. Giving them.

Brian Pruett: [00:46:11] That’s awesome.

Buffy Payne: [00:46:12] Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:46:13] So congratulations. Yeah. Um, so if somebody wants to volunteer or again, a business other than the, the money aspect of it, are there other ways they can get involved?

Buffy Payne: [00:46:24] Absolutely.

Buffy Payne: [00:46:25] There’s tons of ways to get involved. And I shared before we went live a little bit that we’re working on an agreement right now to partner with another nonprofit that will provide technology to veterans. And then we are going to take the veteran from the point that they receive that technology and provide education, training, awareness on how to develop your resume, what LinkedIn should look like. And yes, you do have to be on LinkedIn if you plan on moving on into another job or role outside of what you’ve been doing. So when as we’re moving in through this agreement, we need tons of resources to help, whether it’s a place to train folks or just people to come in and help us train those individuals, read resumes, you know, proofreading all of those education pieces. So our website should flurry with tons of volunteer opportunities where people can come out and help provide space, provide potato chips and a soda. Right. All of those things. Our goal is to train and help place 1000 veterans between now and 2025.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:30] Awesome.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:31] I want to go back to your thing you’re doing for the seniors, the Christmas. Are there certain gifts that you’re looking for?

Buffy Payne: [00:47:36] So right now, the centers have said most of the things that seniors would enjoy would be a book to read socks, nice warm socks that they can wear because the centers sometimes are kind of cool, and then just small individual items that they can then have for themselves. And they’re like, whether it’s, you know, a small snack, a box of chocolate, you know, little handheld games, things that they can enjoy for themselves. They said, please don’t do anything large because there’s not a lot of place to store stuff, right? She told me a story of somebody bringing a recliner one year.

Buffy Payne: [00:48:16] I don’t know what to do with this, but yeah, so small gifts that the individual can enjoy.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:22] And what’s the date that they can donate up to.

Buffy Payne: [00:48:25] So all donations need to be in by December the 7th, okay. And they’ll be delivered the next week.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:32] And where can they bring those.

Buffy Payne: [00:48:34] They can bring them to Outer Circle Foundation at three, four, two Woodland Path in Dallas, Georgia.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:41] Okay.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:42] Awesome. Um, well, I normally ask another question that you normally want to talk to you, but I got so involved talking about the animals because I love animals. Did I forgot to ask a couple questions. That’s okay. So we’re going to come back and do them all three at the end. So but I do want to go back to Kimberly for one second. I forgot to ask. You if individuals and businesses want to help paws for life. Other than the financial aspect, how can they do that?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:49:04] Oh yes. Great question. So we’re always looking for puppy raisers. So if somebody wants to take a 8 or 10 week old puppy into their home and help socialize them for whilst we’re waiting for a potential match to come along for them, we provide all the food or of course all the veterinary things for the puppy. You just have to provide the love and the attention and come to us for training. So the pup is learning basic obedience whilst you’re doing your puppy raising. So we’re always open to that. And anyone who wants to volunteer are more than welcome to have you come to any of our events. You can also make donations to us for our next year’s Veterans Holiday Basket that we’re always looking for. Gifts for that otherwise than that we’re open to. We are going to be doing a shoe drive again next year, and so we’re always looking for people that have gently used or new shoes that they no longer want. When they come to clear out their closet. Just let us know and we will put out a basket for those donations to be made. And we’ll also let you know a time when you can deliver them to us.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:05] And where can they drop those off at?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [00:50:06] They can reach out to us by, of course, calling us by phone, but they will be dropped off at the 3100 Roswell Road, Marietta, Georgia.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:13] Okay. Yeah. All right, Buffy, real quick, we have something going on in March.

Buffy Payne: [00:50:18] We do?

Brian Pruett: [00:50:19] It’s the. And we moved it because I was dumb and picked the week before Thanksgiving and didn’t realize it. So March 21st, 2024. Put it on your calendars. It’s going to be the first annual America’s Hometown Heroes Expo. That’s right. You want to share any information about that?

Buffy Payne: [00:50:36] I think this is going to be fabulous. The timing of this is just perfect, right? So Hometown Heroes Expo is going to be the opportunity for organizations to be present and share jobs that they’re trying to fill. It’s also a great time for our veterans and first responders or anybody in the community, really, to come out and say, hey, I need a job. Or it’s also think about those veteran owned businesses that want to come out and showcase who they are. What they’re about are nonprofit organizations. It’s just a wonderful time for everybody to come together, network, shake hands, hopefully find some jobs.

Brian Pruett: [00:51:10] Yeah, we’re going to have a silent auction there as well. We’ll have some food. We’re going to have a my buddy Daniel for 1041 canines, going to do a canine demonstration with his dog. So be a lot of fun. So you can go to B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com and get more information out as well. Or go to my Facebook page and Buffy share your website and stuff one more time as well.

Buffy Payne: [00:51:35] Sure.

Buffy Payne: [00:51:36] Outer circle. Outer circle. Foundation.org.

Brian Pruett: [00:51:39] Awesome, Buffy, thanks for sharing again. We’re not done. We’ll come back to you, but we do have another gentleman in the house. Thank goodness I’m not the only guy, because lately I’ve been the only guy in the studio. So Todd Masters from FocalPoint Coaching and Training Excellence, thanks for being here this morning.

Todd Masters: [00:51:55] My pleasure.

Brian Pruett: [00:51:56] So first of all, we just had Veterans Day this past Saturday. And thank you for your service. You’re a veteran. So happy belated Veterans Day.

Todd Masters: [00:52:04] Thank you.

Brian Pruett: [00:52:04] Air Force correct.

Todd Masters: [00:52:05] Air force yep.

Brian Pruett: [00:52:07] Can you share a little we’ll get into what you’re doing now in just a little bit. But share your background, share about your service and what you did. And we’ll go into that. Yeah. I don’t have.

Todd Masters: [00:52:14] The great military background story like Matt has, but I was on scholarship out of high school for Air Force ROTC. So Uncle Sam paid for my degree in electrical engineering. And, you know, I grew up in the 80s Top Gun, you know, all the inspirational movies, the shock and awe and things that happened, you know, during the early 90s. So, you know, every kid my age wanted to go into either the Navy, the Air Force. And I went with the one that gave me the biggest scholarship and went that way. So loved it, had a great time, you know, didn’t have a long career. Right after I got out of the ROTC program. You know, we had the big reduction in force, right? So a lot of a lot of the half the military was gone at that age, you know, when Clinton took took administration after the war, after the Bush buildup years. And then Clinton came on board and we did. We had too big of a military. So they cut it. And, you know, the last ones in, first ones out. So that was it. But I loved it, cherished that time. But it was, you know, a bit of a heartbreak, you know, for, you know, seeing your dream kind of get taken away on that part of it. But, you know, there’s always plans for, for other things. From there, I went into I had some small businesses that I did, but I felt obligated to use my engineering degree and, and go on that route. But I did have a home painting business, a home refinishing remodeling business.

Todd Masters: [00:53:33] Then I went in and became an engineer for about a year and a half, and then figured out that sales and marketing actually pays a little better than engineering. So I went into technical sales and spent a lot of time last 20 plus years in corporate sales and marketing for a very large companies, 200,000 employees, down to very small companies of ten employees, and throughout that widespread of executive sales and marketing. The thing that always drove my passion and my excitement was when I was working with individuals and training and coaching and mentoring and bringing people up, especially, you know, new sales folks that come on, on, on the, you know, in the circuit and training them up from not knowing how to do anything to being able to make a good living for themselves and their families, you know, through the sales training and other parts of it, and just seeing the change that you can make in lives. But, you know, in corporate America, it’s really hard to make a big difference in your community. And my family background is all entrepreneurial. You know, my great grandfather, you know, had a Woolworths business. My grandfather started an electrical wholesale business. Most of my uncles and aunts all had, you know, their own businesses, mostly in the home services, trade area, electrical, wholesale, plumbers, electricians, mechanics. So I’ve always seen that part of it, you know, and and seeing what my grandfather did, and he built up a good business that’s still run by family. He had a tremendous impact on the community, being able to be flexible, to help people, to give people jobs that really needed jobs and making a big dent and impacting the community.

Todd Masters: [00:55:04] I also, my other grandfather on the other side, was very active in Lions Club and some of the local local businesses and making things, you know, really help out in this day and age. And I think where our, our country is going, you know, small businesses is really going to become more important, especially as the new generation gets out and starts working 9 to 5. And the first week, as we’ve seen all the TikToks come, they’re they’re not so excited about the whole 9 to 5 thing, right? So I think there’s going to be a big push, you know, especially since they see a lot of peers. I do air quotes, you know, getting rich on social media and these quick things. Right. They think, oh, I can just start my own thing. And all of a sudden, you know, become self sustained. And that’s not going to be real. But I think they’re going to take a swing at having a small business and doing that part of it. So I think we’re going to see a big shift, you know, in the work area, especially if if a corporation still are pushing the, you know, back to the office type schemes, I shouldn’t say schemes, but that is a part of it versus the work at home or flexibility. They don’t find that good balance then that there’s going to be a lot of workers that are just going to start their own thing on that piece of it.

Brian Pruett: [00:56:13] So what did you do in the Air Force? What was your particular job? Communications okay. Yeah. All right. So you talked about being an entrepreneur and everything. So now you are a coach, right? Coach with businesses and stuff like that. Share about what you what you do now. Yeah.

Todd Masters: [00:56:28] So got out of corporate America to come back and make a difference and help people with a good background in sales and marketing. It’s it’s great to be able to work with companies and charities all suffer. You know, small businesses and charities all suffer the same problem we all have. You know, the one big issue, which is obscurity, right? People don’t know who we are. We don’t know. They don’t know what we do. They don’t know how to find us. It’s always that constant battle. And charities are small businesses, right. You know, so getting out and you know, coming from, you know, head of sales and head of marketing type positions and. You know, with large marketing budgets, it’s really easy to end obscurity when you have $20 million to work with. Right? But go to a charity in a small business, you know, funds are funds are a lot tighter, right? It’s a lot harder to do that part of it. So everybody is insanely busy and scrambling social media updates, you know, websites got to do this, got to do that. Business cards going out. You know it’s you know today’s small business owner and charities are just so overwhelmed and busy trying to do all of these things. And it’s becoming more and more competitive, you know, and if people get more and more into the small businesses, it’s going to become even, even more crazy. So I got out really of corporate world to one, make a difference in the lives of small business owners. And that’s turned into helping out a lot of charities. But from the get go, you know, my business model has always had a 10% buffer in there, if you will, of giving back to charity. So it was always going to be 10% of my time or my revenue on that piece of it to give back and make sure that I’ve got room to give back to the community and do things for, for those that I can help.

Brian Pruett: [00:58:13] Well, one thing you’ve talked about before that you kind of help and give back to is a CRM program for nonprofits. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Todd Masters: [00:58:20] Sure. Yeah. So as so I’m a certified business coach and executive coach, and there’s a lot of coaches out there. It’s a lot bigger industry than I thought it was, even though I did, you know, the market research. But there are a couple of kind of coaches, those that you know, will come to a business and kind of have some pre canned material, if you will, and focal point, you know, the franchise that I have was founded by Brian Tracy, a nice great business mind. And we come out and and coach more towards results and outcomes. And when I go in and work with a small business or a charity and, you know, we work through what, what’s the biggest challenge that you’re facing right now? You know, obscurity is certainly one of them. The next thing, one of two things usually come out of their mouths, I need more customers or I need to make more money. And so we talk about that. And, you know, a big part of small businesses is to generate leads, right? To go out and get your message out and bring people in to have engagement with you so you can have a conversation, you know, and talk about what you do.

Todd Masters: [00:59:26] So as as a coach, you know, it’s one thing to say, you need to go out and find a way to get the word out, or you need to work on your digital presence or your digital footprint and go, go find somebody that can do that for you. Whereas for me, I like to bring the people that I work with a tool. You know, I want to actually let’s, let’s get some results and do that. So I found a platform that I could white label as an agency and build a lot of custom automations and all the actions and all the things that are kind of an all in one toolbox for a small business priced for small businesses with all the features and functionality that small businesses need to automate a lot of their systems to bring all the conversations into one place, you know, to help save the time and doing some different parts of it, you know, have the website, have landing pages, SMS, email, all those features, all in one platform. And more importantly, it’s building all the automations that kind of help streamline all that piece together. So so I’ve pieced that together and and also offer that to charities as well at an extremely discounted rate in some instances.

Todd Masters: [01:00:36] But you know, it’s always a challenge when you introduce technology. It’s like sometimes, you know, given a brand new 16 year old driver, a semi truck as a first car. Right? It’s a wow, I know this thing is huge and it has all these capabilities, but I have no idea how to drive a big truck. Right. So then comes in the specialized services to do website development, landing page development, marketers, you know, digital advertising, you know, all the things that we still have to do. You know, it takes a while then to learn those skills or to find people that can come in and do that piece of it, which again, I’ve, I’ve got a certain amount of time that I can help, but it’s not a full time job that I can that I can do that. So I have partnered with several good digital marketing companies that are given veteran rates for their services with a discount 20%, and they’re going to be able to donate some hours to help out with building up some of the charitable websites that that I’m helping out with. So that’s good.

Brian Pruett: [01:01:33] So then you be part of our expo?

Todd Masters: [01:01:35] Absolutely. Yeah. We can we can bring him out. So that’d be.

Brian Pruett: [01:01:38] Great. So those of those who might be listening, who aren’t familiar with what a CRM is, share what that is.

Todd Masters: [01:01:44] Sure. So in the digital media world, a CRM is a customer resource management tool, right? So in big corporations, you know, you’ll have HubSpot or Salesforce, right? Salesforce is typically the biggest one. Oracle, SAP, you know, big, big, huge systems that cost tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to to run. And. And manage. And even at the small business level, there’s. There’s hundreds of CRMs that are out there that typically cost, depending on the features, five, $600,000 a month and all the software platforms, as small businesses start, you know, you start out with Calendly or a calendar function, you have to have a video thing. So you’ll do Zoom or Google Meet or something like that, but then you start needing to have a big email management to do, you know, large messaging campaigns. You’ll need to hire a website developer and host a website on another platform. And over the first course of the year, the first year of somebody being in business, you’ve got 20, 30, 40 different subscriptions or platforms or fees and costs that typically cost around 1000 to $2000 a month. So I’ve tried to bring this platform that does all of the customer management. So you bring in all of your customer information into one place, and you can call them from the platform, email them from the platform, text them from the platform to have conversations. You can also connect your social media accounts so your messages from Facebook and TikTok will come in so you don’t have to log into those other platforms.

Todd Masters: [01:03:14] And you can also post out to LinkedIn, post out to TikTok, post out to Facebook from inside the platform so you can create your content and just launch it from one place when you can have your. Mostly it’s the web page, right? So you have the web page engagement where you have a tracking whoever comes and visits to your web page and with your calls to action, which is very important, you know, and really with a web page, it’s very important to very quickly say, you know who you are, what you do and, and what does your visitor get out of engaging with you? And then you ask them to do something right. Engage on your website whether it’s, hey, you know, join, sign up for our newsletter. Here’s a promotion we have going on. Or can would you like to volunteer for this upcoming event? Right. And you want to capture that information so that you can then send them an email, maybe a text reminder and all those things. But if you’re talking about trying to do that for 2000 people doing that manually, it’s just not it’s not sustainable, right? You’ve got to be able to automate and bring automation into your life to do that, to make sure that no leads or no potential donors fall through the cracks and maximize that effort.

Brian Pruett: [01:04:24] So I’m not going to ask this question because I want them to contact you to find out more about that CRM platform. Sure. Share how people can get Ahold of you and talk to you about that.

Todd Masters: [01:04:35] Yeah, well, if you want to launch your own CRM, it’s just launch your crm.com.

Brian Pruett: [01:04:39] Okay. Yep. All right. So when you work in you’re talking about your coaching and stuff. Are there. You work with all different businesses? I do small businesses.

Todd Masters: [01:04:47] I haven’t niched down into specific industry, but I do like to work with small businesses that typically 1 to 100 employees is kind of ideal, right? And within a business life cycle, you know, you’ll have a start up business that has a great idea and wants to launch, have all the excitement. They may have some funding, but they hit that part where it’s like, oh wow, this is a lot more work than I thought. Or it’s it’s not going as well as I thought. Or in the rare instance, man, this thing has taken off like a rocket. I need help to scale really quickly. You know, that’s probably, you know, 5% of small businesses that start just out of the gate have some awesome product, and they’re just full of energy and it just takes off and launches the other 95% of people. It’s it’s a churn. I mean, it’s a lot of work that people don’t always realize. And then they start to hit this down cycle where they almost want to give up and quit. Certainly I can come in and help there, but it’s a high stress situation. But I, I come in and I usually do a lot of free consultations at that point to let them know, hey, from a second set of eyes, you’re going to be fine right here. Just we need to do these these things get through this hump. Right? And let’s start working together or. Yeah, you know, you’re right. This is going to be really hard to to get out. You know, you might have you maybe considered going this angle and maybe, you know, starting again doing a restart.

Todd Masters: [01:06:05] But at that point typically when you hit this, what I call a growth cycle of once you’re stabilized, you have a good product, you have pretty good systems and tools in place, and you’ve gotten over that initial shock and awe of of starting a business. That growth phase is really where my customers get the most value, especially when we’re talking about sales and marketing. And let’s okay, so now let’s ramp up, let’s optimize, and let’s really crank out your revenue. And one of the first consultations I’ll do with the small business is let’s just look at what you’re doing right now and how you’re doing things, how well you’re advertising, how well you’re marketing. How well are you selling. Let’s gauge your effectiveness and what’s coming in that you’re doing. And almost actually 100% of the meetings that I have are these consultations just by making small micro adjustments to what they’re doing in their current business model, making small micro adjustments can double their revenues by changing what they spend their time on. Let’s look at your lead management. Let’s look at your conversion rates. Let’s look at some of the I call them six levers or six main metrics that we look at. And just making small little tweaks can make such a huge impact over 12 months I’m like, okay, so let’s just do some small adjustments here. And we’re just going to turn these knobs just a little bit. And it should it’s going to double your revenues.

Todd Masters: [01:07:22] It’s going to make it easier to to work with me you know and pay pay a coach because you never consider that before. And then we’re going to work on a one year, two year, three year, five year, ten year plan. So a lot of my customers like that, especially when I come in and with the sales and marketing experience and say, okay, well, yeah, there’s no reason why. There’s no wonder why this ad’s not working. Because you’re you’re set up to go to the wrong audience or let me talk to your, your sales reps and let’s go through the scripts and see how they’re selling. It’s like, okay, if you change this one thing, you’re going to double your closing rates. And that’s happened with a few of my clients where I get a text the next day after we go through the sales training and said, hey, you know, I did exactly what you said, and I doubled my sales today. It’s just amazing, right? So, you know, there’s a lot of little tweaks, and that just comes from all the different experience that I have. But I also work with corporations and I’ve done a couple I can I do sales training and corporate communications training as well. You know, we I’m a certified disc. If you’ve heard of the disc analysis for the four personality types, which which I just love for me, team dynamics and company culture are so important to the success of a company, and a lot of culture dies because we fail to communicate how the other person desires to be communicated with, right? We we more of communicate our style and expect them the other person to to hear what I’m saying, how I’m saying it, and respond the way that I want them to respond.

Todd Masters: [01:08:49] But really, we need to communicate in a way that they need to be communicated to. So we have to understand the difference of personalities and dynamics of what types we are. So I go in and do some training. I did one last week, and you can get in there and know that there’s there’s a little fog in the air. There’s some tension going on between executives and employees, which there always is because executives typically are these high d, high driven, director style personalities, which they have to be companies need that. And then within the employee base you’re going to have all types, right? But typically the opposites of the D’s are going to be ones that are more detail, more analytical, more introverted. And there’s always that big gap between, you know, they didn’t, you know, take my advice. And now the company is going to fail because X, Y and Z. Well how do we how did we communicate that advice. Was it through a thousand spreadsheets and, you know, things had to read through, or did you summarize it in two bullets of if you do x, y happens because that’s what a D needs to see at that level. Like, oh okay. Yeah, I might have been a little too detailed there. Yeah. Yep. You were. So let’s let’s work on that. Right.

Brian Pruett: [01:09:57] So so when you, when you working with small businesses I’m guessing it’s you’re working with the owner. But if they have say up to 100 employees, do you work with the owner and somebody else within the industry or the business or who’s typically other than the owner, somebody you might work with?

Todd Masters: [01:10:11] Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you know, all my all my coaching offers are going to be customized based on on what their needs are. I love to work with the business owners, certainly. And there’s going to be more one on one coaching. We’re going to talk about leadership. We’re going to talk about communication. Certainly all the business skills and things that they need to be trained on so they can then go train their employees. The important thing about coaching and the difference between coaching and consulting is that a coach will will train the business muscles of a business and a business owner to teach them to become stronger, to go out and then do the things that they need to do themselves, where a consultant is going to be hired to come in and then go do that work, you know, off in the background and come back, and then then the company becomes dependent maybe on the consultants because they don’t know what they do or how they did it. I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to teach you how to do it. Work with you on that part, and I’ll help train your employees. I’ll help train your senior executive staff. Right. And communication. But I want you there with me to watch me how I do it. I want you to follow the results.

Todd Masters: [01:11:16] I want you to ponder these things. Not that they have to become a sales trainer themselves or a communications trainer, but I want them to know what’s what’s going on on that piece of it. Because really, to get everybody working, everybody needs to look at at their skill sets. And you know, it’s really you know, everybody here is amazingly successful and talented at what you do. I feel a little intimidated being between you two amazing, amazing ladies. But you know, it’s it’s if you’re a hard worker and you’re putting a lot of yourself into your job, which which most people do if you’re if you’re just basically not a slacker, but you’re not as successful as the top person on your team, right? It gets frustrating. And you keep hammering at it, hammering at it, hammer it, and just can’t seem, you know, to be one of the top salespeople or win that award, you know, oftentimes. You know, the difference between the champions and the people that come in second, third or fourth or fifth place is such a small adjustment. It’s just an adjustment in one skill, one area. And it’s important to confine that awareness of what is that? What is that critical constraint? What is that thing, that one thing that’s holding you back? You know, if you think of a horse race, the difference between the in the Kentucky Derby of the horse that comes in first place versus a horse that comes in second place, you know, what’s that difference? Or NASCAR.

Todd Masters: [01:12:35] Inches inches between you know, champion and second. So you know so my training really focuses on let’s identify what the weakest link is and whatever X thing that you’re trying to accomplish. And let’s just focus on that one skill and let’s just get 1% better every month. 1% every month. Right. And by the end of the year, it’s 10% better. And you can take your average performing sales team, employees productivity, whatever. And in the course of just a few weeks or months, double productivity, double results, you know, and really see that. And and the light goes off and people’s eyes, you know, in their minds it’s like, wow, I can do this. This isn’t impossible. I can provide more for my family. I can do better. And all along, because we get paralyzed through the analysis of all the overwhelming things that we have to do, and we just can just then do nothing. And that’s that’s what coaching comes in, is help. Let’s let’s create some awareness first right of where we’re at. Let’s just find an action of make small adjustments. And then I’m going to hold you accountable to that. And we’re going to see the results.

Brian Pruett: [01:13:40] Right. So you were out of Buford Dacula. You said do you work all over metro Atlanta, all.

Todd Masters: [01:13:45] Metro Athens, Gainesville. So we travel. I can do a lot virtually, but I do like to do faces face to face as much as I can on that piece of it. You know, my websites Todd Masters, focal Point coaching.com. You can find me there. There’s links to the CRM on that piece as well. But yeah, I’d like to show up with with tools experience and and that part of it. But you know, the important part of my coaching is that I provide value first. Right? I’m going to work with you to show you what I can do, how I can help you. And then it’s going to make sense or it’s not going to make sense. My coaching isn’t for everyone, but but pretty quick we can see if it’s right for you, right?

Brian Pruett: [01:14:22] I got so many questions run through my head, but I’m going to ask two more before we kind of wrap this up. So the first question is, you know, when I guess coaches and consultants first came out, people were like, first of all, what? Yeah. And then they get kind of a bad rap, right? And they’re like you mentioned earlier, there are so many out there. Yeah. Can you maybe do a little debunked on the, the reputation for a coach or a consultant? And then second of all, how does somebody what’s the best way to choose the right person to work with.

Todd Masters: [01:14:53] Yeah. Great questions. Certainly. Yeah. There’s anybody can call him a coach. It’s not a highly regulated industry. But to be a certified business coach you have to go through a certification process. So that’s important to be certified first. And looking at the background, you know, a lot of coaching turns out to be referrals. You know Focal Point is a franchise created by Brian Tracy which which is a great business mind. And there’s very selective on who can become a focal point coach. You have to have certain number of years of experience in the industry. You have to have the right you have to pass the assessments to see if you’re actually a person that’s a good coach personality that really has the desire to help others on that piece of it. But you have to have a conversation, and you have to talk to the other people that they’ve worked with to see the kind of results. So reputation is important, referrals are important, but you have to have that conversation and then see, is this person really going to get me to this end result? Right. So you’re going to have to come and understand what is it. If you know what your goals are, ask the coach. How do you plan on getting me to reach these goals? Are you just going to fill me with warm, fuzzy feelings? You know, every Friday you know, of, of like, here’s this, here’s this famous quote from blah blah blah. No, that’s helpful. Mindset’s good. But they’re actually going to be some tools. Is there going to be some things that are going to make a dent in my business? So it’s going to take a lot of, you know, you have to have a conversation, right? So if you have a coach or you’re looking to get a coach, hop on a discovery call. You know, they’re 15 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you want to do and, and have that conversation to see it for sure.

Brian Pruett: [01:16:34] Um, so another thing, and this goes with any industry, not just the consulting and coaching, but you know, somebody is like they’re worried about the financing part of it, especially with me when I’m doing these fundraisers and I’m trying to get sponsors, it’s when you’re sitting, you have to sit. You talked about having the conversation. I want to sit down with somebody and show them the value, right? Because they’re like, well, I’m just going to and it’s the same thing with coaching and consulting. I’m guessing that you have to go in and show the value of what you’re going to bring them, right? Doubling their sales or whatever the case may be. So everybody has to have an open mind when they’re sitting down talking to everybody, honestly. Last question before we kind of go back to all of you, because again, I get wrapped up in some of the stuff, but if somebody because you mentioned you had other businesses as well, if somebody is looking again to start their own business, share some advice from what would you advise them?

Speaker7: [01:17:27] You know.

Todd Masters: [01:17:28] Go for it. I would say absolutely go for it. You know, to do that, it’s it’s it is hard. It’s not an easy thing. Right. So there it’s not a it’s you know, there’s pros and cons to both. Right. And you’re going to work hard to be successful in whatever area that you do. You know, if you have a small business there’s no parachute right. There’s no safety net. You can’t go to your boss and ask for a raise. You can’t go and ask for an advance on your commission, right? It’s going to be you that produces your results. You do have an ejection handle where you got to bail out, right? That’s that’s the out for that part of it. So you know, a lot a lot of veterans make great small business owners in most situations. You know, not always the education in business or not always having that background of how to run a business, which is why coaches are important or all the veteran organizations. Bunker labs.org is a great veterans resource for for veterans that want to have a small business, a lot of free resources on how to start a small business on that part of it. So you definitely have to have a mentor to help you out and do that part of it. But the benefits of a small business is that, you know, you have you’re the master of your destiny, and a lot of veterans make great small business owners because they understand passion. They’ve been in the thick. They understand what it takes to have commitment. They have the perseverance, they have the drive. And you know, they can stick with it. You know, especially at that first curve where it starts to go downhill a little bit and reality sets in.

Todd Masters: [01:18:59] Well, that’s where you bunker in and, and and make it work, which is kind of where Bunker Labs comes into play at too. So I would highly recommend looking at it. So you definitely want to understand what market you want to go into and do a lot of research, right? Not just start on Google. Google, your product, your company, your service. What are you going to do in my area? Find your competitive and and do some good research up front to see if am I coming in an area where I don’t have a lot of competition that I could do well at, or other businesses like mine doing well, who can I talk to that I could run this by, right? Google in business coach. Right. And find those that do consultations like I do and say, hey, I’m thinking about starting a business. What do you think? I’m happy to spend 15, 30 minutes with you to tell you what I think from my experience and to give you some resources to go off and do some research on that part of it and do that. But you definitely need to put the work into it in advance and think through it in advance, in case you need funding in advance to sustain you and your family for a few months or years as its lean to be prepared for it. So definitely want to go into a situation like that as prepared as you can be and not just say, wow, this 9 to 5 stuff is not for me. I’m going to quit my job and start a business. That’s that’s not the way to do it.

Brian Pruett: [01:20:16] Definitely have all your ducks in a row, because I’m raising my hand because I’m guilty of jumping right in the waters. Great idea and stuff. But anyway, I got to let God handle that too. So I got three more questions for each of you. And again, I love this show because I get wrapped up in the stories and all the advice and all that. So we’re going a little longer than normal, but that’s okay as long as you guys are good. So three questions for each of you and then we’ll wrap this up. So I’m going to go back to Kimberly first okay. First question is and I normally ask these while you guys are in the middle of talking when they individually. But again I got too wrapped up in the animals. So thank you know, um, we we talked about why you’re passionate in the animals and stuff like that and all that, but why is it important for you personally to be a part of the community?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [01:20:58] Because I like to give back, and I want to make sure that anybody that has a disability can live their life to their fullest, because unless you actually know somebody that has a disability and how hard it can be, for example, you can be driving your car and somebody in the car in front of you is slow to turn around the corner, or it looks like they’re hesitating or you’re getting frustrated or whatever. Maybe that person has a disability and maybe they’re not quite to sure, or maybe they’re having a problem, but, you know, just don’t take things out. And there’s always two sides to a story. So you’ve got to learn to get a little bit of patience. And it seems that there’s no patience left anymore in our area, and there’s no thinking about somebody else and there’s no thinking. You’re all sort of seemed to be wrapped up in ourselves. We we need to think about some other people and how how we can help and how we can be there for them.

Brian Pruett: [01:21:44] Amen. Keep preaching. Keep going. Buffy. Same question. Why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Buffy Payne: [01:21:50] It’s the desire to make a difference in someone else’s life. It truly is seeing someone else overcome something or making their day a little better. Right is very heartfelt.

Brian Pruett: [01:22:03] You know the little things too. Like we talked one time I had a gentleman on that was one of my early shows that just smiling at somebody just opening the door. Yeah, right. And these days, thank yous.

Speaker5: [01:22:15] Yeah, right. Exactly.

Brian Pruett: [01:22:17] Todd, what about you? Why is it important about the community?

Speaker5: [01:22:19] Yeah.

Todd Masters: [01:22:20] You know, we’re all connected. All of us. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you think, where you’re at. We’re all. We’re all connected. For me, it’s. I want to make sure who I’m connected to, that I can help, that I can help, you know, be successful in that their families can be taken care of, you know, to alleviate the stress and burdens of owning a business. But I firmly believe that in the next 20 years, the heart of this country and the survival of this country is going to be in the small business area. And I want to do my part to make sure that America stays strong.

Brian Pruett: [01:22:50] Awesome. All right. The other thing we talk about on here all the time is the power of networking. And, Kimberly, you have the dogs that you can bring in. And I’m sure that’s just an awesome that the networking speak to that. But do you have a story in particular you can share of how the positive of networking has benefited and helped you guys?

Kimberly Brenowitz: [01:23:06] Everything as far as charity is concerned, for us anyway, has all been about word of mouth, has all been about going out there into the public. As you know, the dogs. Yes, you walk in. I was doing something with a foundation about a month ago, and I was one of the last people to arrive. And of course, what did I have? I had Rufus with me. So I walked in the door and everybody stopped. Everybody looked at the dog because the dog was the only person in the room at that time. And, you know, sometimes you just have to make a statement and you have to do something that makes you stand out a little bit more from other people, because that’s what’s going to draw attention to what you need. And then from that point on, you can make the inroads, you can do the discussion. So it’s a case of just being able to put yourself out there. I mean, we’ve had the door slammed in our faces more times than I care to remember. And, you know, right now we’re we’re trying to find a grant writer to be able to continue writing grants for us, because without those grants, we don’t get the support. We don’t get the funds coming in to operate us, because with us, we’re all volunteers. We don’t get paid for anything that we do. So any funds that we bring into paws for life USA is 100% towards the animals and the people that we’re working with.

Brian Pruett: [01:24:18] I’ll introduce you to somebody who does that for a living.

Speaker5: [01:24:20] Yeah.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [01:24:21] So so that’s one of the things that we’re desperate for. And it’s getting that word out. It’s being, you know, having that reliable content and it’s having us out there on the scene. Push push push push push. It never stops 24 over seven. All right. Well.

Brian Pruett: [01:24:36] Said, I’ll introduce you. Melanie Lambert. Just just for just for grants. That’s the name of a business. I will email you later. She’s a great lady. So as a matter of fact, that title. I meant to mention this in April, Melanie and another friend of mine, Glenda Hicks, who is a trainer for nonprofits on boards and things of that nature. She’s also a CPA strictly for nonprofits. We’re going to be hosting a kind of a half day seminar for nonprofits, and I would love to have you be involved in that with the CRM type stuff. So I’d love to help. All right, Buffy, what about you for the networking? I know you didn’t get a chance to do much in your probably your corporate career, but you kind of may be out now doing it. Do you have a story you can share?

Speaker5: [01:25:13] Yeah.

Buffy Payne: [01:25:13] So probably one of our greatest networking stories is when the Afghan government fell and we through Outer Circle Foundation and the use of our network, began evacuating our US allies out of Afghanistan over the course of two and a half years, we’ve probably helped support the evacuation of thousands of people out of Afghanistan. And probably our greatest story are the one that is most known is being able to evacuate the command sergeant major of the Afghan elite special forces out of Afghanistan. It took us two and a half years to get him into the United States. He arrived here in April of this year, and in September of this year, we were successful in bringing his wife and three children into the US.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:53] So he’s a great man to.

Speaker5: [01:25:54] Is a great man.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:55] Yes, yes.

Speaker5: [01:25:57] That’s the true power of a network.

Brian Pruett: [01:25:58] It is definitely. Todd, what about you?

Todd Masters: [01:26:02] How am I supposed to follow that? Well, my networks bring businesses together, so I love networking. It’s such an important thing, and it’s something that comes pretty natural to me. So I reach out on LinkedIn a lot to a lot of people. I think that’s how I met Matt. That connected me to Buffy, that connect me to Outer Circle and a C suite for Christ and some other great organizations. So if you get an invite to me to say, hey, let’s connect, it’s because I like to connect you with other people that might be able to help you. Once I know who you are or what you need and what you do. So I love it. I think our again, we’re all connected, right? And I think it’s very important for us to continue to work those networks so that in some case, you might be using your network to evacuate people, right, Afghanistan, or to find somebody that has a good platform that might help your business or charity out.

Brian Pruett: [01:26:47] And actually, that’s how you and we met because Matt was at a networking event, met my buddy Bob Brooks, and Bob Brooks mentored me. And I believe you reached out to me on Facebook. So that’s awesome. So, Todd, one more time, share how people can get a hold of you because they want to talk to you for your services.

Todd Masters: [01:27:01] They can call me at 67882221691. Call or text. See if you can get me there. Otherwise it’s Todd Masters focal point coaching.com.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:08] Awesome. And then the last thing as we wrap this up I always like to end this with you guys sharing a positive quote word nugget for the rest of 2023, which is only, what, 30 some days away and the rest of their life with, I guess. So, Kimberly, give us your words of wisdom.

Kimberly Brenowitz: [01:27:26] Practice patience and persistence. Mm.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:29] Buffy.

Buffy Payne: [01:27:30] Just be.

Speaker5: [01:27:30] Kind.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:31] Todd.

Todd Masters: [01:27:32] Start every day with a positive thought because your brain can only have positive thoughts or negative thoughts. So start off with positive.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:39] Awesome. And as I mentioned to the thank you is a lost art these days. So Kimberly, thank you for what you guys are doing for the community and with the animals. And please bring Rufus to the expo.

Speaker8: [01:27:48] I will definitely bring Rufus.

Speaker5: [01:27:49] And a horse.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:50] Yes. Yeah, if you can bring a horse, that’d be great too. I can.

Speaker8: [01:27:52] Bring a miniature.

Brian Pruett: [01:27:53] Horse. Buffy, thanks for what you and Matt are doing for the. Especially the first responders and the veteran community. And, Todd, thanks for what you’re doing for the business community. And again, thank you for your service. Thank you. Everybody out there listening. Let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.