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Search Results for: kids care

Women in Business Putting Food on Our Tables Part 4

August 23, 2023 by angishields

WomeninBusinessPuttingFoodonOurTablesPt4Feature
Women in Motion
Women in Business Putting Food on Our Tables Part 4
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In this episode of Women in Motion, host Lee Kantor discusses the food and beverage industry with guests Rhonda Busnardo, Verona Tang, and Cindy Convery. The guests share information about their companies and the importance of health and healthy diets in their businesses.

The conversation then shifts to trade shows and the opportunities they provide for small businesses. They also talk about the areas where the food industry can improve, such as waiving slotting fees and educating consumers.

Rhonda-BusnardoRhonda Busnardo has worked in the Food sector most of her career starting off in retail, moving into food and beverage manufacturing and distribution, and currently in the Gaming and Entertainment industry.

Rhonda grew up in Southern New Jersey. Rhonda and her husband, Anthony, have 4 boys aged 20, 14, 12, and 6.

When Rhonda isn’t working, she enjoys family time and being at the beach. Rhonda enjoys kayaking, boating, dancing, and is currently working on her long game in golf.

Cindy-ConveryCindy Convery is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the founder of PureWild Co. marine collagen products.

PureWild Co. launched in June 2020 in 7 stores. PureWild products are now available in 800 stores nationwide.

Products include collagen infused drinks, collagen infused wines and collagen supplements formulated for recovery from breast cancer, autoimmune disorders and osteoporosis.

PureWild Co. is working with Native American support groups to donate supplements to Native women in need. PureWild Co. is a certified Native American Woman owned company based in Ojai, California.

Before launching PureWild Co. Cindy worked as a director at ABC TV in San Francisco and as a consultant for Warner Bros and Disney creating movie advertising campaigns.

Cindy is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and attended Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in Paris. Cindy is the mother of 2 daughters and lives in Ojai, California.

Verona-TangVerona Tang has been involved with the food industry since 1998. She started her private practice in 2015. They have two trademarks in the market,  Little Jasmine and Arroyo Kitchen.

Little Jasmine and Arroyo Kitchen, a women- and minority-owned company, specializes in food that intersects clean ingredients and mouth-watering fusion flavors. The creative products are gluten-free, USDA organic, Non-GMO-certified, and free of preservatives and additives.

They are carefully sourced throughout the world, from India to Italy, bringing international cuisine directly to the consumer.

About our Co-Host

Pamela-Williamson-WBEC-WestDr. Pamela Williamson, President & CEO of WBEC-West,  is an exemplary, dedicated individual, and has extensive experience as a senior leader for over twenty years.

She has served as the CEO of SABA 7 a consulting firm, overseen quality control at a Psychiatric urgent care facility of a National Behavioral Health Care Organization where she served as Vice President and Deputy Director,and has served as the CEO of WBEC-West, since 2008.

Her extensive experience in developing and implementing innovative alliances with key stakeholders has enabled the organizations to reach new levels of growth and stability. Her ability to lead and empower staff members creates a strong team environment which filters throughout the entire organization.

She takes an active role in facilitating connections between corporations and women business enterprises and sees a promising future for WBENC Certified women-owned businesses.

Dr. Williamson holds a Doctorate in Healthcare Administration, a Master’s degrees in Business Administration, and bachelor degrees in both Psychology and Sociology.

Connect with Dr. Williamson on LinkedIn.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios. It’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by Wbec West. Join forces, Succeed Together. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Women in Motion brought to you by our good friends at WBEC West. So excited to be talking to the ladies we have. Today’s topic is putting food and beverages on our tables and we have some experts in the food and beverage industries excited to be sharing they’re doing and just their knowledge about the industry. Today on the show we have Rhonda Busnardo with Caesars, we have Verona Tang, with Little Jasmine and Arroyo Kitchen and Cindy Convery with PureWild Co Inc. Welcome, ladies.

Verona Tang: [00:01:02] Thank you. Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] So to kick off the show, I’d like to go around the table and get each one of you maybe to share the elevator pitch of your company. Cindy, why don’t we start with you?

Cindy Convery: [00:01:13] Oh, thanks, Lee I’m Cindy Convery. I’m based in Ojai, California, and my company is PureWild Co. It’s a wellness company that makes collagen infused products like functional beverages. We’re in about a thousand retail markets in all 50 states. The first ever collagen infused low alcohol wines, which I love, and collagen supplements that were formulated to support women recovering from breast cancer and autoimmune disease.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:42] Verona.

Verona Tang: [00:01:42] Yes, my business. Little Jasmine and Arroyo Kitchen. We are based in Los Angeles, California, and we are specialty food business. The concept of the business is we want to try to put international cuisine on your home table as well as some unique natural, essential oil and non-food items. And we are currently distributing our items nationwide about two 3000 stores and which including mainstream chain Kroger’s, as well as ethnic markets. And we have unique items such as organic seaweed, and we also have premium oolong tea as well as we have a fruit bottle tea and we are still developing a more unique and fusion items to our consumer.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:32] And Rhonda, do you mind sharing kind of a little bit about Caesars and your role?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:02:37] No, my name is Rhonda Busnardo. I’m the director of Strategic Sourcing on the food and beverage side. Basically, I’m finding the best food at the best price to bring to customers at our restaurants and give them the best food experience across the nation.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:51] Great. So I’d like to kick off the show today to talk a little bit about health and a healthy diet. How does just kind of the overarching trend towards a more healthy diet impacted each of your businesses? And let’s start maybe at from the largest enterprise Caesars. Rhonda, why don’t you start with you and how important is kind of this healthy lifestyle in the choices you make?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:03:17] And it’s actually very important to Caesars. We are obviously looking to bring the customers and consumers what they want, but we do that in the cleanest and healthiest way possible. One of the trends that we’re seeing is health foods and plant based items. It’s actually becoming more and more important to the consumer as they get more educated on health and and what we put into our bodies. So we try to match that and always have those options on our menus for the people that are health conscious.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:50] Cindy, can you talk about how important health is to your firm?

Cindy Convery: [00:03:53] Sure.

Cindy Convery: [00:03:54] Actually, I was just working on this pitch because I’m a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and Pure Wild is the only certified Native American woman owned brand within food and beverage with national sales. It’s a very small world. And the company was financed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. So it’s very much, you know, very much supported by Native American world. And I started the company because my mother was born in the Choctaw Nation in a house with no running water. A true and true, very true food desert. There were no healthy choices. So I grew up in a in an environment and a family that didn’t have access or education really about healthy food. So, you know, that was my foundation for starting the company. And then in June 2020, when I had my first products, it was the height of Covid. I emailed Erewhon Markets in LA seven stores. I think there are more now, but I emailed at eight in the morning and at noon they got back to me and brought in all of my functional beverages. You know that quickly because Covid was just driving that wellness desire for wellness. And what I’ve learned by expanding across the country is that really that middle part of the country is is just really hungry for healthy choices. You know, it’s my sales are much higher in the Midwest, in fact, which I think is a really fascinating because you don’t consider, you know, wide open spaces as big places to sell cutting edge wellness products. It’s an education.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:28] Verona.

Verona Tang: [00:05:29] Yes, health eating health diet is so important for me. And what we want to present here and is a food that is healthy, but it’s also delicious. So what I’m what I’m trying to do here, we are providing a really transparent ingredients. And also we do we try not to compromise the flavor. Most consumer will think it’s a healthy, healthy product, and delicious product usually doesn’t have the equal sign. And we kind of want to close that gap. So we try to we try to manipulate the ingredients and bring a few items that is healthy and delicious. And and the delicious is also important so people can continue and and also wanting to eat healthy food, not only just if they just think about healthy food, but it’s not delicious. Usually people will not be um people can not last this consumer will not not keep buying the same food. So so that’s our more purchase approach. And I personally think that is very important.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:39] So let me put this out to the group. How can kind of emerging or smaller brands compete with the larger players when it comes to quality, high quality, healthy ingredients? Like how do you differentiate yourself and how do you position yourself in this very competitive world?

Verona Tang: [00:06:58] This question is from me, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:07:00] Sure. Anybody could start. Go right ahead.

Verona Tang: [00:07:04] Yes, because this is a great question. So first, I like to really be transparent to our ingredients. Little things here. There, you know, no corn sirup, no fruit toss. Um, like we have our bottle fruit tea and it is sugar added. Um, but it’s limited and we use cane sugar, so it’s still flavorful and delicious, but the ingredients pretty clean and natural, things like that. And also we want to differentiate ourself that how we investigate our manufacturer that we work with worldwide, we work with, of course, manufacturers in the United States, we work with the manufacturers in Taiwan, we work with manufacturing in Italy, in Europe, and we do an audit once, twice a year. And so we know exactly how, um, what kind of product we bring to our consumer, for example, that we just launched that high end Oolong tea and everything, the sourcing, everything is the tea farm from Taiwan. It’s a small, it’s a small lot. So we see all the quality control and we know the ingredients where they come from. A lot of time that when we buy food, we of course we see the label, but it’s not all the label and stated that where the ingredients come from and the ingredient is something which is very important. And so we are really we I personally emphasize on the ingredient and the origination and everything that how we can put everything together and differentiate ourself is delicious and it’s healthy enough and with a premium quality.

Cindy Convery: [00:08:57] Lee Um, I think my experience with customers and with differentiating a small brand to a large corporation, you know, there’s obviously the financial challenge because I don’t have the marketing budget to compete with somebody that’s got 5 to 10 million in venture capital or a Coca-Cola type brand, which is not our category anyway. But they do have a healthy options they’re trying to sell. But my experience is that customers are really looking for that individual, individualized brand where the founder really knows the product and really is targeting that particular customer by understanding what that customer needs. You know, I founded my product based on my needs. It’s a collagen product. I was really looking for a clean wellness choice. There wasn’t one. My products are the only certified non-GMO Marine collagen drinks. They’re the only clean labeled drinks, meaning five ingredients or less. They’re sustainably packaged. We don’t use any plastic, and my customers really respond to that. I get personal messages all the time. And, you know, it’s like a friend group almost. It’s a little it’s really fun. But I think, you know, that’s the difference with small brands is you really have to connect directly with your customer. One. One story is I just went into Sprouts. So that’s our largest accounts at about 400 stores, and I didn’t see any sales in the only sprouts in a town called Libertyville, South Carolina. So I went on Instagram and I found a micro account. You know, it’s like 2000 followers. It was a clothing store fashion account. And I messaged them and, you know, we talked about the product. And the next day the store inhibits hills. South Carolina was sold out of Pure wild. So, you know, it’s that kind of outreach that starts a nice grassroots connection that I don’t think the corporate companies can really compete with or connect with.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:01] And that’s great advice for the small to mid-sized business owner. You have to do some things that maybe aren’t scalable for these larger firms, and maybe these larger firms are automating some of the things that you’re doing individually and creating those human to human relationships that are really giving you that traction in some areas that are helping you get the momentum so that you can kind of grow based on all those individual touches.

Cindy Convery: [00:11:32] Yes, that’s what that’s exactly what happens. I mean, yeah, I don’t know how to scale that, but at least it’s fun. I mean, you know, at least that part makes it enjoyable. It’s not like a chore, but it is. It is challenging to try to scale that connection.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:47] Now, Rhonda, can you share a little bit about your view of things from that enterprise level when you partner all the time with these small emerging firms, what are some of the things that they’re doing to stand out to get on your radar and to give you confidence that they can deliver what you need them to deliver?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:12:08] Um, well, I always encourage all the small businesses to go to trade shows, and even if it’s a show that might not be specific to your type of brand or product, it’s good to get out there and meet new possible customers. Like, you know, a lot of people think that we’re looking for a certain thing when you just never know. We have so many different types of restaurants and stores and little breakfast areas or what have you. There’s so much out there, so it’s always good to just get your items out in front of the face of the right people. I really like when there’s sample there or information on what the vendors have so that way I can bring that back to my team.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:01] Now, I’d like to shift gears a little bit and talk about maybe the food industry as a whole. What are some things based on your kind of lens of the food industry that you would like the industry as a whole to be doing a better job at? Where do you think there’s room for improvement?

Cindy Convery: [00:13:21] I definitely think there’s room for improvement in the retail world with smaller brands for larger retailers to try to support smaller brands and, you know, frankly waive some of the slotting fees and the types of things that that small brands can’t afford to get on the shelf. You know, I think that’s it’s a little, on my level egregious for a chain to expect a small individually owned brand to pay a slotting fee. So I would love to see. And and they do. And I must say they do talk about it. And there are webinars and emails and all kinds of outreach about it. But bottom line, when it comes down to it, there’s always a fee. So I would love to see them put their money where their mouth is, you know, just saying.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:13] Verona, what’s your view of this?

Verona Tang: [00:14:16] Yeah. You know, Cindy just said I just had a meeting prior, this one, and we were just talking about those fees. So my buyer was wanting me to to put more promotional fees. And I think, yes, I think a continuously said like for some of the distributors and they score each vendors and based on how much we support their program and I think we have to have we have to meet the middle ground that by supporting their program, if that is also supporting our business, somewhere in the middle will be really reasonable that if they are expecting me to put a half million on their promotion banner, which I only have three DC three distribution centers, it does not make quite much sense. So I think when they design those programs, maybe I think they can have a chart like based on the company’s scale and they set up a requirement. I think that then we can all play the fair game here. I think that’s what I just I just experienced it this morning. And also I think that’s a bigger picture is, um, I think I don’t think we have too much control on that. But the trend of the food business, um, I see sometimes is, is misleading consumers and that I mean of course going to each consumers but how they promote like many years ago there was an acting diet and then keto diet, all those things. And I think as a consumer, we also need to know how to choose the correct product for each individual. And Cindy said earlier mentioned each individual customers is different. And of course it doesn’t mean this particular food will match to my body constitution just because it’s it’s trendy. So I think those things we have to find a balance and maybe more, um, more fair like educational media’s out there and that we can share our opinions.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Rhonda, where are you seeing the industry as a whole and where are there room for improvement?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:16:43] Um. You know what? For me, it’s a lot different on my side because I’m technically, you know, buying from vendors like these ladies. And really, it’s just being able to access the product and get the product that we need at the volume that we want to. Um, you know that we need it. It’s been very busy even with inflation and everything else and just having the products in house to be able to provide the customer with the experience that they’re looking for has been a challenge for us. Yeah.

Cindy Convery: [00:17:17] And Lee, I have a question for Rhonda on this subject. Do you mind?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:21] Sure. Go right ahead, please.

Cindy Convery: [00:17:23] So, Rhonda, you know, we’re in in hotels as well as grocery stores. And there are absolutely best accounts. You know, they don’t charge the fees they pay on time. They’re supportive. You know, it’s a unique product. So, you know, like spa hotels, like the Ojai Valley Inn or or Montage Healdsburg or something like that. And it’s such a different experience that, I mean, at least once a week, I just think, why don’t I just do hotels? You know why I’m doing it? Yeah, because it’s so it’s it’s so much more pleasant, frankly, I must say.

Cindy: [00:18:01] Yeah.

Cindy Convery: [00:18:01] Do you. What do you think? I mean, do you have any thoughts about just that general direction?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:18:07] Yeah. I mean, it’s a big industry. Hotels, casinos. You know, people don’t realize too you know, you have a casino. Most of the casinos also have a hotel connected to it. So casinos and hotel industry is is its own thing. And yeah, I mean, you’re not having to pay those overhead charges the same way that you would for a regular retail store. So I don’t think that that’s a bad idea. You know, I wouldn’t suggest giving up on the retail just because you want yourself out there and available to consumers, you know, if they’re trying to find you. But it’s definitely a great opportunity to go and look at.

Cindy Convery: [00:18:48] Yeah, I almost feel like the retail aspect is just for branding, it’s just for marketing. And the on premise would be the profit because our our best account is frankly a mob casino, the San Manuel Casino. I think it’s just casino in California. And you know, we have a native product and casinos are native owned and all of that is a good fit. But yeah, I just think that our retail is going to end up being a big advertising ploy.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:19:16] Yeah. And I mean, you don’t want to pull it out completely and then have a customer see you in a hotel and want to go be able to bring that to their home and not be able to. So it’s good to be out there, you know, still and have your footprint, I guess, in the retail side so you don’t lose that. But if you look for a bigger part of your business being the hotel side and casino side, that’s that’s always a great way to get out there, too, and deal with less of the retail hassle.

Cindy: [00:19:45] And what.

Cindy Convery: [00:19:46] Trade shows. You mentioned going to trade shows. What trade shows would you recommend for that market?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:19:53] I actually a big one that I always promote that I go to is market vision. Market vision is just about the entire market and the food industry. It has everything from paper products to food beverages, and it’s a really great show that brings you together with a lot of different people from all over the world. They have, um, they have two shows. They have one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast. So if you prefer, you know, depending where you live to stay closer to home, you can choose one instead of both. I go to both of them, but there’s a lot of big casinos and vendors out there. And I also go to partner summits, so look into group purchasing organizations. They have a lot of benefits for vendors, you know, and I can provide you with more information offline if you’d like. We can talk more.

Cindy: [00:20:45] Oh, yeah, I’d really appreciate that.

Cindy Convery: [00:20:47] Thank you.

Cindy: [00:20:48] You’re welcome.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:49] Now, Rhonda, can you explain those group things you just mentioned? Like, what does that mean? And what is its mission and purpose?

Cindy: [00:21:00] Yes.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:21:00] Group purchasing organizations are organizations that hold contracts with vendors. And then if you’re a member of that, then you get the benefits of their pricing. And, you know, there’s a lot of other things that are tied into it. Um, you know, if you’re a member of those on the vendor side, you get access to all the members that are customers, like the casinos, the hotels, the restaurants and all of that. And then for me, I have the benefit of having the pricing that is a group pricing that brings it down for everybody and be a part of the programs. Um, you know, that they have that they have within their. Within their contracts.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:43] So are their vendors usually the biggest players, or are they also those smaller emerging brands as well?

Cindy: [00:21:50] Now they have.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:21:50] They have a lot I mean, they obviously have a lot of the bigger players. But any one I’m sure the smaller vendors can also be a part of it. There’s a lot of smaller vendors that I’ve met through group purchasing organizations, so it was definitely something that I would look into if I were them.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:08] Good stuff. Verona Are you part of any of those?

Verona Tang: [00:22:12] Um, we do trade shows a lot, so I joined the trade shows with the my distributors and as well as we go to the distributor shows such as like a key shows, we do fancy food show, we do Natural Product Expo, and we sometimes go to those Ramen Expo. That’s for ethnic markets. So yes, we do. We do join a lot of the events.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:38] Now, have you found a good strategy? When you go to these events? How do you get the most value out of attending or participating in one of these events?

Verona Tang: [00:22:47] I think we need to focus on the items since we have over 30 items, SKUs. I think depending on the show, we need to know the niche and we need to not to try to present everything. I think we need to target consumer and present a just few items there so that way we can focus and of course we also so people can try our items, see the package and know more. And from there we can expand the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:21] Cindy, how do you attack these events?

Cindy: [00:23:24] Uh, well.

Cindy Convery: [00:23:25] Because I’m part of the native food organization. It’s called Intertribal Agriculture. They actually pay for attendance to some trade shows. So those are the ones I’ve been able to go to and one I don’t know if you’ll be there, Rhonda, but it’s American Food restaurant show in Miami in September. You know, so anyway, I’ve been able to go to some of the shows through this group, but they’re not necessarily the shows that are going to serve the product. And I don’t know, they randomly choose the shows. And I went to Expo West, you know, and had to pay for that. But again, you know, it’s 10 to $15,000 to attend a trade show. So it’s this challenge of there’s like a pain point when you start a new brand where you can grow really rapidly locally and then when you want to expand, you have to have venture capital, but you don’t get venture capital until you’ve expanded. So it’s the whole chicken and egg dilemma that I think everybody goes through. And trade shows are part of that chicken and egg chase that I’m in every day. So it’s a.

Cindy: [00:24:35] Lot of fun. Yeah, well, just.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:24:38] Keep going to whatever ones they send you to because you don’t know who you’re gonna meet and who can maybe get you into another show. So it’s kind of like running into the right people at the right time and just getting your name out there and continuing to do that, especially if you have the Indian reservation casinos and things like that. You know, a lot of them can just be your foot in the door to a bigger part of the corporation, too.

Cindy Convery: [00:25:00] Yeah, they have, you know, the annual casino show. I don’t know if you go to that. There’s an East Coast and a West Coast one.

Cindy: [00:25:06] Yeah.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:25:07] I usually stay away from that one because it’s more gaming and I try to stay away as much as possible.

Cindy: [00:25:13] Oh yeah. I wasn’t sure it was a.

Cindy Convery: [00:25:15] Fit for food.

Cindy: [00:25:16] And beverage. Yeah, I get.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:25:17] Enough of the casino life, so.

Cindy: [00:25:19] Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:22] Now, Cindy, have you had the benefit of any mentors, anybody that or any group or organization that’s helped mentor you in this venture?

Cindy: [00:25:32] Yeah, actually, I have a well, I’ve.

Cindy Convery: [00:25:34] Had some mentors that, you know, some of the advice was valid and some of it didn’t apply. So that was, you know, just just along the way. But the mentor who really made a difference is a woman named Sandra Velasquez. And she started a beauty company that’s Latin Latina focused consumer. It’s called Nopalera. And man, she just like hit it out of the park. She she launched in 2020. She got almost 3,000,000in VC. The next year. She’s I think she’s looking at 404 million in revenue this year, you know, from making soap in her apartment in Brooklyn. So she worked in distribution, which was one of her big secrets. She worked for Van Lew and Ice Cream, and she worked for a beauty product called High Bar. So what she did was she went in and worked for other companies, kind of like when you want to open a restaurant, you work for another restaurant and learn where the pitfalls are. And she did that. And then the great thing that she did for me and she still does is she shares her information. She shares her contacts. She has a podcast. She talks to people all the time. You know, she’s not she doesn’t come from a fear based mentality. She comes from a generous mentality. And that’s the kind of mentor that I wish everybody could have because it’s been wonderful. And it’s a friend. She’s a friend. So it’s, you know, Sandra Velasquez, Nopalera, putting a plug for her and now Verona.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:05] Have you have you had any mentors learn.

Verona Tang: [00:27:08] More about Personal mentor Because I think in order for us, we are the minority. And in order for us to stay strong and continue to grow the business, we have to have a very healthy and balanced lifestyle. Um, so I do have personal mentors that more we are talking more about spirituality, more about energy, more about positive views, vision board and which, which. That way I can balance and I can strengthen myself, empower myself to face my day, to face my daily tasks.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:51] Rhonda Have you had any mentors? Have you benefited from any mentorship?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:27:56] I’ve had mentors as personal mentors and businesses that I’ve been involved in that have been great. Just even especially, I have another woman in business that was a personal mentor of mine that really helped me move forward and have the confidence to be a part of the business world when I was pretty young. So, um, yeah, mentors are very important and I think very helpful for everyone.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:24] Does Caesars have any mentorship Protege program?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:28:28] They do. Yeah. There’s a ton of different mentor programs and being part of, you know, being someone else’s mentor as well. They’re big on just, you know, we’re big on diversity, we’re big on sustainability, we’re big on mentorship. It’s it’s a really support, you know, driven company.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:50] So let’s throw out maybe everybody look in their crystal ball and think about the next coming years. Are there any trends or any things that you foresee that can help benefit your businesses moving forward?

Cindy: [00:29:08] No, sorry. No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Verona Tang: [00:29:11] Go ahead. Go ahead.

Cindy: [00:29:12] Go ahead.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:12] Verona.

Verona Tang: [00:29:14] Okay. Um, I’ve been doing so many food shows, and actually, we just went to the Western hospitality shows, and we finished it yesterday. And we I’ve seen a lot of plant based product and which will benefit my business because I’m not a vegan vegan company, but I’m a vegetarian company. We don’t sell any animal proteins or animal products. So I think this will be a really positive sign and a positive direction. And I see, yeah, plant based items is the trend that I’ve seen recently.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:57] Cindy.

Cindy: [00:29:57] Yeah, no.

Cindy Convery: [00:29:58] I agree with that. And you know, especially even last year and the year before at Expo, it was always about plant based. And I think that’s, you know, due to the environment and meat, you know, cows causing methane gas in its simplistic way that straying away from me to supporting the environment or animal products. So you know, just sustainability continues to be the trend. I don’t know that this is a new trend that’s starting now. I think these are just trends that are growing sustainability and plant based.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:32] And Rhonda, are you seeing that as well?

Cindy: [00:30:35] Oh, yeah.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:30:36] Client base is huge. Always. It’s been in every show that I’ve been at. It’s been a very large group of vendors that are plant based. There are so many out there now from, you know, just plant based to like get rid of meat, but to also plant based dairy, plant based ice creams and things that you wouldn’t even think of plant based sushi, you know, for people that have dietary problems as well. It’s very, very large right now. I’m also seeing a lot of, you know, colorful and bright natural color foods. A lot of different exotic fruits coming out to the table and definitely a lot of international flavors being brought back to the table. I just attended a breakout session with a spice company and a lot of their new trends are international flavors. So that was good to see.

Lee Kantor: [00:31:36] Is that something that everybody is seeing? This kind of the consumer is being more adventurous when it comes to spices and they’re looking for something new or exotic or something that maybe they had never heard of before.

Cindy: [00:31:54] Yes.

Cindy Convery: [00:31:54] Yeah, definitely seeing that, I’m seeing cardamom everywhere.

Cindy: [00:31:59] Yeah, I’m happy about.

Cindy Convery: [00:32:02] But, you know, I love cardamom, so that’s fun. But, you know, a couple of years ago, I was seeing ashwagandha everywhere as an adaptogen. So it’s fun, you know? I mean, I love seeing all these things that are in my cupboard that are appearing all around, so it’s great.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:18] Now, how do you, as a business owner, especially of a smaller emerging brand, how do you kind of know when it’s time to try one of these things that you’re seeing as a trend and and protect yourself from it being something that’s here today and gone tomorrow?

Cindy: [00:32:37] Um, I don’t know.

Cindy Convery: [00:32:38] That that is even a process that I go through because when I formulated, I went to cooking school and I worked at a restaurant called Chez Panisse in Berkeley. So I made the drinks in my kitchen and that’s why they’re clean label with five ingredients or less. And I made what I wanted to make and what I thought would taste good. They happened to have turmeric when skew happens to have ginseng and the other one has holy basil. And this was about four years ago. So they’re trending now. Um, I don’t think it’s about trying to chase a trend. You know, it’s really about creating something that’s true to the brand and true to the creator and then sticking with that. And, you know, when you’re a small brand, you can’t really create and launch new SKUs and test things. You just have to, you know, create the best product you can and get behind it. But it really is about being authentic and creating that product that, you know, you know, in your heart is the right product.

Lee Kantor: [00:33:39] Verona.

Verona Tang: [00:33:41] Um, I think on that aspect, I’m pretty lucky. I don’t chase chase the trend. I work very closely with my buyers and actually a lot of time that they request me, um, to source some products for them. Um, they see their distribution maybe needed certain items that they think I have the ability to create with them and they will ask me to do that. And of course I will always add my own concept in there. So the product they ask me to sourcing is fitting my concept. So, so I work closely with my buyers, not necessarily follow the trend as well. Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:34:24] So sometimes I would imagine that you you go and create something and then maybe it has a slow launch, but over time it kind of builds a following.

Verona Tang: [00:34:36] Exactly. Exactly. I don’t have that luxury. I never had that luxury experience. It’s always take it slow. I would say two, three years would be a very reasonable amount of time for me to build one skew or that category.

Lee Kantor: [00:34:54] Yes. Did you know that when you first started that you’d have to have that level of patience?

Verona Tang: [00:35:00] Yes, because I’ve been in this industry for over 25 years, so I’ve seen the items that need some time to build. So usually I give my new item 2 to 3 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:35:16] Cindy, has that been your experience as well?

Cindy: [00:35:19] Well, I’ve only.

Cindy Convery: [00:35:19] Been in this business, you know, I put my products on the shelf in June 2020, so I frankly don’t have, you know, I only have the experience that I have. And, you know, I’m impressed by having the 20 years of experience that, you know, that could really enlighten how you create a product. But but so far, you know, I’ve had such great reception and I believe that it’s coming from that cooking school culture of using the best ingredients and making something delicious that people respond to. And it doesn’t have to be on trend per se.

Lee Kantor: [00:35:57] So you’re so everything you put out has been kind of progressed in a manner you’re happy with or has some things just not worked at all. So you’ve had.

Cindy Convery: [00:36:06] Well, I don’t know if marketing dollars, but, you know, I just feel like I know my customer and if I had marketing dollars, I could probably have a bigger conversation about it. But, you know, I have this collagen infused rosé that I knew people who are drinking wine don’t want empty calories necessarily. So I thought, how can I make a low alcohol wine with 60 calories and zero grams of sugar and a boost of wellness? How can I get that out into the market? So I just you know, I the reception that I’ve gotten from test results has been extremely positive. And the reception from the drinks, the, you know, kind of like Ronda described staying in retail for a marketing experience. The wine is piggybacked onto the drinks and then the my supplements that I have for women recovering from breast cancer which don’t really apply to, you know, the market that we’re talking about food and beverage. But my customers are looking for that type of product as well because it supports bone health and osteoporosis. Breast cancer treatments cause bone loss. I’ve had seven friends, including my mother, recover from breast cancer, and so I know a lot about bone loss. And I worked with an oncologist to create that product. So they all kind of link together in an interesting way. And I don’t even know if I’m answering your question anymore, but.

Lee Kantor: [00:37:34] You mentioned the wine, so how did that wine come about? Like you partnered with a vineyard and then.

Cindy: [00:37:42] Yeah, I was.

Cindy Convery: [00:37:43] Drinking a glass of wine and I threw in a big scoop of collagen and stirred it up and it disappeared. And I thought, Well, there you go. You know, there’s the product. So I found I grew up in Northern California and I knew a little bit about the wine business and wineries from my restaurant experience. So I found a custom crush where they do your own bottling and we worked with them and it was not easy to create a wine that could have collagen in it because the Bureau of Tobacco and Alcohol does not make it easy to create a wellness alcohol. They don’t want alcohol to be perceived as a health product. I get it. You know, it’s like, you know, candy flavored cigarets for kids or something. But, you know, this is a low alcohol wine with a small amount of collagen. So I was able to, after about a year, get it pushed through and that, you know, that took up the whole wine budget right there. So I’m hoping that I have an offer out to a couple of celebrity brand ambassadors and seeing if I can get that person to launch the collagen wine into the market.

Lee Kantor: [00:38:54] So how do you go about developing a partnership like that? Was it just like you just were shopping for a vendor or you had to find the right person who kind of had to be open to this type of concept?

Cindy: [00:39:06] The winery, Right.

Cindy Convery: [00:39:07] I just called, you know, I just had a list of wineries that did Custom Crush Crush, and I called. A lot of people were like, What? You know what we can’t do? You know, I thought it was crazy, but I found a fantastic winemaker that was really open to doing something different. And, you know, people get bored doing the same job over and over, bottling this wine, bottling that wine. And they were really interested in doing something new and fresh. And I had a fantastic label design, so I sent him the label and then they saw what the product would look like, you know, and people can see it. Then they understand it. It’s hard to see it when it’s just words.

Lee Kantor: [00:39:49] Now, Rhonda, in your experience, have you seen that kind of these kind of unusual mash ups where two seemingly, you know, totally different products come together and form this unique product that, you know, maybe has never been done before?

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:40:06] Well, yeah, I’m seeing it more and more, especially like, you know, with things that are not only health based, but even vanity based, you know, even things like putting glitter in wines and, you know, maybe glitter as a topping on a cupcake. Um, you know, just look at the Barbie trend right now. You know, everything pink. It’s like you’d be surprised what they can come up with. People come up with some very interesting ideas. But just like I was mentioning earlier, who would have ever thought that I’d be eating plant based sushi? You know, trying that at a show That was definitely never in my in my wildest dreams. So it’s very interesting to see what type of things they can come up with. But I see it a lot. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:40:54] And is that a situation in your. World at Caesar’s that maybe you’ll you’ll discover an ingredient or a product and then you share it with the chef and the chef then takes it and then creates this whole new thing, using that as an element of a larger product.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:41:12] It could be I mean, with the mash ups, you know, on my side, there’s not a whole lot for, you know, the things that I look at that that can go with. But you never know. You know, you just don’t know what these chefs can do with these products. Um, you know, like infused products or, you know, have you it’s it, I completely promote it and say go for it. If you can find something new. Like Cindy said, people get bored, you know, with just the regular everyday thing. And that’s where really cool items like this come up.

Lee Kantor: [00:41:48] Good stuff. Well, we’re getting ready to wrap Verona. If somebody wants to learn more about your firm, what is the website? What is the best way to get Ahold of you or somebody on your team?

Verona Tang: [00:42:01] Thank you very much. Yes, my website is little Jasmine Food.com or our royal kitchen.com so they can go in there and check out our product. And we also have contact information there. And we are small operations, small business. So definitely we we reply quickly to our consumers.

Lee Kantor: [00:42:23] Cindy.

Cindy: [00:42:25] My website is pure wild echo.

Cindy Convery: [00:42:28] Com. Pure wild echo.com. And you can reach me at Cindy at pure wild echo.com and you know everything is on the website email and contact. So there you go.

Lee Kantor: [00:42:39] And Rhonda, if somebody wants to learn more about Cesar’s, the website for Cesar’s and maybe the best way to get Ahold of you.

Rhonda Busnardo: [00:42:46] Yeah, I definitely encourage everyone to go on seizures.com and check it out. I think everyone that isn’t really familiar with Caesars Entertainment doesn’t realize how many properties that we have across the nation. And you can go on and see everything that we own from east to west coast. It’s a pretty large list of places, and to contact me directly, you can contact me at armazenado@caesars.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:15] Well, ladies, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re each doing very important work and we appreciate you.

Verona Tang: [00:43:21] Thank you very much.

Cindy: [00:43:22] Thank you so much. Thank you. That was fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion. Thank you.

 

Tagged With: Arroyo Kitchen, Caesar, Little Jasmine, PureWild Co.

Jim Garip with Design & Remodel Brothers

August 23, 2023 by angishields

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Cherokee Business Radio
Jim Garip with Design & Remodel Brothers
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Sponsored by Woodstock Neighbors Magazine

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Jim-Garip-headshotJim Garip is a Partner with Design & Remodel Brothers (aka DnR Bros.). DnR Bros is an innovative remodeling company that specializes in providing top-notch remodeling products and installation services, supported by a combination of 30+ years in the industry.

With a passion for transforming spaces and a commitment to customer satisfaction, we have established ourselves as trusted artisans in the industry for our partners and clients. Our extensive range of remodeling products is designed to cater to a variety of needs and preferences.

Whether you’re looking to revamp your kitchen, upgrade your bathroom, or renovate your entire home, DnR Bros. has the perfect solutions for you. From sleek and modern products to timeless and classic designs, our product selection is carefully curated to suit every style and budget.

Follow DnR Bros on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio, Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by Woodstock Neighbors Magazine, bringing neighbors and business together. For more information, go to Facebook and Instagram and find them at Woodstock. Neighbors. Em You guys are in for a real treat this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Design &Remodel Brothers, Mr. Jim Garip. How are you? Man?

Jim Garip: I’m doing excellent today. Stone Thank.

Stone Payton: You. Well, it is a delight to have you in the studio. You and I have had a chance to hang out a little bit together at Young Professionals of Woodstock. That’s right. So excited to have you guys here in town. I know you’ve got some cool stuff coming up and I want to make sure we talk about that and please make sure that we do before we wrap. But I think a great place to open the conversation. And I got 1000 questions. We’re probably not going to get to them all, but maybe a good place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission, purpose. What are you, your brother and your team? What are you guys really out there trying to do for folks?

Jim Garip: Man Well, we are seasoned in the industry that we’re in. We are originally from the North States, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and etcetera, lived all throughout the globe. And when we found out that Georgia had this beautiful little town called Woodstock, and after living here for a few years, we decided to give back to the community what we could possibly be doing on a more family level. So we decided to ensure the fact that we had a location here that was available for the clients and the community to come into where we could provide them with designing and remodel services in general all throughout their renovation.

Stone Payton: So are you finding that the community is embracing you guys, that the business community is embracing you guys? How do you find the the climate, if you will, the business climate here? What do you think so far?

Jim Garip: I think it’s spectacular. Stone. I think that Woodstock definitely is developing still and for this matter, that they are giving everything that they got to feed back into the business community as well as their local level. I think that their services and their and their the groups that they have set up all throughout the town is is very beneficial for small and mid level businesses. And I think that this growth pattern is to reach its climax around 2030 and I’m looking forward to being part of it.

Stone Payton: Me too, man. And that’s been my experience as well. I’ve been here a couple of years. April was a couple of years and I just found that everybody, the group at Young Professionals of Woodstock, the Woodstock Business Club, Cherokee County in general, it’s just been an easy place to do business and other business people that are genuinely invested in your success. You know, they’re not just meeting you and then trying to sell you something. They’re like, How can I help you? Stone? How can I help you get your thing off the ground? And it sounds like you’ve had a very similar experience.

Jim Garip: Yes, indeed. We’ve actually had a I want to say from both worlds, we have club meetings around the town where they are very cutthroat and they want to do business, business, business to a point where you have hundreds of cards being thrown at you and then you have the the network that’s more on the line with YPO, as you said, where they are focused on the the networking in a community matter where everybody just knows each other and just they relax. They go over topics on a weekly basis and they support each other on different levels.

Stone Payton: So how did you guys get into the design and remodel business in the first place? What was the path for that?

Jim Garip: That was actually our father. He was a GC, a general contractor located out in New York. And thanks to the unions that he was part of, we’ve seen him live hitting any type of renovation, whether it was interior or exterior. So naturally, growing up under him and me and the brothers, we decided to take down the family tradition per se and in our own ways with the different companies that we were working in. But hence, I said earlier it was it was about time that we actually butted heads together to to create a business for Woodstock instead.

Stone Payton: I love that verb there.

Jim Garip: Butted heads when it’s brothers. That’s the way it works. At the end of the day, you are brothers, so it doesn’t matter how well or how bad you are with your coworkers, but it’s family at the end, so it’s good.

Stone Payton: Who are the brothers?

Jim Garip: We have John and that’s the little one, I believe YPO he goes out to as well. We have Matt who’s available, but he hits the field more often than than the others, and he’s not really a social guy, I’ll say.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, and particularly now that you’ve been at it a little while here in this community, what are you finding the most rewarding about the about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Jim Garip: Well, the best part is they’re your neighbors. You know, almost everybody that you’re working with. We are specifically focusing around Cherokee County. So, you know, the people that you would assume that you would never meet before are coming up to you asking for help in what they’re trying to do with their businesses or their their homeowner level and whatnot. And it’s always fun to see the fact that you could actually speak with a neighbor much easier through the business route than on a normal daily route.

Stone Payton: All right. So let’s talk about the work a little bit. What I’d like to do is sort of paint the picture of beginning a relationship with a, let’s say, a prospective client. They’re not even a client yet, but they’re seriously entertaining the idea of doing something different with their home. I’d love to play out a little bit of a scenario, though, because I want to get a picture of what things look like very early in the relationship, what that process is. Yeah, walk us through that.

Jim Garip: Well. It all comes down to what the the the the client to be, let’s call them is interested in and what it is that they need. When we could dissect the ideas of what it is that they think is great and looks good on HGTV or Instagram or Pinterest and what it is that they actually need is it could be completely different worlds. I mean, there have been cases where they would assume the fact that, you know, clean and modern and chic is the best way to go. So they would go ahead and showcase what they’re interested in, and then we would dive into the project and then find out the fact that they have a lot of plumbing issues where it could get flooded. So back to the question, the way that we would start is actually go out to their location after they stop in or call us. And we would do a full scope where we’re taking measurements, we’re taking pictures, taking other required recorded work. And if needed be, we’ll go ahead and go through the permits and the county records and etcetera to find out exactly how deep we could actually take this project and the level that they want.

Stone Payton: It sounds like your business is a little I was going to say a little, maybe a lot more consultative and relationship oriented in the early part because I’m coming to you with very limited knowledge. If I’m looking at redoing the kitchen, there are some things I know I want different, but I get the sense that that you might at that stage be saying, okay, well, what are you trying to achieve with that? Have you thought about this? Or, you know, we’ve been doing this a long time. Here’s something we saw that was really cool. Might be something you want to consider. There’s that back and forth early on as opposed to just going there and taking the order and executing.

Jim Garip: No, no, no, no. That’s that’s definitely dangerous in the field that we’re in. There are a lot of companies out there that does it. There are a lot of companies that that does provide a lot of promises in the beginning, too. But to be to be precise and to the point, it is very important to understand exactly what the client is in need of and what they want to ensure that everything is on paperwork so that we could execute it the right way within the time frame, within the budget that’s requested.

Stone Payton: So do you find yourself from time to time having to address I don’t know what’s the right thing to call it a myth, a misconception, a misunderstanding, because you are dealing with people that don’t really understand, like you do countertops or whatever. You know these things, the backsplash, and they don’t really understand how they interact. They just like you say, I mean, we’re guilty of it at our house. We my wife is glued to HGTV. She likes to love it or list it, you know, like she likes the to the other brothers, brothers, the other brother brothers.

Jim Garip: Right.

Stone Payton: And they’re very entertaining show. So it’s which is great. It’s probably great for your business. It probably inspires people and gets them to thinking about it. And I got to believe that people like Holly and I probably walk away from some of that with some less than accurate notions about some aspects of the process.

Jim Garip: Yeah, no, it definitely is. I mean, you definitely hit it on the on the spot right there. I think that the biggest myth is the time frame that’s given for these projects, because the fact that a lot of people do tend to look at the, the finished product regardless if it’s in a magazine or if it’s on an a post that they found on social media or just the HGTV episode where they’re airing something that’s within half an hour, that’s really a myth. You got to understand the real scope of it. I mean, just considering a countertop exchange in your kitchen could seem very, well, easy and and could be done in about a week. But you got to consider there is a possibility that something might go wrong where you can’t really wash your dishes for a whole week where you have to use your tub for these things. So or go out.

Stone Payton: To eat every night. That would be our solution. Well, that’s.

Jim Garip: Good. That’s good for you. I would hope. The fact that a lot of people do consider that as another option as well. But yes, sometimes timing is something that really needs to be considered regardless if it’s a business or a home per se, where the timing needs to be showcased on on what it is that needs to be done for the full scope of the project.

Stone Payton: So I think I just accidentally created a marketing strategy for you. If you’re dealing with a job that’s, you know, several thousand bucks, maybe you could turn around and go and get $100 worth of gift certificates to local restaurants and just tell them right up front, look, the work we’re going to be doing, you’re going to be a few evenings without your dishwasher, without your stove. Good idea. And here’s here’s a, you know, a gift certificate. You know, maybe it’s not the prime 120, but you could probably get quite a bit over at pure.

Jim Garip: Oh, no, I like that idea. There are a lot of companies that we’re currently working with anyway through YPO and etcetera. Right, right, right. So I think that that might be actually something good to have. But the problem is it’s not always in Woodstock or Cherokee County.

Stone Payton: Right, Right.

Jim Garip: If you do have a job that’s located south of Atlanta, yeah, we’re going to be pretty much limited with that coupon book.

Stone Payton: But these are considerations that you need to inform the client and you want them to be well informed. You want to manage those expectations, and then you want to blow right through them. If you can.

Jim Garip: Absolutely. No, definitely. That’s well said, Stone. I mean. I mean, yeah, just timing is not the only aspect that you have to consider. It could be just the colors that you’re choosing, whether you’re looking for tiles, if you need it for the floor, the wall and etcetera. It’s always good to have an expert just just chiming in if needed.

Stone Payton: Be So let’s do talk about the scope of services. What all might that encompass?

Jim Garip: Well, we do specialize in kitchens and bathrooms, thanks to our father. That was the GC work that he was primarily focused on. But that was that’s never limited to what it is possible to do. Anything that is interior, that could be flooring, that could be a drywall job, that could be a framing job, that could be a fireplace job and etcetera installations of windows and etcetera. All of this is included in the remodeling services that we provide.

Stone Payton: Oh, wow. Yeah, much broader than I guess I had had anticipated. All right. So there’s that early consultation, getting everybody on the same page, managing expectations, setting up a timeline. You guys must be like really good project managers. Well, I’d starve to death if I were in your business.

Jim Garip: No, you have to be, because we don’t really go out and do the work ourselves 100% of the time. Yeah, I mean, this is just one of the downfalls of just being the brothers. I wish we had more brothers. So thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. But because the fact that we cannot reach all these possible projects throughout Atlanta, I think that, you know, you have to ensure the fact that everything is to the T with the team that you’re working with and the client to ensure the fact that there is no communication problems and ensuring the fact that the timeline is being prepped, prepped for whatever needs to come up. So project management, yes, that’s definitely something that we specialize in.

Stone Payton: Well, you mentioned a word communication. The other thing that would be valuable to me, I think and I know it would be to my wife, Holly, who will have a real appreciation for project management because that’s part of her work at a little company you may have heard of called IBM. Oh, so good little company. She’ll have a lot of appreciation for that, right, Because she’s got spreadsheets that she’s managing and all that. But just communication, you know, like and maybe you you have some built in points of communication that speak to that piece of it. Because I got to tell you, man, from the customer perspective and there’s a lot I can I can I can take, hey, we’re not going to make it out there today. We got a flat tire or we got doubled up on a job. But just communication is I mean, that’s just so important in it.

Jim Garip: It is for for small businesses out there. I’m sure that the little three lettered word, I call it between the brothers, but CRM, that’s where it’s at. If you have a good CRM program that is that is that is the heartbeat of a business like this that that we’re that we’re executing in the region here. Crms are very good keys and you should invest into a decent company that you are capable of working. If you cannot hire somebody that could CRM is where where you basically map out everything who you’ve spoken with throughout the day, how many minutes you’ve spoken with them about what type of project, What was the part of the project that you’ve spoken about? Who needs to be notified of this? What kind of a calendar event that needs to be in place and et cetera, etc.. So CRM is the key.

Stone Payton: Well, and you’re communicating with your customer. You’re communicating with some of these other people who have specific expertise in that domain and you’re putting them on the job. And you’ve got to vet those people and really trust them. That’s right. Because they’re you know, they’re facing your customer. I mean, you got you got a lot of moving parts in your business.

Jim Garip: Yes, indeed. And ensuring the fact that everything does get done within the budget and the timeline, that’s that’s something that me and the brothers, we literally go out to the cigar bar and enjoy it and kind of congratulate ourselves with because it is something that’s very hard for us to keep up with. But when it is something that’s executed properly, that is something that we celebrate within as well.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a firm like yours? I’m operating under the impression that probably your best sales tool is just doing great work and getting, you know, but say more like, do you do you get out there and shake the trees a little bit and and try to cultivate new business? Yeah. How does that work?

Jim Garip: Well, word of mouth is the strongest marketing tool, in my opinion, and that is something that has helped us basically transition into doing this family business rather than what we were doing before. We were basically working for three different companies for three different positions. And, you know, all of the people that thankfully have have the experience of working with us previously are now supporting us with the jobs to help us transition into the market as a as a new company. So word of mouth is very important. That’s definitely a spot on. On top of that, I personally believe that outreach programs are very. Important. You have to communicate, you have to socialize, you have to network, and you have to treat it like it is a networking event to a point where it’s more more on the how could I say this, more on the on business side of things. You have to relax. You have to socialize in a matter of finding out who that person is that you’re speaking to and what kind of issues that they might be having. And put your put yourself in their shoes and actually execute a communication channel for hopefully where you could pick up a job or two later on down the road. If you focus on just getting excuse my French, but shit done. That’s not always the the accurate way of approach when it comes to it. That is one way of definitely getting it through. But that’s not that should not be the only and first route that you go to.

Stone Payton: So do you find that there are other people that you’ve built relationships with you get to to know them in their work that are in the home services arena, that are good, good connectors for you. Maybe they can refer business to you because maybe they handle maybe they’re a roofer or something they handle Another aspect. Is that also a piece of the puzzle?

Jim Garip: Absolutely. Anyone who is in the construction business or construction industry in general would know that referral programs are a thing. Everybody specializes in their own little thing, and it is very hard for a company to specialize in everything. Yeah, you cannot do that by yourself. You cannot do that with only just one team. It takes it takes corporate level management to take care of stuff like that. Just the other day, for example, we went to Firestone. I swear I thought that it was only a tire place, but I guess not. They do maintenance, they do all the things for a car. So, you know, if you are in the industry that we’re in excuse me, if you are in the industry that we’re in, referral programs are very important and we do work with a lot of pool maintenance people. We work with roofers, we work with insurance companies, we work with exterior based landscaping companies, hardscape companies. We work with people that just does painting jobs that need support on just our end. Again, if if we do keep that communication channel open with with these businesses on a professional and on a personal level, it does come back to us at the end.

Stone Payton: Well, and I got to tell you guys, I’ve known Jim for a little bit now. Jim is that guy, Mister roofer, Mister pool person. His first move is not going to be how can you send me some business? His first move is going to be, What can I do to help you? And he’s going to want to learn more about you, the person, and he’s going to have his antenna up for how he can serve you.

Jim Garip: That’s right. There are a lot of jobs that’s available out in the market. People come up to us assuming the fact that we do roofing because we do remodeling. But, you know, it’s something that we don’t specialize in. And I do pass it on to somebody that that has vetted with us.

Stone Payton: And really, that’s it’s the right thing to do. But it’s also it’s good mojo, but it’s actually it’s almost enlightened self-interest. If you can be the guy that knows the guy. Exactly. Right. Exactly. It’s one of the things that’s fun about having a radio show because, you know, every week I’m talking to different people and, you know, you may need a custom sport coat. Well, I’ve got a couple great places for you to go. That’s good to know. And if I send you there and you mentioned me, I don’t know if they’re going to give you a price break or not, but they’re going to make darn sure they serve you well. There you go. Right. That kind of thing. It’s good to be the guy that knows the guy.

Jim Garip: Exactly.

Stone Payton: Exactly.

Jim Garip: Well, that’s that’s I mean, yeah, you got to be stone.

Speaker4: All right.

Stone Payton: So what’s next for you guys? What’s what’s on the horizon? You’re going to try to scale this thing and grow it or what’s like next 12 to 18 months? Where’s the focus from an entrepreneurial business perspective?

Jim Garip: Well, for the next year, we are trying to just focus on the shop that we have and utilizing all the the social networks that we do have and ensuring the fact that we are keeping a steady ship, as they say, because it is very, very important to ensure the fact that you are giving your best and everybody is getting the best out of you. And once we could take care of that for the next year, the next step would be to moving into importing material from wherever it needs to be, because that’s something that we’ve done with other companies that we were working with. And it it drastically brings the prices down. So that’s something that we’re definitely looking to looking forward to down the line.

Speaker4: Yeah.

Stone Payton: All right. I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit before we wrap, because I’m genuinely interested and I always find the responses to this question fascinating. Passions, if any, outside the scope of the work we’ve been talking about. My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel, and I have a real heart for supporting young entrepreneurs. Yes, you do? Yes. How about your thing? Man?

Jim Garip: We I’d like to definitely shout out to Stone. He definitely is a supporter of the of the community on a. Level, especially as the youngsters, as people call it, because I’m a youngster myself, don’t get fooled by my voice, but I truly do appreciate. Stone Definitely. That’s something that he does provide to the community, and that’s the whole reason why I’m doing this. So, you know, shout out to him again. But on my side, I love music, arts, creative stuff. That’s something that I personally do on the side. I do love to hunt as well. I love camping. I’m one of those guys that brings only ten items with him for the weekend, if not for a whole week if possible. I like to be alone sometimes because it gets so crowded in my head. Because the fact that we are open seven days a week. So if I could get a week in there, I really do like to be in the nature and just enjoy whatever is out there in general.

Speaker4: I’m so glad I.

Stone Payton: Asked and you’ll appreciate this. I’ve been working on one of our main tree stands. My brother is going to come up and hunt with me a lot this year from Tallahassee and I’ve really been trying to doctor it up with the camo and all that, and I’ve got the pool noodle that, you know, stuff so that it’s just easy to rest your arms. And I sent him a text last night. I said, All we’re missing is a cup holder and a USB port and we’re ready to go.

Jim Garip: I got to see that. I have to see that.

Stone Payton: No, it’s a lot of fun. But I think it’s also important and valuable, too, to have something like that that’s a little disconnected in some respects from the work that I call it. White space.

Jim Garip: Yeah, No, Well said.

Speaker4: Well said. Yeah.

Stone Payton: Yeah, that’s.

Jim Garip: Important. No, I definitely do agree. This is something that us brothers have not done properly with the jobs that we were working for before, which is weird because you would assume the fact that you are giving in 125% at the end of the day, but when you’re working for someone else, it kind of has that different feeling to what it is that you’re providing to the quote unquote team. But once we actually established our location here, we had the general rule of once it’s once it’s 6:00, unless it’s it is an emergency, one out of the three needs to go home. Oh, wow. And then we would have to circulate that because it’s very important to just pause, enjoy life out of work, enjoy the house, enjoy the kids, enjoy the dog, and enjoy whatever else you could do to kind of regen back into into reality in the morning.

Speaker4: All right. Let’s leave our.

Stone Payton: Listeners, if we could, with a couple. I call them Pro Tips. And I’ve got two different sets of pro tips. Pick one, pick them both. I one would be someone who is beginning to think about redoing that den, redoing that kitchen, redoing the the bathroom. Like, what are some things they should be thinking about? What are some things that they should be doing to kind of get ready to talk to someone like you? Maybe some questions they should be preparing to ask or some things they should be ready to share. And then also, if you’ve got any insight, counsel, hard learned lessons for entrepreneurs. You know, a lot of our listeners are entrepreneurs and they got a little something going and they’re trying to take it to the next level.

Jim Garip: Well, the first portion of the question, if you are interested in going down the renovating or the remodeling down, down that pathway, first of all, definitely check in with your partner. That’s that’s that’s the golden rule number one. Oh, that’s funny. Definitely check in with your partner. I’ve I’ve had plenty of cases where a lot of a lot of people, let’s just say, will be calling in and and ensuring the fact that, you know, this is something great that they’re interested in. You know, they have these examples in ET Cetera. And then we go out for measurements and the partner has no idea why we’re out there and what we’re doing and etcetera. So please do share your, your your thinking process with your partner. That’s definitely step one. Step two is definitely a scout around for ideas. Please understand that. You might have gone to a friend’s house where you thought that dining room set was really nice or that kitchen was amazing, where the the lighting fixtures were something that you’d been interested in for the past five years, but you haven’t gotten done. Just you have to understand that what may seem visible at their place might not work for your place. So you have to know exactly what it is that you want versus what it is that you need. So just definitely be scouting for ideas and then run it by whoever is the expert that you decide to work with.

Jim Garip: And the latter question that was asked about the boobs. Yeah, well, on our side of the industry, my recommendation is you need to know what you have in the pocket. You need to know what kind of services you could provide. You have to know what the scope of the of the of the labor or the material that you could provide for the clientele. You have to know who the clientele is, what areas you want to hit. So you need to know what’s in your pocket before you go out. I mean, it is always easy to become a handyman because that’s something that you’ve done all throughout your life. But you’ve got to understand that if you mess up somebody else’s house and if you do not have an insurance claim, that’s something that you have to really consider before you pick up that hammer. So again, just know what’s in your pocket and know what it is that you want to get started with. But if you if you have an idea that’s boiling in the back of your head, go out there, create something, you know, be be your own man or your own woman and become become the person that you that you ought to be and and get the support that you need from the community to achieve it.

Stone Payton: All right, man, What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Learn more, have a conversation with you or one of the brothers, whatever you think is appropriate. Let’s just make it easy for them to connect with you. Sure.

Jim Garip: Dnr bros.com. That’s short for design and Remodel Brothers. We tend to keep our website updated. We did our own website and we are very active with our blogs and etcetera, so definitely keep up with us there. If you’re interested in stopping by the showroom. We’re located on Main Street right by 92, you’re more than welcome to stop in as well. Or if you’d like to give us a shout out or give us a call, we’re available on the social networks as well as the number that’s portrayed on the website.

Stone Payton: Fantastic. And although this is really evergreen programing for the most part, so this is a little bit of a time sensitive thing, but you’ve got something coming up pretty soon, right?

Jim Garip: We do. We do. We are actually we decided to get our grand opening up and our lovely mayor is going to be stopping in as well. If you are in the area, please do stop by our showroom. That’s on 9550 Main Street. And it’s going to be on Thursday at 10:00 in the morning.

Speaker4: All right.

Stone Payton: And Thursday is what, like the 20 what?

Speaker4: It’s going to be the 24th.

Stone Payton: The 24th? Well, color me there, man.

Jim Garip: Absolutely.

Speaker4: We got food for you.

Stone Payton: So fantastic. Well, it has been an absolute delight having you here in this studio, getting a chance to tap into your insight and your perspective. Thank you for the work you’re doing. Keep up the good work. Don’t be a stranger. Let’s have you come in periodically and keep us updated.

Jim Garip: Man Absolutely. Stone You.

Speaker4: Got it.

Stone Payton: All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Jim Garrett with Design and Remodel Brothers. And everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.

 

Tagged With: Design & Remodel Brothers

Stacie Roby with Healing House

August 21, 2023 by angishields

Stacie-Roby-FEATURE
Charitable Georgia
Stacie Roby with Healing House
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Stacie-Roby-bwStacie Roby is getting her board certification as a Doctor of Functional Health and a Naturopath. She has worked in brain injury rehab, family practice, pediatrics, women’s health, and some cancer care.

In brain injury, she saw teams of doctors that would collaborate for patients’ care. As she went to other areas, this would be great but is not done.

It is a detriment to healthcare and another way the health system is broken. She realized this as she experienced her own family’s health searching for answers from various experts. No answers were found to help her children or her ex-husband. She had to do the research to find answers herself.

She learned from rehabilitating her ex from a vegetative state to walking, talking, self-care, and being an active part of the community again to the issues her kids had faced. She was being given referrals from the doctors looking over the care of these family members for things such as Inflammation concerns, migraines, and mental health. From these referrals, she was encouraged to get a license as a health coach to cover her guiding health.

She had been doing functional health alongside doctors which made it her goal to go get her doctorate as well, however, she suffered a concussion and wasn’t certain she could finish. She got back to it, networking and sharing her vision to create a collaborative team of Healing House Mind & Body.

Finding root causes and helping the foundations of health by bringing in chiropractors, psychologists, nutritionists, individualized bloodwork, and more as well as modalities that are leading edge that help regenerate or retrain either body or to promote healing that practitioners simply cannot alone. Today she is hunting for a location to open with over a dozen people she has found to create this team!

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: 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 Pruett.

Brian Pruett: Good, fabulous Friday morning. It’s another fabulous Friday morning. And normally I have three fabulous guests. But this morning I’ve got one fabulous guest. We had some folks that had some unexpected things pop up this morning. So we have a star of the show this morning. So if this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia, this is all about positive things happening in the community. So we are going to get started this morning and talk to Stacie Roby from Healing House. All right, Stacie, welcome this morning.

Stacie Roby: Good morning.

Brian Pruett: So you and I sat down. It’s been actually several months ago and you shared your story with me. And it leads into what you’re doing with Healing House. So if you don’t mind, just share your story and then we’ll talk about Healing House.

Stacie Roby: Sure. So I’ve always been taking care of different family or friends. My aunt, when I was young, had some surgery go wrong, and so when I was ten, I was actually taking care of her. She had hospice coming in sometimes and I started helping with her central line, so her IVs and stuff, and I didn’t really think much of it. Then when I actually realized that that might be different was when my first husband was in a coma and I realized my son was 11 and he probably would never have touched the machines that ran, you know, that kind of stuff. So I thought I was just a girl and girls care. And then I realized, Oh, no, there’s actually different people that can do certain things. And so maybe that was something I should have took note of earlier. But but yeah, so I’ve kind of gone on a journey of seeing different things there and then working in the medical system and because I cared and people just want to help. And so I was there and finding some things that were just not flowing the way I thought and we weren’t getting some answers. So looking deeper into why the body was the way it was, that’s where I’ve been Good. I always excelled at anatomy and physiology and physiology was just how your body works and why. And that’s kind of what I continue to do now for different people. And it’s through the journeys of all from my aunt to my ex-husband and my kids having different health things and working in that field, finding it for different patients that we had led me to understand. I have kind of a gift that I can dig deeper and really just feel good when I give somebody an answer. So just trying to do that in multiple ways and partnering with others that can do the areas that I don’t so that we can help them feel better and feel happier.

Brian Pruett: So can you share a little bit about what you did as far as the medical side because you just finished up your schooling, right? And you’re going to be doing your healing house is going to be a medical clinic, but share a little bit about that experience and then explain about Healing House.

Stacie Roby: So healing, it’s called Healing House Mind and Body and and we will have various types of practitioners. So there will be chiropractors, but they’ll be psychologist, they’ll be different types of people and different fields so that we really are well rounded care. And you know, I did work in brain injury for some time. I worked at a brain injury recovery program and hospital and facility and then family practice and pediatrics. So I have a wide spectrum of things. And then. From there. So I’m not a medical doctor, so I won’t prescribe anything and stuff like that. I could go further, but really I’ve been doing functional health for a long time and so I was just advised by the doctors and things I used to work with just to go get, first of all, a health coaching certificate so that I had something to stand on while I was guiding people with those answers and then go to school for functional health. So. So I have a doctorate of functional health and I’m also a naturopath in that schooling. You can pick a whole bunch of other titles as well, which some of them I consider. But sometimes I’m like, How much schooling do I keep on doing? I can get addicted to learning. So it’s a problem. But a.

Brian Pruett: Career student.

Stacie Roby: Yeah, exactly. But it’s things that help. Like while I went to this, we had to study Iridology So you study the eyes, you look at it really closely and your eyes are made from brain matter and it has nerves that go to every organ in your body. So it actually can tell you what systems need support. But it’s very, you know, and so, yes, I can go and become a master Iranologist but I know Iridology And so it does help me, though, in a way that I, you know, went in learning like, okay, this is cool. But when I realized I also had to study Chinese medicine. So when I look at the face and I see the signs that are displaying like from kidneys or colon issues or stuff like that, then the eyes are telling me the same thing. Then I test urine and I see the same thing. Okay, well now your body is screaming at me in three different areas, telling me these organs need support. So I do love it and I do use it because now I know exactly what the body needs more than just one one way. So it’s pretty interesting. But so yeah, so healing house, it won’t be medical.

Stacie Roby: It will have some MDs in there, but there kind of different like me where they were just working in their field and they started to see where there is just a wall that you hit with what you’re doing because a lot of them don’t go into how the prevention part. So a lot of them went functional in their field so that they can go to the wise. And then when you look at what’s happening, the root cause, you can actually work on reparative and then preventative. So everybody’s body is actually made to heal. It just needs to be given the right things and that’s across the board for anything you come across. So the other day, I don’t know. I don’t know if I like this. I don’t have a tag or anything like that. But I thought, Oh, I bring out the heal and healthy because everybody wants to be healthy. But if you really are healthy, your body should be always healing different things, right? So it’s bringing out the tools that people need that they can totally do on their own. That’s what I really love. If I can just tell people, you know, Hey, you can test yourself every time you go to the bathroom and you can know if you’re drinking enough water or not.

Stacie Roby: And then you know how your kidneys are functioning. You know how you’re processing food or not. And then they are like, Wait, what? So I showed them a chart and I said, Yeah, it should be like this. Now, this is when you didn’t drink enough and this is when you drank too little. I mean, you drank too little and this is when you drank too much. Well, then they can do that on their own. Every day. They can go, Oh, I kind of didn’t drink enough. I need to drink more. And they know that they’re pushing their bodies, their organs to be functioning just to do what it needs to do. So those little tidbits that you just guide people with, they can carry that for the rest of their life. They don’t need me or anyone else. So but it’s critical to their functioning. It’s critical to their cognition, their you know, when they have digestive issues, maybe there’s little things that they just didn’t know and helps it. So that’s what I like to do, is just drop the nuggets that they need and send them on their way. All right.

Brian Pruett: So we’ll get more into the healing house and mind, body and spirit here in just a minute. But a couple of questions for you. So we had Jenny Cantrell on a few months ago, who was also a naturopathic doctor. But for those of you who may not or listening who may not know what that is, explain what you can do and what the what what you can’t do and just what you do as a naturopath.

Stacie Roby: So naturopaths look at the foundations of health. So it’ll be hydration movement, nutrition, rest and stress and those kind of building blocks. That is what your health is built upon. So they don’t go and prescribe things, but they do guide you with the changes that you need to make in your life. And they can look at chronic things. They we study herbs, we study. A lot of us know homeopathy as well, which is a different kind of medicine, but it’s, it’s, it’s different. But anyway, so there’s different types of things that you can use to heal. And so we put in those pieces together. So I do know Jenny and we talked and she is a great lady. She might be a part of Healing House. It’s just, you know, I would like to have more of me and more of others out there. And it’s amazing because the healing house came to me years ago and I was like, okay, I’ve got to finish school. I’ve got to do this. But in the meantime, I want to find those people that are aligned with me. And I kept on looking and looking and some of them I did fine, but a lot of them, I think. I believe in God. And he just knew the timing. And really it was when I was maybe he was telling me, don’t worry about that now, you’re not there yet.

Stacie Roby: And so I had a concussion, so I had to kind of go to cognitive therapy. Working in brain injury. It is a whole new world when you experience everything that you’ve done and it just doesn’t feel the way you thought it felt, you know? And it’s kind of frustrating because I just wanted to get through school and get it done. But I had to be patient with myself and my brain and just get through. So when I got through, though, I think he used that time to like, show me different ideas. Like Healing House became more than I ever thought, and the right people just started flowing and being introduced to me and we just really connected and they were like, Yes, I so want to be a part of this. So while I thought that that and it is still hard, there’s still some other people that I really want. I don’t know where they’re going to come from, but I kind of feel like everything has fallen as it should and happened the way it should. And I kind of just I’m going to go with that, that the rest of it will fall in place. And so it’s just a great thing. But yeah. Naturopaths They are not an MD and but they do know those tools that you need and that most people don’t understand.

Stacie Roby: And so a lot of people, once they start talking to one and they see all the tools that we have and they get really comfortable with that because we’re listening and there are certain areas that we’re trained in just to listen. And it’s kind of like a mental health side to hear what the underlying is it a fear? Is it a confusion and uncertainty? And then you kind of guide them that way. So it’s it’s both sides as well. But and it’s it’s just interesting because you can keep on learning and getting better at it the more that you practice. And that’s just being with people and listening. And so, yeah, I just want to have more of those people, any type of those, it doesn’t, you know, like I said, there’s a hormone doctor that I’m talking with, you know, and other people that were in that field, and then they decided, Oh, there’s other ways to do this. That’s great because it’s the people that start looking at what they’ve been taught, taught and then going, there’s there’s more behind it and then they bring extra to what they do. They take what they do to a different level and they reach so many people and they find so many answers that just don’t go explained in the typical medical world.

Brian Pruett: Right. Well, I liked how you talked about God’s timing, because I’m a believer as well. And it’s definitely true. It’s never our timing. It’s his. And you always wonder why is it not now? And you were talking about your concussion and, you know, having to wait and stuff, but all the experiences you’ve had from your own experiences to helping others, you are in that place where you can help all these people. And we were talking before we got on the air about people in different nonprofits who have lived, you know, their story. Kevin Harris He’s one of my favorite people now who all in and all out. He was an addict, sober now 11 years, and he’s helping men with addiction. Well, I could go do that and just talk to him, but I’ve never lived that. But he can. And so it’s more powerful when somebody’s been in that situation. I think it’s the same thing for you. So, yeah, I’m curious. You said you could tell by looking at people’s skin whether it’s a kidney issue or a colon issue. Walk us through that.

Stacie Roby: Well, so sometimes even from one side of the face to the other can be totally different. And it’s interesting because they taught us, take a picture of their face now, take it and edit it to where you mirror the left side of their face and move it to the right side. It will look totally different. And then you do it for the right. But it helps you to see what’s really being displayed in the face. And sometimes when you’re just looking at both sides, you don’t you see it. But then it’s it’s highlighted even more. And so there might be puffiness under their eyes or different lines, different places. There’s like a liver area by the bridge of your nose. And so you can see lines there. It also can tell you if they’ve carried lots of burdens or they haven’t been able to express frustrations or different things that they hold in. So it can tell you personality and how they work, but it also will tell you areas like their liver needs more support. With Chinese medicine, the liver usually holds it, the emotion goes with it as anger. So so you see that. But and so it makes sense when they talk about the personality. If you look at the Chinese medicine, you’re like, Oh, those two organs are related. And it’s just weird because you start learning other things and then you go, Oh, that’s why Chinese medicine says this or that. But the face that is part of that and, and then like your colon and digestion, it goes from one side of your, your colon goes up one side of your body across the top of your stomach and then down. And so it does that on your forehead as well. So you can you can just see because one part of your colon. The ascending part does certain things, the transcending does certain things, the descending does certain things. And it doesn’t mean the whole track has to be struggling. Only one area can be struggling. So you can see it on their on their head and their face and different things. So it does display in different ways. It’s really interesting.

Brian Pruett: Well, you talk about learning something every time on my show,Stone. I just learned some amazing stuff. So I’m going to ask you a question because you could give a testimony about Stacey, right?

Stone Payton: Yeah, but she’s scaring me now because now she can just look at me. She can definitely tell if I’m lying. I know.

Brian Pruett: Well, go ahead and share.

Stone Payton: Well, Stacie Roby is one of my most favorite people in the world, and she would be anyway because I’ve seen the impact she’s had on the community. But I met Stacie 55 pounds ago and I shared with her and we were just meeting kind of like a one on one. It wasn’t an interview. We were just chatting. And I shared with her that I had been to the doctor with the with the PA, actually. Is that the. Yeah, the PA rather than the doctor. And her words were, if you would lose 15 pounds, I won’t have to pollute your body with drugs because my blood pressure was too high. And I told her I think I can do that. So I confided in Stacie and I told her that. And I said, Well, what do you think I ought to do? You know, diet and all that and exercise. And her recommendation was so simple and so powerful. She said, you just you ought to really think about eating whole foods. And I said, Well, I like that idea and I like I like pizza, ice cream and hot dogs, but I also like broccoli, cauliflower, you know, all that kind of stuff. I said, I really think I can do that. And I said, But I don’t really help me understand what Whole Foods is so that I get it right. And I shared this.

Brian Pruett: It’s a grocery store.

Stone Payton: Well, yes, but what she shared with me that helped me so much, she said if it doesn’t come out of the ground or have a mother, don’t eat it. And she said, for now, don’t even worry about how much just start eating real food was basically, I did that. I didn’t pay any attention to how much I just and then I was kind of reading books and watching YouTubes and all that. And I did start once I got that habit in there of just eating. I didn’t eat anything out of a box or a bag or anything. I’m talking about for months. And and the other thing I started doing now, I experienced some success. The, the 15 came off real quick. Well, now I had some momentum and some confidence. And so I’m looking at other resources, reading about people who live longer and all that stuff. And another little discipline I adopted was Don’t eat until you’re just absolutely chock full because you feel awful afterwards. And then I got to the point where I really felt like I actually like feeling a little bit empty, not hungry. I never went hungry. I never like willpower, never entered into it. And seriously, that was 55 pounds ago. And that is my core main discipline. And I honestly think and I don’t know enough about the science, Stacey could say honestly think that my body has reset a little bit to the point that even if I do have a beer this afternoon, which is very likely to happen, I was.

Brian Pruett: Going to say it’s very.

Stone Payton: Likely. I think my body probably treats a beer differently than it did the day that we had that conversation. Is that would that be accurate?

Stacie Roby: Yeah, because your processing is healthier and things like that. So yeah. And I like people will say, oh well I eat healthy and stuff and when I tell them about processed, like I told them, it doesn’t have a mama, does it come from the ground then you’re doing wrong. But I tell people it doesn’t mean that you can’t go have a pizza. And I told them that. It doesn’t mean that you can’t. But like do 85% or 80% like just start doing most of what it is. And I also tell people know your blood type, like your blood fortifies everything, know your blood type. Look at all the foods that are good for your blood type. And any time you could snack on that stuff, you’re doing good for you. Right? But like, you go to a birthday party, okay, eat some cake if you like it, eventually your taste starts to change as well. And I didn’t necessarily want that to happen, but it’s like I can’t eat a lot of cookies or so people will be like, Oh. And they’re like, Oh, we brought these pastries. I’m like, I really want one, but I’ll probably take a bite or two. And then my stomach will just be like, No, don’t want that. So or it doesn’t taste the way I remember like, Oh, I used to like Reese’s peanut butter cups. Well, it don’t taste like it. I like, I think, Oh, okay, it’s going to be good. And when I taste it, it’s not close to what I remember it tasting like at all. It’s kind of disappointing. But on the other hand, I’m healthier, you know, it’s it’s not a.

Stone Payton: Will you change my life? You absolutely changed my life. And then losing that 15 gave me confidence to continue. And then I felt better and better and better. And now I probably am more like an 80 over 20. You know, I’m going to I’m going to have a shot of whiskey or a piece of birthday cake or whatever, but same thing for me. I don’t want like three big pieces of cake. I want, like, a little half a piece of cake. Yeah. So thank you. Thank you.

Brian Pruett: Thank you. So this week’s been really bad because my birthday was Tuesday, so I put on 3 pounds this week just because of everybody putting food in front of me. Right. So but it’s funny because you talk about like in pizza. So my mom is gluten intolerant and she. Founded Aldi’s, this cauliflower pizza. It’s good. And it it’s better than Domino’s. It is less. And I can eat a whole one. And it’s less calories than two pieces of pizza from Domino’s.

Stone Payton: There goes my Domino’s sponsorship. Very much. I’m going to reach out to Aldi’s.

Brian Pruett: There you go. There you go. So I’m curious. So my mom has shared with me one time she knew a young lady that was told to eat the six meals a day. Right. And she took that too, literally. And she literally ate six meals a day and gained 300 pounds. Okay. So it’s it’s not literally six meals. Right. Can you talk about somebody who needs to.

Stacie Roby: Okay. So this really is up to each individual. But my whole thing is I tell people, your body needs the main nutrition, vitamins, minerals, protein to function. That is just to digest, think sleep. I’m not talking anything else other than that. If it’s not getting that, then you’re at a loss. So if something does come into play and you want to heal, you’re already at a deficit. When I look, I test people’s urine and saliva. So the saliva tells me their upper digestion from their stomach all the way up. So if I know it’s too acidic, they I hate antacid and anti acids because you don’t want your stomach to stop producing acid. And if you keep on doing that, that’s what happens. Then people have the opposite when they’re older, they’re like, My stomach doesn’t produce acid. Well, that’s what you’ve been trying to tell it to do, which really we should have just brought down the acidity. So, you know, but I’m looking at what they intake and all that’s important is can they assimilate it properly? Can they expel it properly? Is that happening? Because if not, you can give them as many supplements like their doctor will be like, oh, you need more calcium, you need more.

Stacie Roby: Well, if your body doesn’t take that in, then what’s what are we doing? We’re not helping you in any form. So it’s just like or people take different supplements, right? And they’re like, Yeah, I feel so good when I take it. Okay, now you’ve just replaced the medicine with a supplement. The goal is to get the body to function and get inflammation or whatever it is running smoothly or not there. And so you don’t need these additional things. Then your food just carries you. So when Stone came to me, I was like, I don’t believe in any diets. And he just like what I was like, no diets, those don’t. But what I was getting him to understand is, yeah, I believe in eating more for your blood type to help your blood more real foods. And then when you’re looking at that assimilation process, some people like even your eye type, your eye color tells me different issues that genetically go with that. Wow. So can you.

Brian Pruett: Give me an example?

Stacie Roby: Okay. So like blue eyes are called lymphatic. And so they usually have trouble with their lymph and their lymphatic systems. And so it drives their digestion a certain way, whereas is the other types, the biliary and stuff, they will have other nutritional and organ that you can see. It just goes along with certain things that are going to have struggles so you know that you want them to support it by food or by supplements in general, knowing that certain people are better at eating six small meals a day because their body cannot break down that food of a large meal and then it’s stuck there. So when food just sits and rots, then you have parasites, bacteria, all this other stuff happening. You don’t want that to happen. So for those people, big meal, three big meals is not better for them. Six small meals would be better because they still need that same nutrient. You know, they need that amount every day. But if they can’t break it down, you’re doing more harm than good. So smaller meals are better for them. On the other hand, more people burn through things and their their system passes it through quickly. Well, then they could eat more because now they’re going to.

Stacie Roby: So for some people I’m slowing down that digestion because if it goes through too quickly, they didn’t have time to absorb the nutrients needed. It just passed through. And I tell people like, one easy thing is most people don’t drink half their body weight in water. But if your brain is 80, 87% water, 90% water, then you need water. Water will help carry those nutrients through you. It also helps the oxygen get to all the places it needs to go. So an oxygen is a medicine all on its own, but in the same sentence. I was messing up myself. So I always tell people I’m not perfect. Everybody struggles with something and that’s just true. So I’m not perfect. I struggle to get my water in every day. I usually put a timer on. It reminds me. So 4 or 5, six ounces every hour is all you need, but at the same time, don’t drink water with your lunch because it will pull those nutrition. It pulls it. Very too quickly. So you want something that has substance that’s heavier so that it gives your body time to bring in those nutrients needed.

Brian Pruett: So that’s why Stone likes beer with his lunch. Well, that explains a lot because I’m blue eyed, so that can explain it. So I’m curious. Well, a couple of things. So when we talk about six small meals, you’re not actually talking about it could be just a granola bar. It could be an apple. Right?

Stacie Roby: Well, okay. So I don’t like anybody skipping any meals. Well, here’s one thing. Our body makes enzymes that help break down food so that we absorb nutrition. Our food also has enzymes in it. However, as we’ve groomed food to be more for taste, we have lost some of the nutritional value, and that includes enzymes. So I tell people, take enzymes, you need to take enzymes. You should just be taking that in general. It helps it break it down to where it’s small enough to get the nutrients needed and then anything toxic can pass through. And it doesn’t have to be harmful. It doesn’t have to be a preservative. It could just be toxic for your body. Like my mom struggles with any kind of roughage. Her body, it’s just harder to break that down. Does that mean she doesn’t need it? No, she needs it. But the enzymes. So if you have people that have celiac or they are gluten sensitive or they’re lactose intolerant, well, if they have enzymes and they they can still eat that, but it breaks it down to where it’s not tearing up their stomach and doing as much harm. I mean, they still should do that less. But people need the proteins at each meal. They need vegetables or fruit at each meal. And you ever hear I hate that Skittles took Eat the Rainbow because the rainbow was the rainbow of fruit and vegetables because your body needs six basic calciums just to function and get all the thriving in there. And they come from different colors of different plants. So that’s where Eat the Rainbow came from. Not that you can’t have a skittle or something.

Brian Pruett: But that’s a good trivia question.

Stacie Roby: Yeah, so that’s just the thing. But so when when you’re looking all those things, you’re just guiding people to know what they need nutritionally at each meal. So and then the order that they eat, most people don’t even know that there’s like you just eat what you eat. But really, if you eat when you go to a restaurant, they bring out the bread. Don’t eat that bread first. Put that aside. What else do they bring out first? They typically bring you out a salad. First, eat the salad so those fibers will lay down in your gut like they’ll lay down in your stomach. Then when you put your protein on top of that, you have the enzymes to start helping break down protein, which is harder for your body to break down. You need the protein, but those enzymes are going to help break it down so that you can absorb that protein that you need. Then you put the carbs on top. And then because people that have blood sugar issues, well, if they’re eating the bread first, it’s going to dump into their bloodstream. That sugar is going to change really quickly. But if it’s on top of the other things, it’ll break down slower and then it doesn’t affect their bloodstream as quickly. So just different things, man.

Brian Pruett: So that explains a lot. So I was growing up, I always got picked on because I always ate my sandwich last, but I ate the potato chips first and then the sandwich. So, um, I’m curious though, on when you say drink half of the body of the water, I’m half your body weight. That’s a lot of water for me. Apparently so. But can you give us an example of what one small meal might look like of the six? Just can you you know, it’s different for everybody. But what can what would one look like?

Stacie Roby: So in general, I would say six ounces of some kind of clean protein. So realizing that when I tell men that they need protein, they’re like steak, which you could eat, right? But it’s harder to break down. And pork is, you know, if you look at it, it’s not as clean pork protein. Right? So some people, when I look at their urine, I’m like, no pork right now. Your body cannot it’s struggling with protein. Your kidneys, your liver are struggling. So no, no pork. And we need to cut back your protein for right now until your body gets better at the processing, then we’re going to bring it back in. And so with them, I might tell them a protein shake would be beneficial for you because you still at every meal should get that protein. If not, your body doesn’t have the fuel that it needs. So you need the six ounces of a protein, six ounces of fruit or vegetables. And when I tell people you can go on a diet, but you’re not going to starve when they get out of food scale and they measure that, it is a lot, it is hard to get that down. So my brother was laughing. Me and my mom did well. I did it longer than her.

Stacie Roby: We did 100 days of no sugar, no flour, and I mean no flour substitutes and no almond flour, no nothing, nothing processed that way. And then I continue to do it. And my mom’s like, Yeah, it wasn’t that hard. After a while, it didn’t even notice. And my husband didn’t either. He didn’t do it with me during the day, but we ate every dinner together and he did not and he was cooking and he didn’t even realize that we weren’t having the flour in there and sugar. So we went through that. But we also had our eyes open to how many things have sugar. And the doctor that was behind this, there’s a book called Bright Lines Eating. She wrote that and she was saying, this is a chemical. It is a drug. Flour and sugar is literally a drug. They put it in more things. So you you want it more, you want more chips, you want more. This like, why does chips have sugar? You think it’s a salty thing? Why would they add sugar? Well, that’s what it’s doing. You know, it’s making you want these other things. So anyway, we did that. Then I ended up doing it for 300 days and I just my body just wanted to keep doing that.

Stacie Roby: Now I’ve added it back and she tells you how to add those things back in there and how to do it healthy. But she laid out the six ounces of protein, six ounces of vegetables, and then she taught you. And Apple has way more sugar than, say, blueberries or something like that. So do you want half an apple or do you want, like all of these blueberries? Well, then you’re making other choices and you’re realizing, you know, and for certain people that watch sugar, that’s important to them. That’s their life. So then they make better choices or, you know, things like that. So we just started realizing even in our natural food, there’s better choices that you can make and how much sugar and Apple has and stuff like that. So we just started in some of the things my kids picked up on and they were just like, This is funny, mom. Like, I actually want that. Or my mom’s like, Oh, that’s gross. And I was like, But did you try it? And then she’s like, Oh, I’m going to go home and make that. That was really good. But my brother laughed because we had him come to my mom’s house. I said, We’re going to eat this salad and I want to.

Stacie Roby: And he’s he’s six foot 3 or 4 and he’s a bigger guy. And I said, I’m going to see if you could eat this whole thing. And then when we measured the six ounces, put it in the salad and we had strawberries in there and we had blueberries and almonds and all this other stuff and garlic and all, and he was like, This is so good. And then we were just talking everything. At the end, he’s like, Man, I’m full. I said, Oh, no, that’s six ounces that you need. Keep on eating. And he was like, I don’t think I can. I said, Yeah, you thought we were starving ourselves, but this is what it’s like. So when your body gets that fullness, like like Stone was saying, he never did starve. But you’re feeding it what it needs to fuel itself. So. So that would that would be an example. I would cut up like, six ounces of chicken and put it into salad. And I measured the whatever you’re putting in there. So I put cucumbers or tomatoes or kale or whatever I was getting and put it on a scale. It was six ounces. And man, it’s way more than you think. So.

Brian Pruett: Wow. So have you heard of Shibboleth? No. So we joined Shibboleth, I guess it was last year. And it’s not a diet, but it’s a it’s a Christian or gentleman that started it. And it’s teaching you the foods to eat right together. So you should look into that. I can connect you to, you know, who Kim Dankey is. Yes. So Kim is into that. You need to talk to Kim.

Stacie Roby: Okay. I would love.

Brian Pruett: That. Yeah. So. All right, so let’s go back to the. The healing house mind and body and spirit. You talked about wanting to find some more folks. Can you share what you’re looking for? So maybe we can put that out there?

Stacie Roby: Yeah. So I want to hire some other psychologists out. The thing is, my daughter had a rare inflammation disease and so we tested for all these known ones and it wasn’t any of that. But they knew she had inflammation in her body in the process of me helping her get better. And so I watched us, you know, go through that. There wasn’t just an easy answer. So we had to dig deep and I had to do some research and find what would help her. But the key was helping her organs function better, helping those filtering organs, helping her gut. A lot of people do gut cleanses, but if you’re not doing anything for your filtering organs, then you’re not going to improve your gut. That’s how they all work together. So we were doing that and she was getting better. However, your emotions also start in your gut and then they send signals to your brain. So her emotional well-being, she already had anxiety, but anxiety, depression, everything got heightened and she became suicidal and she went to a mental hospital. So I started digging in. Well, I was in some functional nutrition classes and they said, okay, you’re already doing all this. But did you know for mental health there’s plenty of adaptogens and there’s oils that help, like for the short term, like just to help her feel steady and healthy and, you know, better uplift her. And so I was like, no.

Stacie Roby: And they’re like, okay, well, we know you want to research. Here’s some research. So I went back to the hospital and said, Hey, have you I know we’re already doing all this, but have you heard of that? And they said, Yeah, we actually recommend people use Adaptogens. That’s going to be the best thing. And then they said, Oh, there’s tons of research on oils, but we don’t use it. But you’re welcome to bring it in. But they saw by the time she left, they were just telling me the ones that are doing this and using the natural we worked here 25 to 35 years. We’ve just never seen them process and get better. Like the ones that are doing natural. It really does help. You should talk to the director over and over. So just seeing my daughter struggle. Is why I understand that mental health is important. I knew that before I had my own struggles as well. But just knowing how psychologists do their things and we need them to guide people. But what that mental hospital taught me was that if if we don’t incorporate gut health, they’re really spinning that cycle. And if you slow down the communication between the gut and the brain and have it be a healthy communication instead of overstimulated, it’s sending way more signals than it should, then they’re always having that struggle. But if you told somebody when you’re in that state, you feel like this is how life is always going to be.

Stacie Roby: And I saw my daughter there. School lost so many kids and adults I know have lost spouses or stuff. And if you could honestly sit with somebody and say, I felt that way, I know. I remember what that feels like. But when I learned that it’s actually a tummy issue as well, it wasn’t just changing my thoughts, but what’s driving it. So if I change my stomach, then I don’t have to feel that way. It is an actual feeling coming from your stomach coming. I understand that. But if we can correct that and it doesn’t take long. Well, if you give them hope, then they’re working on something. And then when they don’t feel when they see that, it starts to alleviate. Kind of like stone. It didn’t take him long to drop that. It doesn’t take long to have those emotions change. And then they have somebody, you know, a psychologist helping them through it and boosting them up and keeping them on track. Well, then you’re doing good. And then you can turn that person around who can go and spread that to others. So mental health is just as important to me as physical health. I do continuing education every year for psychology. I’m not a psychologist, although when I first left high school, I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to do. So I actually was starting on both.

Stacie Roby: And then you’re like, okay, this is a lot. I have to choose. So but I love it and I understand it, but I want to bring in the psychologist to do what they do, and then I want to look at other avenues that work with like psychology works with the frontal part of your brain. I want to bring in other tools that work with the other areas of your brain so that we actually correct these pathways and then your gut. So it’s a healing house to bring in all those members, the nutritionist and myself or others, maybe the the nurse practitioner. I’m talking to a nurse practitioner. She’s a functional nurse practitioner. If we all anybody that works in the healing house has to be agreeable that we have huddles and anybody that that client wants to bring in, we all huddle to talk about that person’s health. So instead of piecing it together, that’s what I loved when I worked in brain injury. You had the GI doctor, the respiratory therapist, the PT therapist. You had everybody fighting and working together in a huddle for that patient. And I never saw it when I went to other family practice pediatrics, and I was like, Oh, why, Why we call the GI doctor. But then we don’t get the answers that we were looking for there. This person is in our care. We’re supposed to help them go get the answer.

Stacie Roby: Well, we didn’t get the answer from them. They didn’t get the answer. You know, it was just like all these pieces instead of really working together. So years ago, I was like, one day I’m going to have a place where people work together. Or I maybe I wasn’t going to be a part, but I was going to guide people to start doing that. And so that’s really how my dream of Healing House came to be. And yeah, so I’m talking to a nurse practitioner. I really hope and pray that she comes on board. I need I want to offer attempt. If it doesn’t happen right now, then maybe when I expand again, I will bring that in. But if I can do it now, I want to. And then the psychologist, really, any person, even if it’s an EMT who decided to look deeper and be functional. They have a space, you know, that is the people that I want to have collaborating together because we know the other the Western world, western medicine, but we bring in the other aspects. So there’s a lot of women’s health doctors that I’m talking to. And so I just want to bring them in together. And I told my husband, I was like, sometimes I don’t want to say too much because I want to put it out there and bring it in and, you know, keep on saying speaking it to action.

Stacie Roby: But then at the same time, I think this is I think I think health is changing and I think other people will start having this thing. And I know there’s other I have talked to some great facilities out there, longevity, health. They’re like, we are happy to help you learn which herbs to bring in and what to avoid and not to. I can lean on people that have a practice already. They’re all naturopaths and they do other things and to see that they’re willing to support me in my mission and my goals. It felt so good. That was so uplifting to go. I just want to know if you’ll share with me your insight because you’re you’ve already got a practice and I’m doing more than what they are, but they understand that and they really want me to be able to do it. I love that I’ll be forever grateful for them. And they are like, Come back to us when you have questions so that we can guide you. So I just really want to build and I’m, I’m starting in like right under 2500ft². So I’m starting in that space. But I know as I talk to people, I don’t have space for them now, so I’ll have to expand. But that’s a good feeling, right? But at the same time, I’m kind of overwhelmed like, oh my goodness, how do I fit them here and draw the floor plans out? And what size room do you need? Because I want to give them what they need, but I’m just I’m really blessed to be being advised by people that are like, eventually you just cut the room and say, This is what I have.

Stacie Roby: Do you want to be in it or not? And I was like, Oh, thank you, Shannon. Thank you for pointing that out to me. You know, I can’t appease everybody, but I have the space and I want them to be a part. And if they can squeeze in and be in there, I might just have to do that because I kind of get the floor plans need to be done and we need to get going. So but yes, if there is any people out there that want to work in this film where we collaborate together, they are their own business. So they don’t have they’re not if they already have a business or they are a chiropractor or somebody that wants to have their own business, they are totally their own. They can market themselves. It’s just underneath the blanket of healing house where we work together, and I think that’s a different aspect to it too. I’m not a hospital. I’m not a medical center that are hiring. I know that they have built what they do and they have a gift and I want to work together with that gift. So the only employees will have is like the staff that helps to flow, you know, people where they need to go and put them on machines.

Stacie Roby: I’m really blessed to also have found people that being tapped into the research area, they’re bringing machines out that anything we can’t do as doctors and stuff, anything that we can’t physically help you with, there’s God gives that information to other people that learn how to put machines in that come and do like neuromuscular retraining. So, you know, a table that can help people. And we a couple of weeks back, we put a whole bunch of people on this table and it was just it brought me so much joy. That’s what I loved. I love when I see the results. So we had some stroke people and they had feeling, you know, they weren’t doing remarkable things, but they hadn’t had feeling in their arm. That’s the beginning of healing, you know? And we work from the inner muscle and the inner neuropathways and retrain it and then we adjust it slowly so it goes all the way to the outskirts of the body and then bring it back in. So you’re retraining and they lay us on it when we get trained. So you know what it feels like because it looks really like, Oh, that’s are you shocking them or what? But then you realize it doesn’t hurt. And even my ex-husband went on it.

Stacie Roby: He hasn’t opened up his hand in almost 20 years. Wow. And he didn’t open it like us flat, but his fingers went forward. And that movement, we’ve had to pry it in that time to do it. So, you know, just seeing some people or a girl that was in an accident, you know, she was able to grip things again. You know, it’s something that medically like, yeah, we’re saying go to OT, we’re going to Pete, we’re we’re trying to do that retraining and we’re getting their muscles right. And, you know, sometimes, like we use Botox to relax the muscle and build it back to where the standard should be. But this somebody got the understanding of magnetic frequency and how it helps our body and it realigns it and retrains the body in a quicker timeframe. Those are the tools that I’m going to bring in to my practice to use alongside the the practitioners that know how to do. So I don’t know. I get really excited about it, but that’s where I want to make an impact that even when I’m not here one day, that this is there and people still come and they get answers that they didn’t have and they get tools that they can use. And my goal is eventually to do some fundraising with like golf tournaments or other stuff like that. I know a guy. I see. That’s what I need. I mean, the thing is, I made friends from networking that I don’t know how to put all this together, but I’ve leaned on the attorneys or the this person or that person or payroll person or, you know, all these people that you meet when you network.

Stacie Roby: And I got to say, I, I am so grateful for that because when it came time to be able to do this, it’s not done. But I’m still getting the pieces from everybody. So Brian can help me with the golf tournament. And the goal will be to have the funding so that when if you know limbitless disabilities, if you don’t go check them out. But Paige and I, the person that started luminous disabilities, we just really connected on knowing the people that sort of get forgotten or they don’t get the help that they need or they don’t have the space that they need to live in or to be in during the day. And if this machine helped my ex-husband, who I help, if it got him to open his hand, there’s no difference between maybe a contractor of a person that has CP or something else. I don’t know for certain, but the doctors that put it together and invented it, I asked them and they said, Yeah, sure, because we’re still training that brain in a different pathway. We’re creating new neural pathways we’re doing. And so kind of like this other gentleman I talked to that I hope will come work with me too.

Stacie Roby: He said, You know, I work with genetic diseases. Doesn’t mean that I’m going to fix a genetic disease. However, I look at the dysfunction that takes place because of that genetic disease, then I’m able to help that function. So then I made their life a little bit better. I made the process of digestion or hearing or whatever it is when, like with my concussion, I have vestibular issues now. So I’ve been going to training all this year. I had a concussion 2020 October 2020. I got hit head on. The vestibular did not show up until really this year. And so that’s surprising. But I do know that brain injuries are weird like that. But I’ve been doing this therapy all year and I’m not better. Well, what he was saying is right, because you’re trying to retrain it. But what happens when the dysfunction is and they did a test on me and this is where it’s at. It’s the vestibular. My balance is fine. Thank goodness I was a dancer. I can catch myself when I wasn’t so steady. They would put me on this thing in the floor, moves and all that, and I was able to correct it. But they were like, If you weren’t a dancer, you would be on the floor right now. You’re at risk to fall. So I got past that. But it’s not like the room spins or anything like that, but it just is a feeling that goes across me where I feel not steady.

Stacie Roby: But what happens is I’m trying to do the retraining by following my finger across the room and up and down and tilting my head while I do it and put my feet in front of the other and closing my eyes and all this other stuff. But the problem is the communication between my ears and my eyes and my brain. So if that is the dysfunction, if he can go and help me fix that dysfunction, then when I do the retraining, it works. So the same thing for any of these people that have had life, things that they’re born with. Maybe we don’t change that genetic code, but we help the other dysfunctions that are there. And I don’t know how to do it, but I’m touching. I’m finding the people that do. And if I can bring them in there and then if I have the fundraising that these families that pay for just daily care for their kids can’t always afford things. But if we could do scholarships for those people and then we change, just make their life a little bit better. And that’s really what I like to do. But I hope to do I’m not there yet, but that is my dream. And so I just really hope that I can do that and touch all the different people in the community that way.

Brian Pruett: I was trying to look up. I for some reason I’m having a brain fog for a moment, but Melissa is her first name, but she does brain wave stuff. Do you know her? Yes. Okay. I was going to try to connect you if you didn’t, but yeah. So massage therapist, you guys are going to have all that as well and.

Stacie Roby: I can use another one. Okay, I have one. I can use another one though. Yeah. And the thing is massage therapy. So you can go to a spa and do that kind of stuff. But it’s the ones that know fascia releasing techniques and the ones that like people have like dentists and people for lockjaw, you know, And they go in, they reach inside of your mouth and they’re stretching that fascia and they’re moving it and manipulating the muscles so that it releases or you don’t. They do digestive massage or they do where people can’t open up their diaphragm and breathe properly. So it’s or they’re retraining the muscles when somebody has gait that’s off or things like that, it’s that kind of massage therapy that it’s a specific type. So when they know that or if they know neuromuscular, it’s those kind of people that I’m really looking for. Because when you’re working with these conditions, that’s what you need. So while massages are great and I believe in self care and you need that, I’m looking for more of the functional things. So yeah.

Brian Pruett: Awesome. So as a I guess they would be patients, right? They come see you.

Stacie Roby: Well some of the people it’s clients so yeah.

Brian Pruett: So as a client, you know, we were talking about food earlier and to eat healthy, it’s really expensive, right? So if a client comes to you or and the folks in your the healing house, what does that look like? Is it going to be do they take insurance or what kind of you know is it what’s that look like for a client?

Stacie Roby: We’re looking at that right now because some of them like language and speech pathology. She’s like, oh, I’m Medicaid and I’m credentialed for those things. The chiropractor, he’s credentialed for those things or the people that he’s bringing in So some of them can take insurance and we’ll have billing for that. Some insurance does not unfortunately, cover like naturopaths and stuff like that. There are other the one thing I like about my friend Ken is when he designed that table that does the neuromuscular retraining, when he was working on it, him and his partner, they they all or the two inventors, they all thought about this ahead of time and made ICD ten code so that it can be covered like they did all the research that needed to go behind it and all the things that you have to do to get it medically covered with the insurance. Not everybody thinks about that. Like Hyperbarics does wonders, but it’s not approved. And they don’t utilize they don’t utilize it like we could. So some people, some I’m leaving it up to those practitioners to decide if they will take insurance or not. And it might be in the beginning we don’t. And then we see as the credentialing comes in, then later we can say, Oh, now accepting insurance and stuff like that, because that credentialing can take usually 90 to 120 days for different people. And so, yeah, some of it we will be able to, some of it we won’t.

Stacie Roby: At the same time, I want to make packages just for the different beds and things that we have that will help people, whereas it might cost this to do it individually, but if they buy a package or some kind of monthly thing, they can choose what was helping them. Because even when we put somebody on the bed. They’re making it to where you can have it programable for different types of conditions. But at the same time, when he was training me, he was like, It’s really good that you’re learning it before. It does that because just like with nutrition, it’s individual to the individual person. When we’re doing this, we’re looking at their responses and we’re seeing when they’re when they feel something, it takes the client telling us, Do you feel that? Well, then that’s enough for them. If they didn’t feel it, we can move it up more because they haven’t felt in so long. We’re trying to stimulate that. And the more that they can handle, that’s fine. And then as the healing occurs, you go less and less because they don’t need that stimulation as much. So it’s really looking at that person and knowing and observing them. So if I can make packages where they know that this helped them and that helped them and then later on they need other ones, I can make it more affordable for them because I know places that charge $150 just to get in a bed or just to get on these other things.

Stacie Roby: And if people can’t do that with their kids, But I say, Oh, if you buy ten at a time or if you buy five at a time, it’s discounted, well then they’ll utilize it and and let all the family members use it because sometimes it’s, oh, each person has to buy this. Well, then if you have two kids that are struggling, what the family can afford that and they got to choose one kid. You know, I’ve been in that position as a single mom. And, you know, my first husband was had a brain injury. So it’s not like I could get child support, not that I needed him or wanted him to, but but I needed to support my kids. And I was like, I can’t afford a psychologist for both of you. So you go right now because you seem pretty bad. And then later we’ll do this, you know? And the doctor I worked for was like, That’s so unfair. And, you know, I know life’s not fair, but if we could do things to make that better where people can afford and get what they need, that’s what I hope to do is to be, you know, we have to be profitable, right? So I do have to have a charge for it and it has to be reasonable.

Stacie Roby: But if I could sell it to where, hey, it’s profitable and then they get it. They get it at what they can afford, then that’s the kind of things I want to do. And like brain Train, I did want brain train in there. They’re limited to zip codes. I’m wanting to talk to them because where I’m located, I wanted to bring brain train in, but it’s in the same zip code as another person that has it. But if they would make a thing where, Hey, I just want you, I just want people people are coming here for all kinds of different things. And if we could have it in there somehow where either the person that owns that has somebody in there, it’s a benefit to have to where it helps the brain, the align properly and retrain it on its own. And there’s other there’s it’s not the only one. There’s other ones out there that I’ve looked at in case I can’t, I want to be able to provide that because it is part of that puzzle. That’s a missing link for either. It can be pain, but it can be anxiety, depression, sleep, all those things. It’s a it’s a missing part that helps the brain function the way it should. So I’m trying to figure out how to do that within the guidelines that are set out there.

Brian Pruett: So I think one of your packages should be AC DC with the AC DC. All right. So you already answered a question I was going to ask. We talk always about power of networking and you just talked about how people have helped you along the way now working on some things. So other than the reason of just being a helper and wanting to help people, why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Stacie Roby: Well. I’m a person that. Okay. One of the doctors told me you should go work in research because you’re good at asking the questions and all that. Why I don’t thrive there is because I’m a people person. I just don’t thrive without seeing people. And whether it’s just going to lunch and maybe there’s nobody that I meet that day, it’s other people that understand we’re all in it trying to do our thing and you need that and you need community for for just different things. You thrive with community. Humans aren’t meant to be alone, you know, we need that. But anytime I can even just make a connection like you connect your network and you’re like, Oh, you need that. I know somebody who does that. Here you go. That still feels good. And I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m about to do if I didn’t have those connections and the people that guided me to the right people. And I just love that in the community. I love how Woodstock and Cherokee feels. I loved where I lived before I moved to Cherokee County. But like, it’s just it seems so much more tangible all. And I just love when you see people and you give them hugs. Like when I came in here, I was like, Oh, okay, good. We’re all friends. You know? It’s just being able to do that and have people feel that, that they’re part of a community that cares. And when you when you do, I mean just good goes around and I feel you heal a community when you really believe in putting into that community.

Stacie Roby: There are so many things that I would like to be a part of and I’m like, I can’t go to that. I’m not here. And I kind of I’m like, I’m so sad, but I really want to be there. And I don’t want them to think that I’m not there because I’m not interested or I don’t believe in their thing. That’s my thing is I really want them to know I do care. But at the same time, I just only have so much energy or I’m only can be in one place at one time. But but I love to support others and find those needs or those niches like. Brain injuries. You know, it’s a silent epidemic and it’s been that way for a long time because even in trying to find housing for him, my ex-husband, we moved him here and he just wasn’t given the care from his family that he needed. And and I think they were probably also stuck with what they can do and stuff. But we brought him here and he lived with my sons who love them. I love them, but they’re in their 20s and they’re trying to get their own life together. So they couldn’t always make sure that he went to therapy or, you know, we had, you know, so I was like, all right, well, but I was just getting married when he moved here. And he him and my ex husband have I mean, my ex husband and my new husband, they have a special friendship.

Stacie Roby: And people sometimes like, how does that work? My ex husband, you know, we didn’t get divorced because we were on bad terms. It was his brain injury and the emotions that they go through while they’re healing, where it became dangerous for him to just I don’t want my kids to grow up not understanding what was correct behavior, what wasn’t. And just because he lost field of vision, sometimes he would slam down his cane. And it somebody pointed out to me. What if your child was laying there watching a movie and he just slammed down his cane? But it ruptures their whatever and they die. It wouldn’t have been that he was malicious, but it was something to think about because he had done that on my foot and he didn’t mean to hurt me, but he just was frustrated and I’m helping him walk without a cane. And that’s where it landed. But but so we didn’t get to live together. And then his parents convinced him to get divorced and stuff. So it didn’t mean that we didn’t love each other or that, you know, I just always would tell him when he was going through the emotional part. I know you’re mad. Don’t talk to me that way. Because if we want to always be family, we can’t hurt each other. So I’m going to let you go. And when your frame of mind comes back to where you normally are at, then just call me back.

Stacie Roby: And then he would say, Oh, I’m sorry, They got me aggravated about this. And then I just started going off on whatever. And so we just committed to always being family. And yes, my love for him changed. Now he feels like a brother or he feels like just a family member. And him and my, you know, my my husband now never had the chance to have kids. So he says, you know, he always tells him, thank you on Father’s Day for giving me the kids that I never got to have And, you know, raising. And my ex husband says, thank you for raising the kids when I wasn’t when I can’t do that I couldn’t I didn’t have the mental time to be able to think of the age that they were on or be the father that they needed. So they have a special type of bond, too. And so when we saw that he wasn’t getting his needs, we were like, Well, we didn’t bring him to Georgia. Not to be able to flourish and have the best life that he could. So we moved him back and with us, my daughter had moved out, so we moved him in. I actually he didn’t move into that room. He just took our guest room. But but we just want him to have, you know, the best thing that he can. And so I’m sorry. I forgot what the heck I was talking about.

Brian Pruett: Was talking about community.

Stacie Roby: Community. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve seen that people go, Oh, you take care of him and this and that. But it’s really just seeing that need. And as we moved him here, we’re like, okay, so not that we mind him living with us, but we would like to have our own space. I started looking and I was, you know, I met the lady that Kathy, she works with, Cobb Senior Services. And I was like, Hey, do you happen to know any place that he could go live? And I think I even asked you. I was like, Brian, you know this place for men. Do you do you know if they take this people? Well, there’s facilities for if you’re autistic or you’re mentally disabled and you have learning things, they have different housing for those people, but there’s still people that fall through the cracks. So what do you do if somebody has those disabilities but they can live on their own, but they are on Social Security because they’re disabled, they can’t afford regular housing. It’s just a problem that you find. And there’s other things that fall into that, too, with things that you need. But I know he’s not the only one. There’s other disabilities and things that people have and they fall through the cracks. That’s where you have to have a community to go. Well, how if we don’t have that conversation and you don’t recognize it, you don’t know that there is a missing piece? And how do you take care of those people? Because they live in our community and they need the services.

Stacie Roby: That’s why I thought Paige was so smart and doing what she was doing. And I don’t know the answers to how we help those in that in these communities. You know, we live in Cherokee and we’re trying to help everybody in that. I don’t know if we eventually find an answer or but if we’re talking about it, it’s the only way to do that and meet others. When you meet others. And you know, my ex husband had a severe traumatic brain injury. I have two cousins that had brain injuries way before he did. And you couldn’t tell by looking at them. They function. I have friends that I’ve met in the community and their husbands have brain injuries and a gentleman who has a wife. They’re different levels to their functioning. Not everybody is the same just with other disabilities. So, you know, even though you might find an answer for some people in that community, other people need a different complete answer. So I don’t I don’t know what we do, but that’s part of being in the community where we try to work together. And so that’s just I don’t know, community means so many different things to me, right?

Brian Pruett: So so I’m curious, what was my answer to you? Do you remember? Did I give you when you asked about a facility?

Stacie Roby: Yeah, You told? I did call and I can’t remember the name Hickory Log. Yes. Okay.

Brian Pruett: Just making sure I gave you the right one. Yeah. So I have an idea we’ll talk about later for your fundraiser. Other than a golf tournament, so. Okay. Do you remember what we did for Kevin?

Stone Payton: Yeah.

Brian Pruett: That would be perfect for the brain injury. So locker room chat with all the former athletes. That’s perfect. Yeah. All right. So if somebody is listening and wants to find out of being able to come to your services, first of all, where is your location going to be?

Stacie Roby: So the location is going to be on Piedmont Road across from Sprayberry in Marietta. Okay. There’s an office complex over there, so we’re going to be over there. I am drawing up the plans for the build out and hopefully in November, if not sooner, we’ll be open.

Brian Pruett: So if somebody is listening and wants to get a hold of you even before you’re open, how can they get a hold of you and talk to you and see if you can help them?

Stacie Roby: Right now, you can email me. So I’m getting the email working for Healing House, but right now it’s Stacy with an eye B, just the letter B healthy at. Email and I don’t want to put my phone number out there, so that’s it. But but email me and then I respond. And then if I need a call, we call and we go from there and connect you with the people that would be right for them. And then we’re going to get the website built and things like that. I wish it was up already, but just so many pieces to the puzzle that I’m trying to resolve. So but yes, then I do want to have the website where they can contact and it’ll take them right to the person they need to or our care coordinator who will then contact them to the person that they need.

Brian Pruett: Well, as we wrap this up, I always like to end this way. If you could give some positive either quote, nugget or word somebody to live on today in the rest of 2023 with and beyond, what would you say?

Stacie Roby: Oh, man. Um, um, there’s a few quotes that I’m seeing pieces of that I’m like, Oh, that’s that’s good. This is good. I don’t know. But I can make up something in my own head. I mean, I just think if you, if you love people, everything comes out of love, nurturing everything. Nothing can come bad from love. So if you’re forgiving and you’re patient with people and you love them, that’s how you change and nurture and heal a community.

Brian Pruett: Awesome. Well, the other thing I do is the thank you is a lost art. So thank you, Stacy, for what you’re doing for the community and trying to help people in their healing. So thank you for that. Everybody out there, let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

 

Tagged With: Healing House Mind & Body

Dr. Rich Rogers – Free Chapel College Gainesville

August 20, 2023 by Rose

North Georgia Business Radio
North Georgia Business Radio
Dr. Rich Rogers - Free Chapel College Gainesville
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Why do kids go to college anyway?

College isn’t just about careers and jobs. It’s a chance for kids to explore their passions and learn how to make a difference in the world.

Whether it’s research, creativity, business, or ministry leadership, today’s kids see college as a place to gain the knowledge, skills, and connections to do the things that matter most to them and make an impact right now!

Dr. Rich Rogers, President of Free Chapel College in Gainesville, joins host Phil Bonelli on North GA Business Radio to talk about how Free Chapel helps empower and educate our future leaders through participative learning — connecting theory to practical learning and doing.

Free Chapel’s students are equipped with real-world knowledge, hands-on skills, resources, and opportunities to pursue meaningful work and causes right away.

 

Connect with Dr. Rich and Free Chapel College:

https://www.freechapelcollege.org/

https://www.facebook.com/freechapelcollegega

https://www.instagram.com/freechapelcollege/

Connect with Phil Bonelli:

https://www.facebook.com/Hopewell-Farms-GA-105614501707618/

https://www.instagram.com/hopewellfarmsga/

https://www.hopewellfarmsga.com/

Connect with Beau Henderson:

https://RichLifeAdvisors.com

https://www.facebook.com/RichLifeAdvisors

https://www.facebook.com/NorthGARadioX

 

Tagged With: beau henderson, business leadership training, Christian College, Dr. Rich Rogers, Free Chapel College Gainesville, Hopewell Farms GA, Ministry Leadership Training, Participative Learning, phil bonelli, RichLife Advisors

David Castro with IceBrekr

August 18, 2023 by angishields

High Velocity Radio
High Velocity Radio
David Castro with IceBrekr
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ICEBREKR-LOGO

David-CastroDavid Castro is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of multiple technology companies; before IceBrekr, he co-founded a healthcare software company that was eventually acquired by Dr Oz’s ShareCare corporation.

Currently working on a first-in-kind app called IceBrekr. It is a networking app, a connection utility, that empowers people to meet key new connections on their own terms, and wherever their ideal kind of people gather.

In his off time, Dave is a golfer, decent social latin dancer, musician, athlete, and enjoys spending time with his daughters.

Connect with David on LinkedIn and follow IceBrekr on Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with IceBrekr, Mr. David Castro. How are you, man?

David Castro: Fantastic and excited to be here with you.

Stone Payton: Well, we are delighted to have you on the show, man. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission, purpose. What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

David Castro: Absolutely. So we believe and this is strong for me, I’ve been in sales my whole life. Um, the life that you’re dreaming of is built through the connections that you make. And that’s true whether it’s personal or professional. And so what icebreakers mission is, is to help you to make the connections that matter. And that can be for extroverts. And that’s I’m more on the extroverted side. And that’s that’s kind of how I began the concept, but found that it’s fantastic for introverts as well. So we just everybody is going to achieve what they want in life through the people that they connect with, surround themselves with because you don’t do stuff alone.

Stone Payton: Well, you’re definitely singing our song here at Business RadioX. Amen to that. Love it. So I got to know, man, what’s the back story? How did you arrive at at this? It probably if you’re like most of our guests, it probably wasn’t a straight line. Tell us about your backstory.

David Castro: Yeah, so I was working like five different jobs and and that’s just to make a nice, you know, easy to say number, but working my way through school and somebody snagged me into their startup. It was like they offered me. They literally What are you making now with all this stuff? And they offered me like a dollar more an hour. I’m like sold. And so it was me and the owners. Um, one of the owners, the wife and her black lab retriever in the basement. And that, that, that paid the bills and got me cooking on on, on sales career. We got bought by a big company and that that was the next you know decade of my life being there and making good money good career but always in sales, always doing that stuff. Wanted to get into entrepreneurship. That didn’t come later until I moved to Nashville as a family decision. We moved down here and just didn’t feel like what I was doing was the thing that I wanted to be doing but couldn’t get back to federal government sales and stuff like that. Because there are so many people in the DC area that were right next door, right? So I think that’s changed a little bit with the remote work stuff. But I was this is the opportunity to get cooking in entrepreneurship and I don’t know how much I should go into detail there um, on the pre story to icebreaker but you know had a couple stints of of creating stuff usually in the tech world because that’s that’s where I nerd out and I found myself at one point always always a networking event.

David Castro: So I always found myself in networking events and networking situations. And just like most of us who do that, we’re aware of the fact that, hey, that guy over there is a competitor, right? And who is he talking to? He’s talking to the guy I need to be talking to, you know, or, you know, this room is big and like, I haven’t connected with somebody yet who would make this worth my while for being here. Like a lot of great conversations. And these are wonderful humans, but, you know, it’s 9 to 5 and I’m putting food on the table and, you know, how do I get my ROI? Um, so things like that, right? So I was driving down the highway down here 65, and I’m connecting my phone to my radio because I had an old car and, you know, whatever. That’s what you have to do back then. And there was, you know, meanwhile, you know, people are flying by me at 75 miles an hour or whatever, and I’m picking up their their phones and and then just like just started hitting me.

David Castro: I kind of like have a shelf in the back of my head of like, cool tech. And so think about ways to use it. But I just started pulling that string. I was like, okay, so I’m seeing their phone that is basically an appendage and it’s got its unique identifiers. Each phone in the radio signals have like a Social Security, a Social Security number, basically, right? Unique universal identifier. And it’s basically an appendage of that person because it doesn’t move more than six feet away their whole day. And. Yeah, they can, you know, approve being attached to this number and and saying what they want to say about themselves anyway. So that’s how the idea came about. And I just realized, hey, you know, now we have the opportunity to have an opt in utility network, so to speak. That’s only eyeball distance. It’s not, you know, it’s not GPS. So very organic. Uh, again, privacy. Turn off, turn off, turn on, turn off whatever components of your profile that you want. But then folks can know who’s in the room and you can filter for who’s who’s your ideal connection to help you to make the connections that matter most.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at it a while, you’re out there. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you, man?

David Castro: Oh, man. Uh, you know, I am an artist. You know, on the side. Not professional, but decent. And the thing that you love most about creating stuff is when people react to it. Like you want to bless people. Right? And the coolest thing about what I’m doing right now is seeing people, like, just have the aha moments and the excitement. It’s a lot of fun when you tell somebody the story and they and they’re, Oh yeah, that’s super cool. But then when it actually happens in real life, man, that’s that’s beautiful. I had an event where someone came up to me and was asking me, Hey, you know, how do I, how do I do this? And she just wanted me to help her put her keyword in to her filter. And we did that. And then boom, like it was somebody showed up. That was her ideal person. She she’s like, I got to go. I got to go talk to this person and just. Awesome.

Stone Payton: Oh, it sounds like so much fun. So let me back up a minute. When you made that leap to true entrepreneurship, what I mean, that had to be a little bit scary. I’m trying to envision you coming home to your spouse or your significant other and, you know, Hey, I’m leaving this world that where I’m making a good living and I’ve kind of cracked the code here and I’m going to jump off this cliff. What was what was that like? Or was it all butterflies and unicorns?

David Castro: Man, I got to tell you, I was pretty lucky on my first rodeo, I guess, so to speak, in entrepreneurship, We it was a friend of mine who was also in sales who had the subject matter expertise in health care that that we utilized. And it was a basically a dashboard that helped doctors to understand what these patients need. That came in so they could check the boxes to make sure the patients were healthy and thus they’ll get a bonus from, you know, Medicare or whatever. Right? So anyway, but we had a partner that was helping us build it who, you know, these guys were data experts and they were they had some clientele as well. So I was like the sales guy selling our new software build and selling, you know, this other thing on the side. And we started off with, uh, we pitched the idea to a, a client and the, the client loved the idea and wanted to basically pay for it. So, uh, we had, we had it, we had it built by our first client. And then, you know, we just went to the other folks with, with credibility and a product. So it was, was pretty, uh, was, was, was pretty fortunate. Um.

Stone Payton: Yeah, I love the idea and I often will will counsel people who occasionally will ask me about some strategies for getting their thing off the ground. And I love the idea of a client funded startup that oh is amazing.

David Castro: That is, that is the ideal. And even if you can’t get it funded, obviously you’re you’re the first thing you’re doing is saying, hey, I know I can benefit from this. Right? I would buy it. But, you know, I need other people’s money to put food on my table. I need a lot of I need a lot of clients, not just myself as the client. So, yeah, that’s huge. And, uh, it’s actually very common. And if you’re in software or you’re familiar with the software development world, that’s what a lot of these folks do, is they’ll build something for someone and, you know, they’ll often say, Hey, you know, we’re building this for you and we’ll give you a discount if we can use it. But software development companies have a lot of stuff, you know, in the back, right on the right, mothballed that they can they can bring out after having um, you know somebody else pay for it basically. But but that’s you know depending on what your idea is that’s definitely viable. And it was for us, again, it was an industry as health care industry, very large. These guys are focused on providing health care. They’re not trying to, you know, um, you know, create an enterprise software product. And so ideas like that definitely lend itself to that.

Stone Payton: All right. So let’s dive into the work in the service around Icebreaker, including the what and the and the why. You know, what really compelled you to to marshal your forces and put this thing together?

David Castro: Yeah. So. You know, again, it was it was out of need and also out of out of like personal need, just awareness of like the the fact that this doesn’t exist yet, which is phenomenal. What you what we do have on the market are the platforms that folks are a part of in the virtual world. But getting from the virtual world to the present, right into the into the physical world, that’s a different ballgame. I can I can. And I have. And you have to probably met somebody on LinkedIn. Maybe it was an introduction or whatever. And then you go to the coffee shop and you can’t tell which person you’re about to meet with is in the room. It’s like they don’t look anything like their picture. So, I mean, even on the professional side, you got what they call catfishing, right? Like, right, right. Um, and then, you know, if you’re going to an event or a conference, you want to do your homework ahead of time and see who’s coming in, that type of thing. But great, they’re on the registration list now. What? And this is why a lot of events don’t use apps because they’re basically just a registration list. I mean, you see a lot of events going back to paper because there’s an agenda and there’s the the contact list or whatever. And but they could be not coming that day. They could be out of the room just because you know that they’re coming and you want to meet them doesn’t mean that that it’s going to be a thing. And so, you know, these are all the reasons why I thought and and validation from people that I interviewed that would be potential customers. They all concurred. So that’s that’s how we got started and how I got started, uh, funding wise, bootstrapping this through the, the sale of that health care startup. My first, my first, uh, first startup.

Stone Payton: All right. So use cases, some specific examples of where this tool is just, man, this is the right place for this tool. And this is this is how and why this is an event would want this and an individual would want access to the tool in that surrounding. Yeah.

David Castro: So it’s a tool that’s fantastic for folks who have somebody in mind that they’re looking for. And you know, if you put your keywords or the type of person you’re looking for when you walk into the event, it’ll notify you if that person is nearby. You can look at your discovery screen, see everybody who’s nearby, but it’ll highlight, you know, who that person is. And, you know, so and you can look at their profile and then you’ll say, validate why it says that this is your ideal person. And then walk up to them with a sense of like, you know, the icebreaker data that you’re looking for, um, or that that would help you have that initial conversation. Um, the, the other folks that helps is just introverts who feel overwhelmed with a bunch of people in the room and would love to know a little bit about some of the folks who are nearby. Right? Again, you can break the ice that way. You’re in a 20 person mixer and everybody here is somebody that you’d want to meet on your discovery screen. You can look at people’s profiles and in their their LinkedIn address or their socials or their, you know, whatever it might be and instantly connect with everybody. So if you’re on the small side, you know, understanding what people or remembering people’s names, understanding or remembering what their elevator pitch to make an introduction to somebody else who’s in the room, say, Hey, you need to go talk to this guy.

David Castro: He does what you’re saying. I think connecting with their socials, etcetera. Small side of the room, you know, small side event going upstream. If you don’t have an event app right now, Icebreaker makes a ton of sense because you can have your agenda, your itinerary, your speaker bios, sponsor ads, they’re all native. We could put those in there, plus all the features that that make icebreaker the powerful thing that it is. So but the bigger the event is, the more powerful it is because you’re more awash in a sea of humans. And which one of these people are my ideal connections, you know? And the more days it is, the more ROI you could have from it, and also probably the more money you’ve spent. So the more ROI you want. So as you’re walking through the venue, you know, you’re able to either look at the discovery screen and see your search or whatever it is, or just allow your keywords to notify you and then, you know, say, okay. Stone where is he? You know, there, that’s him. And I’ll walk up and say hi. All right.

Stone Payton: So is this something that the event organizer needs to underwrite for it to be available? For example, we do a lot of trade show and conference work. We didn’t there during Covid, but that business is. Back up against. So, for example, next month we’re going to be at a thing called FinTech South. We’ll be broadcasting live on behalf of that organization. We will probably have a third party sponsor, you know, sponsoring the interviews, the radio for that day. And there will be a lot of people there for. So would fintech South have invested in in this? And it’s makes it available to the participants or do the participants have it individually already or how does that piece work?

David Castro: Great question. My vision is that at some point in the same way you have a phone that you’re using to dial somebody or email that you’re that you’re using to email that icebreaker is the solution. The utility that you use to connect with people who are around you, who want to connect, who want to network. So at some point in the future, I envision that you can go to a conference and other people are going to be having it. So you’re going to be benefiting, right? You don’t need a registration list. Icebreaker, you’re walking around, that type of thing. Um, but, and then event event host can dip into that stream, so to speak. Right. And, and, and what, what we monetize and what they would pay for is the agenda, the speaker bios, you know, the kind of the the sponsor ads in the app but to you know, ensure that everybody has the app and that they know that, hey, we’re all going to benefit if we all use the app. We do have an event package, right, where, you know, it’s, you know, we charge by attendee and then and then again, if they want the sponsor ads and that type of thing. And there so yeah, the event would reach out to, to me and I’d take care of him.

Stone Payton: Gotcha. And then all right, but let’s say let’s say this, let’s just play this out a little bit. We got fintech to do it or we got us to do it. And we and so and then we get everybody in that world, sort of in the icebreaker world. Now we all go about our business and we get all the benefits of having connected in that way right there. The next time we go to an event, to an event, we already have the the system and we’re in there. And so over time, this sort of sort of grows, right? So is there also a path for individuals to just join straight up or does it pretty much have to start through the through an event like that?

David Castro: Yeah, absolutely. I that’s part of the vision is that everybody has it already.

Speaker4: Okay.

David Castro: And the event host just basically like connect to that stream basically connect to that community right that that user community the I’m in Nashville. I envision that at some point in this region, in this area metro area, folks are going to go to one of these coffee houses that’s constantly being used as a networking location and they’re going to turn their app on because there’s other people in there that they want to meet. I go in there and I see somebody I know meeting with somebody that I don’t know, and I’m like, I probably should know them, right? Because they’re meeting them or I do know who that I do know who that person is, but we haven’t met yet. Um, Icebreaker would enable things like that that are both serendipitous, but also I can message them or connect with them without having their phone number or that type of thing. So if they’re open to it.

Stone Payton: Man, I love it. So how does and maybe, maybe more accurately, how is the whole sales and marketing thing working for you right now? Getting people out there to adopt this and use it or or do you have some sort of are you out there like, do you need to be shaking the trees or you’re out there just creating awareness? Like, how do you.

David Castro: It’s a combination. Yeah, it’s it’s a. It’s improving. You know, the the tuning of the stickiness of the app, meaning like, you know, we’re going through a UI refresh right now and it won’t be it won’t be the last. But. Sure. Um, so it’s, it’s, you know, feedback, it’s, it’s watching people and that’s what we did a lot last year. This year it’s heavily shaking the trees. It’s having more events that we’ve done with, you know, proof basically of the value of it and getting that word of mouth and those referrals and stuff to to other events. And then there’s the, the marketing of it, which now that we have the assets to, to prove that we that we have. Great. Uh, my cat. God bless him.

Stone Payton: Welcome.

David Castro: Um, so, you know, so we have a marketing campaign that we’re kicking off to, to really kind of ramp up because this thing needs to be used by everybody. It will be something that is a worldwide phenomenon and it might as well be icebreaker because, you know, we have the vision for it.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So you’re talking to event organizers, associations. You’re building those relationships, you’re connecting with them, and you’re building relationships with just relationship oriented organizations and people that really resonate with and truly understand and appreciate the value of connecting with people. And yes, taking full advantage of technology, but but squarely in putting the human component, you know, where it’s absolutely.

Speaker4: It’s.

David Castro: It’s our our our goal is to bring people together. People can look great on paper. And but when you get there in person, it’s like, you know, there’s a vibe there. Right? That’s why every hiring manager wants to meet the person in person. So there’s that that personal vibe thing that’s so important in the in-person side. Relationships are just so much stronger when you’re in person. And really what our goal is to connect people. Um, and, and then they’ll go and use, you know, other platforms or whatever it is to, to do whatever that they want to do. Like I mentioned, you know, we have the profile links for their socials or their, you know, LinkedIn and all that stuff. Our goal is to connect people that are in person to make that powerful in-person connection with the right people and then let the let them take it from there.

Speaker4: I bet.

Stone Payton: You’re learning. I bet you and your team are learning a ton about networking in general, too. I mean, you could probably, if you chose to capture, generate a lot of thought leadership about how to fully leverage the fact that now we’ve got this great tool. You know, here’s some great strategies and tips on on networking virtually online. Here’s some things you ought to keep in mind to to make the transition and network and truly get benefit from the in-person connection. I can see you and your organization and maybe you’re already doing this really being an almost an education hub to to help, you know, business people just like, you know, just like me and my team get out there and really forge those relationships. And man, I’m really enamored with this idea.

David Castro: Yeah, it’s spot on. It’s really cool because I see a Venn diagram of folks who are doing personal development and they’re talking about, you know, growth of the soul, basically growth of the of the person, right? And then that overlaps with the person who’s all about the strategy and the and the sales and what what to do and how to how to do it. And then another Venn overlap of the the tech, the the format, the platform, the venue, right? So yeah I’ve got a keynote cooking on on this topic.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Well what you have here is a movement for lack of a better term. To me this feels like a movement and, and because it does, I genuinely want to know what we at Business RadioX but like minded people, listeners who hear this really resonate with the idea What can we be doing to help? Like what? What would help you the most from our listener base to kind of really get this puppy off the ground?

David Castro: It’s phenomenal. Thanks so much. Um, one thing we have a our probably most used social right now, which is icebreaker on Instagram and on on LinkedIn actually. So if you want to connect with me on. Uh, linkedin.com slash, you know, icebreaker icebreaker spelled, uh, it’s linkedin.com/company/icebreaker LinkedIn, you know, but if you search for Icebreaker on LinkedIn, it’s spelled I-c-e B, r e CR, so it’s spelled differently. I always say first two E’s no A-hole, i c e b r e cr.

Stone Payton: Fantastic. And we’ll make sure when we publish this on the Business RadioX network site and get it out on all the podcasting platforms. We’ll make sure that in the transcript and the publishing and all that we have that so that it’s easy for folks to link to. So for people to go on these platforms, support it, engage, interact with you and those of us who know people who are organizing events, those of us who know people that take full advantage of participating in events, we just we need to just get the word out and let people know about it, right?

Speaker4: Absolutely.

David Castro: Lutely Yeah, That’s awesome. Stone Yeah, that’s it. And then download it and give me some stars. There’s a digital business card on it that anybody can use, even if you’re not at an event, right? With other people using the the app. And that’s going through a, you know, that’ll be upgraded too. But right now it works phenomenally for being a digital business card. So that’s a, you know, a great way to to to be using it and and, you know, give us give us some stars that’ll give us some SEO on the app stores.

Stone Payton: So my vision and desire for you is like a Carfax, you know, like they’ve kind of trained people when they’re buying a used car. I want to see the Carfax. So now if I’m going to go to an event, where’s your icebreaker? You’ve got Icebreaker, right?

Speaker4: They want me to.

Stone Payton: Sponsor an event.

David Castro: I love that vision. Yeah, that’s great. I’m adopting that.

Speaker4: That’s cool.

Stone Payton: I’m going to switch gears on you here for a minute. Before before we wrap, I’m interested. And I don’t know where you would find the time, but if you have any outside passions, passions outside the scope of your work, most of my listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Right? Just something I can nerd out about that gives me a little white space between my work and the stuff we do at the at the network. But yeah, anything else you dive into? You mentioned briefly the art, so maybe that’s it. But yeah, say more about that.

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: So I, I really should kind of get back. Well, actually I have a, I’ve illustrated for a couple book authors. Oh wow. So that, that, that is, that is something. But man, I’ve been, I’ve been on this Latin dance kick salsa. Oh my my, my my dad was born in Puerto Rico, so I’ve got that background and it’s a lot of fun. There’s the athleticism and and, you know, kind of the art of of physical. It’s like physical art, right to the music. And it’s it’s a lot of fun. Um, I, I like riding motorcycle. Um, yeah, Um, but the icebreaker’s taken up a lot of time. But when I, when I, when I’m not doing that, I’m hanging out with my kids, probably hiking, you know, chasing waterfalls. We have a lot of fun together and yeah, outdoor stuff and salsa dance and.

Speaker4: Well, it.

Stone Payton: Sounds like you find this to be true as well. And I know I do. And a lot of entrepreneurs and founders that I speak with as as as focused as we can get. And given the level of energy that we pour into our work, I find that it is important to create that. I call it white space to create a little distance. It allows me, like for me sitting in a tree stand, even if it’s not hunting season, just sitting in a tree stand with a camera is it gives me a chance to to recharge, right? And sometimes I come up with some of our best ideas. I come up with some squirrely ideas that we don’t implement too, But I come up with with some of my best ideas for me, you know, with a with a with a line in the water or sitting in a tree. Same for you.

Speaker4: Yes.

David Castro: Yeah. It’s so critical to have that. And it’s one of those things where the not urgent, important, but not urgent sometimes can get overlooked by the things that seem to be, you know, pressing for your attention. But those other things are are the mundane bricks. Right. That hold everything up. Right. And so, so important. Yeah, that’s a great reminder. I love it.

Stone Payton: Speaking of ideas, I knew I wanted to ask you about this and I asked other founders about this, too. Do you have, like a methodology, a structure, a rigor, a discipline around your ideation process, or does it just kind of come to you in the shower or at the. Waterfall or what comments, if any, do you have around this whole idea of of not only generating ideas but what you do after you’ve got the nucleus of an idea, what you do to move it forward?

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: Great question. Um, I as far as thinking about an idea and, and then kind of noodling on it and pressing it forward, um. I. You know, one of the first things I do is if it’s not like a. You know, multi-million-dollar, in my estimation, potential opportunity. You know, that’s the first thing is like, you know, what’s the how big picture is it like and this is just me. There’s some riches in the niches. I totally get that that that idea, you know, but but for for for me being a tech guy and being on that side, it’s always kind of a tech related idea. In that case, you know, I’m looking for, you know, a really big story, like a really big idea because if I can get just a part of that, then that’ll be lucrative. And at some point, you know, you have other players and competitors and stuff. So it helps you to have something that’s a really big story that everybody can can use an analogy of. Like, you know, you’re down and you know, a somebody on the safari, some animal on the safari downs, a big animal, He’s going to get some right. Other animals are going to come in and jump in. But he’s going to get. So so that’s one. And then and then from there, it’s like, you know, all the problem solving. And I don’t know if I do it the same way other people do, but, you know, it’s really punch as much holes in as possible. And then at some point after you’ve feel like you’ve exhausted that, then a trusted person to punch holes in it too. But the punch holes part is the most, you know, ego taxing, but so critical.

Stone Payton: Now, that’s an interesting observation because once you start to get emotionally invested in an idea or I’ll speak for myself, I intellectually understand I need to let people smarter than me poke poke at it a little bit. But it’s it’s it’s like my little baby, right? I’m a little reserved and I don’t it’s it’s I don’t want them to punch it too hard.

Speaker4: Yeah.

David Castro: So that is rural. So you got to be a problem solver. I think an entrepreneur and it’s in their core. They are problem solvers. All they’re doing is they’re monetizing a solution to problems that they’ve seen. So that’s part of the process, is letting somebody punch holes and then practicing problem solving. And at some point, if you can’t solve that problem, then you should probably let it go. But another cool thing is if somebody Pooh poohs it, but you’re really confident and you have done the work. You know, to problem solve that and then you’re just like, okay, that’s fine. I don’t need everybody to be like on board. That just means there’s less people that are going to try to like, jump in on the same idea, right? So, um, but yeah, problem solving is, is the, is the key. So when people punch holes, you know, that’s just your, uh, you know, invitation to practice.

Speaker4: Well, and.

Stone Payton: People like you, you have your antenna up for problems in the marketplace. And when you hear them, you kind of run it. You run it through your little, your, your system and say, I wonder if we could create a solution for that problem. And yeah, yeah, that’s a fun part of the, the entrepreneurial lifestyle and ethos, I think. Okay, let’s leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of I call them pro tips, but because you’re so immersed in this world, maybe a couple of pro tips on and certainly entrepreneurship in general is fine if you have something to say about that. But maybe we stay in your specific domain around around this networking, I guess, on maybe networking online or making sure that you you combine the two and don’t just leave it there. Let’s leave them with a couple of pro tips. And look, gang number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with David or somebody on his on his team that’s that’s your best pro tip. But short of that, you know, maybe something we could be reading, maybe something, you know, whatever you do, do this. Whatever you do, don’t do this. Something like that.

David Castro: Well, I’d love to give a shout out to a friend of mine who wrote a book that has just been great. And the title, you know, is fantastic. The depth of the book goes a lot broader than than just what the title the title is Unstoppable Self-confidence. Um, and, but it touches every area of your life. Um, and when I was talking about the Venn diagram earlier around networking, one of those is the personal growth, right? Um, and the, the level that you’re, you’re seeking to get to is Donald Miller, I think talks about this. It talks about the hero’s two journeys. Like you have a, you have a goal and it’s this hero’s two journeys is in every movie the person has a goal that’s monetary or achievement oriented or whatever it is. And so that’s one journey. And the other journey is they have to become better, You know, internally, they have to overcome internal challenges or whatever. Personally, they have to become the person, right? That’s their second journey. So that’s the hero’s two journeys. So, um. Anyway. So as far as a book goes, I think that’s a fantastic book, Unstoppable Self-confidence by Andrew Letham, and it will definitely affect your success positively. Let’s see, as far as you know, the other thing I would say is in networking, we can be impatient.

David Castro: And I think when you’re impatient or you’re too eager, then that’s a lot about me and what I want or what I need. And what you really want to do is just connect with the the human in front of you or on the other side of the the Internet, right on the if it’s virtual networking and be there to to be of service. If you’re talking with someone about something you’re trying to sell, then you should be in the mindset of I’m selling this to be of service like that, that you got to get that right first. But once you get that right, then the next thing is I don’t need to close them in the next conversations, you know, or in the next. If I am being of service to them and my product is going to serve them, you know, having that kind of atmosphere and approach, um, you’re, you’re not only will your success rate go up, your network will grow and therefore your volume of opportunities will grow and people will be bringing you in to to more opportunities and referring you and so forth. But that mindset part is, is an important part of, of networking and, and. Yeah, I think that’s that’s probably the, the most important, important part of networking is the human connection aspect, not your elevator pitch.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. Well said. Marvelous counsel. All right, let’s, uh. Let’s make sure that we leave our listeners with a way to tap into your work. Maybe reach out to you and have a more substantive, more substantive conversation with you so whatever you feel like is appropriate. But let’s give them some coordinates and let’s make sure that they have those social handles again. And then any other thing that you think is appropriate to share? I just I want people to be able to tap into your work and create a relationship with you and your team.

Speaker4: Man Thanks so much.

David Castro: Linkedin. I’m like the most active on LinkedIn, to be honest with you. David Castro you again look for Icebreaker. Icebreaker spelled Ike e b r e r. I always get a chuckle if I say that first two E’s no A-hole. So you.

Speaker4: I like it.

David Castro: And so. So you can find me at CEO, founder of Icebreaker on LinkedIn. And and then Instagram was the other one that I’m most active on and will be more active here on Instagram soon. But we’d love it if you reach out to us and follow us there. And that is again at Icebreaker Ice b e R, and there’s a bunch of icebreaker, you know, spilled all kinds of different ways in the app stores. But there’s except no substitutes.

Stone Payton: Well, David, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show, man. Thanks for sharing your insight and your perspective. Keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing here is so important. I don’t think I’m overstating it to characterize it as a movement. And we want to support your your efforts in any way we can. Man, It’s been a real pleasure.

David Castro: Oh, man. Same stone. Great to meet you. And thanks so much for this conversation. Really enjoyed.

Speaker4: It.

Stone Payton: You got it, man. This is Stone Payton for our guest today with Icebreaker, Mr. David Castro and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Tagged With: IceBrekr

Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter

August 17, 2023 by angishields

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In & On Business
Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter
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In this episode of In and On Business, Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter join host Andy Williams to discuss how both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success. 

Gloria-MatteiGloria Mattei was born in Puerto Rico in 1968. The last kid of five. Graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a degree in Business Administration, majoring in accounting. Worked for 16 years in the telecommunications industry performing several positions, domestically and internationally, starting with accounting and then transitioning to operations, due to her desire to get to know all the details of the business and understand how to run it.

She performed several functions within the Finance/accounting role, starting with auditing financial operations, new business initiatives financial support, and Wholesale Telecommunication operations, and her last role was as an Associate Director for M2M Operations for Verizon Wireless.

She was responsible for the implementation of the settlement system between Telecommunication carriers, when the first M2M system was established by Verizon Wireless, for Onstar-Telematics-General Motors back in 1999. From there she moved to manage a national team that supported major OEMs, such as Toyota, Mercedes Benz, etc. supporting the design, implementation, testing, and operational readiness of their telematics/M2M systems.

On a personal note, she is happily married, for 26 years, to her wonderful and supportive husband Sergio Pacheco. They have been blessed with two amazing kids, Adrian 21, and Zahra 18. Georgia has been their home since 1997, making Roswell their first home, and now in Milton for the last 12 years.

Gloria comes from a large family. Her grandfather was an entrepreneur farmer who owned and developed land for farming and cattle. Her mother had an entrepreneurial mindset as well and supported her family by establishing her own realty leasing business.

Her two older brothers owned a bookstore and a consulting business for many years. Gloria loved her corporate career and considered herself a conservative mindset. However, that owner/entrepreneur seed wanted to grow, and the inspiration to allow it to grow started with being a mom of two kids, one of them, diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Gloria’s entrepreneurship started when she met the Nothing Bundt Cakes (NbC) brand back in 2010, during one of her many business travels to California. She was introduced by a friend from Texas who knew the brand very well. She came home to tell Sergio, her husband, “ I think we found the business” and her husband said… “ Are you crazy? You don’t even cook!” Gloria had the vision to be the first NbC store in GA.

Her first thought after knowing the brand, was “There is nothing like this in GA”. One year later the first NbC store opened in Sandy Springs Ga, and Sergio got to taste the product, at his own XMAS housewarming party. At that point, he said, “You are on to something. Let’s start the research process”. What started as simple franchise research in January 2011 resulted in the opening of the 2nd NbC store in GA, store number 83 for the franchise system. They open their doors in December 2013. They will be celebrating their 10th anniversary on December 13, 2023.

In March 2022, Gloria and Sergio were approved to grow to their second bakery. However, destiny and serendipity had other plans. She had a strong relationship with the owner of the first store in GA (Sandy Springs) and that owner reached out to Gloria- as soon as she was approved for her second bakery- and said “I want to retire and I don’t want to sell to anyone but you.”

Long story short, Gloria and Sergio expanded their market by taking over the Sandy Springs bakery on June 2022 and are now proud owners of bakery #1 and # 2 in GA which proudly serves the GA 400 North Fulton Corridor.

She and her NbC family are proud to bring joy to our community and truly live the experience of how “cake changes everything”. Gloria opened her business with a big dream. That dream is her why. The dream of building a platform for her son, who is in the autistic community. He could either be able to perform in it or prove that he, and other kids like him, can function and have a role in the community.

Gloria is not a stranger when it comes to the community. She has used her business to integrate into the community and find different ways her cakes can bring joy and help at the same time, in all different ways possible. She says she is very proud and grateful for how this platform has allowed her son to grow, and how she and her team have been able to assist the community in many ways.

Gloria has seen this bakery grow not only as a platform for her son, but for her daughter, and many other individuals, including other special needs young adults in the community. Gloria has had the honor of being nominated and receiving several awards that have made her proud of all the hard work they have put into their business during the past 10 years.

Matthew-FosterMatthew Foster is a Tax Partner in Frazier & Deeter’s Tax Practice and Co-chair of the firm’s Manufacturing & Distribution Group.

With over 15 years of experience in public accounting, primarily at FD, he specializes in serving privately owned middle-market companies, including those backed by private equity. Matthew’s expertise lies in corporate structuring for tax strategies, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and ESOPs.

He assists clients operating in diverse industries such as manufacturing & distribution, technology, real estate and construction.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for In and On Business brought to you by the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber. For more information, go to Sandy Springs Perimeter chamber.com. Now here’s your host.

Andy Williams: Welcome to in it on business with the Sandy Springs Premier chamber where we explore the tension between day to day business operations and strategic growth. The in and on of business. I’m your host, Andy Williams. In each episode we explore the ideas surrounding working in your business, while also exploring the essential strategies for working on your business. Whether that’s carving out the visionary path or delivering a final product to streamlining processes, sustainability, whatever the case may be. Both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success. Our guest today first is Gloria Mattei. Correct, with the last name Mattei. Mattei, I knew I wasn’t going to get it right, even though I knew you corrected me already. Owner of not one, but two Nothing Bundt Cakes here in Georgia. And Matt Foster, tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. Welcome. We’re thrilled to have you guys here to share stories, wisdom of everything you all do to leverage your in and out of business within your own organizations to get us started, let’s start with our guests. Learn a little bit more about them. Gloria. Oddly enough, you began your career in accounting as well. So let’s hear how you made that transition from accountant to Nothing Bundt Cakes.

Gloria Mattei: For Nothing Bundt cakes, right. So I started, like you said, my career as an accountant. I was a CPA, and I started in the auditing world. I was auditor for the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico. And then I, I wanted to be in one of the big six companies, Right. Doing tax and auditing. And the opportunity came for telecommunications company that was looking for bilingual accountants. And so I had the opportunity to interview with them. And it was actually a company that was the legacy company of what today is Verizon. It was called GTE, and they were looking for bilingual individuals for their international operations. So that’s how I ended up in the United States, from Puerto Rico to the United States as an accountant, as an auditor in taxing and all operational for all their international operations and also domestic. And so from accounting, I was there for about five years in the accounting world doing new business initiatives and everything that was telecommunications based. And in all honesty, I loved accounting, but I got tired of the taxing and the closing and the closing months. Every you know, in one of the closing flash meetings that we had, they were talking about that we were losing revenue in one of the cell towers because we were losing records. And I’m like, Oh my God, I need to learn about the business. I want to know what the business is about, not just the numbers. And so I did a completely 360 degree and there was an opportunity on a new team that was being developed for telematics.

Gloria Mattei: So remember, OnStar and General Motors. So I jumped into that team completely away from accounting into building that network and doing the operations of that network. And so I was there for 16 plus years, and I was traveling all over the United States in different OEMs, etcetera. And then I was in San Diego doing one of my trips to one of the OEMs, and my friend invited me to a nothing bundt cakes. And I said, What’s that? And he said, I’ve never had nothing. Bundt cakes. It’s like, no. And so I said, I don’t know. I’ll go with you. I don’t like cake. And so I went, I saw the bakery and I was like, Oh my God, this is the cutest thing. It was in San Diego. And I tried a cake and I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So I asked him, Is there anything like this in Georgia? And he’s like, No, I know them from Dallas and they do super well. And I said, Oh, that’s very interesting. And then he brought home like a bunch of cakes with him. I was like, What are you doing? And he’s like, I need to bring this for gifts. Everybody loves them. So anyway, I came home and I told my husband, Hey, I think I found something else I want to do. And the reason is because in the back of our mind, I have two kids, but my oldest son is in the spectrum. He’s autistic. And so I knew that corporate world was going to be hard for sure.

Gloria Mattei: So for some reason we had in the back of our head, we got to do something on our own and see if it’s that platform for him. If it’s not a platform, at least we can prove if he can work with us that he has a value in society. And so that was the was in the back of my mind about, you know, stepping out of corporate world and doing this. That’s excellent. And so the first reaction was, you’re crazy. You don’t bake, you don’t cook, you don’t do anything right. And I said, that’s true. I don’t do anything. I always travel all over the place. So it just ended up being serendipity. And we just left the conversation there and I. Was actually moving to a new house. And my friend that introduced me said, Hey, somebody took your idea. And there’s a store opening in Sandy Springs. And I said, Oh God, I want it to be the first bakery in Georgia. I said, It’s okay. I can be the second one. And so he actually brought cakes to my housewarming party. And so when my husband saw the reaction on everybody’s face, he’s like, Is this the place you told me about? And he’s like, Yeah. So we lost the opportunity of number one, we got to be number two. And he said, It looks like you’re into something. And so we started researching and the reason why I ended up owning a Nothing Bundt Cakes.

Andy Williams: And here we are.

Gloria Mattei: And here we are. Now I got number one and number two bakeries in Georgia.

Andy Williams: Yes, that’s excellent. And over the course of time, you ended up acquiring Exactly first one. Yeah, that’s that’s such an amazing story to me, just on so many different levels. Just simply one being an accountant and then transitioning all the way and turning on a very different side of the brain.

Gloria Mattei: It’s completely different side of the brain. I remember that when I decided to study accounting and be a CPA, what I had in my head was what my first accounting professor at college told me. And it’s like, if you’re an accountant, you can own your own business, you can do whatever you want. And so that’s what actually inspired me to go into accounting. But never in my life thought I would own my own business. I was corporate hard core, so that was a completely out of nowhere.

Andy Williams: Excellent. Well, does that make you corporate hard core at Frazier, or is that where where we land? Give us give us some of your background, Matthew. This is a this is a tough opening act to follow here because mine is much more simple.

Matthew Foster: Um, yeah, I mean, I’m I’m a tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. I’ve been there for 15 years, so unlike you, I am from Atlanta. I’m from this area. Actually, I’m from Dunwoody, right where we’re sitting right now and have both of my degrees from Georgia State. And I, I remember the summer of oh eight very clearly. I left the school in June of oh eight and then or no, in May of oh eight. And I walked into the doors of Frazier and Dieter in June of oh eight, and I haven’t left since. So unlike you, I am a true walking accountant. It’s just the same as last year, every single year. But no, I’ve greatly enjoyed the the time I’ve spent here. And I mean, it’s it’s why I’ve decided to become a partner here and stay here. And it’s it’s working with individuals like yourself working with small business owners, usually family founder owned businesses and helping them to navigate the IRS, navigate the accounting side of the business because a lot of people don’t have your skill set that have started businesses and they’re very, very good at what they do. But struggle a little bit with with how to operate a business. So you’re a package that we don’t see very often in a client base.

Gloria Mattei: It’s hard when you when you build your own business and you really don’t have any background. Right. And still, as we’ll talk about it, it comes to a point in which even though you may have that background, you do need that extra help because you cannot focus on that if you really want to grow your business.

Matthew Foster: Yeah. So I mean, we’re we’re brought in a lot of the times to. Helped take over some of that for them, but also give them ideas about stuff they haven’t been thinking about, ideas about expanding or having them look 3 to 5 years out. And they’re so focused on the now, they’re so focused on next week or making payroll next week that they fail to really think about where do we want to take our business? How far do we want to take it? Or I mean, can we make it bigger? Can we expand or do we want to sell it at some point?

Andy Williams: Well, and I think you lead in with an interesting point there, is that there’s a lot more being asked of you as an accountant than than than what probably the general public looks at is we look at it very much as it’s the numbers and, you know, they’re their ledgers and this is the route that we go. But the reality is, is you’re asked to think outside the box for these people as well, too.

Matthew Foster: No, it’s it’s it’s funny. A lot of people when they when they hear that I do taxes, they think I’m just sitting there with a green visor and you’ve got. I’ve got my tent. Well, I do have my tent key and I love my ten key. But no, to your point, it’s. It’s not just looking at the traditional compliance, not just looking at the tax return, but learning about them, learning about what drives them and what can we do to help. Further what they want to do with their business. And it might not be anything that we can do, but it’s knowing people that we can bring in to help with what they want done.

Andy Williams: Know and spot on. And that’s that’s where it’s, you know, from an innovation standpoint, I think that’s I would say that’s probably where you’ve seen, you know, a lot of businesses accounting firms especially grow is you weren’t always supposed to necessarily learn and gain all that inside depth and knowledge. But the importance of that is, is what I think everyone sees now is there’s there’s a lot more that goes into into strategic thinking of how do we approach it now to transition to you from a strategic standpoint is how do you evolve and innovate and grow nothing. Bundt cakes like what does that look like, especially as a as a franchisee and, and moving a business forward, you’re really leaning probably hard in on corporate a little. But there also want you to go and innovate on your own.

Gloria Mattei: So it’s an interesting aspect, right? And again, I had the view of I got to do something on my own. I didn’t know what. Right. All I knew was accounting and corporate world. So I knew I needed some structure. So that’s the reason why a franchise kind of struck my attention. It’s like I’m a rule follower. I know how to follow a path, right? And so I need that structure. Once I have the structure, I can probably just, you know, venture from there. And it was it’s interesting, once you start your own business franchise or no franchise, you are mostly the beginning of the time just in the business constantly. I mean, labor is stuff you don’t have the right manpower, you don’t have the right team. You are just working in the business kind of. I mean, in my case, I had no experience in the food industry. I had no experience in baking, right? I just had to learn that in three weeks and then fly, Right. So, yes, they give you a structure, but you really have to come up and bring in all those skills. And for sure, being an accountant, being in a corporate world that really helped me.

Gloria Mattei: It was a huge learning curve. So it was a transition for me into venturing into the day to day operations, physically being there, not only implementing all the training that we learn, but also how do you coach your team, right? And so from an in working in the business perspective, that’s where the majority of the the action should go right? Coaching the team growing your team making sure that they can do their day to day operations so that you can transition out and then work on your business and figure out, okay, where do we go next? Right. And it’s been quite a journey from the first days of My God, we did 24 hours a day just trying to learn the operations in and out and then stepping out and saying, wait, we’re spending too much money in cost of goods, right? We have too much money in inventory. How do we lower the cost we need to make this profitable? Et cetera. Et cetera. And that’s when you step out and got to see all of that.

Andy Williams: Now, you know, staffing is a key buzzword these days, and I’m sure you all are in in different situations because I’m sure you have part time staffing that you also have, let alone full time your primarily full time at at Fraser and Dieter. But but I would suspect that that all of that still is it’s the same conversation that you’re having of how do you how are you finding these new accountants and bringing them on board? How are you finding this part time staff to fall in love with a business and want to be there, you know, day in and day out. So, you know, from a you know, I love the idea of coaching. You know, my background is in sports and sports is my passion. So when I look at something in coaching somebody, I look at, you know, how do you coach an athlete or how do you, you know, grow them from there? I think, you know, I also look at it in the business world, it works the same way. So looking at you first, first map, you know, from a coaching growing, you know, being in the business a little bit more is how do you what do you do, you know, to coach and grow your team and ensure, you know, their own success and peace of mind?

Matthew Foster: I mean, this is a huge thing that we’re dealing with right now where. We constantly are asking our staff, I mean, what can we what what is lacking? What what can we do better? And one of the things is training and coaching and developing developing is a big key word inside public accounting and probably in other career paths. But it’s in the business space. It’s we need to develop these people into becoming the next leaders of the organization into the next level. And. Covid has changed that up quite a bit for us. We did start noticing I mean, I kind of liken it back to I have two small kids and both of them started elementary school during Covid and there is definitely this Covid lag to their to their learning. We’re starting to overcome it in business. We’re starting to overcome the Covid lag as well, because when everybody left the office and we went full remote for I mean, about a year and even now we’re a hybrid environment. But that year away from our staff, our seniors, sitting outside in bullpens and not hearing the conversations between partners, between managers and just the. The overhearing highly technical conversations happening. Nobody realized how valuable just the hearing it being talked about in the open in the office was until we didn’t have the office to talk about it. So it’s it’s overcoming and learning how to now work in a hybrid environment and still impart that knowledge. This past year we did our first firmwide where we we brought everybody in to do a week long of training where you could network and not only learn technical aspects, but soft skills, leadership, you know, how to work around, you know, looking at people’s shortcomings. But they’re not shortcomings. It’s it’s, it’s strengths that are hidden and how to identify those, but also work around a big push in our firm and I think in corporate America in general is this push around mental health and being more cognizant of that in the workplace.

Andy Williams: Absolutely. I think, you know, that’s something you know, we’ve all had to check that a good bit here over the past year, year and a half. You bringing up having young kids at home. You know, some of the things even, you know, for us with my wife working upstairs, me working downstairs and kids working in the middle, you know, we kind of let things slide of, you know, who are you online with? What are you talking to? Who are you? Because we knew they needed that exchange and that interaction. And, you know, I think it just it proves your point of being back in the office matters, you know, and having that interpersonal communication is extremely important, you know, from a knowledge standpoint, but also from a just a mental health standpoint, just to sit down and have a conversation with somebody and not not necessarily about work, but just to turn it all off a little bit and take care of yourself.

Matthew Foster: Yeah, there’s a lot lost in translation when you’re over teams or over Zoom that I work, I work in the office as much as possible. I like to work hands on with with the people that are working on my clients and. A lot of times there might be some sarcasm that’s thrown around and it comes across much easier in person than it does over Zoom or over email. So. Yeah. Bringing up development. Bringing up coaching. When you talked about what’s the difference between on and in. So I was I was thinking about this over the weekend and over the past couple of days and. When I look at working, I get the two confused.

Andy Williams: I’m with you. There’s a lot in both on.

Matthew Foster: The end here. It boils down to what’s the core values of your business?

Speaker5: Absolutely.

Matthew Foster: And for Frazier and Deeter, it’s we call it peak. So it’s it’s people entrepreneurial, accessible and quality. And we live on those core values. So for our people, I mean, it’s one of our things is we greatly invest in our people and buy in turn, we want them to invest in our clients. So by working in your business on your people, it should in turn. Or is it the other way around? I think you’re right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. It in turn it it works on your on your business. At the same time, by focusing on the quality that you’re providing to your clients.

Andy Williams: No, I love that. And I was going to say your experience because, again, you’re you’re dealing with its younger group. Yeah.

Gloria Mattei: Completely different experience. So it was definitely quite an adventure in a different way, right? So I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to close doors because I was not considered a restaurant, so I wasn’t serving people. I don’t have chairs and tables, etcetera. So I was allowed to stay open. But then I was impacted by the fear of the employees I was impacted by. I mean, we all were like, okay, so what are we going to do? We, you know, we had big orders, we corporate orders that were shut down immediately. Okay, So how do we pull back? And, you know, you’ve got to bring down all of the production efforts, etcetera, and that’s the working on the business. And then working in the business was, okay, so how do I provide some safety to the team members that I have in here? Because I got to make sure that they’re safe, right? And and my team, you continue the coaching aspect. I got lucky too, because I have a mix. I have a mix of younger people and I have a mix of adults that some of them are maybe retired moms that are just doing something that they like to do and they don’t need the income. So I was really lucky because they were like, We’re good. We’re just going to go home and wait for this to pass. And some of the kids were also my mom and my dad doesn’t want me to work, but then I had the other ones and kind of mixing into the mental health. I had other ones that were like, If I stay in my house, I will go crazy. I cannot do this. I have to be active. I cannot. I get depressed. It’s like, Well, I’ll provide you a safe environment. We’ll put everything in place that we need to put. But I mean, we got to make things happen, right? And it’s that coaching of in good days you have and where is abundance and when there’s sales, this is how you operate, but there’s a lot of coaching. On when that’s not the case. How do you operate? Right?

Andy Williams: I know. And I think that’s great. I think, you know, the piece that that really stuck out. And you know, Matt, you had said, you know, strengths that are hidden. You know, to me, like that was a like I wrote that down as like, that’s something that’s a an interesting viewpoint to look at because too often, you know, if somebody is not successful or they’re not hitting marks or doing what they need to do, you know, you you almost look at that as a as a downfall for them and a failure. And but at the end of the day, it’s not. It’s how do we how do we coach them up? How do we build them up, how do we make that? And it could.

Matthew Foster: Be even going further. I mean, they might not be hitting the marks in the job that they’re doing, but is there somewhere else in the organization that they their skill set would be better, valuable?

Speaker5: Yeah, absolutely right.

Matthew Foster: So I mean, we have a couple people that I’ve seen go from our tax department to operations to marketing and and it’s. They do a good job. But it wasn’t you could tell it wasn’t what they were built to do. And so it was you know, if you look at it just in the lens of their their tax person, of course they’re going to fail. If you take a step back and say, well, what skill sets are they? Are they showing and is there somewhere else in the organization that would be a better fit? And we try to move people around as best as possible.

Gloria Mattei: Yeah, I think that applies to to any business, any industry. I think it’s the flexibility, but it also goes with the developing mindset, right? It’s not just about looking at what is on the outside. You apply for this job and this is what you’re going to do. It’s about you may not be hitting the mark here, but let me find where you can be and giving them that opportunity. And I think that happens in any industry. Corporate, of course I’ve seen it. But even even in this and that has been one of my biggest eye openers. I mean, I had I mean, my favorite story. I had an individual that applied for a job and he actually applied. I divide the bakery between the back of the house in front of the house, and he thought he wouldn’t the back of the house job. And we knew he had special needs. And so that’s close and dear to my heart. And of course, I offer him a job. And it was interesting. He really didn’t have the motor skills to be able to function in the back of the house. But the personality that that individual had was amazing. And the way that he talked to people and the way that he connected. I mean, going back to the values, one of our values is creating and genuine connections. So it’s much more than cake, right? It’s much more than the best product. You have to create that genuine connection with the guests that you’re serving. He was fantastic. As soon as we moved him to the front of the house, I mean, he could talk a storm and he could create those connections and he could say, and it was amazing. Nowadays he evolved. He found a job with other persons because we were able to give them the opportunity and find that spot. And he’s now apparently not a paralegal, an assistant for special needs kids in a school, which is like fantastic.

Andy Williams: Yes. And that’s great. And I think, you know, it kind of leads a little bit into the on side of things, you know, and that passion that goes into, you know, finding that passion for somebody and what that means and, you know, across your businesses, you know, having that passion or innovation or opportunity to work on your business and grow it is is always interesting. And I think, you know, the accounting profession, you know, we had spoken before is like, how do you, you know, students, new hires, how do you how do you engage someone to go like and both of you actually can answer this since, you know, with a background in accounting is, you know, how do you turn somebody’s brain on to to go like, this is where I want to be, You know, how do you how do you get them to find that passion of, you know, you’re fighting the marketers of the world, you know, with, hey, we have fun and we go out and we entertain and we do this, but at the end of the day, you all are doing a lot of those same things and you’re engaging in the same way. So how do you how do you get people to see that accounting profession as this this place that’s evolved and grown to be be more?

Matthew Foster: So it’s interesting you bring that up. I’ve been in I’ve been talking with the head of the School of Accountancy at Georgia State, and they’re having this issue right now where there’s not big enrollment into account the accounting program anymore. And it’s it is we’re seeing it in the profession. I mean, we’re seeing it in the industry that we’re seeing less students coming out of the school system. And so we’re having a shortage of first years coming into the profession. And what is the issue here? I mean, that’s the thing. And it boils down to or this is my take on it. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I’ve been thinking for a while is accounting in general. I mean, it goes back to what do most people think about when they think of accounting? They think of, you know, in a suit and a tie. Very long hours, never see light, always behind a computer or now always behind a computer, but very boring. I mean, dealing with the IRS, Who wants to deal with the IRS? Nobody wants to. I don’t even want to. But very boring career. Whereas. I mean, it’s there are boring times. I think anything that you do, there are boring times if you’ve done it for long enough. But. It’s also a different we have a new generation of leaders in the accounting space that we need to show the students.

Matthew Foster: We need to show younger individuals out there that the days of, you know, grinding, grinding, grinding are I mean, it’s starting to slow down. I mean, it’s still there. There’s busy times. There’s slower times. But we’re not just people in suits and ties. I mean, we all have personalities. We all have lives outside of of accounting. And we we it’s not just sitting down, grinding for ten hours a day and then going home and doing it all over again the next day. It is working very closely with business owners, getting to know them on a personal level so that we can help them with other needs, not just filling out their tax forms. But it’s it’s trying to get people to see because a lot of the older professionals in the in this industry where the. The long hours and the never seeing their kids baseball games or something along that as a as a badge of honor, which is not what anybody wants to hear anymore. And in fact, I don’t like I am very clear with my team. I’m like, Hey, my girls have cheerleading tonight. I’m going to see them cheer. Like if you have kids that are doing something, we’re doing this for our family. But why give up seeing your family grow up just to do this?

Andy Williams: No, that’s and I love that. I know. I, you know, made it a point. And, you know, my father was in sales, but he was also able to be home a lot of afternoons when I still got home. And and that’s definitely rubbed off on me of wanting to make sure I was around and being around and, you know, so I think that’s extremely important. And I think it’s important for all businesses, not just it.

Gloria Mattei: Is, but I think it’s what you just said, right? It’s about them understanding what is the value of what they’re bringing to the community in a way. Right. Because it’s like you said, accountants are not just about the numbers and the taxes and just crunching the numbers from, what, February through April and if you’re in corporate the different time frame. But it’s about helping that business owner finding an exit strategy or where do you get the funds to do that growth that you need. And those and I think those are exciting times, but it’s a misconception. I agree. Yeah. I mean, because my first indication when I told my kids my story and I was an accountant, you were one of those boring people that. Okay, you know, but but it’s much more than that. No, absolutely. But I think it’s in industry, of course. I mean, the majority of the my younger adults, of course, they’re coming just to do a summer job or they’re coming to do an after school job, etcetera. But I mean, the is much more than that is they can get a lot more than just, you know, learning how to do a pose or whatever.

Gloria Mattei: The majority of my kids that come in and it’s actually very rewarding. They come, they come super shy. They barely answer the questions in the interview. And then when you put them in front of the guest and they start talking and I mean, you see them progress and how and how they grow into college and you and you see them coming back and asking for references and it’s like, Hey, would you tell them what I did at the bakery and the connections that I made? And I went with you and I talked to people because those are skills that they are going to need wherever they go, right? And when I bring people into the bakery that I see a potential is if you stay with us, you can do a growth and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to be a bakery. I mean, the tax I mean, the skills that you’re going to learn are going to work with you wherever you go. Right?

Andy Williams: Well, and I think I look at it as they really they really become the face of the business. It’s not, you know, it’s these, you know, young children looking for part time jobs that are you know, they become the face of of the business. So you have to kind of share all of that knowledge information and get them to a point to to be comfortable in their skin and show that compassion.

Gloria Mattei: It all goes to the coaching and the developing right. And I think you need to be honest with them. This is and it’s also about the values, right? I don’t think if you have any values in your business, then it’s very hard to to communicate this and get this in their heads. But for us is, you know, servant’s heart. I mean, that’s what you’re here for, to serve the community in one way or the other. Spirit of a champion. Things are going to get hard and it doesn’t matter the industry again. Right. And so it’s that spirit of a champion. You’ve got to get through it. And it will be it will be fine. You will get through the other end. Right. And and genuine connections. One of the many things again, I was in corporate world and I was in the crunching numbers all the time. And one of the things that I never did was be out in the community and outreach at the community. I, you know, yes, we had the the the contributions to, you know, donations that you did that were matching by the company and all of that. But being out there in the community was not something that I did a lot in corporate world. And that was one of my biggest rewards as I stepped out. Because, I mean, who moves you as a business owner? The community.

Speaker5: Community. Yeah.

Andy Williams: Yeah, no, for sure. One last kind of question. We, you know, I don’t want to keep keep us all here for the afternoon because we could go round and round and chat even further. But as. You know, industry leaders in your respective spaces. What advice would you give to others as to, you know, the how do you balance, you know, not just work life, but even, you know, the in and on business or, you know, balance, you know, all of this moving forward. What’s the what’s something, you know, a little piece that that we could share of how do you balance, you know, working in an on business specifically, but even more broadly, because we’ve hit it a number of times, how do you how do you balance all of it, life work, you know, live, work, play, You know, how do you how do you balance all of that? What’s the what’s that piece of advice you’d give somebody, somebody young that’s that’s listening to us today.

Gloria Mattei: So so I go back to I think you have to step back sometimes and and have a vision of what you’re doing. In my case, it’s super easy to go in because I’m a control freak and I want to make sure that everything is perfect and I’m a perfectionist. But in my case, it’s really hard to when I go in the bakery, I just want to have hands on, right? But I have to be very conscious and have the vision of stepping back saying, Wait a second, I am not helping them in any way. I’m not developing them if I do this right. And I think it’s a progressive, it’s a journey. In my case, as a small business owner, you are maybe 90% in at the beginning of your years and then you have to progress eventually to be more, I would say 80, 90 and 10 or 20 in. Right. But it’s it’s definitely the vision of for me is stepping back and I’m like, okay, how am I going to develop them? They are the ones that are going to carry the torch either in my bakery or somewhere else. And if I do, then then I’m not developing them. And I think that’s the key in my case for me is stepping back. Wait a second, I that’s not where I need to be. I need to be developing them so that they go to their next level.

Andy Williams: That’s great. That’s great.

Matthew Foster: Matt Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think it’s the on comes before the end. I agree. I mean the on it boils down to I said it earlier that I mean it has to be your core values. You have to decide what are the core values of your business, make sure that your team knows that and they believe in those core values also, because if they don’t believe it and they don’t show it, then the end is not going to it doesn’t matter. So, I mean, they really feed off of each other, but I mean, the whole work life, the whole balance of the whole, all of it, that’s a tough one. I mean, it it takes years to practice to learn. I was telling my girls the other day, it’s like my my youngest, it’s, you know, sometimes something’s hard. You have to practice at it before it becomes easy. And when it comes to balancing this and I mean, I’ve been in this in public accounting now for 15 years. You have to know your you have to set your own limits. You have to set what is important to you and what is your in end result that you want to achieve and set that firm and work towards that. But don’t try to work past it. Know when to stop. Otherwise, if you don’t, then you are going to just 100% dive into work and life is just going to leave. And I mean, I learned it a hard way several years ago, but over the past several years, I found that I found what I wanted to achieve, and I’ve just been working towards that. And it has changed dramatically the balancing act that I’ve been doing.

Andy Williams: That’s great. You know what I love said just to kind of wrap this this up in a little bit of a bow here for all of us, what I what I took most out of this was the on the on before the end. I love that. You know, I think that was great. Like it’s such a unique perspective to look at it, you know, in regards to that fashion. And you know, and, you know, the key words and phrases and things that I heard throughout, like passion really is what it boils down to. Just a, you know, a passion for not just, you know, your business, but for all those involved. You know, I love the story of the young gentleman who just started out in the back and then works, as you know, works his way to the front because he really could connect and bring it to life a little bit. So it’s it, you know, is great to hear from both of you all. You know, that’s going to bring us to a close here today on in and on business. I want to thank both of you all for being a part of the Sandy Springs Chamber. We’re grateful for you all and your businesses and our community. You know, we appreciate your experiences and expertise. I want to thank the team at Business RadioX for hosting us and taking care of us here today and all of our partners and their continued support. I hope you enjoyed your time with us and we look to see you next month.

 

Tagged With: Frazier Deeter, Nothing Bundt Cakes

Kimberly Stark with The Flourish Consultancy

August 16, 2023 by angishields

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High Velocity Radio
Kimberly Stark with The Flourish Consultancy
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Kimberly-StarkKimberly Stark, CEO and founder of The Flourish Consultancy and prolific leader, has created one of the top California based, professional and personal development education companies. Kimberly’s B.S. in psychology coupled with her own life altering story of overcoming, spurred the innovative information curator to construct a highly developed program bridging the gap between conventional education taught in schools and the tools needed to handle day to day stresses and obstacles in order to “successfully adult.”

Kimberly seized the opportunity to expertly fill this space for others, by taking her course to market as an employee wellness program. The Flourish Consultancy reduces measurable costs to organizations as seen through attrition, absenteeism, lower productivity and increases overall employee satisfaction, productivity and wellness. The Flourish masterclass adds value to organizations who understand that supporting their employees is the ultimate path to profitability and has been credited with changing the trajectory of lives for the better.

The Flourish Model was born based on real world experiences and scientific evidence supporting the bolstering or rebuilding a life in a short period of time. Kimberly works with a wide range of organizations from school districts to life insurance companies, the hospitality industry, restaurants, and more.

In addition to her program, Kimberly provides employee wellness programs, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for adults and educators, and is accredited to provide CPA continued education hours, giving each person the agency they need to redeem and redefine challenges while creating systems that support future individual and organizational goals. Kimberly has worked with thousands of people, educating them on the cutting edge teachings of the Flourish Consultancy. Kimberly is a respected philanthropist, community leader and lives in California with her four children.

Connect with Kimberly on LinkedIn and follow The Flourish Consultancy on Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:14] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast CEO and founder with The Flourish Consultancy, Ms. Kimberly Stark. How are you?

Kimberly Stark: [00:00:34] I’m good, thanks for having me, Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:00:37] Well, it is a delight to have you on the show. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose, what you and your team are really out there trying to do for folks.

Kimberly Stark: [00:00:55] Sure. So. I. When I entered adulthood, I noticed that there was a gap in the education between what we learned when we were young. And I have a college degree and what it actually takes to successfully adult. So for about 15 years I had this idea of a life skills class. Like what are the things that we really need to know in order to build a successful adult life moving forward? It existed there for, like I said, probably 10 to 15 years, but I decided to take it to market in 2020 as an answer on how do we build true strategy through the adversity that we all face as an employee wellness program. So that is kind of the background. We have two different ways we speak about it. Our clients are our buyers, our corporations or school districts. And so for them we speak to it in essence as increasing profitability through preemptively providing education to your employees, increasing engagement, increasing wellness. But to the end user, it’s a true personalized strategic plan through adversity or just leveling up your life. But it’s not just like a hang in there. You got this, but providing some true tools and strategy in order to build a successful adult life. And it turns out in the long run, it makes a company more profitable as well.

Stone Payton: [00:02:26] Well, it’s got to be it must be incredibly rewarding work. What what at this point, are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the work for you these days?

Kimberly Stark: [00:02:40] You know, I guess both. It’s sort of like most entrepreneurs and a lot of your listeners, you like something, so you build a business around it so that way you can keep doing it. I mean, I’m sure you’re a perfect example of this. You like interviewing? You like talking about entrepreneurship. You’re great on the radio, so you build this company around it so you can keep going. And I’m no different, right? Like I am a total nerd on personal development. I love it. It’s all the books that I read. It’s my favorite conversations. I love increasing wellness. You know, it’s always been within me to help people. And as I look back in my life, what I wanted to do with my life was always in that vein, but it was always according to what I what options I knew at the time. Like so for instance, when I was younger, I wanted to be a missionary because that was like all I kind of knew on how to help. And then it became a social worker. I had a social work degree and then in college it turned into a psychology, and I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. And as my kids were little, I started Moms group. So it all sort of was that same thing. And now the work that I’m doing is also from that same mission of wanting to help in any way I can and take the stories and the adversity combined with my education and continual learning, and then package it to help others build their own lives and navigate the adversity that they face. Because we all face it, it’s just going to look differently in each of our lives. So if we can provide some true, like I said, tools to do it, then we can make the entire, you know, kind of culture leveled up.

Stone Payton: [00:04:26] So let’s do let’s dive into the work a little bit and we’ll pick a scenario. Maybe you have a client scenario or we can devise one, but I’d love to hear. I’m particularly interested in the early stages of a relationship with the organization that you’re serving in that way. And then maybe what some of the work looks like on the ground with the with the people who are actually going through the the process.

Kimberly Stark: [00:04:50] Perfect. Okay. So we have a couple of different verticals. And I’ll just tell you this part, but we have a couple of different verticals. We have corporations, so like corporate for instance, like Mutual of Omaha or somewhere in that vertical. Then we also work with school districts and so we have an education space. We also have CPAs is another vertical, so they get their CPE units. We work with hospitality, so like restaurants to help their staff. But really, so depending on the organization, the contract looks a little bit different. But we’re doing the same thing. The class itself, it’s an eight module master class and it is offered to the employees within that organization. So let’s just say, for instance, a company, one of your listeners decides to work with me. We reach out and then we’d work with them on what is the best way. So think of it as like professional development or an employee wellness program for their employees. We can offer it in a couple different structures. Typically we do once a week for eight weeks, 8 to 10 weeks in a one hour zoom and during, and I’ll let you know like what the content is. But sometimes we’ll do a half day sort of retreat style deep dive with four follow up zooms. Sometimes we’ll do two half days, but that’s essentially what it is. It’s about 8 to 10 hours of content and we can structure it in whatever makes sense to the company.

Stone Payton: [00:06:14] I got to believe that the employee, the people who are going through this process, if it’s framed properly and I’m sure not only do you frame it properly, you probably coach and guide your client in how to frame it properly. It’s got to be received as a true benefit. My company investing in me. Is that accurate?

Kimberly Stark: [00:06:33] Yes. And oh, what’s so amazing to live in the time that we live is that always we’ve always probably had this intuitive understanding of a connection between the well being of your employee and the profitability of the company. But that wasn’t always a culture, right? It was a culture before. It was like, leave your personal life at home. We don’t talk about that here. Like just man up and you know, that’s what it is. But the well-being of the employee has always affected company, bottom line, always. It’s just now that we’re talking about it now it’s really cool is we have visionary forward thinking leaders that are on the front edge of this who are preemptively wanting to support their employees through a lot of different ways. But ours is specifically through a wellness program, through an education or a class. And you have these managers who want to have these really powerful, productive wellbeing conversations with their team but don’t know where to start. And that’s where we can come in and say, Hey, here’s this environment for a shared language and here’s how to start these wellbeing conversation conversations. That will actually level up your engagement, which then levels up your profitability.

Stone Payton: [00:07:44] Yeah. And that kind of engagement can it sounds to me like it would prepare the ground for transitions. I’m from the change management world a long, long time ago when I had black hair. And I know that, you know, managing the human aspects of change was every bit as daunting as the technical aspects of a merger and acquisition. You know, any of that, I would think it would really cultivate the ground and equip your people to to whether, you know, the the challenges of change, but also make them much more productive. So the content let’s do a little bit of a dive into the content. Um, I don’t have the work ethic or the intellect or the pedigree to design a curriculum like that, but I would think if I were, I might want to approach topics like mental toughness or resilience or, you know, kind of getting outside of your normal pattern. Are those some of the kinds of things that you attack?

Kimberly Stark: [00:08:39] 100%?

Stone Payton: [00:08:40] Okay.

Kimberly Stark: [00:08:41] Someone wants to. So what leaders right now need to focus on almost more than anything is how to build, how to relate, how to build within their company, and also how to relay building true strategy through adversity on the back side of Covid and the tail end. And even just when helping people get through their lives. What’s the strategy behind it versus just a you got this or keep your chin up. So that’s what we’re providing. And also when people just want to level up their lives, they often or hit some sort of crisis or trauma. The problem is you don’t know where to start. So what we want to offer is a plan, is a strategic plan. So with, for instance, the content that you just mentioned, instead of just like a kind of weekly drip of it without a plan or somewhere to frame, we give them a framework. So that way when they do get these little bits of knowledge, they’re somewhere to hang it in an actual process. So let me walk you through that process. So at the very core of. Resiliency is a shift of perspective on hardships themselves, is understanding that the stress that comes at us or the adversity that comes at us, if we are willing to shift our perspective on it, can be utilized as a catalyst to not only wisdom or growth or expansion, but ultimately your greatest strength potentially. So really getting that mindset dialed in and starting to look at stress and hardship and adversity as a invitation to growth and giving the tools on how to do that.

Kimberly Stark: [00:10:23] So that is the first step in the Flourish model. The second step is agency. And you mentioned transition. Well, let me back up is agency. So it’s yes, your hardships can be redeemed. What you walk through, that’s challenging, you can use that for it, but you are the one that has to do it. So if you’re holding anyone else responsible, like it’s not even in your best interest. So really taking ownership. So in this module we talk about how do you navigate fear, How do you make yourself keep going even when you’re terrified? How do you navigate and build a true roadmap through change? So you were just talking about change management. In this module, we offer a shared language on a roadmap through transition, because the scariest thing about transitions is the uncertainty. But if you know, and this is based on the work of Dr. Virginia Satir, but if you know that every change, every transition has six steps along the way, and now you have the language to be able to identify that step those steps. So when you’re in the middle of chaos and what feels like chaos, you have words to it. And you know, well, you’re right on track. It’s a really uncomfortable part of the process. But we can now identify it, have some shared language. You can talk to your team about it. It’s helpful because it’s no longer uncertain. You can kind of a bridge. So shift your perspective on hardship, own your agency.

Kimberly Stark: [00:11:45] The next one is Imagine Forward. This is where we pull in a lot of the data around vision. And we we talk about something called strategic foresight, which has been used in the military and then in business. And answering this question of typically people think of. Making wise decisions moving forward. You pull from from experience, right? That’s how you know what to do next as you look at the past. But what happens if you’re in a situation where there is no previous thing to pull from? What do you do now? Well, there’s this thing called strategic foresight and creating these imagined worlds. And starting there, what happens when you start in this imagined world is you get past it. Number one. It can also build some strategy. And when maybe you haven’t gone through something before, but it also pushes you through any self-limiting beliefs you may have. Maybe you don’t have a blueprint of anyone and your family who’s who has gone through this. You don’t see yourself as that way. And the imposter syndrome. So we work with our clients through this process of strategic foresight and imagining the best outcome on on the other side of this adversity or change or whatever you’re trying to do. And you can do that on a micro level in your own life and ask yourself, what’s the most beautiful world I can imagine, both with my health and my relationships and my home, but also on a business level. So those are the first three steps.

Kimberly Stark: [00:13:13] After that we hit mindset. So that’s what you were talking about really. But it’s not just growth versus fixed and operating out of a growth mindset. We talk about what that is and how to do that. But before we do that, we need to be aware of the thoughts that are even going on in our head. And so we dive really into being aware of your thoughts and potentially the the lenses through which you’re seeing and experiencing the world. That number one, you may not even realize you are and number 2nd May be false. They might not even be real. And here you are operating. And it’s not even like a real belief, you know, it’s a belief you have, but maybe it’s not a real thing. So then and then switching those out and choosing the beliefs that serve you and move you forward and give provide resilience like resilient mindsets versus mindsets that might stunt your resilience. And then the fifth one is systems. So if your perspective own your agency, imagine forward, check your mindset and then set up your systems. And in the systems one, we talk about automating the fundamentals and and all of that, but we also pull a lot or push into identity and the role of identity, the role that your own self identity plays in the efficacy of wanting to change your habits and why you need to start kind of with identity on the front end of changing your habits versus changing your habits and waiting for your identity to catch up.

Stone Payton: [00:14:42] Well, I’m delighted to learn that you’re able to do this with a medium like Zoom. It strikes me that that gives you a lot more flexibility and the ability to reach people. You might it might find it difficult to reach otherwise, at least in a timely fashion. I am a little bit curious, having come from the training and consulting world a long time ago, what the mechanism for the what happens after you kind of bring these conversations to the front There you have you must have discovered a way to really let people chew on them, do some skill practice. Can you speak to that a little bit? You know, I’m just and I’m asking, gang, if you ever want to get a bunch of free consulting, get yourself a radio show. You can get just about any answer you want. But I am genuinely curious of how you can kind of really get beyond just the the information sharing piece of it.

Kimberly Stark: [00:15:43] Sure. And you are correct. I am purposeful in that I don’t want it to just be a I mean, hopefully our clients find it entertaining and fun, but I want to really create change in both their lives and the companies that hire us. So we found a couple pieces that work well for that. So yes, the model of the class is a content or live teaching either through Zoom, we have we have national clients, we have international clients. So those are done by Zoom or in person if they’re more local or a combination. But yes, there’s content and then there’s a reflection time of them answering some sort of we call them requirements, but the exercise of answering the question or applying the content specifically to themselves and then a sort of turn to your neighbor piece and let’s chat about it and like share out, right? So that way you’re, you’re, you’re connecting with your team, your colleagues in a way that is different than like a happy hour or a giving, maybe a giving back, which I support both, but it’s just another tool that you can use.

Kimberly Stark: [00:16:57] But there’s a there’s it’s like an invitation and say, Hey, we’re going to talk about this right now, where I find. The most success with our clients is to have an internal champion or an internal leader who is who has a leadership role within the organization but is just as willing to be vulnerable and show up and tell their stories and tell their failures that they’ve turned into benefits and say, Yeah, I felt imposter syndrome too, or any of those things. Because what that does is they’ve now modeled to the team that this is an environment where we’re going to talk about this and you can feel free sharing as much as you feel comfortable, but that your story is only going to be a benefit to the greater team because it shows humanness and it shows, like I said, a vulnerability and a willingness to learn and a growth mindset. And those are the clients that I have essentially the most. So much so, so the most success with so much so that now I make sure we have that sort of person in each of our courses.

Stone Payton: [00:18:09] I bet they learned so much from each other and find and are able to help the other person identify strengths and strategies. This peer to peer is the phrase that comes to me, but this this a peer to peer learning, like learning from each other. I bet they learn as much, if not more, from that than they do just the original content dump. Right. That’s just almost a catalyst for that, isn’t it?

Kimberly Stark: [00:18:35] Yes, because things content comes alive. I mean, there’s definitely content that you hear or it’s education. So there are things you hear where you’re like, oh my gosh. And the lights go off, you know, go on. And and it really hits. But there’s a different level that hits when someone tells their story and someone says, Here’s an example of when this content meant something to me or, Oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about because this happened to me. And it almost like, I’m not kidding you. I know it’s in it’s at work, but it ends up being this really powerful. Energy connectivity experience that happens that ends up changing the dynamic. And now the data show that A when a person conveys how they feel about their life and their overall happiness, you know, you have kind of like the main buckets, your work, your relationships, your home, how you feel in your body, all of that. But the number one contributor to how happy, how people convey, how happy they are is their career well-being. And one layer below that is the second thing is the how they feel about their manager. So when to answer your question before of like, why am I doing this work if I’m trying to genuinely increase people’s well-being? I decided to take it to market as a corporate wellness program versus just, you know, versus coming a coach because career well-being and how you feel about your manager are the two biggest contributors to how someone feels about their life. So if we can increase their how they feel about their career and their career well-being and their engagement and feeling seen and heard and start there and then we can upskill, upskill bosses to coaches through this, also education, and then we can deliver this education that helps people apply and build true strategy in their personal lives. And we can make a lot bigger impact.

Stone Payton: [00:20:45] Well, I love the focus and I’m particularly enamored with the the mechanism or the process. It just occurred to me and I feel like I’ve experienced this at various points in my life when I’ve taken a stab at self-development, how much I’ve gained if we spent that one afternoon, like trying to help Bob or Mary like like it was, it was so valuable for me, right? Like I learned I took a lot away from that. I love and I can it makes all the sense in the world to me that there would be an X factor and it would be so much more productive and powerful. And it sounds like you’ve pulled this off. If leadership isn’t just writing the check, but they’re diving right in there with you. They’re being vulnerable. They’re learning. They’re sharing. That’s wow. You’ve I think you’ve cracked the code on this thing.

Kimberly Stark: [00:21:35] Well, that is how you make for an impactful leader in the sense that I mean. I, I say this carefully because clearly there are a lot of different facets to being a great leader within an organization. You need to know what you’re doing in order to lead the company forward. But this the increasing if you’re looking to increase profitability, engage employee engagement and wellbeing is so tied to profitability like we’re talking an increase in 20%. So as a good leader, why wouldn’t you, number one, start there? And there’s there’s 20% increase in profitability right there. But. But even taking it further, people want to work for you. People will will get to the point where they’re where they’re wanting to come to work and work for you regardless because they feel that you’re prioritizing their health and they feel seen. They feel like their work matters. You’re going to have a much better retention rate and so you’re not going to lose money in needing to train people over and over. And leadership is changing. In the in corporate America from the sort of dominant role. People just have less respect for that now, like in a dominant domineering role. And it’s coming more and more conversation around servant leadership. And essentially what what that’s doing is, yes, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to know how to lead people, but you’re coming at it from a different position. And this tie to vulnerability and a tie to a willingness to see your mistakes and then change them and learn and grow and model that to your team only makes for not only a much healthier environment, but a more profitable one.

Stone Payton: [00:23:32] That is an impressive stat. 20%. It would it would be one of several compelling things about this whole conversation for for me, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for for a firm like yours? Is it as simple and straightforward as an ROI conversation or do you ever find that some senior level execs embrace the conversation a lot quicker and a lot better than than others? Do you do you have to get out there and market? Like how do you get to have the I got to believe if if someone in leadership has this conversation with you, I’ll bet they’re writing a check. But like, do you have to do some sales and marketing stuff to get here?

Kimberly Stark: [00:24:12] Yes, good question. That’s a really good one because it is changed over the last three years since I’ve taken this to market in 2020. There was well, I’ll say like for the business owner standpoint, right? So when I when I took it to market because my mission as we go back to, is that all may flourish. This is the mission. I get up and I’m serving every day that everyone has the opportunity to flourish. And I’m helping that mission through education and mindset shifts and essentially mine train the combination of content and mind training. So when I took it to market my pitch to the the people I was pitching was, Hey, don’t you want to increase the wellbeing? How can you support your team through the pandemic on this true strategy, through adversity? What I found was that what I was selling was the impact to the end user versus selling the Y to my buyer. So my buyer is the company. And sometimes, ideally, I mean, right, Ideally the people you’re pitching want the well-being for their employees, but that isn’t especially at that time there was not there was definitely like an Avatar executive who did not want to have these types of conversations at work. And it was very like, that stays at home. So now fortunately, that’s shifting. But regardless, you do have to you know, if you’re pitching the CFO, if you’re pitching a company that has shareholders, the conversation I lead with to those hearers of the conversation is increasing profitability.

Kimberly Stark: [00:25:54] We increase profitability through boosting employee engagement and wellbeing and the data show that you need to do both. So the let me let me back it up for you. Career well-being is the foundation of a thriving life, right? And so let we talk about it. So when I talk about I talk about in two ways. I talk about the end user, the employee who’s experiencing our class, and then also the buyer, the company who’s hiring us for this program. Okay. So from the end user career well-being they have found is the very foundation of a thriving life. So as I said to you before, when people feel the happiest about their lives, it’s most tied to I mean, of course everything’s intertwined, but it’s most tied to career well-being. Why do people feel happy about their career? Because they have high levels of engagement, and if they’re engaged in their career, they feel a few things. They like what they’re doing. They feel like their company sees them. They feel like they’re they can voice their opinion that their company values, the contribution they’re making. How do you get increased engagement? The number one.

Kimberly Stark: [00:27:02] You have a couple factors, but the number one contributor to increasing engagement is development, education. And that’s why we come in here. So we hit development. Education leads to higher engagement, leads to higher career well-being, and that’s why we start there. But you don’t get the same stats as by simply increasing engagement, the combination of increasing engagement and increasing well-being. That’s where you’re going to really supersize your stats. Now, from the conversation with the buyer, with our the companies that hire us, yes, data is showing that you can increase profitability by over 20% by increasing engagement levels. And again, how do you get your your employees engaged that they feel seen, They heard they can have well-being conversations, that we’re looking at the entire person. We’re providing some education on how to build strategy through adversity. And not only like when you hit trauma and crisis, but also how to level up your overall well-being. And we’re not just talking about like diet and exercise. We’re talking about the in the entire person. And yes, you can hit diet and exercise and make more impact in in those areas, but you’ve got to start where we start perspective agency imagination, mindset systems. Then you can apply that to bodily health, to relationship health and to career well-being.

Stone Payton: [00:28:31] Before we wrap, I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit, if I can. I’m interested to know, and I think our listeners will be too, about what passions, if any, you might have outside the scope of your work, outside the scope of what we’re talking about. My listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel outside of doing what I do with Business RadioX, but anything in particular you have a tendency to nerd out about or go and pursue That just sort of gives you a little bit of a break from this.

Kimberly Stark: [00:29:00] Yes. So, so and I love this question, too, because whenever you ask people this question, they have like one thing. There’s just endless combinations, right? You have someone who is a CPA, but they love sewing and they cook on the side or they’re just like all these combinations that you never expect from people. So, um, well, I would say two things. Number one is that I am also a single mom of four teenagers and I have them full time. And so that takes up a lot of my life. And a lot of my focus is they’re thriving and they’re flourishing. And so that unapologetically is what I’m focused on. I also have a really great community. I’m a I’m a California girl through and through. And that I grew up on the Monterey Bay in like Santa Cruz and surfing. And now I live in Newport Beach, which is also on the water. So we I am often like for fun, it’s on and around the water, whether it’s surfing or stand up, paddle paddleboarding or fishing or boating or anything that has to do swimming in the water, beach walks. But I will also say, and this is exciting too, I am launching a second company in. I have that. I have a background in travel. I was luxury leisure for a while and then business travel and now and popping back into travel and doing high end luxury leisure, doing a high end luxury leisure travel company. And I think why I love travel so much also goes back to my love for. Individuality and people and cultures and and in the same way, I like focusing on individuals, increasing their happiness and well-being. I think that’s what I love about travel, too, is seeing all the different types of landscapes and people and how people live and food they eat. And that’s incredibly and how small our world is. Honestly, it’s it’s rewarding for me.

Stone Payton: [00:31:10] Oh, well, congratulations on the new on the new effort. We for me, one of the reasons that I have been financially ambitious for so much of my career wasn’t so much about stacking up the money, but for me, a large expression of that is freedom and a way to the way that that often manifests for me is the freedom to travel. And I really and so that’s one of the reasons that Holly and I love to travel so much. We’ll have to have you come back on and get us updated on that effort at some point, if you like.

Speaker4: [00:31:41] I’d be happy to.

Stone Payton: [00:31:43] Absolutely. All right. Let’s, uh, if we could leave our listeners with a with a few I’ll call them pro tips. Just a few things they could be reading, doing, not doing, thinking about if they would like to begin to pursue this path of their own toward career well being. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Kimberly or somebody on her team. But, you know, maybe there’s something that they kind of get stimulated by hearing this conversation and they say, you know what, I’m going to start thinking more about this are few actionable things that we could be thinking about or doing to sort of begin to move in that direction.

Speaker4: [00:32:25] Sure.

Kimberly Stark: [00:32:27] I would say. Began. Okay. I would say a couple of things. It is a game changing to start shifting your perspective of hardships and knowing that as things come at, you start asking yourself, What can I learn from this? What is this here to teach me? Okay. I would also say in this process you have to be aware of, like I said earlier, what your thoughts even are. One tool to help you do this is a daily writing practice. I’m a huge proponent of a daily writing practice, and even my clients are like, What do we write? I’m telling you, just get something to write. And before you log on to your email or anything in the morning, like grab your coffee and go and just figure. Find out what’s in your head. One exercise that I use for my clients in order to do that is to take your paper and write different quadrants and write little like kind of the buckets of your life, your career, your relationships, how you feel in your body, where you how you feel about your home and your activities and your community, and get really quiet with yourself and write down what are your thoughts in your head in each of those areas. When you think about your career, what’s the first sentence that comes into your head? And we’re we’re operating day in and day out without realizing the lenses or the thoughts or the beliefs that we’re engaging with the world based on.

Kimberly Stark: [00:33:54] So first, you need to be aware of what that is. Then I would say, and when I did this in my own life, for example, when I got really clear about like what even the thoughts were in my head around these, they were awful. They were awful. I had no idea I was even engaging with the world through this like, belief system or thought or fear. Essentially, it was like fear. Right. So then turn the page, write those buckets again and answer this question. What is the most beautiful life that I can imagine? What’s the best life? I can imagine each of these buckets. But don’t just write it out and write the answers. Write it out in the framework of preemptive Gratitudes there’s a lot of research that backs gratitude and how it changes your day. It changes how you interact with the world, but write it out in this structure. I am so grateful that. But don’t just write what you’re grateful for. I want you to write a made up thing and imagine world what your world looks like. So, for instance, you know you want to up level your your physical health. I am so grateful that, like, in your most imagined world, you’re doing an ocean swim every day.

Kimberly Stark: [00:34:57] So I am so grateful that I did two ocean swims in a row in your most beautiful world, like you’re closer with your brother. I am so grateful that, like, we’ve met up twice this month. So get clear about what that looks like. And I’m telling you, like, blow it off. So in your career, if you want to write a book or whatever, I’m so grateful that I met with a publisher, but start there. And then when you do, if you’re daily writing, you’re constantly going back and looking at that list. And what happens is, number one, you’ve now gotten rid of those dumb frameworks and dumb thoughts that have been holding you back. And number two, you’re starting to dream about like, what do you want? And if you really believe like the the world is your oyster and you start there, don’t think about like how you’re going to make it happen. Just start there first, then you can. Little by little began to see little micro steps that are starting to get you closer to that. And that’s where the real fun begins. And now you know what you’re getting up and shooting for every day. You have a plan that you’ve kind of like given yourself a blueprint and backed it out.

Stone Payton: [00:36:07] I am so glad I asked. I now have a new mantra, preemptive gratitude. I wrote it.

Speaker4: [00:36:11] Perfect. Perfect. I am so grateful that. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:36:15] All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to reach out, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team starting to tap into some of your work. Whatever you feel like is appropriate, you know, the coordinates, LinkedIn, website, whatever.

Kimberly Stark: [00:36:29] Sure. So any information on the Flourish consultancy, you can go to the Flourish consultancy.com to reach out to me directly. You can email me at Kimberly at the flourish consultancy.com. But honestly I am active in two social apps or platforms and that is Instagram. I’m Kimberly. I’m at Kimberly and Stark on Instagram and feel free to DM me. I love having conversations with people who also nerd out on this stuff. I’m totally fine with you reaching out even to bring us in that way. And then I’m also on LinkedIn. I’m active on LinkedIn at Kimberly and Stark on LinkedIn also.

Stone Payton: [00:37:13] Well, Kimberly, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for sharing your insight, your perspective. Keep up the good work. The work you’re doing is so important and we certainly appreciate you.

Kimberly Stark: [00:37:29] Thank you. Stone It was a pleasure. Thanks for the invite and thanks for the conversation there. My favorite.

Stone Payton: [00:37:36] Well, the pleasure is all mine. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, CEO and founder with the flourish. Consultancy, Ms.. Kimberly Stark and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Tagged With: The Flourish Consultancy

Jeff Thompson with Americans for Prosperity and Matt Payne with Inner Circle Solutions

August 15, 2023 by angishields

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Charitable Georgia
Jeff Thompson with Americans for Prosperity and Matt Payne with Inner Circle Solutions
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In this episode of Charitable Georgia, host Brian Pruett welcomes guests Jeff Thompson and Matt Payne. We dive into the positive things happening in our community and explore the power of community involvement and creating change for the better.

Jeff-Thompson-headshotJeff Thompson is a proud Girl Dad, grassroots engagement director at Americans for Prosperity, and a youth pastor.

Currently studying at Luther Rice College and Seminary, Jeff is passionate about theology and its practical application in today’s world.

Beyond his work and studies, Jeff actively contributes to the Frederick Douglass Foundation, fighting for equality and empowerment. He has a special place in his heart for both the elderly and babies, appreciating the wisdom and innocence they bring.

In his free time, Jeff enjoys chess, Reggae music and good cologne. These things bring him joy and helps him unwind.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

Matt-Payne-headshotMatt Payne is one of the Founders at Inner Circle Solutions. He is a Global Leader with 30 years of experience identifying and managing security risks for Fortune 500 companies.

Matt is keenly interested in emerging trends in the corporate sector and seeks to find and implement innovative processes, controls, and tools to help reduce risk for companies. Matt has a unique ability to see business from a holistic perspective due to significant cross-training experience.

Bringing together a wealth of experience to include Military Special Operations, Law Enforcement and Global Corporate Programs to deliver consistent and exceptional results.

Matt focuses on both customer and employee satisfaction which yields optimal management style with superior business results. Matt is an excellent law enforcement partner and maintains a significant range of contacts and willingly shares in education of industry trends. Matt comfortably applies delegation, empowerment, and leadership skills in dynamic environments.

Matt’s professional experience includes Director, Global Safety & Security at Epic Games; Director, Global Security Operations at PayPal; Leader, Global Safety & Security at Intuit, Inc.; Associate Director Investigations at Novartis Pharmaceutical; SME Counter-Terrorism at Coastal Defense Inc.; Retired Chief Humane Law Enforcement Officer, New Jersey; Detective at the Mercer County Prosecutors Office; Patrolman at the Hillsborough Township Police Department; U.S. Customs Inspector; Sergeant Combat Controller in the US Air Force

Matt’s extensive industry involvement includes International Association of Financial Crimes Investigator (IAFCI), Founder of Cyber Fraud Industry Group of IAFCI, Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), International Association of Privacy Professionals, FBI Domestic Security Advisory Council, Department of State Overseas Security Advisory Council, Secret Service High Tech Crime Task Force, and FBI InfraGard. Career highlights include being a retired USAF 24th Special Tactics Squadron (Joint Special Operations Command) Combat Controller, Retired Chief Humane Law Enforcement Officer in New Jersey, and Former Chief Security Officer (financial, technology, entertainment, and engineering).

Matt received his B.A. in Criminal Justice at Caldwell College and received his Master of Public Administration and a M.A. in Criminal Justice at Rutgers University Camden in New Jersey. Professional certifications include Certified Fraud Examiner-Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

He is also one of the Founders of Outer Circle Foundation and President of C-Suite for Christ-Atlanta.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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 Pruett.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:45] Good, fabulous Friday morning. It’s another fabulous Friday, even though it’s wet outside. We needed the rain, so I hope everybody’s having a good week so far. The end of the week is here. And if you this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia. This is all about positive things happening in the community. So first of all, I’m going to welcome our guest in the studio. Rusty, welcome. Stone’s brother. You would never know you guys are related, so.

Stone Payton: [00:01:07] Thank you for saying that.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:09] So normally we have three people on the show, but one of them had an emergency and we’ll talk about that in a minute. But we got two fabulous guests this morning. And our first one is Mister Jeff Thompson from Americans for Prosperity. Jeff, welcome to the show this morning.

Jeff Thompson: [00:01:20] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:21] So Jeff and I met at the Carnesville Business Club. We found out we’re fellow Ohioans and so automatically we’re friends that way. So even though it’s Cleveland and Cincinnati, you know, it’s still still friends. Yeah. But Jeff does a lot of good things. We’ll get into Americans for Prosperity here in a second. But you you’re in a youth minister as well. You’re going through leadership. Bartow right now. So that’s pretty cool. So if you don’t mind, just give us a little bit of your background.

Jeff Thompson: [00:01:47] Actually grew up just right down the street, maybe five minutes from here. I went to elementary school for the last part of school right there, Little River Elementary. Let’s see, I’ve been working in politics for just a few years, but I also felt called to ministry. So I’ve been doing that for also maybe two years now. I’ve been a youth pastor before that, I taught fourth grade boys over at Woodstock. I have a I’m a girl dad. I got a 15 year old daughter. I do love the Buckeyes like you. So that was our immediate bond over that.

Brian Pruett: [00:02:26] Yes. So I’m curious, how is the politics and religion working together? How is that kind of what kind of balance is that?

Jeff Thompson: [00:02:34] I tried not to be overbearing with it. And but religion is the reason I got into politics. And that’s the cool thing about Americans for Prosperity. Although we don’t have specific religious tenets or anything, we stand on the truth and what’s right. That means we don’t chase any politician, any political party. We stand on our principles. You always know where we’re going to be at. We’re going to be at the truth. And my religious beliefs, I’m a man of faith is the truth. I stand for the truth. So I get to to do good stuff through my work as well. And I can I can love people. And when you stand on the truth, oftentimes it can be a nonpartisan issue because you can you can present that to somebody and they’re like, Yeah, I believe in that. And then it’s like, okay. And we invite any person or politician to meet us on that. Now, that might mean that sometimes one politician might meet us on the truth and on another issue, he might not meet us, but we’re not going to change. So I love it. I get to do good stuff in the community. I get to to be a light and they can see it because with ministry, it doesn’t always have to be specifically talking about the Bible. They can see it through your love and through your actions.

Brian Pruett: [00:03:55] What I think is really cool, especially with your organization, is I just know just a little bit from I think you and I met I told you, I looked at possibly working with you guys at one point, but it wasn’t it wasn’t a fit for me. So but what I think is really cool is, you know, I’ve networked in metro Atlanta for almost 30 years, and you could always tell when it was election time because that’s when the politicians came out and networked. Right. But obviously not necessarily being a politician yourself, But you just mentioned it being stuff in the community. You do stuff in the community. And it’s it’s very cool for you, for me to see you doing things in the community where it’s even when you’re together, at least the stuff that I’ve been to, you don’t really necessarily bring up the politics. It is all about the community. So can you share about some of the stuff you guys do?

Jeff Thompson: [00:04:38] Oh yeah. At the down, there’s a guy in Albany, his name’s King Randall, and Albany is kind of a rough area for at least the areas he’s from. So he’s got all these boys and they come to his boys school. And I also got to give a big shout out to my friend Joe Happy. He’s with North Point Roofing. I reached out to Joe. I was like, Joe, like there’s a school down here. And he he he did a $5,000 donation to that school. But we, we, we want school choice for people. We feel that parents can make the best decision for their child. So we support being able to pick which school you go to. And we support a King Randall in that we got to support his boys school. It’s all about teaching these boys from these rough areas, life skills, so they can go out and be productive members of society. We fight for freedom with less cost on our health care, something called certificate of need. Right now, the big guys can essentially block out any competition. And you have to pretty you have to ask for permission from your competition. And of course, it’s not necessarily when when it’s a big picture like that, they’re not thinking about what’s best for the everyday person. They’re thinking about their bottom line. And that’s what I love about this organization is we were we were founded where our original founders, Charles Koch, if anybody’s one of the big guys, it’s him. But he gives us the resources and the support to go out and make a difference for the everyday person.

Brian Pruett: [00:06:15] So explain a little bit more. Go into depth of exactly what you guys do for the people. Because I know you just opened an office in Cartersville. So what can somebody, if they needed, you know, to get in touch with you or whatever, what can they expect by working with you or what you can do for somebody?

Jeff Thompson: [00:06:33] I can educate them on our priorities. And my favorite part about it is teaching people to do politics in a way that’s not this icky stuff going on right now, this swampy feeling of you have to pick a side and then do what that side tells you. We stand for a bottom up control, bottom up paradigm. My goal will be to find what makes every person unique and their special abilities and plug them in. Maybe you’re a writer. Maybe you’re a good event planner. Maybe. Maybe you have something that I haven’t seen yet and there’s an area of the community I can pour into. So my goal is to build unique, unique groups and plug them into the fight using their unique abilities. So if you come to me, I will. First of all, I want to know you. What makes you tick, what you find important, and how we can teach you like a new way of doing things. Because people are tired of politics. They’re tired of the. The extremism of it, the polarizing ness of it. But I could show you, hey, you stand on the truth and you don’t move off of it. And then at the end of the day, nobody can can can say anything to you because you’re just doing what’s right and asking, Hey, come, come meet me here. I’m not going to follow you around or do whatever you tell me the party is doing right now. People are fed up with it.

Brian Pruett: [00:07:59] So do you guys do door knocking? Do you go into homes and stuff like that as well? So it’s different, I guess, than somebody, you know, obviously doing solicitation and technically I guess it is. But what does that look like for you guys?

Jeff Thompson: [00:08:13] So right now we’re doing voter ID, which means just finding out who people are voting for in the next primary. First we ask them, hey, just we just have a conversation with them. Ask them what you feel is important. Do you feel the country is going in the right way or the wrong way right now? Do you feel future people, future kids will get to live the American dream? One thing that I guess is a little alarming, a challenge for us to to to get us back on the right track. A lot of people are saying our best times are behind us and that future generations won’t even get to live the American dream. People are people are concerned right now. And and that goes back to what I can do to get like people want to be involved. But like right now, our loudest voices are the people on either side of the polls. And nobody needs to nobody wants to be near them, whether it be left or right. People are tired of that. So I try to give people a way, hey, you can be involved, you can do something. But the I, I have some some good interactions at the door. Sometimes people are really happy to see me there. I’ve I’ve had people we get in a deep my one of my one of my biggest just a little transparency. One of my things that I love is building instant rapport with people, having deep conversations with people that I just met. And we’ll be we’ll crying at the door, talking about life, sharing it. I love it. And. Like, I’ll tell people, some people like, Oh, I could never do that. Door to door canvasing is one of the number one life skills and job skills you can ever have. It teaches you to just be able to interact, think fast on your feet. Be able to talk to anybody in any situation. And I’ll just be a kind, gentle soul that invites people to just open up. But I love it. I love it. It’s how I started in this world was canvasing and.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:12] Also will teach you to learn how to take the know very quickly as well. It’s funny. So I spent years in sales and everybody kept telling me, I don’t know how you do and get the nose. You know, another thing that keeps you learn the nose, right? So in college, I asked every single girl out and they kept telling me no. So I learned to know very quickly. So no, but I think it’s cool because that goes back to your ministry, too. I mean, obviously your ministry heart that a lot of people open up to you with that as well. So, um, all right. So share a little bit about do you guys have like different areas you work in or is there a different representatives in areas? How does that look right now?

Jeff Thompson: [00:10:52] I would say that I like to do the 11th Congressional District, which is our senator. Barry Loudermilk.

Brian Pruett: [00:11:01] Congressman Loudermilk.

Jeff Thompson: [00:11:01] Yeah, Congressman, he and so that’s Woodstock or Cherokee? Bartow Cobb That’s where I am. But but it’s it’s still a statewide thing. And so I get to I can be anywhere, but I’m located in Cartersville. I’m heavy focus on this area.

Brian Pruett: [00:11:22] So you talked about the education piece. If somebody was really, as you say, a lot of people concerned and they wanted to learn about each candidate, can you sit down and talk to them about the candidates?

Jeff Thompson: [00:11:33] If we endorse them, if they’ve if they’ve we have policy champs. Some of them I know. I came in or he was at the then time he was a House representative, Ed Setzler. He’s a policy champ of ours, Huffstetler, another policy champ. So those guys I can tell why they why they meet us. Yeah. And if anybody ever really wants to know, I can always tell them. But. But more on a personal level.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:04] Okay, so you started networking with the Cartersville Business Club a year ago, is that right? About a year ago.

Jeff Thompson: [00:12:10] I kind of because I was doing Woodstock, I used to be in roofing. I guess I did Woodstock and Canton and it was there like similar. It’s almost like a sister organization type thing. So it was just a natural fit. I would see. I don’t even know how I first it might have been. Maybe Jennifer Smith told me about it. But yeah, I started out going to these ones around here because I was doing the more paid close seats. One and a gentleman I met with a gentleman named let’s see, it was Jim Hilber. He introduced me to Rudy Garza, who plugged me all in. Rudy Great dude. And that’s how I got involved. But yeah, Woodstock is where, where I started out.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:57] So but a lot of people I’ve seen in the Cartersville Club has really kind of latched on. You know, it was really more of like a community out there, especially, I feel, and all the networking I’ve done, of all the ones I’ve been involved in, it really is more of a community at Cartersville, so I’m guessing that might be one of the reasons why you picked Cartersville to do your have your office, but can you share a positive story of you and networking, especially now with Americans for Prosperity?

Jeff Thompson: [00:13:23] Well, originally it all started out with networking. I was at Tabernacle Baptist Church at something called a biblical citizenship training. I met and I’m walking around and it’s all the networking. And in these political worlds, there’s the there’s a certain posturing that goes on. And I see this guy, and it’s almost as if you can feel that this guy is acting different. He’s going out of his way to to make me feel welcome. And it was it was Representative Matthew Gamble. And so we hit it off. And a few months later, he introduced me to a woman on the school board, Miss Darla Branton Williams. And and she we hit it off, too. And so that community feel that that loving feel from them is what drew me to Cartersville. It was the people, the the networking aspect. There of just people being good folks. And that’s often a question in politics. I’m often one of the designated guys that they say, how can we get younger and more diverse? And the answer is just being a kind person. It’s like nobody, nobody felt they had to dress like me or look like me or talk like me. It was just love, you know, love. Love is a universal language. And they they I saw that in them and I saw that in the community. And like I tell people, hey, they told me I could pick anywhere in the state to build community and I picked Cartersville. And so, like, there’s really no place I’d rather be than out there.

Brian Pruett: [00:14:59] So other than the reason that you’ve just talked about, we talk a lot about community on this show. And so other than the reasons of educating people on politics and just a ministry giving heart, why is it important for you to be a part of the community?

Jeff Thompson: [00:15:16] Because I, I often well, for one, I want to do my part. I want to be a light. I want to shatter stereotypes, bridge gaps, open up doors and and and maybe be a positive representation for anybody that I represent, whether that be men, black folks, Christians. I want to use, you know, what God has given me because I have been I’ve been low. I’ve been pretty low. Yeah, I had a little bit too much fun out here in Woodstock and it beat me up. And I humbly say I don’t I’ve never met anyone who’s been out as far as I was that came back all glory to God. Nothing, nothing of mine, nothing of my doing. So I want to use whatever he’s gave me, the life lessons, whatever I can do to be a productive member of society and invite people in in the community.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:22] So Jeff keeps telling me he’s great at trivia and unfortunately, he’s got stuff at church. He can’t come to my shows. But one of these days we’ll get you because I want to see how good you are. Okay. Um, so I wanted to ask you if you could give somebody some advice on. I talk to people and you mentioned this earlier that people are scared right now. Things are going on and people are like, I’m just not going to vote. Yeah, give somebody advice of why that should not be the case.

Jeff Thompson: [00:16:49] Because there’s power. There’s power in in one. There’s power in one. You think of like even like a little ant. If every ant said, Hey, I’m not going to do anything, there would never be these big old ant hills or or things getting accomplished. But it’s just a defeated attitude. And it also gives you a little bit of self-worth. You do matter. Your input matters. You can show up. Everybody has their own brand of of. Of intelligence and input. And when you show up and you make your voice heard, you might give somebody some perspective that somebody else has never, never heard. But every every one vote counts. And it has to be that thing where everybody does it because, you know, everybody can’t take that attitude. And even your attitudes are infectious. You might say that, and then your friend hears it, somebody else hears it, or the next generation hears it or sees it. And, you know, there’s people that are always they didn’t always get to vote. So whether you feel whether you feel like it won’t make an impact or not, it will. And, you know, it feels good to vote. Like I say, I’ve been low, so it feels good to vote. It feels good. It feels good to pay taxes sometimes. And and I’m not a big taxes guy, but when you when you’ve been out there, man, it feels good. So think of the people that can’t do it and represent them. Think of people in the past that fought for your rights to vote and and just go do it and asked me. I’ll fill you in. There you go.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:28] It also feels really good when you get a tax refund.

Jeff Thompson: [00:18:30] Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:32] So talk to me a little bit about leadership. Bartow. I know you guys just started, but what’s what’s that look like? What do you do so far?

Jeff Thompson: [00:18:38] We did a little team building activities. It felt good. Mine came back in the 95th percentile of being social and outgoing and in the 95th percentile of being a person. That will change. And that felt good knowing that. You know, like and sometimes you need to change. There’s been times when I’ve, you know, a couple of years ago, like I like to tell people a few years ago, I think it is. I had a lime green flat top. I was wearing pearls and rock shirts, but for any of this stuff was even the thing to do. And I knew everything. I was loud and proud about it. And now I look back on myself and I had not a clue what I was talking about. So it’s it’s good to to to see that I have that flexibility to grow and learn and change and adapt. And that was one of the things that I got to know. I also got to meet some other cool people and just going there and make my voice heard when it’s appropriate. We also had a cool dinner at the the the country club and I met a woman named Danielle Swanson, and we gave each other a big old hug. And she was like she was like, Yo, do you remember me? And so, yeah, I took like I told y’all earlier, I graduated high school in 2020, y’all.

Jeff Thompson: [00:20:07] I’m 38 years old. Like it was a long journey, but along the way, I, I took a GED class with her and I eventually just dropped out of it. I left it and I told her I had gave up. I just gave up and I was out to go do all types of crazy stuff in the streets that I was doing. She was like, Yo, you broke my heart that day. So I’ve noticed a trend of like, you know, because I can’t go anywhere in North Georgia and not see an area where I did something really far out. I’m talking just right down the street over here, like multiple spots around here. But God always brings me back and it’s like, Yo, yeah, it’s humbly like a redemption tour. Like, yo, look at it now. Yeah. And so that felt good to meet her there. And then they made us sing for our food and that was fun as well. Nice. So things are starting off good. I’m looking forward to learning more about the community, meeting some of the people that may Cartersville-bartow County. Such a great.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:14] Place. You got a lot of folks in there that I know personally and that’s a great thing. You got Joshua Kolonitsky and say Veronica Mingo. So quite a few folks in that that are really, really good. So it’s a good class this year. So. Well, you just talked about it, your story of not giving up as well. So again, if somebody’s listening and have that thought of, well, I just either I’m not worth it or whatever, it’s just going to give up. Give some advice.

Jeff Thompson: [00:21:38] Yeah, it can get better oftentimes, especially my area was addiction, all sorts of addiction. And and what I like to tell people is that is an attempt to heal a spiritual hurt with earthly means. So your soul, your spirit, it gets it gets crushed. Mine was feelings of inadequacy and feelings of being a failure of a bad dad, feelings of being unaccomplished. And it put a big old and and broken relationships. I wanted my daughter to have a perfect family and the best life. And it hurt me when it didn’t happen. So it put a big old hole in me and then you got to stuff it and you got to numb it. And of course, those things fall out and so you got to do it again and again and again. And on the outside world, people are like, Why does that person keep doing that destructive activity over and over again? Well, it’s because they’re numbing a hurt. And that’s what was for me. I went off to a program called Waypoint. It’s up in Dahlonega. It’s in the middle of the woods. No TV, no phones. You get away and you get to work on your mind and heal those hurts. So anybody out there, I would suggest, you know, just just just think about what you can be, what can be hurting you.

Jeff Thompson: [00:23:00] The tricky part is, is that your mind will naturally start to to build defense mechanisms around it. And it’s hard to get to it. But hey, if you can reach out to me, I’ll help you with it. But yeah, don’t give up. And to the people who have those folks in their family, sometimes when you’ve and I understand that they can be a lot to deal with. But sometimes the reason they’re hurting is because of broken relationships. So just know you’re good enough, you can turn it around. That’s like, yeah, I am in Bible college and that’s one of the reasons I do it for the testimony. I want people to be like, Yo, this guy, you know, he he graduated high school when he was like 36 or something and he graduated four years of college. So yeah, you can talk to me. You’re worth it. Everybody’s worth it. Even like from the religious point of view, when you talk about everybody in the Bible that was used by the Lord was screwed up. So it could just be the beginning of an awesome Bible story. Hop back on it.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:04] I told Sharon last week, I love this show and you got some great stories that come on this show. So full circle, huh? Outer circle. We’ll get that in a second. But, you know, we did something with Kevin Harris, who is 11 years sober for his all in, all out ministries. A couple weeks ago, Matthew Gamble was there. We raised $10,300 for his ministry. So that was awesome. But it’s just great to have people who such as yourself and Matt here what we’ll talk to you in just a second who are vulnerable to share their stories and willing to be out in the community and share and help. So do you have anything coming up for Americans for Prosperity that events or anything coming up?

Jeff Thompson: [00:24:46] I’ve got a for the Republican primary. I got or I have a debate watch party. We’re going to do that on the fifth of next month, I believe that’s a Tuesday. I also have there’s a former representative, Tim Barr. He’s going to do a class on how to speak across lines, how to, you know, how to how to teach or do all this stuff without starting a fight. That’s that’s that’s one of my passions. And then that’s what I tell you. What, you got to be long suffering in this world. Like, imagine if I came in here and was like, All right, B, let me, let me tell you about doing a radio show. Even though you do this. Let me tell you about what I know because because maybe I saw something on the Internet or because my dad told me about it. I’m not going to listen to you. And then let me let me tell you. And even if you bring up a point that’s valid. No. Well, I don’t know about that. Yeah. So that’s a passion of mine as well. That’s what’s coming up. And we do phone banks. We do door knocking at the end of the month if it’s something that you’re passionate about and I’m also in the works for, I think I’m going to do we’re going to rent out a booth at the Rome Braves, going to start doing much like a lot more cooler stuff and just a little sneak peek. I want to y’all I want to I want to start talking to the our older generations that are we’re losing all that good knowledge. So I want to sit down with them. I want to get that also, y’all. I talk to people all over the place on the streets of all backgrounds and ages, and I want to get like some secret spy glasses. Nice and like teach people how to talk to anybody. So that’s what’s on the horizon for me.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:29] On November 16th, we got something for you, which we’ll talk about in a second. So we’ve got something you need to be at. So cool. Um, so again, so if somebody wants to get a hold of you, talk to you, how can they do that?

Jeff Thompson: [00:26:41] You can go take action on our website, select Georgia. There’s various ways to take action. I it’ll pop up on our website. You can also just call me on my work phone. That’ll be (470) 668-7805. Email me at T Thompson at AFP hq.org.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:03] And while all of the stuff you just talked about event wise or can find on the website or do you have like a Facebook or anything they can go and follow?

Jeff Thompson: [00:27:09] We have we’ve got Facebook, Instagram. There’s also yeah we’ll post those things on there. Right now. The two events I spoke of are getting approved, which will it’ll just happen. It’s just got another layer to go to and then they’ll be live and active. You can always find the events on our website.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:28] Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks for sharing a little bit of your story. Don’t go anywhere because we’re not done with you. But I’m going to move over now to Matt Payne with the Outer Circle Foundation, C Street for Christ and all kinds of other stuff. So, Matt, thanks for being here.

Matt Payne: [00:27:37] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:38] You were supposed to have your, as I say, better half here as well, but unfortunately, she got called into an emergency.

Matt Payne: [00:27:45] So, yes, she was unfortunate last night, got called in.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:48] So, Buffy, we’re sad you’re not here, but I hope everything goes well for you this morning. So we you have an incredible story. I won’t mess it up. But you are a veteran. You’re also a retired police chief. But if you would, just please give us your story.

Matt Payne: [00:28:02] Oh, Lord. So I was born in Elizabethton, Tennessee. Northeast corner. Johnson City-kingsport-bristol up in there. My dad had gone to Vietnam in October, I’m sorry, November of 66. I was born in February. He was killed in April. So, you know, we lived in a trailer behind my grandma’s house with my mom. My mom had my sister and myself and got the news. My dad was killed. And about a year and a half later, she married my step dad, who she actually had known since she was six years, six months old. He lived right around the corner and he went away and became a Navy pilot and then came back and ended up being a captain for TWA. And with his travels, it took us up to New Jersey and he flew out of JFK. I went to high school and didn’t do well, didn’t know what I wanted to do, and ultimately landed on going in. The military, never told a soul I was going, told my mom the night before, Hey, you got to give me a ride to the train station. Where are you going? And I signed up for the military. I leave to morrow morning and she wasn’t happy about that. But I went in and I became a combat controller. A combat control is the special operations arm of the US Air Force. We are certified air traffic controllers, parachute scuba demo weapons, call for fire, a bunch of different things. And I did that in in 1989.

Matt Payne: [00:29:35] I tore my anterior cruciate ligament. I had to get out of the military, went to college, played soccer knee, did well, called the military back and said, hey, can I come back? And they said, Yeah, absolutely. We now have a waiver because I had a screw in my knee. So went back and was medically retired in 1995 after four knee surgeries, had no idea what I wanted to do. It happened like that, like a month and a half, and I was standing outside the gate with my bags and I had no idea what to do. So move back to New Jersey and just trying to figure things out. Landed on law enforcement, became a cop and decided to go back to school, graduated college. And I just kind of wanted a little bit more. And I was in law enforcement for about ten years, and I left and went into the private world. And a buddy of mine called me about six years later and said, hey, New Jersey State Humane Police are looking for cops. I said, Dude, I got a job. I can’t do anything. He goes, No, they’re a we do cases when they come in, so it’s not a full time job. But it is. We had 60 cops. We handled 5200 cases a year. And I went in and ended up as their chief and retired buff. And I lived down here in Dallas. And, you know, we’re doing our thing.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:59] So talk a little bit about what how first of all, you shared a little bit about you and Buffy, how you got together. But you she does security as well. But can you share a little bit since she’s not here, but can you share a little bit about her? Because it’s amazing what you both do.

Matt Payne: [00:31:11] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we’re both chief security officers by trade, so, you know, run security for for large organizations. She has come in from the intelligence world. I came in from the obviously the law enforcement and military side. And, you know, we have known each other for, I guess, about 13 years now. And way back before it was Bitcoin, a buddy of ours, he and I were writing a paper on cryptocurrency even before it was called Bitcoin. And he goes, Dude, I got to somebody that that I definitely want to bring into this. And she had been working at JP Morgan Chase and then ultimately went over to Equifax and she offered a lot of insight into that white paper. And, you know, in the security world, it’s not competition. It’s, hey, do you have a yeah, let me connect you. Let me hook you up because we want to keep everybody safe. So we stayed in contact. And, you know, she was married and I was married. And, you know, we just had that professional relationship. Long story. But, you know, marriages go south. We ended up getting closer and now we’re married. And there you go doing our thing. There you.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:21] Go. So, all right. So we’ll get to Outer Circle in a second because that’s an awesome organization. But I’d like for you to also talk about C-suite for Christ.

Matt Payne: [00:32:29] Yeah, So we opened our we have a risk resiliency firm called Inner Circle. And when I say we, it’s mine. Obviously Buff is there but when when I opened it, Buff and I are both very religious. We, we have a lot of faith in God and we put God first in everything we do. And I wanted to put God in our website on our stuff. And I went out and started talking to some. More friends and said, Hey, this is what I want to do. They all came back and said, Absolutely not. You can’t do that. You can’t mix religion and business and faith and religion. You’re going to upset somebody. You’re going to lose out on business. You’re going to do whatever. And a microsecond later, I said, too bad, that’s what we’re going to do. So we post a lot on LinkedIn, we post a lot on Facebook and different things. And a guy named Paul Newberger out in Wisconsin connected with us, and he started an organization called C-suite for Christ and C-suite. Think of C-suite as CEO, CSO CFO, Chief Marketing officer, all of those the big people in the organization. And he started liking us our stuff. We started liking his stuff. He came to us and said, Hey, I’m thinking about opening a chapter. Would you guys want it in Atlanta? And we talked about it and we said, Yeah, that’d be really cool. So C-suite for Christ brings business executives and leaders together in an effort to bring Christ back into the workplace.

Matt Payne: [00:33:59] So we meet the second Wednesday of every month at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church in Buckhead. We always have a speaker that comes in, and this is not networking. It’s not, Hey, Brian, I got a lead for you, or I got this or I got that. This is all about Christ and it’s all about fellowship. Will work happen? Absolutely. You’ll meet people and you’ll say, Hey, you know, whatever. But we always bring in a speaker. The speaker has we try to bring in people that have some form of professional development for our executives, whether it be leadership or brand or whatever it is. We had Mac Powell from Third day. We had Mark Lee from Third Day this month. We had Nancy Major. She wrote a book called The Wretch Like Me, the Modern day Mary Magdalene, kind of like your story. She was went down as low as she could possibly get. And now she’s out and she’s giving her testimony. And her story was, you know, on Wednesday. I cannot believe I put every bit of that in my book. The bad, the the really, really bad. The everything went in that book. And it’s her position that I don’t want others to do it. And I want them to know that they can come back, just like you were saying.

Brian Pruett: [00:35:14] That’s awesome. And I also like the fact that because there’s plenty of networking out there, I like the fact that you guys strictly get together for the Christ aspect. Yes. Because that’s that’s a loss these days. Yeah. All right. So let’s now talk about the Outer Circle Foundation, because you guys have a program that I think is so important that I think there’s other organizations out there that that help the people you’re looking to help and do help but share about the Outer Circle Foundation.

Matt Payne: [00:35:41] So about two and a half years ago, we started Outer Circle and we always wanted to give back. We wanted to do something. And obviously military and law enforcement. And it’s not only law enforcement, it’s first responders. So whether you’re a paramedic, a fireman, a fax worker, whatever it is, when you are in the trenches dealing with the stuff that you deal with, that’s what we consider a first responder and we wanted to give back. So we opened it and we sat on it a little while because we had I had started Inner Circle at that same time. And some friends of mine, when the Afghan government fell, some friends called and said, Hey, we need some help. I said, All right, what do you got going on? We need to help move our Afghan special Forces allies out of Afghanistan to safety. I said, cool. So Outer Circle changed the mission from the US to Afghanistan, and I started working the Afghanistan mission and one family turned into five, turned into 100, turned into a thousand. And, you know, we worked really, really closely with a bunch of nonprofits. Gonzo Lazuli at Tarjuman was probably the closest we work with. And he and I would just share resources and information and everything, and we were able to to move people. And about last summer is when we changed our mission back to the US focusing on PTSD awareness, suicide prevention and transition assistance. And there’s a lot of alternative methods for PTSD. From a treatment perspective, you have a lot of different counselors and different capabilities from the suicide side and transition. It’s really the soft skills. It’s resume interview, network, social media, building your brand, getting business acumen, learning culture, things like that to make that transition from the government into the private world and be very successful at your transition.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:42] And you don’t have to be from Georgia for you to do this. You just you can help all first responders and veterans from all over, right?

Matt Payne: [00:37:47] Anywhere. Yeah.

Brian Pruett: [00:37:48] So you have a big event coming up in just, what, a month and a half?

Matt Payne: [00:37:52] Yeah. October 12th, we have our second annual Outer Circle golf outing. It’s at Bear’s best in Suwanee. It’s a. All day event. We have breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have a bunch of sponsors. Last year, you know, Buff and I went in and we had both done golf tournaments for different things and we had been years and years since we did it. And we went in and said, you know, if we can cover our costs and leave with $10,000 that we can help another nonprofit, we would be over the moon and fast forward. We raised over $100,000. We wrote a $50,000 check to Paws for Life. Pause is a nonprofit here in Atlanta. They give service animals to veterans, first responders and medically fragile. So the the woman who received the the dog from our donation last year will be at the outing this year. And so it’s a great day. We have a lot of fun. We’ll have a bagpiper from the Atlanta pipe and drums from law enforcement. We’ll have an honor guard. We have some horse soldiers coming up that were in Afghanistan a bunch of different things going on. So it’ll be a good event.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:03] Awesome. So that leads us to November 16th. You and I sat down and talked and I know you were one of the nonprofits I wanted to work with. So one of the things I like doing is putting on expos and we’re going to do on November 16th at the Acworth Community Center, the first annual America’s Hometown Heroes Expo. I got it right. Yes. You just found it out last night. So. Yeah, and that’s for veteran owned businesses, first responder owned businesses or businesses that want to hire those folks. We’re going to have an honor color guard there. We’ve got actually a gentleman who is an Army veteran who is a canine trainer, and he just told me yesterday that he is now training canines for PTSD. So you guys get together. Yeah, he’s going to do a canine demonstration while we’re there. And it’s just going to be a great time. So, Jeff, make sure you’re there November 16th.

Jeff Thompson: [00:39:47] So my schedule. All right.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:49] So, um, if businesses want to get involved with the Outer Circle Foundation, first of all, are there opportunities to help you in how what does that look like?

Matt Payne: [00:40:00] Yeah. So, you know, on our web, on our website, we have a strategic partners page and I have to give a huge shout out to James Lynch. He’s a doc. He’s up in Annapolis, Maryland, and he runs the Stellar Institute. And Doc was when I was in the military, I was at the Joint Special Operations Command, and Doc Lynch was one of our doctors. And when, you know, the war on terror happened and the guy started coming back, he started doing a lot of work around PTSD. And there’s a procedure out there called the stellate ganglion block And you have two bundles of nerves in your neck. They connect to your autonomous and your sympathetic nervous system, which makes your fight or flight. And he was able to numb that those two bundles of nerves that reset your fight or flight system. And it’s been proven really, really successful. The VA has adopted it. There’s four different VA’s that will administer this procedure. And I went up and did it in November. And for those that don’t have PTSD, PTSD, your head is just all over the place. It is like ping pong balls scrambling around. Dakota Meyer, who’s a medal of Honor winner, kind of summed it up. Think about being in rush hour traffic in New York City 15 minutes late to the most important meeting that you have ever that you are ever going to be in. And that’s kind of chaos and pandemonium that’s going on in your head, right? You don’t sleep.

Matt Payne: [00:41:26] You’re very short nightmares, a lot of different things Go on. So I lay down on the table. He uses ultrasound. Before the needle was out of my neck, he asked me, How do you feel? And it was totally insane. This is not a memory of mine. I never had this. I said, Doc, I’m a ten year old boy. It’s a summer day. I’m wearing overalls and I’m sitting on a dock looking at a lake that’s crystal clear. My feet are dangling because they can’t reach the water. And I got my fishing pole next to me. And I guess that’s what my mind said was the most relaxing, comforting kind of thought that I could come up with. And, you know, Doc is fantastic at this. There’s a bunch of people out there that do it, but he is he’s the pioneer from my perspective. Right. And that’s just Matt’s perspective alone. But if you if you’re an organization, you want to come in. We have sponsorships at the golf outing. You can come in and donate to us Outer Circle Foundation.org. There’s a donate button on our website. There’s a lot of different things we can do. And I would love to talk to businesses that have either, you know, military networks, they’re looking for veteran owned organizations. They’re looking to hire veterans. They want to get more involved in veterans or first responders. Right. We can we can help with a lot of that.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:47] And you can be part of the expo. Yes. So you were just talking about a little bit. But if somebody is listening and they’re experiencing PTSD or they’ve had the the dark thought of suicide, can you give any kind of advice? Just some hope to somebody who might be listening.

Matt Payne: [00:43:04] Yeah. So the crisis line is nine, eight, eight. You just dial nine, eight, eight and it’ll go right to a crisis counselor. So, you know, that’s kind of what I would say right there. If you have PTSD and there’s no shame in it, right? It’s just it’s a fact of life. Right. And I was I have a great counselor. I have a great network of counselors that can help. And even before the the ganglion block, you have to be in therapy. You have to be diagnosed with PTSD and you have to to do it. You know, there are plenty of people out there. There’s plenty of veterans. There’s plenty of people that will talk. You can connect my my cell phone numbers on the website. My email is on the website. You know, you can reach out and and talk to me. And I’ve been on both sides, right? So I’ve been on the military side and I’ve been on the law enforcement side. So you have the ability to talk about those things. Do not keep it inside. It is not never ending. And we just had a conversation the other day and I, I was watching a video and it was from a paramedic and she had gone to a attempted suicide call and the guy had put a gun into his temple and pulled the trigger and he lived while he was still alive.

Matt Payne: [00:44:20] They were in the back of the ambulance and his words to her, Please do not let me die. And I read a study of suicide, people that had committed suicide but had stayed alive. And there every one of them. Their statement was, The minute I did it, I knew I did the wrong thing and I wish I could take that back. And these are people that jumped off bridges that had shot themselves, that had done a variety of different things. It is not as bad as you think it is. There are avenues to come back and there’s ways to come back very productively and continue on doing whatever it is that you want to do. And then you can be that light going out and helping somebody else on the next round. Because you’ve been there, you’ve dealt with it, you’ve done it, and you know, so so do not give up.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:07] Unfortunately, I’ve had two brothers commit suicide, so it’s definitely a rough thing. So yeah. Um, all right. So other than everything you just talked about, give me a different answer. But why is it so important for you to be part of the community?

Matt Payne: [00:45:21] Ha. I mean, so, you know, we I think every one of us and, you know, it’s in the Bible that we are supposed to be God’s light. And, you know, it’s it’s just like he said, you know, it takes one. If we don’t have the one, you can’t transfer that light to someone else. And, you know, the goal for everything that we do, whether it be, you know, my work through inner circle or our work through Outer Circle or C Suite for Christ is to make the world a better place. It is to shine light where there is no light. It is to bring that light to the deepest, darkest areas that we can find to help people realize there is good and there’s things going on. You know, I get so frustrated with the news because you flip on the news and everything in the news is bad. Every single thing, whether it be climate change, politics, crime, the economy, trade agreements, I don’t care what it is, it’s all negative and it’s all bad. And, you know, if you follow me on LinkedIn or you follow us on Facebook or anything, we shed all of that positive. You know, law enforcement’s got such a bad rap with, you know, everything that’s gone on. There’s bad apples in every profession. Unfortunately, in law enforcement, if you get a bad apple, it could lead to something, you know, devastating. But it does not. You can’t paint the broad brush and make every law enforcement officer or everyone out there protecting us a bad person because they’re not. And, you know, I posted, I think, two stories this week where cops gave their lives saving people and they do it day in and day out. So it’s you have to keep that going or else it’s going to be that the society is just going to be what’s the point? There’s no there’s you know, we’re just doomed for failure. And you can’t do that. We all have to do it.

Brian Pruett: [00:47:18] Hence another reason why Charitable Georgia was born, because too much negative. Let’s put more positive out there. So you talked about the police officers that gave their lives. I’ve also seen videos of police officers playing basketball with young men and the thing and then one not too long ago where this police officer gave a young man a ps5, you know, which is pretty cool. So can you share a little bit more about the inner circle?

Matt Payne: [00:47:40] Yeah, So inner circle, it’s a we’re a risk resiliency firm. So if a organization out there, whether it be a small, medium, large sized company has, you know, is facing any type of risk. So it could be emergency management, it could be crisis management, it could be investigations, it could be, um, you know, something along those lines travel, safety and security. We come in and help identify those risks that you are facing and then mitigate those risks with people, process or technology. So there’s a variety of ways you can mitigate things. And our goal is to mitigate it using the culture of the organization, being fiscally responsible and then giving you a solution that meets your needs without disrupting business. And that’s ultimately what we try to do. Nothing from us is out of the box. There’s not something that we did for you that I’m going to use over here. It’s totally I go in, learn the company, learn the culture, and then figure out what we what we should be doing based upon the ask of the organization and how we can use our expertise, our skill set, our people, our network to make that happen for that organization.

Brian Pruett: [00:48:51] So it could it be something as from everything from cybersecurity to actual personal security stuff.

Matt Payne: [00:48:56] So we I have cybersecurity partners, but I am not a cybersecurity professional. So we are really on the on the physical side, security technology, access control, CCTV cameras, emergency procedures, crisis management, things like that.

Brian Pruett: [00:49:11] Okay. And let’s because we kind of touched on it, but I don’t think we really talked in depth about it. But the go back to C-suite for Christ, if businesses want to get involved with that, again, share what that kind of looks like.

Matt Payne: [00:49:22] And how can they do that. Yeah. So we’re really, really fortunate that, you know, we started in March and it took us almost two months to find a location for us to hold our meetings. And we were getting ready to shell out $2,000 a month, you know, a month to have a two hour meeting. And Peachtree Road United Methodist Church came in and said, Look, this is your home. You have have this space for as long as you want it. Um, Jason and Hayley Bellotti, they own West Paces Ferry, Chick fil A, They are our lunch sponsor. So every single meeting we hold meetings from 1132 to 1. And the reason being with Atlanta traffic and everything that’s going on, we talked about it earlier, it’s just horrendous. And, you know, our executives can go in in the morning. They can come have a a little longer lunch and then go go back. But we do feed. And, you know, and as I sit and I look at you, you have Atlanta and you have 75, 85, and everybody’s sitting because of traffic and you look up and. There’s billboards. Why can’t we have a billboard? The one question we ask at C-suite. I don’t ask. Brian, How are you doing? I don’t ask how your family is. I don’t ask how your week has been. I ask Brian, how was your soul? A much different question than just how are you and why can’t I have a billboard out there that says How is your soul come fellowship with us at C-suite for Christ? So we always look for sponsors that help us because even though we’re C-suite for Christ, Atlanta, we want to bring this out. We want to cover the world in Christ. We want to bring this to all reaches of the world and see how good we can be with that message and spreading it around if.

Brian Pruett: [00:50:57] There are businesses that want to get involved with that, but say, I don’t want to drive to Atlanta because of the traffic and all that. Are there other ways for them to be involved and be a part of it?

Matt Payne: [00:51:05] We stream live every every meeting. I then post that that stream on our YouTube page. So we you know, again, we want everybody to have that opportunity to come in. And we’ve had people from South Africa. I’ve had people from Europe. We’ve had people join from all over the world and we do stream it. We’re we’re not as good as streaming as we should be, but we’re getting better at every one that we do. So we’re learning as we go. So, you know, just know that going in.

Brian Pruett: [00:51:34] Awesome. All right. So real quick, share again the information on all three organizations that you’re involved with so people can follow. You, get a hold of you, whatever the case may be.

Matt Payne: [00:51:44] So inner circle is one inner circle.com and you can get on our website. We have a lot of information there. Outer Circle is Outer circle Foundation.org. A lot of information there. C suite is Atlanta dot C suite for christ.com and information there. My my cell phone my email address Matt at one inner circle Matt at Outer circle foundation M pain at C Suite for Christ. You can get me there and I’m happy to help any way I can.

Brian Pruett: [00:52:15] All right. So before we wrap this up, I always like to ask this question. So this is for both of you. We’ll go back to you first. Jeff, I always like to ask and end the show on giving the listeners something positive, whether what’s a quote, a word, some nugget to live today, the rest of 20, 23 and beyond with. So what you got something?

Jeff Thompson: [00:52:32] I did hear you say.

Speaker6: [00:52:35] I, you.

Jeff Thompson: [00:52:36] Know, think for yourself and look for the love and the good in people. As I was saying, it’s hard to go anywhere in north Georgia without seeing something that reminds me of something from the past. Probably just the neighborhood right next door. I did have a run in with the police. I was at gunpoint. I’ve been at gunpoint with the police three different times. Woodstock, Kennesaw, Dallas, all of them. Great interactions. The cop that I was at gunpoint, he gave me a ride home. So it’s not, you know, a lot of this noise we hear out here is nothing more than tactics to gain power. So look for the love and people look for the good and people go out and diversify. Your friends group don’t just you know, diversity has nothing to do with how people look it It’s a mental thing. Go get you some friends. Okay? Some people are like, Yeah, I’ve got I’ve got black friends. Yeah, but they’re all black conservative friends. Oh, I got white friends. Yep. They all listen to De La Soul and stuff. Diversify your group, Get, get some, get some people that are going to tell you your opinion is not right and go into it able to learn like you. You don’t know everything. Humility, friendship. Look for the good in people. They really do say your attitude determines your attitude. So yeah, look for the good love conquers.

Brian Pruett: [00:54:06] I love that because of the diversity part. Because why can’t we be a Democrat, Republican or independent and still be friends? Why can’t we be black, be white, Asian, still be friends? God made us all and we’re all here for a reason. So let’s live it and be the love. So yeah, that’s awesome. Matt, what you got?

Matt Payne: [00:54:22] So I’m going to I’m going to read just a little bit of Ephesians six and it’s 13 to 18. Therefore put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after battle, you’ll be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth, the body armor of God’s righteousness for shoes put on the peace that comes with the good news so that you’ll be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith and stop the fire arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. So be kind. Listen. Say hi. Smile. Be an ear. Somebody standing behind you, turn around and say, Hey, have a great day. Compliment somebody. Buy somebody a cup of coffee that’s behind you. Have them pay it forward. Do something to make this world a better place because we have to start somewhere. And it starts with you. If you wait for somebody else to do it, they’re waiting for somebody else and they’re waiting for somebody else. It has to start here and then it will transform. And that’s how we spread.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:25] So that’s again. Stone What do you love the show?

Stone Payton: [00:55:29] This is my favorite show, man.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:31] And you say every time you learn something, what did you learn today?

Stone Payton: [00:55:33] I do. I learned. I think Love Conquers is the theme here, man.

Brian Pruett: [00:55:37] Right. So, all right. The other thing that I like to do because again, it’s the lost art. It’s just being kind is the thank you. The thank you is lost. So, Jeff, thank you for what you’re doing for the communities America and Matt, thank you and Buffy for what you’re doing for the businesses, the veterans, the first responders and just everybody in general. So everybody out there, let’s remember, let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

 

Tagged With: Americans for Prosperity, Inner Circle Solutions

Justin Bartley With Visionary Muzik Academy

August 11, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Justin Bartley With Visionary Muzik Academy
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Justin Bartley, Founder of  Visionary Muzik Academy

They are a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) enriched music program serving youth of all ages.

In their program, they utilize music as a tool to empower all scholars with the skills, values and cultural understanding to successfully navigate high school and beyond by striving to increase student engagement and commitment.

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How VMA started
  • What separates VMA from other music programs
  • Success stories

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is a very special one. This is part of the GSU radio series where we spotlight some of the great work that’s being done at GSU. And this is particularly important because this is part of the Main Street Entrepreneurship Seed Fund. This is a group of entrepreneurs that are trying to make it with the help of the Main Street Entrepreneurship Fund and GSU. And we have one of the participants, Justin Bartley, and he is with Visionary Muzik Academy. Welcome, Justin.

Justin Bartley: [00:00:58] Hey, Lee, Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:59] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Visionary Music Academy. How are you serving folks?

Justin Bartley: [00:01:06] All right. Well, I’m the founder of Visionary Music Academy school program for music production and songwriting. But we focus on the students who are in our program just a tad bit more than the music I’ve been teaching for about 14 years now. And then just listening to the feedback from my students and over that time, teaching this program has kind of just born out of what the children had to say. You know, music has been taught the same way traditionally for so long. I just believe it’s time to shake it up. My kids believe that it was time to shake it up. And here we are, Visionary Music Academy.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:43] So can you talk about the genesis of the idea? When did you kind of say, you know what, I have some ideas about a curriculum that might be a different or better way to do this. How did that come about? Can you talk about kind of the beginnings?

Justin Bartley: [00:01:56] Yes, well, absolutely. The very beginnings. My first year in education, I was a kindergarten teacher and I was blessed to be given the opportunity to slide in as the music teacher. However, the school didn’t have much of a budget for traditional, you know, classroom instruments, soundproof walls, and a lot of the intricate things that take place in music classrooms that, you know, we don’t always think about. So I had to get creative in order to have an effective class. And one thing I knew I was going to have every day, we might not have instruments, but I knew I was going to have students every day. So we started learning and working with body percussion, learning how to make sounds and create sounds with the things around us literally having no instruments. My wife brought a little voice recorder halfway through my first year and I started recording the things that were happening in class, and I said, Well, you know, this is actually kind of special. This is not in any music curriculum, in any music theory class I might have studied. This is something being created right now in the moment, and it’s worth capturing. It’s worth being a part of a music class. And I believe it was worth including in music education. So just from the recordings of early voices, early ideas from the kids each year of teaching, the program kind of just evolved into what it is.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:16] Now and then when did you start realizing, Hey, you know what? This is something that can be its own business. This doesn’t have to just be one class in it, you know, throughout the day or throughout the week at a school. This is something that valuable enough to the community that could stand alone and people will come and participate.

Justin Bartley: [00:03:36] You know. Well, to be honest, um. I’ve always felt like it could be, but I wasn’t sure what the avenues were to make that a reality. And Main Street really opened the doors for me to see that there is way, you know, there are ways to make opportunities for the class to still be as valuable as it would be in the school, but just taking it to other places. So our main street really helped me see the capabilities and also just, um, you know, having a family of my own. I love teaching all day, but I would love to be able to be, you know, just in control of more of my time and still doing what I love. And I’ve been learning that week by week, workshop by workshop. Chile’s has been a blessing.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] So how has Main Street helped you kind of discover the possibilities? What are some of the the things that they were asking you about and maybe guiding you towards?

Justin Bartley: [00:04:31] So I think Thank you. That’s actually a really good question. Just for me personally, Um, I think I’ve been focused on what happens in the classroom for so long. Um, I haven’t done the best job of taking what I know is valuable out into the outside world, outside of the classroom and the stories that the children are telling the music that they’re creating. Um, it’s so important that now my main street has helped me to kind of light a new fire into finding ways to share that music with the world, to share those stories with the world. And that’s kind of the drive, you know, it’s kind of pushing me to to explore a new identity, like a new intersection in my educational practice and in just in my life. Brightness. So, um, I think does that answer the question?

Lee Kantor: [00:05:23] Sure. Now, for the people who aren’t familiar, can you explain what is what makes a visionary music academy special and different? What how is it different than maybe some of the other programs that are more, you know, kind of been doing the same thing? That’s been done before?

Justin Bartley: [00:05:43] Oh, man. I think the what makes it special, what makes every single group special is the the purpose is not just to create music. A lot of other music programs are, you know, elite in precision and practice and and just habits. I’m a trained, you know, trained trombonist myself. And there are certain things that I do find valuable that I learn from traditional music education. But there’s also just a component of self that I feel like has been missing in music. I believe music is connective. So everything that we do in Visionary Music Academy starts with connecting, connecting as a group, connecting with our communities, making connections with music. Um, you know, we live in a world that’s moving so fast, focusing on, okay, we’re going to find this new trade, learn it, master it, and then we share it. Well, now that’s a beautiful part of it. That happens in that in that practice, when you really learning the instrument or you growing and you stretching yourself. And I believe sometimes we can rush through it. So I focus on the kid. We focus on just holistic development first and finding out who you know each child is and that person is who’s going to start creating music. They find out you know who they are, what they gravitate to, how they want to connect with music, and then they engage as opposed to just picking an instrument and having that. So I like to take my time and getting to know every, every, every scholar who participates in visionary music academy and helping them set their goals and achieve those goals.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:17] So can you share can you can you share with the listener maybe what an early class looks like for them if they were to participate? What what can they expect to happen?

Justin Bartley: [00:07:30] So in early in the early stages of visionary music, we are trying to deconstruct some of the things that we might be carrying with us every day that are the result of anything any preexisting idea that is not coming from our genuine self, from our authentic selves. For example, if you go into a music studio and somebody gives you the headphones and points you to a microphone, you might think, Hey, I have to sound a certain way. I have to mimic a certain artist, my favorite singer, I have to be you know, I have to meet some level of quality before what I put out into the world is acceptable. So the first few weeks, the first few classes we work on breaking those those misunderstandings and misconceptions down and understanding that the most important thing that we’re going to create together is a representation of ourselves, a representation of who’s behind that microphone, who’s got the pencil in their hand. It’s not me writing the songs. Every song that we’ve ever created and posted has been 100% written by the kids. So that’s the that’s the the angle we take. It’s uncomfortable at first. So a lot of the first few classes are just getting to know yourself. Um, getting to understand that the reality that every kid brings to a classroom or to every arena they’re in is valid, their reality is valid. So that’s the, that’s the first few classes before we even really touch any musical apparatus or any, any controllers or music production gear. We just break down misconceptions and start being ready to unlearn the things that have been staring us in the wrong direction and receive whatever else is out there for us to grow in.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:12] Yeah, that brings up an important point. A while ago I interviewed a woman that shared this about artists. She said that when a child is in like kindergarten or pre K or first grade, they think everybody’s an artist. Everybody believes they’re an artist. But when they get around fifth grade, only a handful of people still think of themselves as artists that they’ve, you know, somebody has criticized them or somebody has give them wrong information and they’ve kind of squashed that ability to be an artist. And only the handful of people that could really draw well consider themselves artists at that stage. And it’s really sad that in my mind, everybody is an artist and, you know, the people who aren’t choosing a path or at least a hobby in the arts is they’re doing it because of their own kind of baggage they’re carrying. It has nothing to do with the reality that’s within them.

Justin Bartley: [00:10:12] Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s a very important piece. Like you said, we live in a world man where we’re judged on the out of the ten thing or the nine things we might do right out of ten. You know, we get judged on the one thing that we can be better at, and that’s an idea that we got. You know, kids don’t deserve to walk around, you know, bearing the weight of failure or or feeling like their best isn’t enough. We got to take time and rebuild those values in our culture, in our society, man. So that’s really a huge component of what Visionary Music Academy is.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] Now, is there an age group that you specialize in, or is there a range of ages that are the most appropriate for VMA?

Justin Bartley: [00:10:51] So right now, I’m targeting middle school to high school students, just as I’ve spent the majority of my career teaching kindergarten through eighth grade. And I’ve seen the fruits of the program. Right now, I’m teaching middle school fifth through eighth grade. And these are students that have been with me since they’ve been in kindergarten. So I’m able to track their stories from, you know, being five years old to 13 years old. And now I’ve got students who have graduated college and, you know, pursuing careers now. So I eventually hope to have a program in place for all ages, five years old, all the way through life, 25 years old, man, there’s no age. You know what I mean? That encouragement is too much. There’s no age too, that there shouldn’t be an age cap on on, you know, when a young mind or a young person stops receiving encouragement or stops feeling free to explore their dreams and their passions. So as long as the doors of Visionary Music Academy are open, the prayer is that we will be able to serve all ages, all young people.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:56] Is there a story you can share that maybe somebody that’s gone through the program and has been able to get to a new level?

Justin Bartley: [00:12:03] Yes, I have a few. One, the first one that comes to mind, there’s a young lady who was in my class my first year teaching at my current school ten years ago. She was a seventh grader in my class, wanted to be the first person in her family to finish school. She was writing songs, writing poems, rapping about wanting to become a pediatric nurse. Um. May 20th, 23, She graduated from Georgia Southern, the campus down in Savannah with her degree in nursing. A few weeks ago she texted me, Hey, just let you know. I got my I got my nursing license. I’m a registered nurse getting ready to be a, you know, working at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. So that story to me, she literally has changed the trajectory of her entire family just by doing what she set out to do. She started writing about it, started rapping about it, and she started doing it from seventh grade all the way through life. And now she’s well on the road to be, you know, a success, a legend in her community, a legend in her family. And that’s the story I share with my current students. Every new group. She’s still here. She pops in. She comes and helps kids, you know, with their verses. So the idea her story is still being written. So the most beautiful thing about the program is we keep you know, we keep the doors open for for all young people to keep coming back and keep creating more stories and inspiring new stories. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:30] Well, congratulations on that. The impact is real and it must be very rewarding for you to see that happen. Something you dreamed of in your head to come to reality and impact not only an individual, but, like you said, their family and the community around them. And it goes beyond the music, right? This is the her success. The music maybe is a soundtrack to it, but it doesn’t have to be the career path for it.

Justin Bartley: [00:13:56] Precisely. Precisely. That is it. It’s about the music. Again, like you said, it’s one of the byproducts. But the idea is taking a community, specifically young voices who are usually marginalized and often brushed to the side. And my job is to help them maximize their voice, to help them, you know, become valuable assets in their community, wherever that is, wherever life takes them. I want them to feel comfortable and passionate about what they believe in, being able to voice what they believe in anywhere they go. So that’s absolutely it, man. It’s we’re truly trying to build a family, man. We make it a real family experience.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Justin Bartley: [00:14:36] Um, right now. I need more. I’m going to need a team Right now. It’s just me. Um, and now that I’ve seen the program work and I feel like I’ve acquired just enough experience to hopefully inspire more people to come on board and implement the same values that we’ve built and visionary music in more places. It’s it’s bigger, like you said, it’s bigger than music. Um, these are things that the school doesn’t necessarily have time to slow down and hone in on. We’re focusing on the social, emotional learning and support of, of every child that we encounter. And our schools definitely have programs and, you know, fail safes in place to try to do as much as possible. We can never do enough, you know what I mean? We live, like I say, these times. It’s a different day and age now, man. And every every medium, everything that we can do to help these kids, I think is necessary.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:31] So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or learn more about VMA, what is the coordinates for that? Is it do you have a website? Is there any social media place for people to kind of plug in or just connect with you on LinkedIn? What’s the best way?

Justin Bartley: [00:15:47] Absolutely. To connect with me on LinkedIn. Justin Bartley On LinkedIn, our Instagram page is at Visionary Music Music, and we spell it differently because we do it differently. Um, so that’s where we are right now. The website is currently under construction, but also you can find the music on SoundCloud, just Google Us Visionary Music Academy. We are on SoundCloud, we’re on Apple Music, Spotify. Hey Alexa, play visionary music. Siri play visionary music. We’ll pop up. So yeah, man, we have songs, um, with no promotion, no marketing, no real marketing scheme. We have about 120,000 plays so far, you know, from just about every country that has Internet. So, you know, the messages are getting told, the stories are being heard, the kids are being represented. I’m just ready to take it to the next level.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:38] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, Justin. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Justin Bartley: [00:16:44] Hey, that means a lot coming from you, man. Thank you, Lee. I appreciate.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:47] It. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on GSU ENI radio.

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Tagged With: Justin Bartley, Visionary Muzik Academy

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