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Author and Speaker Douglas Noll

October 14, 2022 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Author and Speaker Douglas Noll

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Douglas E. Noll, Esq is an award-winning lawyer-mediator who has mediated thousands of conflicts.

His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels.

He is an award-winning author of three books, a teacher, speaker, and a trainer. His fourth book De-Escalate was published by Beyond Word’s Publishing in September of 2017. De-Escalate is now in four languages and in its second printing.

Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. He is the co-founder of Prison of Peace, and creator of the Noll Affect Labeling System.

In 2012, Doug was honored by California Lawyer Magazine as California Attorney of the Year.

Connect with Doug on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

What emotional invalidation is and why Doug calls it the first deadly sin
How to de-escalate an angry person in 90 seconds or less
What Doug means by “Listening others into existence.”
The difference between emotional intelligence and emotional competence.
Some of the attributes of an emotionally competent person
Why emotional competency isn’t taught to us
What is the Prison of Peace project

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: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results than less Time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. This is going to be a fantastic segment. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast, author, teacher, speaker and award winning lawyer mediator. Mr. Doug Noll. How are you, man?

Doug Noll: [00:00:38] Hey, Stone. I am great. How are you today? You’re in Georgia? I’m in California.

Stone Payton: [00:00:42] I am enjoying every little bit of today. And I have so been looking forward to visiting with you. I’ve got a ton of questions. We won’t get to them all, but maybe a good place to start would be mission purpose. What are you out there really trying to do for folks?

Doug Noll: [00:01:03] I am a lawyer turned Peacemaker Stone, and I left the practice of law 22 years ago to devote myself to serving humanity. And the way that I do that today is by teaching people how to de-escalate angry people. In less than 90 seconds. Imagine if somebody were just screaming at you and you could calm them down, utterly calm them down in 90 seconds or less. What would that be worth to you?

Stone Payton: [00:01:27] A ton. What a fabulous.

Doug Noll: [00:01:29] That’s what I do. Wow. So I’ve got the I’ve got the I’ve got the hack to do it.

Stone Payton: [00:01:35] So was there a catalytic moment that compelled you to go in this direction or did it sort of evolve over time? Exiting the practice and going into this.

Doug Noll: [00:01:46] It evolved over about a ten year period from the mid 1980s when I took up the martial arts to when I finally had the realization that being a trial lawyer was not my calling. I was a really good trial lawyer, but through a whole variety of circumstances, I realized that. I wasn’t serving people as a trial lawyer. And so I went back to school at mid-career and earned my master’s degree in peacemaking and conflict studies. And that’s when I started thinking about leaving the practice of law. And then finally, my partners pushed me out. And in November of 2000, I opened up my own mediation and peacemaking practice.

Stone Payton: [00:02:27] Wow, what a fantastic story. So are you finding that that people are sometimes more emotional than rational, or is it very case specific? What’s your experience on that?

Doug Noll: [00:02:41] This is my this is my one of my major teaching points is that we’ve been alive for 4000 years, that we’re rational beings. The truth is from neuroscience is that we’re 98% emotional and only 2% rational, and all conflict is emotional. All fights and arguments are emotional. And as I tell my students, you cannot solve an emotional problem with logic. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to use emotional tools to solve emotional problems. And that when you get that insight, everything shifts what looked like chaos before. Now it makes perfect sense because you can just see, hey, they’re not they’re just being emotional. I know how to deal with that.

Stone Payton: [00:03:23] So what kind of folks are attending these classes and trying to to tap into your work?

Doug Noll: [00:03:28] I have taught these skills to inmates serving life sentences in maximum security prisons, and I have taught senior analysts at the Congressional Budget Office how to de-escalate members of Congress and staff. Wow. Pretty broad range.

Stone Payton: [00:03:46] That is a range. And is the the methodology. The the strategy is can you really do it in 90 seconds?

Doug Noll: [00:03:55] Is that you actually you actually can. I discovered this technique and I can even describe the technique for you. It’s no secret. I discovered it in 2005 when my back was up against the wall and a really difficult mediation. And then two years later, a brain scanning study came out of UCLA that showed what happens in the brain when you do this thing. It’s called the technical term. It’s called affect labeling. And then there was the science that supported what I discovered. And then I recognized how foundational and profound this was and just started teaching it. And then I’ve spent the last 13 years, as I said, acid testing it in maximum security prisons, training inmates, how to be peacemakers and mediators in prisons around the world. And and it works like a charm. I mean, it it’s because it’s biology, it’s bio physiologically based. It cannot fail. And here’s how you do it. Really simple. Ignore the words. Read the emotions. And reflect back the emotions with the statement. So I would say something like, Oh, stone, man, you are really pissed off, you’re really angry, you’re frustrated, you don’t feel respected, you feel insulted. You’re completely ignored. And you’re a little embarrassed and sad and you’re worried and anxious and you’re sad, distressed and upset by all of this. You know, at the bottom you feel completely abandoned by everybody that you trusted. And just doing that, just saying words like that inhibits the emotional circuits of the brain and that activates a part of the brain called the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, which is our executive function. So you’re literally lending your prefrontal cortex to this angry person for the 90 seconds. It takes for that person’s brain to calm down and get back online. It works like a charm every single time.

Stone Payton: [00:05:48] Well, I’m sure that would be incredibly powerful. I mean, I wasn’t even angry and you sort of disarmed me. That’s right. And believe me.

Doug Noll: [00:05:57] Exactly.

Stone Payton: [00:05:58] But I mean, how. Yeah. So. So there is exercising this strategy and applying it in concert with just the way the universe and people are wired. Do you also find patterns that you see over and over that that make the situation worse, that maybe some sometimes we just we engage in unconsciously that just exacerbate the situation?

Doug Noll: [00:06:25] You know, we humans have a very limited repertoire of responses to conflict and to emotions. I mean, to the untrained eye, it looks like it’s all chaos and confusion and craziness. But once you’ve learned this stuff, you can now see that the patterns keep repeating themselves. And there are there are three patterns that that we see over and over again. The first is emotional invalidation. So you remember when you were two years old and you’re out running around, you fell down and skinned your knee. What were you told? Suck it up, he cried. Put on your big boy pants, You know, don’t be a girly girl. Don’t be a sissy. Same thing for the girls. And that’s called emotional invalidation. It’s the most invasive, insidious and pervasive form of abuse that exists. And it happens in every single family, even by the most loving parents. They don’t even know they’re doing it. And it literally rots out the brain. I mean, the brain scanning studies are pretty amazing to show how emotional invalidation devastates a child’s brain, but it happens everywhere. And that’s the first one. The second problem is that we go to problem solving. So maybe you’re with an angry, emotional person and you said, well, if you would just do it this way. And problem solving is a form of emotional invalidation, basically what happens in problem solving and emotional invalidation is the listener is trying to soothe his or her own anxiety around the upset that the other person has.

Doug Noll: [00:07:45] And they’re doing it unconsciously. And it’s like the brain is saying, If you would just stop being being emotional, I’ll feel better about myself. I won’t have this anxiety. So you’ve got emotional invalidation, you’ve got problem solving, jumping and trying to solve a problem way, way too early. And then you have defensiveness so you can appease or you can justify or rationalize or excuse or apologize, or any number of other types of defensive mechanisms that we use unconsciously with angry people. And the problem with those is that just makes the angry person angrier. And there’s a whole bio physiological reason why that happens that we don’t need to get into. But but the way we’re set up is when we’re really angry, we don’t need to be we don’t want to be appeased. We don’t want somebody to apologize. We don’t want somebody to try to rationalize, justify our excuse. And what we really need is to be deeply listened to. And and those are the three things that the three common patterns that perpetuate and escalate conflict and fights and arguments.

Stone Payton: [00:08:48] So I’ve been grinning the whole time You describe that because in my own marriage and I think we have a strong one, I at least I’m self-aware enough at this point to recognize that that is my go to move right to fix the problem. And that is not the right answer.

Doug Noll: [00:09:05] It will not work. Ignore the words, read the emotions, reflect back the emotions with the statement. After that 90 seconds, you’ll get a nod of the head. The speaker will say something like, Yeah, or Exactly. And then you’ll see a dropping of the shoulders in the sigh of relief. These are the for involuntary physiological responses. When you de-escalate somebody, that’s when you can problem solve. And then you go into it by saying, well, what do you think we should do about this? You don’t offer to solve a problem. You open up a conversation about really a negotiation about how to go about solving the problem. But you never offer your own opinion.

Stone Payton: [00:09:39] Wow. So that takes some practice or it would for.

Doug Noll: [00:09:43] Me, you know, it’s just different. It’s like riding a bike. It takes most of my students about 4 to 6 weeks of consistent practice to make this a habit. And once that makes it a habit, their life changes forever. It literally changes them forever. It’s a foundational skill of life.

Stone Payton: [00:09:59] So if you would help us get our arms around some terms like emotional intelligence, emotional competence or the same, do they complement each other or are they wildly different?

Doug Noll: [00:10:11] So. So. Emotional intelligence really defines two different things. There’s a whole corporate side of people who claim that they can teach you emotional intelligence. And if you believe that, then I can sell you a bridge that I’ve got stashed here in central California. You cannot learn emotional intelligence because emotional intelligence is a test. It’s like an IQ test. It’s a social intelligence test. And you can’t learn tests. What you can learn are the skills that the test assesses. And those are called that’s called emotional competency. And emotional competency consists of emotional self-awareness, emotional self regulation and cognitive empathy. Now, what I’ve learned over all the years working in maximum security prisons, training tens of thousands of inmates, these skills and tens of thousands of people on the outside, too, is that when you learn cognitive empathy, which is basically, you know, ignore the words, read the emotions, reflect back the emotions. But the you statement, that is the definition of cognitive empathy. You actually automatically, without effort, develop emotional self-awareness and emotional self regulation. Your brain just reprograms itself. It’s phenomenal to watch. And what’s really you know, it’s I know this is all hard to believe, but think about this. We’ve we’ve had over 6000 of our students in California are incarcerated. Students have been released on parole. We don’t have one report of recidivism. Not one of our students has re-offended coming out of prison. That’s how powerful this stuff is.

Stone Payton: [00:11:51] Now is that the the Prison of Peace project that I read about in my notes? Is that what you’re referring to?

Doug Noll: [00:11:57] That’s prison a peace?

Stone Payton: [00:11:58] Yeah, exactly. That is impressive. That’s got to be incredibly rewarding.

Doug Noll: [00:12:04] Well, it is. And it’s all based on the skills that we teach our incarcerated students. And they completely change as human beings. They literally change and fight. Or we see the change at about week five, they completely shift. Completely shipped as human beings. Now, there’s not. There’s not one of my students, including the worst gangbangers I’ve taught in Corcoran State Prison, which is one of the supermax, is in California, where I was teaching for three years, 100 feet from Charles Manson’s cell. There’s not one student that I’ve taught in prison that I wouldn’t have at my dinner table.

Stone Payton: [00:12:37] Man. That says a lot. This this most recent book de-escalate? Is this some of what you cover in there? Tell us about that book, the structure of it, how to get the most out of it.

Doug Noll: [00:12:49] Yeah, the book the book came about as at the request of all my students in prison. They said they knew I was an author because I’d published my third book. And, you know, about three years into the project. And we’ve taken some of the material from my third book and put it into our curriculum. And they asked me, Could you please write a book that describes all of this, that we can share it with our families because they we need something for our families to learn. They can’t understand why we’re changing. So I wrote the book, and the book basically takes you through at a very high level. It takes you through the science, which the brain science that supports all of this. And then the rest of the book sort of follows the arc of life. And we start with working with. Children, small children, then pre adolescence and then teenagers. And how do you de-escalate a teenager, for example. And I just have a millions and millions but dozens of examples of the actual conversations that you could be having with somebody else. So so it covers it covers child raising, it covers relationships from dating to divorce, it covers the workplace, it covers schools, every aspect of life. I just take the common problems that we see and show you how to de-escalate the anger and the upset that occurs on a daily basis in those in those situations.

Doug Noll: [00:14:14] It’s a it’s an easy read. I wrote it non technically non scholarly, so it’s a very easy read and it is a great place to start. Some people can learn from a book, which is great if you’re if you’re really good at reading a book and picking up ideas and implementing them, then that’s all you need. But the other thing I’ve done is I’ve learned that I do, of course, virtual and in-person workshops for six. Usually the workshops are 6 to 8 hours and we follow up for one week weekly sessions, one hour each, because it’s the follow up where you really get the skills. And I have I also put on online courses so people can go online. So there are a whole bunch of different ways that people can access this, this material and learning these skills and through all these different modalities. This is how my my whole life is devoted to pushing this stuff out there. Because as you’ve observed, it’s just absolutely amazing how it can change families and communities and prisons. We’ve we teach 100 men in a prison how to do this within a year. The prison is completely a completely different place.

Stone Payton: [00:15:22] Well, I mean, I can see immediately, just from the brief exercise you walked me through right on air. I mean, I felt heard. I felt. I felt validated, like. Like you’re not you’re not discounting me. And that’s got to be worth a ton.

Doug Noll: [00:15:36] Exactly. And and what you just described, Stone, is the experience that every single person describes when they’ve been listened to. They feel validated, they feel heard, and they say, Wow, you really get me. You really understand me? And that that builds loyalty. Not only does it de-escalate people, but it builds loyalty, trust and intimacy. And if you want, if you’re a leader, if you’re a business leader and you want to be a leader that everyone wants to follow, this is this is your go to skill. You develop this skill and use it appropriately and everybody will want to follow you. They’ll be intensely loyal toward you in any organization.

Stone Payton: [00:16:15] Yeah. I mean, I’m sensing that the use cases, if that’s the right term for for this, are virtually infinite. I mean, could we teach it in schools? Could we, could we teach them in business schools?

Doug Noll: [00:16:25] I just can’t. Yeah, I’m, I’m really working hard on trying to get this into schools. I just two weeks ago, I was in Indianapolis training 30 school principals in the Indiana Principal Leadership Institute. And now I think I’m going to be working with the university with the Indiana State University by School of Education. They’re very interested in what I was teaching to those principals. And I’ve got a page on my website devoted to showing school district, charter schools, schools and school districts how what they can do to implement this at all levels from this school board. School board people are having really tough times with angry parents coming in, disrupting meetings, superintendents. To principals, to teachers and even how do you roll this out to parents? And I’ve got a whole program set up for for any and all different levels depending upon the size of the project for people to do this, it gets rid of discipline problems, period. You don’t have any more discipline problems in your classroom when you start implementing these these these skills. If you’re a teacher, they just go away. And the kids become intensely loyal toward you.

Stone Payton: [00:17:34] It sounds to me like the work is probably just snowballing, but I’m going to ask anyway. Almost always do. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a guy like you? Like how do you get to have a conversation to entertain? I don’t know, like the the board of superintendents or the leaders in companies?

Doug Noll: [00:17:55] Well, you know, I face the same problem that every sole proprietor solopreneur faces. You know, how do you how do you cut through the noise in the world to get people to pay attention to you? And it’s a slow slog. You do it one person at a time. So the Indiana work came as a result of a podcast interview I did with a guy by the name of Nate Roger, who does a wonderful podcast, and he’s a he’s a psychologist. And he finished the podcast and he called he called he he worked he does teaches at this institute, and he called the director of the institute and said, You’ve got to get Doug Noel out here. I mean, so it’s all word of mouth. And the reason I do these podcasts, I do I probably do 20 podcasts a month. The reason I do these podcasts is is because I’m trying to get the word out there that we have a better way of being with each other That works. It absolutely works. And the more people adhere hear this and go to my website and learn what I’m doing. The the faster we can change our communities and change our world, we don’t have to deal with a huge amount of anger right now, politically, socially, a huge amount of anger out there. And we we don’t have to live that way. We can get rid of that anger in ourselves and with all the people around us, we can have calm conversations with the politically polarized. We don’t have to fight. We don’t have to demonize. We just have to be willing to listen.

Stone Payton: [00:19:19] Well, you’re so right. I know there’s a tremendous amount of I would describe it as divisive energy here in the Southeast. You know, during this political season, there’s got to be some hope with some of what you’re talking about.

Doug Noll: [00:19:34] Yeah, well, there is I think there is hope. I mean, there is a clear path to finding to be to be able to be at peace with people, even even though you may have strong disagreements on values or political beliefs or whatever, you still can be civil with each other. And the frankly, the problem we have politically is that it doesn’t matter what your political beliefs are. We’ve got people who’ve political people who now understand that the only way they can protect their power, position and privilege is by by fearmongering and by getting people angry and by dividing people up. And that’s that. So that’s all we hear from these people is divisive language because that’s what gets the base riled up. They get all emotional, they get angry and they they donate money and they vote. But that’s a horrible way to run a country, especially a country that’s supposed to be based on democratic values and civil discourse.

Stone Payton: [00:20:30] Yeah.

Doug Noll: [00:20:32] All right.

Stone Payton: [00:20:33] Country, where can our listeners get their hands on the on this book, the other books? What’s a good way for them to connect with you? I want to leave them with some coordinates. Whatever you feel like is appropriate. I just want to make it really easy for them to have a conversation with you or someone on your team or whatever you feel like is appropriate.

Doug Noll: [00:20:49] Stone I made a web page for everybody that’s listing only for only for the listeners of this podcast.

Stone Payton: [00:20:53] Okay.

Doug Noll: [00:20:54] And the link is Doug Knoll Dog and Elko Slash Cherokee. And if you go to that Doug Nolasco dot com co slash Cherokee, if you go to that page, you can get a free book that describes everything that we’ve been talking about. You can buy a copy of my book De-escalate. You can buy the deescalate video course. And if you want to go further, you can buy the basic emotional competency course, which teaches you emotional competency. And these these are the ways to get into it. And then, of course, if people want to reach out to me, my email address is Doug. Doug at Doug. Nola.com. Com. Doug at Doug NOLA.com. I’m a sole practitioner. I don’t have a staff. I don’t have an entourage. I answer all my own phone calls, all my own e-mails. You know, I’m one of those guys. So and I’m happy to talk to anybody that’s interested in learning more about this, you know, and I’m not I don’t sell this stuff. It sells itself. You either resonate with it or you don’t. And I’m perfectly happy either way.

Stone Payton: [00:21:58] Well, Doug, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Man, You’re doing fantastic work. We sincerely appreciate you. And I can’t thank you enough for investing the time and energy to share your learnings and your insights with us.

Doug Noll: [00:22:13] Man Well, Stone, thank you for having me. And I hope for everybody that’s listening that you found that my idea is to be of interest and check it out because it will change your life foundationally forever. It’s amazing.

Stone Payton: [00:22:26] All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Doug Noel and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Gemma Beylouny with Rejoice Maids, Andrea Johanson with Hidden Acres and Alicia Todisco with Ace Handyman Services

October 14, 2022 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Gemma Beylouny with Rejoice Maids, Andrea Johanson with Hidden Acres and Alicia Todisco with Ace Handyman Services

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This Episode is brought to you byAlpha & Omega Automotive

Gemma Beylouny is the CMO with Rejoice Maids. She graduated from Kennesaw State in 2016 and established Rejoice Maids in 2010.

Rejoice Maids is a locally owned house cleaning service based in Woodstock GA. They are licensed, Bonded, Insured, with liability insurance and Workers Comp.

They service Cherokee County; Woodstock, Towne Lake, Canton, Holly Springs as well as surrounding cities like Acworth, Kennesaw, Marietta, East Cobb, Roswell; Jasper, and Big Canoe.

Follow Rejoice Maids on Facebook.

Andrea Johanson is a classic “Good Doer” who stepped in to help at Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary as a kindness to a neighbor in need.

Little did she expect to also be stepping into a role that would include making the Sanctuary a non-profit, becoming Board President, growing the volunteers from 3 to well over 100, and touching the lives of over 2,000 Cherokee County residents through free animal therapy as together, HAAS has continued to rescue animals and human hearts in a “Go Do Good” mission.

As a wife and mom of four adult children, as well as mom-in-love to a bonus daughter and son, Andrea’s family has championed this incredible organization alongside her with several family members also volunteering.

Andrea’s FAVORITE animals on the farm are the goats, who have utterly stolen her heart!

Follow Hidden Acres on Facebook.

Alicia Todisco is a Georgia Native. She recently opened an ACE Handyman Services business serving Acworth, Kennesaw and Powder Springs area. Her path has twisted and turned, as most do, but she is unbelievably thrilled it has lead to this new season of life that comes along community and love.

Before ACE Handyman Services Alicia was involved in the technology world for 12 years. As a sales leader in the HR and Payroll space for 9 of the12 years she worked with sales professionals to teach them to sell with the need of the client as the priority.

She spent the last 3 of 12 years working as the Director of Learning and Development creating programs to teach and train on processes that she finds to be the most productive and ethical way to sell any product.

Her transition was not an easy decision, however, made with three very important factors. Grayson and William, her 8 and 5 year old sons being the most important aspect of her transion.

Traveling to New Orleans LA every month and being away from home takes a toll. Now she coaches soccer, at Legacy Park and running club, at Swift Cantrell and is seeing a major change in the way her boys are developing and responding to her work life balance.

The third reason is to be more engrained in a local community. Ace Hardware and Ace Handyman Services are both companies that encourage and support their owners to make and impact in the community and that is exactly what Alicia is here to do.

Connect with Alicia on LinkedIn and follow Ace Handyman Services on Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios In Woodstock, Georgia. Welcome to Women in Business, where we celebrate influential women making a difference in our community. Now, here’s your host.

Lori Kennedy: [00:00:30] Hello, this is Lori Kennedy, and I’m your host today for Women in Business, powered by Business RadioX. Stone Payton, our producer is also in the studio with us today and we are grateful to have you tuned in. Today. We are interviewing three amazing ladies. We are interviewing Alicia Todisco and she is with Ace Handyman Services Acworth. We are interviewing Andrea Johanson and she is with Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary Therapy and Rescue. And we are interviewing Gemma Beylouny. I’ve never I don’t know how to say your last name.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:01:13] It’s Beylouny.

Lori Kennedy: [00:01:17] Beylouny, Beylouny. And she is with Rejoice Maids and has several side hustles as well. And we may hear a little more about at least one of those today. Welcome, ladies. We are so glad to have you here. Alicia, I’m going to start with you. Tell us about your business, how long you’ve been a business, how you started it and what it does.

Alicia Todisco: [00:01:36] Okay. So Alicia Tedesco, thank you so much for your time. So my business is Ace Handyman Services. We’re a franchise. We are part of the Ace Hardware family. And so when we have craftsmen that come on board, they’re our employees, so they’re not subcontractors. It means that we get an opportunity to really hold a certain value proposition in the community. We’re on time. We answer the phones. As simple as that is to be a value proposition. It’s kind of a big deal. I started the business in March of this year. I had been in corporate America for 12 years previous and a business owner before that. I purchased a.S.A.P and services in November of last year and we went live in March. So.

Lori Kennedy: [00:02:20] Oh, wow, That’s still new.

Alicia Todisco: [00:02:22] Still very.

Lori Kennedy: [00:02:22] New. That’s awesome.

Alicia Todisco: [00:02:24] Yep. Fresh out of the gates. Very, very exciting.

Lori Kennedy: [00:02:26] Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Andrea, tell us about what your company is and what you guys do and how that fits into our community.

Andrea Johanson: [00:02:34] So I’m a little bit of an anomaly at this table because we aren’t necessarily a business. We are a nonprofit. We became a nonprofit last year in 2021. We launched in 2018 when our founder, Sara Carney, began with two horses in rescue and in the process. And over time, especially through 2020, she began to notice as the world shut down and loved ones couldn’t get to their resident loved ones in assisted living places, that she had an opportunity to be able to provide a service, to offer love and hope, and spread joy and healing in a very unique way by allowing directors at the time to come get an animal or two and have them for the day and spread that joy to their residents. And that has then morphed into we are now in several assisted living locations, bringing our animals and spreading that same love and joy. We have therapy teams who bring those animals. We have onsite farm therapy as well, particularly to those in our community who are our super heroes, those with special needs. So this year alone, we have touched the lives of over 300 individuals.

Lori Kennedy: [00:03:46] Wow. That’s awesome. Gemma.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:03:49] I don’t have therapy, but we can be therapy sometimes.

Lori Kennedy: [00:03:54] Yes, You do like cleaning therapy? I mean, I think. I think when people come home to a clean house, that’s kind of a therapy.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:04:00] Yes, that. And we are really actually some kind of warm up therapy because we have a lot of clients that expect us every other week who have never seen people for months because of the COVID scare of COVID. And also the relatives are far away. These are we’re talking about elderly. So we kind of become their therapists. My name is Gemma Bellone. I’m the owner chief marketing officer of Rejoice Maids. We’ve been in business for more than ten years serving the Cherokee County community. Part of my business as the owner is you’ll see me make fun of me because I’m the cheapest model out there for myself or my business. I do a lot of cleaning TikTok reels and I love what I do. I am now the marketing model of my own business.

Lori Kennedy: [00:04:56] Gotcha. Okay. And then why did you choose that name? These maids.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:05:00] Rejoice. Maids actually came as a surprise because it wasn’t in the plan. I initially baloney cleaning service, but no one can pronounce my last name. I can’t even pronounce my last name.

Lori Kennedy: [00:05:14] That’s so funny, considering that was the first question I asked you. And I’ve known you longer than anybody else at this table, and I did not know that.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:05:24] People would call how to spell your name. I didn’t say your name. Okay, time to change. Yeah. So I hired a lady who gave me a name, Royal Maids. Right. And I’m from the Philippines. And what the heck? It’s really like when things doesn’t happen, it’s not meant to be, right? So anyway, it didn’t work again, because there’s some things that are beyond my control. So when the last thing in your life is going south, who do you think after that? You know, and everything going into a hole, bad hole. You start thinking, Oh, my God, God, There you go. So looking at the Bible, look at books. And I found it in the Bible. There you go. Rejoice. Maids.

Lori Kennedy: [00:06:12] I love that. Yeah, well, that makes me think of something that you told me. Andrea, don’t you have a book that you want to tell us about?

Andrea Johanson: [00:06:20] I do have a book. Thank you for asking. The book is called The One Who Moves Mountains. And it is a faith based book, and it is by design, written as if we were sitting across from the kitchen table with each other and having conversations maybe about some of the questions that you’ve had about faith, about God, and you really haven’t felt the freedom to ask those. And so it’s a conversation, and the end of each chapter has three conversations starters that will ignite that conversation between you and God and take it to the next step. So it’s guided.

Lori Kennedy: [00:06:56] I love that we’re. How do you get that easy peasy?

Andrea Johanson: [00:06:59] You can get it actually on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Lori Kennedy: [00:07:03] Okay, great. You know, that reminds me of you, Stone. You have a book, and I’d love you to tell us the name and how and what it’s about and how to get it.

Speaker5: [00:07:11] Well, it’s about personal and organizational speed, but the title of it, which did end up having some marketing legs, I got to say, is Never fried Bacon in the Nude.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:07:22] I love it.

Speaker5: [00:07:22] And other lessons from the Quick and the Dead.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:07:26] I love it.

Lori Kennedy: [00:07:28] All right. Back to you, Miss Alisha. I. I want to know about your encouragement and mentors and why. Ace.

Alicia Todisco: [00:07:42] My my mentors. People that I connect with. I have a slew of mentors, people that I really look up to. And as I was vetting out, going from a corporate job to entrepreneurship out on my own, I’m not a risk taker. So it was really important for me to lean into them, ask a ton of questions I’ve vetted out for a very long time, and eventually your mentors don’t tell you this is what you should do. They guide you, right? Yeah. All three of them kicked me in out of the nest, and they were like, Just go do this already. This is a great fit for you. You know what you’re doing? You’re going to be successful by having good mentors in front of me. It encourages me to also be a mentor to other people, and I think that becomes part of maybe what your actual question was.

Lori Kennedy: [00:08:29] Yes, sorry.

Alicia Todisco: [00:08:30] That’s okay. So I think it’s really important to me to be able to make a difference for people, whether it’s in our community, whether it is in my office, within our four walls and the team that we have established. I have a great young lady who just started with me. She is coachable, she is open, she’s excited, she is confident. And now I get a chance to really get in and develop her sales processes and help her think bigger because this is her first job where she’s calling it her big girl job. But she’s it’s not true. She’s already way more elevated than she gives herself credit for. So I get to go in and identify those strengths and help her, just like my coach has helped me to grow into the woman that she wants to be.

Lori Kennedy: [00:09:12] I love that. I love that. Andrea Tell us about role models and about mentors and mentoring in your life. How does that look?

Andrea Johanson: [00:09:25] I think it’s taken a lot of different forms in my life. It’s happened in the church world. It’s happened in the business world, It’s happened in education. I think one of my biggest mentors actually was when I was a student teacher and she was an educator for fifth graders at elementary school, Atlanta women. And I will tell you that she has influenced countless lives. And I was one of them. And I just loved her way of drawing gold out of people. And I think that that’s what’s so important when you’re mentoring is to be able to identify the goals in them, draw out those nuggets and help them to become even better versions of themselves. As you walk alongside of them not telling them you should do X, Y, Z, but just drawing all the goodness, all the things that you see in them that are gold.

Lori Kennedy: [00:10:17] Wow, I love that. I love that. Gemma What about a role model for you and mentoring and how are you mentoring others? I know you’re starting a group and tell us about that.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:10:27] I have a different way of I, I, I don’t have a mentor when I was growing up, so I have my mom, but it’s. It’s a different story. So I the mentor that I had in my mind is when I saw I saw this one lady. She’s dressed up nicely, you know, like a business owner with with a case like that. That’s how I saw myself. But in terms of mentoring, I didn’t have one. So I created my own. I started reading books, you know, Jim Rohn, I called him my dad mentors, but I do talk to them. I talk to them in my head. You know, I taught myself how to find things that would empower me because I don’t have that role model in my life. So I learn. I learn on my own. And then once I get to know, like when I entered in this business, I chase the people that I know that are successful. My new Some people don’t see that as a positive aspect. I chase them my first convention in Las Vegas. Before I go there, I hit enter the internet and figure out by reading who is who in that industry. Got my notebook, wrote all their names and chased them around until one of them sat with me and said this, this, this, this, this, this, this. That’s how I started getting a mentor, but not really a mentor. Because when nobody knows you, you don’t really get anything. Then when they start getting to know you, sort of like the bank, they don’t give you any money when you don’t have money right now, When you have the money, when when you have the money, everybody’s like, Hey, you want a loan.

Alicia Todisco: [00:12:12] Right?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:12:13] Right. So yeah, the mentoring, right? So yeah, I try to mentor people now because I’ve learned so much from the years in being in business and I’m a 50 year old woman now. So I think I learned a little do anything. And my business is running on its own now, which I’m very proud. So, you know, you learn and you want to share it to people. And I do. I am sharing it now with a couple of people that I’m sort of guiding, not mentoring, but guiding because I still learn from them. I, I always say that when I have a conversation with you, I will learn from you. You know, I’m not just going to you know, I’m not going to say I know everything because I don’t. I’m still learning for sure.

Lori Kennedy: [00:12:59] So do you have a modern day role model?

Andrea Johanson: [00:13:01] Yes.

Lori Kennedy: [00:13:04] Elon Musk.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:13:07] Oh my God. I’m like, Oh my God, this dude is so smart. Even though he has like 10,000 children from different women. I’m sorry about that. But hey, you know what? I like that dude.

Alicia Todisco: [00:13:18] Can I ask a question really quickly? Yeah. Just based on what you were saying and the fact that he is like your modern day mentor in business, are you an early adopter?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:13:28] I’m actually not really. I’m a logger when it comes to like that. But then once I get my hold on that, I’m like, my husband calls me a bulldog. I will not let go. I learned something. I will implement that. If you tell me something and I see that in my head, it’s going to work. It’s going to get going.

Alicia Todisco: [00:13:47] That’s awesome. I was curious because if you are self driven with your like finding your mentors in your books, it feels different than the way that I was involved in upbringing, but it seems like you have the same process. And then for Elon Musk to be the guy that you’re leaned into, he’s the early adopter, right? He’s like, run and then ask questions later.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:14:05] That’s me. I shoot first.

Lori Kennedy: [00:14:08] So she says that, but she’s very intentional. I mean, the conversations that I’ve had with Jemma, she’s very intentional. So yeah, she will jump out to do something. But she’s already done some figuring out.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:14:23] Calculating in my head.

Alicia Todisco: [00:14:24] Thought through it first. Yeah, exactly. That’s great.

Lori Kennedy: [00:14:27] Andrea, why don’t you tell us how you got involved with the nonprofit that you’re involved with and and tell us about the difference that you’re making in Cherokee County.

Andrea Johanson: [00:14:38] So I love the story, honestly, and it just happened. And it really is a fulfillment of our mission to go do good. And that happened by accident, kind of. I actually live directly behind the sanctuary. It’s in my backyard on the other side of my fence. And so my neighbor next door to us said, Hey, any time you want to come down and feed the goats or the donkeys, you can go ahead and come through the gate in my back yard and go get access. And so I would go down and do that. And I texted Sarah who Sarah Carney, as I said, is our founder. And she when I texted her that day, my neighbor had texted her the same day my neighbor was texting saying, there are these two cows that need rescuing. Are you interested? And I’m texting saying, I have a friend coming whose daughters are coming over. Can we come give the goats some treats to both of us? She said yes and yes. And I’m in the hospital. Oh, and we both said, oh my gosh, what can we do? And so the two of us jumped in alongside of another gentleman, Lawson, who had started the week before we did using old feed feed sheet instructions in the feed room and text messages from Sarah from the hospital and just started running the farm. And so she came home and because of what she had walked through, she couldn’t do any kind of heavy lifting or anything for six weeks.

Andrea Johanson: [00:16:03] And so we just ran it all. And with her guidance, of course, and the two cows came to us and we continued to grow and we would have someone occasionally come with us as a friend, Hey, I’ll come help you to feed team. I want to go play with the goats. What you’re really going to do is I’m going to give you a muck rake and you’re going to help me muck after those cows. And so in September, I had said to Sarah, Hey, would it be okay if I put a post on next door? Just seeing if anybody might be interested in helping volunteer. Our daughter’s having her wedding celebration. October. It’s getting a little busy. We could use a little additional help. We’ve got more animals coming, she said. Sure, go ahead. 300 comments Later, when I thought we would get five or six, we were opening up a group on next door. We suddenly had our first two volunteer orientations. We had our farm community day, the first one in October of last year. Meanwhile, my husband says to me, Oh, y’all need to be a nonprofit. And we all agreed. And he said, Oh, it’s easy to set up. You just fill out a couple of things online. No problem. It’ll be.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:17:08] Quick.

Andrea Johanson: [00:17:10] As everyone in this room is laughing. Oh, well, over 100 hours later, we became a nonprofit in November and I learned a lot along the way. I had never set up a nonprofit, and that day I was working with a score mentor. Highly, highly, highly recommend. When we’re talking about membership or mentorship, Score is a phenomenal organization to work with for mentoring. And he walked me through the process of setting up the nonprofit, and I was going through the slate of directors or board board members with him because he was going to help me run the first meeting that night. And I said, Sarah is going to be the president and this. And he said, Andrew, do you remember very beginning I told you Sarah couldn’t be the president as founder of the organization? No, Yeah, she can’t be president. So I ran from my house to Sarah’s within hours before the very first board meeting. I said, What is your plan B? She looked at me and she said, You’re board president. Okay, so here I am. Board President. We have now, as I mentioned, put in, we have well over 100 active volunteers. We have multiple therapy groups that are going to different locations. We have feed team volunteers, We have animal rehabilitation and training and project team volunteers. We have families who volunteer together. We have people who bring those with special needs and they volunteer together. We have our on and off farm therapy. For instance, we had a mom and her son who were at one of our recent superheroes therapy nights on the farm. She and her son now volunteer, and they are there every single time they can possibly be there. And she said, You don’t understand. When we go home, he’s different and I’m different. And all I know is that not only are there massive differences in the lives of those we bring our animals to for therapy. Yeah, every single volunteer who’s been there, we each have our own stories of transformation and impact that this farm, this mission, these animals our founder have all had in our lives.

Lori Kennedy: [00:19:18] Wow, I. I love that.

Andrea Johanson: [00:19:20] Thank you.

Lori Kennedy: [00:19:22] I have to go ahead and ask this now. Go ahead. You know what I’m going to ask, right? Can you tell us about goat yoga?

Alicia Todisco: [00:19:31] Yeah.

Andrea Johanson: [00:19:32] You’re asking the right person because I am the self-professed goat girl. I am just silly about goats. And I could show you I have more pictures of goats on my phone than my children at this point. But when you have baby goats on the farm, there’s nothing like baby goats. They are just the cutest ever. And if you get down, they’re going to jump right up on you. Well, that is a perfect invitation for a partnership between goats and yoga, because any time you are in a plank or on table or whatever the moves are, the the baby goats will just automatically jump up on you. And it’s hilarious and they will paw at you. And it’s just it’s an experience like none other. So as they get older, we help it along a little bit. We’ll pick them up and put them on participants, but everyone loves it, so they’re in there. Goat yoga poses with goats on their backs. Some people are saying, Oh, it feels so good. And some people are like, Oh my goodness. But we do have a a little piece of, you know, like a badge almost, where it says goat on goat off when you come participate.

Andrea Johanson: [00:20:43] So if you would prefer not having a goat put on you, they don’t have to get put on you. They can go walk around next to you. We have our goat yoga on farm in our sanctuary, which is unlike anything else, because as you’re doing yoga, you’re looking up through the leaves above you and it’s just you’re in this very peaceful, amazing sanctuary. We’ve also done goat yoga at the great lawn in Bridgeville, and right now we have goat yoga happening at the mill in Etawah. And so this Saturday, a couple of days from now, we are having goat yoga at the mill on Etawah at 10:00. And then on October 29th we are doing on farm goat yoga at 11. And our last goat yoga of this season is November 5th, back at the mill at 11:00. So this Saturday is the only one that’s at ten. But you can get those links on our website to sign up. We are WW Dot Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary dot org. Click on goat yoga and the link will take you there.

Lori Kennedy: [00:21:46] That is awesome. All right. Since you talked about kids on your phone, tell us who’s in your in your household.

Andrea Johanson: [00:21:55] That’s not fully who’s in my family? Who’s in.

Lori Kennedy: [00:21:59] Your family.

Andrea Johanson: [00:22:00] So my youngest is still at home Nehemiah He’s 20. He is a sophomore at Kennesaw State University. Our two middle children, Abigail and Noah, are each married. They both got married in 2020 by my husband, believe it or not. So I have bonus daughter Haley, who’s married to Noah and bonus son Thomas, who’s married to Abigail.

Lori Kennedy: [00:22:20] And so they’re twins, I assume.

Andrea Johanson: [00:22:22] They are not.

Lori Kennedy: [00:22:23] They’re not twins.

Andrea Johanson: [00:22:24] They’re not They? My first three are age 17 months apart, so I had three and 34 months. Oh, wow. Yeah. Two miscarriages before having our fourth. And so very grateful to have our fourth as well. Our oldest is living in California. He has been attending Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. He is with an organization working out there as well as on staff with Bethel now as well in their children’s ministry department. So I’m very blessed. Just celebrated my 31st wedding anniversary too.

Lori Kennedy: [00:22:56] So congratulations. That’s awesome. And no goats for pets.

Andrea Johanson: [00:23:02] I have them all behind, but I told Sarah if I ever move, I know who I’m taking with me.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:23:09] Favoritism.

Andrea Johanson: [00:23:11] Absolutely. They know it too.

Alicia Todisco: [00:23:13] I feel like you need to go to the farm or you need to bring her a goat. Like this is a thing. You know.

Andrea Johanson: [00:23:17] I. I came this close to bringing a goat with me today, and I kind of thought it might be a little disruptive, so I decided not to. But it was. It was a consideration.

Lori Kennedy: [00:23:25] I think I’m going to need to come visit.

Andrea Johanson: [00:23:27] I think you.

Lori Kennedy: [00:23:27] Do. I truly need to. Alisha, who is in your family.

Alicia Todisco: [00:23:32] So not to spend too far away from the conversation and draw me in if you need to. But this is really interesting how it overlaps. So yeah, in my household I have myself and my two boys. One is Greyson, he’s eight, and then William just turned six yesterday. They are all fire. I have a daughter that is an angel, baby. She is in heaven. And then we have. We had a miscarriage in between our daughter and our son as well, which we opened a nonprofit. And so we can talk about that later. So I laughed when you said, Oh, yeah, you just go online and you just press a couple of buttons. Not how it works at all. Right? And so our nonprofit is dormant, but it’s one of the main purposes of me building the franchise the way that I am now so that we can get reactive and re acclimated in the community to support family.

Lori Kennedy: [00:24:20] Yeah. Go ahead and tell us about that.

Alicia Todisco: [00:24:21] Yeah, sure. So in 2008, my children’s father and I had a little girl. She was very sick and she passed away. And so she’s in her week life. She changed more humans than most of us get to do in a lifetime. And so I grieved and grieved and grieved as a mother would. And about a week before her first birthday, her father said, You have got to start changing your mindset, like you have to celebrate the time that we did get with her. So we did. And instead of having, you know, this year of we just lost our child a year ago, we had a birthday party for her. So we had friends and family around the gravesite. We did a balloon release, we had a birthday cake, the whole nine. So if you ask my boys, Hey, tell me, do you have brothers and sisters? They say, Yeah, I have a brother and a sister. And so they talk about that very openly. We’re very open about it. We’ve got pictures of them in my phone that are next to the gravesite, which I know seems a little strange. But to them, it’s normalcy. Well, a couple of years into every year, celebrating her birthday and doing balloon releases by the grave site, one of my friends said, hey, listen, you need to turn this into something because I’m hearing more and more about families who have lost children.

Alicia Todisco: [00:25:34] So we did. We created a business plan, sat on it for a year, kept doing the, you know, the balloon releases. And then we moved back to Georgia and I got pregnant, had a miscarriage. I tried to bury it. Oh, it’s not as dramatic. Yes, it is. Every person’s tragedy is their tragedy and everyone stands alone. So what you learn in grief is you don’t you don’t compare grief. Right? Everybody’s story is their personal story. And by trying to minimize that for myself, I realized that very intimately. Like I’d heard people talk about it. But and so it manifested into we got pregnant again with Greyson, and we while I was on maternity leave, I was high risk, so I was benched. And so I went through all the process of creating this nonprofit and getting everything started. We had our first big event where we had 50 people show up at the park down the road from, you know, where we lived at the time. And Dunwoody, there were people that came up to me.

Alicia Todisco: [00:26:30] They celebrated the life of their 50 year old child had passed away five years ago. And we’re talking, you know, 70, 80 year old humans. Right? We had people at the park that came over just to see what was going on, that stood in our circle and got to hear stories of other families who had experienced the same thing. So it’s pretty powerful. I’ll say the other side of it, though, when we do get reengaged, I think where we help the most people is when you know someone who has lost a child, you don’t know what to say. And so I get phone calls even today saying, hey, my friend is in the hospital. They just lost their baby. She just had to deliver a stillborn or had a miscarriage or five year old, you know, passed away from cancer. What do I say? And I’m like, I can’t tell you what to say, but I can definitely tell you what not to say, Right? Yeah. So those have been really powerful conversations. So I just wanted to draw that parallel because I understand and and that desire to give back and serve the community is huge.

Lori Kennedy: [00:27:25] Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate.

Alicia Todisco: [00:27:27] That. Yeah, Thank you.

Lori Kennedy: [00:27:28] Gemma. Who’s in your family?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:27:31] George and I, I have two kids there. Well, we’re empty Nester. My two kids, one. I think she’s never going to get married, so we’re already okay with that. The younger one, Nicole. She have two kids. It’s just, you know, like you’re doing really well and then bam, something hit you. So in a way, we’re still grateful. Very, very grateful. She’s named after me. Her name is Leah Gemma. But she just got diagnosed with autism. She’s two, but it’s a blessing, you know, because. She’s there. She makes us happy. The only thing that I don’t like is she doesn’t know us. Like you look at your granddaughter. No, no. Nothing. It’s like she’s looking past you. Oh, yeah. You know, like, Sorry. She cannot recognize you. You know, I was like I say to myself, I said to my husband, George, I’ll give anything, anything so she can recognize me, you know? So one day she just touched me. Like, normally you’re my first granddaughter, Isabel. She’s nine now. We had a great time together. I mean, I said it was a blast. So just like grandma, you’re expecting that, right? But it was just different. Totally different. But you know what we’re learning? We’re learning to deal with it. We’re learning to grow with her. We’re learning to appreciate life more because of that. You know, it’s things that the challenge you makes you better understanding human being.

Alicia Todisco: [00:29:10] Absolutely.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:29:11] Yeah. But George and I, we enjoy each other. We like each other. We’ve been together 33 years, so we better like each other, right? For sure. It’s a blessing. We do love each other. And we like I always say, like, you have to like somebody. I mean, you can love somebody, not like them, right? So we both we have it both. So we’re blessed.

Alicia Todisco: [00:29:32] There’s a song about that.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:29:33] Oh, yeah?

Alicia Todisco: [00:29:34] Yeah. I don’t like you, but I love you.

Lori Kennedy: [00:29:36] I remember that old song. I remember that.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:29:39] Yeah, well, that’s good. I want to hear that.

Alicia Todisco: [00:29:42] I’ll send it to you later.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:29:42] Okay.

Lori Kennedy: [00:29:44] What are some great. What are the greatest challenges you are facing now as a business or an industry, Gemma?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:29:51] Just like. Like the restaurant industry or in the service industry. When you’re in the service industry, you need people. So it’s human, right? We need like five employees yesterday, you know, because we’re growing. I’m a little TikTok making fun of me, doing a lot of how to clean this, how to do this. It’s generating a lot of calls. Our phone is ringing. Like Google will say, Hey, you have like 1500 visitors in your website alone this week or this month. You’ll have a lot of these people. It’s it’s helping. But the problem is you cannot sustain your growth if you don’t have employees because who is? I’m in the cleaning industry, so I can’t clean everybody’s houses. I would love to, but I can’t that my employees that we have, we have 8 to 9 teams depending on the day we can’t do it all. So especially now that the holidays are coming, we need ten people. We just can’t find them. Yeah. Biggest challenge.

Lori Kennedy: [00:30:56] Wow. Tell us, Andrea, what are the biggest challenges that you’re facing right now in the industry that you’re in?

Andrea Johanson: [00:31:03] So again, I’m a little bit of an anomaly from the rest of you sitting at the table. And as I thought about how to answer that question myself, if you were going to ask that of me, I think it is a matter of the right people in the right seats. And so it’s similar to what you were saying, but for us, we are 100% volunteer driven and you can easily see that 8020 rule of 80% of the work done by 20% of the people. And so making sure that we’re not burning anyone out, making sure that they feel appreciated, we are so grateful for every single person that steps foot on that farm and all that they do and the millions of ways that they give. And also making sure, you know, when we started the nonprofit, it was like, okay, so we have these committees and we need directors. And it was almost like pulling names out of a hat. So, hey, you’re going to do X, Y, Z, All right. Okay. So this has been a year also of really making sure that we we have had changes and, you know, life happens for people. And so you have people who’ve committed to a role, but things happen in life and for very real, valid and even great reasons, they can’t continue in that role. And so what does that look like for longevity, for transition, for, you know, I have worn a million hats on the farm and I’m really grateful because recently I’ve been able to delegate out a lot of those core responsibilities because we’ve had the right people link arms with us and, you know, they’re taking over as director volunteers, they’ve taken over as director of special events, you know, different aspects. And then, you know, just making sure that we continue to identify who’s going to best fill that role and not fill it too fast just because we have a need. But wait until we’ve got the right person to fill that need.

Lori Kennedy: [00:33:10] So how does that I’m going to go ahead and go into a second question and then I’ll ask you, Alicia, how does that go into what is a mistake that you’ve made and how did you correct it? Because it feels like maybe that’s a learning process and how to make that run as smoothly as you as it as you would want it to.

Andrea Johanson: [00:33:33] Well, again, I think part of it was we have people with such willing hearts and so there’s a need. I’ll do that. And I think I can share this story and it’ll be totally fine. But it was so, so sweet because the other the gentleman who was the original volunteer besides my neighbor and myself, when he first said, Hey, I’ll help, he said, I’ll help with social media. Thanks. And we were thrilled. And I mean, it was an offer from his heart. He’s not even on Facebook.

Lori Kennedy: [00:34:09] Yeah.

Andrea Johanson: [00:34:09] You know, so that that wasn’t a right fit for him. And yet the role that he’s in now, he’s director of operations and he knocks it out of the park. Everywhere you look on our farm, you’re going to see his touch of what he’s done in the difference that he’s made and how he’s caused the sanctuary to thrive. And so it’s just a reorganization of, Hey, we are so grateful that you offered to do that and here’s the responsibilities. How do you feel about that? Oh, yeah, not me. Okay, no problem. Let’s get you into the right fit for you, because we want people to feel comfortable, to feel passionate, to feel like they’re making a difference in in a way that they feel confident that they really can.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:34:55] That’s good.

Lori Kennedy: [00:34:55] I love that. All right, Alicia, why don’t you tell us some of the greatest challenges you’re facing as a business or an industry?

Alicia Todisco: [00:35:03] So I think the biggest challenge in my industry is service base, right? We either have too much business and not enough craftsmen or too many craftsmen and not enough business. So it’s a yeah, it’s a balance of I have five guys on my team right now. They’re all standing humans to me. They’ve been fairly easy to find, but I’m very specific about what we’re looking for and so I’m terrified to lose them, right? And so making sure that when we have a craftsman that is I’ve got a military gentleman who’s a chief in the army, he’s getting ready to probably take a full month out. So I need to adjust marketing a little bit, write down or bring somebody else on board and then adjust it up a little bit so we can have more business coming in the doors. So it really is just that balance of making sure that we have enough work to keep them busy and also not burn them out, but to sustain them and make them not want to go anywhere else.

Lori Kennedy: [00:36:00] Same. Yeah, Same for automotive repair, y’all. Tell me about a mistake that you’ve made in your business and what you learned from it.

Alicia Todisco: [00:36:09] This is actually fairly recent, so scab is still a little fresh.

Lori Kennedy: [00:36:14] So I. Band-aids down the hall, I think. Okay, good. Just in case it starts cleaning again.

Alicia Todisco: [00:36:19] Oh, well, So when I first started the business, I met this amazing office manager. And this is a story that every new business owner knows probably intimately. And you’re like, okay, well, it wasn’t going to happen to me. I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it. But she’s so good and she served an incredible purpose in my business, and I will forever be grateful for her. But she took on so much confidently that I let go of a lot. And so when she started to kind of step back and detach from the business a little bit, she still had power over everything. And so she’s been gone for a couple of weeks. It’s been some of the best time that I’ve had in my business. I’ve sat down behind the desk, I’m answering the phones, I’m dealing with the craftsmen firsthand in every scenario. And so I’m regaining that traction. And I’ll tell you, while it’s been a little jolting, a little bit of heartbreak, a little bit of Adora, Right. A little little acid reflux over it, it really is one of the most powerful things. And I’m so grateful that it happened early in my business and not two, three years down the road where processes had been abandoned or mistakes had really been made and a lot of money had been lost. So we’re recovering in a great way.

Lori Kennedy: [00:37:32] That’s great. That’s great. What about you, Gemma? Tell us about a mistake that you’ve made in your business and how you corrected it.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:37:39] Oh, I have a lot of that. I can write a book.

Lori Kennedy: [00:37:43] Right? Anybody who this? Why I ask this like I ask everything in here because I leave with a bunch of notes for me. That’s why I’m here. But no, I feel like any time that you. You have to fail several times before you succeed. So there are always mistakes?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:37:57] Yes. Yes. Similar to what Alicia have been through. I’ve been through that one. Because you’re confident that they can do the job and you can give them the time to improve and give them the reign of your business. Totally empower. That’s the word that they use. And power don’t like that anymore. Yeah, we, we did that. I, I almost lost control a while. You lost control for a while? A little while. And then you wake up and you’re like, No, I’m not going down because it’s my fault. Anyway. Yeah, we did. I, I had my first first two years. Actually, my first five years was the most horrible time in my business. I was crying tears, blood because, you know, I had a manager that wanted to stall my business two times, actually. But, you know, like, I didn’t even know that their birthing business already in their own business. And I had that between the manager and the supervisor. They’re ready to take my business. Like I would get a call and they’ll put it in their own business because I was not there. And so it was tough. But then, you know, you learn. I learned to do everything in my business. Like if you’re my manager now and you tell me I’m leaving you today, I’m like, There’s the door now, now don’t give me two weeks notice. There’s the door. Go.

Alicia Todisco: [00:39:24] Those two weeks are dangerous.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:39:25] I learned that lesson because of my experiences. I know everything in my business and I duplicate myself. My two daughters knows how to do it. My husband knows how to do it. So. Yep, I covered my.

Andrea Johanson: [00:39:41] Yeah.

Lori Kennedy: [00:39:42] Well, so that what is your role right now in the business and what is the future of Rejoice Mates.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:39:48] I’m actually because you become really like when, when, when you see your business is running smoothly, you’re like, Oh my God, I can do everything right. I’m going to try this. I’m going to succeed to this. So I tried a different one. I opened my my own eCommerce business. I still I have a moisturizer, a cosmetic business, which I didn’t really do anything. I spent a grant of $10,000 with nothing if I learned my lesson. Okay, But I said, I am back. I’m going to be doing more of my my advertising. But my future plan is really to duplicate my business so we can have our rejoice maids. Alpharetta rejoice maids. Braswell Someday that’s what I’m doing right now. I’m currently working on my bottles so I can put my name on it. And when I leave it to your house, you’ll see my name. A lot of things. It’s the sky’s the limit. That’s how I see it.

Lori Kennedy: [00:40:43] Are you going to franchise?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:40:45] Well, we have a lot of talks, a couple of people asking for a franchise already, But I like control. I’m a control freak.

Lori Kennedy: [00:40:52] Glad you can admit that.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:40:55] Yeah. So I think I’m just. I like to own it. I like. I like to own it. Yeah.

Lori Kennedy: [00:41:00] All right. Andrea, did you tell us or can you tell us about a therapy story or an animal story?

Andrea Johanson: [00:41:08] We have so many.

Lori Kennedy: [00:41:09] Yes.

Andrea Johanson: [00:41:10] And I would love to share two, actually, maybe three. So going into the assisted living facilities, it’s amazing because some of them are memory care facilities. And we’ve had instances where you’ve had a nonverbal patient who is then singing to the kittens that we’ve brought in, or another nonverbal patient who we brought PGR lovebird in a backpack with a clear front to it. It’s the coolest thing, and just began whistling to the bird and residents who, you know, might not be the most joyful residents to work with. And we bring the animals and they are grinning from ear to ear. But I think one of the most heartwarming stories was written. It’s on our social media. It was written by a mom who came for one of our superheroes nights with her daughter. They came with their daughter in a modified stroller kind of wheelchair type thing, and they would carry her in. And they talked about how tight all of her muscles were when she came into the farm and when she left the farm after being helped to touch the animals, her muscles had relaxed tremendously. And, you know, she’s one who uses her feet. And so she was feeding bread to our 20 £500 Bessie, the wonder cow. She’s a Chick-Fil-A type cow. She’s feeding Bessie bread with her toes and, you know, feeling Bessie’s big rough tongue on her feet. And just the grins, the grins, the joy has just been spectacular.

Lori Kennedy: [00:42:56] I love that. Wow.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:42:58] So you have a lot of different kind of animals.

Andrea Johanson: [00:43:00] We do. We have 75 animals on the farm. Wow.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:43:05] And so you were just doing goats?

Andrea Johanson: [00:43:07] No. So we we. I just happened to be crazy about the goats, that’s all.

Lori Kennedy: [00:43:12] I’m a little crazy about the goods, too, and I haven’t met them.

Andrea Johanson: [00:43:17] We actually have goats and donkeys and pigs and cows and chickens and ducks, cats, parakeets, lovebird, dog, all different things. I probably forgot an animal or two in that list, but yeah. And all of them are amazing for therapy. Even the ducks.

Lori Kennedy: [00:43:36] Okay. Good. Alicia?

Alicia Todisco: [00:43:38] Yes, ma’am.

Lori Kennedy: [00:43:39] Tell us about some misconceptions of your industry.

Alicia Todisco: [00:43:43] I was thinking about this one on the way here this morning, and I would say that they’re probably all intertwined. The first would be that when people present themselves as handymen, a lot of times they really are remodeling. Right? And so there’s a major gap in in I think our community where when people go in to get something simple, like we were cleaning out two garages and reorganizing them, for example, and hanging 20 sets of blinds. And, you know, if you call a contractor that does remodel work, he’s not going to take that job. Right. It’s probably part of the reason that I got into it in the first place, because we fill a gap that’s not out there. So when people call us, a lot of times they’re calling us to rebuild a bathroom or rebuild a deck or rebuild. And we have great partners in the community that we send that business to that are people that I trust, but we do smaller projects. I would suggest one that’s even a little more intimate is that people in the trades industries, blue collar folks, are typically treated really poorly. So when they come to me and I say, I had a hard time finding people, they’ll all come and interview.

Alicia Todisco: [00:44:49] But they fall in love with their culture and they fall in love with the way that we’re speaking with them and the fact that we admire and honor the blood, sweat and tears that they put into the homes that they’re working in. And our guys are they’re smart, they’re intelligent, they’re kind, they’re thoughtful. They’re following a very consistent process. And so when people treat them really well in the community, it’s so interesting to me when they come back and they’re like, Gosh, Mr. Smith was so nice and like, everybody should be nice to you, right? You’re an amazing human. I love having you as part of this team. So I think that people look at them and they think that because they are young and they’re blue collar, you know, that they’re that’s all they can do. No, I’ve got a guy on my crew that’s a fireman, and I’ve got a guy that’s a chief in the military. I’ve got a guy that wants to open a school one day. So just amazing humans that I get an opportunity to work with every day.

Lori Kennedy: [00:45:41] I love that you know so much about them. I think that that’s important and I think that that shows your care for your employees to know, like what they’re wanting to do long term.

Alicia Todisco: [00:45:53] Thank you. I appreciate that. They do mean they mean a lot. I mean, without them, we’re literally closed. Yes.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:46:00] Yeah, for sure.

Lori Kennedy: [00:46:02] What is a do you have a message for women specifically?

Alicia Todisco: [00:46:06] Yes. It’s really funny because I’ve been tied to my office so incredibly, like open to clothes for the past couple of weeks, training a new office manager and I’m a gym rat. If I don’t get into the gym, bad things happen. You know, it’s a stress release for me. And that’s that’s like my go to if I can’t do anything else for myself, that’s it. I coach soccer, I coach a running club, I run a business. I’m trying to get really involved with the kids in the community. But if I don’t make time for myself, everything else seems to be affected by it. So I would just say as women, we always tend to put other people in front of our needs. So that desire to try to take care of yourself is only going to make us that much better to take care of other people as well.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:46:50] I agree.

Lori Kennedy: [00:46:51] Gemma, why don’t you tell us what your message for women is?

Gemma Beylouny: [00:46:58] Hmm? That’s kind of it’s a tough question for me because I have a lot of messages, but I do like that I am. I know that I’m 50. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, but I prioritize myself because if I’m dead excuse me, and I know a lot of people don’t want to talk about that, Who is going to take care of George? My husband and my kids. So I got to be strong. I got to be healthy in my head, in my heart, in my everything. That’s the thing with I say to my employees all the time, better be prioritize yourself first before anybody else. It’s like, you know, you’re in the airplane, put your oxygen first before you land or you crash, Right? Because everything depends on you. In my household, in my family, I’m the light. When mama is sick, everybody is sick. So. Yes. You first before anyone else.

Lori Kennedy: [00:47:59] Andrea, do you have a message for women specifically?

Andrea Johanson: [00:48:02] I think it’s twofold. For me. I actually am kind of flipped in what? You just shared my philosophy. I have a mission statement on my signature line, and it’s what I live by. Love others well and empower them to do the same. And so if you are loving others well and you’re drawing that gold out of them and you’re empowering them, not codependency, but you are empowering them in their own rights to have the confidence and know their own value and the leadership skills that they possess themselves, what they bring to the table. You are empowering them to love others well themselves. And so with that, I had a recent thing that happened in my life where I just felt the nudge. I have my own business, I’m doing the farm, I’ve written a book. I just felt like I was supposed to put my resume out there and I wrote my resume from the standpoint of I’ve got nothing to lose. And it was a powerful exercise. And even if I had not gotten a job through it to write your resume from the standpoint of I’ve got nothing to lose and put it out there. I looked at that afterwards and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is really good.

Andrea Johanson: [00:49:17] This is me. Wow. And to recognize who you are and confidently bring to others the gifts and the talents that you possess, you know, I’m 53, and so I’m in the same boat as you. I’ve got experience behind me. And when I put that together, I recognized just what I actually carry as an individual, as a leader, as a woman in business, as an entrepreneur, as all different roles in my life. My husband and I are very active in ministry as well. And so from this standpoint, to be able to offer that, I ended up just this week starting a brand new part time remote job from home that I am loving and it’s a blessing to us. But I walked into that position, number one, because I paid attention to the nudge to go ahead and put that together, put that out there and present myself in a way of I’ve got nothing to lose. So let me present myself in the truth of who I really am. And it was powerful. And I said to my husband, even if I never got a job through it, I’ve walked away with so much because of the exercise of doing that resume in the way that I did.

Lori Kennedy: [00:50:32] That is so awesome. I love that we are getting ready to close out, so I’m going to ask each of you for a tip or a last comment. I do want to know from you, Andrea, how people can help grow your mission and then let us know how to get in touch with you. So let’s start with you, Gemma, if you can give us either a tip, cleaning tip, business tip, life tip, whatever. Give us a tip and then let us know what you want us to leave with and tell us how to get in touch with your business.

Gemma Beylouny: [00:51:12] Well, it’s fall season, all right, So a lot of tip, just one. If you can see outside. It’s kind of gloomy where we are here in Woodstock, Cherokee County, you have dogs in and out, in and out the house. Please make sure if you have elderly in your home, make sure if it is raining, you have a towel in front of your back or in the front wherever the dog’s goes out, because slip and fall is very, very bad for elderly. So make sure you are taking care of the wet spot in your home or when there’s leaves. You know, those can be slippery too. So make sure you take care of that before it spreads in your house. Because the puppies, the dogs, they don’t know that. Don’t be blaming them. I’m Gemma. Rejoice Maids is our cleaning company here in Cherokee County. You can reach us on on the web. Rejoice maids dot com you can call at 6789053476. We are the cleaning expert of Cherokee County.

Lori Kennedy: [00:52:14] Thank you, Gemma.

Alicia Todisco: [00:52:15] Alicia Yes. So it’s interesting because I feel like everyone has a mechanic. If you have a car problem, you typically know where you’re going to go, right? Well, your home is something that should have a mechanic as well. And so we want to be the home mechanic for everyone. So the we call ourselves the ally. And so if you have little things that need to be done, if you have big things that need to be done, I would encourage give us a call, because I’ve worked really hard over the past seven months to vet out a good plumber, to vet out a good electrician, to vet out a good general contractor who can do those things. We’ll point you in the right direction or we’ll put our arms around you and take care of you ourselves is a huge piece of our purpose to serve our community well. We say we are AC handyman services. We do all the things that you or your honey can’t want or should not do. And so you can find us. Our our office number is 7706277770. We’re on social media. You can find us on Facebook or LinkedIn at eight H. Hackworth. That’s our handle and our our website is long it’s ace handyman services dot com for slash offices Ford slash Acworth and you can find us there as well we’re excited to help take care of the community.

Lori Kennedy: [00:53:33] Thank you, Andrea.

Andrea Johanson: [00:53:36] So I would say that our slogan at Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary Therapy and Rescue is Go do good. So find a way in your community to go do good, whatever that looks like for you. Maybe you’re not a goat girl like I am, but there are things that you can do to make a difference in your community. And even the smallest things can have a huge impact. And so believe that you are capable and go do it. So ways that you can help us grow our mission, follow like, and share our social media. Hidden Acres, Animal Sanctuary, Therapy and Rescue. We’ve got the cute little goat logo. You’ll find us black and white. Come join us at our goat yoga. Come do a farm. Stay because we have two Airbnb properties on the farm and one is a two bedroom. One is a one bedroom and 100% of the income from those Airbnb properties goes to fund our mission. And so that’s another great way you can go to Hidden Acres Animal Sanctuary dot org. You can learn more about us, you can give on our website and yeah, just continue to share our message and we’re very grateful and grateful to have this opportunity to join you today as well. So thank you for this.

Lori Kennedy: [00:54:51] Thanks. It’s been so much fun as far as Alpha and Omega Automotive, It’s that time of year to just go get your car looked at and do a winterize on it to make sure that you are all set for the cold season and that your car will start even when it’s cold outside. And we would love to see you there at either our Woodstock location on Bell’s Ferry by the lake or our Marietta location, which is on Highway five over by Hawk and Store Road. And our our website is Alpha Omega Dash Auto. We’re so glad you joined us today. Thank you.

Your “Nevers” Are Your Opportunities

October 13, 2022 by John Ray

Inspiring Women PodCast with Betty Collins

Your “Nevers” Are Your Opportunities

00:00 /

Your “Nevers” Are Your Opportunities (Inspiring Women, Episode 51)

As host Betty Collins explains in this episode of Inspiring Women, what you say “never” to may represent a life-changing opportunity for you.

The host of Inspiring Women is Betty Collins and the show is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Betty’s Show Notes

The “nevers” became my opportunities once I chose to consider them.

Why do we say “never” first?

Youth and inexperience
Lack of confidence
Easy is easier
No guidance
Fear is paralyzing

My “nevers” included:

Never – going to use my accounting degree
Never – going to be a CPA
Never – going to be the employer, content with being an employee
Never – going to merge

My “never” became “Maybe, OK, Probably” and finally “Yes” due to influencers and facing my challenges.

What are your challenges?

Do you value who you are – no one will ever value you as much as YOU
Are you leveraging your uniqueness?
Are you paralyzed by fear?
When and how you do say NO – that is not a never!

“Nevers” just may be your opportunities. Be more aware of the people in your life. Ask more questions versus acceptance. No one will value you more than you. Paralyzed by fear, you will miss your moment. Leverage your uniqueness, it is your journey.

This is THE podcast that advances women toward economic, social, and political achievement. Hosted by Betty Collins, CPA, and Director at Brady Ware and Company. Betty also serves as the Committee Chair for Empowering Women, and Director of the Brady Ware Women’s Initiative. Each episode is presented by Brady Ware and Company, committed to empowering women to go their distance in the workplace and at home.

For more information, go to the Resources page at Brady Ware and Company.

Remember to follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts. And forward our podcast along to other Inspiring Women in your life.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:06] Betty Collins
So here I am 30 years later and I’m a shareholder and a director of a CPA firm. We’re regional with about 20 owners. We hover in that area. Probably 150 plus employees. I’ve been elected to the board of directors in my company by my peers. And then a year ago I was appointed to be lead of one of our offices. So we have four of those people in our office. But the fun thing probably the energy that fuels me to do what I do is I get to direct a Women’s Initiative. 60 percent of our employees are women in Brady Ware.

[00:00:56] Betty Collins
And so it’s not about entitlement, it’s about empowerment. So that’s why I get a lot of energy from that. I love what I do every day. Probably what makes the “Why” for me is I’m a business owner advising business owners. I wish I would have had that a long time ago in my own life as a small business owner. So it’s really my passion because I believe that the marketplace is huge and the business community plays a role in making sure that employers have employees who are families and households. And so I get to do that every day. And then I get to give back. I support a really great organization, the WSBA, which is about women in business.
Small, accelerating, moving along. And then I’m the president elect for NAWBO, which is the National Association of Women Business Owners. And the Columbus chapter is the largest in the country. So that’s 30 years later. So I go “Wow, how did I get here? Why am I here?”.

[00:02:04] Betty Collins
And here’s my story. And really it comes down to all the “Nevers.” Everything I said never to really became my opportunity. And if it would have not been open after I said “Never” I would have never been where I am right now. So what I want to do is is kind of go back 30 years ago and talk about the process of those “Nevers.”

[00:02:30] Betty Collins
You know I’m a practical thinker. My world is really small which a lot of us live in. But the greatest thing along the way was others saw in me what I didn’t see. And that’s a good thing. And it’s a bad thing. But I’ll talk about that later. But generally I would start a sentence “I would never do that.” Now any time I say never I go “I shouldn’t be saying never. What am I missing?”

[00:02:56] Betty Collins
My “Nevers” were this. I was never going to be an accountant. Even though I had a college degree to do that. I was never going to get a CPA. It was “Who cares about that? Right?” I don’t want to takea test and go through all that agony. Let alone own a CPA firm or stay in public accounting or now go to a big company merge into a company. Every one of those things I said no to. Never an accountant. Never a CPA. Never an owner. And never going to merge. And those four things were the catalyst to all my opportunities.

[00:03:34] Betty Collins
So “Never” going to use my accounting degree. I chose accounting because I had to choose a major. It was not a passion. It was a good way to get a job, right?! Fortunately, I did find that when I was 50 that accounting can be passionate and I can be passionate about what I’m doing. I definitely see that in my two kids who at 20 chose college majors because it’s what they wanted to do in life. I didn’t do that till 50. So I took the first job, of course, that’s offered to me. Now I have a job and I have that paycheck every two weeks. And it took me to an upstate New York town called Rochester. And I loved it. Except I was a Buckeye at heart and want to be back in Ohio. So I came back. And how I came back was, my neighbor of my parents owned a CPA firm and said I can give you a job tomorrow. But I go I don’t want to be an accountant. But I need a job to get back to Ohio. So my second choice was that I would come and be an accountant. But I said I’m only staying for a while. This is not what I want to do. So no passion, no dream, everything was logical. Those types of things.

[00:04:40] Betty Collins
So I came back, started working there and I actually kind of liked it. But I was “Never” going to be a CPA. He challenged me over and over to do and I didn’t want to do it. And then he moved on and another owner came into play. And he said, “You act like an owner, why wouldn’t you be one?” I said, “Well, I don’t want to be a CPA.” I didn’t really want to be an accountant. I’m “never” going to be a CPA because I “never” want to own the company. And so he made me a great offer and said, “You act like an owner. I’ll make you one immediately if you just get your CPA.” How do you turn that down? Because most people had to have clients and build rapport. I didn’t have to do that. So I said okay fine, I’m going to be an accountant for a little bit longer and I’ll go get my CPA and maybe become an owner. And so in 2009, I became that owner. And for 10 years we built an amazing business. I was content. It was a good thing.

[00:05:38] Betty Collins
Well then people started calling saying “Hey, would you like to merge?” Of course I “never” going to merge. I’ve got a nice little gig. I know my next 10 years. I live in a small world. Remember I’m a logical person. And so I said this is what I’m going to do. I don’t want to merge. So my partner at that time said I think you need to meet Brian Carr of Brady Ware. I said bring him on. I will be glad to meet him. I’ll see what he’s like. And we immediately had this synergy.

[00:06:08] Betty Collins
And so I said I guess I could merge. I mean, if I can be a CPA and I can own a business, I guess I can merge. And so that’s what I did. So it was those “Nevers” that was like “Wow.” But I didn’t want the pressure of making payroll. I just wanted to be paid. I didn’t want to take risks. That isn’t comfortable for me. And I wanted to work for clients not find clients. That’s two very different things. So all of this went against my little small world. All of this went against the things I didn’t think I wanted to do. But yet I started this podcast with “This is what I’m doing today.” So I’m certainly glad that I now can look back and think if I would have said never and stuck with that I would not have this opportunity that I have right now.

[00:06:58]
So you have to go. What are the things I’m saying “Never” to? And I don’t care what age you are. Because the “Maybe,” the “OK,” the “Probably,” and finally the “Yes,” may really just turn into something that’s amazing.

[00:07:14] Betty Collins
So how did that happen for me? Because I look at this as I just evolved into this and now hindsight shows me this along the way. So I want to make sure people know you don’t have to go and evolve and hope it all works out. So influencers are the biggest thing about your “Nevers.” Because there are times you need to say no. There are times it’s just absolutely no.

[00:07:41] Betty Collins
But I have great influencers. So Jane Davis was probably really my first mentor. And she, in the 70s, went through things, like divorce, when it wasn’t popular. And she married a guy named Randy Nipps. He was the first accounting firm that I worked for that merged into Nipps Brown Collins, eventually Brady Ware. But Jane was a big huge influencer. And when you look at the influencers right now in your life. what are they influencing you in?

[00:08:12] Betty Collins
So my first boss was Austin Swallow, who showed me that integrity and faith could be drivers and you could still be a business person and make money. So it’s all OK.

[00:08:24] Betty Collins
The second one was Randy Nipps who showed me the value of your employees. You don’t have that, you can’t continue to grow, you can’t grow at all. They’re your biggest asset.

[00:08:36] Betty Collins
Gary Brown showed me loyalty and focus. Those are the things that drive you to next levels. And he had a passion for his client which are people with disabilities. That was always the underline of everything he did.

[00:08:49] Betty Collins
And then Brian Carr, who is now the CEO I work for. He’s a person of vision. He’s always thinking about something bigger and that there’s always more. And I worked for each one of these men. And I was always the “Never.” And they were going you need to say yes. So I was lucky that I had that. They saw in me what I didn’t see. And while that’s all sounds great, what if I would have seen it? Then I could have had maybe a little more control of my destiny. Not that I needed to but you have to look back and ask that, right? So if I would just say yes on my own instead of yes to maybe what somebody else was saying I should be, I might have gone further and farther. I don’t know. So I look at that and say great, I had these influencers and these were the different things. However, I needed to see in me that I could do this. They saw it. But there were challenges with like anything in any career. And now I want to make sure that people don’t go through the challenges, the things that I went through.

[00:09:55] Betty Collins
You have to value who you are. It can’t be somebody else valuing you. You have to do it. You have to leverage your uniqueness. I’m surrounded by experts. I’m surrounded by technicians. I’m surrounded by people with really big careers. Yet I have things that they don’t. Which is I’m very personable and very passionate. I make sure I find the right technician because they’re everywhere. And I have a relationship with a client because I’m a business owner helping business owners. And I can see that the business marketing community has to have us in order to have those households that form communities. So I have a uniqueness of looking at things differently.

[00:10:44] Betty Collins
Paralyzed by fear will get you nowhere, even if you say yes to your opportunity. When I first came to Brady Ware, the first day I was downtown in my big office I could see The Scioto Mile on one side and the Capitol on the other. And I had the same computer, the same mouse, the same software, the same employees. And I sat there having no idea what to do. I was paralyzed by fear because I’m surrounded by experts and big career and now I’m in a big company. So I said yes but yet I’m paralyzed for the opportunity. So I left that day knowing what to do, which was go to lunch. And I went to lunch and I came back, because I talked to my husband he said, “This is your moment don’t miss it. Are you kidding? This is your moment.” So I didn’t. I did not let fear paralyze me once I said the “Yes.” And so again the opportunity came out. But there are times you have to understand there’s a “Yes” which promotes the opportunity but there’s “No” which means you didn’t go down the wrong path. And sometimes you just need someone to help you understand which ones those are.

[00:11:51] Betty Collins
So hopefully what your takeaway is today from the things of my story to you, because we all have a story, is “Nevers” just may be your opportunity. So take a mental note of when did I say never today. Or just even how many times you’ll say “Never” and “No” in a day. You’ll be surprised.

[00:12:13] Betty Collins
You have to be more aware of the people in your life, the influencers you are with right now. How are they influencing you? Are they the things you really believe? Are they the things that want to drive you? I mean I had great people of integrity and loyalty and vision and big picture. You have to ask more questions before you accept something. And women don’t do that. They just accept the circumstance. Men always ask questions.

[00:12:39] Betty Collins
No one will ever value you more than you. Don’t let somebody dictate your worth. And don’t let somebody take advantage of what you’re worth. Because they will.

[00:12:51] Betty Collins
Don’t be paralyzed by that fear, because you’ll miss your moment. And others saw my value and directed my path. My next 10 years I’m directing my path and I’m never going to say never. Ha. It’s a mindset. I only want opportunity if I choose to take it.

Automated transcription by Sonix www.sonix.ai

Antonio Clinkscales With Life Way Services

October 12, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Richmond Business Radio

Antonio Clinkscales With Life Way Services

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Antonio Clinkscales is a pastor, educator, business owner, author, speaker, conference host, and community advocate who is passionate about healing the mind, body, and spirit. As Founder/CEO of Life Way Services, a mental health counseling company, he uses his training in trauma and spiritual calling to fuse both the science and spirituality of healing into a transformative message of hope for the hurting and lost.

His national conference of “Tackling Trauma Together: The Way To Wholeness” is changing lives by placing people on a mental trajectory towards ones divine purpose. Professionals in the medical and mental health industries recognize his strategies as revolutionary and partner to assist in helping people overcome their past pain in order to live in their present prosperity.

Follow Life Way Services on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

His reason of entering this business
His community involvement
His motivation

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:06] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Richmond, Virginia. It’s time for Richmond Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:19] Lee Kantor here another episode of Richmond Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor War Cry Consulting Solutions, supporting women to lean into their purpose, craft their vision and crush their goals. Today on Richmond Business Radio, we have Antonio Kling Scales with Lifeway Services. Welcome, Antonio.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:00:45] Welcome. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Lifeway Services, how you serve in folks.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:00:53] Absolutely. Thank you for having me. We are an outpatient mental health counseling company that services individuals, youth, as well as adults in the Richmond area and beyond. We also provide in-person counseling as well as virtual. So we’re able to service a wide range of individuals with a variety of needs in different locations.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:20] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:01:24] Absolutely. It’s really a tremendous story. It was birth out of the pandemic, believe it or not, because the need was so great in this county already, the pandemic only. Increase the need and the demand for services in our county and the surrounding counties. And therefore we rose to the challenge and to meet that need head on and to make sure that individuals were able to receive the help that they need. And so because of a pandemic, which is a bad or negative thing, depending on how you look at it, but it also birthed something that was so tremendous and such a blessing to so many people in our community.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] Now, when you started offering the services that you offer, when did you realize, hey, this is something that’s really getting a lot of traction, A lot of folks are this is resonating with a lot of folks. We should be doing more of this.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:02:32] Well, again, the need was already there. And many people where we are in Caroline County, our headquarters in Caroline County, which is just north of Richmond, right above the King’s Dominion area, is very rural. So we either have to travel to Richmond or Fredericksburg for services and many people have transportation concerns and aren’t able to receive the services. And therefore, again, out of the pandemic, it only magnified the problem that already existed. And therefore we had to do something to not only try to bring relief to individuals through a lot of community service projects that we also formed through our company, through Lifeway services, but to give people mental relief as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:29] Now, was it something that you just started offering these services and people were coming to you or were they coming to you saying, Hey, we need some help? What can you do to help us? Like what came first, the offering of services or just the demand from the public?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:03:44] The demand was there. But when we opened our doors and we said that we’re here and we’re able we wanted to help and give people some mental relief and to put some youth and students on the right path. People immediately gravitated towards us and accepted us into the community and welcomed the help and the resources that we were providing. And again, we are out in the community. We are the community I live in. The community have been here for almost 30 years. Our staff live in the community and some of them have grew up in Caroline County and are willing to give back to their community. And so we wanted to do something that was unique and special again, birth out of the pandemic, but wanted to make sure that we were taking care of our own.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:45] Can you share with the listeners some examples of how you work with somebody? Maybe somebody gets onto your radar, you see a person in need. What are some of the services you provide? What are some of the ways that you interact with them and maybe help them kind of redirect their life maybe to a better place?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:05:06] Absolutely. People can call our office or the best way is to go onto our website which is w WW dot lightweight services dot org. And from there you can find out all the resources that and services that we provide. You can see our clinicians and our counselors that also that are listed there. And most importantly, individuals can schedule their own free consultation right through our website at a time and date that is convenient for them and we will make sure that we contact them during that particular time. We’re able to work with them during their initial consultation, get them scheduled with a clinician, get them into our office as quickly as possible because that’s one of the benefits that we wanted to provide, is to make sure that not only we be in the community, but we want to make sure that we were available for the community. Therefore, we had to make sure that we had sufficient staff, we had to make sure that we were available to meet those needs. So when they call that, we didn’t have to place them on a waiting list, like many other services and providers in the surrounding area, if you call them, you might get a 2 to 3 month waiting list before you’re able to have that initial consultation. But we want to make sure that we met the needs and those demands of the community by being available.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:45] Are you finding that young people are open to this kind of help, that maybe for older folks there was some stigma or some feeling that they didn’t need help? I could do this myself, or I should be able to solve these challenges on my own, whereas maybe younger people today are more open to asking for help and receiving help.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:07:04] Absolutely. I am just ecstatic of the number of young people that come to us who are open, who are honest, who are receiving the strategies that we’re providing and the information that we provide. They are soaking it up. They observe it, absorbing it. And it’s a beautiful sight to see. And I encourage more young people to reach out not just to Lifeway services, but to any provider just to be able to talk things through. They want a listening ear. They want to be heard in so many times in the community and the society that we live in today, they’re not giving that voice and then not given an opportunity. And therefore, a lot of the behaviors, a lot of stressors, a lot of things that they’re going through, the anxiety, the depression, trying to find out who they are in their place in this world is because of the lack of voice and opportunities that they have to speak and to be heard. And therefore, we want to make sure that we are providing them that space, that safe space, so that they can be heard and we can begin to work through some of their issues and concerns.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:23] Is there any kind of clues maybe a parent could be on the lookout for that? Maybe something is amiss with their child. A lot of times you want to give your child space, but you also don’t want to miss things that maybe in hindsight would have been obvious. Are there some clues that maybe your child needs some help and there maybe you can identify and then introduce them to you and your team?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:08:46] Absolutely. One of the biggest strategies that we encourage parents is to get involved with their children. And I know that may sounds real crazy, but the reality is with technology, a lot of parents just say, go to your room, you know, go watch TV, be on your phone, be on the computer, be on your tablet, be on a gaming system, and therefore they don’t want to be bothered and therefore they allow their electronic device or system to be their teacher, their guide in that safe space that they can go to. And so we encourage parents to get involved just to have those conversations with their child. It’s okay to ask them how their day was. It’s okay if they say fine and then just kind of want to be by themselves, but really engage their child and know who their friends are, know who they hang out with at school and get involved with their school system. Because a lot of times that explains a lot of what’s going on because they find trust in individuals and adults in the school system and they may confide in those counselors or teachers. And so when parents are involved, they can become connected and find out a lot more information from those sources than they would at home. But definitely parents have to be more involved in engaging with their with their child to find out what’s going on in their lives so that they can stay connected and build that trust so that their child can share those intimate things with them, those concerns and those thoughts that they may be having and be able to share them with their parent and their parent really should be there for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:42] Now, how do you help the parent where, you know, they’re trying to do these things, They’re asking the questions, but the kid’s like, hey, you know, I’m good, everything’s fine. And they just kind of brush them off and don’t really engage back. Is this a situation where the parent just kind of has to be relentless and and just kind of keep showing up day after day to let them know I’m going to be here no matter what?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:11:08] And absolutely as parents, we’re supposed to be doing that anyway. We’re supposed to be that relentless voice saying that we are going to be there and providing that security, providing that safe space and a place, and that their child can be comfortable and trusting enough to share again that their intimate thoughts and things that might be going on on the inside of them and with their body changing during certain times in their development. We should be there anyway and we should be that relentless force. Absolutely. But not pressing, but just reminding their child that they are there for them, not only to provide that shelter and food, the basic needs that they need, but also to be that listening ear. So. The parents really need to look out for patterns and they need to look out for certain behaviors in their child. If they see something that is different, that they’re doing something different. If they’re normally outgoing and now they’re quiet, that’s a sign. If they’re really quiet and to themselves and isolation. But now they’re wanting to go out and they’re dressed in a certain way and looking a certain way. I mean, these signs are signals. They can be red flags. And parents need to be aware of those changes in their child’s behavior and not to be pressing. But they also parents have the responsibility to care for their child. Therefore, if they’re seeing some reckless behaviors, if they’re seeing things that are the some of their decision making is not aligning with some of their core values and beliefs and the way that they want to raise their child, then certainly they should seek help in those situations so that it’s they’re not waiting until it’s too late.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:08] Can you share a story? Maybe that. Is a success story that maybe you got a hold of a kid, maybe that was in a in a in rough water and you were able to help them get to the other side. And now they’re leading a more healthy, productive life. You don’t have to obviously don’t name the kid’s name, but just maybe tell the story.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:13:30] No, absolutely. And we we have a bunch and I’m excited about that. And that’s why I’m so passionate about what I do. And to be in this mental health field is because of the successes. And one particular student who a male student in middle school was really having a hard time fitting in. He was new to the area. He was being picked on and bullied because he was new in a little different dress. Different because it was from a different part of the country. And therefore he kind of stood out a little bit. And in his outgoing personality, he just wanted to make friends. But it didn’t it wasn’t received well and it was received differently by his peers. And so he really struggled the first year of school here, being in Caroline County. But his mom got involved. His mom called us and said, I need some help. I don’t know what to do. We began working with that student and mentoring that student as well. And really within three, 3 to 4 months, that student was a totally different kid. I mean, he really embraced the process and the strategies that we were trying to implement. And we work with mom as well to for mom to implement some things at home and to put some different boundaries and structure at home so that he could operate, she began she became more involved with him at school, and that gave him a lot of confidence and gave him really some security that he was looking for because he didn’t feel safe at school.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:15:19] And therefore, to have those extra bodies and eyes there to reassure him that he was in a safe place and that he could really fit in. And then he began to gravitate towards some different friends who really wanted to become his friend, and they really bonded. And that student is excelling. He was when he came to us in our county, he was an average student, a C student, and now he’s on the AB honor roll every semester and we’re just super excited with his progress. But it was really the the the quickness in how quickly he gravitated from who he was to who he became in such a short period of time that we’re super excited to really spotlight him and showcase that our strategies and our efforts really do work when we are a village trying to take care of our kids.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:19] Yeah, and that is an amazing story to be able to turn a kid’s life around so quickly. And you know, if you weren’t there to intervene, you know, it could have really had a different outcome. And now the path seems like it’s going in the right direction. And not only do you impact that child, you impact their that family, you impact the community. I mean, the impact is real.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:16:42] Absolutely. And it does trickle down. And we’re starting to see that in our community now as we become more involved and we’re working with more students and families, that we are really changing individual, dynamic family dynamics as well as we’re trying to change our community and with our staff being here in the community, that just feels a heart that makes us so proud.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:13] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:17:16] Absolutely. More clients. We’re we’re still a relatively new company. We’re only a few years old, but we’re growing. And therefore, as the demand grows, we want to we will grow proportionately with the demand and we’ll make sure that we have the staff and the capability to meet those needs. But we’re out in the community. And also during the pandemic, we provided meals to 35, almost 40 families every week, and we collected those foods and we delivered the foods to their houses because a lot of people were, again, during the pandemic, during the shutdown, would not come out. And therefore, we delivered food boxes. And we continue to be in the community providing food boxes to those who are in need. We’re showing up at different events, and what we need is just more individuals who know about who we are and what we do and if they are willing to partner with us in this process of wholeness, then we are there for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:31] And if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on the team?

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:18:37] Absolutely. Through our website again is W WW lifeway services dot org and all of our information is there and most importantly, individuals can choose their free consultation and book it right through our website. It will come to us and we will make sure that we contact those individuals at their designated time.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:01] Well, Antonio, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Antonio Clinkscales: [00:19:06] Know, I appreciate the opportunity and thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:09] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Richmond Business Radio.

Jamie Simpson, J Simpson Photography

October 12, 2022 by John Ray

Hello, Self . . .

Jamie Simpson, J Simpson Photography

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Jamie Simpson, J Simpson Photography (Hello, Self… Episode 3)

Jamie Simpson, owner of J Simpson Photographer, joined host Patricia Leonard on this episode of Hello, Self… Jamie talked about her winding journey through corporate work to returning to her love of photography, building a business working newborns, and more.

Hello, Self… is presented by Patricia Leonard & Associates and produced by Arlia Hoffman in association with the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Jamie Simpson, Owner and Photographer, J Simpson Photography

Jamie is wife, mother to three (two that are nearly Irish twins), daughter, sister and friend. She has been preserving lifetime memories for hundreds of families throughout Central Indiana and the Indianapolis area for 13 years now! She currently lives in Franklin on a horse farm with three dogs and two horses, and the kids usually have a goat or pig around for their current 4-h project.

Her love of photography began at the age of 8 when her grandmother gave her a “real” camera. After going to Purdue University for undergrad and Indiana University for her Master’s, then working as both a CMT and musician, she and Scott married and almost immediately started a family.

When she realized with her experience that she could photograph her own babies just as well as someone else, I started J Simpson Photography while home with her children. Jamie focused mainly on weddings whiled learning the intricacies of photographing newborns.

Now, she focuses on maternity, newborn and family sessions.

Member PPA | Professional Photographers of America
Member IPPG | Indianapolis Professional Photographers Guild
Certified Professional Photographer, 2020
Expertise Best Newborn Photographer in Indianapolis, 2020-2021
Expertise Best Maternity Photographer in Indianapolis, 2020-2021

Website | Facebook| Instagram

About Hello, Self…

Hello, Self… is a biweekly podcast focused on inspiring stories of turning dreams into reality. Join coach and author Patricia Leonard and her guests as they share life-changing Hello, Self… moments.

Hello, Self… is brought to you by Patricia Leonard & Associates and is based on the new book by Patricia Leonard, Hello, Self.., available here.

The show is produced by Arlia Hoffman in association with Business RadioX®. You can find this show on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.

Patricia Leonard, Host of Hello, Self…

Patricia Leonard is President of RUNWAY TO SUCCESS, a division of Patricia Leonard & Associates located in Nashville, TN. She is a MESSAGE ARTIST speaker, career & business coach, author and magazine columnist. Patricia consults with clients on leadership, empowerment, career management, entrepreneurship and the power of language. Her work is focused on helping clients find their runway to success!

She has a professional background in management, human resources, corporate training, business consulting and talent development. Patricia has worked with companies in the service, music, banking, manufacturing, publishing, warehousing, healthcare, academic, retail and financial industries, and has taught management classes as an adjunct professor.

Patricia has a degree in Human Resource Management, is certified as a Career Coach and Consulting Hypnotist and is MBTI qualified.

Her volunteer energies are focused on Women in Film and Television-Nashville, where she is a Board Vice President; Dress for Success as the Advisory Board President; and International Coaching Federation-Nashville where she held Board roles for several years.

Patricia is the author of Wearing High Heels in a flip flop World, BECOMING WOMAN…a journal of personal discovery, THE NOW, HOW & WOW of Success, Happenings, a full year calendar of inspirational messages and a spoken word album titled, I AM…

She enjoys songwriting, creating poetry and has written a one-woman show and artistic speech she performs titled Hello, Self…, about a woman in midlife reinventing herself, which led to her new book by the same name, available here.

On the personal side, Patricia, describes herself as a woman, lover of life, mother, grandmother, career professional and message artist; AND in that order! Her goal is to continue inspiring others, of any age, to START NOW creating and expanding their Runway to Success.

She believes that life is a gift, the way we wrap it is our choice.

Connect with Patricia:

Website| LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

John Winstanley, Fort Safety

October 12, 2022 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

John Winstanley, Fort Safety

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John Winstanley, Fort Safety (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 549)

Inspired by personal experience, John Winstanley, Founder and CEO of Fort Safety, founded a nonprofit to assist families with internet safety for their children. He spoke with North Fulton Business Radio host John Ray about the three C’s of internet safety, his passion for this work, the kinds of problems present online, how the Fort Safety system works, partnering with groups and brands, and much more.

North Fulton Business Radio is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Fort Safety

Fort Safety provides families and communities with practical instruction and preventative measures to address the daily challenges of internet safety, online harassment, and technology-born addictions.

Fort Safety shines the light of awareness and hope on to what we do, see, and feel while online.

Fort Safety strives to provide every parent and caregiver in America the knowledge and power to protect their kids from online threats.

Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook

John Winstanley, Founder and CEO, Fort Safety

Inspired by the courageous life of his daughter Laura Gwen and motivated by the frustration of seeing children of all ages fall victim to online toxicity, John Winstanley founded FortSafety in 2013, in Monroe, Georgia. With the support of his wife and family, John left his career as an engineer behind to start a nonprofit focused on protecting kids and strengthening families.

Featured in multiple publications, podcasts, radio, and TV shows and awarded commendations for their outstanding public service, John and the Fort safety aims to make internet use safe for children and empower their families to make healthy decisions for their internet use. John’s unique style of presentation uses stories of his own struggles with depression, self-esteem, and a technology-born addiction to teach his audiences how to create an internet safety plan, protect and empower kids to deal with bullying, or care for a child that has been exposed to harmful content by accident, for example.

Questions and Topics in the Interview:

How did Fort Safety get started?
Where are you from?
Should parents throw their internet devices in the trash…why not?
What are the 3 c’s of internet safety?
What is your mission, your guiding light?
What do you want parents/educators to know about internet safety and their kids?
How can parents, schools, churches, or businesses get involved with FortSafety?

North Fulton Business Radio is hosted by John Ray and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with over $13 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Special thanks to A&S Culinary Concepts for their support of this edition of North Fulton Business Radio. A&S Culinary Concepts, based in Johns Creek, is an award-winning culinary studio, celebrated for corporate catering, corporate team building, Big Green Egg Boot Camps, and private group events. They also provide oven-ready, cooked-from-scratch meals to go they call “Let Us Cook for You.” To see their menus and events, go to their website or call 678-336-9196.

Nisha Lehmann with Confidential Conversations

October 12, 2022 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Nisha Lehmann with Confidential Conversations

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Nisha Lehmann with Confidential Conversations does UX Design by day, and is a Mental Health advocate by night.

Helping people find communities around mental health issues by facilitating anonymous online peer led support groups.

Confidential Conversations is an app that offers peer led online support groups for a wide array of mental health issues that is anonymous, affordable and available.

Follow Confidential Conversations on Facebook, Twitter and 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: [00:00:15] Welcome to the high velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with confidential conversations. Ms.. Nisha Lehmann How are you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:00:37] I’m great, thanks for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:00:39] Stone Oh, I have really been looking forward to this discussion and I think the topic of the day, the broad stroke is, is mental health. But maybe share with our listeners a little bit about mission purpose. What are you out there trying to do for people.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:00:57] Trying to save the world? No. Well, kind of. Basically, this app stemmed from a very dark period in my own life. I think anyone that has struggled with mental health issues can relate to feeling alone, isolated, feeling like you have no place to turn. And and even if you do want to talk to someone about your problems, you know, the closest people to you, they can’t sympathize or understand you the right way or the same way because they’re not experiencing what you’re experiencing. And I think the realization, the kind of aha moment came for me when I really needed to connect with people who were going through the same thing, who are going through depression or anxiety or grief or whatever it is, right? Because those people, you already have a baseline for the conversation. You don’t have to explain or justify or try to wish your feelings away or something. I mean, when talking to people that are experiencing what you’re experiencing, you can be more raw, be more authentic, and I think get get more concrete steps in terms of help. And so what I really wanted to accomplish with this app was to be able to facilitate online support groups that are completely anonymous, because that for me was incredibly important. I still, unfortunately, really believe in the stigma around mental health. I think it’s there for a lot of mental health issues, although it’s it’s dying down for some.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:02:30] But I think it’s it’s it’s a big inhibitor in talking about mental health. And so having a place where you can go that, you know, is a safe space that is completely anonymous, that it’s private. Now, we cannot nor will we ever collect PII data about our customers or about our users, because this is this is your own it’s your own private issue. And we absolutely respect that. But being able to connect with others who are experiencing the same thing you are and hopefully be able to walk away a little bit more educated a little bit more, or at least having a bit of the pressure relieved on you that you’ve at least talked to someone, You’ve gotten some ideas, maybe some routines, things to try that a therapist would never be able to tell you, because it’s not as if every therapist has gone through what you’re going through as well. So I think I think there’s an incredible potential for success in this space. And honestly, the goal for me was to create it for others like me who were struggling at that time, who were struggling and continue to struggle, I would say, with with mental health related issues in a in a small effort or small steps toward recovery.

Stone Payton: [00:03:39] So have you observed any interesting dynamics or shifts with with regard to pre and post pandemic?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:03:50] For sure, I think the pandemic well, I don’t have to say this. Probably the pandemic did a number on all of us, right? Yeah, I think isolation and loneliness were never really classified as mental health issues until after the pandemic. But of course, if you can’t leave your house or you have to distance from people, that really impacts your ability to be social, your ability to really connect with others. So for sure, pre, pre and post pandemic, you saw a lot of issues related to work, specifically burnout, stress, panic attacks, high anxiety. I mean, but that was probably existing pre-pandemic as well. But you really saw it come to a head post-pandemic when people started leaving their jobs in the great resignation. They were not going to tolerate the work life balance. They were not going to go back to how things were, you know, and if it means making less money, but being able to shut off your computer at five and spend time with your family or spend time working on your passion projects, that became more important. And I think that’s an incredible step for people and for employers to also learn that actually mental health is is is a real issue when it comes to employees in the workforce. Beyond that, I think. There are a number of mental health issues that really came to the forefront. You know, grief. It’s it’s I mean, I never thought of it myself as a mental health issue. For me, it’s it’s something that you will experience at some point in your life.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:05:15] Everyone will experience grief because at some point you will lose someone close to you. And you know, what does that feel like and how can you cope with that and how differently people cope with That is what I found so interesting. But that’s a big one post-pandemic, because of course we all know someone who we either lost someone ourselves in the COVID pandemic or we know someone who experienced loss during the COVID pandemic. So, I mean, it wasn’t a small number of people that died during this pandemic. So, I mean, I think grief was a really big one as well. And also the ability to shut off the the ability to be able to have addictions that are completely unorthodox now in addiction to your screen, addiction to mobile phones, addiction to social media, and the kind of also the meanings and the stigma that comes around being attached to the number of followers you have, the number of likes you get on a particular post. I think all of these are only going to proliferate in the future. And so I think it’s just we have to be cognizant and mindful of the fact that social media is a platform, but it’s not an integral really part of our lives and we need to be able to turn it off and live our lives. And so I think maybe those would be some of the takeaways. Pre post.

Stone Payton: [00:06:30] Yeah, well said. You mentioned employers and awareness. Are there some actions employers, mid-level managers inside larger organizations can take or or things that they should be reading or keeping in in mind to to help this?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:06:51] I’m so glad you brought this up. It was it’s such a fantastic segway. So I actually just wrote a piece of thought leadership specifically about this, about what employers can do when it comes to mental health, what they should be doing. A lot of studies have been released specifically on the ROI of investing into your, investing into mental health, investing into resources for mental health. I think the biggest thing that managers or people in in, let’s say, positions of power can do is try to stem cultural cultural shift in the organization, because that actually has a very, very low monetary cost. But if you can make the workplace a safe place for people to be able to talk about what they’re feeling without feeling like there’s retribution to that action, I know I know a lot of people in large and large consulting firms, in large enterprises, they feel like they can’t talk about mental health because if their manager finds out that they have depression or if their manager finds out that they are struggling with something, then they think it will impact negatively their career. And so being able to really foster a work environment that is that where it’s okay to talk about these things and where managers can kind of recognize when when one of their employees or when one of their team members is is going through a mental health problem, I think is also a huge a huge step in the right direction. So if you want to know more information about this, please visit the website config convos and you’ll find some thought leadership there on some ideas about this.

Stone Payton: [00:08:25] So this app you were describing, I’m operating under the impression that it provides anonymity, but the structure in I’d like to get that validated, but the structure is like these peer led kind of it’s sort of a peer to peer thing isn’t it.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:08:41] Exactly. Yeah. It’s peer led online support groups. Exactly. And it’s an interesting point you bring up because, you know, these discussions are not really facilitated by any moderator or, you know, anyone else. One, because we want to protect the privacy of the people in the group for sure. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to have a moderator that isn’t experiencing the same things that you are just listening to the conversation. But we wanted it to be a bit more free flowing as well because it can be difficult to talk through these things. And I think if there’s a moderator pushing you to talk about these things, the conversation becomes kind of fake. It becomes a bit superficial. People have to be able to on their own terms as they become comfortable with the dynamic of the group, as they become comfortable within within their the frame of their own mental health issue, or as they become become more aware or they recognize and aware they are on the mental health spectrum, they need to be able to talk about these things on their own. And I know for sure being a bit more introverted myself, it was very hard for me to do this. And the first many in the first couple of sessions, I was just listening. I was just listening to what other people were experiencing, what other people were going through, smiling and nodding and trying to kind of be brave to talk about this myself, because it can be a huge step for people. Who really come in a way, come clean, write, admit that they have a problem and talk about it out loud with others. It’s it’s a big step and it can’t be pushed or forced in any way. And so we want people to get there on their own terms. And that’s why we kind of wanted the conversation to be a bit more free flowing and unstructured. And from there, you know, we take into consideration what we do with that in the next steps.

Stone Payton: [00:10:28] So it’s one thing to build an app, clearly another to get a critical mass of people utilizing it in returning their learning back to the organization so you can continue to improve and and enhance it. How did you crack that code?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:10:47] It’s a work in progress. It’s definitely not complete for sure, and I think we don’t really have that many users. And I will say very bluntly from the beginning, you know, the goal of launching this app was not to have 5 million users or even 500,000 users. This app is designed for the people who need it. It’s designed for people who want to explore on their own terms, their own mental health, or they can’t afford a therapist for whatever reason. And they want to still get proactive about doing something in terms of their mental health. And so I think it’s not for everyone to be sure, but the people that use it, I believe, find value in it because they’re using it for their own intents and purposes. And they’re they’re exchanging with each other. They’re trying to learn from each other. And whatever learnings we can get because we cannot be involved with every single group, right? So we can only take the learnings from the groups that we’re actually in because we designed this selfishly, we designed this app also for us for, for the like for, for me and my team. We, we needed this outlet ourselves too, because we, we all found ourselves kind of struggling with mental health issues around the same time. And so we can bring feedback about app performance and how to improve things and how to make this more fruitful for our users. And we’ve already gotten a lot of really good ideas and suggestions from users that just interact directly with us through the website or through through the app itself. But I think there’s a lot more to do.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:12:30] I mean, what I will say about the app is that it’s pretty barebones. It’s not very fancy. It’s much more substance over style, I would say. So the UX is it definitely can be improved. I would say it’s definitely not perfect, but the point of this app was to get it out there as soon as possible. So we had to do a lot of prioritization in terms of figuring out what functionality did we really like was must have in the app and what could wait. And so for us being able to facilitate the conversations, being able to do it in a way that’s private, being able to make the app accessible and affordable to those people who simply can’t afford a therapist or professional help, those are really the key drivers to get this out the door. And, you know, we take we take what we can and we definitely want to do a lot more with it. So be looking out for the next version of this where we integrate, we integrate some multimedia, There’s some incredible games that we’re that we’re thinking about, including into a like a digital library, because I think we I also truly believe that games are the future when it comes to mental health treatment and mental health sourcing. So being able to really experience an immersive and immersive multimedia content that where the avatar actually struggles with a mental health issue, but it’s not some kind of caricature of the mental health issue. That for me is really the next step in terms of trying to make this a bit more progressive and a bit more intuitive for our users.

Stone Payton: [00:14:04] Well, and I think you’re up to the task because you’re in UX design by your daydream, right?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:14:11] Yeah, Yeah, exactly. That’s that’s what I do every day. Yep. So, I mean, it’s, it’s definitely, I mean, shame on me that the UX is not brilliant on the first go around. But like I said, we were in a rush. And if you want the UK to be very, very, very good, then it takes a long time to get that right. And my, my clients and myself will tell you that it’s a it takes a while to do this and there’s always improvements and iterations that come later. So I think the beautiful thing about app development is that you can iterate on it so you can get out one kind of almost proof of concept out the door and then build on it and improve things and add features granularly rather than having to have a full blown new app that’s completely redesigned or something. So that’s, that’s the strategy that we’re using and hopefully you’ll see some changes coming up with it.

Stone Payton: [00:15:02] I’m an entrepreneur. So many of our listeners and our clients at Business RadioX are entrepreneurs. Do you find that there are mental health? I don’t know what the right word is issues, topics, dynamics that are unique or more prevalent in the entrepreneurial community. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:15:28] That’s an interesting question. I don’t know if it’s specific to entrepreneurs, but there’s definitely a subset of mental health issues that are specific to high stress jobs. What what people don’t often think about is having financial duress, which I think every entrepreneur has experienced at some point that has incredible ramifications on your mental health, you know, because you’re constantly having to deal with the pressures of. I want to follow this dream and I want to be able to give back something. But I also need to pay the bills. You know, I’ve got I’ve got financial obligations in my house to my family, to my kids, whatever. And that can cause a lot of stress, which, of course, is a well-established mental health issue. So there are definitely a few that I can think of that that definitely lean more toward the entrepreneurial space. You know, I mean, I don’t want to make light of this too much, but also, you know, VC funding and things like that typically goes more to men than it does to women in this space as well. And so I think there’s an inherent gender bias that exists in the entrepreneurial space as well, where where if you’re competing directly with a man and you have the same idea, it’s unlikely that you would get funded simply because of your your sex. And so there’s also these things to take into consideration as well. No, specifically for women entrepreneurs, I think that’s why there are so many organizations specifically devoted to promoting female entrepreneurship, because this is a recognized problem, and I hope it’s changing given all of the the movements we’ve had within, you know, female, you know, female rights and pay parity for women and things like this. But I hope it’s moving in the right direction and I hope this becomes a thing of the past soon.

Stone Payton: [00:17:20] Now, am I remembering my notes correctly that you have a radio show of your own, don’t you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:17:27] I don’t know. That’s not me. Okay, I don’t. I don’t have time for a radio show and maintenance.

Stone Payton: [00:17:36] See me after class. We’ll get you set up.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:17:38] So. Fantastic. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think it would be an interesting. I mean, the number of people that have said, you know, you should do a podcast of your own. It’s more than a handful, but. What? What people don’t tell you is how time consuming it is. It is an incredible I mean, I think you, you and your team, they do an amazing job because the amount of research that goes into these episodes and being able to ask tailored questions specifically around particular topics, it’s not easy. And yeah, between between a full time job and the app and other things. No, there hasn’t been enough time to to add a podcast on top of that, but maybe one day in the future.

Stone Payton: [00:18:18] Yeah, maybe. And I will tell you, it’s a lot of fun. And for me personally, there’s there’s just so much I don’t know, the questions come pretty easily so maybe fun is the that’s okay.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:18:32] So maybe then it is right for me because I don’t know that much either. So maybe then it’s okay.

Stone Payton: [00:18:39] So in your career and in in this pursuit, have you had the benefit of a mentor or to to help you navigate some of this terrain, or is it pretty much been been you?

Nisha Lehmann: [00:18:55] Well, in terms of the app development itself and just generally in my career, yes, I think it’s incredibly important that women help other women, especially in the tech field, because there’s it’s sounds so cliche to say it, but it’s still true. There are so few of us actually working in the tech field and trying to do things in the digital space. That mentorship becomes incredibly important. And one of the things I actually am thinking about is to is, you know, what what impact does this have on your mental health, people who have mentors versus the people who don’t? Hmm. But in the mental health space, it’s hard it’s hard to find this. You know, it’s hard to find. I mean, I’m thinking about the equivalent of like a sponsor or something like this. I think it’s I think it’s hard to find it because so many people are just kind of unsure about where they sit when it comes to having good mental health versus poor mental health. And it’s what I think people need to realize is, is that it’s not binary. It’s a spectrum. You know, you can have you can be in the 3% of individuals that have absolutely no mental health problem. But that’s pretty rare. Everyone is struggling with something and it’s okay to struggle with something. The problem is when that struggle kind of overtakes you and then you can’t get the help that you need for whatever reason. Whether that help is a therapist or an online support group or whatever it might be. Right. And so honestly, the point of this app was really just to give people another option. I think in the mental health space specifically, it’s it’s really kind of binary. It’s like you have a mental health problem or you don’t.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:20:33] And if you do, you see a therapist and that’s really it. And if you can’t afford a therapist or you, there isn’t one you know that you like or it’s not the right thing for you. There aren’t really a lot of other options other than to ignore the mental health problem. And we all know what happens when you do that. So hopefully this app will just allow people another choice where they say, okay, well, maybe I’m fine now, but maybe one day, you know, I may need to talk to someone and not a professional, but just someone like me, someone struggling with with issues like me. And I think it’s particularly important when you talk about Gen Z and you talk about Gen Alpha and the next generation’s right, because they’re going to be struggling with mental health issues that we, you and me, cannot understand. You know, the cyberbullying, the cache, the gaslighting, the catfishing, you know, these things that are relatively new, I would say. I mean, to Gen Xers like myself, but they need to be able to have an outlet to speak with others like them, because if they if my kid comes to me one day and, you know, tells me that he’s struggling with this, I don’t know if I’m going to be able to help him properly, but I know if this app is on his phone, at least he’s talking to someone. It doesn’t have to be me necessarily, but I would take some comfort in knowing that, okay, he’s talking to other people who get him, who he can relate to, who’s going through the same thing. So, you know, maybe that’s already a step in the right direction.

Stone Payton: [00:21:58] All right. Let’s make sure that our listeners can get their hands on this app and leave them with any other coordinates that you would like to leave them with or want them to be able to follow your work, connect with you, and get access to to this app.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:22:11] Okay. Well, the app is called Confidential Conversations. You will find it on the App Store on Google Play. It does cost. A little something to download it. So at the moment it’s paid simply because we didn’t want ads in the app. That was really the big fear on our end, because you’re already talking about a vulnerable population. And then suddenly if you throw ads in there, it’s it’s not the model that we were looking for. So you do have to pay a little something for it. And I’m sorry, there is a small barrier to entry. Probably in the next version we’ll we’ll try to make it for free because the point of this app is that it really should be accessible and affordable for everyone. You can visit our website that was confit convos. There’s thought leadership there. There are a couple of other podcasts that have I had the privilege of doing as well, so feel free to check them out. And our social media handle is at config convos where on Twitter. We’re on Pinterest, we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram. You can pretty much find us on your favorite social media. Feel free to follow us. We’re always posting things that we think will be useful. Other podcasts that are talking about mental health or thought leadership within mental health, or no new research that’s coming out in particular areas. So please follow us and feel free to learn and reach out directly To me. It would be great to hear from from some of the people struggling with mental health issues if this app has helped you or not. Right? Both of them, it would be great to get some feedback just so we know whether we’re in the right direction or whether we really do need to do a complete overhaul.

Stone Payton: [00:23:43] Well, Nisha, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you so much for investing the time and the and the energy and thank you for the work. This is important work and we sincerely appreciate you.

Nisha Lehmann: [00:23:59] Well, thank you so much. And I really hope that the app is is going to help people that that was the whole purpose going in because it helped. It helped me. And if it helped me, maybe it can it can help others. And that’s really my contribution to humanity. I guess so. But thank you. Stone It was it was a great conversation.

Stone Payton: [00:24:20] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Nisha Leamon with confidential conversations and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Speaker and Purpose Consultant Genevieve Piturro

October 12, 2022 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Speaker and Purpose Consultant Genevieve Piturro

00:00 /

Genevieve Piturro is all about Purpose and The Human Connection. She was a successful television marketing executive until she dramatically changed the direction of her life. She found her true purpose when a sudden inner voice challenged her life as she knew it.

In 2001, she founded the hugely successful national non-profit, Pajama Program, when a question from a six-year-old girl in an emergency shelter changed her life forever and she jumped off the corporate ladder. This year, the Program celebrates its 21st anniversary, having delivered more than 7 MILLION magical gifts of new pajamas and new books to children through its 43 chapters across the U.S.

Genevieve is now a professional speaker and purpose consultant inspiring individuals, groups and companies on The Transformative Power of Purpose & The Human Connection. She created the Purpose ACER business training program to help leaders create a shared culture by aligning the goals of the company and management with the goals of its employees.

Her first book, sharing life and leadership lessons she learned through her Pajama Program journey, is an Amazon best seller and the winner of five (5) awards. The book, Purpose, Passion and Pajamas: How to Transform Your Life, Embrace the Human Connection and Lead with Meaning, debuted during the Covid shutdown to rave reviews. The book’s message dovetails perfectly with our Nation’s growing interest in finding purpose.

Her TEDx talk: “1 Idea + The Human Connection = 7 Million Pajamas” debuted at the same time. Genevieve has been interviewed on and in many local and national media including Hallmark’s Home & Family, The Huckabee Show, OPRAH, TODAY, GMA, The Early Show, CNN, Fox & Friends, O Magazine, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Parenting Magazine.

Genevieve rang the Nasdaq Stock Market Opening Bell in 2016. She has been the recipient of many local and national awards as she inspires others to listen to their heart-voice in pursuing their passions.

Genevieve is a graduate of Fordham University and lives in Irvington, N.Y. with her husband, Demo DiMartile. If you can’t find them, check the beach.

Connect with Genevieve on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and 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: [00:00:15] 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. You guys are in for such a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast. Author, speaker, consultant and founder of Pajama Program. Ms. Genevieve Piturro. How are you?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:00:39] I’m great. Thank you for this invitation.

Stone Payton: [00:00:41] Stone Well, I am delighted to have you on the show. I got a ton of questions. We won’t get to them all, but I’m thinking maybe a good place to start is if you could share with our listeners. Mission. Purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:00:58] Well, you know, I never no one ever asked me what my purpose was or no one ever suggested I might have one and consider it when I was thinking about a career. And I think that’s true for a lot of people who’ve entered who are in the business world now for ten or more years, 20 years even, You know, I thought lucky people found their purpose, you know, famous people I didn’t know we all had one. So when I sort of tripped on mine and it appeared out of nowhere, I thought this this is something that I want to share, that we all have a purpose because nothing felt more right for me to be doing than when I jumped off that corporate ladder because something stimulated me finding my purpose.

Stone Payton: [00:01:46] And what is the back story? How did you find yourself in this line of work? Was it a catalytic moment or did it sort of just evolve?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:01:56] I like that word. It was definitely catalytic. I was climbing the corporate ladder, always wanted to work in the world of television, and I did. I was behind the scenes in marketing and I started in radio and I loved it. It was a fast paced world. I for 12 years, I worked my way up to vice president of marketing for several television syndication companies. And it was my dream, or so I thought. And I really was not paying attention to my roots. I was an Italian first born daughter, first born here in the US, and family was very, very important to my family and I just didn’t have that get married and have children vibe. I had that businesswoman vibe, vibe. But one day, 12 years into this corporate career, I heard a voice in me, asked me a simple question, and it asked me if this is the next 30 years of your life, is this enough? And stone That stopped me cold because I never heard a voice from in me. I’d never considered anything else or really what I was missing. And the answer came just as quickly. You missed something really important. And I realized that although I didn’t want to get married and have kids right then and there, I needed children in my life. And I started reading in shelters and I never felt more grounded than at night after a crazy busy work day.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:03:28] To sit on the floor with these children who were brought in by police and social workers because of being hurt in so many ways. And I felt connected to them. And I felt connected to me. And I’d never felt that before. It took me a while to even use that word. I felt connected to them and to myself. And over time, reading to them, I got to know a little bit about the process. And when I saw them sleeping in their clothes for the first night, they were brought in and huddled together on futons and they had nothing. They were so afraid. I wanted to bring pajamas because I saw the bedtime I had flashed before me and when I did and I handed them out. Most of the children took them quietly, and one little girl was just afraid to take them. And in a moment or two, when I just gently prodded her to take them, she whispered to me, What are pajamas? And that changed everything. I nearly nearly fell over and I went right to the core of me. And I just realized I’ve been I’m the founder of Pajama Program. Now we’re celebrating 22 years. The experience of living. Your purpose has changed everything in my life. And I started talking and speaking on it, and that’s what I do now.

Stone Payton: [00:04:46] Yeah. So. So you’re out there, you’re speaking, you’re consulting. So who are you speaking to and consulting with?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:04:53] Well, it’s so funny because I was doing this while I was still executive director of Pajama Program, and I wanted that position to start to grow us. And after 20 years, I decided to go out on my own to speak about this experience and further it. And so I speak and I have always spoken to groups who are maybe looking for chapter two, who are unfulfilled in general about how to find your purpose and how it changes everything and how we have one. Every single one of us has one. It’s not just for the lucky few. And then in and after the pandemic was at its high, we all were reconsidering what we were doing. And even if you love your job, there’s a way there to communicate with your coworkers and the leaders of the company how to make it purposeful for everyone there to grow the company’s bottom line, to grow the companies camaraderie, to feel inspired. So even if you have a job, you can find your purpose.

Stone Payton: [00:05:56] It must be. It’s got to be incredibly rewarding work.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:06:03] You know. Yes. Rewarding. I don’t. There’s got to be a better word than rewarding because you feel like you belong exactly where you are. You feel like you are in the right skin. You feel like there are forces outside of you that are supporting you. The right people come. Now, when I started Pajama Program and I jumped and left my job, I had I had very little I was not a saver and it was very frightening. I had a lot of nights where I cried myself to sleep, afraid that what did I do and could I get all these children pajamas? And I didn’t even know what a 523 was. So I did it. I did it in a way that probably wasn’t easy. And I coached people on both. You know how I got through that and how to do it a little with a little less stress. But you still always feel like you are where you’re supposed to be and you will get through it. There’s just that knowing when you on your purpose.

Stone Payton: [00:07:03] So how does the whole and I recognize that that this is a nonprofit pursuit, but I still think this applies. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for for an organization like yours? Like how do you get a chance to get to do the work?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:07:20] Well, you have to balance doing the emotional work because I think for the most part, founders of nonprofits are are doing it because of an emotional experience and emotional attachment to what they’re doing. Right? So there’s balancing the need to tell people how important it is. Share your story, because all founders have a story of why they’re doing this with growing the financial aspect. It is a business the IRS is watching. People want to know the financials. People want to know how they’re making a difference. So there’s a balancing there that takes place. And you need and I needed we all do professionals, professional attorneys, professional CPAs, professional fundraisers, people who know how to run the business part with you while you’re telling the story and really working the mission part of it. And of course, you can make a living working in nonprofit. It’s a little different. You know, it’s different in a lot of ways, but it is a business.

Stone Payton: [00:08:25] So what has it been like moving through the pandemic, coming out of the pandemic? Has that had an impact on the way that you and your clients go to market?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:08:39] Definitely. I think leadership is changing. I think that was a very big part of the pandemic’s effect on all of us. I think I would say it’s used to be more of a military. When I was in my beginnings of the career, very military, like in a boss, said what he wanted you did with the boss wanted. And that’s how I accepted it. And I think over the years and certainly my starting something brand new, I was developing different leadership styles. And I think in the pandemic we all reflected on is that what I want to do? Going to work every day. Is that how I want my day to go? Is that the relationship I want with the people I work with and work for? And I think we’re all looking for more compassion and leaders who inspire us. And I think that that’s a very big difference now today versus three years ago and certainly versus ten or 15 years ago, the different leadership styles for us all.

Stone Payton: [00:09:43] Well, yeah, I suspect some things that may have worked very well for us before pre-pandemic. Now, these are terms, right? Pre-pandemic, but before maybe don’t services as as well now are trying to go forward. Yeah.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:09:59] Yes. Yes. I think we’ve all we all have our stories and they’re very valuable and I don’t think that we were raised, many of us, to share those stories. They were private, but people are sharing now and I think that’s a good thing. We want to find where we connect with each other. I don’t think we want to be on two sides, You know, the leaders over there and everyone else over here. I think we want to connect and interconnect and and intermingle and share and find the commonality because leaders want their teams to rally for them. And the teams employees all want to feel that they’re seen, that they matter, that somebody knows about them and values what they want and includes them. So I think in order to feel included on both sides, the leaders feeling they’re included in their entire team base and the team, the employees feeling like people see them and that they matter. I think that communication and that sharing is key more than ever now.

Stone Payton: [00:11:03] So are you finding that that the client is also seeking something different or or more from the the sales person and those relationships as well?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:11:15] Yes, I think I think all of us are looking for more from each other. Any relationship, personal or business? I think it’s about connection. And I talk a lot in my book about the human connection and how that’s the key to our success. Once you find your purpose, that human connection is going to take you home.

Stone Payton: [00:11:34] So this book, Purpose, Passion and Pajamas, I got to ask, did it did it come together for you pretty easily or were there some parts of the book that were more of a struggle to get committed to paper and articulating things the way you wanted to? What was that experience like writing this book?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:11:54] Well, I tried over the years many times, but Pajama Program took my attention 100%. So I started and stopped a while. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to pass the baton of executive directorship and the salary to someone who could take it. So the next 20 years and I wanted to write the book. So that’s what I did. The hardest part, I knew the message. I knew that I wanted to tell everyone, You have a purpose. Promise me you will. Look, I know. I promise you, you have a purpose. And if they feel there’s something missing in your life, there is. And go find it. And I’m here if you want to brainstorm. But the hardest part was the particulars of Pajama program and the children. I wanted to. I wanted everyone to understand the plight of these children and why it brought me to my knees and why I cried and why I didn’t want to to I wanted to take them all home, but I didn’t want to fill it with all of the devastating stories I heard and learned about. So that was that was difficult because I wanted to share so much and I wanted to be really sensitive to to everyone.

Stone Payton: [00:13:02] And so let’s offer the listeners a little bit of counsel, if we can, when they get their hands on this book. Do you do you have some recommendations on how to get the most out of it, how to how to utilize the the book?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:13:17] Sure, it’s a chronological story, but at the end of every chapter are a heart of the matter lessons and in the chapter proceeds it. There are two, three or four key points I want the reader to really own, and I list them at the back of every chapter. So it’s the heart of a matter of lessons that I learned that I want to share at the end of each chapter.

Stone Payton: [00:13:43] So you’ve done something that I’ll confess has been on my bucket list. You’ve conducted a TEDx talk. Say a little bit about that, what it was like to prep for it, what the experience was like, and and what you’ve found to to unfold after doing that.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:14:01] Well, I did it during the pandemic, which was very odd. So I do want to do another one live. And I was set to do one live. And then the pandemic hit and Ted came around and said, okay, hold on all the Ted X. So everybody held. And then when the pandemic didn’t end in six months or even a year, they came back and said, okay, we need to continue. Ted, is there need to be inspiring do them on video? Get a cameraman, do the professionally. Here’s the logo or whatever. We’ll will approve them once you send them in and then we’ll run them. That’s how I did mine. So it was a very surreal experience. I had did what they said. I got a professional cameraman, but I only had that person and my husband cheering me on. And my story is emotional as most Ted is, I think are you you want that feedback from the audience. You want to feel connected because you have a very personal message. So that was strange that I only had my husband and a cameraman there, and I was used to and still love speaking in front of an audience because of that feedback. But but I did okay. They approved it. It’s out. It’s gotten a decent amount of views. And it dovetails with my book and my story and my messages.

Stone Payton: [00:15:17] You are so well accomplished in your in your passion for for the work. It just it really comes through. Did you have the benefit of one or more mentors in your corporate career and or as your entrepreneurial journey was unfolding? Did you get a chance to work with some mentors that helped you navigate some of that terrain?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:15:43] I did. I did. I had a couple of them, but and I had a very good one in constant one whenever I needed to hurt in the nonprofit world when I started that. But early on, somebody gave me the best piece of advice that I give people because we all struggle when we’re trying to grow ourselves and our careers. We’re all trying to do that for the most part. And in addition to one person telling me, get paid on time, no excuses from anybody. And it sounds funny, but I stuck to that and it’s always worked. So that was a very simple piece of advice that I don’t know. Most people hear that from their mentor, but he said that to me and I promised him I would. But a very important exercise that someone told me about. I use it to this day and I’m actually looking at it right now. Stone They said, you know, those days when you think you can’t do it, when you’re doubting yourself, take out a piece of paper and handwrite every accomplishment that is impressive to you that not everyone else has done.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:16:48] Well, If you do that, if any of your listeners do that, I promise you you will be amazed at the list of things you’ve done that you would never have thought a year before, two years before you could have or would have done. And you know what? Most of those things on your list other people don’t do, most people don’t do. And I add to that list. And when I get down and I doubt my next move and I get paralyzed because I’m afraid to take a step and look at that list. And it just it just gives me inner strength to say, Oh, my goodness, look at that. Look at that. I walked out on that job because of something, the way that they were running it or or look at this thing I did when I didn’t think I had any money. How in the world that I all of a sudden get the money to do that? And it’s just empowering, empowering, and I will forever be grateful for that person telling me that.

Stone Payton: [00:17:45] Well, I am so glad that I asked because.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:17:48] I know if you haven’t yet.

Stone Payton: [00:17:51] That is an absolute pearl. So as I understand it, in your work with companies, you’re helping leaders really get a get a handle on this idea of shared culture and and goal alignment. I’d love to leave our listeners with a with a few I’ll call them Pro Tips. The number one pro tip is reach out to Genevieve. But you know between now and then maybe a few actionable items things we should be thinking about, things we should be reading or just some things to be thinking about if we want to be serious and focused. In intentional. Those of us who do have responsibility for generating results with and through other people. Are there some things that we can begin kind of doing on our own before we get our hands on your book and listen to your talk and reach out to you?

Genevieve Piturro: [00:18:44] Well, I created the Purpose Acer program, which I facilitate for leaders and teams, and there are several exercises in there and suggestions and things that I facilitate with them. But I think the communication and the sharing has been missing. I think that there are there’s a group in every organization of the up and coming leaders. They’re in the middle and the top brass can identify them and that group. Honestly, I can tell you where your leader’s going right, and where the leaders might be going off course, because they’re in a great position to either continue and make that company successful or take everything they’ve done in that place where they’re riding high and take it somewhere else. If they don’t feel seen and that their ideas aren’t being considered. So I think. A really great place to start is with your up and coming leaders to make sure they’re on board, to listen to what they need to stay and what they think you’re doing right and wrong. And it’s a scary thing. And it has been for many years for the leader to take a chance and sit down and get that personal. But that is an incredibly powerful group in your organization, Those up and coming leaders and then those that are hired have been hired within six months or a year of report card. How are we doing together? And people are clearly demanding that they be considered. That we see it in the job market. We see it in the change, we see in everything we read about corporate America. And I put that now in quotes. So I think those two groups we really have to pay attention to.

Stone Payton: [00:20:37] Okay, let’s make sure that our listeners have an easy path to have a conversation with you or someone on your team where they can access that TED talk, get their hands on this book, whatever you feel like is appropriate, whether it’s a LinkedIn or a website or email. I just want to make sure that folks can can reach out and connect with you.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:20:58] Thank you. Stone Well, my website has everything Genevieve Pinterest.com and Short LinkedIn has everything to.

Stone Payton: [00:21:07] Well, Genevieve, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show. Thank you so much for for investing the time and energy to join us. And thank you for the work you’re doing. Incredibly important work, and we sincerely appreciate you.

Genevieve Piturro: [00:21:24] Oh, thank you. And thank you again for asking me to share share my story. I so appreciate it.

Stone Payton: [00:21:30] All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Genevieve Petro and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Sherita Buford with Euphoria Noir

October 11, 2022 by angishields

Buy a Business Near Me

Sherita Buford with Euphoria Noir

00:00 /

Sherita Buford is with Think Pink Hot Shot & Transportation Service LLC, a woman-owned, full service logistics company located in the Houston Metroplex area.

Over the last 20 years Think Pink has grown into a diversified, multi-state logistics and fuel provider, delivering highly professional services and resources to its ever growing customer base.

Think Pink Hot Shot & Transportation Services has a combination of experience and expertise within the industry which allows us to provide the quality and assurance to maximize the best results in the market for our customers.

Connect with Sherita on LinkedIn and follow Think Pink on Twitter and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me, brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:32] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business near Me. Stone Payton here with you this morning. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Euphoria Noir Ms.Sherita Buford. How are you?

Sherita Buford : [00:00:51] Oh, I am great. How are you guys?

Stone Payton: [00:00:53] Oh, we are doing well. And it’s such a pleasure to get a chance to visit with you today. You have so many irons in the fire, as my daddy would say. So many plates spinning. But today we’re going to get a chance to talk a little bit about the green rush. But before we dive into some specific questions and topics, maybe it would be a good idea to share with our listeners, You know, mission purpose, What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks with this effort?

Sherita Buford : [00:01:22] Well, we’re just trying to make sure that everyone that’s getting into this green rush is properly informed on the policy and procedures and most of the laws and the guidelines. So we’re just trying to give them a starting point and make sure they’re educated and kind of, you know, cultivate what they’re doing. Kind of do a little mentorship and make sure that this green rush is what they call and it gets out to the right people, the right resources, the right banks, the right financial institutions, just basically some good old fashioned just starting it up from the ground up.

Stone Payton: [00:01:57] Well, I’ll tell you something else that would be helpful for me personally, and I think it would be good for the listeners as well. Maybe you can help us get a handle on some different terms, like hemp. Then there’s CBD and there’s these Delta nine strains. It’s all it’s a lot. So can you give us a little bit of an idea about those people?

Sherita Buford : [00:02:17] Label it different ways. I think that it’s all a derivative of hemp is sort of speak when you say the CBD, the Delta nine, the Delta eight and the few different strains they have. It’s all a derivative of the health. And so people have their choice on, you know, some people like the Delta eight because of the smoother taste or the way it makes you feel. Some people like the calming effects of the Delta nine, So it’s really a personal preference, but they’re all derived from one plant, which is the hemp. And so it’s just became a little bit more popular to say, Hey, I like the Delta eight strand versus the seven versus the nine, or there are a few additional new strands out. I mean, we really can’t keep up. These guys are very creative with these strands and and they’re healing properties and their medicinal and non medicinal reasons as well. So it’s basically it’s the same thing. People just have their preference on what they like.

Stone Payton: [00:03:12] Now it’s my understanding there are some regulatory things still in place. You got to jump through a few hoops and get some things organized before you can get into this business. Is that the case in Texas and what does it take to get your.

Sherita Buford : [00:03:28] Definitely, definitely. So what our group does is basically we sit you down with a consultation and we make sure, one, that you’re lawfully able to achieve the goals that you set forth. So there is like some legalities that you go over just to make sure that, you know, you’re in compliance. And then once we go through that, we basically develop a business plan starting from the basically the bottom bottom on getting their retail license, making sure there are spaces. We just basically go over a plan. And so once we do that, we start with the licensors for first. After we do that, then we just basically we follow the plan that we came in and they put together. So if they say, Hey, I’m looking to get into this business, we first go over the legalities with just checking the state website. I’m proud to say Mr. Miller and his team has a very mapped out on the website. They have YouTube videos, basic instructions. I mean, our Department of Agriculture really supports us when it comes to getting in this line of business. So that is a very good place to start. But if they don’t know how to start, even on those websites, they can come to us and we can walk them through the whole process.

Stone Payton: [00:04:34] So how in the world did you get started in this line of business? What’s the what’s the back story on you?

Sherita Buford : [00:04:43] Well, the back story is, as you can see, the name Euphoria in the war. It’s basically I started out doing brokering. And so I’m a very, very, very strong advocate of breast cancer and cancer survival survivalists. So now the new term that we use is warrior. So after going in some conversation with some warriors we were looking for, I guess you would say, a holistic approach to cancer treatments. And so what we came on was a lot of our holistic doctors were using CBD, hemp and THC to combat some of the symptoms before and after chemo treatments. And some of them they didn’t even receive chemo treatments. They also said that they received benefits. So after searching it for the. Answer. I found out that there was a lot more things as far as building materials, construction properties, just basic. It’s a sustainable resource for us as well. Not only does it have holistic approaches to alien symptoms, so that’s basically how I got into it, consulting with some of my warriors who were survivors and they they introduced me to this. And so we started out with taking shakes, edibles to naturals, oils, and it actually helped me as well. And I’m using it based off a holistic approach. So that’s how I got into it. Just basically looking for a healthy alternative.

Stone Payton: [00:06:08] Yeah. And with your background in brokerage, you probably have a pretty good handle on helping people even get funded. Yeah.

Sherita Buford : [00:06:20] Oh, definitely. So there are several. What people don’t understand is that it’s several different programs that they can go to that offer grants, sponsorships. There’s a lot. So when you deal with the help, it depends on what phase or what your plan is or what your goal is. I should sort of speak because we all start with the plan, but we have to have a goal. They have so many resources through the United States Department of Agriculture because you’re actually saying that you want to produce on the United States land. So they will help you. They will give you the resources that you need. You just have to know what you want because it’s such a broad area, but you’re actually cultivating soil. Our partner with some of the local colleges that do agriculture, and they’re always eager to help to send volunteers. So there’s there’s a lot of good stuff involved in it. It makes you feel good, too, because you’re actually growing. And I’m not a growing person. I like to go to the grocery store and it’s all done for.

Stone Payton: [00:07:18] Well, it does sound like very rewarding work. What do you enjoy the most about it?

Sherita Buford : [00:07:26] What I enjoy most is I get to be a cool kid. I never was the cool kid. I was a nerd kid. So when you start talking about CBD and THC with the kids, I have college kids that actually call me and say, Hey, you know, I want to know if I take this class. Will you be able to help me, you know, when I’m finished? So it kind of puts you on a cool rush with your college kids. If you have them or their friends, it gives you something different to talk about because not many people are easy with talking about it, but it’s something that they’re doing and, you know, pretty much every state. So now that Texas has taken a part in it, I think it’s actually an interesting conversation, which makes me kind of like the conversational piece now amongst my peers.

Stone Payton: [00:08:09] So as you’re sitting down with folks, some who may be very knowledgeable about the product in May or may not have a great deal of experience getting a business off the ground, I bet you see some patterns like some of the same things that are missing or the some of the same questions or misconceptions. Has that been the case where you where you see some things over and over and you’re like, Yep, I’ve heard this before and here are some things you need to think about.

Sherita Buford : [00:08:39] Yes. So we get a lot of people to come in and they come in like, hey, I seen about seven retail stores. You know, this is what we want to do. They have a misconception of just jumping in and putting it on your shelf. Like I said, there’s policy and procedures. We sit them down, we consult with them. They can come by our office, they can come by our location. We have a full staff that they do an intake interview and based upon their intake interview, then we, you know, like I said, we call them back in or real soon, and we’ll basically go over that plan and show them what they’re missing or basically how to put the pieces to the puzzle together so they can see their pathway on how to get started.

Stone Payton: [00:09:17] So in this business of yours and in consulting in the past with with other entrepreneurs and brokering businesses, did you have the benefit of a of a mentor or two that kind of helped you learn the terrain?

Sherita Buford : [00:09:34] Well, actually, not really. The mentors, I would say, would be probably my holistic guide. And these were just a group of ladies who have a group and they were basically we just got together and we self-taught. And by me having a background dealing with government services for procurement and brokering, it just kind of like fell into place. I just kind of start looking around. And maybe for the last two years I’ve just been doing my research, following up with my organizations, making sure I stay in the network with all of the groups. The advocates were actually on board. This month, we’re going to Austin for a two day training and sessions. So you just have to basically it’s self taught because it’s not really many people out here right now that can share the information or even have privy to knowing the information. And I’ve just been on this board for so long because I do do projects through the USDA that it just so happened to be that this was just maybe just a door I just had to open in the room that I was already in.

Stone Payton: [00:10:33] So how does the whole sales and marketing thing? It’s kind of a two part question. How does the whole sales and marketing process work for you in this business of helping launch these businesses? And then how does the sales and marketing thing work for for these businesses?

Sherita Buford : [00:10:56] Well, I’m not really a sales and marketing manager, but from what I’m hearing, word of mouth in social media is like 90% of how these people are taking like rocket into the top. So I think you have to have a really good social media presence and then you have to know your audience. And I think they just go after them because these places are I mean, if you’re in Texas and you’ve been here for a little while, you know, within the last year, there’s one at least every 90 days you’re seeing a new location open up. So the way that I believe, like I said, I’m not a marketing specialist, but I do know that social media and word of mouth is just it’s running rampant right now.

Stone Payton: [00:11:35] Well, it makes perfect other thing. Yeah, go ahead.

Sherita Buford : [00:11:38] You’re right. And so the second part of your question.

Stone Payton: [00:11:43] Yeah. I was just wondering how how the sales and marketing worked for you. Like, how do you get to have conversations with these people and, and maybe it’s the same way.

Sherita Buford : [00:11:53] Yeah, it is. And then too, like I say, I stay in the emails, I stay in the network, I stay in the know how or, you know, I, I consult them once my peers, basic email texts, group chats, the group chats and the social media are awesome. So basically I don’t do any promoting, so to speak, because everybody that I know is is really pretty much a heavy social media presence and they kind of do the promoting for me or say, Hey, if you’re looking into this industry, you know, go holler at my girl over here in Missouri City or Sugarland, Texas, and she can help you guys. You know, she’s offering consulting this week or they’ll pretty much they’ll just give me the I guess, the marketing ploy so I need so I really don’t do anything. What then? It’s guys like yourself that are opening up people as well.

Stone Payton: [00:12:43] What a fantastic strategy. And it’s you know, I know for me, if I’m shopping for anything, I’m going to go to my circle and I’m going to ask their recommendations. So, I mean, that sounds like a solid approach to me.

Sherita Buford : [00:12:57] Yeah, you have to. You have to look to your team and look to your inner your inner circle for your Zen, because, you know, you might have somebody that you think like, hey, you know, they’re just a manager over here, but they might know ten people that actually, you know, might have something to offer. So you have to just basically take stock of your inventory because sometimes your biggest network are your peers.

Stone Payton: [00:13:19] So we touched on this formal process and I would certainly advocate, look, if you’re going to go through any kind of process that involves regulation and credentialing work with with someone like Sarita who has the the experience base and the skill set to help you navigate that, It’s just a that makes all the sense in the world. Now, is there as part of that, is there a a pre-approval piece to this at all where you can at least sort of stack the deck in your favor a little bit?

Sherita Buford : [00:13:50] Yes. If you come in or if you call or if you email, there’s a criteria based list. What I was telling you about where it’s some standard things that are government regulated, where you have to meet that criteria for us to even accept you. And we also involve that in our in our intake interview as well. We let them know, hey, if you guys can get past this point, then we’re welcome to accept you as a client. But we can’t do anything about the government regulated part. But should I say, it’s not that hard? I mean, this program is actually open to a lot of people who think like, hey, you know, I’ve done something in my teenage life or, you know, we’ve all had those college nights up and, you know, we’re saying, oh, God, you know, we don’t care about 20 years in the future. Now we’re about 20 years in the future. Hey, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just a basic guideline. If you are like someone like me and had a good time and you’re, you know, five or six years in college, don’t worry about it. I’m pretty sure we’re grandparents and we’re, you know, we’re grown at this point. So I tell people, don’t get discouraged. Just let me send you the criteria list.

Sherita Buford : [00:14:57] And so far, we’ve had maybe like two out of ten that didn’t meet the criteria. I mean, it’s really, really easy. The state of Texas wants people to get involved. The Department of Agriculture wants you to get involved because we’re sustaining ourself on American soil. So that’s like if you’re somebody like me who, you know, we love making products that we make on our on our own soil and we manufacture, we sell, then you would love this. And like I said, the criteria are basic. We’ll send you a list of all the government rules and regulations and what the do’s and don’ts were in your intake interview. And like I said, maybe two out of ten. So I always tell people, Hey, give it a shot. It doesn’t cost you anything but an email or a phone call and we’ll send you what they have on the website so you don’t have to look for it. We have it all downloaded for you. You can send us an email or book an appointment and we’ll give it to you. And like I said, as long as they can pass the criteria, they’re pretty much good to go. We’ll hold their hand through the whole process.

Stone Payton: [00:16:01] So are there opportunities evolving for someone like me maybe, who may want to invest in a startup like that? Because I see the market potential, but I don’t really want to run my own chopper or anything. Is there a platform or a channel or a way to invest in some of these startups? Have you have you seen that?

Sherita Buford : [00:16:24] Yes, Yes. We have a lot of people who have representatives that approach us and they just want to know how could they be? How could they get involved? We have an affiliation program. We’re not franchising because of the industry that it is. You have to be careful. But we do offer an affiliation program which allows you to come in and speak with our team. They will show you the legalities of it. They’ll sit down and they’ll strategize. They’ll show you the funding that you have available. They’ll show you basically, we’ll give you the structure set up so you’ll know what your risk is, whether it’s on the low end or the high end, or show you the financial institutions that get involved with us will show you all the regulations, because what a lot of people don’t know is when you get into this industry and you’re on it on the medical side, there are split spending accounts that will cover your bills. There’s also insurance plans that will cover your bill. But you have to know how to go into the system. You have to know the doctors and the network. So we show them all the back end so they’ll know the risk coming in. And then we also show them the people that have already been set up by the government who can consult, pass what our knowledge is.

Sherita Buford : [00:17:35] We also give them referrals to those as well. We show you the financial institutions that will offer you services like delayed page or payment plans because there’s a lot of people, you know, like let’s just say the average guy goes out, he’s a maybe a garbage collector, he’s jumping on it off that truck. He didn’t realize that, you know, after 40, you know, your bones don’t work the same as they did ten years ago when he started. So he may want some CBD oil, but hey, he doesn’t have the extra, but he has an insurance plan that might cover some of them. And that’s what we have people in our office to sit down and go over insurance policies until those as well. So a lot of investors get in on the medical or the wellness side and they find it very lucrative to what they’ve already been doing. And that’s what we offer you guys. Like it’s it’s so it’s so many ways that you can go down this avenue for the green rush. That’s why we always do an intake interview and we find out if you’re on the investor side or if you’re just looking to, like you say, just put a little money up to see what turns out.

Stone Payton: [00:18:35] Before we wrap, this question is a little more about entrepreneurship in general. So many of our listeners on the business radio network are early stage entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs. So my question really, it’s about inspiration. When you I mean, you’re obviously a very upbeat person, you’re very passionate about what you’re doing. But but I know you’re human. And when when it’s time to recharge the batteries, where do you go? How do you how do you sort of rekindle the fire when it’s time to do that?

Sherita Buford : [00:19:08] Well, I looked at the statistics, so if I look at something, um, I look at the statistics and I look at what it can do. So a lot of people have a misconception. So when I look at something, I say, Hey, let me find out for myself. Let me see what good this can do. Let me see how it makes me feel. And, you know, honestly speaking, what’s the minimum cost to get involved? So that’s the big thing, too. You say, hey, to invest in this product, it might take 25,000 or to invest in CBD and help. You know, I can start out with under $5,000 while, you know, or it may be something that someone said to me like they say, hey, you know, I had a you know, one of euphoria shakes, which is a dragon fruit, immune boosting shake. And it was, you know, line with CBD that’ll give me like, hey, well, maybe it was a CBD or maybe it was the dragon fruit. It’s just self interest. How much sweat equity you’re willing to pour into something that you have. And I just tell people just, you know, go for your dream, find something that you like. I’ve never been anywhere that they didn’t say we have any CBD products.

Sherita Buford : [00:20:16] You can walk into your gas station, your Walmart, your your massage parlor, you know, everywhere, it said. And so that sparks my interest. And that’s the stuff that keeps me going. Like, Hey, I want to know what’s going on. It’s everywhere. But I don’t hear it talked about a lot. So that’s something that I go after. I don’t know if that answers the question, but, you know, that’s the way that I go after it. I’ve seen it. It’s, you know, my kids come home from college, Hey, we want a CBD bath bomb to take a better bath. You know, I’m interested. I’m actually investing in a product that I don’t know about. And, you know, my from my kids to my peers, they’re like, hey, you know, you should try the shampoo or, you know, there’s hemp clothing. You know, it’s just something that you have to have a self interest in. And it’s not a heavy startup. So that makes it enticing. And it’s just something that you you know, like I said, it’s very interesting to go into it and find out that it has so many medical properties as well as the medicinal as well.

Stone Payton: [00:21:16] Oh, no, it absolutely answers the question. Okay, let’s make sure that our listeners have a way to learn more, get in touch with you or somebody on your team. So let’s let’s leave them with some coordinates. Whatever you feel like is appropriate, whether it’s email or website or LinkedIn. I just want to make sure that folks can connect with you and learn more.

Sherita Buford : [00:21:36] Yes, yes, yes. So actually, I do have a LinkedIn and I have all the social media platforms and we have people that activate them. So if you guys want to go ahead and follow it, sink pink, hot shot service on every platform, you can also search for Sarita Buford on LinkedIn or you can look for a think tank hot shot service across all boards LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as well.

Stone Payton: [00:22:09] Well, Sarita, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show today. Thank you so much for investing the time and energy.

Sherita Buford : [00:22:19] Thank you so much for having me. And like I said, thank you so much and I really enjoyed it.

Stone Payton: [00:22:25] All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Sarita Buford with Euphoria and and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you next time on Buy a Business near me.