Search Results for: marketing matters

Beyond Numbers: How Frazier & Deeter Invests in Relationships, with Jessie Broussard and Donna Beatty, Frazier & Deeter

March 7, 2025 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Beyond Numbers: How Frazier & Deeter Invests in Relationships, with Jessie Broussard and Donna Beatty, Frazier & Deeter

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Beyond Numbers: How Frazier & Deeter Invests in Relationships, with Jessie Broussard and Donna Beatty, Frazier & Deeter (North Fulton Business Radio, Episode 852)

In this episode of North Fulton Business Radio, host John Ray interviews Jessie Broussard, Chief Marketing Officer, and Donna Beatty, Tax Partner at Frazier & Deeter. The discussion highlights the evolution of Frazier & Deeter from a traditional accounting firm to a multifaceted advisory firm. Topics covered include the firm’s commitment to client relationships, the integration of technology like AI, and the recent rebranding efforts focused on maintaining client trust while evolving with modern times. The conversation also touches upon the importance of internal culture and recruiting in maintaining the firm’s growth and success. Listen to learn how Frazier & Deeter continues to innovate and serve their clients’ diverse needs while fostering a dynamic and supportive workplace.

John Ray is the host of North Fulton Business Radio. The show is produced by John Ray and North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®, and recorded inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

Jessie Broussard, Chief Marketing Officer, Frazier & Deeter

Jessie Broussard was named Frazier & Deeter’s first Chief Marketing Officer in 2024, marking a significant milestone for the firm’s strategic growth. With more than 15 years of corporate marketing and leadership experience, she specializes in B2B marketing, advertising and sales enablement, along with a background in talent and organizational development. Her expertise spans brand development, demand generation and client engagement across professional services, technology and telecommunications sectors.

Known for leading high-performing teams, Broussard has developed marketing strategies that fuel business growth and innovation. Her leadership plays a key role in advancing Frazier & Deeter’s market presence and strengthening client relationships. A graduate of the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor of Arts in History, she has been recognized for her expertise in strategic communications and sales marketing in the B2B sector.

Donna Beatty, Tax Partner, Frazier & Deeter

Donna Beatty, a Partner in Frazier & Deeter’s Tax Practice, brings extensive professional tax and accounting expertise to the firm. Her experience includes providing comprehensive tax planning, review, advisory, and compliance services to closely held businesses, high-net-worth individuals, and professional services groups. She has significant expertise consulting with small businesses on financial software and has worked with clients across various industries, including real estate, construction, manufacturing and distribution, retail, professional services, technology, entertainment, and family-owned businesses.

Donna specializes in assisting law firms and real estate investment groups with complex tax matters. Her broad industry knowledge enables her to offer valuable insights in an evolving market. She has successfully represented clients before the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C., showcasing her ability to navigate challenging tax scenarios.

A hallmark of Donna’s career is her commitment to building strong professional relationships with her clients. She thrives on understanding and meeting their needs and expectations. Before 1994, Donna served as a Principal at Frazier & Deeter before transitioning to a partner role at a small local accounting firm. She rejoined Frazier & Deeter in January 2010 to better serve her clients.

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Donna is actively involved in civic and professional organizations. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), the Georgia Society of Certified Public Accountants (GSCPA), and the Atlanta Tax Forum, where she serves as a Board Member and Past President. She is also a Board Vice President for the Better Business Bureau Serving Metro Atlanta, Athens & Northeast Georgia, and a Board Member and Past Chair of the C5 Georgia Youth Foundation. Furthermore, Donna serves as a director on the board of the Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia (CFNEG), contributing to initiatives that strengthen communities through leadership and charitable giving while supporting nonprofits and fostering meaningful connections between donors and causes.

Frazier & Deeter

Frazier & Deeter, founded in 1981 by Jim Frazier and David Deeter, is a prominent accounting and advisory firm that has grown from its Atlanta roots to become one of the largest and fastest-growing firms in the United States. The founders, dissatisfied with the rigid and impersonal approach of their Big Eight firms, set out to create a company that prioritized client relationships and hired curious professionals eager to understand their clients on a deeper level.

Over the past four decades, Frazier & Deeter has attracted talent from the world’s largest accounting firms, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and prestigious colleges. Today, it stands as a Top 50 firm with a presence in three countries, maintaining its commitment to client-centric service.

The firm’s success is attributed to its brand promise of “Investing in Relationships to Make a Difference™,” which has earned it numerous accolades. These include recognition as a Best of the Best Accounting firm, Best Firm for Women, Fastest Growing, and Best Firm to Work For.

Frazier & Deeter offers a comprehensive range of services, including tax, audit, risk advisory, digital, and business transformation solutions. Its client base spans from Fortune Global 500 companies to small businesses worldwide. The firm is registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, underscoring its commitment to maintaining high professional standards.

Website | LinkedIn |Facebook | Instagram

Topics Discussed in this Episode

00:00 Introduction and Welcome to North Fulton Business Radio
00:33 Meet Jessie Broussard and Donna Beatty
01:52 Frazier & Deeter: Beyond Traditional Accounting
07:16 The Role of Technology and AI
11:50 Brand Refresh and Employer Branding
24:22 Client Success Stories and Firm Growth
29:11 Closing Remarks and Contact Information

About North Fulton Business Radio and host John Ray

With over 850 shows and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in our community like no one else. We are the undisputed “Voice of Business” in North Fulton!

The show invites a diverse range of business, non-profit, and community leaders to share their significant contributions to their market, community, and profession. There’s no discrimination based on company size, and there’s never any “pay to play.” North Fulton Business Radio supports and celebrates business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignore. Some media lean left. Some media lean right. We lean business.

John Ray, host of North Fulton Business Radio, and Owner, Ray Business Advisors — **John Ray, host of *North Fulton Business Radio*, and Owner, Ray Business Advisors**

The studio address is 275 South Main Street, Alpharetta, GA 30009.

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, and many others.

John Ray also operates his own business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their value, their positioning and business development, and their pricing. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as consultants, coaches, attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

John is the national bestselling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.

Strength in Unity: How the Greater Perimeter Chamber Supports Diverse Business Needs

March 4, 2025 by angishields

Chamber Spotlight

Strength in Unity: How the Greater Perimeter Chamber Supports Diverse Business Needs

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In this episode of Chamber Spotlight, Adam Forrand, President and CEO of the Greater Perimeter Chamber, and Bernadette Pannier, Director of Strategic Membership Investment, discuss the merger of the Dunwoody and Sandy Springs Perimeter Chambers into the Greater Perimeter Chamber. Adam explains the decade-long rationale for the unification, emphasizing a stronger network and better resources for businesses. Bernadette highlights the Chamber’s support for both small and large enterprises, focusing on personalized assistance, community engagement, and fostering connections. The merger aims to create a thriving business ecosystem, advocating for local businesses and encouraging community involvement.

Adam Forrand, President of the Greater Perimeter Chamber, is a master of relationships. It’s a skill that enables him to sit down at an initial client meeting and come away with a clear sense of who everyone is, where they’re coming from, and what their goals are.

It’s a skill that helps him use that knowledge to map out ways that various and often competing needs just might fit together in a solution.

And it’s a skill that mixes well with Adam’s abundance of creative energy, leading to innovative ideas to meet those needs. And with Adam, an unrepentant optimist who says “opportunity” a lot, there is always a solution. Always.

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn.

Bernadette Pannier is the Director of Strategic Membership Investment at the Greater Perimeter Chamber.

Connect with Bernadette on LinkedIn and follow the Greater Perimeter Chamber on Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Greater Perimeter. It’s time for Greater Perimeter Chamber Spotlight. Now. Here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Chamber Spotlight. So excited to be talking to some of the leadership team at the Greater Perimeter Chamber. I got Adam Forrand President and CEO and Bernadette Pannier, who is the Director of Strategic Membership Investment. Welcome.

Adam Forrand: Hey, Lee.

Bernadette Pannier: Hey hey.

Lee Kantor: Hey, hey.

Lee Kantor: So I’m going to just throw this out to the room. Let’s talk a little bit about kind of this merger that happened, the coming together of two chambers into the new Greater Perimeter chamber.

Adam Forrand: Yes. We have taken what has been a long conversation, a long period spanning a decade or more, honestly, of two municipally focused chambers, the Dunwoody Perimeter Chamber and the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber, and in service to our members to scale and to grow, to provide a greater, stronger network, more resources to serve our members. We have unified into a single regional chamber.

Lee Kantor: So now can you talk about the why behind it? Like there’s city chambers all over the place, but this kind of a regional chamber is there’s a transition involved. Right now. It’s thinking from city to region. Can you talk about the why behind it? Yeah.

Adam Forrand: The why for us is unique in contextualized to this geography as well. When you think of chambers and other parts of the nation, other communities, there’s good reason why a city or a regional chamber would be formed in terms of a boundaries or service area. In our particular case, the central perimeter marketplace has been known nationally for years and years before cityhood for our two respective cities. So as an economy, as a marketplace. There’s there’s maturity. There is equity in the perimeter. And given the fact that we have a significant amount of fortune 500 companies based here, it is a we are a known community, a known business community. And cityhood provided a great opportunity for us to rally around ensuring that our futures within our cities are directed by the residents that are that are managed appropriately. Each city wanted to have a chamber for themselves as well, which is understandable. But as cityhood and those services to the community mature, the service to the business community needed to mature as well. And so this unification of what were two city focused chambers into a more regional chamber that reflects a region that is well recognized nationally, just made sense.

Lee Kantor: And Bernadette, in your role, can you talk about how this region, how do you see it, and what do you see as kind of the best way to serve it for me.

Bernadette Pannier: When I moved here a little over ten years ago, Sandy Springs was my home. So it’s it’s got a special place in my heart because it’s where I started here. It’s what formed my love for this area in Georgia. And coming here and seeing all of the businesses that have moved here and the brick and mortars that are coming back to life, the new developments that are in the area and the dedication of the city management. You can tell that this area is really thriving. And when you hear stories from the individual mayors about how Sandy Springs has less than 3% retail space available at this time for rentals and purchase, that’s a big deal. It’s there’s a reason why businesses like Mercedes Benz are here. They’re it’s thriving. It’s fun, it’s young, it’s inviting. And I’m really excited about the future of what this area is going to be like. You know, it’s it used to be just known for the mall and now it’s known so much more.

Lee Kantor: Now, how, uh, the the region is, is so diverse in terms of the types of businesses here. Like you mentioned, Mercedes Benz, there’s you know, I don’t know how many, but lots of fortune 500 headquarters are here. There’s a lot of kind of enterprise level organizations that hire, you know, that employ a lot of people. They serve a global marketplace, but they’re based here. But then you have, like you mentioned, when there’s only 3% space left, there’s lots of mom and pop, you know, people out there grinding, just trying to, you know, you know, run a restaurant or a hardware store or a hair salon. So how do you create value for each of them and encourage each of those constituencies to become part of the chamber?

Bernadette Pannier: I think the main thing is eyes on them. That assistance that we give for them to be able to have that additional set of eyes, that additional marketing, that additional advertising, that additional support really makes a difference. There is a brand new, uh, taqueria that’s opening in the area here. It’s a family owned restaurant. This isn’t their first restaurant that they’ve owned or opened, but as they’ve gone through the process, the daughters reached out a few times. And every now and then, I think it’s just to be able to talk it out to me and know that she can do that. She can pick up the phone and say, okay, we’re doing inspections tomorrow, and I’m really nervous and I’m not really sure about this. And for me to be able to listen to her and say, do you need me to come? Do you want me to just come hold your hand? Those are the things that I think that they don’t necessarily get in other areas, or from other businesses or membership environments. Right. The chamber is a place that we want you to come for the support that you need, no matter the support. If you’re having problems with your sign getting approved, I can’t necessarily say the phone call I’m going to make is going to help that process happen, but maybe I can find out why it’s sitting on somebody’s desk. Right.

Lee Kantor: It’s not going to hurt.

Bernadette Pannier: It’s not going to hurt for me to make a phone call or send a text message on your behalf as the owner of that restaurant, and if it’s me using you or the chamber, using you as a caterer for your restaurant, or putting an event in your restaurant or your place of business, or if it’s you needing additional education. A lot of small business owners restaurants specifically fail because they got into the industry with the education that they didn’t have. And for us, we come from a place of education. So we specifically curate these leadership programs to make sure that you are going to have the foundation and the chaptered information that you need to be successful.

Lee Kantor: So what are some of the changes as it turns into a regional chamber from individual city chambers? When it comes to maybe some of the benefits to the members, is there going to be more education? Is there going to be more kind of mixers, networkers like, what’s your vision of how you see kind of the value to each of the membership, no matter what level they are. Um.

Adam Forrand: It’s about scale. Uh, is definitely for us that the stronger network, the bigger network, the the accumulation and aggregation of partners and resources are two chambers had complementary sets of of networks and resources so that when we combine them, both memberships got the benefit of, of that scale and that growth. Ultimately, when we talk about scale and growth and stronger networks and stronger resources, it also acknowledges the fact that doing business in DeKalb County in Dunwoody is different than doing business in Fulton and Sandy Springs as well. And so we are also here to help navigate the nuanced differences between the two as well, recognizing that in these communities, they are unique and they are different. We’re here to celebrate them and to also, uh, navigate and operate with them within them as well. And so whether you’re a small business just starting out, whether you are a large global enterprise as well, where you are rooted matters and it is our job to know how and where that matter meets the rubber, where the rubber meets the road on those matters. Right.

Lee Kantor: So now, Bernadette, when you’re going and talking to the the different constituents, kind of give me your elevator pitch for maybe a mom and pop versus an elevator pitch for enterprise.

Bernadette Pannier: For the smaller businesses, the scaling businesses. My conversation normally starts with the what do you feel like you’re missing? Where do you feel like you need the support? Those usually answer a lot of the questions. For me, I tend to do a lot more listening than I do asking questions when I’m talking to the smaller retail space owners and things like that in the area, because they all need something different. Some of them just want a ribbon cutting. That’s all they want. They want to celebrate this huge moment that to them, is just as important as their baby gender reveal or their baby shower. Right. So sometimes that’s just what it is. They come to me and say, listen, I just want the ribbon cutting. That’s all I really want. That’s fine. Absolutely. I will come and celebrate anything you want me to celebrate. Sometimes it’s. I really do need some help with advertising. I need some help with traffic. Well, we have availability on our website for you to be able to put that information on our hot deals page, on our job boards, on our calendar, so that people can see where you’re located and what you’re doing. Other times, it’s about being part of the ecosystem, and that usually drives my conversation when I’m talking to larger companies. If I’m talking to those companies that are in that 5 million and above, it’s about what are you doing for your community? You moved in here.

Bernadette Pannier: You built this beautiful building. You put 500 extra bodies into our traffic. And now what are you doing? Have you invested in the local nonprofits? Have you figured out how to plant trees. Are you trying to drive additional things back to the community? Whatever you do as a business, what are you giving back? Are you going into the schools or are you doing the things that you need to do? Are you dropping off food for our police and for our fire departments? So a lot of times when I talk to the larger companies, it’s about being part of the ecosystem. It’s about being part of the bigger conversation about where the sidewalks are going and where Marta is making stops and how the busses are running. Those are the larger conversations they need to be in, because they make more of an investment in the city financially than the smaller companies will. So it’s about making them understand why we’re important and why we can help drive legislation forward in the area, and that these two cities are sisters. They touch in a bunch of different ways, and most companies don’t sit there and say, I only want to sell in Sandy Springs. I only want to sell in Dunwoody. I don’t want to sell in the other city. They want to be able to bring traffic from one to the other.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re talking to them, um. And, Adam, correct me if I’m wrong. When an enterprise level organization joins the chamber, all their everybody joins the chamber, right? It’s not just the senior leadership, right?

Adam Forrand: It is not for all of our members, the businesses, the member, but the representatives. All the employees are members as well. And so whether it is the small, family owned business, we want to be sure that every member of that family in that business has the opportunity and knows that that all services, all supports, all activities, all programs, all events are for every single one of them. And so we start talking about, uh, we talked about this yesterday actually, how depending regardless of the size of the enterprise, there will be salespeople, business development people who would be the best, uh, participants to engage in some of our sales and marketing supports and services. If you’re trying to advance young professionals, we’ve got programs for them. If you’ve got finance professionals, we’re hosting a webinar next week about forecasting in uncertain times, right. The finance and accounting professionals on the team need to know that, hey, we’ve got an additional opportunity for you to learn from another expert, perhaps outside of your sector or your domain or even your own organization, to give you some fresh perspective. And so we’re working hard to identify who our target audiences are, how we tag them within our membership. Because the whole membership within the whole organization, every individual in that organization who is a member can benefit from the things that we do.

Lee Kantor: Membership has its benefits. Huh? It does.

Adam Forrand: Indeed.

Lee Kantor: Now, um, can these enterprise level organizations connect with you and then make recommendations like, hey, it would be great if we had this type of, uh, you know, education Available. Are you open to having those kind of conversations?

Adam Forrand: Absolutely. We’ve had a smaller member, not necessarily a large global enterprise, come to us with his particular expertise in sustainability, with a particular focus that he wants to ensure that even smaller businesses can operate more efficiently, more effectively through sustainable practices. And so he takes his big corporate experience. Even though he is the owner operator of Hounds Town Sandy Springs. His background has ensured that his business operates sustainably and incredibly economically efficient, that he wants to champion that for fellow members as well. And so thus was born our new focus on sustainability and sustainability resources thanks to Kevin Brown. And so those suggestions, those ideas, particularly when when brought with action and support, are always welcome.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any story you can share? I know it’s a new kind of Uh, coming together. But maybe in your experience in the chamber, working in the chambers, where a success story where a member came to you, maybe at one size and then, you know, joined the chamber and then that helped fuel their growth?

Adam Forrand: Well, we had at our orientation just a couple of weeks ago, we had a solopreneur single employee organization, a bookkeeper who had been with us socially for a couple events and was waiting for the New Year to make that investment in her membership, uh, and came to her first official orientation as a member and stood up in the middle of the event and said, I just want everyone to know that, because now that I was on the directory of members that I picked up two new clients, uh, just because of the trust that was conveyed through membership. And so in that transition from nonmember to member, and her recognizing that that membership does have its benefits and the trust that is parlayed through membership as an Active Now member on our roster earned her two new clients. Um, just by joining. Um, and so, you know, she was over the moon. She was thrilled. It was an immediate ROI for her. Um, and, you know, whether it’s a single employee solopreneur opportunity or if we’re talking about exponential growth versus incremental growth for some of our members, um, we hear those stories often and we celebrate them. And it’s a reminder to us of the of the critical nature of the work that we do for our members and for the business community.

Lee Kantor: Now, does the chamber play a role in attracting businesses to the region? Is that part of your mission?

Adam Forrand: It is. We play a role with our partners in economic development at our cities and in the region. Uh, and that role may change from time to time based upon the opportunity that comes our way. But our job is to as Bernadette spoke to, is to ensure that there’s perhaps an expectation that this business would be, uh, rooted in our community and that we, as a chamber, will help them get grounded in a community that if they choose to land and locate and to expand in the perimeter region, that we are a partner to that as well. But the expectation is that you’ll also be involved, uh, that there’ll be, uh, that they’ll be engagement, they’ll be involvement, that you will understand better the needs of our community, and perhaps the role that that company can play and help solving some of those challenges and issues as well. Right.

Lee Kantor: This isn’t something that you just pay your dues and you’re done. Like, in order for this chamber to really thrive, it requires that there is involvement and engagement. This this can’t just be, you know, a donation, that you just do it one time. You’re finished.

Adam Forrand: No, uh, in community, this is all relationship based. This is all relationship based. And particularly for our larger employers too. What’s at stake for them is not just their consumer brand or their service brand. Right. But but as an employer, if they have growth plans and they need to hire, um, and have have projections for their growth and know that the best talent is within the community that they reside. Um, how they show up in community also ensures that that trust is conveyed, that they’re here for the long run and for the right reasons as well.

Lee Kantor: Right. And and I’m sure all of these companies on their mission statement, they mentioned the importance of community.

Adam Forrand: Indeed.

Lee Kantor: So it’s time to walk the walk.

Adam Forrand: Absolutely.

Adam Forrand: And that’s what chambers as institutions within communities has always been about. Right. Um, is rooted in community for the community, with the community.

Lee Kantor: So now what’s something as you look forward into the year, in the coming years? What are what what would have to occur for you all to be high fiving? Like, this was a great year.

Adam Forrand: Well, as a membership organization. It’s all about growing our membership rank. The role, the roster. There is power in numbers, in scale and growth. Um, while we talk about expanding our capacity and our network and our resources, we also ask our members to show up not just for themselves, but for other members as well. And so with more members comes more resources and and better support in community. And so membership, organization, membership growth at the end of this year, if we have had significant growth like we expect to have in more having more members join us, then that is a that is a double high five. That’s a high ten right there. That’s uh, those are Grand Slams that were born out of singles and doubles and triples. Right. And so that’s what we’re working on.

Lee Kantor: So the metric that matters is membership.

Adam Forrand: Membership. We’re a membership organization. We’re a membership. Uh, we are we’re a business advocacy organization for our members. We are nothing without our members. And so the more members, the better.

Lee Kantor: And, Bernadette, for you, that’s obviously you’re one of the people that are kind of charged with that mission here.

Bernadette Pannier: So that’s a lot of my role. Right. So when we were when Adam and I sat down and started talking about this and we started talking about the growth opportunity in the area, it’s not necessarily just about, you know, signing up members and walking out the door. For me, I wanted to have a bigger conversation. I want to have a better conversation about membership and what that means to the members themselves. The chamber is, Adam said, is a trusted component of every community. And so I wanted to make sure that when you’ve made that investment, no matter the investment that you make, because every investment, every penny we spend is really expensive and it feels it’s an emotional component of your business. I want to make sure, though, that you’re getting the most out of it. So as you come into the chamber, are you coming to the right events? Let’s have a conversation about where your ideal client sits. If you’re telling me you need to be speaking to CFOs, let’s make sure you’re in the room with CFOs. If you’re telling me you’re a boutique and you sell mother of the bride dresses, let’s make sure that you’re around the women that are the mother of bride age. I don’t even know what that age is anymore. But let’s make sure that you’re in the room with them. Let’s make sure that maybe, potentially, you spend a little money on that event and put up a table and show everybody what you sell, or you pay a little bit more and speak in front of that crowd. So I want to make sure that these members aren’t just stamping a stamp on an envelope and throwing a check in the mail once a year. I want to make sure that they’re really looking at their spending and putting it where it makes sense, where it can make impact, and where they can develop a great footprint here in the community so that people say I shop at so and so because they show up for me and those things are important.

Bernadette Pannier: And I, I think we all learned a pretty valuable lesson a few years ago about the importance of small business and communities and how we can support each other. That is the foundation of our country that makes or breaks us as a country. We don’t necessarily thrive and survive on the top 100 businesses. They get our day to day through, but at the end of the day, the I can spend $100 and a very large retail space or $100 in a boutique. I’m making the difference in that boutique, because that boutique owner is going to be able to put food on their table, to turn on their lights and to show up the next day, because I shopped there instead. So shopping local, being involved in local community, those are huge drivers for me and I want the higher end companies the fortune 100, the fortune 500, to come into our community and help us thrive. And when they’re looking at their employees, knowing that they’re doing those things in the communities, making sure that the apartments are built in the right places, transportation is done correctly. Sidewalks are correct. Crosswalks are correct that we have all of the plug ins that we need for electric vehicles. That’s what they’re there for because they have a voice at the table amongst our legislations because they listen to them. But there’s impact. It’s like a butterfly wing. Everything makes a little bit of a ripple as you go through.

Lee Kantor: Effect is real.

Lee Kantor: Now for you, you’re looking to have more conversations with business leaders of businesses of all sizes just to have this conversation, to see where you can help them and where they can plug in to help the community.

Bernadette Pannier: Absolutely. If somebody comes to me and says, hey, I just want to be able to get my voice heard and I need to be on a podcast. Well, let’s have a better conversation. If somebody says, I’ve got a book coming out in September. I need to know how to advertise it. Great. Let’s talk about it. Um, one of my my favorite things to say is some of my best recommendations for the members that we need inside the chamber come for our other members. So as we roll into I can’t believe we’re saying this spring and summer, right. I’ve had members that have come up to me and been like, well, my pool guy quit. I need a new pool guy, and I only use people that are involved in the chamber. So then I go look for a pool guy, right? Or I need a bounce house for my kid’s party this summer I found a bounce house community. So it’s sometimes it’s just those little conversations. The members come to me and say, I need X, Y, and Z and there isn’t a member in the chamber. And maybe I’ve never thought about that person being a member. And I’m like, well, let me go find that company for you. So a lot of those conversations come. The recommendations come from the members, right? It’s their needs. They want to drink the champagne, just like we want to drink the champagne. So they don’t necessarily want to look outside the directory. They just want to go to the directory, put in what they’re looking for and use. Use the person that they know that’s already part of their community. So that’s really fun for me.

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

Bernadette Pannier: I would say my my email and my cell phone is on the website. You could definitely call or email us. Um, I’m on LinkedIn and my contact information is on LinkedIn as well. So definitely look for us there. Follow us on our social medias. We’re building out our Instagram’s, our Facebook’s, and we’re very excited about all the things that we’re posting. So those would be our recommendations I think.

Adam Forrand: Greater Perimeter Chamber. Com and in the show notes too.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Greater Perimeter Chamber. Com A lot of big things happening. So uh join now. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on Greater Perimeter Chamber radio.

Brian Sabin with SpinnerMedia

February 28, 2025 by Tom Sheldon

Northeast Georgia Business Podcast

Brian Sabin with SpinnerMedia

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Brian Sabin – CEO, SpinnerMedia

Business owners often juggle multiple responsibilities—from managing daily operations to helping customers—leaving little time to build a strong online presence and stay ahead of the competition. Limited marketing experience and fast-changing technology only add to the challenge. SpinnerMedia makes it easier with customized marketing solutions that enhance brand identities, create user-friendly websites, and develop effective social media and advertising strategies, along with software tools to streamline business processes. Partner with SpinnerMedia to boost your digital presence, so you can spend more on what matters most: keeping your customers happy.

Our Community Partner for this episode of Northeast Georgia Business Radio is Leads Near Me. A giant thank you for their continued support. Leads Near Me, the leader in marketing for auto repair shops; making lives easier by helping great auto repair shops to connect with great customers with the greatest of ease.

Damon Joshua with Rent.

February 13, 2025 by angishields

Tech Talk

Damon Joshua with Rent.

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As President, Damon Joshua leads the Rent. organization and sets the strategic vision and roadmap for continued growth at Rent., ensuring Rent. continues to meet the ever evolving needs of the multifamily industry. Damon’s customer-first values, coupled with his competitive drive and strategic acumen, make him a perfect fit to lead Rent.

Damon’s career spans 25 years across various industries, including notable positions at MarketSource, Vertafore, Cisco, Verizon, and UPS, where he was responsible for managing multi-billion-dollar revenues and leading sales teams of 1,500. His diverse background provides him with a unique perspective to innovate and drive Rent.’s growth and product strategy forward.

Damon’s appointment marks an exciting chapter for Rent., and his dedication to driving value and efficiency for both clients and renters alike ensures that Rent. will remain at the forefront of the industry, delivering unparalleled experiences and solutions. Damon was appointed President in May of 2024.

Connect with Damon on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for another episode of Tech Talk with your host, Joey Kline.

Joey Kline: Happy Friday everyone. Another great day for a Tech Talk. We have got a great one for you. Today we’re going to be chatting with Damon Joshua, who is the CEO of Rent. Damon, how are you doing?

Damon Joshua: Fantastic.

Joey Kline: So when I say rent, because I know it is stylized rent with a period after that.

Damon Joshua: Yeah, right. Yahoo! Remember, Yahoo had the, um. The exclamation,

Joey Kline: Exclamation point,yeah. That’s right.

Joey Kline: Hopefully you guys don’t go to the same fate as Yahoo!

Damon Joshua: No, we just stuck with the period.

Joey Kline: Yes. Anyone looking it up online? Rent period.

Damon Joshua: Yeah, just rent.com.

Joey Kline: Rent.com. There you go. Okay, so, uh, let’s get into it. What does Rent.com do?

Damon Joshua: Well, a couple of things, but mainly we’re what we would call an ILS, which is an internet listing service. So when you’re out looking for properties, mainly single family properties, um, we’re a repository for all those things. You need an apartment building or looking for a place to rent, or there be a, you know, multifamily unit or, you know, maybe an over 55 or, you know, college housing or, um, maybe it’s a home. You come to our site, we’ve got the most listings out there, uh, or, you know, one of the top 2 or 3 places to get listings. And we’re going to display that, uh, that property for you and hopefully allow you to go click on a button and set up a tour and go rent.

Joey Kline: And so this is look, I remember when I was doing this maybe 10 or 15 years ago when I moved back to Atlanta, right? I used Craigslist to find the apartment. Okay. Right. But the world has evolved.

Damon Joshua: It has.

Joey Kline: Yes. Yeah. And so how does someone looking ensure that the party on the other end, the owner of the property, the owner of the home, is a reputable and safe entity with whom to do business.

Damon Joshua: Well, you know, there’s good old Google out there, but you know, our job is to really work with the communities that list with us and ensure that, you know, it’s somewhere that people actually live. And there there’s certain standards that each community has that really regulate that more than we can do. But our goal is really to list them all, make sure that we capture places that people are going to actually want to rent. And then we put those out there so that you have the most information that you can get at your fingertips when you’re actually making that search.

Joey Kline: And so your platform essentially connects the owner of a property, the potential renter of a property. And from there, it’s a kind of on them to consummate that relationship however they see fit.

Damon Joshua: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve got tools to shepherd it along. Right. You know, our goal is once you start to look and you narrow your search down, we’re going to have tools within our app or within our online tools or our online, you know, computer based connection to really help you figure it out. So if you can imagine you’re looking at a place, it’s empty. We’ve got tools that virtually stage it for you so you can see what it looks like with furniture or with, you know, a bed in the bedroom and those kinds of things to help you. Right. Evolve it and figure it out as you go along, so that you can get yourself in the place. Because most people don’t want to spend a lot of time doing it. They want to find some place quickly and get moving.

Joey Kline: Oh, so that’s interesting. So you have dimensions and then you can basically virtually stage furniture for someone to understand. How does my existing or future stuff fit in this place?

Damon Joshua: Right, yeah. Because everyone doesn’t have a fantastic imagination, right? So yeah, you know, you’re looking at a at a space and you’re trying to figure out, is this going to work for me? Um, maybe you’re you’re moving from a very large living room, and you got to decide. Well, this one’s smaller than what I had. The bedroom’s bigger, but this is really close to where I work. Can I make this work? Yeah. You know, and then all of a sudden, you see, you kind of virtually stage it and you see some things, and you go, okay, I can make this trade off.

Joey Kline: Do you all have metrics on how long it takes the average person to search for a new place?

Damon Joshua: Um, more around how long they, uh, metrics. We definitely look at that, but but the real metric is how long it, um. They start.

Joey Kline: Okay.

Damon Joshua: Right. So it used to be people started, you know, 30 days before they looked to move, because that was when you had to give notice on your lease. Sure. And now we’re starting to see that move out to almost closer to 90 days. Yeah. Right. Because you have to give more lead time. And so we’re starting to starting to see searches begin sooner. Mhm. Um and we can see because they save you know, their the information in the app and those kinds of things. But you’re starting to see the search start sooner. So um that just means that people want more information. You know they’re, they’re you know folks attention span is obviously gotten a lot shorter over the years. Um, but our goal is to allow them to, you know, when you’re looking, you can save it and keep, you know, come back to it later. And then, you know, we’ve leaned into AI to start to remember what you looked at and serve you up the things that will probably, uh, you’ll want to see.

Joey Kline: Right. So even if you don’t set up that saved search, which is available on many different websites from yours to, you know, if you’re looking for a car, right. The the system remembers what you have done and will offer it up to you, even if you haven’t necessarily set it up yourself.

Damon Joshua: Absolutely. All right. We’re moving in that way to really, you know, help you once again cut down the search time, get to where you want to get to, because that’s what our clients want ultimately, right? They’re they’re interested in getting you to their place. Our job is to help you get there, too.

Joey Kline: Uh, obviously a lot of companies are investing in AI capabilities, and I’m always curious whether it is in-house, a specialist actually working on that for your team, or whether you are partnering with an outside vendor to build those capabilities into your technology.

Damon Joshua: Right. It’s it’s, um, it’s a little bit of both. Right. We’ve got teams in-house that are obviously working on. I just mentioned the virtual staging. Um, there’s all kinds of applications that are available. Um, so you may buy or lean into a platform that already exists. Open AI is one. A lot of companies are leveraging that platform to do things. Um, but then you can also build out your own. So you may take that as an open source platform and then build upon it. Um, but we’ve got teams of engineers that are actively looking at a multitude of ways to make our product better or our website better, or make the experience better for a user who’s coming to figure out what they want to do. We leverage it for our our our business partners who are displaying the multifamily units. Um, and they want their units or their particular properties to stand out. So how do we, you know, leverage both sides of the coin? Yeah. And we use AI to do that. And I think we’ll continue to lean into it. Um, more and more, um, as the technology matures. Today it is not. Um, it’s interesting. It’s not, you know, changing the world yet.

Joey Kline: It’s not a panacea.

Damon Joshua: It is not.

Joey Kline: Yes, yes. Uh, yes, I find that it tends to be, you know, you hear it on earnings calls and you hear it on podcasts and, um, you know, interviews of how’s this going to change the world? And I’m not trying to be a cynical naysayer, but it just feels like a lot of speculation and a bit of drinking the Kool-Aid. I’m not at all implying that there is not a lot of potential there, but I don’t think anyone who claims to really know, I don’t think, has any idea what they’re talking about.

Damon Joshua: There’s a there, there. Yeah, but you’ve seen this over time. Digital transformation. You’ve seen you know, you’ve seen a lot as technology moves. You know, there’s a there’s a tend to establish that this is a thing. And then there’s a run up on that particular technology where there’s a ton of spending, and then you have to implement and execute. And and then you either get the benefits that everyone said you would get or not. Typically you don’t get the full benefit of it with this particular one. I do think it’s a game changer. We have started to see companies change their go to market strategies and even their, um, you know, resourcing strategies or companies have come out and said, hey, um, Salesforce said we’re not going to hire any new engineers. We will. We are at the number of engineers we will ever have. Yeah.

Joey Kline: That’s that’s.

Damon Joshua: Significant.

Joey Kline: Right? Yes.

Damon Joshua: So there are real, um, there are real effects, um, out there in the marketplace, uh, with AI and, uh, as you said, it’s not a panacea today. Sure. Um, but I think that, um, I think I just saw a statistic that most of the, the large companies. So Amazon and the companies that are, you know, Microsoft that are in the space are going to spend over 100 billion in just in evolving the technology this year. So that’s a large investment. Um.

Joey Kline: I have absolutely no doubt that it will make a significant impact on our world. I think what I’m referring to is that when you hear someone who’s not specifically Andy Jassy or Tim Cook or Sam Altman, like, actually opine about this, it is outside the industry. Yeah. I just, I, you know, take it with a grain of salt.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. It’s top of the pyramid. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, is a is a mid-size or SMB going to realize, uh, what those guys are talking about today? Probably they’re going to need help figuring it out and figuring out how to apply it to the things that they do day to day. And, um, so I think there’s probably opportunity for companies to go out and assist. Yeah. So you can figure out, hey, you know, how do I leverage this? How can I work faster and smarter and more And more efficiently. There’s probably a big gap for the big, big companies that are doing really cool things and everyone else.

Joey Kline: So okay, let’s let’s dovetail this into your own talent and your own hiring. Right. Has I guess we could apply this to a number of different functions. Right. Whether it’s sales, marketing, finance, technology. But you know, you have you’ve recently taken the helm. Have you been there for a year, less than a year.

Damon Joshua: A little bit less than a year.

Joey Kline: Less than a year. Okay. So you come in, you have a vision, right? You have a vision for culture. I’m sure you have a vision for team. Okay. Talk to me about how your vision for team actually gets implemented in your hiring practice. What type of people do you look for. And maybe it’s different across different functions.

Damon Joshua: It is. But let’s just talk in general. Right? You want your culture is important. That’s my job right? There’s a lot of folks that count money and, you know, figure out what products we need to bring to bring the market and, you know, how are we going to market those products and how are we going to sell it? I have teams of people that do that, but ultimately you want to make sure that you have the right people on board because you can’t do anything if you don’t have folks with the right attitude that that are willing to buy in. Because at the end of the day, you’re going to ask more than probably at a given time, uh, we might be compensating you for. Right. I need you to want to and be willing to put in for the cause. And so you, you know, my my role, my, you know, my job is to to lay that out for the folks that are already there, such that they have a really good understanding of what I feel is going to take to win and what’s the most important thing. And then you lay that you you then apply that to our hiring practices and work with our recruiting teams and teams such that we put in place things to tease those. Those attributes out in candidates. And you make sure that that is the main thing. So you work with your senior leaders and your mid-level leaders so that they understand, hey, talent is great, but we need these 2 or 3 qualities that will override, uh, if there’s a jump ball that’s going to override, uh, maybe some of the, you know, someone may have a great talent, but, you know, if their attitude is not in the right place and their willingness to work and their their understanding of how we go to market and how we do business and how we want to do it matters.

Joey Kline: It does. And there are some things that are just non-negotiable, right? And that can be disqualifying, even if everything else seems right. Um, I don’t know who I heard this from, but I was talking to someone and they were. I don’t think the insight inside is revolutionary, but I think that the simplicity is, um, is insightful. So, you know, someone for a senior leadership role came in on paper and in presentation. Just great. Said all the right things, right. And at the end of the day, when this person left, the hiring manager went to the front desk, um, and asked, you know, how were they? How did they treat you? And basically said, you know, somewhat like a servant and not terribly kind. And that was that. That’s it. Right. You can tell a lot about people, um, by what they do when they think that no one important is looking.

Damon Joshua: Correct.

Joey Kline: Yeah.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. Um, that’s a great. I’ve heard that before. Yeah. And look, my, uh, my leadership style and philosophy is we’re all. We got different jobs. They all serve different purposes. But we all go home. We all get up in the morning and we go do a job, you know? Until you own your own business. And that’s the way I conduct myself, you know. There’s no oh, look, I’m Damian DJ, whatever you want to call me. Um, but when you, you act that way, you know, if you go into my office or talk to any of my teams, I spend just as much time trying to better understand what they do and how they do it, because that matters. Once again, I’m going to need them to lean in at some point. Yeah. And if they feel like they they matter in the grand scheme of what we’re getting done, probably going to get a little bit more out of them. Um, and all the teams that I’ve built over the, you know, 30 plus years I’ve been doing this kind of work, specifically in performance based organizations.

Damon Joshua: You can beat the hell out of someone. You’ll get them for a short amount, you know, a short amount of time. They’ll be scared. They’ll be They’ll be active. They’ll jump when they see you. Yeah. Doesn’t last. That’s right. And? And you get to understand how people work and how they tick. You make them feel like and believe that you care and you understand them, you know, below a surface level engagement. And they really feel that they’re tied to the cause. You start to see performance really jump by double digit percent, right? That’s how I like to build teams. That’s how I build culture. That’s how the organization starts to really get lift. Yeah. And you can conquer so many things. So it takes diligence. It has a real, um, you have to make sure your senior leadership team understands that. What the most important thing is, um, they’ll tend to want to look at numbers a lot of times. And those things, and those are important. But the culture matters. And that’s my job to to hit hit home with that.

Joey Kline: Yeah. I mean the role of the CEO really is, to a certain degree, kind of chief cheerleader. Chief culture officer. I think that it’s, um, so much can be drilled down to very simply, don’t be a jerk and express empathy.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. It at a, you know, to start. Yes. Yeah. But it really is. You need to take time. And, you know, one of the things that did way back in the day, we used to hand out note cards, hand out note cards to all the managers. And I’d said, you go out and you fill out these note cards about your people. You should know name. Is there a significant other? Do they have kids? What are the kids names? What are the hobbies? Is there any significant changes in their lives in the last 12 months? Right. And so I gave him a real, you know, a limited amount of amount of time, and they looked at me like I had five heads. I’m like, here’s these three by five note cards. Go find out because every person’s different. Not everyone. I don’t want to get in their business. No, you need to get in their business. Because when you’re asking or you’re having a conversation that matters to them, right? You know, we’re all trading time for money when it matters to them. You can understand why the answer is coming back the way it’s coming. Yeah, that matters. Right? Um, you can get five answers that are all the same, and they all mean something different.

Joey Kline: I bet that in your position you have just because you’ve built, as you said, performance based teams, really all your career. Um, how is it? Harvey. Mackey. Harvey Mackay. This is the guy who owns the envelope company in Minnesota, right? So amazing. Sales leader. Yeah, right. One would think envelope company. That’s kind of, you know, kind of kind of dull. Um, he has several incredible sales books, and one of the things that I’ve taken from, um, him and, you know, the these are the type of books where, you know, you don’t absorb everything if you take 1 or 2 things away, benefits your life. Um, for every customer of his, he basically had a sheet very similar, you know, birthday, religion, background, school, kids. Um, it’s just incredible how much those things matter. It’s it’s a it’s a little thing that can make a big difference.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. It’d be. It’s probably a field we should add in in the CRM, you know. That’s right. To really understand your customer. Yeah. Um, but for me, it starts with the employee. Right? I want to make sure that I understand the team really well. And, um, you know, like I said, people think that’s soft stuff, and, uh, but you find out I will outperform you every time if everything’s the same. And I’ve got the same set of rules. My teams are going to kick your tail up and down the street every time.

Joey Kline: Well, I think that and I’ve come to this conclusion very firmly over the past couple of years. And it’s it came more from sort of the difference between a fully remote job, um, versus, you know, one that is more around a team. If all you have to offer an employee is a dollar sign, that’s not really, at the end of the day, it unless it is a extraordinarily large dollar sign, right? There comes a point where it’s just not sticky enough. If the only thing that someone is getting from work is a paycheck, then that becomes a, then your company becomes a commodity and it becomes very easy for that person to switch at very little cost. If there are other things, more the soft stuff, as you’ve said, which I, you know, think is very important, right? If someone gets way more than just a dollar sign in their bank account from what they do and the people they’re around, that’s a way to build build a truly sticky employee.

Damon Joshua: Yeah, there’s plenty of data out there that says that, right? That if all things are equal, pay falls down to the fourth or fifth most important thing. Yeah. And there’s tons of data that talks about, you know, people leave because of their manager directly.

Joey Kline: Huge.

Damon Joshua: That’s true too. So, you know, you put it all in a mixing bowl. Um, yeah. You can’t be in the bottom 25 percentile of pay, but let’s just say you’re in the 50 percentile of pay then. Yeah. How do I engage? How do I make sure that people, you know, believe they understand what they do? Does it matter? So that’s why you spend tons and tons of hours and money on surveying your people to really get an understanding of how well you’re connecting with them. Um, those things are really important, and I’ve seen companies that I’ve been with where we didn’t do really well at that, and we actually made a deliberate effort to change it, to engage, to ask one more question. We I’ve seen us say we’re going to ask one more question. We’re going to ask, do you see a difference here? We literally asked people as we engage with them. And then on the surveys of next year, we saw a significant uptick. But more importantly, we saw our churn come down. Like we saw people leaving voluntarily come down.

Joey Kline: Yeah.

Damon Joshua: That’s huge. Um, which, you know, that’s an expense to a company to go out and, you know, all that stuff and find new find new employees.

Joey Kline: Yeah. Um, I’d love to talk about your background a little bit and how you got here. Um, I am I also do want you to tell the story of your first gig because it’s it’s. I just think it’s fantastic. And I think it’s a really interesting lesson for, uh, young people being thrown into a crazy situation. Yeah, but just, you know, give me the, uh, the the elevator, uh, version of it.

Damon Joshua: Elevator version? Yeah. Uh, man. Um, I have, uh, I have done everything. You know, I kind of came the circuitous route, so. Yeah. You know, from growing up, uh, in Atlanta, originally being from New York, but growing up in Atlanta and, um, just kind of bopping around. Been on my own since I was 18 and, um, you know, really having to figure it out at a young age and, you know, going to college and playing ball there, uh, at West Georgia, which was a great experience. Really learned about team. When you’re on a team like, you know, and doing those things. Um, and then just, uh, you know, I’ve been in logistics business, I’ve been in it and telecom and. Human resource business. So you get an opportunity. I’ve had an opportunity to see how things have been done across a wide variety of, uh, of different roles. Um, you know, I’ve had people tell me, even in a management role that, you know, you don’t run things we do and, and, you know, go read handbook page, you know, section nine five. And once you read that, then you can come talk to me. Yeah. Uh, which is always interesting. So, um, you know, my career has just allowed me, uh, through all those different zigs and zags. Uh, as you said earlier, you pick up nuggets along the way, and you may not. You know, someone’s interviewing me, and you go, I don’t I don’t really understand how working in logistics, uh, may tie to a sales role. Oh, there’s, you know, give me a minute and I’ll tell you. Right. But it just it gives me a perspective. A lot of times when I’m sitting in a room and we’re trying to either sell something or make a make a decision. I had just had I’ve seen it done so many different ways that I’m going to more likely be open to, and push the team to think about something a little bit more creatively than just how it’s always been done.

Joey Kline: I think that the circuitous route and obviously I have to, you know, maybe I’m biased because I have somewhat of a similarly securities route. Um, but the more experiences that you have, the more people that you have been, um, exposed to, the more organizations that you’ve been exposed to, both good and bad. It just informs you in a way, that staying at the same company for 30 years never will.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. And look, if you if you’re one of the you know, I mean, I think that that the person that stays at a company 30 years is, is, you know, back in the 70s that was a thing and now it’s not. Um, but it still happens. You know, there are companies out there, um, that, that have folks like that. There’s almost a blind bliss, right? Right. That if you go somewhere and it’s the only thing you’ve ever known. Um, you know, there’s, uh, there’s a bliss to that. Um, and, uh, I think it’s interesting, but for, you know, I didn’t get that same lot. And so you make you got to make do with what you have. And, um, I definitely have, uh, have been able to capitalize on it. Um, and I, you know, I’ve had some really, really good experiences and more importantly, kind of back to what we were talking about before, some really good mentors along the way that have helped me cross chasms and get me to places and have taken chances on me along the way. And so, um, I’ve felt always in those instances that, you know, I got to repay those guys.

Joey Kline: Yeah, I think the, the pay it forward, uh, instinct is, is enormous. Yeah. Um, there’s a lot of people that Help you along the way that get nothing out. Well, seemingly get nothing out of it right now. Once you do it yourself, you know that you do get something out of it, right? It fulfills something inside of you. But in the moment, you know, if you’re 25 and, you know, trying to get someone who’s far more senior than you to coffee, you know, in the moment it seems like you’re getting the lion’s share of the value out of that. And I think what you learn is that that is the way that we all know to pay it back, because it was done for us.

Damon Joshua: Absolutely.

Joey Kline: At a certain time.

Damon Joshua: Absolutely. Yeah. I do it all the time. Yeah. You know, I get people reach out and they’re trying to figure it out. And, um, I absolutely feel indebted to.

Joey Kline: For.

Damon Joshua: Sure people who don’t even know that I feel that way about them or what they did for me, that I absolutely have to do, that I don’t even feel like I want to do this. This is a have to do. Sure. Um, because you never know. It might be something you say that gets someone motivated? I’ve had that happen where I just had a conversation with someone over a lunch. Yeah. And they just changed my whole perspective on something that I might have been thinking about at the time. So I think it is very important. And that’s how we, you know, you put the seed in the ground and I might be that droplet of water. Yeah. That’s right through. Right.

Joey Kline: Yeah. I think this goes to the sort of, you know, you make you make your own luck in the world, right? Um, you know, you put yourself in enough situations and this can apply to business. It can apply to friendship, it can apply to dating. Right? You put yourself out there enough, and eventually the benefits come back to you.

Damon Joshua: Absolutely.

Joey Kline: Um, I want to go back to the the company or the product a little bit. So you have, you have sort of a, um, a dual sided marketplace in essence. Right. You are serving two different ends. And I think that that you have obviously the ownership group landlord that is listing a property, and then you have the user that is actually interfacing with your platform to find a property. Um, one pays you. One does not. And so I’ve just always found that fascinating. The I don’t know, the engineering, the marketing, the design conundrum about having this place that is designed for two separate interactions. How do you think about that? Is it complicated? Is it liberating? How do you solve it? I just opine, if you will.

Damon Joshua: It’s complex because both sides need each other.

Joey Kline: Mhm.

Damon Joshua: But from a design perspective they’re totally different. One side is a B2C typical B2C kind of thing right. You know I need to have a app and a website that’s both attractive. Um It’s engaging. We need to make sure that, you know, when a person clicks on Rent.com or apartment Guide.com or, you know, any of our other sites, Redfin.com. They’re engaged. They’re able to come in easily, navigate, uh, see the inventory that they need to see, um, or that they’re interested in, um, that they have buttons and places and all those things that matter. Uh, because of once again, our attention span is lickety split. So I got to make sure that you see what you want to see, and it’s engaging. Yeah. Well, that’s totally different than a property management company or ownership company who needs to be able to get data out of the people that are searching for their properties and get leads from us and, um, that interact with our user tool, which is Just totally different than our consumer tool. And it’s totally different as it relates to how we interact with those property management companies, to be where they are, to understand the things that they’re dealing with as a business. So our marketplace is a B to C marketplace, which I have a team of people that need to think about what a consumer wants to see and how they want to operate. That also needs to interact with a B2B customer and think about how they think about business, how they make money, how their margins are affected by using a product like ours, how they get the most bang for the buck, and how we more efficiently help them with their marketing spend. Yeah.

Joey Kline: Yeah. It’s um, and you sort of you can’t you can’t necessarily afford to have employees that only deal with necessarily one side of the business. Right? I’m sure that there are some depending on their function. But you really need someone if they’re going to be a long term value to the team, I imagine, to truly understand both of those needs.

Damon Joshua: Right? So my senior product guy, Nishant, he has both, right. But then the team is split. Yeah. So there is a B2C team, and then there’s a B2B team that has to look at how we interface because as we go out and sell, we’re not selling to the B2C side. I’m selling to the B2B side. And so there are a long list of things that they would like to see. And they’re not asking us for buttons on our website. They’re asking us to, you know, how can we more effectively generate traffic to their property. That’s what they want. How do I how do I get more people? How do I get more eyeballs to this? You know, this new property that I’m opening or, you know, something that they just took over? Or maybe it’s a small mom and pop and they really want to compete better with some of the other properties in the area, and they want to show up higher in the Google ranking, or they want to show up on Facebook or Meta or, you know, other tools. Other, excuse me, other mediums. How do they do that? Well, we come in and we sit down with them and help them with that. Totally different than you going in the App Store, pulling us down, you know. Rent.com, right? And that experience, those are two different things. So I do have someone at the top okay, that straddles both. But then those teams just kind of have a different mindset for how what matters most. And then we have to blend them together so that one does serve the other. I do get enough traffic such that then a B2B person or that person in the PMT, as we call them, property management company, would want to pay for those eyeballs.

Joey Kline: Okay, so so let’s talk about the PMCs and your strategy for going after them. Are we talking about the mill creeks and gray stars of the world? Are we talking about the single family rental community are we talking about? Uh, you know, uh, someone owns a couple of vacation homes. All of the above. What is the outreach and sales strategy look like?

Damon Joshua: Yeah, it is all of the above. And because he who has the most, um, you know, properties wins, right? You’re. If you come to my site and you’re standing in front of a building and you put you type in an address or you, you geofence it and you say, hey, look, give me something in this area and it doesn’t come up. You’re going to come out of my site and you’re going to go to my competitor’s site. Yeah. So inventory matters. He who has the most inventory wins. Mhm. That’s the first thing. And that means that you have to have a strategy for the stars and the assets of the world, the largest groups as well as the midsize and the smaller ones as well. And so we have a strategy to engage all of those individuals. Viduals someone who may just have a rental. Yeah. And they want to put it on their to large companies that really have a large footprint. And we want to make sure that we are in lockstep and engaging with them so that their properties are on our site.

Joey Kline: Are these large companies? Are they are they hedging their bets and advertising on multiple different sites? Yours and your competitors in order to get scale? Or are they typically saying, we’re going to dedicate ourselves to this one medium?

Damon Joshua: No, they use multiple. Yeah. They’re promiscuous. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love, I’d love to to to have him single threaded. Yeah. And I’m sure our competitors would as well. Um, but, you know, it’s similar to, um, the wireless industry. Mhm. And you know, you can say, well, I’m a T-Mobile guy, a Verizon guy or AT&T guy, but I really think it depends on who has the best service where I live. Um, and sometimes you can have a service and it just doesn’t do well at your office or where you live versus another carrier. In our business, it’s similar in certain markets, in certain places, um, our advertising just outperforms others and sometimes others outperform ours, right. And so the strategy for a lot of those companies are I’ll use multiple. And the data is so good. Now you can figure out who does what. Well, and we, you know, advocate for ourselves in those particular situations to tell people that, you know, we’re a top performer across the country.

Joey Kline: Yeah. So so to that end, as you look forward a year or two years, what’s on your plate for making sure that you, you remain a top performer and that you, you know, eclipse those that are maybe nipping at your heels.

Damon Joshua: We have got I mean ultimately it comes down to your Google ranking, making sure that we’re driving eyeballs to our site because without that you don’t. The B2B buyer was not going to purchase what you’re selling. So we’ve got to be relevant. And so that’s being a thought leader, making sure that we have inventory and working with property, um, you know, the aggregators and the property management companies to ensure that we have as much of their properties on our site as we can possibly have. So you got to be relevant. Yep. Um, and once you do that, then it’s just a matter of going out and really executing against, um, that inventory. So you got to make the ROI worth it, right? You know, where’s the value? So make sure we’ve got the inventory, make sure that the people who are with us stay with us and then go out and get as many new businesses on our platform as we possibly can. Yeah, right. You do those three things, and it sounds really simple. A lot of work that goes into it, a lot of folks that are working on it. Yeah. But you do those three things you things you have. You’re going to have a really good company in a lot of success.

Joey Kline: Um, let’s the sort of the unseen character I feel like on this show in the background. Um, a lot of companies is the city of Atlanta. Okay. And obviously now we live in a world in which we have national or global businesses, right? There’s no boundaries. That means that we only are working with people in the state of Georgia. But, um, you know, a lot of technology companies find being headquartered in this city in the state invaluable. And I’m always curious, from a leadership perspective, how do you use the city and its people and its talent to your advantage? Where do you see it fitting in with your company?

Damon Joshua: That’s a great question. Um, and one that I’m biased on. I am most.

Joey Kline: People on here are.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. Well, you know, I think it depends on the town you live in, but I think Atlanta just offers up, uh, one of the more unique settings in the country, and I’ve lived in a couple of different places and gotten a chance to get the most of the major, I guess 32 NFL cities. Yeah. Uh, the diversity of talent is fantastic. And that means whether you want sea level, whether you want tech level, whether you want service, you’re going to you’re going to have a really deep pool of individuals to choose from here. You have a great educational foundation that will continue to to pump out talent. Um, some of the top, uh, historically black colleges are here. Uh, you’ve got Georgia Tech right downtown that’s just pumping out, um, great innovative, um, students all the time. You’ve got Emory in town, you’ve got, uh, just a myriad of educational possibilities. Georgia State, uh, just finished paying them for my daughter. So hail hailed the Georgia state. Um, but you have a great base. And those are really big schools that put out a ton of talent. And then you look at the weather and you look at the, you know, the, um, the opportunities, you know, the number of companies that are both in tech and other spaces.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. Um, you know, largest logistics company in the world is here. The largest, you know, soft drink company is here. Um, there’s so many things. Um, no matter what you want to do that offer up, um, diverse opportunities for a young person or someone who’s trying to make a change in their career to come to and find that I think it’s just a very unique place. When you’re a person like me who’s looking for diverse talent. Where else would I want to go? Yeah. Now I’ve got teams. I got folks that are all over the country, and we’ll continue to pursue that just because our business calls for it. I have to be where the apartments are. Sure. Right. But for having a headquarters here, I think that I have an advantage. And when I talk to other leaders, you know, there are a lot of great cities in this country. But I’ll put Atlanta up against most of them anytime.

Joey Kline: Yeah. I mean, look, obviously, again, we’re we’re drinking each other’s Kool-Aid. Um, and look, I think that it is a, it’s a convergence of happy accidents of fate as well as actual planned strategy, that this place is what it is and is kind of firing on all cylinders as we speak.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. Good leadership. Yeah, I’ve seen it. I’ve been here a long time. Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen some of the mayors and moves that are made. You know, you think about the airport opened up in 1985. It’s the largest airport by gates, um, in the world. Um, most, most flights in and out. Well, what does that do for a town like this? It allows this gateway to the world, and you get access. And so, you know, if you’re starting a starting a business. And those are the things that matter. Yeah. If you’re relocating a company, those are the things that matter. I need to be able to get anywhere in the world really quickly. You can do it from here. Those are decisions that were made years and years ago that were gambles. You know, you’re taking out tons of municipal bonds to go build or, you know, go start up a project like that. Um, but it’s paid spades. It’s paid in spades time and time again. So those are small examples. But really good leadership has got us to a really good place.

Joey Kline: That one in particular I love because like, think of how audacious that was at the time, right. You know, I think we all just sort of take for granted that at the Atlanta airport, like is and has always been, you know, this isn’t that long ago that Atlanta was just, you know, kind of a little regional, you know, redneck town that, you know, flip of a coin. Birmingham could have grown bigger than we are. And the mayor wants to go and take on this project and be the most busy airport in the world for little old Atlanta. You know, um, you got to dream big. Yeah, those guys dreamt big.

Damon Joshua: Yeah. They did. Yeah. And they made the right bets. Right? And that’s what leaders do. Um, you got to be willing to say yes when others are saying no and be convicted about it. And those those leaders, you know, the Ivan Allens and Mayor Young’s and, you know, uh, Maynard Jackson and those leaders had the conviction and they knew or they felt in their spirit that this was these were decisions that needed to be made. Um, that’s how you end up getting the Olympics. Olympics in 96. Um, which was, you know, the greatest of long shots probably needs to go up there with the, you know, the US hockey win in 84. Yeah. Um, that’s that’s what kind of win that that was that really put Atlanta on the map internationally. And we’ve never looked back. And um, and thus I get to sit here and drink from that really large well, uh, of talent, of outlook, um, of optimism that that city brings.

Joey Kline: Yeah. Couldn’t agree more. Yeah. Um, really enjoyed the conversation, Damon. If anyone listening wants to learn more about you or about Rent.com, how do they get in touch? Where do they go?

Damon Joshua: Well, you can look me up on LinkedIn. Damon. Joshua, I’m out there. Uh, I don’t, you know, I haven’t posted as much as I normally post in this role yet. Uh, that will change. You’ll start to see more content coming out from me there. Yeah. Um, Joshua, at Rent.com, I always take an email, but, um, I really appreciate the time. I mean, this has been a fantastic conversation.

Joey Kline: Thanks for coming on. I appreciate you taking the time.

Damon Joshua: Absolutely. Thank you.

Gaby Evers with GBF Translations and Colby Passman with Southwestern Advantage

February 13, 2025 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Gaby Evers with GBF Translations and Colby Passman with Southwestern Advantage

00:00 /

Brought to you by Diesel David and Main Street Warriors

Gaby Evers is the founder of GBF Translations, a Spanish translation and interpretation business based in Woodstock, GA.

With a strong background in immigration and medical fields, Gaby has years of experience helping individuals and businesses navigate the complexities of cross-cultural communication. She offers professional services in translation, interpretation, proofreading, and cultural consulting, ensuring that her clients’ messages are accurate, culturally relevant, and impactful.

Passionate about bridging language barriers, Gaby works with small businesses, organizations, and individuals who want to connect meaningfully with Spanish-speaking audiences. Her expertise includes reviewing and proofreading websites, marketing materials, and important documents to guarantee not only linguistic accuracy but also cultural resonance.

Whether it’s helping immigrants communicate their stories or assisting businesses in expanding their reach, Gaby brings a personalized, detail-oriented approach to every project.Gaby’s mission is to bridge language gaps and ensure everyone has a voice.

When she’s not working on translations or consulting with clients, she’s often exploring new ways to serve her community or strategizing creative solutions to make language accessible to all.

Follow GBF Translations on LinkedIn.

Colby Passman is a graduate of The University of Mississippi in Integrated Marketing Communications with a minor in Business. He’s a top salesperson and team leader for Southwestern Advantage.

During his five years with the company, he’s grown his business as a freshman to now producing over $260,000/yr in revenue.

While in college, Colby served as the founding President of the Public Relations Students Society of America (PRSSA) at Ole Miss.

Colby enjoys playing guitar, mountain biking, and watching Ole Miss athletics in his free time.

Connect with Colby on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning, and today’s episode is brought to you in part by our Community Partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, go to. Main Street Warriors and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc. Please go check them out at diesel david.com. You guys are in for a real treat. We’ve got a couple of guests this morning. But first up on Cherokee Business Radio, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Southwestern Advantage organizational field leader, Colby Passman. How are you, man?

Colby Passman: Stone, this is so much fun. I’m really happy to be here.

Stone Payton: Well, I love it. It beats the heck out of working. I get to visit with interesting people who are passionate about the work that they’re doing. I want to learn so much about who you’re serving, why you’re you’re doing it, and how. But let’s open up with a bit of a picture, a primer for me and our listeners. Mission. Purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man.

Colby Passman: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, personally, in my life, I feel I feel called to, to create leaders. Um, the my company’s mission statement. That’s a big reason why why I work there. And the mission is to be the best company in the world at developing skills and character to help young people achieve their goals in life. So the company, southwestern, it’s been around for 160 years. It’s the oldest internship in the nation. And what we figured is that if we want to be the best at developing skills and character. So basically, to achieve personal growth, the only way to to grow is by stepping outside of your comfort zone. So the summer internship that I get to recruit for it is known as the Navy Seals of College Internships. It’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve done up to this point in my life, but one thing that gets me through is it won’t be harder than marriage, right?

Stone Payton: Maybe. So. You have personally participated in the intern program, and now you are, uh, leading recruiting for this thing?

Colby Passman: Yeah. Yeah, I started my freshman year. Um, I use it to pay my way through college, so was able to graduate from Ole Miss debt free.

Stone Payton: Um, really mamas proud.

Colby Passman: So.

Stone Payton: Oh, yeah. Oh, we gotta swing back around and figure out how you how you did that. Because that’s huge. So at this point of your career and I know it’s a, you know, a little longer in the tooth than our guest here this morning. It’s, uh. But you have a career now. What’s the what’s the most rewarding, man? What’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Colby Passman: Yeah, man, it truly checks all the boxes in terms of, you know, entrepreneurial with the flexibility of schedule. And, um, I always say money’s not the most important, but it’s definitely top five. Um, for me, Stone, it’s truly the impact. I mean, outside of, um, you know, being a Christian and choosing to serve the Lord. Um, you know, working with this company, it’s been the best decision. Also the most impactful decision in my life. So the fact that I can extend that impact to others through this really challenging, um, sounds cliche, but truly a life changing Experience. Um, that’s what fires me up and gets me out of bed in the morning.

Stone Payton: So what is a day in the life of Colby? Like? I know you shared with us before we came on air that you’re about to take a trip and go to this career fair, but what’s a maybe typical is not even a good word. But what’s a typical day week look like for you?

Colby Passman: Yeah. Typical. Yeah, it’s always changing. So I definitely do travel a lot. Um, yeah. I mean, the goal is to to wake up at 5 a.m., go, um, go straight to the gym in the morning. So I’ve been doing pretty good about that recently. Um, I cook my own meals. I take cold showers every morning because it keeps me disciplined and start starting my day getting outside of my comfort zone. Um, but, yeah, I mean, in terms of recruiting, um, prospecting can look, um, it can look different for different weeks. Sometimes I’ll like for, for today example, I actually have a meeting right after this with the president of, um, the real estate club at Kennesaw State. And the goal and what I expect is that, um, she’ll have me as a as a guest speaker. I have a speaker bio and I speak to different clubs, so that’s one kind of recruiting method. I do career fairs and basically with all the names that I gather up, I’ll, I’ll call them and then send them some informational videos and interview kids and the kids I select for my team, I, I train them until, until May when the summer starts. And that’s kind of that’s kind of like like football season, so to speak.

Stone Payton: And so what does that process look like? Uh, a kid, you, you find a kid at a career fair or through a university system like that, or however you find them and you’re having that initial conversation. I know you have these group presentations, but when you’re sitting down with with a kid, uh, how does that conversation go? Walk us through that a little bit.

Colby Passman: Yeah, that’s that’s a really good question. And, um, you know, with the the degree of challenge of the internship, I don’t really view myself as someone that’s necessarily like hiring people, but instead, since it’s entrepreneurial, you You know, um, if a student comes and works for me with the summer, I’m also working for them. So at the end of the day, I’m really just looking to form a partnership. More of a business partner, someone to do life with. And, um, it all comes back to the personal growth. So of course, with the conversations, I have a lot of it. With it being an internship is about career goals and how this could help them professionally, but more so what fires me up and and the main reason why so many students will do this is because they just have a burning desire to become the best version of themselves. So a lot of times I’m asking questions like, you know, let’s say 60, 70 years from now at your funeral and, you know, grandkids and coworkers and, you know, all your friends are there, how do you want to be remembered? You know, when when people are talking about you and someone comes up and gives the eulogy? What specific character traits are they going to use to describe you and those character traits they talk about? I tell them that’s what this summer internship is for, whether it’s integrity or Integrity or perseverance or empathy or, you know, love, reliable, you name it, growing in those areas. That’s that’s what this internship is for.

Stone Payton: And so what can an intern expect to, uh, to, to see and hear and do over the course of this thing?

Colby Passman: Yeah. I mean, in terms of expectation, expect to fail a ton, expect to fail a ton and to get rejected. The, um, the way we go about accomplishing our mission is teaching students how to start their own miniature franchise over the summer. So it’s kind of like starting a chick fil A. So we give students a product to sell and the product that we’ve we’ve been selling for 160 years. It’s educational material for families, um, families with kids in school as well as, um, biblical material and then, um, a leadership program. But our students, they, um, you know, we’ll knock on doors, we’ll do social media marketing, what we manage all of our own accounting and product delivery. Pretty much the full blueprint of running a business. And on average, students work about 80 hours a week for 12 weeks straight. I mean, it is like entrepreneurship bootcamp.

Stone Payton: Wow. So mentors along the way. I know the answer to this has to be yes just by virtue of what you’ve described already. But can you speak to the role of of mentors in your life so far as as they’ve helped you navigate this, this terrain? It’s got you’ve probably had some tremendous experiences in that regard.

Colby Passman: I truly have. And if you look at the alumni network of, you know, people that did southwestern when they were in college, I mean, just to name a couple. Mike Johnson, who’s, you know, the speaker of the House of Representatives, did this for four summers when he was in college and actually came to our company’s headquarters in February and gave a live keynote. I couldn’t make it for that. I was living in Austin, Texas at the time, but a lot of my friends got pictures with him. We’ve had seven former governors, including the current governor of Oklahoma right now, multiple people on the Forbes list, including John Yarbrough, who created the algorithm that makes slot machines turn. Oh, my. It’s insane. I mean, the people that do this job are truly movers and shakers. But in terms of my personal experience with mentorship, I’ve been told that you want to you want to put yourself in three buckets, one where you’re seeking mentorship from someone else, one where you’re you get to run that race with other people. And then the last bucket is being in a position where you can pour into others. And through this job, I’ve just been able to have my two feet firmly planted in all three of those roles.

Stone Payton: Okay, you got to talk to us about graduating debt free. I am operating under the impression that being a part of this thing of yours. Oh, yeah, it was a huge. It was a huge contributor to that. Yeah.

Colby Passman: Yeah. I mean, this this past summer, the the average intern made right at $12,000 for their work done over 12 weeks. So.

Stone Payton: Wow.

Colby Passman: It’s crazy. And our averages have gone up over the the years since my first summer. But I made about $10,000 working in Alabama. My first summer doing this, I made about 20 grand in South Carolina. My second summer went up to Michigan. After my junior year of college. I made about 30 grand and then made another 30 grand in Illinois after my senior year. So over the course of four four summers in college, I made about $90,000.

Stone Payton: That’s impressive.

Colby Passman: Yeah.

Stone Payton: So what’s next for you? You’re going to continue to expand your reach. Is this a, I guess, to be like a launching pad for a, for a different type of career, or do you really know yet?

Colby Passman: Yeah. I mean, specifically, no. I mean, my goal is to always be in the entrepreneurship realm. I’d love to to always have southwestern as a source of income and then, um, be able to sustain, um, a good amount of money with, you know, less amount of time and then start, start new business adventures. But, um, truthfully, Stone, I’m just gonna, you know, be obedient to the Lord. And, you know, if he tells me to go somewhere else, then. Then I’m gone. And if not, then I’ll. I’ll stay here for a while.

Stone Payton: But this presents the flexibility to to serve in that capacity and run another business or pursue other entrepreneurial ventures.

Colby Passman: Yeah it does.

Stone Payton: Wow, man. Sounds like a good deal.

Colby Passman: Yeah, I’m really thankful for it.

Stone Payton: So I don’t know when or when or how you find the the time, but, uh, passions, pursuits, interests outside the scope of this of this work. My listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Yeah, it’s pretty common knowledge now. Uh, that that passion for the outdoors has, uh, has launched a project to build out a boat, uh, that’s wheelchair accessible so that we can get disabled vets and people with mobility issues out enjoying the outdoors, fishing and cruising and all that. So, uh, everybody, at least in Cherokee County, knows what stone’s up to. Anything you nerd out about outside the scope of this, uh. This work.

Colby Passman: Oh, man. I like to do for having fun. That’s a great question. Um, man, I love playing guitar. I’ve been playing guitar since a young age, so that’s definitely a big part of, uh, of my identity, I would say. Um. Love travel. Love outdoors. Backpacking. Um, yeah, I, I’m trying to think if there’s any, like, weirdly authentic things that I like to do, but, um. Yeah. Big music, big outdoors, and that’s that’s pretty much it.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like you could still hang out with us. You don’t have to be in a wheelchair to get on on the SS freedom. That’s the. The name of the project is SS Freedom Adventure for all. Uh, but, uh, you know, there’s plenty of us that are not in wheelchairs that are going to be enjoying it, too. So it sounds like we can hang out. Sounds like you would enjoy boating and fishing and all that stuff.

Colby Passman: I’d be happy to hang out anytime with you.

Stone Payton: All right, so let’s go back to this intern program and break it down a little bit. Um, how would you describe, like, who would be a really good fit for something like this? And what are some maybe yellow flags or red flags or like, hey, this might be a nice person, but this is not the right program for them, you know?

Colby Passman: Yeah, I think the biggest thing for me is just people that are competitive, you know, um, get it? That definitely isn’t a factor. I was never the biggest fan of school myself. Um, hence pursuing entrepreneurship. Right? But yeah, people that are competitive, I mean, I, I, alongside everyone else, um, truly view this job as, as a sport, you know, so someone that can just really get excited about about doing the hard things. I would say not only that, but people that just don’t want to don’t want to be average in life. Um, I mean, this job, like I mentioned, it’s the hardest thing I’ve done up to this point in my life. So it definitely takes a lot of drive and ambition to really embrace yourself of 12 weeks straight of delayed gratification.

Stone Payton: Um, you spoke earlier about failure as, uh, that’s just that’s part of it. Can you speak more to that personal experience and philosophy, apparently, of the of the organization and what you try to teach these kids about falling down and getting back up?

Colby Passman: Yeah, man. Thanks so much for asking. Um, I mean, just just some, some stats that I had on my resume after my first summer of doing this, I gave, um, 3500 cold calls all in person, all in a different state to complete strangers I’d never met before in my life. Um, 3500. I gave probably 800, um, selling presentations. So those are people that were open minded enough to say, yeah, just let me let me listen to it. And then within that I probably had about 200 customers. So on average, I mean, my first summer doing this, I probably talked about 50, 50 strangers a day and pitched myself on the idea of spending a couple minutes to to hear my sales pitch. I’d probably have about, you know, 10 to 12 a day do that and maybe 2 or 2 or 3 customers within that. So I’m getting told no close to 40 times a day. Wow. Or more than that. I call it vitamin no a little bit. Every day is good for you.

Stone Payton: Vitamin? No, I like that. You’re going to hear that again. I’m going to use that.

Colby Passman: Yeah. Copy it. Um, but at the same time, Stone, that’s one thing that, um, made me kind of fearful before going into this, um, because I didn’t like failure. I’ve always been a perfectionist. I was really good at sports and the best one on my team, and just had a lot of success from a young age in high school, middle school, things like that. But at the same time, I realized that, you know, while I hate getting rejected, it gets under my skin and I take it personally and I just do not like failure whatsoever. This isn’t something that I want to always struggle with, so to speak. So I’m sure you’re probably familiar with exposure therapy, which is if you’re scared of something, the best way to get over that is just to just to do it. So, um, I kind of viewed this my first summer as a 12 week investment of just facing all of my fears. So then that way when I’m 30 and married and have two little kids, their dad is just a complete total stud who’s not not afraid of failure or rejection anymore.

Stone Payton: Yeah. All right, so if I’m a kid in this program, I’m going out there, I’m getting a little scar tissue. I’m getting good at the presentation. I’m sure at some point, uh, am I am I coming back to home base and getting a little bit of a recharge, and I’m able to communicate back and forth and get some direction before I have to shake the dust off and, uh, or the blood off and march back out there.

Colby Passman: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking. I mean, we could not do this job without accountability. So, yeah, I mean, every single day, our students, they track all of their stats with how many prospects they talk to, how many sit down customers, um, you know, the amount they, they bought from them, so on and so forth. But we track all of our stats, and every single night we have about a 10 to 15 minute long coaching call. And we we coach based off of the stats, you know, because the data doesn’t lie. So we’ll do that every single night for 72 days straight all summer long. And we don’t work on Sundays. So Sunday will have a 4 to 5 hour meeting where we’ll give some general coaching based on the group’s needs as a whole. But then within that we have what’s called a PC. We call it a personal conference. So for about 30 minutes, each one of our first year students would sit down with one of the experienced people, like me or another person, for about 30 minutes, look at their numbers, look at how they’ve been doing with marketing, checking their business expenses. I mean, just really hands on into the detail coaching.

Stone Payton: And so they’re looking at expenses in the whole thing. So they really are running a business. It’s not just like go out there and you be the sales rep for my thing. They really it’s well I think you used the word franchisors. They’re they’re basically out there running their own thing.

Colby Passman: Yeah. Essentially. I mean our students are ten, 99. Every penny they spend over the summer is, you know, a business expense.

Stone Payton: Right, right. I love it. I mean, I can see why it’s. You characterize it as the Navy Seals of, uh, of internships.

Colby Passman: Yeah. I mean, it is not for the faint of heart, but, uh, I love it. It fires me up.

Stone Payton: So, based on that experience, I want to ask you this first. Tell me more about the people they are. They are serving who they are selling the product and service to. Who is their prospect?

Colby Passman: Yeah, that’s a that’s a good question in terms of families over the summer. I mean, short answer is just anyone that that has kids, you know, because we have, um, you know, some, some early learning products for families with babies like, you know, learning books and like, fun educational apps to get kids really excited about learning.

Stone Payton: Mhm.

Colby Passman: And then for the older kids, we have products that are kind of like SparkNotes or CliffsNotes that are just designed to save kids a ton of time with schoolwork. So the kids that hate school, that don’t want anything to do with it, they love it because they get their homework done easier, and the kids that have really high goals that excel, they’re usually the ones that are busy with sports and other extracurriculars. They really like this because they study a lot, and then they get their work done easier. And at the same time, we have Act and SAT prep alongside some material that helps with AP exams.

Stone Payton: Nice. All right, before we wrap up, I’d love to leave our listeners if we could both with, I call them pro tips. Right. Just a couple of things to to to noodle on. Be thinking about do or don’t. And as a product of what you’ve learned so far and maybe in the vein of kind of both sides of the table, if, if you you’re young, you have some aspirations about doing your own thing. You really are willing to put yourself through the ringer a little bit, as it were. But maybe also for those of us who may want to create something to serve a constituency like that. What should we do be doing in terms of creating a, you know, a program around, you know, like the Business RadioX Youth academy. You know, like, if we really wanted to help people. Like, what have you learned? Um, so a pro tip or two just for people to be thinking about and look, number one pro tip, guys, is reach out and talk to Colby, and we’ll make sure we get his contact info here in a little bit. But something to be thinking about.

Colby Passman: Yeah. Thanks, man. I can answer that a million different ways truthfully, but, um, and the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey, he talks about, um, private victories, perceived public victories. So, you know, I think, um, in terms of, you know, building momentum, obviously, you know, the hardest step is just taking the first step. I, um, I heard the other day that every mile begins with a step, and it’s so true, but in terms of, um, of. Yeah, just building that momentum. I mean, the reason why I’m, you know, waking up and going going to the gym at 5 a.m. and, you know, taking cold showers and just truthfully doing everything I can to put myself outside of my comfort zone is because I know that I can’t excel in work and excel with creativity or really anything if I’m not taking care of of my inside. You know, if if that makes sense.

Stone Payton: It does. And part of what I’ve drawn from the conversation, as someone who would like to invest in young aspiring entrepreneurs is, um, you got to give them some room to, to to scrape their knee a little bit. And then when they come back, you know, maybe have the discipline and the rigor and put the responsibility on them to, to not only absorb the lesson, but to return the learning to the organization so that everyone can can benefit from it, but create that environment where it’s, uh, it’s okay to fail, you know? Now, if you keep making the same mistake over and over and over, then you might need to free up your future. Right. But but if it, uh. I mean, so that’s what I’m taking for the for my. And look, this is a great way to get some really good coaching insight from people who are very well accomplished in their domain. Uh, free. Get yourself a radio show. You invite smart, passionate people in the studio, and they teach you a lot.

Colby Passman: Yeah, I love that stone. And I guess the, uh, as we’re wrapping up, the last thing I want to say, um, whether you’re Christian or not, I mean, there’s so much value in in what I’m about to share. And this is, um, I hold this this, you know, these next couple sentences more dear to my heart than anything. Um, this is my favorite quote ever. It comes from the book of James verse. It’s chapter one, verses two through four. He says, consider it pure joy when you face trials, because the testing of your faith produces perseverance. So let perseverance finish its work so you can be made mature and complete, not lacking in anything. And basically what that means to me is no matter how we slice it, the obstacle is the way. You know everything that we want to accomplish in life. It’s truly on the other side of fear and what’s holding us back. There’s so many analogies for it. You know, diamonds are formed under pressure. And, you know, I mean, if you want to make a sword, the process of that is you stick it through the fire and you beat it up, and the finished product is you have this beautiful, just really sharp, high quality, just work of art, really nice weapon. And, uh, that’s pretty much what the summer program is. And that’s just how I live my life. Um, you know, the obstacle is the way.

Stone Payton: The only regret you have left me with this morning is I wish I would have turned on the video, because I would love for our listeners to see the youthful face that just shared that incredibly mature wisdom, not only articulate, but right on target. That is marvelous. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners? To learn more, tap into your work website, LinkedIn, whatever you think is appropriate. But I want to make sure they have some coordinates to connect.

Colby Passman: Man, I give my phone number.

Stone Payton: Yeah, absolutely.

Colby Passman: All right. Cool. Yeah. Cell phone number is 601 443 1488. That’s my cell phone number. That’d be the best way. I mean, of course I have an email, which is C passman@southwestern.com. Um, I’m actually giving up social media for 2025. That’s my.

Stone Payton: Oh.

Colby Passman: My that’s my thing for the year. And it’s it’s been so fruitful up to this point. It’s been I can’t recommend that enough. But I am on LinkedIn. So Colby Passman and uh, I guess outside of those three methods, I’m, I’m pretty much rogue, unless you want to write me a letter.

Stone Payton: No. Colby is easy to get to and easy to talk with. I guarantee you. Well, this has been marvelous. Hey, how about hanging out with us while we visit with our next guest?

Colby Passman: Uh, that’s exactly what I want to do, stone.

Stone Payton: Perfect. All right, next up on Cherokee Business Radio. We have with us with GBF Translations, Gaby Evers. How you doing?

Gaby Evers: Oh, I’m doing all right. How are you?

Stone Payton: I’m doing well. And I’ll just apologize. That’s that’s a tough act to follow.

Gaby Evers: I know I don’t wake up at six in the morning or five, so I’m already apologizing in advance.

Stone Payton: So GBF translations. Mission. Purpose. Uh, tell us about the work.

Gaby Evers: Um, so basically, working with small businesses, um, trying to bridge that gap. Um, so the Spanish speaking community can be reached, um, not only by, you know, small businesses trying to work with them, but also, you know, small businesses themselves. Um, because, um, a professional translation is different that someone just being bilingual. Um, I have worked with other bilingual people who have their small business, but they need that professional, you know, touch.

Stone Payton: Yeah. Well, I want to talk more about the virtues of a professional translation, as opposed to some of the other things that, uh, we might be tempted to to lean into, but. How did you get started? What were you doing before this?

Gaby Evers: Well, I mean, I’ve been translating and interpreting since I was in elementary school, so I’m originally from Mexico. So when I taught myself English in elementary school, I sort of became the go to person for parent teacher conferences, not only for my family, but for others. So it just was something that I did. And then, as you know, I went to school and college and started working in corporate America. It was just something that I started to do, you know, in a more professional level. Um, I think the joke is always, you think you know, Spanish until you have to translate or interpret like a business document or a legal document, and then all of a sudden you’re like, do I actually know this language? Um, so when I started to sort of learn that, um, aspect of it. Um, I was doing, um, I worked at law firms. I worked, um, with, um, within the medical field. Uh, at some point I was freelancing and doing, um, translations and interpretations through agencies. Um, but I learned that I wanted to be the one who decided what projects I could invest in and who I could work with. Um, when I moved to Woodstock about two years ago, I saw the need, and it just sort of became, uh, a little something in the back of my mind, like, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could do this. And then this year, I was like, well, I just have to go for it, because if I don’t do it, I can’t, you know, I want to say that I did it. Whether this goes into a different direction, whether I fail or not, I want to say that I did it.

Stone Payton: So how has the transition been? I have to believe it’s had to be a little bit little bit intimidating coming from a corporate environment where there are maybe some more knowns. And now not only do you do you have to be a practitioner and be good at practicing the craft, but oh, by the way, you, uh, you got to run a business. You got to get to business, right? What’s that transition been like?

Gaby Evers: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it’s been terrifying. Um. Very exciting. Um, I wish I had, uh, taken that, uh, book camp that Cody has spoken to us about, because that would have been handy right about now. Um, but I will have to say that everyone here in Woodstock has been so nice, so welcoming, so willing to sit down and share their knowledge and share their wisdom. And a lot of it has been with other small businesses or entrepreneurs who have been in the same shoes as I am. Um, so it’s definitely challenging, but very exciting, especially when I get to see sort of my work come to fruition. So, for example, I just finished collaborating with a small business. They do a chiropractic and um, their intake forms needed to be translated into Spanish. Mhm. Um, so I did that and then shortly after they were able to collaborate with uh, a law firm. So now they’re, they are Spanish speaking clients are now going to be coming to them. Uh, and so having that tool and having that already translated in a way that will make sense for, for these new customers, it’s, it’s like a full, full circle moment. Not only do I get to help this small business, um, get more people and, you know, uh, succeed in that sense. I also get to help the, the people that are going to be coming in and maybe aren’t sure, you know, how that practice works or how things work in general. Now, there that that is translated in a way that they understand it. It’s given back to the community, and it’s a full circle moment for me.

Stone Payton: Yeah. All right. Let’s talk about me for a minute. It’s my show. Okay. So I’m connecting dots here, right? So I think I mentioned to you a couple of times that young professionals of Woodstock, it would be fun to have a Spanish speaking show, and that would be fun to pour in, and that would be a way to invest into the community. But now that I hear you talking about how that can open up a whole new world and potentially other markets to you, let’s let’s walk through a hypothetical use case, like if we had a Spanish speaking show and we had people coming in here, um, and having conversations like this, but in Spanish, we probably would draw more people tapping into the work. There might even be more people that would be wanting to be on the client side of our world and, and have those interactive business people interviewing business people with conversations. And it might even open up a world where someone’s running a business radio studio in Austin, but they at least have that added texture to it. Or maybe they just have a whole Spanish speaking. Like we could actually have studio partners that are doing some Spanish speaking. I mean, it can just it can keep unfolding, right?

Gaby Evers: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that’s the beauty of it. Um, when I first moved here, I noticed that there would always be like some art festivals or something going on in Woodstock. And I, you know, I made friends with my neighbor, and he had been living here for five years at that time. He had no idea that any of that was going on. Um, you know, he didn’t see any signs. It wasn’t really posted that much. So for him, it was like, oh, I didn’t know that that was there. And then, you know, being able to let him know what’s going on, it just kind of sparked that idea that if we could sort of bridge that gap, if we could, you know, make it so communication is easier. I mean, you tap in into so many things. Um, when I went to, uh, Puerto Rico for, uh, sort of to help, uh, with the conference, I noticed that, you know, obviously the people there spoke English, but there’s just a connection that happens when, you know, you meet someone that knows you know, your native tongue or just it’s just that cultural togetherness that comes and, you know, just being able to find that, especially here in Cherokee County, I feel like it’s always exciting when when I meet somebody else who’s also, you know, an entrepreneur who’s also Latino, who’s also Latino, and it’s just like, oh, this is togetherness. That just makes it just makes it a different experience.

Stone Payton: I’ll bet. So I know there are a great many myths, misconceptions, a pretty good sized body of misinformation around how to use this platform to help people and make money. The work we do at Business RadioX. I got to believe the same as is true for you. Are there some? Do people have some pretty odd and off the mark ideas about about translation and the value of the services, or how to go about it or the and maybe speak to the differences in, you know, me hitting a translation app or me engaging Abby to rewrite our Business RadioX Academy so we can train Spanish Business RadioX studio partners?

Gaby Evers: No, that’s a that’s a great question.

Stone Payton: I hey, it took me a minute to get it out, but I thought it was a fantastic question.

Gaby Evers: Um, no, I mean, I think that that’s the number one thing that as I’m trying to, um, you know, sell this business. Um, also educating people on what exactly it is that I do and how it works and, and what it actually means. So first off, I think that the first thing is, um, so translations versus having an interpreter, it’s different. So translation has to do with like written words. So anything that’s in writing basically. Whereas interpretation it’s spoken. So whether, you know, it was a workshop and. I’m translating for whoever or interpreting for whoever’s speaking, that would be. The main difference. And then second, you know, with AI and Google Translate. They’re great tools. But to rely on them completely, you, you you can get yourself in trouble. And I’ve seen it, uh, not only, as you know, um, a consumer or just walking around and seeing these mistakes, but I’ve seen it when I do consultations and I’m like, do you know what that actually says? Is that what you were trying to say? Um, and so having that cultural, um, nuance and knowledge makes a difference because, you know, you might be thinking, you’re saying one thing and then people read it and you’re offending, You know, half of Latin America.

Stone Payton: Ouch. Well, you don’t want to do that. So let’s walk through a couple of use cases and you don’t have to name names, of course, but, um, I so that we can really understand the breadth of opportunity for tapping into into your expertise.

Gaby Evers: Yeah. So not only, you know, having, um, marketing material, for example, made from scratch, um, translated and having that. So when you are posting things up, like, I know for, uh, Cinco de Mayo, there’s times where businesses will, you know, Google Translate things. So it’s easier trying to reach the Spanish speaking community. Um, but they’re not saying or communicating what they really want to say. So people might just disregard that and be like, oh, that’s not for me, even though it’s in Spanish.

Stone Payton: Oh, ouch. You might actually have the opposite effect.

Gaby Evers: Exactly.

Stone Payton: Oh, wow.

Gaby Evers: So having that a professional, you know, take a look at it, uh, can make a difference. So, um, maybe even on your website or your social media. Um, as we are seeing that more, um, speaking Spanish speakers are, you know, they’re a big force, not only in for business, but, I mean, they’re here and that that matters. So you’re tapping on a whole new base that, you know, people aren’t reaching. Um, something that I noticed here in, in Woodstock specifically. Um, and I’m sort of grateful for it. There’s no one else that’s doing what I’m doing. So it’s it’s interesting because not only am I growing with people and educating them sort of from from scratch, but because I’m the only 1 or 1 of the few ones here, it’s like, well, so what do you do? You know, um, so to get back to the answer, I tend to wander off. Yeah, but it’ll be perfect then. Um, so. Yeah. So not only that, but also, um, I have had the opportunity on just creating things from scratch, uh, whether that’s, uh, at a, in a medical field, uh, a clinic or, um, like I mentioned, the chiropractor. Uh estheticians things like that, where, you know, people tend to forget about it, but these are services that people need. Um, and so when someone sees something that is meant for them, that is translated in a way that they understand it, uh, with the cultural knowledge and nuance that they understand, they’re more likely to be like, oh, well, let me see what that’s about. And then from there, you know, word of mouth is very it’s very important in our community. And when they feel like they found a place that they’re comfortable in, that they can go to, they tell everyone. And then all of a sudden you have all these people that you maybe didn’t realize that we’re there, or that you thought you were reaching out. But the material that you were using wasn’t, wasn’t properly for them.

Stone Payton: So, uh, on the whole sales and marketing front, what have you learned about that? How is that going? I know in our work we work with a lot of professional services providers. And again, while they may be really skilled at their craft, often a hole in their swing or let me, I’ll be gracious as I can. The biggest opportunity for improvement in their business is the front end of that pipeline. Just having like these discovery calls, these initial conversations. Um, is that a channel? Have you cracked the code on how are you getting the new business, Gaby?

Gaby Evers: Um, a lot of it has been word of mouth. Um, like I said, I did wish that I would have taken that, uh, course.

Stone Payton: Bootcamp met Colby a couple years ago.

Gaby Evers: Yeah. Because, I mean, getting those those no’s can be very, very hard at first. Hurtful.

Stone Payton: Hey, it can be hurtful for those of us that haven’t been tough enough, like Kobe and his crew.

Gaby Evers: Um, but not only that, I think the other part is that I see it’s like, oh, if I could just fix it. If I could just do it, then, you know, it’s almost like a like an itch, right? Like I see that it’s wrong. I want to fix it, but they don’t see why it’s wrong or they’re like, well, no one has had an issue. No one has been offended. It’s fine. I’m like.

Stone Payton: Yeah, because they don’t know who did who they turned away or didn’t attract.

Gaby Evers: Right, exactly. And even though, um, like I said, Google Translate and I, they’re great tools, but to just solely rely on them, you know, you’re missing out so much. And I mean, it can definitely get you in trouble. Um, I think the other, um, part of it is although, like I said, I am, I see that I’m the only one working specifically with small businesses, um, and sort of translating marketing and documents, not just, you know, doing the interpretation, which is some of the stuff that I have seen. Um, you know, like when I looked on Google Maps. So just trying to get myself out there has been a challenge especially, you know, I moved here, I didn’t really know anybody. But this community just opens up to you and they want to see you thrive and they want to see you succeed. And I think that that’s part of the reason that just sort of pushes me forward to continue to help other small businesses, because it’s like there’s a whole group of people you haven’t tapped in. Let me help you. And so when I see those moments, like I mentioned earlier with the chiropractor, that’s sort of what, like, keeps me going. Um, and as someone who, you know, has been in a position where I felt like things weren’t for me or they weren’t in a way that I could understand them or that they were reaching out for me. You know, I want that. I want the representation. I want people to see things and feel like, okay, so I’m part of this too. I am wanted in this community, in this business, not, you know, to sort of allies themselves from us. So yeah, that’s what keeps me going.

Stone Payton: Well, I gotta say, my experience, at least we really do have that here in Cherokee County. And I think in Woodstock in particular, we do have a, a group of people who small business people who are genuinely invested in everyone’s success and are very quick to pour into our work the causes that are important to us. How about for you, community and causes? You touched on it, but, uh, anything in particular that you’re really trying to rally behind? Uh, right now, like, is that a group of people that you’re trying to reach out to and maybe serve them as well? Um, and or or do you have your own, like, uh, wheelchair friendly boat project like me or anything like that going on?

Gaby Evers: I wish I had a boat. Nope. Oh.

Stone Payton: Well, you got one now. You come visit with us.

Gaby Evers: Um, no. I don’t know that I have a specific, um, thing. I think the mission right now is to serve, uh, the Spanish speaking community. And the way that I see that I can do that is by, you know, offering my services and trying to reach, you know, everywhere. I’m trying to be in the city of Woodstock. I’m trying like, every document that, you know, needs to be translated in Cherokee County to, to be translated, even if it’s not me. Mhm. Um, although I don’t see anybody else, but even if it’s not me, uh, I think that that’s what what I care about so much that it gets done so that people can see it and be, you know, informed or feel welcomed.

Stone Payton: Hey, I like that. Let’s send when we get this published, let’s send this interview to Michael Caldwell. Tell him to get on the stick. We want everything in Spanish and like Gaby Spanish not I Spanish.

Gaby Evers: Actually, I spoke to the mayor.

Stone Payton: Oh. Did you?

Gaby Evers: Okay, I did. I had spoken to him during the, um, the IT meetup, and he he was so great.

Stone Payton: Um, I’ll bet he’s just a good guy. He is. Amen.

Gaby Evers: I mean, this honestly, after that state of city speech, I was like, I need to live in Woodstock. I feel so, so patriotic. Um, but he did mention, um, you know, talking to the Woodstock, uh, police department. And so we’re have that kind of in the works. Um, also trying to work with, uh, the Parks and Rec. Jamie has been so helpful. So, you know, it’s in the works. Sure. Um, I’m putting my little seats out there, and I can’t wait to see that come to fruition.

Stone Payton: I’ll bet. All right, so what’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Small businesses that may very well have need, uh, desire for your services, but also and also those of us who, uh, just want to help and, and, uh, and want to continue to learn more. What’s the best way to connect with you?

Gaby Evers: Uh, so our website, uh, if you sign up for the newsletter, you can get, um, tips and exclusive, um, offers, uh, mainly tips, um, on, uh, mistakes to avoid so that your translations are proper. Uh, but if you go to Translations.com, that’s the best way. Uh, my phone number is also (470) 215-1321. And you can also send me an email, uh, Gaby, at translations.com. Um, I am trying to get on social media more, although I wish that, you know, social media wasn’t something we relied on so much.

Stone Payton: Well, Colby’s going to be no help there. He laid it down.

Speaker5: I did get off TikTok, so that was my big thing last year.

Gaby Evers: Uh, before, you know, it was banned, I was off TikTok. And honestly, that helped a lot. It gave me time to read a Read a lot. I mean, I was already reading, uh, but it just gave me time and peace of mind that I didn’t. I didn’t think I could have, um, I think I’m trying to go more the authentic route and just be myself.

Stone Payton: Good for you. Well, Gaby Colby, this has been an absolute delight having you join us in the studio this morning. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, and some inspiring conversation. Uh, you guys are doing great work. And keep it up. We sure appreciate you.

Gaby Evers: Thank you for having us.

Colby Passman: Thanks. Thanks, Don.

Speaker5: It’s been fun.

Stone Payton: Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.

Michele Aikens with ClearSight Coaching & Consulting

February 6, 2025 by angishields

High Velocity Radio

Michele Aikens with ClearSight Coaching & Consulting

00:00 /

Michele Aikens, MA, ACC is Lead Coach of ClearSight Coaching & Consulting, Inc., bringing over 30 years of experience in leadership development, communications, and team dynamics.

Known for her insightful, empathetic approach, Michele partners with leaders and organizations to navigate challenges and foster growth with clarity and purpose.

Her coaching style combines strategic vision with a genuine understanding of human resilience, empowering clients to pursue meaningful transformation in their personal and professional lives.

Aikens is also a storyteller. She is the author of three dramatic plays, two screenplays and five books, including the most recent, “Consider The Possibilities: Pursuing What Matters Most.”

Michele Aikens is certified by the World Business Executive Coaches (WBECs) as an Enhanced Practitioner in the Accelerating Coaching Excellence program, and as a certified practitioner from the Global Team Coaching Institute (GTCI).

Michele has coached teams and leaders from organizations that include: The Obama Foundation, ThredUp, U.S. Cellular and others.

Connect with Michele on LinkedIn and follow ClearSight on Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and you guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with ClearSight Coaching and Consulting, Michele Aikens. How are you?

Michele Aikens: I am great. Thanks so much for having me. Stone. I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the program. I got a ton of questions, Michele. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start is if maybe you could paint a little bit of a picture. Give us a little primer of mission purpose. What? What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Michele Aikens: Oh, wow. Mission and purpose are two of my favorite words. Um. Mission purpose, I think, are interchangeable. They are the reason you exist. Whether you are an individual or a company or a team. Your purpose is why you’re there. And if you drift from that purpose, not only do you not meet those outward goals, but you start having those struggles inside. When a person is disconnected, or when a team is disconnected from who they’re supposed to be.

Stone Payton: Now, how did you find yourself in this line of work? What’s the what’s the Michele backstory?

Michele Aikens: Well, here’s the Michele backstory. Um, my I have a background in advertising. When I was when I had a, quote, real job in the 90s, 80s and 90s. Um, my background was in advertising. And then I started with a company, a magazine, a national women’s magazine, and it did really well on a shoestring budget because this was just a hunch, I guess back then they called them startups. Now there’s a name for it. Um, but after five years, the magazine was too expensive to continue because it had become successful. But the sales hadn’t caught up with them yet. And so, at a the middle of my life, I found myself without a job and never having, quote, failed at anything before I went on a two year journey of self-discovery and redefining and also being a nerd. After some considerable study, I came out on the other end of that as an executive coach. That’s the short the cliff notes.

Stone Payton: So I gotta know what was that transition like going from from that comfort zone, that arena into. Yeah, you’ve got a you’ve got to hone and practice your craft, but you’ve also got to run a business and get clients right. Was that intimidating at first?

Michele Aikens: Yes. It was intimidating and painful. Uh, because I had always even though I’d helped launch a magazine, I always had an employees mindset. And so now when you’re launching your own practice, well, first, it took you two years to figure out that that’s something you could do. Um, but once you launch your own practice, you’ve got to learn some things, like how to sell what you’re good at. And being a child of the 60s, I was raised as a young lady to be nice and not talk too much about myself. Well, that doesn’t help you when you have to sell your business. And so I had to relearn some things. And, um, I am the better for it. And so helping others, other women who might be like me, other corporations or businesses or things that have to shift. Learn to speak a different way about what they do well is it’s a skill. It’s a learned skill.

Stone Payton: So let’s dive into the work a little bit. Everything from the the medium that you use the mechanism to specific groups that you’re trying to to serve. I know you specifically mentioned women just a moment ago. Let’s dive into the work a little bit.

Michele Aikens: Okay. Well, I am an executive coach and I have some specialties, but one of the areas that I really focus on is executive women, senior leadership, C-suite types. Um, because that navigation to the C-suite can be fraught with a whole lot of minefields on the way up that to the naked eye. Other people don’t see them, but there’s always there’s usually a little girl inside that executive saying, uh, that’s not where you belong. And so it’s it’s getting that mindset, like I talked about learning how to talk well, about what I did. It’s the same thing. We have to grow as leaders in stages. And sometimes those stages get accelerated and you feel out of sorts. So I work with, um, executive leaders. I also work with teams, leadership teams, because those conflicts that come within a team can not only shut a fuel down, but if they’re managed right, they can create innovation. So those are my favorite things to do.

Stone Payton: So yeah. What are you finding the most rewarding these days? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Michele Aikens: Right now. Well, this is I’m really having fun doing this right now. When I lost my, uh, job in 2009 and got redirected into coaching, I started tinkering with a program called Rewriting the Script. And initially it was just for people who wanted to redefine themselves after a big loss, maybe a job loss or a significant relationship. And because I’m so fascinated with movies and storytelling, I used script writing procedures to outline this course. Well, that was in 2011. Just recently, I have launched a corporate version of rewriting a script, rewriting the script to help individuals and teams navigate change. And watching these leaders go cut, that’s not the mindset that we want to want to use here is a lot of fun, so I’m having a real fun time with that right now.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous framework. I bet that really does lend itself to individual exchanges, but also with groups. And you’ve got that peer to peer dynamic and people are offering up, you know, they call scene or cut or whatever. What a great framework. That is fascinating.

Michele Aikens: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And to watch the the person who cast the vision has to be the, the producer. But the writer can tell him this script doesn’t make sense. And the director says this is not going to work with the actors, and we’re not talking about a story. We’re talking about your team. But because they step out of their normal roles, there’s some safety, there’s some innovation, there’s ways of looking at things that you may not have considered before, because we’re not in the normal roles that we play. It’s a lot of fun.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So going back to actually writing the book, committing the ideas to paper, I’m interested to know what that process was like for you. Did some of it come together really pretty easily? In other parts more difficult, or was it a pretty smooth road? What was that experience like?

Michele Aikens: Well, if we’re talking about rewriting the script, um, part of my depressed phase after losing my job was I watched movies over and over stone. But after I got started to feel better, I started asking myself questions like, I wonder what happened to that character. And consequently, I wrote a couple of screenplays. So sequels. And so this whole idea of telling your story, crafting it and whatnot is what what created the idea of Consider the Possibilities, which is the latest book that I wrote that talks about how to pursue what it is that you really want to pursue, even though you may have been stuck in a way of being for a long time. And I wrote it for people over 50, because a lot of times that’s when we get stuck.

Stone Payton: So do you find in some of your work that you are trying to serve people who are, who maybe have fairly recently really hit a roadblock or or had a major disappointment, or there’s a big shift. So they’re just they’re really looking for some direction and are maybe a little bit rudderless. Is that part of the do you find that sometimes?

Michele Aikens: Yes, I’m finding it a lot. And particularly with older executives, they may not have hit a rough patch, but they see the rough patch coming. Mhm. And what do I do. What am I going to do. And if I may offer, this is one exercise that I do with them. I say look at the worst possible outcome that all of these fears that you’re magnifying look as straight in the eye and ask yourself then what? Because by the time we’ve asked ourselves. Then what? A few times what happens is you realize the same resilience that made you successful in the last thing is still there. You might have to tweak it a little bit, take the glasses off, clean them out and see in a different direction. But you are still the same person who was successful in the last ventures. You can make it through this. Yeah.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practitioner like you? Do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit? Or is it the kind of practice where it’s largely based on someone’s had a success and success and they refer a colleague or a or a peer like the business side of the business, especially the front end of that pipeline. We sales guys call it sometimes. What’s that like?

Michele Aikens: Yes. Tell me about it. Well, I am I coach for a national executive leadership organization, and I have five groups of executives that I meet with every month. But then after that, because I’m this creative tinkerer nerd type, I started playing around with other things and I’ll introduce them to somebody that I’ve coached in the past because I never I’m very aware of conflicts. And if if I’m tinkering with something, I said, hey, what do you think about this? And, um, sometimes there’s a bite. And in case of rewriting the scripts, there’s a few bites. And so that kind of sends me in the direction when I was training, uh, in coaching, and I trained with Doctor Chant. Who’s in Georgia? Where you are, I think. Yeah. And my, one of my team leaders said use everything that you have in your coaching. That’s not normally what you hear. And so I got permission early on to play. I got in trouble in kindergarten for coloring outside the line. I thought, there’s all of this nice space. Why can’t I color that? Well, in my book, I say we need people who know how to color inside the lines. They build the train tracks, they make sure the train stays on the tracks. But we need people who color outside the lines because they build the cities that the train tracks run on. And so being free to play allows me to present something to clients and potential clients. That’s unusual, that’s creative, in ClearSight. Our mission is to help leaders and their teams embrace change with courage, compassion, clarity, and creativity. So I like to play, and that’s part of how I sell.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell that you do. I mean, I can hear it in your voice. So if I’m an executive in A and I and I have a even a high performing team, or maybe they’re not, how do I begin to know what are some signs that, hey, maybe me and my team, we need a need a coach? What should I be looking for?

Michele Aikens: Well, I would look for conflict that doesn’t get resolved in a healthy way. I have a workshop that I do. It’s an introductory workshop. It’s called Why is Your Team Fighting? And yes, we look at six possible reasons. Because I’m a I’m a credentialed team coach too. We look at six possible reasons that your team could be fighting, and those things range from not being clear on why we’re a team to problems with the leadership. And there are things in between. And so we look at why your team is fighting. And if it is not something because it’s there’s a saying teams the process to a team is forming storming norming and performing. And so storming is a part of the team building process. But if those storms don’t get resolved in a way that is healthy for the team members and productive for the goals, then we need to look at how the team is learning and how we’re dealing with conflict.

Stone Payton: Now, when you may back to kind of making this transition too early, going in this in this coaching consulting career, did you have the benefit of of one or more mentors that sort of helped you navigate this, this new terrain?

Michele Aikens: Oh, here’s a funny story. Yes, I had one mentor, and, um, his name was Ken Cheatham. He’s he’s passed away a couple of years ago, but we had an online radio program. I used to have a blog talk network on the talk radio show. And so Ken and I had a program about sales because I needed to learn about it, and I assumed other new business owners needed to learn about it. And so in the meantime, I’m running this digital magazine, and there’s a man who wants to come into our market. But he was locked out and he was in the health and beauty business. So I start calling all of these hair salons and beauty houses and all of this to try to get his products in there so that he would take out an ad in my magazine, and Ken watched me do that for about two weeks, and he said, you know, you are selling advertising space and giving away something that’s much more valuable. That is what set me on the path of looking differently at how I managed what was in my hands. So no, it was not easy. But I had a great mentor who walked with me, um, all the way.

Stone Payton: Now, you made the decision pretty early on. I’m under the impression to to become formally credentialed, like you went through a certification process with a with some type of organization, didn’t you?

Michele Aikens: Absolutely. The International Coaching Federation and I took that approach because first of all, when I first was approached with the idea of being a coach stone. I’m sorry. This is my profession now. But back then, everybody was calling themselves a coach, and I was like, this is a hustle. I did not want to be a hustler, so I did, I did, and so I did the due diligence I researched. And then when I decided I was going to pursue it, I studied coaching for two years before becoming credentialed. I know you can get there, people. You can get credential, you can get certified as a coach in some programs over the weekend. I did not want that. I wanted to if I was going to do this, I wanted to give my clients the best benefit of my experience and training that I could, which means, um, x number of years later, I am still studying, um, in credentialing programs a few times a year. Oh, wow.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Well, and I guess, or my observation has been in my career that competency can be a moving target. Right.

Michele Aikens: Tell me about it.

Stone Payton: So it’s important to continue to sharpen that saw and learn new things and be exposed to new techniques for achieving maybe some of the same purposes, but, uh, no, that’s absolutely to be commended. So, uh, passions, interests, pursuits outside the scope of the the work. A lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about that’s outside the scope of this work.

Michele Aikens: Oh, nerd out about. Boy, did you use the right word there? Uh, my husband calls me a collection of useless facts. I enjoy learning new things, but what I am, in fact, one of the ways I spend my downtime. I am currently working on a futuristic dystopian novel. Uh, because it gives my brain another place to play? Of course I like comedy and love dancing, but the nerd part of me likes science fiction.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I. You just don’t ever know, right?

Michele Aikens: You just don’t know.

Stone Payton: Well, before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners with a couple of, um. I call them pro tips. Just a little something to be thinking about noodling on and look, gang. The number one pro tip is, uh, reach out and have a conversation with with Michele. But, um, maybe if you’re up for it, maybe a tip on what I’ll call both sides of the work. Right. The practitioner side of the work. A tip, because some of our listeners are practitioners as well. Uh, you know, a tip on actually executing the work, but maybe also a tip or something you feel like you’ve learned or do or don’t on the business side of running the business, that would. If you’re up for it, I’d love to leave them with a couple of things to chew on.

Michele Aikens: Okay. And and they’re actually related. Well, here’s something that’s kind of unrelated, but from the nerd portion of the brain, there is a book called Brain Rules. And the author lists rules that talk about how our brain functions when we are stressed or in, in anxiety. Our brains don’t learn. Well, that’s rule number eight. I believe in the book, stressed brains don’t learn the same. And so if you are forcing yourself to do something that is hard and it’s creating stress, um, I’m going to encourage you to back away from that now from the business side, which and I’m learning, I never considered myself stone. It’s funny, I didn’t consider myself a real business person for a long time. I was just a coach. Here’s the business. Um. Business. Inside I’d give. Find what makes you spark. Because it is the thing that sets you apart. There are a lot of coaches, probably hundreds of thousands. In fact, I read a couple of years ago that it’s the fastest growing profession. So whatever you’re doing in business, you’ve got to find a way to distinguish yourself from the competition, from the non compete people. You’ve got to find a way to stand out and work that spark.

Stone Payton: Well you’ve clearly done that haven’t you.

Michele Aikens: I’m trying but. But I’m having fun, which I didn’t before, but I am. I am blessed enough to have fun doing what I do for a living.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell. And this conversation has certainly been fun and enlightening. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work? Learn more. Maybe have that conversation with you. Let’s leave them some coordinates. Whatever is the you feel is most appropriate for so that you can connect with them.

Michele Aikens: Well, that would be wonderful. Um, our website is clearsight-coach.com, and there’s methods for contacting me in there. Um, or if you want to just bypass the website and get in contact with me, you can reach me at lead coach at Clearsight. Coach.com. Um, I’d love to have those conversations with you, um, or with any of your listeners, because I believe that helping people find out what makes them spark benefits the rest of us in the world.

Stone Payton: Amen. Well, Michele, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Thank you for your enthusiasm and your encouragement. It’s been a very inspiring exchange. You are clearly having a great deal of impact on so many and we sure appreciate you.

Michele Aikens: Well, I appreciate being here, Stone. Thanks for having this conversation with me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Michele Aikens with Clearsight Coaching and Consulting and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Joe Nation – Gainesville Signs and Graphics

January 27, 2025 by Rose

North Georgia Business Radio

Joe Nation – Gainesville Signs and Graphics

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5 Ways Your Signs Shape Customer Perception (and Profits)

As business owners, we often focus on the big picture – our products, services, and overall strategy. But have you ever stopped to consider the impact of something as seemingly simple as your signage and graphics?

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Joe Nation, owner of Gainesville Signs and Graphics, to discuss the crucial role these visual elements play in business success.

The Power of First Impressions

When potential customers approach your business, what’s the first thing they see? Your signage and graphics are often the initial point of contact, setting the tone for their entire experience. Joe emphasized that well-designed signs and graphics can:

Create a professional image
Convey your brand personality
Guide customers to your location
Communicate important information

Beyond Just Aesthetics

While aesthetics are important, effective signage goes far beyond just looking good. Joe shared that the right signs can:

Increase foot traffic: Clear, visible signage helps potential customers find your business easily.
Boost brand recognition: Consistent use of colors, fonts, and logos across all signage reinforces your brand identity.
Comply with regulations: Proper signage ensures you meet local ordinances and avoid potential fines.

A Consultation Approach

One of the most valuable insights Joe shared was the importance of treating signage as a consultative process. Rather than simply taking orders, he and his team work closely with clients to understand their needs, budget, and local regulations.

Investing in Quality

While it might be tempting to cut corners on signage to save money, Joe cautioned against this approach. Quality signage is an investment in your business’s future. He shared a story of how many clients come to him to “fix” cheap signs they purchased online, which often look nothing like what was promised.

Remember: Your signage is a direct reflection of your business. Investing in professional, high-quality signs and graphics can pay dividends in terms of customer perception and brand image.

Collaboration Over Competition

Joe has a very refreshing perspective on competition. Rather than viewing other sign companies as threats, he sees them as potential collaborators. He shared stories of sharing materials with competitors and even referring clients to other companies when he couldn’t meet their specific needs.

This abundance mindset not only fosters a healthier business community but also ensures that clients always receive the best possible service.

The Importance of Team Building

Joe’s success isn’t just about signs – it’s about people. He emphasized the importance of building a strong team and fostering a family-like atmosphere in the workplace. His approach includes:

Hiring for personality fit as well as skills
Encouraging innovation and new ideas from team members
Leading by example and being willing to do any task

Looking to the Future

Joe shared his vision for the future of Gainesville Signs and Graphics. Rather than focusing on rapid expansion, his goal is to increase efficiency and create more value for his team and clients.

This patient, thoughtful approach to business growth is something we can all learn from.

Key Takeaways for Business Owners

Don’t underestimate the power of quality signage and graphics in shaping customer perceptions.
Seek expert advice to ensure your signage is not only attractive but also effective and locally compliant.
View your signage as an investment rather than an expense.
Foster collaboration within your industry rather than viewing everything as competition.
Build a strong team by focusing on culture fit and encouraging innovation.

In business, every detail matters. Your signage and graphics are often the first impression you make on potential customers. Make it count!

This Segment Is Brought To You By Our Amazing Sponsors

Hopewell Farms GA

Roundtable Advisors

RichLife Advisors

Regions Bank

Highlights of the Show:

Discussion on Business Presentation (00:31 – 01:53)

Phil talks about the importance of signs and graphics in business presentation.
Joe Nation is introduced, and Phil shares his personal experience with Joe’s work.

Gainesville Signs and Graphics Background (01:53 – 03:11)

Joe explains the history of Gainesville Signs and Graphics, starting in 2008 during the recession.
Joe’s background in the sign business for 29 years is discussed.

Relocation to Gainesville (02:20 – 03:11)

Joe shares the story of moving from Arizona to Gainesville, Georgia, influenced by a website recommendation.

Business Growth and Services (03:11 – 04:30)

Discussion on the growth of Gainesville Signs and Graphics and the range of services offered, from small to large-scale projects.

Competitive Advantage (04:30 – 05:50)

Joe talks about the competitive landscape and how Gainesville Signs and Graphics differentiates itself by doing what they promise.

Challenges and Problem-Solving (05:50 – 07:53)

Joe discusses the challenges in the sign business and the importance of problem-solving and providing good advice to clients.

Team and Collaboration (09:12 – 10:47)

Joe emphasizes the importance of his team, including in-house artists and production staff.
The role of collaboration with sister companies for larger projects is highlighted.

Family Involvement (10:47 – 11:39)

Joe talks about working with his son, Logan, and the dynamics of having family members in the business.

Building a Great Team (11:39 – 13:26)

Joe shares tips on building a great team, including the importance of personality fit and trial days for new hires.

Community and Networking (13:26 – 14:40)

Joe discusses the value of community involvement and networking, particularly through the Chamber of Commerce.

Customer Service and Consulting (14:40 – 16:03)

The importance of customer service and providing consulting advice to clients is emphasized.

Marketing and Business Development (16:03 – 18:18)

Phil and Joe discuss the importance of marketing and business development, including the role of signage in attracting customers.

Leadership and Team Building (18:18 – 20:06)

Joe talks about leadership and the importance of building a cohesive team.

Personal Insights and Work-Life Balance (20:06 – 22:00)

Joe shares personal insights on work-life balance and the importance of taking care of oneself.

Conclusion (22:00 – 40:50)

The conversation wraps up with final thoughts on business, community, and personal growth.

Neil Bedwell With LOCAL

January 27, 2025 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Neil Bedwell With LOCAL

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A digital-native and strategic leader with 15+ years running work, teams and businesses in London, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Atlanta, Neil Bedwell is now building LOCAL, a Change Marketing agency that creates people first communication programs for some of the world’s best companies .

Before launching LOCAL, he led digital strategy and content for Coca-Cola’s Global Content Excellence group. His work included leadership of the digital program for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, developing new ways to create and publish content in real-time across multiple social channels and managing global digital agency relationships.

Neil is an advisor to multiple start-ups, a General Assembly Instructor and a regular keynote speaker on brand-building and marketing innovation in the social age. Before that, he trained as a race engine designer for Benetton F1 and ran a digital incubator for young filmmakers.

Connect with Neil on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

How LOCAL came to be
The importance of employee engagement
How to build a thriving team
Why change is hard and how marketing can make it stick

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, CSU’s executive MBA program. Without them, we wouldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Neil Bedwell with LOCAL. Welcome.

Neil Bedwell: Hey, Lee. Good to be with you.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us Tell us about local. How are you serving folks?

Neil Bedwell: Well, we LOCAL. We’re based down here, not too far from the Beltline on Edgewood, and we are a employee marketing company. So a group of marketing folks from all different industries and disciplines now working to try and help companies basically reach their employees better.

Lee Kantor: So how did this idea come about?

Neil Bedwell: Well, um, you probably figured already. I’m not from Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: It sounded it was Smyrna. That’s what it sounded like.

Neil Bedwell: Tennessee. Yeah. No, I’m a Brit, born and raised and grew up in the advertising industry in London, but lived in a few different spots. But like a lot of folks who have similar accents to me, the Coca-Cola company lured me from California to Atlanta, Georgia. So, um, the origin story for this company that we built, and this is our ninth year now, is really the experience of my first ever really big corporate job inside one of the biggest companies. One of the the biggest brands in the world, Coke. Trying to convince colleagues of mine in different divisions or in different countries. All to jump in and participate in one idea. The. And this was the advertising campaign for the World Cup in 2014, the World Cup in Brazil, which Coke is obviously a huge sponsor of. The idea for a marketing company that focuses on employees was that we had a hell of a time trying to reach these colleagues, these employees of Coca-Cola, across all these different divisions and and companies. And with hindsight, we could have used a lot more of the, the stuff we know as marketing folks to cut through and actually create that awareness, to create that adoption, create that interest that we needed around a single idea that was supposed to be activated around the world.

Lee Kantor: Now, what made you think you know what? Employee engagement. That’s really the key here. And companies aren’t leveraging employee engagement enough. They’re not serving their employees in the way that really makes the most sense for the wellbeing of the company. So when did that kind of that thesis. Like, I understand that you were trying to wrangle everybody and it was difficult, but what made you say, you know what? I think that this is kind of where more companies should focus. And and I want to do something about it.

Neil Bedwell: Yeah. I mean, I’ve got pretty thick skin, but, um, being sort of ignored and, you know, enough times by, uh, by colleagues is enough to kind of wake you up and go, hey, we must be doing something wrong here. You know, if all if you’re in the outside world, if the customer if every potential customer walks past your store, your shop window probably isn’t, uh, as good as it should be. Uh, and so we needed, um, that that was the awakening. Um, and then really getting under the skin of of employee engagement. I’ve learned a ton over this last sort of nine years or so. I mean, more than two thirds of us seem to be pretty unhappy with the thing we spend half our waking lives doing as adults with, with, with our jobs. Um, employee engagement is kind of the biggest secret problem in business, I think. Um, because if you look at it, um, for most companies, the employees are both the single biggest asset and also the single biggest cost. Um, when you have disengaged employees, you lose out on, uh, things like productivity or, uh, customer loyalty or profit and earnings per share. Um, things like, uh, you know, retention. Um, you have to hire more people because more people leave you. Um, they don’t serve their your customers, particularly the frontline folks, aren’t serving your customers in the way that you want them to, and living up to the promise that you’re making those customers because they’re disengaged and unhappy. So, um, for me, it’s a root cause of a lot of, of the deficits that we feel in, in business when it comes to growth or when it comes to efficiency or effectiveness. Um, yet we we try to fix those symptoms rather than going to the cause, which is really this the biggest asset in your business is, is pretty miserable and pretty disengaged.

Lee Kantor: Well, it’s interesting you say that because if you, uh, I’m sure if you looked at the mission statement of 100 companies, 50 of them would say that people are their most important asset. So they’re they’re at least giving lip service to the importance of their Her team, but what are some symptoms that maybe they aren’t really, um, delivering on that mission statement or promise?

Neil Bedwell: I mean, if you look at the data, you said it. Lip service. Um, you say it, but I don’t see you do it. Um, I don’t see you say that. That, um, people are at the center of this company, but it looks like profits at the center of this company. Um, you say that, um, that the, you know, we are human centered, but we restructure and lay off people on a regular basis. You know, it’s on a day to day, um, a day to day sort of experience. Um, if you tell me something, um, from a, you know, in a business town hall with a group of executives talking about the future and telling you what’s going to happen, but then I see something different happening in my day to day. I’m going to believe what I see versus what I hear. Um, and so those are some of the symptoms. Um, and I can tell you, um, how we approach some of those symptoms, uh, which is really if you most companies, successful companies, are pretty good at understanding and engaging their customers on the outside. They’re pretty good at getting those folks to stop walking past the store and get them in the store. You know, um, and most successful companies are pretty good at keeping those people. Um, we need to start to think of as our employees, our people inside as customers, too. And actually, if you think about it, the in order to win the customer on the outside, I kind of have to win the customer on the inside first. I have to win over my employees so that they will then do the the customer engagement on the outside every minute of every day, in every location. Um, so we our philosophy, um, really is that employees are not just customers, they’re your first customer for anything that you’re doing. Um, if you if you can reach them and engage them, you’ve got a lot better chance of engaging every all of the other customers that you need to spend the money to drive your revenue to get the growth that you want. So it’s a first customer principle.

Lee Kantor: Now that I would imagine takes. That’s a mindset shift for most organizations, because most organizations spend a lot of resources in trying to get the brand new customer. They don’t even spend as much resources in nurturing the existing customer. And now you’re asking them to not only nurture their team and and emphasize the people that are already there, rather than focus on anything new. So how do you kind of help them understand that what you’re saying is true, that your employees are your first customer, and that’s where you really should invest time when they’re typically they’re not spending time on their existing customers. They’d rather find a new customer.

Neil Bedwell: And, you know, all the data will tell you that finding new Finding new customers is way more expensive than keeping the ones that you have. Same goes for employees, by the way. Finding new recruits is way more expensive than keeping the one the folks that you already have and keeping keeping them happy. Um, you just got to look at the data. The Gallup huge, hugely respected organization produce a report on employee engagement every year. And, um, whatever metric you’re trying to move, whether it is a revenue or profit metric, whether it is a customer loyalty metric, whether it’s an earnings per share metric or any other thing in companies with engaged employees, outperform those with disengaged employees on every metric. Um, and it’s not just about keeping your employees engaged and keeping them retained as, as employees. It’s all the other stuff that those happier people do because happier people, when people are happy and engaged at work, then they’re more they’re more productive. Then they show up and go that extra foot or mile for the customer. They sell more to the customers. Um, anything that you’re trying to do is done better if your employees are engaged.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you kind of measure the level of engagement your employees currently have? I can’t believe that just by asking them or giving them a bunch of smiley faces on a form is going to tell the truth. There has to be actions that they’re taking that are kind of illustrating whether they’re engaged or not. And I’m sure that, um, you know, if they’re quitting a lot, that’s probably a clue. But are there clues for engagement?

Neil Bedwell: Oh, absolutely. And, you know, you can go from the hard, hard, um, if you like, lag, measure of retention or of, um, Customer success or or revenue growth or profitability. But really, what you’re trying to do first and foremost is, um, as a as a leader, make sure that you reach every single one of your employees. A lot of internal messaging doesn’t reach most of the people inside companies. Um, I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with with companies in almost every industry. And, uh, often there’s a common theme where where leaders will stand on a stage physically or, or digitally and sort of project a message of, of, of, of the story of the next quarter or the story of the next year. They’re often called town halls. Um, and we’ve been, uh, able to go out into the field for some of the companies that we work with and, you know, meet folks who drive trucks or, um, work in maintenance or handle, you know, handle baggage for airlines, things like that. They don’t see those things. They don’t see the town halls. They don’t go on the internet.

Neil Bedwell: They don’t look at email. They talk to each other. Um, and so the message, first and foremost is often not reaching the majority of employees, particularly in industries that have a lot of frontline folks, not just sort of head office folks. Um, then what you’re looking to try and get is, well, okay, did we get what was the response to that messaging? Was it understood? Um, and then if you have understanding, then you’re going to to if you like, the harder, more tangible, um, elements. Are people adopting new behaviors because of this? Are they using an online system or are they following a process more? Um, are they actually taking actions based on, um, the reach and engagement that you’ve created? And if they take those actions, do those actions, then drive to these hard, if you like CFO level metrics of revenue, profitability, uh, employee churn, all of those kind of things. So you’re you’re looking at sort of lead and lag measures all the way from, first and foremost, did your message even reach all of your people?

Lee Kantor: Now, who is your ideal client? Are they kind of these enterprise level organizations that have kind of like a global presence, or are they like startups or are they like, where do your customers lie?

Neil Bedwell: We we found a sweet spot as local with large companies, with distributed workforces, you know, in in head offices, different offices in on locations, out with customers, um, that have a desire to change, to transform to, to, to take on new behaviors or use new technologies but struggle to reach their employees and in, in so doing, not reaching those employees hampers then those initiatives. I’ll give you a you a very simple example. If you have a new piece of software, a new piece of technology that is going to increase efficiency for 50,000 people on the front line across the country, the what you actually have to do in order to unlock that value is get those 50,000 people to actually use the technology successfully. And a lot of companies spend all of their money on the technology and the integration of the technology, and nothing on actually getting people to use it. And if you think about employees as customers, if you think about external customers, you never create a new product without thinking about how you’re going to sell it. And so we really urge any of our clients to think about what they’re doing as a product, and the fact that whatever new thing that they’re trying to bring inside that company is a new product, and you’re trying to sell it to this audience of employees. And we will work with, um, leaders across every discipline to do that. So if it’s a piece of technology, it’s often with the technology team, with the CIO and her or his group. Um, if it’s a new brand or, um, or product launch, maybe it’s with the marketing team. If it’s a new, um, learning program, it’s with the chief learning officer. If it’s a new, uh, new vision or values or, um, sort of working processes, then maybe it’s with the HR group. Um, we’ve we have experience across all of those different, uh, disciplines. And really, we’re a marketing team for anybody that’s trying to make change stick.

Lee Kantor: Now, is.

Lee Kantor: That usually your typical first point of entry, that they’ll have an initiative that they want to roll out and then they need help kind of getting the buy in throughout the organization. So they hire local to help them execute that.

Neil Bedwell: Yeah. There’s really, um, like three different ways. There’s that, which is, hey, we’ve got this new thing. We want to make sure everybody knows about it. We need a, you know, an employee marketing company. We and we’re there for that. There’s. We tried it. It didn’t work. It failed. People aren’t using it. What should we do? Maybe we need to do something different. And we are different to traditional consulting firms in terms of the approach to change. Um, we actually have a trademarked process which we call change marketing, which is everything we know about marketing to customers on the outside, but pointed at customers on the inside and sort of with a little hybrid, um, of some of the progressive change management thinking, too, so that we’re actually bringing some of that understanding of organizations. Um, you know, so it’s it’s, um, we’ve got something new and we want to make sure people see it. We’ve launched something and people aren’t using it. Um, or we’re seeing negative results in our employee engagement research, and we want to turn things around. So if you like launching something new as a tangible thing, or trying to sort of win over hearts and minds a little bit more on the intangible side so that you can foster more engagement so that you can actually achieve some of the goals that you have.

Lee Kantor: Now, what are some of the, uh, the qualities of a leader that is a good fit for local? And what are some of the qualities that are probably you’re not going to be a good fit.

Neil Bedwell: If I come back to that point I made earlier about standing on a stage and projecting a story, um, and not thinking about whether people hear you, I think it’s that I think, um, good leaders understand that the most important thing is reaching their audience versus, um, saying what they want to say. Um, and so listening and understanding the audience, understanding your, your whoever you’re leading is the most important thing. And then I’m a big believer personally in, um, doing versus saying. So if you if you model behaviors, if you show what matters and you and you do it with courage and confidence, that is a better way to lead others to want to do that versus to mandate or instruct. Um, and then the final thing is recognition. Um, your job as a leader is to, is to model and show the right way to behave and work and then recognize, celebrate those who do that so that others will follow. People follow people more than they follow leaders. So if you can model something, show others doing it, and then have them basically, um, lead for you the rest of the organization, that’s, that’s that’s the way forward. I think, um, for me at least.

Lee Kantor: Now, you.

Lee Kantor: Mentioned early on that you saw an opportunity when you were working with an organization that it was difficult to roll out your idea. What was kind of a clue when you were had this idea of employee engagement and focusing in on the importance of that, that you were like, can you share maybe that first time you did an initiative that worked and you were like, okay, this is something this isn’t just in my head. This is something that I can see really working here. And then it could work in other organizations.

Neil Bedwell: Yeah. And I have the Coca-Cola company to thank, not just for the experience of of working through something as big as the World Cup. And I, you know, I it was incredibly hard work, but I loved it. Um, but also when we first started local, obviously we had a lot of friends, you know, inside the Coca-Cola sort of ecosystem. And we got offered the chance to look at it at a employee engagement program that wasn’t working. Um, and we we were trusted enough by a leader to say, you know, what would you guys do with this? And that’s where we were able to actually show that a marketing approach, which is really about focusing on the audience, in this case the employees, how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking and then leaning into them. Maybe, you know, more emotionally first than rationally. So more about inspiration than than instruction and taking that slant on it actually did unlock some real wins for that program. And we were able to say, well, look, we made something work at one of the biggest, most complex by the sheer size and, uh, geographic spread of the company that that worked. We think that we can do the same thing for you. Um, and I’m very grateful for that opportunity to do that. Um, and it’s still we regard that that experience back in 2015 and 16, I think, as the sort of genesis of what we’ve been able to build since then.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there any advice you can give an organization? Uh, maybe not an enterprise level, but just a small to small to mid sized company. Is there some low hanging fruit that they can be doing better in terms of employee engagement?

Neil Bedwell: Yeah. My um, uh, my old boss from my Coca-Cola days and and are still a very good friend. You you have this great mantra which is you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. You should use them in that ratio. Um, so listen, so many people don’t listen. Your employees, whether you have a team of 5 or 5000, are telling you everything that you need to do. And they’re also capable of doing it. Um, so if you can listen and understand them, you know, and we always say that in marketing the, the, the, the single greatest competitive advantage over any, you know, any competitor is a deeper knowledge of your audience. And I think the same thing goes for, for for leaders inside companies to the more you know about your, your people, um, the more you understand them and what they’re what they want, what they need, what they’re capable of. The more chance you have of of leading them successfully to the outcome that everybody wants. Um, so that that’s, that’s the same no matter what company you’re in, if you’re a smaller company, you can do it quicker. I think you can be more nimble.

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

Neil Bedwell: Well, local, um, we are happily growing. Um, we are, um, investing a lot in the community here in Atlanta. So, um, we think of our clients, uh, as change makers. So a change maker, is anybody in any, any, um, discipline or division inside any company that is trying to make it better? Um, and using employee marketing is change marketing. Uh, sort of process that we have is a tool in the toolbox of a change maker. Um, and what we what we recognize is that an HR leader from a technology company, um, a technology leader from a product company, um, a marketing leader from, uh, you know, a sportswear company, they’re all change makers, and they can all can learn from each other. And we get the benefit. We benefit from knowing those people, um, in terms of growing our business, too. So, um, we are hosting change maker gatherings, events. Uh, we have a really cool, um, house space, a clubhouse space, um, down here on Edgewood that, um, the last event that we did was, uh, just before the holidays, and we had 60 or 70, um, really interesting change makers from across different industries and, and and companies all coming together, talking, sharing, um, sort of contributing, uh, to, to a dialog, but in a really fun, informal way with some really good wine. Um, so if you’re interested in being part of that, we’re also doing virtual ones because we want to reach people, you know, further and wider. But for the Atlanta community, we’d love to meet you. Um, you can find us on LinkedIn local, the change marketing company. Uh, you can find us at Local industries.com. Um, there’s plenty of ways to get in touch with us. Myself, Neil Bedwell on LinkedIn, and we’d love to meet you and understand what change you’re trying to drive and bring you into this, this burgeoning community. And I really mean this as a Brit, uh, transplanted into Atlanta. There is some incredible, um, people here doing really interesting work across a lot of different industries. And, and we, we get so much goodness out of bringing everyone together.

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

Neil Bedwell: Thanks, Lee. Really enjoyed it.

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

Automate Your Way to Security: The Essential Role of IAM in Modern Enterprises

January 20, 2025 by angishields

Sandy Springs Business Radio

Automate Your Way to Security: The Essential Role of IAM in Modern Enterprises

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In this episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio, Erik Boemanns talks with Bill Morse, a seasoned expert in identity and access management (IAM) with over 30 years of experience. Bill, who founded his own IAM consulting firm three years ago, discusses the critical role of IAM in automating employee onboarding and offboarding, enhancing security, and boosting productivity. He highlights the challenges of managing digital identities and the importance of principles like “least privilege.” The episode also covers Bill’s journey into consulting, the financial benefits of effective IAM practices, and practical security tips for organizations.

Bill Morse has a 25-year career as an IT leader in the Financial Services industry including Chase, Prudential, First Data and Fiserv.

In January 2021, Bill started Airitos, providing Identity & Access Management (IAM) architecture and strategy to Fortune 500 companies across industries such as Financial Services, Pharma and others.

In his enterprise career Bill provided IAM leadership through major events including Mergers & Acquisitions, Divestitures, and implementations of new HR Systems, access management and identity governance platforms.

Today Bill uses this experience to advise companies on their own IAM journeys.

Connect with Bill on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for Sandy Springs Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: This episode of Sandy Springs Business Radio is brought to you by Mirability, providing unique IT solutions, leveraging cloud, AI, and more to solve business problems. Here’s your host, Erik Boemanns.

Erik Boemanns: Thank you, Bill Morse, for joining me today. I’m glad to have you here to talk to us about. We’re going to talk about identity access management, which is probably a term that nobody’s ever heard of. So we’ll dive into what that really means in a bit. But I wanted to start maybe just with a quick give yourself an introduction, tell, you know, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Bill Morse: Sure. And thanks for having me. My name is Bill Morse. I’m about a 30 year career doing different enterprise roles for a for large financial services companies. Towards the end of that time started to focus on what we call identity and access management. We’ll explain what that is in a in a second here. And then about three years ago, I started my own company doing the same thing, but as a as a consultant. So get to get to help, you know, several several organizations with some, some shared lessons. And that’s what we’re here to talk about. Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And so that company name is Aretos. Right. And it’s we focus on identity access management. And we will I want to talk a little bit later about kind of that journey to a founding a consulting company and, and some of the things there because that it’s always interesting as well. But, um, maybe just start with what does Aretus do? How do you help your clients? What is maybe even take a step back? What is identity access management?

Bill Morse: So we focus on, uh, so if you think of a large company, kind of, you know, hiring and firing, you know, potentially hundreds of people, you know, weekly, monthly, etc., we do is we help automate that whole process. And, you know, what we what we focus on is when you bring a new employee in, you don’t want to just give them a computer and joke around how it’s going to take a week to get them all the access he needs. You know, we want to get people productive on day one. And more importantly, when they when they leave your company either on their own or, you know, a mutual decision, we want to make sure they lose all the access that they have. And this this is much more important now than it used to be in the old days and the old days, you’d go to a building, and if you lost access to that building, you couldn’t get to any of the computer systems in it. But now, as you know, everything tends to be in the cloud. So what we do is automate what we call the provisioning and the deprovisioning of that access across all the different applications. So, you know, keep the the enterprise more secure, but also make the the resource more productive, you know, give them access to everything they need kind of on on day one where, you know, where possible. So if you, you know, we’re talking about large enterprises here. Banks and pharmaceuticals etc.. But you know, everyone kind of has this need right from the, you know, at the at the lowest level If you have a PC in your house and you want your you know your child to use it, you might create an account for that, for you know, for your child and say you have access to this, this and this, but I don’t want you messing with quicken.

Bill Morse: Right. So, you know, at all levels, there’s kind of this, this concept of of identity, right? Kind of prove who you are and then access management. So based on you being Eric and you know, your level of trust and training, etc., I’ll give you access to, you know, these things and, um, you know, the bigger the enterprise gets, the more complicated that gets. Right. One of the things we deal with is, um, called separation of duties. So, you know, maybe if you have this access over here, I shouldn’t give you that access over there. You shouldn’t be able to, you know, approve your own time sheets or, you know, write, write checks and then, uh, you know, make journal entries that kind of, you know, wipe away the fact that you wrote that checks and stuff like that. So, you know, it gets gets more complex the the more complex the business gets. Uh, but it’s basically the same thing as, as just, you know, that that that first use case of, you know, based on who you are. I only want to give you access to what I feel comfortable giving you access to. So that’s that’s I am in a in a nutshell.

Erik Boemanns: Gotcha. And I think something to point out too, is that not only when the employee starts and leaves, but even in the middle as they get promoted, as things change within the organization, they may also gain access. Because I’m thinking a lot of breaches happen when a person, an individual’s computer gets hacked through, you know, ransomware or something, and then whatever they have access to is the target. Yeah. And so if they have access to something that they shouldn’t have access to because they’ve either changed departments or it wasn’t poorly managed or was poorly managed, that kind of access control, I think, matters too. So it’s not just that beginning and end.

Bill Morse: No, definitely. There’s there’s a lot a lot of concepts. Some. So there’s a concept of what’s called least privilege, right. So you should get the least amount of privilege to do the job that, that you’re supposed to be doing. But in the industry we we have different jokes. Right. So we call people packrats. Right. If you’ve if you’ve been in an enterprise for a decade and change roles three times. You know, sometimes people are afraid to remove permissions because they might need you to kind of come in and help them out. That kind of thing. But, you know, over the course of, of a long career, you might have access to too many things. So that’s that’s one of the things that I am looking at, right. Do you, you know, have roles that can can conflict with each other over time. And, you know, as as people leave departments, they should lose access to the old department and just have the access they need for the for the new department they’re moving to. So great. Great point.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And so understanding the kind of complexity, like you said, as the organization gets bigger, they’ll have multiple systems, but even a small company now will have multiple systems and probably a a login and account in each of those systems. So the complexity may vary, right, depending on the organization size. Um, what is it? How does Airbus come in and help? What is kind of that first type of engagement if you will?

Bill Morse: It differs. So one of the things we offer is called a IAM maturity assessment and the use case. There will be typically a new CIO, new CISO. There will be a merger. There will be a divestiture. Something significant will happen, and someone will bring us in and say, hey, just just give us an inventory of what we got from an IAM perspective. Sometimes they have 2 or 3 products to do the same thing. So, you know, help us help us rationalize this to, you know, can we get down to one? Is there a is there a good reason to have two products to do the same thing? Um, a lot of times the the event will be, like I said, either a either a merger or a divestiture. So you’ve got to figure out, um, how do we combine these different user stores or split them out? And a lot of times with, you know, big organizations, the divestitures is announced. You know, we’re going to we’re going to spin this company off, etc.. But there’s a period of of, you know, sometimes a year where the, the company that was spun off still has to use systems at the, at the parent company that that spun them off.

Bill Morse: Um, but, you know, there’s a limited amount of stuff you want that that spun off company to have access to. Um, so we’ll kind of come in, look at the whole picture. Um, you know, a lot a lot of what we do, um, from an architecture and strategy standpoint, is draw pictures, right? Um, and, you know, the simpler the picture looks at the end of the day, the better. But typically it takes, you know, hundreds of interviews and a lot of research and stuff to figure out what does the enterprise look like. And then you show that picture to people, and it makes it a lot easier to say, you know, see this redundancy here? We’re going to get rid of this, this and this, consolidate it into that. This is, you know, the future state that we we suggest. And then we talk about how to get there. And um, again, the bigger the organization, the longer these processes take. Because, you know, systems that have been around forever, they they tend to grow legs, right? They’re used in ways people forgot they were used. So you really got to kind of, you know, go through and dissect these things carefully.

Erik Boemanns: It makes sense, especially in the divestiture where your point was exactly right, where you have a user base that’s now no longer part of the company, but still needs to access those resources. But I think something I heard you say, as you’re talking about that is the multiple systems. What do we even have? And we may have 2 or 3 systems. So I assume one of the outputs of what you’re doing is to actually help simplify, which then probably one could improve their security, but two has a cost saving.

Bill Morse: It definitely is. Yeah. And there’s there’s a couple of ways where I am can can help you save costs. So one of them is, um, you know, knowing who has access to different systems. So, you know, a lot of these cloud systems, you provision people, they they leave the company, you kind of forget to deprovision them. So, you know, going in and looking at your email provider or looking at your CRM provider, etcetera, looking at all the accounts that are still active that you’re still paying for and make sure you’re, you know, those people are still around. That’s that’s one of the, the easiest ways to kind of, you know, show some show some cost savings. Um, but on the, um, on the, on the what we call the harmonization side. Right. If you have three, three systems that do the same thing, you know, the goal is always to get, you know, down to one, you know, reduce your attack surface, you know, run one thing and run it well. Um, but we joke it’s a lot like painting a bridge. So it takes, you know, it takes a year to paint it. By the time you’re done painting it, they’ll merge with someone else. So now they. You know that. And that other company might have a, you know, a fourth technology. So now you have to kind of take a look at that, you know, hey, they’re using this other technology, you know, how are they doing with it? Can, can our technology do all the stuff that their technology does, that kind of thing.

Bill Morse: Um, so, you know, one of the things about IAM is it almost never ends, right? You’re always trying to get simpler. Um, from a, from a user access standpoint, we’re always trying to make it easy so that it’s, it’s role based. Right? So if you join the company and you’re a, you know, tax accountant one. Um, you should get access to six different systems to do your job. You know, by just by just by putting you in that one role. Um, so we have, we have concepts that we call birthright access, right? So as you, as you join the company, you kind of get everything you need just because you’re in that role. Well, these roles change, right? As you know, your CFO says, hey, we’re not going to use that tax platform anymore. We’re going to shift to this one. Now someone has to go in and see what permissions. Tax accountant one should have. So it’s kind of a it’s always an evolving thing. We always try to evolve towards a, you know, simplified, easy to manage model. Uh, but it’s uh, you know, it’s a journey.

Erik Boemanns: I think the other thing that I heard just now, if a person is leaving the company and you forget to de-provision their account, if you forget to delete them from the system, or you’ve got so many systems, you remember to do it on two, but you forget on the other eight. If you also are either interested in going through an audit, a security audit, like a soc2 or something like that, that’s something that the auditor is going to check. And then they’re going to have all sorts of questions about like, why is this person still in your system if they haven’t worked for you for six months.

Bill Morse: And so it’s an uncomfortable conversation. Exactly.

Erik Boemanns: So if you are thinking about that sort of audit or or already under it, having something like this looked at and and fixed is almost a critical item at that point. Yeah.

Bill Morse: Yeah, that’s that’s one thing we’ve seen. Auditors love automation. You know, they love the ability to, you know, push a button and run a report. Um, you know, even if the report has, has bad news on it that at least you can run it, right? It’s much better than, um, you know, having to make the auditor go go dive for it. My wife’s an auditor, actually. So there you go. She always tells me the, you know, the the friendlier you are with me, the better the audit goes. So I try to I try to put my clients in a way where they can, you know, kind of make the order. They’re happy.

Erik Boemanns: We talked about cost savings. We talked about some security benefits and a lot of business owners, when they’re thinking about security and they’re thinking about risk, it’s it’s cost that I spend to not lose more money, but it’s just still a cost center. It’s still me spending money. And this could feel that way to other than we said, there’s a few cost savings, but I think the an aspect of this that’s missed is that these can be a business enabler as well. So how do you see that in terms of identity, and how does it having a good practice around identity actually become an enabler, not just a cost?

Bill Morse: That’s a great question. Yeah. Since since I’ve been in this business we’ve almost joked about it, you know, can can security be a business enabler. Right. And you know, the people that just want to get some functionality out of it when the when the security department says, hey, you can’t do that. And here’s why. You know, there’s all these jokes, right? Where the department that says no and all that. So we, you know, we always try to say, hey, you know, we can be a business enabler. I think we’re finally getting to the point where people are believing that. Right? So when you when you wake up and your system is not ransomware, you know, when you’re when your website’s not defaced, etc., um, you know, hug your CISO. So, um, you know, we’re at the point now where like, like from an identity standpoint, I’ll give you some specific examples, right. You mentioned a minute ago that, you know, all these different cloud systems. You might have your own ID and password. Yeah. So if we go in and we enable them all for single sign on, we’ve made ourselves way more secure. Right? I know that if you don’t have access to the thing that you can single sign on through, then you lose access to all these things immediately. And I can worry about deprovisioning your account later on.

Bill Morse: But from a user perspective, I can now give you, you know, a portal where you can just click on all the access you have, all the apps you have access to, and kind of, you know, log in directly without worrying about, you know, an ID and password for, for each one of them. Um, so there’s, there’s, there’s different um, you know, another even even simpler. Right. People used to complain about, um, you know, I step away from my desktop for ten minutes, and when I get back, it’s locked. Now I have to log into it. Well, you know, with with, um, Windows Hello and touch ID, depending if you’re, if you’re a PC or Mac, it’s not that big a deal anymore, right? But now, you know, I’m authenticating you with a with a biometric, not just a simple password. So you’re more secure, and, you know, all you have to do is drag your smile, your camera, drag your finger across the fingerprint scanner so it’s, you know, it’s easier for the user and more secure, you know, and I do want your desktop to lock when you walk away. So there’s there’s several examples where, you know, you can be more secure and make the user happier at the same time.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And so happy users, obviously more productive users. And I think you start talking about fingerprint biometrics and the idea of password lists is is a topic that people may have heard about. And we’re so focused on making sure that that people have different passwords and strong passwords, and all of a sudden we’re saying actually just don’t even have a password. You’re going to be more secure if you just skip that step altogether, which I think also can result in more security and more productivity and lower risk as well.

Bill Morse: Yeah, yeah, shared secrets should, uh, you know, and that’s, that’s a fancy way of saying passwords and other things that, you know, you know, but someone else can, can guess or find out or whatever. Just a public service announcement, right? When we when we tell you to use a different password for every site, you know, there’s there are reasons that we’re we’re telling you that. Right? We can kind of scare the audience by, uh, you know, explaining that, you know, as, as, as, as sites are hacked and IDs and passwords are kind of, you know, discovered there is really simple technology that can kind of, you know, spray those IDs and passwords across every other website on Earth, right. So that’s that’s why we don’t want you to have the, uh, you know, the same password more than more than once. But another example of how, you know, security can make users happy. Um, they’re a very good password managers. Right. It’s trivial now to have a, you know, strong, unique password for every site, and you don’t even need to know it, right? You just, you know, unlock your, your, uh, you know, keystore on your computer and, um, you know, pass that, pass that password. So.

Erik Boemanns: So I’m going to pivot the conversation a little bit. I mentioned we want to talk a little bit about the business itself, consulting and how kind of what motivated you to shift to that mode of.

Bill Morse: I’ve wanted to have my own business since I was a child. So it was it was it was time. Right, right. Um, so I was looking for my next my next role, um, had several offers to take another kind of enterprise role, but I got one offer that was a, you know, an offer to come in as a consultant and, um, you know, working, working through the details, I realized this was my this was my chance to kind of, you know, come in, start my own business, come in as a consultant, um, you know, through through another consulting company that had the actual contract, but then try to build, you know, my, my book of business on my own. Um, so that was about three years ago now. Um, you know, I’m I’m enjoying the journey. So, you know, one of the, one of the things that, um, is kind of fun about it all is, you know, if you come from the enterprise side, where, you know, you’re supposed to secure the the ERP platform and the accounting platform and HR platform and all that, but you don’t really understand 100% what these things do. Now you’re running your own business, and you need an HR system and a CRM and an accounting platform and all that. So, you know, these days, um, you know, if you’re if you’re out there thinking about starting a business, I would say go for it because, um, you know, it’s a lot easier. You know, you can subscribe to all these things. You don’t need to stand up a data center, etc.. You know, all this stuff is kind of available. Um, you know, the more people that use something, the easier it is to find other people to, you know, ask for advice and etc.. So, yeah, you know, the process of getting this all started was, uh, was very exciting. And anytime anyone and I could go for a couple of hours about starting a business up and integrating all your systems together and all that. So if anyone wants to know more about that, please, please reach out. It’s one of my favorite topics.

Erik Boemanns: You did mention one thing, though, that I think scares people the most about starting a new business. You should build your own book of business. So getting customers, getting clients that obviously once you get past that curve, having your own business is amazing. It’s fun. It’s getting to that first customer second, and then a repeatable process. Um, so do you have any secrets you want to share about how are you acquiring new business?

Bill Morse: So our so one of the things about identity and access management at the enterprise level is it’s, it’s difficult for a very small business to knock on, you know, a large bank or pharmaceutical store and say, hey, I can I can help you with your problems. Right. It’s it’s almost impossible. Um, but what we do is we, we call them our channels, right? So we partner with much bigger consulting firms that already have those relationships. And in the ideal situation, they don’t do IAM. So they might do ten other things for a for a company. And if they hear I am they’ll kind of call us and say, hey, we you know, we just heard that this company has this problem. Can you can you solve it? Um, sometimes we can’t. And I’m and I’m happy to, you know, stay in my uh, my wheelhouse. Um, you know, one of the things is, is people, um, often ask me, hey, is this guy your competitor? And I always joke, I’m too small to have competitors. You know, there’s enough business out there, um, that, you know, the crumbs that fall off the table from from some of the big guys are big enough to to, you know, run your own consulting firm on. Sure.

Erik Boemanns: So you’ve been doing this a few years now looking forward. What are you excited about?

Bill Morse: Am I excited about I, I personally want to get to the point where I’m no longer billable. Right. So we right now we have about a dozen people, um, you know, there there is work involved in, you know, going on podcasts. Actually, this is this is great. Thanks for having me. But there’s there’s work going out there, marketing, you know, running the business, finding, finding the next job, etc.. And, um, you know, when I stand up and say, yeah, I’ll get that spreadsheet to you next week, you know, I need someone to smack me and say, no, you can’t. You know, you’ve got other stuff to do. Like, you know, delegate that. Um, so 2025 is going to be the year where, you know, Bill is is less billable. The guys in the office are kidding about that, but also want to want to get bigger. We have some some revenue targets for this year that we think we can hit. Um, you know, I’m making it sound like it’s great. One of the scariest parts of starting your own business is, well, talking to other people that have a successful job into quitting it and coming along with you. That’s that’s the most terrifying part. Yes. So, you know, you got to remember you’re bringing other people along on this, on this journey with you. But it’s it’s been, you know, a lot of fun, very rewarding so far.

Erik Boemanns: That’s great. Um, so real quick as we are getting close to the end here, how can people find out more about Erdos and reach out to you?

Bill Morse: So we have a website just w WW. Com has a contact us link. That’s one of the best ways to to kind of get our attention. Um, we’re also on LinkedIn. Uh, we have, we have a page on uh, on LinkedIn. If it’s okay, we’ll put links to both in the, uh, in the comments and all. Um, and, you know, bring bring us your, uh, your questions, comments, concerns. You know, one of the things we, um, we really believe in is, um, you know, as an industry, as a society, etc., we’ve got to talk about these things. And one of the things I wanted to I want to talk about today is, you know, we, you know, if some someone wakes up and their system is ransomware, like I said a minute ago, it’s not something to be embarrassed about. It’s something to tell everyone about and tell them what you could have done differently so that we can all kind of learn from the experience. So, you know, if you if you want to tell me something I said here was wrong or if you want to ask for advice. Either way, you know, feel free to reach out.

Erik Boemanns: Yeah. And real quick, if you don’t mind spelling the company name as well.

Bill Morse: So it’s, uh, I r I t o s. So, yeah, some people do tell me it should be pronounced like like the bag of chips, but but it’s it’s it’s supposed to sound Latin sound.

Erik Boemanns: Yes. Not a snack. Um. So awesome. Appreciate that. I just want to close out. Maybe, um, what are three things that people could do as they today to make themselves more secure?

Bill Morse: That’s a good question. So we mentioned one of them. So, you know, talk to each other. Right. Learn from each other and and, you know, share your experiences. Share your your good experiences, but also your, your bad ones. So we can all learn from it. Um, have a healthy amount of skepticism. You know, so, um, you know, when you get that link that says click here, your package can’t be delivered or you got a wire or whatever. You know, think think twice about where it came from. Uh, you know, all the advice people give you. Check the URL, make sure it’s a known sender, make sure it’s a, you know, SSL cert, etc. but be skeptical when you’re when your bank calls you out of the blue and they’re asking you for more information that they should probably know already. You know, make sure it’s really your bank. So we all have to be skeptical. But we all we all have to tell each other about this so that we all understand, you know, where to be, where to be skeptical. And then if you’re, you know, if you’re a you’re a service provider, your bank, your insurance company or your travel agency, whatever. If they’re offering more security, take them up on it. Right. You should, um, you know, we talked about having unique passwords for all your sites, but if they offer what’s called multi-factor authentication, where, you know, you can’t log in without, um, you know, acknowledging a notification on your phone or that kind of thing. Take them up on it. Right. You know, it’s our responsibility to be as secure as we’re we’re able to be. If the vendors were working for our, um, I’m sorry, if the vendors were using our offering security, we should take them up on it. And if they’re not offering these levels of security, we should we should push back and ask for it be.

Erik Boemanns: Consider different vendors. Right.

Bill Morse: Right, right. Part of part of due diligence.

Erik Boemanns: Right, exactly. Well, thank you again for coming. I appreciate the time and the insight and look forward to next time.

Bill Morse: This was great. Thanks for having me.

About Your Host

Erik Boemanns is a technology executive and lawyer. His background covers many aspects of technology, from infrastructure to software development.

He combines this with a “second career” as a lawyer into a world of cybersecurity, governance, risk, compliance, and privacy (GRC-P).

His time in a variety of companies, industries, and careers brings a unique perspective on leadership, helping, technology problem solving and implementing compliance.

Connect with Erik on LinkedIn, Substack and Medium.