Search Results for: marketing matters

EDI, Integrations and Accessibility E6

May 16, 2023 by Karen

EDI-Integrations-and-Accessibility-featurev2

eCommerce Insights

EDI, Integrations and Accessibility E6

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EDI, Integrations and Accessibility E6

In this episode, atmosol spoke with Dave Malda from Jitterbit and Landon Shefts from accessiBe. We dove into the ever-changing world of eCommerce, shedding light on the critical areas of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), integrations, and accessibility. Are you ready to stay ahead of the curve and thrive in the eCommerce landscape? Listen and learn.

You’ll discover the power of EDI, uncover the secrets to seamless integrations that empower your eCommerce ecosystem, and understand how to break barriers as accessibility matters.

Jitterbit is a software integration solution provider, empowering businesses to optimize their connectivity and scalability through a single integration and workflow automation platform.

Jitterbit’s iPaaS (Integration Platform As A Service) offers hundreds of pre-built integrations that automate common business workflows, an easy-to-use interface that lets users quickly create integrations, and management tools that enable users to see everything in one place.

A low-code, cloud-native enterprise integration platform as a service built for IT developers and business users alike.

Dave Malda is an experienced eCommerce ecosystem expert with nearly 20 years of experience in software development, marketing, and sales.

He is a passionate evangelist for smarter and more-connected eCommerce and omnichannel retail environments that put the customer experience at the center of every transaction, data transfer, and communication.

Follow Jitterbit on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

accessiBe is the market leader in web accessibility, providing an ecosystem of solutions for any business.

Our Mission is to provide an ecosystem of accessibility solutions to enable businesses of every size to create and maintain accessible and compliant websites.

accessiBe’s promise is to streamline website accessibility with accessiBe’s ecosystem of solutions powered by AI technology, to provide your users with an accessible and compliant website and to participate in making the internet an inclusive space for everyone.

With almost a decade of experience working with marketing and web development agencies, as well as experience with a leading E-commerce CMS platform, Landon Shefts has learned how agencies and business owners can make a great user experience for their clients’ and all users, no matter their ability.

He has a dedication to providing brands with the knowledge of why accessibility is important and how they achieve this goal.

Follow accessiBe on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

About eCommerce Insights

eCommerce Insights is about bringing people together to discuss the vast landscape of eCommerce covering topics like technology, conversion optimization, branding, and marketing. The show focuses on how to build, manage and grow your online business using scientific and predictable methods thereby reducing uncertainty and risk. Our guests include vendors, merchants, experts, and technology partners shaping the world of eCommerce.

About Our Hosts

Ram Mohan is CEO and partner at atmosol, an ecommerce and technology company. He has spent over two decades in technology and eCommerce consulting helping companies ranging from small to fortune 100 achieve their business goals using technology.

As CEO, Ram leads atmosol’s eCommerce and SaaS services business working with our clients. In addition, he leads a team that runs an eCommerce portal in the meetings and events sector focusing on the EMEA market. He is also responsible for several SaaS products that are envisioned, built, and marketed by atmosol in different verticals and geographies.

Ram enjoys keeping up with and gaining a deep understanding of the latest trends in technology and eCommerce so he can help atmosol and our clients avoid hype and adopt trends that offer a tangible impact on our businesses.

Honey Olesen is the Director of Operations with atmosol and has substantial experience in leadership, management, operations, project management, digital marketing, human resources and data analysis. She deeply understands how businesses work and can take complex concepts and make them easy to understand for both employees and customers. She has worked at atmosol for over 11 years and has had the opportunity to work with some great brands and people in ecommerce, marketing and business.

Before entering the world of technology, Honey worked with some fantastic business owners in the building industry – soaking up knowledge of business day-to-day operations and growing her professional development.

She believes that in order for businesses to be successful, they need to have a clear mission and purpose, make sure the business goals are aligned with the values and stay focused on what’s important. She believes this is the same for individual success: find a place where your mission, purpose, goals, and values align with the company.

About Our Sponsor

Atmosol is a technology company working at the intersection of eCommerce and SaaS software. Our deep expertise in web development in addition to our long partnership with eCommerce platforms enables our clients to break through eCommerce platform barriers and build experiences that amaze their customers. Being in the eCommerce business ourselves running a meeting and events sales portal in the EMEA, we know the trials and tribulations our customers face firsthand.

In addition to eCommerce, we also build highly scalable SaaS products for our clients. We’ve also built and marketed our own successful SaaS products in different verticals.

Follow atmosol on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Ingrid Weir with Cornerstone Hospice, Jenny Cantrell with Arbonne and Melissa Pearson with The Barter Company

May 15, 2023 by angishields

Charitable Georgia

Ingrid Weir with Cornerstone Hospice, Jenny Cantrell with Arbonne and Melissa Pearson with The Barter Company

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This week on Charitable Georgia our guests include Jenny Cantrell, a naturopathic doctor and master herbalist. Cantrell’s story of overcoming health challenges and her passion for helping people improve their health through clean eating and natural remedies is truly inspiring. She also sheds light on the crisis of malnutrition and toxicity in America and emphasizes the importance of educating people about making healthy choices.

We also talk with Ingrid Weir with Cornerstone Hospice, who shares her experience of providing compassionate end-of-life care to patients and their families. Ingrid also discusses the challenges faced by the organization and the importance of community support in their work.

Melissa Pearson from A Barter Company talks about the benefits of bartering and how it can help people save money and build stronger communities. She also shares her experiences of working with different businesses and individuals and how bartering has helped them achieve their goals.

With her family working in real estate, finance, and construction, Ingrid Weir began her career in the areas she knew well. After 14 years of working at the same company in electric radiant floor heating, a twist of fate led her into the field of senior care.

Beginning in home care, she quickly realized that she had an affinity for working with patients and their families and liaising between them and those in the senior care community. After three years working in the for-profit area of home care, she realized her true passion was in hospice and helping those terminal illnesses embrace their lives.

She now spends her time educating the community, patients, and their families and caregivers on the benefits of beginning hospice care early while working for a non-profit hospice. Her main purpose is to educate those under the misconception that hospice is only for the last few days of life. Patients and their caregivers miss out on the many services hospices provides because of the delayed care caused by this myth.

Hospice provides 24/7 on-call nursing and nursing assistants to help with hygiene and bathing while reporting changes back to the medical team several times a week. In addition, medical equipment, supplies such as Depends and bed pads, volunteer and respite services, on-site x-rays and wound care, medical comfort care, bereavement and community support and resources, education on the disease and dying process, and much more are available free of charge when on hospice.

When started at the point that someone has decided to stop medical intervention in the disease process, this potentially saves patients and families thousands of dollars and reduces stress on both parties by assisting throughout the entire process including bereavement support for the caregivers long after the patient has passed.

Jenny Cantrell has a degree in naturopathic medicine and is a master herbalist. She is a Health and Weight Loss Coach, a Clean Eating Coach and Speaker. She is passionate about changing the health of one person at a time, one family at a time so they can feel great and thrive, not just get through the day and so they can accomplish what they were meant to do and enjoy life
to the fullest!

She is a native of Georgia mother of 2 sons, has a granddaughter, and is a great grandmother to 2 boys, 2 and 4 years old! Her father was a pastor for 40 years and she saw both her parents helping people in many ways. So it naturally followed suit that she would be in a helping business as well. As a young adult, she was interested in nutrition and how our health is affected by what we eat and drink.

In spite of eating healthier than the average person, she found herself losing her energy and found herself very weak and living in pain struggling to get through the day. This led her to seek out naturopathic holistic ways to get her strength back and totally regained her health! She went on to get a formal education from Trinity School of Natural Health to further her knowledge. As she says, “It Matters What You Put on Your Body and What You Put in Your Body!”

You can contact Jenny via email jenny@jennycantrell.com or by phone at 865.405.8861

Melissa Pearson has a background in Marketing & Advertising. She previously worked for Trader publishing, cars.com and apartments.com. She worked for The Barter Company in 2013, but left to start a Money Mailer Franchise for 5 years and came back in June of 2018.

What she likes most about her position as a Client Growth Specialist is her TBC family, networking in the community, meeting new people and helping businesses reach their highest growth potential. She has a beautiful daughter, 2 precious grand gifts and a fur baby who she adores.

When she is not working or networking, she Loves spending time with family, (especially her grand gifts) friends, the outdoors, hiking, festivals and walking her little dog Izzy.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:09] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta. It’s time for Charitable Georgia. Brought to you by B’s Charitable Pursuits and Resources. We put the fun in fund raising. For more information, go to B’s Charitable Pursuits. Dot com. That’s B’s Charitable Pursuits dot com. Now here’s your host, Brian Pruitt.

Brian Pruett: [00:00:46] Good, fabulous Friday morning. It’s another fabulous Friday. And we’ve got three more fabulous guests. If this is your first time listening to Charitable Georgia, this is all about positive things happening in your community. And I don’t know if I’m if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’m the only guy in the studio this morning, so I got my favorite producer, though. Sharon’s back.

[00:01:06] Hello.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:06] Stone is actually on the golf course doing his thing with that. So, Sharon, I’m thankful that you came. And.

[00:01:12] My pleasure.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:12] Like I said, I’m the only guy. So we’ll see if I make it through this. But I do have. You’re brave. Yes. Yes. I do have three great guests, though, this morning. And you’re going to hear some some great stuff. We’re going to start with Miss Jenny Cantrell. So, Jenny, thank you for being here this morning.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:01:29] Oh, thank you for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:01:31] So Jenny is a naturalpath doctor and a master herbalist, right. So please share your story and why you’re passionate about helping people in their health.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:01:43] Okay. I’m happy to. Well, my story actually starts as a young child. I was born with great hearing loss. And when I was in my 20s, when I went to have my first exam, I was in my late 20s and the audiologist was amazed that I actually worked outside the home, had my own business, and I asked him why he was amazed with that. And he said, because people who have a great hearing loss such as yours really do not do well in life. In fact, they become totally dependent on their parents and never work outside the home. And I said, Well, I never thought about that. I just thought as a child when I was told that I would be deaf by the time I was 20, I just thought, well, you know, I’m just going to have to do the best I can. I’ll just learn sign language. And it never occurred to me not to work or, you know, be productive in society. And so that is really where it started. And I just want to encourage people that no matter what your setbacks are physically, emotionally or whatever, you can overcome that there is something that you can do. Now, one of the reasons I went into sales is because, you know, I’m kind of an old woman. I’m 68 years old. So if you go back in time, a lot of the phones did not have where you could increase the volume. So I knew that I could not do office work if I had to answer the phone. So but I’m a people person and I like to be out.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:03:42] So I just had to choose sales in in order. That was my really my only, only option. So and then later I went into business for myself because I had always been a healthy eater and I did not allow, you know, coats and candy and things like that in my house. But all of a sudden I started losing my energy and I didn’t know why. And I was starting to struggle to get through the day. So I went to the doctor. They couldn’t find anything wrong. They and then I began to live in constant pain, unbearable pain. So I asked the doctors, you know, for help. They couldn’t figure it out. And their only option was pain medicine. And I’m the kind of person I like to get to the root of the problem. I I’m not going to live on pain. I’ve got to find what is causing this. It doesn’t make any sense. So that put me on a path to seek out a naturopathic medicine, alternative means of healing. And so I got in touch with some experts in that field, began to apply clean eating. Now, my my diet was better than the average American, so but I realized I could clean it up even more and make some changes. So I did that, took some, you know, supplements and I put all of that in remission. I mean, I was very, very weak, could hardly walk and in a lot of pain. And after about 5 or 6 months, I began to feel the energy coming back in my body.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:05:38] And so and it all went in remission. And I felt better than when I was a teenager. So I got curious about, well, why these herbs, why this? Why that? What was it in that the chemistry of that that provided healing for my body. And so I just began to study. At the time I was an interior designer, but I started studying this on the side and then I decided to get a formal education. So I got a degree in natural pathic medicine and two certificates of the master herbalist to study, to study the chemistry of herbs. And that put me on a path to share my knowledge. So I didn’t just learn that for me, but to share that knowledge to make a difference in people’s lives. So when I, I do speak and when I speak and whatever organization it is, I want to share information right then that a person can go away, makes them changes. That is going to bring more energy and health in their body. And so that is a passion of mine to change one person’s health at a time, one family’s health at a time. Because we are in a crisis in this country. We are in a crisis with toxicity and malnutrition, and we don’t think of us as being malnourished. We when we hear the word malnutrition, we think of starving children in a foreign country. But most Americans walking around right now are very malnourished. They’re extremely dehydrated, and they are very toxic. And so my passion is educating people so that they can can manage that. Now, we’re not going to get away from a chemicals.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:07:43] We’re just not. But there are some changes that we can make every day that will make a difference because when these toxins get in our body, unfortunately, we can’t just drink water and flush them out. They build up inside of us on a cellular level. So we need to be focused. Being healthy nowadays will not just happen like when I was a kid because I grew up, you know, we were before intensive farming, but when intensive farming began to take control of our country back in the 50s and 60s, everything changed. For the first time in the history of mankind, our food was altered to the point that our bodies do not really and truly vegan. It’s not just what you get inside of you, it’s what you’re able to assimilate and your cells use for nutrition to produce energy for healing and energy for the day. So that’s what I like to teach people and it will make a difference. I’ve done this for well over 25 years and almost every week somebody is texting me and telling me, Oh my gosh, I feel so much better. I’m sleeping better. I don’t have this brain fog. I’m, you know, and it’s just such a joy to be able to share that and know that I’m turning people’s health around because it’s not just them. It might be the woman of the family. Usually the women, you know, kind of control the food in the family, hopefully. And and so it can really make a difference. And that’s what I love to do.

Brian Pruett: [00:09:35] You can tell I like my women’s cooking. So as we shared a couple of weeks ago, I’ve got the keg, as Tara like to say. So I got the 24 pack. Can you can you share just one thing that you mentioned about knowing what you’re eating and stuff like that? Can you just share one tidbit of how you can, you know, the natural part of changing what you eat?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:09:57] I tell you. Your goal every day. My goal every day is how much green food? And I’m not talking about pistachio pudding.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:10] Or green M&ms?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:10:10] Now that that’s not on the list, but green vegetables, When you sit down to eat, half your plate needs to be dark green vegetables or your yellow or your orange. That’s a given because we’ve got to balance the alkalinity with the acid. And so that one thing I’ll give you another tip, we should never drink when we eat.

Brian Pruett: [00:10:38] Why is That?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:10:38] Well, several things. When you eat, your stomach is to release digestive fluids. That’s got all kinds of good stuff. Food, enzymes, hydrochloric acid, other things in there to help break down that food, to assimilate it. So when you crowd your stomach with liquid, there’s not enough room for the digestive fluids to really work on digesting your food. The other thing is you can actually drink so much that you’re flushing what nutrition is in that food. You’re flushing them on out of the body. So those are two important reason. The rule of thumb is drink your water 15 minutes before you eat. That gives it time to go through your stomach and then you can eat. And if you have to, people tell me, well, I have to drink when I eat, well, then you’re eating the wrong thing. So if you’re eating something that’s super dry, what is that? Because vegetables have a lot of liquid in them. You don’t need to drink water when you’re eating vegetables. So those are two tips. But dark green vegetables. And when I have people come and I work with them, I have them write down five days worth of what they’re eating. It’s not for me. I already know what they’re not eating and but this is for them. So I look at and say, we’re going to circle all of the green vegetables that you’ve eaten in the last five days. And it’s shocking because sometimes it may be. The only thing is that that one piece of iceberg lettuce on the hamburger.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:26] I mean, that doesn’t count?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:12:27] No, it does not. There’s no nutrition in that. So anyway. Okay, so.

Brian Pruett: [00:12:34] So can you there might be somebody listening who doesn’t know exactly what a naturopathic doctor is. You shared a little bit. But what exactly is that? And the difference between that obviously in a medical doctor and what you can and can’t do.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:12:48] Right. Well, naturopathic means that there’s healing through natural means without medication. So through your diet, through herbs, through supplements. And that’s what is different. Medical doctors. And I’m not against doctors. We need them. I go to them all the time to help diagnose. I cannot diagnose. And but doctors can do that. That’s what they are trained to do and can legally do. And so they diagnose and they’re trained to then get a medicine to help control that symptom that you’re having. But naturopathic means that you’re you’re really balancing the body on a cellular level so that the body is able to heal itself.

Brian Pruett: [00:13:45] Okay. On the supplements, I’m guessing there could be good and bad supplements. Can you share about supplements?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:13:52] Yes, there are a lot of supplements out there that the bottle is actually more expensive than what’s on the inside. I’ve read lab reports over the years where these are labs that don’t they don’t actually make a supplement or sell a supplement. They’ve gone into health food stores and pulled as many as 50 bottles off the shelf and taken it to the lab to dissect it, to see what was in there. And shockingly. Some of those did not even have anything that it said it had inside of it. Some of them had a little bit and it was mostly fillers and additives. So there is, you know, unfortunately, a lot of fraud in that industry. So it’s important to to know the brand that you are taking and making sure. That’s why I don’t endorse a lot of companies. I just don’t I have to do the research, talk to the people, the scientists in the lab, so that I know I can trust, because when I’m working with people, they’re dependent on me to know. And and it goes a step further, too. You know, you may have the company may have put like if you get a bottle that’s got like 50 ingredients in it, that sounds impressive, but the pressure that it takes to compact all of those nutrients in that tablet make it completely indigestible. I’ve talked to a couple of people that are in the Porta John industry and that’s.

Brian Pruett: [00:15:42] A messy industry.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:15:43] Yeah. So they have said that they see mounds and mounds, piles of supplements that have passed through people’s bodies and you can even read the name brand on the tablet.

Brian Pruett: [00:16:02] Why are you getting that close is what I want to know. But anyway, no, that’s wild.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:16:06] Yeah. So it’s about maybe they they have everything that’s on that label in that tablet, but then it’s completely indigestible to your body. So people have paid the money, taken the time to take it and it’s done them no good. And over the years I’ve had people say well I’ve tried supplements whatever. They don’t help. And and I know why because it for those reasons but it may be that it’s not digestible but it may also mean that they don’t have enough enzymes in their stomach to break things down. So that’s what I try to, you know, figure out with a person what’s going on so that we can get you producing energy. Because if your energy, the lack of energy is the beginning, because your body, if it’s losing energy, you are losing your energy also to assimilate and to heal the body and do what it needs to do.

Brian Pruett: [00:17:14] I’ve always been told that when you’re looking at supplements, there’s I guess a certain label or something of endorsement of a particular I don’t know, that’s supposed to be the best ones, but can you maybe share the one that you would endorse? That would be good.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:17:28] Well, the product that I have researched and checked out are made by a company called Arbonne International, and the other one is nature’s sunshine. I have bought from them for 30 years and I’ve I’m a watchdog because before that I did buy from certain companies, but I saw them making changes, cutting corners to save money. But then they started adding chemicals and whatever. And so I couldn’t endorse them anymore. So I want you want to get what you pay for, you know. But but the labeling laws are so deceptive. It would take me a few minutes to explain that. I don’t want to take up time for that. But the way the FDA sets up how labeling can be, it’s really deceptive. So it’s my job, You know, when I recommend something, it’s my job to know everything about that product. So that because my the people that I’m coaching and helping are dependent on me to know.

Brian Pruett: [00:18:51] So on the herbs, actually, when I was growing up, I always called them Herb. So are you British? No. Well, we all transition, I guess at one point we were, but no, just kidding. Um, on the herbs, is it something that the herbs that you cook with or do you take them as a supplement? Can you share about the, the herbs that you.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:19:08] Yeah, well a lot of the herbs we can cook with and they have medicinal properties just we just have to be careful sometimes in cooking that we don’t cook something to death, meaning that we cook the life out of it. Um, so their herbs have different properties. Some herbs are considered as nutritious, you know, like alfalfa. That. That’s a good one. Kale, Those are considered herbs that are more nutritious and have, you know, lack of food. But then there are herbs that have not really considered a food but have a certain chemistry that will vivo in and support because of the chemical structure of it. It will zero in and support different systems in your body. And so that’s why knowing the chemistry of herbs, you would know which ones. Now all herbs are going to feed your body. Vitamins and minerals may have some fiber in it, phytonutrients in it, a number of things, but it will have different actions on the body. Do you need to take something for an astringent to kind of draw out an infection or something you need to draw out? Do you need one to to add moisture to the body? So they all have different properties, but they will have different nutrients. So that that’s why you would take a specific herb if you’re dealing with the nervous system or the circulatory system.

Brian Pruett: [00:20:59] I don’t think her stuff would work with what we had on the other week with bread. Delicious. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:04] Yeah, it looked really good, but I think you’d probably pull out all of it apart and be like, All right, there’s nothing green, right?

Brian Pruett: [00:21:10] I will tell you, Alfalfa was my favorite on Little Rascals, but I think that’s probably different than what you’re talking about.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:21:15] Right? Yeah. Yeah, There are two different things. Okay. All right.

Brian Pruett: [00:21:19] All right. So you do a lot of networking. You’ve been a part of several groups, and that’s how you and I met, actually, years ago. We were part of the same BNI group, and we’re now part of Cartersville Business Club, Acworth Connections. And you’re out there a lot in the community. So other than the reasons why you just share like helping people, why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:21:38] Well, if I’m not part of the community, I will not be in a place that someone might need my help. And there’s not that many people that do what I do. You’ll have people that do sell supplements and so forth, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I had someone just not too long ago asked me to tell them certain herbs that they could take. And I said, Well, that’s that’s not the way to get at the root of the problem. You know, you’ve got to do more. And I want to tell you, because of the malnutrition and the toxicity, you can’t just take a couple of supplements anymore and really get to the root of it and make the changes that you want. You’re going to have to change. We we are what we eat and what we digest. And so you’re going to have to be more focused on making the changes, what I call clean eating, and that that alone will carry so much weight of it. But then there may be some supplements added to that.

Brian Pruett: [00:22:56] So if somebody’s listening out there, whether it’s an organization or somebody just wants to talk to you about your services, how can people get Ahold of you?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:23:05] Well, they can email me at Jenny at Jenny control.com or they can call me at (865) 405-8861 or text me and I. I love to speak to organizations because that’s more than one person that I can influence at a time and make a difference in their life.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:33] Awesome. Well, Jenny, thank you for sharing a little bit of your story. We’ve got a couple other guests that have good, good stories. You mind sticking around because we’re really not done with you. There’s a couple other things I’ll ask you towards the end. So you can’t go anywhere anyway. But you mind sticking around?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:23:46] Okay. No, I’m happy to be here. I want to hear from them, too.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:49] All right. So you guys just heard about some keeping yourself healthy. And this is going to be a weird transition. Maybe, but, Ingrid Weir from Cornerstone Hospice. Thanks for being here.

Ingrid Weir: [00:23:59] Thanks for having me.

Brian Pruett: [00:23:59] You, I guess it takes a special person to to work in your industry as well. But give us a little bit of your story and why you are in the hospice industry.

Ingrid Weir: [00:24:11] Well, I am in the hospice industry. Well, it’s weird. I actually used to work for several years right behind this building selling heated floors.

Ingrid Weir: [00:24:19] And then one day my boss got sick, and then we shut down the company, and I had to kind of. Feel around and figure out where I was going from there. And I actually landed in home care, which is a form of senior care. And while that’s a wonderful thing, not everybody can afford it. So that is what slowly got me over to where I came into hospice, because this way, especially working for a nonprofit, I can help everybody for free. So it’s been very fulfilling.

Brian Pruett: [00:24:53] So do you actually work with patients or are you what is your role within Cornerstone?

Ingrid Weir: [00:24:59] My role is I’m the liaison, so I’m the go between. And then if anything goes wrong after we have them on service, then I’m I’m the bulldog.

Brian Pruett: [00:25:08] So can you share because I’m sure there’s people out there that kind of have an idea of what hospice is. And most people think it’s you know, obviously when somebody is about ready to pass and things of that nature, but share exactly what a hospice organization does.

Ingrid Weir: [00:25:22] Okay. And that is one of the reasons why I’m trying to spread information is it’s not the last five days that you’re alive like it used to be. So it’s anyone with a life limiting illness. We are here to help you embrace what’s left of your life. And we do that by providing medications that are delivered right to your home. We have home health aides that will come and help with bathing and hygiene. And then, of course, we have the medical equipment, hospital beds, wheelchairs and all of that. Then we have the chaplain that can come in. Always optional, of course, non-denominational. And we have social workers that can come in and help with any kind of financial end of life planning, anything like that, and just be there for emotional support for the family as well as the patient.

Brian Pruett: [00:26:13] So hospice can be several different things, right? You can. I know some places actually have a hospice facility. It could be a hospital. It could be in a home. Is that right? That’s right. Share a bit about Cornerstone. You know, this is a nonprofit, which I think is an interesting concept. And that in itself can you share about Cornerstone?

Ingrid Weir: [00:26:29] Well, Cornerstone is a profit, like you said. So we accept anyone, regardless of ability to pay. We go to wherever the patient lives. Now, if symptoms become unmanageable, then we do have settings where we can have 24 hour care. But generally speaking, we’ll have a nurse come once a week and then a CNA or home health aide come out a few times a week and the home health aide reports back to the nurse. The nurse reports back to the doctor as well. But then as symptoms progress and the nurse will actually come out more frequently.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:07] So you’re coming to they’re coming to the home.

Ingrid Weir: [00:27:09] Is that right? We’re coming to the home, yes. But if needed, then we we do have facilities that they can go to and then we will go there and treat them as well.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:17] So Cornerstone being a non profit, is it kind of like any other non profit? Can people get involved and help with that?

Ingrid Weir: [00:27:23] Absolutely. We we have volunteers. We have amazing volunteers that come out and sit with people or they go and walk their dogs, take their dogs to the vets. We also have a program where if somebody can’t afford to pay for vet visits or pet food or anything like that, where our foundation will actually cover that as well, and we’ll actually rehome your animals so nobody has to lose their pet before they lose their life. Wow.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:51] So business can get involved and well and be sponsors, I guess.

Ingrid Weir: [00:27:54] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We accept any kind of donations as well.

Brian Pruett: [00:27:59] What all do you guys service? Is it just Metro Atlanta or North Atlanta or North Cobb or. Well.

Ingrid Weir: [00:28:04] We’re in Cobb, North Fulton, Cherokee and Gwinnett currently, and then half of Florida as well. We’ve been in Florida since 1984, so we’re fairly new up here, but we’ve got the backbone down in Florida.

Brian Pruett: [00:28:19] So I’m guessing especially the caretakers. I mean, that would be hard to be working with somebody who, you know, is on the deathbed, literally. Um. I don’t know. You don’t do that part, but can you share a story of somebody that there are things I mean, I can I can remember being in a hospital room when my grandmother passed, and that was awful. But I know that there’s been other people who have been in and it’s kind of a I don’t know, this may sound weird, peaceful transition or whatever, but it’s just kind of a happy time. I don’t know. But are there any stories you can share? The kind of people make people feel good about the hospice and not know that it’s a, you know, oh, no type of thing.

Ingrid Weir: [00:28:59] Actually, I had a I had a family member that we put on service a couple of years back. And first of all, they did not want to go on hospice. They he had brain cancer. It was very clear that he needed our help, but nothing that I could say would convince them until he started having seizures that were uncontrollable and the doctors were just putting up their hands like, you know, we can’t do anything. So I came in, I was like, please let me get my nurse in here. And I was convinced that this entire family was going to just unravel when this man died. And it scared me. And I’ll tell you what it did. But then she finally let my nurse come in. We got the seizures managed, and then our whole team just attacked the whole family. And when he finally did transition, it was so peaceful and calm and the whole family was there. They were prepared. He was comfortable. I could not believe the difference between what they were just a few months earlier. And then the family that they were that they were actually able to enjoy the time they had left with them.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:13] Wow. Wow. Is there I know like when people are they have pre funeral things you can do. Is there something you can do ahead of time for hospice. For services for hospice is that’s something you can you know if you know that there’s a the end is near type of thing can you set that up beforehand or is that something when it actually happens, you do it when it’s when it’s happening.

Ingrid Weir: [00:30:35] Most people do it when it’s happening, but you can actually go through and we have what’s called the Five Wishes program, where it’s this booklet where you go through and you put in all of your wishes as your life comes to a conclusion and you can actually specify things like what hospice you would prefer.

Brian Pruett: [00:30:55] Okay, So you also do the networking piece. You we see you at the Acworth connections in other areas. Why is it important for you to be part of the community?

Ingrid Weir: [00:31:03] Because people don’t know enough about hospice. It’s people don’t realize that this is their right to have this service to help them through it. And I’ve seen families and patients go through this transition without hospice. And the difference is, I mean, it’s really tragic that most people don’t know about it. So I’m just trying to raise awareness.

Brian Pruett: [00:31:27] So give somebody a little tip that that they need to kind of be what do they need to look for when they’re looking for some hospice care?

Ingrid Weir: [00:31:37] I always check the reviews, of course. Also take some of the review reviews with a grain of salt because people are very, very upset during the time of their family transitioning. But, you know, ask around if somebody’s good. People are going to know if people are bad and people are definitely going to know. Look for somebody that isn’t just just now opening somebody that does have the backbone behind them so that, you know, they’re not just going to disappear all of a sudden because the regulations in Georgia are not strong enough. Just about anybody can open a hospice here.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:14] Well, wow. Well, if somebody’s listening and wants to get a hold of you and talk about your services, how can they do that?

Ingrid Weir: [00:32:21] You can call my cell, text me whatever. Six, seven, 85518103.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:27] Awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and sharing that little tidbit. We’re going to kind of lighten the mood back up because I know that was a.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:33] But, you know, that’s an important part of I mean, everyone will face has someone in their life or they will be facing it, too. So you’re right, people don’t consider that as being like top of mind, but it will affect everyone at some point. So I get why that’s important.

Brian Pruett: [00:32:47] And I share this with Stone last week, Sharon, you know, people listening to the show and they may think, why in the world is he talking to somebody about hospice that’s not positive or charitable, but it is, you know, I mean, yeah, I mean, you’ve got to be you’ve got to be prepared for one. But you also do want your loved ones to be, you know, have up to the end be as comfortable and live what they can left. And so I don’t care whether you smile at somebody, open the door, say thank you, work for hospice, give somebody the herbs or whatever you’re doing worse. You know, there’s plenty of positivity and charitable things out there. And so it doesn’t have to be that you’re giving somebody money or a nonprofit to be charitable. So. Again, I thank you for coming on and sharing. Do you mind listening to this next story? Absolutely. Uh, Melissa Pearson from the Barter Company. Thanks for being here. Like I said, I don’t know if I’m going to be in trouble or not, because as you can tell, they all like to give each other myself a hard time and I have to give it right back. But I still don’t win. I don’t I don’t understand that. But anyway, Melissa, thank you for having me.

Melissa Pearson: [00:33:53] Really happy and excited to be here.

Brian Pruett: [00:33:56] Yes. So you are passionate about helping people, especially in business, right? But you do have a just a passion for people. Do you mind sharing your story? And then we’ll talk about the barter company when after you share your story? Sure.

Melissa Pearson: [00:34:10] Well, I grew up in a very sheltered family, strict household, went to church every Sunday, went to the best schools and was very shy. I had a dad that was very still, very strong, and he kept moving up the corporate ladder. So we moved like 19 times. So I never had that chance to develop long term relationships. When I turned 19, we had moved 19 times and he moved up the corporate ladder. So when we moved here, he was like, I’m starting my own company. We’re not moving anymore. And it was 10th grade when I moved here, so it was hard to fit in. I was very shy. I didn’t want to talk in front of people or even this is not you know, I know. I know everybody’s shocked to hear that. But I really am. I mean, even our little one minute at Cartersville Business Club, I’m like, oh. So we moved and I went to Lassiter in East Cobb, and I always wanted to be a teacher because my parents were teachers. They met in college. And then I was at a ceramics class and a lady promoted me to be a leasing agent, lease apartments. And I was like, okay. And did that for a while. And she would hand me one day she handed me this book of stuff and a box of fliers and all this stuff. She goes here, go out and talk to businesses.

Melissa Pearson: [00:35:34] And I’m like, What? I was scared to death. And then I was like, Oh, my gosh. And I went into advertising and I worked for Trader Publishing and we flew out to Dallas, Texas. And within ten minutes of being there, we were on stage and being filmed in front of everyone with the old VCR and people were throwing up in the class. It was horrible. We had a before and after, so I had to learn to adjust and talk to people. And from then on I just loved it. And I had this client tell me he goes, Melissa, you just thrive in front of people. And I’m like, Well, yeah, you’re right. I do. I do love people and helping people and connecting people. I had a boss in the in the advertising or before that, I think, leasing. And she said, Melissa, be the go to girl, be that connector you know and you will always have business and people relying on you. And I was like, okay. So I just lived that forward and I do. I love connecting people, helping people give back. I mean, there are so many amazing people out there doing so much for our community and I want to be one of those people and do my part. And that’s what I try to do every day.

Brian Pruett: [00:36:45] So we mentioned you were worth a barter company share about them and what the what their goal and mission is.

Melissa Pearson: [00:36:53] We. Our goal is to get more clients for small businesses and get their business to grow, and they get them in barter dollars rather than nothing. So a restaurant that’s not completely filled or a painter that has gaps in their schedule or like a entertainment place that’s not completely filled, why lose that money and get barter dollars instead of nothing? And a lot of people don’t understand that. They get referrals from other businesses and it spins anywhere in the network. So my boss, Rick Zampatti, started this company 27 years ago, so we’re very well established in Kennesaw. He gives back to the community, must ministries. They call him the Giver. And we’ve all given back and most ministries, and we do a lot for our clients too. We have Casino Night, which Jenny came and a huge Christmas show that’s so much fun. Lots of different meet ups and different client appreciations. So we try to give back to our clients as well and connect them. And I work with just wonderful, amazing people, the brokers in the office, and they are dedicated to give back to their people and find their people business. And it’s just it’s a ton of barter business going on. And we have several people in the $2 Million club and like I think eight now it grows and the $1 million Club. So it’s a huge business and we’re the largest in the Southeast and my boss is always looking for ways to help people and savvy business ideas. So it’s, you know, it’s a great company to work for. I’ve been there since. Well twice now, five years this time and beforehand also.

Brian Pruett: [00:38:43] So if somebody who doesn’t know exactly what barter is and barter dollars, what is that share what that is?

Melissa Pearson: [00:38:49] Well, barter is an alternative currency. You have your regular bank and your barter bank and your barter bank works just like your regular bank. You just can’t see it. So where you you don’t change, you don’t charge more and you don’t charge less, whatever your good or your service product is, is what you charge. And that money goes into your barter bank account and now you have an extra money in your bank account to use wherever in the network. So if you go out to a restaurant, the waitress comes, she puts the check down, you put your barter card, they swipe it and they spew out a receipt. And that money leaves the customer’s account into the restaurant’s account. And now they have an extra, say, 100 bucks in their barter bank account to spend anywhere in the network. Could be hood cleaning flowers, gift, employee incentives. We have pretty much everything you can imagine.

Brian Pruett: [00:39:47] Are there certain industries that are not good for barter?

Melissa Pearson: [00:39:51] Well, we do have industries that we have tapped out and we don’t want to promise them business if we can’t get them business. So we kind of you know, we’re all over the Atlanta area, from Gainesville to Rome to, you know, the Atlanta area. So a Peachtree City Newnan. So if we can’t get someone enough business in a certain area, we will not bring them on. And we have a list of that and we have a top list, too. And if clients are asking for a certain category, we’ll go out and get it for them.

Brian Pruett: [00:40:24] Are there certain are in those categories? Do you have multiples or do you just stick with a couple in that category or do what.

Melissa Pearson: [00:40:33] I’m saying it depends on what it is. A restaurant is so transactional. We’re going to have a lot of restaurants all over the Atlanta area, whereas maybe a counselor, we don’t have as many. You know, it’s not as transactional. So it just depends on what category it is and where it is.

Brian Pruett: [00:40:52] But there’s no exclusivity, right? You don’t know. Okay. All right. So other than the reason of why you shared of being the barter and stuff, why is it important for you to be part of the community? Because you’re everywhere as well.

Melissa Pearson: [00:41:02] Well, I don’t want to be just a taker. I want to be a giver as well. And I want to help people grow. I’ve been in advertising all the time and that’s what I did with numbers. I would help businesses grow and we have a ton of advertising. I think that’s the most brilliant thing people can do, is invest their barter dollars back into advertising. Could be TV, radio, magazines, direct mail. I mean, tons of different things.

Brian Pruett: [00:41:27] So you actually had started a business before, right? You were in between when you did your own business. And I’m going to ask this for you, Jenny, as well, too. But Melissa, first, can you share with somebody who may be thinking about starting their business what they should do.

Melissa Pearson: [00:41:44] Really look at the numbers and investigate it and the trends, too? I kind of I had a money mailer and I could have been successful if I had a mr. Melissa, but it was just me, so I didn’t have that backup. I don’t know.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:01] If we could have the. Mr..

Melissa Pearson: [00:42:02] Melissa You just wait till we get outside.

Brian Pruett: [00:42:07] Brian Jenny, how about you? If somebody is thinking about starting a business because you’ve now obviously been in for a while, what would you tell them?

Jenny Cantrell: [00:42:15] Well, first of all, is there a need if, you know, you may be let’s just use this as an example. Let’s say that you love making cupcakes and that’s your passion and whatever. But if there’s no need for cupcakes, how are you going to sell it? Because you have to be able to sell it and make money to provide for yourself. So there has to be a need. You have to count the cost of really getting detailed about what it’s going to cost you to start up, and you need to have several months advance for when money is not coming in to to take care of yourself and your needs and buy more supplies and so forth. So you’ve got to have some cash flow to carry you until the money is coming in for that. And you have to just if there’s a need and you’ve got the money, then you have to do it in spite of being afraid.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:29] Sharon I like how she gave the example of cupcakes and what she does, and she brings up cupcakes.

Melissa Pearson: [00:43:34] There’s a need to eat them, right?

Sharon Cline: [00:43:37] She balances it out a little bit. Probably is. Okay. Maybe a little.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:43:40] Yeah, that was a bad example, I’m telling you.

Sharon Cline: [00:43:43] Green cupcakes. Green cupcakes.

Brian Pruett: [00:43:45] So, Melissa, if somebody’s listening that has a business and wants to be a part of your barter system, barter company, how can they get Ahold of you?

Melissa Pearson: [00:43:54] They can call me on my cell at (404) 375-9023. Or email me at melissa@bartaco.com. That’s Melissa at barter co.com.

Brian Pruett: [00:44:10] Awesome. Well thank you. I was sharing last week Sharon not Sharon. Sharon sharing. Last week we had Shannon Bowfield on last week as one of the guests and he was he shared what he did at the Castle Business Club on the written written word and how powerful that is. And and one of the things that I also said at the end of the show, too, was that the thank yous are a lost art as well. So I want to thank each of you for not only just coming to be a part of the show, but what you guys do because it does make a difference. You you, the two of you, Jenny and Ingrid are making people in difference lives and you’re making people in difference businesses. So I just thank you for that. So before we wrap this up, I have one more question for the three of you. And I’d like for you guys to share one nugget quote word, just a positive thing that people can take and live today and the rest of 2023 and beyond with. So, Jenny, give me some wisdom.

Jenny Cantrell: [00:45:04] One of my favorite quotes is if it is to be, it’s up to me.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:11] I like that. Awesome. Ingrid.

Ingrid Weir: [00:45:13] My favorite quote is from The Lorax. Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:21] Nice.

Melissa Pearson: [00:45:22] Melissa I have several quotes, but my most recent is Sidewalk Prophets. I heard a song Reason to Smile and that has stuck with me with these times because he wrote it. Just because of that. To look around and be thankful for what you have instead of looking at all the other stuff that’s going on in the world.

Brian Pruett: [00:45:46] All good. Good stuff. So, guys, again, thank you for coming to be a part of the show. Everybody out there listening. Let’s remember. Let’s be positive. Let’s be charitable.

Brenna and Josh Burkhalter with Burkhalter Realty Group and Mary Win King with Simplicity Home Staging & Design

May 10, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Brenna and Josh Burkhalter with Burkhalter Realty Group and Mary Win King with Simplicity Home Staging & Design

00:00 /

About Our Co-Host

Mary Win King grew up in a small town in South Carolina and has been living in Georgia for 12 years with her husband and amazing 11 year old daughter. She is so thankful to be in the Southeast with warmer weather!

Mary and her family love living in Ball Ground on their 13 acre farm enjoying their horses, cats and dog. She has always had a passion for interior design and home staging, so starting Simplicity Home Staging & Design 2.5 years ago, alongside a friend at the time, has been such a blessing.

Mary loves helping clients LOVE their home and turning it into a relaxing “breath of fresh air” when they come home each day.

On the home staging side, she loves being able to help potential buyers see themselves in the home by showing off the great aspects of each room and what the home has to offer.

Currently, we look forward to serving new clients with our new bundle services. The best gift is when we are able to call our clients our new friends!

Follow Simplicity Home Staging & Design on Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to this very special edition of Cherokee Business Radio. It is our inaugural episode of our new House to Home series. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our local small business initiative, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org 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. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with simplicity, home staging and design. Miss Mary Win King. How are you?

Mary Win King: [00:01:15] Oh, thank you. I am great. I’m so happy to be here and do this for the second time around and have some guests with us and just make the most of it.

Stone Payton: [00:01:23] Well, it is such a delight to have you back in the studio. We had so much fun last time. I learned a ton for the two and a half people in Cherokee County that don’t know Mary Win King, let’s give them a little bit of an overview, a primer about your business and what you’re really out there trying to do for folks.

Mary Win King: [00:01:42] Sure. So I am the owner of Simplicity, Home staging and Design, and we actually just celebrated three years last week. So that is exciting news. And we specialize in helping clients with interior design and home staging. And on the interior design side, typically I would help with residential, but I just got my first commercial client. So working, working on that as well and just growing and learning as we go.

Stone Payton: [00:02:09] It sounds like a great deal of fun. It sounds like a marvelous way to and a platform to to be able to express your creativity and live into that. And I’ve gotten to know you a little bit, so I know that that’s important to you at this point in your career. You’re kind of over that initial hump. You really beginning to get some traction. What are you finding the most rewarding? What what do you like most about the work?

Mary Win King: [00:02:33] Honestly, just listening to my clients, whether it’s home staging or interior design and tailoring, what needs to happen to to their specific needs and really being able to help them with that, listening to them at first and making sure that I understand what the task at hand is that they need accomplished is really my main goal of how to serve them the best.

Stone Payton: [00:02:58] And you are a good listener. I know know I’ve watched you in conversations. I’ve participated in conversations. And when it’s time for you to talk, you talk. But you know, sometimes people are just waiting. They’re not listening. But Mary Win. Right. My other guests that we introduce here in a moment are nodding their head. But you’re genuinely listening. And I can sense you doing that, you know, when you’re out in the field.

Mary Win King: [00:03:19] Definitely. Definitely. It definitely helps me hone in on what is important and and loving on our community that way.

Stone Payton: [00:03:27] Yeah, well, who’d you bring with you today and why?

Mary Win King: [00:03:30] Oh, okay. So I am so excited to have on the show as our special guest, Burkhalter Realty Group based out of Woodstock, Georgia. We have Brenna and Josh, Hi.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:03:42] Thank you for having us. We really appreciate it.

Mary Win King: [00:03:44] Absolutely. They are an awesome married couple that we met about two years ago that will go into that in just a minute. But they are a great local real estate team with the Keller Williams program here. And we would love to hear about how y’all operate in our community and just hear more about your specialties and your background. So we’d love to start with that, if that’s okay, Stone.

Stone Payton: [00:04:12] Works for me. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think that’s a great place to start.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:04:17] Sounds good.

Mary Win King: [00:04:18] Yeah. So. So first off, I kind of would love to express to our listeners how Brenna and I met so Brenna, go ahead with that.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:04:28] Okay. Mary Win I met on social media. Actually, I came across an awesome Instagram account that had some wonderful interior design tips and tricks. And I looked into who the owner of that account was. It turned out it was a girl from Canton, and I reached out to ask about getting coffee and we met at a local coffee shop and all of a sudden it was three hours later and we had become fast friends and future business to come out of that, which was great.

Mary Win King: [00:04:59] Yeah, absolutely. We just I felt an immediate connection. We are similar in age. We both had children, you know, smaller children, but also working hard to make our businesses work and really get ourselves out there.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:05:13] Yeah, I remember when she came home from that meeting and she was like, I just met this awesome lady and she’s really cool. And we sat there and I was like, Why did it take so long? And she was like. Our because we have to live by a calendar. She’s like, well, we just before you know it, it was three hours. So that’s awesome.

Mary Win King: [00:05:29] So that was so fun. And then we were able to kind of progress our friendship through y’all needing some interior design needs and help with like your living room and your home office and some kitchen ideas. So that was really fun when they were able to bring me in and just get some things that were practical for their family, but also some size furniture that was more proportionate for like their space. And also now that I think your home office is more functional, right? Yes.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:06:01] Yeah, We normally would work in two different parts of the house, whether it was an upstairs bedroom that we had or a dining room. And now we have a functional desk that allows us to collaborate together in a space where we don’t feel super cramped anymore. So it was a huge help.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:06:18] And as as realtors, we see different homes every single day. And it’s so easy to take pieces of different people’s homes and say, I like this, I like this. But then making it cohesive is hard to do in your own home. So Mary Win really helped pull that whole thing together and and make it a space that would be functional and pretty.

Stone Payton: [00:06:39] Yeah. So did you find that you were that self-aware right out of the box and you knew you needed and wanted help, or did you find it a little bit intimidating, either one of you, to have this professional. Come in.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:06:51] They’re probably a little bit of both. Because I knew what kind of vibe or look we were going for. But it’s hard to do that, I think, in your own home sometimes, especially when you see so many other homes. So it was it wasn’t hard to reach out to her and ask. It was just something. I refer to other people all the time. And you don’t really think you’re going to need it in your own home in this profession, I guess. Yeah.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:07:16] Yeah. I kind of felt the same way. It wasn’t that it was a little different to have somebody because we see so many homes like Brenda had mentioned, that we kind of know what we like, but we hadn’t really applied it as much in our home yet.

Mary Win King: [00:07:29] Yeah, I think a lot of people go through that actually. Yeah, because it takes some time. Yeah. And but what was great in y’all’s instance, which I love doing, is they had some inspirational pieces that they did want to incorporate, like they had a rug for their home office with some colors that we could work off of and things like that. So so that kind of at least gave me the style that you were going for and some colors to play with and just to kind of pull it all together.

Stone Payton: [00:07:56] Well, one of the reasons that this is so such a germane conversation right now is we’re getting a new island, which of course means we’re getting new countertops behind it and which I’m sure translates to recovering or buying a new couch and all that. So this is a very timely conversation around my house. And my wife, too, is very creative. And, you know, she’s got a good eye, I think, for that kind of thing. And but I think she’s self-aware enough that, you know, maybe it makes sense to get a little help, just get a different a different take on it. So. All right. So the very first really work with the with these two was in their own home.

Mary Win King: [00:08:33] Yeah. Yeah. And so that went so well that, you know, a little bit later down the road I kind of was like, okay, Brenna, I really want to help you Home stage. I want you to see the difference that it can make. And I said, Just try it just one time with me. So we we did. And y’all, why don’t y’all elaborate on that scenario?

Josh Burkhalter: [00:08:57] Yeah. Do you do you want to go ahead. So we had a client who a family friend of ours that we had known for years and years. They were moving back to actually my hometown in middle Georgia, and she moved from there to here and empty nester downsized with, you know, all the stuff. She had accumulated a house for 30 years. She’s a very neat, tidy, clean lady. She just had a lot of stuff for like a townhome and small space for smaller space. So we had Mary Wynne come in and I mean, it was night and day how much more of a flow there was. And you could immediately just see yourself in the space, which is exactly what we’re shooting for. When people walk in, we want them to be like, Oh, I can do anything I want in here or leave it just like this. And it would be fantastic. So, I mean, it was amazing what she was able to do in on the property.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:09:48] And in turn, when it comes to selling it, seeing a space and being able to envision your own things, your own family in that space because it’s been decluttered minimal decorations, people can really envision themselves or their families there. It makes such a difference. And because of that we had multiple offers and our seller was able to choose the offer that worked best for her and her timeline. And that was fantastic. And it was just the best example possible of no matter what price point or size home you’re working with, she can make a difference. And ideally that’s going to sell for more money and faster.

Stone Payton: [00:10:29] Well, how’s that for an endorsement?

Mary Win King: [00:10:31] Yeah, no, I mean, you know, we were laughing about this earlier is recently kind of my new slogan is going to be I want it to be a mary win, win, win win for the client. You know, a win for everybody involved. That’s perfect.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:10:47] Well, I mean, we can attest to it. She came through our house and we do like to try out a lot of our vendors before we refer them out to our clients because we want to make sure that we reputation exactly. So if we refer someone, you know, it’s you said our reputation on the line. And we knew after she came through and helped us out that it was probably going to be okay. And then she, I mean, knocked our socks off with the way that everything went with that deal. So, I mean, it was perfect.

Mary Win King: [00:11:10] Yeah, I heard you really love the curtains.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:11:12] Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, I was. I had my doubts about some things she suggested in our home. And now I love.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:11:18] There are some of his favorite pieces.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:11:20] It is. It is. So it’s. Yeah. Just trust her.

Stone Payton: [00:11:23] Well, I can tell you, like curtains would never even occur to me and I would probably love them, you know, once they were in. And if you saw my my side porch, you know, we were talking about hunting a little while ago, maybe it was before we came on the air. But, you know, I’ve got a deer head out on the side porch. You could probably do some stuff with the side porch. And now that I’ve been to Spain and back, I want to have, like, a Spanish flavor. Oh, cool. Yeah, I got ideas that are all.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:11:48] I think Mary needs to come to your house. I need a win win.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:11:51] Exactly.

Stone Payton: [00:11:52] So is now has it gotten to the point where this is sort of part of the Burckhalter methodology when you’re when you’re listing a home, you’re going to want to bring a stagers that kind of where you’re at?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:12:02] Fabulous question. Yes, it is, actually. And that’s a newer thing that we’ve been doing. We have added staging to our our listing package. So when we go in to talk with sellers, there are some vital pieces that we offer them that we cover the cost of that really set their house apart. We’re paying for those professional photos and we’re paying for our stager to come in.

Stone Payton: [00:12:26] You’re absorbing Mary Wind services. Okay. Wow.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:12:29] We’re paying for our stager to come in and walk through the home and give them a very detailed to do list of what to do to get their house ready to sell. So that’s our our goal is to get them ready to sell, get them to sell the most for the most money possible and the least amount of time as possible and make it as seamless and smooth and stress free as you possibly can. Absolutely. And really.

Mary Win King: [00:12:51] Help with. We’ve talked about this. So like sometimes timeline of me coming in. Can be different depending on each client and when they’re going to do photos and list it. So the different varieties, you know, for example, on my website I offer occupied and vacant staging. But within that, Brenna came to me and said, Well, would you by chance even be okay if we did a walk? If you did a walk through and make a list for those clients? Because sometimes it could be that I come two weeks before you know the listing and then they have time to do those on their own. Or I can do hands on staging. So I like a combination of both, but it really just depends. That’s whenever it’s listening to what their needs are and what, you know, Brenna and Josh’s needs are for their timeline of what I can accomplish in different ways of of making that happen.

Stone Payton: [00:13:40] Okay, let’s talk about me some more. It’s my show. No, it occurs to me that, like, Holly and I, we’re thrilled to death with our home. We are remodeling some stuff, upgrading some stuff. But it occurs to me, even when we get it exactly like we want it, it could be perfectly appointed for Stone and Holly for this stage of our lives. And if we chose to put it on the market, it needs to be set up, staged a little differently to maximize the chances of it getting the best offer. Is that accurate? Correct. Yes. Very, very. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I want to back up. How in the world did you two get into this business?

Josh Burkhalter: [00:14:16] I or. Yeah, go ahead.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:14:17] Go ahead. I got into the business a little bit before Josh, We actually bought our home in Woodstock in 2015. We got married in 14, bought our house in 15. I got my real estate license in 2016. We had. Wow. Just boom.

Stone Payton: [00:14:31] Boom, boom. Yeah.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:14:32] We like to do big things. 17 off and had our first kid in 18, so we had a little gap year.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:14:37] There got to be something big every year, right? But we had a fantastic experience buying our house. It was very smooth. It was fairly stress free. There weren’t really speed bumps along the way, and we enjoyed that experience. And obviously it got us to a place that we love and into a home that we love. So we wanted to be able to give other people that same experience. And so I got my real estate license and jumped in head first and have loved it ever since. And three years after that, Josh joined me in the business too, and now we’re husband, wife, realtor team, which has been awesome.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:15:13] Yeah, we I started my post college career in Inside Sales. I was working in the telecom industry mainly a little bit of time in the finance industry, but got started right after our son was born. We just kind of rip the band aid and let’s do it, you know, join the team. Got licensed in 2019 and actually had my first closing the next day, which was pretty cool. That is so awesome. You are a rock star. So it was thanks to my wife. The Berkhalter.

Stone Payton: [00:15:43] Training methodology.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:15:44] Yes. God, she got to me through the process and we were able to get it done, which was awesome. So the best boss ever? Yeah, she is. That’s what I tell everyone. They’re like, How do you all work together? I’m like, She’s the best boss I’ve ever had.

Mary Win King: [00:15:54] So that’s a huge compliment.

Stone Payton: [00:15:57] Yeah, so you said it. I’m going to take your word for it at face value that it’s been awesome working together. And I’m trying to envision Holly and I in the same business. You know, she has a real job. She works at IBM. I do this, and she’s been so incredibly supportive and I try to be supportive of her. But there’s got to be some additional dynamics when you’re working with your with your spouse. A what’s that like in general? But B is like, do you kind of, I don’t know, divide and conquer may not be the right label, but you each kind of have your own roles, your own strengths. And yeah, we do talk to that a little bit.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:16:31] Yeah. And we do a lot of dividing and conquering and we, we love being together, being around each other. So I think that helps a lot. We have always been I mean, we’ve been together now for what, seven, 16 years. So we yeah, so and, but we do kind of split things up. But really it just depends on the client’s need and if how one of us meshes with a certain person, if we feel like this person should take the lead with this type versus another, that is kind of how we do it. We don’t have set roles as far as me handling the list side of things and her specifically working with all of our buyers. It’s really just who we mesh with best.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:17:11] And it’s such a relationship based business. It’s so important to even if we are tag teaming and helping that client out, both of us, somebody does most likely take the lead on who meshes best with that person so that we can really be a good fit for their personality and their needs.

Mary Win King: [00:17:28] And one thing that I’ve complimented them on that I just love about their, you know, togetherness and the way that their personalities work, though, is also their background of like Josh is more from the country. And then Brenna is a little bit more from the suburbs. So but like in my personality is both and so I feel like I relate to them at different times on different levels and so many good ways, you know? So I feel like that’s. Great thing that they offer their clients so they can they’re very relatable that way, that they have the background of both.

Stone Payton: [00:18:02] Well, there’s the relationship aspect, which I it makes perfect sense to me. But the level of trust that you must have to cultivate, because these are huge moments in a person’s life, right?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:18:16] And we do not take that lightly at all.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:18:18] We it can be stressful and emotional and and we embrace the challenge, but we also make sure that we educate people along the process to take out as much stress and emotion as possible because the logic needs to drive the decisions. When we’re talking about massive amounts of money, that especially with the people that we like to work with, like first time home buyers, we make sure that we hold their hand through the process so there’s no speed bumps or hiccups, and they understand that the whole process is going to be smooth.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:18:48] And they know what they’re signing. Exactly.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:18:51] Good point. That would.

Speaker6: [00:18:52] Be important. Yeah. Yeah.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:18:53] I mean, that’s really some people just sign their name and we try to make sure that they really, truly understand it. It’s a big purchase. A lot of money. Yes. Yeah, it’s.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:19:02] A big deal. And it’s a big deal to purchase a home at any stage, whether it’s your 15th investment property or your first home. It is a monumental, life changing moment. That is. I mean, it’s when my mom was able to purchase the home that I grew up in when I was ten years old. It was it was structure for my brother and I that we previously didn’t have. So that’s huge. And that’s something that I lean on with first time home buyers that I mean, you’re setting them up for a way to generate wealth for their family for generations.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:19:32] Yeah, I love that.

Mary Win King: [00:19:33] I love that. And I was hoping that they could share with their listeners like a little bit, even like what they specialize in. I know they mentioned the first time home buyers, but just can you all elaborate on that a little bit?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:19:44] Absolutely. Like Josh mentioned, we do love working with first time home buyers since we were in that boat, and that’s kind of how I got into this business. We love the chance to educate other people, really help them find the home that’s going to be the right fit for their current setup and ideally be their realtor for life when they’re moving on up. And we we try to when people ask us who’s a great referral for you, we try to think of those people in those big life moments. So it is we love the first time home buyers. We love the first time sellers too, because we’ve worked with a lot of our friends buying their first home. But then when they go to sell their first home, that’s a whole nother experience. You’re on the opposite side of that and you haven’t been there before, So the.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:20:30] Market’s a lot different. I mean, if you unless you buy and sell within a two year period, it’s I mean, it’s going to be substantially different from when you work with your first client seven years ago. So selling now, right? So it’s I mean, there’s a lot that can change. As we know, overnight, a couple of years ago, a lot changed.

Mary Win King: [00:20:45] So so if you walk through them on that first time experience, you’re going to be able to relate back to that so that they can understand better when they’re going to sell it, which I love.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:20:54] And then we have found over the past year and a half or so, we’ve had a lot of opportunities to work with folks in those end of life stages where they’re going through the probate process and selling a home that was in the family or belonged to a deceased family member, that they’re now responsible for selling that property. So we’ve learned a lot through those experiences. And it’s a big responsibility.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:21:17] Yeah, it’s it’s a different education process because a lot of the probate and estate stuff has to be taken care of prior. And some people don’t know that. Some people do. We’ve kind of had people that were educated along the whole spectrum. It’s also a great. Way to give people closure that they need for whether it was there that makes sense. You know, someone that was really close to them, mom, dad. Or it could be a distant relative that they just happened to acquire a property when they passed away. So it’s it’s challenging, but it’s also very rewarding because you’re able to give them that closure. And a lot of the time that is the last piece is the house is the last thing to really go.

Mary Win King: [00:21:55] And you can tell y’all’s heart’s in it. That’s that’s one reason that I love you too so much is because you’re care for your clients shines through like every transaction and every, you know, reason for doing certain things. And that’s why I love working with them. I appreciate.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:22:10] That. We want people to feel that. Yeah, sure.

Stone Payton: [00:22:13] So paint a day in the life of the like on a Thursday. And I’m getting the sense that no, Thursday is the same. No.

Speaker6: [00:22:21] That’s why we love this.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:22:22] It’s never the.

Speaker6: [00:22:23] Same.

Stone Payton: [00:22:24] What are some things that might happen on any given Thursday Thursdays?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:22:28] We usually have listings. Go live.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:22:30] Yes. Normally we have stuff hit the market on Thursday. Okay. This past I did not.

Stone Payton: [00:22:34] Know that that was not scripted. It’s not in my show notes.

Speaker6: [00:22:37] That just appreciate that.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:22:40] We last Thursday was when I was out of town was pretty busy for Brenna. She got a call from somebody that wanted to see a house and, you know, things changed immediately.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:22:49] So they are under contract on said House.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:22:51] Yeah. So we had to pivot and make a quick move. And so it can be anything from a listing going live to you know maybe having to show someone that calls on a sign call hey I’d like to check out this property to go and show a buyer a new property. As long as we’re dropping our son at school by 830 and picking him up by six, I think there’s that divide.

Stone Payton: [00:23:10] And conquer thing coming back around.

Speaker6: [00:23:12] So a lot of dividing and.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:23:14] That’s really like Brenna said, what we enjoy about it is that it’s different and no two clients are the same. Yeah, every deal is different. Every day is different. So we, you know, it keeps us on our toes for sure.

Speaker6: [00:23:26] Yes.

Stone Payton: [00:23:27] Well, it seems like there’s so many moving parts. Like, I feel like just the paperwork alone. If I had that much paperwork in my business, I would starve. Right? I’m just not the right.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:23:37] I’m a control freak. It’s hard for me to let go of things. However, I will say delegating some of those things to an assistant has been the best decision we have ever made. Yeah, we have a contract to close assistant that’s amazing and supports us from when buyers or sellers go under contract until the closing period to help keep all the paperwork in check.

Speaker6: [00:23:56] Yep.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:23:57] Just an extra level of accountability with dates and I mean the whole process, it makes it smoother for everyone. And then we also have an assistant that helps us with a lot of our social media and a lot of our marketing that we do.

Stone Payton: [00:24:08] Because that is so key in this day and age where you have to have a social media presence, right? I’m saying this how we met.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:24:14] I know it’s a testament here. That’s how.

Speaker6: [00:24:16] Yeah.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:24:17] So it’s it’s it’s a challenge. But we have slowly started to leverage some things out and we found that it allows us to do what we’re good at. And like when we bring Mary went into the picture on a listing, we are able to focus on the negotiation and the marketing side of things. And she can handle the staging and the prep side of things. So it allows us to do what we do best and her to do what she does best. So it’s a win win all around. So there’s a.

Stone Payton: [00:24:42] Pro tip not only for other realtors, just other entrepreneurs and business owners in general. Yeah, get that best in class. Help and stay in your lane. Do what you do and yeah, exactly.

Speaker6: [00:24:52] Absolutely.

Stone Payton: [00:24:53] That’s a good reminder. Your arena strikes me it seems like it would be incredibly crowded, competitive. I feel like there are a lot of realty professionals out there, so I am curious how the whole sales and marketing thing works, how you get the new business or even just the new conversations that might lead to new business. How do you.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:25:15] Yeah, I will say first it’s community over competition. Always. We love where we live. There’s a ton of realtors in this area and there’s enough business for all of us. It is all about the relationships and. Even if one person is looking for a house and they’re choosing between several different realtors, a couple of those realtors may not be a good fit for that person personality wise, goal wise. So while there are a lot of us who you’re working with is so important and and that’s going to be different across the board, if that makes sense. It does.

Speaker6: [00:25:54] Yeah. Yeah. I mean.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:25:55] Like Brenda mentioned, it is a pretty crowded space. I mean, just with our brokerage alone, we have, I think around 400 agents that work out of our Keller Williams Market Center in Woodstock. Oh, that’s just Keller Williams agents. Now, that’s not to say that they all work just in this area. We work all over the place. Then there’s other I mean, you know, you’ve got many, many other brokerages, but like she had mentioned, it’s there’s plenty of business to go around. You just we have to make sure that it’s a win win for everybody on every side of things. And we’re not the best fit for some people and we’re okay with that. I mean, I would rather recommend that up front than have problems in the transaction because we didn’t mesh personality wise and our goals weren’t aligned so well.

Stone Payton: [00:26:37] I love that ethos. I love that mindset of community over competition. And you described it about the the realty world. But my experience here in Cherokee County in general, and particularly here, like in Woodstock, Holly Springs, you know, ball ground, Canton, it’s such a my experience has been it’s such a supportive business community. People will rally around you if you’re willing to share with them what you need and want. And if you’re willing to serve first, serve early, serve often as well. Has that been your experience community wide?

Speaker6: [00:27:10] Yes. Yeah, 100%.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:27:12] I got Mary Wind to come to Woodstock Business Club with me. Yeah. It’s been a great source of new friendships, business vendors that we need on our vendor list that have been very helpful to our clients. I mean, it’s been a wonderful place of community. And Mary Winds met several other clients and yeah, it’s been.

Mary Win King: [00:27:32] It’s been great and we learn so much. They have some great speakers there that we can learn from and grow from and learn from each other and just share what we do and support each other. So that’s been awesome and it’s something that we can, you know, that it’s pretty consistent. It’s every Thursday at 830 here and so we can plan on it. But yeah, it’s, it’s nice to have those outlets to be able to really go and share success stories and also things that we can really add onto our skill level and, and all of that. So yeah, Brenna and I love to meet up there.

Stone Payton: [00:28:08] So do I. And I enjoy meeting people after like the big meeting, you know, hanging out under the elm tree, grab a cup of coffee and chat. But also, you know, I’m also a consumer, so I have professional service needs as a business. But also, you know, the home services people are there, Alpha and Omega, Lori Kennedy You know, that’s where I take my car to get it done.

Speaker6: [00:28:32] We’ve taken our there. Okay, So.

Stone Payton: [00:28:34] Yeah, I’m gonna send Laurie an invoice, but just, you know, just anything you might need if I were in search of a mortgage, you know, one of the first people I would at least talk to is Darren Hunter. Right. If I were going to organize my next Spain trip, I’m going to talk to Dawn, you know? Yeah. And I feel like that’s someone that I that I know and trust. And and I suspect many of them, if they felt like they were going to use this platform to build relationships for their business, whether they ended up doing it with me or not, I think they would check in with me first and I think they would know. And it’s true. I would try to help them whether they were going to do it with me or not, you know, just and I’ve collaborated with other people in the media. But this this community is so supportive. And Woodstock Business Club in particular has just been a wealth of friends. I mean, I’ll call them family. Yeah, that’s been my experience, too.

Speaker6: [00:29:25] Yeah.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:29:25] I mean, every Thursday when she comes back, she’s like, energized, ready to roll. I mean, and I’m like, wow, okay, I got to. I’m getting some of this vibe.

Speaker6: [00:29:32] Because she’s just good energy. Yeah, it is. It’s great. Yeah.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:29:36] Being with people in the community that, you know, are happy to help.

Stone Payton: [00:29:38] Yeah. So outside the scope of your work, what passions, if any, do you pursue? I shared with you as we were coming on air that I like to hunt and fish and travel. That’s my thing. What are some things that you nerd out about or really dive into outside the scope of the realty? Yeah, I.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:29:54] Mean, you hit it right on the head. I just got back from Colorado Sunday. We did 750 mile road trip across the state and checked out like six national or state parks and national parks. Amazing. So, yeah, I mean, and I enjoy anything outdoors. We like to hike a lot together, hunt fish. I try to do that as much as I can. The kids are priority number one now, so that’s taking a back seat. But I’m not complaining. I love spending time with the fam, but yeah, I do. Like I said, pretty much anything outdoors. I’ll. I love being outside. I grew up on 100 acres so anytime I can get out of the. Suburbs. I need to kind of get some some good fresh air.

Stone Payton: [00:30:35] It’s nice just being in the woods, whether you harvest anything or not, just being in the woods. My I mean, I just it’s just a marvelous way to decompress and appreciate.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:30:45] I think everybody could use a couple hours.

Speaker6: [00:30:49] He needs to.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:30:49] Send me out there sometime just because. Just be still and be quiet.

Speaker6: [00:30:52] Yeah, well, and.

Stone Payton: [00:30:54] How about you.

Speaker6: [00:30:55] Or.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:30:55] I? Do. We do love hiking and getting out there with the kids, too. Just having them be out in the woods as much as possible, too. But I really enjoy swimming. That’s my. My me time where I can just be in my head right and swim laps. And I did that all growing up and through college so that the pool is my happy place. Any kind of water really is my happy place. Yeah, we do love to travel, so I’m glad he got to take this trip recently and a couple other family trips coming up soon.

Stone Payton: [00:31:27] So, Mary, when am I remembering horses? Animals, period. Really? Right.

Mary Win King: [00:31:31] Exactly. Yes. Oh, my daughter and I just got to ride again with all this rain and and her little pony had an injury, so it was just I was in heaven this weekend just being able to get back into horses and enjoy being at the barn and our cats and our crazy dog and yeah, whoever else comes around.

Stone Payton: [00:31:50] Well, we’ve talked before and you were kind enough to offer and we’re going to take you up on it. My wife Holly, just loves horses. She was around them when she was younger and. And she hasn’t. She we’d love to come out and do so. I’m going to come do the horse thing with you. I’m going to go get a tree with Josh. This is what was so great about Woodstock. You meet people, perfect new connections. Was there anything in particular that drew you guys to Keller Williams versus like another brand or brokerage?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:32:21] Yeah, great question.

Speaker6: [00:32:23] Well, I thought.

Stone Payton: [00:32:23] It took me a minute to get it out. I thought it was a fantastic question.

Speaker6: [00:32:26] Yeah, no, it was. It is.

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:32:29] I’ve been at Keller Williams since I started seven years ago or so. And the culture and the training there is what really pulled me there and has kept me there since. The culture is amazing. They’re very inclusive and accepting of anybody, any type of business that you want to have, whether you want to be doing a few transactions a year or you want to be a mega agent with a huge team so they can encompass all of that. And also their training is just unmatched. I mean, there’s a calendar every single month of amazing training classes, whether it’s taught from people at the office or they bring in outside vendors to teach those classes on those specific subjects.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:33:12] So yeah, I mean, I agree 100%. I think the the culture is huge. I mean, it’s I mean, Thursday, this Thursday, we’re having our annual red day where every Keller Williams agent in the entire world and we’re in, what, 70 countries I think now. Wow takes the day off and serves in the community to some degree. So and that’s that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the stuff. I mean, agents in need in our office with health issues get taken care of. I mean, people if you need help with anything, you can ask anyone at the office anytime, which is huge for anybody getting into the industry. That’s new. It’s it’s great to have just a support system. And like Brennan mentioned, there’s a model and a plan for any type of agent at any level that you want to be. So it’s it’s great to be able to go in there and know that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to be successful. You can just go, Oh, I want to be like this person and do what they do.

Speaker6: [00:34:08] Yeah, Yeah. Well, I’m glad I asked. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:34:12] So before we wrap, I’d like to go around around the table and leave our listeners with a pro tip or two, you know, in your domain of expertise. So I’m going to start with Mary Wynn, a number one pro tip gang. If you’re if you’re thinking at all about redoing anything in your home, just reach out and have a conversation with Mary Wynn. But are there some things that people can begin thinking about or just some things they can do on their own just to sort of get in that mode of revisiting the way they’ve got things organized in their home?

Mary Win King: [00:34:43] Sure. I would say for me personally, if I was giving a tip that go through your home and really decide, do you love it? Meaning? Meaning like, okay, if they have a bookshelves, go through each item and say, do I love this or am I just keeping this here to fill space? So if I have something in my home that I don’t love, I would rather have empty space so that then my creative brain can go through as I’m walking through HomeGoods or wherever and say, that’s what I’m picturing for that space. Because in my personal experience and with helping with other clients and even family members walking through their homes with them, it is so much more fun and easier if you get rid of what? You don’t love. Set it in a pile. Maybe you don’t get rid of it yet, but set it in a pile. Off to the side and then be excited about what it could be and the things that you might want to add to your current decor that you do love. That’s my best pro tip for the day.

Stone Payton: [00:35:44] I think it’s a great tip and I like the idea of having that in your mind, like going through that exercise. Then when you’re out playing, no stress, just. But when you’re out and you go to a home goods or like I noticed the other day at a Tuesday morning or something that’s closing down. Yeah. Well now I’ll go in there and walk through but, but instead of walking in cold, you know, Holly and I will have thought about that kind of. What a great tip. So if someone out there listening would like to have a more substantive conversation with you, reach out to you, tap into some of your work, whether it be an individual or, I don’t know, maybe another realtor team that you could team up with, What is the best way for them to connect with you?

Mary Win King: [00:36:22] The best way is to give me a call or text me at (606) 260-0175 or feel free to reach out by email at Simplicity home interiors at gmail.com. And we’re also on Facebook and Instagram, so it’s easy to find us.

Stone Payton: [00:36:41] I got to go check out the Instagram and Facebook. We got to get better at the whole social media thing here at Cherokee Business Radio. All right, Josh, you got a pro tip for us. Those of us thinking about buying and selling whatever.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:36:52] I would just say who you work with matters whether it’s in real estate or your business, but especially in the real estate field like we had mentioned. We know that there’s plenty of business to go around and we’re not just going to force it down your throat if we don’t feel like it’s a good fit and you don’t feel like it’s a good fit, then by all means, you know, go with whoever you’re most comfortable with because it is a huge decision whether you’re buying an investment property, first house selling. Just make sure you’re comfortable with whoever is holding your hand through the process because they’re going to make your life a lot easier.

Stone Payton: [00:37:24] All right, Brenda, you trained him. That was a great tip.

Speaker6: [00:37:27] Was a great. Now you got.

Stone Payton: [00:37:28] To follow that act.

Speaker6: [00:37:30] What do you thinking?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:37:33] I in relation to that, to the education piece is so important to us. So make sure that the person that you are working with again, going along with the right person for you. Make sure the person you’re working with is explaining things to you because it’s a huge deal. It’s a significant amount of money and it can, you know, make or break a family situation sometimes having this new place to live. So I would say just being educated on what you’re doing, how it’s going to propel you into your your next goal or stage in life is so important. So the education piece, I think, is what we really weigh heavy on.

Stone Payton: [00:38:15] Amen. I love it. All right. What’s the best way to connect with you guys?

Brenna Burkhalter: [00:38:20] We are all over Facebook and Instagram. Yes, you can reach us by phone. We love when people call or text us. My number is (404) 434-3484. Lots of.

Speaker6: [00:38:30] Fours and.

Josh Burkhalter: [00:38:31] I’m (478) 232-0438. Like Brenda mentioned. Call text. Email berkhalter. Realty Group on social media. Check us out. We’d love to, you know, get to know everybody. And thank you for having us. We really appreciate it. It’s been awesome.

Speaker6: [00:38:45] Awesome.

Mary Win King: [00:38:46] Y’all got to come. I love.

Speaker6: [00:38:48] It.

Stone Payton: [00:38:48] It has been an absolute delight having you two in the studio. You know, I knew it was going to be fun having Mary Wynne, but Mary Wynne, thank you for making this happen and thank you all for joining us.

Speaker6: [00:38:59] Absolutely. Appreciate it.

Stone Payton: [00:39:00] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today. And everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on house to home radio.

Relationship Building as a Business Banker: An Interview with Samantha McElhaney, Pinnacle Financial Partners

May 8, 2023 by John Ray

North Fulton Studio

Relationship Building as a Business Banker: An Interview with Samantha McElhaney, Pinnacle Financial Partners

00:00 /

Relationship Building as a Business Banker: An Interview with Samantha McElhaney, Pinnacle Financial Partners

How do you build your brand and your book of business as a business banker when you don’t control your pricing, your reputation is tied up with your employer (which might or might not be helpful), and you work for a publicly traded company with quarter-to-quarter earnings pressure? On this episode of The Price and Value Journey, host John Ray spoke with Samantha McElhaney of Pinnacle Financial Partners. Sam discussed why she’s remained in banking her entire career, how she operates with an abundance mindset and a “relationship first” philosophy, how she handles mistakes and errors, developing trusted strategic referral partners and other referral sources, her philosophy of networking, success stories, and much more.

The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Note from Host John Ray:

We’ve recently expanded our guest focus to professional services providers who do not have their own solo or small professional services firms. They have something to teach those of us who operate independently, because they work with handicaps those of us who own our own businesses don’t have.

In this vein, we recently chatted with Steve Aleksandrowicz, a Medicare insurance broker who built a book of business in an extremely competitive space without a website, no advertising, in an industry dominated by major companies.

I wanted to feature a business and/or personal banker who had built their client base and reputation by a focus on relationships. Business bankers are not in control of their pricing, they are somewhat captive to the reputation of their institution, which may or may not be as good as their own reputation, and they work for publicly traded companies who have quarter to quarter earnings pressure.

I knew who I thought was the ideal professional to invite, but I decided to ask around among a few trusted members of my network. Everyone I asked confirmed my choice, the guest for this episode, Samantha McElhaney.

It’s a great conversation….enjoy!

Samantha McElhaney, Commercial Financial Advisor/Senior Vice President, Pinnacle Financial Partners

Samantha McElhaney is a Commercial Financial Advisor and Senior Vice President with Pinnacle Financial Partners.

She is a single mom of twins at the University of Alabama and the University of South Carolina, respectively. She has been in financial services for 28 years, starting as a teller while in college.

Sam loves lighthouses because they provide hope in the darkness/storms of life and admits she is extremely hard on herself. She leads and participates in small groups at North Point Community Church and Woodstock City Church because her faith is extremely important to her personally and professionally.

Sam’s favorite time of the year is college football season. She’s always ready for fall, food, and “fandemonium.”

Pinnacle Financial Partners

The Pinnacle approach is a very people-centric one. It takes an unwavering focus and commitment of leadership to make it work.

The same five key business strategies Pinnacle has employed since its inception shape our focus today: Focus on businesses, real estate professionals, and consumers that desire a deep relationship with their financial partner. Provide distinctive service and effective advice. Hire and retain highly experienced and qualified financial services professionals. Offer a full line of financial services including banking, investments, mortgage, trust, insurance, and financial planning. Offer extraordinary convenience.

Pinnacle is much more than a bank. It’s a place for people to find true partners for their business. It’s a place where seasoned professionals give clients unmatched service and advice that improves their financial well-being. And it’s a place where people love coming to work every day.

Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook

TRANSCRIPT

John Ray: [00:00:00] And hello again, I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. We’ve recently shifted our guest focus to professional services providers who do not have their own solo or small professional services firms, but they have something to teach us who do. Those of us who operate independently because these professionals work with issues and concerns that those of us who have our own businesses, we don’t have.

We recently chatted with Steve Aleksandrowicz. He’s a Medicare insurance broker who’s built a book of business over 12 years in a very competitive space without a website, no advertising, and in an industry dominated by major companies. Check out the show archive for that episode if you missed it.

I wanted to feature a business and or personal banker who had built their client base and reputation by focusing on relationships. And here’s why I wanted to talk to a business banker. They are not in control of their pricing, which makes chills run up my spine, as you might imagine. And they are somewhat captive to the reputation of their institution, which may or may not be as good as their own. And they work for publicly traded companies who have quarter to quarter earnings pressure.

I knew who I thought was the ideal professional to invite, but I decided to ask around among a few trusted members of my network, and everyone agreed with the first thought that came to my mind. The guest that I have here with me today, Samantha McElhaney.

Sam is a commercial financial advisor, senior vice president with Pinnacle Financial Partners. She’s been in the banking industry for 28 years and almost all of that time as a business banker.

Maybe the best way to introduce Sam is what she says about herself on LinkedIn in her profile. She says that for 28 years in the financial services industry, my number one priority has been to connect the right people together in order to pay it forward. By placing my clients’ needs first, I am gaining their trust and becoming a more important part of their overall team.

Quite well said. Sam McElhaney, thank you so much for coming on Price and Value Journey.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:02:29] Thank you, John.

John Ray: [00:02:30] Yeah, thank you so much. So give everyone a brief overview of you and your banking career and maybe explain why banking for you.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:02:41] I actually started in banking as a teller in college. It was the perfect job while going to school in Memphis, Tennessee Rhodes College. A lot of people assume, I went to the University of Alabama.

John Ray: [00:02:56] A great school by the way, Rhodes College.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:02:58] Yes, it is. Go Lynx. But I did receive a scholarship to Alabama, but chose academics over athletics.

John Ray: [00:03:07] Were you an athlete?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:03:08] I was. I played softball.

John Ray: [00:03:09] Really?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:03:10] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:03:10] Okay. See, I just learned something about you. Wow. Cool.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:03:14] But chose academics and went to Rhodes. And actually, majored in history. And I’m supposed to be a teacher, high school history teacher. But you probably don’t want me in your classroom with my OCD behavior.

But after doing my student teaching while also working my full-time job at Union Planters Bank in Memphis, I went into the management training program. And upon graduation, chose to stay with Union Planters and become a branch manager at the naive age of 21 instead of teaching in Memphis, Tennessee.

So my career in banking started that way. And also influenced very heavily by my manager at the time who is still in banking. He’s in the mortgage industry in Nashville, Tennessee. As well as my assistant manager at the time, who is also my best friend of almost 30 years, and she’s in Illinois and the banking industry as well. So pretty well connected there.

John Ray: [00:04:18] What are their names? Let’s shout them out.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:04:19] Yeah. Jeff Devereaux with Studio Bank up in Nashville, and Kara Ferguson who’s in a bank up in Illinois that has changed names several times because she’s in community banking.

John Ray: [00:04:30] Got it. Got it. So, Jeff and Kara.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:04:33] They’re the bomb.

John Ray: [00:04:34] Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to the two of you.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:04:36] Yes.

John Ray: [00:04:37] But you’re a little bit unusual, though, as are apparently Jeff and Kara, too.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:04:45] Yes.

John Ray: [00:04:45] In that you’ve stayed in banking because banking has, let’s say, spit out a whole lot of people over the last two and a half decades with all the merger activity in 2008 fun that everyone had in that time. Why have you stayed? And what’s made you successful?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:05:07] I probably have stayed because I became a mom, number one, in 2003. And every day, blessings, goes to make sure my kids get through college. They’re both in school right now. Number one, so I’ve got to get them through school.

But number two, I just love meeting business owners on a daily basis and hearing their dreams and what they want to accomplish. And I hope to be a part and become a part of their team and making those dreams happen.

One of my favorite shows on television is Shark Tank. And those entrepreneurs are those people on Shark Tank, and they are doing something that I wish I could have done or I could do, come up with that great idea. And so when I go visit them and hear their stories, I’m basically getting to live out Shark Tank and hopefully provide them with the funds that they need to fulfill their dreams. And when they do, and they tell me that I help them do that, it’s just an amazing feeling inside.

John Ray: [00:06:06] Yeah. Yeah. I want to come back to that but part of what’s happened in the banking industry over the last three or four decades, really, I mean it’s been going on for a while is, although it’s slowed down recently, it seems is just the constant formation of community banks. And some of them are built for sale, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:06:33] Yes.

John Ray: [00:06:34] But you’ve never, if I’ve got your resume right, you’ve never been enticed by that. And community banks sell themselves as being relationship oriented. You talk about being relationship oriented, but you’ve stayed at larger banks. Why is that?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:06:53] Well, I actually had technically a one day stint at a community bank. I left Fifth Third in 2018 and joined a small community bank here in town that was formerly Midtown Bank and became first Landmark. So it was technically considered a community bank. And then it started the whole merger process. And so over a period of four years, went through five different mergers.

John Ray: [00:07:23] Oh, dear.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:07:23] Which is the definition of community banking, because in order to fulfill the needs of its clients, over time, the only way to do so is to get larger and have capacity. And so merger after merger after merger happened. So that was a new experience for me in that world.

John Ray: [00:07:43] Okay. Okay. So you did do that.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:07:45] Just briefly.

John Ray: [00:07:46] Briefly. Yeah.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:07:47] Because it became, went from a community bank to what is now a large regional bank.

John Ray: [00:07:52] Right. Right. So what was that — how did that experience — how does that contrast between your time at larger banks in terms of your ability to deal with your customers in a relationship format? Was it better? Was it worse? About the same? Or was it what you made of it yourself? Talk about that.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:08:18] I honestly, having experienced both sides of the coin because I made great relationships and great friends in both scenarios. One of the reasons why I’m where I am today at Pinnacle with the large bank scenario, but I still am in contact with those smaller community bank, friends and partners. I just had lunch with a couple of them a few weeks ago and they do pride themselves on relationship style banking.

But it’s really not the name of the bank for customers, or at least it shouldn’t be. It should be the person that you’re banking with. And if you’re banking with a person and you know that person and that person knows what they’re doing within their institution, they should be able to navigate the waters within their institution and get to the people that they need to make decisions to get things and make things happen for you when it comes to products, when it comes to service, when it comes to getting answers, when it comes to getting requests through, when it comes to changing products, updating products.

For instance, if your online banking product doesn’t have a tool that you need, then that banker who’s representing you within that institution should be able to run that idea up the chain. And those changes should be able to be made within that online banking platform, because I’m sure you’re not the only person, John, who wants that change to be made. I’m sure others. You’re just the one voicing it.

John Ray: [00:09:48] What you’re describing is the role of you’re the facilitator.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:09:53] I like to say advocate.

John Ray: [00:09:54] Yeah, yeah, I like that better. Yeah.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:09:56] Yeah. That’s what — we call them advisors at Pinnacle. I like to say advocate. It’s the same initial, but I like to say I’m a daily financial advocate for my clients.

John Ray: [00:10:08] Yeah, I mean, it’s not — this is a dangerous analogy because it’s not that people are guilty of anything, but like you’re advocating for someone in court, right? I mean, you’re arguing on their behalf.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:10:24] I need to be able to tell their story and their why. Yeah. So that means I have to ask some critical questions. I need everybody to be honest on both sides. It goes both ways. That’s one of my biggest pet peeves is when a banker won’t honestly tell somebody why or why not they can do something. And don’t blame the bank. You know, I am the bank.

From day one since I was hired as a teller, I’m not going to sit there and go, well, someone upstairs told me, I can’t do this. No, we just can’t do it. I can’t do it. It’s my responsibility. I am the bank no matter where I am, whether it’s Monday through Friday during business hours or it’s a Saturday when I’m inside of a grocery store, if they recognize me as the banker. Yeah, I represent the bank 24/7.

John Ray: [00:11:10] Now, that’s interesting because as we talked, as I led this off, there are policies. You have no control over prices. You have no control over marketing that you have no control over. So how do you absorb the idea that you are the bank, and you may be advocating for things that or representing things that you don’t even actually agree with?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:11:39] That’s a great question because I’m definitely a why person. I need to understand the why we’re doing it the way that we’re doing it. And I’ve always been the person, especially in a meeting, to ask the question. But if you can give me some answers to the question when I ask it, don’t dance around it.

And I’ve luckily worked for companies who or individuals in the company from a management perspective who’ve always been open and willing to give me that answer so that I can be their biggest cheerleader or biggest representative out in the community.

And they know that I will voice that answer out in the most professional way possible. They’ll give me that to arm myself and be that advocate for the company and to help the clients. So to calm down anything or to lift up anything and be a positive voice.

So even though I might not have had any authority per se to influence a price or to change a product, they have always given me what I’ve needed so that I could let people know this is how we’re going to do it and this is how we’re going to be your best advocate and this is how we’re going to create a portfolio for you so that you can do your day to day business. And I can take care of your financials. And you won’t have to worry about those things on a regular basis.

And it’s been pretty successful. I have been called on the carpet, but when I’ve been called on the carpet, I have no problem saying, you’re absolutely right, let me fix this.

John Ray: [00:13:14] Well, give an example of that. I mean, you don’t have to mention the details of individuals or whatever but talk about just giving an example of that being called on the carpet.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:13:25] Well, I mean, for instance, when we set something up from an implementation standpoint, when a customer gets onboarded at any institution I’ve ever worked at, you tell people that it’s going to take a certain amount of time to get things implemented, set up, and we ask them to keep their old accounts open and new accounts, and cash is going to come in, cash is going to go out. And there shouldn’t be flaws or there shouldn’t be any issues.

But things do happen, unfortunately, out there. We’ve got scammers and we’ve got people taking things out of mailboxes and items of that nature. And so fraud, for instance, does occur. When that situation happens, we try our best in the banking world to prevent it from happening or to catch it before it happens to the client.

When it does happen, customers, you know, they get fearful. They get scared. They get emotional. And so you have to listen to the customers. You have to acknowledge their fear. You have to help them understand, yes, we are going to protect you and that we’re sorry it happened. We thought we had all the instruments in place to prevent it from happening.

Unfortunately, it didn’t stop it. We are going to fix this. We’re going to give you your money back. We’re going to do all the investigation. Just give us the time to do it. But first and foremost, let us give you your money back. Okay. We’ll do this right here, right there for you. So we can’t always catch it, but we try to do our best job possible. And we are truly sorry that it happened.

John Ray: [00:15:06] Yeah, yeah, sure. And you don’t control a lot of the aspects of the quality of your product.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:15:15] I wish but no.

John Ray: [00:15:18] I mean, again, unlike those of our listeners who are solo, small professional services firms, they control the quality of their product. You have a problem with that?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:15:32] We have vendors, of course. We buy products from other people and they promise us things as well. Yeah. But when you work with good vendor partners who will listen to us and gather feedback. For instance in online banking, it’s imperative that you not only are compatible with HP computers, but you’re compatible with Mac computers. And not all online banking products were necessarily compatible for a while with Mac computers. So it was frustrating.

John Ray: [00:16:01] Really.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:16:02] It was frustrating for some customers. And they wouldn’t go to technology because a lot of people converted to Macs early on.

John Ray: [00:16:08] Right. And they’re not leaving.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:16:11] They’re not going to leave it. Once you’re a Mac customer, you won’t go back to an HP. So it was very imperative early on to find out who would and who would not work with Mac computers for customers.

And when vendors said they would and it didn’t work, you had to find out the why and explain it and get it fixed. So that’s just one example that always sticks out in my head. And when I’ve worked for an institution, it’s one of the first questions I ask because a lot of your savvy business entrepreneurs all have the Apple products now.

John Ray: [00:16:47] Yes. Yeah, for sure. Let’s talk about relationships. Now, one of the things I find interesting is that banks may be large, they may be small, they may be mega banks, but every one of them, I think they must have the same marketing people because they all talk about their importance of relationships, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:17:12] Yes.

John Ray: [00:17:13] So there’s no difference in the marketing piece of it when you get to know the bank and you get to know their people. Like you, then only then do you know the difference, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:17:27] Right.

John Ray: [00:17:27] Right. So talk about, I guess the reality versus the marketing, if you will, of building relationships and how you do it, because it’s a one-on-one thing. And you said that well, if I can just add. You talked about how it’s about people and it’s not about the institution which the executive suite, probably, they’re running in circles hearing that maybe sometimes, depending on the bank. A great bank knows that, right? But talk about that, just the difference between how you operate on the ground in building relationships versus the marketing speak.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:18:19] Yeah. I get leery when someone claims they’re all things to all of their customers. I can do everything. And then they hand out A 1-800 number to their clients. That’s one of the reasons why I am where I am today because we don’t give out a 1-800 number and we also strive to pick up the phone.

In fact, our motto is we will pick up the phone in three rings. So if I’m unavailable because I’m on the phone, let’s say with you, John, my phone rolls to the next person in line, human being, in line to pick up the phone, who is my colleague and teammate. And that’s not a marketing thing or a marketing department. That’s us as a team. That’s different.

John Ray: [00:19:09] Yeah. That’s a process thing, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:12] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:19:12] Yeah.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:13] Yeah, exactly.

John Ray: [00:19:13] It has nothing to do with marketing.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:14] No.

John Ray: [00:19:14] Right.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:15] And it’s something that we all almost like sign an oath or an agreement with previous and it’s just not in banks, it’s in other companies.

John Ray: [00:19:28] Oh, sure. Yeah.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:29] Yeah. Not to be named, but companies, they’ll sit there and switch you over six different times just to talk to someone to get something answered. I’m experiencing this right now in customer service with a vendor that I’ve used for years trying to get it resolved, and it’s resulted in me having to tweet to get an answer.

John Ray: [00:19:52] Oh, lovely.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:19:53] Yeah. And it’s really sad that you have to go to those extremes to get somebody to reply after you’ve called and after you’ve sent emails. And it takes social media now to get somebody to respond to something that could have been resolved really quickly with the first phone call that you made. And the promise that the person said, okay, this will be resolved before the end of the business day.

Lip service is not cheap. If people will just say what they say and do what they say and mean what they say and follow through with what they say, the world would probably be a different place and people would probably feel a lot better about what they’re hearing and about what they’re being promised. And would probably have a higher customer service scores and higher follow through and have happier shopping experiences for that matter.

You can spend a gazillion dollars on your marketing and on your appearance and on your brand and on your logo. But at the end of the day, it’s all about the people who are providing it. And if those people don’t believe in the marketing and the promos and everything, it doesn’t matter. So I’d rather you invest in the people who are providing the service than the color and the brand and everything else that doesn’t matter.

John Ray: [00:21:19] Right. Right.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:21:21] I hope that answered your question.

John Ray: [00:21:22] No, no, it did. But I want to dig a little deeper into your current institution, Pinnacle Financial Partners. So first of all, you hear the name and you think that sounds like an investment bank or something.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:21:40] Yeah, it does. I have been asked, you got your license.

John Ray: [00:21:43] Right. Right. Where’s the bank in there? So what does the name signify and why is it that you’re — what is it about Pinnacle that helps you do what you do?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:21:56] Okay. When I lived in Nashville, because that’s where my children were born, Pinnacle started in 2000. And it was born out of mergers of banks that got to be pretty large. That bank, which is now the largest bank in Nashville and the second largest bank in Tennessee, just started out differently. It focuses on its employees being happy. The employees own stock in the bank. And the employees, if they’re happy, they will provide amazing customer service. So employees come first. Therefore, clients get treated extremely well.

In 2020, the announcement was made that they were here in Atlanta, and I read it in the newspaper, and I was like, whoa, this is a big news, because Pinnacle believes in raving fans. Pinnacle believes in taking care of clients, taking care of employees.

And Pinnacle doesn’t spend a lot of money on marketing. So you didn’t see the big billboards and commercials about them coming to town like you have with other institutions in the past. They also don’t post on LinkedIn. They don’t post on Indeed. They don’t have job postings or career fairs or anything of that nature.

You have to, at minimum, have at least 15 years of experience in your position. So our tellers, down to our tellers, they all have been in those positions or have banking experience of at least 15 years or more. So it’s just a different type of institution. We also call ourselves a firm. So you’ll hear us talk about ourselves as we are a firm.

John Ray: [00:23:40] Why?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:23:41] Because we’re about relationships. And we believe firms build relationships and banks do transactions. And so we’re advisors, not bankers. And so we advise clients on everything when it comes to their business and their personal financial matters and build those relationships.

We’re not going to do a transaction for you. We look at everything and we help introduce you to people that can help you with every idea and every situation. And it may not be something that we do financially for you. That may come later. So that’s what makes it different.

John Ray: [00:24:20] Yeah. Hence your title, Commercial Financial Advisor.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:24:24] Yes. And I don’t have a license.

John Ray: [00:24:25] Right, Right. That doesn’t mean you do stocks or something like that. Yeah, right. Yeah. You advise on all aspects of a business.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:24:34] Yes.

John Ray: [00:24:35] Got it. And so let’s — with Pinnacle as your backdrop, which you seem extraordinarily happy with.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:24:45] It’s my dream.

John Ray: [00:24:46] Yeah. Wow. So let’s talk about your approach to relationship building. So how does that work for you? You’re connected with someone. It’s a loose connection. How do you make that connection tighter so that whenever there’s an opportunity, an impetus for that individual to change banks, that they’re thinking of you?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:25:15] I mean, I never look at any introduction as being a waste or as unnecessary or as what’s the purpose of this introduction or what’s in it for me? I want to meet anybody and everybody. My mom said that when I was little that I would walk up to anybody and just introduce myself. That’s not necessarily the best thing on the planet when it comes to strangers. But she said, I had no problem meeting people.

And so I like to know people’s stories. I like to know what gets them up and gets them going in the morning. And so I want to hear about their business. I want to hear about their families. I want to hear what motivates them, what their passion is. And then I want to hear what keeps them up at night.

And again, that may not be banking. It may not be financially related. I laugh and tell the story about early on in the 2000 when I was in my career, moving here to Atlanta, one of the first companies I met here in Atlanta, the customer spent probably our first 10, if not 15 minutes, talking about and apologizing for the taste of his coffee in the meeting.

John Ray: [00:26:33] Oh, really?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:26:34] Because the coffee, he said, it’s just awful and I just — I’ve tried so many different coffee vendors. I don’t know what to do, but the coffee’s just horrible. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Well, come to find out, it was the water filtration system.

And so we ended up introducing him to a water filtration vendor system to put in his office. And the taste of the coffee changed, and he never talked about it again after we solved that solution and problem. So we could talk about other things like his actual business down the road.

So I like the fact that we got down to the heart of it and figured it out and introduced him to a solution. Now you say, that’s kind of weird, Sam. But no, that was something that obviously bothered him because he spent 10 to 15 minutes talking about it during our initial meeting.

So those are the kind of things I want to do is help somebody with what’s preventing them from doing what they do best, which is obviously their business.

John Ray: [00:27:36] Right. So it sounds like what I’m hearing is that you’re trying to figure out what their problems are, what is keeping them up at night, whether that has anything to do with their banking issues or not and trying to proactively bring them solutions to that.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:27:54] Yeah. And that may not in the past with all of my banks that I’ve ever worked with that may not meet my goals right now in the immediate present. But I think long term, it has helped me with not only who I work for, but who I work with, whether that’s my employer or my clients or future prospects, because I think I’m doing the right thing for everybody involved. Because that’s what they need, not necessarily what Sam needs at that particular time.

John Ray: [00:28:29] Yeah. So you work for — as good as your firm is for you, you’re still in a big public company. I mean, and public companies by definition, I mean they have quarter to quarter earnings pressures —

Samantha McElhaney: [00:28:45] For profit.

John Ray: [00:28:46] Right? They’re for profit. They’re for profit. That’s always important. But there are goals, there are budgets, there are, again, the quarter-to-quarter pressures. So what you’re talking about helping someone with their water filtration system, that doesn’t actually add to earnings per share.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:29:07] No, it helps.

John Ray: [00:29:08] For the quarter.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:29:08] It helped that company, I’m sure, but it didn’t help my company at that time.

John Ray: [00:29:12] Right. So, I mean, how do you balance these things, right? Because you’ve got to hit your targets, whatever those targets are and over whatever time frame you’re talking about, how do you balance that?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:29:30] That’s very important. I really honestly believe in a combination of if I’m out there doing the right things every single day, which is out meeting people, talking to people, asking people to do the same thing, keep their ears open, feet on the street, making the right introductions, if I’m asking them who they need to be introduced to, if that’s ongoing 365 days of the year, no matter where I am, I mean, even I take vacations.

I mean, I go to football games because my kids are at two of the best SEC schools on the planet. No offense, Georgia, but they are — you know, I’ll talk to people when I’m at those institutions. I’m always talking about businesses and opportunities and trying to make connections.

And if I’m doing that 365 days, then it always creates what I think is a pipeline. And I’m a big believer and a lady of faith. And I just truly believe that if I continue to do the right things then and I stick to my faith, then it will be provided for me because I’m walking and talking and doing what I’m supposed to do for the right people and for the people who need it. And so I just have to believe I can’t have fear. It’s going to happen and it’s going to be produced so.

John Ray: [00:31:00] Well, so what you’re describing is you’re living from a philosophy of the world is an abundant place, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:31:09] It should be.

John Ray: [00:31:10] That’s one way to describe it. As opposed to that the world is a fixed pie. It’s a place of scarcity. And you have to grab whatever you can grab at that moment. That’s what you’re describing. That’s the dichotomy you’re describing, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:31:25] I like the way you just put that because I don’t want to see people with one set amount and everybody’s beating each other up to try to get, like you said, their piece. I think there is plenty of business out there for everybody and the right amount is going to go to the right person and to the right fit.

It’s like, for instance, we’ve discussed before when someone comes up to you and says that I can make anybody and everybody, I don’t believe that. I know a lot of bankers here in Atlanta, a lot of people who are really my good friends.

And so I’m not the bank for everybody and I’m not the banker for everybody. That’s why if it’s not a right fit, I have no problem introducing you to a great banker at another institution who’s probably the right fit.

And people are like, why would you do that? Don’t you have goals? I’m like, no, it’s better to put you in the right place so that you’re with the right banker and you’re not being moved around all the time. You’re with who you need to be, the right institution, the right person so that your business can prosper. And I hope it would be paid forward in the long run.

John Ray: [00:32:31] Right. So the analogy here for, again, those of our listeners that are solo small professional services firms, they have their own firm, they’re not subject to quarter-to-quarter earnings, but if they’re trying to maintain this a philosophy like yours, you’re going to go through dips.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:32:48] Always.

John Ray: [00:32:49] Right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:32:49] Yes.

John Ray: [00:32:50] Where that philosophy of abundance seems like it’s not working, right? So how do you sustain yourself through that?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:32:59] I mean, you’ll sit there and you’ll say, oh my gosh, there’s nothing in the books, there’s nothing in the pipeline. But if you will do the right steps every single day, get up, not mope or play martyr, if you will get out and show the activities and show that you’re actually doing the right things and continue over and over again, kind of like what Adam Grant talks about in give and take and give and give and make the introductions and do the things that you’re supposed to do, even with your coworkers and teammates, then it will eventually open up again and just flood. And you’ll be like, whoa, wait a minute, it was there all along? Why did I doubt it? It will happen and occur.

If you’re not doing the right things in the right steps. Then no, the abundance won’t happen, or the opportunities won’t happen, but you have to be consistent. I love the word consistent. My kids used to say, you all aren’t being fair. And I’m like, babies, I never claim to be fair, but I’m definitely consistent in my practices.

John Ray: [00:34:05] Yeah. We could talk a lot about fair, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:34:12] Yes.

John Ray: [00:34:12] Yeah, fair is something that happens in the early fall.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:34:15] In Cumming, for sure. In October, the best one.

John Ray: [00:34:18] That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. You’re mixed up on what fair is all about.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:34:22] Exactly.

John Ray: [00:34:23] Yeah. So you mentioned your personality, you’re an outgoing personality. You love to meet people. There are a lot of our listeners that wouldn’t describe themselves that way. They’re introverts.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:34:39] Yes.

John Ray: [00:34:39] And they don’t see themselves as wanting to put themselves out there the way it’s so easy for you. So give counsel to folks like that, that they want a network, and they want to develop strategic referral partner network like you have. How do they do that in a way that’s non-threatening?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:35:04] Oh, wow. Because I mean, initially when I first moved to Atlanta, where I knew nobody in 2005, I mean I was that person who would go to any and every event and splash my name all over the place because again, had no fear of doing so.

But someone who would move here in 2005 and not know anyone, you don’t know where to start, especially if you’re inside of a shell. Personally, because I do know a lot of introverts. I do, in fact, in my small group from church, our group is half extroverts and half introverts.

John Ray: [00:35:43] Oh, you all have a lot of fun.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:35:45] Oh, yeah. Because you’ve got the people who will dominate the conversation and then you’ve got the people who are just sitting there and not saying a word. And you have to get them to to come out and participate.

John Ray: [00:35:56] And they’re running silent, running deep right there. They’re the ones that come out with the really deep thoughts.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:36:00] When they finally say something, you’re like, oh my gosh, why hadn’t you talked the whole time?

John Ray: [00:36:05] Exactly.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:36:06] You’ve got to take baby steps. And it’s really both of them, extroverts and introverts. You have to take baby steps when it comes to networking and pick something that interests you, especially introverts. You have to find an organization or a group that you’re passionate about to go join and go participate in.

Because if not, networking is not going to be fun. It is going to seem boring. It’s going to seem like a checkbox. It’s going to seem like something that you’re going to want to give up on really, really quick. Like you’ll register, you’ll show up, you’ll enter the room, you’ll pick up your badge and you’ll walk out the door type scenario.

If you go to something that you enjoy or that you have a passion for, let’s say it’s a women’s organization or it’s an event that is sponsoring animal’s rights or the Humane Society or something, you’re more likely to attend that event and find maybe one person in that entire room that you could walk up to and connect with and just have a conversation with that night about the dogs or the cats in the room that you connect with or something.

And that’s one success story right there, because you met one person. And that’s one baby step. Getting there, baby step. Staying there, baby step. Meeting one person, baby step. So that’s what I would encourage the introvert to do is to find one event, one chance, go, stay, find one person, and make the connection. And then try it again.

And then once you get your feet wet and you find out it’s not really that scary, you might actually find out you might be an introvert, extrovert. And then that’s a whole other topic for another day. And those are professional trainers. They can talk to you about that term so.

John Ray: [00:38:01] Right, right. Yeah. Because we tend to put ourselves in these binary silos, right? We’re either this or that, and that’s rarely the case, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:38:14] Like, I’m an extrovert during working hours. But, John, when I get home, yeah, I won’t answer our phone, or I’ll go into like a rabbit hole. I need my downtime to recharge my battery.

John Ray: [00:38:28] Right. Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So let’s talk about Strategic Referral Partners because as professional services providers, we all live off our network, right, and referrals. So how did you develop that? You’re known for having quite a deep network, so extensive network. So talk about how that happened for you beyond what you’ve already mentioned.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:39:04] Again, getting out and meeting a lot of people when I first moved to Atlanta. But one of the best networking groups and sets of partners I have had, and I can admit to, and we’re a really neat group. We just met yesterday for lunch, and we have since 2012.

There was a group of us that were part of an organization that paid a lot of money to be a part of that group. We went our separate ways and formed our own networking group back in 2012 because we found some commonalities with each other, and we meet over in the Cumberland area and have the first and third Tuesday of every month around lunch time.

And we protect each other. And when I say protect each other, we don’t overlap when we meet with one another. So if there’s one CPA in the group, it’s the only CPA in the group. I’m the only banker in the group, but our organization is up to 22 members. And we regularly meet with each other. We discuss opportunities with each other, customer clients with their permission, and we look out for each other.

As far as business, we all try to do business with one another. But again, we try to make introductions with one another. And this group has probably been one of the most important parts of my business since, again, we formed in 2012. And the biggest part of it is, I could say we’re honestly family.

That group of individuals, if something ever happened to any one of us, like one individual is celebrating a wedding this weekend. There’s been babies born in that group. There’s been graduations. There’s been deaths. There’s been illness. We treat each other as family. So how we treat each other is how we want to treat our clients. It’s how we want to treat anybody. So it’s a unique organization.

And so from that baseline, that’s how we treat all of our networking partners. And so anyone we meet out in the community, we try to introduce each other to those networking partners and other referral sources. And so it’s just grown and connect each other on LinkedIn and it continues to multiply. So we’ve been very blessed with one another.

John Ray: [00:41:30] We could go down a bunny trail on this. But I mean, how does someone that does not enjoy a group like that, how do they find that kind of group, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:41:41] Okay, it’s a great question.

John Ray: [00:41:42] Yeah. How did they judge that group, right, for its personality of giving?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:41:48] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:41:49] You know, how does that happen for them?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:41:51] No. When I worked at Fifth Third, I had employees who would ask me about that group and how did that group even form or what would you do, what would you recommend on how we start a group similar to that? And I have told individuals in the past, start with people that you like to do business with, like to have lunch with, like to break bread with and go have breakfast or lunch with those people.

That’s maybe three, four people and put together. And you all come up with a baseline. What do you all require from a set of guidelines? Are you just going to require that you all meet once a month? Are you going to require that you all make one introduction to each other once a month? And put those baselines down and hold each other accountable.

And then set it on the calendar. Are you going to meet once a month, twice a month, whatever it is? And you come together and is it just going to be the same group of people? Or are you each going to require each other bring another person the next month and see if it stays the same in size?

And if that’s comfortable, keep it that size. If you want to grow it, then do the visitation and grow it to the next size, grow it to the next size. And then if it keeps growing, decide do you want to charge fees for that or are you cool with everybody paying for their own meals, whatever you decide from a meeting standpoint.

But you can create your own group. It doesn’t have to be a national organization and nothing against the national organizations because they’re fantastic. I’m a part of one. I only do two networking groups and one of them happens to be a national organization.

But you can create your own group. You just have to make sure the people that you’re in and working with and that kind of group all have the same ideas and philosophies in play. And the people that you invite clearly understand what those philosophies are.

So if I’m bringing you as a visitor and we introduce our clients to each other, make sure the person you’re bringing, hey, John, when you come and meet my friends, we’re going to — you know, I’m introducing you to my friends that I do business with, they’re going to ask you, who do you want to meet, who are my clients, and who are you willing to, down the road, introduce me to if my services are needed by your clients?

You know, you’ve got to be very clear about those expectations. And if you can’t be and you’re not comfortable with that, then this might not be the right group for you.

John Ray: [00:44:23] Sure. Sure. Well, let’s talk about a success story or two. You know, obviously we’re not going to mention names or affiliations, but where this relationship first approach, let me hear your problems and see if I can solve them approach has worked out for you over the longer haul.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:44:54] It’s always varied in size. I’ve had individuals come to me and they’ve been start-up companies.So I can think of one right now. Three individuals were working for a very large corporation in a field of staffing. And they wanted to leave their larger corporation and start their own smaller company.

They did not want to do SBA lending. And we basically had to sit down and look at their business plan. Everything that an SBA lender would look at and see if the plan made sense from us on a conventional standpoint to take care of them and give them the lending that they needed to get the project off the ground, which would include not only funding to start the organization, working capital for payroll for fixed needs to hire individuals, but also for the lease that they needed because they wanted to have a retail outlet. They wanted to have furniture fixtures and equipment, desks, everything of that nature. They wanted to appear like, in my opinion, like a mini little Rognstad.

Everything financially looked great, but it was going to be really dependent upon those three individuals and the strength of those three individuals. Again, they did not want to lock up their homes. They did not want to lock up 401Ks. They basically wanted an unsecured loan. And it took —

John Ray: [00:46:33] Yeah, because this business does not have any assets.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:46:35] Nothing.

John Ray: [00:46:36] Other than the furniture.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:46:37] That they were going to buy.

John Ray: [00:46:39] Right. At your financing, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:46:41] That they were going to purchase. And that would not really be something that a bank would want to take back in the event that it didn’t work out. So we really had to look at the deal, the projections of the deal, the history of the individuals, how they handled their personal finances, resumes, letters of recommendation. I mean, we really had to look outside the box to figure out if this was something that we wanted to do and take a chance on.

And with senior management, I mean higher levels of credit authority, everything, interviews of the three potential owners, again, the letters of people who believed in them, faith in them, things of that nature. I mean, we really went outside what’s normal parameters, especially for a large bank and made this deal happen.

And we did it on a very short term basis. So they had rather large payments in the very beginning. So they were going to have to really work and get contracts, get clients on board, make accelerated payments for this to happen. And the company did a really nice job to the point where even by year two, they were acquired.

John Ray: [00:47:58] Oh, wow.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:47:59] Yeah. Someone acquired them really quick so they could pay us back which was nice. And they’ve all gone their separate ways. And one individual right now is back in corporate America and is doing a fantastic job. Never thought they would go back into corporate America, but they are.

But it’s just a nice little story how we kind of made the exception and went outside the box, and didn’t go down the traditional path because, yes, it probably could have been done SBA, but it would have locked everything up. And a lot of customers don’t necessarily want to do that. Yeah.

Well, that was that one sticks in my head because it was just the idea of, yes, we don’t always have to put every customer inside a square box. We can kind of make it wavy, curvy, triangular, whatever shape you want to come up with.

John Ray: [00:48:53] Yeah. That’s great. Sam McElhaney, folks with Pinnacle Financial Partners. Sam, just one more question and then we’ll kind of bring it down to a close. But just offer a takeaway, just one takeaway that our listeners that are out there with their own firms can take away too, as they think about success for their practice, for their lives. What advice would you give?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:49:31] You have to — it’s going to probably sound like two pieces, so I apologize upfront for that. But first and foremost, John, really stick to your morals, stick to your values, who you are, and don’t let social media or anybody, anyone else change who you are. Because at the end of the day, people will see through that. They’ll see through anything that’s not genuine.

And I hope I’ve done that over the years. I hope people who have met me since, for instance, moving to Atlanta or even those who have known me since I first started as a teller, they will say this is the same person who started banking when she was 18, and now I’m 48. So they will be like, wow, she’s not changed. She can sometimes be a handful, but she also is very passionate, and she will fight and she will be loyal, and she will represent me and take care of me and will be honest with me.

But also, for business owners, be transparent. That’s my word for 2023. I always pick a word and I get it imprinted on a necklace. And I try to wear it on Fridays. And this year’s word is transparent.

And that’s, again, a word that I think people need to know is not a negative. It’s a very positive word. If you’re transparent, I think people will appreciate what you have to give them because there’s no smoke in mirrors. It’s you just being your most authentic and vulnerable self and it goes along with sticking to your values. So that’s why I picked 2023 and I think it’s coming in very relevant right now, especially with the banking industry and what we’re going through.

John Ray: [00:51:28] Yeah, for sure. For sure. That’s an entirely different conversation.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:51:34] Sorry, I didn’t want to open up that worm.

John Ray: [00:51:36] No, we won’t go down that trail, but maybe another time. Well, Sam McElhaney, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation. I’m sure there are folks that might want to be in touch, so let’s tell them how they can contact you.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:51:54] Yeah. I am Sam McElhaney. Again, with Pinnacle Financial Partners. My office is over in the Riverwood area, but we have two other locations. One in Avalon and one in Buckhead. You can reach me at 678-524-7133. The same cell number I’ve had since I moved here to Atlanta. And my email address is Sam.McElhaney, that’s M-C-E-L-H-A-N-E-Y@P as in Paul, N as in Nancy, P as in Paul.com.

John Ray: [00:52:30] And they can find you on LinkedIn because you’re very active there.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:52:33] Yes, I try to be. Every morning, one of the first things I do.

John Ray: [00:52:36] And I think you’re the only Samantha McElhaney on LinkedIn. I think you are, right?

Samantha McElhaney: [00:52:40] Some people confuse me with another McElhaney or they ask if we’re sisters and we’re not related, but she’s one of my favorite individuals on the planet, so I like her a lot.

John Ray: [00:52:52] Okay. So connect with both of them.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:52:54] Yes. And you’ll get one of us. I’m sure she knows who I’m talking about.

John Ray: [00:52:58] There you go. Okay. Terrific. Sam McElhaney, Pinnacle Financial Partners. Thanks again so much for our talk.

Samantha McElhaney: [00:53:05] Thanks, John for having me.

John Ray: [00:53:06] Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun. Hey, folks, just a quick reminder is as we look ahead to the rest of 2023, if you are a current listener, subscriber to this podcast, thank you. Thank you for your support. We’re grateful for you.

And if you’re not, you can go to pricevaluejourney.com to find our show archive and check that out and see if you like the series enough to want to subscribe. And if you do, you can do that on your favorite podcast app. So we thank you in advance if you decide to do that.

If you go to pricevaluejourney.com, you can also get a link to receive updates on my upcoming book that will be released later this year. It’s called The Price and Value Journey, Raising Your Confidence, Your Value and Your Prices Using the Generosity Mindset Method. If you want to know more about that book, you can sign up for updates there and you can also email me directly too, if you’d like, John@JohnRay.co. Thank you again for joining me on The Price and Value Journey.

About The Price and Value Journey

The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on: building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire, and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.

If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.

The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.

John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey

John Ray The Price and Value Journey — **John Ray, Host of “The Price and Value Journey”**

John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.

John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.

John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 2,000 podcast episodes.

Coming in 2023: A New Book!

John’s working on a book that will be released in 2023: The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices Using The Generosity Mindset Method. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. For more information or to sign up to receive updates on the book release, go to pricevaluejourney.com.

Connect with John Ray:

Website | LinkedIn | Twitter

Business RadioX®: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Casey Gaetano with Integrity Compounding Pharmacy

May 1, 2023 by angishields

In & On Business

Casey Gaetano with Integrity Compounding Pharmacy

00:00 /

This episode of In and On Business features Casey Gaetano, owner of Integrity Compounding Pharmacy in Sandy Springs. Casey discusses the difference between working in and on your business. He emphasizes the importance of constantly reinventing processes and systems in a growing business.

Casey also talks about the unique manufacturing process of Integrity Compounding Pharmacy, which focuses on creating batches of one, tailored to the specific needs of individual patients. He stresses the importance of maintaining a commitment to customer service and quality, even if it means sacrificing efficiency.

Integrity Compounding Pharmacy customizes prescriptions to fit individual patient needs. This ranges from turning a tablet into a suspension for a toddler to combining multiple drugs at precise strengths for a particular patient.

We believe that a healthy and active relationship between the Patient, the Provider, and the Pharmacist benefits all parties. Please feel free to inquire about additional information or educational materials related to compounded prescriptions. We welcome the opportunity to serve you and your patients.

Casey Gaetano has been the owner and operator of Integrity Compounding Pharmacy since 2015.

A graduate of Emory University, he was born and raised in Atlanta, where he continues to reside with his wife, daughter, and son.”

Connect with Casey on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for In and on Business brought to you by the Sandy Springs perimeter chamber. For more information, go to Sandy Springs Perimeter chamber.com. Now here’s your host.

Adam Forrand: [00:00:33] Hello everyone. This is In and On Business with the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber where we explore the tension between executing on and innovating in your business. I’m your host, Adam Forrand, and today I am joined by Casey Gaetano, who is the owner of Integrity Compounding Pharmacy here in Sandy Springs. Welcome, Casey.

Casey Gaetano: [00:00:52] Thanks for having me. Excited to do this.

Adam Forrand: [00:00:54] Glad you’re here. For our listeners and even for you, Casey. Just as a reminder, we talk about working in and on your business. We are talking about when working in your business. We’re referring to the work that enables the delivery of a fabulous service such as integrity compounding pharmacy or a remarkable product. So what you’re really known for what the market and the community knows you as and working on your business refers to the growth oriented activities you undertake to ensure the sustainability and the viability of your business in the future. So we’re going to dig into that. The difference between working in your business and working on your business. So let’s just get to it. Casey Great, Let’s do it. Your signature says owner. Why do you use the word owner in your signature and not something else?

Casey Gaetano: [00:01:44] So it really goes back and this entire conversation, I guess what we’re going to be talking about in verses on business gets back to I am the owner of a compounding pharmacy, but I am not a pharmacist. So there’s never been one day in the history of our business where I could say it’s either my way or the highway. I will be doing everything right. I will be checking this prescription and it will go out the door. And that’s just the way it is because I’m the, you know, the pharmacist in charge and that’s what it is. Yeah. So for me, it’s always been a tension of working in versus on because by law, quite literally, I cannot do all the parts of what working in our business would would mean. And so for, for me and we still I still talk about this in hiring all the time, I say the best part about our business is that I’m not a pharmacist. The worst part about our business is that I am not a pharmacist because it forces me to clearly delineate the things that I do versus what our team of pharmacists do. Right. And that’s been basically the structure around which this conversation we’ll be having today revolves around.

Adam Forrand: [00:02:48] Yeah, so using the word owner in your signature and only owner. Right? Sends the right signal.

Casey Gaetano: [00:02:54] Yeah. For me. Well a lot of you know everybody else most compounding pharmacies the owners are are pharmacists. And so a lot of times there will be pharm.d this right and what board certifications they have and then either they’re most of them are the pharmacist in charge. Some of them end up passing that off at some point. But that’s what it’s to talk about. But for me, it’s more on the business side of things where it does get to be working on the business.

Adam Forrand: [00:03:17] Yeah, and that’s what’s going to make this conversation great, right? Hopefully, yeah. So we’re going to focus on working in your business. So when working in your business, what strategies or tactics have served you well so that you get the best out of yourself and or your team?

Casey Gaetano: [00:03:33] So in terms of working in the business, I got into compounding pharmacy when I was very young, 22, 23, and my job at that time was basically to do all the stuff that nobody else wanted to do at the beginning, right? So it’s like. Some of it, I guess maybe in hindsight it seems obvious, but I’d never thought about things like how do you make sure that the trash people come pick up your trash once a week? Somebody has to call them details, details. These things happen, right? At&t insurance contracts, all these stuff. So I kind of started there in terms of, you know, as we’ve gone forward, I’ve held different done different things in terms of in the business versus on and and part of it is how you define those things. But I’m still very involved in a lot of purchasing, very involved in our financial side of the business and even down to down to bill pay. A lot of times very involved in putting, you know, all of our orders together and sales and product development and all of this kind of stuff is where I tend to be more on for me involved in the business.

Adam Forrand: [00:04:36] Gotcha. Okay. And so what’s many years later? Sure. Right. How old is integrity?

Casey Gaetano: [00:04:42] So in our current form, it’s basically been the way that it is now since 2015. Since about eight years.

Adam Forrand: [00:04:48] Yep. And so you’ve grown to a team of one You.

Casey Gaetano: [00:04:53] Yeah. Well, I was never a team of one because I couldn’t be the pharmacist. But that’s true. So we were when, when I took over at Integrity, we had a team of, I think 5 or 6. Okay. And then so now we have a team of about 36.

Speaker4: [00:05:06] Wow.

Casey Gaetano: [00:05:07] So it’s different.

Adam Forrand: [00:05:08] It is. It’s very different, right? Yeah. What is the difference between as you were contemplating working in the business. Right. And those early experiences and those finer details to where you are today? What has been the through line? What has been the common thread in terms of your experience as it relates to your focus on delivering the service? That integrity is known for sure.

Casey Gaetano: [00:05:34] So when you have six or 5 or 4 or 2 or 1 employees at a business, then basically when you’re the owner, you’re responsible for everything, right? And that never changes when you have 36 employees or you have a thousand employees or a million employees. It doesn’t matter if you’re the owner, you’re still at the end of the day responsible for everything. What changes is the fact that you can’t do everything anymore, right? Um, so there’s a delegation side of that. And to me, one of the biggest parts is intentionality, which is okay if I don’t think about this and I just try to respond to every email and phone call and employee that knocks on my door or whatever in the moment, it’s very overwhelming. So you have to try to think about in advance, what are the things that you feel like you truly provide value add doing versus things that other people could do just as well of a job if given the right training that you’re kind of doing. And to me, that’s like really the ultimate question. And there are certain things as the owner that you probably can never you never give off right to anybody else.

Casey Gaetano: [00:06:37] You never want to delegate. But as time goes on, because it’s just the volume of requests, each individual task tends to just take longer and longer and longer because there’s more, Right? And so you just are slowly working down this funnel to just eventually deciding what is the one most important thing that if this was taking 40 plus hours a week for me to do, I would just only do this one thing. Yeah, I think, you know, for us and for me, I always said that our we would know our business was super successful if I could just sit in a dark room all day and just think about what we should be doing, Right. Um, you know, that’s. I wish that was the case. It happens on the way to work and in the shower, and while I’m brushing my teeth. Yeah, exactly. And all these types of things. But dimly lit. Yeah. Not dark exactly. Um, but yeah, I think, yeah, to answer your question, it’s just kind of working that funnel of trying to figure out what’s important and that only you can do it versus what’s what can be given to other people. Yeah.

Adam Forrand: [00:07:35] And so are there new systems or new protocols, new processes that you’re relying upon now that you didn’t rely upon many years ago or even last year or the last two years? Yeah.

Casey Gaetano: [00:07:49] We’re constantly reinventing processes and all of that kind of stuff. I tell people in whenever I do interviews for hiring, I’m still very involved in the hiring process. I always say, If you don’t like change, then don’t say anything. Just get up and leave. Just walk out the door. Never come back. Never. Don’t, don’t look back. It’s all good. It you’re good. Like let’s not do we’re good. Yeah. So we’re constantly changing everything. But that’s because I think it’s very easy. It’s very easy to understand that what works when you have five employees doesn’t work when you have 50 and and definitely wouldn’t work when you have 1000 employees. People understand that. What I think people don’t understand is that what works at 1000 employees doesn’t work at 50. And what works at 50 also doesn’t work at five. It’s actually bi directional in terms of scale with different things. And so if you are a growing business, you can’t like you can’t somebody that runs Coca Cola or something can’t just be like, Oh, well, here are all of our processes for our 100,000 employees. Like just institute these with your team of 30. It doesn’t work. And so you’re constantly as you go trying to reinvent things up and down. As as as it kind of comes.

Adam Forrand: [00:08:58] And so in the face of new regulations, in the face of other regulatory constraints that you have, is that borne out of just the sector that you’re in and the service you provide? Or is that that change? Does that come from within? Is it internal or is it as much external?

Casey Gaetano: [00:09:21] This is a great question. So so definitely being part of pharmacy and what we do in compounding is one of the most highly regulated parts of probably the the entire the entire economy. And there are certain rules about doing things like quality management meetings and standard operating procedures that we have to have by law. Thank goodness. Right. Exactly. The general public should be very happy that these things are in place. Right. So we have to have some frameworks for those for that, for that type of stuff as a business. But we try to carry that over into other things because again, kind of back to some of the scale stuff when you’re, you know, 2 or 3 employees, a doctor calls in and says, Hey, could you make this for me? And a lot of times if it’s just maybe back in the day, that would be just me and a pharmacist. We sit there and we look at each other, we think about it and decide whether we want to pursue that or not and what that would mean. But now, you know, we have 4 or 5 salespeople out there doing it full time. We’ve got 10 to 15 people answering phones all day long. We’ve got a lot of people working in the lab. And so it’s not just one question that comes in per week that we have to decide whether we want to do it or not.

Casey Gaetano: [00:10:29] But there’s 30 questions that are coming in per week about whether we should do things. And then, you know, we’re trying to build out systems such that if one doctor, let’s say one gastroenterologist, called in and asked about a particular product in April 2023 and I did three hours worth of research and we decided whether to do it or not. Well, if another gastroenterologist calls in in April 2024, we’re trying to build out systems so that we don’t have to like we can remember what we said and what we did and how we did it right and all of that kind of stuff. And so we don’t have to keep answering some of these same questions over and over again because I know that I’ve sometimes I’ll be halfway through researching something. I’m like, I’ve done this already. Kind of like reading a book. You get three chapters in and you’re like, Wait a minute, I’ve read this book, right? So we’re trying to build out those types of systems. And a lot of that to me is taking all the information that’s in all of our pharmacists heads, my head and our sales people’s heads and putting that into some sort of. You know, procedure such that we can learn from each other. Right. And we can save that information over time. Wow.

Adam Forrand: [00:11:39] So to provide more context for the listeners, you would describe your environment as a high mix, sort of low volume environment, or do you work on a low mix, high volume in terms of the the pharmaceuticals that you compound for your clients?

Casey Gaetano: [00:11:56] So in the Okay. So in the grand scheme of things, we’re kind of a little of both. So a regular retail pharmacy like your Corner, CVS, Walgreens, Kroger, whatever, a busy store might process 500 prescriptions in a day or a really busy store might process 7 or 800 prescriptions in a day. Okay? And usually at most of those types of places, they’re going to have one pharmacist on. On duty. On duty. And then just depending on what their hours are, it might be split between two different people or one person working a like 3 or 4 twelves or four tens or whatever the case might be. Just kind of depends on their hours. But a busy store would say do 500 to maybe 800 retail prescriptions in a day. Okay.

Adam Forrand: [00:12:43] Non compounded.

Casey Gaetano: [00:12:44] Pharmaceuticals. Non compounded. That’s just where they’re off the shelf. They’re off the shelf. You know, there’s antibiotics and blood pressure medications and all of these things. So and 1 to 2 pharmacists might be able to cover that for a day, just depending on exactly how that’s set up. We have 13 pharmacists that work just in Atlanta, and we only do about 250 to 300 compounds. Gotcha. Okay. So each one of our basically every single compound is just a lot more work than a particular commercial product. And that’s on a couple of different for a couple of different reasons. One, we have to make it so there’s that whole making it component to it. And then two, based on the types of work that we do at your regular retail pharmacy, at CVS or whatever. Every patient that walks in the door, most of the time it’s a refill and they’re on the same blood pressure medications and the same things month over month, over month. Obviously, that’s going to be a little bit different. You get sick, you get an antibiotic steroid, whatever. But a lot of times, you know, you have your CVS and you’ve been going there for the last eight years because it’s the one that’s most convenient to the house and they give you good service and whatever. For us, it’s a lot of new patients. And not only is it new patients, it’s new patients that don’t know what a compounding pharmacy is. And depending on how that conversation went with their doctor or their nurse, they might not even know why they got prescribed a compound.

Casey Gaetano: [00:14:02] Gotcha. And so it’s a lot more work on the front end. We’re getting payment. Insurance doesn’t cover most of what we do. So a lot of times it’s cash pay. So it’s explaining that whole process to them and then it’s got to be made and then it’s got to be, in most cases, shipped to the patient. Sometimes they do pick up. But we we probably ship about 90% of what we make. Wow. So so then you’ve got that and then you’ve got what pharma does. So or hospitals a little bit different, but you’ve got what pharma does. Pharma runs these massive batches that are going to go towards thousands and thousands and if not tens of thousands of people in a single batch, right? That’s very traditional manufacturing, whereas when we’re doing it, a lot of times we’re making batches of one. So we do a lot of one on ones. Okay. So it’s very time and labor intensive to just make that single compound that’s going to make a specific difference for a for an individual identified patient. Right. So it’s a very like it’s a it’s kind of we’re in the middle of all these all these different things that are kind of going on. Some things we do batch for up to maybe a few hundred patients, but a lot of things, about almost half, probably over half of what we do is one of ones. Gotcha.

Adam Forrand: [00:15:09] And so your primary relationship is both with the physician and the customer, the ultimate patient, right? Who is ultimately the customer who receive this specialty.

Casey Gaetano: [00:15:20] Correct combination. So so we the slogan that I made up was Our patients are our patients and our doctors are our customers. So patients are very important to us. Absolutely. Ultimately, who’s paying the bills? Right. And that’s who’s getting the medication and that’s who we want to get better. If that’s the case, or maintain whatever they’re trying to maintain, depending on what it is. So they’re very important to us. We, you know, think very highly of that relationship between us and our patients. But our sales and marketing are geared toward the doctors of those patients, such that, you know, if you are a particular patient, you go into your doctor, you know, it might be that 98 out of 100 people need one thing. But when that doctor realizes that you are in the two out of 100, they think a compound and be integrity compounding pharmacy. So that’s what we work with a lot of times on our salespeople, is that it’s that two part sale. It’s like when to use a compound. And if you are going to write a doctor or write a compound doctor, please send it to integrity versus some, you know, what other choices that you would have. Yeah.

Adam Forrand: [00:16:18] So does that culturally speaking at integrity, does that phrase your patients are your patients and your doctors are your customer? Is that imbued in every part of of the work that you do?

Casey Gaetano: [00:16:30] I think it is. And I always and I always catch myself saying I never want to diminish the work that our customer service and patient services team do with our patients. But from a strategy standpoint, my job, yep, that’s who I’m thinking about is, is why doctors would write compounds or we don’t always work with doctors, sometimes with hospitals, sometimes it’s with other pharmacies that are outsourcing different things, whatever. Right. Okay. But that’s who I’m thinking about, is those people as being the people that are trying to prescribe something or to handle something that they don’t want to do themselves and therefore they want to use us for that service.

Adam Forrand: [00:17:07] Yeah, brilliant, Brilliant. You know, the question of differentiation across compounding pharmacies, right, is the question I was headed towards. But you answered the question in terms of that ethos. That is integrity compounding, Right? It is acknowledging the difference between. Those whom you serve and how you serve them differently and why you serve them differently.

Casey Gaetano: [00:17:27] I think that’s that’s right. Most compounding pharmacies grew out of independent retail pharmacies and then they started doing compounding. And so for those places, the customers are their patients. It’s one and the same, right? Because they what they’ve realized in a lot of those cases was that they had a captive audience of two, three, 5000 patients that are coming there to pick up their regular medications. And it’s like, okay, if we just start doing compounding for this sliver of patients and doctors that already know us. It’s just, you know, a value add service that we can make some money off of. And sometimes that grows and grows and grows and the next thing they know they can. It can be a standalone compounding pharmacy, but it never typically loses the roots of the patients and customers being the same people. And that’s what their marketing is geared toward, doing Facebook things. And, you know, social media is more important to to them than it would be to us and all that kind of stuff. But for us, you know, I really do think that a lot of our job is to make our doctors look good. Yeah, I want my whole goal is that the patients not necessarily go tell me that we did a good job with our compound, but that they go to their doctor and they go back to their doctor and say, Wow, that recommendation you made was great. The company took great care of me and it worked. And thank you, doc. That is more where we are geared toward than just that individual relationship between us and the patient.

Adam Forrand: [00:18:46] Awesome. So beyond that mantra, how do you get the best out of your people on a on a day to day basis?

Casey Gaetano: [00:18:53] Do we have like seven hours? We do not know. I think that’s that’s very difficult. Seven minutes.

Adam Forrand: [00:18:59] How about that? Right.

Casey Gaetano: [00:19:00] No, that’s that’s that’s it’s such a challenging question. I think it’s the question. Yeah. In terms of of building an organization is how do you get the best out of your people Because ultimately all of the the words and the things I mean, it’s still human beings that are that have to do all of those things. And so I think it really is the ultimate question to me, the answer to that to that question, because it is so hard, is to try and simplify it. And what that means to me is if the our company aligns on like one on one axis, right? The patient’s professional life is a second axis and their personal goals and ambitions in life is a third axis. Okay. If those three things intersect, what I’ve typically found is that most problems just kind of take care of themselves because everybody’s incentives are aligned like, right? If it makes sense for them professionally and personally to have this job and what they do and what they bring to the table is a good fit for what we are looking for in that particular role. Then typically any sort of personal issue or lack of motivation or it kind of just all falls away. Whereas when those three things aren’t lined up, all of a sudden they don’t like this one policy on that and they didn’t like, like it’s like things come out of the woodwork, right? And it’s all because there’s an inherent tension in that. It’s just not the right fit at the right time for that, for the for that particular person. Yeah. So I think about that a lot in terms of just trying to align those three things up and therefore basically solving the problem before it can become a problem. Right? Because everything just makes sense. Yeah.

Adam Forrand: [00:20:35] Yeah. That’s incredibly hard to assess though, in an interview process, Right, Very. Um, and maybe you can speak to it or your managers, your hiring managers speak to that in terms of that alignment and certainly that ethos by which you guys operate. But assessing that through a hiring process is incredibly difficult. So you’re probably putting the onus on the candidate themselves.

Casey Gaetano: [00:20:58] Yeah, look, you’re never going to get it right 100% the time. No, I think the number that I read most recently was like, if you can be successful in hiring 70% of the time, you’re absolutely knocking it out of the park. Yeah. And even 50%, you can be happy there. Yeah. So I think and I think we’ve gone through ups and downs with hiring. We’ve had times when it felt like every single hire we were making was just the right person, just the right time. And then there have been other times where it’s like, okay, we hired six people in the last three months and none of them are still here. It’s been only three months. So we’ve kind of gone through both of of of those of those things. And I think the biggest the times when we make the most mistakes or when we are desperate and that’s either because we have a job that we just have to fill or because something happens or whatever the case might be. And we I almost always look back at it and I’m like, Yeah, we made that decision because we were desperate. And so we try to stay ahead of it. That keeps us out of being desperate. But that brings us to this other thing that’s kind of important called the budget.

Casey Gaetano: [00:21:59] You know, small thing. It’d be great to have an extra person at every position, but that’s not how it works. And so you try and balance those things the best that you can. But yeah, it’s hard in the in the interview process. So we try to see we try to select for people that like change, that are motivated, that are curious, that are. That. Honestly, the question that to me matters the most in an interview process is why do you want this job? Like when people have trouble articulating that, that to me is probably the biggest red flag because we’re a niche company, right? We’re a compounding pharmacy, right? There’s not that many. And when people can’t articulate why they would want to work at a compounding pharmacy, to me that’s kind of a red flag for like, have you done any thought or are you putting like any thought into your personal goals and life and write any research at all into any of this stuff? So when people are able to well articulate in a way that to me makes sense of why they want this particular job, that’s such a green light to keep talking to that person.

Adam Forrand: [00:23:01] It goes to motivation right across those three axes. Sure. Yeah. And while they can never meet the same motivation you have as the owner and the leader and the founder, if they’re getting close right, then you’ve got you’ve got an indication that there’s something there for sure.

Casey Gaetano: [00:23:20] And we are in health care. So obviously I am the the the owner of the company. So, you know, there is a financial component to that on on all axes. But a lot of people got into health care because they want to help people. And that’s really important, too. Yes, it is. So we try to make our company a place where people can help people if that’s what they wanted to do. And the most common reason that pharmacists will move from like from big box retail to integrity, at least on the patient services and customer service side, is because based on the nature of the business where it’s CVS, they might have 30 seconds to spend with a patient. A lot of times we try to give them the space to spend 15 minutes with that patient and actually trying to get in there and help them and do do all that stuff. And I think they they do find that rewarding. I think also when a lot of the retail pharmacists feel like doctors don’t always respect them professionally as much as they would. Okay. But and I almost have to like untrain that out of them because when they come over to our side, on the compounding side, those same doctors are calling because they have real questions. They don’t they know that they want something, but they don’t know exactly how to write it. Yeah. And so they’re those pharmacists are like, wait, a doctor hasn’t really asked for my opinion about something in five years and all of a sudden they’re starting to ask me for my opinion all the time. I actually, I really got to double down and know this stuff because my opinion is valued here, because the doctors need help getting what they need. And that’s that’s kind of what we’re trying to to be able to, to be set up to do. Yeah, that’s.

Adam Forrand: [00:24:50] Fabulous. So I’m going to transition to the working on your business. Sure.

Casey Gaetano: [00:24:53] The whole thing we were supposed to talk about.

Adam Forrand: [00:24:54] Yeah. No, we got the in part we got a great dose of the in part. And there was some absolutely fabulous stuff in there on the on part. You and I were talking earlier before this broadcast, this recording that you know where you are with 35 or so employees. Right. And you think about the viability and the sustainability and perhaps the scalability of integrity compounding where are you in that working on the business part? So you mentioned some of the things that you’re trying to delegate that you do, delegate some of the things that you’re in the mix on in terms of the operations at Integrity. But when you think about hiring new people and the prospect of hiring new people or you think about systems development within your organization that may take certain tasks away from others and perhaps automate them, like what does the future look like? When you think about when I’m going to you’re going to switch that gear, change that gear into I’m working on my business now. What does that look like right now for you?

Casey Gaetano: [00:25:59] So a couple of different things. You know, at its roots, pharmacy is a scale business meaning and in health care, a lot of things are not great scale businesses because people are getting paid for their time. Right. When we’re on the pharmacy side of things, we’re not getting paid for our time. We’re getting paid for prescriptions going out the door, which it naturally lends itself towards being a scale business right in addition to that, with compounding very high fixed costs compared to most pharmacy operations, just because it is, you know, at the end of the day, it’s a very small batch manufacturing facility. And the the actual costs of the drugs that we’re using to compound are typically quite low as a percentage of what that product looks like. So from that reason, I always think about compounding as a very scalable business. On most axes. The hard part to scale is actually the institutional knowledge of how to do everything correctly and how to sell it and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So when I think about working on the business from a sales and actual production standpoint, a lot of that is working on processes that will build institutional knowledge. Institutional knowledge across employees such that, you know, as you grow, you’ve got ten, 12, 15 pharmacists, you’re going to have different people there every day.

Casey Gaetano: [00:27:18] Can you still do everything you need to do when 2 or 3 employees are out? And then in terms of sales, you know, do all of those sales people know what they need to be saying in front of doctors and then that coordinating with the patient services folks so you never want it, where a salesperson goes into a doctor’s office and says, Hey, this is how to prescribe this. The doctor does it exactly that way. They get a call back from the pharmacist saying, You didn’t do this right at all. And then they turn around, look at the salesperson, like, what did you tell me? So everybody’s got to be on the same page with all that stuff. And so I do think about that from a process standpoint. You know, we do that. We tend to hire younger pharmacists, generally speaking. So there’s a lot of learning and training to be done there, right? But that’s where we do a lot of meetings and a lot of internal teaching and internal learning about how to do all this stuff and then try to put it together in a way that it’s actually written down and saved such that anybody can go back and find our notes on a lot of these things and kind of and kind of build on that with, with other types of processes.

Casey Gaetano: [00:28:21] I mean, it’s kind of the same thing on the other side of things, all the different parts of running a business, there’s invoicing, there’s payables, receivables, purchasing inventory, all of these types of things. And again, that’s just to me, I spend a lot of time trying to think about processes such that that somebody else could do what I have been doing or what somebody else, you know, somebody else has been doing. And then if that person were to left or to leave, okay. And we had to rehire for the next person, how long would it take them to figure out how to do the job? Because if it takes two years to figure out how to do purchasing, that’s not going to work because that’s not necessarily a job that you’re going to keep somebody for the rest of their life doing. And we need to have it done in a way such that somebody new would be able to come in and figure it out. Right? And so that’s what I spend a lot of my time doing is trying to build those processes.

Adam Forrand: [00:29:11] Yeah. And so does that documentation that that memorializing of institutional knowledge does that is that a really just a hard transcript of documentation of conversations? Are you recording audio conversations? Are you recording them in video? How are you capturing this huge amount of knowledge that you have?

Casey Gaetano: [00:29:32] So a lot of it is mostly written So, so as a pharmacy, we have to have written SOPs on a lot of things and that’s where a lot of things will start. But then a lot of times we will make basically reference documents with instructions, supplemental supplemental documents that kind of just walk you through doing it the right way almost. Yeah. And so for instance, with purchasing, I know that they just added a yesterday, they added a box that could be checked so that somebody with an iPad can just have the iPad and know where they are in the in the doing it. And but it sounds really simple that we just added a checkmark. Checkmark to the document. Right. But it’s allowing people to basically figure out across hundreds of different SKUs what we need to purchase on a weekly basis without constantly getting lost in the middle of what they’re doing. It was so simple. It’s like, why did we not do this five years ago? But it’s little things like that. And then, you know that document now it’s made whoever’s doing purchasing now might move on. Somebody else comes in. Well, that little, that little check mark is not going away. And so it’s going to help the next person too. Even though it’s weird. Like institutions, I think institutional knowledge is something that’s kind of fascinating to think about, but like nobody’s going to talk to that person about the times before the check. Mark The checkbox, right. Like they’re just always going to know that the check mark, what the check marks for and why it exists and how it keeps you from getting mixed up when you’re in the middle of things. And so those are the types of things that you you build on these processes. You just iterate over and over times thousands of different things. And that’s to me is how you, you know, ultimately build an organization.

Adam Forrand: [00:31:07] Yeah. So you’ve got regulatory requirements in terms of SOPs and documentation, and then you add on really what makes integrity unique and special from an operational standpoint. Do they live in the same place? Do they live on the same platform or do you have separate platforms? I’m curious like, what does this look like? Yeah, we keep.

Casey Gaetano: [00:31:23] We keep everything on Dropbox. Yes. Shout out for Dropbox, I guess. Sure. Shout shout out for Dropbox. So we really keep everything on Dropbox in different folders and different things and almost everything. I mean, there’s a. Couple things that I keep in private drop boxes and H.R. files and stuff like that. But for the most part, any document that has to do with anything for our company, somebody could look up on their first day of work and just be like, Huh, I guess that’s the invoice that we sent to this doctor six years ago. Yeah, And it’s that.

Adam Forrand: [00:31:53] Knowledge that is absolutely critical for your future success, particularly when you think about working on your business and scaling your business. Sure. That that stays with the organization and it’s not lost with the individual as they make a transition out.

Casey Gaetano: [00:32:07] So yeah, I think that’s right. So I guess in terms of the on the business stuff, I think. I could divide it almost into like, internal strategy and external strategy. Like what? Like internal strategy is all about processes and how we move the pieces around the chessboard and who should be doing what and how we should be doing certain things and all that stuff. And then the external strategy is all about how do we present ourselves? What’s our brand? Do we do we know our brand? The doctors know our brand, Do our own employees know what our brand is, right? You know, then and obviously sales is the next step down that and just trying to understand, okay, do we want to get involved in allergy compounding? Do we not want to get involved in allergy compounding? Do we want to do fertility? Do we not want to do fertility? And if we do those things, what does it mean for the rest of the way the business works? Yeah.

Adam Forrand: [00:32:58] Moving forward.

Casey Gaetano: [00:32:59] Allergy doctors typically like typical turnaround time on a lot of this stuff in the industry is 4 to 6. 4 to 6 weeks. Sometimes in our fertility and genetics program, they want, if they call it five, they want us to ship it at 525. So you know, how do you have an organization that can handle these big batch runs for allergy on this hand? Right. But then the second a reproductive endocrinologist calls in and wants a fertility med, everybody drops what they’re doing and makes sure it gets out the door that day. Those are two conflicting things. So how do you run like processes side by side so that you can do both things or can you do both things? Should you pass on one right? Or can you do both? What what similarities do they have? What differences do they have? That’s to me that that is the essence of working on the business.

Adam Forrand: [00:33:45] Which in many cases and you know this well too, across different sectors, different verticals, that ability to be nimble and agile and serve a customer’s need and prioritizing those customers appropriately is really where the greatest challenges, right? And shifting gears and doing a fire drill, if someone calls at 5:00 and no, it’s going to hit the hit the dock by 525. Right.

Casey Gaetano: [00:34:11] I get pushback all the time from our employees like Casey. You cannot promise people that we’re going to ship things at 6:00 if they do not send it to us until 550. And my response to that is always when we made the decision to be a compounding pharmacy for genetics patients and for IVF patients, we made the decision that we will try our absolute best to do it. If we’re not, there is no doing it. There’s no for me, there is no doing fertility and genetics without the the end of the day problems and the immediate things, either you’re in or you’re out. Right? We made the decision to be in. And that means if it means we’re in, it is if it is physically possible, we are going to try to do it. And we made that decision years ago. And so that’s what we have to stick. Why? And I think it’s one of those things that employees like. It’s one of the reasons I like new employees, things like that. They’re just like, Oh, okay. And then they keep going, Yeah, Your people that come over work another jobs for ten, 20 years, that takes a little bit longer until they get the buy in and understanding of, okay, that is the way we’re going to have to do this one particular thing. Even though I understand that it makes it less efficient and I understand that it’s a pressure at the end of the day. And if we don’t double, triple, quadruple, check it real quick, it theoretically could lead to mistakes. And we understand all that stuff, but we try to put the guide rails on to respond to it because we made the decision to do it five years ago. Right. And we’re all in on it.

Adam Forrand: [00:35:33] Yep. And you’re maintaining that commitment through and through.

Casey Gaetano: [00:35:36] Correct. Awesome.

Adam Forrand: [00:35:37] So, Casey, you lead a group for us here at the Sandy Springs perimeter chamber that I it’s got many names, but I’m going to just call it a mastermind group. Sure. Because I think that’s the most accessible.

Casey Gaetano: [00:35:49] I never use the same name twice. So.

Adam Forrand: [00:35:51] Good. We’ll go with Mastermind. So you’ve got a front row seat to a lot of other business leaders who are challenged with particular aspects of their running their business, scaling their business. And so you’ve received advice and counsel from those folks. You’ve also provided that as well. As it relates to working in and on your business, what advice would you give our listeners and how to best balance that?

Casey Gaetano: [00:36:20] I guess the advice that I would give is that it is a balance. It’s never going to be all one way or all the other way. Yeah, One of the things that I think is most important for understanding your business is at least the beginning. Sometimes it’s doing your own books. Like when I talk to business owners that outsource that function from day one and didn’t didn’t happen to come out of like accounting or some other job where they had to understand how to do that and they outsource it from day one. I’m like, how could you? I don’t understand personally how you can understand your own business without doing your own books, at least for a little while. That’s fair. And so again, what my counsel be, do your own books for the rest of your life, even when it’s taking 80 hours a week just to do the books by yourself. No, but I think there’s there’s parts of it that you have to just do yourself at the beginning, even though it’s inefficient. Right? It’s the whole point is that it’s inefficient. Because you’ve got to learn it. And so again, that’s why I talk about it as like a concept of a funnel, because at the beginning you have to do everything yourself, basically. Yeah. And then you can start either outsourcing it or you start hiring for it, right? But everything at the beginning is this giant funnel.

Casey Gaetano: [00:37:30] And so you’ve got to start slowly working that funnel down in terms of what you’re going to concentrate on and what you’re going to try and either delegate or outsource. But my I guess my one piece of advice was you can’t go too hard in either directions because you do have to truly understand being in your business. Right. And I, I and I like, you know, our pharmacists that, that have that no longer work necessarily in workflow all the time. I always tell them that they’ve got to be in workflow at least once in a blue moon so that they understand they can still remember what the pharmacists are in workflow are looking at. So when they’re building the processes to help the work people, to help the people that are in workflow, they remember what workflow feels like, right? And I feel the same way for myself. Granted, not on the pharmacist side. For me, no. But still, like occasionally answering a phone call or dealing with an angry patient and understanding why they’re upset is not the worst thing to have to get your hands dirty in. Um. In order to truly understand the strategy of what you should be doing, right? So again, it’s kind of that balance. If you if you go too far out, you start to lose touch a little bit with exactly what your company is.

Adam Forrand: [00:38:37] Well and what you should be doing changes.

Casey Gaetano: [00:38:40] Yeah, right. And it doesn’t have to be the most efficient thing all the time.

Adam Forrand: [00:38:43] It does not. Not if you’ve made that commitment. Right. You’ve made that commitment to your customers, to your patients, to a community, to an organization. And then on behalf of all your employees as well, right? I think that’s right. Yeah. That’s awesome. Casey, share a little bit about where potential customers and patients might be able to find you.

Casey Gaetano: [00:39:04] Sure. So we’re we’re over at off of Dunwoody Place. So we’re North Sandy Springs. Feel free to call the pharmacy drop by the pharmacy. We do try to get to doctors in terms of of getting but if you’re a patient that that is either on compounded medication or has questions about compounded medication, please feel free to call the pharmacy. Find us on Google. Our website is mixed with integrity.com. That’s probably the best way to start. Yeah, I think that’s. That’s that’s honestly, it’s old school. It’s calling people don’t people don’t call anymore. But in our in our businesses there’s like so many exceptions and nuances and this and that and the other thing that it’s very difficult to automate down to like different things. So we just prefer people to call us and just say what their problem is and we’ll try and respond the best we can. Yeah. What’s the number? (404) 815-1610.

Adam Forrand: [00:39:54] And I can say I’ve been to your pharmacy before. The place is buzzing with phone calls. So I know they call. They do. It is old school, right? It is mixed it with integrity. Dot com is great. But when you have the question and you want to talk through it.

Casey Gaetano: [00:40:09] That’s that’s that’s definitely the way to go.

Adam Forrand: [00:40:11] That’s the best way. Casey Gaetano, owner of Integrity Compounding Pharmacy. Appreciate you being here today. Appreciate your leadership in our community as well. And thanks for these wonderful insights on how you can and should be working in and on your business.

Casey Gaetano: [00:40:29] Thanks, Adam. This was fun.

Adam Forrand: [00:40:30] I enjoyed it. Thanks, Casey. Yep.

Speaker1: [00:40:39] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for in and On Business. Brought to you by the Sandy Springs perimeter chamber. For more information, go to Sandy Springs Perimeter chamber.com. Now here’s your host.

Episode 104: Building Financial Resiliency & Sustainability

April 26, 2023 by Karen

Episode-104-Building-Financial-Resiliency-and-Sustainability-feature

Phoenix Business Radio

Episode 104: Building Financial Resiliency & Sustainability

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Episode 104: Building Financial Resiliency & Sustainability

In episode 104 of the Senior Living Visionaries podcast, host Jennifer Drago and Larry Bradshaw, financial consultant and retired CEO of National Lutheran Communities and Services discuss how senior living providers can ensure their financial strength in light of our current cost and staffing pressures and occupancy challenges.

They also discuss current trends and metrics that executives should monitor to remain financially strong and why occupancy isn’t always the most important metric for an organization.

As senior living providers, you won’t want to miss Larry’s wisdom as he shares why he is often called in as a financial consultant and the key things he evaluates. Larry also shares his advice for current leaders to strengthen their financial resiliency and sustainability.

Larry Bradshaw brings more than 40 years of experience in the not-for-profit senior living industry. Beginning in 1982 he was the Chief Financial Officer for Presbyterian Manors of Mid-America in Newton, Kansas.

From 1987-2006, he was Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President for Strategic Growth with Asbury Communities, a not-for-profit, multi-site, senior living organization. In 2006, Larry took on the role of President for Asbury’s for-profit company, The Asbury Group, offering consulting services to other Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRCs).

Mr. Bradshaw formed the Bradshaw Insights Group in 2008, providing consulting services to CCRCs in strategic planning, board development, financial analysis, and capital structure development.

Mr. Bradshaw joined National Lutheran Communities & Services (NLCS) as the President & CEO in October 2009 and retired in 2021. During his tenure at NLCS, Mr. Bradshaw’s focus was to strategically grow and further the organization’s 130-year mission and ministry of providing lifestyle, residential and health care options for seniors.

Under his leadership, NLCS became a multi-site organization from a single site campus and offered a wide range of services including home health, home care and community clinics.

Connect with Larry on LinkedIn.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Welcome to Senior Living Visionaries, a podcast for senior living leaders who are looking to stay ahead of the curve in the industry. On this show, we feature leaders and innovators in senior living who are pushing the boundaries and creating new effective services and solutions. And now, let’s settle in as host, Jennifer Drago, connects us with today’s guests.

Jennifer Drago: [00:00:31] Hi. Welcome to Senior Living Visionaries broadcasting live from the Phoenix Business RadioX Studio, where we showcase leaders and innovators in the field of senior living. I’m your host, Jennifer Drago. I’m a strategy consultant and the CEO of Peak to Profit.

Jennifer Drago: [00:00:47] And I’m really excited about today’s guest, Larry Bradshaw, who’s a financial consultant these days, but a retired CEO and former CFO who’s worked in the senior living industry for over 40 years. And I’m going to introduce him fully here in just a second, but one of the things I’m really interested in – and I spoke to Larry very early on when I was really talking about bringing this podcast to life – was really helping our industry become more financially resilient and more sustainable in the long term.

Jennifer Drago: [00:01:21] And with Larry’s background and his expertise, he’s really helping organizations do that. Now, he is retired, so he doesn’t want to work all the time, but we’re going to hope to extract some of these goodies out of his brain today and learn what we can do as senior living providers and executives to remain financially resilient and keep that strength behind us in really challenging times.

Jennifer Drago: [00:01:45] So, as I mentioned, Larry has more than 40 years of experience in the nonprofit senior living industry. He started as a CFO and had a really long run with Asbury Communities, where he started as a CFO and Executive Vice-President for Strategic Growth, and then took on the role for the Asbury Group, which I think does consulting for continuing care retirement communities. He then went on to consult on his own, but then shortly returned to National Lutheran Communities and Services as the president and CEO, where he was from 2009 to the time that he retired in 2021. So, Larry has a wealth of knowledge that he can impart to us today. And I’m just so excited to welcome you, Larry.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:02:36] Thank you, Jennifer. Glad to be here.

Jennifer Drago: [00:02:38] You bet. So, you know, I mentioned we really want to strengthen this industry and I know you’ve been working in it a long time, that’s been part of, I’m sure, your passion and purpose is helping to create the next level of leaders and continue so that your legacy is strong and you have people coming in behind you that are leading the organization and focusing on the things that you would want them to.

Jennifer Drago: [00:03:02] And so, in that vein, I’m going to ask my first question about the type of consulting that you brought in to do now with organizations. What are some reasons that organizations bring you on or seek your type of assistance in this day and age?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:03:17] Well, thank you, Jennifer. It’s an interesting time, as you know, in senior living, I mean, coming out of the pandemic. And as you said, I am retired, but I do get called in and asked a few questions. And in my experience in the last 18 months since I retired have really been in the areas of development.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:03:38] I’ve had a community look to me to help them with some development of both expansion opportunities and also new campuses. And that was really around looking at the feasibility of doing something, especially in a really difficult environment in certain areas around land entitlements and project entitlements and really getting through a lot of the red tape that communities are doing. I’ve done a few of those.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:04:05] I’ve actually done a little bit of secret shopping for some organizations going in and pretending that I’m looking – pretending may not be the right word, but pretending to look at those. I’m looking from the eyes of a consumer and then going back to those communities and saying, “Well, here’s some things I saw or some things that weren’t being done.” And I think, again, during the pandemic, a lot of communities, the occupancy dropped so low, there was very little kind of marketing or lead generation because people just were staying at home.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:04:40] So, I think some of the organizations that I’ve talked to have gotten a little bit out of practice on how they contact people, how they follow up and all those things. And so, just some of the basic blocking and tackling, if you will, on some of those developmental and marketing issues.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:04:55] But I think primarily what I give some advice on or take a look at is really financial stability in the organizations and really kind of what to look at. I think the industry has come so far in the last 40 years, but there’s still so many nuances, especially in senior living when it comes to entrance fees and it comes to some of those accounting issues that are not necessarily easy to understand, even for people who do it all the time, but especially for people trying to sell the product or get into the product.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:05:30] So, a lot of financial nuances. I take a look at a lot of financial statements and just kind of give some thoughts on. And it’s funny how sometimes people will ask me, “Well, I think we’re doing pretty well.” And I’ll look at their statements and say, “I think you’re doing some pretty good things,” but either I see vulnerability points or I see opportunities to really gain even more traction. And so, I think I would say it’s a little bit variety. There’s a variety of things I look at, but primarily it’s around the financial stability of the organization.

Jennifer Drago: [00:06:05] And that’s so important. And one of the things that we talked about as we were prepping for this call is I think we would love to see providers reach out and seek expertise in this area far ahead of when they might need it. So, even when things are seemingly good, maybe occupancy is almost recovered to the pre-pandemic levels, but you’re still struggling a little bit financially. That’s a great time to to seek the guidance of an expert and say, “Hey, take a look and see what we can do differently.”

Jennifer Drago: [00:06:38] We’re going to get into some of the factors, some of the things that you look at, but one of the things I take away from talking to you is that each organization is so unique, and their financial picture and the sustainability and stability is really a puzzle. You’re kind of mixing and matching a number of elements to optimize how that organization can perform financially, even in the midst of all of the things that are hitting our industry right now, staffing shortages, inflationary pressures, you name it.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:07:10] I think you’re puzzle analogy is right on track, Jennifer. I think one of maybe the positive things that have come out of the pandemic – I’m not quite sure. I don’t think we’ve gone far enough in to see if it’s really positive or not – there were some statistics several years ago that over 65 percent of the leaders in senior living were going to be leaving through retirement, and we’re kind of in that period of time now. And I’m one of those individuals.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:07:36] But I think that maybe the good part of that coming out of the pandemic is some of the new leadership that’s coming in with some new ideas and they’re not handcuffed or biased by the way things have always been done, which I think could be a positive moving forward.

Jennifer Drago: [00:07:51] I agree. I agree. And on the flip side of that, they may have great ideas which we need in this industry. We need disruptors. We need innovators. But matching those ideas with some financial expertise is really important. We got to make sure that we do this in a very smart way.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:08:10] Not to be at all negative, but I think one of the challenges that is very subtle in this industry in trying to be innovative and trying to illuminate some of the things we’re talking about today is really some of the regulators, the regulations in different states. They’ve come through the pandemic and they’ve really changed also. They weren’t always as innovative and as quickly as a provider we wanted them to be. But I’m concerned that maybe they’ve gotten a little farther behind because of the pandemic and because of, you know, all the other focus of legislation and those type of things. We’ll see how that plays out. But I think that could be a factor in the future, too.

Jennifer Drago: [00:08:48] Yeah. Good point. Good point. So, in the last 18 months, as you’ve been brought in, you know, this is really post-pandemic, what kinds of trends are you seeing when it comes to financial stability? What things are you seeing that you point out more and more maybe than you did in the past?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:09:05] Well, certainly occupancy has to be at the top of the list because if you go through and look, the organizations, I think, that are really doing well out of the pandemic have increased their independent living occupancy back to pre-pandemic levels. But the health care side, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing are significantly lower. While that in itself is a pretty good indicator, I think the trends of staffing has gone the other direction. They’ve become more expensive, harder people to staff.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:09:38] And if you talk to HR professionals, I heard this when we were in the pandemic until the end of 2021, so kind of in the throes of it, but we had so many individuals who would sign up for interviews and they would just never show up. And it would just be very, very difficult to get people in.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:10:03] So, as I look at financial stability, I really have focused on a couple things. One is certainly occupancy, but two is occupancy mix, especially in skilled nursing and assisted living, where you’re in a Type A or life care community, where you could have a lot of individuals coming out of independent living, going into skilled nursing, but they’re usually at pretty deep discounted rates. So, that could affect your revenue stream. So, I think what I’ve really looked at is what’s your occupancy, what’s your mix. And I think that’s really important to look there.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:10:33] And, again, depending on the contract, How dependent are you on entrance fees? Are the entrance fees refundable? If they are refundable, a lot of contracts will allow individuals to leave their independent living apartment, but go to skilled nursing or assisted living without paying the refund and entrance fees because the contract stipulates you don’t pay it until they leave the community.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:10:57] You get a new entrance fee in, but you’re building this liability and skilled nursing. All of a sudden, you’ve got $8 or 10 million of refunds sitting in health care. And if for some reason you’ve run out of inventory or you’re very highly occupied, all of a sudden, where’s that money going to come from when it’s time to pay it out? So, I think that’s an area I’ve been looking at a lot.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:11:20] You know, one of the organizations that I worked with, we’ve actually begun to put that on our financial statements so we can actually see what that number is and that liability is, because while it’s on the balance sheet as a deferred revenue, until it is very specific to health care stability, it can just be lost in the numbers. So, if it’s not distinguished on the financial statements, certainly as part of the management report, I think, has been something to be useful of.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:11:49] We look a lot at debt service coverage ratios. Usually, that’s the covenant related to debt. And I’ve have begun to focus more on the debt service coverage without entrance fees versus with entrance fees, because certainly you can be in line with your covenants. But I’d like to see that ratio of debt service coverage without entrance fees continue to rise because that reduces your reliance, of course, on entrance fees, which I think is really important. And we’ve seen how important it is. I mean, if we have a heavy reliance of entrance fees and occupancy goes down due to something like the pandemic, it’s just hard to get that back.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:12:26] So, my focus has really been more on focus on improving operations and less reliance on entrance fees, making sure your capital expenditures are adequate, because what you can’t afford in this environment is to have a tired facility. And, of course, liquidity is also an important area. So, those are kind of the five or six areas that I look at. And if one of those looks like it’s kind of going the wrong direction, it’s time to dig a little deeper.

Jennifer Drago: [00:12:52] Yeah. I love what you brought up about entrance fees and how they play into kind of your occupancy mix, the refundability component, really the mix of contracts that you have in your organization. And you’ve brought up some points that I really haven’t heard expressed by many consultants that work in this industry, which is, if you’re not keeping an eye on the refunds that you need to issue and kind of how the entrance fees play into your overall financial picture, you really run the risk of having a big surprise in the future. And I love your idea of kind of always having an eye on those numbers and knowing where you’re at so that you can be planning accordingly.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:13:40] Yeah. I think one of the things we tend to look at in this industry – I mean, I could paint you a scenario. I haven’t thought about this in advance, Jennifer, so I hope it doesn’t mess up. But if a project came to you with 98 percent occupancy in independent living and you had entrance fees, and your debt service coverage ratio was 1.5 times, which is all very strong, in that scenario, 98 percent you’re functionally fully occupied. Because by the time people go out of the project and then you have to turn the unit over, you’re there.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:14:22] But let’s say that you’ve built up that refund liability in health care and maybe it’s $10 or 15 million, depending on your market, how big it is, well, all of a sudden those people start needing their refunds out of health care, you don’t have any units to resell. So, while, yes, the occupancy is great and it’s strong, the flip side of that is if it’s so strong that you cannot pay some of those refunds, I think that’s problematic and it really could affect your liquidity. And when you start paying those refunds, it affects your debt service coverage. And you don’t have entrance fee refunds coming in to replace them because they’ve already been replaced.

Jennifer Drago: [00:14:56] Yeah. Good point. Good point. You know, one of the things, I just interviewed, Brad Paulus from Continuing Care Actuaries on this podcast.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:15:04] That’s a good guy. I like him.

Jennifer Drago: [00:15:05] Yeah. He sure is. And when I was working for a provider, I had the opportunity to work with Brad and really think about, “Oh. What do different benefit structures look like? How can we morph this plan? Or is this contract still appropriate given what the next generation of residents is going to want?” And that’s one of the things that Actuaries, I think, are really good at doing is kind of strategic visioning. And I’m not sure all providers kind of take advantage of that.

Jennifer Drago: [00:15:36] And so, what you’re describing back to the contracts and the contract mix, I think you could really have some great conversations with your actuary, and I think that could be a key takeaway from this podcast as listeners are listening, is, if you haven’t taken a look at your contracts in a while or thought about how they might need to change or how that mix might need to change, could be a really good time to do it.

Jennifer Drago: [00:16:01] And the other thing that Brad was sharing is a lot of providers are taking advantage of the shift in utilization. Post-pandemic, he reported to us that skilled nursing facility utilization is down, that residents are really resisting more than ever going into skilled nursing. Whereas, in prior years it might have been 18 to 22 percent. Now, we’re seeing 15 to 18 percent of residents actually utilize that service, you know, short term or long term, depending on what’s going on. And so, providers are taking advantage of that and maybe adding in home care benefits where we could actually provide care, but in a different location, which is, again, truly what residents want.

Jennifer Drago: [00:16:48] Did you ever work with actuaries in that regard to kind of strategically vision —

Larry Bradshaw: [00:16:53] Well, it’s funny that you mentioned Brad, because in my former job we did work with his company, and I have a lot of respect for what he does. And prior to me leaving National Lutheran, my former job, we actually were developing a project that we created. And I’m not sure this is done a whole lot of places. We actually created a project that had both Type A and Type C contracts. And we did that for marketing reasons for a couple, because we did have some people that liked the life care benefits, but others who had a lot of long term care insurance didn’t want to pay the premium. So, we actually generated the project will have Type A and Type C contracts, but we did cap them at a certain level.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:17:36] And I remember the conversations that we had with Brad and his team about, well, where do we cap these at? I mean, how many do we do for Type A? How many do we do for Type C? And it’s an interesting conversation, but I think, also, the actuarial models for years – and I’ve said this to other people – from my experience always look to have higher or bigger skilled nursing facilities than what was really needed.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:18:09] I go back to my early years back in the 1990s in another organization and we built a community which had a 40-bed skilled nursing community. And that didn’t fill up for 15 years because people wanted to stay out of there. So, I have kind of felt like a little bit our industry has shot ourselves in the foot a little bit about the number of skilled nursing beds that we have built.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:18:36] At National Lutheran, my former job, when I got there, they had 300-bed skilled nursing facility and it was huge. And we dropped it to 160, redeveloped the entire skilled nursing. And, frankly, if I would have had to do it again, I probably would have said instead of 160, let’s do 60, because it’s just hard to fill and now it’s hard to staff.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:18:58] So, I think the industry is paying heed to what needs to be done. And I’m really glad to hear that you had Brad on this because he’s a very innovative person. But I think we’ve got to figure out a way to reinvent and, if you will, right-size some of these skilled nursing and health care beds because, to your point with homecare and other such things.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:19:21] And at some point the Medicaid model is going to get to the point where I think – and I don’t know when it’s going to happen. I don’t know if it’ll ever happen – the money could actually follow individuals versus follow communities. And then, you’ll have a really interesting situation if Medicaid and the states and funding cap off certain levels to individuals and then, all of a sudden, they’ve got to use those dollars the best way they can. And so, that’s going to be at the lower cost. So, it’s an interesting time, but I’m glad to hear that you had Brad on.

Jennifer Drago: [00:19:52] Well, and the other thing – and I don’t know if you’ve seen this in other areas or other states, I know not all states are as flexible – here in Arizona before I left industry, we had three life plan communities in the state that had decommissioned their SNF beds altogether and had kind of beefed up their assisted living, whether added beds to that, added acuity levels, so they had high acuity AL. And what they found was they could adequately take care of 99.5 percent of every residents’ needs in the high acuity AL, and where they needed to outsource, and they did that with strategic partners was for short term rehab or for the very few cases that needed a true level of SNF care. So, are you seeing that in other areas of the country?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:20:45] Yeah, I am. People are just looking to right-size skilled nursing or decommission. I know in Maryland, when I worked in Maryland – and this was going back. And since that time, I’m glad to hear the Department of Aging has kind of changed their stance – if you were building a continuing care retirement community, they were mandating. Matter of fact, the project I talked about earlier going back to the ’90s, we had a smaller health care footprint and were required by the regulators to make it bigger. And it never filled up because the regulators were really looking at the actuarial models that, I think, were really skewed a little bit towards more health care.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:21:24] So, yeah, I’m seeing a lot of that. I’m hearing about a lot of it. And I’m also hearing that the state of Maryland now, instead of trying to provide bigger skilled nursing beds, are trying to partner with home health and home care to make that happen too. So, I’m excited about the direction because I think it’s going to alleviate some of the issues relative to the high cost of health care, but also the staffing shortages.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:21:48] Those are our critical components. I mean, marketing is always critical, but we’ve got a pretty big aging population coming into place, but we don’t have the individuals to care for people. And that’s a tough job. And when I left National Lutheran, I said several times, because our wages had gone up so much because of regulatory living, wage requirements, and everything else, we were now competing with fast food restaurants and other such restaurants which were paying similar amounts of money. And, frankly, that’s a much easier job than taking care of seniors who have really acute and chronic care needs.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:22:30] I think that’s beginning to address some of the really critical vulnerabilities. And that’s a key word, vulnerabilities in our sector because we are vulnerable to those types of things.

Jennifer Drago: [00:22:41] I want to return to kind of the financial piece and ask you, you know, you were a CEO for a number of years, what are the key metrics that you had on your dashboard that you looked at, I don’t want to say day in and day out, but certainly weekly? And are there any surprise metrics that you can share with us that you would monitor that perhaps other CEOs may not have?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:23:03] Okay. Yeah. That’s fair. We built an in-house business intelligence model that we were really proud of that really distilled and focused a lot of things down. But, of course, every day you want to look at occupancy, not just overall occupancy, but also within your skilled nursing. We try to have a fairly high Medicare profile, especially at our flagship community. And so, I would look at that Medicare model because that was appropriate that we kept a certain level.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:23:35] Our second community that we built in Virginia, I think we were pretty innovative. We only built ten beds for 200 independent living units, ten-bed health care, and we had a 16-bed memory care. And it’s funny, I think it worked pretty well, except psychologically for the residents who were constantly saying we need a bigger footprint. That was very interesting to me.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:24:00] But anyway, I digress a little bit. But occupancy and then that mix within skilled nursing, I think, were very important. I took a look at our average wages by job classification a lot. I really paid attention to that. And as the pandemic was wearing on, we were able to track our tenure really well. Sorry. I’ll take a real quick drink of water. Sorry. So, we were looking at that fairly closely. Our liquidity levels were important. Those were the really big ones.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:24:35] And then, when I went to staffing, I looked at open positions, the number of open positions. We had the average number of FTEs. And then, I looked a lot at our production metrics on our staffing. I looked at productivity, PTO hours, education hours, really looking trying to make sure overtime was a big one too. But really trying to make sure that our production metrics were greater than 92 percent. Because I felt like if we could keep our people on the floor or in the units for 92 percent of the time, meaning we weren’t replacing them for paid time off or education purposes, we were probably doing pretty well.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:25:17] And if we could keep our overtime numbers under 3 percent, that was really positive for us. When I first started there, the overtime numbers were 20 percent. It’s one of the first things we really went after was just managing the people. And, you know, it just wasn’t everybody could go on vacation the same day. They had to be some structure. And we got that down lower than 3 percent, even lower than 2 percent for the most part. So, those are metrics I really took a look a lot at.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:25:45] And of course, the other thing relative to Medicare was, because Medicare is a capitated cost, we just looked at what our expense levels were to that. Because if Medicare costs, Medicare expenditures get a little bit out of control, all of a sudden those really high daily reimbursement rates you get on Medicare, they can deplete really quickly. So, we looked at that. Because we had a large Medicare utilization, we tried to find that sweet spot where the reimbursement levels were maximized. And then, once our residents got to that point, we would want to make sure our service structure had them moving to the next level of care because reimbursements were going to go down.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:26:27] So, I hope that helps. But those were the big ones we took a look at for the most part. And we had them on a dashboard. They would shoot up on your screen pretty much on-demand or anytime you want to look at them.

Jennifer Drago: [00:26:37] Yeah. I’m a big proponent of dashboards and metrics, what you measure matters and gets your attention. And I love that you talked about productivity standards because my experience in senior living was that it didn’t seem to be many organizations that were truly focused on it in the way that you described. And, hopefully, that’s changing, because I do think that’s a key to our success in the long term for sure every single day.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:27:07] The other thing that I think is important to look at is really the percentage of your salaries and labor related costs, including any contract management and employee benefits to your operating revenue. Because if that number begins to get too high, those costs essentially become fixed costs because not a whole lot you can do when you have to staff the project. But if those numbers are closer to 50 percent, that gives you a little flexibility on areas, if you have to cut, you can cut. But if it’s all staffing, it’s hard to do, unless you’re tremendously overstaffed. And I don’t think anybody’s having that situation.

Jennifer Drago: [00:27:44] Yeah, for sure. You mentioned occupancy, and that’s been such a push since the pandemic, trying to restore our occupancy to pre-pandemic levels. And I know now, actually, we’re probably all shooting for a higher target, a higher stabilized occupancy because of the increase in staffing costs and things like that, that we’ve already talked about.

Jennifer Drago: [00:28:07] But you mentioned something to me in our pre-call that, you know, occupancy alone does not tell the full story. And we can have a very high occupancy organization that still has some financial challenges. So, can you give some context to what you’ve seen as you’ve consulted with organizations around this?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:28:25] Well, I think if you have high occupancy levels, the first thing I’m going to say is that’s really good. The second thing I’m going to say, if you have really high occupancy and you’re struggling financially, then you want to take a deeper look. If you’re high occupancy is there but you can’t get enough units for scale, I think that’s something to really take a look at.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:28:51] I mean, obviously, if you have a ten-bed nursing facility and you’re full, you’re up to 98 percent on a rolling basis, that’s probably pretty good. Except that is such a small scale. You probably can’t get any kind of efficiencies in staffing. So, I think scale makes a big, big difference in that. I think also – I talked a little bit about it earlier – if you’re occupancy gets too high, it could pinch you in other areas, especially of entrance fee refunds that are sitting on the sidelines waiting to be paid.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:29:20] And, also, if you’re reliant on entrance fees to have your debt service coverage levels be adequate and, all of a sudden, you’re at 98 percent, you don’t have any any product to sell. And so, then you’ve got to rely on operations. And if your operations are weak and very reliant on entrance fees, and if you don’t have any product, then all you have is your operational expenses, the only thing you can do is cut costs or raise entrance fees or raise monthly fees a lot. And residents don’t like to do that.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:29:52] So, I think occupancy is a great beginning barometer, but if I’m called in and someone says, “Well, I’ve got occupancy at 97 percent, I’m just losing money,” that tells me several areas to look, scale, your cost structure, what your staffing structure look like, what are your fixed costs, what are your managerial costs if you’re doing your own management, or your outsourcing, what are your dining costs because dining costs begins to get bigger. And how much debt do you have? I mean, if you’ve got debt where you’re needing to turn 30 percent a year to cover debt from interest fees, you’re just over-debted. And that’s the other thing to look at.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:30:34] If everything is good and it looks good and it’s not good, there’s something underneath it. And we talked before the call today, I sometimes think weirdly than other people, which is I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But I have a concept of when I talk to people and I talk specifically about debt operating margin, and I say, “Your net operating margin is good enough. The inevitable question is what should it be?”

Larry Bradshaw: [00:31:03] And I think in a perfect world, you know, your operations should cover your operational expenses, obviously. I think it should cover some routine CapEx to a certain level every year, not expansion or any major products, but routine CapEx. And it should cover your principal and interest on your debt. And if it does those things and you’re achieving that level, chances are you’re taking most of your entrance fees and putting them in reserve for a rainy day, whether it’s a project or for a potential drop in occupancy.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:31:37] So, that number is easily calculatable. That’s a word, calculable, calculatable. But sometimes it’s so much different than what is actually happening. I’ve worked with a company many, many years ago and they said, “What should our net operating margin be?” And I said, “Well, in a perfect world, it’s going to be 18 percent, but you could probably live with 14.” And they’re at 3 or 4 percent, that’s a big hill to climb. And I think a lot of organizations back then were saying, “Well, you know what? We’re going to just keep clanking away.” So, they didn’t spend money on CapEx. They didn’t spend money on marketing. And in five years, guess what happens?

Jennifer Drago: [00:32:15] Right. Right. Yeah. When things get tight, you have to cut somewhere. But maybe the target needs to be different and you structure everything around that target. I love that you said your net operating margin should cover some amount of CapEx and then your principal and interest, then you’re in good shape.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:32:32] Yeah. And I mean, your cap interest, if you can keep your days – the ratio just skipped my mind.

Jennifer Drago: [00:32:39] Days cash on hand.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:32:40] The age of plant. Age of plant There you go. I mean, if you have a goal that your age of plant is going to be around ten years and your routine CapEx keeps that at ten years, that’s the amount you ideally will want to cover from operations. I mean, it just works.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:32:56] But some people or some organizations, you can’t get there. So then, the question is, “Well, what can I get to where I’ll be doing good things?” And I said, “Well, there’s thriving and there’s surviving.” I mean, if you want to thrive, you need to get to this area, at least, and maybe not all the way there in year one. But maybe it’s a part of your strategic plan that in five years you’re going to get to this optimal level. And on the surviving side, if you’re at 4 percent, you need to be at 14 percent, and you’ve decided you’re going to stay at 4 percent, you’re always going to struggle. I mean, the math is simple on that. But sometimes it’s hard for organizations to make those tough decisions.

Jennifer Drago: [00:33:36] Yeah, absolutely. Like we were just talking about the pandemic times, post-pandemic, we’re still recovering. But I love the fact that you’re encouraging providers and executives to reconsider their targets and where they’re at so that they can thrive. And, again, they not may not get there in a year, but we can work toward that and don’t have to keep struggling.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:33:58] So, like anything, it’s hard to get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re going.

Jennifer Drago: [00:34:01] Yes. As a strategy consultant, that’s kind of my main message. If you don’t have a vision, where are you headed? You wouldn’t take a road trip if you didn’t know where you were going and you didn’t know how to prepare for that. So, we’re very aligned in that regard.

Jennifer Drago: [00:34:16] In our final question, I want to just ask you for your best piece of advice offering to current CEOs to strengthen their financial resiliency and sustainability in this challenging climate. So, if you just want to give one final pearl of wisdom for us, I’d appreciate it.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:34:34] I guess it probably would go away from the financial aspect, but I would say just build a great team. Build a great team of people that you work with. Not the people that work for you, but people you work with. Build a great board, because that becomes a key element. Because if you have a great board and you are transparent and you really provide communication, then they can help you because they can get you over the hump.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:35:02] And the last thing I would say would be to create a great communication and transparency plan to your residents and your staff. Not just your senior team, but your staff, because the higher you go in the organization – we all know this – the easier you are to get toppled if you don’t pay attention to those things.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:35:20] But I kind of always thought everybody’s going to make mistakes and I certainly made my share during my career. But if you can build a great team, that team will minimize your mistakes. If you can build a great board, you lessen your vulnerabilities. And if you can really build a great relationship with your residents and your staff at the communities and the line staff, it’s hard to beat that that combination. So, I really would encourage that.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:35:47] To your point, look at dashboards, look at metrics, but educate your team on what you’re looking for. Because if your team knows what you’re looking for – as the CEO, I had a great team and I knew they knew what was important to me. And if one of those things got out of line, they would come to me and say, “Hey, Larry. This is out of line.” And then, we could deal with it together. They didn’t come into my desk and dump it on my desk and say, “You need to fix this.” It’s like, “Okay. How do we fix this?”

Larry Bradshaw: [00:36:17] I just think creating that great team, great board, great relationships, that’s where you get to where you need to go. And as a strategic consultant, my team, when I first got to Nationals said, “Well, financial stability needs to be our goal.” I said, “No. Financial stability is a result.” It’s a result of resident satisfaction, employee satisfaction, board integration, and how well your team stays together. If you do those four things or five things together, the financial metrics will play themselves out and they’ll be positive. But if that’s your goal, you probably won’t have as deep a team and a cohesive as team as you want to have. So, I guess that’s my pearl of wisdom at the end.

Jennifer Drago: [00:37:00] Yeah. What a great message. And I’m so glad that I asked you that question because you got to see your leadership in action there in terms of what was most important to you. And I didn’t have the opportunity to work with you during your career, but I sure wish that I would have, because I imagine that you were an amazing CEO.

Jennifer Drago: [00:37:19] So, I just want to thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and experience with us and giving us a lot to take away in terms of how to build our financial resiliency as an industry. And, Larry, I know you’re on LinkedIn. Is that the best way to get in touch with you if anybody has some follow up questions?

Larry Bradshaw: [00:37:36] Well, I’m retired for sure. But, yeah, that’s probably the best way to do it.

Jennifer Drago: [00:37:39] He’ll check it once every couple of weeks.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:37:42] I’ll check it. I still have that little habit of checking things out, but I’m trying to break the habit. A little bit more golf and a little bit less checking things like that. But I’d like to continually to engage and talk about things. I enjoy doing this. And I’ve really enjoyed speaking with you today and I appreciate the offer to join your team. And, you know, I wish you all the best of luck. I think you’ll do great.

Jennifer Drago: [00:38:06] Thank you so much. Thanks, Larry. And today, you’ve been listening to Senior Living Visionaries. It’s a podcast that’s specifically curated for senior living leaders with the hope that we can share innovations, disruptions, and best practices in our industry to kind of rise the tide, lift all boats and rise that tide up. So, thank you.

Jennifer Drago: [00:38:28] And if you’d like to subscribe to our podcast, you can always be notified of new episodes, get transcripts, get special things that our guests are giving away, and you can do that at seniorlivingvisionaries.com. Again, thanks so much. We’ll see you next time.

Larry Bradshaw: [00:38:44] Thank you, Jennifer.

Outro: [00:38:48] You’ve been listening to the Senior Living Visionaries Podcast and Radio Show, where we showcase the leaders and innovators in the industry who are pushing the boundaries and setting the stage for the future in senior living and services. Join us next time as we share the bold ideas and breakthroughs of the industry’s most forward thinking leaders here on Senior Living Visionaries.

About The Show

Senior Living Visionaries is a podcast and radio show curated specifically for leaders in the senior living industry. Our guests are among the best and brightest executives, advisors, and service providers in senior living.

These industry leaders have consistently implemented creative solutions, new customer services, and targeted financial strategies resulting in long-term brand impact and increased revenues.

About Your Host

With 30 years of experience working with mission-driven organizations in senior living and healthcare, Jennifer Drago is an executive leader who brings creative, out-of-the-box strategies to help organizations amplify their impact and skyrocket their revenues.

As an award-winning strategist, best-selling author, and certified business coach, Jennifer helps corporate leaders and small business owners develop and implement a laser-focused business vision and strategy so they can earn more and amplify their impact.

Jennifer holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance, a master’s degree in Health Services Administration and an MBA from Arizona State University. She is a Life Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives.

About Peak to Profit

Peak to Profit serves senior living, healthcare and nonprofit organizations, helping them identify and execute revenue and growth opportunities through strategic, financial and operational consulting. Our core purpose is to help mission-driven organizations amplify their impact by serving more clients and increasing their financial resiliency.

Our proprietary Peak Performance Assessment provides an objective evaluation of your organization on six key dimensions, identifying areas that need improvement and highlighting growth opportunities. With the assessment results, we help you implement an Impact Roadmap – a clear, measurable action plan to execute your strategy.

Learn more at PeaktoProfit.com.

Sabrina Kaylor with Bizarre Coffee Company

April 25, 2023 by angishields

Sabrina-Kaylor-Bizarre-Coffee-Company-feature

Cherokee Business Radio

Sabrina Kaylor with Bizarre Coffee Company

00:00 /

Artist Sabrina Kaylor, founder of Bizarre Coffee Company, an independent coffee shop specializing in hand-roasted, small-batch brews throughout the year, located in the heart of downtown Canton, Georgia.

Bizarre Coffee Company believes in embracing all humans for exactly who they truly are and celebrating all the unique things that make them, them. Because, without a world of weird, life would be really boring.

Follow Bizarre Coffee Company on Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is Fearless formula with Sharon Cline.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] Thank you for joining us here on Fearless Formula on Business RadioX, where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline. And today on the show, we have the founder of Bizarre Coffee Company, which is a it’s an independent coffee shop specializing in hand roasted small batch brews throughout the year, located in the heart of downtown Canton, Georgia, but also soon to be Woodstock, Georgia. Please welcome Sabrina Kaylor. Hello. Hello.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:00:49] Thank you for having me today.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:51] Oh, my goodness. I’m so excited to talk to you because I have been to your shop so many times and I just think it’s amazing and it’s it’s unique. And that’s what’s, like awesome about it is like here you made this company kind of on your with your own thoughts, your own inspiration, and look how well it’s doing, expanding, you know, to Woodstock.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:01:10] It’s really exciting. I’m so glad that you enjoy it there. It really just enforces everything that that we’ve done so far.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:17] So let’s talk a little bit about your background. I know that you had gone to college. I read that you had gone and gotten a degree in business in sales, but that changed after a while. Like you didn’t continue on that path, right?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:01:30] I graduated. I did competitive sales in college, just really trying to bulk up my resume before I actually graduated. You know, we spent a lot of money to go to college, so I had to make sure that everything was as full as it could be. I specialized in marketing, so I did a lot of that. But once I graduated. I didn’t want to do sales. I think it was a. Uh, almost like a test to see how good I could get at it. And, you know, would recruiters want to try to recruit me? And they did. And it just wasn’t in line with with where what I was feeling. And. And then I started painting.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:12] So I know it’s kind of amazing when you think about it, the fact that you did like painting before, but it wasn’t something that you thought, This is going to be my future. Obviously it must be challenging to to know that you had your path. You really thought it was going to be this way, and then it kind of it didn’t fit to your spirit. But most people stay, you know. Well, this is what I invested in. This is what I did. This is my future. I’m building on it. How did you kind of decide what was the sort of way that you were able to kind of make peace with leaving it and getting into art?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:02:41] So there was an actual specific moment. I mean, as a human in general, I would say I’ve always been somewhat rebellious, so to speak. I definitely tried to push the boundaries at every corner growing up at every phase, just differently. And once I graduated college, I felt like I spent all of this time over the last 4 or 5 years doing things for a specific purpose. So I went to college to get the degree to hopefully get the job to do this. I was working all the time to make money to do that. I was going to the gym to make sure I say, you know, like it was all for this major purpose that once school ended and I was transitioning into this next phase. I really didn’t know of anything that I could do to be happy. Like in that moment right then and there, simply for that reason and. I had to think back of like, when? When was that? And it was really just like being fun and free and creative. So I whipped out a bag of little Publix bag of old paint that I had from high school that I had been toting around through the years. And I had a piece of paper and sat at my dining room table and started painting. And then the next night I came home, I was like, Oh my God, that was so fun. You’re making something out of nothing. Let me do it again. And then we do it again. And then one night I came home after work, and I painted for eight hours straight. And I didn’t even realize what time it was, you know, like in that full flow. And that’s what I knew.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:11] It’s amazing because I think a lot of people, if they haven’t had that kind of creative moment where you almost are like something exists now that didn’t an hour ago, is this kind of an amazing feeling? It’s I’ve been in that kind of moment where I used to write a lot of music and I’d be like, Oh my gosh, this song, it’s out there in the world. And I didn’t even know, you know that. Where did it even come from? You know, it is kind of like a high almost. It is.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:04:34] Absolutely. It’s the best way to describe it.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:37] A natural high, I should say.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:04:38] Yeah. And you get to see something that like was on paper. Is it anything like what I paint now? No, because just like anybody else, I was just picking it up.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:46] Yeah. You evolve, right? Yeah.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:04:48] And I just kept doing it and kept doing it and I was like, I definitely want to do something in my career with this.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:54] There’s got to be a way. So the next step, you started to get involved in different art shows?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:05:00] Yes, I did all sorts of art stuff in Atlanta. Any pop ups and, you know, small things sold online wasn’t wildly successful, all just like any I mean, it’s really hard to be an artist. So a lot of times we were barely making profit or breaking even. You know, my husband out there on his days off helping me try to sell art.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:24] And we were talking before the show about what it’s like to be an artist when you don’t, you know, when you kind of have your idea of how you want it to go and you don’t want to sort of go the mass route like making prints or whatever, how to stay true to that and still be successful. And I can’t imagine the pressure of it trying, but well, then that probably led you to what you’re doing now, right?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:05:43] Yes, it did. It’s funny because prior to diving into art, I did always love coffee. I spent my high school years at a Dunkin Donuts. It evolved to a Starbucks when I was in college and I spent a lot of time there. And my first business plan I ever wrote was for a coffee company. I’ve got five variations. Some were shops, some were custom making companies. I’ve always been into entrepreneurship and that side of life as well. So it’s just interesting how that evolved. It was kind of like the thing that I knew I would do. I just didn’t know when or how or why.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:20] How did it all come together.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:06:21] Right before COVID.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:23] Right? So I remember going to your shop and it was during COVID. And I think I think I must have had a mask on. But I was like, how are you guys doing? And you were still open. And I loved seeing that because so many companies didn’t survive it.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:06:38] So yeah, I mean, we we got our coffee shop and opened in December of 2020, but we were first out at the Canton Farmers Market in. June of 2020.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:48] So when you talk about how you were branding yourself as bizarre coffee, how did you come up with the logos or sort of the angle that you wanted?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:06:56] When I saw it and I was like ready to make the step into doing a coffee business was right after I had just sold the most art I had ever sold, which was during COVID. My husband sold on Facebook Marketplace. We sat, we set up our living room like an auction, and he wore a button up and a whole thing. And we sold my art because, you know, of course, just like anybody else, I was in marketing. I lost a bunch of clients.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:22] But still, that was really cool. Wait a sec. That was amazing. What a great idea. Holy cow. And it.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:07:27] Worked. And that’s when everybody was on Facebook live. Yeah, we sold, I think, 25, 26 original pieces. We shipped them out. And, you know, it was before then that I was like really getting back into art. And I was also doing this, this coffee. I was designing the bags and and doing all of that. And I was like, There’s got to be a way. There’s got to be a way. Art might not have done its thing by itself, but if I pair it with a commodity and something that people can really latch on to and appreciate in a different way, like maybe it’ll get my art into people’s houses in a, in a new way. And that’s where Bazaar coffee came. When I designed the logo I pulled, I was painting these weird eyeballs and I pulled that and I threw it in the middle and I was like, Oh, that works. And the nature of the business being bizarre coffee, I knew that it would it would be sustainable as an artist would evolve through a period of time.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:22] Wow.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:08:23] You know, so there wouldn’t be like a strict box. I mean, it’s bizarre coffee. You can just keep it weird and keep it moving. You know.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:30] You can do whatever you want as a side question, Do you remember the first time you sold a piece of your art? The first time? Yeah, the first one you sold and sort of were like, I, I am I am a professional artist.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:08:44] I don’t I don’t think I still to this day, like, I’m not a professional artist. Yes, you would know. Like, it doesn’t feel that way, you know? So when I was selling it, it was like, oh, like, do they even really like it? Like or do they just feel bad for me? I don’t know. I don’t remember exactly. But even even to this day, I think back of people who own my pieces, I’m like, I hope they didn’t give it to Goodwill when they moved. Oh my God, I hope they still like it.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:09] Like if you walk through a goodwill and you’re like, I would be mortified.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:09:12] But you know, it happens to the best of the artist, so.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:15] Well, it would be worth a ton. Like on Antiques Roadshow. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. So you were obviously looking into finding a well, first you started off at your farmer’s markets and then you realized that you needed a real shop. Like a storefront?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:09:33] Yes, a storefront was always the goal. Okay. But the farmers market was really a way for us to test the brand and and the coffee itself. Are people resonating with what we’re putting out there? Are we getting good feedback? Is it interesting? Are people enjoying the coffee? Are they buying it? And we got really amazing feedback. And the community of Canton, you know, shout out Cherokee County in general has all been amazing and the people were just awesome. So we we were definitely looking for a spot. We just weren’t planning on moving as quickly as we did.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:07] Gotcha. Sometimes things just open up timing wise that you have to jump on.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:10:11] Yes, absolutely. And that’s exactly what happened. Somebody was getting rid of a spot. It was right near where the market was. We did the the transaction in two weeks and we were open doors for two weeks.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:25] So I well, I can’t imagine what that felt like. Like hurry.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:10:29] Yeah. Everything was just insane. There were so many nights that my husband and I looked at each other like. We sign that paper, right like we did. That means like, we have to do this and we have to do it well. Anything that I’m signing, you know, I’ve got to make sure that we make we do our we.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:46] Honor what we say. So when you go into your store, do you call your store? What do you call it? Shop. Shop. It’s full of beautiful art. That’s your work. That must be so exciting to walk in and see.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:10:58] I do. I’m glad that everybody else loved it as much as I did. Oh, it’s really cool to hear.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:05] It’s up the wall and everything. I mean, it’s beautiful, it’s colorful and it’s cheerful, which is, you know, you don’t realize. I don’t. I know how much I’m impacted by the environment of something when I walk into a store or a place. But you really get the vibe in a it’s a happy vibe in your place. Plus, people are happy to be drinking coffee. Yes, I love it.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:11:24] The good mood juice.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:25] The good mood juice. That’s right. That’s what’s on your cups. So did you come up with that logo? I did a phrase. That’s awesome.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:11:32] I wanted to evoke the feeling that we were trying to create every time. So you knew that the vessel was the coffee. Everything else was. Was an exchange of energy. Whether it was you walking into the space, talking to a customer or talking to an employee, and that it was all being transferred through the actual vessel itself.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:50] So when you moved into this place, here you are a new business owner, basically, like with a physical store. What’s what was the most surprising to you? As you became an established business, like with a physical store.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:12:06] Most surprising would be how quickly things break.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:11] Oh, no.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:12:14] And. How hard it is to to build a team and train people and, you know, just the restaurant component in general. My husband and I have worked at many restaurants, but being in charge of it for the first time, front of house, back of house, everything involved was definitely a challenge.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:34] Because you don’t just have coffee, you serve food as well. We serve smoothies.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:12:37] And then a kitchen, and that means inventory and food and training and all of that too. So we just I mean, we just bootstrapped. We we learned as we went and made mistakes.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:47] But is there something you wish you knew beforehand besides besides something breaking, you know, things breaking easily?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:12:55] I think if we had a better understanding of like food and like inventory in general, I think is one of the biggest hurdles for us and I’m sure for other people. Um, I think that that is a business is, is very hard.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:11] Especially in the pandemic when you don’t know how many people are going to come into into your shop or now there are lots and lots of people, right?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:13:19] You have no clue. And for us, you know, our shop is very small, so we can’t even keep an excess.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:26] I heard I want to say, who was it that I was? Lori Sutton of bananas and beehives. She was talking to me about how great you all are, and she said, You have a separate roastery. Is this correct? It’s down the street. It is. So initially, did you have this?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:13:40] No, we opened that about a year and a half, maybe even closer. So we celebrated two years in December and the roastery was opened in September. October. Where did.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:51] You roast.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:13:52] Everything? So everything was roasted at a contract roaster. So it was a small batch roaster. Gotcha. We worked with him really closely. There’s a lot of ways that you can start a coffee company and some involve you can do it online and the they’ll stick a bag, a label on a bag and send it to you and you can claim it as yours. I worked a little bit in the in the coffee roasting world prior on the marketing side, So I was aware of kind of what the specs were if you wanted to start it. But it’s a lot of overhead, even more so. Well, maybe not more so. But you know, to have a shop and a roastery. So when the testing phase, we found somebody who was doing really small batch who would let us. Be all hands in. So sourcing, testing, tasting, packing, grinding, all of those. I wanted to touch it, feel it, see it and be part of it. Your baby. Before I put something of mine and put it out into the world. So that was really lucky for us to find somebody who was in that position where they were just starting. They had a small operation and we could be part of that, and we were where we were very lucky to have that. Not everybody does. It’s not very accessible. So yeah, that’s what we did.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:06] Not everybody has a drive either, right, to to even want to do that.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:15:09] Yeah. Or to find it, you know, like, I’m really good at asking questions and reaching out to people. So, you know, I just try. In the worst cases, the answer is no.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:19] But, you know, I have a rebel spirit, too. That’s actually the name of my company, has the word revel in it, because I don’t think being a rebel has a negative connotation to it at all in my mind. I think of it as I know that my idea is like, who I am doesn’t really fit into what traditional society loves, right? So I consider it a positive. Like, I’m not afraid to ask questions either, but I think that that’s kind of something that that works in your favor because if you hadn’t and.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:15:50] I think that people are just afraid. They’re afraid of rejection. So they don’t and they don’t ever ask. But really, the worst case scenario is the answer is no, in which you’re in the same position that you were prior.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:02] I think this is a huge lesson moment because for fearless formula, that’s the whole goal is to how do you navigate around what makes you afraid, which is so many things in life to be afraid of thinking about, like, where are we going to have a shop? How is this all going to happen? I don’t know anything about this. You know, it can be very overwhelming and the unknown is terrifying. But even that, like being afraid to hear the word no, I know a lot of people that don’t take steps because they don’t want to hear a no no.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:16:29] Exactly. And you get desensitized to it once you hear it enough.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:32] Someone told me that that there was an experiment. They had somebody walk around. Maybe it was This American Life. I listen to podcasts where they walked around and all day they had to ask questions to where they knew they most likely would get a no. And all day they got knows about whatever it was they asked. But by the end of the day, they did not have that fear anymore because what was going to happen had nothing.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:16:54] Nothing? No. Okay, cool. Moving on to the next person. Right? Just answer the question so I know where I’m at.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:00] Right. Do you think that your personality, because you have that kind of like want and bravery, I guess is a better word or maybe just drive that it lends so well to what you’re doing now? That’s what I think.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:17:14] I definitely think that that is a huge factor specifically because it’s not like it’s not like we had a circle of people who were taking action in these spaces. I’ve always really, really believed in my abilities to accomplish what I desire. I don’t know really why in particular why I was ingrained with that at a young age, whether it was through college or high school or anything that I did. I just really trusted in my innate ability to accomplish it. And I do. I think that that’s a huge thing. And my husband, he’s a little bit more reserved, so I just grab him and jump and grab him and jump and grab him and jump. And he’s like, All right, you know? But the more you keep swimming, the easier jumping becomes.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:01] So you now are looking at moving or expanding into Woodstock. So tell me about that.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:18:08] So we will be expanding into Woodstock. We have our second location, hopefully opening in October. Oh, great. That’s fall sometime. We don’t have an exact date because we are not in just yet doing construction, but likely construction will start early July.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:23] Wow, That’s coming. Do you do you want to say where it’s going to be?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:18:27] So it’s going to be right near where copper coin was. Okay. But on that side of the building. Oh, wow.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:32] So right in the heart of downtown Woodstock.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:18:34] Oh, my goodness. Yep, right in the heart. And we are so excited.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:38] But you also are. I was thinking about this, So you’re kind of like giving birth in many ways. Yes, very much so. Giving birth to a new, like part of your business. But also, you’re about to have a baby. I am.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:18:51] I’m about to have a baby.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:51] How does that impact your life in the business world?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:18:55] I guess we can catch up in six months once the baby’s here. No, You know, I think it’s just funny how things work. If you would have asked me. I’m in my 30s. I’m 33. Every year, I was like, just wait one more year, one more year, one more year because we were just doing so much. And I’m trying to check all the boxes as fast as possible, like just try to make it through before we did it. But, you know, it was just it was always going to be in the chaos. So might as well if it wasn’t now, if it was next year, we’d still we’d have two stores and whatever. So, you know, we’ll see. I’m due in June and we’ll be in construction in July and. We’ll just make it work. I may have a baby on me in the shop. You know, you just do what you can and you do.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:45] But I was wondering what it’s like to be a female business owner. What is that like for you? Do you notice any things? I asked someone else this question once and I was really surprised at their answer that they actually did notice that there were some sort of pervasive, misogynistic ish kind of attitudes.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:20:01] 1,000%. No way.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:03] I hate hearing.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:20:04] That all the time. For me, it’s really frustrating, too, because, you know, my husband just came into the business full time. He was working full time for another company. And although he was very hands on in everything we did, meaning still working every week, helping at the shop and doing whatever, but all the back end has always been me. I it’s my natural ability to do so. And we would sit in meetings and people would address him and he doesn’t even know why we’re there for the meeting. Oh, no, you know, and they would ask him questions. So what about this and that? And he would look at me and I’m like, Yeah, you’re talking to the wrong person. Like, at least the dress is both. But situations like that or, you know, for example, when we were first looking for our roastery space, I was calling agents. And I think it’s a combination of not only being a woman, but being young on the younger side. You just get pushed back.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:59] That’s so frustrating to me. Like I’m just kind of incredulous.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:21:02] Like what? But the big thing is like them addressing him first. All that happens all the time. If he’s in a meeting with me. Obviously, if I show up by myself, they know who they’re talking to. But if he’s there, they typically address him, whether it’s a contract or business meeting anything.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:20] I recently had to have some work on my air conditioning unit, and I’m not married at the moment, but my son is 20 and he’s got like a beard. He looks like a little man, right? So he was in the house with me while we were speaking to the air conditioning guy and he was just talking to my son, like the whole time. And my son’s like, oh, I don’t know. It was interesting. It was something to note that I was kind of like watching him. Like, does he realize that this gentleman is talking to him like he’s the husband here and like naturally deferred that way? And I thought, this is fascinating to me and how do I feel about this? And just I don’t know. I’m a little frustrated, but I imagine you see it all the time. A constant.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:22:01] Reminder. I do. I try not to let it bother me and I just move on. And I think it’s always really interesting and kind of a little bit funny when they do realize because then they they feel stupid. Oh, interesting. You know, so like, when they realize or I answer the question that they just asked my husband, who has no idea what they’re even asking. And I chime in, it’s like, oh.

Speaker3: [00:22:21] Wow.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:22:22] You know, like they realize that they addressed the wrong person. And then from that point forward, who’s their point of contact is me, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:30] But a little check maybe in their in their spirit.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:22:32] 100%. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:34] How do you balance your life when it’s your business, you and your husband in this business, how do you put the phone down at night or whatever? Is it difficult? Most most business owners I talked to have really struggle.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:22:47] It’s very difficult. It’s very difficult for me. I’m a. There’s always something. And when it sparks like I got to do it and my husband’s very much like, I’m ready to wind down at this moment. So I know at the beginning. You know, he had to tell me, like, like enough for the night, like, I’m good. Let’s talk about something else.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:11] Like, not the business.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:23:13] Yeah, but, I mean, as you’re also moving through different phases, like, sometimes you just don’t have time and, like, you got to get the work done while you can. And I feel like that is also another differentiating factor, too, between people who are moving quickly and aggressively. It’s like, you really it sucks, but you just sacrifice. It’s not every night, it’s not every seven days a week. But if the work’s got to be done, like there’s nobody else to do it, you know? So balance is hard. I do feel like we’ll get to that point and I think having more people in more tiers of of your company allows that. We’re just not there yet but that’s okay.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:51] But you were saying the challenge can be finding those good people, right?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:23:54] It’s always a challenge.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:56] And keeping good people, too, I bet.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:23:58] I mean, I will say, like we’ve been lucky. We’ve been very lucky with a core group of people. And even though some have maybe left now at this point, they were with us for almost two years and helped us create the groundwork of what we’re doing now. So I do feel like we, being that my husband and I worked in house every day with them, like they really they saw the growth, they saw the work. They they were part of something. They believed in it.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:24] Yeah.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:24:24] And I still think that that’s something that we experience is there are there rotating people for sure. There’s always going to be. It’s a restaurant industry, so to speak. But I would say we’ve got an amazing core and.

Speaker4: [00:24:39] When stuff goes.

[00:24:40] Down, you know, like they’re ready with us. And you’ll find similar people, I imagine, for the Woodstock. I hope so, but I believe so for sure. People are have already been excited. Oh, that’s nice. Are we hiring? And you know, so we can’t wait to to meet more people in the community here. That enthusiasm is like kind of like infectious, you know? Yeah, we’re excited. So you have a really great social media presence, which is something that I talk a lot about with business owners, about what it’s what it’s like to know that a lot of your marketing can be almost a 24 over seven sort of job. Yes, especially if people are making or leaving Google reviews or putting out there on social media, something that you’re like, let me handle this. I can’t imagine what that’s like. But what I love to see is because I follow you on TikTok, you’re very creative. You’re super creative. You have like a huge following. We we’ve also been really lucky there to you know, I’ve I think the big thing and the reason why.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:25:40] I think most people just second guess what they post to and for good reason, right? Like you got you do have to tread lightly. It is your business. It’s your reputation. So there is that space. So I’m not saying that, but I felt like for me, like I can tend to be a perfectionist in things that I do and it would hold me back from doing it enough. But I knew that. The more I posted on there, even if one person saw it and came into the shop, it’s still a win. Yes. So I stopped looking at the metrics because the metrics really didn’t matter. The followers really didn’t matter. What mattered is are people coming into the shop? Are they finding us here? And the same thing with Instagram. I mean, it’s the same if somebody new comes in, it’s a win. Whether it’s one like it doesn’t matter, it’s still a win.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:29] I like that you kind of put it out there and not worry about the end result.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:26:33] I mean, if it gets a lot of views, people are going to be mean. They’ve always got something to say. You know, the more views, the more chances. I mean, we’ve been lucky for the most part we don’t. But we put out an April Fools Day drink recently. And what.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:45] Was it.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:26:46] This year was a everything bagel latte with cream cheese smeared on the inside and everything. Bagel seasoning.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:54] I have that in my notes.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:26:56] And that’s funny. It went crazy on Instagram and the comments are horrible. But no, you know, it’s funny and it’s still circulating and some people realize that it’s a joke, some people don’t. But that’s like, you know, it just that’s the nature of social media. And if, like I said, we get five new followers who never knew who we were and thought it was funny and follow us, like that’s still a win, you know, they’re not going to be able to order it. So I’m not providing something that they won’t like. You know.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:26] I saw the video and I was like, Oh, it’s like savory. And then I was like, Wait a minute. And then you have like a bagel on top of the. Of course.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:27:33] Yes. We had to like, really level in because companies go the big companies go crazy for April Fools. So we always try to do one. Last year we did Bacon Grease and people still tried to order that. People tried to order this too. So it’s just become kind of like a funny thing. And this one just blew up. Oh, gosh.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:51] That’s so funny. I was going to ask you about it, but it’s kind of cool, though, is that you actually legitimately do have special holiday drinks throughout the year, Some of them Gingersnap, These are Christmas ones. Gingersnap latte, mint cookie latte, French toast, latte sounds amazing, but what was the inspiration for having sort of really special, one of a kind kind of drinks?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:28:12] I think ultimately, at the end of the day, we’re really trying our best to cultivate an experience that you’ll remember. So you’ll always think back whether you were just traveling or you took a special trip to come out. And like you can you can associate the place. So whether it’s colorful and bright and then you remember this drink that was really unique that you haven’t seen anywhere else or it’s never been presented in this way. Exactly. I think that that’s really important. So we do a lot of testing. We’re always testing.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:43] So are you do you have like your employees Test, test, taste, test them is what I’m trying to say. Yeah.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:28:50] So typically we will. Me and another one of our employees, we’ve pretty much crafted everything. She’s amazing. She’s been with us since we first started as well. And it’s kind of become our thing is like that’s what we do in every season. We just wrapped up our summer, you know, and and everything else. So.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:05] So and you’ve got a lot of merch in your place. We do. So how did you decide how you were going to invest your time this way? In other words, it’s a lot of your art, right? Which is so cool. And like you said, you could imagine someone coming home with a little piece of your art on a on a bag of coffee. That’s amazing. But what else do you have?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:29:23] So we have stickers, we’ve got t shirts, and we just released mugs and cups and tote bags and it’s been really cool. So all of the coffee bags themselves have original pieces of artwork on them, the stickers and stuff like that. I work with a local designer too, and he is awesome at capturing the the vibe that I’ve always gone for. If I had the time to sit and do design work in the way that I wish I could, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily have to use him, but he’s amazing. He makes my life easier and he is great at, like I said, capturing the vision that I have. So that must be so fun to be.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:02] Creative that way as well, right?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:30:04] Absolutely. And to to send him I mean, half the time it’s just me sending voice notes of like, what about this weird eyeball thing with, you know, with a bagel and, you know, I just, like, send him random notes and he just makes something with it and we go from there.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:20] Do you ever like if you’re out at the grocery store or something, see some of your merch out there.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:30:25] I see it around Canton for sure.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:28] That must be so awesome.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:30:30] I see people wearing the Crewnecks or whatever. It’s always.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:33] Really cool. It’s neat. I always think this is it’s inspiring for me because I think, how neat is this that someday someone 20 years from now is going to be like, I used to come here with my mom and like, you’re part of their story in a major way, 100%.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:30:47] It’s one of the coolest things. I mean, I posted recently about the Bazaar Baby, who she’s been coming in since we first opened. She was like eight months. She took her first steps in our shop. And, you know, we’ve become friends with her parents and, like, it’s just like a thing. The bazaar, baby, you know? And like, she, like, grew up in our shop from all these, like, major milestones of being like, a baby, you know? So it’s really, really cool.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:12] How does it feel to be plugged into your community like that, too?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:31:16] It feels awesome.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:17] Because I was speaking with some other business owners. What it’s like to have someone like during the pandemic, if they ran out of something, they could ask another business owner who’s in a similar field, you know, Do you happen to have some of this? And they really did all help each other.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:31:30] I mean, and for us, like it’s at least in Canton, where we’ve been at. Our shops really tiny. You’ve been in there, so you know, it’s small. We’ve been limited on a lot of things. We’ve done our very best to to remodel and put things that we absolutely needed. But the businesses around us have been critical for our success, like a critical whether it’s getting ice from them or running out. And like we’re lucky we’ve got a restaurant right across the street. You know, restaurants use some of the same stuff. I’ll be like, I need thermal paper. I need a I need utensils, like, you know, And they’ve always been so gracious and so helpful. And yeah, you can have your people sit on our patio and like, you know, it’s just been, it’s a, it’s a huge blessing for sure.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:15] I love that because I always believe there’s space for everyone. There’s a place for everyone and there’s space for everyone. Um, it’s also so kind. And I think when you have such kind intentions to help people, it comes back to you too, you know, in those moments, like 100%. So where would you like to see yourself in like five years? Do you ever think about those things? I do.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:32:37] I do, of course. What do you mean? I’m a planner and I’m always thinking of, like, the next move and the next five years. I would love to have more locations for sure, and I definitely want to have an ability to live coastal side. So my husband and I have talked about opening a location in Savannah or something, you know, where I was born and raised on the beach. I love it so much. It’s like a sacred place for me. So being able to build that into our business is something that I really, really hope for.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:14] So you’ve got you started off doing art, got into your coffee company and now you have more art that you do, correct? Like you, you have a success in a different way too. It’s like they both helped each other to grow. Yes.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:33:28] Yes. Because my art gets to go into people’s homes in a way that it never did. Right.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:32] So do you do you still go to any of the art shows and display your art that way? I don’t. Because you don’t have time. I don’t what?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:33:41] I don’t. And I you know, I have painted a little bit here and there and I still do. But after a website.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:49] Specifically for yours, I do.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:33:52] And I went, I did the roastery. I painted all of that. So after that, I was like, okay, I got my fix in for a little bit, you know, and we’ll have a second location that will have plenty of white walls for me to transform. But that’s.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:09] So fun. Yeah. So. As we wrap this up, what do you think is the most rewarding part of what you do?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:34:16] The most rewarding. Making people’s day. It’s so simple. It’s exactly what we wanted to do and it is the most rewarding part. People message us. They tell us how, you know, things in their lives weren’t going great and they stopped in and like, it really makes a difference. And I can’t stress that enough to anybody else around us, whether it’s you going out into the world as yourself and you’re going to the grocery store or, you know, our team members, every every interaction that they have has long lasting implications and and it has impact. And I think that that’s that’s everything.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:56] It doesn’t have to be something major and big. It can be something small as making someone kind.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:35:01] Yeah, being nice, being a light in somebody’s day. You don’t know what they’re going through and you can change that around.

Sharon Cline: [00:35:10] I love that because, you know, it doesn’t I don’t know. It can be intimidating when you’re thinking, what can I do to make the world a better place? Like, there’s just too much, but it can be just as simple as being a kind person. And here you go. Have a great day. A smile even.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:35:24] Absolutely. And I mean, we in our in our book, our employee manual, we have a concept that I call the happiness paradigm, which is essentially just that and being able to pay it forward. So being going above and beyond for one person, knowing that now you’re sending them out into the world in a better space where they can do that to somebody else.

Sharon Cline: [00:35:47] I love that. Pay it forward thought because it’s not directly for you. It’s just to give to somebody else that hopefully will expand on the people around them.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:35:55] And it’s that exchange, you know, that energy exchange, whether it’s the communication, whether it’s you handing something off. A smile, a look, anything like it matters.

Sharon Cline: [00:36:07] And you know, if you don’t have the right employees that have that energy, I imagine you can feel it. Yeah. Yeah.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:36:14] And does it happen? Do people have off days? Of course. But I think, you know, at the end of the day, if it’s built into the culture and you just remind them, you know, everybody does their best with what they have and they know what the mission is. When we get feedback, I send it to them. People send me things and I send it to them. And I say, you know. This matters. You helped this person today, you know, so that they can see that what their work does as well.

Sharon Cline: [00:36:42] That’s very satisfying, I would think. It is. Is there anything you’re not afraid of anymore, having gone through your sort of journey to where you are right now?

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:36:53] Having hard conversations. Oh, really? Yeah. That was always really hard for me. Because they come up in business and when you’re running a business and you have. Employees and working with employees was really hard. I was always a really independent worker. I mean, I’m an artist. Like, what do you mean? Of course, like, I was used to working alone and like, you just get used to it.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:15] Is it like what we’re talking about where you. You don’t when people don’t want to hear? No. So once you have been told no, enough, you get desensitized to it. It’s the same thing. It’s like a muscle.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:37:25] It is a muscle. And it’s the more you do it, the more comfortable you get. Probably the same thing like being on a microphone. Oh, yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:33] True. Because when I hear myself enough, I’m like, I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t know how I sound exactly. Yeah, I don’t like tough conversations. I don’t. So that’s interesting to note that if I were to just start to have them and see that the world doesn’t swallow me up whole and like the negative repercussions are going to push me apart. I guess I like the idea of knowing that I could do it if I just practiced.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:37:57] It and that you’re not stressed out about it. I used to stress out about like every hard meeting with somebody or like if I wasn’t giving 100% praise, like, you know, the last thing I wanted was for something to be misconstrued or come off badly. You know, when my intention is to help them be better at whatever it is and that we’re addressing. And I think, like it’s taught me how to deliver things better and to just be more comfortable in the conversation.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:27] This is good to know. I think this is good advice for anybody. It’s a communication, especially if.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:38:31] You have employees for sure.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:33] And all the different personalities.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:38:34] It’s challenging. It really is. That was that was a huge learning curve.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:40] What would you say to someone who’s maybe interested in starting their own business? Whatever it is, what would you say is like a word of wisdom that you could give them something you learned and you wish you knew before?

Speaker5: [00:38:53] Um.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:38:54] Well, first I would tell them to take action immediately.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:57] Don’t wait.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:38:58] Don’t wait. If you have a thought and you think it’s worth any bit of while, do something, even if it’s small. That takes a step towards that action. I think that that’s imperative. Okay. Um. And I also think just be willing to put the work in. Like know that it’s going to be hard and that’s okay. But know that, like, you’ll do whatever’s necessary. And you’ll work and you’ll get it done.

Sharon Cline: [00:39:26] Like trust yourself that you’re going to be able to handle it and do 100% right. This is good advice. I’m going to take that with me today. Sabrina, thank you so much for coming. This has been so fun just to get to know you and kind of see the other side of what I get to enjoy when I go visit your your shop and I get to see the new one open. So that’ll be really exciting.

Sabrina Kaylor: [00:39:46] Thank you so much for having me.

Sharon Cline: [00:39:47] You’re welcome. And thank you all for listening to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX. And again, this is Sharon Cline reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.

Lori A. Manns With Quality Media Consultant Group

April 11, 2023 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Lori A. Manns With Quality Media Consultant Group

00:00 /

In this podcast episode, Lee Kanter interviews Lori Manns, President of Quality Media Consultant Group. They discuss the evolution of marketing with new technology, the importance of analyzing the right metrics, and how to build brand equity and reputation.

Lori shares how her firm tailors its services to meet the needs and goals of each client, and shares a success story of a financial consultant who was able to secure clients at three times the rate they were charging before. She also invites listeners to attend the upcoming Trailblazer Business Summit.

Dr. Lori A. Manns, President of Quality Media Consultant Group, is an award-winning, trailblazing entrepreneur and has been the owner of a successful business consulting firm for the past nearly 14 years.

As a sought-after speaker, media personality, and business coach, she is considered an expert content creator and thought leader in the marketing and sales industries.

Her work has been featured on Forbes.com and other national platforms. Across her social media channels and private network, she has amassed an audience of over 40K people. Her goal is to help purpose-driven, female entrepreneurs grow their incomes and reach their first or next six or seven figures.

Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Thriving not just surviving in entrepreneurship through economic crisis
What does it take to survive in business during a recession or difficult times
What are some of the latest trends
Some issues entrepreneurs must avoid in order to succeed
How do you help entrepreneurs grow their businesses
Upcoming events

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Lori Manns with Quality Media Consultant Group. Welcome, Laurie.

Lori Manns: [00:00:44] Hi, Lee Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I’m so excited to get caught up and learn what you got going on. For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit about Quality Media Consulting Group. How are you serving folks?

Lori Manns: [00:00:55] Well, Quality Media Consultant Group is a business consultancy firm specializing in advertising, marketing and sales solutions for optimal business growth. And essentially what that means is we help our clients to grow and scale their businesses to the next level of success, whatever that means for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:15] So do you have a sweet spot in terms of the people you serve? Is there a size of the organization or an industry niche?

Lori Manns: [00:01:22] Yeah, we have two sides of our business. One is we work with corporate clients on their advertising and marketing strategies to put their brilliant messages out there to the universe and attract their target audience. And for corporations, we do marketing plans and media buying. And for small business owners and entrepreneurs, we are servicing those people who are service based business owners primarily. And we also primarily work with purpose driven women who are coaches, consultants, trainers, speakers and influencers.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:04] Now how have you seen marketing evolve with all the new technology? And now there’s AI, There’s all kinds of stuff that are tools available for businesses and entrepreneurs. How have you seen kind of the evolution of that in your work?

Lori Manns: [00:02:21] Well, digital technology is influencing business more and more as time passes, because one of the things for sure, artificial intelligence is here to stay. Chatgpt is here to stay. And it’s only going to grow and evolve. And one of the best things I tell my clients is to learn the new trends. Learn what is. Happening and get to know what you need to know and how you can use it, leverage it and optimize it for your business, but more importantly, learn the things not to do. So I have seen digital technology evolve in my 14 years of business. Digital marketing has also evolved because during the time that I’ve been in business, I have seen social media platforms come and go. I’ve also seen. Marketing strategies come and go in terms of the trends. But I do believe that artificial intelligence and primarily chatgpt is one of those things that you can absolutely leverage and use it the right way to grow your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Now, what do you tell the business folks out there that are now experiencing this kind of economic chaos that’s occurring and has been occurring for a little bit now? And couple that with all these new technologies that are available. How do you know when it’s time to really kind of take a leap into some new technologies instead of maybe shoring up some of the foundational marketing resources that you’ve been using in the past? Because, you know, there always seems to be a new crisis and there always seems to be a new technology. And it’s just really getting harder and harder to, you know, stay on top of everything.

Lori Manns: [00:04:22] Well, the first thing I say is to analyze what you’re currently doing and how it’s working. And so if you’re using a methodology, a strategy or a game plan to grow your business and it’s working, continue to do that. If you are using something that is not working, then it’s time for you to consider some other options. And so because of the fact that we are in an economic downturn, a lot of people did not plan for this, even when it was forecast by economists and even when it was forecast by talking heads. A lot of people failed to act in business and they failed to pivot. And so it doesn’t necessarily mean that when we’re in an economic downturn that you have to stop everything that you’re doing. But it just means that you need to analyze what’s working well and what’s not working so well so that you can figure out how to fill in the gaps. And so, for example, if you are a business owner and you’re not getting the leads that you want, you’re not getting the sales that you want, then it’s time to look at how are you putting messages out there, How are you, you know, deciphering what your marketing strategies are. And perhaps you do need to take a look at some new innovative ways to reach your target audience and doing so on social media and or using something like artificial intelligence or augmented reality or chatgpt may be a strategy that you just want to look at.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:09] So now you mentioned leads. That’s a maybe a symptom of things that aren’t going as well as you’d like. Are there any other kind of metrics that matter for, you know, entrepreneurs and corporations?

Lori Manns: [00:06:21] Yeah. The number one metric that matters is revenue. If your revenue is down, if your revenue is not where you want it to be, sales are not coming in. That’s a good indication that you need to make a shift or a pivot. Then of course, you have to look at, you know, the leads and the cost per lead that you’re spending to get the leads. You have to look at those kinds of things. But more importantly, you also have to look at what are your top selling products and services and what are your worst selling products and services. These are also metrics that can help you determine if it’s time to pivot or shift.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:05] Now, do you find that some folks just aren’t aware of that kind of data, that they’re capturing all kinds of data, but maybe they’re not prioritizing what truly is important. For example, some folks, you know, maybe they’re on social media and they’re focusing on, look, we’re getting a lot new, you know, followers or or maybe they’re paying attention to some areas that seemingly is going well. But like you said, if it’s not translating to bottom line green dollar ROI, maybe that’s a distraction and not really a priority in your marketing.

Lori Manns: [00:07:44] Exactly. And I think you’re right on target, Lee, because a lot of people, when they implement a social media marketing strategy, just because social media is so big right now, they think that if they get more followers, that that translates into it’s working. Well, what really translates into whether or not your marketing is working, whether it’s on social media or whether it’s traditional media or any form of marketing is if it is converting. And so if you are converting those prospects into clients and or customers, then that is a signal that it’s working. If you’re not, then that’s a signal that it’s not working. And so, yes, followers on social media is important. Yes, engagement is important, but the most important thing is are your efforts producing a return on investment and is it moving the needle when it comes to sales and revenue for your business?

Lee Kantor: [00:08:53] Now, is that part of your challenge as a marketing consultant is to really educate your client into focusing in on the things that truly matter and that just because historically you’ve been using one measure of success. If you’re not measuring the right thing, you know, you’re kind of just kind of going through the motions of business. You’re not really optimizing your business. Is that part of what you’re one of your challenges is to really understand and explain to your clients, hey, you know what, I know it looks like because you were using a metric, like you said, of followers, our followers are down, but your, you know, your revenue was up. And isn’t revenue what you want more of, not followers Like is that do you spend some time explaining people, hey, this is the stuff you’ve got to really be focusing in on, not this other thing that that might look great to the world, but it may not be really helping your bottom line.

Lori Manns: [00:09:54] You’re absolutely right. Because here’s the thing. In business, you have to measure so many things in order to have a profitable business and a profitable business model. Now, there’s also things that you can measure that are going to influence whether or not you do get that bump in sales and revenue. And for example, one of the things that you can measure to lead to that road of revenue success is what is your brand known for? Do you have brand equity? That means is your brand. Is your company respected and revered in your industry? And if when you speak, people listen, That is a good indication that when you put out marketing messages and when you put out offers, that you’re going to get a response. So of course, before we get to trying to sell anyone who’s following us, we have to build the reputation that makes them know that we are the leader in that industry. We are the expert and the authority, and we actually have a good handle on what we speak of in order to bring about some good results for the people that we say we can help.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:14] But but also times for especially people who aren’t working with an expert like yourself, some of the easiest things that can be measured aren’t really worth measuring. Like it might be easy to see. I keep coming back to it, but followers, it might be easy to see, Oh, the followers are going up. So you know, we’re doing good, so stop thinking about it. But if you go a couple layers deeper like you described, you might be seeing a different result. That is a little trickier to measure, but really is more impactful.

Lori Manns: [00:11:48] Absolutely. And I can totally relate to what you’re saying because, yes, people will measure what I call vanity metrics and the vanity we call them.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:00] We call them cosmetics.

Lori Manns: [00:12:03] Exactly. And that simply means you’re spending too much time focusing on perceived. Opinions and engagement when it comes to social media. Because if you have a public. Company page on any social media platform, you could get followers that are only curious. They’re not necessarily interested buyers or ready to buy customers. They could just simply be curious or they saw somebody else like your page or engage with your page. And so therefore they liked it too. But they’re not really interested. They’re not really engaged. So when you measure the vanity of, Oh, I’ve got 100 likes or I’ve got 500 likes or a thousand, oh, this person went viral. Okay, well, what did that viral post do for them? And if they went pseudo viral, what did it do for them in terms of helping them to produce a bigger impact, helping them to produce a bigger income and helping them to produce more influence. If it helped them in all of those areas, then great. But if it was just something that was trendy for the moment, then it was so fleeting and it was so based on vanity that it just doesn’t matter.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:27] And sometimes when you go viral, it might be for a negative reason. It could be because you got some some attention for something controversial or isn’t going to really serve you in the long run.

Lori Manns: [00:13:39] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:41] So now what does it look like when a company works with you? What does that first few conversations look like and how do you kind of onboard them and get them going?

Lori Manns: [00:13:52] Well, the first couple of conversations are what I like to call a business needs analysis. That’s when we just take a look at the business or the person themselves and we look at what are your top needs and what is it that you are facing in terms of your challenges that you need help with the most? And when we identify what your biggest needs are, your biggest challenges, we come up with a strategy to help you to overcome those challenges and meet those needs in a way that’s going to produce in the area of more income, more brand visibility, more clients and conversions and greater impact in your industry. So it starts off with just an analysis. Where are you now and where do you ultimately want to be?

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] So now I know when you go to market, you do through a variety of ways. Can you talk about some of the ways that you serve your clients? Number one, like I know you do consulting, but there’s also other aspects to your business.

Lori Manns: [00:15:02] Yes. So we decide based on the needs and the goals. Do you need to have a. Brand overview and a brand strategy session, or do you already have that and you now need to market your company or yourself, and if you already have the marketing in place, then we decide, okay, is it time for you to do media and advertising to really get that? Momentum built in your business. And then, of course, we look at what’s the sales plan, how are we going to convert those prospects once they start to come after we have. Put out those messages. Once we get them into our funnel and once we get them into our system, how are we then going to convert them into paying clients? And so that is all about creating a process for welcoming prospects into your business, taking them through the sales cycle, making sure that whatever you offer, be it a product or a service, is something that they actually need, something that solves a problem or meets a need so that when they have engaged and they have bought that thing, they are happy and satisfied and they become your biggest brand ambassador. And that simply means that they are your unpaid sales force because when happy customers become. Referral partners is simply that they tell everyone they know that I bought X, Y, Z from this company or I hired X, Y, Z person and they did a great job. And, you know, happy people tell other happy people and unhappy people also tell unhappy people. So that’s that’s basically the basis of the work that we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:06] Now, is there a success story you can share? You don’t have to name the name of the company, but explain maybe the problem they came to you with and how you helped them get past that and get to a new level.

Lori Manns: [00:17:16] Yes. I had a VIP client that was a financial. Consultant and had created an app and was struggling to really connect with people who were interested in paying for the financial consulting and services they were offering. And after working with myself and my company, we were able to not only look at some of the holes in the marketing and advertising strategy, but also to look at the programs that were being offered and analyze them in a way that made them more valuable to the end user. We raised the price and changed the entire marketing strategy, and they were able to secure a handful of clients at three times the rate that they were charging before and therefore made a significant amount of money in a very short amount of time. And we’re talking, you know, when it comes to financial consulting and coaches, you can run into all types of levels of experience, but this person really had a high level of experience. And so they were able to reach five figures, high five figures in just a couple of months where they had not previously done that before with just a handful of clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:44] So if somebody wants to learn more and connect with you or somebody on your team, is there a website or are there any events you got upcoming?

Lori Manns: [00:18:52] Yes, there’s both an upcoming event and a website. So I am actually celebrating 14 years in business this month, which is April and. At that event where I’m going to be celebrating my business anniversary. It’s called the Trailblazer Business Summit, taking place Saturday, April the 22nd. And you can go to quality media consultants.com on the events page and check it out. There’s going to be ten speakers talking in TED talk style, but with more strategy and meat on the bones than you would get on a TED talk. But it’s going to be amazing. They’re going to be talking about all kinds of business topics, and one of them is something that we covered today, and that is how to use artificial intelligence and chatgpt as well as social media to grow your business when the times are changing. And you need to be abreast of what’s going on in the digital world. So we’re going to have three professionals talking about that, as well as finance scaling your company automation, video technology and branding and so much more. It’ll be an amazing event. It’s virtual. You can join from anywhere. Saturday, April the 22nd, the Trailblazer Business Summit. And once again you can go to WW dot quality media consultants.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:28] Well Laurie thank you so much for sharing your story today you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Lori Manns: [00:20:33] Thank you so much Lee it’s always a pleasure to talk to you and it’s a great opportunity. I appreciate.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:39] It. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Ask the Expert: Real Estate Professional Robert Mason

April 10, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Ask the Expert: Real Estate Professional Robert Mason

00:00 /

In this episode of Ask the Expert, co-host Robert Mason, a real estate broker with Exp Realty in Roswell, is interviewed about his background in the industry and his experience in both commercial and residential real estate.

Mason provides valuable insights and advice for those interested in real estate investment, emphasizing the importance of honesty, strategic planning, and having a team. He also discusses the current state of the residential market in Atlanta and his investor club for those interested in investment real estate. Overall, the conversation highlights Mason’s expertise and commitment to providing personalized and honest service to his clients.

Robert Mason is a full-service Real Estate professional, specializing in Sales and Listings as well as Property Management. His 24 years in this business has shown him a variety of situations and He handled them all.

As a Previous Owner/Broker of RM Property Group, currently, an Associate Broker with Keller Williams, he concentrates on real estate sales. As a former Commercial agent and a 21-year residential real estate vet, he has sold and leased commercial properties, residential homes and participated as an investor and investor/portfolio services.

He has been fortunate enough to have been honored as a Top Producer on many occasions and He has sold millions in real estate throughout his career. Buyers and Sellers will get his honest opinion and that in its own right, is uncommon in their arena.

In a world of uncertainty and real estate flux, your decision to work with a Pro is your choice. There are no cutting corners in today’s business environment and working with the best ensures the Best outcome.

Connect with Robert on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:15] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Excel Radio’s Ask the Expert brought to you by Beckshot Photography and Video. It’s your story. Make it awesome. For more information, go to buckshot.com. Now here’s your host.

Randell Beck: [00:00:40] Hello, everybody. An interesting package today. Stone and I are going to interview our co-host, Robert Mason, because not enough people know Robert Mason and they need to. Hi, Robert.

Robert Mason: [00:00:52] How you doing, brother? How are you doing, Stone?

Stone Payton: [00:00:54] I’m doing well, man. It’s going to be fun. Yeah.

Randell Beck: [00:00:56] Now, in an earlier episode that we cut on this, one of the questions we talked about with our guest, Mark Fonseca of Fonseca Clothiers was If you could walk into a room of your peers and send a message without saying anything, what would that be? So, Robert, who’s Robert Mason? What’s the message you send you want to send when you walk into that room?

Robert Mason: [00:01:17] Integrity. When I walk into a room, I want people to feel at ease. I want them to see my smile, firm handshake and know that this is a credible person and this is I can be serious. I can be not so serious, but I’m going to I’m going to give you everything I got. And there’s a loyalty there. And you’re going to see that first thing.

Randell Beck: [00:01:39] Is that what makes you different in real estate?

Robert Mason: [00:01:41] What makes me different in real estate, Randy is number one, I know the city. I’ve been here since 1973. Got lost in a snowdrift in Wisconsin in 69. I said, Dad, I’m going to be short. I need to go somewhere warm so this won’t keep happening. And so we came to Atlanta in 73, and I always knew I was going to be in sales because that was my personality. I wasn’t going to be a scientist. I wasn’t going to be a lawyer or an Indian chief. So what would I want to sell? What has got the biggest benefit to the person on the other end of that line? And that to me was always real estate. Went to the University of Georgia, studied real estate, got out in 1990, and I went into commercial real estate and that was back after the 87 tax law changes. And so the commercial end of that business was in shambles and chaos. And everybody said, Hey, you don’t have any gray in your hair. Kids still don’t have any gray in my hair. And you’re probably not going to do well. So you should probably go sell copiers or something like that until the market comes back. Well, I stayed worked three jobs at the time and I switched over to residential real estate a little bit after the Olympics because the residential side just really took off. That’s how I got started.

Randell Beck: [00:02:59] Okay. So for them, what doesn’t know Robert’s real estate broker with EXP in Roswell and formerly was a commercial real estate broker. So you just mentioned you switched over to residential, but tell me about that commercial background and how does that impact what you do?

Robert Mason: [00:03:14] That’s a good question. Commercial real estate and residential real estate are completely two different animals. I worked for Charlie Ackerman. I worked for Richard Bowers and Jan Saperstein. Three big developers, three big commercial real estate guys at the time. And commercial real estate is a long, long sales process, whereas you can identify a piece of property that somebody wants to buy or rent and moving through that process as a buyer or a lease just takes a considerable amount of time to do so. Checking financials, traffic counts, you got to get DOT records. There’s a lot of processes on on renting or buying commercial real estate, and it takes a long time to find people for your for your retail establishment or industrial establishment or your office park. It’s a lot different than the residential side.

Randell Beck: [00:04:08] Tell me how that impacts you now in your residential side?

Robert Mason: [00:04:12] Well, how does it impact me now? I’m able to talk about it, you know, so COVID changed the commercial real estate ROI returns on investments and a big, big way like office space. I can talk to people about what they’re going to expect on the commercial end. What to expect on the residential end is a completely different subject matter. But being able to talk about the commercial side and how it’s going to affect people’s bottom line, whether it be unemployment, whether it be opportunity, there’s a lot of opportunity on the commercial side. And I’ll give you an example like shopping center space. People can order from Amazon. During COVID, people didn’t have to go anywhere to buy stuff. And so are they going back to their strip centers? Are they going back to the shopping centers? And the answer is no. So what do you do with that? If you’re an investor and I’m an investor, I’m going to say, hey, there’s going to be some opportunity on the commercial real estate side, so be on the lookout. Save your dollars. And so that’s that’s really how I equate that. I put that back into the process.

Randell Beck: [00:05:17] Okay. And you are you’re active in investment real estate still? Yes. Sort of a sort of a commercial endeavor. Tell us about your investment property program.

Robert Mason: [00:05:27] So investment properties, I’ve been investing in real estate since 2003. At one time, I had 15 properties. I had four business partners and 2008 hit. And we all know what happened in 2008, 2009, I started a property management company when I was working for Re Max Greater Atlanta because my clients came to me, investors, and they said, Mr. Mason, what do I do with this real estate? I said, Well, we’re going to have to lease it. We’re going to have to put renters in there until this market turns back around. So I was able to offload all of my properties, all but one. Basically, I had a 525 loan on a condo and the bank would not refinance it for me. So I said, okay, what are my options? The option was either paid off or give it back to the bank, gave back to the bank, didn’t have a choice at the time, so I got rid of all my investment properties. My wife and I had a beach property that we were running and we sold that a couple of years ago. But so now my wife and I have gotten into STRs or short term rentals. We bought a mountain property up at Big Canoe. I’ve got a lot of investor clients, so I’ve been selling these friends and clients these investment properties for years and years and they’re like, Hey, why aren’t you investing in real estate as well? And it just came back to there was a little shock. There was a little maybe fear and hesitation on my part because of what happened in 2008 and when I was able to sit down with my wife and say, hey, here’s the benefits, here’s the Ben Franklin, here’s how it’s going to work, here’s how we can really set ourselves up for wealth development and for future values. We need to get into this. And we did. We bought Harley’s hideaway up at Big Canoe, and it has been a fantastic endeavor since.

Stone Payton: [00:07:19] This whole thing, this whole thing fascinates me. And I feel like, boy, if I don’t get some some real direction from someone who knows what they’re doing, I could really lose my shirt on this. But the idea of having something for me near the woods or the water that I can make some money on, maybe enjoy some myself. What are some of the mistakes? People like me with a little money and much less knowledge make when they try to get into that arena?

Robert Mason: [00:07:49] That’s a great question. What makes a good starter investment? Location, location, location. You’ve heard that before? Yeah. Yeah. Having a business plan. Didn’t we just talk about that earlier today in a in a earlier conversation? A lot of people get into this and they think they can just buy anything and they can just throw it at the wall and it’s going to stick. Well, that’s not even true about anything. You have to be strategic in this business. You have to have a reason why. Why would somebody want to rent this property from me? Water. We bought the Big Canoe property, Harley’s Hideaway. It’s on Lake Scott. It’s also on a golf course. So those are two reasons why One of the biggest mistakes that I see investors making is, number one, not working with a realtor that understands the business. Number two, not working with a lender that understands the investment business. Those two are key things to making this investment choice correct. And you have to form a business plan like our master interface is called owners and owners. We put that board together and then that shoots down to things called Airbnb and VRBO. But our go to website is owner and we’ve set everything up through owners. My wife and I had to watch probably 100 hours of videos. I kid you not. We watched video after video after video. We watched video videos on YouTube of people who’ve opened their own str and it’s either a success or not. And I’ll tell you their whole story. And we were taking notes and we said to ourselves, We don’t want to make those mistakes. What did everybody else do? And so we inoculated ourselves in that business. We knew where the pitfalls were. We knew where the bear traps were before we got involved. Not to mention the fact that I’ve had investments before, not to mention the fact I had my mortgage guy who was my mentor, walk me through all the steps. So you have to have those people in place. Lease. That’s that’s critical. It’s not just about money, because you can lose it.

Randell Beck: [00:09:55] On the residential side. Big change has been happening in Atlanta area in the last six months. Tell me about the residential market.

Robert Mason: [00:10:04] Well, you know, there’s a macro look and there’s a micro look. Okay. Not all cities are the same. Not all markets are the same. So if you said, okay, real estate in the United States of America, where are we headed? Now, that’s a big old long conversation and you’ve got to parcel that out. California and New York are not the same as Atlanta, Georgia, or Birmingham, Alabama, or some of the coastal towns. So the Fed rate’s being raised have changed things dramatically. Okay. That’s not the mortgage interest rates. That’s the Fed rate. That’s the bank rates. That’s what’s what’s your HELOC going to cost? What’s your car loan going to cost? Okay. So the Fed’s up the Fed rate two and a half, 3%, and that has made money more expensive. So that also parallels over into the the residential mortgage side of the business. A year ago, we were sitting at 2.75. And now we’re sitting at 6.75. It’s more than doubled and less than 12 months. We went from a seller’s market, hot seller’s market where anything that came on the market, you’d have 15 to 20 offers and day one average time on the market was like three days.

Robert Mason: [00:11:16] Average day on the market now is is 27 or 28 days. I’m seeing things out there at 60 days. So yeah, but the good thing about the Atlanta market in particular, in Greater Atlanta in particular, we have 100, 110,000 people that are going to come to Atlanta every single year. Covid changed a lot of that. You don’t have to work on Wall Street. You don’t have to live on Wall Street to to have that job anymore. You can work in Montana and your corporate offices in Atlanta or vice versa. So people are going to where the taxes are lower. Hey, you came from New York, so you understand that, right? And so people are coming to Atlanta for a lot of different reasons. Economically speaking, Atlanta is a very vibrant city, economically speaking. We’ve got, what, 25 of the top Fortune 500 companies here in Atlanta. There’s reasons to be here. There’s reasons to be in the south. The weather’s nice. My wife’s from Michigan. She ain’t going back to Michigan. You know, average day in Michigan now is probably, what, 37 degrees and snowing. I look outside, it’s 75 degrees and it’s nice.

Randell Beck: [00:12:20] What’s it like to work with Robert Mason to sell or buy a house?

Robert Mason: [00:12:24] Well, I’m going to tell you what’s on my mind first, Right. So when we work together, I may say some things that you might not like, but at least I’m going to be honest with you. I’m going to give you a real deep dive. I’m going to I’m going to give you probably more information than you need, and I’m going to give you a historical preference of why this area of town is is doing well or school systems, why this school system is better than this school system. And zip codes are not all the same as well. So what are appreciation levels going to do, Robert and Sandy Springs? Well, they’re going to go up 7 to 8% this year. What are they going to do when some of the other like Haynesville? Well, we might see a decline in Haynesville by 4 to 5%. So, you know, not all markets are going to be the same. So when you’re going to work with me, you’re going to get my personal and professional opinion on all things that matter real estate wise.

Stone Payton: [00:13:18] So I believe everything you just said and residential real estate seems like such a competitive arena. There are so many folks out there in that role. How do you get to have like this conversation, that first conversation with someone so that I even get a chance to get to know you and build that confidence in you?

Robert Mason: [00:13:38] Well, how do you get to to the point where you get to speak to me or you get.

Stone Payton: [00:13:42] Yeah. How do how do you get to speak to me if I’m in the market? Because, I mean, there’s a real estate person around every corner. At least that’s what it seems like to me. Like as a layperson, it seems so competitive.

Robert Mason: [00:13:53] And so when there are rough times in real estate, the people jumping ship are just it’s dramatic. So whereas we had let’s just say I’m going to just make this number up, 400,000 real estate agents in Atlanta, there’s not that many. Okay. You’re going to lose about 30 or 40% right off the bat when things start to get difficult. Wow. And so we’ve already seen it. You see that in the mortgage industry. You see that in the real estate industry. People jump into my business when things are going well. I mean, last year you could it didn’t matter what you listed, you’re going to sell it like day one. But like now we really have to work hard to sell these houses for the right number. You can’t just put any number on a house like we were doing a year and a year and a half ago. So when you’re going to go out there and you’re going to sell the biggest asset that you’ll ever own your house or buy that asset, you better be dealing with somebody who’s got the experience. And 33 years in this business, man, I’ve got all the I’ve got all the swelling in my head. I’ve got all the black eyes, I’ve been thrown out cars. And you better have somebody that knows how to weed through all of this because there’s a lot to it.

Randell Beck: [00:15:05] Related question to that. So you’ve been around a while. You went to school, you’re educated in real estate, which seems like a big competitive advantage. So tell me, what are the Robert Mason competitive advantages?

Robert Mason: [00:15:17] Well, the Robert Mason competitive advantages are I’ve been here forever. It seems like I’ve seen the rise and fall of Atlanta. I saw 400 get built back in the 80s when you said, Hey, I’m going to Alpharetta. You know, back in 1981, there was no 400 that went all the way up to Dahlonega. So I’ve seen the I’ve seen Atlanta grow. I’ve been here. I know a lot of folks, which is really a that helps me out tremendously. Having the pool of folks that know my name and know how to get in touch with me. Brother, this this city is I consider it mine and I’m coming from a place of love. But if you want somebody that knows the city from from the from A to Z, well, that’s me. And I’m not shy about telling people that. And it’s not I’m not it’s not bravado. It’s I’ve seen it. I’ve, I’ve lived through it. And this is my town.

Stone Payton: [00:16:11] I mean, he loves the work. You can tell it every time. Anytime you ask him any question or any real estate oriented topic comes up, your eyes light up and you just the passion comes through. You’ve been at this a minute, as the kids say. Yeah. What do you find the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it all for you?

Robert Mason: [00:16:30] The most rewarding part is I am a part of one of the top three decisions you’re ever going to make. Right? I’m not going to deliver your child, okay? I’m not a doctor. I’m not a lawyer. I can’t marry you. But I can sell you a house. The biggest wealth building instrument you’re ever going to buy. So I’m part of the top three decisions you’ll ever make. And to me, that is the most important thing. And to get it right, you have to get it right. You just can’t sell somebody anything. You just can’t, you know, you can’t just be a seller. You have to be an instructor. You have to be somebody that is building wealth for that client of yours because it’s going to come back. If it’s not a good deal, if it’s not a good neighborhood, it’s not the right school system, they’re going to know. And then that’s your reputation. That’s my reputation. I can’t afford to make mistakes like that. So I take it real super serious.

Randell Beck: [00:17:20] What is it about being involved at that level with the client that that excites you?

Robert Mason: [00:17:26] Being involved at the level to where you’re going to sell somebody, something that’s $100,000 or more, that is. Again, one of the most important decisions that they’re ever going to make. I wear a lot of hats as a realtor. I’m a marriage counselor. I’m a construction expert. You know, I’m a preacher. I’m a car mechanic. I’m a what’s going on at the school professional. I wear so many hats. It’s just I get to know people at the at a level that a lot of folks don’t get to know. People And I get questions from the wives. I get questions from the the dads. I get kids involved. So, man, I’m really getting to know these families. And if they can’t trust me, then that’s a big problem. And that is the utmost important part for me to get right is the loyalty and trust factor.

Randell Beck: [00:18:22] You have an investor club for people that are interested in investment Real estate? Yep.

Robert Mason: [00:18:28] Our investment club, Brad Hartman, my mortgage lender extraordinaire, and he’s my mentor. He kind of got me into the business as well. He and I started a wealth wealth development investment club. Our first meeting is next Thursday at 430 to 6. We’re going to have a meeting once a month for investor minded people, people that want to get into this business. It’s key that Brad and I are doing this together because he does the mortgage side of the business, which is, you know, that’s not just any lender. And then you’ve got a realtor. That’s my part of finding the properties and understanding that business. And so we’re going to do this together. We’re going to help people. I don’t look at other real estate agents as competition. I look at I’m a big circus tent guy. I’m everybody’s everybody’s welcome in my book because the better they are, the better my business is going to be. I’m not going to be here forever. And I want to be able to hand off as much information as I possibly can. So this investment club that we’re starting is built key. The key part of it is helping people build their businesses correctly and doing it right so they don’t lose their money because wealth development, I mean, if you lose $300,000 and you bought the wrong property, then what are they going to think of Robert Mason?

Randell Beck: [00:19:51] Well, in fact, it’s better to not lose than it is to gain. It takes a lot more to recover than it does to make right.

Robert Mason: [00:19:58] So once you lose your reputation, that’s it, man. Right. And it could be a small it could be a small mistake. But we are going to get the blame. And we do, whether it’s right or wrong.

Randell Beck: [00:20:10] Tell me about exp.

Robert Mason: [00:20:12] Exp is the company is built around the premise that brick and mortar is no longer necessary. Okay. We don’t have offices like when I worked for Keller Williams and Re Max Greater Atlanta and some of these other folks, we had brick and mortar and there’s a cost to that. There’s a back end cost to that. Right. We had a guy on that. We talked in our podcast, you know, that talks about that building a back office at EXP. They’re able to give that money back to the agents, which is totally key. When Keller Williams started back in 1998 1999, I met with one of the guys who started it, Sean Rawls. Fantastic guy. He he asked me to come to work for him back in the early 2000, and I didn’t. But I saw their model and I saw that it was a model that was way better than, say, the Remax, the Coldwell Banker models at the at the time. But Keller Williams kind of is still a great company, one of the best in the world. Absolutely. But now EXP is doing things right in a way that the monies that they that we earn in the commissions are going back to the agents in ways that the other giants are not doing. And it’s all virtual. We have like a virtual campus. We go online and we can ask any question we can. I could be an agent in Florida and I wouldn’t have to put my license with a Florida broker. I would just be an affiliate down in Florida and I could pass the test. And now I’m selling real estate in Florida or South Carolina or other states. And the other giants in the industry don’t have that. So it’s streamlined everything. The virtual office is fantastic. The stock options. Every time I sell a house, I get stock in exp. And right now with the stock market down, I’m buying stock at a at a at a lower market value 3 or 4 years from now when that stock market goes back to normal, I’m going to have made a lot of money. And so that’s really important.

Randell Beck: [00:22:13] And how does that XP framework translate for your buyers and sellers? What’s the advantage to them?

Robert Mason: [00:22:20] Well, it allows me to be a better real estate agent. It allows me to be more effective. It allows me to get answers to questions, critical questions a lot quicker, like broker questions. I’m a real estate broker. I don’t know everything. I know a good bit, so exp puts more money back into my business. I’m able to use resources differently than I was at some of the other shops. Okay. Like I’m able to invest in my business like virtual assistants. I need marketing campaigns done. I’m able to use resources that I was putting out in another fashion and the things that are going to be critical to my business and it’s just streamlined my business. I’m able to do things with you, whereas I wouldn’t have had maybe that income or that extra cash to to do otherwise.

Randell Beck: [00:23:07] So that brings up the self-serving question. Tell me about the Robert Mason team.

Robert Mason: [00:23:11] I’ve got some good players on my team. Randall Beck at Beck Shop.com is one of my critical players. You have to have a team around you. You have to have stone, You have to have people that can do things for you. You have to have good law firms and legal advice. You’ve got to have good contractors. You’ve got to have inspectors that know what the hell they’re doing. You’ve got like you do in my videographer. You are a principal part of my business. And so what do I do? I try to promote you. I try to promote those people that are on my team because that’s loyalty. You’re helping me build my brand. I’m helping you build your brand. And so you guys are teammates and a lot of a big mistake that I see a lot of realtors make is they don’t think of it like that. They don’t think of it as a team. It’s all I well, there’s no I in team, is there team? There’s no I. And so you have to have critical structure. You’ve got to have critical support when it really matters. And people like Randall Beck is a critical part of my business. My attorneys, whether it be Shafritz and Dean or Douglas, I mean, I have to have these people in place. And what that does is when I tell somebody that I’m going to fully represent them, I’m fully representing them with my entire team, contractors, legal aid, mortgage people, things like that.

Randell Beck: [00:24:34] What’s next for Robert Mason? Where are you going over the next two years? Well.

Robert Mason: [00:24:40] That’s a good question. Where am I going? I’m trying to solidify my place as a investor again. That’s critical to my wealth development aspect of retirement, although realtors really never retire. You know, that’s just kind of dumb, right? What am I going to do? I’m trying to build I’m trying to build that wealth piece for my family and my wife. And, you know, we make a good living together. I’m not all that money oriented. I’m more oriented towards doing what’s right for my friends and family and those people, those that entrust me with their business. And I want to continue that. So there’s no grand scheme other than just continue to build on the pyramid that I’m already building on. Is that a good answer?

Randell Beck: [00:25:24] I think that’s a good answer. Parting shot Somebody that wants to do real estate, they’re not sure they should work with. What would you want to say to them about working with you?

Robert Mason: [00:25:33] Let’s sit down, have a cup of coffee. I’d like to ask you what your goals are first. Right. So it’s not as simple as saying, Oh, just come to work for me or come to work for EXP. I want to find out what what are your expectations? Where do you see yourself going? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? And there’s no way for me to give somebody an answer like that over the phone. I’ve got to meet that person and I’ve got to put my hands on them, you know, in a way to kind of feel where they want to go because EXP is not for everybody, you know? And so I’ve got to ask these questions and be true to that person to be able to give them a really good answer.

Randell Beck: [00:26:08] And same question for somebody that’s looking to buy or sell. Why would you what would you say to them about working with you?

Robert Mason: [00:26:14] Well, if you’re going to work with Robert Mason, you’re going to work with one of the best and one of the guys who’s been around the longest. Okay. You’re going to get my professional opinion, whether you like it or not. I’m going to be honest and like representing you on a couple of things, Randy. There’s certain times when I’ll say, No, I don’t think this is not it, you know, and and some people can’t handle that because maybe they found the house and they were really excited about it. And I have to say, these are the reasons why this won’t work in this scenario. I’ve been doing I’ve been selling real estate for a long, long time. I’ve got integrity. I’ve got honesty. I’ve got my reputation still intact, fully intact. So that’s a huge reason to work with somebody that’s been doing this for a long time.

Randell Beck: [00:26:59] There it is, folks. The backstory on our co-host Robert Mason from Exp Realty. He is a vital part of Excel here, helps me interview our business guests. But now you get to know him a little better, too.

Robert Mason: [00:27:11] Very much.