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GWBC Radio: WITH/agency CEO Blair Brady

May 8, 2020 by angishields

GWBC Radio

GWBC Radio: WITH/agency CEO Blair Brady

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As the Co-founder and CEO of the WBE Certified WITH/agency, Blair Brady is an ambassador of the movement for female entrepreneurship and leadership as well as in diversity of talent. With her leadership, the award-winning agency has received recognition for its work in brand strategy, creative and advertising.

WITH proudly serves as an agency partner for Atlanta’s iconic brands such as AT&T, The Fox Theatre, Georgia Power, Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, EarthLink and others. Blair has also led the expansion of the agency’s business and Atlanta’s creative talents to new markets through the agency’s partnership with Pacific Gas & Electric in California.

Blair co-founded the WITH/agency in 2012 to find a better way to serve Atlanta’s brands. When Blair assumed majority ownership of the agency in early 2018 and became CEO; her mission for WITH was realized: to reveal a world that works better together by creating unmatched creative work for clients while progressing a vibrant culture focused on cultivating and empowering diverse talent contributing to the rise of Atlanta’s creative community. As a trailblazer, Blair’s leadership style is centered around her intentionality to be the change she wants to see in the world around her.

The WITH/agency is an Atlanta born and based agency with service offerings including creative, strategy, advertising, video production, and branding. As a purposely small agency serving big brands, WITH is making its mark on Atlanta’s creative scene.

Blair also advocates for Atlanta’s creative community through participating in key professional organizations including:

The Forbes Agency Council – Member
Metro Atlanta Chamber – Board of Advisors
TimesUp Advertising – Board Member – Atlanta Chapter’
Network of Executive Women (NEW) – Member
Atlanta Advertising Club – Corporate Member and Event Host

Connect with Blair on LinkedIn and follow WITH on Facebook and Twitter.

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Open for Business, part of GWBC’s radio show that we run here at Business RadioX. Our guest today is Blair Brady, and she’s with the WITH/agency. Welcome, Blair.

Blair Brady: [00:00:33] Hi, Lee. Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:35] Well, before we get too far into things, can you tell us about the WITH/agency? Who do you serve?

Blair Brady: [00:00:41] I’d love to. We are a full-service marketing, advertising, and design agency right here in Atlanta. And we proudly serve a lot of Atlanta’s greatest brands AT&T, Georgia Power, Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, and another wonderful client that is really Atlanta’s gem is the Fox Theater.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] So, how-

Blair Brady: [00:01:07] Other clients … sorry about that, Lee. Our other clients include Pacific Gas and Electric in San Francisco. And also, a wonderful re-emerging Atlanta brand of EarthLink.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Oh, wow. I was with EarthLink when they were MindSpring. I have a-

Blair Brady: [00:01:27] You have?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:27] … an email address, MindSpring email address, probably still. I’m probably still paying for that. Yeah, that goes.

Blair Brady: [00:01:34] Yeah. I mean, that’s a throwback. That’s a good one. Hang on to it.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] So, now, how’d you get into this line of work? How’d you get started in your career?

Blair Brady: [00:01:43] I have always been on the agency side of business. I began early in my career with an agency that was born really out of sports marketing. But then, moved into general, a full-service, integrated marketing. And I was fortunate enough early in my career to serve really big brands from a young stage. So, I got to learn how to navigate corporate culture, which can be really, really rigid for a lot of good reasons as why they’re rigid. But as a marketer, you have to find a way to breathe life and creativity into those structures. So, I got to see that up close and personal early in my career.

Blair Brady: [00:02:28] And then, about eight years ago, my co-founder, Jamie Sims, and I decided that we wanted to make a new kind of agency. We thought that there was a better way. So, we founded the WITH/agency in 2012 and really bootstrapped from the very, very beginning, and years of really hard work and trying to align ourselves with the brand-forward companies who believed in creativity and really believed in brand strategy and brand storytelling was how we approached it. And we are, as you know, a proud, certified women-owned business.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] Now, why was it important for you to become a certified women-owned business?

Blair Brady: [00:03:20] That’s a great question. There are a couple of reasons. One, we believe that you need to be the change you want to see in the world. And, especially, in the creative industry, this rings very true. I believe that the best creative product that is really going to connect brands to people has to come from a diverse set of talent and has to come from several perspectives. And the old framework of doing things that limited female voices, diversity, that was not going to allow brands to reach the hearts and minds of people in the ways that they needed to.

Blair Brady: [00:04:12] So, we restructured, and it was important for us to certify because that meant that we were committed in going about this. And a lot of our corporate clients, they have a real need for diverse suppliers, especially in the creative industry, because a lot of really big multinational agencies are held by large companies, large holding companies that are predominantly male. And so, they are getting that. We were able to provide them a unique service and a unique perspective to serve today’s brands and what they need to reach their audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] Now, speaking of today, right now, we’re going through this coronavirus. And it’s a challenge for a lot of businesses. I’m sure you’ve had to make some adjustments. But from putting in your marketing hat on, how are you kind of consulting with your clients to help them kind of re-strategize or maybe pivot in order for them to continue to stay relevant during this?

Blair Brady: [00:05:16] That’s a great question. It is a real challenge right now because we live in a world of connection. And right now, we’re isolated physically. So, it’s a whole new way of working. And early on, in the first week of this, I challenged my team to think about the plans that we had for our clients for the year and consider that those plans were probably not going to happen. And what we needed to do to serve our clients the best way was not found in those plans because we’re in a new world. So, I urged them to take each of our clients, strip them down to their brand’s purpose and their brand’s promise. Why do they exist and what do they deliver? And then, put the new filter of today all over that. So, how are we going to exist and deliver based on this new on this new world?

Blair Brady: [00:06:19] And three of our key clients are essential business. Health care in Kaiser Permanente, obviously, they’re more essential now than ever. Pacific Gas and Electric and Georgia Power in energy and utility. Specifically with Pacific Gas Electric, we are working on how they position themselves to best help and speak with small businesses because, right now, they are in dire straits. And then, third would be in EarthLink, an Internet service provider. Everyone is at home right now working, trying to keep their kids engaged in school, and we are relying more heavily on our internet connection than ever before and in more ways. And so, we have to stay connected. That’s the way that we stay connected now. We can’t physically be connected. So, those three clients, we really leaned, we really pivoted strategy, and we quickly got in front of them to say, “You know what? We’re here. We have you. We understand that everything’s changing. But we’re ready to change too.”

Lee Kantor: [00:07:22] Now, what about when it comes to the messaging, when those people are going out to the world and saying, “Hey, we’re still open for business. We still are here to serve you. While our business may have been executed in this manner yesterday, today, we’re still here and we’re executing in this new manner,” is there any advice for those business people out there that maybe have to kind of re imagine themselves, but they don’t want to go out there, and be salesy, and yet want to be sensitive? It seems like a tricky time for marketers to communicate what they need to communicate and in what maybe a more elegant way.

Blair Brady: [00:08:07] Right. You’re so right. There is such a delicate balance right now. And you’re seeing, as you turn on the television, or Netflix, or anything, and you’re watching, brands are putting out all kinds of material that is pivoted now to the world that we’re in. And you’re starting to hear vocabulary that’s becoming cliche a little. You continue to hear words like, “In these uncertain times,” and “We’re all in this together.” And it’s difficult for marketers because we do want to speak and connect on a human level. We do want to serve the brands who are relevant to this crisis. But you can’t come across in a disingenuous way or kind of way that sounds like you’re pandering to a bad situation. You’re taking advantage of a crisis. So, it’s a very delicate line.

Blair Brady: [00:09:04] The way that that we approach it and the way that we advise our clients is that we should only put a message out there or we should only engage with consumers when we are directly relevant to what we’re talking about. We do want to pander. So, when you do put out a message, first, you have to say, “Is what we’re talking about, is our service directly relevant to what is happening in people’s lives right now?” And then, how do we make that message ring true and be genuine, so that they don’t feel like they’re being sold to and taken advantage of in a time of crisis.

Blair Brady: [00:09:44] It’s interesting. I’ll give you one more example. Our client, the Fox Theater, obviously they cannot operate right now. Their doors are closed. And we’re not sure when they’re going to reopen. But their purpose in the world is to or their promise is to create a grand sense of occasion. It’s all about coming together. It’s all about people experiencing something amazing. How can we do that? How can we come together and say something amazing when we’re apart? So, that’s been our creative brief as an agency to help them make people feel like they’re connected and experiencing something wonderful while they’re not apart. And it’s not because they’re looking to sell tickets. It’s because they’re an Atlanta icon, and they’ve made a promise to the city a long time ago to remain that way. And so, they have to continue to tell Atlanta that that promise isn’t gone. But certainly, there’s no ticket sale message at the end of that. It’s just articulating that our promise still stands.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:49] Now, when you’re working with especially a client like that, where their business is in person, people physically going to their location, is there any kind of, I don’t wanna say therapy, but it’s kind of therapy to help them kind of focus on the long haul and to help them just not panic? Because at some of these, like even the Fox as an example, I mean, the Fox is an icon to many that they’re a little special, but if you’re just like kind of Joe and Mary’s theater, this is a tough time.

Blair Brady: [00:11:26] You’re right. And so, I have to say that part of being a really good agency partner, there is a percentage of therapists that’s in your job. One of the things that we always say is that we believe in a world that works better together. And that goes in good times and bad times. And so, I spent a lot of time on the phone with my clients talking about their personal lives, talking about their work lives, talking about what they’re concerned about. And it’s just because we genuinely love to be with people. I mean, that was how our agency was built. And so, a lot of it is time spent just listening because everyone feels so disconnected. So, we don’t even have to have conversations that are directional towards a project or a campaign. Sometimes, it’s just to catch up.

Blair Brady: [00:12:26] But what I do find when … because we do need to look towards something. So, for for some of our clients whose business is a little bit on a hiatus right now, what we started doing is working with them on re-emerging plan. So, when we come back into the world, what does that look like? And though we don’t know when that may be, there’s no date on the calendar necessarily, having the actual plan there not only give a sense of something to look forward to, but it makes them feel like somebody is at them, or they’re not alone, or when the time to reopen comes, they aren’t left saying, “Well, what do we do now?” That when the time comes to reopen, that we’re ready, we have a plan. We’re not just sort of slowly starting to get going. We’re already catching our pace.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:18] Now, how have you been working with your own team to keep their morale up? And maybe you can share some tips for others that are dealing with this with a team that’s working remotely. Maybe you’ve been already working remotely prior to this, but if you weren’t doing a lot more now.

Blair Brady: [00:13:39] Yeah, I can definitely share some on that because that has been one of the biggest things for me personally. In our office, it’s a very open office. We are a very close knit group. We are together a lot. We’re a very family-like environment. So, almost overnight, we were completely separated and isolated from each other. It was really difficult at first. It was a really heavy feeling for me. So, things that I had done and we have done together since then that have really helped, we do a lot of video conferencing. I know everyone does that.

Blair Brady: [00:14:21] But one thing I will say is get in the habit of always turning on your camera and showing your face because when you see each other’s faces, it makes it so, so, so much better. That, to me, is so important. I always want to see everyone’s faces. And we do quick morning check-in meetings every morning where we just see each other’s faces, write down a quick connect for what is going to happen that day, what’s really important, what somebody needs help on, what someone’s stuck on, any updates that we had got overnight. So, that’s been really helpful.

Blair Brady: [00:14:58] Another thing is that first week I was mentioning, I felt really disconnected. It felt really heavy. On the Sunday night of that first week, I just turned on my web camera on my computer, and I talked to the team. I just recorded a video of me talking about what I talk about, and then closing it with a fun … I played like a fun song. And so, I have done that every Sunday since the first week. So, we have seven episodes of what we now call the Sunday night sit-down. And it goes to my team every Sunday night. It just goes to is. It’s not posted on social media anywhere. It’s just a message to the team. And that’s been a really great way to connect. I’ve gotten really good feedback from them that they enjoy those.

Blair Brady: [00:15:50] And then, the other thing is we’ve done just agency polls. Like just fun things. What’s a new hobby you picked up during this time? What music are you listening to? We made a quarantune playlists on Spotify. So, finding those ways have really, really been a great way to keep everybody connected.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:13] Now, you had some great advice earlier about coming up with that kind of how are you going to emerge plan with your clients. Is that something that you’ve also done internally? Like how are you going … like how does the future you’re going to see yet the work you’ve done? And are you doing work that matters? Are you looking ahead to yourself as well?

Blair Brady: [00:16:38] I am. And that’s something that that we are addressing currently and recently. I’ve been referring it to as a mental box that I’ve just sort of been putting my thoughts in and keeping to the side, and I will address them when the time is right. But the time is right. We are going to be coming out of this. And that plan is not going to look like what I thought our year was gonna look like in January. When we started this year, we had a very, very robust plan for growth. It was going to be a very transformative year for the agency.

Blair Brady: [00:17:28] And so, I think in the first few days of this crisis, I probably personally merged that a little bit, that that was probably not going to go the way I wanted it to go and the way that I really wanted our team to that had gotten. Everyone was so excited and we were ready to go. And so, it took me a while to mentally adjust to that. But I have now. And we’ve been working on a plan to reemerge. And I think a lot of the ways that we were going to transform this year will still happen. They just may happen a little later, and they may happen in some different ways. We’ve learned a lot through this.

Blair Brady: [00:18:16] And I don’t think it will change everyone’s business. I don’t think anyone will just hit the on button again and just go on as usual like they did before. I think this crisis will challenge everyone to rethink the way they operate internally and with their customers, or clients, or who they serve. It’s just the plan is there, and it’s an important one, and it has to be done with with such intentionality, and we certainly can’t rush it. But I am immensely proud for the way that my team has conducted themselves through all of this. I’ve leaned into them hard, and they have stood up and done so much more than I had ever had in mind. So, I am immensely grateful to them. And I just think that the promise of reemerging is so much brighter.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:14] Now, what’s the ideal client for you? And what pain are they having where the WITH/agency is the solution?

Blair Brady: [00:19:23] Oh, that’s a great question. So, our ideal client doesn’t come in the shape of any specific category or vertical. We are not B2B, exclusively B2B, or exclusively B2C. Our ideal client is a brand-forward company. So, a company that believes in their brand and their brand’s ability to connect with people. And so, we start every piece of work, every project, everything with strategy. The strategy is really at the centerpoint of what we do, whether that manifests itself into a television campaign or manifests itself into a new visual identity for a brand. All of that must start with strategy. And so, companies that really invest in their brand and in their brand story, that is our ideal plan.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:27] And if somebody wanted to learn more and have more substantive conversation with you, what’s the website?

Blair Brady: [00:20:34] We’re at thewithagency.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:38] Well, Blair, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work.

Blair Brady: [00:20:43] Thank you, Lee, I appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:45] All right, that’s a wrap for this episode of GWBC Radio. We will see you again next time.

About Your Host

Roz Lewis is President & CEO – Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®), a regional partner organization of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and a member of the WBENC Board of Directors.

Previous career roles at Delta Air Lines included Flight Attendant, In-Flight Supervisor and Program Manager, Corporate Supplier Diversity.

During her career she has received numerous awards and accolades. Most notable: Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 2018 Diversity & Inclusion award; 2017 inducted into the WBE Hall of Fame by the American Institute of Diversity and Commerce and 2010 – Women Out Front Award from Georgia Tech University.

She has written and been featured in articles on GWBC® and supplier diversity for Forbes Magazine SE, Minority Business Enterprise, The Atlanta Tribune, WE- USA, Minorities and Women in Business magazines. Her quotes are published in The Girls Guide to Building a Million Dollar Business book by Susan Wilson Solovic and Guide Coaching by Ellen M. Dotts, Monique A. Honaman and Stacy L. Sollenberger. Recently, she appeared on Atlanta Business Chronicle’s BIZ on 11Alive, WXIA to talk about the importance of mentoring for women.

In 2010, Lewis was invited to the White House for Council on Women and Girls Entrepreneur Conference for the announcement of the Small Business Administration (SBA) new Women Owned Small Business Rule approved by Congress. In 2014, she was invited to the White House to participate in sessions on small business priorities and the Affordable Care Act.

Roz Lewis received her BS degree from Florida International University, Miami, FL and has the following training/certifications: Certified Purchasing Managers (CPM); Certified Professional in Supplier Diversity (CPSD), Institute for Supply Management (ISM)of Supplier Diversity and Procurement: Diversity Leadership Academy of Atlanta (DLAA), Negotiations, Supply Management Strategies and Analytical Purchasing.

Connect with Roz on LinkedIn.

About GWBC

The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business.

GWBC^® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Customer Experience Radio Welcomes: Wes Moss with Capital Investment Advisors

May 6, 2020 by angishields

Customer Experience Radio

Customer Experience Radio Welcomes: Wes Moss with Capital Investment Advisors

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Wes Moss the host of Money Matters – Atlanta’s longest-running live call-in, investment, and personal finance radio show – on News 95-5FM and AM 750 WSB. Wes is also the Chief Investment Strategist and Managing Partner at Capital Investment Advisors (CIA). In this role, Wes is responsible for communicating CIA’s position on markets and investments. CIA currently manages more than 2.5 billion dollars in client assets.

In 2017 Wes was featured in Barron’s Magazine where he discussed his career in financial advising as well the investment strategy that he pursues, investing for income. Barron’s Magazine also named him one of America’s Top 100 Independent Wealth Advisors in 2017 and 2019. From 2014 through 2019 Barron’s Magazine named him one of America’s top 1,200 financial advisors. In 2012, he was named as one of the top 40 fee-only investment advisors (under 40) in the country by Wealth Management Magazine. Wes was also named one of Atlanta’s 40 Under 40 by the Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2015.

In addition, Wes is a regular contributor to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution both online and in print, and a regular contributor to ClarkHoward.com. In 2014, Wes was the host of Atlanta Tech Edge, a weekly TV show on Atlanta’s NBC affiliate WXIA, covering the fascinating business of technology within the state of Georgia. He was also the financial consultant for Spike TV’s show, Life Or Debt.

Wes holds a degree in economics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and four sons and loves spending time with his family, coaching lacrosse, and playing golf and tennis.

Wes has written several books including Starting from Scratch (Kaplan) and Make More, Worry Less (FT Press), and has served as a financial expert for both local and national media including CNN, CNBC, and Fox Business Network. He has been interviewed by USA Today, Forbes, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo Finance.

His latest book, You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think – The 5 Money Secrets of the Happiest Retirees (McGraw Hill 2014) has been a best seller in the retirement planning category. The book’s unique message and research has struck a chord with readers and the financial community since its release in May of 2014.

Follow CIA on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Transcript

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, it’s time for Customer Experience Radio. Brought to you by Heineck & Company, real estate advisors specialized in corporate relocation. Now, here’s your host, Jill Heineck.

Jill Heineck: [00:00:18] Well, hello and welcome to this very special edition of Customer Experience Radio. I’m your host, Jill Heineck. And I’m a business owner, a real estate adviser and customer experience enthusiast. I’m super excited to have Wes Moss on with us today. He’s the host of Money Matters, Atlanta’s longest running live call-in investment and personal finance radio show on News 95.5 and AM 750 WSB. He’s also managing partner of Capital Investment Advisors here in Sandy Springs. He always delivers at such a high level. So, I thought it’d be really interesting to hear how Wes and his teams are working to meet the listeners and his investment clients where they are and especially in the environment that we’re in. And so, I thought that we just have a conversation with Wes. And I’ve been listening to a lot of his recent shows and a special podcast that you’ve been airing. And first, just give the listeners a little bit of background about who you are and how you got where you are now.

Wes Moss: [00:01:22] Thanks for having me on, Jill. It’s a lot of fun. I know that we’re doing this via a video, but I know this is via radio. And maybe you should have your own TV channel. It’s what you should have. Radio and television show. And Jill, for those listeners that are not seeing this because it’s all via audio, Jill is broadcasting from … most people have like a plan, and a family photo, and all that. Jill is in the bedroom, and she got two lamps and her bed. That is her home office. And maybe … is that a guitar in the corner?

Jill Heineck: [00:01:54] It is.

Wes Moss: [00:01:55] Yeah, that’s cool. Anyway-

Jill Heineck: [00:01:56] It’s our home office.

Wes Moss: [00:01:56] … she had a cool background. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. I will tell you that we are a financial advisory firm. So, we do investments. Our mission at our firm is helping families find happiness in retirement. And that is the guiding light at our firm. I wrote a book seven years ago called You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think: The Five Money Secrets of the Happiest Retirees. And that was really kind of an outcropping of a survey that I did for habits of happy retirees, and those who are unhappy and were effectively trying to reverse engineer how to be a happy retiree.

Wes Moss: [00:02:34] A lot of that came out of what I saw as those going through retirement, they were really enjoying it, and those who were not as much, and just comparing and contrasting. So, it was almost an outcropping of that. And then, that’s even become even more so the philosophy and the guiding light at our firm. But I’ve been in the investment business right out … I studied economics at the University North Carolina back in the ’90s. Became an advisor right out of the gate. Actually, I was still in school and did an internship at Atlanta in the mid to later ’90s. And then, I’ve been a financial advisor ever since. And I started with a really big firm and always wanted to go independent. And now, we have an independently owned – me and another family, two of our families have an RIA, registered investment advisory firm that we’ve had now for going on 20 plus years.

Wes Moss: [00:03:28] So, that is what we do for a living. As far as the media, my second job, which takes up a lot of my bandwidth and time these days is radio as well. And being able to educate the public on so many new things has been a huge part of what we’ve been able to do and bring to the table as a firm, and a lot of it just goes … people are constantly saying, “Oh, Wes, you must be doing so much work to get ready for the radio. And then, how do you—” A lot of it is, what I’m doing on radio, and I do all these special podcasts now, in addition to Money Matters, the show, really, these are pieces of research and insight that I’m looking for economically to make investment decisions anyway.

Wes Moss: [00:04:17] So, a lot of it is just utilizing the content that we want to glean and find any way. And then, we can produce it in a way. We can publish it in either a podcasts, or radio, or videos, or both. And, obviously, we turn a lot of that into written content on my website at westmoss.com. Again, the media side of the equation, I was on The Apprentice with Donald Trump, if anybody remembers that.

Jill Heineck: [00:04:44] I remember.

Wes Moss: [00:04:45] I don’t know if anyone’s heard of Donald Trump at this stage, but there is a guy named President, or there’s a guy named Donald Trump who is a real estate mogul back in the day, and he had a show on NBC. And that show, I ended up on it, and it kind of opened my eyes up to the media. And the show is really run by Mark Burnett Productions, the guy who started Survivor and, ultimately, kind of woke up to, “Wow, there’s this whole another world of media,” and that kind of got me into doing radio. And I’ve been doing radio now for about 12 or almost 13 years now.

Wes Moss: [00:05:21] So, I do that in conjunction with what I do from an investment standpoint. I’m the chief investment strategist at our firm, and I’ve been been an investor or investment advisor for over 20 years now. And I think all those pieces kind of just come together. So, I’m able to be able to do our client work. Then, I still have individual families that I work with. And then, running the firm that we serve about 3000 families at our firm – Capital Investment Advisors. And then, just trying to bring the most current, up-to-date information on understanding what we need to understand at any given time. And today, that’s the virus, it’s coronavirus, and how that impacts the economy, how it impacts markets, how it impacts real estate. And we’re trying to make sure we’re bringing the leading experts from Johns Hopkins, and Harvard, and the Brookings Institute, all to our podcast because I want to get educated on it. And then, I can turn around and share that knowledge with our clients.

Jill Heineck: [00:06:22] So, let’s go back to real estate for a second. So, you’re talking to your portfolio clients, and they are potentially beginning their retirement journeys or they’re midstream. And now, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and they’re looking at the tickers. And I’m sure they’re asking and looking to you for guidance on, “Do they liquidate? Do they hold on, continue to look at it from a long-term perspective?” And are these questions you’re getting and what kind of guidance are you providing to them?

Wes Moss: [00:06:58] Beyond what is for my 401(k) or my IRA doing, and how much income am I generating, that’s the kind of primary conversation at our firm. And then, number two, second only to that, is real estate. Hey, what should I do with this house? I’d like to go buy my family … my wife and I, the kids are out of the house now, so I’m ready to go. I’ve been eyeing a place in St. Simons, Wes. What’s the best way to go do that? Should I wait? Should I keep my house here in Atlanta, and then go buy the place in St. Simons? Should I rent out my place? Should we pay off the mortgage? Should we refinance the mortgage? So, we do a lot of consulting around, Jill, the best financial … how does your how does your real estate, particularly your your personal real estate? And this is not necessarily commercial real estate, but your personal real estate that might be rental income too, how does it fit into the bigger plan? Because it’s such a big chunk. I mean, whether you’re … it’s always a big chunk. It’s always a big percentage of your personal balance sheet.

Jill Heineck: [00:08:03] So, are you seeing your clients, what percentage do you think of your clients are in the midstream or are jumpstarting, they were going to jumpstart their retirement journey before COVID actually really hit, before SIP maybe, or did you have a group? I’m always curious. Like what happens at that point when you were ready to do it, your maybe in your mid-50s, and you had planned all along to do it, and then COVID hits? And then, do you have to recalibrate and figure that out, or do you just keep rolling?

Wes Moss: [00:08:38] Mathematically, Jill, and we’ve all heard of these statistics that 10,000 baby boomers retire every day, and I’m in the middle of that. And I was shocked. I am constantly surprised at just how many people continue to hit that age of 65, and they’ve been eyeing retirement. So, just mathematically and statistically, a lot of people just retired right before COVID because a lot of people are retiring every day.

Wes Moss: [00:09:04] And everybody has to be prepared for big market correction and big dislocations because they happen all the time. And even though this has been really painful, and I think there’s a higher level of emotional burden, because we’ve all been sequestered in our houses than ever before. The crash of ’07 and ’08, the crash of 2000-2001, I mean, here we are in the third massive crash, and we were down almost 40% of the Dow, at the Nader, if you go back to March, we had three of these now in the last 15 or so years or call it in the last 20 years. So, to some extent, you’ve got to plan for it and figure out how real estate goes into that.

Wes Moss: [00:09:49] And one of the chapters or one of my favorite chapters in You Can Retire Sooner Than You Think has to do with one really interesting, let’s call commonality between happy retirees is they’ve essentially either paid off their primary residence or they have a plan to do so in the next five years. So, interestingly, as years to pay off mortgage goes down, and this is a cool chart I have in the book, as years to pay off mortgage goes down, happiness levels go up.

Wes Moss: [00:10:23] I want to try to … my goal typically is trying to help a family figure out, are you downsizing the house? And can you downsize? And if you can go from a $600,000 house to a $400,000 house, does that help you then have no mortgage? And that’s a huge part of that. I love that conversation is how can we get you to a point where you might be moving at this point, we’re eyeing a place that you haven’t lived before, and I keep using the coast, but I have a lot of folks that want to go from Atlanta to do some sort of other housing situation when everyone’s out of the house. My kids are out. It’s just me and my wife, or it’s just me and my husband. Does it make sense for us to have this big house still or are there places that we can maybe move now that we weren’t able to move before all within big metro Atlanta? I mean, it’s a huge area here.

Wes Moss: [00:11:22] And then, of course, people that are thinking, “Hey, is there a deal in the mountains? Can I go get a place? I’ve always got to do that,” or “We want to go closer to the coast and get something near St. Simons, or on the Florida Coast.” So, those conversations are happening all the time. And I think that you’ve got course. And then, you think of renovation, Jill. You think about like, “Hey, what do I need to do to fix up my house to sell it?” or “Do I want to spend $200,000 to stay here? Would I rather just sell it and go somewhere else?” So, it’s so unique to every family. And it’s kind of a fun … I will tell you, people like talking about their housing situation a lot more than-

Jill Heineck: [00:12:02] They do.

Wes Moss: [00:12:02] … they like talking about their 401(k). Like, “Okay, Wes—”

Jill Heineck: [00:12:03] Yes, true.

Wes Moss: [00:12:03] “… we’ve talked about my retirement account. Now, let’s talk about the house.”

Jill Heineck: [00:12:09] That’s the sexy part. Nobody wants-

Wes Moss: [00:12:10] It’s a lot of fun.

Jill Heineck: [00:12:13] Nobody wants to worry about their 401(k).

Wes Moss: [00:12:15] I mean, everybody can worry about and spend time thinking about the house because we-

Jill Heineck: [00:12:18] That’s right.

Wes Moss: [00:12:18] And now more than ever … and this is what’s amazing over the next several years, Jill, is how much will our insights about our primary residences change in this?

Jill Heineck: [00:12:31] Right.

Wes Moss: [00:12:31] And they’re going to be-A

Jill Heineck: [00:12:32] A lot.

Wes Moss: [00:12:33] A lot. I mean, big time.

Jill Heineck: [00:12:35] A lot.

Wes Moss: [00:12:35] If I didn’t have two doors to get to this office, I would be really rethinking my house situation. We’ve been forced to do work from home. It’s worked out so well. And I have a company of 40 people on our main company, and then 20 people in our ancillary. It’s 60 people working from home, not skipping a beat. So, why would we ever go back to 100% of people going back to the office when we could, forever, if I’ve already done to get back to work office plan. And the third phase, which is the phase one, two, three, we haven’t even started phase one yet, but phase three, I have 30% of us still working virtually until further notice.

Jill Heineck: [00:13:21] Right. So, from a an experienced perspective and cultural perspective with your teams, they still need to be able to deliver whatever they need to deliver to your customers from that perspective. So, how are you motivating them and continually kind of keeping the energy high remotely and being able to still deliver on a high level to your clients?

Wes Moss: [00:13:53] The challenge is that we’re not together. And as humans, we want to be in the same room. And there’s nothing that will ever replace that.

Jill Heineck: [00:14:03] Correct.

Wes Moss: [00:14:03] I would say, being in person, that’s an A plus. Being on Zoom is like a B plus or maybe an A minus, maybe a B plus. It’s a B plus. It’s pretty good. And I don’t think you can build a brand new culture around it, and I think it’s tough to build … I think that it’s easier to maintain a culture via Zoom for, at least, a while than it is to build a culture via Zoom. We got to be together to really build a culture. You’ve got to have holiday parties where somebody maybe made a little bit fool of themselves, and they’ve gotten over it. That’s how you really become close, right? But-

Jill Heineck: [00:14:47] Yeah.

Wes Moss: [00:14:47] But it’s been fine to be able to maintain that. As far as customers are concerned, Zoom has been … I think it’s a really good evolution. It’s not a substitute. It’s an evolution on new communication. I did a client … I never thought I would do this, but I had a group of … I had about 80 clients on a Zoom call just as kind of a test, talking about what we’ve been doing. I do a lot of this via radio and videos where I’ll just send it out and it’s kind of just a message. But this was the first time I’d ever done, hey, I’ve got a bunch of my own clients collectively on the same call. And I’m a little bit nervous about that thinking like, well, are people gonna think, well, you just … now, we’re altogether. Why are we not talking one-on-one money so intimate? Yeah, I just want to talk to you.

Wes Moss: [00:15:41] So, it’s not a substitute for that, but it’s an evolution of saying, “Hey, we can do an update, live update, and everyone together.” And I get so many emails and text messages from clients like, “Thank you for doing that. That was awesome. Let’s just do our next meeting via Zoom anyway when the world returns. I don’t want to drive down to your office. Let’s just do Zoom. I love it.” So, it’s an evolution, Jill, not a substitute. I think that’s a way you can keep your client experience very much up to date and continue the intimacy and that emotional connection. And it’s not a substitution. It’s an evolution in the way we’re doing business and communicate.

Jill Heineck: [00:16:21] I love that. I think that’s incredible. We’re doing the same thing here. I’m not necessarily doing group calls, but it’s been a great way to take a little bit more time to be real clear on what the client is signing, what they’re signing up for. We can talk really intimately without worrying about rushing to get into the car to get into rush hour to leave the office. So, it’s been a really relaxing way to go through everything that the client needs to know. So, I appreciate that so much. And so, when it comes to your listeners, I know you get bombarded with questions, and they just want to know what you think. Have you changed the way in which you are delivering your information? I see you’re doing a few more podcasts now. Are you able to give them everything that you feel like they need? It sounds like your listeners are still very engaged, still really have their ear to the screen. They want to hear what Wes has to say. Are you changing any way that you’re delivering this information?

Wes Moss: [00:17:26] It’s a tricky environment, Jill, because not only is it about the economy. I mean, our job as an investment firm is to help people meet their goals and make sure that their portfolio structure is in a balance. And we are an income-oriented firm. Meaning that what we own for clients are generating income, whether it’s dividends, or interest, or distributions. And that velocity’s still remains. Now, we have changed and upgraded the balance sheet and quality of the type companies that we are owning. We’ve gone a few rungs up the ladder in quality because I think we need to in this particular economic environment.

Wes Moss: [00:18:11] But I think the other thing is when you’re talking about the economy, it’s such a political issue. It’s so polarized politically. So, I’ve had to be really careful about … I mean, I’m not a politician. And I’m not necessarily … I’m not a radio host. I’m not a shock jock to have these … I’m not here to polarize. I’m here to really try to be objective. And I’m always trying to do that. Now, I’ll still get comments on my podcast that, “Oh, because you want to reopen the economy, you’re clearly way right wing radical.” And if I say something here, we should be careful about reopening, I’ll get a message like, “Well, you sound like a liberal.” And just to me, it’s very difficult. It’s impossible today to really totally walk the line in the middle.

Wes Moss: [00:19:00] But listen, my goals, I think as long as you’re aligned objectively with your clients, and you want the same thing. If you’re totally aligned, you want them to meet their goals, my opinions about reopening the economy are, look, the economy needs to be reopened. We don’t want to go into a depression, which I don’t think we will. But if we stay shut down forever, we will. And we’ve got to have some reasonable balance about getting the engine restarted. And I’m not going to shy away from that. I think it’s important because, then, ultimately, companies have to be able to have customers. Ultimately, that flows through to earnings. Ultimately, flows through to stock prices. And that’s-

Jill Heineck: [00:19:42] That’s right.

Wes Moss: [00:19:42] … my vested interest for my clients. And I guess it has become a political issue but, to me, it’s an economic issue.

Jill Heineck: [00:19:52] Well, and your clients look to you for your opinion. Now, again, it’s still your opinion. So, what people perceive to be political is, I guess their problem.

Wes Moss: [00:20:05] This is the world we live in today.

Jill Heineck: [00:20:06] I know.

Wes Moss: [00:20:06] Which is the world we live in today.

Jill Heineck: [00:20:09] Right.

Wes Moss: [00:20:09] So, are you seeing … I mean, I would think, are you … now that we’ve been sequestered for probably, call it seven to eight weeks, let’s call it two months, I don’t know, are people starting to … now that Georgia’s reopening, are people looking in to you and say, “Hey, I’m ready to make or thinking about making a move?” Are you seeing [crosstalk]?

Jill Heineck: [00:20:30] Yes. Our business has exploded in the last four weeks. In the last four weeks, we’ve written six contracts. We have several more in the pipeline right now. It has been incredible, the amount of agreements that we’ve signed to engage our services because part of the reason because of Zoom, we’ve been able to just coordinate it easier and faster. And so, for us, the opposite of what you would think it would be. There’s two more layers to getting contracts solidified. So, I’m going by myself to the property COVID-ready, doing the Facetime walkthrough with the client who’s at home after they’ve already scrutinized online properties, and videos, and whatnot.

Jill Heineck: [00:21:19] And we’re very, very careful. It’s taking a little bit longer. But at the end of the day, it’s not slowing down interest. And so, as we all know, real estate really is the backbone of the American economy. So, as long as people are wanting to buy and sell property, that’s a great thing. But we also know that sector of the economy that’s not working is also going to impact real estate. So, we’re keeping our eyes out, and we are praying, and we’re much like you, very optimistic. So, we are optimistic.

Wes Moss: [00:21:55] I’m very optimistic that we get this right. There have been so much because Georgia was somewhat first to market on reopening. And optically, maybe we didn’t do it in the perfect way by starting with tattoo parlors, right?

Jill Heineck: [00:22:07] Right.

Wes Moss: [00:22:07] But the idea of getting back to work, I’m very much behind and very much in line with. But there’s been so much criticism. There are a couple of different articles that I’ve seen just this week that are bashing the State of Georgia, and there are people that are like rooting against us.

Jill Heineck: [00:22:28] That’s right.

Wes Moss: [00:22:28] And that really bugs me that you can … it really bugs me that you’ve got such polarization. There are folks that are almost they’re scorning us from afar. You’ve got people in the northeast, you’ve got people out west looking at us saying, “You’re irresponsibly reopening.” And I think that what I think is that just because we’re allowed to reopen doesn’t mean everybody does reopen, number one. Number two, just like you’re mentioning, and I think about the … and you hear commercials on our station at WSB Radio, every single one of them is like, “Here’s how we have adapted to do business.”

Jill Heineck: [00:23:10] That’s right.

Wes Moss: [00:23:10] Even roofers are like, “Look, we’re not going to come and shake your hand. We’re going to do this via Facetime. We’ll come and we’ll fix your roof.” Everywhere from roofers to any other industry, they’re trying to figure out how to get back to work safely.

Jill Heineck: [00:23:25] That’s right.

Wes Moss: [00:23:25] And to me, that’s the spirit of entrepreneurs is to adapt to the environment we’re in, not just throw our arms in the air and say, wait. What? We’re gonna have to wait till everything’s perfect again because it never will be. You’ve got to be able adapt to the world that would be, the cards that we are given.

Jill Heineck: [00:23:43] That’s right. That’s right. And I really appreciate your insight and your time today. I continue to be a big fan, and listen, and hope that every time I listen, I glean something that will be able to be applicable to our situation. And I know a lot of our listeners really appreciate your insight. So, I wanted to say, is there anything that you would like to impart on our listeners before you leave? Any piece of advice or tell us where they can find you?

Wes Moss: [00:24:15] Well, one, I would say that I’ve followed Jill Heineck and her team for a long time. And you guys are some of the very best in the business. So, that would be one of my pieces of advice for your listeners.

Jill Heineck: [00:24:25] Thank you.

Wes Moss: [00:24:25] They probably already love you. The second part is that from a financial standpoint, we are, again, available just like anybody else, through Zoom and chat. We have had no business interruption. It’s easier to coordinate today more than ever. And the my thought is, yeah, people can find us at wesmoss.com, which is where we post a lot of our resources and articles about the world we’re living in today to try to keep people informed. And then, you can contact us through that. And I think that that’s a good hub for you to find my firm and the Money Matters team. Our firm name is Capital Investment Advisors. So, you can find our firm through our website, and we still love to chat with folks and see if we can help.

Jill Heineck: [00:25:17] Excellent. Well, I want to thank everyone for listening. I’m proud to share this show with you as these stories prioritize the customer experience as a legitimate business strategy, reminding us that no matter the business that you are in – entertainment, investments, or real estate – the customer experience should always be at the heart of the business.

About Your Host

Jill Heineck is a leading authority on corporate relocations, and is highly sought after for her real estate industry acumen and business insights. As a published author, frequent panelist and keynote speaker, Jill shares her experience and perceptions with people from around the globe.

Jill is a founding partner of Keller Williams Southeast, established in 1999, and the founder and managing partner of Heineck & Co. Her real estate practice specializes in corporate relocations, individual relocations, luxury residential, and commercial properties. Jill’s analytical approach to problem-solving, along with her expert negotiation skills and sophisticated marketing, deliver superior results to her clients. Her winning strategies and tenacious client advocacy have earned her a reputation for excellence among Atlanta’s top producers.

While Jill has received many accolades throughout her career, she is most gratified by the personal testimonials and referrals she receives from her clients. Jill’s unwavering commitment to the customer experience, and her focus on the unique needs of each client, serve as the foundation of her success.

Follow Jill Heineck on LinkedIn.

Decision Vision Episode 63: Should I Buy a Business? – An Interview with Ray Padron, Brightworth

April 30, 2020 by John Ray

Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 63: Should I Buy a Business? - An Interview with Ray Padron, Brightworth

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Decision Vision Episode 63: Should I Buy a Business? – An Interview with Ray Padron, Brightworth

Why buy a business? How do I manage the process of buying a business? How do I prevent an acquisition from destroying the culture of my existing business? Ray Padron speaks from his experience as CEO of Brightworth, an acquisitive private wealth management firm. The host of “Decision Vision” is Mike Blake and the series is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Ray Padron, Brightworth

Brightworth is a boutique private wealth management firm that empowers its clients to focus on what matters most. They do that by helping their clients build, preserve and to make an impact with their wealth.

Their advisers have deep expertise across the financial disciplines with certifications that include the CFA,CPA, CFP and CIMA, JD and CFTA. The major client focus of Brightworth includes the dental industry nationwide, corporate professionals and executives, business exit transition services, and retiring well.

Ray is Brightworth’s Chief Executive Officer, leading strategic and management operations across the firm. In addition, as a Wealth Advisor, he provides comprehensive financial and investment advice to help clients achieve their financial goals and dreams. His experience working with senior executives and business owners and their complex transition and succession strategies helps him guide both Brightworth’s and his clients’ success.

Ray began his financial career with what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers, later working for the Marriott Corporation and then serving as Vice President of Accounting Operations and Financial Reporting for Finalco Group, Inc. In 1986, Ray became a Principal and Senior Vice President of Finance for Capital Associates, Inc., a regional venture capital firm that provided both capital and funding services for portfolio companies.

In 1988, Ray created ARC Financial Services, a financial planning firm that focused on the unique needs of business owners. He later merged that firm with Ron Blue Trust, a national wealth advisory firm, starting their Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md. branches and eventually becoming the Vice President of Practice Areas and Chief Financial Officer at the national headquarters in Atlanta.

Ray is a Certified Public Accountant and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ practitioner. He has completed the Investment Management Consultants Association’s Investment Analyst Program at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and is a Certified Investment Management Analyst^SM. In addition, he is an Accredited Estate Planner^®, a Chartered Life Underwriter and a Chartered Financial Consultant. Ray has been named several times in Atlanta Magazine‘s list of Five Star Wealth Managers*.

Ray is currently on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Chamber of Commerce as well as Junior Achievement of Georgia, the Executive Committee of the Buckhead Coalition, and is past President of CEO Netweavers, a community of CEOs and trusted advisors committed to helping and improving the Atlanta business community. He is also a founding board member of Matchbook Learning, a national non-profit K-12 school management organization focused on a unique blended, competency-based model of learning for struggling schools.

He is an active member of Business Executives for National Security (BENS), a non-profit organization focused on bringing the private sector together with our government partners to apply best business practice solutions to its most difficult national security challenges. In addition, Ray is a past member of the board of directors of the Financial Planning Association of Georgia, and a past chairman and board member of an international faith-based ministry.

Over the years Ray has been a frequent speaker to executives on retirement planning. He has also spoken on operational excellence within the financial planning and wealth management industry.

Ray and his wife, Sharon, have four grown children and ten grandchildren. His hobbies include international travel, golfing with friends, reading and exercise.

For more information, you can visit the Brightworth website or email Ray directly.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owner’s or executive’s perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:39] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I also touch my face, at least, 35 times a day. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; and Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:07] So, we’re talking about a subject that I’m a big fan of. And I’m a big fan of it because I think it’s extremely important, and nobody talks about it. And that is whether you should buy a business. And I say nobody talks about it because I’m in the transactional world, and I do my fair share of M&A, thankfully. And one thing that I’ve noticed is that there are plenty of seminars around that will talk about how you should sell your business and why. And there’s some that will even talk to you about succession planning, how do you transition at your business to a succeeding generation?

Mike Blake: [00:01:54] And I think those two subjects get covered a lot, quite frankly, because I think that’s where the most money is made. There’s a lot of money to be made, certainly, anytime a business sells, or brokerage fees, or legal fees, or accounting fees are, I don’t know, after deal dinner fees. There’s a lot of money on the move that occurs and is set in motion because a business is going to be sold. And that’s usually initiated by the seller. Not always, but usually. And to a lesser extent, that is true for businesses that are in succession. There’s a whole industry now around succession planning. There are organizations that offer some form of accreditation or some source of letters after your name because you’re a really awesome succession planner.

Mike Blake: [00:02:41] But buying a business, it’s really crickets. And even to the point where it’s actually hard to find an investment bank that wants to take on what we call buy side transaction. They don’t want to work for buyers because the perception is that buyers have less of a motivation to buy a business than a seller has to sell a business. And therefore, if you’re working on contingency, it’s a less reliable source of income. But buying a business, I would argue, is just as hard, if not harder than selling a business because the burden of information is on the buyer and it’s going to be in the asset that you buy.

Mike Blake: [00:02:41] So, Warren Buffett is famous for saying that “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” And if you do things right, you hope that value is, at least, equal to or maybe greater than the price. But the seller walks away with money, and they know what money is worth. But the buyer, they may not understand exactly what they’ve bought for a year or two or more after they’ve bought the business. And so, this is a rich topic for discussion. This can be one of these things. I may ask our guest to come back for a second part because I can just see right now that we’re going to cover a lot of ground and leave ground uncovered.

Mike Blake: [00:04:11] So, with that having been said, I would like to introduce you to my friend Ray Padron, who is Chief Executive Officer of Brightworth, a boutique private wealth management firm headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1997, they empower their clients to focus on what matters most. They do that by helping their clients build, preserve and make an impact on their wealth. Today, Brightworth has over 1400 individuals and families across the US, whom they helped build, preserve and be generous with their wealth, which is currently, according to their website, about $4 billion under management, letting them spend more time on the things that truly matter to them.

Mike Blake: [00:04:48] From the beginning, Brightworth built their firm to align their interests with those their clients that they’re always on the same side of the table with those they serve. A critical way in which they accomplish this is by being fee-only, selling no proprietary products and refusing to let compensation influence the guidance Brightworth provides to its clients. That’s important. Fee-based advisors are hard to find. Fee-based advisors who are good are very hard to find. That is not a usual model. So, pay attention to that.

Mike Blake: [00:05:16] They’re a team of over 50 professionals in Atlanta and Charlotte who are dedicated to providing independent and objective advice, taking care of their clients in the same manner they would want their own parents taken care of provide. By providing outstanding depth of expertise, the uniquely personal approach, they continue to create lasting relationships with clients to help build their financial future with confidence. Ray Padron, thank you for coming on the program.

Ray Padron: [00:05:40] Mike, it is a pleasure to be here. I’m glad you and I are getting to spend time together.

Mike Blake: [00:05:45] So, you’re now CEO and grand poobah of Brightworth. I know you’re a co-founder, but have you always been the CEO?

Ray Padron: [00:05:54] No. Actually, I took over the CEO position in 2014.

Mike Blake: [00:05:59] And in that time, how many acquisitions have you led Brightworth either through or maybe better yet into?

Ray Padron: [00:06:06] Sure. We actually have done three. And it was a very fortuitous. We had a chance to do a very small transaction first, which helped us sort of learn the ropes of integrating an individual practice into our firm. Then, the next transaction, which was probably within 12-18 months of that, it was sort of a team that was rolling out of another firm, they wanted to leave, and we brought them into our firm. A little more complicated. There was a lot more client work to do, paperwork, more conversations with the exiting that was taking place, et cetera. And then, there was a very large transaction we did, which doubled the size of the firm in 2017.

Mike Blake: [00:06:49] So, I’d like to talk about that one because it was clearly so material and so important. Why did you want to make that big an acquisition? Were you nervous about making that big an acquisition?

Ray Padron: [00:07:02] Right. Two questions. Yes, we were nervous, but the big reason for doing the acquisition was we decided we needed to actually have a a non-organic growth strategy. We’re in an industry, the wealth management industry is not actually that old, particularly the fee-only practice. So, when you look at what’s happening in our industry, there is issues around succession planning. We have literally hundreds, if not thousands of firms that are struggling with their own succession plans. All the first-generation owners who’ve created this business now were in what we would call a succession trap. They can’t sell their practice or their businesses to the next generation. It’s too late. It’s worth too much. And what’s happening is there’s this huge amount of consolidation that’s actually taking place because they have to do something.

Ray Padron: [00:07:54] At the same time, we’ve got private equity firms that are in large banks like Goldman Sachs that are buying up RIAs because they’re seeing changes in their own industry. So, there’s a lot taking place because the industry’s matured to the place it is. So, our choices are stick with organic growth or to do things that put us in the better position for the future. The future of this industry, there’ll be a handful of national firms. There’ll also be maybe 5 to 10 regional firms. And our decision six years ago was we want to be a regional firm. Let’s work towards that. And then, we can go from there. So, from a strategic standpoint, we needed to to do something and we needed to learn our way there. So, that’s pretty much the motivation for why we wanted to do an organic growth.

Mike Blake: [00:08:45] So, I like that distinction. That’s important kind of vocabulary point, organic growth versus inorganic. For our listeners who may not necessarily know that, organic growth simply means growth that you drive on your own by either expanding revenue from existing clients or adding new clients to your portfolio.

Ray Padron: [00:09:02] Exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:09:03] Right? So, I infer something. I wanna clarify. I wanna make sure I’m not assuming, but I infer from what you just said that you had a concern that if you did not acquire to become larger, you are at risk of potentially being acquired and maybe not under the best circumstances that you would like.

Ray Padron: [00:09:26] Sure. That’s exactly right. We actually had made the decision to work on our own succession plan 13 years ago. I was only 50 years old at the time. I was the oldest partner. So, we started our transition and our strategy for our own internal succession plan well in advance. We’re now at a point where the next generation, and we’re almost into third generation owners, own more of the firm than the original founders do. In fact, two of the founders are already gone. And the other two, myself included, will probably be gone in the next five to seven years. So, we’ve taken care of our part. Now, the question is, what do we want to become? And with all the consolidation taking place, it really is we wanted to be the masters of our own destiny. We’ve sold all our own succession plan. We should be able to survive all the changes that are taking place in the industry.

Mike Blake: [00:10:18] So, this big acquisition that you did in 2017, it’s hard to imagine. It’s three years ago now. How long did that take?

Ray Padron: [00:10:27] Longer than I anticipated. There was a really interesting process. We actually had met several years before that. They were interested in their own succession plan, wanted to meet with us to understand how we had done ours, and approached one private equity firm, in particular, to help them do that. After, I think, working with them for 18 months realized there wasn’t enough time, and they came back to us and said, “Would you be interested? We really like you. Why not consolidate the two firms?” And that was a great opportunity for us.

Mike Blake: [00:11:04] So, you said that the acquisition took longer than than expected. What knock-on effects did that have on other aspects of your business or maybe the acquisition itself? How did that change the tenor?

Ray Padron: [00:11:19] Sure. And I didn’t really s answer the last question well in a sense of why did it take so long. But there are a couple of things that had to take place. You have this whole LOI, which is our first time we actually did something as formal as sending out an LOI. You start doing some due diligence, and you realize, “You know what? The way we structured the LOI, some of the provisions really did need to change.” And one of those was there was a follow-on transaction that we felt was really important. There were two parts to the transaction. There was the investment, the registered investment advisor. And then, there was a planning firm. And there was issues with the planning firm. We realized we needed more than just a — what would you call it? An option. We needed an actual drop-dead date where we would actually be able to do something.

Ray Padron: [00:12:09] So, anyways, that process required us to sort of renegotiate from the LOI a different transaction. And that really is the reason why it stretched out. The cascading consequences of that are both positive in a sense for us and negative. The negatives, as I’m sure everybody can imagine, the longer you take, it’s like a death march. The more time people have to think of things, they want answers that I’m trying to explain to them, we’re going to answer those things on the other side of the transaction. So, where there are blanks in in people’s minds, they filled it with usually negative things. So, it’s this constant grind of trying to solve things and ghosts, I call it, that they think exist that just aren’t there. So, those are the negative things. The positive things where the firm actually grew during all that time, the firm we were buying. So, our initial upfront cost relative to the revenue we’re buying ended up becoming much lower.

Mike Blake: [00:13:10] Now, that’s interesting. And that speaks to the fact that on the sell side, they ran their process well because the more frequent outcome you see as that the firm stagnates or even declines in the sale process because selling a firm, and as I think you discover, buying a firm becomes a full-time job in and of itself. And so, frequently, the very asset you’re targeting can be neglected. If it’s not run well, if it hasn’t scaled well, it’s not as valuable an asset at the end of the process as it was when you started, but you encountered the reverse phenomenon.

Ray Padron: [00:13:42] Yeah. Good point.

Mike Blake: [00:13:43] And that must have given you, then, a lot of confidence. You found the right partner. You are doing the right thing.

Ray Padron: [00:13:48] Yeah, they’re a very focused business. They’re focused on the dental industry. So, they were able to continue to—what’s the word? Kind of run their flywheel. And they have this great marketing engine, which is one of the things that absolutely attracted us to the acquisition. And that marketing engine just kept working.

Mike Blake: [00:14:08] So, actually, I want to I want to touch on that ’cause something you led off with and now are coming back to, I think, is a very important instructive point, which is you didn’t buy a business for the hell of it. You bought a business because you had a specific objective that you wanted to meet with buying one or more businesses, right?

Ray Padron: [00:14:30] Correct.

Mike Blake: [00:14:30] And presumably then, you are prepared and perhaps did walk away from potential targets that we’re not going to help you meet that objective.

Ray Padron: [00:14:38] Correct.

Mike Blake: [00:14:38] Right? So, a there’s a deliberate process. And I think that’s important because— actually, what I’m going to back out, I’m assuming some of that may not be true. Do you, on occasion, receive unsolicited offers? Some firms or brokers say, “Hey, this this thing’s available. Would you like to buy it?”

Ray Padron: [00:14:54] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:14:55] And most the time you say?

Ray Padron: [00:14:57] No.

Mike Blake: [00:14:57] Why?

Ray Padron: [00:14:58] Well, there’s some very specific things that we’re looking for. One is we love the idea of there being a succession trap because, usually, that means we can get this at a decent price. But there has got to be a whole host of things that have to be behind that to make it work. You got to have talent. There’s got to be a set of hungry next generation people who’ve been waiting for something to happen, so they can take over this business. I can’t just ask somebody from Atlanta to move up to Charlotte to run the firm.

Ray Padron: [00:15:31] So, we were looking for several things. One is a strategic location. If I get an offer to buy a firm in some small town in Alabama, I’m not interested in that. So, Charlotte was a strategic location. You’re looking for a strategic talent – the credible talent and group of next-generation people that were ready to take over the business. And then, I’m trying to think of what the third thing was. Oh, a strategic market. So, our Atlanta business is very focused on corporate executives and professionals, as well as with business owners. Having a business up in Charlotte that’s entirely focused on the dental industry nationwide was a really cool and very unusual. You, usually, don’t see that in our industry.

Mike Blake: [00:16:13] And we had another guest on, Rod Burkert, who talked about the need to specialize. This is not really in our script, but I sort of have to ask you, do you feel that specialization has been a benefit?

Ray Padron: [00:16:24] Absolutely. People want to work with people who know their business and the phase of life that they’re in.

Mike Blake: [00:16:32] Yeah. And I think clients appreciate not having to educate their advisors-.

Ray Padron: [00:16:39] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:16:39] … about their business. And being a generalist, it’s hard to sort of defend to a client that says, “Hey, should I get somebody that’s done one of these before or not?” No, you don’t need someone who’s done one of these before. Your business is any old business.

Ray Padron: [00:16:58] Right, exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:16:58] I’ve never been able to really figure how to carry that conversation and not sound dumb doing it. If there’s a way, please send something into info@decisionvision.com, whatever the hell our email is. Help me figure out how to do that.

Ray Padron: [00:17:11] Really.

Mike Blake: [00:17:14] So, this opportunity came about because you had some kind of relationship, and there was sort of a slow-burn conversation. Let’s just sort of dip your toe in, and I think sort of gradually weighed in. Is that fair?

Ray Padron: [00:17:25] Yeah, that’s fair statement.

Mike Blake: [00:17:27] So, at some point, you then flipped the switch from conversation to real negotiation discussion. You touched on this before, but I want to really dive into this. What was your due diligence process like?

Ray Padron: [00:17:40] So, the due diligence process actually went incredibly well. There are several reasons. The individuals we were dealing with, some of them actually were attorneys. And so, they had a really good understanding of some of the things we were going to be asking for. We also had a private equity firm, our financing arm, if I may, that was helping us do the acquisition, had done literally dozens and dozens of these in this space. So, we really knew exactly sort of what to ask for, and how to build out the data room, and et cetera. So, that process actually went really well and smoothly. We have a full-time compliance officer who knows exactly, again, what we need to be doing and looking for. So, it was a pretty smooth process. It didn’t take very long.

Mike Blake: [00:18:27] How long did it take? Do you recall?

Ray Padron: [00:18:29] It’s about 30 to 45 days.

Mike Blake: [00:18:31] Okay. That’s a well-run due diligence process, which I’m sure your buyer— I’m sorry, your seller appreciated.

Ray Padron: [00:18:37] Yeah, it was.

Mike Blake: [00:18:38] Because a seller, when I advise sellers, I tell them to be prepared for a 90-day, sometimes even 120-day due diligence. And that gets them to the death march things you talk about.

Ray Padron: [00:18:48] Exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:18:48] Everybody’s happy and cheerful for the first two weeks of questions. And then, after that, it’s, “Oh, God. I got to do this again,” right?

Ray Padron: [00:18:55] Yeah, yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:18:56] I can’t imagine what it’s like by day 100. You just want to chuck everything and say, “You know what, I’m just gonna sell this to the government.”

Ray Padron: [00:19:03] It’s funny, and I mentioned it earlier, there were these two parts – the getting the RIA part in the due diligence done. Really, we had that done all in 90 days, including the purchase agreement. It was renegotiating the aspect of the LOI that required the acquisition of the other part that took us another 12 months. It was that, which where we had the death march.

Mike Blake: [00:19:26] Now, what’s interesting in the due diligence too is that in your world, you’re a highly regulated industry.

Ray Padron: [00:19:26] Very, very very.

Mike Blake: [00:19:36] And one in which potential liability and, frankly, disaster is lurking around every corner. And as you said, you have a compliance officer, all RAs either have an internal or outsource compliance officer. You pretty much have to, I think.

Ray Padron: [00:19:51] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:19:55] How afraid were you, concerned were you about finding that or maybe not finding that gremlin under the rug that, all of a sudden, now, it becomes your responsibility? How big a concern is that in your industry?

Ray Padron: [00:20:13] It’s a big concern. Obviously, there’s two things that you do. Well, or maybe three things that you’re doing that kind of help mitigate a lot of that. Obviously, we did an asset purchase. We weren’t buying the stock of the company. So, there’s sort of step one.

Mike Blake: [00:20:28] So, that gives you some level of protection.

Ray Padron: [00:20:30] They actually have compliance files, which they have to have. And if they’ve been recently audited, they’re probably very up to date. So, that gives you another layer of comfort. You’re going to do an audit of their CRM. Well-run firms got every client conversation or every issue sitting in CRM. So, you’re going to do a set of tests through their CRM for, particularly, their larger clients where there might be larger financial exposure. In this case, the firm that we purchased did have one issue with a client. It was disclosed to us right upfront. It wasn’t a big deal. Clients get upset sometimes.

Ray Padron: [00:21:08] And then, the last thing is the clients are required to sign a consent on the transaction. So, we can’t just buy a firm and then the clients go, “Wait a minute” all of a sudden, “Who’s Brightworth?” So, there’s this whole communication process. And the clients actually consent to the transaction. So, there’s another set of affirmations that there’s no problems lurking out there or if they are, they’re going to make a decision not to come.

Mike Blake: [00:21:32] So, that’s interesting. I think I kind of knew that but hadn’t really internalized it. Is a client consent such that they consent to be transitioned over or could a client potentially even hold a transaction?

Ray Padron: [00:21:46] They can’t hold a transaction, but what they can do is isolate what issues are. And effectively, then, they would not sort of consent to moving over, and they can no longer be a client.

Mike Blake: [00:21:57] They can opt out basically.

Ray Padron: [00:21:58] And then, it changes the math of the transaction.

Mike Blake: [00:22:01] Now, I wonder, the way you kind of work through this due diligence process and compliance, I guess I wonder if in a way it’s easier because you can kind of look up with FINRA what kind of actions have been taken, if any sensors, anything like that, that’s gonna be a matter of public record.

Ray Padron: [00:22:18] Exactly. And that’s not just at the firm level but also at each advisor level.

Mike Blake: [00:22:23] Okay.

Ray Padron: [00:22:23] Right. If there’s an action against a specific advisor that maybe they even hired after that issue came up, it’s all gonna be out in the disclosure systems that we check.

Mike Blake: [00:22:34] So, that’s a luxury relative to a lot of other industries-

Ray Padron: [00:22:38] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:22:39] … that the skeletons, they can’t be in a closet or it’s a very easy closet to open.

Ray Padron: [00:22:44] Exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:22:47] So, you’re working through a due diligence process. At what point does your conversation talk turned to pricing terms?

Ray Padron: [00:22:56] Most of the pricing terms were worked out upfront and were in the LOI. We structured it that way. We are basically saying, “We’re going to purchase your revenue at X. And we’ve built out an earn out of whatever, over a five-year period.” And so, most of the pricing was already determined.

Mike Blake: [00:23:14] And how difficult was that? Was there a lot of back and forth? Or did you and the seller find that you had kind of a similar mindset?

Ray Padron: [00:23:22] In this case, it was very similar mindset.

Mike Blake: [00:23:25] In other cases. were there not? Are there cases where you found that a show stopper?

Ray Padron: [00:23:30] No. In the other ones, it was less of an issue because there was much smaller transactions and the multiples were just one time; where this was an earn-out calculation. So, it gets a little bit more complicated. And when you have market volatility like we do today, yesterday anyways, it becomes a much more complex conversation.

Mike Blake: [00:23:51] So, did you do this transaction yourself or did you have a team of advisors helping you with us?

Ray Padron: [00:23:57] Great question. Probably one of my— I call it both a strength and a fault was this one transaction, in particular, I did most of the work from a Brightworth perspective. Now, the good news is I had a private equity firm that specializes in this. So, they were a big part of helping keep things on track, make sure our thinking was clear, and moving the transaction forward.

Mike Blake: [00:24:23] You said you had a private equity firm. In what way? What? How are they involved? Were they a client that’s just sort of helped you along the way or professional contact?

Ray Padron: [00:24:30] No. They’re actually an investor in the transaction. So, it’s a-

Mike Blake: [00:24:33] Oh, I see. Okay.

Ray Padron: [00:24:34] Yeah. They’re just partly a Brightworth private equity purchase of the business.

Mike Blake: [00:24:39] Got it. Okay. So, I didn’t know that out of the transaction. So, it sounds like, I would think initially, my first reaction would be having another seat at the table would make the transaction more complicated, but it sounds like in your case, it also made it easier.

Ray Padron: [00:25:01] Yeah, it absolutely did make it more complicated. Quick funny story. My wife and I have a place in Florida condo. One day where I was working, negotiating with and against the private equity firm on pricing, I was working on the transaction itself, negotiating compensation. I don’t think I got off the phone over a 10-hour period, and I’d walked over five miles just inside my home working through those kinds of issues. So, yeah, it can get really complicated.

Mike Blake: [00:25:36] Now, a lot of people talked about the importance of culture. I’ve known you long enough to know, you are a big culture guy.

Ray Padron: [00:25:44] I am.

Mike Blake: [00:25:44] This is not something that’s just a Harvard Business Review article that you read. This is something that is critical to you. It’s part of who you are and what’s made you successful.

Ray Padron: [00:25:54] Thank you.

Mike Blake: [00:25:54] You are acquiring a large firm. How did you explore culture and get comfortable that an acquisition of that magnitude wasn’t going to blow up what you’d spent the prior 20 years building?

Ray Padron: [00:26:09] Yeah, great question. And probably the biggest concern that you have with your own team when you’re proposing this to your own management committee and your partners, in this case, it was really kind of an interesting process. Step one, and I do this as I’m looking at firms that are out there that I would call targets, they’re what I’d call stealth targets. I’m not using their name. Nobody else in the firm knows. But I actually go to their website, and I’ll sit there and look at the bios of what I would call the next-gen leaders or the senior team that we would probably be buying out. And in this case, when I looked at their website, it was, “Wow! I could take that that bio and that person, lift it out, I could set it right in the Brightworth, and you would know the difference. They’d look and feel just like a Brightworth advisor.” That’s not culture, but it is a big step. You see the things that they’ve done. You see what their hobbies are. You see what’s important to them, their certifications, et cetera. They were definitely felt like Brightworth.

Ray Padron: [00:26:09] The next thing is you’ve got to talk about how they make decisions. How do they govern themselves? That’ll tell you a lot about the leadership. Is it a top-down kind of thing? Is it consensus building? And then, the other part is you actually go in there and you show them, “Here’s how we run our firm. Here’s what we expect from ourselves as human beings working together to get things done for our clients. We want to look as healthy on the inside as we look to our clients on the outside.” And the other thing is you spend time with them. We encourage to do assessments if we can get them to do there. Step one is I share mine, “Here’s my assessments. I want you to see what my profile looks like.” The fact I’m a take charge person and I tend to be a bit spontaneous, et cetera. Those are the things I want them to know about. So, I open the firm up to them. And at the same time, hopefully, allow them to be and feel more open to us. And we kind of learn our way there.

Mike Blake: [00:28:15] I’m glad you say that one. When my firm was acquired by Brady Ware two and a half years ago, I volunteered my profiles because I wanted them to know what they are getting into, and I wanted them to self-select out. And my profile basically says that I am a raving lunatic that is always pushing the edge of stuff, that is a creative type, that doesn’t follow rules, that doesn’t pay attention to administrative detail and doesn’t acknowledge that they’re even important. And basically says that you’re retaining an anarchist.

Ray Padron: [00:28:51] Right.

Mike Blake: [00:28:52] Right? And I thought it was important that they sort of understood what they’re getting into. That when I told them that, I wasn’t just being self-deprecating. I have empirical data that demonstrates that’s the kind of person that I am, so that they understood what they kind of getting into.

Ray Padron: [00:29:10] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:29:10] And I think that’s why our relationship has, although it’s had some bumps, I’ve only threatened to burn the building down twice, it’s had its bumps along the way, I think it survived because we also realized a culture is going to be a threat. And even as one person who was a loud mouth going into 160-person firm can be just as disruptive to culture if you don’t play it correctly-

Ray Padron: [00:29:38] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:29:38] … as a large acquisition.

Ray Padron: [00:29:40] Yeah. If you think about it, you really are. The closer you can get the authenticity or in transparency is the sooner you can get to a win/win. They don’t want to buy trouble, and you don’t want to inherit trouble. And the best thing you can do is lay it out there, and just be clear on what life forward is going to be like.

Mike Blake: [00:29:59] And you don’t want to walk into trouble either.

Ray Padron: [00:30:01] Exactly. The other thing, and I did mention this, that you should look for, and that is turnover. Go back through the last five years and see how much turnover did the firm actually have.

Mike Blake: [00:30:12] And you’re an industry that has some turnover.

Ray Padron: [00:30:14] It really does. In large part because the way these businesses have been built, they tend to be very siloed. Everything’s concentrated at the top. And you have all these young advisors coming up through the ranks who are looking for opportunity. If you don’t bring that to them, which includes ownership, something we solved at Brightworth a long time ago, they get frustrated and leave. And we earn in talent race in our business.

Mike Blake: [00:30:37] Yeah. So, you’re the chief executive officer, but I don’t think you’re a dictator. You didn’t come in wearing a sash or a big hat and frilly shoulder pads or anything like that. So, how did you get your other partners on board? How involved were they? And how did you manage the— I don’t want to say politics. That’s not the right word. But how do you manage the relationship and communication, so that they would be inclined to be a constructive force in the transaction?

Ray Padron: [00:31:11] Sure. Great question. And there’s sort of several parts to this one too. There’s the management committee and the partners. And then, there’s the entire Brightworth team sitting in in Atlanta. So, one of the things we already had was what were our critical success factors in our mergers and acquisitions strategy that we were looking for? Check the boxes, strategic location, strategic talent, a focus in a niche market. Check, check, check. So, all of the basic things were covered.

Ray Padron: [00:31:43] The other part to this is that you have to realize that there’s sort of a— I call it there’s two kinds of people. At Brightworth, I saw two kinds of people. There’s always the wow group, which is, “Wow, this could be amazing and great.” They see the check next to the critical success factors. And then, there’s the other group, which is, “How in the world are we going to pull this off?” And you really have to take your time with the hows because they’re going to have a billion questions sitting in their head about, “How is that going to work from a compliance? How is that going to work from an investment standpoint? How are you going to integrate all this?” There’s all these millions of questions. And I’m an influencer. I am a very positive person. And at the same time, I have to be patient. You’ve got to bring them along. You’ve got to give them the time to process these things. And partly, you’ve also got to say, “Well, you’ve got to have a little bit of faith here.”

Ray Padron: [00:32:39] I had a great question at a staff meeting when I announced that we were pursuing this large acquisition. A gentleman in the group, he was one of our planners, said, “What makes us think we can pull this off? Like, what makes you think we can actually do this?” And the fact of the matter is I didn’t know we could do this. I can’t prove to them that we can do this. But I looked around the room, I said, “Look, we’re one of the few firms who’ve invested a lot in our next-generation leaders. They’ve done an amazing job over the last 10 years of moving from where they were to where we are now. We’re at the right place in our maturing as a company to go find out. I don’t know if we’re riding a 5-speed bike, a 10-speed bike, or an 18-speed bike. But the only way we’re gonna find out is to attack the hill, and let’s go see.” And that really won a lot of people over.

Mike Blake: [00:33:30] Interesting that you bring up, and not just bring up but that you involved your employees. I think that’s an unusual step to take. I think when most executives pursue a material transaction, buy or sell side, they try to keep that a very closed discussion with a very tight inner circle, I think, primarily, because they’re afraid of causing fear and uncertainty.

Ray Padron: [00:33:58] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:33:58] Right? Although, I think that tends to backfire. We’re kind of seeing now with the coronavirus thing, the more that you try to cover up, all that does, it makes people’s imaginations become more active.

Ray Padron: [00:34:12] Yep.

Mike Blake: [00:34:12] Right? So, it hurts in the long run. But also, what you did is that you made yourself subject to scrutiny. You put yourself in a position of a public forum where one of of your planners said, “Basically, what makes you so great? Who do you think you are that we can pull off this really successful thing?” and gave you the opportunity to put you in the position of being vulnerable and saying, “Well, I don’t know. But here’s what my faith is based on.”

Ray Padron: [00:34:41] Yeah, exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:34:43] But not all leaders appreciate being questioned right by the “rank and file” of the organization.

Ray Padron: [00:34:50] Sure. Just from a personal philosophical standpoint, I have found that the benefits of having the open conversation and the challenge outweigh the other way, which is don’t tell them anything. And we actually used to have that culture of telling these people very little. I want to have the questions in advance on a card. And that’s just not my style.

Mike Blake: [00:35:18] Well, I think you get buy-in. We just recorded a podcast with another individual talking about CPA firm relationships, and what he said was that the most disruptive thing to a CPA relationship is a surprise, a material surprise. Very few things are more surprising than an e-mail at 8:30 in the morning on a Monday saying, “Hey, we just acquired a firm equal our size in Charlotte. More to come.”

Ray Padron: [00:35:46] Right. Yeah, exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:35:48] Is that really helping you retain people? And B-.

Ray Padron: [00:35:52] No.

Mike Blake: [00:35:52] And [B], have people be more comfortable with the transaction than if you’ve kind of at least said some information along the line?

Ray Padron: [00:35:59] Exactly. Exactly.

Mike Blake: [00:36:02] So, you made this acquisition in ’17. You’ve had a few years to step back. How has it change your firm?

Ray Padron: [00:36:09] Okay We have not stepped back. That’s the funny part.

Mike Blake: [00:36:12] Okay.

Ray Padron: [00:36:12] All the work starts. You get that signature, you cut a check, and now you’ve got a lot of work to do. And we went from, like I said, with effectively, what were we? We were about 25 people. They were 16. We’re now 80 people. It was a big giant step for our firm. So, we had an awful lot of infrastructure we needed to build out while we were integrating. So, at the time that we did the acquisition, I was effectively CEO, CFO and COO. Well, that couldn’t last very long. So, over the last two years, we’ve spent time building out the infrastructure. We now have a chief operating officer, a chief financial officer, people officer. I’m trying to think what else, but we’ve built in the matrix management between the two offices, so that it’s really clear where all the planners actually report to. And it’s taken an awful lot of time and effort.

Ray Padron: [00:37:13] We’ve answered all the questions that I tried to push off until the other side of that the transaction, and that’s worked out really well. We follow through with our promise, which was we told them, “Look, we realized you’re the same size as us pretty much.” We had more infrastructure built out than they did, but we told them, “We will figure this out together.” I’m sure that was a Jimmy Carter ‘Please trust me” kind of a comment but we follow through. We said, “Look, okay, let’s go sit down. Let’s start talking about CRM. Let’s talk about our trading software. Let’s talk about where trading should take place.” And we’ve worked through all those things together.

Ray Padron: [00:37:51] Now, that’s going to be a lot harder on the next one because we’ve made a lot of decisions about how we’re going to organize ourselves, et cetera. So, the next one won’t be as— what’s the word? Together, if I may. It’s going to be-.

Mike Blake: [00:38:03] Quite as collaborative.

Ray Padron: [00:38:06] Thank you. We’ll be quite as collaborative. It’s got to be more our way than the highway or whatever, but we’ll still take the best. Like if we find another firm that’s of substantial size, and they’re doing something we really like, I think the pain of change now is going to be way better than just trying to force people into a system that’s not as good. So, we’ll make changes. It just won’t be as many changes as we’ve done this time.

Mike Blake: [00:38:34] So, you sound like you’re happy with the results of the acquisition.

Ray Padron: [00:38:37] Yeah. Great team. I love our partners. I can’t tell you how many times they’ve come up to me and said, “Man, we are so glad that we’re part of Brightworth now.” And from that standpoint, people’s standpoint, I could not ask for a better decision. Their firm, if I may, their part has grown by leaps and bounds. And so, everything’s working out. But it’s, again, really hard work. There are periods of time where they probably feel like, “We’re starting to feel like the stepchild,” and it means I’m not spending enough time up there or we’re not putting the right resources there. And we’re working through how to do all of that.

Ray Padron: [00:38:37] Our decision making around hiring, for example, is a little bit more driven around real calculations of what capacity is across the organization. Theirs was a little more by the— I’m not going to use the word seat of the pants, but hey, we’re feeling really busy. I think we need to hire somebody. So, now, we’re bringing structure around all that. They’re not used to that. And we’re learning a lot of things from them. So, it’s been a lot of, I would say, really a win/win from that standpoint.

Mike Blake: [00:39:43] Are you finding that your offices still have slightly different cultures? And maybe that’s a good thing.

Ray Padron: [00:39:49] Sure. And part of that is their service model is a little different. It needs to be. We’re very, obviously, Atlanta-centric. We, obviously, have clients all over the country. Those larger clients, we go fly to. And the Atlanta clients, they just kind of drive to the office. Well, their space, the dentists are all over the country. They actually have the dentists fly into Charlotte. So, the dentist will come in, come to the building. It’s almost like a Mayo Clinic structure. They’ll meet with the attorney. They meet with the transition’s person, the TPA, the CPA, and they meet with us. So, there are some cultural differences but we really are merging the cultures, and that’s working really well. We have very defined sort of terms and accountability around our culture. So, there are a lot of things and behaviors we don’t tolerate, and we’d make sure we jump on those. So, we’re seeing it really come together.

Mike Blake: [00:40:43] I don’t know if this is either here or there but I feel compelled to add in. Microphone’s turned on, so I’m just going to say it. But we were the result of the acquisition of Brady Ware and several firms, including two in the Atlanta area that became the Atlanta office. And our Atlanta office does have a different culture, I think, than the rest of the firm. And I think that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing for me because I do believe that our office is a little bit more entrepreneurial. We do feel like we’re kind of the rebels a little bit, and we’re not afraid to kind of do skunkworks kind of stuff and put things in place that we know are going to hurt the rest of the firm, but we just don’t feel like we got to wait for everybody to catch up to realize how brilliant we are and that we’re right. And we think that if we set a good enough example, the rest of firm will come along.

Ray Padron: [00:41:35] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:41:36] Personally, our headquarters are in Dayton, Ohio. I don’t know that I would thrive in our headquarter office because it is the central office. It is the core of the firm. They are accountants. There’s nothing wrong with accountants. I worked for an accounting firm but it’s much more of a by-the-numbers kind of place.

Ray Padron: [00:42:00] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:42:00] And so, personally speaking, having another location of the firm that is willing to be a little bit different where I can be a better fit, for me, has been a huge benefit. And I actually think it benefits our firm.

Ray Padron: [00:42:15] Sure. And I think that’s a really good thing. And I would think every organization, and this is even true around operational issues, which is what are things that have to be absolute, and what are the things where we have some flexibility around? And part of that is also culture and how people operate. But there are also some boundaries where things are just plain not acceptable. And we think those boundaries are really also important to enforce and make sure that there are no exceptions, particularly at the partner level. If we let the partners live in the exception area, the staff will never follow. So, they have to see that at the partner level. And we’ve actually had issues around that, and we’ve dealt with them. And that really speaks volumes to the team.

Mike Blake: [00:43:03] So, you’ve been through a couple of these. And thank you again so much for spending all this time with us and sharing your experience. If someone listening is thinking about buying a company, if we can distill down to a couple of pieces of advice, couple of bullet points, can you do that? Or are there a couple of pieces of advice you’d just give blanket thinking about buying a business, what do you need to think about?

Ray Padron: [00:43:26] Couple of things. One is we talked about it, it’s the death march. So, it’s almost like preparing for a marathon. You have to mentally say, “Okay. I may get this done in six months, but it also may take a really long time.” And just prepare yourself, which also means linked to neglect. So, you have to prepare. Also, know your team. Who are you going to draw into the process and when? And sort of understand how they’re built, right. Are they a wild type of a person or are they going to be a how type of a person? Knowing that it’s good to have those people were always asking how because they’re the ones you’re going to help you with the due diligence and really ask a lot of good questions. So, know your team, expect a long march.

Ray Padron: [00:44:07] One of the things that really was hard for me was realizing that everything matters to somebody. And I have to realize that, “Even though it may not matter to me, like, yeah, that’s just not an important deal point. Why are we bothering with that?” it matters to somebody in the firm. So, you have to take the time to address it and address it well. So, in a sense, details matter. Everything matters.

Ray Padron: [00:44:31] Know your boundaries. I work a couple of times where I got hooked on some policy that they had that they wanted to keep, and it was an absolute no for Brightworth. But when I really looked at it, it was just not a big deal. And I let it bother me. And I was really ready to just say the heck with it and walk away when the PE firm or our attorney would step in and go, “Ray, it’s just not that big a deal. It’s just small potatoes. We’re talking billions of dollars of assets to manage. Who cares whether you’re going to charge your parents or not for the services you’re doing,” that kind of stuff.

Mike Blake: [00:45:08] You want to charge a $5 million fine for a 50 cent crime.

Ray Padron: [00:45:10] Yeah, right. And then, the other thing is when you’re doing the LOI, again, it was my first time, there’s just an awful lot of cascading consequences of anything that’s in there and you need to think ahead. Like what are the cascading consequences of putting this specific thing in your LOI? I found myself having to cover a lot of areas that I didn’t think about because you’re sort of sold that the LOI is just this general document, you want to put too much detail in it, but sometimes you do. You really want to think ahead. Those are my suggestions.

Mike Blake: [00:45:47] I’m going to use that quote. I may even make it my quote of the day that I do on LinkedIn, “Everything matters to somebody.” That-.

Ray Padron: [00:45:53] Really do.

Mike Blake: [00:45:53] That is profound and insightful.

Ray Padron: [00:45:56] Thank you.

Mike Blake: [00:45:56] At least, to me, it is. I think, to other people, it will be as well. If somebody wants to ask a question about how to buy a business, as somebody who has been through the wars before, can they contact you?

Ray Padron: [00:46:05] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:46:06] How do they do that?

Ray Padron: [00:46:07] Well, there’s always the website. My my email address is ray.padron@brightworth.com. And you can always call our phone number, which is 404-760-9000.

Mike Blake: [00:46:20] That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Ray Padron so much for chair for joining us and sharing his expertise with us today. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune so that when you’re faced with your next executive decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & company. And I’ve just touched my face three more times. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

Jon Wittenberg, Minuteman Press of Sandy Springs

April 2, 2020 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Jon Wittenberg, Minuteman Press of Sandy Springs

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“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 207: Jon Wittenberg, Minuteman Press of Sandy Springs

Jon Wittenburg, owner of Minuteman Press of Sandy Springs, joins “North Fulton Business Radio” to discuss the value of direct mail during these “shelter-in-place” times, how he’s managing the current economic crisis, and much more. The host of “North Fulton Business Radio” is John Ray and the show is produced virtually from North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® in Alpharetta.

Jon Wittenburg, Minuteman Press of Spring Springs

Jon Wittenberg is the Owner of Minuteman Press Sandy Springs. Minuteman Press of Sandy Springs is a full-service professional printing company located in vibrant Sandy Springs, GA. “Full service” is exactly that, offering a full range of products and services for business marketing, from traditional printing like business cards, flyers and brochures, to yard signs, window vinyl and promotional products. While part of an internationally renowned franchise network, Minuteman Press Sandy Springs distinguishes itself from other printing companies by combining best in class products and services with a best in class customer experience. It does things that most other printers don’t do, including asking probing questions to make sure customers get at least what they expect, if not more, and double checking proofs before going to production. Little things can make all the difference when image matters!

To contact Jon and his team at Minuteman Press Sandy Springs, go to https://www.sandysprings.minutemanpress.com/ or call (678) 691-9100.

Questions and Topics in this Interview:

Direct mail
Jon’s message to clients on the current economic turmoil
small businesses helping each other

Jon’s Message to His Clients on the Current Economic Turmoil

(reproduced from his website)

I realize that I am breaking the rules by being long-winded, but these are not ordinary times and I beg your indulgence. I sincerely hope this message finds you healthy and safe. Minuteman Press Sandy Springs is still open because the printing industry has been deemed essential to other operations that have been deemed essential by the federal government, for example, the U.S. Postal Service. We are operating responsibly: washing hands frequently, respecting social distancing, cleaning common spaces more frequently, and so on. We are here to serve you as the need arises.

As I prepare to send this message as an email and a post on social media, I suspect that most of you are at home reading this. You are still getting mail from the post office, maybe even looking forward to it more than ever, just because it is something to read that is not on a computer screen or smart phone. It seems to me that I should send something like this out via the postal service but perhaps with a twist to add some entertainment value to it. Besides, a lot of emails, as you know first-hand, don’t get read – or don’t get read past the first few lines. Studies show that direct mail is different, that if the message is compelling it will get read, and if it strikes a chord, it will get kept. If we have a valid mailing address for you, you’ll “see” from us in a few days.

My father, God rest his soul, was a Podiatrist in Augusta, GA for over 60 years, practicing into his late 80’s. He believed in helping others, regardless of social standing or skin color, whether they had the means to pay, it didn’t matter. I had the good fortune to work for him as a lab technician as a teen. Though I wanted to follow in his footsteps, there was one slight problem: I didn’t have the “science genes” in me. So, I did the next best thing – Accounting. I promised him I would pass the CPA exam even though joining a CPA firm wasn’t an aspiration. I passed the exam because it was a promise I wanted to keep but was quite satisfied working in a corporate accounting or finance position in the wireless industry. Then came mergers and more mergers and ultimately, I became a corporate refugee looking for the next adventure. For a couple of years, I worked as a solopreneur preparing lots of income tax returns and a few sets of books for small businesses. Nine years ago, I started looking for something different, ventured into a Minuteman Press franchise, and here I sit, wondering how I can help our clients and customers get through an unprecedented business “red flag” (to coin an auto racing term) while preparing for the restart that is sure to come.

Another trait I took from my father was ethics. He believed strongly in doing the right things for the right reasons all the time. That is why I have been conflicted with the idea of staying open for business, because my staff and I are going to work while so many others are unable to be at work. However, government believes we should be at work so we are. We would like to help you with communications, whether it is by your reaching out to provide a status to your customers or preparing them for what’s ahead when the crisis ends. Maybe you need more signage inside and outside of your building. Maybe, like us, you think hand sanitizer will make a useful promo product going forward.

We will not take advantage of the situation; like you, whether a fellow business owner or a valued employee of a business, we are in survival mode. If we can keep the presses running, or work with our signage partners to keep their machines going, that is what we hope to do. Most of you know that I operate my shop unlike most other print shops: we practice what we preach when it comes to quality by insisting on “2 sets of eyes” when proofing artwork, and not cutting corners when it comes to the finished product. That process takes a bit longer and costs us more to produce; that’s why we don’t have frequent sales or discounts to drive volume (We do believe in the benefits of membership in local chambers of commerce so we offer a 10% member benefit for members of the chambers we belong to.). If you want to bounce some ideas off us, or want our help to come up with ideas for marketing now or the future, please don’t hesitate to call or email us. We are still baking cookies (still yummy despite my doing the baking) and making deliveries. During this unprecedented situation, we will help you by reducing our prices significantly because you will be helping us keep the presses running and keeping a small staff of dedicated workers on the payroll. Speaking of small staff, I have made some recent adjustments, two through attrition. Zach and Arona voluntarily left 4 and 2 weeks ago, respectively, both leaving for excellent opportunities elsewhere. I could not be happier for them, but as two nice people who excelled at their work, they will be missed. Jennifer is no longer here and will be replaced as business conditions improve. She too will be missed.

Times like these call for outside the box thinking. Kyle, Ty and I want to help any way we can. Please let us know if we can help you. Be well. We all look forward to better times ahead.

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

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

Decision Vision Episode 57, How Do I Secure Data for Work at Home Employees? – An Interview with Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson, and Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors

March 26, 2020 by John Ray

Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 57, How Do I Secure Data for Work at Home Employees? - An Interview with Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson, and Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors

00:00 /

Decision Vision Episode 57, How Do I Secure Data for Work at Home Employees? – An Interview with Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson, and Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors

Millions of employees are now working at home because of coronavirus-related “shelter in place” directives, creating a data security problem for many employers. Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson, and Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors, address this problem in the latest edition of “Decision Vision.” This series is hosted by Mike Blake and presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson

Justin Daniels, Baker Donelson, provides corporate advice to growth-oriented and middle market domestic and international businesses. He is also a cybersecurity thought leader who believes cybersecurity is a strategic business enterprise risk.

His corporate practice consists of representing businesses and business owners in all aspects of their growth cycle, from structuring new ventures, raising capital and advising on acquisitions and divestitures to reviewing and negotiating key vendor, franchise, employment and customer contracts.

Justin specifically advises on cyber business and legal issues that impact every aspect of a company from mergers and acquisitions, investment capital transactions and related due diligence matters, vendor and customer contracts and cyber insurance. He runs tabletop exercises to help companies practice and identity opportunities to improve their cyber incident response plan. He also has a strong background in blockchain technology as he represents one of the largest cryptocurrency mining facilities in the country. He has particular experience in helping clients navigate how the blockchain might apply to a specific use case and the potential business and legal issues arising from it.

Justin has taken a leadership role in Georgia’s cybersecurity industry. In 2017, he founded and led the inaugural Atlanta Cyber Week, where multiple organizations held 11 events that attracted more than 1,000 attendees. Atlanta Cyber Week created business opportunities between growth cyber companies and Atlanta’s middle market and Fortune 1,000 customer base while also burnishing the reputation of Atlanta’s regional cybersecurity ecosystem. At the end of Atlanta Cyber Week 2017, he gave a Ted Talk entitled “Why You Hold the Key to Cybersecurity.” In March 2015, he traveled with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and a 36-member delegation on a Georgia cybersecurity mission to the state of Israel to promote the Atlanta regional cybersecurity ecosystem. He has also given presentations about Atlanta’s cybersecurity ecosystem and U.S. privacy laws as part of his travels to London and Manchester surrounding the InfoSec cybersecurity conference in 2016 and 2017.

You can connect with Justin on LinkedIn, or email him directly.

Jodi Daniels, Red Clover Advisors

Jodi Daniels is the Founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors. She is a Certified Informational Privacy Professional (CIPP/US) with more than 20 years of experience helping a range of businesses from solopreneurs to multi-national companies in privacy, marketing, strategy, and finance roles. During her corporate career, she proved a valuable asset to companies like Deloitte, The Home Depot, Cox Enterprises, Bank of America where she most recently served as the privacy partner for Digital Banking and Digital Marketing. Ms. Daniels started her privacy career by creating the comprehensive privacy program at Cox Automotive. She launched an online advertising network for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book.

Since launching in 2017, Red Clover Advisors has helped hundreds of companies create privacy programs, achieve GDPR, CCPA, and US privacy law compliance, and establish a secure online data strategy their customers can count on. Jodi makes privacy easy to understand by breaking it down into measurable steps using plain language her clients can relate to. She passionately supports the idea that privacy is more than just compliance and concern over fines. It’s a human right we all deserve. She has made it her mission to help businesses build trust and transparency with this core value at its foundation.

Jodi holds a Masters of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in Accounting from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. She lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband, two little girls, and a big fluffy dog named Basil.

You can connect with Jodi on LinkedIn, or email her directly.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company

Decision Vision Podcast Series

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Mike Blake: [00:00:00] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the processes of decision making on a different topic from a business owner’s or executive’s perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:19] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast, which is being recorded in Atlanta per social distancing protocols. If you like this podcast, please subscribe to your favorite podcast aggregator and please consider leaving or review the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:00:44] This is a first in a sub-series of topics regarding how to address the coronavirus crisis. And I think we’re gonna have a few of these podcasts that we’re going to record before everything is said and done. But this is our initial attempt at this, and we’ll see how it goes. But I think that it should go pretty well. And specifically, we’re going to talk about data security.

Mike Blake: [00:01:07] Now, in episode 15, we had Charles Hoff come on to talk generally about data security practices and procedures. But now, we are faced with an unprecedented data security challenge. We’ve all been basically told to take our balls, and go home, and don’t come back until somebody else gives us the all clear. Now, for a lot of us, like myself, this is a good thing. It means that we don’t have to not be working at all. We can work from home, but it does present some novel challenges that, frankly, I don’t think a lot of us ever thought we would ever wind up having to face – certainly not on the scale. And as we always do for our podcasts, I bring in the best experts that I can find for this because I don’t know anything about this. All I know is to ask a few questions and we’ll let the experts talk.

Mike Blake: [00:01:59] So, joining us today are Justin and Jodi Daniels. Justin is a partner with Baker Donelson, which is the 64th largest firm in the US, giving their clients access to a team of more than 700 attorneys and public policy advisors, representing more than 30 practice areas, all seamlessly connected across 21 offices to serve virtually any legal and policy needs. Baker Donelson provides their clients a global network of global counsel and other professionals and to help their clients take advantage of global opportunities in more than 90 countries spanning six continents.

Mike Blake: [00:02:30] Justin’s corporate practice consists of representing middle-market and emerging growth businesses and business owners in all aspects of their growth cycle from structuring new ventures, raising capital, and advising on acquisitions and divestitures, to reviewing and negotiating key vendor franchise employment and customer contracts. Justin specifically advises businesses on cyber business and legal issues that pertain to mergers and acquisitions, investment capital transactions, and related due diligence matters, vendor customer contracts, information security plans, and cyber insurance. His representation of one of the largest crypto mining facilities in the country has provided him with a strong background in blockchain technology. This experience has been especially relevant in helping clients navigate how the blockchain might apply to a specific use case and the potential business and legal issues arising from it. He is also co-founder of Baker Donelson’s Cybersecurity Accelerator.

Mike Blake: [00:03:22] Jodi Daniels as founder and CEO of Red Clover Advisors. Since launching in 2017, Red Clover Advisors has helped hundreds of companies create privacy programs, achieve GDPR, CCPA, and US privacy law compliance -if you want to know what those are, again, go back and listen to Episode 15 – and establish a secure online data strategy their customers can count on. Jodi makes privacy easy to understand by breaking it down into measurable steps using plain language her clients can relate to. She passionately supports the idea that privacy is more than just compliance and concern over fines, it’s a human right we all deserve. She’s made it her mission to help businesses build trust and transparency with this core value at its foundation.

Mike Blake: [00:04:05] Jodi is a certified informational privacy professional with more than 20 years of experience, helping a range of businesses from solopreneurs to multinational companies in privacy, marketing, strategy and finance roles. During her corporate career, she proved a valuable asset to companies like Deloitte, the Home Depot, Cox Enterprises, Bank of America, where she most recently served as a privacy partner for digital banking and digital marketing. Ms. Daniels studied her privacy career by training at the Comprehensive Privacy Program with Cox Automotive. She launched an online advertising network for Auto Trader and Bluebook, Justin and Jodi Daniels, welcome to the program.

Jodi Daniels: [00:04:43] Hi. I’m glad to be here.

Mike Blake: [00:04:45] So, with all that said, you guys know a thing or two, you know a thing or two about security. Before we get started, I just kind of want to dive in to kind of a high level. When everything started hitting the fan about two weeks ago, what were your first thoughts in terms of how this is going to impact and really just sort of change the game in terms of business, privacy, and data security?

Justin Daniels: [00:05:14] So, thanks, Mike. Let me take that one. So, the biggest thing that we identified is pretty much overnight, companies, as you said, told their workforce, “Take your ball, and go home, and work remotely.” So, now, when you take a whole lot of companies who may not have had a significant part of their workforce work remotely and introduce them into this whole new concept of working remotely, a lot of the security challenges that companies were struggling to deal with, just in the workplace, now take on an added focus now that you’ve got all these people who are unfamiliar working at home, who now have to go and work at home and connect remotely to the company server, and all of the potential mischief and mayhem that can present for our trusty cyber criminals who are always out there.

Mike Blake: [00:06:10] So, let me ask this. I’m already going off the script, but I know you can handle it. Do you think as soon as this started happening, cyber criminals around the world, and crime syndicates, and so forth, and even state-sponsored are sort of rubbing their hands in anticipation because of the vulnerabilities here?

Justin Daniels: [00:06:27] I have three words for you. They think of this as target-rich environment. Absolutely, because any kind of dislocation like that, just like you’re advising your clients to think strategically about new ways to do business, a pandemic like this for a cyber-criminals says, “Wow, look at all this dislocation and people working remotely, this is just a great opportunity to commit different and varied types of crimes.” And as we get into this, I’ll share with you some of the things that we’re already seeing, which are cyber threats that are very specific to coronavirus when it comes to phishing and other kinds of things, but absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:07:08] So, now, everybody has gone home. And for, at least, in many cases, they’re working on their personal device in some respect. And they may have been before, but certainly more of them are now. What sort of issues does using your personal device to telework present?

Jodi Daniels: [00:07:25] Sure. And so, you have the teleworking piece, but you also have, a lot of people like us, you have children doing distance learning and virtual learning. And so, it’s very similar scenarios. But you have probably no VPN, maybe the home Wi-Fi doesn’t have a password, or the password is password, or my pet’s name, something very simple that’s really easy to crack. So, if I don’t have a good password or no password, that’s sort of the first line of defense on the Wi-Fi or router. And then, I might not have a VPN, a virtual private network. That’s often been sort of saved for some of the more sophisticated or bigger companies. And again, just an aside, if I was a company and sent everyone home because that’s what we needed to do, I didn’t think about a VPN and how I set that up.

Jodi Daniels: [00:08:15] A lot of people who are now potentially exposing company data fairly easily, the Wi-Fi might be one kind of wall that’s a bad actor has to make it through. A VPN would be a second wall that they’d have to make it through. You also have company information now on a personal device, which presents two interesting things. You have the security challenge. You actually also have a privacy challenge because the privacy laws haven’t gone away. And now, you’ve just exposed further where that personal information is. And you have others in the home who might be seeing it. And maybe someone comes along and, oops, accidentally sends that email that you had and draft that had all this information on it or shared information that they didn’t anticipate doing or a variety of things kind of like that.

Mike Blake: [00:09:10] So, you talk about the Wi-Fi piece. And I wanted to divert into that because I think that’s really important. When I think of Wi-Fi security, I think of going on airport Wi-Fi, Starbucks, whatever. Obviously, a vulnerability. And as you mentioned, that’s a target rich environment because if I’m a hacker, I know there’s 20 people in there that are using them, that are using Wi-Fi. Chances are there’s one computer in there, at least, that’s not secured properly. In a residential environment, what is the crime case there? Have you heard of criminals literally just like is parking outside somebody’s home, or a group of homes, or maybe a multi residential property, and just scanning for open networks and seeing if they can hack in?

Jodi Daniels: [00:09:58] Yeah. Well, if you actually think back to some of the stories you’ve seen on the children’s baby monitors that had Wi-Fi on them and how people were able to hack in. And sort of a nanny cam, people would call. The same idea is true. Those are on Wi-Fi networks. So, you have a couple different things. You have people from around the world who can break into those Wi-Fi networks that don’t necessarily … You know, there’s backdoors into all of this. Certainly, people could park outside my house. My neighbors can break in. We all don’t exactly know who our neighbors are all the time. So, you’re certainly exposing yourself. And the way the digital system works, I don’t necessarily have to be in range to be able to still break in, just like with those nanny cams years ago or ring devices. We’ve seen the developers of certain different Wi-Fi-enabled devices be able to break in and see whatever they want to see on those exposed devices.

Mike Blake: [00:10:53] So, are there any new threats that are being posed by mass teleworking, or do kind of the distribution or the composition of the threats change? Well, I guess what is the threat? How does the threat landscape change now that we’re in this mass remote working environment?

Justin Daniels: [00:11:14] So, Mike, I think the way that it changes is the type of phishing scams that you had before where they try to get to you through work, they’re now going to try to get to you as a remote worker. And let me break this down for you a little bit. So, you’re going to start to get emails that are very specific to coronavirus. And someone shared with me one that said, “Hey, this is from the CDC.com,” or I’m sorry, .gov.org. And the fact that they added on the “.org,” that’s what made it a phishing type of e-mail. So, now think about instead of phishing people at work, you’re now going to phish people at home, and they’d be distracted because they have kids, or trying to get work done, they have a million things on their mind.

Justin Daniels: [00:11:56] Well, let me take a step further for you. And it’s a concept called Identity Access Management. And what that really is, is have companies – because they so quickly get their remote workforce working remotely – did they really think about, “Well, how do I have to limit the access of my employees?” Like, for example, with what you do, Mike, it might be that your company says, ‘You know what? Mike gets access to the network, but there’s probably no reason for him to get access to invoicing or cash management,” because that’s not really your role. But I think what you’re going to find with a lot of these other companies who are just quickly trying to get their employees working remotely, they didn’t think about how to limit the employees’ access to the company network.

Justin Daniels: [00:12:43] So, now, if I phish remotely on someone, not only may I get through their e-mail, I may get access to the entire company network because the company didn’t think through, “Well, maybe I need to limit their access.” And now, they can get to the invoicing, they can get the wiring, they can get this sensitive company IP. So, it’s really a cascading effect because it’s not just the remote working, it’s how did you setup identity access management? How are you putting in layers of defense to help your people who are working remotely? Because just the phish e-mail is just the first step in getting access to a network that they may not have limited appropriately for the different workers because you put several thousand people working remotely, a lot of companies may not have thought about this.

Mike Blake: [00:13:29] I think that’s a really interesting point that you bring up. So, I want to drill back into that. So much of cyber security still relies on the focus of the individual user. And that distraction I face, I have a nine year old that we’re homeschooling now. My wife has her own business. Our situation is not that dissimilar to yours. And it’s different. Even though I work from home a lot, it’s still different. And I have to change my work hours and so forth to make sure I can concentrate. But all it does, and because the nature of cyber threats, all it does is, it takes one wrong clicked email when you’re not 100% focused, and the whole house of cards can come down, right?

Justin Daniels: [00:13:29] That’s it. That’s it.

Mike Blake: [00:14:17] And so, I think a key bullet point, if you’re a remote worker and you’re listening to this podcast or if you’re a manager, one of the things to think about, aside from policies, and software, and hardware – and we will get into that – is also just maintaining concentration and focus because not only are we in a target rich environment but, realistically, for a lot of people, we’re in an environment that encourages mistakes. Sorry. Go ahead.

Jodi Daniels: [00:14:49] I just want to add. I think this environment, also, it’s emotionally charged. People are tired. They’re stressed. We’re all at home hoping we don’t get this disease. We might know others who do. And there’ll also be a fair amount of personal information that might come through our personal emails like, “Please donate to this cause here,” or like the one that Justin just said, “Let’s get more information on the virus here.” And so, when your defenses are down because you’re tired, and you’re trying to do 14 things at the same time, there’s going to be a multitude of different ways of how these actors are going to try and get at you.

Mike Blake: [00:15:33] So, let’s start at the heart of this from the infrastructure-wise. I think we’ll kind of start there and work our way out. Employees are now going to be accessing their servers remotely through the internet, through their home access. It maybe cable. It maybe fibr for some case. It maybe through their mobile device. How does that change the security equation? And how should companies be reacting or addressing that to minimize the security exposure at the infrastructure level?

Justin Daniels: [00:16:09] So, Mike, let’s talk about that. So, when you log on to your network with your business, I suspect you may have something, as Jodi alluded to, what’s called a virtual private network. So, let’s talk a little bit in general business terms what that is. So, that is software that you can put on your computer that creates a secure link between you and your company network using your home internet. But here’s the thing with VPN that’s interesting, is IT infrastructure wasn’t built so that everybody would be connecting via virtual private network.

Justin Daniels: [00:16:54] So, one of the things that companies may face is, one, they may not have sufficient licenses to put everyone on a VPN. But second, and probably just as important, is their network may not have the capacities to sustain the load of almost all of your workforce being remote. So, you may need to put in policies and procedures that say only certain employees have access during certain times because if everybody goes at the same time and is using it at the same time, you’re likely to have a disruption to your network or worse, it could go down. And then, you compound the problem.

Justin Daniels: [00:17:30] So, that’s just from an IT perspective, in addition to the security, because security is part and parcel of how do I keep stuff running because if it’s not secure, and we have a breach, then things don’t really run. But in general, how are you thinking about your IT infrastructure? And I think a lot of people did this because they had to get it done to keep working without thinking through, we’re gonna do this for an indefinite period of time. How do I make sure my IT infrastructure has the capacity to take care of all these people and also do it in a reasonably secure fashion?

Mike Blake: [00:18:05] So, you bring up virtual private network. I want to touch on that too because some people may have virtual private networks already, they may have purchased one because they’re concerned about the abolition of net neutrality. Some people have them because they want to be able to access Star Trek Discovery on Netflix. So, they spoof it into thinking they’re an international subscriber. So, it has been a consumer use case for VPN. Is that the same thing? And if I already have a VPN, does that mean that I’m using that to access those corporate documents or are we talking about two different animals?

Jodi Daniels: [00:18:45] I don’t know that it’s necessarily different. I think if you’re going to use any software on your personal computer to access the company network, your company and their IT professionals should be involved in that because I think one of the things you and I talked about was, should you use your own devices? And I think the answer to that is my company issued me a computer, but that may not be a realistic choice under this time pressure for everyone. So, my answer to you is you might be able to do it, but it’s not something where a company should said, “Hey, Mike, go off in whatever VPN you might have. Just go and use it.” It needs to be more of a concerted, “we’ve engaged with professionals and this is the type of VPN we want you to use. We’re going to give it to you because even though you’re letting employees have their own access, you want to have some level of control.”

Justin Daniels: [00:19:35] And we haven’t even talked about our iPhones. And that’s a whole nother area. And remember, a VPN just deals with the connection from you connecting to your server. It doesn’t really deal with any PII or other sensitive information that may now reside on your phone or your computer, and how that might impact the ransomware attack.

Mike Blake: [00:19:56] Yeah. And we’re definitely going to get to that. So, we’re kind of moving from that access in on out. The licensing issue you bring up is interesting. We phased out at the firm that I used to work for, when we had the Snowmageddon back, I want to say 2014, I think that sort of was. And of course, we’re all home. Once we finally got home, we’re home for about three days while the ice melted. And a lot of us couldn’t get on because we didn’t have enough licenses. We had to start rationing license. Then, we scrambled. But we never foresaw a scenario where 300 people, all of a sudden, would need remote access. And ironically, I think that’s actually made a lot of Atlanta companies better prepared for this, because we had sort of a dress rehearsal back and forth team to do just that.

Mike Blake: [00:20:52] Let me ask this. I know this is an area that you deal with a lot. So, I think your answer is going to be great. And that is, what are the cyber liability policy implications of moving to this mass remote working? When insurers wrote that policy, they thought there’s only a certain amount of remote and a certain amount of onsite. Now, that whole thing’s been disrupted. Are people’s policies being blown up if there is a breach? Are companies still covered?

Justin Daniels: [00:21:23] So, I think the answer to that question, Mike, is you really have to look at your individual policy, because if I’ve learned anything when I’ve been involved in the cyber insurance game is that there is no uniform policy out there like you have with commercial general liability or some of the other more well established type of policies. And so, I think what you’re going to have to do is take a look at the exclusions in your policy because it’s one of the hardest contracts that I have to read. And I hesitate to give you an answer that’s definitive because it’s really policy-dependent.

Justin Daniels: [00:21:58] But what I will say is companies should really be looking at whether or not they have specific, they call it social engineered emails in their coverage because a lot of companies may not realize that they’re not covered for the kinds of increase in what I expect of phishing scams to be, and they may want to look at their insurance and say, “Well, how am I covered for this?” because you probably know this, we’re in kind of the season where insurance is being renewed. And so, this is now a great time to bring up the issue of, “Hey, what is my coverage for socially engineered emails? And what is covered? What isn’t covered? Can I increase my defenses, so that I can get bigger coverage? What is excluded now that I’m more of a remote workforce?

Justin Daniels: [00:22:48] These are questions that should be brought up now because I know we are now in the season for people getting renewals on their insurance, and premiums might be changing on that kind of stuff. But now is the time to be asking those questions to the insurers because you know what, when you talked about Snowmageddon, you bring up a larger point. A lot of companies who really don’t have or never practice their business continuity plan, they’re now having to build it in flight.

Justin Daniels: [00:23:16] And so, an additional challenge is this teleworking issue is a big one. I think we’re going to see a rise in cyber breaches, but they’re going to have to figure that along with furloughing employees. What if my employee, do I have to test them for the COVID? If they test positive, what do I do? So, now, you’ve got this teleworking issue sitting alongside all those other issues as a business. And it’s a capacity issue. How many of these issues can you deal with in mid-flight if you don’t have a plan and you’ve never practiced it? And that’s why I think you’re going to see such a rise in breaches because people are going to discount this one for some of these more immediate ones until this one becomes a huge problem.

Mike Blake: [00:23:57] Yeah, I think a key bullet point. And I appreciate you can’t answer this blanket. I mean, you sound like you have command of everybody’s insurance policy.

Justin Daniels: [00:24:06] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:24:06] But it does sound like it is definitely worth your while at a minimum to pull your policy out and see how this changing environment may alter the coverage. So, let’s move then sort of away from the infrastructure then to the individual device access. We’ll get to mobile in a second but I want to ask a question about computers first because I think they’re slightly different. And my question is this, I guess, broadly, what would best practices be for companies in terms of monitoring, policing, developing standards, I guess, around the actual hardware that employees are using to telework?

Jodi Daniels: [00:24:59] Well so, I think that starts with a few different things. There’s certainly software that companies can use to manage and monitor what’s happening. There’s data loss prevention software, there’s monitoring software, there’s VPN monitoring software, there’s noodles of software to actually manage the ins and outs of data on a network. At the same time, you really have to have some policies in place that inform the employee what is actually being monitored. And that’s really important depending on the country you’re in. So, if you’re outside the US, there’s some stricter policies in place, especially if you’re in GDP, what you can and can’t be monitoring, and what you have to disclose to me. If I’m here in the United States, there are still some issues. So, you kind of need to factor in the HR component combined with an information security policy.

Jodi Daniels: [00:25:56] So, while there’s an IT team who can identify the right software depending on the type of information and the number of employees to be able to monitor and determine where is traffic coming in and out of, what’s being downloaded, there’s capabilities to restrict what’s being downloaded, or shared, or forwarded. There’s a lot that you can do. And again, it’s very dependent on the company and the type of data. You do have to factor in the human element and the notice requirements, so that employees understand what is happening to them, to not have it be such a huge surprise.

Mike Blake: [00:26:37] Now, the question I think that follows from that naturally is, where’s that software going to reside? Of course, many people, not everybody, but many people do own their own computers. And so, they could use that to access whatever it is they need access or do. Is that the right answer is BYOD? And now, WYOD, just work on your own device. Is that presenting additional challenges? And if so, maybe, should a company consider them, at least, giving employees the option to use company issued equipment, so that maybe the company has more power over this, or maybe I’m barking up the wrong tree? Is that a way to think about this?

Jodi Daniels: [00:27:31] I think it’s a great question. So, BYOD, WWOD, pick your flavor of acronym, they all do present big issues. And again, a policy piece is something I’ve helped a number of companies on, which is, what is the policy? Because it does make it a little bit harder if I have my own device, depending on the tools that I’m using, you may or may not be able to see what I’m doing on that device. So, in some policies, the company has the right to take a look at it at any time. I have the right to be able to wipe it at any time. And I know we’re gonna get into mobile, but that’s really quite similar for mobile because a lot of times, I’m putting my company email on mobile, I might access my apps on mobile. It’s really very similar of what power does the company have to be able to come in and kind of audit, if you will, be able to test and control when it needs to, and it reserves the right to be able to do so.

Jodi Daniels: [00:28:29] At the same time, because there’s so much in the cloud these days, if I’m using Google Docs or I’m using Exchange, there are still some monitoring tools that can be connected to those cloud servers. So, let’s say I’m sending an email, and I’m trying to forward it to a personal email, there is some capabilities to be able to limit that. You can put in certain … you can’t forward it to G-mails, and Yahoo!’s, and things like that. I’ve seen companies do that. So, it’s a little bit dependent on the type of software I’m using, but it is definitely still possible.

Mike Blake: [00:29:06] So, let me bring up a specific case that I think if I were in a decision making capacity – I guess I semi am – that would concern me if I’m allowing all my employees to use their personal devices, particularly if they’re not necessarily particularly conscientious about their own security is, who knows what is on the employees computer, right? And whether it’s free apps, whether they’ve downloaded pornography, whatever they’ve done with their computer, we know that there’s malware and other things that piggyback off of other content that may be basically cohabitating with company data in some respect, right? So, if we’re going to ask employees to use their own equipment, is that an additional risk? And is that one that the company can reasonably manage absent issuing everybody a company-issued laptop that then the company can lock down, and restrict use, and downloads, and all that good stuff?

Justin Daniels: [00:30:15] So, Mike, I think to address that question, what I would say is I am going use a term I learned from the US Secret Services, it’s really about concentric rings of defense. And what I mean by that is you’re absolutely right, who knows what employees have downloaded? And if you’re a company who’s not in the position to configure a hundred computers or whatnot and just disseminate them out, you’re kind of in a spot where you’re going down BYOD. But as I alluded to before, I think you have to go at this with a sense of you’re going to assume that some fish e-mail is going to make it through. They only have to be right once. So, you do security, I think, you train people up the best that you can, but you do it under the assumption that some e-mail or something is going to get clicked on because that’s just the law of averages.

Justin Daniels: [00:31:06] But the other things that you can do, and I alluded to it before, is are you making sure that your employees have the least amount of access necessary to do their work? Meaning that even if you phish someone, maybe it’s the administrative assistant to the CEO, that they don’t have access to billing and invoicing. The access that a criminal would get is very limited. So, then, what you’re adding in are these other layers of defense that make it harder for a criminal to get around, to get to your wire instructions or get to other information that they’re seeking to get to because you just don’t give people carte blanch access to the network.

Justin Daniels: [00:31:46] And are you using – and you’ve probably heard of this – two factor authentication? Maybe you have instances where if you want access to certain parts of the network, there has to be a higher level of authentication than is required, so that people get access to invoicing, billing, financial statements, things of that nature. So, there are other things that you can implement to institute all these different layers of defense among the different assets that you’re identifying as being the most important for your organization.

Justin Daniels: [00:32:15] And that’s a lot of what I’ve been doing lately for clients is I’ve been helping them issue spot across a whole different swath of areas that are impacting their business. And when we start talking about teleworking, I start to ask these questions. When they say, “Oh, well, they just have access to the network,” then that’s where you’re creating the opportunities to help clients identify these issues, and then start to implement this defense and depth, which, really, it’s a factor of the technology that you’re using, we talked about; pop processes and procedures, Jodi alluded to that; and also, it’s educating your workforce about what to look for in phishing. It’s really doing all three of those things and doing it in layers of defense.

Jodi Daniels: [00:32:58] All right. So, let’s then move out to the mobile device. And I appreciate that that’s similar to the more conventional work device, but I think they’re a little bit different in that mobile devices are more likely to have been issued by someone’s employment. At a minimum, they’re probably picking up the tab for the access, which I think, then, gives the company certain rights that they may not have with respect to a true BYOD. So, how does the equation now change for mobile devices? Or let me ask this. iPhone or Apple has gotten a lot of publicity for their security. Even the government can’t crack it, et cetera. So, I don’t know if that’s true or that’s a sort of an urban legend like roving bands of surgeons that steal kidneys, but that’s certainly the reputation. Does the security equation change with mobile devices? And if mobile devices do, in fact, offer superior security, is there a case to be made that maybe you want to try to work off a mobile devices as much as possible?

Justin Daniels: [00:34:12] So, Mike, I’m going to answer the first part of that. So, when I was in Israel on a mission for cyber, even the Israelis said the iPhone is a much better platform for security. And one of the big reasons why is everything with Apple is internal to Apple with the apps and everything else. With Android and some of the other users system environments, other developers can come, and create things, and put them onto their systems. So, those are potential areas of weakness as opposed to Apple that’s very much self-contained. It is very difficult to breach Apple’s security, as we know from the San Bernardino issue and whatnot. So, Jodi and I happen to have the iPhones. So, one thing people should be doing is you can have a passcode that’s six digits long instead of four. People should implement that. It’s another layer of security.

Justin Daniels: [00:35:09] As for the other parts of your question, with mobile devices, I know that you can install software from a company perspective on devices that you give people that allows you to monitor the software or monitor the machine, what’s coming on to it, but also more importantly, what if somebody just loses it or something happens? It allows you to wipe their machine immediately. And having some of that software, particularly on devices that the company has issued, can really be the difference between a large breach and keeping something on a low boil because you’re able to get to your machine or your phone and just wipe it.

Justin Daniels: [00:35:43] So, that’s where, to me, mobile devices have some other security that might be if the companies issued all the phones, and they don’t have it on there, they might want to consider pushing apps out to their users, so they can now monitor the phone, the ISPs. And it shouldn’t be an issue if those are phone issued by the company, you just probably want to check some of your policies and employee handbook, so that people are made aware of you, and you put it on the computer or the phone that says, “Hey, look, anything you do on this, we can monitor.”

Jodi Daniels: [00:36:15] I’d add two interesting things. So, on the Apple side, one important distinction is a lot of people, they might use Slack or other chat channels, but if they use the iMessage, iMessage, so Apple to Apple is what’s encrypted. But if I’m Apple to Android, I’m not encrypted. So, kind of an interesting differentiation on that. And then, if I’m a company who didn’t issue devices, and now everyone’s remote, and I have all these mobile devices, another avenue to, at least, be able to protect the data without … there are going to be some companies who don’t want to say, “I’m going to wipe all the data on your personal device.” That’s just not going to be the culture. For that company, the six digit passcode is going to be really important one. You can also have two factor authentication on the different company-focused apps, and tools, and suites, and things along those lines too. Again, it’s another added layer to Justin’s concentric methodology.

Mike Blake: [00:37:15] And what do you think about biometric authentication? That’s getting more and more common. Android is headed for a while. Apple is catching up. Windows, hello. I’m a big fan of it. And I also use KeyLemon for Apple devices. Are you a big fan of biometric authentication as well, or do you think it’s overkill?

Jodi Daniels: [00:37:36] I think it depends on the type of data that your company has. I think it’s just all relative to the type. Again, what kind of information and the volume of information that the employee has? Maybe it’s appropriate for some employees, not for other employees. And bring it to the privacy side, biometrics is a very sensitive area. So, for anyone who has employees really actually anywhere in Europe, for sure, it’s a sensitive data field under GDPR. That requires special notice and consent. And then, for States, here in the United States, biometric, also, there’s a variety of hoops you have to go through. So, can absolutely still do it. Just have to make sure you follow the laws where you’ve notified, you’ve asked for consent, I get what I’m doing. And to me, it’s just a matter of, does it make sense? Is it the right method for what I’m using?

Mike Blake: [00:38:30] So, you mentioned privacy. That’s a good segue to the next question I wanted to ask, which is, does this new work regime create loopholes that have not been foreseen in privacy protection and ownership protocols? Are there companies that, therefore, might be tempted to collect data that they wouldn’t necessarily be in a position to collect before? Is that an issue? And then, what are best practices to kind of safeguard against that?

Jodi Daniels: [00:39:05] So, from an employee standpoint … And there’s a difference, I think, between us and the rest of the world. The rest of the world generally has stricter privacy regulations than what we have here in the US. And in the US, we’re very sectoral. Every industry is going to have its own privacy laws. But if I had any level of a remote workforce, I likely was already monitoring something – IP addresses, where are people accessing my network from, and things along like that. If I have more of them, I probably just have more data points. If a company is going to start analyzing it and using it in some other fashion, then I think that does tie into the loopholes that you’ve just described.

Jodi Daniels: [00:39:50] I personally haven’t heard of any company yet trying to do that. I think everyone is just in a little bit of survival mode trying to keep their business afloat as best as they can. So, it’s quite possible, but I haven’t heard of that yet. It would, though, go to the same theme that we’ve been talking about, which it brings it back to policy. Whatever it is that a company is doing, whether it’s on your customers or for your employees, you need to have a policy that informs them of what it is that you’re doing. And in some countries, the individual rights might be a little bit greater and the notice might be a little bit greater, but it is a fundamental privacy baseline to inform of what it is that companies are doing.

Justin Daniels: [00:40:37] Mike, I want to add one other point alongside of what Jodi is saying is. If I’m a company, and if it’s the difference between my sales going down by 80% and collecting and using data to market to people, I think you know what a lot of companies are likely to decide to do, particularly small or medium sized companies that may not have the cash reserves to withstand this. So, I think you’re going to have a lot of companies making some pretty tough decisions. Well, we got these privacy laws and these other things. Well, I need to sell this because I need to generate revenue. And I think that’s also going to create some issues.

Mike Blake: [00:41:13] Yeah. And that answer segues in a question that I’ve got to ask. And it’s an unfair question, but I’m going to ask it anyway.

Justin Daniels: [00:41:20] Okay.

Mike Blake: [00:41:20] And the question is this, is that I think more companies are in this position than are going to admit. One day, everybody is in the office. The next day, everybody isn’t. Most companies probably are just not compliant as they need to be day one. I mean, I think that’s a fact of life. How do you manage that? Is the best practice to cause all of your operations until you get compliant? Do you just sort of roll that, and do the best you can, and hope that you don’t get unlucky, and you kind of make it until you do get to the point where you want to be? That’s a real kind of brass tacks decision. How do you think about that? I got to imagine your clients are raising that issue with you.

Jodi Daniels: [00:42:10] Yeah, we each have some thoughts. I think we’re going to both take a stab. I think that the reality is business needs to go on, especially in the environment that we’re in right now. And for any of the privacy laws and security requirements, it’s impossible to be perfectly 100% secure and 100% compliant. Companies should do the best that they can. And for some, it’s just starting out, and they know the five things they need to do. They have a list and they’re going to dedicate to working towards as many of them as they can. For others, they’re farther down the path, and they’re going to try and maintain where it is that they are.

Jodi Daniels: [00:42:50] So, generally, I don’t think it’s the best idea to just stop all business and wait for sort of your perfect compliance secure program because it’s moving. The security challenges are continuously changing. It’s doing the best that you can. Everyone can pretty simply educate a workforce of what they should be on the lookout for. There’s some practical items that they can do pretty simply. And there’s some more complicated things that they can work towards. And this is probably not the first time we’re going to have this. So, planning for the next iteration, I think, is going to be incredibly important. And Justin, I’m sure you have some thoughts too.

Justin Daniels: [00:43:34] So, Mike, I’ve already had that some pretty tough discussions with people, particularly around potentially violating one law or having a potential lawsuit. And I’ve had to give some tough advice because you’re put in a position where the uncertainty of a lawsuit versus maybe violating some other law, I’m going to violate the law, kind of know what that might look like because you’re just trying to make some tough business decisions. When it comes to the security and the privacy, it’s like every other risk in your business. You need to manage it.

Justin Daniels: [00:44:07] And what Jodi and I have tried to articulate in our discussion today are some of the real commonsense things that you can do that don’t cost tons of money, don’t take an overwhelming amount of effort to start to manage this because you and I both know there’s no way people are going to wait to be perfectly compliant. That’s not what they’re gonna do. But what they can do is, is if they do none of the things we’ve talked about and have these issues, if you have a data breach on top of what the environment is now, I think most companies, you’re done.

Justin Daniels: [00:44:40] And so, what can companies be doing to do some commonsense things that don’t cost the sun and the moon to address this? And that’s really the approach that Jodi and I have taken with our clients and customers on how to manage this amongst all the other things that people are trying to manage, because you know what businesses are focused on. How do I trim expenses and how do I generate new revenue? And within all of that, how do I manage these risks, which are very real when you have a remote workforce from a security and privacy standpoint?

Mike Blake: [00:45:12] So, Jodi and Justin, this has been a great conversation. I’ve learned a lot. I think our listeners are going to learn a lot as well. They probably will have more questions. How can they contact you for more information?

Jodi Daniels: [00:45:26] Sure. So, for me, a couple of different ways. My website is redcloveradvisors.com. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Red Clover Advisors or personally, Jodi Daniels. Real simply, email is just jodi@redcloveradvisors.com.

Justin Daniels: [00:45:45] As for me, my email is jdaniels@bakerdonelson.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn because Jodi and I post on these topics very regularly for more information. And I also have been advising companies just generally on strategically issue spotting. And so, if companies need help with that as this is important but not the only point. I’ll be honest, Mike, that’s been the bulk of my advisory services lately is helping companies strategically implement a business continuity plan in mid air because they either haven’t had one or the one they have doesn’t really relate to something this significant.

Mike Blake: [00:46:33] Well, thanks so much. That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Jodi Daniels of Red Clover and Justin Daniels of Baker Donelson so much for joining us and sharing their expertise with us today. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next executive decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

Decision Vision Episode 55: Should I Change My Customer Profile? – An Interview with Andy Goldstrom, Midcourse Advisors

March 12, 2020 by John Ray

Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 55: Should I Change My Customer Profile? – An Interview with Andy Goldstrom, Midcourse Advisors

00:00 /

Mike Blake and Andy Goldstrom

Decision Vision Episode 55: Should I Change My Customer Profile? – An Interview with Andy Goldstrom, Midcourse Advisors

Why is developing a customer profile so important? How should I develop a customer profile? Andy Goldstrom, Midcourse Advisors, answers these questions and much more when he joins host Mike Blake on this edition of “Decision Vision,” presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Andy Goldstrom, Midcourse Advisors

Andy Goldstrom

As Managing Partner at Midcourse Advisors, Andy Goldstrom and his team grow companies profitably and do it fast. Andy is an expert with B2B companies and is a sought-after business partner and speaker.

Early in his career, Andy started and built a division of a real estate brokerage company that generated 30%+ margins and grew from 1 to over 500 employees. After that, he took over an existing national recycling company and grew the top line from $70M to $100M and profit from $10M to $17M in 3 years. Both businesses were both designated as Inc. 500 companies, the fastest growing privately help companies nationwide, and subsequently sold to Fortune 500 companies at high multiples. Most recently, he served as Global Director at a major investment bank, where he grew service capabilities over in 70 countries while saving $12M annually.

In each case, Andy led sales teams that competed efficiently and effectively to win an extraordinary amount of business. In addition, he reduced cycle times and increased the frequency of incoming sustainable business, creating incremental value that was monetized when the companies were sold.

He started Midcourse Advisors as a way to give back to the B2B services community and now offers his knowledge and experience to organizations looking for ways to grow and improve.

For more information, go to the Midcourse Advisors website.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

Brady Ware & Company

Decision Vision Podcast Series

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Mike Blake: [00:00:20] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic from the business owners’ or executives’ perspective. We aren’t necessarily telling you what to do, but we can put you in a position to make an informed decision on your own and understand when you might need help along the way.

Mike Blake: [00:00:39] My name is Mike Blake and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast? If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator and please consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Mike Blake: [00:01:04] So, today, we’re going to talk about whether you should change your customer profile. And I’m excited about this topic. I mentioned this topic for a number of reasons. Number one, as it happens, it’s very timely. I just came back from a strategy meeting at our global headquarters in Dayton, Ohio, where the valuation practice of Brady Ware got together and we decided, in effect, our strategy for the next five years.

Mike Blake: [00:01:36] And in the nine hours that we had that meeting, about eight of them talked about defining what our customer profile is going to be going forward. And I think that’s so critical because unless you figure out what your customer profile as all the other things that you want to talk about in terms of marketing and staffing, investment, and other strategy, none of those are going to be right unless you understand what your customer profile is going to be.

Mike Blake: [00:02:06] It’s that central, it’s that foundational to your business strategy. And therefore, you know, we decided that if that’s all we accomplish in that particular day, then that was going to be a win for us. And I’m not leading up to a big announcement or anything like that. But, you know, we will probably, in about four to six weeks, as we flesh out the strategy. But the strategy part is not time well-spent unless you’ve identified that customer.

Mike Blake: [00:02:39] The other neat part about going out to Dayton was I discovered something that I did not know because I do not pay attention to college basketball that much, now that Georgetown has somehow managed to be irrelevant in college basketball. But the Dayton Flyers, I don’t know if I ever realized it, Dayton Flyers are ranked number six or seven in the country. I have no idea. So, anyway, good for Dayton out there. And by the way, what a cool name, the Flyers.

Mike Blake: [00:03:04] Of course, with the Flyers because that’s where the Wright brothers originated, even though they did their flight in North Carolina. So, a shout out to the Dayton Flyers. We’ll be rooting for them when the tournament shows up. But, you know, the customer profile is so foundational. And, you know, when companies—every company, I don’t think there’s a company in the world that is satisfied with selling. Every company believes that it can sell better than it’s currently doing.

Mike Blake: [00:03:31] I think most companies look at revenue and sales and says, you know, look, when I wake up in the morning, that’s one of the things that I worry about. It’s one of things that I worry about going to bed the night before, too, is sales. And if you don’t have that customer profile right, everything else just doesn’t matter. And that requires, quite frankly, deep thought and requires some understanding of what that customer is going to be because you’re literally going to build everything around that.

Mike Blake: [00:04:01] And in spite of having a big powwow about this, I’m not the expert on that. But instead, we’ve brought in somebody who is an expert on this. And that’s my friend, Andy Goldstrom, who is managing partner of Midcourse Advisors. Midcourse Advisors are business strategists and growth experts for small and medium-sized service businesses. They help leaders focus on the right pursuits and execute effectively using proprietary tools and methodologies that enable them to scale their businesses and grow rapidly.

Mike Blake: [00:04:29] As managing partner of Midcourse Advisors, Andy and his team grow companies profitably and do it fast. Andy’s an expert with business-to-business companies and is a sought-after business partner and speaker. Early in his career, Andy started and built a division of a real estate brokerage company that generated over 30% margins and grew to over 500 employees from one. After that, he took over an existing national recycling company, grew the top line from $70 million to $100 million in revenue and profit from $10 to $17 million in three years.

Mike Blake: [00:05:02] Both businesses were designated as Inc. 500 companies, the fastest growing privately-held companies nationwide and subsequently sold to Fortune 500 companies at high multiples. Most recently, he served as global director at a major investment bank, where he grew service capabilities in over 70 countries while saving $12 million, annually. He started Midcourse Advisors as a way to give back to the business community and now offers his knowledge and experience to organizations looking for ways to grow and improve. Andy, thanks for coming on the program.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:05:33] Thanks so much for having me. And good to see you after we met several years back and have been in touch.

Mike Blake: [00:05:39] Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:05:39] I appreciate being on your show.

Mike Blake: [00:05:42] So, before we get started, have you just published a book or is a book about to come out?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:05:48] I have a book coming out. I’m just working on the right promotion.

Mike Blake: [00:05:53] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:05:53] I got all the content in place, but it’s got all the basics about how to grow your business lessons from an Inc. 500 person, an executive. And it has some things about customer profile in it that can be used, tools and methodologies and anecdotes and case studies and all the rest.

Mike Blake: [00:06:14] And when do you think that book will come out?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:16] Probably in the next 60 days.

Mike Blake: [00:06:18] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:18] And when we reference my website, you can see a link for it.

Mike Blake: [00:06:22] And do you know what is the title of the book? Do we know that yet?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:25] We’re trying to finalize that.

Mike Blake: [00:06:28] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:29] Yeah. Right now, it’s called the Ten Deadly Sins of Growing Your Business.

Mike Blake: [00:06:35] Oh, nice.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:36] Yeah. So, I’ve got 10 themes. The only thing I’m trying to struggle with and I’m getting feedback from experts is that if you Google that, you get a lot of other junk.

Mike Blake: [00:06:47] Okay. I guess that makes sense.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:49] Right? So, I just want it to be poignant and on point. Title is an important thing.

Mike Blake: [00:06:54] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:54] So-

Mike Blake: [00:06:55] Well, good luck with that.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:06:56] Thanks.

Mike Blake: [00:06:56] And make sure we know about when the book is launched, so we can publicize it.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:07:00] I will. Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:07:03] So, you mentioned in your book, in fact, you deliberately discuss or separately discuss customer profiles. So, let’s get the vocabulary right. What is a customer profile? Is it the same thing as what people call a customer avatar?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:07:16] Sure. The first thing I just want to do is step back. When you talk about customer profile and when you had your meetings in Dayton, you had gotten to a specific point, knowing that you were serving the customer in certain markets and you knew you were doing accounting work and valuation work and other work. So, there’s a bigger picture than just the customer profile to successfully grow a business, but the customer profile is foundational.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:07:40] So, you need to know your industry and your target market and your customer segment before you even get to your customer profile. But when you get to that point, it’s really a representation of your ideal customer and it’s defined. It’s something that allows you to target, given that you have limited resources. And the thing that happens is most companies don’t do a really good job and it inhibits them from reaching their goals, which is a credit to you and your company in terms of how much time you’re spending on the, trying to get right.

Mike Blake: [00:08:16] Well, you know, we hope we got it right. Now, we got to execute.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:08:19] Yeah.

Mike Blake: [00:08:19] So, it all looks great on the whiteboard. We’ll see how it turns out in practice, but-

Andy Goldstrom: [00:08:23] And you mentioned the avatar.

Mike Blake: [00:08:25] Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:08:26] So, an Avatar is kind of a physical representation of it. I teach at Georgia State in addition to doing my consulting and we call it a persona. And it’s a physical representation with a name to it, so you can kind of feel it and look at it. So, for instance, as an example, just if someone’s a really avid tennis player and you know that they’re going to buy premium products because they love tennis so much and they want to differentiate their game and have every advantage possible, that avatar might be Peter, the professional tennis player or something like that. So, you actually can have a physical look as an avatar in terms of what that target customer could be or what that customer profile would look like. And then, obviously, there are a lot of different characteristics associated with that person.

Mike Blake: [00:09:17] It’s interesting. I never thought of it from a physical manifestation perspective, but that makes sense. And I know you specialize in service businesses. Do you go through that process with service businesses, too? Can you do that with professional services in terms of building a customer avatar like that?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:09:33] Absolutely. So, I’ll give you an example. I worked with a company that was a generalist type of company and they weren’t growing as fast as they want. They happened to be in the real estate services space, which is one of the things I focus on. I work with companies outside of that, but I’m focused on my customer profile. And they had expertise and background and hung out in technology areas, like where you sometimes spend your time, Michael.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:10:05] And so, we said you have to create an avatar or a customer profile based upon what that technology company leader looks like and what he looks for and what he cares about. And so, we developed a profile on that and it was Tom, the technologist. And literally, it was an opportunity to understand how they need flexibility in what they’re doing, how they care about vision, how they want to be able to grow their business quickly and how they care about all the technological aspects in the wiz bank things. And so, that kind of profile and being able to address their needs specifically knowing what they’re like compared to a corporate executive is very important.

Mike Blake: [00:10:55] So, you obviously agree, we think a customer profile is important or critical, but can a business theoretically be successful without one? Is that what we would think of as a mass market? For example, does Procter and Gamble have a customer avatar for Tide? Do they make Tide? I think they do.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:11:17] I think that’s right.

Mike Blake: [00:11:18] So, for some of us, that’s truly mass market. You know, do they have a customer profile, do you think or do they just make a product they think is really good, position it and distribute it in a certain way and sort of off they go? What do you think that looks like?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:11:33] No, they definitely have an avatar and it might be broader. But when they first started making Tide, it wasn’t as mass market or broad as it is. So, when you get a certain appeal, you can expand it. The example I use is McDonald’s. McDonald’s actually has brand ambassadors to focus on specific customer profiles for their specific type of food that they sell. So, they actually have somebody who just focuses on salads, you know, and people who just focus on burgers and literally, the customer segment that would be more in line with that.

Mike Blake: [00:12:15] You know, that’s interesting. I’d like to drill down on that for a second because I would not have guessed that, but I guess that perhaps makes sense because when McDonald’s—I find McDonald’s fascinating. I worked there as a kid. I used to think the way they produce things is just so cool.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:12:30] The whole story about, you know, the mass customization and the way that-

Mike Blake: [00:12:35] Yeah, it really is fascinating. But anyway, when they first introduced salads, that did not go well for them initially, right? Because it’s very confusing to the market, right? Because I think they didn’t have a customer avatar for that. And it sounds like what you think they discovered is maybe they have multiple customer profiles.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:12:58] They do. But they started from a foundational element and a base. And if you’re a new company, you really can’t afford to spread yourself too thin.

Mike Blake: [00:13:06] Right.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:13:06] And if you’re an existing company that’s starting something new, it’s just as important.

Mike Blake: [00:13:12] So, what are the pieces or components of a customer profile?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:13:18] Sure. There are several pieces. The key thing, what’s really important is it needs to be data-driven. So, it’s not something where you talk to your friend or you see something on TV or you just have something in your gut that tells you this is what my customer could look like. You really have to do the research to understand it, to inform your decisions. And, you know, Michael, when you post on LinkedIn, you have all these data charts and data, and I think you do it because it’s interesting, but you also do it because it can inform—you know, it’s sparks curiosity, but also informs how people make decisions.

Mike Blake: [00:14:01] And it also is indicative of my ideal customer profile.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:14:04] That’s right.

Mike Blake: [00:14:05] Right? If you like to guess, you’ll need to pay me to guess.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:14:09] Right.

Mike Blake: [00:14:09] It’s like when, you know, I tell my son, “Go tell your mother something”, right? And then, he just screams at the bottom of the staircase, like I could have done that. I wanted to go up the stairs and do that. The same thing, you don’t need to pay me to guess, right? But I’m trying to build a brand that suggests that we’re data-driven.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:14:27] That’s right.

Mike Blake: [00:14:27] I’m glad you picked up on that. I might be doing something right.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:14:30] Right. Absolutely. So, let me answer your question. Common elements are demographics. So, if it’s a B2C, it tends to be income, gender, marital status, things like that. For B2B, it’s the size of the opportunity, the industry and the location. You have to focus on customer needs. And it’s interesting. Customer needs are both perceived in latent needs. And it’s really interesting. A latent need is so important in terms of getting somebody to buy. And a perceived need is something that a customer knows, a latent need, they might not know or might not be out in front, but it’s something that drives their purchasing behavior.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:15:11] And the example I’d like to give best is just a phone, like the iPhone, you know, the perceived need is it’s a communication tool, right? It’s a way I can look up things on the internet, call my friends, text whatever. But it’s actually a security blanket for people. That’s their latent need. They feel a sense of connection and they need it. And when they don’t have it, it’s a problem. So, when people buy, you have to understand both the perceived and the latent needs when you’re looking at your customer profile.

Mike Blake: [00:15:43] Steve Jobs is so good at that, by the way. I mean, he was the Mozart of understanding that latent need, wasn’t he?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:15:50] He created a market, which is hard to do. He created several markets.

Mike Blake: [00:15:54] More than once.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:15:54] Yes, he created several markets. And so, yeah, he was the master at that for sure. Other elements are attitude. So, it’s the values and beliefs of the customer profile or the customer. Behaviors, which are use cases, meaning how they will consume the product or service and then, their purchase preferences, like what information? Do they need to understand what they’re buying? What channels are they going to find in order to be able to purchase it via online or store or in-office or somewhere else and how frequently they may purchase. So, if you understand all of those things in a data-driven way, you can actually put on a whiteboard, you know, with the customer in the center, all the different elements that influence their buying behavior and understand what your customer looks like.

Mike Blake: [00:16:48] Now, when you say data, that can scare some people. And it doesn’t even have that much to do about understanding how to do basic math, but data can also be very expensive, right? Some of the things you’re talking about on the surface sound like you’ve got to hire a marketing research firm to do surveys and focus groups and all those things can be very expensive. Is that true? Do you have to go that way or are there ways you can get data that is at least sufficient, where you’re not making multi-thousand-dollar investments in specialized studies?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:17:26] Sure. It depends on the scale and the size of the product or service that’s being implemented. There are a lot of resources that are available that don’t cost any money that are just on the net. PricewaterhouseCoopers has information. You look for companies that have traded and see what the profile of that competition looks like. There’s a lot of opportunity to find things on the net. At Georgia State where I teach, they’ve got a myriad of resources. You can find it through the SBA. There are a lot of different ways to do it.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:18:03] There certainly are paid resources where you can hire, you know, a professional firm that collects that information and does that all day and night and is an expert in that. And if you have the resources to do it, that might not be a bad thing. But ultimately, the data is not just looking up facts and figures. It’s actually engaging with prospective customers to get feedback on what their beliefs are and why they would buy something and what their feedback is. And there’s a term called ethnography. You ever heard of that term?

Mike Blake: [00:18:39] I have.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:18:40] There you go. Well, ethnography is direct observation and interviewing of potential customers, suppliers and partners, right? And if you are trying to get data or feedback from potential customers and you’re doing it on the phone or you’re doing it via email, you’re not going to get—the quality of the feedback you’re getting and the context of the feedback you’re getting isn’t going to be as good.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:19:09] And I can assure you that whether it is Procter and Gamble or McDonald’s or, you know, some of the other small to medium companies that I typically consult with or the students in my class, they get in front of their ideal client to be able to actually understand that feedback. And they draw on some other sources of information in order to understand the income brackets and things of that nature in order to do it. And they typically say you need 10 to 12 quality interviews or discovery sessions in order to develop a pattern or have enough of a sense. And certainly, you know, some companies go well beyond that.

Mike Blake: [00:19:55] Interesting. So, what you’re talking about resonates with a couple of things. One, Atlanta has an interesting technology market. You know, we’re not Silicon Valley, but we’re very deep in a few areas, right? And the venture market, in my view, has improved tremendously over the last 10 years or so. But one of the practices that is very much involved here, I think, more so than other places is something called customer discovery, where investors want entrepreneurs to have gone out and talked to lots of potential customers. In fact, in the Georgia Tech and Emory entrepreneurship programs, you cannot graduate without having actually gone out and talked to potential customers, even for a hypothetical venture. They make you develop that skill.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:20:49] I do that with my students, too.

Mike Blake: [00:20:50] You do, too.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:20:51] Absolutely.

Mike Blake: [00:20:51] Okay. And what a valuable skill and valuable asset that is. And it’s interesting that that intersects with a recent experience of mine. In preparation for the strategy meeting that I described, I read twice Michael Porter’s book on competitive strategy. And Appendix B, I think, of that book is entirely dedicated to the practice of interviewing customers and developing customer profiles, which I did not expect. I didn’t think it would be that granular.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:21:24] It is. And the way you ask the questions is really important. As an example, you want them to be open ended and not be yes or no answers.

Mike Blake: [00:21:34] And I think it might have actually been the most useful part of the book I read. I’m so glad because normally, I’m so happy I got to the end of a book that I skipped the appendices. For whatever reason, I didn’t this time. And I’m really glad because that is so chock-full—because conducting a customer interview is not walk into an office and just start asking questions.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:21:58] Appendices are where you get most of your charts, right, Michael?

Mike Blake: [00:22:02] They are.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:22:03] There you go.

Mike Blake: [00:22:03] They are, yeah. Especially in academic papers, for sure. So, what are some signs that maybe you have a customer profile that’s not working?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:22:21] The signs that it’s not working is you’re not getting traction.

Mike Blake: [00:22:25] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:22:25] Right? So, if you have initial traction with innovative customers who can validate, you can solve their problem, then you know you probably have the right customer profile. And a lot of people don’t because they’re not data-driven or they’re too broad in their customer profile that they’re focused on. And so, you know, results speak. And there’s actually something called the law of diffusion of innovation. Long, interesting, impressive set of words that I believe in, but I haven’t put together, that kind of tells you where your tipping point is relating to having that kind of traction. And it’s why people accept new ideas.

Mike Blake: [00:23:09] I love that. So, like calculus in it.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:23:12] It does. It does.

Mike Blake: [00:23:12] When you work it through. So, you’re talking dirty to me now. But I think where I want to get to is I think executives and entrepreneurs sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that they’re failing to get traction not because they have the wrong customer profile, but because they are not executing approaching that customer profile well or correctly or maybe they don’t have enough resources, right?

Mike Blake: [00:23:42] So, theoretically, maybe you do have exactly the right customer profile, but the thought process goes, “You know, we know who our customer is, but we just don’t have the right salespeople. The salespeople aren’t doing their job. Marketing is not doing their job. We don’t have enough money to get in front of those customers”, et cetera. You’ve heard all these things before, right? And this is a hard question, but that’s what we’re about on this podcast. The hard question is how do you know if your failure to gain traction is in fact the result of poor execution versus having the poor, the incorrect foundational customer profile?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:24:21] You’re right. It is an excellent and complex question. And it could be something else, right? Your sales team might not be executing well. Even though you have the right customer profile or avatar, you might not be executing once you get the sale, which impacts your reputation and ability to sell. So, there are a lot of different aspects to it. And all you have to do is be able to measure with certain KPIs about each stage of that process to get the appropriate feedback.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:24:59] And certainly, if you’re not getting any inbound interest, if you’re not getting good feedback on what your product or service could be, if there’s not a problem that you’re solving, you’re not going to pass go. You’re not even going to get started. And then, there’s the question that you have to measure, is, okay, a sales cycle is a multi-stage process, right? You have to have marketing and good salespeople and a good value proposition and good references. And they all have to work together. But if you don’t have the right target, none of it matters.

Mike Blake: [00:25:30] And the main part of it goes back to what we just talked about a few minutes ago, which is maybe you just ask the question, “Why did I think I had the right customer profile? Did I do the work that you just talked about in terms of actually going out and talking to 10, 15 customers? And did I do so in kind of a rigorous way?” You revisit how you got to the customer profile.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:25:55] The first Inc. 500 company I was with, I joined in 1995 and we grew really quickly in a period of time and became an Inc. 500 company in 2001. And we didn’t have all these tools, a business model, canvasses and customer profiles and avatars and things like that. We just had good common sense to be able to see a need in the marketplace that we could solve, there were changes going on in the marketplace. Getting some customers who were lead innovative end users who were willing to give us feedback and also pay us for the service even though it wasn’t fully fleshed out yet.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:26:46] And so, in essence, we were doing those things in a less structured way. And it provided validation along the way. Now, there are amazing tools and methodologies that are used in corporations by consultants who understand this stuff. It’s taught in schools. And if you use it right and do the right due diligence, you’re reducing your risk. And being an entrepreneur or being somebody who’s an intrapreneur in a bigger company, who’s trying to target a new business, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to peel the onion back and reduce the risk in each stage.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:27:26] And so, if your customer profile is right and you were talking about discovery that investors in Atlanta are looking for, if you’ve done that discovery correctly, you’re reducing the risk and you go on to the next stage in terms of—and if you’re looking for investment along the way, like beyond friends and family to angels and series A and series B, you have to have reached certain milestones in terms of revenue, customers, discovery that you’ve done in order to get to those platforms.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:27:58] And then, the best companies are ones that actually start with a narrow solution to a problem via a product or service and then, they build on it modularly. So, an example is like Salesforce. Salesforce started out with like a free type of app or free system, where you could manage certain aspects of your CRM, but then, they have higher level premium services that you can choose based upon the number of users or the sophistication that you want. But it’s built on the same chassis, just like an Infiniti is, you know, built on a Nissan chassis.

Mike Blake: [00:28:42] Now, let’s move up from the startup into maybe a more mature company. At some point, presumably somehow, whether they do it analytically or reluctant with, they had a customer profile match and a successful identification, can a customer profile change? Is it possible that, you know, once a company reaches a more mature stage, they see sales growth drop off or maybe even retrench? Is it something that executives need to look out for, as maybe your customer profile can change over time?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:29:18] It can almost change overnight. So, you really have to stay with the times. And the reason things change overnight is innovation, communication channels, time and social systems have all been compressed. And the communication channels have been compressed because of the internet. The social systems have been compressed because of social media. And time has been compressed because of technology. So, what happens is trends change and preferences change and you need to keep up with that. Some of the big trends are relating to demographics, millennials and baby boomers on both sides of the spectrum in terms of their needs and in the size of that demographic.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:30:08] Technology and regulation are all changing. So, an example of a trend that, you know, could change very quickly or has changed is people weren’t as concerned about their health. You know, they cared about their health, but they weren’t as concerned. And, you know, there’s a big push and it’s not so new anymore. But all of a sudden, things change when people really cared about organic and pure products and, you know, there are a lot of vegetarians and vegans. And I think, you know, Amazon purchased Whole Foods for a variety of reasons, including distribution. But one of the reasons was to reach that audience, which is growing.

Mike Blake: [00:30:49] You know, one of those areas where I’m seeing it, we’re recording on Valentine’s Day today, although this will be published probably closer to St. Patrick’s Day.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:30:57] Happy Valentine’s.

Mike Blake: [00:30:58] Happy Valentine’s Day and happy St. Patrick’s Day coming up and whatever else is coming up. But you know, one of the things I sort of had to do in order to purchase for my wife is she’s big into the fair-trade chocolate now, which is harder to get, right? Organic chocolates, not hard to get now. But then, you got to make sure that it’s fair trade, which is an up and coming trend.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:31:23] Sure.

Mike Blake: [00:31:24] I’m not sure that’s overnight, but these customer profile things, I think, change the way a lot of things do. The change is very subtle for a long period of time. And then, it seems to sort of change overnight. Organic food was definitely like that. You know, this meat alternative, Beyond Meat and so forth, I think, looks like that. And fair trade may be the next thing which will delight me because I spent more time looking for fair trade chocolate than I think the whole of my Christmas shopping this year. So, it can’t happen fast enough.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:31:56] Did you find it?

Mike Blake: [00:31:57] I did eventually. Yes.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:31:58] Okay.

Mike Blake: [00:31:58] I did. And in a nick of time because my wife is actually on—she and my children left on vacation today. So, I had to come through it last night and I did. It was a buzzer beater.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:32:08] Good for you.

Mike Blake: [00:32:11] We touched on this a little bit, but I want to come back to it because I think it’s important to hit. Companies can evolve into multiple customer profiles, too, right? It may not be that your customer profile is wrong, but you may need to add to it, correct?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:32:26] You do, but there’s a method that you need to evolve in order to do that.

Mike Blake: [00:32:33] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:32:34] And again, whether you’re in a startup or whether you’re an established firm, you don’t just all of a sudden cater to try to cater to everybody. And so, what you usually try and do and what we teach and what I work on with my clients is getting a beachhead strategy. So, it’s what’s a use case for a particular customer that you can focus on in that first year? Use the law of the diffusion of innovation, where you can actually get some market share and prove up and get some cash in the door.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:33:10] And then, you can grow from there to other use cases to other types of customers with other different profiles. And that could work. In the chocolate case, for instance, there are some people who eat chocolate because it’s a snack. There are some people who eat it because it’s healthy for them. They have these, you know, health bars now Clif Bars and other things. And some people want to give it as a gift, right? And then, there are different customer types along those lines depending upon their age bracket.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:33:42] So, you can’t be everything to everybody out of the gate, but if you focus on one of those uses and one of those age brackets to get started, to get traction, then you can leverage and go from there. And that’s the best way to do it. There’s a client I have in town that is a technology company that does app development and they do training. So, they’ll train people how to be app developers or to have the newest, latest and greatest to do it. And they also develop apps. They were trying to go out to both customers and the message got mixed and diluted.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:34:24] And so, they didn’t know, their customer base didn’t know what they really were and this company itself didn’t know where to really put its resources into because they thought that the growth area was the one that was the low-margin business, which isn’t necessarily a good play. But they thought that that was where they wanted to put their emphasis and they really had to pick and choose one. And when they did, which was, “We’re an app developer”, their business took off.

Mike Blake: [00:34:55] Now, when a customer profile changes, it can be an existential threat to the company if it comes as a surprise to you and you don’t act upon it, right? I mean, you know, Microsoft was putting a lot of trouble because, you know, Steve Ballmer just blew it on mobile. And it caused them a lot of problems, I would argue Major League Baseball has some issues because their customer profile is primarily White and older. And that’s not the way the demographics of the country are currently going. That’s something they’ve got to figure out. Is customer profile so important that if it changes on you, do you agree that it actually could be a company killer?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:35:43] No doubt.

Mike Blake: [00:35:44] And if so, once you make that discovery, let’s say you’re kind of late to the game, say, “Crap. My customers just flat out changed. They don’t want a beef anymore. They want to eat something that’s not beef”, right? But all I do is I raise cattle, right? How do you go about kind of a crash course, if you will, to basically kind of save the company if you’re late to the game and you make that realization or by that point, is it already too late?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:36:20] The answer is it depends.

Mike Blake: [00:36:22] Okay. Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:36:22] Right?

Mike Blake: [00:36:22] I figured.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:36:22] So, you’re talking about baseball. I’m a big baseball fan. Grew up as a stats guy and loved baseball. And you saw what happened here in Atlanta. Atlanta saw that the demographics were changing and they actually moved their stadium to where the demographics were more applicable to them.

Mike Blake: [00:36:39] Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:36:39] Now, not everybody can pick up and change like that. That was an expensive proposition for them, but it seems to have paid off. But for other businesses, you want to be in the growth area, not the mature area of a business. And so, if you’re trying to make a pivot, you can certainly make that pivot, but you don’t want to change your business. You want to find customers that are a better fit for what you have. And so, if it’s a new business, hopefully, you can do it right the first time and adjust along the way.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:37:16] But if it’s an existing business, find new customers that are a better or closer fit. And the reason, primarily, is you’ve got all this investment and knowledge in your existing business, don’t try to be something that you’re not just because you’re trying to chase something, because you’re not going to have the knowledge or the relationships or the understanding to be able to actually solve that problem. So, find a problem based upon where you are and what you have and you can make subtle adjustments to it, but don’t try to be something that you’re not all of a sudden.

Mike Blake: [00:37:48] So, interesting. What I take away from that is one, option for a company that finds that their customer profile has shifted and maybe their business can’t necessarily shift with it as easily. Let’s take the beef example. All right. Maybe that means you get out of mass-market beef, but then, you switch to a niche market of organic or Kobe steaks or something that is lower volume, but higher margin, something like that as, you know, a ham-handed example.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:38:20] Sure. You know, if you’re Burger King, which came out with, I guess, the Impossible Burger first and was the one that kind of made the name, their distribution channels and the way that they serve their customer didn’t change. So, they had a lot of things in place. All they had to do was get the raw product to be able to serve it. Most other customers don’t, you know, have a bigger change than that.

Mike Blake: [00:38:46] I’m going to be really interested to see how Burger King does with that, because I actually like an Impossible Burger, but I’m not sure what the use case is because if you bother to look at the nutritional information, it’s for the most part unhealthy for you in a different way than conventional beef.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:39:06] It’s still just caloric, is it?

Mike Blake: [00:39:08] It is just as caloric. It is a lot less cholesterol, but it is massively higher in sodium, right? So, it’s a different kind of-

Andy Goldstrom: [00:39:17] So, we talked about latent needs.

Mike Blake: [00:39:19] Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:39:22] People who care about animals and don’t want—you know, some people are vegetarians because it’s for their health, but some of it don’t want animals to be killed.

Mike Blake: [00:39:31] And also environmental, right? We’re now hearing that-

Andy Goldstrom: [00:39:33] So, it’s an environmental thing so that’s serving a latent need that they’re trying to cater to as opposed to just people who just want to eat supposedly healthier.

Mike Blake: [00:39:42] Right. But I don’t see that that in their commercials yet, right? Maybe that’s their next phase. Right now, it’s, “Hey, this is just as good as any other Whopper, so you might as well have one.” But I don’t see the—I guess they’re just saying, “Well, if you’re just inclined to eat vegetarian, anyway, here it is.”

Andy Goldstrom: [00:40:02] Businesses don’t typically promote latent needs, but they need to understand them in order to capture the business.

Mike Blake: [00:40:11] Interesting. So, I’m being blatantly unfair, by the way. This is off-the-cuff questions for Andy. I’m asking to analyze a strategy of a multinational corporation real time. So-

Andy Goldstrom: [00:40:23] And I haven’t had an Impossible Burger yet, but I’ve heard it’s good.

Mike Blake: [00:40:28] Now, I’m getting hungry. So, how long do you think it takes to develop or maybe redevelop a customer profile?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:40:39] Depends on the size.

Mike Blake: [00:40:40] Does it have to take years?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:40:41] No, not if it’s done right.

Mike Blake: [00:40:44] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:40:44] So, you know, in my classroom, we’ve got people, young students, some of them are as old as 27, 28 because they’ve worked full time and they’re going back to school or, you know—but some of them are 18, 19, 20 years old who actually go through what we’re doing and are actually able to launch a business that I stay in touch with them. And they’ve actually launched fruitful businesses. One is launching a supplement product for gamers.

Mike Blake: [00:41:21] Okay.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:41:21] That’s specific to gamers. There’s another one that has an app that actually connects people to hold them accountable at the student level, where when it comes to health or getting somebody who can study with you or go to the gym. And they went through a process over several weeks as opposed to months and years to actually validate that that used the right tools or methodologies and did that.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:41:46] And when I work with my clients, it’s the same kind of thing. It doesn’t require push—you know, you don’t have to be Sisyphus. We’re not trying to push the boulder up the hill. You really can do it relatively quickly. And obviously, if you’re in a larger corporation, there are more stakeholders to please. That doesn’t mean the work needs to take longer. It just means that there are more stakeholders who you need buy-in from.

Mike Blake: [00:42:12] And it’s worth emphasizing. You have students that are doing this.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:42:15] I have students that are doing this and doing it well. And some of them, it’s just a practical exercise in class that instead of it just being a textbook kind of thing, which makes it more real, but some of them are actually pursuing these business opportunities and have been successful at it, believe it or not. And it’s exciting. And then, what I do with my clients, you know, it’s just as exciting because frankly, there’s more at stake.

Mike Blake: [00:42:46] Yeah.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:42:46] You know, they have families to feed. They have house, you know, mortgages. And they don’t have unlimited resources in terms of money or time or cash. And so, making the right choices and the right decisions along the customer profile route or how they manage their money or how they operate as they grow is really important. And I take a lot of pride in how I work with customers to do that.

Mike Blake: [00:43:11] And we are running out of time, so we’re going to have to wrap it up. This is a topic that, you know, probably deserves a lot more treatment than we’re able to give it in the span of one episode. But if people want to contact you to learn more about this topic, can they do so? And if so, what’s the best way to do it?

Andy Goldstrom: [00:43:28] Sure. Well, Michael, thanks for your time. I hope, you know, we covered enough, that people that were listening actually understand how important it is. And maybe it piques their interest or reinforces what they’re doing correctly or makes them think a little bit harder about what they need to do in order to really hone in on, you know, who they’re approaching and how they’re marketing their services or products.

Andy Goldstrom: [00:43:52] I can be reached at midcourseadvisors.com. My company is named Midcourse because it’s kind of the mid-course of a journey of a company, where adjustments need to be made. And my email address is agoldstrom@midcourseadvisors.com. And my phone number 770-633-2260. And you can find me on LinkedIn. And be happy to talk to anybody, to share, to learn about their perspectives and share any background I have.

Mike Blake: [00:44:19] Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Andy Goldstrom so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in so that when you’re faced with your next executive decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision podcast.

Inspiring Women, Episode 19: Stop Networking and Start Connecting (An Interview with Frank Agin)

March 10, 2020 by John Ray

Inspiring Women PodCast with Betty Collins

Inspiring Women, Episode 19: Stop Networking and Start Connecting (An Interview with Frank Agin)

00:00 /

Stop Networking and Start Connecting

In this edition of “Inspiring Women,” host Betty Collins encourages connecting (knowing people more) over networking (knowing more people). The show also includes an interview with master networker Frank Agin.

Betty’s Show Notes

Networking is about knowing more people. Something amazing happens when you network and connection happens. That is the moment of success because . . .connecting is about knowing people more.

What is your goal when you network? When you make connections?

Most connected people are often the most successful. Statistics support that statement. When you invest in your relationships — professional and personal — it can pay you back in dividends throughout the course of your career. The key word was “Investment”. That means you are going to give or put forth effort and resources FIRST, then ROI.

Who is the goal for you in networking and connections?

The what determines the who. Most importantly – figure out who matters. Sometimes you have to network with many to find the few solid connections. Think about the relationships you have right now that started with a person you met one year ago, five years ago, 20 years ago. How you network to make true connections is key.

Frank Agin, the President and Owner of AmSpirit, is just simply the best at networking and connecting. I have learned so much from him over the past 19 plus years. The number one thing I learned? Networking is more about connecting and engagement than to “know” everyone or be known. I am so thankful to have him as a guest on this podcast.

Are you networking, or are you connecting. There is a difference—make sure you know.

Frank Agin, AmSpirit Business Connections

Frank Agin is the founder and president of AmSpirit Business Connections, where he works to empower entrepreneurs, sales representatives and professionals around the country to become more successful through networking. In addition, he is a sought after speaker and consultant to companies and organizations on topics related to professional networking and business relationship development.

Frank has written numerous articles on professional networking and is the author of several books, some of which include Foundational Networking: Building Know, Like and Trust to Create a Lifetime of Extraordinary Success, The Champion: Finding the Most Valuable Person In Your Network, and Chase Greatness: Life Lessons Revealed Through Sports. He is also the host of the weekly Networking Rx podcast, which provides insights and advice for becoming more successful through networking as well as the host of the daily micro podcast Networking Rx Minute, which provides short messages of inspiration and recommended action.

Frank has a law degree and MBA from the Ohio State University, a B.A. in Economics and Management from Beloit College, and continues his professional development through a variety of programs and sources.

For further information on Frank or to be in touch, go to his website.

Betty Collins, CPA, Brady Ware & Company and Host of the “Inspiring Women” Podcast

Betty Collins is the Office Lead for Brady Ware’s Columbus office and a Shareholder in the firm. Betty joined Brady Ware & Company in 2012 through a merger with Nipps, Brown, Collins & Associates. She started her career in public accounting in 1988. Betty is co-leader of the Long Term Care service team, which helps providers of services to Individuals with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and nursing centers establish effective operational models that also maximize available funding. She consults with other small businesses, helping them prosper with advice on general operations management, cash flow optimization, and tax minimization strategies.

In addition, Betty serves on the Board of Directors for Brady Ware and Company. She leads Brady Ware’s Women’s Initiative, a program designed to empower female employees, allowing them to tap into unique resources and unleash their full potential. Betty helps her colleagues create a work/life balance while inspiring them to set and reach personal and professional goals. The Women’s Initiative promotes women-to-women business relationships for clients and holds an annual conference that supports women business owners, women leaders, and other women who want to succeed. Betty actively participates in women-oriented conferences through speaking engagements and board activity.

Betty is a member of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and she is the President-elect for the Columbus Chapter. Brady Ware also partners with the Women’s Small Business Accelerator (WSBA), an organization designed to help female business owners develop and implement a strong business strategy through education and mentorship, and Betty participates in their mentor match program. She is passionate about WSBA because she believes in their acceleration program and matching women with the right advisors to help them achieve their business ownership goals. Betty supports the WSBA and NAWBO because these organizations deliver resources that help other women-owned and managed businesses thrive.

Betty is a graduate of Mount Vernon Nazarene College, a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and a member of the Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants. Betty is also the Board Chairwoman for the Gahanna Area Chamber of Commerce, and she serves on the Board of the Community Improvement Corporation of Gahanna as Treasurer.

“Inspiring Women” Podcast Series

“Inspiring Women” is THE podcast that advances women toward economic, social and political achievement. The show is hosted by Betty Collins, CPA, and presented by Brady Ware and Company. Brady Ware is committed to empowering women to go their distance in the workplace and at home. Other episodes of “Inspiring Women” can be found here.

Show Transcript

Betty Collins: [00:00:00] Today, we’re going to talk about a topic called networking, right? Well, I’m going to say stop networking and make connections. What does that mean? Well, networking is really about knowing more people, and connecting is knowing people more. I’m going to just say that again – networking is about knowing more people and connecting is about knowing people more. You need to think about that as we talk today.

Betty Collins: [00:00:29] Networking, some people think bigger is better. How many friends, how many likes, how many business cards, what’s your contacts like? For some businesses, that’s not the worst. You want volume; you want a ton of followers, especially when you’re really transactional. Networking is not always easy for people. It can be pretty awkward and, sometimes, just draining. You’re in entertainment mode way too much. Networking is- it’s often associated with just selling; so, if you don’t think you can sell, you don’t think you can network.

Betty Collins: [00:01:03] There truly is power in having a strong network, especially when you’re in business, and you’re in the marketplace. Something really amazing happens, when you network and connection happens. This is the moment of success because true connections- when you really connect with someone, you’re going to make up a community.

Betty Collins: [00:01:25] When you think of your community that you live in, or maybe the camaraderie of your office place, or maybe the associations we’re in, the ones that are the best are kind of like Mayberry; everybody gets along; everyone is in it together; they want success; there’s relationships; there’s mutual trust; there’s respect, which all has to be earned, but that’s the kind of network, and it becomes an actual connection. When I say stop networking and making connections, that’s kind of what I’m trying to get you to think about.

Betty Collins: [00:02:01] You have to really look at what is the goal for you in networking connections. Is it name recognition? Are you trying to just generate revenue? You get into hanging with the big dogs because you’re a little pup, right? How about you want introductions to certain people, or maybe you want to be at the table? There’s nothing wrong with any of those things, but you have to go, “What is the goal?” Because you could be consumed, out in the marketplace, networking all day long.

Betty Collins: [00:02:32] It’s shown that most people that are connected are generally more successful … Not bigger networks. People who are connected are often more successful. When you invest in your relationships, whether they’re professional or personal, it usually can pay a pretty big dividend back throughout the course of your career, but you have to realize what I just said – investment. That means you have to put the effort; you have to probably give first; and then, you’re going to get some return on that giving.

Betty Collins: [00:03:04] One of the missed goals, when you’re thinking about what is the goal of connecting and networking, is you can develop and improve your skill sets, when you do that, and you’re out in the marketplace, and you’re seeing how other people do things, or challenged by something you just didn’t think about.

Betty Collins: [00:03:23] Another goal, when you’re out networking, and connecting, and making those connections, is you’ve got to probably stay on the top of those latest trends, whether it’s in the market, or in your industry. I was recently at an event where they talked about the different aspects of Columbus and what was going on in the Columbus market. Of course, within probably a couple days, we were announced that we were the number-one place in the country …

Betty Collins: [00:03:48] I was able to just take a few of those tidbits, when I was out talking with people or trying to have conversations with clients. They looked at me like, “How did you know this?” Maybe it was something they didn’t know. Just like when I was at the marketing event, and I didn’t know that.

Betty Collins: [00:04:05] I think another missed goal, when you’re thinking about this whole thing of networking connection, is it keeps a pulse on the job market because you never know when you’re going to need that. I always go back to- I love this one guy who was in … He was a payroll rep for ADP, years, and years ago. He was like a lifer, because he had been there three or four years. I completely relied just on him. One day, he leaves. Now, I had nobody to really … I had no other relationships. I didn’t have any- I was not on the pulse of those connections. So, keeping the pulse on the job market, I look at that as, too, the [contact] market, when you’re trying to connect with people, but most certainly, you meet prospectives, and mentors, and partners.

Betty Collins: [00:04:48] The other thing we miss in goals, sometimes, with networking, and connecting, is your clients can gain access to your network, and then that gives them some necessary resources that will definitely foster a long relationship with them. Again, you have to go, what is the goal? Do you have one? If you don’t, you probably need to really rethink that. What am I doing? As we end the decade, and you go into 2020, what is the goal going to be for me in networking, so that I can make connections?

Betty Collins: [00:05:22] Then, after you determine that – it’s not like it’s a hard exercise, right? – who is the goal for you in networking? Who is the goal that you want to actually have connections with? Of course, the what determines the who, right? So, most importantly, but you have to figure out who matters in your network. I have a fairly large network. It’s always funny when I get happy birthday on LinkedIn. I’m like, “Now, who is this, and why did I accept this relationship? I don’t even know who they are.” You have to figure out, though, who matters in your relationship.

Betty Collins: [00:05:54] I always use this example – if you are servicing small clients, then why are you meeting with bankers who service large clients? Who is important? Who is going to meet your goals with you? Chances are, that probably isn’t, except that you could say, “I met with this big banker,” or “I know this big banker that everyone knows and wants to know.”

Betty Collins: [00:06:16] Now, there are times that you have to network before you find some really solid connections. You might have to meet a lot of people before you do. Think about, now, the relationships you have right now that started with a person, and now you don’t even know that person that connected you. I have plenty of those in my life, where it’s like, man, if I wouldn’t have met so-and-so, I wouldn’t know so-and-so, who introduced me to so-and-so.”

Betty Collins: [00:06:39] So, I don’t want to minimize the fact of liking everybody and connecting with a ton of people because you never know where that’s going to lead you, but it still has to go back … Who is the goal that you are trying to make a real connection with and have community? Also, when you’re thinking about your goal of who that is, it’s not just an external relationship, who your audience should be. I would tell you, very clearly, you need to internally make sure, in your organization …

Betty Collins: [00:07:07] I work for a organization that has 150 people, and I have four offices. I can’t just know the person sitting next to me. I’ve got to know more people in my company, especially as I’m navigating through … Because one day, I just might need people to be helping me with something, or I might want to be growing, and all the sudden, I only know this person.

Betty Collins: [00:07:28] It’s simple things about taking advantage of lunches with those internal people. Welcoming the new people. You might welcome a new person much more than someone else. It’s easier to kind of be with who you know, but you never know who that person is going to be and how they’re going to fit into the mix; into your outside and inside place.

Betty Collins: [00:07:47] I would accept and be part of office invites. It’s interesting when you’re linked to your peers. That’s one way I do with Brady Ware. I’m a link to a lot of the different offices, and then I kind of see what they’re involved with, in Atlanta, or Richmond, Indiana. When you’re thinking about networking and setting connections, you really need to think about the internal ones, not just the external. Maybe you work for five people. It’s a little bit easier. When you work for 150, it’s kind of different.

Betty Collins: [00:08:17] So, how … We talked about what is the goal, and who is the goal, and you’re defining those things. Now, it’s how do you network? How do you make those true connections? I could go to lunch three times a day, year round. Well, I don’t need lunch three times a day … You have to make it well worth your time, because, in my industry, client service is really important in my industry, making sure that the bigger I become with that, I have to really watch how much time I’m out having lunches, versus really making connections. It really comes down to I could eat lunch anywhere, but the connection part is what’s important.

Betty Collins: [00:08:54] I would suggest to you to really look at your calendar. I do it three weeks out, to go, “Why am I meeting with this person? Why is this calendar invite here? Should I even be taking the time to do that? Maybe it’s a better relationship for someone else around me than me,” and you try to do some of that.

Betty Collins: [00:09:12] The other thing is when you’re at an event, you need to look around and determine is this who I want to be around? If you’re at an event where you really don’t fit in; you’re not comfortable; you’re kind of out of the loop; or this isn’t my client; this isn’t my sweet spot; this is not connected to my industry, then you just went to another event that was really cool.

Betty Collins: [00:09:34] So, I just went to an event recently that was very interesting. It was on a Friday, and they made it very clear in the invitation, “Please be casual. This is really going to be just a time of getting to know some people in our network.” What they made sure happened was … First, there was a whole slew of professionals that they use. But the other part they did was the location was awesome. It was at the Italian Club – I think is what it was called – downtown. Cool place. Very cool. The food was easy, but phenomenal. You were carbed out on a Friday afternoon. There was no ‘fold the napkin, use the right fork’ situation. There were no suits on in the room.

Betty Collins: [00:10:14] The greatest thing they did was they brought clients that would really benefit the professionals. Then, they brought professionals that would really benefit the clients. It was really a lunch that was worth going to because there was such connection and there was such synergy. The room was filled with who you wanted to be with. That’s a really important thing, when you’re looking at events, and as you’re signing up to go.

Betty Collins: [00:10:43] I’ve been in public accounting since 1988, so I’ve been in the marketplace a long time, but I didn’t start networking till 2000; 12 years later. I was really good inside. I was really good with running … My firm, at that time, was small. I was good with just being behind my computer, talking with people that I already knew. Then, I became a shareholder. “Oh, you need to go get business.” Oh? I have no clue … Most of you who know me would think, “Oh, well, that would be simple for you. That would be easy for you.” No. There’s very few people, I think, in the marketplace that just love the idea of, “I’m going to go out and get new clients today and make relationships. I’m going to close the deal,” and the art of the deal, and all those things. That’s not usually the comfort level of people.

Betty Collins: [00:11:28] So I did join a group called AmSpirit Business Connections. It was the first time I had to tell people who I was, and what I did, and what I liked, and it was very nerve-wracking. I just was like, “Oh, my goodness!” I had to really think through that, “30-second commercial,” let alone just demonstrate to a group of people that I could take care of their clients. Never had to do that before. Never was out there. Don’t wait 12 years into your career to do that.

Betty Collins: [00:11:56] It took me a few years, too, to be comfortable. It wasn’t all success from day one. I still connect with people from that group. I’m not currently in AmSpirit Business Connections, but Frank Agin, the president and owner of AmSpirit, is just simply the best at networking that I’ve known. I’ve learned a lot from him over the last 19-20 years. The number-one thing I learned is more about connecting engagement than “knowing” everyone or to be known. It was really about be engaging and work on your relationship, not get to know everyone as much as you can.

Betty Collins: [00:12:35] I kind of went to the next level, when I joined a local chamber in Gahanna; became very involved. Then, I also got involved with NAWBO. Those two places were places where it became definitely connections. I was connected to it. This became relationships. Gahanna is my community, where I live, so there was a little bit more ownership there. It just really got me out.

Betty Collins: [00:13:00] In that organization, people started asking me to speak or be on panels, which was something I was just terrified of. But that really helped me become connected, and networking, and connected with people. So, it was really kind of a gift, even though, at the time, it was like, “Oh, my goodness!” The more I networked that led to actual connection, I began having, finally, success in the marketplace; in building my business, and connecting my clients to the right people. And just, then, at the end of the day, having a different kind of impact.

Betty Collins: [00:13:32] What were the lessons I learned over that timeframe? Again, I go back to if you serve small clients, why are you networking with bankers who serve large ones? You follow up. You thank the person you met that you really want to have a connection with. If you don’t have more than one meeting, you’re probably not going to make … It’s not probably going to be a connection, as much as it’s just going to be, “I networked today.” If you got somebody’s business card, and met him once, would you …? If you got my business card and met me once, would you say, “I’m going to be … I’m going to do accounting with her”? Probably not.

Betty Collins: [00:14:08] Then, I really learned to quit focusing on the sale aspect. You always know when you’re selling too much because people immediately retreat. If you’re perceptive at all, you kind of see it. Then, some connections, you know what? They’re just not meant to be. It’s okay. I’ve gone to some things, where I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, that was awful.” Even when they emailed me back and said, “Can I have an appointment?” sometimes you ignore them, and you delete them. I just know enough, now, who I am going to spend time with and who I’m going to really make a connection with.

Betty Collins: [00:14:41] Tips, to me, that take networking to connection levels, where you’re really making some connections? You’ve got to be yourself. You’ve got to be fairly open. Let me rephrase that – you’ve got to connect … You’ve got to be yourself, and open, but do not be telling your life story the first time you meet somebody. Be infectious, when you’re personable, which is really spreading your influence in a pretty rapid manner, and people are drawn to you. That kind of takes time to develop. If you’re too infectious- again, if you’re too personal, if you’re too much in selling, all those things backfire on you.

Betty Collins: [00:15:19] Be inquisitive. It’s not all about you. Here’s the typical question – “So, who do you work for?” or, “Hey, what do you do?” You could say, “How do you like working for your company?” and, “Well, tell me a little bit more about your company.” Of course, if they say, “I don’t like working there,” then you probably need to move on. “How did you get in this position? What drew you to this field?” Think about a different way to ask some questions, where it’s a little more inquisitive, and it really reflects on them. You could even take it a step further and ask them some advice in their industry; see what they’re made of on their feet like that.

Betty Collins: [00:15:54] Be generous when you’re out there. When I meet someone that I pretty, pretty connect with really well, and I could see a future in that relationship, I try to be generous, and like give them tickets to events. How many events do you have in your life, where you’re trying to get rid of a ticket? I did this with NAWBO lunch. I mean, guests are $20. When there’s a really good event, I try to take a couple people for 20 bucks, and they get to be in a roomful of 100 women. They may not even know who NAWBO is, let alone think they can afford that, or maybe they can’t afford it. You take them. You be generous in that, and they’ll be grateful. They’ll give something back to you, probably; or it’s just another way to make connection with them.

Betty Collins: [00:16:37] I would tell you that speaking, being on panels, or getting people in speaking gigs, or getting them on panels only when they have something really good to say, and they can say it well. Do not recommend somebody that cannot get out there and do it. Trust me, it’s never, never good because the reflection is on you when they really get on front of the stage, and they’re horrible; or they’re on a panel, and they don’t stick to a two-minute response time. But it is a good way to network. That is a way to make connection, where you’re placing people in the right place.

Betty Collins: [00:17:11] Then, think people. Get over positions. Sometimes, it’s, “I want to know the CEO of that company.” Maybe you need to know the children of the CEO in the company, because if you’re the same age as that person, guess what? They could be retiring a lot sooner than you maybe, or not be there as long. Sometimes, getting some younger people in your network, where you’re helping them, and they love your knowledge, and they love what they’re getting from you. They kind of think you’re a big dog, right? If you help them with certain steps in their career, or in their business that has lasting impact, you’re going to have some different generations behind you, as well. It’s a great way to go, plus, it gives you a little energy; gives you a little step, versus hanging out with the old people like us, right?

Betty Collins: [00:17:59] You help them because you know what to do. They have to want the help, but it could end up being a lifetime relationship for you, for sure. As I get older, my clients are selling, so if I don’t have some younger client behind me, to some degree, or younger people surrounding me, or younger connections who are starting to retire, your network could easily shrink pretty quickly. So, think position, yeah, but, really, I would think the person. Think the people.

Betty Collins: [00:18:26] This is one … You all know somebody like this. Stop treating the schmoozing like your busines-card contest collection. Start over with some new goals and think about quality over quantity. I look at that person and think they really are into, “I’ve got this collection of business cards, and I know everyone in town.” And then, you talk to that person in town, and they’re like, “Who are you talking about?” Name droppers; people who are totally about the collection – those are people you probably don’t want to connect with. If you are that person, you need to probably really go back to the who, the what, and say, “Let’s set some new goals with quality over quantity.”

Betty Collins: [00:19:11] Networking or connecting? Networking that leads to good connection … There is a difference, and you need to make sure you know that. You’re either green and growing, or you are ripe and you’re rotting. There is a difference. When you’re out there in the marketplace trying to make connections, and trying to grow, and trying to be different, you have to think differently. Knowing what to do and doing it are not the same thing. So, I would challenge you, today, to change your mindset on networking or connecting.

Betty Collins: [00:00:00] I hope you enjoyed the podcast today on “Stop Networking, Start Connecting.” I did this podcast because I could network and be out and about all day long but have no fruits from it; no results that I like. When I talk about the connection piece, I’m really talking about it’s got to … Networking is not a bad thing. It’s not like you stop that, obviously, but it’s got to make a connection that goes into a relationship.

Betty Collins: [00:00:30] There’s no one who can talk about this better than Frank Agin, who is the president and founder of AmSpirit Business Connections. Over my career, for sure, and through my business journey, Frank has been very influential in my networking and connection abilities. He’s simply the best at it. His organization and all the connections that have led to relationships have been there. So, I welcome you today, Frank, and thank you for taking the time to spend with me today. First, why don’t you just tell about you, the organization – that 30-second commercial thing that we talk about.

Frank Agin: [00:01:03] Sure.

Betty Collins: [00:01:04] It can go longer. It can go longer.

Frank Agin: [00:01:05] Yeah, I used to be an attorney, and I got into a networking organization … I’ll make the long story really short. I got into a networking organization; liked it so much, I bought it. I haven’t practiced law since 2004; it’s been a long time. What we do at AmSpirit Business Connections is we help entrepreneurs, sales reps, and professionals get more referrals through networking. It’s a for-profit membership-based type organization, where they come together with other like-minded individuals on a consistent basis to go through a consistent meeting program to learn about each other, and establish relationships, and exchange referrals.

Betty Collins: [00:01:47] I know I’ve benefited greatly from it. I can remember my first meeting, going back to those days, and I just thought, “I’ve never had to tell anyone a thing about myself, let alone ask anything.” Most people would think that Betty Collins could do this in her sleep; she’s personable, and on and on. It was a huge challenge for me. But, all the sudden, business development became this top, top thing that I had to do. So, it really, truly helped me through those times. I have some of my younger generation now in AmSpirit from Brady Ware, and they’re really enjoying it, for sure. I talk about stop networking and start connecting, but I want you to tell me what you think all that means. Tell me the difference between networking, connection, and leading to relationships.

Frank Agin: [00:02:34] Networking gets a bad rap. It does. People kind of think of networking as the aluminum-siding sales guy, used-car salesmen, or … We’re picking on men here. Perfect show for it, right? It gets a bad rap because people think of it so much as sales. They really kind of align those two. I look at networking this way – networking is a verb. It’s an action. Networking is really about getting out there and being amongst other people. From that, you make connections. People that you learn their names, they learn you, but really, the end game to it all is establishing relationships.

Frank Agin: [00:03:14] We do business with those that we know, we like, and we trust. All things being equal, we do business with those sorts of people. All things being unequal, and the example I always use is insurance … I pay too much … Well, I could pay less for my car insurance. I know I could. I just know I could, but I really like my auto-insurance guy. He’ll go to bat for me. He will do things. I can speak to lots of professionals in my life that I have this relationship with them. I can get it cheaper, but I wouldn’t have the relationship. There’s something about that relationship that just kind of pulls us together. So, it’s really about the relationships.

Betty Collins: [00:03:55] Sure, sure. I have had this same scenario. From the very first AmSpirit group I was in, my car-insurance guy has been there, and my house … I’ve never had a reason to change, and it was just because there was a relationship that was forged. I don’t have a reason to go look for 10 bucks a month or call an 800 number. Generally, who is the successful networker/connector? Who is that? What do they look like?

Frank Agin: [00:04:27] I don’t know about actual look. It’s more actions, and it’s really people who are focused on trying to help others, providing value to the world, providing value to others. In their mind, they ask … We all ask this question- the question we ask when we meet somebody new is, “What’s in it for me?” That’s very primitive. That’s a very primitive question to ask: “Okay, I’ve met this person. What’s in it for me?” Because we’re in a survival mode.

Frank Agin: [00:04:55] But the person who’s successful in networking is able to push beyond that question and ask the second question. The second question is, “What can I do for this person? What can I do for the person I’m meeting?” If you stop and think about it, everybody I encounter, probably about two percent will benefit me. Two percent can be a member of my organization, or a franchisee, or client, however you want to look at it. But 100 percent, I can help somehow, some way. The successful networkers, they’re kind of driven by that. I can tell, when I talk to somebody, it doesn’t take long to find out, by the questions they ask, where their mind is. If it’s constantly, “Hey, what’s in it for me? What’s in it for me?” I know they’re not a good networker. Doesn’t mean they’re a bad person, just that they’re not operating at that networking level.

Betty Collins: [00:05:42] Right. Well, I know that was probably the thing I learned the most is you … Especially when you’re saying, “What am I going to do for this person?” That’s the mindset you have to be in. It can be simple things, such as inviting them to events, or getting them on a panel, or getting them a speaking gig, or any of those type of things. It’s not necessarily leading to business, but you’re helping them get there. It’s not getting me any business because I got someone on a panel. But you just never know where that will lead to, because it’s truly helping them to connect where they need to be, or a place that they could really help your client, and that’s valuable to the client.

Frank Agin: [00:06:23] Right.

Betty Collins: [00:06:23] I just recently had somebody who … I said, “Who’s your …” They’re frustrated all the time with the bank, and I said, “Well, who’s your banker?” They go, “We love the teller.”.

Frank Agin: [00:06:35] Yeah, that’s the problem.

Betty Collins: [00:06:37] I said, “Who’s your banker? You want loans, and you want lines of credit, and you want these things, and you don’t have a banker.” So, I got them connected to a banker, and they have just been so grateful. I didn’t get anything out of that … You’re right in the terms of ‘but it helped my client.’ It definitely helped them. So, what are those common mistakes in networking …? I have those moments where I dread going to networking things because I know who’s going to be there, and I don’t want to deal with that.

Frank Agin: [00:07:07] Right.

Betty Collins: [00:07:07] Help the audience understand – this is probably what you shouldn’t do when you’re trying to network, and connect, and making that relationship really work.

Frank Agin: [00:07:17] Well, I think some of the common mistakes that people run into and probably the reason that keeps people away from networking events is they go in with the mindset of, “Okay, what am I going to try and get out of this?” What I always say … I call it my cloak of invincibility; when I walk into a networking event, I am there to help people. I’m a superhero. I’m here to help. If you don’t want my help, that’s okay, but very few people are going to reject somebody who’s trying to help them.

Frank Agin: [00:07:45] People get stuck with small talk; don’t know how to make small talk because they’re always so worried about what they have to say. What I tell people is, “Don’t worry about what you have to say. Get them talking. Allow them to talk; explore where they’re coming from.” Then you can just relax and let it come to you. I think people have, with respect to networking, they just- they think it’s got to work according to some preordained schedule, and you just don’t know. You know, in your life, there are things that have come out of the woodwork that you set in motion years ago. I hear that’s a common theme. “I ran into this person at a wedding 10 years ago. Now, they’re finally a client.” That happens.

Betty Collins: [00:08:30] Well, I know I was appreciative for some of those things that I learned early on, when I realy had to get into the business-development world. Now, I’m kind of in a world where I want to have impact more. I say the word ‘legacy’ probably too much because I’m 56 but having connections and relationships where you can really have some impact is huge. It’s not even just about building my business at this point. That’s why it’s so important to just stop the networking thing. Utilize that as a venue to make real connections that end up in lasting relationships. So, wrap it up for me. What is the takeaway, today, to the audience, that you would love to communicate to them?

Frank Agin: [00:09:13] You need to find ways to help other people. One of my many sayings … My kids will roll their eyes if they hear this. One of my many sayings is that everything you get out of life is tied to what you do in life. You just can’t see the string. It’s so true because things will happen, and you don’t know how they were set in motion.

Frank Agin: [00:09:33] You just need to focus on trying to find ways to help other people. I’m not talking about pulling your wallet out of your pocket and giving to charity. I’m talking about being encouraging to others. Introducing to people that don’t know each other is huge. Me being on this show is huge. There’s lots of ways that we can help one another. Just focus on helping one another, and don’t worry how it all pieces together. You just have to kind of trust the process. It does work.

Betty Collins: [00:09:59] Well, I appreciate you being here today, taking the time to be part of my podcast. I will tell you, if you’re an entrepreneur, or a sales rep, a professional, and you would like to generate a greater percentage of your business from referrals, you should consider AmSpirit Business Connection as an option for doing that. If you’d like to become better at building your network and making those connections that end up building relationships, you need to reach out to Frank, via his LinkedIn, or through his website, FrankAgin.com. Agin is A-G-I-N, And it’s all one word. So, FrankAgin.com. I can’t encourage you enough to stop networking. Make connections that build relationships.

Nick Santora with Curricula, Marc Gorlin with Roadie and Bijal Patel with Synamedia

February 28, 2020 by angishields

Atlanta Business Radio

Nick Santora with Curricula, Marc Gorlin with Roadie and Bijal Patel with Synamedia

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Nick Santora founded Curricula after a 7-year career at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the enforcement agency responsible for regulating the power grid across North America. Nick spends time advocating and advising critical infrastructure utilities on how to improve their cybersecurity programs. Nick is internationally recognized as a cybersecurity expert and speaks regularly at security conferences across North America on the psychology behind influencing employees within security awareness programs.

Nick holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration from Rider University. He also earned his CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) and CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor). Nick also serves on the board of advisors for Veracity, and industrial control systems SDN company.

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn.

Before starting Roadie, Marc Gorlin Co-Founded and was Chairman of Kabbage Inc., which provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses. To date, Kabbage has raised more than $250 million in venture funding and has a $270 million credit facility from Guggenheim Securities. The company has provided over $3.5 billion in capital to small businesses.

In 1996, Marc was a co-founder and an original board member of Pretty Good Privacy (“PGP”), a company formed to commercialize one of the most prevalent security standards used on the Internet, popularized in the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Marc assisted with the initial formation of PGP and oversaw the financing, growth and eventual sale of the company (to Network Associates (Nasdaq: INTC), a public company worth over $1 billion) in December of 1997.

After PGP, Marc co-founded VerticalOne Corporation, a content personalization service that was sold to S1 Corporation (Nasdaq: ACIW) for $166 million. Marc was Executive Vice President of VerticalOne and worked in multiple areas of the company including financing, business development, sales, M&A and security issues.

Marc is an active speaker on serial entrepreneurship, innovation and venture funding. Marc has spoken at SXSW, RILA Supply Chain, The Montgomery Summit, Internet Summit, Southeastern Venture Conference, and Finovate among others. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and remains an avid bulldog fan.

Connect with Marc on LinkedIn.

Bijal Patel is Synamedia’s Chief Financial Officer and brings over 20 years of experience in international high-tech and software companies as well as private equity-backed technology firms. Bijal has extensive experience driving business transformation, integrations and process improvements.

Bijal joined Synamedia from hospitality technology innovator, HotSchedules where he served as CFO for 3 years. Prior to HotSchedules, Bijal was CFO at Aptean and before that he held the position of Vice President of Finance at Finastra and was interim CFO between 2012 and 2014. Bijal spent the early part of his career in a variety of senior roles at IBM.

Connect with Bijal on LinkedIn.

About Your Host

Joey Kline is a Vice President at JLL, specializing in office brokerage and tenant representation. As an Atlanta native, he has a deep passion for promoting the economic growth and continued competitiveness of communities in and around Atlanta, as well as the Southeast as a whole. He has completed transactions in every major submarket of metro Atlanta, and works primarily with start-ups, advertising/marketing agencies, and publicly-traded companies. With a healthy mix of tenacious drive and analytical insights, Joey is a skilled negotiator who advises clients on a myriad of complex real estate matters.

With a strategy and business development background, Joey is first and foremost a pragmatic advisor to his clients. Most recently, he was the Director of Business Development for American Fueling Systems, an Atlanta-based alternative energy company. While at JLL, he has become a member of the Million Dollar Club, and has built a reputation as an expert on the intersection of transit-accessibility and urban real estate. With intimate involvement in site selection and planning/zoning concerns, Joey approaches real estate from the perspective of the end user, and thus possesses a unique lens through which to serve his clients.

Joey holds a Master of Business Administration from Emory University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. He is a founder, board member, and the treasurer of Advance Atlanta, and also sits on the Selection Committee for the Association for Corporate Growth’s Fast 40 event. In addition, he is a member of CoreNet and the Urban Land Institute. Finally, he is part of LEAD Atlanta’s Class of 2019.

Connect with Joey on LinkedIn.

Chris Hermann with Clean Hands Safe Hands and Atandra Burman with RCE

February 20, 2020 by angishields

Atlanta Business Radio

Chris Hermann with Clean Hands Safe Hands and Atandra Burman with RCE

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This episode is brought to you in part by our Co-Sponsor Trevelino/Keller

Chris Hermann, PhD is the Founder and CEO of Clean Hands – Safe Hands (CHSH). He has over 14 years of experience working in medical technology design and healthcare. His background, as a physician and engineer, has given him a unique perspective to bridge the gap between engineering and medicine. His in depth technical and clinical knowledge have allowed him to lead multidisciplinary teams to address complex clinical problems. These teams have created several medical devices, biologic therapies, and electronic sensors that are used clinically or are in clinical trials.

Dr. Hermann started and led the multi-institution research collaboration that developed the core technology utilized in the CHSH system. The research team included investigators from Children’s Healthcare, Georgia Tech, Emory School of Medicine, the GA Tech Research Institute, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Over the last 10 years the research team has secured and executed more than eight state and federal research grants totaling over $3.2M. Unlike most clinical research grants, these projects were heavily focused on rapid iteration engineering development and completely driven by the real world needs of clinicians. Dr. Hermann is the lead inventor for the patents related to the CHSH technology and serves as the connection between the clinicians and engineers.

Outside of his clinical experience, Dr. Hermann has over ten years’ experience in a variety of leadership development training, experiential education, and team building roles. These include running and facilitating high ropes/challenge courses, climbing leadership development programs, and high adventure sailing programs. He has a PhD in Bioengineering, a MS in Mechanical Engineering, a BS in Biomedical Engineering with High Honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MD from the Emory School of Medicine. He is married with two children.

Follow CHSH on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Atandra Burman, CEO and Founder of RCE, is on a mission towards saving human lives, susceptible to heart attacks. We have put together a team of medical experts, who have developed a unique technology that detects critical cardiac biomarkers early in the stages of heart tissue injury. This is the first and only solution that empowers cardiologists in preventing the unexpected heart attack from happening and bringing peace of mind in patient care.

Follow RCE on LinkedIn and Twitter.