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Decision Vision Episode 41: Should I Sell My Company to an ESOP? – An Interview with Andre Schnabl, Tenor Capital Partners

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Decision Vision Episode 41: Should I Sell My Company to an ESOP? - An Interview with Andre Schnabl, Tenor Capital Partners
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should I sell my company to an esop
Mike Blake and Andre Schnabl

Decision Vision Episode 41: Should I Sell My Company to an ESOP? – An Interview with Andre Schnabl, Tenor Capital Partners

Is selling my business to employees through an ESOP advisable? What kind of businesses are the best candidates to sell to an ESOP? In this edition of “Decision Vision,” host Mike Blake discusses this question with Andre Schnabl, Tenor Capital Partners. “Decision Vision” is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Andre Schnabl, Tenor Capital Partners

Andre Schnabl

Tenor Capital Partners is financial advisory firm focused exclusively on the design and installation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). These transactions use employee ownership as a platform for business owners to realize the value of their businesses through the sale to an ESOP.

Andre Schnabl is a managing partner of TCP and leads the firm’s debt placement practice. Prior to joining TCP, Andre retired as Managing Partner of the Atlanta office of Grant Thornton LLP in 2012. Prior to his retirement he held a variety of positions within the firm in the firm’s offices in Zimbabwe, Montreal, Canada and Atlanta. During his career, he has consulted with mid market companies on a variety of matters, including mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings including public offerings. Since joining Tenor in 2013, Andre has been advising companies and shareholders in business succession using ESOP’s, including shareholder advocacy, structuring and leading the financing raises. Andre has a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Geology from the University of London and is a CPA. He serves on a number of corporate and not-for-profit boards.

For more information, visit the Tenor Capital Partners website or call Andre directly at 404-372-2759.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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/

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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 firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, a clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic, rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different. We talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision. 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.

Michael Blake: [00:00:53] Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator and please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well. Our topic today is, should I consider an ESOP? An ESOP is an acronym for employee stock ownership program. And, you know, this is a topic that sort of comes and goes. You kind of see waves of ESOP’s popularity in the marketplace. And I don’t frankly know for it a crust or a nadir of waves right now.

Michael Blake: [00:01:31] But what I do know is that ESOPs are interesting. They are complicated. They can be accompanied by some risk, but I also am convinced, in certain circumstances, they are, flat out, the best way for an owner to exit their business. There are tax advantages to doing so. In some cases, the ESOP is in a position to pay more for a business than any other buyer. And also, there are business owners out there who have an interest in giving their employees an opportunity to share in the wealth that the business has created will generate.

Michael Blake: [00:02:18] And that may be in the ongoing role of the owner or even after the owner sort of drops off the keys and retires some place to Costa Rica. And, you know, I don’t know if this is still true, there’s not tricks have emerged since, but for a long time, I think the largest ESOP in United States was United Airlines. And for a long time, they are an employee-owned company, merged I think with Continental. I can’t keep track now. They’re just all, in the United States, making airlines anyway.

Michael Blake: [00:02:55] But, you know, it’s probably a topic that at least some of you have had arise either as a business owner or an advisory capacity. And once you start getting into regulations, the mechanics, it can be dizzying. And I am far from being an expert on this, as I am with just about every topic that we bring on the program, which is why we do the program. And so, instead of my trying to fumble my way through it, I have brought on my friend and colleague, Andre Schnabl, who is a principal and managing partner of Tenor Capital Partners, a financial advisory firm that is focused exclusively on the design installation of employee stock ownership plans.

Michael Blake: [00:03:38] Prior to joining TCP, Andre retired as managing partner of the Atlanta office of Grant Thornton in 2012. And we’ve known each other long before then. We were sort of friendly quasi-competitors. Prior to his retirement, he held a variety of positions within the firm and the firm’s offices in Zimbabwe, Montreal, Canada, and Atlanta. During his career, he has consulted with mid-market companies in a variety of matters including mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings, including public offerings.

Michael Blake: [00:04:10] Since joining Tenor in 2013, again, a very busy retired guy, Andre had been advising companies and shareholders in business succession using ESOPs, including shareholder advocacy, structuring, and even the financing raises. Andre is a bachelor of science in chemistry and geology from the University of London and is a CPA. I did not know that you’re a scientist. He serves on a number of corporate and not for profit boards. He has the passionate belief that the advancement of women into leadership positions is not only the right thing to do, but also a business paradigm. I strongly agree with that.

Michael Blake: [00:04:44] He partnered with Women in Technology to help create the Women of the Year Technology Awards that began 17 years ago. For those of you who are not in Atlanta, that is a big deal. I think it is one of the two or three most important awards ceremonies on the Atlanta tech sector calendar. And I did not know that you helped start that, so good for you. And thank you for doing that. Andre continues his unwavering support for diversity and has been a frequent guest speaker for corporations and associations on the critical importance of diversity within leadership ranks. Women in Technology recognized Andre’s contributions in this regard with their legacy award. Andre, thanks for coming on the program.

Andre Schnabl: [00:05:22] Thank you, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:05:24] So, let’s start with very basic—this first question I ask in almost every interview, it’s probably the most important interview for which I’m asking this question so we can set the vocabulary. What is an ESOP?

Andre Schnabl: [00:05:37] The acronym literally means employee stock ownership plan. I would like to say that the acronym unfortunately connotes a number of different things for different people. And to some extent, maybe it’s the press that it’s received has been unfortunate. What an ESOP essentially does, it creates a platform for employee ownership. So, this is a mechanism by which a shareholder, a founder, somebody who basically has built a business, it’s time for them to consider a variety of options on how to exit. They can either take it public. They can sell to a competitor. They can sell to a supplier and/or other strategic buyer or they can sell to a financial buyer, such as private equity. They seldom think about this other potential exit strategy, which is selling to an ESOP. And therein I guess is the basis of this conversation.

Michael Blake: [00:06:44] I’m glad you brought that up because in my line of work dealing with many companies, I hear people use the term ESOP in connection with stock options, right? And they’re calling it employee stock option program. And it’s descriptive but factually incorrect, right? So, it’s important because those two things are about as different. In fact, later today, we’re recording a podcast on stock option programs, but that’s not what we’re talking today. So, we’re selling to an ESOP. When we say selling to an ESOP, I mean, what exactly is ESOP? I mean, we talked about, you said that it is a vehicle for employees to own a company or a portion of a company. Can you expand upon that in terms of what the mechanics of an ESOP actually are?

Andre Schnabl: [00:07:34] Yes. Basically, what happens is one creates a trust, an employee stock ownership trust, and you sell all of the shares of the business from the selling shareholders or a portion of the shares to that trust. Can be anything from 1 percent to 100 percent into the trust for the benefit of all of the employees. And so, over time, the trust releases those shares into employee accounts. A little bit like a company’s match on a 401(k) plan. And by releasing those shares into employee accounts, over the years, those employees enjoy the benefit of the equity appreciation of the company.

Andre Schnabl: [00:08:27] And on their retirement, they can essentially sell back those shares at fair market value and have created value for themselves. And on the sell side, here is a way for selling shareholders to sell their shares at full value. They’re not leaving anything on the table or be it that they are doing something wonderful for their employees, they’re going to get full value. And they get paid out over time and the employees ultimately get ownership over time.

Michael Blake: [00:08:59] And the thing that strikes me over the head about an ESOP, one of the things that makes it so unique, is the fact that, in effect, you create your own buyer, when you think about it, right? And that just struck me. When you say you create a trust, you are, in effect, creating a vehicle that is going to be the buyer of your own company.

Andre Schnabl: [00:09:23] That is-

Michael Blake: [00:09:23] I cannot think of any other scenario in which that exists.

Andre Schnabl: [00:09:26] Well, you’re absolutely right. And let’s just think about this. I cannot tell you how many times we get a knock on the door and get brought into a potential ESOP opportunity because the potential selling shareholders have been let down or disappointed or left at the altar by a third-party buyer. There is enormous transactional risk when you start talking to a third party about buying your company. You have risk about whether it’ll ever close. You have risk that the original promise of price is actually met. You have a lot of warranties and reps and escrow.

Michael Blake: [00:10:12] In fact, the price probably won’t be met.

Andre Schnabl: [00:10:14] I was-

Michael Blake: [00:10:14] If we’re really honest about it, chances are that LOI price ain’t going to get paid.

Andre Schnabl: [00:10:18] That is exactly correct. In a case where you’ve created your own buyer, nothing in the business from an operational standpoint changes, whatsoever. So, employees don’t get unsettled that anything negative is to happen and you know the deal terms before you pull the trigger. So, there is no transaction risk. There’s no integration risk. It’s not as if a third party now has to integrate the buy, the business that they’ve just bought into their own business. And as a result, the trustee is prepared to pay total and full value in spite of the fact that the employees get a wonderful benefit over time.

Michael Blake: [00:11:02] And, you know, that last part, I don’t know how relevant it is to the podcast but it does bear highlighting. And that one of the greatest gifts that you can give I think anybody is a functioning operating viable business, right? And I say that I do a lot of work with succession planning and I strongly encourage people, whatever they can, if they have a business that they can keep it in the family to do so and maybe that’ll be a—and we’ve had a topic on succession planning.

Michael Blake: [00:11:38] But anyway, you know, giving that same thing to employees, especially in a time where retirement is very uncertain, right? Depending on your ideology, you may or may not think that Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare are going to be out there in 30 years. I’m not going to go down that rabbit hole. But one thing we do know for certain is that most of us are going to live longer than we ever thought we would, right? And one of the best hedges against that is ownership of a viable going concern.

Andre Schnabl: [00:12:14] Absolutely correct. And in addition to having ownership in a viable concern, there is significant empirical research that supports the fact that employee ownership, as opposed to selling to a third party and in particular, selling to private equity, will in fact create a business that outperforms a business owned by private equity. Productivity, employment, wage rates all move in the wrong direction when purchased by private equity. And I don’t want to be disparaging about private equity. There is a wonderful place in our macroeconomic equation-

Michael Blake: [00:13:02] Sure.

Andre Schnabl: [00:13:02] … for private equity and capital formation. But one of the negatives is that private equity, in order to enhance returns, do things, sometimes, that are very much negative for the performance of that business and the experience of employees.

Michael Blake: [00:13:20] You know, it brings up an interesting point. I’m going to take a little sidebar here. One of the things I’ve been studying a lot is business holding periods and one of the things I’m learning is that basically, the longer you hold on to a business, the better it performs. In fact, there’s data suggest that at a 20-year threshold, the average stock has less risk than the typical bond over the same period. And that’s St. Louis Fed data. And the thing that has struck me about private equity, and this is where this is relevant to the ESOP, is that private equity has a structural problem and that it has a countdown, right? Private equity must sell in some period of time. Very few private equity funds have more than a 10-year vintage.

Michael Blake: [00:14:12] You’re starting to see some 20-year, but those are very much kind of unicorns, which means that depending at what point in the firms, the PE fund’s life cycle the company’s been bought, the holding period may be somewhere between three to seven years. And that creates distortions, as opposed to an ESOP, which is definitionally a long-term owner, a buy and hold structure. If you accept my premise that the time horizon is meaningful to the business outcome, by definition then, the ESOP is structured to build that better outcome not because they’re better, smarter, more noble better motivated, but simply because they have more time.

Andre Schnabl: [00:14:57] Well, I wonder if I could provide a specific data point-.

Michael Blake: [00:15:02] Please.

Andre Schnabl: [00:15:02] … that takes that broad conceptual observation and brings it down to earth. We happen to be in a bank building. I have done about 10 transactions with this bank. This bank has provided the senior debt on a leveraged ESOP transaction. I don’t know the total number of millions of dollars that those 10 transactions aggregate. But the lead ESOP lender for this bank gave me an interesting statistic a few months ago. If you can consider 10 borrowers because essentially, these 10 companies that shareholders sold their stock to a trust, the company borrowed money to pay off the selling shareholders.

Andre Schnabl: [00:16:00] And so, we’ve got 10 companies who are 10 borrowers of this very bank. Of those 10 loans, each quarter, the bank measures covenants. And so, they are acutely tuned into the performance of these 10 companies. One of these borrowers had a covenant breach in one quarter. And so, over the six years that I have been doing this with this particular bank, those ten companies, they have ten performing loans and they are performing not only in accordance with the prescribed documents, but in fact, in every case, they’ve accelerated the delivering process because of this structure that an ESOP provides.

Michael Blake: [00:16:48] So, ESOP sounds great. Why is not every company an ESOP? Should every company be an ESOP?

Andre Schnabl: [00:16:58] No. I think that we design each transaction based on the priorities and strategic objectives of the selling shareholders. And not every company is either performing at the level that one needs in order to accomplish those objectives or the balance sheet of the company may not be strong enough to support the structure that we design. The growth rates may not be appropriate. There may be a number of reasons that a particular business is either not ready or not suited to this particular exit strategy. So, I’m not saying that there are an enormous number of hurdles to jump over in order to be eligible, but there are companies that are far more suitable for this transaction than others. But what I can tell you, for those that do fit nicely into this model, there is nothing that comes close to competing with it.

Michael Blake: [00:18:06] So, let’s dig into that because I think that’s really kind of the main course of this interview. Profile for me the characteristics of a great ESOP candidate, please.

Andre Schnabl: [00:18:20] A great ESOP candidate is a business that employs at least 20, 25 employees, these are general guidelines, is profitable, has been around for several years, so that they are an attractive borrower to a bank. And finally, the value of the business tracks with the business’s ability to throw off cash. In other words, if we have a business that is worth $100 million but isn’t profitable or is worth $100 million and throws off $1 or $2 million dollars in cash, it’s probably not the best candidate for an ESOP. So, we are looking for businesses where the enterprise value of the business is tied very closely to the cash that it throws off.

Andre Schnabl: [00:19:21] Generally, in this market, valuation somewhere between five and 10 times EBITDA, those are the kinds of businesses that really fit very, very well into this ESOP model. I’ll give you an example of something that doesn’t fit. If you’ve got a software company that has built an enormous amount of intellectual property that it hasn’t yet monetized. In other words, it’s early in its market cycle. I don’t think that’s a good ESOP candidate. A business that is a multi-generational manufacturer of widgets that has been profitable, that has got a very strong balance sheet, a perfect example of a wonderful candidate for an ESOP exit.

Michael Blake: [00:20:10] And so, you touched on valuation, which, of course, is a topic near and dear to my heart. And I want to explore that just a little bit with you because what you’re highlighting that I think is very important here is that not all values are alike. And your example I think is very apt. For example, that software company, if I were to perform an appraisal, may very well exhibit a value of say $20 million, right? But the thing may very well be pre-revenue, certainly pre-profit. And the value of that company is derived primarily from a strategic fit for a, you know, potential strategic buyer.

Michael Blake: [00:20:54] Basically, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook decides that they just sort of have to have it. And there’s nothing wrong with that value but the thesis of that value is inconsistent with the thesis of the ESOP because in effect, that market-based value, this gets in so many interesting questions, I got to keep my mind on topic, that thesis of value is sort of the flipper value, right, as opposed to an ESOP where a cash-driven value implies, again, a buy and hold strategy. And it must be able to support and sustain a buy and hold investment and ownership thesis.

Andre Schnabl: [00:21:33] And that is all correct. There are two elements within it, most ESOP structures and ESOP design transactions. The one is that the selling shareholders get paid over time, but they want a down payment. That down payment generally represents somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of the entire value of the business. And where does that money come from? It comes from a lender. The lender may sell to a software company pre-revenue, but it’s unlikely to. They would love to lend to a business that is cash flowing.

Andre Schnabl: [00:22:17] And so, with the added tax benefits, banks love to lend to ESOPs and that money goes into the pockets of the selling shareholders. And then, the remainder of the selling price will come from the profitability of the business going forward so that the selling shareholders are paid out in total over, let’s say, a five to seven-year period. There are a number of bells and whistles that we haven’t touched upon here that make the transaction even more attractive to the selling shareholder than them getting full and fair value over a multi-year payout.

Michael Blake: [00:22:58] And I want to touch upon that. But before I forget, I want to clarify or bring one issue into the characteristics of an ESOP to your attention or for your comment really. And that is that although the ideal candidate, as you said and I agree with this, certainly that, you know, multigenerational manufacturing company, lots of fixed assets is an ideal candidate, you don’t necessarily have to be that to be a viable ESOP.

Michael Blake: [00:23:25] For example, there is a stereotype that architecture and engineering firms seem to make very good ESOP candidates. And they’re unlikely to—they don’t manufacture things, they’re a professional services firm. But for whatever reason, they seem to find ESOPs as, there seems to be a match there with ESOPs. A, is that true? And B, why do you suppose that is? And then, C, if you can remember all these questions, is can that be applied to other services firms, maybe even accounting firms?

Andre Schnabl: [00:23:56] First of all, it is true. Secondly, the reason is why are ESOPs attractive to professional services? Professional service firm’s primary driver of growth, in addition to market conditions, is the attraction and retention of talent. And ESOP provides a unique opportunity for a future employee to look at two offers and say in one situation, “I’m simply going to get a paycheck”, in the other situation, “I’m going to get the same paycheck plus ownership over time”, which is more attractive.

Andre Schnabl: [00:24:41] And so, ESOP-owned professional service firms have got competitive advantage in attracting and retaining talent, which is the lifeblood of professional services. Now, in terms of what kinds of professional service firms work, in our firm, Tenor Capital, we’ve done architects and engineers, we’ve done general construction, we’ve done intermediaries, and consultants, marketing consultants, for example. And as you may recall, we’ve done one for your firm.

Michael Blake: [00:25:19] Yeah.

Andre Schnabl: [00:25:19] And they were a professional services firm themselves. Whether this would work for an accounting firm or for a law firm for that matter, the answer is yes. But there’s certain regulatory hurdles that one has to consider when you consider a law firm or an accounting firm. Because the regulators of those professions generally require that the shareholder or a principal in an accounting firm is an accountant. In an ESOP, everybody, including support staff, including the person at the front desk who answers the phone will be a shareholder and one has to navigate the regulatory environment, which one certainly can do before one can actually execute an effective transaction for professional services.

Michael Blake: [00:26:18] Now, why are banks interested in lending to such ESOPs? Because the fixed assets are not going to be there, right? The traditional collateral, as we would think about it, is not there. How do banks get comfortable with that?

Andre Schnabl: [00:26:35] Well, the fixed assets are not there in professional services.

Michael Blake: [00:26:39] Right.

Andre Schnabl: [00:26:40] The fixed assets are certainly there for other kinds of ESOP transactions. Banks become comfortable because they lend on collateral, yes, but they also lend on cash flows. And an ESOP transaction, the cash flows are actually enhanced when the owner of a company is an ESOP compared to a traditional individual like you and me. Most smaller businesses in the United States are S corporations.

Andre Schnabl: [00:27:19] And that means that the company itself is not a tax-paying entity, but the shareholders that own the business are. In order for those shareholders to pay their tax liability each year, to make a distribution of cash to those shareholders. Well, if instead of those shareholders, you replace those shareholders with a tax-exempt trust, which is what an employee stock ownership trust is, then overnight, you are no longer required to make tax distributions to your shareholder because your shareholder has no tax liability.

Andre Schnabl: [00:27:58] So, all of a sudden, 100 cents on the dollar that you make, you keep and can be used to pay off the bank as opposed to only 60 cents on the dollar or 70 cents on the dollar. So, you have immediately enhanced the borrowing power of a company, which is obviously very attractive to a lender. And that is why they look at these things and enjoy the possibility of lending to an ESOP, even if it is a professional service firm that doesn’t have hard collateral.

Michael Blake: [00:28:33] Okay. So, let’s say by now, we’ve convinced some of our listeners that an ESOP is a viable vehicle. What’s involved in setting one of these programs up?

Andre Schnabl: [00:28:47] Well, we’ve talked about the formation of a buyer, which is the trust itself.

Michael Blake: [00:28:52] Right.

Andre Schnabl: [00:28:53] And one needs to obtain a trustee. Now, the company itself could nominate an executive to be a trustee. It’s not something that I would recommend, but it can be done. So, let’s assume that you follow my recommendation and get an independent trustee. So, you need a trust and you need an independent trustee. And on an ongoing basis, you need a third-party administrator, who is the person that does a lot of the day to day mechanics, so that an employee, when they want to see how many shares they have in their account, they need an annual statement.

Andre Schnabl: [00:29:38] That annual statement is produced by a third-party administrator. So, those individuals have to be put in place. And there is an annual cost associated with those individuals. The cost is very manageable. And I will say that quite frankly, this is more a misconception than reality that this is a complicated affair to set in place. There is certain costs for a small business, let’s say, worth $25 million and less, the average annual cost is somewhere around $50,000 for all of these activities combined.

Michael Blake: [00:30:25] So, pretty reasonable, right? That’s-

Andre Schnabl: [00:30:27] Pretty reasonable.

Michael Blake: [00:30:28] … a junior employee, basically. And one other feature that I want to bring up, a tip also is that an ESOP, when it’s formed, is typically accompanied by some form of third-party appraisal, right, which is, in effect, a fairness opinion. And the role of that exercise is basically, in effect, to prove to the bank that the asset they’re buying is worth what they’re lending against, I think. And second, I think it also has something to do with communicating to the shareholders now what it is they’re actually receiving, then there’s an ongoing need for that as well. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Andre Schnabl: [00:31:08] Yes. I apologize that I didn’t bring up the valuation firm at the outset as to their annual running costs. But you’re absolutely right. The trustee that is essentially representing the trust as the buyer, from a legal standpoint, cannot pay more than fair value for the shares. And so, they get a valuation firm to give them a valuation to ensure that they don’t overpay for the business. On an annual basis, that valuation is updated so that the employees know the value of the number of shares that they hold in their account. So that when they retire, they know the value that they’re going to get for those shares, so that they can then take that cash and use it to put bread on the table. So, yes, a valuation is required for the transaction itself, the sale. And it is required on an annual basis to maintain, essentially, the efficacy of the plan.

Michael Blake: [00:32:13] And that valuation on an ongoing basis will also serve as the basis for setting the price at which shares will be repurchased or, in fact, redeemed, correct?

Andre Schnabl: [00:32:24] That is correct. Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:32:25] So, you know, it’s a big deal in my experience that the valuation part is among, if not the most expensive part of the ESOP.

Andre Schnabl: [00:32:36] Well, I can give you some numbers and you know this business better than I do. The cost associated with giving the trustee what they need, that fairness opinion is heavily dependent on the target company. Generally speaking, the larger the transaction, the more expensive the valuation. But also, the complexity of the valuation may be driven by the kind of business that the company is in. The valuation therefore can be anything from $25,000 up, depending on the size and complexity. However, we haven’t talked about all the savings associated with this transaction-

Michael Blake: [00:33:24] Yes.

Andre Schnabl: [00:33:25] … which generally funds all of these expenses. And without getting ahead of myself, when we get to that point, you will very quickly see that selling to an ESOP is less expensive than selling to a third-party.

Michael Blake: [00:33:39] Well, you know what, it’s Friday. Let’s go ahead and get ahead of ourselves. So-

Andre Schnabl: [00:33:43] All right.

Michael Blake: [00:33:43] … let’s talk about what those cost savings look like because they are significant, but they’re also a little bit complicated. So, let’s walk through that a little bit.

Andre Schnabl: [00:33:52] Okay. Well, essentially, an ESOP-owned company gets a unique set of tax deductions that no other entity gets. We’ve already talked about the fact that if it’s an S corp, you don’t even care what tax deductions you’ve got because the company is effectively a tax-exempt entity. But let’s assume that it’s a C corp, the C corp gets a tax deduction equal to 25 percent of its payroll over and above its payroll itself.

Michael Blake: [00:34:31] Wow.

Andre Schnabl: [00:34:31] So, essentially, they get a tax deduction which represents 125 percent of its payroll. So, if a company is a professional services firm, where its primary cost of delivery is salaries and compensation, you can imagine that it’s very easy to drive down your taxable income to zero when you’ve got that tax deduction which represents 125 percent of your primary cost. In manufacturing, same thing, labor cost is huge. So, you’ve got a huge tax deduction. So, what is the value associated with that 25 percent tax deduction? It usually exceeds the cost of that valuation that you were talking about. And so, effectively, it is a very tax-efficient and cost-efficient way of selling your business.

Michael Blake: [00:35:29] Now, do all employees participate in ESOP? Is there an option to exclude some employees either from the owner side or from the employee side, if they choose they don’t want to be a member?

Andre Schnabl: [00:35:40] No, there is no choice.

Michael Blake: [00:35:41] Okay.

Andre Schnabl: [00:35:41] This is a qualified plan and you cannot discriminate. Everybody has to participate. Now, their level of participation is dependent on their personal compensation. So, not everybody participates at the same level, but everybody is required to participate at some level.

Michael Blake: [00:36:04] Okay. So, one of the other features of an ESOP that makes it so different is that it is a government-regulated entity, right, by the Department of Labor, if I’m not mistaken, under ERISA from the 1970’s Employee Retirement Income Security Act, if I did that correctly.

Andre Schnabl: [00:36:25] Well done, Michael.

Michael Blake: [00:36:25] Oh boy. So, what are the implications of that external regulation? Do they add a level of risk? Do they interfere in the business? Is there a lot of activity of the Department of Labor as taking actions against companies? How do you see that environment?

Andre Schnabl: [00:36:45] And let us consider the Department of Labor as you might consider the IRS. As a company that is a taxpayer, you’re always subject to potential audit. And if you’ve been doing something that is untoward or potentially illegal or irresponsible, you may get sideways with the IRS. The same thing with the Department of Labor. The Department of Labor has the right to audit the filings that an ESOP is required to file every year. But in the event that that filing doesn’t raise any questions, you don’t hear from the Department of Labor. If you’ve been doing something a little strange or something that raises a number of questions, then it is true, you’re subject to a Department of Labor audit.

Andre Schnabl: [00:37:37] And if they believe that there is something that is being done that is inappropriate, you are potentially subject to legal risk as a result of that. So, I don’t consider the risks to be enhanced any more than somebody who doesn’t pay their taxes and they should. So, there have been court cases brought against trustees and selling shareholders as a result of litigation brought by employees and third parties, but that is infrequent. And when you look at the history, the chances of that happening is as remote as you being thrown into jail because you were a bad boy by the IRS.

Michael Blake: [00:38:26] Okay. And I actually could touch on one question that I want to make sure we get back to, which is the ongoing role of the trustee, right? And for our listeners, you know, that the trustee’s role in ESOP, as I understand, is that of a fiduciary, meaning that the trustee is there to represent the interests of the employees who are the participants in the ESOP. How involved or engaged is a trustee in the business of the ESOP? Do they effectively serve as a board member? Do they have veto rights over certain corporate actions? What does that role look like?

Andre Schnabl: [00:39:03] That’s a great question, Mike. And we get that question a lot from selling shareholders. The reality is that the selling shareholder, although they have sold a part of their company or potentially 100 percent of their company, they still control the board of directors. The trustee has absolutely no interest in being a board member or in running the board or participating in running the business.

Andre Schnabl: [00:39:32] They know as well as anybody that the people who built this business are the best people to run this business. Having said that, there are certain items where trustee approval is required and where a vote of the shares held in the trust is required. An example would be if an ESOP-owned company is approached by a third party to buy the business, then the board of directors has to consider whether that offer would be good for all the shareholders, which includes the employees who are represented by the trustee.

Andre Schnabl: [00:40:15] And so, in the sale of a business to a third party, the trustee needs to support the transaction. Generally, what would happen, the board would evaluate the transaction, would conclude that this is a deal that they’d like to do and then, they would approach the trustee and show why this is good for all shareholders and the trustee would sign off. But on all operating decisions and most strategic decisions, the trustee has absolutely no interest.

Andre Schnabl: [00:40:48] In the absence of something nefarious occurring, if the trustee became suspicious that, for example, the selling shareholders had granted a bonus or a distribution to themselves outside of the agreed upon deal terms, then the trustee would have a right to demand an explanation. But they are, quite frankly, from a practical standpoint, invisible other than once a year reviewing the annual valuation that we talked about previously.

Michael Blake: [00:41:31] Okay. So, we’re running out of time. We have time for a couple more questions. One question I want to make sure I get out there is how permanent is an ESOP? If I decide, you know, I have a company that decided, “Can we go do an ESOP?” But I’m concerned, maybe five years from now, maybe I don’t like the ESOP so much. Can an ESOP be canceled, terminated like a benefit plan sometimes is or once it’s there, is it pretty much there, carved in stone?

Andre Schnabl: [00:42:07] The answer is once you’ve decided to sell your business to an ESOP, they are now the owners. And in the event that you want to buy back your business, which is absolutely within your power, you need to cut a deal with now the seller who is the trustee. Just as selling to a third party needs a trustee approval, if you want to buy it back, you need trustee approval. So, it is cast in stone in the sense that you can’t just tear up the documents and pretend it never happened. But you can very much reverse it by buying it back or selling to a third party.

Andre Schnabl: [00:42:54] In fact, an ESOP-owned company is a wonderful vehicle for an intermediate step in a roll up. For example, if you were a professional services firm, sell it to an ESOP, you now have a tax-exempt entity that has a lot of cash and a very attractive platform to be a buyer for other professional service firms. So, you can build a business, you can grow your business through acquisitions before you decide to sell the entire shooting match to a third party. So, it is a wonderful way to build wealth and then, flip it out to a third party using an ESOP platform to accelerate that growth because you preserve cash because of the tax efficiency we talked about.

Michael Blake: [00:43:47] So, in effect, it’s really no different than if you have another shareholder in your company to say, “Hey, I’d like to buy your share.” “Okay. Let’s talk” or “I’m not interested.” Same kind of conversation.

Andre Schnabl: [00:43:57] That is correct. That is correct. There is one thing that we haven’t talked about and because we are getting to the end of our time that I want to bring up, that the selling shareholders, they sell their company for fair value. But there is also an opportunity for them to get an amount over and above fair value. And that sounds a little bit too good to be true. Let me tell you how that happens. Because selling shareholders are waiting for all of their money, they get compensated for that wait. And they get compensated by being issued warrants in the business.

Andre Schnabl: [00:44:39] And a warrant is the right to buy shares in the business at a price that is agreed upon. And so, as the business grows after you’ve sold the business, their warrant position becomes more and more valuable. That warrant position can be as much as 20 or 30 percent of the entire business. So, if you just think about this, if you’ve got a growing business, that 20 or 30 percent will grow in a business that is no longer paying taxes. Very often over a decade, that 20 or 30 percent is worth more than the entire business was worth the day you sold it. So, that warrant position should not be forgotten. It is something that is unique to these ESOPs.

Michael Blake: [00:45:31] I’m glad you brought that up because candidly, I did not know that. And you’re right. It does sound too good to be true. It sounds very much like, you know, you’re literally getting two bites of the apple.

Andre Schnabl: [00:45:43] That’s right. This is-

Michael Blake: [00:45:43] You sell your company but you still maintain a foothold in the company so you participate in the upside.

Andre Schnabl: [00:45:49] Absolutely. It is the second bite of the apple. But you’re financing a transaction that is for the benefit of employees, you deserve compensation and you get that compensation through the warrant position we’ve been talking about.

Michael Blake: [00:46:04] Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. And thank you, Andre, for helping us work through what is a very technical and complex topic, a lot of moving parts. I suspect a few listeners will find that they want to learn more about ESOPs to see if it’s right for their company. How can they reach you to learn more about this topic?

Andre Schnabl: [00:46:24] Well, my name is Andre Schnabl and my telephone number, 404-372-2759. And pay tenorcapital.com a visit on the web and you’ll see how to get a hold of us by email and you get to learn a little bit more about our firm.

Michael Blake: [00:46:44] Okay. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Andre Schnabl 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 business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy these podcasts, please consider leaving a review through your favorite podcasts 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.

Mike Dickerson with ClickDimensions and Joe Macchiarella with Trextel

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Tech-Talk-Group-11-14
Atlanta Business Radio
Mike Dickerson with ClickDimensions and Joe Macchiarella with Trextel
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Tech-Talk-11-14

Mike Dickerson, CEO of ClickDimensions, is an experienced global executive with entrepreneurial passion for developing new businesses and building the teams to bring them to life. Turned an idea on a bar napkin into a $250 million division providing mission-critical communications technology to the Global 1000. Funded and founded three start ups. Was part of the executive team to take PGI private in a $1.1 billion transaction with Siris Capital. Currently leading an industry-leading Marketing Technology firm owned by private equity firm Accel-KKR.

Specialties: Growth strategy, new business development, organizational transformation and global management.

Interested in talking with anyone who wants to make digital marketing technology more accessible for the benefit of our 3,400 customers and 1,000 partners in the Microsoft Dynamics community.

As the primary stakeholder in transforming the customer experience, Joe Macchiarella is responsible for leading our operational teams in the never-ending pursuit of customer excellence. As a successful business leader with a track record for building companies to scale, he capitalizes on 25 years of experience in creating high-performance environments by establishing well-defined, repeatable business processes in order to ensure Trextel is the last IT and managed service solution that our customers will ever need.

Prior to joining Trextel, Joe worked with industry innovators such as Straix Corporation, Cbeyond, Goldman Sachs and Harris Corporation. While at Stratix Corporation, Joe led the mobile operations organization to scale through a rapid revenue growth rate in excess of 400% within a 5 year period while achieving industry-leading NPS scores, year over year.

The hunger to achieve industry-leading customer satisfaction (NPS) is embedded in his DNA, along with motivating and professionally developing everyone around Him. All efforts are through a disciplined focus on people, process and product. These are the three pillars in Joe’s blueprint for success.

About Your Host

JoeyKlineJoey 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.

Decision Vision Episode 40: Should I Align My Business with a Cause? – An Interview with Mollye Rhea, For Momentum

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 40: Should I Align My Business with a Cause? - An Interview with Mollye Rhea, For Momentum
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Mike Blake and Mollye Rhea

Decision Vision Episode 40: Should I Align My Business with a Cause? – An Interview with Mollye Rhea, For Momentum

Does cause marketing really help my business? What factors should I consider in selecting a cause to align with? Answers to these questions and much more come from Mollye Rhea, For Momentum, on this edition of “Decision Vision.” Mike Blake is the host of “Decision Vision,” presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Mollye Rhea, For Momentum

For Momentum unites companies and brands with nonprofits in a way that benefits both organizations. Benefits include enhanced visibility, high-touch relationships with employees, customers and donors and significant social impact. Within the industry, this is referred to broadly as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or more concisely as cause marketing. At For Momentum®, they call these carefully designed partnerships strategic cause alliances.

Mollye Rhea

Founded in 2003 by corporate marketing and nonprofit executive Mollye Rhea, For Momentum has emerged as a leading cause marketing agency that helps companies and nonprofits prosper through partnership. Corporate Responsibility Magazine has recognized For Momentum as one of the top five cause marketing firms in the United States. Their work has been featured in the books Cause Marketing for Dummies and Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause as well as in numerous other industry publications.

While many factors set For Momentum apart from other cause marketing firms, these are the top five unique selling points (USPs) mentioned most often by their clients and industry experts. For Momentum is 100 percent focused on strategic cause alliances versus offering cause marketing as one service among many public relations, marketing and advertising options.

For Momentum’s accomplished cause marketing consultants possess a deep understanding of national/local dynamics—both corporate HQ/franchise and national nonprofit/chapter affiliate relationships.

For Momentum maintains a hiring criterion that each staff member has experience in both nonprofit and corporate environments, which equips them to provide valuable “translator” skills. Experience on both sides of the table allows them to link shared values and mutual challenges cohesively and meaningfully, leading to strategic, integrated cause marketing programs that achieve nonprofit mission objectives while delivering marketing, sales and PR benefits to the corporation.

No other cause marketing agency offers For Momentum’s proven system of identifying partnership prospects, conducting partner outreach and negotiating corporate partnerships. They customize each strategy and cultivate each pipeline for the specific client or project. With For Momentum, you won’t find cookie cutter plans, stale templates or impersonal outreach using the same tired list of prospects.

For Momentum provides a fresh, outsider perspective to help clients realize strategic priorities and adds a depth of experience and actionable plans that enable agencies, companies and nonprofits to meet their goals more quickly and efficiently.

For more information and to access resources mentioned in the show, go to the For Momentum website.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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 firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] And welcome to the 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, rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different. We talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision. My name is Mike Blake and I’m your host for today’s program.

Michael Blake: [00:00:41] 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 also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:02] So, our topic today is should my business align with a cause? And I was brought to thinking about this topic because it was in the late last year, early this year, I think it was late last year, you know, I observed Nike pretty much going all in with the Colin Kaepernick scenario with the NFL. And I’m not going to comment specifically on that matter, but I did make an observation on social media that, it struck me that if I were a shareholder of Nike, I would at least like to know in advance if a company in which I was invested was going to take a polarizing or potentially polarizing position like that.

Michael Blake: [00:01:52] And I think I was kind of motivated in that viewpoint by the fact that there was a pretty demonstrative response by what turned out to be a very small minority of customers. I know that the massive response is everything from burning shoes to tearing up sweatshirts and wherever it is else that Nike sells. And, you know, quite frankly, most people who looked at that on social media said, “Blake, you’re dead wrong.” And I said, “We’ll see.”.

Michael Blake: [00:02:28] And you know, to a couple of my friends’ credit, they actually went out and bought Nike stock. So I got to give them credit, they put their money where their mouth was. And, well, you can see the history for yourself. Nike is still around. They are doing fantastically. Their stock has never been at a higher level, I believe. I think they had one of their best years ever in terms of return on that stock.

Michael Blake: [00:02:51] And clearly, I was wrong about that. And I owned up on that on social media. Imagine that, somebody saying they were wrong on social media. But, you know, the facts are the facts. And as Bill Gates likes to say, “Success is a lousy teacher.” So I had a great teacher in failure there. But it led me to sort of think about, you know, what goes into the process of a Nike when they decide that they’re going to support, in their case, a polarizing cause?

Michael Blake: [00:03:18] Not all causes are polarizing. There are many cause we can all get behind, whether it’s the United States Olympic movement, whether it is fighting cancer, whether it is stopping human trafficking, right? Not every single cause that people believe in is a polarizing one. But nevertheless, there is also a viewpoint, and Warren Buffet, I think, would agree with us because he’s written about this, that, you know, it’s really not company’s business to engage in causes at all, that business should be in the business of generating return for its shareholders.

Michael Blake: [00:03:51] And if shareholders then want to take their returns and use that to support a cause, then they should do that. And that’s how the economics should work. And again, I’m not going to necessarily debate that directly, but I want to put that out there that that is a widely held view by a person who’s been pretty successful at this whole business thing. And so, that kind of sets the stage as a platform for today’s discussion, because my bringing this on social media showed me very clearly that there’s, you know, something more that I can understand.

Michael Blake: [00:04:22] And many of you who are in business may be thinking the same thing about, you know, is there an opportunity for me to align with a cause, an organization of some kind? Is that the right thing to do? How do I kind of figure that out? And I’m not qualified to talk about that, but I have somebody here in the studio who is very qualified to talk about that. And joining us today is Mollye Rhea, founder and president of For Momentum, a cause marketing agency here in Atlanta.

Michael Blake: [00:04:54] When Mollye founded For Momentum in 2003, she recognized that she was leading one of very few agencies that specialized in cause marketing. I think that’s still true today. Since then, as cause-related marketing and corporate social responsibility have grown to a $2.6-billion industry, For Momentum has grown into one of the leading cause marketing firms in the United States. And they’re doing fantastic.

Michael Blake: [00:05:18] Through work in nonprofit development, brand marketing, and cause marketing, Mollye has acquired a unique 360-degree perspective of what fosters success and strategic cause partnerships. In her over 25 years in the field, she has created and executed cause engagement and marketing programs, strategic fundraising campaigns and organizational development strategies with dozens of nonprofit organizations and hundreds of brands, including the American Cancer Society, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Habitat for Humanity, International—InterContinental Hotels Group, Lane Bryant, and Novartis to name a few.

Michael Blake: [00:05:53] She is a graduate of the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2012. And by the way, that’s the second best class ever. You had to be an insider of Leadership Atlanta to get that joke, but I was class of 2014. And I did not know that about you. She sits on a bunch of nonprofit boards and holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and psychology from William & Mary. Mollye, thanks so much for coming on the program.

Mollye Rhea: [00:06:18] Well, thanks so much for having me, Michael. I’m excited to be here. And wow, what a provocative promotion you started the discussion with.

Michael Blake: [00:06:26] Well, yeah, you know, you got to do something attention-grabbing to get attention on social media, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:06:31] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:06:32] And what’s nice about that is that I learned something and it made me think more about this topic. So, thanks for coming in to talk. I don’t think I’m the only person that’s thinking about this question, right? The fact that you have the thriving business you have, I think, is Exhibit A that this is a topic that’s of a lot of interests, but it’s not a cut and dried one. So, why don’t we dive into it? So, what I like to do with a podcast is to sort of set our vocabulary. When we talk about cause marketing, what does that mean?

Mollye Rhea: [00:07:05] Well, I’m really glad you started with that, because so many people, in my experience, come to that term with a different point of view. And so, I think it’s really important to lay that groundwork right from the get go. So, I’ve been doing this type of work for a very, very long time. And back in the olden days, it was called corporate relations or something like that. And it’s really the practice by which a company is supporting a nonprofit as a part of their business practices.

Mollye Rhea: [00:07:35] And I really encourage the listeners today to take a more open-minded viewpoint to realize that that can bring many different—that can come to life in many different ways. So, some of the terminology that you hear, you know, bandied about, you know, corporate relations, community relations, cause marketing, strategic philanthropy. But these days, a really popular term, which kind of plays off of the story you told is social impact marketing. And so, companies today are looking to really engage in generating impact into our society as a side part of their business, but as a primary part of their business as well.

Mollye Rhea: [00:08:18] So, some people think of cause marketing as, you know, I’m going to buy this bottle of water and 10 cents is going to go to a charity. That is one type of cause marketing. It’s a very specific type called commercial co-venture. And we can talk about that more later. But also, different types of cause marketing, I would argue, would be, you know, the Nike program that you talked about. Other campaigns, even in employee engagement these days, in terms of really getting your employees involved in making a difference on a social issue. So, it’s a very broad landscape that we’re talking about.

Michael Blake: [00:08:54] So a question comes up, and I apologize, I’m going off the script right away, but I think it’s—I just got to get your answer on this, because I think it’s so interesting. You know, in recent months, we’ve seen a number of companies pull back in terms of their willingness to sell firearms and firearm ammunition supplies, and so forth. Is that a kind of cause marketing in your mind?

Mollye Rhea: [00:09:21] In my mind, yes.

Michael Blake: [00:09:22] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:09:22] I mean, I put those into the same landscape.

Michael Blake: [00:09:27] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:09:27] Right? So, again, cause marketing itself might be one term within this landscape, but it’s the most commonly used term.

Michael Blake: [00:09:35] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:09:35] So, I think, in fact, I was going to bring up that example based on what you said, you know, about the Colin Kaepernick Nike campaign. You know, there are a variety of societal issues where companies are starting to make a difference through their business decisions, whether to sell something. There’s a local firm called Kabbage that makes business loans and they will no longer loan to anybody who’s in ammunitions-

Michael Blake: [00:10:01] Oh, really? Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:10:03] … type of business.

Michael Blake: [00:10:03] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:10:04] So, there’s things like that. So, I think those sorts of deep integrated business decisions are more of the recent trend we’re seeing in this landscape, but you do have to be very careful. And I want to say that I think that we can continue to use this Nike example as a grounding case study, if you will. They did lose a segment of their customers. You know, their overall numbers went up, but there was a segment, just like there was a strong segment who spoke out against it and burned-

Michael Blake: [00:10:34] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:10:35] … things. And then, there was, you know, on the other end, strong, you know, affiliation with it. You have to really understand your customer base and not make those decisions based on your personal opinions, but really take into account the community that you serve if you want to make sure that you aren’t having that, you know, the tail wag the dog, so to speak, you know.

Michael Blake: [00:10:57] Yeah. And that’s a great point that I think we’re going to get back to. But it does it does bear emphasizing that, you know, cause marketing for its own sake may or may not be a great thing, but it sounds like an integral part of that notion is make sure you understand who your target market is, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:11:15] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:11:16] And it may not be necessarily the target market that I, as a CEO or board or a decision maker, chief marketing officer, thinks as the right cause, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:11:25] Mm hmm. That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:11:26] So, again, using the Nike sort of the platform for this discussion, there was some risk there, I think. That turned out well for Nike, great for them, right? But, you know, because of that risk, why should a company consider taking that risk in embarking on a cause marketing campaign?

Mollye Rhea: [00:11:47] Yeah. And you know what? I think I want to interject here a different example, because I don’t want the listener to think of that as the guiding light of an example-

Michael Blake: [00:11:57] Yeah, please.

Mollye Rhea: [00:11:57] … because it’s an extreme example.

Michael Blake: [00:11:59] Yeah, please.

Mollye Rhea: [00:12:00] So, you know, there are many, many ways that companies can support nonprofit’s, you know, strict sponsorship of events or activities, things like that. They can get behind a campaign that is going to raise funds or awareness for an issue that isn’t controversial. And it doesn’t change their business model, but it’s more of a programmatic way that they can support. So, let’s talk about some of those more standardized types of campaigns, because I don’t want the listener to be frightened that, oh, it’s got to be this big extreme-

Michael Blake: [00:12:33] Yeah, good.

Mollye Rhea: [00:12:33] … you know, thing. So, let’s talk about the business benefits of a company supporting a social impact or a nonprofit mission. You know, either space. Often, they’re very interlinked. There are clear and documented benefits to a company for this type of marketing behavior. And they are things like increased sales, heightened PR, heightened awareness of the company and positive awareness of a company. So, there are a lot of great business benefits. But what I also want listeners to know is that, you know, in the trends in this space, an increasingly important target audience is your employee base. Because today our unemployment rates are very, very low.

Mollye Rhea: [00:13:21] The cost of finding a good candidate and retaining a good employee are real cost that we have to be very careful about. And there’s a mounting amount of evidence that cause marketing or a company’s support of the local community is a positive differentiator for job selection. And that when employees join a company that they feel is doing good things in the community, they’re more likely to be engaged and they’re more likely to stay employed with that company. So, why should a company consider cause marketing? Lots of different reasons. It could be PR, it could be HR.

Michael Blake: [00:13:58] You know, and I want to underscore that point as well. You know, marketing, when many of us think of marketing, frankly, myself included, we think about an outward message, right? How do we get more customers? How do we get the customers we have to love us more, buy more from us, and so forth. But you’re right, there is a marketing element internally, right, to make your employees and your associates feel great about where they are. Because at the end of the day, raising salaries can only take you so far.

Mollye Rhea: [00:14:30] That’s right. Yeah. You know, part of the overall compensation package is psychic income, right? And so, you want to feel good about the work you’re doing and you want to feel good about the company that you’re working for. And this is becoming—you know, we hear a lot about millennials, you know, we’re starting to hear now more statistics from the Gen Z population.

Michael Blake: [00:14:51] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:14:53] But these younger cohorts are absolutely motivated by community impact. And so, you know, it’s becoming more and more important as companies want to attract those younger talent.

Michael Blake: [00:15:07] And that’s been something of an adaptation for Gen X’ers like myself, right? The Gen X’ers are the, I think, last of the kind of the old school workforce where just put your head down, getting your hours, do your thing, and, you know, get in and get out. And that’s an adaptation outlook that my generation has had to change, right? Because if we try to treat our workforce in a Gen X way, we’re not going to have a workforce very long or at least not one with which we’re very happy.

Mollye Rhea: [00:15:44] Mm hmm. I think that’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:15:45] So, it sounds like you’ve segued again very nicely into the next question, which is it sounds like there’s evidence that cause marketing does have a positive impact on company performance.

Mollye Rhea: [00:15:55] Absolutely. You know, there are an increasing number of studies out there. The most common are from an agency called Cone, C-O-N-E. And if readers are interested, you can certainly Google that and you will find all sorts of different studies on this topic. But I like to cite more resources than just the primary one, because I think sometimes we can get into a rut or a routine and I think their work is fantastic. I’m not dissing that at all.

Michael Blake: [00:16:23] Right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:16:24] I follow that. But, you know, we’ve been able to find many, many other sources of information that point to the validity of this notion. I also want to point out that there are increasing numbers of corporate associations focused on this topic. One of those is the Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy, CECP. And they are a group of CEOs of large organizations that very much track the benefits of this type of investment, because this is not just a, you know, flash in the pan idea.

Mollye Rhea: [00:16:59] This is something they realized they have to pay a lot of attention to. And according to CECP, 87 percent of companies are now measuring and tracking societal outcomes and using that data to inform their program development. And 80 percent of those same corporate leaders think that, they believe, it is enhancing customer loyalty and 89 percent of them feel that it’s enhancing collective purpose amongst their employees.

Mollye Rhea: [00:17:27] So, those are just some of the types of statistics. I could go on and on. I don’t want to do that because probably, a lot of your listeners are driving. And I don’t want them to fall asleep. But, you know, on our website, at For Momentum, we have a variety of resources. We compile this type of research all the time because we’re in it, you know, 365. So, free downloadable tidbits are there if your listeners want to go and download those.

Michael Blake: [00:17:53] Well, yeah, perfect. It’s all about data nowadays. So, let’s shift gears in a little bit. So, let’s say that one of those driving listeners now is saying, “You know what, this cause marketing thing is something I ought to pay more attention to.” I think the next obvious question to my mind is, is my company a good fit for it, right? Is there a profile of a company that has a good or a best fit for cause marketing as opposed to maybe a company that isn’t as good with that?

Mollye Rhea: [00:18:22] Yes and no. I mean, I think that there are some companies that, you know, have an easier footprint into the community. So, like a retailer, you know, where they can really, you know, engage, “Would you like to add a dollar? Would you like to make a donation and get a bounce back coupon?” Things like that. They have a natural affinity. But what I like to say is that when you, whoever you are as a company, are looking at putting your toe in the water on this, think about what companies—or what nonprofits, rather, what social impact mission is going to advance your business and what is the right footprint for you.

Mollye Rhea: [00:18:59] So, if I am a local company based in Atlanta, Georgia and my footprint is 100 percent Atlanta, Georgia, I probably want to pick a comparative nonprofit that impacts that same geographic space. So, you know, I need to find someone who’s like-minded, like-sized, you know, and find the right match for me. So, I’m not, as my company is not going to compete with what Nike is doing.

Michael Blake: [00:19:28] Right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:19:29] Because I don’t have the same profile or footprint.

Michael Blake: [00:19:31] Right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:19:33] So, I really think it can be any type of company, but with the right connection to a cause that makes sense. And another thing I want to point out about that is that sometimes, companies fall into a natural rut, where they just want to pick something that they care about individually. So, you know, I’m going to support, you know, something that matters to me individually, but it has no tie to their brand, whatsoever.

Mollye Rhea: [00:19:58] That’s confusing to the consumer and confusing to the employees, frankly, because it needs to be a charitable choice that matches, I call it, the three-second rule. It’s like, “Oh, I understand why this restaurant is supporting hunger issues because they’re both about food”, you know, or something basic like that. But that can really enhance the validity of the campaign when there’s a natural fit between the brands.

Michael Blake: [00:20:23] It’s almost like a joke. The second you have to explain it, you’re done.

Mollye Rhea: [00:20:26] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:20:27] Right? The joke is just never going to have the impact.

Mollye Rhea: [00:20:30] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:20:31] So, one thing that kind of strikes me about cause marketing is that you’re trying to find a partner. You need a partner, probably, in some constraints. I guess you could have a completely unidirectional cause marketing campaign, but I don’t think that’s what you’re all about. What is the role of the partner, the nonprofit or philanthropic partner in the cause marketing relationship?

Mollye Rhea: [00:20:56] Yeah. So, actually, I want to go back and talk about what you’ve just said.

Michael Blake: [00:20:59] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:21:00] Which is that, you know, it doesn’t make sense for it to be unidirectional, but in fact, that is one of the trends we’re seeing, which I am really sad about. You know, I think there are a lot of companies that have decided to do their own—they’ve picked their own issue and they’re going to create their own solution to it. You know, and some companies can do that. I mean, they have enough wherewithal to really, you know, go in there.

Mollye Rhea: [00:21:25] I’m a big proponent that if there is a nonprofit that is working in that issue space, find a way to work with them because it does help to bring multiple voices to an issue and not later get maybe accused of self-dealing or, you know, something that’s self-serving. There are many, many benefits that the nonprofit can bring to the partnership table. And you have to have a really robust business discussion about that. So, it’s really important to find a partner who is going to match your business objectives.

Mollye Rhea: [00:22:02] So, for example, the nonprofit partner brings, first of all, an expertise into the issue space that you are wanting to address. They live in this space 24/7, so they should be bringing some special expertise. With that comes connections with stakeholders and opinion leaders in the space. They bring a level of awareness, a level of authenticity. They can bring marketing benefits. They have followers and they may have social media following or they may have, you know, donors, constituents. So, they do have their own audience that they can bring to the marketing equation.

Michael Blake: [00:22:39] You know, that unilateral element brings to mind something that just came up in the news. Apple just announced they’re going to put, I think, $2 billion into building housing in Silicon Valley because California has a massive housing problem. Basically, their own employees cannot afford to live in the state.

Mollye Rhea: [00:22:57] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:22:58] Facebook is doing something similar. And what struck me about that was, you know, I don’t know that necessarily building houses is the answer. And I hope—it wasn’t clear from what I read that they’re partnering with anybody. But, you know, perhaps, they should be. I certainly hope that they are, because Apple is not in the multi-family real estate business, as far as I’m aware, right? And simply building houses may not be the issue, right?

Michael Blake: [00:23:28] In my view, I think the issue is most likely zoning or something of that nature that prevents homes from being built where they ought to be built. And it would be interesting to see how the Apple initiative unfolds, right? Because they’re clearly targeting a cause somewhat self-serving. But that’s okay, because there is a collateral good that’s coming out of it. But it would be interesting to see if that winds up being part of a partnership or not. Right now, it’s not clear.

Mollye Rhea: [00:23:55] Yeah. And I don’t know because I haven’t studied that particular topic. But I do know of many nonprofit players that could be excellent in that space. You know, I think it’s called Community Enterprise Partners that we did some work with few years ago, whose mission is to talk about the fact with the increasing amounts of rent in key cities and how people can’t afford to live in the places where we need them to.

Mollye Rhea: [00:24:19] So, they obviously are working in this space 24/7 and at least could bring thought leadership to that process. So, that’s a great example, Michael, where I hope that whatever the issue is, I think it’s imperative that companies look to others in the space to see what they can learn before they go running down a path, you know, without all the information available.

Michael Blake: [00:24:42] So, let’s say we go through some process, we identified that nonprofit partner, you know, what are some of the typical contributions a nonprofit partner makes to that relationship?

Mollye Rhea: [00:24:53] So, again, it depends on the nature of the relationship. It can be extremely directed. It could be that the company is funding a specific project of the nonprofit and they are literally delivering, you know, the project. But many times, nonprofits can bring—you know, as I was saying earlier, people are aware of the nonprofits, so they’re bringing awareness to the topic. They are bringing constituency. They are bringing, you know, increase. I’ll give you an example. So, one of our clients is Habitat for Humanity, and they do a program called Home is the Key. And they’re a variety of corporate partners that engage in that campaign.

Mollye Rhea: [00:25:35] And in that case, what Habitat is bringing to it is, you know, obviously, the expertise on the issue. But they are also bringing celebrities to the floor, right? So, the Property Brothers are celebrity spokespeople for this event. They are investing in a big PR campaign that then the companies receive the spotlight of as a part of that initiative. So, instead of building the whole program from scratch on the corporate shoulders, the corporate can engage in a program that the nonprofit is bringing to the marketplace. And they are tremendous amounts of marketing and sales benefits, you know.

Michael Blake: [00:26:11] Okay. So, often, the nonprofit brings their own infrastructure-

Mollye Rhea: [00:26:15] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:26:15] … basically. And the benefit there is, yeah, you could do it unilaterally, but why are we reinventing the wheel, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:26:21] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:26:22] And especially in that case, you know, they’ve got celebrities, which, you know, most companies want to line with and so forth. And it sounds like—and I appreciate that it sort of depends. You know, it could be as simple also as simply using, you know, doing co-branding logos, trademarks, things of that nature.

Mollye Rhea: [00:26:41] Absolutely.

Michael Blake: [00:26:41] So, as I understand it, there’s really a sort of a whole spectrum of the sky’s the limit. And of course, another function of that is going to be, you know, how big the nonprofit itself is, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:26:50] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:26:50] The united way can do more than, say, you know, the local Chamblee chapter of St. Vincent de Paul, which is a thrift store that, you know, helps people in poverty in the Chamblee area.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:04] Yeah, but that’s a good example of if I am a company based in Chamblee, you know-

Michael Blake: [00:27:10] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:10] … St. Vincent de Paul is gonna be more attractive to me-

Michael Blake: [00:27:12] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:13] … because there is an authentic connection between my business and that nonprofit’s mission. So, just to kind of tie that back to what I was saying earlier about, you know, finding the right partner, don’t forget those local ones-

Michael Blake: [00:27:27] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:27] … if you’re a local company.

Michael Blake: [00:27:27] Is it hard to mix the for profit and nonprofit cultures? Are there any issues with them sort of having being able to talk the same language? Because there are probably cases where their goals are not 100 percent aligned all the time.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:43] Yes, absolutely. 100 percent of the time, they are not 100 percent aligned.

Michael Blake: [00:27:48] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:27:49] I can tell you that. They may come together for a common objective in, you know, a particular program or initiative. But it’s very important to take into account the respective needs of each of the partners and their business realities, their business resource mixes, their stakeholders and who they’re reporting to. I would say that you could make the same argument in any business to business relationship building. Whenever you bring two partners together, they’re going to have different goals and different missions. But I will say the nonprofit environment is more starkly different from a corporate environment, you know, just given the fact that it’s a nonprofit.

Mollye Rhea: [00:28:28] However, where you can really bridge that gap is by having very straightforward communication and collaborative planning and really authentic clear conversations. So, you know, Business A wants this set of benefits and the nonprofit needs be able to say, this is what I can do and this is what I can’t. And some of those are regulatory-related. You know, like, for example, a nonprofit can’t overly promote a corporate entity or it becomes unrelated business income tax. There are implications for EBIT. So, you know, the company needs to respect the nonprofit’s, you know, boundaries and vice versa.

Michael Blake: [00:29:08] Okay. And to that end, I believe that some companies will actually create a role inside the company for somebody to be their, in effect, cause marketing ambassador, their person that represents the company for the nonprofits with whom they cooperate. And I suspect that model can work well because then, that person is fluent in both languages, basically, if you will. Is that a necessity in your mind? Is that best practices? Can you live without it? Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how important that role is?

Mollye Rhea: [00:29:43] Yeah. So, I don’t think it needs to be someone’s full time job, but there needs to be someone who’s put in charge, if you will, of managing the relationships. And so, I guess I want to answer this in a couple of different way. So, it doesn’t have to be—you know, I don’t want to dissuade companies that can’t afford a full-time position because you can certainly do this. You can have effective partnerships without it being a full-time role.

Mollye Rhea: [00:30:08] In fact, some of the largest companies that we work with as customers only have a couple of people and they’re doing billions of dollars, sometimes, of good. So, you don’t have to have a full-time person to get engaged in cause. The other thing I want to say is that we’ve been doing a piece of research. We’ve now completed our third cycle of this research with corporate partnership decision makers. And, you know, in the trends and in the way that the landscape changes, there came a time where there was this individual who was responsible. And what we’re seeing now is that that’s not the case, that it’s actually a shared responsibility across many different departments.

Mollye Rhea: [00:30:50] And so, we asked the question in our research, who from your corporate structure is involved in the decision making? And we found marketing, PR, HR, Community Relations, C-suite and sometimes, a special committee. So, I think that the company needs to make those decisions about where the most natural fits are and don’t work in a silo. Recognize that you need to engage counterparts from all those departments that I just mentioned in your planning process or you will end up with a silo, and that’s not good.

Michael Blake: [00:31:24] Okay. So, I want to switch gears a little bit. What are some trends you’re seeing out there that are, for lack of a better term, hot in terms of cause marketing? What are some emerging things that a lot of companies are looking to do? Whether it’s practices, nature of the cause themselves. What are you seeing out there?

Mollye Rhea: [00:31:40] So, let’s go back to your first topic of the morning, which was the, you know, Colin Kaepernick, you know, taking on a social issue. That is a trend. It’s not for everyone. It’s for a select few of brands that have an avant-garde element to their brand personality. But increasingly, we are seeing some companies taking this very strong stance on a particular social impact issue. So, that is a trend. And we actually have some resources on that, if anyone’s interested. But sort of to the more broad-based approach, actually, a trend is that the United Nations came out with some sustainable development goals. And I think it was 18 different areas of impact, where, you know, United Nations members from around the globe identified 18 common areas that any country needs to be sustainable.

Mollye Rhea: [00:32:34] So, poverty, education, hunger, water, you know, et cetera, and health. And what I’m seeing is an increasing trend as that companies are identifying from these sustainable business goals, development goals from the United Nations, they’re identifying we’re going to impact, you know, area 2, 8, and 12, whatever their numbers are that they pick. And companies are starting to speak in lingo, in that lingo of, “Well, in, you know, goal 12, we’re making this, you know, headway, this much headway. So, it’s a way of really working collaboratively across different corporate segments towards mutually beneficial goals. Does that make sense?

Michael Blake: [00:33:19] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:33:19] And so, that’s a trend. And then, the other trend that I want to highlight sort of as a top three trend is the increasing incidence of digital. So, as our society becomes more and more digitally focused, we are seeing lots more partnership activations in the digital realm.

Michael Blake: [00:33:39] Okay. And actually, to that end, is there a risk to defy, embark on cause marketing? And, you know, I’m not doing it yet. Is there a risk of it being somehow disruptive to my existing conventional marketing efforts? I imagine there must be some integration issues because I think that’s the expertise that you lend. So, if that is true, can you talk about kind of what some of those challenges might be?

Mollye Rhea: [00:34:08] So, how cause could be disruptive to the rest of your business plan?

Michael Blake: [00:34:12] Yeah, or, you know, cause marketing is a different kind of marketing, just like digital marketing has become disruptive to more conventional analog methods, right? I guess I’m posing a hypothesis that cause marketing has the potential to be similarly disruptive because I think the way you have to go about, the skill sets required, the stakeholders are different, right? And so, I guess my question is, is it fair to characterize this cause marketing as somewhat disruptive? And if so, is that something that needs to be actively thought about, managed by a company that is thinking of pursuing it?

Mollye Rhea: [00:34:52] So, I guess where this takes my mindset, Michael, is to think about, you know, all good things in moderation, right? So, if you were to abandon, if a company was to abandon some of their traditional marketing methods toward strictly cause, I think they could lose themselves, frankly, in it, because they need to—it needs to be a piece of your overall communications or employment objectives, not the only thing you do.

Mollye Rhea: [00:35:22] So, that’s something that I think you have to like integrate it into a bigger plan as opposed to, like, for instance, if a company suddenly went 100 percent digital and forgot all their other kinds of marketing, those repercussions will be clear. I think anybody can understand that analogy. So, I’m saying the same thing would happen if you went too top-heavy in cause. And maybe I’m honestly just a little too close to it, but I don’t see it as a risk, in general.

Michael Blake: [00:35:53] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:35:53] Here’s another example of where it could be risky. It could’ve been risky with Nike. You know, if they don’t understand their audience or if they choose a cause activity that doesn’t resonate with their target audience. That could become disruptive because they’ve suddenly changed their brand personality, probably unintentionally.

Michael Blake: [00:36:15] Right. And another example, we’ve talked about Nike, but Gillette with their “Me too” ad about a-year-and-a-half ago, right? That had some ramifications as well. In some cases, somewhat stronger, I think.

Mollye Rhea: [00:36:26] If you’re thinking of the ad where it was like the gentleman that they were trying to encourage men to be, it wasn’t “Me too.”

Michael Blake: [00:36:37] Well, but they sort of aligned—okay, you’re the marketing expert.

Mollye Rhea: [00:36:42] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:36:42] I’m not. I’ve heard it referred to as that.

Mollye Rhea: [00:36:44] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:36:45] So if it’s not, then I stand corrected. But I’m referring to the ad where they try to redefine a sense of what it means to be a man.

Mollye Rhea: [00:36:54] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:36:55] Which is a different relationship with women, which is a different relationship with other men, which is different relationships with people who are vulnerable. And I think that—is that a fair characterization?

Mollye Rhea: [00:37:06] Well, you know, it’s interesting. I think that your perception of it is a great example of where it can get dangerous, right?

Michael Blake: [00:37:11] Okay.

Mollye Rhea: [00:37:12] Because the campaign, in its essence, was designed supposedly to educate men to make more responsible choices that consider other people’s feelings more, like, you know, the way they raise their sons or the way that they talk to women or whatever. That is a great example of a campaign that had a really positive and negative reaction in the marketplace. I think they’ve—I haven’t seen it lately, so I don’t know if they’ve withdrawn or gone back to the drawing board or exactly where they stand on that, but I don’t think they expected that big of a reaction on the negative side.

Michael Blake: [00:37:51] Right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:37:52] So, that’s a good example of really needing to understand your target audience. And if a portion of your target audience resonates with that, you know, that could be a strategic decision. It could have been a mistake. And I don’t know because I wasn’t involved. And so, I don’t know the inner workings.

Michael Blake: [00:38:09] Right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:38:10] But I’ll give you another example and I don’t feel comfortable saying who it is because it was a business-to-business conversation.

Michael Blake: [00:38:16] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:38:17] But it was a, again, company that targets men and they had decided to, in their own way, try to redefine how men relate to their emotions. This was, you know, the stance that this brand took was, “We’re going to teach men that it’s okay to be in touch with their emotions.” And they did some, you know, post-campaign research and their audience didn’t like it. Like, “Don’t tell me how I’m supposed to feel.” So, you really do need to understand your audience. And especially if you’re going for something that’s provocative or brand changing, potentially could have people have a different perception of your brand, those are good examples of where it can be very disruptive. So, what could they have done differently? They could have picked a—those are also cases where there was no cause. There was no nonprofit partner. They’re just stating like, you know-

Michael Blake: [00:39:15] I hadn’t thought about that. Yeah, that sounds exactly right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:39:18] So, if they wanted to generate something, maybe that would have been a good time to find a partner that has a mission that they could say we’re supporting their mission, not we are changing who we are.

Michael Blake: [00:39:29] Interesting. Okay. And to that point about picking partners, I would imagine not all partners are created equal, right? And even if you identify with the partner’s potential cause, they may not be the right partner for you, right?

Mollye Rhea: [00:39:46] That’s true.

Michael Blake: [00:39:48] And sometimes, there can be a size mismatch. You know, an interesting story, you know, one cause I paid some attention to is Lou Gehrig’s disease research, ALS Society—ALS Association. And, you know, as everybody knows, it had the ice bucket campaign, which I did, and boy, ice water’s cold.

Mollye Rhea: [00:40:12] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:40:13] But an interesting thing about that was that all of a sudden, the ALS Association of America came into a windfall, about $130 million. They just did not have the infrastructure-

Mollye Rhea: [00:40:23] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:40:25] … to manage that kind of cash, right? Their organization had to completely reorient to make sure that that money was used well, right, and wisely. Can that be an issue in the cause marketing space, too? Maybe there’s a size mismatch or just fundamental characteristics of certain nonprofits that may not make it a good partner, even if you agree with the cause?

Mollye Rhea: [00:40:49] Yeah. So, I just want to go back just to clarify for a moment about the wonderful, fabulous ice bucket challenge phenomenon.

Michael Blake: [00:40:56] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:40:58] That was not cause marketing.

Michael Blake: [00:40:59] I understand.

Mollye Rhea: [00:40:59] Okay, okay. I just want to make sure your listeners understand that that is an example of a movement that caught wind. And I think every nonprofit in the world dreams of having that problem-

Michael Blake: [00:41:11] True.

Mollye Rhea: [00:41:12] … of creating that magic in a bottle, you know, where they can create something. Another beautiful example of something that was a game changer was cystic fibrosis.

Michael Blake: [00:41:22] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:41:22] So, they literally invested in research and the research paid off. And so, they became a part-owner of a pharmaceutical product that serves cystic fibrosis. I might not be getting this 100 percent right.

Michael Blake: [00:41:37] I think that sounds right. I’ve read that.

Mollye Rhea: [00:41:39] And it created just a tremendous amount of income. So, I think it’s incumbent on the nonprofit board to be prepared with, “This is our plan and this is our plan if we grow this much and this is our plan if we grow that much”, you know, so that they are strategically staying aligned to their mission and bringing that to life. In terms of a cause program that just has taken off and changes the direction, I think—I can’t think of a real example.

Mollye Rhea: [00:42:07] But I can tell you that, you know, if the nonprofit or if the message of the campaign was focused on a tiny issue and then, you had too much funding and you couldn’t spend all that on the issue, I think it’s really important to make sure that the focus area is broad enough that you’re not going to get into that topic. So, it gives me the chance to say this, many times companies decide that they want to create impact on a particular subset of a bigger issue. And sometimes, it’s better just to help the broader issue and not get so singularly focused on this small little piece.

Michael Blake: [00:42:45] Sure. Yeah. Because even if, say, Coca-Cola decided there is hook of the firehose and dumped, you know, $10 million into that St. Vincent de Paul charity in Chamblee, right? They’d be overwhelmed.

Mollye Rhea: [00:42:58] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:42:58] Most likely. And it wouldn’t work very well for everybody. So-

Mollye Rhea: [00:43:02] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:43:02] … you know, pick not just the cause, there’s a bullet point I want to kind of tease out, I think we’re doing that, is that picking the partner for a match is just as important as picking the cause. Is that fair?

Mollye Rhea: [00:43:14] Picking the partner that is delivering into the mission space that you’re interested in?

Michael Blake: [00:43:21] Correct. That’s right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:43:21] Yes. Yes, I do agree with that. And an example that I wanted to share, you know, when you think about that, so let’s say that your organization, you know, one that many of us know is breast cancer, right?

Michael Blake: [00:43:33] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:43:33] So, lots of people want to support breast cancer. And, you know, you really need to do homework on your nonprofit partner because, you know, there’s one breast cancer organization that works, let’s say, on funding research. And there’s a different breast cancer organization whose mission is to serve people who currently are dealing with breast cancer and make it easier for them, make it—help them get to their doctor’s appointments or things like that. And yet, a third breast cancer organization is all about prevention messaging and warning signs and things like that. So, really look at what it is you’re trying to accomplish within the mission space and make sure that you’re finding the right partner who will help you with that particular goal.

Michael Blake: [00:44:11] All right.

Mollye Rhea: [00:44:12] Not all nonprofits focus on exactly the same things.

Michael Blake: [00:44:15] Yeah.

Mollye Rhea: [00:44:16] Even if they’re all about, say, breast cancer.

Michael Blake: [00:44:18] Yeah, that’s true. I mean, many of them are new ones and that the cause itself is so big that there are subsectors of that cause and effect.

Mollye Rhea: [00:44:26] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:44:27] Well, Mollye, we’re running out of time but this has been great, I’ve learned a lot. And if I’ve learned a lot, I’m confident at least some of our listeners have learned something. So, thank you for doing this. There’s a lot more we could talk about. I’ve only gotten through about half the questions I want to talk about today, but that’s a good thing. How can people contact you if they want to find out more about this and explore maybe this for their own business, their own nonprofit?

Mollye Rhea: [00:44:52] Okay, great. Well, so, you know, I have been working in this space for a very, very long time, so I’m hyper interested in it. And as a part of our return to the community, we conduct research every year into different factors of how to bring a cause partnership to life, what sorts of benefits can you seek and things like that. So, I would hope that some of your listeners might find it of interest to go to our website, to our resource page and download some of our free resources.

Mollye Rhea: [00:45:20] So, that’s For Momentum, formomentum.com/resources. If you have specific questions for us, there’s a Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. Be more than happy to help direct you to resources or point—answer questions, things like that. That’s just a part of our giving it back to the industry practices kind of things. But I do want to shout out to a couple of others in the cause landscape that I think produce excellent resources for the listeners. So Engage for Good is the association of people in this profession. And they do a fantastic job of constantly bringing, you know, information to light.

Mollye Rhea: [00:46:00] They have research resources, they have free webinars, they have newsletters for free that listeners can sign up for. And a third one that I would mention is a newsletter called Selfish Giving. And it’s produced by a guy out of Boston named Joe Waters, who’s a pal of mine. And he is really funny. And so, most of his, you know, articles have some entertainment flair to them as well, but really, really great examples. And he tends to focus a lot on small companies. So, you know, some of your listeners, if they’re not the Nikes of the world, but they’re a more moderate-sized company, they might find Joe’s content very realistic.

Michael Blake: [00:46:37] Very good. All right. Well, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Mollye Rhea so much for joining us and sharing her 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 business 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.

Tuesdays with Corey Episode 26

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Atlanta Business Radio
Tuesdays with Corey Episode 26
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Named one of Atlanta’s top tech talents to watch, Geek Girl Emma Loggins is the founder and editor of the popular lifestyle site FanBolt, where she updates daily the latest happenings in the television and film industry, the world of technology, must-visit travel destinations  – and really any that you’d be a fan of and geek out over! The site, which Emma also designed and developed by herself, currently receives an average of 300,000 hits per month and has given away over $200,000 in movie and television related contests since it first launched nearly two decades ago. She has conducted thousands of celebrity interviews with talent such as Jennifer Lawrence, Ryan Reynolds, Joss Whedon, Betty White, John Travolta, William Shatner, Harrison Ford, Aaron Paul, Johan Hill, and so many more!

As a result of interviewing so many celebrities over the years, Emma is now a big fan of public speaking. She has spoken at over 50 events ranging from 5 to over 2,500 attendees, and she continues to seek out more speaking opportunities on everything from web usability, user interface design, web development, social media, web community building, blogging, and more.

In 2004, Emma was asked to be the official blogger for the FOX television series The O.C., and in 2005, she was interviewed by People Magazine for having one of the best television show websites. She was also a contributing writer on geek culture for several years with CNN.com.

Emma Loggins has done on-camera host and media personality work for a number of conventions where she has interviewed cast members of The Walking Dead, Lost, Breaking Bad, Gotham, Game of Thrones, American Horror Story and more.

Emma is also the founder and editor in chief of Women’s Business Daily, a site targeted at millennial female entrepreneurs who are chasing their dream and making it happen. Women’s Business Daily compliments their mission by providing daily content to motivate, inspire and educate them on their journey as well as help them achieve the ideal work/life balance!

Over the years, Emma has also worked as an influencer with a number of brands across all her social media profiles in addition to her websites. Some of these brands include Target, Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, AMC, NARS, Coffee-mate, Coca Cola, Visit Scotland, Ireland Tourism, Toyota, Nissan, and more!

Designer + Developer + Social Media

Aside from the world of entertainment, Emma’s main company is a digital marketing agency, Excite Creative Studios. She has been designing websites since 1998. From small local businesses in Atlanta all the way up to campaigns with Warner Brothers for television series such as Supernatural, The Big Bang Theory, and The Vampire Diaries, Loggins has worked with 100’s of businesses to design and optimize their web presence and also their social media marketing.

The Background AKA The Wonder Years

Emma was Valedictorian of her high school’s graduating class, and she went on to graduate with her Bachelor’s Degree in Multimedia and Web Design (with a 4.0 GPA) from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in 2006 where she won “Best in Show” at the school’s graduating portfolio show. However, Emma wasn’t quite done with furthering her education just yet,  and in 2009 she received her Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Web Design/New Media from The Academy of Art in San Francisco.

Connect with Emma on LinkedIn and follow Excite Creative Studios on Facebook and Twitter.

Corey_RieckCorey Rieck is the President and Founder of The Long Term Care Planning Group, a firm that specializes in delivering Long Term Care education and coverage to companies, high net worth individuals and large organizations. Since 2001, Corey has devoted his career to Long Term Care as a result of multiple personal experiences. 

A neutral provider of Long Term Care Solutions since 2001, Corey brings a unique and comprehensive consultative perspective to this issue.  Since 2003, part of his commitment to the Long Term Care Industry includes his having trained over 3,500 advisors from San Francisco to Wall Street on how to properly position Long Term Care to clients through the CLTC organization. Additionally, he has authored dozens of published industry articles on Long Term Care and has assisted many of the nation’s leading LTC carriers on operational and educational matters.

Decision Vision Episode 39: Should I Write a Book? – An Interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

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Mike Blake and Bea Wray

Decision Vision Episode 39:  Should I Write a Book? – An Interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

Are books still relevant? How do I get a book out of my head and down on paper? Should I self-publish? The answers to these questions and much more come from this interview with Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company, “Decision Vision” is hosted by Mike Blake and presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Bea Wray, Michael Levin Writing Company

Bea Wray

An innovation expert, Bea Wray helps thought leaders share their stories, passions and knowledge as they invent, launch, and promote new products. As the former Chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group at Advantage Media Group, ForbesBooks, Bea further leveraged the wisdom and experience of these innovators through branding, visibility, and marketing efforts substantiated by the ForbesBooks brand name.

Bea is an innovator herself.  She successfully built and eventually sold SourceHarbor Inc.  Along the way, she expanded the company to serve thousands of clients internationally, and has consulted with hundreds of startups. Bea served as the Executive Director of The Creative Coast, a regional non-profit building the innovation economy in Savannah, Georgia where she hosted TEDxCreative Coast and the innovation conference known as GeekEnd. Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to entrepreneurs across 26 countries and throughout the United States.

Bea’s upcoming book, titled What Harvard Taught Me, But My Kids Made Me Learn, is expected to arrive late in 2019. She is looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate, and adapt in the business world.

Bea holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, is a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University, and is one of South Carolina’s prestigious Liberty Fellows of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She is a frequent keynote speaker on innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth, and an inspiring contributor to various publications, including Entrepreneur.com, The Grindstone, and The Savannah Morning News.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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 advisory that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael 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. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:38] 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’re recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe in your favorite podcast aggregator. And please, also, consider leaving a review the of podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:02] Our topic today is, should I write a book? And this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart because books have become, in some respect, easier to write and circulate than ever before. And I do sort of have this secret desire to get about five or six books out, which surprises a lot of people because they’re a surprise and I learned I could read. But in point of fact, I think that there’s a voice in there that wants to put things down on either dead tree paper or virtual paper.

Michael Blake: [00:01:38] And I think a lot of people are thinking about that as well. And it may be people who are like me that are in the services area that wish to establish and reaffirm our reputations as subject matter experts to the market. It may be people that have an artistic bent and this is, you know, a book is in effect their canvas for self-expression. Or it could be somebody that simply feels like they have a story to tell or a lesson to teach. And a book is their way of of getting that lesson out to the world. That’s sort of their contribution to society. And we all know this proliferation of books out there under various names. They could be books, they could be e-books, they could be something else.

Michael Blake: [00:02:27] And, you know, I think that, you know, as we record today in 2019, this is a topic that really wouldn’t have even mattered 20 years ago. You know, the notion that somebody would just somehow write a book was a much larger undertaking because of the way the industry was structured, because of the way technology worked or didn’t work. And it’s just another one of those signs of the times that technology is enabling us all to put a voice out there in a way that, for good or bad, we simply were not able to.

Michael Blake: [00:03:06] And joining us today is my pal Bea Wray, who is with Michael Levin Writing Company with the awesome tag line, their books make their clients happy, famous, trusted and rich. You have a story to tell, a business case to make, a family history, to capture, your book as the ultimate leave behind on sales calls. And I agree with that. The best way to record the culture of the enterprise you’ve built and your legacy for your family.

Michael Blake: [00:03:31] Bea herself is an innovation expert. And she and I know each other from back in the days when Startup Lounge was active in Savannah, Georgia, and she was the director of—executive director of our partner organization Creative Coast there. And now she’s helping thought leaders share their stories, passions and knowledge as they invent, launch and promote new products. As the former chair of the Entrepreneurship Practice Group and Advantage Media Group, Forbes Books, Bea further leverage the wisdom and experience of those innovators through branding, visibility, marketing efforts substantiated by the Forbes Books brand name.

Michael Blake: [00:04:08] Bea is an innovator herself. She successfully built and eventually sold Source Harbor Incorporated. Along the way, she expanded that company to serve thousands of clients internationally and has consulted with hundreds of startups. She serves as the executive director of the Creative Coast, a regional nonprofit building the innovation community in Savannah, Georgia. By the way, one of those awesome cities anywhere. If you don’t—if you’ve never been there, go. If I can ever afford to retire there, that is where I’m going. She hosted TEDxCreative Coast and the Innovation Conference known as GeekEnd.

Michael Blake: [00:04:40] Her years of energy and effort are an immediate benefit to entrepreneurs across 26 countries and throughout the United States. She holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School and a summa cum laude graduate of Emory University and a bunch of other good things. And last but not least, I mean, we’ll get to this one. She has written her own book or is in the fit—in the process of putting her own finishing touches on that book. What Harvard taught me but my kids made me learn, which is expected to arrive in 2019. And I know she’s looking forward to sharing how her experiences as a mother of three taught her how to negotiate, communicate and adapt in the business world. And I think there’s a lot that I’m going to learn from that, too, as a father of two who I think already can negotiate better than I can. Bea Wray, thank you so much for being on the program.

Bea Wray: [00:05:30] I’m so happy to be here, Mike. This is wonderful.

Michael Blake: [00:05:33] So, let’s sort of get down to it. You know, normally I start these podcasts with a definition because we’re talking about a fairly technical topic. But I’m just going to go on a limb here and say everybody knows what a book is. So, why would I want to write a book? You know, I don’t have time to even read all the books that I would like to read. Why am I going to take that time and write one instead?

Bea Wray: [00:05:57] Well, the main reason is to—that people want to be known, loved, and trusted and businesses want to hire people that they know love and trust. And more and more businesses are deeper in whomever they’re working with. Whether it’s your accounting firm, your lawyer, even your orthodontist. You know, I helped an orthodontist write a book because he explains that the impact of straightening teeth on a child’s sleep and what was happening in sleep and the ability for that child to do better in school. So, I thought, orthodontia was all about just keeping your smile pretty. Well, it turns out that the fact that this doctor spends more time understanding the numerous impacts, he wrote a book about it.

Bea Wray: [00:06:53] And so, I guess what I’m trying to say is, you introduced the podcast, which was excellent by, you know, this was not something you could have done 20 years ago because technology was different and the distribution was different. That’s very true. I would argue that in addition, the knowledge base was different. And so, one of the reasons fewer and fewer people publish with a traditional publisher is because we are not all reading the same book. You just said yourself, there’s 10 or 12 books you would love to read. Those are probably not the 10 or 12 that are on my list.

Bea Wray: [00:07:35] It’s that we want more specific stories, more connected to our lives. I want to know not what is the most popular book in the country, but I want to relate to someone who’s more like me, who has insights about things that I need. And so, one of the reasons you might write a book is because you have a unique and special experience and perspective that can help some people, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. Maybe not a few billion people. And yet helping thousands of people is actually a really great thing to do, and sharing your own thoughts in that way is a great endeavor.

Michael Blake: [00:08:23] So, you touched on something that I think I want to jump to, because if you’re—if you really haven’t looked at this and if you’re a people of a certain age such as myself, you think, oh, I need a book, I then need to, I guess, find a way for John Wiley and Sons or McGraw-Hill or, you know, somebody else that’s going to pick this thing up, is that necessarily the case anymore? Is that gateway or that barrier to entry still important?

Bea Wray: [00:08:55] It is not. And I’m a big fan of both of those companies. And working with a traditional publisher can be great and it might not work for you at all. And I have had the privilege of working with hundreds of authors. And what I find is that that industry continues to consolidate and to minimize in such a way that the services one would have gotten in the past, like marketing services are smaller and fewer. And so, it may not be a great experience if you, one, go down that route even if you’re successful. Then the distribution of the book may not be what you’re hoping for.

Bea Wray: [00:09:39] What also can happen is, you know, they’re in the business of selling books. Not in the business of selling you or your company or your idea, which can be great as long as your incentives are aligned with what you want with your book. And so, if they’re not aligned, what can happen is a very specific methodology that maybe it’s something you go over in your consulting practice. It’s a way you use as a business card. It’s what you start talking about and bringing people to your company. Make it watered down in the book that’s trying to be sold to a million people. And so, right off the get go, just the book you envision in your head, depending on what level of control you want, it may be better to self-publish or a hybrid publish than going the traditional route because you lose a lot of control. There’s a lot of talk about how you lose money. You get 40 cents on the book versus $10 on each book sold. But a big problem is, are you actually putting out there the book that is in your heart and mind and soul?

Michael Blake: [00:10:50] And you know, you touched on something there that I want to kind of break from the script a little bit and drill into because I think that’s an important point. You know, the business model of bookselling and the life model of the author may not very—may not be in alignment, right, to sell a book. If you’re going to really do it the way McGraw-Hill put on a bestseller list, that kind of becomes your job, doesn’t it? And maybe you don’t want that to become your job.

Bea Wray: [00:11:18] Absolutely. That’s exactly right. And you know, you mentioned me and my own book. And I’ll just use this as a very specific example. Is—I write not exclusively to women, but sometimes to women, because I’m a mom and I am a woman and I’m a business person. And what I have found is that, we as women, choose to belittle our own experiences in the home and outside of the corporate world, even though they’re very, very relevant to learning about how to deal with people and learning how to negotiate and all those things you said earlier. I never speak from a platform of corporations to conferences or in my book as a victim, or about those bad men who don’t treat me well enough, because that’s not something I think about.

Bea Wray: [00:12:14] However, there is a huge market for that. There is a lot—after the #MeTooMovement, there’s a lot of energy and there’s—I have actually been approached by traditional publishers, write the book in this way because there is a market for, if only men would pay a dollar and a dollar to men and women and the gender pay gap and all this whole language that—those are important factors and there are important things to fight for. But I’m going to fight it from the perspective I know which is I’m going to get better at raising my hand. I’m going to get better at taking risks. I’m going to be better at stepping forward. Not about saying I’m a victim.

Bea Wray: [00:12:55] And the point I’m trying to make here is I have personally been approached, hey, if you change your book to say something that wasn’t in your heart, mind and soul, we can sell it. That’s not been my personal choice. And I know 30 other people who’ve made a similar choice to me because what was more—if you’re going to go through the effort of writing a book, it is a long journey and it sticks with you a long time, my encouragement is make it a book you want it to be.

Michael Blake: [00:13:22] And you know, I would think the thing about a book even by today, it—still, if you compare it to other forms of communication, media, it—a book still has a permanency to it that even a blog doesn’t, a YouTube video, or a Facebook post, whatever, an Instagram, whatever it’s called, a gram, I don’t know. I’m not on histogram, you know, tweet, whatever. A book is still different in that regard, isn’t it, that once it’s out there, either on on dead tree paper or a virtual paper, at some point, I think most people would would have a need to be proud of that out there, because if you’re not, it ain’t going away.

Bea Wray: [00:14:08] Correct. And it is all about—I mean, I love that the word author is part of authority. It is all about establishing your authority. So, be clear on what authority you want to be establishing. Be clear on who you are on that paper because this is where you have your chance to shape it.

Michael Blake: [00:14:30] So, let’s do a close eye role play here. But what I’m really doing is I’m getting free consulting and other guys are giving you a podcast interview opportunity. But I’ve got a book and I’ve got several books in my head that I think I want to write. Do I just start writing? Do I do the Snoopy cartoon thing where I’m on my doghouse, the typewriter and say it was a dark and stormy night? Or how do you—what are the first steps toward that goal?

Bea Wray: [00:15:00] Well, that’s a great question. And you certainly can. Most people start to at least have an outline and a set. The kind of questions you’re thinking is, what is the book I want to write and for whom? And then why? I do recommend being I won’t say selfish but a little bit. Like know your purpose for writing the book because that will help you define your audience and your use. And it will certainly keep you motivated.

Bea Wray: [00:15:34] So, I’ve worked with people who are writing a book because they just hope that one of their grand kids will read it someday, that they don’t want to die without their story somewhere written down. And that’s what they’re going to do. Maybe it will get published in a place and all those people around the world will read it but it was really just about a legacy. That’s a great reason. I’ve helped people write books because their need is to drive business to their company. Now, those kinds of people may be selling $40 gene. Usually, they’re selling a complicated relational relationship kind of product. So, $150,000 on average. Way that leads to consulting, whether it’s for manufacturing or setting up of insurance captive or whatever, where their wisdom and knowledge and the sense to be trusted is so critical. You can’t have that across in a phone call. They want their ideas out and they want to be trusted. And that’s their way that they attract people to their company.

Bea Wray: [00:16:45] Some people want to launch a speaking career. Some people—so, understanding your why. I think it is really, really important before you go too far in writing your book. And then there’s the how. What I will say is I learned over time that the average entrepreneur take around three years to write his or her own book. And unfortunately, fewer than 40 percent of the entrepreneurs to start out on that personal endeavor finish. And that’s why people like the Michael Levin Writing Company exist, is people who are running their own company have—there’s so much at stake every two hours that they spend just writing, not working in the company. And so, it’s constantly the battle that’s most urgent thing and the book never gets done. And so, it becomes a very costly endeavor just an opportunity cost.

Michael Blake: [00:17:54] So, you know, you said another thing. You’re going to make us rip off the script, which is great, because I can do that with you because you’re smarter than I am, empirically. And that is that you say something that kind of runs against what a lot of us, I think almost everybody, is taught and as a hardwired way, which is cater to your audience, cater to your audience, cater to your audience. And while I think you’re acknowledging kind of the existence of the audience, at the end of the day, if you’re going to produce a book that you’re going to feel is worthwhile at the end, it’s really about what you want. It sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing is that it’s really about what you want to put out there to the world. And then if people buy it, buy into and engage cause they’re great. But that’s just kind of the way that it’s got to go.

Bea Wray: [00:18:48] Yes. I mean, one of the first questions we ask people is who is this book for? And what are you going to do for them? And so, in why are they going to do what you want them to do? It may be that they—you want to motivate them to take better care of their health. Great. It may be that you want them to call you to take better care of their health. We don’t know. But one of the very first questions is who are you writing for? So, I do care about the audience.

Bea Wray: [00:19:21] But before that, you have an idea for the book. It really needs to be your idea that’s deep in your heart and your passion connected to the life that you are ready to lead as an author. And so, whether that’s a business person who has a book, whether that is a speaker who has a book, or whether that I’m a grandparent, I’m leaving a legacy that has a book. This book is becoming a part of who you are and you have to have a reason for wanting to write it. And that will help define your audience. And then you can start tailoring to that audience and you have to or otherwise it won’t be a good book. But I—what I don’t recommend is go out, survey the world, and see what book is missing.

Michael Blake: [00:20:12] Interesting, because I’ve actually heard exactly that advice given many times. So tell me more about that. Why? Why is that a bad idea?

Bea Wray: [00:20:23] Because we don’t live in—because, well, we’re going to think I’m an old fuddy duddy, but because we don’t want beaver cleaver on T.V. anymore is basically the reason. And let me explain that. So 40 years ago, you watch, you consume video television, the same—you and every other neighbor were watching the same thing as there were three channel. And we all watched the same thing. We consume information in a certain way. And my guess is you didn’t watch that last night. Am I right?

Michael Blake: [00:20:59] Yeah.

Bea Wray: [00:20:59] And you didn’t watch even the same thing as everyone on your street. And if you’re like most of America, you don’t even watch everything that was the same even if people in your home. So not only is it not consistent. Three options down the street. Most of us watching the same thing and talking about it. And as the water cooler the next day, we are self-selecting and sometimes is independently created content like YouTube videos, TedX Talk, and so on and so forth. So the way we consume information is so totally different than the way it was years ago. At that time, publishing of individual books had certain channels. We need so many mysteries, we need so many adventure stories, we need so many biographies. And we don’t have a recent biography of Abe Lincoln for 10-year-old. We needed to fill that.

Bea Wray: [00:21:56] That is not the way information is consumed today. It’s quite the opposite. We create whether video content or written content as a way of connecting with people. Who do we want to connect with? Is it based on our faith? Is it based on our geography? Is it based on our clients? And so, I want to write a book that helps me be who I want to be and connect with the people I want to connect with. I have a—I have an e-mail today from a friend who went to Harvard Business School who wrote a book about parenting and leveraging Harvard Business School, very, very similar in some ways as my book and not at all similar. And it will be used in the same way. But we became friends because our books were similar. But never did she think, oh, gosh, you’re writing on that topic, I can’t. Or did I think you’re writing on that topic, I can’t.

Michael Blake: [00:23:01] Yeah. And to some extent, right, it probably kind of reaffirms a factor you may be on to something.

Bea Wray: [00:23:07] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:23:08] If one person, other person thinks it’s worth writing that book, that would tell me there’s 10,000 people that think it’s reading that book.

Bea Wray: [00:23:18] Exactly. But it wouldn’t be the case if there were only one spot on the network or only one spot in the McGraw-Hill sells for this type of book. But that’s not the way books are distributed, written especially today.

Michael Blake: [00:23:36] So—and this actually—this does circle back then to a question I actually had prepared to ask for today, which is, you know, given all of the media that bombards us and is available, you know, I mean, are books on their way out or are books still a real thing?

Bea Wray: [00:23:58] That’s so interesting because many times you also in this podcast talked about, you know, a paper book or an online book. And I believe that not only are books very much relevant today. Funny, I’m looking at a bookshelf right now suddenly filled with books. But I think paper books are still very relevant, even though I’m an audible fan. I listen to books often. And the reason is because they are a way of connecting with people.

Bea Wray: [00:24:30] So more and more people are writing books, more and more people are writing books to connect with their audience. It may not be a billion people. It may not even be 300,000 people. But writing a book—well, take the guy, for example, whose client is $150,000 every time he gets a client. This gentleman wrote a book, put it in the hands of fewer than a thousand people, and his business increased by $5 million in the first year because it didn’t take many people to learn, to know, love, and trust him. Does that make sense?

Michael Blake: [00:25:15] It does. And by the way, as an aside, I have stolen that phrase because I’m familiar with the phrase no like and trust. No love and trust is so much better. So kudos to you.

Bea Wray: [00:25:26] Well, thank you.

Michael Blake: [00:25:26] And if you hear lots of other people that are using that, it’s because I stole it from you and told everybody they can have it.

Bea Wray: [00:25:33] I appreciate that. I was told one time that, you know, the first time you borrow, you give credit. The second time, you know, oh, I was talking and so-and-so said. The next time you say, so and so taught me to say. The third time you forget about so-and-so altogether and you just know it.

Michael Blake: [00:25:52] That’s right. And by the fourth time, it just came to me one day. I don’t know where. But you’re welcome to borrow it if you want.

Bea Wray: [00:26:01] There you go.

Michael Blake: [00:26:01] Yeah. So I do think, you know, there is still some—there is still a mystique around a book. In spite of all the other media that, you know, compete for attention, I give books a lot because I recommend that people read a book and then to guilt them into reading and I’ll often buy it for them and send it to them. So they’ll at least lie to me the next time they see me and say they read it. But, you know, it is a very powerful calling card.

Michael Blake: [00:26:32] And I’ll share my own story. So years ago, I co-authored a book called Entrepreneurship Back to Basics, and it’s one long out of print. But I remember, I was applying for a job and they asked me for a writing sample. I say, okay, if I send you a copy of my book, right, just sort of hear a pin drop at the interview at that point. An extreme case, but still an anecdote of the impact that a book could make.

Bea Wray: [00:27:00] Totally fabulous. And you know, a lot of time it’s okay if someone doesn’t read the whole book. But one of the most powerful sales talk is to say, you know, hey, Michael, it was great to speak with you today. I really appreciated the questions you had on my marketing strategy. Please turn to page 26 in the book that I’ve enclosed.

Michael Blake: [00:27:23] Yeah. And of course, then there’s if you want the benefit of reading the book and I haven’t actually read it, you can just hire me.

Bea Wray: [00:27:31] Precisely.

Michael Blake: [00:27:34] So let’s say we’re well along the way to a book being written or maybe it’s even written. Is it as hard to get a book picked up by Amazon and distributed to Kindle or iBooks or something like that? Is it hard at all or can anybody just sort of do it? How, you know, what’s your assessment of that electronic distribution medium in terms of making it harder or easier to actually get a book out there?

Bea Wray: [00:28:01] Well, I think anybody can do it. Most people need help with how. So certainly making sure the book is a great quality. You know, you do want an excellent manuscript, well-written, but that’s not enough. You definitely have to have someone who’s helping you do the layout, make it look excellent. Pull out images and illustrations and even font type and book jackets. All of that matters.

Bea Wray: [00:28:30] And so, I’ve never met someone who can do all of that him or herself. You know, that usually takes a team who can get that done. And that’s where, you know, hybrid publisher and that’s where, you know, our company helps people find that right team at the Michael Levin Writing Company so that—because what people don’t want to do is finally get this book out of themselves. Finally have this manuscript and then say, now what, and still run into all of the hurdles that they were experiencing before, you know, they took the steps to get the book actually done. That said, you know, Amazon will put a book up, and so you don’t have to go to McGraw-Hill to have—to be a published author. And you still get—and you get to retain much more of the profits of the book, which is excellent.

Bea Wray: [00:29:27] But there’s still a science around how do you get it in the very category? How do you get the ISBN number? How do you make sure that it becomes an Amazon best-seller because Amazon does a great job of creating certain categories. And there’s a system around making sure enough people are voting for you at the time so that you can be a best-seller. And so, there—it’s not that hard. You just, you know—my husband will kill me for saying this. I don’t even change my oil in my car because I don’t know how to do that, right.

Michael Blake: [00:30:03] Right.

Bea Wray: [00:30:03] He does and he knows how to take the radiator out, too. And if he doesn’t, he’ll learn on YouTube. That’s not me. So my philosophy is get the people who are excellent at doing these things for you so that you can feel comfortable and go do the things that you’re excellent at.

Michael Blake: [00:30:25] So you mentioned in passing that assuming the book is finished at all, that it would take an entrepreneur roughly three years to complete a book. Is that reflective of best practices or is that reflective more of that? There have been a bunch of fits and starts and mistakes and restarts. And that’s not really an efficient path. And if you do it kind of the Bea Wray way that it doesn’t necessarily take a full presidential cycle to do that.

Bea Wray: [00:30:55] Now, I think the best practice is 90 to 120 days.

Michael Blake: [00:31:00] So good. Yeah. Because I’m not nearly that patient if I’m going to write my book. So, let’s walk through that. If you’re talking to somebody and they’re serious about writing a book, what—how does that time typically get allocated? Do somebody take 90 days off to write the book and they go to a, you know, a Nepalese monastery where they’re not going to be disturbed? Or do they take one or two days a week or they just sort of locked themselves in an office and do that? Or is it, you know, the method where somebody gets up at 4:00 in the morning and the first two and a half hours a day, they write? How does that typically work?

Bea Wray: [00:31:38] So, what I have experienced in the last few years, both with the Michael Levin Writing Company and the ghostwriting company and when I ran the Forbes book is that they realize they want to buy their—what they’re really doing as CEO of a company is buying his or her own time. They’re saying, I don’t want to delay fits and starts because there’s something about our brains that actually gets ourselves in the way of writing our own book because we want to be perfect. And writing is an imperfect endeavor. We have to get it out and then it needs to be edited and changed and moved around.

Bea Wray: [00:32:18] And so, most people who have not been trained as writers and have 10 years of history as a writer with things that are not emotionally connected to themselves, are not going to be the best at writing their own book. They’re going to be the best at speaking their own books. And so, what they typically do is say, I want to hire a partner to help me with this book. And then, the first thing that happens is there’s a 90-minute phone call where there’s a conversation about who’s the audience, why are you doing the book, and let’s work through what is the book, meaning the outline of the book in the book plan.

Bea Wray: [00:33:00] And then usually the writers will go back and take probably six to eight hours with that 90 minute, listening to it, just writing it, re-listening to it, reshaping it, understanding, doing some research and then deliver back. Sometimes a 10 to 12 fixed, detailed outline, sometimes with holes. This is the way I see the book. Here’s where I sit these stories. What do you think? And so, now we’re working off of a book plan. And from that book plan, sometimes weekly phone calls are scheduled, sometimes every other week, depending on the schedule of the book and whether there is sort of a launch of that. But we need this book to be done by X date. What are we aiming for in order to hopefully get the 90 to 120 days.

Bea Wray: [00:33:51] And oftentimes, the entire book is interviewed. And then the writer goes away and delivers factious the first three chapters, never the whole book. That’s too much to digest for the author. So, the ghostwriter will deliver back the first two or three chapters, are we—did I get the voice right? Are we on the right path? That’s the time to iterate and decide how to shape the next two-thirds of the book. And within 90 days, an excellent ghostwriter, ghostwriting team should be able to deliver to a CEO his or her book written in his or her voice about his or her story.

Michael Blake: [00:34:40] And so, you know, kind of working through that process. And it certainly makes sense to me if you’re retaining a ghostwriter. You know, you’re surely buying back that time. And by the way, I’ve got to assume being a ghostwriter is extremely hard because writing to capture someone else’s voice has—I know is excruciatingly difficult because I’ve tried to work with ghostwriters in just small articles. And it’s never worked very well. And I think it’s something that’s very hard to do. Meaning that if you find somebody like you guys that can do it, you know, that is a precious commodity.

Bea Wray: [00:35:23] I think so. I can’t not do it. So, let me be clear. But the Michael Levin Writing Company has written over 700 books in 25 years. And I’ve been tracking for the last five years, and what I find is there are people who can do it. And interestingly, I spent enough time with them that these actual ghostwriters will say it’s easier for me to write your books than my own because all of those emotional things like that are those blocks that get ourselves in the way, get in our, we put in our own way don’t happen.

Bea Wray: [00:36:07] But it is one reason why the calls are cheap recorded, is there’s a lot of time spent getting that voice correct. Getting even that like (inaudible) of stories correct.

Michael Blake: [00:36:22] So, you touched on something I think is an important definitional point and that is editing and proofreading. I don’t think those are necessarily the same thing. And if you agree with that, can you explain to our audience what the differences between those two steps?

Bea Wray: [00:36:39] Yeah. So, anything—you know, they’re closely related, but editing is this—is a little more thorough and has a little more power. So, there’s ghostwriting. There’s really an overseeing. So, Michael Levin actually does all the book planned and he does the overseeing as a whole company. But there’s dozens of ghostwriters who are very carefully, closely match specifically to the author, but they’re never going to do their editing themselves. And so, then, there’s an overall editor who’s paying attention to tying the written work back to the author,b Back to the transcripts, back to the plan.

Bea Wray: [00:37:24] And then the proofreading is more the very final, you know, fork it out the door.

Michael Blake: [00:37:35] Right. Make sure there are no glaring errors and so forth, as opposed to high level kind of structure elements, I’m guessing.

Bea Wray: [00:37:41] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:37:42] Okay.

Bea Wray: [00:37:42] Editing can be—proofreading is making sure what they’re perfect. Editing is making sure we have everything we need there and identifying what’s not there.

Michael Blake: [00:37:57] Yeah. Okay. So, we’ve touched on this next question a little bit, but I don’t want to skim over because I do think it’s important. What’s your opinion of e-books?

Bea Wray: [00:38:11] Well, I think a lot of people that have them need to have them. Personally as a parent driving me crazy that my kids almost only read e-books because they read them on their phone and then there goes the text message, it’s like an invitation for a distraction. So, I don’t think they’re going away but there is a lot lost. I also don’t think—I’m positive they’re not replacing paper books where you can highlight and send and give as a gift and wrap up in a way. That cannot be done as effectively in an e-book.

Michael Blake: [00:38:55] And in terms of impact on a reader, do you think there’s a difference? Do you think that maybe readers look at e-books—and I want to make a distinction. I don’t necessarily mean a formal analog book that also happens to have a Kindle variant, but I’m more referring to kind of the promotional e-books that you see out there and they’re often called an e-book and maybe they’re not even worthy of the name. They should be called something else. But, you know, maybe they’re 15, maybe they’re 50 or 80, 90 pages to be considered almost too short a book to publish in paper format. But you see kind of that genre of book that appears in a digital format. You know what I’m talking about?

Bea Wray: [00:39:36] Yeah, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And, you know, there are certain things that are seen to be shared and they are sort of too short that would never make it as a book that also has an electronic version. I hear what you’re saying. So, I tell people that some of those out, it’s definitely not my specialty and I don’t personally have a big desire, so I don’t know that I have enough experience to say, you know, to have an opinion about them. It makes sense to me that sometimes people have a shorter message to give and a 50 page e-book will get it done.

Michael Blake: [00:40:20] Okay. So, now, I’m curious on your view, and I think our listeners are curious, and it’s an off—it’s an awkward, almost insipid question, but I think it has to be asked and that is, you know, how easy or hard is it to actually produce a book that people are willing to pay for? And, you know, for most people, is that even a realistic or desirable goal?

Bea Wray: [00:40:55] Well, I think that the hardest part is digging deep in your heart. So, I’ve been involved with the publishing of hundreds of books and every one of them has met that bar. They are—some people are paying for them. What I’m not sure is that enough people are paying—the author is getting a million dollars. So, I am not a fan of published—I never say to someone go write a book, you’ll be a millionaire because it’s selling—making money, selling books is hard work. So, it depends. You know, you’re not going to get very far if your book is of bad quality and you can’t find some market who will pay for it.

Bea Wray: [00:41:48] Oftentimes, the way to get to that is you might give it away to other people, but it has to be excellent quality, has to have an excellent work, has to have a brief title, has to know the audience but that’s a big leap from, you know, I sold books at the back of a conference to I became a millionaire selling books. And I say a million dollars because it’s really not worth your time and effort. Probably you’re gonna get a $200,000 but there are easier ways to make a living.

Bea Wray: [00:42:22] And so, that is really hard. And I don’t think it’s about the quality of the book at that point. I think it’s about the quality and the dedication of your marketing and how many—did you run here to get on the radio station? And how many public speaking engagements are you doing and how did you work your way onto The Today Show?

Michael Blake: [00:42:45] So, it’s about the business of the book?

Bea Wray: [00:42:46] Most people don’t want to do all of that work because they don’t need to, that their book is making them a million dollars because it’s tied to a business that they’re doing or it’s tied to some other reason. So, they don’t go through the effort to get on The Today Show.

Michael Blake: [00:43:01] Right. And plus, I mean, it sounds like—I mean, that process, if you want your book itself to be that kind of income generator, the book itself becomes a business and it requires a substantial investment. You know, I don’t think you just sort of write at info@todayshownbc.com, whatever their domain is. Hey, can I come on. I’d really like you to interview me. You know that in itself is a huge financial investment.

Bea Wray: [00:43:27] I used to help software companies sell their software. And what we always said was no matter how great it is, you can’t just cut a hole in the side of the building and hope that people start driving up like Burger King.

Michael Blake: [00:43:40] Darn it.

Bea Wray: [00:43:42] It’s true with books.

Michael Blake: [00:43:44] So, we’re running out of time. Before we do, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to shift gears to your own upcoming book. It’s going to be released later this year. Are you self-publishing that or is that going for a formal publishing house?

Bea Wray: [00:43:57] I am actually self-publishing that and I’m really excited about it. We’re finally getting into the homestretch here.

Michael Blake: [00:44:05] And if it’s not a major state secret, what is the voice of that book and what is the idea that you just had to get out of yourself and into that book?

Bea Wray: [00:44:18] Thank you. So, I had the privilege. I called the company and I had the privilege of taking about six years off of corporate work to raise my children. And I actually did so on a (inaudible) island in South Carolina. Daufuskie Island. So basically it’s exactly next to heaven and it was a perfect experience. But when I went back to work, which was at the Creative Coast, which you’ve already mentioned, I’m terrified. Did I have any skills? What can I do? How could I help them? Could I even find a job? And it was even way worse when I did because then I thought of all the ways I would fail because I had been at home with my children for six years.

Bea Wray: [00:45:00] And what amazed me is I had floods of thank you note. Thank you for that introduction to the venture capitalist. Thank you for this great event that you put on. Thank you for the strategic consulting. And I kept wondering, what were we doing that was helping these people? And then I kept wondering specifically, where did I personally get this skill to help these 300 plus companies? And over and over and over, the answer to that last question was not that I got this skill because I had attended the Harvard Business School. It wasn’t that I got this skill because I had decades of experience as an entrepreneur. Over and over again, the ability that I had to connect people, make people feel comfortable at an event, set out a vision for where we were going I received because I was raising children. So I want to talk about it.

Michael Blake: [00:46:00] And what what is the—is there one lesson that stands out as to the most important or the most obvious that your children taught you?

Bea Wray: [00:46:16] There isn’t one. Well, there’s dozens of them. But I think the main—the overarching lesson is that business is done with people. So people skills matter. So a great way to get people feel—hone your people skills is to try to raise them in your home.

Michael Blake: [00:46:37] Very good.

Bea Wray: [00:46:38] The one to do I have that I hope people walk away with is we, both men and women, belittle on our LinkedIn profile anything to do with parenting. We treat it as like a black mark, especially people who have taken time off. We try to cover it up from our professional experience. And my invitation is to consider not feeling that. And if you consider saying, you know, here’s who I am as a whole person. It’s basically Sheryl Sandberg said, hey, your corporate—your career path is not a corporate ladder. It’s not linear. It’s a jungle gym. And what I’m trying to do with this book is to validate that parenting is a reasonable spot on that corporate jungle gym.

Michael Blake: [00:47:33] Well, I am going to hit you up for a signed copy of that book. I can certainly see where that would fit because you’re right, there’s not just people skills. I think, you know, modern parenting involves tremendous time management requirements. I think obviously there’s economics that are involved. There’s conflict resolution. There’s so many things that actually can take from that. I’ve never thought about that. But the more you talk about it, the more inherent sense it makes to me. So, like I said, I’m going to hit you up for an autographed copy of the book.

Bea Wray: [00:48:10] I can’t wait.

Michael Blake: [00:48:11] So we need to wrap up. I think this is the longest podcast we’ve actually done and this is number 37 or 38, something like that. So I’m not sure if congratulations are in order or not, but it is what it is. If people want to contact you about writing a book or or maybe just figuring out where, you know, what lessons their children should be teaching them, how can they best contact you?

Bea Wray: [00:48:36] So, my personal e-mail is bea, is my name. B like boy, @beawray.com.

Michael Blake: [00:48:47] Okay. And that’s gonna do it for today’s program. I’d like to thank Bea Wray so much for joining us and sharing her expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please tune in, so that when you’re facing your next business 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.

Roxana Shershin with Digital Additive, K.P. Reddy with Shadow Ventures and Chris Weissman with TopRight

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Atlanta Business Radio
Roxana Shershin with Digital Additive, K.P. Reddy with Shadow Ventures and Chris Weissman with TopRight
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Roxana Shershin is Co-Founder & President of Digital Additive. In a world of one-size-fits-all email, Digital Additive delivers on the promise of one-to-one.

Founded in 2012, Digital Additive specializes in eCRM Planning, Email Marketing Services, Data Integration, Creative, and Campaign Optimization services to Fortune 1000 companies including The Home Depot, FleetCor, ApartmentGuide, Oldcastle and Carters, Inc. An agency partner of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Digital Additive helps clients go beyond email to foster authentic conversation with their customers.

Follow Digital Additive on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

To know K.P. Reddy, Founder of Shadow Ventures, is to experience boundless enthusiasm for creating new ventures. Reddy’s multidisciplinary career spans the innovation continuum. Over 25+ years, he has been a technologist, subject matter expert, founder, CEO, advisor, investor, professor, author and coach.

K.P. effortlessly combines expertise in advanced technologies with critical, in-the-trenches experience as an entrepreneur. He is a globally recognized authority in AEC environments, artificial intelligence, robotics and automation, collaborative communication, mobile applications and cloud computing. His passion is in launching game-changing startups, raising substantial investments, and leading organizations to meaningful acquisition and IPO exits.

Follow Shadow Ventures on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Chris Weissman brings over 25 years of marketing and leadership experience for leading consumer and B2C companies.  Prior to joining TopRight, Chris served as CMO for The Honey Baked Ham Company where he delivered strong e-commerce and retail growth.

Chris was also an integral member of the NuCO2 leadership team – driving over 20% growth in revenue resulting in the sale of the company for ten times revenue.  Prior to NuCO2 Chris spent 10 years consulting driving growth for clients across an array of industries.  Project work included brand development, innovation, portfolio optimization, “go-to-market” strategy, and marketing training. Clients included Coca-Cola, Heineken, Walmart, Dow Chemical, Alcoa and Con Agra Foods.

Chris also spent 10 years at Kraft Foods and The Pillsbury Company in a variety of product and brand management roles.  Chris holds an MBA from Babson College in Boston and a BBA from Southern Methodist University where he was an All American swimmer and member of the United States National Swim Team.

Follow TopRight on LinkedIn and Facebook.

About Your Host

JoeyKlineJoey 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.

Decision Vision Episode 35: Should I Hire a Business Development Coach? – An Interview with Rod Burkert, Burkert Valuation Advisors

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 35: Should I Hire a Business Development Coach? – An Interview with Rod Burkert, Burkert Valuation Advisors
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Mike Blake and Rod Burkert

Decision Vision Episode 35: Should I Hire a Business Development Coach? – An Interview with Rod Burkert, Burkert Valuation Advisors

Why should I hire a business development coach? What are the most important aspects of marketing my professional services? In this interview with “Decision Vision” host Mike Blake, Rod Burkert of Burkert Valuation Advisors answers these questions and much more. “Decision Vision” is presented by Brady Ware & Company.

Rod Burkert, Burkert Valuation Advisors

Rod Burkert, CPA, CVA, and his wife, Amy Burkert, CPA, CFA, with their dogs Buster, left, and Ty, stand in front of the RV that serves as their mobile office and their home.

Rod Burkert is the Founder and President of Burkert Valuation Advisors.

In one way, shape, or form, Rod has performed valuations since the late 1980s. In July 2000, he started Burkert Valuation Advisors in Philadelphia where he ran a “traditional” valuation practice for 10 years that focused on tax purpose valuations for manufacturers and distributors.

Based on that experience, in 2013 Rod began coaching BVFLS (business valuation and forensic legal services) professionals to mentor them in the marketing and positioning skills they need.

In March 2010, he began traveling full time throughout the US and Canada in an RV with his wife and dogs. Today his mobile consulting firm includes his valuation practice and a coaching business, all of which he built by leveraging his professional network, social media, and hiring virtual assistants to make the available technology work for him.

For more information, you can email him directly, go to his website, or you can find him on LinkedIn.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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:

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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 firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.

Michael 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. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts on how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael 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 also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:03] So, our topic today is, should I hire a business development coach? And I’ve picked this topic because, as most of you know, I’m a shareholder inside an accounting firm. And one of the hard—one of the struggles that almost every accounting firm faces is, how do we motivate people to develop business? How do we train people to develop business? Because at the end of the day, in the 21st Century economy, it’s all well and good to be a great technician, but if all you have in a firm is technicians, it’s like trying to win a baseball game with great pitching only, you wind up having zero to zero. And you can’t win that way. So, you’ve got to have people and a culture that drives the ability to generate revenue. And the accounting industry, in particular, is not one that is necessarily known for its outgoing, gregarious nature. And so, that’s a particular area that that we focus on.

Michael Blake: [00:02:08] And, for me, as a leader of a valuation and strategic advisory practice, at least 70% of what I do has something to do with business development. And I can tell you that the things on the mind of our partners all the time is, how do we get people excited, and not just excited, but also trained to generate revenue? Because it’s not fair to send a bunch of kids out there, or sometimes not kids say, you know, “Go back, get us some business. Go get them.” That’s not going to produce an outcome, except for the occasional outlier. There needs to be an important support system for that.

Michael Blake: [00:02:46] And I say this is not somebody to whom sales necessarily comes naturally. When I started my career in investment banking, I was the clock guy. I was the guy they locked into a room, and shoved in front of a spreadsheet, and left them with the textbooks, and just made sure it never ever got in front of the client because that was my role. We had other people that were much more comfortable than I. And then, over a number of years, working with coaches, including Rod, for a time, I’ve managed to become slightly below average, which doesn’t sound a lot, except when you understand the disaster I was when I started. And, actually, it’s quite a long way.

Michael Blake: [00:03:25] And joining us today by phone is is Rod Burkert, who is, I think, the best in the business when it comes to this kind of topic in the business valuation arena. And I’m proud to say that I was actually a client of his when I had my own practice for a little bit under a year, and I fired him for the best reason possible, is that I was generating so much business, I could not handle all of it. I had to turn off basically. And I give him a lot of credit for that, as well as another coach sort of earlier in my career. And I can’t think of a better endorsement than that. And it happens to be true.

Michael Blake: [00:04:03] But Rod is the founder of Burkert Valuation Advisors, a business valuation and litigation support firm. His assignments focus primarily on income, gift, and estate matters, specializing in closely held companies and private investment partnerships. He also provides report, review, and project consulting services to assist attorneys and other practitioners with their engagements between 1996 and 2025. Rod was a member of an elite instructor for the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts – just rolls off the tongue – Consultants Training Institute. Missing the classroom environment, he rejoined the NACVA’s teaching circuit in 2011, championing the subject of Report Writing, another topic near and dear to my heart.

Michael Blake: [00:04:42] He is a recipient of various instructor awards, including the Circle of Light and Instructor of the Year. He is a past chairman of NACVA’s executive advisory board and education board, and has been named one of NACVA’s outstanding members. He is also a regular contributing author to Business Valuation Update, the Value Examiner, and Financial Valuation and Litigation Expert. If you’re not in valuation, you don’t know what those are, but those are basically the Sports Illustrated of the Valuation World, the New York Times of the valuation world. Rod is leveraging social media to build a mobile valuation consulting practice, allowing him to travel full time in an RV throughout the United States and Canada with his wife, Amy, and their two dogs. And Rob, thank you for taking time off the road to talk to us today.

Rod Burkert: [00:05:26] Hey, thanks, Mike, for having me. I appreciate it. I—gosh, until you read my bio, I didn’t realize how much I’ve done, but it sure sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?

Michael Blake: [00:05:38] Well, as I tell people, one of the benefits I see for myself having gray in my beard and two arthritic ankles is, at least, when you look behind in the rearview mirror, there’s some interesting stuff.

Rod Burkert: [00:05:49] Exactly, exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:05:51] So, you started out, I think, as did I, as a practitioner, giving out the work. Why did you decide that you’re going to develop, if you will, this persona or this new vocation of practice development training?

Rod Burkert: [00:06:13] Well, one of the things that you said in the beginning kind of struck me as pretty close to home is back in the day, when I started doing valuations, if someone said to me, “Describe your ideal day,” I would have said, “Sitting in front of a computer building an Excel model to help a client accomplish some—you know, or solve a valuation problem.” So, I was very much the nerd sitting in front of a computer as well, but I had my own practice, and I had to bring in work in order to build those kinds of models.

Rod Burkert: [00:06:50] And so, I’m kind of an outgoing person. I don’t mind getting out there. And I actually found that the more I did it, the more I enjoyed it. And then, I turned 60. So, I’m 63 now, but when I turned 60, I’m thinking my health is really good, I’m having a great time, I’m not thinking about retiring, I’ve got a long road ahead of me, and I have an opportunity really to embark on a second career. And for me, that second career piggybacked on what I know and what I do best, which is doing business valuation work. But instead of doing the work, I’m actually, as you said, helping people get the work because there is a lot of information out there that’s of a very technical nature. It tells us how to do the work, but nobody tells us how to get the work.

Rod Burkert: [00:07:47] And the last piece of why I’m doing what I’m doing, as you mentioned in the introduction two days ago, my wife and I officially crossed 9.5 years that we have lived full time in our RV, traveling throughout the United States and Canada with our two dogs. There’s no home. There’s no storage facility. Everything is in the RV. And I want to give that RV equivalent experience to other people in our profession. So, I don’t expect everybody to think that they’re going to pull up stakes and live in an RV like Amy and I do. But rhetorically speaking, Michael, what is your RV equivalent experience? What is it that you would like to do in tandem or in parallel with the business valuation work that you do? And one of my—kind of one of my success stories is a client that I am working with, and he really had a previous life as a painter and an artist. And we’ve restructured her practice to give that life back to her again.

Michael Blake: [00:09:00] So-

Rod Burkert: [00:09:00] That’s why I’m doing this.

Michael Blake: [00:09:02] Okay. So, yeah. And obviously, you’re helping a lot of a lot of people with it. So, before we go, I’m going to define a term because what we’re going to be talking about here is business valuation because that just happens to be my world. But I want to emphasize that Rod, also, helps people that are in the forensic and litigation services area, which generally means expert witnesses. And that that’s not an area which I play in. I’m on record saying that’s not my strength, to put it mildly. But a lot of what Rod does is he works with professionals like that as well.

Michael Blake: [00:09:38] So, when I say business valuation, because I don’t want to say that entire mouthful each and every single time, just imagine to yourself out in the audience that we’re also talking about forensic and litigation services. So, with that in mind, the question then is, can anyone do this? Can literally anyone who decides that, for whatever reason, for career development, or for survival, because they’ve got to eat, and they’ve got this practice, can anyone develop a business valuation practice?

Rod Burkert: [00:10:11] I think, to an extent, the answer to that question is yes with a huge but caveat. And that caveat is simply this, it’s that you have to be willing to keep showing up to try new things and always keep moving forward. And I think that’s the problem with many people in our profession. They don’t have that dedication to the consistency and persistency that’s required for the marketing that you need to build a practice.

Rod Burkert: [00:10:46] So, one of my coaching clients coined a really cool term. He’s been accused by his friends and colleagues of dolphin marketing. And what is dolphin marketing? Well, dolphin marketing is when you need work because everything in the pipeline is done, you come up for air, you breach out of the water, you grab a few new clients, and then you disappear under water, and nobody hears from you again until you need more work. That’s dolphin marketing.

Rod Burkert: [00:11:18] Anyone in our industry who we might call an industry titan, the seasoned professional, will tell you that you need to be out there marketing, if not every day, at least every week. And I think, given some of the mentality in our profession, we don’t want to do that. We convince ourselves—to me, we convince ourselves, “I’m a person that was never good in math,” and I had convinced myself that I will never be good in math. When actually, it’s a learned skill like anything else that we do. You can learn to be good in math, and you can learn to be good in marketing and practice development if you don’t talk yourself out of it.

Michael Blake: [00:12:05] What you talk about resonates with me. A podcast to which I listen fairly frequently is the Rosen Institute. You might have heard of it.

Rod Burkert: [00:12:14] Oh, yes.

Michael Blake: [00:12:15] Yeah. I mean, Lee Rosen is very much a kindred spirit of yours, except he goes global. And one of the things he says is that almost any marketing activity you do will be successful as long as you stick with it, and you’re consistent.

Rod Burkert: [00:12:31] And yes, I agree with that. And related to that, Michael. You have to like it. I mean, one of the things is what works for others may not work for you. And what works for you may not work for others. But the important thing is to play to your strengths. I would never advise a coaching client that they need to be out there speaking constantly if they didn’t really like speaking, or writing, or doing videos, or anything like that. You have to pick a marketing skill that you are halfway good at, so that you can learn to get better and enjoy doing or else, you won’t stick with it. And that goes back to being consistent and persistent.

Michael Blake: [00:13:14] So, why isn’t just being a great technician good enough? I mean, the little voice in my head that says the world in America is a meritocracy. Tell us. And maybe this is a rationalization that the marketing and sales are just fluff, but I’m a professional of substance, and I’m really good at the business valuation, et cetera, world. Why is that not good enough?

Rod Burkert: [00:13:39] Yeah. I mean, I used to think being a technician would be good enough. And then, I read Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. That book was written back in the 1930s. So, 80 some years ago, Dale Carnegie had this observation about the finance, about the success of the people that he was coaching. And he says, basically, it’s by observation that if you look at anyone who has achieved some level of financial success, 15% of that success is due to technical skills, and 85% of it would be due to what we would call today people engineering skills, the soft skills like good listening, having empathy, being patient. That has—I think, many times, we gravitate to somebody who can capture our imagination and tell us what they can do for us without, actually, supplying the mathematical solution for what they can do for us.

Michael Blake: [00:14:56] Now, sales, for people who don’t do it, and for me, I surprisingly found to my to my astonishment, really, that I get a big endorphin rush from it, but not everybody does. And some people—I think a lot of people still look at sales with a certain amount of apprehension, even dread. And I’m sure it comes across people’s minds, “Maybe I could just hire a salesperson or maybe partner up with a salesperson.” Is that. Is that a model that could work for a small firm, or is that just sort of putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound?

Rod Burkert: [00:15:32] Well, there are firms out there, even in our business valuation space, that have a team of salespeople only. They do not do valuation, or forensic accounting, or litigation services work at all. They go out and their job is to sell the work. And they have built an incredibly successful practice. I think they are five or six offices. They’ve been around for like 80 years, and they have used that model to some success.

Rod Burkert: [00:16:09] Rhetorically speaking, though, if you’re the prospect, at that point, because you haven’t signed on, this isn’t a widget that we’re selling. We’re selling a solution to an acute problem that could be the death of a family member, and their interest in the business needs to be valued for estate tax purposes. It could be the sale of your business, something that you’ve built over the course of your lifetime. And now, it represents the largest asset that you own. When it comes to interviewing somebody that’s going to help you solve that problem, do you want to meet somebody who’s selling the solution or somebody who is going to be preparing this solution?

Rod Burkert: [00:16:56] So, I’m not saying that the sales model where you’re wanting to hire somebody to outsource the sales piece of your practice development won’t work. But I think where we really fail most often is the people that do the work that we do, we don’t put ourselves in the shoes of the client. And how would we feel if we were going to have our problems solved by a salesperson as opposed to a person that’s going to actually do the work?

Rod Burkert: [00:17:27] You go to a doctor, there’s no salesman selling you the procedure that you need to have performed. There is the doctor that’s telling you the what, the why, and the how that this procedure needs to be performed. And I think with a professional service like ours, to me, prospects and clients want to meet with the person that’s going to be doing the work, not the person that’s just going to be selling the work.

Michael Blake: [00:17:57] Now, one of the objections, I’m sure, you face, and I certainly see with somebody who is confronted with the need to develop a business development mentality and business development practice, if you will, is a lack of time. I don’t have time to sit. I don’t have time to do X, Y and Z. And I’m curious, I would imagine that—I know this for a fact, as I’ve been a client of yours, is that it’s not a free ride to kind of jump on board the Rod Burkert training and become a coaching client, is it? I mean, there’s a there’s a time commitment and not just inside of school, if you will, but outside as well to prepare and build those skills, and build those business development muscle, isn’t there?

Rod Burkert: [00:18:45] There is. And I think, a big factor in all of this in what you said, Michael, is really how—first of all, well, how successful of a practice do you want? What does success mean to you? Because there are some people, you and I both know them, that have a successful practice simply by sitting in their office and aggressively waiting for the phone to ring. That’s a term that I used in coaching with you. And they are perfectly happy with that. They’ll never make high six figures doing that or it would be unusual to think that they could, but if they’re making a low six figure billing revenue and however you want to look at it, that may be all they need, and they’re not going to invest time with a coach like me.

Rod Burkert: [00:19:38] And on the other hand, there are people who want more for different reasons. And they’re not just necessarily saying more income. I’m saying more time, more money, more freedom. You have to put some systems in place to realize those things. And that’s what I would like to think that my coaching helps people do, not just more money but more money with more time and more freedom to use that money to, again, have that RV-equivalent experience.

Michael Blake: [00:20:12] And one of the time investment required by a coaching client of yours, let’s say, in a given week? How many hours do they expect to invest in their education that’s being led by you?

Rod Burkert: [00:20:25] I would say that there is a ramp up. In the beginning, it may be a few hours a week tailoring down. I mean, there’s two things, if you can bear with me here, Michael. Number one is it depends on when you come to me, how much authority, how much awareness that you have because there are people in the profession that don’t do marketing per se. They’re not out there networking like we think that they might do. Their networking is speaking and writing. And so, for them, they’re not investing any time in marketing, again, per se. They’re just doing what they like to do, which is speaking and writing.

Rod Burkert: [00:21:07] The other part of what this is, of what I teach, is something that you should be doing anyhow to build your practice. Let me give you a great example. I’m at a speaking event, someone says to me, “I’m a tax person. I would love to get a valuation practice up and running. And I just don’t—but I just don’t have the time.” And I was kind of blunt, and that’s my style. And my first question out of my mouth was, how much television do you watch a week? And he was all proud of the fact that he was a Cubs fan, and that during baseball season, he’s watching every game somehow streaming on television. And I said, “So, to me, an average baseball game is like three hours a week, three hours a game. And you’re watching multiple games a week. And now, you want to tell me that you don’t have time for marketing.”

Rod Burkert: [00:22:02] So, that enters into it as well. Meaning, how badly do you want this? Do you just want to gripe about your situation, or do you actually want to take time from other activities that really don’t contribute any value to get you to where you say you want to end up, and invest it in coaching time, and learning how to market and build a practice?

Michael Blake: [00:22:30] I remember reading that story. You put it on your mailings, at least, once. And it’s—yeah, it is a great story. And television is one of styles, sort of, t sucks too. You don’t realize how much time has gone until you—sometimes, you do wake up, but you look up, and you say, “Oh, my gosh. My whole evening is gone. I could have written an entire article in the four hours I just spent watching that TV.”.

Rod Burkert: [00:22:57] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:23:00] So-

Rod Burkert: [00:23:00] And if I can say, one of the last things—well, one of the things that I teach people is how to automate certain processes. Now, I don’t have a sales system or anything like that. But given what I know, given what I can teach people about platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, there is a way to automate your connection requests. There’s a way to automate your scripts and use conversations on LinkedIn Messenger or Facebook Messenger to make it seem like you’re actually having a conversation until you get to the point where you find out that the person really does want to buy from you whatever they’re buying, and you take that conversation offline, and have—and call them, reach out, and phone, and have them have that real discussion.

Rod Burkert: [00:23:51] But there’s a lot of automation that can go on at the front end that you don’t have to be sitting at your computer to do or it happens for you. You’ve got to invest the time to set the system up. But man, once it’s running, it really works.

Michael Blake: [00:24:09] So, what about the duration of an optimal coaching relationship?

Rod Burkert: [00:24:14] And I’m supposing some of them may not be true. So, I’m likely going to learn something, but contrast with, say, a therapist, where—and I think part of what you do is therapy, good therapy, but there are some people that have lifelong relationships, or certainly years or decades-long relationships with therapists, is there ever a point in a coaching program such as the one that you run where your clients graduate, or is this something that you think that it’s a long term, maybe ideally a semi-permanent commitment to that relationship?

Rod Burkert: [00:24:51] Yeah, good question. And tongue in cheek, I think you stay with a coach as long as the return on investment is greater than or equal to the investment. And I think what really pivots people here is that our average engagement could be anywhere from at the really low end if you’re competing on the basis of price, maybe you’re doing work for $5000. But our engagements could easily go up to $25,000, $30,000, $50,000. $100,000 if you’re doing litigation support work, and it’s a big case. I mean, that happens.

Rod Burkert: [00:25:29] So, if I can teach you something that helps you get those kinds of—that kind of case work at those kinds of fees, and let’s say my coaching is $10,000 for an entire year, or that’s what it comes out to, because it’s close to that, but I’m helping you get three, four, five engagements at a multiple of $10,000, or $15,000, or $20,000 that you would not have otherwise gotten as a result of the coaching. Why wouldn’t you stick with me or any other coach, for that matter, that can help you develop that kind of a return on your investment?

Michael Blake: [00:26:08] Well, okay. So, yeah. So, there you go. So, I’d like to jog down to that a little bit because we’ve talked about the skill set that you help your clients acquire. And that’s a big part of what you’re offering. But my sense, also, is that’s for some people, you’re also just offering an accountability partner, so that people do, in fact, stay engaged, they stay motivated, they stay on task. (A), is that a fair characterization? And (B), if you had to guess, in many cases, is that accountability contribution even of equal value to the technique and skills contribution that you make?

Rod Burkert: [00:26:52] Yeah, it’s interesting that you put it that way, Michael, because if you think about it, we know – we know what we need to do to be successful because what it takes to be a success in an industry like ours hasn’t changed in generations. Quite frankly, it hasn’t changed in centuries. You get known for what you know by a combination of speaking and writing. And perhaps, in this day and age, video or podcasting. So, you see, you know what you should be doing. So, one of the big reasons people come to me is that accountability because they know that we’re going to have twice monthly meetings, and I’m going to ask them what progress that they’ve made towards the goals that they set for themselves to have the practice that they say that they want to have.

Rod Burkert: [00:27:48] So, accountability is a big thing. It’s not like I can’t teach you some things about, for example, something has come out in the last couple of weeks that has really changed the game about how people should be using LinkedIn. I can teach you that, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that you know you should be using LinkedIn in some way, shape, or form to help build your practice. Now, are you going to do it? Are you going to set aside 10 or 15 minutes every morning and every afternoon to use it? Well, that’s where accountability comes in because you know, as a coaching client, you’re going to have to report back to me about what you did and didn’t do in the last two weeks.

Michael Blake: [00:28:35] So, you’re a big proponent of your clients making themselves visible experts. And it’s important to note, there are there other marketing opportunities or channels available if you choose to. But you’re very much on the visible expert train. Why exactly is that as opposed to other potential marketing channels or approaches?

Rod Burkert: [00:28:59] A great question. And I think the answer is simple. If you put yourself—if we’re—if we put ourselves in the client’s shoes when we have a problem, we want a visible expert to solve it. I mean, if there’s something going on in your family, in your household, in your home, and it needs to be—and by that, it could be a medical emergency, all the way down to a plumbing emergency, do you want to call somebody that nobody has never heard of to solve your problem, or do you want to call somebody that you know of, or that your friends can highly recommend because they know that that person can successfully solve your problem? And I think we would agree with the latter. I mean, we want somebody who has solved our problem multiple times successfully.

Rod Burkert: [00:29:51] And the way you do that is to have—first of all, you have to have the skills and knowledge. So, you have to be an expert. You have to have expertise. But no one’s going to know about your expertise, or your authority, or what you’re known for if you don’t get out there because we need to be where the buyers of our services are when they need us. And so, if you’re not out there constantly priming the pump with speaking engagements, writing articles, again, whatever is your strength, doing videos, how’s anybody going to know to call you?

Michael Blake: [00:30:30] Well, yeah. That’s true. And, of course, as a presupposition, and I think an important one, that you don’t want to be a commodity. One thing you could do is the alternative, is you could adopt sort of a Yellow Pages model, put yourself in directories. Believe it or not, I actually do a case. I get an email from appraisers.org. I never landed a client or even came close, but at any rate—and you can sort of go that route, but by making yourself a visible expert, you are elevating yourself and making yourself, I think, a much more obvious fit to solve that problem too, right?

Rod Burkert: [00:31:06] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:31:07] So-

Rod Burkert: [00:31:08] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:31:09] I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the the the nature of the coaching relationship itself. Somebody is looking for a coach like you, and they may have a view as to what an outcome, desirable outcome would be. Can you talk about what are some—what are realistic expectations of a coaching relationship? I’ll just have you talked about you because I don’t want you to speak for all other coaches, but what are realistic expectations of a relationship with you? And maybe what might be some unrealistic expectations somebody might have in a relationship with you?

Rod Burkert: [00:31:47] Sure. You’ve heard the expression, “You can lead a horse to water,” right?. And I think the an example of an unrealistic expectation and a coaching relationship is that me imparting knowledge to you is going to solve your problem because information is dramatically different than implementation. And the coaching client in any field is going to have to take the information from the coach and implement it. So, I can give you what you need to do. I can tell you why it’s important that you do that. And as a coaching client, I will even show you how to go about doing it. So, I will give you the what, the why, and the how. But if you don’t do anything with it, if you don’t do the work, if you don’t implement it, your situation is not going to change.

Rod Burkert: [00:32:47] You just may—you may learn more, you may be more knowledgeable, but if you don’t do anything, nothing’s going to change. If you don’t get out there on LinkedIn, if you don’t get out there and write, if you don’t get out there and speak, even though, again, you know these are the things you should be doing, nothing’s going to change. And quite frankly, Michael, when I see that happening in a coaching relationship, I will terminate the relationship because I’m not—I don’t want to take people’s money. If I see that they’re not implementing, we have a come-to-Jesus conversation, and I give them a little bit of time after that, and if they’re not working it, then I’m not helping them.

Michael Blake: [00:33:28] And look, I think, to be perfectly candid, too, it’s a self-defense mechanism for you as well. And I know how you coach in groups. So, if a person is not engaging, it means they’re not contributing to the other people who are, sort of, in your study group, if you will. And also—and I fired clients for similar things where I don’t want a client paying me, not taking my advice, have it not worked out, and then run around telling everybody what a moron I am because they didn’t take my advice.

Rod Burkert: [00:34:02] Right, exactly. I mean, there’s there is something in your reputation that you want to preserve out of all this too.

Michael Blake: [00:34:08] I think absolutely. What you talk about reminds me of a running joke my wife and I have. So, years and years ago, I used to be a tournament chess player. And one thing that my wife could always count on was whenever I came home from a tournament, I’d come home with, at least, three chess books. And they looked great, and they make you sound so smart. But there’s a problem with chess books, and this is the spoiler alert. They’re really boring to read. And so-

Rod Burkert: [00:34:38] I can imagine.

Michael Blake: [00:34:38] Right? They’re just not a page turner. Even though I was, in my day, a pretty strong player, they’re not boring. They look great on the shelf. And at some point, I had to stop stop myself from buying them because only in the books did not magically create this energy field that made me a stronger chess player. They just took up space on my bookshelf and made free space in my bank account.

Rod Burkert: [00:35:07] God. Yeah. Again, the difference between information and implementation.

Michael Blake: [00:35:14] So, one issue practices have, and I face this in mine, not urgently, but it’s something I think about a lot is training kind of the next generation. Many practices, as you know, sort of have a patriarch at the top of the practice, right? It could be Chris Mercer, who I know you have a good relationship. It could be Shannon Proud. It could be Jim Hitchner. And then, they have people that are working for them and are professionals in their own right. And all of those people know what it takes to build a successful and valuable firm, that if it’s going to have value, better not be entirely dependent on one person doing all the rainmaking. Do you think there’s a role for coaching in some capacity to help address the problem or the challenge of raising the next generation of visible experts? And if so, do you have any idea of what that may look like?

Rod Burkert: [00:36:16] Yes and yes. I think, to get to the heart of your question, it sounds like, well, is there a problem in training the next generation? And I think you’ve got to look at it from the origin of marketing. I mean, again, we came into this profession, Michael, many, many years ago, where there was no expectation that we needed the market. We were going to be those technicians and succeed solely on that basis. And then, things got tough.  We started to realize that if we really did want to get anywhere, we needed to do marketing.

Rod Burkert: [00:36:55] Just as a quick aside, I had a managing partner and accounting firm come to me when I was running a valuation practice in an accounting firm, comes into my office one day and says, “Damn it. The problem that I’m having is I can always find people to do the work. You can’t find people who can get the work.” And so, I suddenly realized, that was like a big aha moment for me that if I wanted to get anywhere, I needed to get the work. And so, begrudgingly, my generation – again, I said I was 63 at the top of the podcast – I happen to be what I consider a baby boomer trapped in a millennial body, or, I’m sorry, I’m a millennial trapped in a baby boomer body, the other way around. But we’ve begrudgingly learned these things that we have to do to bring in more work. We have to network. We have to have lunches, and breakfasts, and coffees with attorneys. We have to do it this way.

Rod Burkert: [00:37:54] And that patriarch at the top of the firm is saying to the younger generation, “This is how you have to do it,” and it doesn’t work that way because generations change. And the patriarch grew up with a certain generation of colleagues and referral sources for which networking events, for example, worked for them. But I hate to even say the millennial generation because it sounds like we’re maligning them, but I don’t mean to, they’re growing up with a cohort of similar-minded people who saw the damage of being away from your family all the time create. So, going out and networking every night of the week is not something that you’re going to convince the millennials the right thing to do. They’ve grown up with all sorts of phone apps, and texting, and that is how they communicate with each other.

Rod Burkert: [00:38:54] And these millennials, if they’re professional service providers, they’re going to get work from attorney and CPA referral sources who are their own age, who grew up with the same technology, and have the same shared experience of wanting to be with family and wanting to do a good job. So, I think when there’s a breakdown between trying to train the younger generation, it’s because we’ve already approached the relationship that these people are lazy, and they spend too much time on their phones, and they don’t want to get out there, and we make them bad and wrong because we want them to do it our way.

Michael Blake: [00:39:37] Yeah. And darn it, we want them to pair the same horrible price we had to pay, regardless how much sense it makes.

Rod Burkert: [00:39:43] Exactly. I mean, think about it the other way around. What if patriarchal generation grew up with texting as a way to bring in new work, but the younger generation didn’t like that? They don’t like texting. They want to have real conversations with people. They want to go out and meet them in person. They want to go to networking events. Would we, the older generation, be yelling at millennials if they didn’t want to stop texting to get business, and instead wanted to go out and do networking events? Would we be yelling at them because they want to do networking and not rely on something more technology related?

Michael Blake: [00:40:23] Yeah, and I see that. I see that in my practice because, as you know, I do a lot of work in the tech space. So, my demographic tends to skew a little bit younger. And I’ve actually not met about half of my clients in person, and it doesn’t matter, right? Even if I did a site visit, I wouldn’t even see servers anymore. I would see a bunch of Macbooks, and iPads, and a couple of conference rooms. If, they might even be in a coworking space. But they’ll respond to a text, they’ll respond to a tweet. I can read some through Instagram. And as you have often said, in a way, that millennial generation has it right because if you think about the investment you have to make, meeting one person at a time, breakfast, lunch, drinks, whatever it is, right, in the time you spend doing that over the course of a month, you could have reached 100,000 people over social media.

Rod Burkert: [00:41:19] Several times. Several times over. That’s exactly right. And just try and say, “Hey, we don’t care so much.” What we’re really saying as the patriarch, we don’t care about the results as much as we care about your methodology.

Michael Blake: [00:41:38] Right.

Rod Burkert: [00:41:38] And I think that’s wrong.

Michael Blake: [00:41:39] Yeah. Clearly wrong, right? That is just—that’s no longer a business solution. That’s a psychological issue.

Rod Burkert: [00:41:47] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:41:48] So-

Rod Burkert: [00:41:49] Again, like you said, we want those people to pay the same price that we had to.

Michael Blake: [00:41:54] That’s right. So, you obviously coach this business valuation forensic area, I think, exclusively. Do these—could these principles—again, could these principles apply in other industries? Law? Digital marketing? Management consulting? Could they be applicable anywhere, or are they strictly useful only and in the field that we’ve chosen?

Rod Burkert: [00:42:21] I think that what I do is applicable to other fields, but  you know from working with me, I’m a big fan of niching. So, I’ve got this minimum viable audience of business appraisers. So, I would be violating my own philosophy of niching if I try to go out and proselytize about how to develop an accounting practice or a law practice. I just—I’m not saying it couldn’t work, but I don’t think I’d have any authority or credibility because I’ve never built an accounting practice, or I’ve never built a law practice, but what I have built a couple of times over different iterations is a business valuation practice. I know what my clients are up against. I know how things are changing because I still run a traditional valuation practice. And I think it gives me the authority and credibility to do and to talk about what I do for similarly situated professionals. I’d have no idea. I wouldn’t really know where an accountant is coming from. I mean, I sort of would, but you get what I’m trying to say.

Michael Blake: [00:43:32] Yeah, sure, sure. And to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you should diversify, but somebody who I—some—it is most likely that the vast majority of people listening to this discussion today have nothing to do or have no interest in the business valuation industry or profession, but they may be wondering, if I could find a coach with a similar approach in my industry, would that be viable? My own answer is it probably would. It’s just a matter of finding the right person who are similarly niche that understands kind of the industry-specific realities that have to intersect with the techniques.

Rod Burkert: [00:44:15] Number one, I would agree with what you said. And number two, I would also like to point out that I think you’d be really hard pressed, Mike, to identify anyone that has achieved any level of success in finance, in industry, in sports, any field of endeavor without a coach or mentor. People say, “Well, why do I need a coach?” And I’m like, “Hey, do you ever watch a basketball game?” “Yeah.” “What’s the objective of the game?” “Score more points than the other team.” “Do you think the five players out on the court know that that’s what the objective is?” “Yes.” “Well, then why did those five players need a coach? Why don’t they just go out and score more points than their opponent? They know what they have to do. They don’t need a coach. right?” And then, there’s a big pause.

Michael Blake: [00:45:07] I’m glad you brought that up because I think the reputation of the professional coach has evolved and elevated significantly, certainly, in the last 10 years. And I think, in particular, in the last four or five. And I think it’s elevated partially because I think coaches have become better, and the coaches themselves are people that are accomplished as opposed to 10 years ago, I seemed to encounter a lot of coaches that weren’t very successful in the actual field. So, those who can’t do teach kind of thing.

Michael Blake: [00:45:42] But I think, also, there’s a recognition that particularly in business development, and I know you don’t like the word sales, so I’m trying to avoid it, but business development, we don’t teach that anymore. And it used to be—you’re a little older than I am, but, certainly, in the baby boomer generation, in most professional services firms of any size, even the smaller ones, there was a notion that the senior people would impart their wisdom, their knowledge, and would participate in the management and development of that next generation of business developers.

Michael Blake: [00:46:16] Now, what I see is just everyone for themselves. They got to meet their billable hours goals. I think to a certain extent, they’re fearful the younger generation will come and take their jobs. They’re certainly not rewarded for developing new talent as much as most firms kind of give lip service to that. And that confluence has created, I think, an opportunity for people like you to fill a very real vacuum that, I think, has occurred and has generally been harmful to most professional services industries.

Rod Burkert: [00:46:50] Yeah, yes. I mean, you’re preaching to the choir. And I know this sounds self-serving, but I think a lot of people might be more willing to embrace a coach, but I think they look at it as a cost instead of an investment. And that goes back to, well, how long should they stay in the coaching relationship? Well, as long as you’re getting a return on your investment, it’s not a sunk cost. If you’re not getting a return on investment, you should find another coach or quit your existing coach, find another coach. But investing in your own personal development, I don’t know where else you should spend your money first if not spending it on or not investing it in your own personal growth.

Michael Blake: [00:47:37] I think there’s plenty of literature out there that is very clear that one of the best investments anybody can ever make is on themselves, right? And certainly, one of the best bets you can make is on yourself.

Rod Burkert: [00:47:47] Correct.

Michael Blake: [00:47:48] So, we’re winding down here, and I want to get you back to your beautiful weather and your scenery. But two more questions I like to ask. One is, can you think about kind of one of your favorite coaching success stories and tell us a little bit about that.

Rod Burkert: [00:48:07] Yeah, yeah, yes. And actually, I’m going to—more than one comes to mind, but let me tell you the one that had the most impact that I feel like I’ve had the most impact on somebody. My biggest success story was somebody who I coached out of business valuation, because one of the things that goes back to, “Well, why don’t we like marketing?”, we realize for this person, for this individual, that she did not really like—the reason she didn’t really want to do marketing is because she really didn’t like business valuations. And actually coached her out of the business valuation world. She went to work for her husband’s business and is, now, focusing on something that she realized that she really wanted to do, which was to become a writer. And so, she’s starting out selling detective stories on Amazon. And I’d like—from a personal standpoint, from my viewpoint, that is like my most successful story.

Rod Burkert: [00:49:17] From another client’s perspective, I have an older client, late 60s, early 70s, who came to me really drained. I mean, emotionally drained of the years of just doing one project after another. And we’ve turned things around. We’ve tried to get away from one-to-one client service. He’s created a one-to-many product that he’s selling—creating one time, selling to his industry niche, and they don’t want to say what it is, what his niche is, but it’s webinar related. And he’s making almost as much money from a one-to-many product, which takes him a couple of days, a month to create, as he was going out there trying to sell and do one-to-one client service engagements. And he’s got a whole new—he feels totally reinvigorated about his practice and the possibilities for his practice.

Michael Blake: [00:50:23] And I do think those are very important outcomes. And at first, I have a similar one. As you know, I do office hours a few times a month.

Rod Burkert: [00:50:32] I think it’s a great idea. Let me—I’m sorry, Michael, to interrupt you, but everybody thinks it’s got to be something so secret saucy, there’s a magic bullet, secret potion, silver bullet that is the answer to marketing. And the simple things that I see you do on LinkedIn, creating the hard candy is an example. Letting it be known that you’re going to be at a restaurant for a certain time, and anybody who shows up during that time, you’re going to help them. I think, sometimes, we get so lost in the trees, and we don’t see the forest. And then, it’s the simple things that if we did consistently and persistently, we wouldn’t even consider it marketing. We wouldn’t hate to do it because we think it’s—you hate going to lunch and having those open office hours? I don’t think so.

Michael Blake: [00:51:21] No, no. And you take one look at my waistline, you know I do not going to lunch and having those office hours. But one of my favorite stories of office hours was I’d call a successful failure like Apollo 13. I had office hours. And this was about eight to nine years ago. And a guy showed up, ran his pitch, his venture pitch by me, and said, “What do you think?” I said, “I think this thing has a lot of holes, and I think that you are risking years in your family’s finances on a very dubious proposition. And it’s most likely going to fail.” And he was so upset that he got up, walked away, stuck me with this bill, and called me a couple of names on the way out. He was not happy.

Michael Blake: [00:52:07] Six months later, I received a handwritten note from him thanking me through the fact that I told him something that his friends and family just didn’t have the heart to do and for having the courage to kind of tell him that he needed to do that. And he sent me $100 gift card hoping that was going to cover his tab, which is more than it did, but that was somebody I held by getting him out of something that just was not going to be successful. So, there’s no nothing wrong with that.

Michael Blake: [00:52:36] All right. So, I’m already going over time for both of us, but I want to make sure I get this last one. And that is, how can people contact you to learn more about business development coaching? And maybe if you’re not the right person because they’re not in business valuation, maybe elsewhere, how can they reach out to you?

Rod Burkert: [00:52:57] Well, I think just saying it over the phone, probably the easiest way is just if you know how to spell my name, you can find me on LinkedIn. I’m there a lot. That is my social media platform of choice. And so, you can message me on LinkedIn. I have a website that outlines pretty much who I am and what I do. And that website URL is rodburkert.com. And my email address piggybacks off of that. You can email me at rod@rodburkert.com.

Michael Blake: [00:53:31] All right. Well, thanks very much for that. And that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Rod Burkert – B-U-R-K-E-R-T, so you know how to spell it – so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us today. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week. So, please turn in so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcasts 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.

Geoff Wilson with 352, Aman Bhardwaj with Liberty Defense Technologies and Robby Gulri with Proliant

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Atlanta Business Radio
Geoff Wilson with 352, Aman Bhardwaj with Liberty Defense Technologies and Robby Gulri with Proliant
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Geoff Wilson is a true entrepreneur. He’s passionate about helping companies find, build and grow their next big idea. He launched his first venture at age 16, when he started a computer store in a shopping mall in Sarasota, Florida. Since then, he’s built eight more companies.

Geoff is president and founder of 352, a firm helping industry-leading companies find new market opportunities and build new products and services. Geoff and his team have helped some of today’s most recognizable brands—including Microsoft, Nationwide Insurance, Cox and GoFundMe. Thanks to 352’s insight and consultation, clients have generated hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue.

Being true to his entrepreneurial spirit, Geoff often can be found at TechStars Atlanta and Atlanta Tech Village coaching startup founders to help them achieve success by accelerating business growth. His involvement in his wife, Kim Wilson’s, high-growth startup, Social News Desk—the world’s leading social media tool set for journalists and media, used by 85% of the television newsrooms in the US—led to its acquisition in 2014 by Graham Holdings, a Fortune 500 company.

Inc. magazine has named Geoff one of America’s Top 30 Young Entrepreneurs, and his alma mater, University of Florida, recognized him as the Warrington College of Business’ Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

Outside of his professional pursuits, Geoff passionately cheers on the Florida Gators, collects sports cards and enjoys time with Kim and their three kids.

Follow 352 on LinkedIn.

Aman Bhardwaj, President of Liberty Defense Technologies, is a product development and operations executive with over 25 years of experience in bringing consumer electronics products and services to market in mobile phone, Smart TV and e-learning industries.

Mr. Bhardwaj has built and led global teams in U.S, Canada, China, and India for large multi-national and start up companies such as Panasonic, Flextronics, Educo, Hisense and Liberty Defense.

Mr. Bhardwaj holds both a Bachelor and Master of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology specializing in RF and Electromagnetics.  He also received an Executive MBA from Georgia State University and currently pursuing a Doctorate in Business Administration from Northcentral University.

Follow Liberty Defense on LinkedIn.

Robby Gulri is Chief Marketing Officer with Proliant. His mission is to use his technology, business, and marketing skills for a better world.  Robby brings over 25 years of technology product marketing, product management, and sales experience and has brought 13 SaaS products and solutions to market in the areas of predictive analytics, machine learning software, information security, mobile device security, email encryption, business email and IM, and artificial intelligence platforms totaling in over $200M ARR since 2000.

Robby works or has worked in senior marketing and leadership roles at companies such as Proliant, ENGAGE Talent, Solvati, Illuminate360, Echoworx, BellSouth, Yahoo!, Portal Software, and Sirius Systems. He also runs a non-profit called Community Consulting Teams of Atlanta, where they provide over $1M of consulting expertise all pro-bono to 15 non-profits every year in the areas of marketing, strategy, IT, and board development. In April 2017, Robby was appointed to the Leadership Atlanta Class of 2018.

Robby has a BS in Electrical Engineering with a Minor in Mathematics from Georgia Tech, Master of Business Administration (MBA) with a focus in Management of Information Systems & Marketing from the Robinson School of Business at Georgia State University. He is a proud father of 2 beautiful daughters, ages 17 and 12.

Follow Proliant on LinkedIn.

About Your Host

JoeyKlineJoey 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.

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MIND MONEY MOTION Elena Zee with ACEE and Lupe Camargo with Perspective Financial Services

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Phoenix Business Radio
MIND MONEY MOTION Elena Zee with ACEE and Lupe Camargo with Perspective Financial Services
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MIND MONEY MOTION Elena Zee with ACEE and Lupe Camargo with Perspective Financial Services

Financial success is 20% head knowledge and 80% behavior. So it’s crucial to be sure we have a good foundation of knowledge and understanding. Personal finance is a life skill that needs to be taught in our schools and reinforced at home. Elena Zee from the Arizona Council on Economic Education, shares how Arizona is educating students as part of the new law passed requiring personal finance as a graduation requirement. Childhood is often the beginning of our money script messages in our head and then consumer marketing knows how to trigger emotions to impact our purchasing, not always for our own good. Lupe Camargo, from Perspective Financial Services, discusses our habit loops and how we can make positive behavior change when it comes to money decisions or any area we want to improve in our life.

Our mindset and body/mind connections are key factors that impact our health, success, and happiness in life. Not sure where to start or what next step to take? Listen in to what our guests have to share and challenge yourself to act on one of their tips. Elena offers fun ways to help children practice critical thinking when it comes to money decisions, how to consider the opportunity cost when you make your own personal purchase decisions, and encourages us to focus our actions on the question “what kind of life do I want to live?”. Lupe reminds us of the science behind marketing, steps we can take to work around our brain’s tendencies in order to be successful in making change and how we can overcome that “I am not good with money” script in our head.

The ACEE envisions a world where all school-aged children are empowered through economic and personal financial literacy to make informed and rational choices acee-vertical-1-page-001throughout their lives as consumers, savers and investors, workers, entrepreneurs, citizens, and participants in a global economy.

Our Mission is to reach and teach every Arizona student to become financially and economically responsible in work and life.

Elena-Zee-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXElena Zee is President and CEO of the Arizona Council on Economic Education. Prior to this role, Elena had worked in the global financial services industry for more than twenty years, with her first job as an econometrician developing predictive modeling to launch new products at American Express in New York. She was then promoted to Director of International Operations responsible for customer service, business growth and process improvement worldwide.

Elena’s extensive work and travel internationally brought her to Arizona to build the international information management MIS and business analytics infrastructure and teams. Elena has a Master’s Degree in Economics from Columbia University and Double Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Math from Wellesley College. She is a graduate of Lodestar American Express Leadership Academy Class VII and Valley Leadership Class 40. She is also a Certified Financial PlannerTM, and taught financial planning and economics at universities.

Elena is very passionate about education, professional development, economic empowerment, and international exchange, having served on the boards of Global Economic Education Alliance, Organization for Nonprofit Executives, National Association of Economic Educators, Phi Beta Kappa of Greater Phoenix, and Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Arizona. Elena has represented the City of Phoenix multiple times to visit China for cultural, education, tourism and business exchange.

Follow ACEE on Twitter and Facebook.

Perspective Financial Services is a full service Financial Planning and Investment Management firm. They are fee-only planners acting as their clients’ fiduciary, putting clients’ interests before their own. They do not receive commissions or any third-party sales which allows them to remain free of conflicts of interest. PFSlogohighres

As qualified financial planners they help manage finances, provide direction in identifying goals, and help maintain a balanced portfolio in uncertain economic times. They strive first to understand clients background, philosophy, needs, objectives and concerns to develop a personal plan for their unique situation. They then provide the necessary resources to understand options to make confident decisions.

They help clients gain control of their financial life with a range of customized services and online tools that will organize everything from budgeting, taxes and insurance needs to planning, investments and goal setting.

Lupe-Camargo-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXLupe Camargo has been serving clients as a financial planner for 15 years. She received her undergraduate degree from Arizona State, and her MBA from University of Texas at Austin. Prior to becoming a financial planner, Lupe held management positions with US West and Honeywell.

In addition to providing financial planning services, Lupe also works with clients to explore opportunities to create stronger financial habits, and understand behaviors that may be preventing them from achieving their goals. She is a lifelong learner, and has been certified and has conducted boot camps on behavior change. This passion began as she pursued her goal of optimizing her own health.

She is active in her community, and has dedicated years of service to both the Girl Scouts AZ Cactus Pine Council, and the Friends of the Tempe Public Library.

Connect with Lupe on LinkedIn.

ABOUT OUR SPONSORS

The Women’s Enterprise Foundation (WEF) is a 501(C)3 charitable organization that supports and inspires women business owners within the greater Phoenix area. For over 10 years we have sponsored women through scholarships and grant funding.  Our monthly scholarship applications and bi-annual grant opportunities have assisted over 20 women in 2018 and 2019. These women continue to develop themselves as business leaders. The grants give them the increased capital to help generate greater revenue in their business.  Scholarships help support their business growth through leadership and business training. We know when women grow their businesses, they benefit entire communities. WEF-Logo

The first Friday in November each year, we hold our annual fundraiser at the Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch. This year our featured guest speaker will be Dr. Connie Mariano, the first military woman to serve as a White House Physician to the President. Info for scholarships and grants, as well as our upcoming event may be found at . 

WEF is proud to sponsor Marie Burns in her podcasts, Mind, Money and Motion, that will positively educate women about money habits.  We are excited for Marie Burns to spread her message, as it is consistent with the success for women in business, as well as their personal financial growth.

Our financial support of Marie’s grant continues to create a foundation that WEF fosters. We believe that women are the glue for their communities as they participate in, orchestrate and mediate relationships, opportunities and business growth. We are confident that her support and success will multiply and benefit many others.

mindmoneymotionlogoMind Money Motion is an education business whose mission is to help women worry less about running out of money by keeping their mind and body healthy so they can enjoy LESS WORRY, MORE LIFE.

Money is the number one stressor in American’s lives and one of the main reasons for divorce. Women are often uncomfortable with financial decisions OR don’t have the time or interest to take care of financial matters OR don’t know where to begin or if they are on track.

As the founder, Marie Burns provides tools and resources through her podcast, books, speaking events, website and social media to be the financial advocate women need.

ABOUT YOUR HOST:

Marie-Burns-on-Phoenix-Business-RadioXMarie Burns, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), has been advocating for clients’ financial health for almost 20 years.

Originally from Wisconsin, she has helped clients with their financial lives in a fiduciary capacity in a bank setting, accounting firm, at Vanguard, at a financial planning firm and now has an independent advisory practice where she offers financial planning and investment management called Focus Point Planning.

She is a volunteer ambassador and board member for The Financial Awareness Foundation, member of the Financial Planning Association, board member for the Senior Advocacy Group of Ahwatukee, author of a financial checklist book series, and podcast host of Mind, Money, Motion, where she strives to help women enjoy LESS WORRY, MORE LIFE!

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