Romanoff Renovations and Solution Road
This week I was joined in studio by guest co-host, Bo Wilkins, of Sound River Advisors. Sound River Advisors is a collection of experts who help privately-held businesses create compensation packages designed to retain key high-value executives. Their compensation plans help preserve the owners’ equity in their business while rewarding the leaders who have helped build the business.
We sat down with Doug Romanoff, founder of Romanoff Renovations, a flooring installation company he started in 1974. Doug described how, as a young man recently out of college, he decided he wanted to start his own company after working for another company for a while. He shared how at the time, he had only $300 in his bank account. So, he would buy some discontinued carpeting nearby, go into the city and market it to apartment complexes that were renovating, selling them the product he’d bought and installing it for them.
Over the ensuing 40 years he became one of Home Depot’s largest contractors, installing their flooring at over 400 of their locations around the country. His business has grown from that one man start-up to a business with over 2000 installers, billing over $100 million per year.
We also talked about how he established a charitable foundation through the company called The Romanoff Foundation, focused on helping individuals and families in the community who are struggling.
Solution Road is a not-for-profit whose mission is to help organizations in need of fundraising. Sarah Smith and her colleague, Charlie Craig, came by to talk about how they put their skills at relationship-building to work for the organizations they serve to help them achieve their goals.
This new company’s first client is GeoVax, an Atlanta-based organization that is in the later stages of testing the vaccine they have developed to prevent HIV. GeoVax is also now actively working to develop a vaccine that will successfully prevent Ebola as well.
Sarah and Charlie explained how rewarding it is for them to be helping an organization with such far-reaching impact if they are successful in their efforts. We were pleased to help them tell their story!
Special Guests:
Bo Wilkins, Partner, SoundRiver Advisors 
- Former Executive Managing Director, Wealth Management, Reliance Trust Company
- Former Partner, Nease, Lagana, Eden, & Culley
- BA, History & German, Hampden-Sydney College
- CLU – Chartered Life Underwriter; ChFC – Chartered Financial Consultant; CAP – Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy
Doug Romanoff, CEO/Founder, of Romanoff Renovations
Sarah K. Smith, CEO/Founder, of Solution Road
- Masters Degree, English, University of Essex
- Previous Director, Corporate Marketing, Emory University
- Former Vice President, The Emmy Awards Foundation
- Previous Director, Special Projects, TEDx Peachtree
Charlie Craig, COO of Solution Road
- Master of Arts, Bioethics, Emory University
- Master’s Degree, Journalism, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College
- Previous Author and Editor, Global Technology Report, Ernst & Young
- Former President, Georgia Bio
