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David Castro with IceBrekr
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David Castro is a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of multiple technology companies; before IceBrekr, he co-founded a healthcare software company that was eventually acquired by Dr Oz’s ShareCare corporation.
Currently working on a first-in-kind app called IceBrekr. It is a networking app, a connection utility, that empowers people to meet key new connections on their own terms, and wherever their ideal kind of people gather.
In his off time, Dave is a golfer, decent social latin dancer, musician, athlete, and enjoys spending time with his daughters.
Connect with David on LinkedIn and follow IceBrekr on Facebook and Instagram.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity radio show where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with IceBrekr, Mr. David Castro. How are you, man?
David Castro: Fantastic and excited to be here with you.
Stone Payton: Well, we are delighted to have you on the show, man. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission, purpose. What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?
David Castro: Absolutely. So we believe and this is strong for me, I’ve been in sales my whole life. Um, the life that you’re dreaming of is built through the connections that you make. And that’s true whether it’s personal or professional. And so what icebreakers mission is, is to help you to make the connections that matter. And that can be for extroverts. And that’s I’m more on the extroverted side. And that’s that’s kind of how I began the concept, but found that it’s fantastic for introverts as well. So we just everybody is going to achieve what they want in life through the people that they connect with, surround themselves with because you don’t do stuff alone.
Stone Payton: Well, you’re definitely singing our song here at Business RadioX. Amen to that. Love it. So I got to know, man, what’s the back story? How did you arrive at at this? It probably if you’re like most of our guests, it probably wasn’t a straight line. Tell us about your backstory.
David Castro: Yeah, so I was working like five different jobs and and that’s just to make a nice, you know, easy to say number, but working my way through school and somebody snagged me into their startup. It was like they offered me. They literally What are you making now with all this stuff? And they offered me like a dollar more an hour. I’m like sold. And so it was me and the owners. Um, one of the owners, the wife and her black lab retriever in the basement. And that, that, that paid the bills and got me cooking on on, on sales career. We got bought by a big company and that that was the next you know decade of my life being there and making good money good career but always in sales, always doing that stuff. Wanted to get into entrepreneurship. That didn’t come later until I moved to Nashville as a family decision. We moved down here and just didn’t feel like what I was doing was the thing that I wanted to be doing but couldn’t get back to federal government sales and stuff like that. Because there are so many people in the DC area that were right next door, right? So I think that’s changed a little bit with the remote work stuff. But I was this is the opportunity to get cooking in entrepreneurship and I don’t know how much I should go into detail there um, on the pre story to icebreaker but you know had a couple stints of of creating stuff usually in the tech world because that’s that’s where I nerd out and I found myself at one point always always a networking event.
David Castro: So I always found myself in networking events and networking situations. And just like most of us who do that, we’re aware of the fact that, hey, that guy over there is a competitor, right? And who is he talking to? He’s talking to the guy I need to be talking to, you know, or, you know, this room is big and like, I haven’t connected with somebody yet who would make this worth my while for being here. Like a lot of great conversations. And these are wonderful humans, but, you know, it’s 9 to 5 and I’m putting food on the table and, you know, how do I get my ROI? Um, so things like that, right? So I was driving down the highway down here 65, and I’m connecting my phone to my radio because I had an old car and, you know, whatever. That’s what you have to do back then. And there was, you know, meanwhile, you know, people are flying by me at 75 miles an hour or whatever, and I’m picking up their their phones and and then just like just started hitting me.
David Castro: I kind of like have a shelf in the back of my head of like, cool tech. And so think about ways to use it. But I just started pulling that string. I was like, okay, so I’m seeing their phone that is basically an appendage and it’s got its unique identifiers. Each phone in the radio signals have like a Social Security, a Social Security number, basically, right? Unique universal identifier. And it’s basically an appendage of that person because it doesn’t move more than six feet away their whole day. And. Yeah, they can, you know, approve being attached to this number and and saying what they want to say about themselves anyway. So that’s how the idea came about. And I just realized, hey, you know, now we have the opportunity to have an opt in utility network, so to speak. That’s only eyeball distance. It’s not, you know, it’s not GPS. So very organic. Uh, again, privacy. Turn off, turn off, turn on, turn off whatever components of your profile that you want. But then folks can know who’s in the room and you can filter for who’s who’s your ideal connection to help you to make the connections that matter most.
Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at it a while, you’re out there. What are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What’s the most fun about it for you, man?
David Castro: Oh, man. Uh, you know, I am an artist. You know, on the side. Not professional, but decent. And the thing that you love most about creating stuff is when people react to it. Like you want to bless people. Right? And the coolest thing about what I’m doing right now is seeing people, like, just have the aha moments and the excitement. It’s a lot of fun when you tell somebody the story and they and they’re, Oh yeah, that’s super cool. But then when it actually happens in real life, man, that’s that’s beautiful. I had an event where someone came up to me and was asking me, Hey, you know, how do I, how do I do this? And she just wanted me to help her put her keyword in to her filter. And we did that. And then boom, like it was somebody showed up. That was her ideal person. She she’s like, I got to go. I got to go talk to this person and just. Awesome.
Stone Payton: Oh, it sounds like so much fun. So let me back up a minute. When you made that leap to true entrepreneurship, what I mean, that had to be a little bit scary. I’m trying to envision you coming home to your spouse or your significant other and, you know, Hey, I’m leaving this world that where I’m making a good living and I’ve kind of cracked the code here and I’m going to jump off this cliff. What was what was that like? Or was it all butterflies and unicorns?
David Castro: Man, I got to tell you, I was pretty lucky on my first rodeo, I guess, so to speak, in entrepreneurship, We it was a friend of mine who was also in sales who had the subject matter expertise in health care that that we utilized. And it was a basically a dashboard that helped doctors to understand what these patients need. That came in so they could check the boxes to make sure the patients were healthy and thus they’ll get a bonus from, you know, Medicare or whatever. Right? So anyway, but we had a partner that was helping us build it who, you know, these guys were data experts and they were they had some clientele as well. So I was like the sales guy selling our new software build and selling, you know, this other thing on the side. And we started off with, uh, we pitched the idea to a, a client and the, the client loved the idea and wanted to basically pay for it. So, uh, we had, we had it, we had it built by our first client. And then, you know, we just went to the other folks with, with credibility and a product. So it was, was pretty, uh, was, was, was pretty fortunate. Um.
Stone Payton: Yeah, I love the idea and I often will will counsel people who occasionally will ask me about some strategies for getting their thing off the ground. And I love the idea of a client funded startup that oh is amazing.
David Castro: That is, that is the ideal. And even if you can’t get it funded, obviously you’re you’re the first thing you’re doing is saying, hey, I know I can benefit from this. Right? I would buy it. But, you know, I need other people’s money to put food on my table. I need a lot of I need a lot of clients, not just myself as the client. So, yeah, that’s huge. And, uh, it’s actually very common. And if you’re in software or you’re familiar with the software development world, that’s what a lot of these folks do, is they’ll build something for someone and, you know, they’ll often say, Hey, you know, we’re building this for you and we’ll give you a discount if we can use it. But software development companies have a lot of stuff, you know, in the back, right on the right, mothballed that they can they can bring out after having um, you know somebody else pay for it basically. But but that’s you know depending on what your idea is that’s definitely viable. And it was for us, again, it was an industry as health care industry, very large. These guys are focused on providing health care. They’re not trying to, you know, um, you know, create an enterprise software product. And so ideas like that definitely lend itself to that.
Stone Payton: All right. So let’s dive into the work in the service around Icebreaker, including the what and the and the why. You know, what really compelled you to to marshal your forces and put this thing together?
David Castro: Yeah. So. You know, again, it was it was out of need and also out of out of like personal need, just awareness of like the the fact that this doesn’t exist yet, which is phenomenal. What you what we do have on the market are the platforms that folks are a part of in the virtual world. But getting from the virtual world to the present, right into the into the physical world, that’s a different ballgame. I can I can. And I have. And you have to probably met somebody on LinkedIn. Maybe it was an introduction or whatever. And then you go to the coffee shop and you can’t tell which person you’re about to meet with is in the room. It’s like they don’t look anything like their picture. So, I mean, even on the professional side, you got what they call catfishing, right? Like, right, right. Um, and then, you know, if you’re going to an event or a conference, you want to do your homework ahead of time and see who’s coming in, that type of thing. But great, they’re on the registration list now. What? And this is why a lot of events don’t use apps because they’re basically just a registration list. I mean, you see a lot of events going back to paper because there’s an agenda and there’s the the contact list or whatever. And but they could be not coming that day. They could be out of the room just because you know that they’re coming and you want to meet them doesn’t mean that that it’s going to be a thing. And so, you know, these are all the reasons why I thought and and validation from people that I interviewed that would be potential customers. They all concurred. So that’s that’s how we got started and how I got started, uh, funding wise, bootstrapping this through the, the sale of that health care startup. My first, my first, uh, first startup.
Stone Payton: All right. So use cases, some specific examples of where this tool is just, man, this is the right place for this tool. And this is this is how and why this is an event would want this and an individual would want access to the tool in that surrounding. Yeah.
David Castro: So it’s a tool that’s fantastic for folks who have somebody in mind that they’re looking for. And you know, if you put your keywords or the type of person you’re looking for when you walk into the event, it’ll notify you if that person is nearby. You can look at your discovery screen, see everybody who’s nearby, but it’ll highlight, you know, who that person is. And, you know, so and you can look at their profile and then you’ll say, validate why it says that this is your ideal person. And then walk up to them with a sense of like, you know, the icebreaker data that you’re looking for, um, or that that would help you have that initial conversation. Um, the, the other folks that helps is just introverts who feel overwhelmed with a bunch of people in the room and would love to know a little bit about some of the folks who are nearby. Right? Again, you can break the ice that way. You’re in a 20 person mixer and everybody here is somebody that you’d want to meet on your discovery screen. You can look at people’s profiles and in their their LinkedIn address or their socials or their, you know, whatever it might be and instantly connect with everybody. So if you’re on the small side, you know, understanding what people or remembering people’s names, understanding or remembering what their elevator pitch to make an introduction to somebody else who’s in the room, say, Hey, you need to go talk to this guy.
David Castro: He does what you’re saying. I think connecting with their socials, etcetera. Small side of the room, you know, small side event going upstream. If you don’t have an event app right now, Icebreaker makes a ton of sense because you can have your agenda, your itinerary, your speaker bios, sponsor ads, they’re all native. We could put those in there, plus all the features that that make icebreaker the powerful thing that it is. So but the bigger the event is, the more powerful it is because you’re more awash in a sea of humans. And which one of these people are my ideal connections, you know? And the more days it is, the more ROI you could have from it, and also probably the more money you’ve spent. So the more ROI you want. So as you’re walking through the venue, you know, you’re able to either look at the discovery screen and see your search or whatever it is, or just allow your keywords to notify you and then, you know, say, okay. Stone where is he? You know, there, that’s him. And I’ll walk up and say hi. All right.
Stone Payton: So is this something that the event organizer needs to underwrite for it to be available? For example, we do a lot of trade show and conference work. We didn’t there during Covid, but that business is. Back up against. So, for example, next month we’re going to be at a thing called FinTech South. We’ll be broadcasting live on behalf of that organization. We will probably have a third party sponsor, you know, sponsoring the interviews, the radio for that day. And there will be a lot of people there for. So would fintech South have invested in in this? And it’s makes it available to the participants or do the participants have it individually already or how does that piece work?
David Castro: Great question. My vision is that at some point in the same way you have a phone that you’re using to dial somebody or email that you’re that you’re using to email that icebreaker is the solution. The utility that you use to connect with people who are around you, who want to connect, who want to network. So at some point in the future, I envision that you can go to a conference and other people are going to be having it. So you’re going to be benefiting, right? You don’t need a registration list. Icebreaker, you’re walking around, that type of thing. Um, but, and then event event host can dip into that stream, so to speak. Right. And, and, and what, what we monetize and what they would pay for is the agenda, the speaker bios, you know, the kind of the the sponsor ads in the app but to you know, ensure that everybody has the app and that they know that, hey, we’re all going to benefit if we all use the app. We do have an event package, right, where, you know, it’s, you know, we charge by attendee and then and then again, if they want the sponsor ads and that type of thing. And there so yeah, the event would reach out to, to me and I’d take care of him.
Stone Payton: Gotcha. And then all right, but let’s say let’s say this, let’s just play this out a little bit. We got fintech to do it or we got us to do it. And we and so and then we get everybody in that world, sort of in the icebreaker world. Now we all go about our business and we get all the benefits of having connected in that way right there. The next time we go to an event, to an event, we already have the the system and we’re in there. And so over time, this sort of sort of grows, right? So is there also a path for individuals to just join straight up or does it pretty much have to start through the through an event like that?
David Castro: Yeah, absolutely. I that’s part of the vision is that everybody has it already.
Speaker4: Okay.
David Castro: And the event host just basically like connect to that stream basically connect to that community right that that user community the I’m in Nashville. I envision that at some point in this region, in this area metro area, folks are going to go to one of these coffee houses that’s constantly being used as a networking location and they’re going to turn their app on because there’s other people in there that they want to meet. I go in there and I see somebody I know meeting with somebody that I don’t know, and I’m like, I probably should know them, right? Because they’re meeting them or I do know who that I do know who that person is, but we haven’t met yet. Um, Icebreaker would enable things like that that are both serendipitous, but also I can message them or connect with them without having their phone number or that type of thing. So if they’re open to it.
Stone Payton: Man, I love it. So how does and maybe, maybe more accurately, how is the whole sales and marketing thing working for you right now? Getting people out there to adopt this and use it or or do you have some sort of are you out there like, do you need to be shaking the trees or you’re out there just creating awareness? Like, how do you.
David Castro: It’s a combination. Yeah, it’s it’s a. It’s improving. You know, the the tuning of the stickiness of the app, meaning like, you know, we’re going through a UI refresh right now and it won’t be it won’t be the last. But. Sure. Um, so it’s, it’s, you know, feedback, it’s, it’s watching people and that’s what we did a lot last year. This year it’s heavily shaking the trees. It’s having more events that we’ve done with, you know, proof basically of the value of it and getting that word of mouth and those referrals and stuff to to other events. And then there’s the, the marketing of it, which now that we have the assets to, to prove that we that we have. Great. Uh, my cat. God bless him.
Stone Payton: Welcome.
David Castro: Um, so, you know, so we have a marketing campaign that we’re kicking off to, to really kind of ramp up because this thing needs to be used by everybody. It will be something that is a worldwide phenomenon and it might as well be icebreaker because, you know, we have the vision for it.
Stone Payton: Yeah. So you’re talking to event organizers, associations. You’re building those relationships, you’re connecting with them, and you’re building relationships with just relationship oriented organizations and people that really resonate with and truly understand and appreciate the value of connecting with people. And yes, taking full advantage of technology, but but squarely in putting the human component, you know, where it’s absolutely.
Speaker4: It’s.
David Castro: It’s our our our goal is to bring people together. People can look great on paper. And but when you get there in person, it’s like, you know, there’s a vibe there. Right? That’s why every hiring manager wants to meet the person in person. So there’s that that personal vibe thing that’s so important in the in-person side. Relationships are just so much stronger when you’re in person. And really what our goal is to connect people. Um, and, and then they’ll go and use, you know, other platforms or whatever it is to, to do whatever that they want to do. Like I mentioned, you know, we have the profile links for their socials or their, you know, LinkedIn and all that stuff. Our goal is to connect people that are in person to make that powerful in-person connection with the right people and then let the let them take it from there.
Speaker4: I bet.
Stone Payton: You’re learning. I bet you and your team are learning a ton about networking in general, too. I mean, you could probably, if you chose to capture, generate a lot of thought leadership about how to fully leverage the fact that now we’ve got this great tool. You know, here’s some great strategies and tips on on networking virtually online. Here’s some things you ought to keep in mind to to make the transition and network and truly get benefit from the in-person connection. I can see you and your organization and maybe you’re already doing this really being an almost an education hub to to help, you know, business people just like, you know, just like me and my team get out there and really forge those relationships. And man, I’m really enamored with this idea.
David Castro: Yeah, it’s spot on. It’s really cool because I see a Venn diagram of folks who are doing personal development and they’re talking about, you know, growth of the soul, basically growth of the of the person, right? And then that overlaps with the person who’s all about the strategy and the and the sales and what what to do and how to how to do it. And then another Venn overlap of the the tech, the the format, the platform, the venue, right? So yeah I’ve got a keynote cooking on on this topic.
Stone Payton: So yeah. Well what you have here is a movement for lack of a better term. To me this feels like a movement and, and because it does, I genuinely want to know what we at Business RadioX but like minded people, listeners who hear this really resonate with the idea What can we be doing to help? Like what? What would help you the most from our listener base to kind of really get this puppy off the ground?
David Castro: It’s phenomenal. Thanks so much. Um, one thing we have a our probably most used social right now, which is icebreaker on Instagram and on on LinkedIn actually. So if you want to connect with me on. Uh, linkedin.com slash, you know, icebreaker icebreaker spelled, uh, it’s linkedin.com/company/icebreaker LinkedIn, you know, but if you search for Icebreaker on LinkedIn, it’s spelled I-c-e B, r e CR, so it’s spelled differently. I always say first two E’s no A-hole, i c e b r e cr.
Stone Payton: Fantastic. And we’ll make sure when we publish this on the Business RadioX network site and get it out on all the podcasting platforms. We’ll make sure that in the transcript and the publishing and all that we have that so that it’s easy for folks to link to. So for people to go on these platforms, support it, engage, interact with you and those of us who know people who are organizing events, those of us who know people that take full advantage of participating in events, we just we need to just get the word out and let people know about it, right?
Speaker4: Absolutely.
David Castro: Lutely Yeah, That’s awesome. Stone Yeah, that’s it. And then download it and give me some stars. There’s a digital business card on it that anybody can use, even if you’re not at an event, right? With other people using the the app. And that’s going through a, you know, that’ll be upgraded too. But right now it works phenomenally for being a digital business card. So that’s a, you know, a great way to to to be using it and and, you know, give us give us some stars that’ll give us some SEO on the app stores.
Stone Payton: So my vision and desire for you is like a Carfax, you know, like they’ve kind of trained people when they’re buying a used car. I want to see the Carfax. So now if I’m going to go to an event, where’s your icebreaker? You’ve got Icebreaker, right?
Speaker4: They want me to.
Stone Payton: Sponsor an event.
David Castro: I love that vision. Yeah, that’s great. I’m adopting that.
Speaker4: That’s cool.
Stone Payton: I’m going to switch gears on you here for a minute. Before before we wrap, I’m interested. And I don’t know where you would find the time, but if you have any outside passions, passions outside the scope of your work, most of my listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel. Right? Just something I can nerd out about that gives me a little white space between my work and the stuff we do at the at the network. But yeah, anything else you dive into? You mentioned briefly the art, so maybe that’s it. But yeah, say more about that.
Speaker4: Yeah.
David Castro: So I, I really should kind of get back. Well, actually I have a, I’ve illustrated for a couple book authors. Oh wow. So that, that, that is, that is something. But man, I’ve been, I’ve been on this Latin dance kick salsa. Oh my my, my my dad was born in Puerto Rico, so I’ve got that background and it’s a lot of fun. There’s the athleticism and and, you know, kind of the art of of physical. It’s like physical art, right to the music. And it’s it’s a lot of fun. Um, I, I like riding motorcycle. Um, yeah, Um, but the icebreaker’s taken up a lot of time. But when I, when I, when I’m not doing that, I’m hanging out with my kids, probably hiking, you know, chasing waterfalls. We have a lot of fun together and yeah, outdoor stuff and salsa dance and.
Speaker4: Well, it.
Stone Payton: Sounds like you find this to be true as well. And I know I do. And a lot of entrepreneurs and founders that I speak with as as as focused as we can get. And given the level of energy that we pour into our work, I find that it is important to create that. I call it white space to create a little distance. It allows me, like for me sitting in a tree stand, even if it’s not hunting season, just sitting in a tree stand with a camera is it gives me a chance to to recharge, right? And sometimes I come up with some of our best ideas. I come up with some squirrely ideas that we don’t implement too, But I come up with with some of my best ideas for me, you know, with a with a with a line in the water or sitting in a tree. Same for you.
Speaker4: Yes.
David Castro: Yeah. It’s so critical to have that. And it’s one of those things where the not urgent, important, but not urgent sometimes can get overlooked by the things that seem to be, you know, pressing for your attention. But those other things are are the mundane bricks. Right. That hold everything up. Right. And so, so important. Yeah, that’s a great reminder. I love it.
Stone Payton: Speaking of ideas, I knew I wanted to ask you about this and I asked other founders about this, too. Do you have, like a methodology, a structure, a rigor, a discipline around your ideation process, or does it just kind of come to you in the shower or at the. Waterfall or what comments, if any, do you have around this whole idea of of not only generating ideas but what you do after you’ve got the nucleus of an idea, what you do to move it forward?
Speaker4: Yeah.
David Castro: Great question. Um, I as far as thinking about an idea and, and then kind of noodling on it and pressing it forward, um. I. You know, one of the first things I do is if it’s not like a. You know, multi-million-dollar, in my estimation, potential opportunity. You know, that’s the first thing is like, you know, what’s the how big picture is it like and this is just me. There’s some riches in the niches. I totally get that that that idea, you know, but but for for for me being a tech guy and being on that side, it’s always kind of a tech related idea. In that case, you know, I’m looking for, you know, a really big story, like a really big idea because if I can get just a part of that, then that’ll be lucrative. And at some point, you know, you have other players and competitors and stuff. So it helps you to have something that’s a really big story that everybody can can use an analogy of. Like, you know, you’re down and you know, a somebody on the safari, some animal on the safari downs, a big animal, He’s going to get some right. Other animals are going to come in and jump in. But he’s going to get. So so that’s one. And then and then from there, it’s like, you know, all the problem solving. And I don’t know if I do it the same way other people do, but, you know, it’s really punch as much holes in as possible. And then at some point after you’ve feel like you’ve exhausted that, then a trusted person to punch holes in it too. But the punch holes part is the most, you know, ego taxing, but so critical.
Stone Payton: Now, that’s an interesting observation because once you start to get emotionally invested in an idea or I’ll speak for myself, I intellectually understand I need to let people smarter than me poke poke at it a little bit. But it’s it’s it’s like my little baby, right? I’m a little reserved and I don’t it’s it’s I don’t want them to punch it too hard.
Speaker4: Yeah.
David Castro: So that is rural. So you got to be a problem solver. I think an entrepreneur and it’s in their core. They are problem solvers. All they’re doing is they’re monetizing a solution to problems that they’ve seen. So that’s part of the process, is letting somebody punch holes and then practicing problem solving. And at some point, if you can’t solve that problem, then you should probably let it go. But another cool thing is if somebody Pooh poohs it, but you’re really confident and you have done the work. You know, to problem solve that and then you’re just like, okay, that’s fine. I don’t need everybody to be like on board. That just means there’s less people that are going to try to like, jump in on the same idea, right? So, um, but yeah, problem solving is, is the, is the key. So when people punch holes, you know, that’s just your, uh, you know, invitation to practice.
Speaker4: Well, and.
Stone Payton: People like you, you have your antenna up for problems in the marketplace. And when you hear them, you kind of run it. You run it through your little, your, your system and say, I wonder if we could create a solution for that problem. And yeah, yeah, that’s a fun part of the, the entrepreneurial lifestyle and ethos, I think. Okay, let’s leave our listeners, if we could, with a couple of I call them pro tips, but because you’re so immersed in this world, maybe a couple of pro tips on and certainly entrepreneurship in general is fine if you have something to say about that. But maybe we stay in your specific domain around around this networking, I guess, on maybe networking online or making sure that you you combine the two and don’t just leave it there. Let’s leave them with a couple of pro tips. And look, gang number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with David or somebody on his on his team that’s that’s your best pro tip. But short of that, you know, maybe something we could be reading, maybe something, you know, whatever you do, do this. Whatever you do, don’t do this. Something like that.
David Castro: Well, I’d love to give a shout out to a friend of mine who wrote a book that has just been great. And the title, you know, is fantastic. The depth of the book goes a lot broader than than just what the title the title is Unstoppable Self-confidence. Um, and, but it touches every area of your life. Um, and when I was talking about the Venn diagram earlier around networking, one of those is the personal growth, right? Um, and the, the level that you’re, you’re seeking to get to is Donald Miller, I think talks about this. It talks about the hero’s two journeys. Like you have a, you have a goal and it’s this hero’s two journeys is in every movie the person has a goal that’s monetary or achievement oriented or whatever it is. And so that’s one journey. And the other journey is they have to become better, You know, internally, they have to overcome internal challenges or whatever. Personally, they have to become the person, right? That’s their second journey. So that’s the hero’s two journeys. So, um. Anyway. So as far as a book goes, I think that’s a fantastic book, Unstoppable Self-confidence by Andrew Letham, and it will definitely affect your success positively. Let’s see, as far as you know, the other thing I would say is in networking, we can be impatient.
David Castro: And I think when you’re impatient or you’re too eager, then that’s a lot about me and what I want or what I need. And what you really want to do is just connect with the the human in front of you or on the other side of the the Internet, right on the if it’s virtual networking and be there to to be of service. If you’re talking with someone about something you’re trying to sell, then you should be in the mindset of I’m selling this to be of service like that, that you got to get that right first. But once you get that right, then the next thing is I don’t need to close them in the next conversations, you know, or in the next. If I am being of service to them and my product is going to serve them, you know, having that kind of atmosphere and approach, um, you’re, you’re not only will your success rate go up, your network will grow and therefore your volume of opportunities will grow and people will be bringing you in to to more opportunities and referring you and so forth. But that mindset part is, is an important part of, of networking and, and. Yeah, I think that’s that’s probably the, the most important, important part of networking is the human connection aspect, not your elevator pitch.
Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. Well said. Marvelous counsel. All right, let’s, uh. Let’s make sure that we leave our listeners with a way to tap into your work. Maybe reach out to you and have a more substantive, more substantive conversation with you so whatever you feel like is appropriate. But let’s give them some coordinates and let’s make sure that they have those social handles again. And then any other thing that you think is appropriate to share? I just I want people to be able to tap into your work and create a relationship with you and your team.
Speaker4: Man Thanks so much.
David Castro: Linkedin. I’m like the most active on LinkedIn, to be honest with you. David Castro you again look for Icebreaker. Icebreaker spelled Ike e b r e r. I always get a chuckle if I say that first two E’s no A-hole. So you.
Speaker4: I like it.
David Castro: And so. So you can find me at CEO, founder of Icebreaker on LinkedIn. And and then Instagram was the other one that I’m most active on and will be more active here on Instagram soon. But we’d love it if you reach out to us and follow us there. And that is again at Icebreaker Ice b e R, and there’s a bunch of icebreaker, you know, spilled all kinds of different ways in the app stores. But there’s except no substitutes.
Stone Payton: Well, David, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show, man. Thanks for sharing your insight and your perspective. Keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing here is so important. I don’t think I’m overstating it to characterize it as a movement. And we want to support your your efforts in any way we can. Man, It’s been a real pleasure.
David Castro: Oh, man. Same stone. Great to meet you. And thanks so much for this conversation. Really enjoyed.
Speaker4: It.
Stone Payton: You got it, man. This is Stone Payton for our guest today with Icebreaker, Mr. David Castro and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.
BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another
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BRX Pro Tip: Why One Brand Over Another
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with BRX Pro Tips, Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, we talk a lot about branding positioning in our Pro Tips and throughout our work with our clients. But when you really boil it all down, why do you think people choose one brand over another?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Right. There’s obviously lots of reasons why people pick one brand over another. It’s how they want the people to see them. There’s a status element of it. But at the heart, I think, of choosing one brand over another is, which brand makes me feel good about myself that I’m part of this community? So, when you’re out there, especially in professional services, you want your brand in the community to be congruent with how your customers want to be seen. And at the heart of your customers, you have to remember that your customer is the hero of the brand story. As Donald Miller likes to say, that your story has to be all kind of customer focused and you are just there helping your customer get to the outcome they desire.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] And in our case, our customers like to have leads. They like to have business. They like to spotlight the people in their ecosystem. So, the more that we can help them do that, that makes them feel good about themselves, that makes them in connection to that, feel good about us because we’re helping them achieve that goal. So, remember, what does your client want to feel good about and then deliver that back to them? And don’t discount the fact that status is important. Don’t discount the fact that being respected in the community is important, the impact they’re having, the prestige that they would like to have. All of that is important components of them feeling good about themselves. And if you can deliver that, then they’re going to be customers for life.
Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter
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In this episode of In and On Business, Gloria Mattei with Nothing Bundt Cakes and Matthew Foster with Frazier & Deeter join host Andy Williams to discuss how both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success.
Gloria Mattei was born in Puerto Rico in 1968. The last kid of five. Graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a degree in Business Administration, majoring in accounting. Worked for 16 years in the telecommunications industry performing several positions, domestically and internationally, starting with accounting and then transitioning to operations, due to her desire to get to know all the details of the business and understand how to run it.
She performed several functions within the Finance/accounting role, starting with auditing financial operations, new business initiatives financial support, and Wholesale Telecommunication operations, and her last role was as an Associate Director for M2M Operations for Verizon Wireless.
She was responsible for the implementation of the settlement system between Telecommunication carriers, when the first M2M system was established by Verizon Wireless, for Onstar-Telematics-General Motors back in 1999. From there she moved to manage a national team that supported major OEMs, such as Toyota, Mercedes Benz, etc. supporting the design, implementation, testing, and operational readiness of their telematics/M2M systems.
On a personal note, she is happily married, for 26 years, to her wonderful and supportive husband Sergio Pacheco. They have been blessed with two amazing kids, Adrian 21, and Zahra 18. Georgia has been their home since 1997, making Roswell their first home, and now in Milton for the last 12 years.
Gloria comes from a large family. Her grandfather was an entrepreneur farmer who owned and developed land for farming and cattle. Her mother had an entrepreneurial mindset as well and supported her family by establishing her own realty leasing business.
Her two older brothers owned a bookstore and a consulting business for many years. Gloria loved her corporate career and considered herself a conservative mindset. However, that owner/entrepreneur seed wanted to grow, and the inspiration to allow it to grow started with being a mom of two kids, one of them, diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Gloria’s entrepreneurship started when she met the Nothing Bundt Cakes (NbC) brand back in 2010, during one of her many business travels to California. She was introduced by a friend from Texas who knew the brand very well. She came home to tell Sergio, her husband, “ I think we found the business” and her husband said… “ Are you crazy? You don’t even cook!” Gloria had the vision to be the first NbC store in GA.
Her first thought after knowing the brand, was “There is nothing like this in GA”. One year later the first NbC store opened in Sandy Springs Ga, and Sergio got to taste the product, at his own XMAS housewarming party. At that point, he said, “You are on to something. Let’s start the research process”. What started as simple franchise research in January 2011 resulted in the opening of the 2nd NbC store in GA, store number 83 for the franchise system. They open their doors in December 2013. They will be celebrating their 10th anniversary on December 13, 2023.
In March 2022, Gloria and Sergio were approved to grow to their second bakery. However, destiny and serendipity had other plans. She had a strong relationship with the owner of the first store in GA (Sandy Springs) and that owner reached out to Gloria- as soon as she was approved for her second bakery- and said “I want to retire and I don’t want to sell to anyone but you.”
Long story short, Gloria and Sergio expanded their market by taking over the Sandy Springs bakery on June 2022 and are now proud owners of bakery #1 and # 2 in GA which proudly serves the GA 400 North Fulton Corridor.
She and her NbC family are proud to bring joy to our community and truly live the experience of how “cake changes everything”. Gloria opened her business with a big dream. That dream is her why. The dream of building a platform for her son, who is in the autistic community. He could either be able to perform in it or prove that he, and other kids like him, can function and have a role in the community.
Gloria is not a stranger when it comes to the community. She has used her business to integrate into the community and find different ways her cakes can bring joy and help at the same time, in all different ways possible. She says she is very proud and grateful for how this platform has allowed her son to grow, and how she and her team have been able to assist the community in many ways.
Gloria has seen this bakery grow not only as a platform for her son, but for her daughter, and many other individuals, including other special needs young adults in the community. Gloria has had the honor of being nominated and receiving several awards that have made her proud of all the hard work they have put into their business during the past 10 years.
Matthew Foster is a Tax Partner in Frazier & Deeter’s Tax Practice and Co-chair of the firm’s Manufacturing & Distribution Group.
With over 15 years of experience in public accounting, primarily at FD, he specializes in serving privately owned middle-market companies, including those backed by private equity. Matthew’s expertise lies in corporate structuring for tax strategies, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and ESOPs.
He assists clients operating in diverse industries such as manufacturing & distribution, technology, real estate and construction.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It’s time for In and On Business brought to you by the Sandy Springs Perimeter Chamber. For more information, go to Sandy Springs Perimeter chamber.com. Now here’s your host.
Andy Williams: Welcome to in it on business with the Sandy Springs Premier chamber where we explore the tension between day to day business operations and strategic growth. The in and on of business. I’m your host, Andy Williams. In each episode we explore the ideas surrounding working in your business, while also exploring the essential strategies for working on your business. Whether that’s carving out the visionary path or delivering a final product to streamlining processes, sustainability, whatever the case may be. Both working in and on your business is a necessity to achieving the balance of your success and your company’s success. Our guest today first is Gloria Mattei. Correct, with the last name Mattei. Mattei, I knew I wasn’t going to get it right, even though I knew you corrected me already. Owner of not one, but two Nothing Bundt Cakes here in Georgia. And Matt Foster, tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. Welcome. We’re thrilled to have you guys here to share stories, wisdom of everything you all do to leverage your in and out of business within your own organizations to get us started, let’s start with our guests. Learn a little bit more about them. Gloria. Oddly enough, you began your career in accounting as well. So let’s hear how you made that transition from accountant to Nothing Bundt Cakes.
Gloria Mattei: For Nothing Bundt cakes, right. So I started, like you said, my career as an accountant. I was a CPA, and I started in the auditing world. I was auditor for the Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico. And then I, I wanted to be in one of the big six companies, Right. Doing tax and auditing. And the opportunity came for telecommunications company that was looking for bilingual accountants. And so I had the opportunity to interview with them. And it was actually a company that was the legacy company of what today is Verizon. It was called GTE, and they were looking for bilingual individuals for their international operations. So that’s how I ended up in the United States, from Puerto Rico to the United States as an accountant, as an auditor in taxing and all operational for all their international operations and also domestic. And so from accounting, I was there for about five years in the accounting world doing new business initiatives and everything that was telecommunications based. And in all honesty, I loved accounting, but I got tired of the taxing and the closing and the closing months. Every you know, in one of the closing flash meetings that we had, they were talking about that we were losing revenue in one of the cell towers because we were losing records. And I’m like, Oh my God, I need to learn about the business. I want to know what the business is about, not just the numbers. And so I did a completely 360 degree and there was an opportunity on a new team that was being developed for telematics.
Gloria Mattei: So remember, OnStar and General Motors. So I jumped into that team completely away from accounting into building that network and doing the operations of that network. And so I was there for 16 plus years, and I was traveling all over the United States in different OEMs, etcetera. And then I was in San Diego doing one of my trips to one of the OEMs, and my friend invited me to a nothing bundt cakes. And I said, What’s that? And he said, I’ve never had nothing. Bundt cakes. It’s like, no. And so I said, I don’t know. I’ll go with you. I don’t like cake. And so I went, I saw the bakery and I was like, Oh my God, this is the cutest thing. It was in San Diego. And I tried a cake and I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. So I asked him, Is there anything like this in Georgia? And he’s like, No, I know them from Dallas and they do super well. And I said, Oh, that’s very interesting. And then he brought home like a bunch of cakes with him. I was like, What are you doing? And he’s like, I need to bring this for gifts. Everybody loves them. So anyway, I came home and I told my husband, Hey, I think I found something else I want to do. And the reason is because in the back of our mind, I have two kids, but my oldest son is in the spectrum. He’s autistic. And so I knew that corporate world was going to be hard for sure.
Gloria Mattei: So for some reason we had in the back of our head, we got to do something on our own and see if it’s that platform for him. If it’s not a platform, at least we can prove if he can work with us that he has a value in society. And so that was the was in the back of my mind about, you know, stepping out of corporate world and doing this. That’s excellent. And so the first reaction was, you’re crazy. You don’t bake, you don’t cook, you don’t do anything right. And I said, that’s true. I don’t do anything. I always travel all over the place. So it just ended up being serendipity. And we just left the conversation there and I. Was actually moving to a new house. And my friend that introduced me said, Hey, somebody took your idea. And there’s a store opening in Sandy Springs. And I said, Oh God, I want it to be the first bakery in Georgia. I said, It’s okay. I can be the second one. And so he actually brought cakes to my housewarming party. And so when my husband saw the reaction on everybody’s face, he’s like, Is this the place you told me about? And he’s like, Yeah. So we lost the opportunity of number one, we got to be number two. And he said, It looks like you’re into something. And so we started researching and the reason why I ended up owning a Nothing Bundt Cakes.
Andy Williams: And here we are.
Gloria Mattei: And here we are. Now I got number one and number two bakeries in Georgia.
Andy Williams: Yes, that’s excellent. And over the course of time, you ended up acquiring Exactly first one. Yeah, that’s that’s such an amazing story to me, just on so many different levels. Just simply one being an accountant and then transitioning all the way and turning on a very different side of the brain.
Gloria Mattei: It’s completely different side of the brain. I remember that when I decided to study accounting and be a CPA, what I had in my head was what my first accounting professor at college told me. And it’s like, if you’re an accountant, you can own your own business, you can do whatever you want. And so that’s what actually inspired me to go into accounting. But never in my life thought I would own my own business. I was corporate hard core, so that was a completely out of nowhere.
Andy Williams: Excellent. Well, does that make you corporate hard core at Frazier, or is that where where we land? Give us give us some of your background, Matthew. This is a this is a tough opening act to follow here because mine is much more simple.
Matthew Foster: Um, yeah, I mean, I’m I’m a tax partner at Frazier and Deeter. I’ve been there for 15 years, so unlike you, I am from Atlanta. I’m from this area. Actually, I’m from Dunwoody, right where we’re sitting right now and have both of my degrees from Georgia State. And I, I remember the summer of oh eight very clearly. I left the school in June of oh eight and then or no, in May of oh eight. And I walked into the doors of Frazier and Dieter in June of oh eight, and I haven’t left since. So unlike you, I am a true walking accountant. It’s just the same as last year, every single year. But no, I’ve greatly enjoyed the the time I’ve spent here. And I mean, it’s it’s why I’ve decided to become a partner here and stay here. And it’s it’s working with individuals like yourself working with small business owners, usually family founder owned businesses and helping them to navigate the IRS, navigate the accounting side of the business because a lot of people don’t have your skill set that have started businesses and they’re very, very good at what they do. But struggle a little bit with with how to operate a business. So you’re a package that we don’t see very often in a client base.
Gloria Mattei: It’s hard when you when you build your own business and you really don’t have any background. Right. And still, as we’ll talk about it, it comes to a point in which even though you may have that background, you do need that extra help because you cannot focus on that if you really want to grow your business.
Matthew Foster: Yeah. So I mean, we’re we’re brought in a lot of the times to. Helped take over some of that for them, but also give them ideas about stuff they haven’t been thinking about, ideas about expanding or having them look 3 to 5 years out. And they’re so focused on the now, they’re so focused on next week or making payroll next week that they fail to really think about where do we want to take our business? How far do we want to take it? Or I mean, can we make it bigger? Can we expand or do we want to sell it at some point?
Andy Williams: Well, and I think you lead in with an interesting point there, is that there’s a lot more being asked of you as an accountant than than than what probably the general public looks at is we look at it very much as it’s the numbers and, you know, they’re their ledgers and this is the route that we go. But the reality is, is you’re asked to think outside the box for these people as well, too.
Matthew Foster: No, it’s it’s it’s funny. A lot of people when they when they hear that I do taxes, they think I’m just sitting there with a green visor and you’ve got. I’ve got my tent. Well, I do have my tent key and I love my ten key. But no, to your point, it’s. It’s not just looking at the traditional compliance, not just looking at the tax return, but learning about them, learning about what drives them and what can we do to help. Further what they want to do with their business. And it might not be anything that we can do, but it’s knowing people that we can bring in to help with what they want done.
Andy Williams: Know and spot on. And that’s that’s where it’s, you know, from an innovation standpoint, I think that’s I would say that’s probably where you’ve seen, you know, a lot of businesses accounting firms especially grow is you weren’t always supposed to necessarily learn and gain all that inside depth and knowledge. But the importance of that is, is what I think everyone sees now is there’s there’s a lot more that goes into into strategic thinking of how do we approach it now to transition to you from a strategic standpoint is how do you evolve and innovate and grow nothing. Bundt cakes like what does that look like, especially as a as a franchisee and, and moving a business forward, you’re really leaning probably hard in on corporate a little. But there also want you to go and innovate on your own.
Gloria Mattei: So it’s an interesting aspect, right? And again, I had the view of I got to do something on my own. I didn’t know what. Right. All I knew was accounting and corporate world. So I knew I needed some structure. So that’s the reason why a franchise kind of struck my attention. It’s like I’m a rule follower. I know how to follow a path, right? And so I need that structure. Once I have the structure, I can probably just, you know, venture from there. And it was it’s interesting, once you start your own business franchise or no franchise, you are mostly the beginning of the time just in the business constantly. I mean, labor is stuff you don’t have the right manpower, you don’t have the right team. You are just working in the business kind of. I mean, in my case, I had no experience in the food industry. I had no experience in baking, right? I just had to learn that in three weeks and then fly, Right. So, yes, they give you a structure, but you really have to come up and bring in all those skills. And for sure, being an accountant, being in a corporate world that really helped me.
Gloria Mattei: It was a huge learning curve. So it was a transition for me into venturing into the day to day operations, physically being there, not only implementing all the training that we learn, but also how do you coach your team, right? And so from an in working in the business perspective, that’s where the majority of the the action should go right? Coaching the team growing your team making sure that they can do their day to day operations so that you can transition out and then work on your business and figure out, okay, where do we go next? Right. And it’s been quite a journey from the first days of My God, we did 24 hours a day just trying to learn the operations in and out and then stepping out and saying, wait, we’re spending too much money in cost of goods, right? We have too much money in inventory. How do we lower the cost we need to make this profitable? Et cetera. Et cetera. And that’s when you step out and got to see all of that.
Andy Williams: Now, you know, staffing is a key buzzword these days, and I’m sure you all are in in different situations because I’m sure you have part time staffing that you also have, let alone full time your primarily full time at at Fraser and Dieter. But but I would suspect that that all of that still is it’s the same conversation that you’re having of how do you how are you finding these new accountants and bringing them on board? How are you finding this part time staff to fall in love with a business and want to be there, you know, day in and day out. So, you know, from a you know, I love the idea of coaching. You know, my background is in sports and sports is my passion. So when I look at something in coaching somebody, I look at, you know, how do you coach an athlete or how do you, you know, grow them from there? I think, you know, I also look at it in the business world, it works the same way. So looking at you first, first map, you know, from a coaching growing, you know, being in the business a little bit more is how do you what do you do, you know, to coach and grow your team and ensure, you know, their own success and peace of mind?
Matthew Foster: I mean, this is a huge thing that we’re dealing with right now where. We constantly are asking our staff, I mean, what can we what what is lacking? What what can we do better? And one of the things is training and coaching and developing developing is a big key word inside public accounting and probably in other career paths. But it’s in the business space. It’s we need to develop these people into becoming the next leaders of the organization into the next level. And. Covid has changed that up quite a bit for us. We did start noticing I mean, I kind of liken it back to I have two small kids and both of them started elementary school during Covid and there is definitely this Covid lag to their to their learning. We’re starting to overcome it in business. We’re starting to overcome the Covid lag as well, because when everybody left the office and we went full remote for I mean, about a year and even now we’re a hybrid environment. But that year away from our staff, our seniors, sitting outside in bullpens and not hearing the conversations between partners, between managers and just the. The overhearing highly technical conversations happening. Nobody realized how valuable just the hearing it being talked about in the open in the office was until we didn’t have the office to talk about it. So it’s it’s overcoming and learning how to now work in a hybrid environment and still impart that knowledge. This past year we did our first firmwide where we we brought everybody in to do a week long of training where you could network and not only learn technical aspects, but soft skills, leadership, you know, how to work around, you know, looking at people’s shortcomings. But they’re not shortcomings. It’s it’s, it’s strengths that are hidden and how to identify those, but also work around a big push in our firm and I think in corporate America in general is this push around mental health and being more cognizant of that in the workplace.
Andy Williams: Absolutely. I think, you know, that’s something you know, we’ve all had to check that a good bit here over the past year, year and a half. You bringing up having young kids at home. You know, some of the things even, you know, for us with my wife working upstairs, me working downstairs and kids working in the middle, you know, we kind of let things slide of, you know, who are you online with? What are you talking to? Who are you? Because we knew they needed that exchange and that interaction. And, you know, I think it just it proves your point of being back in the office matters, you know, and having that interpersonal communication is extremely important, you know, from a knowledge standpoint, but also from a just a mental health standpoint, just to sit down and have a conversation with somebody and not not necessarily about work, but just to turn it all off a little bit and take care of yourself.
Matthew Foster: Yeah, there’s a lot lost in translation when you’re over teams or over Zoom that I work, I work in the office as much as possible. I like to work hands on with with the people that are working on my clients and. A lot of times there might be some sarcasm that’s thrown around and it comes across much easier in person than it does over Zoom or over email. So. Yeah. Bringing up development. Bringing up coaching. When you talked about what’s the difference between on and in. So I was I was thinking about this over the weekend and over the past couple of days and. When I look at working, I get the two confused.
Andy Williams: I’m with you. There’s a lot in both on.
Matthew Foster: The end here. It boils down to what’s the core values of your business?
Speaker5: Absolutely.
Matthew Foster: And for Frazier and Deeter, it’s we call it peak. So it’s it’s people entrepreneurial, accessible and quality. And we live on those core values. So for our people, I mean, it’s one of our things is we greatly invest in our people and buy in turn, we want them to invest in our clients. So by working in your business on your people, it should in turn. Or is it the other way around? I think you’re right. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. It in turn it it works on your on your business. At the same time, by focusing on the quality that you’re providing to your clients.
Andy Williams: No, I love that. And I was going to say your experience because, again, you’re you’re dealing with its younger group. Yeah.
Gloria Mattei: Completely different experience. So it was definitely quite an adventure in a different way, right? So I was lucky enough that I didn’t have to close doors because I was not considered a restaurant, so I wasn’t serving people. I don’t have chairs and tables, etcetera. So I was allowed to stay open. But then I was impacted by the fear of the employees I was impacted by. I mean, we all were like, okay, so what are we going to do? We, you know, we had big orders, we corporate orders that were shut down immediately. Okay, So how do we pull back? And, you know, you’ve got to bring down all of the production efforts, etcetera, and that’s the working on the business. And then working in the business was, okay, so how do I provide some safety to the team members that I have in here? Because I got to make sure that they’re safe, right? And and my team, you continue the coaching aspect. I got lucky too, because I have a mix. I have a mix of younger people and I have a mix of adults that some of them are maybe retired moms that are just doing something that they like to do and they don’t need the income. So I was really lucky because they were like, We’re good. We’re just going to go home and wait for this to pass. And some of the kids were also my mom and my dad doesn’t want me to work, but then I had the other ones and kind of mixing into the mental health. I had other ones that were like, If I stay in my house, I will go crazy. I cannot do this. I have to be active. I cannot. I get depressed. It’s like, Well, I’ll provide you a safe environment. We’ll put everything in place that we need to put. But I mean, we got to make things happen, right? And it’s that coaching of in good days you have and where is abundance and when there’s sales, this is how you operate, but there’s a lot of coaching. On when that’s not the case. How do you operate? Right?
Andy Williams: I know. And I think that’s great. I think, you know, the piece that that really stuck out. And you know, Matt, you had said, you know, strengths that are hidden. You know, to me, like that was a like I wrote that down as like, that’s something that’s a an interesting viewpoint to look at because too often, you know, if somebody is not successful or they’re not hitting marks or doing what they need to do, you know, you you almost look at that as a as a downfall for them and a failure. And but at the end of the day, it’s not. It’s how do we how do we coach them up? How do we build them up, how do we make that? And it could.
Matthew Foster: Be even going further. I mean, they might not be hitting the marks in the job that they’re doing, but is there somewhere else in the organization that they their skill set would be better, valuable?
Speaker5: Yeah, absolutely right.
Matthew Foster: So I mean, we have a couple people that I’ve seen go from our tax department to operations to marketing and and it’s. They do a good job. But it wasn’t you could tell it wasn’t what they were built to do. And so it was you know, if you look at it just in the lens of their their tax person, of course they’re going to fail. If you take a step back and say, well, what skill sets are they? Are they showing and is there somewhere else in the organization that would be a better fit? And we try to move people around as best as possible.
Gloria Mattei: Yeah, I think that applies to to any business, any industry. I think it’s the flexibility, but it also goes with the developing mindset, right? It’s not just about looking at what is on the outside. You apply for this job and this is what you’re going to do. It’s about you may not be hitting the mark here, but let me find where you can be and giving them that opportunity. And I think that happens in any industry. Corporate, of course I’ve seen it. But even even in this and that has been one of my biggest eye openers. I mean, I had I mean, my favorite story. I had an individual that applied for a job and he actually applied. I divide the bakery between the back of the house in front of the house, and he thought he wouldn’t the back of the house job. And we knew he had special needs. And so that’s close and dear to my heart. And of course, I offer him a job. And it was interesting. He really didn’t have the motor skills to be able to function in the back of the house. But the personality that that individual had was amazing. And the way that he talked to people and the way that he connected. I mean, going back to the values, one of our values is creating and genuine connections. So it’s much more than cake, right? It’s much more than the best product. You have to create that genuine connection with the guests that you’re serving. He was fantastic. As soon as we moved him to the front of the house, I mean, he could talk a storm and he could create those connections and he could say, and it was amazing. Nowadays he evolved. He found a job with other persons because we were able to give them the opportunity and find that spot. And he’s now apparently not a paralegal, an assistant for special needs kids in a school, which is like fantastic.
Andy Williams: Yes. And that’s great. And I think, you know, it kind of leads a little bit into the on side of things, you know, and that passion that goes into, you know, finding that passion for somebody and what that means and, you know, across your businesses, you know, having that passion or innovation or opportunity to work on your business and grow it is is always interesting. And I think, you know, the accounting profession, you know, we had spoken before is like, how do you, you know, students, new hires, how do you how do you engage someone to go like and both of you actually can answer this since, you know, with a background in accounting is, you know, how do you turn somebody’s brain on to to go like, this is where I want to be, You know, how do you how do you get them to find that passion of, you know, you’re fighting the marketers of the world, you know, with, hey, we have fun and we go out and we entertain and we do this, but at the end of the day, you all are doing a lot of those same things and you’re engaging in the same way. So how do you how do you get people to see that accounting profession as this this place that’s evolved and grown to be be more?
Matthew Foster: So it’s interesting you bring that up. I’ve been in I’ve been talking with the head of the School of Accountancy at Georgia State, and they’re having this issue right now where there’s not big enrollment into account the accounting program anymore. And it’s it is we’re seeing it in the profession. I mean, we’re seeing it in the industry that we’re seeing less students coming out of the school system. And so we’re having a shortage of first years coming into the profession. And what is the issue here? I mean, that’s the thing. And it boils down to or this is my take on it. I don’t know if it’s right, but this is what I’ve been thinking for a while is accounting in general. I mean, it goes back to what do most people think about when they think of accounting? They think of, you know, in a suit and a tie. Very long hours, never see light, always behind a computer or now always behind a computer, but very boring. I mean, dealing with the IRS, Who wants to deal with the IRS? Nobody wants to. I don’t even want to. But very boring career. Whereas. I mean, it’s there are boring times. I think anything that you do, there are boring times if you’ve done it for long enough. But. It’s also a different we have a new generation of leaders in the accounting space that we need to show the students.
Matthew Foster: We need to show younger individuals out there that the days of, you know, grinding, grinding, grinding are I mean, it’s starting to slow down. I mean, it’s still there. There’s busy times. There’s slower times. But we’re not just people in suits and ties. I mean, we all have personalities. We all have lives outside of of accounting. And we we it’s not just sitting down, grinding for ten hours a day and then going home and doing it all over again the next day. It is working very closely with business owners, getting to know them on a personal level so that we can help them with other needs, not just filling out their tax forms. But it’s it’s trying to get people to see because a lot of the older professionals in the in this industry where the. The long hours and the never seeing their kids baseball games or something along that as a as a badge of honor, which is not what anybody wants to hear anymore. And in fact, I don’t like I am very clear with my team. I’m like, Hey, my girls have cheerleading tonight. I’m going to see them cheer. Like if you have kids that are doing something, we’re doing this for our family. But why give up seeing your family grow up just to do this?
Andy Williams: No, that’s and I love that. I know. I, you know, made it a point. And, you know, my father was in sales, but he was also able to be home a lot of afternoons when I still got home. And and that’s definitely rubbed off on me of wanting to make sure I was around and being around and, you know, so I think that’s extremely important. And I think it’s important for all businesses, not just it.
Gloria Mattei: Is, but I think it’s what you just said, right? It’s about them understanding what is the value of what they’re bringing to the community in a way. Right. Because it’s like you said, accountants are not just about the numbers and the taxes and just crunching the numbers from, what, February through April and if you’re in corporate the different time frame. But it’s about helping that business owner finding an exit strategy or where do you get the funds to do that growth that you need. And those and I think those are exciting times, but it’s a misconception. I agree. Yeah. I mean, because my first indication when I told my kids my story and I was an accountant, you were one of those boring people that. Okay, you know, but but it’s much more than that. No, absolutely. But I think it’s in industry, of course. I mean, the majority of the my younger adults, of course, they’re coming just to do a summer job or they’re coming to do an after school job, etcetera. But I mean, the is much more than that is they can get a lot more than just, you know, learning how to do a pose or whatever.
Gloria Mattei: The majority of my kids that come in and it’s actually very rewarding. They come, they come super shy. They barely answer the questions in the interview. And then when you put them in front of the guest and they start talking and I mean, you see them progress and how and how they grow into college and you and you see them coming back and asking for references and it’s like, Hey, would you tell them what I did at the bakery and the connections that I made? And I went with you and I talked to people because those are skills that they are going to need wherever they go, right? And when I bring people into the bakery that I see a potential is if you stay with us, you can do a growth and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t need to be a bakery. I mean, the tax I mean, the skills that you’re going to learn are going to work with you wherever you go. Right?
Andy Williams: Well, and I think I look at it as they really they really become the face of the business. It’s not, you know, it’s these, you know, young children looking for part time jobs that are you know, they become the face of of the business. So you have to kind of share all of that knowledge information and get them to a point to to be comfortable in their skin and show that compassion.
Gloria Mattei: It all goes to the coaching and the developing right. And I think you need to be honest with them. This is and it’s also about the values, right? I don’t think if you have any values in your business, then it’s very hard to to communicate this and get this in their heads. But for us is, you know, servant’s heart. I mean, that’s what you’re here for, to serve the community in one way or the other. Spirit of a champion. Things are going to get hard and it doesn’t matter the industry again. Right. And so it’s that spirit of a champion. You’ve got to get through it. And it will be it will be fine. You will get through the other end. Right. And and genuine connections. One of the many things again, I was in corporate world and I was in the crunching numbers all the time. And one of the things that I never did was be out in the community and outreach at the community. I, you know, yes, we had the the the contributions to, you know, donations that you did that were matching by the company and all of that. But being out there in the community was not something that I did a lot in corporate world. And that was one of my biggest rewards as I stepped out. Because, I mean, who moves you as a business owner? The community.
Speaker5: Community. Yeah.
Andy Williams: Yeah, no, for sure. One last kind of question. We, you know, I don’t want to keep keep us all here for the afternoon because we could go round and round and chat even further. But as. You know, industry leaders in your respective spaces. What advice would you give to others as to, you know, the how do you balance, you know, not just work life, but even, you know, the in and on business or, you know, balance, you know, all of this moving forward. What’s the what’s something, you know, a little piece that that we could share of how do you balance, you know, working in an on business specifically, but even more broadly, because we’ve hit it a number of times, how do you how do you balance all of it, life work, you know, live, work, play, You know, how do you how do you balance all of that? What’s the what’s that piece of advice you’d give somebody, somebody young that’s that’s listening to us today.
Gloria Mattei: So so I go back to I think you have to step back sometimes and and have a vision of what you’re doing. In my case, it’s super easy to go in because I’m a control freak and I want to make sure that everything is perfect and I’m a perfectionist. But in my case, it’s really hard to when I go in the bakery, I just want to have hands on, right? But I have to be very conscious and have the vision of stepping back saying, Wait a second, I am not helping them in any way. I’m not developing them if I do this right. And I think it’s a progressive, it’s a journey. In my case, as a small business owner, you are maybe 90% in at the beginning of your years and then you have to progress eventually to be more, I would say 80, 90 and 10 or 20 in. Right. But it’s it’s definitely the vision of for me is stepping back and I’m like, okay, how am I going to develop them? They are the ones that are going to carry the torch either in my bakery or somewhere else. And if I do, then then I’m not developing them. And I think that’s the key in my case for me is stepping back. Wait a second, I that’s not where I need to be. I need to be developing them so that they go to their next level.
Andy Williams: That’s great. That’s great.
Matthew Foster: Matt Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. I think it’s the on comes before the end. I agree. I mean the on it boils down to I said it earlier that I mean it has to be your core values. You have to decide what are the core values of your business, make sure that your team knows that and they believe in those core values also, because if they don’t believe it and they don’t show it, then the end is not going to it doesn’t matter. So, I mean, they really feed off of each other, but I mean, the whole work life, the whole balance of the whole, all of it, that’s a tough one. I mean, it it takes years to practice to learn. I was telling my girls the other day, it’s like my my youngest, it’s, you know, sometimes something’s hard. You have to practice at it before it becomes easy. And when it comes to balancing this and I mean, I’ve been in this in public accounting now for 15 years. You have to know your you have to set your own limits. You have to set what is important to you and what is your in end result that you want to achieve and set that firm and work towards that. But don’t try to work past it. Know when to stop. Otherwise, if you don’t, then you are going to just 100% dive into work and life is just going to leave. And I mean, I learned it a hard way several years ago, but over the past several years, I found that I found what I wanted to achieve, and I’ve just been working towards that. And it has changed dramatically the balancing act that I’ve been doing.
Andy Williams: That’s great. You know what I love said just to kind of wrap this this up in a little bit of a bow here for all of us, what I what I took most out of this was the on the on before the end. I love that. You know, I think that was great. Like it’s such a unique perspective to look at it, you know, in regards to that fashion. And you know, and, you know, the key words and phrases and things that I heard throughout, like passion really is what it boils down to. Just a, you know, a passion for not just, you know, your business, but for all those involved. You know, I love the story of the young gentleman who just started out in the back and then works, as you know, works his way to the front because he really could connect and bring it to life a little bit. So it’s it, you know, is great to hear from both of you all. You know, that’s going to bring us to a close here today on in and on business. I want to thank both of you all for being a part of the Sandy Springs Chamber. We’re grateful for you all and your businesses and our community. You know, we appreciate your experiences and expertise. I want to thank the team at Business RadioX for hosting us and taking care of us here today and all of our partners and their continued support. I hope you enjoyed your time with us and we look to see you next month.
The Wrap Podcast | Episode 062 | Managing Risk and Navigating Challenges for Financial Institutions | Warren Averett
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We’re continuing our Industry Podcast Series with a dive into the current opportunities and challenges specific to financial institutions. The Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) Accounting Standard ushered in a new era for financial institutions that they are still grappling with, but the industry’s recent focus has shifted towards discussions about liquidity after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and others.
Join our financial industry experts Jeff Burleson, CPA, and Josh Bowen, CPA, CGMA, CAMS, CITP, as they discuss the evolving landscape for financial institutions and the continued influence of CECL, as well as strategies for driving stability, growth and adaptability in the face of change.
Special Guest: Justin Headley, CISSP, CISA, CDPSE, CRISC, member of the firm’s Risk Advisory & Assurance Services Group
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- Discussion surrounding CECL and its implementation
- How the 2023 failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank led to shifts in liquidity management
- Information about how economic uncertainty has led to the tightening of lending practices
- The importance of third-party risk management within a financial institution’s cybersecurity policy
- Strategies to help financial institutions manage staffing levels
Resources for additional information:
- Blog: Don’t Turn Your Back on CECL
- Blog: Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) Standard Update: Best Practices for Implementation
- Blog: What is Enterprise Risk Management?
- Blog: The Biggest Cyber Risks for Your Company and How to Manage Them
- Previous Podcast Episode: Employee Retention and Recruiting in Today’s Competitive Environment
- Event Invitations: Subscribe to receive invitations to future Bank and Credit Union Roundtables.
TRANSCRIPT
Commentators (0:02): You’re listening to The Wrap, a Warren Averett podcast for businesses designed to help you access vital business information and trends when you need it. So, you can listen, learn, and then get on with your day. Now, let’s get down to business.
Paul Perry (0:16): Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Wrap, a Warren Averett podcast. We’re happy to have you with us here for the next episode. Today, we’re going to be talking to some of the financial institution experts within our firm about some of the opportunities and challenges that they’re seeing when they talk to their clients. We are happy to have some of our own experts here with us, but also with us is a new co-host for our podcast: Jessica Juliano out of our Birmingham office and in our Staffing and Recruiting Division. Jessica, welcome to The Wrap, and I’m glad to have you as a co-host.
Jessica Juliano (0:53): Absolutely. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Paul. I’ve been with the firm almost 11 years now, which is kind of hard to believe. But yeah, I started in audit and decided to retire and recruit CPAs instead.
Paul Perry (1:10): We’re glad to have you with us today.
Jessica Juliano (1:12): Happy to be here. We’ve got Jeff Burleson, out of our Birmingham office, and we have Joshua Bowen from our Montgomery office here today. Welcome, gentlemen.
Jeff Burleson (1:23): Glad to be here on the podcast. So, I worked in CPA practice and then also in a family business, but I worked 14 years with an international accounting firm. In between, I worked in a family business. I’ve been at Warren Averett since 2010, and the whole time when I was with a public accounting firm and currently, I’ve been in the Financial Services practice, and I’m glad to be part of the podcast.
Joshua Bowen (1:49): Yes, so I’m in the Financial Services group as well and started with the firm back in 2005. straight out of Troy. My wife and I moved to Birmingham. That’s where it all began. I did go to work at a couple other firms in the process. But back in 2017, I had the opportunity to come back to Warren Averett and move back home closer to family. We jumped on that opportunity, and it’s been a blast ever since. So, here we are today.
Paul Perry (2:21): We are happy to have both of y’all with us today and look forward to this discussion. Let’s jump right in. Jeff and Josh, you both deal strictly with financial institutions, so you’re inside their offices and talking to them all the time. What challenges and opportunities are organizations in this industry facing? We know it’s a much more regulated industry than most, and there’s probably a lot of very unique challenges. Can you touch on some of those and what you’re seeing, Jeff?
Jeff Burleson (2:52): Yeah, sure. Probably one of the biggest changes in the financial institutions practice—I mean, it applies to various entities—but it is what we call CECL, which is the Current Expected Credit Loss. It changed how financial institutions accounted for the allowance for loan loss, and now it’s an allowance for credit loss. For public companies, it was adopted several years or a handful of years ago. For calendar year companies (12/31), they adopted it as of January 1, 2023. It actually changed the accounting from an incurred model to an expected model. FASB issued this at the time based on the recession in 2008 and 2009, and it’s generally applicable to loans and held to maturity securities. For instance, like loans held for sale—that’s not applicable to those because they were accounted for differently—anyway, for loans and held to maturity securities. One of the items that is not in the new standard is the OTTI (Other Than Temporary Impairment) on available for sale securities. That went away.
Another item that went away and is not in the current standard is the termination of impairment. There’s different ways and certain situations where that may be considered but generally speaking, impairment is not included in the current standard. Also, the intent in the standard was to not have an unallocated portion. In the incurred model, you know, you have your quantitative and then your qualitative amounts, but then there could also be an unallocated amount. But the intent was to not have an unallocated amount. However, if you look in the OCC handbook from April 2021, it is included in there. And also, currently on the call reports, there is an unallocated component that’s included in the allowance. We were at a recent conference—Josh, you want to elaborate on this a little bit?
Joshua Bowen (5:05): Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jeff. So, it seemed like every conference we went to last year, there was always discussions of M&A. It seemed to be the hot topic, and it has been for a while. But this year, we’re seeing a change in what we’re hearing at conferences, and it started at the beginning of the year. We thought that we were going to have a pretty simplistic year like—adopting CECL? That’s probably going to be the most complex, but then we had a little bank failure, and then another little bank failure. So, there were some issues as it comes into this topic of liquidity. So, Jeff, do you want to start us off on talking a little bit about Silicon Valley Bank?
Jeff Burleson (5:46): Sure. In March of this year—as many of you know that have listened to the podcast, especially on the financial institution side, you’re pretty familiar with Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank and what occurred—but basically starting back from Silicon Valley Bank, there was a run-on deposits. There were various causes of this. One of the things that has been looked at since then is: okay, who’s to blame for this? Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around. Even if you’ve listened to some of the testimony with the regulators, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, they’ve accepted some of the responsibility for it, but management was responsible for it. It really stemmed from a mismatch on the balance sheet and managing that balance sheet with the change in the interest rates. As many of you know, as interest rates increase, the value goes down. It has an inverse relationship. If you have available for sale securities, that change is running through equity and not through the income statement. So that does effect a large unrealized loss position, and that’s what was recurring. When this occurred in March of this year (2023), one of the things that we did on our audits that were ongoing at the time—since then, we’ve actually incorporated different audit procedures—is to put some effort towards this and the uninsured/insured deposits and how the financial institutions are carrying those deposits.
Commentators (7:33): Want to receive a monthly newsletter with Wrap topics? Head on over to https://warrenaverett.com/thewrap and subscribe to our email list to have it delivered right to your inbox. Now, back to the show.
Joshua Bowen (7:45): Yeah, so watching this unfold, we started getting a slew of calls. Jeff, we were talking multiple times a day, and we were just trying to digest all of the information as we were receiving it. This actually spread to our non-banking clients within the firm, because obviously if you’re holding cash in your financial institution—you have to question: am I about to lose my money? We were assisting other CPAs and advisors throughout the firm on their questions as they were receiving them from other clients. Luckily, it was very targeted. Obviously, there are some differences in how those banks operated and how most community financial institutions are operated. Fortunately, I think what we’ve seen—and it still holds true today—is that our financial institutions are sound, and they’re stable. We’re hearing that from the top regulators down. As we perform our procedures—whether that be on the external audit side or internal audit procedures—over asset liability management, interest rate risk and liquidity procedures, we’re seeing that that our banks are definitely well positioned. We’re very thankful for that. A few things to think about though. Obviously, as we mentioned earlier, we saw this shift where it seems like liquidity is the number one topic and rightly so. These were very significant failures in our banking system. It’s been a while. Jeff, during the downturn during the great recession, we were used to sitting back on Friday afternoon and waiting on the email from the regulators to say what banks failed, right? It was just every single Friday, it seemed like we were getting a listing. It’s been a while. So, we’ve had one here, one there and then all of a sudden, we get these very large institutions. Then, First Republic comes along not long after that, so it seems like this is systemic throughout the financial industry.
Jessica Juliano (9:56): How do the complexities and the challenges that both you and Jeff have brought to the attention of this audience—how have those impacted or will impact the overall business strategy for these institutions?
Jeff Burleson (10:14): Okay, Jessica. I think with CECL, is how it was adopted and how it affects the financial statements. Actually, when it was adopted, recording the effect of it—whether it’s a hit or a pickup to the allowance, it actually goes through equity. From that point forward, it goes through the income statement. Also, if it’s a pretty significant entry to equity, the financial institution can apply a transition method over a three-year period. But, as mentioned earlier, we had several financial institutions where it was no effect. Naturally, they would not apply any transition method because there would be nothing to apply. With regards to the liquidity crisis and how that’s going to affect banks? As we had mentioned, at a conference that we were at, the thought was—like on the CAMELS ratings, a rating that the banks get—the main focus going forward (or at least in the near term) is going to be on liquidity and management.
Paul Perry (11:25): That’s it. That’s interesting. Jeff, Josh, I want to go back to where you were talking about liquidity. I’m assuming the banks are feeling like there’s a concern with liquidity. I think you’ve talked about it, but we’ve been seeing a lot of activity from the feds with rates. I assume, as those go together, so can you unpack how that changes the business strategy for banks?
Joshua Bowen (11:49): Yeah, thanks, Paul. So, you know, for most of our financial institutions, we’re seeing that they’re still pretty strong from a liquidity standing. No major concerns there, although the regulatory concerns are heightened. We’ve seen a new financial institution letter is interagency that just recently came out. It’s requiring some changes to the contingency funding plan, and so forth. It’s something that all financial institutions should review. But because of the economic uncertainty, we’ve got large unrealized losses that are tied to the balance sheet and a lot of investments that can’t—well, you could sell them, but you probably don’t want to lock in those losses—coupled with the potential for regulators wanting more on-balance liquidity. It can reduce some of that future availability and current availability of liquidity that banks may be willing to put out, which could in turn reduce the amount of loans that they may be willing to originate. What we are seeing is that when you add that along with the potential uncertainty in the economy, we’re seeing financial institutions be a little bit choosier on the loans that they’re originating. Not all are that way, but every financial institution has their own strategy when it comes to managing their assets on their balance sheet. We are seeing some of those pressures come out that business owners and consumers may start to feel. Actually, something that the Federal Reserve, I think, are relying on to some degree, as they’ve begun to spread out how quickly or how often they increase rates. Obviously, as financial institutions are not lending as much, then that puts a little bit more pressure on the spending in the economy as well.
Jessica Juliano (13:49): I think it would be interesting to take a little sidestep here. Guys, we’ve talked about pressure. Staffing is a very hot topic as well, and we’ve talked a lot about regulations and things. But for these institutions, what would you say is going to be the biggest thing that they’re going to be focusing on? Because the June jobs report came out, and it was not what we expected but what we expected all at the same time. What are your thoughts on the staffing climate for this industry?
Joshua Bowen (14:26): Yeah. We’re seeing, like in so many other things, a trickledown effect. As COVID-19 hit our financial institutions, we started seeing a lot of the big banks start putting minimum wage minimums out there that are pretty tough for some of our community financial institutions. So, we’re seeing more and more pressure, obviously, as wages continue to go up. There’s a requirement there. We couple that with the fact that a lot of our financial institutions are not in Birmingham, Atlanta or Tampa, so the labor pool for those areas can be a little bit tougher to fill certain positions. So, we are seeing where financial institutions are getting more creative. Back in the day where you may have someone in operations—whether it be a loan officer or a deposit officer—you may be sitting right in the main bank headquarters. Now, some are thinking, “Well, we have a branch in Huntsville, or we have a branch in this city. So, can we hire in a city that has more talent in that population, and let them sit there or even let them just work remotely in general?”
Jessica Juliano (15:44): That’s right, and we are seeing a compromise. You know, obviously, COVID—there’s a significant portion of industries that outside of those industries that just couldn’t do business without their people being physically on site, we’ve come to terms that hybrid is the compromise. We’re seeing a lot of that. As long as companies and these institutions can access and have the technology to reach the talent, they’ll be successful, but it is cooling off significantly. We’ll see. I don’t know what other challenges you guys are going to anticipate.
Jeff Burleson (16:24): Hey, Jessica, I think another thing is looking at the talent pool. If you’re looking at people that have, you know, maybe they were retired or maybe displaced or whatever. You know, late 50s and early 60s. They’re great talent, but they don’t want to work full time. That’s a great talent pool to pick from. Generally speaking, you know, they’ve had their career, and they’re really not wanting to climb the corporate ladder. There’s not that pressure or drama internally, but that’s a talent pool that we’re seeing being looked at pretty significantly now.
Paul Perry (17:01): Gentlemen, I know that there’s another topic that always comes up when we talk about the challenges that industries face, specifically financial institutions. That’s technology and security. I know that y’all can answer the question, but I wanted to bring in another colleague of ours, Justin Headley, who is with our Risk Advisory and Assurance Group within the firm. Justin, welcome. Welcome to the podcast, we’re bringing you in to talk about financial institutions. When you’re out there talking to those institutions, what are you hearing from a technology perspective? What are the examiners focusing on? What are those hot, quick topics from a security perspective that people need to be focused on? Again, welcome to the podcast.
Justin Headley (17:46): Thank you for having me. This is a very interesting topic for financial institutions. While the FIC has guidance and their information security handbooks on what best practices should be in place, we do see that examiners and regulators have focus areas that they key in on and have a higher focus on. We also hear a lot of these things when we host our banking and our credit union roundtables for clients, and we see what they’ve been through and experience. There are two things I want to briefly mention, and these are hot topics that we’re seeing. The first one is third-party risk management. This is not necessarily something that’s new for financial institutions, but it’s an area we continue to see increased scrutiny on. I think the reason is because we’re continuing to see large scale, third-party data breaches almost every day. The very recent MOVEit breach that we’ve all been seeing and hearing about has been very interesting. We’ve seen millions of customer records that have been exposed already, and many more companies are finding out, “Hey, I’ve been impacted here.” This has included a lot of banks and credit unions that are dealing with this. Making sure that you have a well-functioning third-party risk management program that you’re continually assessing is key.
It is critical to think about that. You can outsource that service to a third party. But that responsibility is going to rest squarely with you. If you experience a breach, as a result of a third-party issue, your customers are going to look at you. They’re not going to look at that third-party. That responsibility, unfortunately, sort of lives with you. Your internal risk is always changing and so are your third parties. Staying on top of that is essential.
The second area I want to cover briefly is incident response. This is no surprise, but we’ve seen incident response at financial institutions be sort of an afterthought and something that gets baked into your disaster recovery and your business continuity plans. Obviously since data breaches are so mainstream, you have to make sure you have a completely separate incident response plan that goes into detail on how you’re going to respond to incidents. Along those lines, you have to make sure that you are testing that incident response plan regularly. Just like how you would traditionally test your business continuity plans: prepare a tabletop exercise, get the leaders of the organization around the table and walk out how would you respond to a ransomware scenario, for example. Make sure you’ve got your ducks in a row. Recently along the lines with incident response, we’ve seen both the FDIC and the NCUA provide guidance and rules on how you are to notify and respond to an incident. Making sure that you have a good well-functioning incident response program is key. Those are just two areas that I’d say to be on the lookout for. But those are two things that you need to make sure you’ve got good controls to cover those risks.
Paul Perry (20:39): Justin, thank you for calling in and giving us some of those insights on cybersecurity as it relates to financial institutions. We appreciate your time today.
Justin Headley (20:46): Thanks for having me, guys.
Jessica Juliano (20:47): Thank you so much, Justin. You know, we brought several different topics. I’d be interested, Jeff, Josh, how should the business leaders in this industry respond to these various dynamics to position themselves and their organizations to succeed in these various environments? What do they need to do for the immediate future?
Jeff Burleson (21:12): For the immediate future, it’s probably just continued focus on credit management and liquidity management. I mean, that’s what they do anyway, but just continued focus on that. Josh can elaborate on this, but with regards to liquidity management being such a big topic now…It’s making sure that the board or the audit committee is also knowledgeable and taking responsibility for that.
Joshua Bowen (21:38): Yeah, I completely agree. At the end of the day, we have to remind ourselves that financial institutions and bankers are managers of risk, right? This is what they do every single day as they continue to expand their business strategies. For most of our financial institutions, we’re seeing that they’re in great shape. They’re not like the Silicon Valley, and they’re not running their financial institutions in very high-risk markets and customer bases. So, I think focusing on that and paying attention to risk within their portfolios, and just keep doing what they’ve been doing. Many of these financial institutions have been through World War I, World War II. They’ve seen so much, they’ve thrived, and they’ve continued to be resilient, regardless of what the economy has thrown at them. So just keep doing what you do best.
Paul Perry (22:37): Right. Good information. Gentlemen, here on The Wrap, we’d like to wrap it up in 60 seconds or less. Josh, I realize that’s going to be very difficult for you. But as we end this discussion around financial institutions, what is that one thing you want the listeners to leave with? Whether it’s something you’ve already said, maybe it’s a summary of some of the things or maybe some ideas that didn’t get into the podcast? What are those things that you want to leave our listeners with?
Jeff Burleson (23:09): Yeah, I think from my perspective, it would be that the adoption of CECL was not as big of a deal as everyone thought it was going to be several years ago. However, as the interest rates are changing credit risk, that’s going to have to be focused on. We’re probably going to see allowances increasing. You know, just the topic of the day: liquidity management. Just really focus on that. Josh?
Joshua Bowen (23:37): Yeah, I agree. For the first time in a long time, financial institutions had been under a lot of margin compression, because rates have been almost zero for a long time. Now, rates are higher, but there’s not as much margin compression there. At the end of the day, we have all these other ancillary issues. I think, for the most part that the financial institutions that we work with, and most financial institutions out there, are doing a great job. I think now’s a good time to—although we look at Silicon Valley and many other things going on, and we say, “Oh, they’re not like us.” This is completely true, but I think there’s still an opportunity for financial institutions that are doing a fantastic job to take a look at the smaller things, because all of the smaller things add up and can make significant impacts to the operations. Whether that be just spending a little bit more time looking at your model assumptions, whether that be combing through your contingency funding plan to ensure that it’s up to date and it’s aligning with the bank strategies or really just looking at the enterprise risk management process of the bank or financial institution. Just make sure that everything is aligned with the financial institution’s ultimate strategy as they look out the next year, two years, five years and so forth.
Paul Perry (25:08): Good stuff.
Jessica Juliano (25:08): Oh, thank you, Josh and Jeff. I feel like we probably could spin off and have five other podcasts based on the information y’all have provided today to our audience. We thank you both for your time, your professional insights and your expert advice on these matters. So, thank you both for being here.
Joshua Bowen (25:29): We appreciate the opportunity. Thank you all.
Jeff Burleson (25:31): Thanks. Yep.
Commentators (25:33): And that’s a wrap! If you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave a review on your streaming platform. To check out more episodes, subscribe to the podcast series or make a suggestion of other topics you want to hear, visit us at https://warrenaverett.com/thewrap/.
BRX Pro Tip: Building a System: Start Here
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BRX Pro Tip: Building a System: Start Here
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you this morning. Lee, in terms of building a system, I think one of the key challenges maybe is just, you know, where do you start?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] I think when you’re building a system, it’s important to start at the end, not at the beginning. And that might sound counterintuitive, but it’s really critically important to understand what the end looks like and what is the outcome you desire. And the clearer you can get from that standpoint, then the easier it is, is to reverse engineer the system. And that is, you know, one of the things that we’re pretty good at, at Business RadioX.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] So, my recommendation is, begin talking with the end user. Who’s the person doing the work? What’s the customer want? And what are the frontline folks kind of need? And if you start really diving deeply into the end, where the process ends, you’re going to have a way better kind of plan on how to get there. So, it’s better to have things work better for the frontline folks than it is for the management folks.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Like, just because it’s easier for the management to want to see something a certain way, but it’s hard for the frontline worker to deliver that, then that defeats the purpose. I mean, then the customers are going to get a bad experience just because it makes the person keeping score at the end of the day, it makes their life easier. That’s silly, I mean, to me.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] You’ve got to focus on the people that matter most. And it’s a lot more important to have your customer have a great experience, to have the frontline workers have an easy way of delivering that. Rather than some management person who’s just counting things. So, you got to kind of understand that going in and err on the side of giving the customer and your frontline people the easiest way to do their job so that the customer is the happiest.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:43] And then, when you’re building these systems out, you got to kind of give yourself a lot of grace because this kind of work never ends. The systems are constantly changing. You should be constantly trying to improve them. And change is not a bug in this. Change is a feature. You should always be learning, growing, tweaking, and sharing what you’ve learned.
Useful is Better Than Happy
Women in Business Putting Food on Our Tables Part 3
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In this episode of Women in Motion, we discuss trends in the food industry and how different brands are serving their customers. Rhonda Busnardo with Caesars talks about the rise of plant-based and natural foods, as well as the popularity of finger foods and small desserts.
Chef Laura Briscoe from Laura’s Gourmet emphasizes their chef-driven, natural ingredient-focused brand and the incorporation of international flavors, and Michele Freeman with Venice Beach Beverage introduces their health-focused, plant-based vitamin teas. The guests also discuss their target audiences, challenges they’ve faced, and the importance of independent stores.
Rhonda Busnardo has worked in the Food sector most of her career starting off in retail, moving into food and beverage manufacturing and distribution, and currently in the Gaming and Entertainment industry.
Rhonda grew up in Southern New Jersey. Rhonda and her husband, Anthony, have 4 boys aged 20, 14, 12, and 6.
When Rhonda isn’t working, she enjoys family time and being at the beach. Rhonda enjoys kayaking, boating, dancing, and is currently working on her long game in golf.
Michele Freeman, a retired actress and grandmother, defies age limits to pursue her dreams. Collaborating with her husband, she built a thriving business from scratch, crafting functional teas from family recipes.
In just three years, their company, Venice Beach Beverage, becoming Amazon’s Choice and one of KeHE’s top spotlighted black-owned companies.
Michele’s leadership secured grants from The Fearless Foundation with Tory Burch and JP Morgan Chase & Co., earning awards from the city of Los Angeles for community contributions.
Her journey inspires others, as she believes there’s no set timeline for achievements. Venice Beach Beverage, under Michele’s guidance, innovates with high-quality ingredients, becoming a respected brand. She actively supports local charities and promotes wellness initiatives in underserved areas.
Michele Freeman’s entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to healthy living inspire aspiring business leaders, redefining the beverage industry one health-conscious sip at a time.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Political Science and French, Chef Laura Briscoe spent nearly 15 years as a sales executive in the tech industry working for companies including Apple and Oracle.
In 2001, Chef Laura changed career paths, attending culinary school in Arizona. She started her first business, Celebrated Cuisine, a private event and high-end catering company, in 2002. In 2004, Chef Laura created a recipe now known as Vanilla Almond Crunch, the flagship flavor of Laura’s Gourmet Granola and earned placement on the retail shelf of AJs Fine Foods.
Nearly 19 years later, Laura’s Gourmet Granola is a recognized brand of specialty granola of which all are all-natural, certified gluten- free, certified kosher Pareve, with vegan options, available at specialty grocers and to foodservice throughout the US.
About our Co-Host
Dr. Pamela Williamson, President & CEO of WBEC-West, is an exemplary, dedicated individual, and has extensive experience as a senior leader for over twenty years.
She has served as the CEO of SABA 7 a consulting firm, overseen quality control at a Psychiatric urgent care facility of a National Behavioral Health Care Organization where she served as Vice President and Deputy Director,and has served as the CEO of WBEC-West, since 2008.
Her extensive experience in developing and implementing innovative alliances with key stakeholders has enabled the organizations to reach new levels of growth and stability. Her ability to lead and empower staff members creates a strong team environment which filters throughout the entire organization.
She takes an active role in facilitating connections between corporations and women business enterprises and sees a promising future for WBENC Certified women-owned businesses.
Dr. Williamson holds a Doctorate in Healthcare Administration, a Master’s degrees in Business Administration, and bachelor degrees in both Psychology and Sociology.
Connect with Dr. Williamson on LinkedIn.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios. It’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by Wbec West. Join forces, Succeed Together. Now here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here another episode of Women in Motion brought to you by our friends at WBEC West. And today’s topic is the food industry putting food and beverages on our tables. And we’re going to learn from a lot of several experts in this space. We have Rhonda Busnardo with Caesars. We have Laura Brisco with Laura’s Gourmet and Michele Freeman with Venice Beach Beverage. Welcome, ladies.
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:00:53] Thank you.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:54] Before we get too far into things, I’d like to kick it off with Rhonda to discuss maybe some of the trends she’s seeing out in the industry today, or is anything catching your eye?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:01:05] Uh, there’s a lot of new fun things out there. Plant based and natural foods are huge right now. Also, you know, for the vegan and just, you know, crowds that have health conscious or, you know, meat free dairy free type of diets in mind, they are huge right now. Every food show that I go to, there’s a very big portion of plant based items. So I definitely see a lot there. People are health conscious now more than ever, a lot of bright and natural colors, you know, different fruits and varieties, things like that. Now that are that are out there that you’ve never seen. And believe it or not, finger foods, a lot of finger foods, a lot of really small desserts. So the little tiny one bite type of desserts are a huge trend right now because restaurants are noticing that a lot of desserts people either didn’t want because they were too full or, you know, they would take a few bites and waste the rest of it. So it’s a lot of waste. So now, yeah, little finger items and small desserts are really popular.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:11] Now. Rhonda, can you explain for our listeners that maybe they’re not familiar with Caesars is a brand that we’re all familiar with, but there’s lots and lots of kind of brands underneath that umbrella, right?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:02:22] Oh, yeah. So we have, of course, Caesars as our brand. We have a lot of casinos that people don’t understand that are owned by Caesars I and you know, just go out there, Google Caesars Entertainment and you’ll be surprised at all of the casinos across the United States that we own. I think it’s right around it’s it’s at least 50 properties right now. We keep changing every day. So it’s it’s a lot across the board. And then we have many different restaurants, some owned by us and some that are not owned by us that are in each casino. So a lot of different a lot of different things.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] Now, when you’re talking about a trend in food and beverage, how do you kind of take that trend and then sprinkle it through all of the brands that you represent to make sure that it’s a right fit in each place?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:03:12] Yeah. So it’s different in each region, right? So the East coast, West Coast, very different. Sometimes things start over on the West Coast and then move their way to the east seems to be the case most of the time. And it also just depends on local sourcing and everything. But what we do is we we go to these food shows, we see what trends are out there. We talk to a lot of vendors and chefs. And then what we do is we send all of these things out to our chefs and procurement department to share amongst their properties. And yeah, then we start to source things that they’re interested in or that they see that’s going to work in their properties. We do a lot of cuttings which are going to properties, sitting with the chef and tasting different things, trying different things. Um, you know, there’s, there’s a lot that goes on in the background that a lot of people don’t realize.
Lee Kantor: [00:04:10] Now. Laura, can you share a little bit about Laura’s Gourmet? How are you serving folks?
Laura Briscoe: [00:04:16] So Laura’s Gourmet actually is the chef brand. So we have a few different things under our umbrella. The most widely known is Laura’s gourmet granola. Laura’s gourmet granola has been a retail product for just over 19 years, and we’ve been supplying food service for 16. And that’s actually a much bigger piece of our business, which is great for me as a chef. It’s a wonderful conversation. When you’re doing you’re speaking with other chefs about how you can integrate your products into their menus, talking to F and B, and then also identifying places on property. If it’s a hotel where you can integrate a retail product as well. But in terms of so our products are available nationally for both retail and food service. And what stands out around our our granola is that everything that we do is certified gluten free, certified kosher nondairy and also certified women owned, as you know. But also of our ten SKUs, seven of them are vegan. But the thing that’s interesting about it is that all of those certifications are just happen to be because as a chef driven product, we always look to do things as naturally as possible and. As cleanly as possible, because at the end of the day, we’re looking for the trifecta of taste, texture and mouthfeel.
Laura Briscoe: [00:05:32] And when you start incorporating other things that are not natural, then you also bring in textures and flavors that are not really good for what you’re trying to achieve. So so I like to talk about our products being chef driven, but happen to be so that there’s no sacrifice to the flavor profile. You know, there are a lot of trends out there, and I agree with everything that was just shared. But what I really love seeing is some of the international flavors making their way into the American palate. And I don’t mean just the low hanging fruit, but when I walked a show back in June, being able to capture things coming out of Asia that we don’t have yet or things coming out of Italy, even where you think that we’ve seen everything we haven’t. So being able to find ways to incorporate that into our product line, into subsequent lines that we’re introducing is and doing it in a way that meets the very needs of the American palate is it’s a fun chef challenge to have.
Lee Kantor: [00:06:33] Now, do you think that chef driven brands like yourself are the ones that are kind of leading the charge here, that the trends are starting with you, You’re able to connect dots maybe in some creative ways that the larger entities are kind of following your lead.
Laura Briscoe: [00:06:50] Yeah, that’s a great question because there’s two ways to look at that. There’s Chef Driven where everything we’re doing is based on the ingredients, right? The naturalness of the ingredient and, and manipulating it in a way that creates that recipe. But then the other way is if you look at it from a nutritional standpoint. So there are a lot of products out there that are driving for that, right? They’re looking to offer, you know, a probiotic or a prebiotic or something along those lines in their product, which may or may not influence the taste in a positive way. So personally, I prefer the chef driven way because there we know that we’re not going to put something out that doesn’t taste amazing, but we’re also going to ensure that it has the attributes that people are looking for.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] Now, Michele, can you share a little bit about Venice Beach Beverage, how you serving folks?
Michele Freeman: [00:07:39] Well, I like to call Venice Beach Beverage Health without the hassle. Venice Beach Beverage is a line of products that are from family recipes and plant based shelf stable, all natural vitamin teas with 100% daily vitamins in every can. I’m a midwest girl who was planted in California. Venice was my happy place. Thus the name. We’ve had the trademark since 2008 didn’t launch till 2020. That’s planning. So we waited until I was retired and my husband was retired to start our business. The nice thing about our products are they actually imagine if Sweet Tea was healthy. That’s what I like to tell people about our original vitamin iced tea. Then we also have a 35 calorie ginger tea with 5000mg of organic cold pressed ginger juice. There’s a lot of products out there with too many additives and too many things that aren’t good for you. You have to have something that’s healthy and that someone actually wants to drink. I am a big advocate of if it’s nasty, I don’t want it. So that’s the rule number one. I like hearing Laura talk about chef driven because I’m taste driven and I totally get what she’s saying. It has to taste good. You’re wasting your time. Otherwise, um, we have less than five milligrams of caffeine in our tea, so that way you’re not jittery. I’m trying to alleviate the issues that the everyday health enthusiast has. There’s so many people north, south, east and west that want to do better. They wanted a better beverage, but they don’t want to sacrifice taste for themselves and their families. So that’s what I’m here for.
Lee Kantor: [00:09:41] So I’d like to throw this out to the group. Let’s talk about your target audience. Do you have a target audience in mind or is this something that you have a passion about and you’re putting it out to the world and then you’re just hoping that the target audience finds you?
Michele Freeman: [00:09:59] Oh, no, you better have a target.
Laura Briscoe: [00:10:00] Audience 100% target. Audience Yes, You’re going to waste a lot of hope. You don’t. You don’t just cross your fingers and close your eyes and hope that’s just not what the product that’s not that’s not healthy.
Lee Kantor: [00:10:15] So then that being the case, then you have a persona of who that person is and then you are marketing towards that person.
Michele Freeman: [00:10:26] Correct? The everyday health enthusiast that’s looking for better beverage options for themselves and their family. There’s a whole thing that the powers that be age, demographic, where does this person work? What does this person do? How many children does this person have? All of that. There’s so many things that go into finding out your specific target audience. And it is different for our different lines because of our 35 calorie ginger tea. Everyone thought, Oh, she must be vegan. I am not. But I make a product that is and that’s very good for you. There’s there’s some overlap with the people that enjoy our products and I’m happy about that.
Laura Briscoe: [00:11:19] Yeah, to to dovetail on that. You know, when we look at our target audience, first and foremost, the thing that comes to mind are people who consider themselves to be foodies, right? Those who are looking at things that are more elevated, the combination of flavors. And in addition to that, then we look at those who are layering a different type of lifestyle or want to just have a day where this is you know, they’re going to be enjoying something that they know is better for their body, even if it’s not there every day. But, you know, we’ve targeted the higher end of the market in terms of retail, the specialty stores specifically, because we are an artisan crafted product and we can’t sit successfully on a shelf next to a granola that is full of not better for you ingredients that are that’s also being sold for a third of the price. We’ll never win that game and that’s not an educated consumer that we’re going after anyway. We are going after the people who pick up a bag and flip it over and look at a label and understand that seven ingredients can really taste this good. So I did a I did a small artisan market a few weeks ago that was local to Arizona. And what I really found interesting was that everyone who attended that was a self-proclaimed foodie and every single one of them were going berserk over the product because they felt like they had just had their first taste of what granola was meant to be, not what is normally billed as granola. So. So target market 100%.
Michele Freeman: [00:12:56] Yeah. And that’s so exciting when you see people. I’ve had people. Oh, I don’t. I don’t like Ginger. I don’t. You don’t like Ginger with all of the additives, powders, sirups and oils in it. If you had organic cold pressed ginger, that’s a different thing. It’s smooth enough for my grandchildren to drink. That’s another thing that I really like. And I hear that a lot. Oh, my gosh. This is really good. And they look surprised. Well, yes, I wouldn’t have done this otherwise. Thank you. So it’s really important to offer something that is beneficial. You know how many people juice every day and don’t want to? Do you know how messy it is? And I bet a lot of people that, you know, have a juicer, they don’t want to do it. It’s dirty, it’s messy, it’s time consuming. It’s expensive. And now you can have a better ginger juice and you didn’t have to do anything to get it. That’s what I like. And I put not.
Laura Briscoe: [00:13:52] Only that, it’s consistent every time, Right? You’re giving them exactly the consistency and the quality because you don’t necessarily get that if you try to make it yourself. So. Exactly.
Michele Freeman: [00:14:02] Exactly. And your kitchen is a whole lot cleaner.
Lee Kantor: [00:14:06] Now, when you both were when you both were starting, did you have this kind of persona in mind or was this something after you developed the product and then you realized, hey, this is the the target for this? Like, did the idea come first or did the audience come first?
Michele Freeman: [00:14:25] Well, in my case, the idea came first. These are my grandmother’s tea recipes. I was fortunate enough to marry a gentleman who grew up in Japan and Taiwan Air Force kid and learned how to make proper Japanese tea at a very young age. What are the odds of that? Fast forward. Um, he has been in the beverage industry for over 30 some years. He was actually vice president of Coca-Cola. So when you have a person that’s right next to you, that’s your best friend with all of that helpful information on quality control, logistics, manufacturing fleet, and then you put that with really good recipes, then you get an opportunity to check out the market to see who likes what and to find out, hey, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of people just like me who want a healthier alternative but aren’t die hard enough to do it every day themselves. And vitamins. I can’t begin to tell you how many emails I get from people. Oh, I hate taking vitamins. I forget they’re in my cabinet. It’s a pain, but you don’t have to now. You’re welcome. And it is very difficult to make vitamins taste good in a beverage. Very, very difficult. That’s why you don’t see any other ones but us. So I’m very, very proud of that.
Laura Briscoe: [00:15:48] Yeah. In our case, our it was an organic, happy accident. So I changed careers. I went to culinary school, and after culinary school I started my first company, which was focused on doing private fine dining and events and culinary instruction. And during that startup phase, over the first year and a half or so, I started playing with a recipe for granola for my own enjoyment, and I kept modifying it and modifying it, taking out ingredients that I can’t eat personally that just don’t work for my body, and trying to find something that reminded me of my college years and consuming boxes of granola during finals and after. A lot of it’s actually several months of just I don’t know why I was just on this mission and having been fully trained now on recipe development with culinary school, I was documenting everything. And just like any time you bake something, you have more than you want and you give it away. So I was sharing it at my daughter’s soccer games. I was giving it to friends, my personal trainer, whatever the case was, and people started asking for it and they asked for it a lot. So my best friend suggested I should think about selling it. And at the time and for the next 15 years, I did sell it, but not proactively. It was, you know, I just I placed it in our local retailer and that became a second retailer. And then that became a very large restaurant chain asking us to make it for food service. And finally, 15 years later, I figured I had to pick a team between running my private fine dining and elegant events or doing Laura’s Gourmet. And so since 2019, it has been with intention. And since that time we have weathered 2020 and have grown significantly since then with our most recent rollout last week, as a matter of fact, with fresh thyme. So so there’s a lot to be said for happy accidents. And then finally waking up and listening to the universe. So and a lot of planning behind that.
Michele Freeman: [00:17:50] Oh, yeah, agreed. Agreed.
Lee Kantor: [00:17:52] Now, Rhonda, how does it work in an enterprise like Caesar’s that’s so large? Does the audience come first or does the idea come first?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:18:02] I would say the audience comes first. You know, same thing. So we have people asking for things a lot. And when you see that becoming popular and asked for a lot, we start looking. Um, I would say it would be a little bit of both because sometimes our chefs come up with ideas from what they’re seeing as well, and then we go out looking for the items that we need that match that profile. So I would say just, you know, the consumer and what they want is where we get most of our ideas from.
Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] So now let’s shift gears a little bit and talk about some of the challenges that are facing the food industry today. Rhonda, we’ll start with you. What are some of the challenges that Caesars is facing?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:18:48] Challenges in our side is just, you know, just the supply chain still with inflation. Also just being able to get the product that we want to get in in a timely fashion and for it to be available. You know, we still have a lot of problems from Covid that are still trickling down with just, you know, companies that are just getting back and up and moving again with being able to produce the amount of volume that we need. So and also getting professionals in the door that are qualified. You know, chefs, a lot of them moved out of being a chef and moved into different lines of work during Covid because all the restaurants were closed for so long. So, you know, getting our our employee employee base, you know, back up to where it used to be. It needs to be.
Lee Kantor: [00:19:44] So is that become kind of an opportunity for Caesars to acquire some talent that might be available now that wasn’t in the past?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:19:52] Yes, absolutely. And some new talent. You know, it also helps for new talent out there that are looking to get into these type of restaurants or this type of business that maybe didn’t have that availability before because we had people here that were, you know, there for so long and there was no opening. So a lot of new talent that’s out there. There are so many talented chefs out there. I mean, you watch the shows on TV. It’s a real thing. You know, there are so many just naturally talented and, you know, Internet based, you know, chefs that that really are looking for some type of way to get in. And now’s the time.
Lee Kantor: [00:20:33] Laura, what are some of the challenges that you’re facing?
Laura Briscoe: [00:20:37] So currently, I think some of the challenges that are most so logistics there seems to be always a challenge with logistics in moving ingredients in and moving product out. I don’t know what’s changed except for what we’ve all experienced, but it just feels like every time there’s a little bit of a of a struggle, even with with some of our logistics partners. And then weather has definitely played a role as well. I mean, yes, there’s supply chain issues and being we’re able to get product now that we weren’t able to before or as timely and prices have come down a little bit. But we’ve seen weather now impacting some of the ingredients that we usually could get very, very easily. And now we see lead times that we hadn’t experienced before. So that’s always something to, you know, get your heart rate up when you’re not wanting it to go up. So and you know, and then in terms of hiring, you know, we had had some challenges in hiring. And of late we have seen people really, really get entrenched in the business and are happy working in our packaging and manufacturing. It’s exciting to see that and I think that’s borne from the culture that the company has overall. And then the direction from our production manager for our team to really make them feel like a team. So, so that’s one of the ways that we’re surmounting that type of challenge. But there’s a laundry list, I’m sure, and, and sometimes it’s just a challenge working with some of our distribution partners, you know, just throws a wedge in here and there. So you have to keep your eye open for that.
Michele Freeman: [00:22:14] Michelle The main challenge that we faced, we handled our second year. This is our third year in business. And that was I don’t want a co-packer. So we purchased our own production facility. This way we are not obligated and bound to someone putting us on the back of the line. When someone bigger comes, making you produce more than you need losing money on that. That was very important to us because this is our money. We did not get funded for this company. I saved my entire paycheck for over 15 years to start this when we retired. So I like I said, I’m a midwest girl and I’m extremely. Ordinarily frugal. So I want to make sure that I am utilizing our money in its best capacity. So we got a production facility and that helped us alleviate a lot of the pain and difficulty that a lot of new businesses start with. With my husband’s background in manufacturing. I had no problems with worrying about who should I get this? Should I do this, what to do? Because that’s not my wheelhouse. I stay in my lane and he stays in his lane and it works out very well for us that way. And oh, one more thing. I was not aware that so many different stores are paid to play to the extent that they are. We’re in about 550 stores nationwide and as of yet, we do not pay for slotting. We’re in hotels, we’re in golf, country clubs and things like that all over the place. And I’m very appreciative for those independent grocery stores, hotels and things like that. Very grateful that I don’t have to pay thousands of dollars just to have the privilege of sitting on their shelf. I know that in the future that I will have to do that. But for right now, I’m going to try to collect every single store that appreciates our product for what it is and not have to pay to play and actually not make any money.
Lee Kantor: [00:24:38] Now, Michelle, do you mind explaining what pay to play is for the folks who aren’t familiar with that?
Michele Freeman: [00:24:43] Oh, sure. Um, big grocery stores will charge you anywhere from 500 to $1000 a skew just to sit on their shelf. Then there’s cap. That’s when you walk past a past a shelf and the end cap on the end when you’re going from aisle to aisle that they charge for that. Then a lot of these stores, even if it’s you know, one can talk about Venice Beach beverage better than I but they ask you to have someone else, a company come in and do sampling for you instead. I’ve gone as far as Puerto Rico to do samplings for our stores, so I’m not above getting on a plane and going. Um, these are the things that grocery stores have. Allocated as this is what you have to do. And it kind of started in the beverage industry when the top three beverages in the US said, Hey, we want to be at eye level and we’re going to pay you to be there. And then they realize, Hey, everyone can do that. And so now to be in these stores and these are very popular stores, people are very interested in being in them because they’re so big. But I would rather have 550 independent stores where they’re actually purchasing it. I don’t have to worry about, Oh, I’ve got to make this many sales or I get kicked out in six months. And just all of that added money. You would be surprised at how many people are in stores right now and they don’t make a dime because they’re giving all the money back because of the pay to play system. So I’m a pray for me. I’m trying to stay away from that as long as humanly possible.
Lee Kantor: [00:26:37] Yeah, I’m sure a lot of folks aren’t familiar that with that. They think that everybody earned their spot on the shelf. But people are paying to be in eye level.
Laura Briscoe: [00:26:48] To to clarify that, though, you do earn your spot in that chain. Okay. It’s not like you just said, I’m going to give you 50,000. Put me on the shelf. Right. So you do have to go through an evaluation process. They do category reviews for your products. You go through tastings, cuttings just like Ronda experienced or shared earlier. But if they select you, depending on the size of the chain, then there is normally some type of a fee involved. And it could be like just as Michelle shared, anywhere from $500 to several thousand per SKU per item. But but you do earn that spot. What I think the average consumer doesn’t understand, though, is there’s two parts to this. One for a retailer, while they may look at the at the high level, like their margin is so great, like they may have layered maybe 35% onto the cost from the distributor, that that margin gets whittled down very, very quickly between all the SKUs that they’re carrying, the management of it all, the people that they’re know that are in store. Et cetera. Damage loss, what have you. So so there’s that piece of it. But also, anytime you see an item on sale in a grocery store, a buy one, get one or it’s $2 off or whatever, that money is actually coming out of the manufacturer’s pocket, not the grocery store, unless you have a partnership with them where they might step up and share in some of the in some of the the the coupon, if you will.
Laura Briscoe: [00:28:25] So my favorite thing is when someone reaches out to me from Wisconsin and said, oh my God, your product is on sale at X, Y, Z, I’m super excited. And I’m thinking, yes, I’m paying for that. I am well aware that that is on sale there because we made that happen. So there’s just a lot if someone is planning on launching a retail product, I mean, the number one thing I would suggest to them is go and talk to somebody who’s been doing it for a while. It is it’s it’s challenging. It’s hard. Just like Michelle, we’re bootstrapped. We have been since the beginning. And it’s expensive if you don’t know what you’re walking into. You are at huge risk. I’ve been fortunate enough to learn over the last 19 years as I went, but we had some hard lessons. Really hard lessons. It’s it’s. It’s got its challenges.
Lee Kantor: [00:29:16] So is it still fun?
Michele Freeman: [00:29:20] Well, it’s funny for me because this is actually something I chose to do. I retired at 40, so I’ve been patiently waiting for my husband to retire so that we could do this. This is something that I’ve always wanted to do. So in trust, there are much better ways to to spend your retirement money. There’s a lot of easier things to do. So I wouldn’t suggest, hey, start a business at 57. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that for everyone. But for me, this is something that has been in the patient making, dreaming, hoping, praying for for a very, very long time. And I’m extremely happy and extremely proud that we’ve been able to do this. And you have everyone has their quitting days where you wake up and go, my God, why did I do this? And then you have those other days where you’re like, I’m so glad that I’m doing this. I could burst. So it’s within it’s like any other job, you know, you have your good days and you have your bad.
Laura Briscoe: [00:30:31] And luckily the good outstripped the bad by without a doubt far outpaced. Yeah, we wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t. And it is. Yes, it is still fun. And it’s not just still it is fun because as owners of the business and being the entrepreneurs who created the products and knowing that we have more products that we’re bringing to market and seeing the impact that it has on people and hearing from them about what a change it has made in their lives, whether, you know, no matter what, you know who or where that person is, you know, that is I think the word is rewarding that I think it’s so much more rewarding than anything I can put my finger on. You know, there’s there is a lot to be said for knowing that you’ve put something out there that no one else has done before, because you’re doing it in a way that no one else has done before, and you’re supporting it in a true, authentic and transparent way that that just that lights you up, that keeps you moving forward. That. Yeah.
Lee Kantor: [00:31:35] So now, Rhonda, where do you find the joy in the work that you’re doing?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:31:40] I’m actually just bringing the food to the table in our restaurants, just finding, um, you know, like these businesses are just listening to these ladies and that passion. You know, I. I look for that passion. I can go to a huge floor filled with different vendors, and the passion and drive is what attracts me. Um, you know, so bringing those attractive and, you know, wanted items to the tables of all across the nation. It makes it exciting, you know, it’s almost like a challenge, but it’s really, really exciting to watch people enjoy themselves and our casinos to watch them, you know, post things on social media about their experience. There’s nothing more rewarding than all the hard work that goes on in the background just coming to fruition like that and seeing that happiness in our consumers and.
Lee Kantor: [00:32:40] Especially, I would imagine you get a lot of joy from seeing when you’re kind of discover this emerging brand and then you put it in front of your people and then it’s a success and you know that you had some help in making that impact.
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:32:56] Absolutely.
Lee Kantor: [00:32:58] Now, I’d like to throw this out to the group. How important is you mentioned social media a second ago. How important is social media and maybe share some tips that you’ve learned in order to maximize social media to help you grow your brands? Anybody want to take a stab at that?
Laura Briscoe: [00:33:20] Okay, I’ll I’ll jump in there first. I have a dream that someday I’ll use social media just for the pure fun of social media. I don’t I don’t get to do that right now because it’s always brand awareness related. Right. And best foot forward. But like I said earlier, it’s authentically, you know, one of my favorite things to do when we use social media is use our behind the scenes. Here’s how our product is made. Here are the people who are making it. Here’s the heart and soul that goes into what we do. Um, and it’s it. You learn to get a thick skin too, because you’re putting yourself out there. You don’t know how someone’s going to respond. And luckily we’ve been very well supported. But but it’s social media. I remember when social media first really started raising its head in about 2010, and I didn’t even understand the phrasing social media, like, what is that supposed to be? And it was all about Facebook at the time. Um, and so, you know, it’s just there’s so many ways you can put yourself out there or you put your product out there. And each platform requires a different message because the audience is different. So I have a real appreciation now for why you would want to have someone do that for you full time. But I haven’t gotten to that point yet because it’s still my voice. It’s my product, these are my babies and I want to make sure that that is the message that’s consistently shared. So that’s a that’s just a quick social media from Laura.
Michele Freeman: [00:34:58] Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. I am very used to speaking. I was an actor. I did commercials and voice overs for a living. I had no idea that I would be running back to do this again on our YouTube page, on our Pinterest page, on Facebook. I wasn’t on all of these platforms initially, but when you have a business, it’s imperative that you are so it is very time consuming. And when like like Laura said, when you’re bootstrapping your business and you don’t have a social media person, you have to rely on doing it yourself and your customers. I have never been so grateful to strangers in my life. I don’t like taking photos anymore at at 59. I don’t like it. I prefer I preferred it in my 20s and 30s. But now I get photos from someone’s soccer team. I get photos from a guy going to work who’s in Florida. A very cool picture. Um, TMZ took photos of Brad Pitt drinking my drink. Very exciting. So things like that that helps with social media when your customers are are in contact with you.
Michele Freeman: [00:36:23] That’s the thing that I’m the most grateful for because I do not want to be on camera every day. I just don’t. So when I get these photos from people very, very grateful for a here he is, the official DJ for the Dodgers, for the baseball team here in Los Angeles. He is a huge fan of our teas and he told all of his fans about it. And then all of those fans started purchasing it through here in LA and on Amazon and so forth. And I got so much social media presence from those people, so grateful, so very grateful for each and every person that has purchased our product, reviewed it, talked about it, held up a can. And you know, took a picture. So I am really big on interacting. Oops, sorry, very big on interacting with our customers to engage with them and showcase their pictures and showcase their bar or their hotel and things like that. So yeah, it’s a lot of work. It is a full time job that I look very forward to handing over in the future.
Speaker6: [00:37:44] Yes.
Lee Kantor: [00:37:45] Now is there anything that you’ve learned that you can be doing proactively to encourage your superfans to, you know, share on social media? I mean, to have TMZ take a picture of Brad Pitt holding the can is a, you know, lightning in a bottle kind of thing. And I don’t know if you could have planned that that way, but are there anything you can be proactively doing to encourage that level of sharing and engagement from your fans?
Michele Freeman: [00:38:14] Well, what. I do as I ask them when when they tag me in a photo on Instagram, I message back, Thank you so much. May I please share this on other platforms? And most people are like, Sure, yes. And especially with different demographics that I hadn’t thought about or things that I hadn’t thought about. It never occurred to me to mix our ginger tea with alcohol. It didn’t occur to me, but it occurred to a whole lot of people on Instagram and they sent me the recipes and beautiful pictures. The black Cherry. This is the this isn’t a I don’t know if you can see that or not. This is our original sweet tea black cherry. This is really popular, very popular back east and in the South. And people mix that with all sorts of alcohol that it would have never occurred to me. So look, interact, engage with your customers and you’ll see they’ll tell you what they like and what their favorite is. I also hadn’t considered heating our ginger chai, our chai flavored tea. Didn’t occur to me to heat it and put it with cream. My a lot of my customers do that. So you learn how your products are implemented in different households. And I really that’s exciting to me. That’s exciting that someone likes it and put their own spin on it, whether it’s alcohol or or heated or whatever. I’m really grateful for the interaction with our customers.
Laura Briscoe: [00:39:59] And to to springboard on that too. When you talk about super fans, we have super partners also, right? We have our one of our Granolas, which is a coconut granola used exclusively by a few different chains of businesses that do acai bowls and smoothie bowls. And so they’re constantly promoting everything on social media to encourage their audience. And by nature of that, they’re tagging us. And so people understand that we are part of that product. And so we’re able to enjoy exposure to their fan base. And then people will end up going to buy the retail product because they want to have it in between or what have you, and buy the same thing as Michelle saying that she hadn’t thought about X, Y or Z with her product. We’ve had chefs from around the country who have taken our products and used them in such creative ways on their menus that I never would have thought about. My favorite is one who has taken our chocolate granola and soaked it overnight in milk and then strains. It uses the base, the milk to make ice cream and then dries out the granola and uses that as a crumble on the dessert. Okay, so what? Right. So just kind of fantastic to see and to help push the boundaries where the answer isn’t just a yogurt parfait or a bowl of cereal, but it’s literally breakfast to dessert. These are things I’ve learned as a result of social media and a result of the partnerships that we have.
Lee Kantor: [00:41:29] And it sounds like you’re both doing a great job in creating that human to human connection that, you know, is so important in today to have that authenticity and that relationship and that level of trust between the brand and the consumer is so important to differentiate yourself from maybe some of the larger players who can’t really make those one on one connections that you’re making.
Laura Briscoe: [00:41:55] You know, I think that 1 to 1 connection is one of the reasons our products taste better, because the bigger the company gets, the more outsourced and co manufactured and everything else. Something happens in that manufacturing process that takes away from the authentic flavor of what it is you originally went out to make. Because there’s some there’s some big competitors to us. I mean, huge. But you can it just doesn’t have that same artisan. Feel and flavor to it.
Speaker6: [00:42:31] He’s right.
Michele Freeman: [00:42:31] Laura So right. It cheapens the product and we’ve heard it before. There are certain things that are will never be in my products. And high fructose corn sirup is one of them. Under no circumstances. There are certain things that big companies will use to cheapen. They’ll use ginger powder. That’s by no means as effective as organic cold pressed ginger juice. Huge, huge difference in your body and in the nutritional value of it. So there yes, there are cheaper ways to make everything, but that’s one I know, Laura, and that’s one thing I really admire about her company as well. You’re not taking the cheap route. You’re taking the correct route to health and deliciousness. So that’s I think that’s why we get along.
Speaker6: [00:43:29] So. Now.
Lee Kantor: [00:43:31] Rhonda, can you share a little bit about how social media plays at Caesars? Because, I mean, you have so many brands doing so many things, it must be hard to kind of control, it seems, the uncontrollable.
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:43:43] Yeah, I mean, it can be good and bad like everyone knows and you do have to develop thick skin, but it’s also a good, um, a good information platform. So if there is a problem that we’re not aware of, it’s being watched and being looked at to make sure that it’s not a real problem that we can fix. It’s a very large corporation, so things can slip through the cracks or there could be an issue that maybe someone’s not aware of. You know, it’s good and bad. You know, sometimes you just have unhappy people that go out there and say things that, you know, may not really be a valid, you know, thing, but you have to appreciate everyone’s opinions and take the good from it that you can. It’s definitely something that we use a lot in marketing, getting all of the different activities and shows and, you know, specials and restaurants that are opening, you know, anything that’s happening out there to our consumers. So it’s great for that. And it’s it’s really is damaging as you think it can be. We need to know the bad stuff, too. So you just really have to find the good parts of that.
Lee Kantor: [00:44:57] So as we’re getting close to wrapping here, Rhonda, is there what do you need more of? How can we help you? Are you looking for more kind of interesting ingredients to play with at Caesars and the different restaurants? Are you looking for more chefs? What what do you need more of and how can we help?
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:45:17] Yeah, I mean, chefs, if you’re looking to work in any of our restaurants or at Caesars Entertainment, please go on caesars.com and look at career opportunities. We are always looking for talent out there for sure. Same thing with vendors. Please always reach out to me and I can provide Michele and Laura, you know, I can provide you with my contact information. I’m always looking for new innovative products out there. And especially as Laura was explaining and Michelle, you know, things these chefs can play with, you know, figure out what they can come up with with these new items. It’s really nice to have clean products that they can do a lot of things. And I mean, who knows, you know, your ginger tea could be in a soup. You just never you never know what these chefs can do. Keep your minds open and don’t just walk by a restaurant or a side shop a breakfast bar and think that your product couldn’t belong because you never know.
Lee Kantor: [00:46:17] So, Rhonda, one more time, the website for Caesars.
Rhonda Busnardo: [00:46:20] It’s just caesars.com. Very easy.
Lee Kantor: [00:46:23] Great. Laura what do you need and how can we help you?
Laura Briscoe: [00:46:27] So what I really appreciate is when we get an email from one of our consumers that shares that they have a market local to them in the state that they live in, that they’d love to see our product in that we may not have ever heard of. So it gives us an opportunity to find placement with another independent because similar to what Michelle was saying, you know, the specialty independents around the country, you know, there’s such great stores. They have such a variety of products there. They’re very foodie driven with the products that they carry. And it’s usually a really good match for us. So I really would encourage anyone listening to this. If you don’t have one of our larger retailers near you to please share what your what the what the local independent is and let us know so we can share our products with them to bring to the store. And in addition to that, if there is their local smoothie shop or a restaurant, a breakfast restaurant or something like that where they know we’d be a great fit on their menu, let us know so we can send some samples, because I think everybody deserves to have Laura’s gourmet granola in their diet at least once during the day. So let us help you.
Lee Kantor: [00:47:38] And then the website. The best way to get Ahold of you.
Laura Briscoe: [00:47:41] Our website is Laura’s Gourmet.com And. And you can always email us at Hello at Gourmet.com.
Lee Kantor: [00:47:48] Michelle, what do you need and how can we help you?
Michele Freeman: [00:47:51] Agreed. Everything Laura said those small independent stores as well as larger chains. Because we are nationwide already. We can and we have our own manufacturing. We have the capability of utilizing more stores. I guess that’s the easiest way of putting it. Um, we are trying to focus this year, 2023 on the West Coast a little more. I actually have more stores in New York than I do in California. I’d like to even that out this year. And also I would very much appreciate sharing with these other stores. If you go in and ask, we’ve actually gotten into stores simply because customers have said, hey, I want to get the vitamin iced tea. I want to get the vitamin ginger tea. So that has helped us. You’d be surprised just walking in and asking. And then when all else fails, Amazon, we’re right there waiting on you. So that’s also an opportunity to enjoy our products as well.
Lee Kantor: [00:49:05] And Michelle, the website.
Michele Freeman: [00:49:07] Our website is Venice Beach beverage.com and you can find us at Venice Beach beverage.com on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
Lee Kantor: [00:49:21] Good stuff. Well, thank you all for sharing your stories today. You’re each doing important work and we appreciate you.
Laura Briscoe: [00:49:29] Thank you for the opportunity to share. We really appreciate it.
Michele Freeman: [00:49:33] Yeah. Appreciate you.
Lee Kantor: [00:49:35] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next. Time for Women in Business.
Kimberly Stark with The Flourish Consultancy
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Kimberly Stark, CEO and founder of The Flourish Consultancy and prolific leader, has created one of the top California based, professional and personal development education companies. Kimberly’s B.S. in psychology coupled with her own life altering story of overcoming, spurred the innovative information curator to construct a highly developed program bridging the gap between conventional education taught in schools and the tools needed to handle day to day stresses and obstacles in order to “successfully adult.”
Kimberly seized the opportunity to expertly fill this space for others, by taking her course to market as an employee wellness program. The Flourish Consultancy reduces measurable costs to organizations as seen through attrition, absenteeism, lower productivity and increases overall employee satisfaction, productivity and wellness. The Flourish masterclass adds value to organizations who understand that supporting their employees is the ultimate path to profitability and has been credited with changing the trajectory of lives for the better.
The Flourish Model was born based on real world experiences and scientific evidence supporting the bolstering or rebuilding a life in a short period of time. Kimberly works with a wide range of organizations from school districts to life insurance companies, the hospitality industry, restaurants, and more.
In addition to her program, Kimberly provides employee wellness programs, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) for adults and educators, and is accredited to provide CPA continued education hours, giving each person the agency they need to redeem and redefine challenges while creating systems that support future individual and organizational goals. Kimberly has worked with thousands of people, educating them on the cutting edge teachings of the Flourish Consultancy. Kimberly is a respected philanthropist, community leader and lives in California with her four children.
Connect with Kimberly on LinkedIn and follow The Flourish Consultancy on Instagram.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.
Stone Payton: [00:00:14] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast CEO and founder with The Flourish Consultancy, Ms. Kimberly Stark. How are you?
Kimberly Stark: [00:00:34] I’m good, thanks for having me, Stone.
Stone Payton: [00:00:37] Well, it is a delight to have you on the show. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose, what you and your team are really out there trying to do for folks.
Kimberly Stark: [00:00:55] Sure. So. I. When I entered adulthood, I noticed that there was a gap in the education between what we learned when we were young. And I have a college degree and what it actually takes to successfully adult. So for about 15 years I had this idea of a life skills class. Like what are the things that we really need to know in order to build a successful adult life moving forward? It existed there for, like I said, probably 10 to 15 years, but I decided to take it to market in 2020 as an answer on how do we build true strategy through the adversity that we all face as an employee wellness program. So that is kind of the background. We have two different ways we speak about it. Our clients are our buyers, our corporations or school districts. And so for them we speak to it in essence as increasing profitability through preemptively providing education to your employees, increasing engagement, increasing wellness. But to the end user, it’s a true personalized strategic plan through adversity or just leveling up your life. But it’s not just like a hang in there. You got this, but providing some true tools and strategy in order to build a successful adult life. And it turns out in the long run, it makes a company more profitable as well.
Stone Payton: [00:02:26] Well, it’s got to be it must be incredibly rewarding work. What what at this point, are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about the work for you these days?
Kimberly Stark: [00:02:40] You know, I guess both. It’s sort of like most entrepreneurs and a lot of your listeners, you like something, so you build a business around it so that way you can keep doing it. I mean, I’m sure you’re a perfect example of this. You like interviewing? You like talking about entrepreneurship. You’re great on the radio, so you build this company around it so you can keep going. And I’m no different, right? Like I am a total nerd on personal development. I love it. It’s all the books that I read. It’s my favorite conversations. I love increasing wellness. You know, it’s always been within me to help people. And as I look back in my life, what I wanted to do with my life was always in that vein, but it was always according to what I what options I knew at the time. Like so for instance, when I was younger, I wanted to be a missionary because that was like all I kind of knew on how to help. And then it became a social worker. I had a social work degree and then in college it turned into a psychology, and I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. And as my kids were little, I started Moms group. So it all sort of was that same thing. And now the work that I’m doing is also from that same mission of wanting to help in any way I can and take the stories and the adversity combined with my education and continual learning, and then package it to help others build their own lives and navigate the adversity that they face. Because we all face it, it’s just going to look differently in each of our lives. So if we can provide some true, like I said, tools to do it, then we can make the entire, you know, kind of culture leveled up.
Stone Payton: [00:04:26] So let’s do let’s dive into the work a little bit and we’ll pick a scenario. Maybe you have a client scenario or we can devise one, but I’d love to hear. I’m particularly interested in the early stages of a relationship with the organization that you’re serving in that way. And then maybe what some of the work looks like on the ground with the with the people who are actually going through the the process.
Kimberly Stark: [00:04:50] Perfect. Okay. So we have a couple of different verticals. And I’ll just tell you this part, but we have a couple of different verticals. We have corporations, so like corporate for instance, like Mutual of Omaha or somewhere in that vertical. Then we also work with school districts and so we have an education space. We also have CPAs is another vertical, so they get their CPE units. We work with hospitality, so like restaurants to help their staff. But really, so depending on the organization, the contract looks a little bit different. But we’re doing the same thing. The class itself, it’s an eight module master class and it is offered to the employees within that organization. So let’s just say, for instance, a company, one of your listeners decides to work with me. We reach out and then we’d work with them on what is the best way. So think of it as like professional development or an employee wellness program for their employees. We can offer it in a couple different structures. Typically we do once a week for eight weeks, 8 to 10 weeks in a one hour zoom and during, and I’ll let you know like what the content is. But sometimes we’ll do a half day sort of retreat style deep dive with four follow up zooms. Sometimes we’ll do two half days, but that’s essentially what it is. It’s about 8 to 10 hours of content and we can structure it in whatever makes sense to the company.
Stone Payton: [00:06:14] I got to believe that the employee, the people who are going through this process, if it’s framed properly and I’m sure not only do you frame it properly, you probably coach and guide your client in how to frame it properly. It’s got to be received as a true benefit. My company investing in me. Is that accurate?
Kimberly Stark: [00:06:33] Yes. And oh, what’s so amazing to live in the time that we live is that always we’ve always probably had this intuitive understanding of a connection between the well being of your employee and the profitability of the company. But that wasn’t always a culture, right? It was a culture before. It was like, leave your personal life at home. We don’t talk about that here. Like just man up and you know, that’s what it is. But the well-being of the employee has always affected company, bottom line, always. It’s just now that we’re talking about it now it’s really cool is we have visionary forward thinking leaders that are on the front edge of this who are preemptively wanting to support their employees through a lot of different ways. But ours is specifically through a wellness program, through an education or a class. And you have these managers who want to have these really powerful, productive wellbeing conversations with their team but don’t know where to start. And that’s where we can come in and say, Hey, here’s this environment for a shared language and here’s how to start these wellbeing conversation conversations. That will actually level up your engagement, which then levels up your profitability.
Stone Payton: [00:07:44] Yeah. And that kind of engagement can it sounds to me like it would prepare the ground for transitions. I’m from the change management world a long, long time ago when I had black hair. And I know that, you know, managing the human aspects of change was every bit as daunting as the technical aspects of a merger and acquisition. You know, any of that, I would think it would really cultivate the ground and equip your people to to whether, you know, the the challenges of change, but also make them much more productive. So the content let’s do a little bit of a dive into the content. Um, I don’t have the work ethic or the intellect or the pedigree to design a curriculum like that, but I would think if I were, I might want to approach topics like mental toughness or resilience or, you know, kind of getting outside of your normal pattern. Are those some of the kinds of things that you attack?
Kimberly Stark: [00:08:39] 100%?
Stone Payton: [00:08:40] Okay.
Kimberly Stark: [00:08:41] Someone wants to. So what leaders right now need to focus on almost more than anything is how to build, how to relate, how to build within their company, and also how to relay building true strategy through adversity on the back side of Covid and the tail end. And even just when helping people get through their lives. What’s the strategy behind it versus just a you got this or keep your chin up. So that’s what we’re providing. And also when people just want to level up their lives, they often or hit some sort of crisis or trauma. The problem is you don’t know where to start. So what we want to offer is a plan, is a strategic plan. So with, for instance, the content that you just mentioned, instead of just like a kind of weekly drip of it without a plan or somewhere to frame, we give them a framework. So that way when they do get these little bits of knowledge, they’re somewhere to hang it in an actual process. So let me walk you through that process. So at the very core of. Resiliency is a shift of perspective on hardships themselves, is understanding that the stress that comes at us or the adversity that comes at us, if we are willing to shift our perspective on it, can be utilized as a catalyst to not only wisdom or growth or expansion, but ultimately your greatest strength potentially. So really getting that mindset dialed in and starting to look at stress and hardship and adversity as a invitation to growth and giving the tools on how to do that.
Kimberly Stark: [00:10:23] So that is the first step in the Flourish model. The second step is agency. And you mentioned transition. Well, let me back up is agency. So it’s yes, your hardships can be redeemed. What you walk through, that’s challenging, you can use that for it, but you are the one that has to do it. So if you’re holding anyone else responsible, like it’s not even in your best interest. So really taking ownership. So in this module we talk about how do you navigate fear, How do you make yourself keep going even when you’re terrified? How do you navigate and build a true roadmap through change? So you were just talking about change management. In this module, we offer a shared language on a roadmap through transition, because the scariest thing about transitions is the uncertainty. But if you know, and this is based on the work of Dr. Virginia Satir, but if you know that every change, every transition has six steps along the way, and now you have the language to be able to identify that step those steps. So when you’re in the middle of chaos and what feels like chaos, you have words to it. And you know, well, you’re right on track. It’s a really uncomfortable part of the process. But we can now identify it, have some shared language. You can talk to your team about it. It’s helpful because it’s no longer uncertain. You can kind of a bridge. So shift your perspective on hardship, own your agency.
Kimberly Stark: [00:11:45] The next one is Imagine Forward. This is where we pull in a lot of the data around vision. And we we talk about something called strategic foresight, which has been used in the military and then in business. And answering this question of typically people think of. Making wise decisions moving forward. You pull from from experience, right? That’s how you know what to do next as you look at the past. But what happens if you’re in a situation where there is no previous thing to pull from? What do you do now? Well, there’s this thing called strategic foresight and creating these imagined worlds. And starting there, what happens when you start in this imagined world is you get past it. Number one. It can also build some strategy. And when maybe you haven’t gone through something before, but it also pushes you through any self-limiting beliefs you may have. Maybe you don’t have a blueprint of anyone and your family who’s who has gone through this. You don’t see yourself as that way. And the imposter syndrome. So we work with our clients through this process of strategic foresight and imagining the best outcome on on the other side of this adversity or change or whatever you’re trying to do. And you can do that on a micro level in your own life and ask yourself, what’s the most beautiful world I can imagine, both with my health and my relationships and my home, but also on a business level. So those are the first three steps.
Kimberly Stark: [00:13:13] After that we hit mindset. So that’s what you were talking about really. But it’s not just growth versus fixed and operating out of a growth mindset. We talk about what that is and how to do that. But before we do that, we need to be aware of the thoughts that are even going on in our head. And so we dive really into being aware of your thoughts and potentially the the lenses through which you’re seeing and experiencing the world. That number one, you may not even realize you are and number 2nd May be false. They might not even be real. And here you are operating. And it’s not even like a real belief, you know, it’s a belief you have, but maybe it’s not a real thing. So then and then switching those out and choosing the beliefs that serve you and move you forward and give provide resilience like resilient mindsets versus mindsets that might stunt your resilience. And then the fifth one is systems. So if your perspective own your agency, imagine forward, check your mindset and then set up your systems. And in the systems one, we talk about automating the fundamentals and and all of that, but we also pull a lot or push into identity and the role of identity, the role that your own self identity plays in the efficacy of wanting to change your habits and why you need to start kind of with identity on the front end of changing your habits versus changing your habits and waiting for your identity to catch up.
Stone Payton: [00:14:42] Well, I’m delighted to learn that you’re able to do this with a medium like Zoom. It strikes me that that gives you a lot more flexibility and the ability to reach people. You might it might find it difficult to reach otherwise, at least in a timely fashion. I am a little bit curious, having come from the training and consulting world a long time ago, what the mechanism for the what happens after you kind of bring these conversations to the front There you have you must have discovered a way to really let people chew on them, do some skill practice. Can you speak to that a little bit? You know, I’m just and I’m asking, gang, if you ever want to get a bunch of free consulting, get yourself a radio show. You can get just about any answer you want. But I am genuinely curious of how you can kind of really get beyond just the the information sharing piece of it.
Kimberly Stark: [00:15:43] Sure. And you are correct. I am purposeful in that I don’t want it to just be a I mean, hopefully our clients find it entertaining and fun, but I want to really create change in both their lives and the companies that hire us. So we found a couple pieces that work well for that. So yes, the model of the class is a content or live teaching either through Zoom, we have we have national clients, we have international clients. So those are done by Zoom or in person if they’re more local or a combination. But yes, there’s content and then there’s a reflection time of them answering some sort of we call them requirements, but the exercise of answering the question or applying the content specifically to themselves and then a sort of turn to your neighbor piece and let’s chat about it and like share out, right? So that way you’re, you’re, you’re connecting with your team, your colleagues in a way that is different than like a happy hour or a giving, maybe a giving back, which I support both, but it’s just another tool that you can use.
Kimberly Stark: [00:16:57] But there’s a there’s it’s like an invitation and say, Hey, we’re going to talk about this right now, where I find. The most success with our clients is to have an internal champion or an internal leader who is who has a leadership role within the organization but is just as willing to be vulnerable and show up and tell their stories and tell their failures that they’ve turned into benefits and say, Yeah, I felt imposter syndrome too, or any of those things. Because what that does is they’ve now modeled to the team that this is an environment where we’re going to talk about this and you can feel free sharing as much as you feel comfortable, but that your story is only going to be a benefit to the greater team because it shows humanness and it shows, like I said, a vulnerability and a willingness to learn and a growth mindset. And those are the clients that I have essentially the most. So much so, so the most success with so much so that now I make sure we have that sort of person in each of our courses.
Stone Payton: [00:18:09] I bet they learned so much from each other and find and are able to help the other person identify strengths and strategies. This peer to peer is the phrase that comes to me, but this this a peer to peer learning, like learning from each other. I bet they learn as much, if not more, from that than they do just the original content dump. Right. That’s just almost a catalyst for that, isn’t it?
Kimberly Stark: [00:18:35] Yes, because things content comes alive. I mean, there’s definitely content that you hear or it’s education. So there are things you hear where you’re like, oh my gosh. And the lights go off, you know, go on. And and it really hits. But there’s a different level that hits when someone tells their story and someone says, Here’s an example of when this content meant something to me or, Oh yeah, I know what you’re talking about because this happened to me. And it almost like, I’m not kidding you. I know it’s in it’s at work, but it ends up being this really powerful. Energy connectivity experience that happens that ends up changing the dynamic. And now the data show that A when a person conveys how they feel about their life and their overall happiness, you know, you have kind of like the main buckets, your work, your relationships, your home, how you feel in your body, all of that. But the number one contributor to how happy, how people convey, how happy they are is their career well-being. And one layer below that is the second thing is the how they feel about their manager. So when to answer your question before of like, why am I doing this work if I’m trying to genuinely increase people’s well-being? I decided to take it to market as a corporate wellness program versus just, you know, versus coming a coach because career well-being and how you feel about your manager are the two biggest contributors to how someone feels about their life. So if we can increase their how they feel about their career and their career well-being and their engagement and feeling seen and heard and start there and then we can upskill, upskill bosses to coaches through this, also education, and then we can deliver this education that helps people apply and build true strategy in their personal lives. And we can make a lot bigger impact.
Stone Payton: [00:20:45] Well, I love the focus and I’m particularly enamored with the the mechanism or the process. It just occurred to me and I feel like I’ve experienced this at various points in my life when I’ve taken a stab at self-development, how much I’ve gained if we spent that one afternoon, like trying to help Bob or Mary like like it was, it was so valuable for me, right? Like I learned I took a lot away from that. I love and I can it makes all the sense in the world to me that there would be an X factor and it would be so much more productive and powerful. And it sounds like you’ve pulled this off. If leadership isn’t just writing the check, but they’re diving right in there with you. They’re being vulnerable. They’re learning. They’re sharing. That’s wow. You’ve I think you’ve cracked the code on this thing.
Kimberly Stark: [00:21:35] Well, that is how you make for an impactful leader in the sense that I mean. I, I say this carefully because clearly there are a lot of different facets to being a great leader within an organization. You need to know what you’re doing in order to lead the company forward. But this the increasing if you’re looking to increase profitability, engage employee engagement and wellbeing is so tied to profitability like we’re talking an increase in 20%. So as a good leader, why wouldn’t you, number one, start there? And there’s there’s 20% increase in profitability right there. But. But even taking it further, people want to work for you. People will will get to the point where they’re where they’re wanting to come to work and work for you regardless because they feel that you’re prioritizing their health and they feel seen. They feel like their work matters. You’re going to have a much better retention rate and so you’re not going to lose money in needing to train people over and over. And leadership is changing. In the in corporate America from the sort of dominant role. People just have less respect for that now, like in a dominant domineering role. And it’s coming more and more conversation around servant leadership. And essentially what what that’s doing is, yes, you have to know what you’re doing and you have to know how to lead people, but you’re coming at it from a different position. And this tie to vulnerability and a tie to a willingness to see your mistakes and then change them and learn and grow and model that to your team only makes for not only a much healthier environment, but a more profitable one.
Stone Payton: [00:23:32] That is an impressive stat. 20%. It would it would be one of several compelling things about this whole conversation for for me, how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for for a firm like yours? Is it as simple and straightforward as an ROI conversation or do you ever find that some senior level execs embrace the conversation a lot quicker and a lot better than than others? Do you do you have to get out there and market? Like how do you get to have the I got to believe if if someone in leadership has this conversation with you, I’ll bet they’re writing a check. But like, do you have to do some sales and marketing stuff to get here?
Kimberly Stark: [00:24:12] Yes, good question. That’s a really good one because it is changed over the last three years since I’ve taken this to market in 2020. There was well, I’ll say like for the business owner standpoint, right? So when I when I took it to market because my mission as we go back to, is that all may flourish. This is the mission. I get up and I’m serving every day that everyone has the opportunity to flourish. And I’m helping that mission through education and mindset shifts and essentially mine train the combination of content and mind training. So when I took it to market my pitch to the the people I was pitching was, Hey, don’t you want to increase the wellbeing? How can you support your team through the pandemic on this true strategy, through adversity? What I found was that what I was selling was the impact to the end user versus selling the Y to my buyer. So my buyer is the company. And sometimes, ideally, I mean, right, Ideally the people you’re pitching want the well-being for their employees, but that isn’t especially at that time there was not there was definitely like an Avatar executive who did not want to have these types of conversations at work. And it was very like, that stays at home. So now fortunately, that’s shifting. But regardless, you do have to you know, if you’re pitching the CFO, if you’re pitching a company that has shareholders, the conversation I lead with to those hearers of the conversation is increasing profitability.
Kimberly Stark: [00:25:54] We increase profitability through boosting employee engagement and wellbeing and the data show that you need to do both. So the let me let me back it up for you. Career well-being is the foundation of a thriving life, right? And so let we talk about it. So when I talk about I talk about in two ways. I talk about the end user, the employee who’s experiencing our class, and then also the buyer, the company who’s hiring us for this program. Okay. So from the end user career well-being they have found is the very foundation of a thriving life. So as I said to you before, when people feel the happiest about their lives, it’s most tied to I mean, of course everything’s intertwined, but it’s most tied to career well-being. Why do people feel happy about their career? Because they have high levels of engagement, and if they’re engaged in their career, they feel a few things. They like what they’re doing. They feel like their company sees them. They feel like they’re they can voice their opinion that their company values, the contribution they’re making. How do you get increased engagement? The number one.
Kimberly Stark: [00:27:02] You have a couple factors, but the number one contributor to increasing engagement is development, education. And that’s why we come in here. So we hit development. Education leads to higher engagement, leads to higher career well-being, and that’s why we start there. But you don’t get the same stats as by simply increasing engagement, the combination of increasing engagement and increasing well-being. That’s where you’re going to really supersize your stats. Now, from the conversation with the buyer, with our the companies that hire us, yes, data is showing that you can increase profitability by over 20% by increasing engagement levels. And again, how do you get your your employees engaged that they feel seen, They heard they can have well-being conversations, that we’re looking at the entire person. We’re providing some education on how to build strategy through adversity. And not only like when you hit trauma and crisis, but also how to level up your overall well-being. And we’re not just talking about like diet and exercise. We’re talking about the in the entire person. And yes, you can hit diet and exercise and make more impact in in those areas, but you’ve got to start where we start perspective agency imagination, mindset systems. Then you can apply that to bodily health, to relationship health and to career well-being.
Stone Payton: [00:28:31] Before we wrap, I’m going to shift gears on you a little bit, if I can. I’m interested to know, and I think our listeners will be too, about what passions, if any, you might have outside the scope of your work, outside the scope of what we’re talking about. My listeners know I like to hunt, fish and travel outside of doing what I do with Business RadioX, but anything in particular you have a tendency to nerd out about or go and pursue That just sort of gives you a little bit of a break from this.
Kimberly Stark: [00:29:00] Yes. So, so and I love this question, too, because whenever you ask people this question, they have like one thing. There’s just endless combinations, right? You have someone who is a CPA, but they love sewing and they cook on the side or they’re just like all these combinations that you never expect from people. So, um, well, I would say two things. Number one is that I am also a single mom of four teenagers and I have them full time. And so that takes up a lot of my life. And a lot of my focus is they’re thriving and they’re flourishing. And so that unapologetically is what I’m focused on. I also have a really great community. I’m a I’m a California girl through and through. And that I grew up on the Monterey Bay in like Santa Cruz and surfing. And now I live in Newport Beach, which is also on the water. So we I am often like for fun, it’s on and around the water, whether it’s surfing or stand up, paddle paddleboarding or fishing or boating or anything that has to do swimming in the water, beach walks. But I will also say, and this is exciting too, I am launching a second company in. I have that. I have a background in travel. I was luxury leisure for a while and then business travel and now and popping back into travel and doing high end luxury leisure, doing a high end luxury leisure travel company. And I think why I love travel so much also goes back to my love for. Individuality and people and cultures and and in the same way, I like focusing on individuals, increasing their happiness and well-being. I think that’s what I love about travel, too, is seeing all the different types of landscapes and people and how people live and food they eat. And that’s incredibly and how small our world is. Honestly, it’s it’s rewarding for me.
Stone Payton: [00:31:10] Oh, well, congratulations on the new on the new effort. We for me, one of the reasons that I have been financially ambitious for so much of my career wasn’t so much about stacking up the money, but for me, a large expression of that is freedom and a way to the way that that often manifests for me is the freedom to travel. And I really and so that’s one of the reasons that Holly and I love to travel so much. We’ll have to have you come back on and get us updated on that effort at some point, if you like.
Speaker4: [00:31:41] I’d be happy to.
Stone Payton: [00:31:43] Absolutely. All right. Let’s, uh, if we could leave our listeners with a with a few I’ll call them pro tips. Just a few things they could be reading, doing, not doing, thinking about if they would like to begin to pursue this path of their own toward career well being. And look, gang, the number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Kimberly or somebody on her team. But, you know, maybe there’s something that they kind of get stimulated by hearing this conversation and they say, you know what, I’m going to start thinking more about this are few actionable things that we could be thinking about or doing to sort of begin to move in that direction.
Speaker4: [00:32:25] Sure.
Kimberly Stark: [00:32:27] I would say. Began. Okay. I would say a couple of things. It is a game changing to start shifting your perspective of hardships and knowing that as things come at, you start asking yourself, What can I learn from this? What is this here to teach me? Okay. I would also say in this process you have to be aware of, like I said earlier, what your thoughts even are. One tool to help you do this is a daily writing practice. I’m a huge proponent of a daily writing practice, and even my clients are like, What do we write? I’m telling you, just get something to write. And before you log on to your email or anything in the morning, like grab your coffee and go and just figure. Find out what’s in your head. One exercise that I use for my clients in order to do that is to take your paper and write different quadrants and write little like kind of the buckets of your life, your career, your relationships, how you feel in your body, where you how you feel about your home and your activities and your community, and get really quiet with yourself and write down what are your thoughts in your head in each of those areas. When you think about your career, what’s the first sentence that comes into your head? And we’re we’re operating day in and day out without realizing the lenses or the thoughts or the beliefs that we’re engaging with the world based on.
Kimberly Stark: [00:33:54] So first, you need to be aware of what that is. Then I would say, and when I did this in my own life, for example, when I got really clear about like what even the thoughts were in my head around these, they were awful. They were awful. I had no idea I was even engaging with the world through this like, belief system or thought or fear. Essentially, it was like fear. Right. So then turn the page, write those buckets again and answer this question. What is the most beautiful life that I can imagine? What’s the best life? I can imagine each of these buckets. But don’t just write it out and write the answers. Write it out in the framework of preemptive Gratitudes there’s a lot of research that backs gratitude and how it changes your day. It changes how you interact with the world, but write it out in this structure. I am so grateful that. But don’t just write what you’re grateful for. I want you to write a made up thing and imagine world what your world looks like. So, for instance, you know you want to up level your your physical health. I am so grateful that, like, in your most imagined world, you’re doing an ocean swim every day.
Kimberly Stark: [00:34:57] So I am so grateful that I did two ocean swims in a row in your most beautiful world, like you’re closer with your brother. I am so grateful that, like, we’ve met up twice this month. So get clear about what that looks like. And I’m telling you, like, blow it off. So in your career, if you want to write a book or whatever, I’m so grateful that I met with a publisher, but start there. And then when you do, if you’re daily writing, you’re constantly going back and looking at that list. And what happens is, number one, you’ve now gotten rid of those dumb frameworks and dumb thoughts that have been holding you back. And number two, you’re starting to dream about like, what do you want? And if you really believe like the the world is your oyster and you start there, don’t think about like how you’re going to make it happen. Just start there first, then you can. Little by little began to see little micro steps that are starting to get you closer to that. And that’s where the real fun begins. And now you know what you’re getting up and shooting for every day. You have a plan that you’ve kind of like given yourself a blueprint and backed it out.
Stone Payton: [00:36:07] I am so glad I asked. I now have a new mantra, preemptive gratitude. I wrote it.
Speaker4: [00:36:11] Perfect. Perfect. I am so grateful that. Yeah.
Stone Payton: [00:36:15] All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to reach out, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you or someone on your team starting to tap into some of your work. Whatever you feel like is appropriate, you know, the coordinates, LinkedIn, website, whatever.
Kimberly Stark: [00:36:29] Sure. So any information on the Flourish consultancy, you can go to the Flourish consultancy.com to reach out to me directly. You can email me at Kimberly at the flourish consultancy.com. But honestly I am active in two social apps or platforms and that is Instagram. I’m Kimberly. I’m at Kimberly and Stark on Instagram and feel free to DM me. I love having conversations with people who also nerd out on this stuff. I’m totally fine with you reaching out even to bring us in that way. And then I’m also on LinkedIn. I’m active on LinkedIn at Kimberly and Stark on LinkedIn also.
Stone Payton: [00:37:13] Well, Kimberly, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for sharing your insight, your perspective. Keep up the good work. The work you’re doing is so important and we certainly appreciate you.
Kimberly Stark: [00:37:29] Thank you. Stone It was a pleasure. Thanks for the invite and thanks for the conversation there. My favorite.
Stone Payton: [00:37:36] Well, the pleasure is all mine. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, CEO and founder with the flourish. Consultancy, Ms.. Kimberly Stark and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.
