angishields, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

BRX Pro Tip: Keep Delivering, Keep Selling

May 3, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Keep Delivering, Keep Selling

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BRX Pro Tip: Keep Delivering, Keep Selling

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Today’s pro tip, Lee, keep delivering, keep selling.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:08] Yeah. You shouldn’t stop selling once your client has purchased something from you. You should always keep delivering the value, obviously, that you promised your client. That’s critical. But listen to what their frustrations are. Listen to what they need and figure out ways that you can incorporate some of that into your service offering. You might be able to upsell them into an additional service, number one. But number two, if it works for them and you’re able to execute it well, you might be able to then offer that to other clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] So once you’ve sold your client something, it’s a lot easier to sell them another thing rather than finding a brand new client to sell them anything. So, always look at it in terms of trying to solve the problem that they have listened to their frustrations and figure out ways to keep serving them and keep selling them different services that you’re able to execute at a high level. And, again, if you do that for one, figure out a way that you can do that for all.

BRX Pro Tip: Are You Following Up Enough?

May 2, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: Are You Following Up Enough?

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BRX Pro Tip: Are You Following Up Enough?

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, the answers are so often in the questions. One of which is, are you following up enough?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Yeah. When it comes to sales and your prospects, you probably aren’t following up enough. Most salespeople give up on prospects after one or two attempts. They kind of go into this pile of folks that, “Yeah. I wish that would have worked out,” and they just kind of leave it alone. But successful salespeople know that they have to try and connect with those prospects about ten times in a variety of ways over a 30 day period before they move that prospect to some sort of a nurture campaign.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] And this is where you can really leverage some automation, and especially marketing automation can be your friend in this area. To me, I would much rather keep marketing to a prospect until I have a definitive no. And then, even after I got a definitive no, I would still send them my newsletter every month. You know, I wouldn’t quit after that.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] So, I think that most folks kind of give up on a prospect too early. When a lot of times, for prospects, the answer is not now. It’s not no. And then, if you’re just in front of them for a longer period of time, they’re going to remember you and they’re going to, hopefully, think of you the next time they have the problem that you solved.

Casey Gaetano with Integrity Compounding Pharmacy

May 1, 2023 by angishields

In & On Business

Casey Gaetano with Integrity Compounding Pharmacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Casey on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaker4: [00:05:06] Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shawn Stewart, Ron Sweatland and Anna Teal with Cherokee Cyber Commission

May 1, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Shawn Stewart, Ron Sweatland and Anna Teal with Cherokee Cyber Commission

00:00 /

Sponsored by Business RadioX ® Main Street Warriors

Cherokee Cyber Commission is a group of business owners and experts passionate about educating our community about cyber security and online safety. Our team speaks at various events and holds educational workshops in Cherokee County, GA.

Shawn Stewart has 25 years of experience with hundreds of international, commercial, military, and government IT projects.

He holds certifications with ISC2, Cisco, Microsoft, CompTIA, ITIL, Novell, and others.

He has a Masters in Cybersecurity, a Bachelors in IT, a Minor in Professional Writing, and is a published author.

Ronald Sweatland is the Founder and CEO of Orcannus Technologies, Inc and the Red Team Commander at CyberGate IT. He started in the computer industry about 30 years ago.

A few of the projects he worked on while still in high school was a massive computer overhaul of a large banking hub in Charlotte, NC and implementation of America Online (AOL).

After high school, he enlisted in the US Navy and became a Submarine Sonar Technician on the USS Los Angeles SSN 688, stationed in Pearl Harbor, HI.

While enlisted, he ported in Alaska, San Diego, Japan, South Korea, Guam, Australia, and Tasmania. Ronald did two Western Pacific Tours of Duty and several reconnaissance / SEALs missions during his time.

After the Navy, Ronald remained engaged in the computer sector in one capacity or another. He has also worked as an automotive technician, restaurant manager, software support engineer, smart bomb/munitions engineer, and director of technology.

Ronald was the Director of Technology for the School and Computing and Software Engineering for Southern Polytechnic State University until the merger with Kennesaw State University.

He currently has two degrees: Cybersecurity / Assurance and Criminal Justice / Pre Law. He hold certifications in FERPA, Ethical Hacking, Pen Testing, and LTE Communications. When not in front of a computer, Ronald can be found in a kitchen creating dishes, as food is his hobby and love.

Anna Teal is a published author and the owner of Teal Marketing, LLC, and Aphasia Readers, LLC. Somewhat of a serial entrepreneur, one of her passions is helping small businesses succeed online, whether it’s with branding, website development, or social media marketing.

With over 15 years of experience and an MBA in International Marketing, she’s witnessed the evolution of digital marketing firsthand and loves to leverage the latest and greatest strategies for her exclusive clientele.

She enjoys serving on the Chairman’s Council for the Cherokee Chamber of Commerce and is proud to sit on the board of the Cherokee Cyber Commission to spread awareness of the importance of cyber safety.

Follow Cherokee Cyber Commission on Facebook and YouTube. You can also donate and contact them.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon, and today’s episode is brought to you in part by our local small business initiative, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors. Defending capitalism, promoting small business and supporting our local community. For more information, go to Mainstreet warriors.org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors, Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at dieseldavid.com. You guys are in for a real treat this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone. Miss Anna Teal. How have you been doing?

Anna Teal: [00:01:11] I’m doing well. How are you?

Stone Payton: [00:01:12] I am doing well. Just returning from an overseas trip to Spain. Oh yeah. Gained a little bit of weight, enjoyed some food, had some marvelous experiences and kind of back in the saddle. Now. But I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation because we’re not really going to talk about your marketing company so much. You’ve got some other cool stuff going on. What is it that we’re going to talk about and who did you bring with you to help us?

Anna Teal: [00:01:35] All right. So I brought Ron Sweatland with Orcannus Technologies and then Shawn Stewart from Stewart Consulting. And we’re part of the Cherokee Cyber Commission, which is a initiative that, you know, it’s just a bunch of experts coming together that we’re passionate about educating the community on cyber security. So we do that by hosting events and doing all kinds of things, you know, to get out there and talk to seniors, schools, you know, different places in the community, to kind of share our vision and to help others.

Stone Payton: [00:02:06] Okay. So I got to ask why and with your permission, I’d like to ask all three of you individually, because I’d like to get that unique perspective. And I’ll I’ll start with you and then we’ll go around the we’ll go around the the horn. So, Anna, why did you get involved?

Anna Teal: [00:02:22] Um, basically because, you know, in my line of business, I encounter a lot of people who, you know, I have to obtain their credentials and sometimes their passwords aren’t as strong as they need to be. And, you know, I get a lot of interesting passwords or either their birthdate or their actual name verbatim or, you know, I’ve seen all different kinds of things and I’m like, Hey, man, you really should look at changing your password because your accounts need to be secure. So but yeah, yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:02:53] So I feel like I resemble that remark. So Shawn, what compelled you to get involved in this?

Shawn Stewart: [00:03:01] Man Well, I’ve been in the industry for about three decades now working on different layers of computers. It network things of that nature. And security has always been a big issue. And like we tell the kids these days, it’s like, I know your password and if I don’t know your password, nothing that you do online ever goes away. Keep that in mind. And they’re like, oh, but Snapchat. No, no, Snapchat. A subpoena can get everything that you just did. So keep that in mind. So we we want to educate not just businesses, but politicians, law enforcement, the children, of course, and the elderly who are the two biggest targets in our community right now for cybersecurity, especially for hacks and money. Anything that requires fraud that pulls in. And, you know, our elderly community is the one that seems to be most underserved.

Stone Payton: [00:03:53] So it’s it’s not a new challenge. It’s just but the stakes are getting higher. Why is it coming to the forefront now?

Shawn Stewart: [00:04:02] It’s it’s all about technology and access. Yeah, everyone has a cell phone now. Everyone can be reached 24 over seven. And if it’s too good to be true, it almost always is. But we humans never learn, it seems like, and we always want to trust. We always want to trust first, and that’s our downfall. So we want to educate people to say trust but verify.

Stone Payton: [00:04:24] So, Ron, was it the margarita Mondays that the club has or what brought you into the fold? Man Oh, it’s.

Ron Sweatland: [00:04:31] Always about the margaritas. So we came up with this concept because we saw that the community had a need. There’s a lot of companies even that don’t have the wherewithal, the skill set to properly secure their infrastructure. So when we started, that’s kind of what we had in mind a couple of years ago. The. Uh, Department of Homeland Security director. Get up there and said we basically have enough to secure our own government. It’s up to the private sector to get involved and protect the basically the community, because unfortunately, the government doesn’t have the money and the manpower to do that. So that’s kind of where we step in, is to provide that skill set to to be there as the resident experts in this area, even with other technology companies that may not have that specific skill set in there.

Stone Payton: [00:05:34] So yeah, so skill set and it’s mindset, right, that they have to feel like it’s an important thing and give it that, that level of of priority. You mentioned several constituencies just right off the bat. You mentioned the elderly, which I want to learn more about because you mentioned that was a particular challenge, but there were other aspects of the community too young folks, law enforcement. So it strikes me that it could be a real challenge trying to develop a message or messages or curricula that’s going to effectively meet the needs of each of those distinct constituencies. Can can you guys speak to that a little bit? Yeah.

Shawn Stewart: [00:06:13] And they’re each facing something different. Okay. For instance, in Cherokee County, if there’s a crime that involves a computer and data is pulled forensically to be used in trial, the trial can be delayed up to 18 months for that data to be viewed. Because what we have here, we have, what, two forensics people in the county and they’re so overwhelmed. So by default, everything rolls over to the GBI. Well, the GBI has a backlog of 18 months because they’re not only supporting what’s in the state, they’re supporting all the municipalities and counties that can’t do it themselves. So for the law enforcement side, it’s very important for us to say, okay, it’s not just a matter of going in and collecting this forensic data. There’s a certain way to do it so that you can speed up your own processes so that if you collect your forensics data and search in such a way, you might be able to allow your people to process it faster or get it ahead of the list in the GBI.

Stone Payton: [00:07:14] So talk to me about the price of failure. So if we don’t get our arms around this thing, I mean, the stakes really are high, aren’t they?

Ron Sweatland: [00:07:24] They are. And there’s actually a legitimate business model called ransomware as a service. And I mean, people are making millions and millions of dollars. It’s through digital currency because that can’t be traced. But I mean, that’s that’s what it is. And. You know, you might have somebody that’s been in business for, you know, ten, 20, 30, 40 plus years and just having the wrong person or having somebody click the wrong link, even something that says, I don’t want to get this email anymore. Well, you hit the unsubscribe button. Guess what? The unsubscribe button is the trigger to hit the the ransomware. So I mean, even hitting unsubscribe now is is is not even safe. So I mean, losing your business as far as the, you know, residential type stuff goes. I kind of know what Sean was saying. You know, the second that somebody puts something on the online, it’s there. It’s there forever. It’s not going away. You can hit, delete and whitewash and Hillary your stuff. So, I mean, it’s.

Shawn Stewart: [00:08:27] Like the for instance, Equifax. Equifax was hacked. It’s been almost two years ago now. I believe once Equifax was hacked, all of our historical credit data was dumped onto the Internet, all of it. So when you now get a fake email from Best Buy, it’s because you have or have had a Best Buy account at some point. And the person who’s sending you that email knows that because of the Equifax hack all of your data. Okay. Mark Zuckerberg said privacy is dead. I don’t believe that. I believe our history, our Internet history is compromised. Yes. But we going forward, we have to be able to protect it. And there’s ways we can do it. But it requires educating people.

Stone Payton: [00:09:09] Well, I’ll tell you what. You’re scaring the hell out of me. Well, I just mentioned earlier in the program that I just went on a trip. When I got back, I had to wade through a bunch of emails. And one of the first thoughts that occurred to me is I got to unsubscribe to half of this stuff, but now I don’t know if I want. All right. So so there’s there’s law enforcement. You talked about that, but you also mentioned elderly or specifically particularly vulnerable. Yeah.

Shawn Stewart: [00:09:34] Yeah. Well, the elderly is the largest target demographic right now of scams, mostly social engineering. I know from personal experience, my own mother in law received a letter from the IRS in air quotes that said, We noticed that you had a death in the family last year. Her her husband passed away last year. Call this number because we owe you tax or you owe us tax money. The number went to a call center in India. And it was a scam. It looked legitimate. And it came through email. No computers. No email. And it looked legit. And of course, what’s the first thing that a law abiding citizen is going to do? They want to call and they want to get it verified. They want to get it cleaned up. They want to get their name off the IRS list. But it’s and it’s prevalent. It’s everywhere. And it’s not just IRS. It’s Social Security Administration. We get those calls all the time. Or, hey, I’m a Russian female looking for love. We see that that is one of the biggest scams that are out there now for the elderly. And it’s not even romance necessarily, but it’s, hey, do you just want to talk? Companionship. Companionship.

Stone Payton: [00:10:47] Wow. Okay, Ron, you got to give me a little bit of relief here. What are some things that like some big rocks, some things I should do or not do?

Ron Sweatland: [00:10:56] So with those links, if it’s something that you don’t see, just block it. What you can do with most is report phishing. So depending on who the email is coming from, most of them have something. If you get something, if it’s not already built in, like if you get something through Gmail or whatever, usually that’s a right click on that email and then you can say block, you can actually say report phishing for a business type things. And usually if you hit report phishing, that email will go through the, your, your company administrator and they’ll say, okay, yeah, this is junk and then they can take it from there. Anything that looks there is no company in the world that’s going to ask you for payment and Walmart gift cards. Yeah, that’s a big one. That’s a big one. Any kind of stuff. I know that there’s there’s. Payment type things now that are even kind of sketchy, but they’re legitimate. Like if somebody wants to steal some money or something or.

Shawn Stewart: [00:12:07] Yeah, Venmo is a big Venmo.

Ron Sweatland: [00:12:09] You know.

Shawn Stewart: [00:12:09] They do protect and back in validate who the money’s going to at least. Right?

Ron Sweatland: [00:12:14] So the best thing that you can do is if somebody’s asking you is simply pick up the phone and call that person directly and say, hey, are you asking for money? Or, you know, what could this be? But I mean, if it if it doesn’t look like it’s safe or anything looks fishy about it, if it’s a phishing type scam, just mark it as phishing, block it, whatever it is. Don’t ever click any of the links that are in there because chances are right now you hit that unsubscribe. That’s it. That’s all it takes is one click. All right.

Stone Payton: [00:12:46] So what does happen when you hit a link like that? There’s some stuff happening in the background that I don’t even know about and it’s spying on me or what’s happening.

Ron Sweatland: [00:12:54] So what happens is it’s like somebody going up to your house and they, you know, hey, I’m with the I’m with the police department, You need to let me in. So you say, oh, yeah, you must be okay. You’re with the police department. When they come in, they’re holding the door open while they’re letting in, you know, hundreds of bad actors in there. And what they’re doing is, is they’re rearranging your furniture and they’re turning the TV and everything else. So essentially what that’s doing is, is once you click that, you’ve given somebody permission into your computer and they’re going to start encrypting files, and then you need actually a key to decrypt those files. So if you don’t have the encryption key, which normally is part of the ransom, they can do that. If it’s somebody’s a bad actor that’s not looking for a ransom, that’s just looking to cause trouble. That might be just a malware type thing where they just go and they just really mess up your computer. They’re just being mean. Yeah. Or there’s that.

Shawn Stewart: [00:13:52] Too. They’ll use your computer as a bot to attack someone else, so it looks like it’s coming from you and not from them. Yeah. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:13:58] All right. From a marketing perspective, Miss Anna, as a sales and marketing person, I want to get the message out about some stuff we’re doing at Business RadioX or like the Main Street Warriors program that I talked about at the top of the show. Does that mean we need to? Stop using email marketing or what impact does it have on the ways that we go to market and communicate?

Anna Teal: [00:14:20] I don’t think there’s any direct impact. It’s just being careful and being aware and being educated on what to do and what not to do and not to click on anything crazy.

Stone Payton: [00:14:29] But but as simple as wanting to get an email to someone and have them click on a link that takes them to this cool show we just did on cyber security, right? I mean, you guys are throwing my whole world upside down here.

Anna Teal: [00:14:39] I know. It’s like, how do you trust anybody at this point? Right, right, right. No, I think there are, you know, certain things that you can do rather than saying this is not spam, please open because that’s what a hacker would say. Probably. You know, I don’t know. I know that’s what you would say.

Stone Payton: [00:14:58] All right. So let’s talk about the work, the structure. So how do you get these kinds of conversations going, this kind of education? How do you gather the the the what do you want to call it? Intellectual property, the important information? And then how do you disseminate it to these different groups? Are we are we going into schools? Are we going into workplaces? Or what does that look like?

Shawn Stewart: [00:15:22] Yeah, we’ve kind of done it all. I mean, we we definitely have spoken to a lot of the children. The county has a lot of great initiatives that we’ve kind of piggybacked on like career day and things like that, where we go in and talk about what we do and how to be careful online, things of that nature. And there’s a lot more initiatives that are coming along now too, from from a lot of different areas. But yeah, it’s it’s hard to get people to come out of their shell because there’s such a fear. You know, you walk in and you say, Hey, I want to help you with cybersecurity. And the first thing they go is, Are you a hacker? Well, yes, but I’m a good hacker.

Ron Sweatland: [00:15:58] I’m a white hat. Yes, I.

Shawn Stewart: [00:15:59] Am. Yes, I am. But so it’s really hard to get them to trust up front what you’re saying until they realize that you’re coming from a place of. I want to help you. Look, I’m not in here to. I don’t want to expose you to the feds. I don’t want to expose you to your insurance carrier that you’re not in compliance. You know, I want to just kind of educate you on what to do and what not to do. I’m not I’m not asking for money. That’s that’s always the big question. It’s like, well, how much do you want? It’s like, well, you’re welcome to give us a grant that we can use for other people, but we’re not out here with our hands out. You know, we’re trying to make this as as inexpensive and free to the community as possible, right?

Stone Payton: [00:16:38] When you do find that you have genuinely helped an individual, an organization, it must be incredibly rewarding. It must feel great to know that you’ve you’ve probably saved them some money and some anguish. That’s that’s got to be very rewarding work. And I applaud that. And I’m a business owner. Where and how do you find the time to to do this? I mean, I would be completely understanding if you kept all this great knowledge to yourself because you’ve got a businesses to run. You just felt like it was that important.

Shawn Stewart: [00:17:14] It’s probably the most important thing we have going forward from a technology standpoint. Yeah, because if we don’t teach everybody top to bottom how to move forward safely, it’s like sending them off into a minefield. You’re going to have elderly who lose pensions, you know, who lose substantial amounts of money because they want to trust. Yeah. And, you know, they they accidentally give out their bank account information. There’s no coming back from that. They will wipe a bank account out in seconds. We’ve seen them actually go through and log right into their bank account information and see how much money they have. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:17:53] Yeah. So if they get they these bad folks, if they get the account number and then the password, they can they can go in there and move money around. Guess. Right. Wow. You haven’t done anything to make me less scared in the last few minutes, but that’s all right. We’re going to hang in there and we’re going to get.

Shawn Stewart: [00:18:11] There are things that are happening that are meant to protect us and some things like Stir Shaken, which was something the government built. And it’s been going on now for years and finally has come to fruition. So Stir Shaken was initiated by the Federal Communications Commission to say, look, we’re getting all these phone calls and all these phone calls appear to be coming from places they’re not. Caller ID what stir shaken has done is say, okay, we’re going to force all these phone carriers to confirm the person who’s calling matches their caller ID, and we’re going to give it a confidence level of A, B or C. If you receive a phone call. I mean, this is this is just blanket, good, safe information for everybody. If you receive a phone call that does not have an Associated caller ID name to it, don’t answer. It is most likely a scam. Or a survey asking you how you would like. If you want a car insurance or your new car warranty and all of that. Either way, you don’t need to pick up a phone call that does not have proper caller ID, and every phone carrier is now required to give every phone that you have spam protection. So if you it’s either on by default or you have to go through a small little step process. But everyone should have the caller ID spam blocker set up on their phone. It’s free. The federal government forced them to turn it on for free for all carriers Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and all the sub carriers.

Stone Payton: [00:19:45] Okay. I think I may have this because there’s this guy named Spam Risk that calls me every day. That’s it. So So it’s on my phone and doing what it’s supposed to be doing.

Shawn Stewart: [00:19:54] Your carrier has has set it up there so that you will be alerted if a call comes through with a low confidence that that’s not who they say they are in most cases. I hate to say this, I’m going to lose a sponsor. It’s typically a Google Voice phone number in almost all cases because those are free. Now, Google Voice does now require you to go back and tie to a cell phone, but that cell phone doesn’t have to be your real number. So. If you do see a phone number come across without a caller ID, don’t answer it. It’s probably not someone you want to talk to.

Stone Payton: [00:20:30] Oh, yeah.

Shawn Stewart: [00:20:30] Yeah. So you can think the federal government for that one thing. That’s it. One right there.

Stone Payton: [00:20:37] So what do you guys need more of? Do you need more sponsors? You mentioned sponsor. Do you need clearly you want to get the word out, but what do you need from the business community? What do you need more of right now as a as an organization, you think?

Shawn Stewart: [00:20:53] I think the biggest thing we need is people who. Will listen, right? Because, I mean, personally, I’ll stand up on the stage over here at the at the amphitheater and talk all day long. But that’s really not going to do anybody any good. We would really like to have some deep level of community outreach to where we can go and speak to to everybody. And, you know, we’ve talked to Sheriff Reynolds. We’ve talked to his his office. We’ve talked to the GBI. We’ve talked to several people. And they’re all like, this is a great idea. Good luck. So. Yeah, because I think they’ve tried it too. And it’s it’s kind of hit the same thing. People are people just I think they’re overwhelmed by it, to be honest.

Stone Payton: [00:21:38] Well, as a lay person, I can tell you I’m overwhelmed. I’m a little bit skittish. But I there’s also a little bit of a sense of confidence that we’ve got smart people like you guys working on it. So when you see spam risk pop up on your phone with your skills, do you just have fun with it and you go ahead and answer it anyway and then you just because you know what you’re dealing with.

Shawn Stewart: [00:21:57] Sometimes it record and say, Hello, can I help you? Oh, which kind of gift card do you need? Okay, I’m scratching it off now. Yeah, I only if I’m bored, but that’s far between.

Stone Payton: [00:22:10] When you mentioned earlier a scenario where someone’s close to them had passed away. Well, if you hit a certain demographic, a certain a critical mass of those, people are going to have a friend that recently passed away. It’s just a numbers thing, right? Well, they pulled.

Shawn Stewart: [00:22:25] It from obituaries. They pulled it from because they had to have the information from somewhere. And if you think about it, all this information is public knowledge, what we call osint. It’s just open source intelligence. Right. And, you know, those people who like to post way too many things online, those people basically are handing someone, here’s the playbook with how to hack me here. Here you go. Yeah. My my child’s name is this. They’re three years old. My other child’s name is this. They’re four years old. And they go to this school and I do this and they’re in cheer and they’re in football. That’s an awful lot of information.

Ron Sweatland: [00:23:00] Not only from that, but I mean, we’ve even made jokes about. You know, we’ll have some of these business groups that meet and they’re taking pictures of one another. It’s like, well, look at all the businesses that can be hacked right now because everybody’s at this group. Yeah. So, I mean, it’s, uh, you know.

Anna Teal: [00:23:19] Never post when you’re on vacation.

Ron Sweatland: [00:23:21] That’s the worst thing. Oh, yeah, We’re. We’re all down here.

Shawn Stewart: [00:23:24] Just arrived in Key West. Yeah.

Anna Teal: [00:23:27] Come. Please rob me. Yeah. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:23:29] I mean, this is not the kind. It’s not the way my mind works. And I guess a lot of people are that way, right? Right.

Speaker6: [00:23:35] Yeah.

Anna Teal: [00:23:35] Because you’re a good person.

Speaker6: [00:23:37] You know?

Stone Payton: [00:23:38] So the ransom thing. So say more about that and how it works. And if there’s anything we can do, businesses small and large, to kind of buffer ourselves from that.

Ron Sweatland: [00:23:49] One of the biggest things is. Training the people phishing campaigns where we set up basically fake a fake ransomware site. We send out random emails to your business and then see who just like phishing, see who takes the bait. And then once they get that bait, they go to a landing page that says, you know, guess what? You just, you know, destroyed your company just by this one click and have them go through some kind of training. So even before then, it’s trained the employees. What that does is it gives them and empowers them to learn a new skill set. So not only are they using that same at the office, but now they can take that and use it at home where they can say, you know what, this doesn’t look right if they’re getting something with their personal stuff, part of the ransomware stuff that goes along, kind of what Sean was talking about is one of the worst things you can do is use your business email as your personal stuff. So you go to you set up a Best Buy account and you’re using your business stuff. Best Buy gets hacked. Hopefully they don’t get hacked. But it and again, so sorry, we’re not we’re not trying to pick on them. But if something were to happen now you’ve got that you’re typically going to use your same password that you use with your work stuff to do that. So now you’ve got that. You’ve got a CEO of a company or somebody that’s high up in HR person, you know, any kind of C-level executive that’s doing that. Now all of a sudden they’ve got the keys to the castle, to your place. Now they can do whatever they want. Not only can they do that, but they can sit there and they can look at your emails and.

Shawn Stewart: [00:25:42] Emulate your emails.

Ron Sweatland: [00:25:43] Email because it’s like, you know, they let’s say that CEO’s name is, you know, Robert Sanchez. Well, Robert Sanchez, I’m just using that. That’s writer transportation. But he maybe he signs the stuff. Thanks, everybody. Bobby. So. You get something that looks exactly like him, you know? So, I mean, those are all kinds of things to worry about. What’s when it happens, what can you do to protect yourself? For a company is to make sure that you have all of your updates on your environment, all always meaning the computer.

Stone Payton: [00:26:22] Update, the computer. So that’s a good thing because I was about to ask if I got to be careful about doing that right. The days of protecting.

Ron Sweatland: [00:26:30] Yeah, the days that used to be an IT thing. You got to keep three versions behind and etcetera. You can’t do that anymore because everybody, not only your operating system, but a lot of the software that’s on your computer, they push those security updates constantly. So making sure that you’ve got that up to date, newer versions and of Windows starting at Server 2019 and more is actually that has built in defender that has ransomware protection. So what that does is if you have that enabled, if something comes in and tries to start rapidly renaming your files, it stops it right there. And there’s a lot of even IT companies that don’t know that, hey, that functionality is there. So I mean, that’s one of the things that we can do is empower those IT companies to say, Hey, you need to protect your customers as well. So there’s all kinds of, you know, good, good antivirus solutions. None that are free, though, right?

Shawn Stewart: [00:27:29] No free antivirus.

Ron Sweatland: [00:27:30] No, no. Free is what you get. You pay for what you get for its free versions are usually a kind of help you sleep at night just because, oh, I might have something on there that’s going to protect me. But if it’s not constantly being monitored and live updated, it’s not going to really do anything.

Stone Payton: [00:27:49] There’s your ideal sponsor, right? The antivirus, like whoever the gorilla in that market is, that’s who ought to be writing.

Shawn Stewart: [00:27:54] You check Webroot McAfee, I mean, Norton Sentinel Yeah, all of those guys.

Stone Payton: [00:28:00] And so there’s the there’s the technical aspects of getting girded up properly. But it strikes me during the course of this conversation, the weak link is the human always.

Ron Sweatland: [00:28:10] It’s always.

Stone Payton: [00:28:12] Wow. All right. So, I mean, you guys have thrown out so much information in such a short period of time. My mind is spinning. I’m going back and forth between fear and awe and respect, like I’m running those three bases right there. Is there I don’t know, a checklist or the, you know, the 15 do’s and don’ts or the the the daily practice or is there have you started to add some structure and some rigor and stuff so that the layperson can do some of these things that seem to be more second nature to you guys?

Ron Sweatland: [00:28:41] So I know that we all have kind of our own thing, but at the end of the day, it’s all pretty much the same set. Looking at reputable sources, if somebody doesn’t decide, hey, we’re going to go with the commission even looking at like NIST and some of the bigger like government type things where they do have those security standards in place. At this point. I know that, like a lot of people have what we call YouTube PhD. Even if you look at it, even if you have a YouTube PhD and you get something from there, it’s better than nothing.

Shawn Stewart: [00:29:22] So it’s true. And a lot of the things that are out there for Nest and the other frameworks they call them, which is just kind of like it’s guidelines for how to run a business for for businesses. You really got to start with your policy. You know, the policy is like number one, if you don’t have a standard set of policies and an attorney will tell you this in a heartbeat because they’re, you know, charging by the word. But it’s if you don’t have a policy that’s enforceable. So if if you don’t have every one of your employees signed to say, okay, this is how I’m going to use the Internet, here’s how I’m going to use this computer. If I don’t use this computer in this Internet properly, then I’m subject to being written up or possibly even terminated. We’ve seen businesses be hacked from the inside and not have policy in place. And that person is not charged because they have no legal standing to charge them with anything. So policy is the very first thing you do because it tells everyone what you expect of them.

Shawn Stewart: [00:30:21] Then you educate them toward the policy that you have in place to say, Remember what I said? You don’t click on links. Okay, here’s why You don’t click on links and show the examples and constantly send them fake emails to say, Oh, I recognize that that’s fake. You know, the education comes and then at the end you bring the technology in to say, okay, let’s put a good firewall in. Let’s make sure that our antivirus is up to date. Let’s make sure that if we are communicating with the cloud like AWS or with Office 365, that it’s a secure communication. We have to make sure all of our our windows are up to date. All of our systems are up to date. Even Mac Mac is Mac had their first ransomware attack. It’s it finally broke spades on that one So nobody’s safe. Android’s doesn’t matter iPhones doesn’t matter. There are products and technologies out there for every single device. You have to ensure that you aren’t going to get caught basically with your pants down.

Stone Payton: [00:31:21] And there are smart, motivated people on the other team.

Shawn Stewart: [00:31:26] State sponsored, right? Most of these places are state sponsored either by the the red country, the bear country, even the Dharma group. I mean, that’s state sponsored out of India. Iran has some. North Korea has some. And then there’s the people who just do it for the heck of it that aren’t tied to anybody who are probably some of the smartest people in the world. So they make millions. Actually, the latest number was if you put all the numbers lost to cybersecurity last year, it would be the third largest country in the world. I think it was $6 trillion. $6 trillion lost to cybersecurity issues last year.

Stone Payton: [00:32:10] So, Anna, do you feel a lot better about your own situation since you’ve been hanging out with these guys? Do you feel like you at least you’ve got your shop buttoned down and you’re able to help your clients more? Or are you still like me running these bases?

Anna Teal: [00:32:22] I feel like I’m definitely more well rounded hanging around these guys because they’ve taught me a lot, but I feel like I can better serve my clients more than some other marketing companies because I am that conscious of what it requires for businesses to stay secure. And so that’s that’s kind of, you know, what I take pride in. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:32:42] All right. So what’s next for you guys? You got some upcoming events. Have you got new materials coming out? You got some flash cards for me or what are you or like a daily reminder, but you can’t send it with a link.

Shawn Stewart: [00:32:52] What are we would We are working on putting together a newsletter. We ask people to go to our web page and sign up for the newsletter. We do host events. We have several. You know, it’s not just us three. There are several other companies involved in the in the commission, quite a few. And if you start naming some of the names, people are like, Oh, really? They’re in there? Yes. Yeah. We’ve got we’ve got quite a quite a few folks and we’re working on trying to put together relevant training for businesses, individuals, law enforcement, politicians, whatever we can get on a regular basis. Just really it’s dependent upon either need based or interest based. So we ask people to go to the website and say, Hey, I’d like you to come and talk to our business about spam or about social engineering, you know, physical security. You know, there’s all the different pieces and parts to it that, you know, you wouldn’t think about. We kind of call it the red pill moment. You know, why oh, why didn’t I take the blue pill? Well, you can’t, you know, head in the sand is not a security posture. So and we’re willing to go we’re willing to go anywhere we need to to talk to people. It’s not you know, you don’t have to come to us. We’re happy to come to you. And we’ll talk about whatever subject you want to talk about that’s relevant for your business or your your kiwanas group or whatever.

Stone Payton: [00:34:08] Oh, I think that is marvelous. So, all right, what is the best way to reach out? Is it there’s a website. Is that the best place to go? Start tapping into this work and learning more.

Anna Teal: [00:34:18] It’s Cherokee Cyber commission.com and you can email us at hello at Cherokee Cyber commission.com as well.

Speaker6: [00:34:25] Fantastic.

Stone Payton: [00:34:26] Well, before we wrap, I want to hear a little bit about your business. Okay. Yeah, Tell me about yours, Sean.

Shawn Stewart: [00:34:33] We are Stuart Consulting is a woman owned Georgia business who’s been in business since 2011. We do a lot of business with the military, the government, a lot of Fortune 500 companies. I would tell you who they are, but I can’t. We don’t kiss and tell. I can say we do have non security clients such as Polaris Industries, Chanel, the perfume company, and that’s about the only ones I can disclose. And we we are the the local site phone company, phone representatives for the Parris Island for the Marine Corps. Those are the only ones I can actually disclose.

Stone Payton: [00:35:11] Got it. And I know you’ve been on the show before, but it’s been a while. So tell us tell us about your outfit, man.

Ron Sweatland: [00:35:17] So we’re canvas is we’re all pretty much primarily cybersecurity now.

Stone Payton: [00:35:24] So this is your wheelhouse. Everything we’ve been talking about.

Ron Sweatland: [00:35:26] Okay. Absolutely. So we are penetration testing and ethical hacking. One of the things that we that we see a lot of is as you go through a building, even if it’s on the third floor and you see Post-it notes with passwords on the side of the computers, I can take a drone with high definition cameras and go and just click and see what your password is just with a drone. So, you know, those kinds of things. That’s one of those policies.

Stone Payton: [00:35:56] You’re talking about. We probably maybe you should not be allowed to put a Post-it with your password on your monitor.

Ron Sweatland: [00:36:02] And the security the security assessment, making sure that not only are your people trained and what they need to do, but taking a look at your equipment, do you do you have a server that’s like 25 years old, You know, because we can. Yeah, yeah, we can. We can take a look at those. And actually it’s. We can condense pretty much an entire server room into like two modern type servers that are quieter, Don’t take as much air or electricity, electricity. They don’t heat up the room and all of a sudden we’ve just opened up a big, huge place for you to store more boxes. Um, so there’s that aspect of it, but just pretty much everything security. And then we do some work. I primarily do a lot of work with another company, Cybergate it, and they’re here in Woodstock as well. So we do a lot of the I.T. type things.

Stone Payton: [00:37:04] So well, you certainly have job security. This this need is not going to go away. If anything, it’s going to continue to be more complex. It’s going to be a moving target, right? Oh, yeah. But we got to enlist the help of the everyday person. We got to we got to trust folks like you to to help us. And then we’ve got to be diligent, vigilant, whatever that word is, we got to be paying attention. All right. Marketing. Get us get us an update. What’s going on over there?

Anna Teal: [00:37:31] We just work with small businesses to tell their story online through like website development, social media, blog, posting, content, writing, whatever you need to brand yourself online. We help small businesses. You’re welcome.

Speaker6: [00:37:44] John, Are you.

Stone Payton: [00:37:44] Helping these two out?

Shawn Stewart: [00:37:45] Yeah, and I did everything on my website, including all of my blogs. And they are they are beautiful. And the is constantly in the 90 seconds. Yes.

Anna Teal: [00:37:52] I love his website. It’s one of my favorites that I’ve built so far. So you should check out his.

Shawn Stewart: [00:37:57] Yeah, I had nothing to do with it.

Stone Payton: [00:37:59] So it’s not only pretty, but there’s SEO expertise. I mean, it’s functional and it gets the job done. It gets people coming to the right.

Anna Teal: [00:38:06] Because what’s the use in having a beautiful website if nobody sees it?

Stone Payton: [00:38:09] So now if I did my pre-show research right over an hour and a half ago before I drove down here, I’m kidding. We got at least two authors in the room or is everybody in the room written books? What’s what’s happening here? Don’t we have some published authors here?

Speaker6: [00:38:24] Yes. Ladies first.

Anna Teal: [00:38:25] Yes, I published three books. Aphasia Readers.

Speaker6: [00:38:30] Sean.

Shawn Stewart: [00:38:31] I haven’t got any books, but I’ve won several awards for short stories.

Speaker6: [00:38:34] Really? Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:38:36] Wow. And that’s just. That’s a passion of yours. It’s outside the scope of what we’re talking about. These short stories. Or are they all like cybersecurity horror stories?

Shawn Stewart: [00:38:43] None of them are cybersecurity. I am working on a book that is cybersecurity, but I’m so busy, you know, it’s hard. Cyber sci fi, cyber, that one. Cyber sci fi. Yeah. But I guess if I were a good author, I wouldn’t be doing this.

Stone Payton: [00:38:57] And writing you’re doing is with aphasia, right? Yes. Yes. Say a little bit about aphasia.

Anna Teal: [00:39:03] Well, aphasia is a speaking in language condition, so it can affect your reading, your writing a lot of things. And so aphasia readers was developed out of a need to provide relevant reading for adults with aphasia. So on a simple scale, so they don’t have to read children’s books. So. Yeah.

Stone Payton: [00:39:23] Well, good work. How about you, Ron? You got a book in you, man? I think I.

Ron Sweatland: [00:39:26] Have one published thing from college when I was working with the Marietta Police Department. Okay. Yeah, it was, you know, just hear about it anymore. But the Google glasses where they. Oh, yeah, we could where the police department, they would put on the Google glasses and they could like look at a license plate and then would immediately say, yeah, this is a student here. They would have the facial recognition. Oh, wow. They would have. They could do because it you could talk to it as well. So if they had it hooked up to a drone, they could say, you know, go up 20ft and see if there’s a shooter on the roof or something to that effect. So.

Speaker6: [00:40:05] Mm.

Stone Payton: [00:40:06] All right. So do you feel like you do have a book in you, though you might write something about cyber security or you may do something totally different, like, you know, talk about mermaids or you got hobbit.

Shawn Stewart: [00:40:14] Fan fiction sometimes.

Speaker6: [00:40:19] Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that’d be fun.

Ron Sweatland: [00:40:20] Maybe a cookbook.

Speaker6: [00:40:22] There you go. For hobbits. For cookbook, for hobbits. Why is he giving you?

Stone Payton: [00:40:26] What’s all this about? Hobbies.

Anna Teal: [00:40:27] He knows him so well.

Ron Sweatland: [00:40:29] A book about hobbits.

Speaker6: [00:40:31] That is a fun book. Hobbits do. All right.

Stone Payton: [00:40:36] One more time. Best way for our listeners to get out, have a conversation with any of the three of you or learn more about this, about this commission. Let’s make sure they’ve got a way to connect. Yeah.

Anna Teal: [00:40:47] So you can just visit Cherokee Cyber commission.com or reach out to us by email at hello at Cherokee Cyber commission.com.

Stone Payton: [00:40:54] Well, it has been an absolute delight having all three of you in the studio. It’s been a little bit scary, a little bit sobering, but I think that’s important. Right. And I really thank you guys for the work that you’re doing in your profession and your willingness to expand beyond that and really get out there and try to help all these different constituencies that we talked about. And I hope you won’t be a stranger, maybe swing back around periodically and get us updated on your efforts, because as we said before, this is not a static environment that we’re talking about. And I would love to continue to follow this story as it unfolds, if you guys would be up for that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much for joining us.

Speaker6: [00:41:35] Thank you. Thank you.

Stone Payton: [00:41:36] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today. And everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.

Joe Cianciolo with Front Porch Advisors and Brendon Canale with Diesel David

May 1, 2023 by angishields

Cherokee Business Radio

Joe Cianciolo with Front Porch Advisors and Brendon Canale with Diesel David

00:00 /

Joe Cianciolo, Human Capital Strategist with Front Porch Advisers, is a thinker, questioner, planner, goal setter, problem solver, family man, and all-around believer in people.

As a teenager in small town Ohio, he learned early that reaching higher levels of success requires becoming, building and leading from a healthy place of self-awareness.

Joe has helped create missions, achievable strategy, social media content for brands, as well as developing nationwide outreach and local community building platforms. Through it all, he’s discovered that no matter the job, he finds success by leaning on who he is at his natural best.

Each of the amazing opportunities Joe has allows him to understand and build his own human capital. Now Joe gets to share his skills and tools to help others do the same.

Follow Front Porch Advisers on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

A small drop can result in a ripple that grows into a tsunami. For Brendon Canale that was a toy truck as a young child and a bmx bike. These two seemingly small things gave him the fundamentals that would ultimately shape his life.

Bmx bikes taught Brendon to love adrenalin and turn wrenches. The toy truck began an obsession with vehicles that has only grown stronger throughout the years. When the opportunity to come on board with Diesel David presented itself, Brendon took the job.

Brendon started off as the shop handy man, then he took charge of projects and took care of what needed to be done. That pattern of taking the initiative set him up perfectly to take over service writing, and eventually shop management.

Brendon didn’t realize this was what he would be doing, but if he hadn’t taken that initial opportunity, he wouldn’t be where he is at today.

Follow Diesel David on Facebook.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] Welcome to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX, where we talk about the ups and downs of the business world and we offer words of wisdom for business success. I am Sharon Cline, your host, and today in the studio I’ve got two really interesting people. I’ve got my favorite Front Porch Advisor. This is Joe Cianciolo. He is the human capital strategist with Front Porch Advisors. And we also have Brendon Canale, who is the general manager with Diesel David, which is an auto repair shop. Is that the best way to say it? Auto repair shop in Diesel.

Brendon Canale: [00:00:50] Diesel Specialty Specialty shop in downtown Woodstock.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:53] Oh, I’m so glad I asked you how to say that correctly. I would have butchered it. Thank you for coming on the show.

Brendon Canale: [00:00:57] Of course.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:00:58] Happy to be here, as always.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:00] I’m so happy to chit chat with you because we’ve got a really interesting show today. And I know we talk a lot about business owners and how they manage their natural inclination to have fear and how they can manage and work with themselves to even learn and help other people who want to have their own businesses. But what’s cool about you guys is that you all kind of have a almost like a relationship where you can help, where Joe helps Brendan to understand the positives and negatives of his personality type and how he can work with those positives and quote unquote negatives, I guess, to, to further your self in business. So it’s fascinating to me because I think every one of us has obviously we all have our own personalities, but it’s very easy for me to look at myself and say, Well, here are my weaknesses and I can’t do that. And here’s an excuse for why this doesn’t work. And oh my gosh, I’m so horrible when I have days like this, but I like that you’re spinning. It’s not even a spin. It’s a reframing of allowing myself to accept that I have maybe the light side as well as the dark side that I can work with both. Right? So I don’t have to have something that’s like such a I can look at myself in a positive way, I guess is what I’m trying to say. Man, it took me forever to get that out. So what do you think about what I just said?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:02:18] Well, I’m excited because when you say fearless formula, of course, that’s we talked about this earlier, but everybody needs to know what their fearless formula is. And in our business at Front Porch Advisors, we believe that awareness and acceptance of who you are or what you bring at your best and what you need to be at your best is the formula to overcome the fear. And when we say who you are and what you bring, that means good, bad and ugly. And so yesterday we had the fortune of sitting in a room full of business owners and local business professionals talking about vulnerability. And the question was to provoke what is your strength that sometimes gets you in trouble? So I’m excited to be here today to talk more about the double edged sword, because here at Front Porch Advisors, our philosophy is that the same thing that makes you strong under pressure or stress or extreme challenge becomes your nemesis. Hence the double edged sword. And Brendan has graciously come to sit here because sometimes it’s hard for people to understand what that means to get there. And Brendan has fully gone into the realm of awareness and acceptance and now we practice all the time.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:37] So I think it’s really interesting that you have you’ve kind of gone through the process. It’s not like in the beginning steps. You’ve gone through the process with Joe and have seen positive changes in your relationships with work, and I’m sure it’s exponential with other relationships. What was it that made you realize that you really needed some coaching in a way to reframe how you view your positives and negatives of your personality?

Brendon Canale: [00:04:03] Yeah, so I was stuck back in the day, you know, I’m pretty old, so I was stuck and, you know, I came to Joe and fresh out of a relationship in a dark place, you know, And Joe was like, you know, who’s this kid, you know, down to coach me? But, you know, kind of, kind of unsure. Don’t don’t blame him.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:21] And he’s open. He’s open to people and.

Brendon Canale: [00:04:25] Exactly, exactly. And so we we worked through it. And, you know, my greatest superpower is I care. And my biggest downfall is I care. So I you know, I come in and, you know, first of all, I’m going to want to say yes. So you’ll hear me say yes and then you’ll hear me backtrack and be like, okay, wait a second. And then second of all, you know, whenever I have the ability to give you care, you know, I thrive whenever it’s expected. I struggle. And, you know, working through that understanding that and then using that not only professionally, but with my friends. Relationships. It’s helped, you know, now, now we’re in a successful place.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:05:08] I’m going to turn into Sharon and ask the question because do it, do it. But like she said, you’ve been through the process, but we’re still in it. Why are we still in it?

Brendon Canale: [00:05:17] There’s always room for development. You know, I’m working through some big things with my job and understanding, you know, how to go from where I’m at now to the next level. You know, it requires some advice, some coaching, some guidance so that I can be calculated in my approach and not just like come in guns a blazing reactionary. Exactly. Be calculated. So that’s.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:05:41] It’s interesting. I like it because somebody like Brendon and his tendency to care, it’s interesting how that works externally and internally because it’s more natural for him to provide that care externally. So internally he doesn’t know, always know how to provide that care for himself. That is very common for a lot of people who have that same double edged sword. Yeah, so.

Brendon Canale: [00:06:04] Today I had to force myself to do things for myself, care for myself. So I went to Joe that wasn’t forced. That was something that I know I need to do. But going to.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:13] Joe, going to Joe is a form of care for.

Brendon Canale: [00:06:15] Yourself. Yes, it is a form of care for myself. After that, I went and started taking care of things for myself because what I’ll do is somebody tells me they need my help. I’m out doing that. Like my needs don’t matter. I want to help somebody else. And so today I had to focus on taking care of myself, doing things for myself, which is something that Joe has helped me with because I did not do that well.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:36] I think when you’re a giver and I tend to give as well is and when you had said the expectation, when you set that expectation, then it’s there’s not even a discussion about whether or not you’re going to come and do what because you did it once. So now you’re going to do it again. I get resentful very fast, but I but I did it to myself. I set the precedent like I set the pattern, the expectation. So it’s something I’m working on as well. And I can imagine in your business as well, when you’ve got people coming asking you to help and can you fit me in? Can you do this or that? Well, you want to help. Naturally. This is your job, right? But then you have to be careful if you over promise or something.

Brendon Canale: [00:07:14] Boundaries.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:15] Well, that’s a nicer way to say it.

Brendon Canale: [00:07:17] Setting boundaries. Because the answer is yes. I want to help you, but here’s how you can help me Help you and knowing to communicate.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:25] Are you so proud of them?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:07:26] I’m so proud.

Brendon Canale: [00:07:29] I’m proud to take the mic, you know. But it’s hard. Yeah. You know, and when to when to ask for help. Help me care which I can see it in you. You care. And so let me ask you a question. Okay. Here we.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:44] Go. Let me ask you. Wait a minute. This I asked the questions on this show.

Brendon Canale: [00:07:47] This is Brendan’s ready. Okay, I’m ready. So I’m ready. So whenever somebody expects you to care and you feel like it’s been pushed on you, how hard do you pull back that care?

Sharon Cline: [00:08:00] I don’t. Don’t. I don’t. I push. I go into it more. I’m like, oh, okay. Will you expect this of me? I can’t let you down, but there’s.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:08:07] Always a trade off. You pull the care from yourself even further in thinking that you’re providing more care for them and digging harder. But actually you’re not providing the greatest level of care that you possess. Naturally.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:21] Yes. True. Because I’m not. Because it’s not about me so much in my mind, it’s more about, okay, well, this is what you need. Here I come. You need, you need me. You even came to me and asked me. So of course. So I don’t think about what it’s costing me so much as as much as I’m thinking about what I’m giving you, which maybe it isn’t 100%, but.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:08:42] It also is what Brendan said and what got me so excited was him understanding and acknowledging like, Yes, I want to help, but help me make sure that I’m helping you. And that’s one of the things that it’s a tool that we’ve gone through, setting those parameters in a dialog that you have to practice because it’s not natural for you to think it that way. Your natural inclination is to say, Sure, I’ll help. Instead of saying no, I would rather provide you with the best help and the best care for you, so I need you to help me with that. I need you to set that.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:16] So the question so if someone were to come to me and say, Can you please help me, my question back to them is what is the best help that I can give you that what you mean.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:09:25] Sure that can help? Or if you feel the need to want to say yes, out of obligation is to say, what is it that would be an opportunity for you to help as opposed to an obligation. So you say, okay, I am most likely to want to help when I know X, Y, and Z. So that’s where those parameters, that’s where those barriers or boundaries come in, because then at that point, you’ve flipped it from an expectation to an opportunity.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:50] Opportunity, right? Completely different energy behind that. Wow.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:09:54] That’s why I’m so proud.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:55] Are you so proud? Well, that’s so.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:09:58] Awesome when we talk about Fearless formula. That’s why I really got excited about today of trying to to pair these two is you can hear in Brendan Brendan and I are going through a little bit of an exercise here because he’s learned so much and we’ve been practicing and we’re going through the entire program together. And now I hear him sharing that out and not being afraid. So overcoming that fear of thinking, I just have to do it. No, he wants to help others around him, which is part of his care mechanism. Yes. But it’s the opportunity care mechanism, knowing that when you use his formula, when he uses his formula, then it is exponentially more effective.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:38] Because he’s protecting himself as well. He’s not coming at an expense of yourself.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:10:44] Well, that’s the trade off that we want to keep healthy at the expense of you is not healthy. Brendan What happens to you when you don’t consider your own health? When providing care for someone else?

Brendon Canale: [00:10:55] We go downhill, you know, dark places. But, you know, then I have to take a step back, you know, find my peace. I usually, you know, I’m a person that likes to be around people. I’m a nurturer. I care. I want to be with my people. Um, but I have to step away. I have to ground myself. I choose to go to the top of a mountain at midnight and stay there all night. Um, that’s me. And, you know, find my peace, find my ground ness, and then come back whenever, you know, I’ve healed. And then I can handle. Right. You know, helping with everybody.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:11:27] And when you scale out, which. Depending on your wiring. Some people are wired for very day to day and some people are future. Just what he explained about getting away going on top of the mountain. Even that little bit of time will energize him enough that when he comes back down, that ability to care is fueled by inner energy. If you take that away, like we talked about earlier, if the trade off is is is pulling your energy, then you’re not going to have the fuel in your tank to actually get the job done. Like you might be limping along. And that’s not a that’s not you at your best. You at your best is, oh, my gosh, watch me, watch me. Come care. I am so good at providing care.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:10] So I’ve heard the notion of boundaries are loving. They seem mean, but they’re loving. And I think for me, that’s always been a big challenge for myself to be able to say, I see that you need me, but I can’t give that to you right now because I need I need to take care of myself for a little while. It feels like I’m in the face of someone needing me saying no. And that is so counterintuitive to my wiring, I believe. And but I do get the notion of being able to be quiet in myself and give like, my spirit what it needs so that I’m not resentful, because that’s that’s a big theme, I think, for me. Have you found the same in your relationships or with work? Yeah.

Brendon Canale: [00:12:50] You know, I am so inclined to want to help and care, so I. I’ll lead with, Hey, if you can’t find anyone else, I’ll help you. But I have other things I need to do. And this isn’t professional. It’s more personal. But I have other things I need to do. So if you can find someone else, like I need to go do these things. If I have to, you know, make some space, I can come help you. And, you know, setting that boundary of, hey, like, yes, I’m here as a resource. If you absolutely need me, please explore another option.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:13:21] Do you hear how, though? It’s it’s kind of one of those things where he’s keeping himself grounded in the fact that he will care but not overcorrecting. He’s staying really grounded in the fact that, hey, you know, I have to care for myself, that in order for it to be a fearless formula, it has to be practiced. It has to be You have to constantly be aware in this moment, am I obligated or am I opportunity?

Sharon Cline: [00:13:46] What would overcorrecting look like in that scenario?

Brendon Canale: [00:13:50] Brendon overcorrecting, either agreeing and then ghosting or just saying no.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:58] Flat out no risking the feeling that this person is going to walk away knowing that you don’t care which is the opposite of who you are.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:14:06] Well, and I think the overcorrect can also look like martyring yourself by taking everything on and just kind of saying, No, everybody else out, I’ll do it until you run completely into the ground, which we’ve had to face a couple of times, where the physical, the physical health part of it goes away. And even though you anyone who has that care double edged sword can sustain that longer than most, at some point you lose your influence because of it.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:38] So something will give emotional, spiritual, physical. Oh yeah, Somewhere along the way.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:14:44] Mental, mental. And the thing that I find and Brendon I would love for you to share is especially in the business when you have customers, they can feel this natural tendency to care. So when he brings sort of the credibility and competence of awareness and acceptance of help me make sure that we do this properly, it actually grows his influence and his trust within the customer base, which makes them more likely to want to do business with him because he is being fearlessly but grounded.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:19] How often are we not grounded as a general statement? Percentage it out. You know.

Brendon Canale: [00:15:26] I’m doing better every year. Every year there’s been there’s been improvement. But I’d say probably probably once or twice a year. Right now I catch myself where I’m like, okay, I really need to take essentially a mental health break and go, you know, handle myself.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:41] That doesn’t sound so terrible once or twice a year. Is that bad?

Brendon Canale: [00:15:44] Oh, it used to be all the time.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:15:46] And that’s the thing. There is no such thing as perfection. But being grounded is being. That’s why I say awareness and acceptance, because those together, you can stay grounded and there’s going to be variables thrown every which way, and you’re going to have different personalities coming at you. Some are coming in hot, some are coming in, you know, very confused or misguided. And sometimes they’re just redirecting frustration from something else. So that’s why for us, it’s a practice. It’s something that we have to do every day and we have to give ourselves grace when we fall back into the only one side of the sword on ourselves.

Brendon Canale: [00:16:21] What I’ve learned is, you know, customers are going to, like Joe said, have their emotions. And our tendency is to take that on. And, you know, it can be overwhelming if you can’t process what’s going on. So, you know, a customer is upset because their truck’s broken. They’re not upset at me. I’m just the messenger. And, you know, a terminology I’ve used is I’m an advisor. I’m not here to sell you work. So if you come to me, you’re like, Hey, what do you think I should do with this truck? What’s going on with it? And that gives like, I love, I love vehicles and then I love caring.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:16:55] Opportunity to care, opportunity, not obligation.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:59] Opportunity to care. But you’re not obligated to care. Interesting.

Brendon Canale: [00:17:02] And so I can guide them through the process of, hey, let’s let’s figure out the your circumstances. Do you make money with this truck? Is it just a hobby? And, you know, guiding them through that and hey, it makes sense to fix it if you’re losing $1,000 a day because you’re not driving this truck doesn’t make sense to fix it if it’s just your daily driver, probably not. And, you know, guide them through that, hey, it’s sellable right now. Here’s some other vehicles you can get. And, you know, I’ll talk myself out of a large sale just to make sure that customer is cared for.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:33] And you keep yourself grounded in the meantime. That’s the goal, right? The energy is feeling like you’re not overcompensating or trying to sell them or trying to placate them in their feelings. Just a.

Brendon Canale: [00:17:46] Conversation.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:17:47] Ask him how his numbers have done since I was going down.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:51] That was my next thing is like, how has this impacted your daily life personally and professionally?

Brendon Canale: [00:18:00] Daily life. Oh man, you know, you know that anxious feeling. You know, you just get that, like, overwhelmed. I have I.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:07] Have anxiety rings on as we speak. They’re like fidget spinner rings because I live in that space.

Brendon Canale: [00:18:12] So there is a space outside of that space and there’s a.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:17] Space outside of that space.

Brendon Canale: [00:18:19] Yes. And you can access that more and more as you understand what’s going on internally. Like I can be overwhelmed and I can take a second to be like, okay, I’m overwhelmed. And just that second of realizing like, hey, this is like building up inside of me, take a breath, realize it’s happening, and then you can control your response and kind of guide yourself out of it, figure out what you need, move forward from there. And you know that that piece, like, I’m an anxious person, but I operate very calmly now.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:52] That’s nice and that’s amazing. How are your numbers at work?

Brendon Canale: [00:18:58] Um, we have, uh, if I remember correctly, 7 or 8% growth a month.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:04] So how do you feel about that? What do you think?

Brendon Canale: [00:19:08] A little accomplished. But I have an excellent team that I work alongside with.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:11] They’re very humble.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:19:13] As always. But that’s the thing. Sometimes we try too hard as business owners. If we think being fearless means being loud, bold, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:22] Caution to the wind.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:19:23] Hustle, you know, push, push, push. But if that’s not the formula that fits into who you are at your best, then it’s not going to work. So instead, when you ground yourself, it naturally, like I said earlier, grows that influence to the point where people are gravitated towards you. And because, like you said earlier, you don’t know what’s causing their stress. They come in emotional because of whatever it may not just be their vehicle. And when they when you’re around somebody who is practiced and grounded, it’s calming and it makes you realize, oh, wait, maybe, maybe I can knock it down. And they don’t even know it, but they definitely are attracted to it. And that is a good thing. And it builds trust. But it’s not trust because you’re trying to prove that you’re trustworthy. It’s no, this is who I am. This is what I do. I mean, the way he says it, I love it because it sounds so professionally created. No, it’s Brendan doing the study, understanding what? That awareness piece. The acceptance of it. And this is it. I have nothing to prove. Nothing to hide, nothing to lose. Totally grounded in myself. And I would love to help. Here’s the best way to do it.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:29] What was the process like when you were just starting where you you were the first time you were in a scenario where someone came in and gave you sort of a lot of all their energy and stress and you had the tools in your head of how to ground yourself. Was it scary in itself to do that? How was that?

Brendon Canale: [00:20:47] It can be it can be overwhelming working with somebody who’s operating from a place of emotion. And, you know, a lot of times they want to be heard. So hear them, you know, help them walk through the process of, hey, here’s here’s what we’ve done. Here’s, you know, the conversations we had. And putting the the rationale back in the conversation is helpful for me. That’s where I operate best. So working through that and, you know, whenever they get a misconception or something, helping guide them, like, hey, like, no, this is what’s going on. And, you know, I just want to make sure like we’re on the same page. I understand your frustration. Like, I want this vehicle fixed just as much as you do. I don’t want to have I don’t want I will have these conversations. But these aren’t the conversations I like to have. I like to have like, Hey, you’re good to go. The vehicle is awesome. But you know, the how you handle the hard conversations is almost more important than how you handle the easy conversations.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:43] Was it a challenge to change your interactions, to be more grounded, or how challenging was it.

Brendon Canale: [00:21:52] The the process getting there is the challenge because it’s a lot of internal, it’s not as much external. Um, so I would say it’s challenging internally, but in those cases, once you become healthier and healthier in your practice, they become easier.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:10] Do you find that things didn’t. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead, Joe.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:22:12] Go ahead. I am excited to to hear him say that. And because I watch it, I get to work with it all the time and the confidence just grows the more practice he gets. And so it’s hard for him to remember as as dramatic of a difference because now it is an ongoing thing. And. And we all fall back into some past patterns. We, you know, sometimes under that extreme stress, we do use the other side of we’re.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:40] Hungry or we’re tired or we’re, you know, there are various reasons, right?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:22:44] And so to hear him say it like that makes me very proud. And I know we still have work to do, but it is building sort of that repetition and being rhythmic about understanding that being grounded is not something you can just read in a book and just have. It takes specific situations. Situational awareness where we will study it. He’ll come to me and be like, Oh, this happened. Whether it be internal with the office or whether it’s with a customer or even personal. And we then go, okay, go ahead. You look like you want to say something.

Brendon Canale: [00:23:15] Yeah. The awesome part is, is as you’re working through it, is it? And I had this defensive driving teacher whenever I was like 18, 17, and he said he called events that you pull from movies. So you build your movies and you know, as you have those conversations you’re building experience and like afterwards, like, Oh, I messed up here, I messed up here, and like, not mad at myself, just data and like, Hey, I could have done this better. And you know, the awesome part is, is, you know, working with Joe David, the owner of the company, he, you know, they both give different input and it allows me to grow from a situation, ask for, ask for advice, you know, hey, how could I have handled this better? And, you know, then next time I’m in that scenario, I’m like, I got this. I have a movie about this and I can move forward from there.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:04] It’s tools you’re talking about, like exercising a muscle, right? Absolutely.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:24:09] So be careful. We’re going to flip this around on you. Oh, wait a minute.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:15] Yeah. The thank you for coming to Fearless Formula and Business RadioX. So I think it’s fascinating, too, because what you’re doing is giving yourself a lot of self compassion. You’re not judging yourself for having failed something or it didn’t work the way I thought because I live in this space very easily of being like, Well, yeah, at two in the morning I have a playlist and I just add stuff to my two in the morning playlist of how I did something wrong, or I could have done it better or I should have known. I have a lot of judgment that way, but it’s so refreshing to see someone not take that as being the focus God, where did I do wrong? I could have done it better. You actually are just giving yourself, like you said, data or data and using it for your movie, which which makes it so third person. It’s not so personal.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:25:04] Well, just listening to the way that you said that about your 2 a.m. list in my head, I hear obligation, obligation, obligation, obligation, not opportunity. And that’s where I think and maybe, Brendan, maybe we haven’t used these terms, but I think that’s when things flipped for you was when you were looking for the opportunity in all of that feedback, because feedback is just that. The emotions that we bring to it are separate and we do that. So the thing is, is like we have had to deal with a lot of emotion through all of our time to get everybody does. And but the way that we react to that is not influential. And that’s the part that when he can say you probably, well, it’s not a video, but you I smiled because I always say it is just information. It’s not good or bad. It’s information. What we do with it is a response if we don’t think it through, if we’re not aware of it, if we don’t accept it as data, then we will react. And our reactions tend to be the other side of our double edged sword.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:08] Interesting. But why Let me ask you this. Why How much is the way that we are naturally predisposed with our personalities and how much is our parental influence regarding our responses to things and the the the judgment, the meaning that we put behind the failures, so to speak, or our experience. Because obviously in listening to you, I’m not looking at my experiences that I don’t love the outcome of as data. I look at it as a failure of spirit in some way or myself or I should have known, right? So I don’t know how much of that is inherent to who I am or if that was just like scripts that I’m hearing from parents or other experiences. So how much does that influence us?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:26:58] She just opened chapter one, and chapter one is it’s one of the courses that we have, and it is a hard course because it does look at the one thing that we all own for ourselves, which is our experience. And in that experience comes influences. And we have a formula for that where we can study that and understand if we can look at the past and understand collect data. That’s how I do it, is we look at what were those influences like, what was their role in our world? And then we have to understand that people are naturally wired even within. That influence. And it could either be nature, nurture or choice. So it’s either how they are or who they were raised to be or the choices that they make now. Because once we start to realize that all those people are in one of those areas, then we start to look for the people who have learned how to be more than that. And we look for the people who liberate us to be free. And that’s why I love what I do, because my job is to be a liberator for Brendan. But that means I have to study him right alongside him. So because what he needs is very different than what I need and I need to be that influence so that we can help unlock way more people like that, that will keep him going forward. Forward. That’s the fearless formula.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:15] Well, I wanted to ask you, do you also have do you also have relationships that you’ve had to let go in this process because they are not the types of people that will help you along your journey?

Brendon Canale: [00:28:26] Every relationship has its own unique attributes. You know, I have a lot of challenge in my life with what I do, so I look for support and I look for positive influences on my life. Um, you know, fortunately I’ve had a good friend group and, you know, relationships throughout my life where, you know, even from a young age, if somebody wasn’t making me feel good about who I am or wasn’t offering challenge in an appropriate way, then I was already going to distance myself. Because the cool thing about being a person that really cares is our weapon is you just pull back hair.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:09] Listen, I have what’s called the INFJ door slam. Are you familiar with this thing? The Myers-Briggs? So, yeah, the door slam is significant. I cannot work around it either when I have decided that I have just this is not a healthy relationship. I’ve given everything I can and it still is somehow becoming toxic to me. I walk away and I cannot even reason with myself to come back, even if I think, Oh, well, they’ve learned or they’re sorry, or they or maybe it could be better at some point. Like, I don’t know how to override my natural protective instinct at this point.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:29:43] Her is number two.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:45] My caretaker is number two.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:29:46] Yeah. Because for us, we study all of those patterns and tendencies in an order that’s most natural and we are a combination of all of them. And so his is number one and yours is number two, which is why yours is a little bit more extreme. That’s why you have the shut the door what you refer to. And so when it’s number one, you pull it back. But they’re the only ones that can bring it right back to care without a whole lot of effort. Really. There’s a formula for that, too. We we have tools for that that help understand why you do that and whether it serves you or not, and how to make sure that you’re staying grounded within that. And so for you, you you have more of that charismatic forward, you know, people and values need to put together. Yes, they must be aligned that that comes first, which is why you may not see eye to eye right now on how he can do what you just asked him to do. It’s just different. You still have access to the care. It’s just not first, it’s not the top one. For me, it’s number three. It’s not even.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:53] Oh, yeah. But I think that’s fascinating to me because I did not realize that I always thought of myself as a caretaker, number one. But it’s but but it’s interesting to think that at some point I realize that it’s too much for me and I’m able to get out. But if it were number one, would it be harder for me to get out? Oh, don’t you think I’m cold? Brendon?

Brendon Canale: [00:31:21] Yeah. Um. So somebody, somebody wrongs me and whatever that instance is, you know, a pretty chill person. Not many people. Wrong me, but I’ll pull it back and be like, okay, I’m going to go do my own thing. I don’t have to have an argument, conversation, anything. All right, I’m going to go do this and, you know, say that person, you know, shows a positive light, whatever that is. Like, I’m willing I’m able to comfortably forgive and, you know, welcome them into my life. Like, there is a there is there is a boundary, there’s a wall. Um, but, you know, as long as everything is kosher and, you know, I continue to do me.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:00] Wow, that sounds so healthy.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:32:02] That’s why I say grounded, but it looks different for everybody else. I’m I’m a strategist. I, I calculate and I remember everything. So it’s not the same. And if, if my double edged sword when I’m healthy and grounded, then I am providing clarity. I am looking for a strategic solution to a problem. But when I’m unhealthy and not grounded.

Brendon Canale: [00:32:28] Lots of questions.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:32:31] Then I do have. Incessant questions, which is also a sign of of unhealthy or not healthy or whatever you want to say. And the questions become judgmental and personal in nature, but you’re.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:44] Able to see yourself do this. Yeah.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:32:45] Oh, and I can stop it now because I have the formula. Like, I have studied it enough that I can I can hear it instantly. I can even feel it in the muscles of my face. So because I pay attention to it with all of my clients, I have to be able to see what’s natural. It’s not a judgment, it’s a piece of data. And so as soon as I see my eyes or feel my eyes pass that personal line, I’m like, Nope, that question was not correct. And then I will stop or I will say, You’ll hear me. I’ll say, This is not that. That sounded judgmental, and then I’ll reframe the question because it’s not my intent. But all of us, when we’re stressed and we’re reactionary, we aren’t intentional. And so that’s why it’s called a reaction. You know, when we’re responsive, then we can be intentional. We can even call out what he said, like, I’m pulling it back. I can give it back. I’m oh, let me stop my questions. If they’re really that important, I’ll bring them later.

Brendon Canale: [00:33:39] And that’s where I have to be careful with customers, is whenever I start pulling back that care and they’re already frustrated is I have to catch myself doing that because I become transactional. And so then it’s yes, no, okay, all of that. Instead of like, let let me let me guide you through this. And so spearheading that before you’re in it is, you know, from a customer service aspect is how I can work through customers utilizing the tools.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:34:07] When you want. Wouldn’t everybody want Brendon to be in charge of customer service because he naturally provides care. But the fact that he is that aware to be able to notice mid mid conversation and that’s why we why we think this can be a fearless formula because once you do understand that about you, you start to pay attention to it in them and you start to see their patterns and tendencies, you see their reactions as just that. And if we can become that aware and accept that it’s maybe them on a bad day, you know, who are they on a good day and how will you connect with them? What kind of communication can you use that will remind them of what they’re amazing at? Then all of a sudden you’re like, Take them on a whole journey where they’re kind of with you forever. And that creates customers for a lifetime for a business if done properly.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:56] And that’s so exciting. I mean, when I think about it, it’s like what I’m learning in therapy about observing and not absorbing. You’re able to observe yourself without absorbing the negative connotation with your reactions. You’re able to observe yourself as just, This is just how I’m feeling today, whatever. But you also can if you do it for yourself, you can do it for other people when they’re interacting with you. So you don’t take it personally and they can feel that because you can have a space of them being upset and it’s not going to rattle you and create like a bad energy that could create a huge argument or something. And then they feel grounded as well because they’re kind of feeding off of you, right?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:35:32] Well, yeah, What I would say and Brendan, I would love for you to chime in, but for any caretaker, it will affect you. But the question is, is how much? So as I always say, like for caretakers that go into self deprecation because they’re overstressed, they start going down the steps into the pit. And I always say, if you’re going to go into the pit of despair, you are naturally going to do that because you care so much. The question is, is can we stop you five steps down instead of taking yourself 1000 steps down? And in doing that, you weren’t denying who you are. You’re just reminding yourself, Oh, wait, stop. I’ve been down there before and I don’t want to be there now.

Brendon Canale: [00:36:12] Yeah. Taking the taking a breath, giving yourself a reset. There’s been a few times after, like the heavier conversations where, you know, I’m a car guy, I work at a shop, I work there for a reason. So, you know, I’ll have one of those heavy conversations like, All right, I just need to go on a quick, like 15 minute drive, you know, go on a drive, go do a lap, and then, you know, come back and, you know, that that little reset of, you know, hey, like I realized I need this or, you know, most of the time the customer doesn’t get me get to me anymore. Like, okay, on to the next one. Um, but you know, whenever you do have those heavy ones, you need to take that second, find your ground and then, you know, move forward. Because if you carry that to the next customer, then it’s just going to keep going. You’re like, Man, I’ve had like six bad customers today. The customers? Yeah, yeah.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:36:58] What did you do today?

Brendon Canale: [00:37:00] It’s not the customers.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:01] If you have six bad customers, it’s not the customers. Right. Interesting. Such self-awareness.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:37:05] Though. Wow. And I’m so proud to sit next to him and watch every one of my clients who takes this to heart and really decides that they want to make this into a fearless formula. It is so fun to hear them talk about it good, bad and ugly because we’re not going to be 100% great at it. But if we are 70, 80% great at it all the time, that’s awesome.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:28] There’s space to not be 100% great at it because nothing is perfect.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:37:32] But instead of judging that, we accept that, Oh, I screwed that one up. Tomorrow I’ll do better.

Brendon Canale: [00:37:38] The win feels so much better when there was loss.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:37:42] Dang, he’s very, very good. Are you.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:44] Are you so ready? I am. It’s exciting to see that some of the tools that you 100% believe in and know work in in real time. You’ve seen the positive effect it’s had not only in your interpersonal relationships, but what it’s meant in terms of dollars, which is what’s important here. We’re talking about in in business. So what are the other I don’t know if you call them archetypes, but what are the other main ways that people interact? Like he’s he’s a caretaker. I’m not quite sure what I am, but.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:38:15] Well, and I started it thinking about yesterday’s question is what is the double edged sword? And for mine as a strategist, it is overthinking or analysis paralysis. When grounded and used for good, I ask strategic questions to gain enough pieces of the puzzle to be competitive and solve it When I’m stressed out. It’s too many questions internally first and then externally is awful, and I will lose credibility instantaneously when I do that, which is why I had to practice learning how to stop. Then you have the extreme emotion dreamer, maybe archetype as you want, and when healthy they can solve problems that no one else can solve. They see the future in a way that nobody else can. But when stressed out the extreme perfection of It’s in my head, why don’t you understand? And an inability, if they’re not aware, their communication does not come out at all like what they say does not match what they dream. And that’s very, very frustrating for them and for the people that that work for them. That’s one of the hardest things when we’re looking at different business owners is we attract that in our business. When the owner is in that dream state and dream does not operate day to day, dream is meant to operate bigger. So then you also have a more dominant which most business owners want to be. We will call them initiators for today’s purposes when amazing and healthy and. Rounded, they actually execute and make the biggest things happen because their confidence is through the roof.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:40:02] But when stressed out, their arrogance and ability to blow up the situation on purpose because they want you to remember how bad whatever just happened, incompetence is is a trigger for that. And so what they need to remember is very few people are actually number one initiator. It’s what, something like 9%, maybe 7%. It’s really, really low. And the majority of the people that work for them are going to be caretakers or strategists, and they do not communicate the same and they don’t receive it the same. So what we’ll find with our clients that are inclined that way is that they often feel like islands and they don’t understand why people won’t get it done. They are working their people so hard that the turnover is ridiculous. And so we say, okay, let’s figure out what it is that your team needs in order to be their best and then let them do it, you know? And then who did I miss? Oh, the the believer. Oh, the believers are the type of people I think that Sharon, I think you and I have talked about this before, but you have this natural ability to believe in people and ideas and you feed off of a big crowd of it to the point where you just want to bring them together. That’s why you hosting the show. It’s like I get to bring all these people in and I get to try to find ways that they can relate with each other and I can relate with them.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:41:24] And when healthy and grounded, that’s amazing. But when unhealthy, I think the flipped sword on that one is trying really hard to force a belief and then it becomes forced on all the people around them. And man, it is like walking through glue and they’re so typically on a grounded strength, very charismatic in a great way. But that same charisma when when not grounded and not healthy is kind of emotionally explosive on people around them. So, I mean, like I said, we are bits of all of them. The question is which ones are the most natural, which are the ones that give you the most energy. And so that we don’t have to pretend to be all of them. As a business owner, I that’s one of the hardest things at the very beginning is helping them understand the best way to lead your business is through your own natural patterns and tendencies. Even though you think or have read books that tells you you need to be such and such a way in order to work. That’s not true if you lead from that grounded place, just like what Brendon experienced with the gravitational trust, the customers and the staff that always rely that Brendon is there and he’s grounded. The same thing happens for a business owner. You attract employees that want to stay there. And so I.

Sharon Cline: [00:42:47] Mean, and if you recognize what your pattern and tendency naturally is, then you can strategically choose the people that you have in your business and you just put your arms up. I did.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:42:57] I did because strategic hiring is one of the biggest programs that we’ve been using lately is to say, Hey, you need to be given the majority of the time to be in your natural best and the people who are going to balance that is probably your natural least. So why don’t you hire those people and empower them to be their best? And Brendon was one of those strategic hires and it’s beautiful. It’s glorious, It is sometimes unexpected, but it has the biggest outcome. I guess it’s the best outcome.

Brendon Canale: [00:43:31] Yeah. You asked you asked the question, what was the percentage in dollars of the benefit of the growth? And the other side of that is the cultural benefit within the company, the people, the people with you.

Sharon Cline: [00:43:48] The non quantifiable.

Brendon Canale: [00:43:50] Effect. Yes. Having a healthy place to work. That’s not like, you know, they’re stressed. It’s a job but like having a healthy place that you can work and you you want to be there and you have these people around you, you know, that continues to improve and grow, which is again, unquantifiable.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:44:09] But it also is a level of care for a team and sometimes it’s business. We always think numbers, but numbers aren’t always the only driver. We have a formula for that too, where you as a business owner or a team leader have to understand yours, and then a company itself has to understand what it wants to be and we will take people through that. So we can say if I mean obviously money has to happen in business, we get that. But if it’s not a natural top driver and it’s getting the most of your time, energy and effort, it’s going to feel off, it’s going to feel against the grain. And so if you do it in a more natural order, then it will come along with That’s why Brendon I’m happy for him to sit today because it has come along. With the culture and money just because of him learning how to be grounded and and and do his job at his best and him being able to communicate that to the team and the customers verbally and non-verbally.

Brendon Canale: [00:45:10] Yeah. So what got me to bringing that point back up is the strategic hires is figuring out who whenever you’re looking at people, not only looking at their voice orders, interacting with them, seeing, you know, maybe they maybe they, you know, fibbed a little while. They’re taking their their analysis or where you’re kind of understanding them and seeing who’s going to be a good fit for company culture. So you can continue that environment of just like a healthy place to work, as I’m sure everybody’s had that job where it’s just like the manager. Is this like super toxic or like one bad apple just like focuses on the wrong thing and you’re like, Hey, like, this is what we do, this is what we provide, this is who we are. And, you know, figuring out who fits within that mold.

Sharon Cline: [00:45:54] Um, it’s interesting because you’re talking about sort of an ultimate acceptance of who you are without the whatever nature versus nurture versus choice, meaning that we all put on the feelings that we have right?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:46:10] That’s why when people ask me, Oh, do you do personality? Yes, I do as a basis, but I don’t put stock in the terminology. Like if you’re a caretaker, what does that mean? How does it play out? How does it serve you? How does it not serve you? What’s an opportunity for you and what’s the opportunity for the company? And that’s strategic hiring. That’s kind of the big thing, is you can get warm and fuzzy vibes from somebody who’s extremely charismatic in an interview and they may have the best credentials, but if the job that is needed does not serve their natural best tendencies, it won’t last. And it’s really a formula there too. So what we always say is we we because we’ve done interviews on the front porch with clients of ours, we say, Oh my gosh, you’re awesome. That’s not the job that we have right now. But when we do, we would want you and we’ll call you because we don’t want to give you the false sense that we just want you on our team because we like the team environment, You fit the team environment. We want to make sure that you have the right opportunity to continue to be healthy and actually, you know, develop yourself and say, hey, I want to be here and I’m going to be more committed to being in a place that values me for what I bring, not just what’s on my resume.

Sharon Cline: [00:47:23] I love that, too, because the way you’re talking about it is a I am not a victim of my personality and the jobs that are out there and someone’s not putting me in the right place. I’m not so much a victim. I’m more I can take action to change the outcome, which feels so much better. Yes.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:47:43] But it requires at the very beginning we talked about awareness and acceptance, and that’s the acceptance piece. Like, you can be aware of your tendencies, but you have to accept what that means for good and for bad and for ugly so that you can say, Oh crap, you know, if I know that this is going to bring me down, what do I need? Brendan said, This is what I know is care for me. He knows that now. It’s part of his cheat sheet booklet, whatever. So he can he doesn’t even need to look at it anymore. It’s part of his daily practice. He knows how to get it.

Brendon Canale: [00:48:14] Yeah, I have my. I have my people, you know, So I have it. I have a reminder on my phone. 830 goes off every night. I call a person I care about. And, you know, it’s either a person that I need care from or a person that I want to give care to, and that’s very much so simplifying it. But that is a part of like my daily routine, making those phone calls. Like, hey, like it’s been a heavy day. Who do I need to call? Or I need to call this person? And they always just bring that light back, right? And, you know, I’m feeling fired up. You know, I want this person to be fired up to let me call them and, you know, kind of helping them through that, whatever it is.

Sharon Cline: [00:48:49] I love this because it really does give in real time what your company, Front Porch Advisors offers companies, because I’m sure in a way it’s almost like esoteric. It’s almost like you can’t really say it in a quick snippet. It’s it’s complex but not unmanageable. And so I guess I really like that. You’ve had a moment here to explain in a not just from the beginning like we did with Anna Kawa, which was so interesting because it was like the initial this is what it would be like if someone just came to you brand new and assessed. What are your things that you like about yourself and don’t or how it works in your business? But now you can see the other side of you’re not a completely different human being. Like the notion of, Oh, I have to change can be so daunting and scary. And what is this going to mean for why am I still going to like going skateboarding? What, like, what’s it going to mean for my life? But I love that you have your, your your the best version of yourself. Yes. Yes. Oh, still yourself. Just the best version of yourself. Which which to me, if someone told me that you’re going to be the best version of yourself, then I’m not going to be so scared to go through a process of kind of unpacking all of the different things that I don’t like about myself, or I have to look at myself and maybe change and but I don’t want to change too much because that seems like too much.

Brendon Canale: [00:50:10] Learning to use your natural wiring to benefit your job. So, like, I’m a service, like service advisor, service writer. I sell work for a shop. So it was it was exhausting for me when I first started out to sell work for a shop. But whenever that role changed to I’m caring for the customer. That was an internal change. It’s not something that stated that is that is an internal quiet. It was quiet. Exactly. So learning to use my wiring for what I am doing and, you know, growing from there, then make it so that I’m not exhausted doing my job. But it’s actually rewarding is one of the bigger takeaways for me. I don’t know if you guys want to. Oh, but.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:50:53] It also if you notice because he’s humble. Yes. Which is part of his wiring, he’s never arrogant and caretakers are never arrogant. But as a result of this kind of work, his influence makes him a natural team leader. Which is why throwing the term GM, it is a really good fit for him. But traditionally, when you look at that title, a company thinks I need a GM that’s going to be this. No, no, no, no, no. It doesn’t have to be one. It has to be grounded. It has to be. What does the company need to balance out between owner, between other team leads, between other staff members and their company? Needed a Brendan, but he needed to be the best version of himself. And that’s what’s the formula that’s working really well for them. Yeah, it’s it’s glorious to watch.

Sharon Cline: [00:51:42] I love I hope that business owners who are listening right now. Can contact you and say, Here, here are the things that I see aren’t working for me. What’s the best way they could contact you?

Joe Cianciolo: [00:51:52] Well, we are front porch advisors.com esses advisors with an E. I am Joe at Front Porch Advisors. You can email us. You can go to our website. There’s plenty of ways to to connect. But what what I really also hope and why I love today is all of the clients that I get to work with on a leadership level, fearless leadership. I’m going to start saying that fearless leadership because Brendan has been on that leadership journey. He’s in it right now is you can see them intentionally spreading it out because that’s part of what it means to be a fearless leader is that when you know this about yourself and you become grounded, you want other people to be their best selves. And that’s why listening to Brendan talk to you and then all of a sudden flip things.

Sharon Cline: [00:52:36] Back, he was asking me questions.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:52:37] It’s because if we do that as a community, we all want the best around us. We want the best. And that is, like you said, you don’t have to change and you don’t have to pretend to be extremely dominant or extremely demanding. You just have to be grounded because everybody brings something different to the table and it’s necessary in all arenas.

Brendon Canale: [00:52:58] So when everybody sees the fake but they respect the real, so be yourself. Don’t pretend.

Sharon Cline: [00:53:07] I.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:53:07] Won’t pay you later is. But it’s coming out of him. And I get to usually when we’re in session, we’re doing the work like right now. But when we are at this point, I’m watching and he’s coming up with these gems that we it just makes me feel like I want to do more. I want to continue and I see Brendan continuing his journey upwards and the fear has didn’t even play a part today, I don’t think.

Sharon Cline: [00:53:33] Not at.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:53:33] All. Fearless formula.

Sharon Cline: [00:53:35] Fearless formula.

Brendon Canale: [00:53:37] I was ready.

Sharon Cline: [00:53:39] I like that. You say when you’re when you’re elevating yourself and you want to elevate people around you, well, then it just elevates everything. Do you know what I mean? Like, exponentially.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:53:47] Well, and like you said, you can people can feel the fake, and the try is fine. I don’t have a problem with people trying as long as they’re willing to accept that they’re trying. Instead, once you take that away, it can be a little bit simpler and you can be more accepting of what’s real and not sort of trapped or enslaved by your own tendencies. The double edged sword is there for everyone. The question is, is do you know which way to hold it? Do you know which way to use it? And can you stop yourself when you start to see that it’s it’s not the best version of yourself takes practice. Even after all these years, we’ll find plenty of opportunities to say where it’s not. But I bring people like Brendan right into that, where I will call it right out so that I know and he knows.

Brendon Canale: [00:54:33] Yeah, we’ve, we’ve had many sessions where Joe is like did this old tendency.

Sharon Cline: [00:54:39] But you know, I love that you call it even your own fearless formula because you are you have tools, you refer to it. We have a plan for that. This is how we can work around it. You’re not a victim of your circumstance.

Joe Cianciolo: [00:54:51] Well, and it’s really easy to measure numbers, but like you said, the intangible, the the culture that these words have, I think, been a bit co-opted lately. That’s what you you felt from Brandon. Yeah. When we do that, we do have tools and we do have formulas, but it’s sometimes harder for a business owner to think, Man, I really need that because they want to know how is it going to improve sales? Well, this is it. And that’s why I appreciate you coming on to help, because Sharon is one of those people who connects people she’s really good at. But it will be so much easier for everybody when they realize, oh, wait, that’s not natural for me, but maybe one of the people on my team is for them and how do I empower them? What do I need to give them that provides them what they need to be fearless and amazing like?

Sharon Cline: [00:55:39] Brendan So if you if people want to come see you and see this interaction in action, where could they.

Brendon Canale: [00:55:46] Go? Diesel David Inc Type in diesel. David.com. Check us out (770) 874-5094. I’ll be on the phone and.

Sharon Cline: [00:55:55] No one’s going to test you at this point We got.

Brendon Canale: [00:55:57] It. Main Street, Woodstock, Georgia.

Sharon Cline: [00:56:02] Well Brendan Connell and Jose and hello from Front Porch Advisors. I’m so excited that we got to have this conversation today. This is some of my most like I said, I get in my own head and just seeing it in real time, someone right in front of me. You’re different from the first time you came on the show, which was probably last September or maybe maybe August. It’s cool to see. It’s it’s really true. I guess so. All right. Well, listen, everybody out there listening to Fearless Formula, thank you for tuning in today. And this is Sharon Cline again, reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.

BRX Pro Tip: 2 Things I Used Chat GPT for This Week

May 1, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: 2 Things I Used Chat GPT for This Week

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BRX Pro Tip: 2 Things I Used Chat GPT for This Week

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, ChatGPT is all the rage. You continue to study it, look into it. What are you learning, man?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Well, these are two things that I actually use ChatGPT with this week – and heads up, spoiler, but Google also has their version of it. It’s called Google Bard, B-A-R-D. I recommend Googling Google Bard and see if you can get on the wait list to try that out. I’ve tried it out as well. It has a very simple interface and it tends to be a lot less busy than ChatGPT is at this time, so you might want to check that out.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] But two things I used AI with this week, was, I used it to help me write headlines for Facebook Ads that were running and I used it to write a first draft of an email that I wrote this week. Now, some of the tips to use when you’re using AI is to be as specific as possible and help the AI help you.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] So, when you’re writing something in an ad or a headline, tell it things like, “Write this like a thought leader expert on this subject matter,” or “Write this like a high school student.” Write it in the tone that you want to, tell it the tone you want, or the audience that you’re aiming at, and it’ll give you a better response. And you can play around with it. You can try, you know, write it for an expert, write it for a beginner, and it’ll write a different type of content depending on who you’re trying to communicate with. And it’s cool to see that.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] And I like to use AI especially for first drafts. So, if I have some ideas that I’m working on, instead of just kind of myself brainstorming stuff, I’ll say, “Okay. Write ten things on this subject matter,” and it’ll write ten things. And then, I’ll be able to say, “Okay. Maybe I can use this one or I’ll go deeper on this one, or this one might work better in this case.” So, I use it a lot for first drafts. And you’ll be surprised, once you start using it, it becomes very easy to be a habit.

BRX Pro Tip: 3 Things Your Future Self Will Thank You For

April 28, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: 3 Things Your Future Self Will Thank You For

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BRX Pro Tip: 3 Things Your Future Self Will Thank You For

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I don’t guess any of us have a crystal ball, but I got to believe things that we do now will impact the future that we live. What’s your take on that?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:16] Yeah. Here’s three little things that you can do today that will make your tomorrow a little bit better. One thing is – this is easy – prepare your coffee the night before. Better yet, if your coffee machine is automatic, have it scheduled to make the coffee so it’s waiting for you when you wake up. This way, your day is rolling. Things have already started happening. You haven’t even done anything yet.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Second, the night before, write one thing you want to get done the next day. Make that kind of the north star for your day so that you know that if I get this one thing done, I’ve had a good day. And then, third, during that mid-afternoon lull, when you get hungry – and you know you get hungry, everybody gets hungry in the mid-afternoon – help yourself by instead of snacking, go out for a walk. Schedule a walk. Put it in your calendar. It doesn’t have to be far. It just has to get you moving a little and to distract you from wanting to eat something. So, if you can kind of get ahead of your future hunger by scheduling in a short light workout, you’re going to eat less and move more, which can help you with your health.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] So, by changing these three little things every day, it’s going to help you get more done and be more productive in the long run. And the message, though, outside of these three things are, there are things you can be doing today to help future you be the better you. So, think about some of those and start scheduling them into your day.

BRX Pro Tip: How I Connect People I Know

April 27, 2023 by angishields

BRX Pro Tips

BRX Pro Tip: How I Connect People I Know

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BRX Pro Tip: How I Connect People I Know

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, how do you go about connecting people to each other?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:10] Yeah. This is something that’s super important, especially in our business, because in our business, we meet so many people and we build relationships so fast with so many different people. It’s important when you do find the opportunity to connect to the people together, to have a system that you can easily make that connection in a simple way that helps each of them get to know each other and it gets you out of the middle of it as quickly as possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] So, the way that I write an email when I’m connecting two people is this, in the subject line, I write their names, “Bob meet Sue. Sue meet Bob.” And that’s all the subject line is. And then, within the email, I write, “I think you two would benefit from knowing one another.” And then, I put, “Bob – Sue Smith is the executive director of ABC Company.” And then, I say, “Sue, Bob Jones is the CEO of XYZ Company.” And I highlight their name and I connect their name to their LinkedIn page. And then, I highlight their company and I hyperlink their company to their company’s website, usually their about page. And then, I close the note with, “I hope you two connect.”

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] And that’s it. And I keep it short and simple and then it’s up to them to do the rest.