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BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

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BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular
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BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

Stone Payton: And we’re back with Business RadioX Pro Tips, Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I am not complaining even a little bit, but why do you suppose podcasting has become – and podcasts – are so popular these days?

Lee Kantor: I think that what podcasts do, it really aligns well with what listeners are valuing today. Today’s listeners value content that’s tailored to very specific interests and identities. And when you’re listening to a podcast, it feels more like a community than just kind of a media. This fosters connections over shared passions, and listeners feel like they’re active participants, not just passive consumers.

Lee Kantor: People are so hungry for this authentic human connection. And just think about how they’re listening, they’re usually with headphones, they’ve usually blocked out all the other things that are going on. And they might be doing something like walking on a treadmill or going for a walk, but what’s in their ears is the podcaster talking, whispering right into their ear.

Lee Kantor: So, podcasts are typically more conversational, they’re unscripted, they’re intimate than other media. The format lets the host share stories or struggles or expertise in an authentic voice. This type of intimacy is making listeners feel like they know the host, this builds trust and builds connection. And when the content aligns with a passion or identity, you know, this can feel like a lifeline to some folks, especially for first generation entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: So, podcasts are on demand and personalized. The listener controls what, when, and where they listen. It’s a gateway to real relationships. Podcasts are so popular today because they go beyond delivering content. They build community.

Disrupting the Roofing Industry: David Bitan’s Vision for a Better Customer Experience

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Franchise Marketing Radio
Disrupting the Roofing Industry: David Bitan’s Vision for a Better Customer Experience
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In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee Kantor interviews David Bitan, founder of Bumble Roofing. David shares his journey building Bumble Roofing into a standout brand by focusing on “white glove” customer service, local ownership, and operational excellence—rare in the roofing industry. He discusses industry trends, the pitfalls of private equity rollups, and the company’s innovative use of technology. David also highlights the importance of thoughtful franchise growth, strategic partnerships (notably with Empower Brands and Lowe’s), and maintaining a people-first culture to ensure both customer satisfaction and franchisee success.

Bumble-Roofing-logo

David-BitanWith 16 years of experience in home and residential services, David Bitan is the driving force behind Bumble Roofing, a company that has transformed the roofing industry over the last five years.

David’s passion lies in bringing fresh, innovative experiences to traditional industries and turning customers into lifelong raving fans. After successfully establishing Bumble Roofing as a household name in the Los Angeles market, David partnered with Empower Brands to expand his vision nationwide.

Today, he is dedicated to helping franchise owners achieve their goals, while continuing to fulfill homeowners’ roofing dreams through the Bumble Roofing vision.

Connect with David on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

  • Overview of Bumble Roofing’s commitment to a “white glove” customer experience in the roofing industry.
  • Discussion of the fragmented nature of the roofing market, dominated by small to midsize local companies.
  • Examination of the trend of private equity firms acquiring and consolidating small roofing companies.
  • Analysis of the drawbacks of private equity rollups, including loss of local ownership and customer service quality.
  • Emphasis on the importance of local ownership for delivering exceptional service and customer satisfaction.
  • Description of Bumble Roofing’s customer service fundamentals and how they differentiate from competitors.
  • Introduction of innovative technology, such as AI-powered satellite imagery for accurate roofing quotes.
  • Insights into the challenges and learning curve of expanding Bumble Roofing through franchising.
  • Profile of the ideal franchisee, focusing on community involvement and diverse professional backgrounds.
  • Overview of Bumble Roofing’s strategic partnerships and the benefits of being part of the Empower Brands franchise platform.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio. It’s Franchise Marketing Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have David Bitan. He is with Bumble Roofing. Welcome.

David Bitan: Hello Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Bumble Roofing. How are you serving folks?

David Bitan: Well, we’re serving the white glove experience, something you don’t find in that in the industry. Uh, much too often, uh, specifically in roofing. We’ve been in the business now since 2019, myself, since about 2008. And one of the things I noticed early on was that homeowners aren’t getting the the experience they deserve. And as time went on, you know, spending some time as a salesperson in the industry, as a product manager, I noticed more and more and more that that piece was missing. And so I decided in 2019 to launch Bumble Roofing out of Los Angeles, California.

Lee Kantor: So just kind of give us a lay of the land of our roofers, pretty much kind of small to midsize companies in, in most local markets. Is that how it typically runs?

David Bitan: Yeah, I would say so. I think, you know, you’re noticing now a lot more PE backed firms coming into the roofing space. You have the franchise owners, you have, you know, firms that are doing roll ups of small mom and pops. That’s where it’s headed. It’s a very fragmented trade. Hasn’t been touched by PE other than the last couple of years prior to that. Even now. Right. The majority is small mom and pops. Uh, they may do great work, but they’re not providing the experience to customer service.

Lee Kantor: So when you got into it, was your intention to franchise all along, so you built it to be a franchise or was that something? After doing it a while, you’re like, you know what, I have a pretty good system. I can replicate this.

David Bitan: Yeah. So? So no. So the intention was never to franchise a couple different reasons. One is I wanted to build this thing on my own and and see it grow organically too, which is the primary reason is I have no idea. Franchising was was a thing in the in the home service space. So I thought franchising like most people, was fitness and food and a small little box. Right? And so after spending about four years in the industry, or really about really about three, I decided, let’s take that next step. Let’s have some more locations. Again, franchising was not even a thought in my mind. And as I was doing that and started talking to colleagues and peers of mine, I came to realize that franchising was a thing. Since I had an old buddy of mine by a restoration firm franchise out here in LA, and that’s when my eyes kind of opened up. I started doing some research. I got really excited. I think franchising is not just a great opportunity for the franchisee, but for a founder like myself. I’m not a big fan of these pea rollups, and the main reason is there’s no ownership in every single location. And I think ownership is the most important aspect of a local service business, right? When you’re on the ground, when people know that the business owner lives in their market, understands their market, understands the demographic and makes it much bigger difference. And they have, you know, at the at the end of the day, they have they they have a piece of that pie. Whereas with these PE you know, with these PE firms, backed firms, they’re opening a bunch of locations. The ownership group, the management group, they’re usually sitting in some nice office suite in some big city. And so they don’t understand what the customer actually wants. And as I mentioned early on, right, we’re all about the white glove experience. We’re all about the customer experience. And you can’t get that unless you have somebody who truly cares on ground floor.

Lee Kantor: Now for the listener who isn’t maybe as familiar as you are about these kind of roll ups, can you explain, um, why they’re happening or where where these, um, private equity firms are seeing the opportunity because, uh, I don’t know if everybody as, uh, as knowledgeable about this subject as you are.

David Bitan: Yeah. So I’ve been noticing it over the last five years or so. Uh, more so on, on on the HVAC side, the plumbing side, the electrical side. You’re starting to see it a lot more now in roofing as well. Um, so what these PE firms are doing, right? They, they they come and they buy these mom and pop shops for very low multiples. Um, you had a lot of, um, you know, baby boomers that are getting ready to retire and they have nowhere to pass their businesses down to. So they’re getting, I wouldn’t say pennies on the dollar. A lot of them are making, you know, pretty nice exits, but, um, they wouldn’t be getting what usually the business is really worth multiple wise. And so these bathrooms are coming in. They’re buying these companies for one to, you know, to three, maybe four x. Uh, and then they’re putting it all into one portfolio, putting everybody on one system, under one umbrella, under one brand. And the goal is, you know, usually between 4 to 6 years later to go and sell that as one company.

David Bitan: The problem is, is where the problem lies. And I seen a lot now, um, with, with, with the HVAC industry, the problem is that all of the founders, all of the GM’s, they usually get a nice paycheck. They end up leaving. Right. The difference between that and franchising is that you have ownership on ground level. So when you have this PE firm coming out and buying 100 HVAC companies across the US two years from now, all of those founders are gone. All those presidents are gone. All the owners are gone for the most part. And so what happens? You now have, you know, a management group running these locations remotely, and you’re not getting a level of service, the level of customer experience that you actually need in order to be successful. And so that’s where you’re seeing a lot. Not to say that, you know, there’s a lot of firms that do very, very well. And they run a tight ship. Uh, but most, most of what I’ve seen, um, usually ends up failing in a couple of years in.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Uh, it seems like the the folks are the ones who typically win. So, um, you keep talking about kind of this white glove service, this super service. Um, how how does your service kind of distinguish itself and differentiate itself from your competitors when it comes to roofing, where a lot of folks just say, hire somebody and then, you know, then it’s done in a couple of days.

David Bitan: Yeah. You know, I love that question because first of all, we could probably spend two hours on the phone talking about the difference between Bombo Roofing and Traditional Roofing Company. I always like to tell people it’s it’s it’s it’s not rocket science. It’s it’s answering the phone in time. It’s showing up. When you say you’re going to show up, it’s cleaning it up at the end of every single day, offering a power wash at the end of your project and making sure you’re there when, when, excuse my language. When shit hits the fan. Um, that’s that’s that’s what it really takes, right? Little things. Uh, answering an email, um, sending an estimate the day you’re on your, you’re on the job site or the day you leave the home, um, those little things is what ends up making it work. I’ll give you a quick story. One of my first franchisees that came on board, uh, we went out to visit him in his first couple of months. And during our site visits, uh, we’ll do everything right. We’ll, we’ll we’ll go to job site visits. We’ll go on appointments. Uh, you know, we’ll do deep dive marketing. We’ll knock doors, whatever needs to be done. Whatever that franchisee, uh, thinks, thinks is, uh, is going to be a good use of our time. And so we went out a couple of appointments, we went out to a bar restaurant, um, and we show up, um, you know, we take our measurements, we sit down with the owner of the bar restaurant, and within 30 minutes, guys signing a contract. And I had to ask him because, you know, 30 minutes pretty quick. I had to ask him, like, why? Why did you end up going with us? And he says, I called.

David Bitan: I don’t remember if it was 6 or 8, but he said, I called about six companies. You were the only ones out of the six that showed up and gave me a proposal out of the other, the other five, one other one showed up. It’s been two weeks. He’s never sent me anything, he’s never communicated, and the other four never even got backed. So again, when I say what makes us different, it’s what most consumers believe the standard should be. Um, but obviously there’s a lot more to that, right? We have accreditations. We are a platinum preferred roofer, which only 0.7 percent of roofers across the nation can say they are art with Owens Corning, one of the leading manufacturers. Shingles. Uh, we are Lowe’s Pro provider, which only 1% of contractors can say that they are. Meaning we do business with Lowe’s. We’re background checked by Lowe’s. Any person that comes into your home running our Lowe’s Bumble badge, you can rest assured they’ve been through a background check. We are at RCA members, the National Roofing Contractor Association. We are a top 500 remodeling for five years now, running with qualified remodeling. This year we are number 251. This is not just roofing companies. This is all remodeling and replacement companies throughout the US. A very prestigious list. So the list again goes on and on and on. I think from the sales process, the customer experience standpoint, um, the post, you know, post sale and post project, there’s a lot of things that we bring to the table, but I think pre project is where most consumers and owners have their cards up.

David Bitan: And what we do differently is we offer a very easy sales process. One, you can go online right now. Lee, I’m not sure where you’re located. Uh, but if we do have a market, uh, inside of where you live, uh, you can go onto our website. Put in your address. Within seconds, you’ll receive a quote on what your roof will cost you. Uh, via email. And we do that free through AI and satellite imagery. Will measure the roof via satellite through AI. Uh, within, as I mentioned, a couple of seconds of finishing that that, um, that AI powered, uh, satellite roof measurement, you will receive a quote via email. So those little things is what makes a huge difference. The cons of communication, the consulting piece have only come out. We’re not there to sell people. We’re there to educate them on what they’ll need. I’ve logged into several appointments throughout building Bumble Roofing, where we walk into a home where most roofers will say, hey, yeah, we’re going to sell you a $30,000 roof. And we walk out and say, hey, all you needed was some sealant on your pipe. We took care of that for you when we were up there. And in ten years from now, when you really do need a roof and new roof, we’ll be sure you give us a call. So, uh, it’s really that that’s that’s what we mean by white glove. Customer experience is not screwing people over. Roofers and contractors have a very, very, very bad rep. And we just want to be the ones that that change that rep.

Lee Kantor: So when you were developing the concept, and I’m sure at first, um, you were on roofs yourself at some point, but at the, at the point of inflection when you said, okay, we’re going to franchise this and we’re going to, you know, kind of document all of our systems. We have our ideal customer profile. We know what a good franchisee would look like. What, um, what was it like getting those first few franchisees? Can you talk about kind of the launch phase of this, uh, franchise?

David Bitan: Yeah. Uh, and and I’d love to be as transparent as possible. Um, so, uh, when we first launched franchising, we had one location under our belt. We had the Los Angeles location, the company owned store. Uh, and so all we knew is what I knew, right? Uh, which is pretty much the Southern California roofing market, which is, uh, as I’m sure you could probably guess, much different than the rest of the landscape across the US when it comes to roofing. We get, if we’re lucky, two weeks of rain out here. We do get the Santa Ana winds, but still much different than what you see across the map. And so when we launched, we’re now opening locations across the map. My number one biggest fear was like, okay, is this thing going to work? Like we have systems and processes in place, but is it going to actually work? And so when we got a few projects under our under our franchisees belt that, that that felt really, really good. Um, and uh, you know, show showed that this thing can work. Um, what we ran into, though more often than not, in our first, I would say 8 to 12 months, um, are a lot of things that we didn’t know we needed. Uh, for example, Los Angeles is not considered a considered an insurance or a stolen market for obvious reasons.

David Bitan: Uh, we started opening up locations, these insurance markets, and we realized, oh my God, we need to figure out how to write up contingency agreements. We need to figure out how to use exact amount. We need to know how to talk to these public adjusters and to these insurance claim adjusters, and to have to and read policies. And so those type of things, in the first 12 months of franchising, I would say it happened a lot. Um, it didn’t happen very often because there was a lot of playbooks and systems and processes that we had missing. What I love about the platform that we’re part of, the parent company and power brands, is that when they say we are here to empower our franchisees, we want to see our franchisees success, success. Uh, they actually mean that. Um, and so I’ve always had the opportunity as a brand president, uh, as we were growing to go out, seek whatever playbooks we needed, seek whatever technologies we needed, uh, seek whatever consultants we needed in order to ensure our franchisees have all the systems, processes, and tools in their toolkit to be the most successful in their market.

Lee Kantor: So, um, what was kind of the profile for that ideal franchisee? What does a candidate look like to you?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s really, you know, someone who’s who’s who’s driven. Um, I always, you know, whenever I have prospect calls, I always tell them, hey, this is not easy, right? Regardless of what business you open, you’re still opening up a small business. I don’t care if there’s 20 locations, five locations or 500 locations. It’s still going to be hard to put your name on the map and your market. And so what that takes is a lot of drive, a lot of hard work, and a lot of hours in your first 12 to 24 months. And so for me, it’s and this is, this is how I’ve kind of held my standard for, for for job interviews for, for, for, you know, franchisees prospects coming in. It’s really just the gut feeling that I get. If I feel like someone’s going to put in the work every single day and still want to do this after I’ve instilled the fear in them of what a small business is, the roller coaster that they’re about to go on emotionally, financially. Um, right. For those first, I would say 12 to 24 months, uh, if they still want to move forward. That, to me is the type of prospect that we’re looking for. Right. And on top of that, somebody who’s willing to get. Into the local community. Someone who’s willing to go around, join networking groups, show up at your local realtor’s office, uh, cold, cold call and cold outreach via email, uh, to to local GCS, property managers, insurance companies and really get out there. And we always say that it’s like your your goal is not to put Bumble Roofing on the map. Your goal is to put David on the map and to go to roofer and not market. Bumble roofing just makes it easy from a system standpoint and operation standpoint and planning standpoint, a marketing standpoint. But you want everybody to know everywhere you go that you are the local expert when it comes to roofing and bumble, roofing just makes it a little bit easier. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Now where that is your franchisee, one of those mom and pops that are saying, you know, I want to be with a brand that has more systems and, and is, you know, maybe more organized than I am and maybe can fill in some of my gaps. Or is there somebody who’s never been involved in construction or roofing?

David Bitan: Yeah. So, um, we we’re happy to entertain both. Uh, we have had a lot more luck with people who know nothing about roofing. Um, so most of our leaders, uh, are corporate, you know, leaders, um, some come from tech, some background engineering. Uh, I would say other than one. Um, nobody’s had any experience in the roofing space. And so we take them from not knowing anything to being able to sell roofing within a couple of months.

Lee Kantor: And are they the ones on the roof? Are there? You teach them how to find the right person to be on the roof?

David Bitan: Yeah, it’s a mix of both. We have we have our operators and our owners who want to get on the roof, who want to get dirty. When I say on the roof, they’re not installing shingles, but they like to perform inspections. They like to handle the sales. We do teach to bring about required, you know, part of our requirements to be a sales person from day one. So the goal is not to have them on the roof. Our model is 100% subcontracted, which is how most roofing companies work anyways. So you do not have to physically be on the roof, uh, if you do not want to. Uh, I would say it’s probably about 5050 of the franchisees that come out of the franchise, etc..

Lee Kantor: Now, how difficult is it to find those subcontractors in today’s climate?

David Bitan: Yeah, surprisingly not difficult at all. We, uh, I thought I thought that would possibly be one of our biggest hurdles that we’d have to get over when we started Bumble franchising, because I know how difficult was it for me in LA to at least find good ones? Uh, but through through our national suppliers, uh, supplier relationships, we’ve been able to, uh, basically open up the Rolodex of every local rep, uh, in any market we opened and get our franchisees connected, uh, with, with subcontractors in that market. Uh, there are also other avenues, like third party, um, hiring sites, recruitment sites that we find subs on there. But literally out of all of our franchisees, not one has had any issues finding subcontractors.

Lee Kantor: And then, um, do you have a story you can share, maybe a success story? Do you have enough track record that, um, you’re starting to see, uh, some of the success of people who are working your systems in a local market?

David Bitan: Yeah, there’s there’s there’s plenty. I’ll share. I’ll share one and maybe one more. We’ll we’ll jump off as and as I’m talking about this one. So, uh, our franchisee, um, out in Richmond, um, about three months in, uh, secured an HOA roof replacement, uh, for a large gated community, uh, for about $850,000. The biggest project sold, uh, to date at that time in Bumble roofing history. The biggest project before that, uh, was about 400 grand out in Los Angeles. So that was a big feat, especially three months in, uh, surprisingly. Um, you know, I was shocked. I was pretty scared to to have him take on a project that early on, but he had a great subcontractor that finished a project, just like any big project. There was a few hiccups here and there, but they finished it. The customer was super happy. Uh, job came out beautiful. No major issues whatsoever. So that was to me that that that was one of the greatest success stories we had early on. Uh, and then I can’t really get into the numbers if it’s not our FTD yet, but we do have a couple franchisees, uh, that have almost three. Their initial, uh, ramp up, uh, projections. So that that to me is another great success story.

Lee Kantor: So I’ve been doing this show for a while now, and I’ve run into a lot of what I’m calling them, kind of, um, clusters of franchises that, that, um, franchising is being turned into kind of where a person can buy one franchise, but they can buy like kind of complementary franchises in and around their brand. Um, I know that you guys are working within the, um, Empower Brands, uh, platform. Can you talk about how that’s been? Because it sounds like their model, uh, kind of aligns with that thinking around home services.

David Bitan: Yeah, I think with us, you know, one, um, we have several sister brands. Uh, we’re a total of ten, uh, that all cover the same verticals. So we’re we’re all we’re all in the home. We’re all selling home services everything from windows to insulation, fencing, outdoor living, uh, outdoor lighting. Um, uh, we have restoration services as well. Uh, as well as some irrigation and landscaping services. And so, um, there is always the opportunity. We do have a couple of owners, uh, inside of the bungalow roofing system that do own some of our sister brands. Uh, one of them being a koala installation owner and a conservator irrigation owner. Uh, and two others being superior fence and rail owners that came into our system. Uh, being that we are early on and we are a younger brand. Uh, we want to see you succeed first in Bumble before we saw you more, uh, we’re not in your franchise or the 1030 territories and say, okay, thank you for the franchise, but you go figure it out. Uh, we we make it difficult to buy more than more than three, right? So four is our max. Our new Bumble Bumble roofing franchisee. You better come in with a a very good business plan if you want to get four. Uh, the sweet spot. It’s usually around 2 to 3, but we’re not going to tell you more. And we’ve had, you know, prospects that came in and they wanted to bite off a lot more than they can chew. And tell us that’s a red flag, right? Like we want people to be realistic, down to earth, understand what this takes. And I don’t care how much money you have, buying 20 territories of anything is not a smart move. And so we’ve realized that time and time again, uh, we’re lucky to be part of a of a platform like Empower Brands.

David Bitan: Um, I have several mentors that, you know, help me and help me understand the, the landscape of the industry. Um, part of what we do as brand presidents, uh, as we connect to once a month and have kind of like a, a meeting of the minds and share best practices. Share trade secrets, share different technologies and softwares that may be beneficial for the other brands. And we share our partnerships and vendors as well, which I think is the coolest part of it all. Uh, I mentioned earlier in the call, you know, we have, a partnership with Lowe’s. Uh, we are a close provider. Uh, every single location becomes a Lowe’s provider. Uh, from day one. That would not have happened without our sister brand, koala insulation. Uh, I can’t tell you how many cold emails and cold calls I’ve made to all the emails I’ve found online for Home Depot, Lowe’s. Uh, you name it. Uh, over the years, and nobody would respond. And then finally and become part of the power brands. Uh, and we become this franchise system that’s growing pretty rapidly. And all these doors start opening. People are now coming to me. Right. And so, uh, again, one of those stores being Lowe’s would not have been opened if it wasn’t for the, uh, for the relationship they have with our sister brand. So all those type of things, you know, kind of fall back on, on on the entire big picture. Uh, and, and talent and power brands. And it would not be Bubba would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for the for the entire platform.

Lee Kantor: Now, did you start out at Bumble? Um, without partnering with empower. And then you realized, hey, I’m going to be better served if I join forces with them?

David Bitan: Yeah. So I started Bumble Roofing on my own, uh, in 2019, out in Los Angeles. Just one location that we’re playing in the franchise. And then, uh, when I started looking into franchising, the original plan was to, uh, do it on my own. And I realized that I know a lot about roofing. I know a lot about home services. Uh, I know nothing about franchising. And while I may be able to do this on my own, maybe it’s smart to seek out a partner. So, uh, that’s what I did. Uh, I reached out to the broker about, uh, who helped facilitate the acquisition of my last home service business. Uh, and he brought, uh, a couple of different groups, uh, to, to to the table, uh, one of them being in power brands. And, uh, the rest is history. Uh, and power brands, for me, was really love at first sight. Um, the, the offers were all pretty much aligned with each other, but, uh, I knew I wanted to stay wherever I’m at. I didn’t want to just hand over the keys to Bumble Roofing and see it become what I know it can become on its own. Uh, and, um, ultimately, I’m glad I made that choice. I say love at first sight because every other company I met went, and I see this now. In hindsight, uh, they were all about the financials, all about the spreadsheets, which to me was normal. Right? I thought that was common with PE backed firms. Then power grants comes in. I meet Scott Z, the CEO, and some of their other team members, and they just care to get to know me.

David Bitan: Uh, obviously the financials came up at one point in the conversation, but the first couple of meetings it was just let’s get to know, David, is why his passion and vision behind Bumble Roofing, where he sees Bumble over the next 5 to 10 years and where he sees himself over the next 5 to 10 years. And to me, that was extremely important because I grew up in this industry. I knew nothing else. I dropped out of college back in 2007, moved back home to L.A., didn’t know what I was going to do and fell into this industry. Uh, and I love what I do, but what I’ve learned over time is that most the majority, at least the majority of companies I worked for, I don’t want to say it all, but you you hear this across, uh, you know, across the entire industry. Most companies are just out to make more money, right? In the home service business. And the companies who had their mission as Benjamin Franklin, as I like to say, right. The $100 bill at the top of their mission, those companies are the companies that ended up failing, the companies who had people, in this case, their franchisees at the top of their mission. Those are the companies that ended up thriving and being successful. And so for me, that was the most important factor in choosing a partner is who do I feel good about? Who do I feel has a good culture and actually cares about the people and just not doing this just because of the money?

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and it sounds like that their culture aligned with yours and and the values aligned. And that’s the culture and values you’re trying to, um, you know, kind of, uh, encourage your franchisees to, to live into. Um, and then that’s what makes a successful system.

David Bitan: Exactly.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you, um, or somebody on your team, what is the website?

David Bitan: Connect with me. Uh, you can find me at David at Bumble Roofing. You can also go online and Bumble Roofing franchising.com. Uh, or you can go to, uh, Bumble Roofing. Com as well as empower franchisees.com.

Lee Kantor: Well, David, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you.

David Bitan: Lee, thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships

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BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships
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BRX Pro Tip: Why Real Life is Better Than Online in Building Relationships

Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, we have the benefit of some pretty powerful entry into both worlds in real life and online in the work that we do. What’s your take on the value and the place for – in real life and online when it comes to building and sustaining relationships?

Lee Kantor: I think that the most powerful reason why building more relationships in real life face to face is better than building more online relationships is that because when people are sharing on social media online, they’re just sharing information. They’re showing you where they are or what they’re doing, and you get mostly dry, factual information.

Lee Kantor: But when that same person is talking to you in person about the exact same thing, you are learning more about how they feel. You can see their body language better when they say something. You can see if they’re smiling or frowning or leaning in when they’re sharing their story.

Lee Kantor: The investment in time for face-to-face interaction will accelerate and deepen your relationships dramatically. You’re going to better understand their feelings, hopes, and dreams rather than what they are superficially just trying to show the world.

Lee Kantor: So I am a big believer in the power of face-to-face relationships, and I think that you have to be investing some time in generating more face-to-face, real-life relationships with human beings in person, even though it’s harder to scale, even though it is more difficult to execute. But you’re going to get a better ROI on those relationships than you will with a bunch more online superficial relationships.

How Core Values Drive IT Excellence

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Cherokee Business Radio
How Core Values Drive IT Excellence
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Brought to you by Diesel David and Main Street Warriors

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In this episode of Cherokee Business Radio, Joshua Kornitsky interviews Chris Chao, co-founder and president of Centerpoint IT. Chris shares his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting how his finance background shaped Centerpoint IT’s customer-focused approach to managed IT and cybersecurity. The discussion covers the importance of proactive security, employee training, and building strong company culture. Chris explains how Centerpoint IT tailors solutions for small and midsize businesses, partners with internal IT teams, and maintains top customer satisfaction.

Chris-Chao-bwChris Chao, President of Centerpoint IT, is a serial entrepreneur & finance guy that experienced “bad IT” and believes businesses deserve excellent IT support.

Chris is happily married to college sweetheart Beth and they are now empty nesters with Abby & Nathan spreading their wings.

Chris volunteer at a local church working with business owners to grow businesses & walk with Christ.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

  • Chris Chao’s entrepreneurial journey and background in finance.
  • The founding and evolution of Centerpoint IT.
  • Recognition of Centerpoint IT as the Best IT Service in Atlanta for 2024 and inclusion in the Inc. 5000 list.
  • The importance of proactive cybersecurity measures for businesses.
  • Common misconceptions about cybersecurity risks for small businesses.
  • The role of education in helping clients understand IT and security risks.
  • Customization of IT solutions based on client needs and risk tolerance.
  • The significance of company culture and hiring practices in building a successful IT service.
  • The impact of technology evolution on IT needs and security threats.
  • Strategies for improving employee awareness and response to cybersecurity threats.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Joshua Kornitsky: Welcome back to Cherokee Business Radio. I’m your host Joshua Kornitsky professional EOS implementer. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by the Community Partner Program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors defending capitalism, promoting small business, supporting our local community. For more information, go to Main Street warriors.org. And a special note of thanks to the title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David, Inc.. Please go check them out at diesel. Com. Well, welcome back for another episode. I’m thrilled to share with you. I’ve got in the studio with me, Chris Chao, co-founder and president of Centerpoint IT. Under his leadership, the company has earned accolades, including being named the best IT service in Atlanta in 2024 and landing on the Inc. 5000 list. Chris brings a really strong finance and business mindset to managed IT cybersecurity, and he focuses really and truly on simplifying the complex technical challenges for businesses so that they don’t have to understand that. Well, welcome, Chris.

Chris Chao: Good to see you, Joshua. Thanks for having me today.

Joshua Kornitsky: So it’s really exciting to have you here in the studio with us. Um, can you tell me a little bit about your background? Tell me about the the journey that led you to Centerpoint?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, I’m a non IT guy in the IT business. I’m a finance guy.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a rarity.

Chris Chao: Yes, it’s a rarity. It’s, uh, I’m seen to be a celebrity when we go to conferences with it. People, they ask me more finance and accounting questions, and that’s funny Did anything. Uh. But, uh. But I’m a serial entrepreneur of, uh, founded several businesses. And, um, kind of a funny thing about the entrepreneurial journey. I’ve had some wins, some losses, you know, learn from all of those. But, uh, Center Point, we’ve been doing this for about 20 years. Really? Yes. And, uh, so my, uh, my, uh, co-founder, uh, Fred, as a former CPA. So we’ve got a couple, two finance guys finding it, founding an IT company, and we’re both serial entrepreneurs. And what we found is we couldn’t get good IT support and the businesses we owned. And we said what a great opportunity to, you know, fill a gap and a need for businesses to say, hey, listen, let’s just make the it’s, uh, situation simple, right? For, for for businesses that are, you know, under 500 employees and, uh, and make them feel, hey, listen, they matter. Uh, and, um, and, uh, you know, the, the level of customer service is that, you know, that they’re getting is is something they can feel they can feel good about.

Joshua Kornitsky: So that’s really the the magic of a successful entrepreneurial endeavor is finding that niche that nobody’s in. Uh, how valuable, though, because you shared it with us. How valuable are the failures in your journey?

Chris Chao: Oh, wow. You know. You know, certainly a hey, sometimes you win, sometimes you you learn. Right? So it’s, uh. It’s true. And certainly, you know, you know, I’ve had a I’ve had a seven figure failure. You know, and, you know, it’s those struggles, you know, some of the days I, you I don’t know if I can get out of the bed today, you know, that sort of thing. And you kind of work through that. And it really just takes the fear out of it. Once you kind of work through those failures and process it and learn from them. Uh, you know, I think it just makes you a bolder but also smarter. Right? And in making those, those risks and also getting the right people around you, uh, to, to speak into your life and say, hey, listen, you know, hey, you know, here’s some good wisdom on some things. And I’ve been blessed to have, uh, several good mentors that come alongside me through the years and, uh, and good friends that will speak into me. And I’m willing to accept that and in humility and and learn from those things because it’s just, you know, not only, you know, you know, you can learn your own lessons or you can learn from other people’s, uh, you know, journey as well.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, that’s the saying I’ve heard is that a smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from others mistakes.

Chris Chao: Amen to.

Joshua Kornitsky: That. It just takes. In my particular case, I had to. It took me a long time to find wisdom. I hadn’t watch a whole lot of mistakes and make a whole lot of mistakes. Um, but you said something interesting that you and Fred both come from a finance background. How did you. Well, first of all, if you’ve made the the best of it in Atlanta, I guess you’ve cracked the nut that is providing the the right quality of service to in order for your your customers to appreciate the work you’re doing. But how did you and and Fred, presuming he too didn’t have a strong IT background. How did you conquer an industry that you understood the the math of so to say, but didn’t have the skills or abilities yourself? Because most often it’s the entrepreneurs themselves that that put the shovel in the dirt, right?

Chris Chao: Yeah. Yeah. You know, in our previous businesses, before we found a center point, we were in the periphery of the technology space. Uh, but got not in the IT support space, so. So, you know, we’re in that area. We kind of knew the, you know, knew some of the needs and some of the people there. And, uh, and once we started investigating over a couple of years, we’re like, wow, there’s a great opportunity here. And so what we really went out initially is, hey, let’s put together an all star team, right? Uh, the right kind of people again. And people that were customer service focused. I mean, that’s what we look for in the IT business. A lot of people are looking for technical, technical, technical proficiencies. But we’re saying, hey, number one, hey, uh, do well, our customers enjoy working with with this, this, this team member. And once we did that, then we weren’t worried about the technical piece of it. And then beyond that, just Fred and I, uh, just going through in the, in the IT space, most people are trying to do the latest, greatest technology. We were saying, okay, let’s get good processes and systems in place that are repeatable.

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

Chris Chao: And let’s build a company culture around that. Again around values, vision and mission that says, hey, listen, we’re going to make it simple for our clients. We’re going to we’re going to be a trusted partner, right. We’re going to, you know, and build those around and build that into our culture and hire people based on a cultural fit, not not a technical fit.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and so obviously, as an iOS implementer, core values speak to me directly. It’s it’s the heart of it. And I know you run your company on iOS, but before iOS, just in general, how did core values factor in for you? Is it. Can you help us understand that? Because I think that you’ve put your finger on something that I’ve heard a lot on the show, that a lot of successful businesses are seem to be understanding that if they put the culture ahead of the profit, it seems to work out really well.

Chris Chao: Right. Right. Well, absolutely. I mean, so really, I mean, a business, you know, in, in, in all the businesses I’ve owned and been successful with. And the ones I haven’t been, I haven’t, you know, I had to learn this lesson. It’s about people and it’s about the right people and the right seats. Right. So, um, it’s really understanding what you want when I ask, you know, people, hey, what do you want? Most people don’t have an answer. They haven’t really thought about it. And, you know, in this particular instance, the right people. What what did we what we identified the right people. And we actually started testing for personality profiles, you know, cultural fit, understanding who we were and who we wanted to be and aspired to that and, and and drove to that.

Joshua Kornitsky: So with the team that you have, uh, do you have a lot of turnover?

Chris Chao: No, actually we have almost no turnover, which is great. So, you know, good, good healthy culture, uh, you know, it’s fun to go to work with.

Joshua Kornitsky: And, and that and the reason that I asked that question is because I think you’ve just hit the nail on the head. Right. If, if, if you’ve hired people that align to the organization’s outlook, its goals and its values, in all likelihood you’re going to have people that are happy to come to work every day.

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: So thank you for sharing that perspective. I’m curious, though, because I am an old IT guy from a long time back. Not not. Nothing current to offer the world today other than as a consumer. But having borne witness to the last 20 years of technology, how have you seen it change from the from the owner’s side of a support business? What’s been some of the big shifts you’ve seen over time and if you’re willing to. Where do you think we’re headed?

Chris Chao: Yeah, yeah. You know, when we first got into this business again about 20 years ago, get really the needs were pretty basic, right? So again, they just needed, you know, responsive IT support. Um, the basic tool sets were having if you had anti-virus, a firewall and patched things occasionally, everything worked right. Right. And and now it’s now what we find is we’re in a, we’re in a situation again. We’re going to cloud, you know, how do you leverage the cloud. People want to do a lot more consulting. Salting. Right. And as you have a distributed workforce, certainly post-Covid. How do you secure that environment in, you know, where it’s distributed. And so there’s all kind of multiple layers of security tools and things like that that we’re getting into and doing a lot of, say, security consulting now and uh, and putting those buttons and those things. That’s one of our growth areas, really just rapid growth areas. Uh, because the, you know, the threats are that the threats are getting, you know, pretty intense.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, let me ask you, because that that’s a that’s certainly, uh, something that’s in the news all the time and, uh, usually not for good reason. Yes. Uh, and if your company is impacted, not yours, if someone’s company is impacted by a security concern, it has a tendency to to, at the very least, be life altering, if not life ending. Some organizations. So so what are some of the the services you’re able to provide now that that a small business may think, oh, this doesn’t apply to me.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of people think, hey, listen, these things will just kind of take care of themselves, right? So, uh, you know, and, uh, sticking your head in the sand and being an ostrich is not going to work. Uh, you know, and, you know, a small business, a lot of times I hear the statement, hey, listen, we’re just a small business. Who’s going to bother with us, right? And try and try to, you know, compromise our security. Well, that makes you a perfect target, because even a small business, you know, they can be a six figure ransom. It can be whatever those things are. And there’s usually some and it can be disruptive and even business ending. Right, right. So what we sell say, hey, listen, as a small target, you’re an easy target. If you’re not doing the things you want, you know, you’re supposed to be doing again, patching things, having, you know, multiple layers of security. You want to be the least attractive target for cyber thieves, so they’ll move on to somebody else. And so so really, you know, it’s one it’s about peace of mind. You know, people want to know hey. And that’s what I hear once people kind of understand it. Hey I do like the peace of mind. They also see that if they aren’t having all these issues and they’re taking care of the maintenance of it, just like you would on a car, hey, everything runs better, you know?

Joshua Kornitsky: Sure, that that makes sense. And let me ask this question, because it’s something I used to hear all the time. Um, you know, we get our servers are hosted at Microsoft, our servers are hosted with with Google Cloud. They take care of all of that, don’t they?

Chris Chao: Yeah, I wish so. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So disaster recovery right. They you know, they you know, if you read the fine print, uh, they, they don’t they don’t guarantee the backups. So if you aren’t doing your own backups, you know, would be a good example. Uh, they’re not doing your security unless you set it up. So those are fun things. You know, you got, you know, people kind of take for granted.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, right. Because because I’m not thinking about, um, using a, a Google or an, uh, a Google hosted workspace or a Microsoft hosted exchange or office 365. I’m saying if I’ve got servers of my own that are hosted at Google or, or with with Azure, those virtual machines, right? They don’t come with any protection or updates or anything, do you?

Chris Chao: Yeah, they they don’t. They give you a blank slate. And so they’re giving you a hey, here’s here’s your environment. You’re responsible for all those other things. And yeah, and you know, even how you access those kind of, you know, those cloud resources, uh, you know, now now, you know, if you’re not having some sort of multifactor or some sort of encrypted transfer or those kind of things, that’s where we’re seeing a lot of that, a lot of the compromises where they’ll get into into that remote session, they’ll get into your resources. And then now they’re starting either get your data, your customer data, or they’re using that to do nefarious things. And, you know, and those are all things you can you can button up with some, you know, just some smart tools and a few few layers of security.

Joshua Kornitsky: How important do you think it is with with the people that CenterPoint works with, with the client center point works with, um, is the education aspect because.

Chris Chao: Yeah.

Joshua Kornitsky: If I, if I don’t know what I don’t know, I imagine I can pay you to teach me or at least know it for me to help protect me.

Chris Chao: Absolutely. You know, and we mentioned core values earlier in one of our core values is just having the heart of educators, because that’s a lot of what we do. Uh, because, again, we’re dealing with businesses and to know what they know. And they do what they do. And so they, you know, they want to be educated, but, you know, but they don’t want to be the experts. So our, our, our focus is even from the, the technical level or engineers, they take the time to explain, hey, here’s, here’s what’s going on. Here’s why you want to do this. Here’s here’s the next step. So they have a good vision, a good roadmap for, you know, what they’re doing and for the future. And I think most people understand that okay I understand why people just yeah. Hey what’s the why here. You know and then and then what’s what’s the what. And and once we explain that, it’s usually a pretty good, uh, you know, pretty good conversation. It’s a good relationship going forward. If they value that.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds like. Is it more of or is it a one size fits all or or is it more tailored?

Chris Chao: You know, there’s some things that, you know, everybody’s got to have. And, you know, we’ll say that’s just the entry level, you know, to, you know, to get into the game. Uh, but but beyond that, usually is a love of customization to, uh, you know, what is their risk? What is their security, uh, exposure or things like that. And so what we try to do is customize that, you know, and what what risk are they willing to take on what risk they want to eliminate? Uh, you know, and even asking a question, simple question. Hey, what does downtime look for you? Is that is that, you know, is five minutes of downtime life ending, you know, for your business or is it, hey, that’s just a minor inconvenience. So, you know, we can customize that so they can, you know, something they can afford that also meets their business, you know, initiatives and needs and SLAs.

Joshua Kornitsky: And is that something that that idea of understanding the value of the downtime? Excuse me. And I’m sure that’s because you come to it first and foremost with a financial mindset, um, not to reduce everything to dollars, but when you’re looking at the operation of a business, there is a dollar value associated with everything you do. That’s right. Is that something that’s often in the forefront of the the folks you you meet with? In other words, are they thinking about that or is that something you helped them understand?

Chris Chao: Yeah, we usually have to pull that out, you know. And once you once you start talking about maybe the last year or two and you just kind of see what’s been going on in their business, things come to the forefront of their mind. Oh, wow. Yeah. We did have this issue. We did have multiple issues. Hey. How much time did that that that eliminate, you know, how much inconvenience how many people were impacted. Right. How many customers you know were impacted. So I think once they kind of do the math, they’re like, oh, wow, I really do need to be paying attention to these things. They just never, you know, skipped a beat and said, hey, let me think about this.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, and I think that’s got to be a big value add, because one of the challenges that entrepreneurs across the world deal with is the fact is understanding what is important. And if it costs you 20 grand to be down for a day, it’s probably worth looking into ways to be proactive about that.

Chris Chao: Absolutely. You know, and we get called into and we’ll say security emergencies as well. So we’re kind of coming in remediating and and doing those kind of things and, you know, that’s after the fact.

Joshua Kornitsky: So even if I’m not a client, I can pick up the phone.

Chris Chao: Yep, yep. So we we do that for clients as well. And I say new clients. It’s, um, a good way to meet new clients when they’ve got an emergency. Right.

Joshua Kornitsky: Good. Good and bad.

Chris Chao: Yeah. Good and bad. Get to know each other really quick. Um, but but, you know, when we see those situations where, you know, again, they maybe haven’t thought about these kind of things and put things in place, it’s usually just more, you know, say more catastrophic, you know, and it takes a lot more time to recover, uh, if they can at all. So that’s, you know, we try to get people hey, listen, let’s let’s get the let’s get this out to folks. Let’s get people thinking about it. And, uh, and, uh, you know, putting some basic things in place.

Joshua Kornitsky: So if they’ve taken the right steps and they’ve taken, uh, presumably the right proactive guidance, does it mean a life without fear or worry or it just means a well protected organization?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, I’d say we’ll go with well protected, uh, because, again, nothing in life is, uh, guaranteed. Sure. And certainly it security falls.

Joshua Kornitsky: In that because there’s something new nobody’s thought of already happening somewhere.

Chris Chao: That’s right. And a lot of times some of your threats are internal. And you know, hey, you know, how do you take care of those kind of threats where you have people within the organization either. Sometimes we’ll say being being careless, okay. You know, would be or sometimes it could be malicious. And so, you know, are there, are there, you know, safeguards in place to take care of that, you know, and, and, and those sort of things. So those are things that, you know, even even in a well-run IT organization, you know, some of the larger ones we deal with might have, you know, you know, maybe a staff of six people or something like that, you know, we can come in and be that, that extra set of eyes and ears and use AI tools and, and other people watching that so they know instantly when things you know or you know, are looking, looking fishy.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, so I don’t want to ask about malicious intent because malicious. And if someone’s bent on doing that they’re going to find a way to do bad. So tell me, can you give me an example of something that might be, uh, an accidental or an unintentional security, uh, breach or opening, because I think that’s the kind of thing going going under the, the mantra of I don’t know what I don’t know someone who’s hearing this right now, what’s what’s an example of something that can happen without it being, you know, ignorance or unintentional.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say, you know, the most common threat we see today is, is business email compromise, right. And that a lot of times that’s coming in from some email phishing. Right. So so again somebody an actor is trying to get you to, you know, click on something, do something, those kind of things. And yet again, not malicious intent on the employee. A lot of times the trouble is the most helpful employees are usually the most susceptible because they want to be responsive quickly. They’ve been.

Joshua Kornitsky: Asked. That’s an interesting thing to keep in mind.

Chris Chao: It is. And you know, and you hate to see these folks with big hearts. Yeah. Hey, listen, I just wanted to help out and do this, and I clicked on that or I did that. And, um, and so, you know, so training and, you know, that’s one of the places we try to start, start with our clients is, hey, let’s just get on a regular monthly training rhythm. So we kind of show your employees, hey, how to recognize, uh, some of the threats. Um, because, again, your your most vulnerable, uh, spot is your people again. And if you invest in them and you show them how to do that, it’s amazing. We can go. I think, you know, from a stat perspective, I love numbers. You know, I think when we go in to test people on phishing campaigns, 70, 17% of people click.

Joshua Kornitsky: Oh, so it’s a service.

Chris Chao: You are it’s a service. So so we will we will, we will we’ll call it fake fish people and uh, our clients and we’ll train them. And then when we do the training it goes down to sub 1%. So it takes I mean, so you’ve just shrunk.

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a pretty uh that’s what’s the word in shrinking of the exposure.

Chris Chao: Right, right. Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Taking it from the side of the barn to the front of the car.

Chris Chao: That’s absolutely. So so again, we’re putting him into that. You know, we’ll say it a safe environment so we can train them and teach them. And when they do click on stuff, we can we can just teach them. And again it’s not something that’s going to be catastrophic at that point. So.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, sure. And if you’ve got the if they’ve worked with you to put the the prioritized right protections in place, then even if it gets all the way to somebody, once they click on it, there’ll be the right protections in the backside to make sure it doesn’t do what it intended to do.

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: Um, so who does CenterPoint work with? What? What types of companies.

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. So so again, coming from the, you know, the heart of entrepreneurs, we we work for a lot of small businesses, midsize businesses. Um, you know, probably our, our average business is probably around 50 to 100 employees. That’s probably our typical. But, you know, sometimes we start with small guys and they grow and but I I’d say more than anything we’re looking for companies that hey, they recognize. Hey, listen, we need some help. They’re open. Open to ideas. Okay. And they’re really looking over time, not necessarily right away to get to best practices in their IT, support it, you know, security infrastructure. Um, and we try to do it in a way that customers can do it a la carte, and they can kind of work their way as. As their budget allows to, to get the right things in place over time.

Joshua Kornitsky: So if I’ve got an IT department, do I just fire them?

Chris Chao: Yeah. You know, you could because we we do all we do all of that. But most likely, you know, as we get larger in client client size, you know, maybe it’s like a 500, uh, user client will come in and fill a gap for that IT department that they, they say, you know what? We just don’t have the expertise in this area okay. And so we might say, hey, listen, let’s plug the security piece for you. Or maybe it’s a disaster recovery piece for you or just a consulting piece.

Joshua Kornitsky: So you’re able to augment what they have rather than simply advise that they remove it. And and I gather that that’s an internal decision anyway.

Chris Chao: That’s right. And in fact, about 60% of our business is some sort of augmented, you know, not a full hey, we’re the IT department for everything we’re doing, you know. You know, maybe half or more, uh, you know, of their IT department. But again, just just partnering with them to make sure things run smoothly.

Joshua Kornitsky: How often do you have to send people on site?

Chris Chao: Gosh it’s funny. Back in the day, we used to have bunch of vans running all over the place and now it’s you. Gosh, I want to say probably 2 or 3 times a week, and it’s usually something they’re adding. Right. Uh, because it’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, you know, it’s just, you know, stuff just really doesn’t fail. And if it does, a lot of times things are disposable. We just ship another, you know, piece of hardware out and they plug it in and they’re rocking and rolling.

Joshua Kornitsky: Well, I can’t thank you for everything you’ve shared with us. I do want to ask as as you kind of look back over the journey that that center point it has been on. Um, are there any moments that that stand out? So if someone’s listening to this and in full disclosure, Chris and I do know each other fairly well, and I know that he’s much more of a collaboration over competition kind of guy. But if I’m a newer IT support company or a managed service provider, what are some of the things that they should look out for that that are traps for them?

Chris Chao: Sure. Yeah. So so I you know, I would say for us, uh, you know, some of our breakthroughs have been in systems and processes and just making sure we have good repeatable systems and processes. And what you measure gets done. And one of the big measurables we’ve done is we measure customer satisfaction, uh, real time. And so we get probably about 600, uh, responses. Uh, we have one of the actually we have the highest customer satisfaction in our, in our, in our.

Joshua Kornitsky: Uh, best of Atlanta. I mean.

Chris Chao: In our business. Right. So which is great because we look at it and we coach to it and we reward to it, we gamify it and we have fun with it. So I think some of it is, hey, listen, let’s let’s just make sure we measure the right things and have fun.

Joshua Kornitsky: It sounds to me like you take good care of your staff and you take good care of your customers, and, and, uh, it sounds all the way around like it’s an organization. An operation that that is well worth engaging. Well, Chris, how do people get Ahold of CenterPoint?

Chris Chao: You know, I think the easiest thing to do is just go to CenterPoint itv.com and gauge us. We gauge a lot, quite a bit in LinkedIn. So just, just just look us up on LinkedIn. And several of us, I have leadership that I’ve passed the mantle over to. So I and but I’m still involved in the business. But I’m a little more of a coach and a supporting role.

Joshua Kornitsky: And clearly, you’re the spokesmodel.

Chris Chao: Yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, that’s fun too.

Joshua Kornitsky: He’s in a tuxedo today.

Chris Chao: That’s right, that’s right. Absolutely.

Joshua Kornitsky: We will also share all of the links to Centrepoint. It, along with a phone number in LinkedIn and all the rest when we publish the broadcast. Chris Chow, co-founder and president of Centrepoint. It. Thank you so much for being here with us today. It was a lot of fun and we all learned a little bit of something. And remember that Centrepoint was best of best IT service in Atlanta for 2024. They’ve already been on the Inc. 5000 list. Cybersecurity managed it. Really and truly they focus on simplifying the complex technology challenges for business. Thank you for being here today, Chris.

Chris Chao: Thank you Joshua. I appreciate the time.

Joshua Kornitsky: It’s really been a pleasure. So today’s episode was brought to you in part by our community partner program, the Business RadioX Main Street Warriors Defending Capitalism, promoting small business, and supporting our local community. For more information, please go to Main Street Warriors. 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 diesel David. This has been another fun and exciting episode of Cherokee Business Radio. I am your host and professional EOS implementer Joshua Kornitsky. Thank you for joining us and we can’t wait to see you again next time.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Stuck is Not Stopped

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BRX Pro Tip: Stuck is Not Stopped
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BRX Pro Tip: Stuck is Not Stopped

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, talk a little bit about getting stuck.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. You’re reading a lot lately about a lot of people that are feeling stuck, that they have hit a point where they don’t know what to do next so they kind of are in a state of suspended animation where they know things aren’t going the way they like them to go. They would like things to be different, but they don’t know what to do next.

Lee Kantor: So, a lot of times people look at this moment and say, “You know what this is the end. You know, this is – I tried and this is all I got and this is all that there is,” so they quit. But being stuck is not permanent. It does not have to be permanent. It’s really a symptom. And if you look at it as a symptom rather than an endpoint, you realize that there are ways out.

Lee Kantor: I think a good way to start if you are stuck is to take some sort of an action, start moving somewhere, do something. And if you look at being stuck merely as a pause, you’ll realize that there are still cards to play. You still have moves to make. And remember, you’re not permanently stopped unless you refuse to take action. If you quit and if you refuse to make any type of change, then you have been stopped. But being stuck is not the end of the road unless you want it to be.

BRX Pro Tip: Case Study – BRX Association Show

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BRX Pro Tip: Case Study - BRX Association Show
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BRX Pro Tip: Case Study – BRX Association Show

Stone Payton: And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, today’s case study or use case is the Business RadioX Association Show.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. We’ve been fortunate to serve quite a few associations over the years and we’ve shared with them how we recommend an association use show. So, I thought it would be a good idea to kind of detail some of that for the folks that are listening.

Lee Kantor: An association show that we typically do spotlights their members and it creates a compelling educational information that can benefit all of their members. So, what we do for these association shows are we interview their members and we have roundtable discussions about the topics that are most important to the members. So, the combination of this helps our clients get lots of testimonials from their members and creates lots of thought leadership from their members to share amongst all the members.

Lee Kantor: So, this is one of those things that we help facilitate member generated content that serves multiple purposes throughout the association. It nurtures existing relationships. It creates testimonials to attract new members. And it creates thought leadership to educate all members and prospective members. We also offer them the opportunity for the association team to create thought leadership directly from the leadership team as well that helps them attract more people to the leadership team by giving them an opportunity to spotlight what they know and the work that they’re doing.

Lee Kantor: So, by doing these kind of facilitated conversations around topics that are important to our clients, it’s helping them check a lot of boxes when it comes to marketing, it helps them check a lot of boxes when it comes to member retention and membership growth.

Raj Khedun with Keep Fit Kingdom

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Houston Business Radio
Raj Khedun with Keep Fit Kingdom
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Raj-Khedun-Keep-Fit-KingdomRaj Khedun is a London-based wellbeing and transformation coach, and a passionate leader at Keep Fit Kingdom, an organization on a mission to help a billion people live happily to 100 years old and achieve the healthiest version of themselves. With over 15 years of experience in relationship and personal transformation coaching, Raj combines ancient wisdom with modern insight to guide others toward peace, purpose, and potential.

Raj is the creator of the 3:3 Metaverse Breathing Method, a cornerstone of his 7 Minutes 2 Bliss program, which rapidly reduces stress, anxiety, and even insomnia in just 1–3 minutes. His method blends breathwork with spiritual and physiological insights, honed over 25+ years of studying yoga, metaphysics, and human evolution.

In his conversation with Trisha, Raj shared his journey from a curious child fascinated by dinosaurs and the cosmos to becoming a global wellness advocate. He reflected on the role of breath as the foundation of vitality and highlighted the contrast between traditional wellness practices and modern medicine’s symptom-focused approach. Raj’s uplifting energy, spiritual depth, and commitment to human flourishing make him a powerful force in the wellbeing space—helping others not just survive, but truly thrive.

Connect with Raj on LinkedIn.

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. I’m thrilled to welcome today’s guest today. Raj Khedun joining us all the way from London. Raj is an inspired manager at Keep Fit Kingdom, whose bold mission is to help a billion people become happy, healthy centenarians. What does that mean? Living to be a hundred and even beyond. While thriving for over 15 years. Raj especially specialized in relationship coaching and well-being transformation, and he’s also the creator of the three by three metaverse breathing method. Part of this part of his seven Minutes to Bliss program. It’s a breakthrough practice that’s helping people dramatically reduce stress, anxiety and even heal insomnia in just minutes. Raj brings such an infectious energy and passion for helping people unlock their potential and truly make their dreams happen, and I can’t wait for you to meet him. Raj, welcome to the show!

Raj Khedun: Wow, that was a great intro, Trisha. Very colorful, larger than life, very American.

Trisha Stetzel: I love to do this because we don’t use this type of language about ourselves. So I love to build this up. And I in in the conversations that you and I have had already, I believe all of these things and I’m so excited to get started today. So, Raj, let’s talk a little bit about you. So I’d like to learn a little bit more about you, or let the audience learn a little bit more about you. And then I think we’re going to get into some practice today, which will be very exciting.

Raj Khedun: Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So thank you for having me. Really, uh, thrilled to be here, uh, with a Houston audience. Texas. We love it. Uh, so I’ll take you into a bit of a Genesis backstory where it all started. And, uh, the reason why I talk about this is because we, I believe as kids, when we’re children, we all have dreams. We have kind of an idea of what we want to do. Like, we want to be, you know, run for president or we want to, you know, change something in society and be well known and leave a legacy or something. You know, we always have these great national be a great physicist or something. And I think what happens is that we lose touch with that dream as we get older and we get pushed through a system which is not really designed to help you fulfill your potential. So then you kind of lose that dream becomes dimmer and dimmer, and then you just get, you know, just, you know, stressed out with all the practicalities of life. You’ve got a husband, you’ve got kids, your wife, or you’ve got mortgage and and and all that stuff. So, um, I it all started for me when I was three years old, and my mother takes me to the nursery or kindergarten. It’s, uh, you call it, uh, in London for the first time when I’m three and we’re getting rolled, we’ll look at the playground, look at the classrooms and everything, and we end up in the library and the first two books I ever pick up off a bookshelf in my life was two books. One about dinosaurs and one about planets. Right? Yeah. And the Thomas the Tank Engine, the Mister Happy Mister Sad books. I didn’t touch those.

Speaker4: But for whatever.

Raj Khedun: For whatever reason, these images imprinted themselves so deeply on my memory that I can remember it as if it was yesterday. And these believe it or not, these images guided me more than my entire education did. Right. And you say, why? What’s so fascinating about that? Well, dinosaurs. Because of evolution. Like, how do species evolve from a crocodile? You know, nowadays, we know crocodiles still look like dinosaurs. Right. Their design hasn’t changed much. But dinosaurs. And then, you know, as evolved animals become, you know, dogs and then elephants and dolphins, they have this ability to communicate and cooperate in a group, in a family. I’m thinking, what? How does that happen? Where does that intelligence come from? How does that decide it? And then I started thinking, well, can humans evolve their own brain then? Can they evolve their own level of intelligence and sentience to higher and higher levels? And of course, the answer is yes. We can’t do that if we are determined to put in the effort, the consistency, the, you know, the willpower to to do that, you can do a lot. Um, so that was the, the, the dinosaur aspect. The planets came in, for example, when I was thinking about there’s all these beautiful planets out there Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Venus, Mars. Right. It’s Jupiter itself. The king of planets spins at 47,000km/h. Right? And you can fit 1300 planet Earths in there. And I’m.

Speaker4: Thinking.

Raj Khedun: Wow, what? What must it be doing there with all that energy spinning that fast? How does it impact other planets and humanity and animals and what is going on? I was asking myself these questions as a kid. Right?

Trisha Stetzel: Wow.

Raj Khedun: Yeah. So that kind of if you look at Mars on YouTube, you can go on Mars and see the videos about the robots on Mars examining Mars. You can see the sky is red. The ground is red, rocky red. But there’s no water, there’s no plants, and there’s no dinosaur bones of any kind anywhere. So why is there an empty planet there? Yeah. Earth, which is right next to it, is full of life with. Billion humans and all the animals and all the fruits and all the bitch and all. Everything is here. Like what? How does that make sense?

Trisha Stetzel: So how did that experience as a young child really lead you to the work that you’re doing today? Raj?

Raj Khedun: Well, I wanted to understand, like the the how things are created. But why? How are humans? Why are they different? What makes one strong? One week, one happy, one sad? One takes their own life. One lives an amazing life. One has a.

Speaker4: Free.

Raj Khedun: Life. And some can inspire others. Some can’t even inspire themselves. I was wondering like, what is that all about? Where does that come from? How can you change it or not? So if that helps to kind of, um, understand how that evolutionary process was for me, then you get a sense of, oh, he was asking those kind of questions earlier. So you were meant to go some way to answering them?

Speaker4: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. So how. What? Tell us what it is that you’re doing today with your with your clients. And I think we may even practice a little bit here, do a demonstration. So why don’t we go there next.

Speaker4: Sure, sure.

Raj Khedun: So, um, again, a bit of background. I studied yoga and metaphysics for 25 to 30 years. Right. And when you come across laws like electromagnetism, light, you know, energy, these kind of things, then you begin to realize there is an underpinning, uh, in the universe, which humans are a part of. And breath is the most important energy that you need to understand for your body, your mind, your everything. Because you can live for 40 days without food, for days without water, but only four minutes without your breath. So if breath is the most important fuel, why don’t we talk about it? Why isn’t it being discussed in school and things like that? Yeah. So yeah, your guess is as good as mine on that front. But I get into conspiracies, but, you know.

Trisha Stetzel: And even the idea that our doctors are not talking to us about wellness in general. Uh, you know, it’s always, oh, treating a symptom. Let’s dose out a pill. And then that pill provides us with more side effects, and then we have to have another pill. So it’s a very interesting space that we live in particularly. Um, I’ll call it, you know, here in the, the Western world. Uh, it’s more about treating the symptom versus treating, you know, being well. And I think as business owners, as leaders, as entrepreneurs, we need to be well. We need to feel good. We need to create that great energy. We need to learn breathing exercises so that we can lower the stress in our bodies in order to be great leaders and entrepreneurs. Yeah.

Raj Khedun: Totally. Totally. So to to get back to your question and to answer that in a bit more detail. Um, I’ve been studying very complex breathing methods for years, but that’s great if you want to commit your life to that. You almost live a hermit like life and kind of almost monastic like like a monk monk mode, as they say nowadays. So I was a monk for eight years, right from 22 to 30. And it’s like, okay, Raj doesn’t go to parties. He doesn’t watch films in the cinema. Like, what does he do? And like, I practice breathing. So, um, I was, you know, coaching women, as you mentioned in the intro, uh, and they would panic a lot when relationships weren’t going well in the pandemic because you couldn’t meet and they would send me awful WhatsApp messages. Oh, well, he said this, what shall I say? And they get panicky and I’ll do the breathing methods with them. But the problem was there when they would go home and they would face another kind of crisis scenario. They would forget the breathing and they would just get all panicked again. Right? I said, you did the breathing with me? Yes. It worked. Yes. Then why aren’t you doing it in your own space then? Oh, it’s not part of my lifestyle. I forgot, it’s too complicated. That’s what they would say. These are doctors and lawyers and teachers. Okay. What do you find so difficult about breathing anyway? I then set upon designing something so simple and easy that anyone can remember it.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay.

Raj Khedun: So that’s how we’ve developed the three three, which reduces stress, anxiety, and suddenly within 30 to 90s three minutes and people, all that stress disappears. They’re getting flow state. They fall asleep if they need to. So that’s how they vote.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, well, this sounds very special. Um. I’m excited to learn more about it.

Raj Khedun: Okay. Shall we try it for a minute? Would you like.

Speaker5: To. Let’s do it. I’m ready.

Raj Khedun: Okay. Wonderful. What you do first. Do you do? First of all, Trisha, do you do any breathing methods at all in your own?

Speaker5: I, I.

Trisha Stetzel: Am familiar with box breathing, um, and breathing from the belly. So I know that that’s very important versus trying to fill up our lungs. We want to fill up our diaphragm. So that’s the extent of what I know about breathing.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: Wonderful. Do you do cold plunges or Wim Hof? Have you seen any of that stuff?

Speaker5: No, I have not.

Raj Khedun: Okay. All right. So what we do first, Trisha, we check the nostril flow first. So we block one nostril, okay? And we breathe in and out of the other. Do the same on the other side. So mine are 5050 at the moment. What’s the ratio roughly for you? Would you say it felt.

Speaker5: Yeah, it felt a 5050 to me. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Good, good.

Raj Khedun: Um, and on a scale of 1 to 10. Trisha, where one is terrible and ten is amazing overall, how would you say you feel right now?

Trisha Stetzel: Because I’m here with you. And we had such a great conversation before we started. I’m totally at an eight right now. Maybe pushing nine. Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good this morning.

Raj Khedun: Love it. Okay. Awesome. All right. So this breathing method to three three. Um, it’s also known as the three three insomnia hack because people love it for sleep.

Speaker5: Oh, I’m.

Trisha Stetzel: Totally I’m totally using this so that I can get to bed faster than I normally do. Yes.

Speaker5: Yeah, exactly.

Raj Khedun: We’ll go through an experiential, uh, moment right here. So. All right, so what you do is you breathe in three parts through the nose like this. I’m not sure if the zoom is going to cancel out the noise, but it’s sniff sniff sniff and then ha ha ha without the vocal cord. So.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: Sniff. Ha ha ha. Without the vocal cords.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: Open them up a little bit more because a ha comes from the back. Yeah, yeah. The ha comes in the back. Yeah. Perfect. Comes from the back of the throat. Activates the vagus nerve. You’ve got it. You got it. Okay, what we’re going to do, Trisha, we’re going to do it for one minute together.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: With the eyes closed.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: It’s going to help you feel everything that’s going on inside, within the mind, in the body, Everything okay?

Trisha Stetzel: I can already feel a shift. Just doing that for a few seconds.

Speaker5: I can see your physiology.

Raj Khedun: The way it was responding.

Speaker5: Like. Wow.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I’m. Yeah, I’m already already going there. Okay, so I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Speaker5: Okay.

Raj Khedun: Let’s do the three, two one with the eyes closed. Let’s go. Stop there. Keep your eyes closed, Trisha. Just relax. Just gently observe what’s happening within. Just relax. Keeping your eyes closed. Trisha. Tell me what you notice and how you feel.

Trisha Stetzel: Much more relaxed. I did.

Speaker5: And.

Trisha Stetzel: During the exercise. Get my. No. No vision. Of course, as my eyes were closed. But dark black with colored small spots came to to my vision while I had my eyes closed and it became harder for me to concentrate on what I was doing because I was really started to relax.

Speaker5: And I.

Trisha Stetzel: Had to consciously tell myself to continue the breathing because I wanted to just stop and feel what was happening in the.

Speaker5: Moment? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Raj Khedun: And do you feel any gentle pressure points around the head, the brain, prefrontal cortex, between the eyebrows anyway. Like that?

Trisha Stetzel: I do. Right. I would consider it in between my eyebrows.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Which is normally where I’m squinting. Right. So when I have stress, that’s an area where because I have those lines, the three lines in between my eyebrows. Right. So, uh, I can definitely feel a point there. And then just above, like the tips of my ears. Right.

Speaker5: Mhm. Right. Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Not in a bad. Not in a bad way, but.

Speaker5: Certainly.

Trisha Stetzel: More conscious of. Yeah. The feeling there and here between my eyebrows.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Raj Khedun: The pineal gland activation there. That’s fantastic. Um, okay. And did you notice, Trisha, your heart rate slowed down a bit.

Trisha Stetzel: I truthfully, consciously know, but I think based on the way my body was reacting to the exercise, I’m sure that that happened. Um, because everything felt like it slowed down for me.

Speaker5: Yeah. Yes, exactly.

Raj Khedun: Now, do you feel the monkey mind chatter? We call it, you know, sort of ADHD mind.

Speaker5: Yes I do. Yes.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you for asking me about that. Because there’s this chatter in my head worried about the people who are listening. Like I felt like I needed to that chatter.

Speaker5: Right.

Trisha Stetzel: I needed to say, okay, if you’re only listening. You can do this too.

Speaker5: And.

Trisha Stetzel: Feel the same thing, but don’t do it while you’re driving. This is the chatter. And if you’re only listening, you should absolutely go to the YouTube channel and see what’s happening. Because I’m. My eyes are still closed. I’m sure anyone watching Raj would see how my body changed as we were going through that exercise. So we would encourage. That’s the noise. I would encourage anyone who’s just listening to either play along, right, or do the exercise with us. So long as you’re not driving, because you may. Don’t close your eyes and drive.

Speaker5: Yeah, and.

Trisha Stetzel: I want them to experience or see what happened with me while doing the exercise.

Speaker5: Yeah. Mhm. That was.

Raj Khedun: Yeah. That mental chatter. Did it sort of get less sort of usual.

Speaker5: Oh yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh yeah. Bye bye. By the time you said time all of that was out of my mind.

Speaker5: Yes.

Raj Khedun: Good, good. And did you notice an expanse of mind beyond the body? Like there’s a growing sense of awareness that you’re not just flesh and bone. Did you feel something like that?

Trisha Stetzel: I’m wondering so consciously. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I’m wondering if that black space with all of the colored dots that I experience may have been that?

Speaker5: Yes.

Trisha Stetzel: I wouldn’t know how to explain it or connect it.

Raj Khedun: I know because the first time you’ve done it, yeah, I know. And you said you felt an eight out of ten. What would you say you feel now? Trisha?

Speaker5: Oh, so much better.

Trisha Stetzel: I would I would push myself to more like a nine, nine and a half.

Speaker5: Wow.

Trisha Stetzel: And the other thing that’s happening this phenomenon is my eyes are watering.

Speaker5: Wow. Really? Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: My eyes are watering, so when I open them back up, I hope I don’t.

Speaker5: I may look.

Trisha Stetzel: Like I’m crying, but I’m not. My eyes are just watering.

Speaker5: Right.

Raj Khedun: Totally, totally. And just a quick couple of things, Trisha. Um, are you surprised at how quickly this worked and how quickly this.

Trisha Stetzel: Oh, most definitely, because, you know, I’ve done the box breathing before, and I. I know how to calm myself through that I can even lower my blood pressure through that type of breathing. Um, and that takes some time. This was so quick, and to get me from there to here is very interesting because I am I’m in such a calm state.

Speaker5: Yes.

Trisha Stetzel: And not even conscious like I have good posture. So I sit up straight, but I wasn’t even conscious about holding myself up. If I had been in a totally relaxed state. You know, I may have kind of hunched over.

Speaker5: I.

Trisha Stetzel: All I don’t even realize any of that. And it’s so calming.

Speaker5: Yeah. So it’s a calm.

Raj Khedun: Exactly. Now, the other couple of quick things here. Um, do you feel like you’re in a flow state? No.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. When we finish, I’m totally going to go do some creative work.

Raj Khedun: The scientist. The Hungarian scientist. Um, Mihai Mihai says you need to practice a craft for 10,000 hours before you get into a flow state where we help get people into flow state in 60s.

Speaker5: Oh.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s amazing.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Raj Khedun: Yeah. And the other quick thing is, Trisha, would you feel like if someone’s having difficulty sleeping, they do this method before bed? Do you feel. Do you see how it could help them drift off to sleep?

Speaker5: Yes. Yes and.

Trisha Stetzel: Yes. And I’m totally doing this tonight.

Speaker5: Yeah. And I like.

Trisha Stetzel: Because I think it will work. Box breathing helps, but it doesn’t always, always clear my mind. And I think that this could be very beneficial at clearing all of the. I call it head trash project.

Speaker5: Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: A great way to clear the head trash in a very short amount of time.

Speaker5: Excellent.

Raj Khedun: Okay. You can open your eyes now.

Speaker5: Okay. All right. Yeah.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. That was an experience. And, um, for those of you watching, it was real, like, not practiced. Raj and I didn’t practice this. He said that we were going to do this today, and I was completely open to it, and it’s something that you guys can do as well. So Raj, thank you for sharing that. And I would love for and I know we’ve all we’re already almost to the back end of our conversation. And I still have one big question for you. But before we get there, if people are wanting to already connect with you and have a conversation or learn more about this practice or other things that you’re teaching your clients, how, what is the best way to connect with you?

Raj Khedun: Best way is to go to keep calm. So keep calm. They’ll see there a tab, um, around the three three products. We even have a, um, product they can buy on there. Download the resources. Helps to teach them a lot about this method and how it can transform many areas of their lives. They can email us. They can WhatsApp us, get questions all day, every day from all over the world. And we’re helping people with their various challenges. So that’s the.

Speaker5: Best.

Trisha Stetzel: That thank you. And if you’re looking for Raj specifically, uh, Keenan is his last name and spelled k h e d u n. Of course I will put all of his links and contact information in the show notes, so you can just point and click and connect directly with Raj. Thank you for taking me through that. I feel like the rest of my day is going to be the most amazing day ever, just because we spent this time together. So as we finish up today, I love to hear one of your favorite stories. It could be about you or one of the clients that you’ve worked with. What bubbles up for you? And who would you like to tell us about today?

Raj Khedun: Um, I would have to say it was a pivotal, life changing experience. I have to mention this because it’s so unbelievable that even I’m blown away by thinking about it. When I was 18, I went to India and I meet this avatar, right? A full blown avatar like you’ve heard of Avatar and James Cameron’s films, or Avatar The Last Airbender on Netflix. These avatars exist. They are real. And I met one who was a almighty power avatar who just told me everything about myself. When I was three, I picked those books up. He knew everything. I know why you’re here, son. I know I’m the one who brought you here. I know everything you know. I’m going to teach you everything you need to know to do something very significant on this planet. And I was like, oh, my God, you got to be kidding me.

Speaker5: This is not this.

Raj Khedun: But he said, look, don’t worry about it. He’s electromagnetic power got into me because I was right next to him several times. And I know that when you were in the presence of someone like that, the reason they do it is because they need people to spread something positive for humanity before we die. So I have to mention that people want to know me and get close to my energy because of the proximity I have to an avatar. So that’s why I’m here to share as much as I can with as many people as I can.

Trisha Stetzel: So thank you for sharing that. And I want to. I’m going to say this out loud in front of my audience. I want to invite you back to the show, Raj, because I really want to dig into this idea of energy. And I think that it’s so important to have that conversation around where the energy is coming from and why it’s out there, and why we’re attracted to certain people or certain things and why certain things happen to us. Uh, whether you believe it or not, it’s happening. And I would love for you to come back and let’s really dive into the energy that’s out there and how it affects all of us from a personal perspective as well as a business perspective.

Raj Khedun: Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker5: My friend.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited that you came on with me today. Our time went by so fast. I really appreciate your sharing this. Um, three and three practice with me. I will be using it. I’m going to give you some feedback, Probably tomorrow. I’ll let you know how this works tonight. I’m really excited about being able to go to sleep so much faster this evening when I lay my head on the pillow. Raj thank you. This has been wonderful.

Raj Khedun: Appreciate it. Looking forward to the next time as well.

Speaker5: Me too.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation, share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran, or a Houston business leader. Ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

 

Be A WBE That Leads Without Losing Herself

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Women in Motion
Be A WBE That Leads Without Losing Herself
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In this episode of Women in Motion, Lee Kantor and Renita Manley welcome Lisane Basquiat, founder of Shaping Freedom, to discuss how women can lead without losing themselves. Lisane shares her journey from corporate executive to coach, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, boundaries, and intentional self-care. She introduces her six-week online program, “Shape Your Foundation Core,” designed to help women align with their values and cultivate joy. The conversation offers practical strategies for balancing leadership and personal well-being, encouraging women to create harmony in their lives and lead authentically.

Shaping-Freedom-logo

Lisane BasquiatAs the founder of Shaping Freedom®, Lisane Basquiat guides individuals, entrepreneurs, and leaders in breaking generational cycles, healing emotional patterns, and stepping fully into who they’re here to be.

She’s also the owner of Hera Hub Carlsbad, a coworking space and business accelerator that supports women-led businesses through strategy, community, and purpose-driven growth.

With certifications in NLP (Board-Certified Master Practitioner & Teacher) and professional coaching, Lisane blends strategic insight with deep personal development. Her approach is grounded in truth-telling, legacy work, and the belief that when we change the relationship we have with ourselves, we change everything.

In parallel, Lisane serves as co-administrator of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, stewarding her brother’s legacy and co-curating the Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure© exhibition to share his story and genius with the world.

Whether in the boardroom, a workshop, or a moment of stillness, Lisane’s mission is the same:
– To help people reclaim their power and live lives that feel aligned, whole, and free.
– To help people improve the quality of the relationship they are in with themselves so they can show up more powerfully in the spaces that matter to them – with family, at work, and in community.

Connect with Lisane on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

  • Challenges women face in balancing leadership and caregiving roles.
  • The importance of self-care for women in leadership positions.
  • Signs that indicate a woman may be losing herself in her roles.
  • The impact of hustle culture and technology on personal well-being.
  • Strategies for setting boundaries and prioritizing personal needs.
  • The concept of harmony versus traditional work-life balance.
  • The significance of living in alignment with personal values.
  • The role of community and support in personal and professional growth.
  • Tools and questions to help women regain control and clarity in their lives.

Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios. It’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here with Renita Manley. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today’s episode is be A WBE that leads without losing herself. And our guest today is Lisane Basquiat with Shaping Freedom. Welcome.

Lisane Basquiat: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Renita, this is going to be a great episode. This is an important topic.

Renita Manley: Yeah, it really is. I’m really happy to have Lisane in with us today. She is going to be helping babies learn how they can be leaders without losing themselves. Because a lot of our wives are moms. We’re caretakers. Some of us have 9 to 5 jobs, and we’re also involved in communities or they’re also involved in the communities. So listen is going to definitely be here to give us some tips and some guidance to show us how to be that leader without losing who we are.

Lisane Basquiat: I’m really excited to be here today. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me.

Lee Kantor: I guess we wanted to share a little bit about the background of your work, and, you know, the kind of the work that you do every day.

Lisane Basquiat: Absolutely. So I am a former corporate executive. I was in corporate working primarily in project leadership and leading these very large, enterprise wide organizational change management projects, along with technology and that kind of thing. And I fell into coaching while doing that, and very soon after decided that I could do the best work. If I were to step outside of corporate and do the work of helping people to fill or resolve the gap, the delta between what they want and where they actually are. And so I took my coaching and took my, uh, corporate background, the deep knowledge that I gained there and started a company called Shaping Freedom. And the goal and intention shaping freedom is to help people to contribute more positively to their environments, whether it’s professional or personal and really specifically within their families, because I think that that’s where everything kind of starts and ends. And so the work that we do is to help people to be in better relationship with themselves as they’re navigating their work and navigating the challenges that life presents to us always.

Renita Manley: That sounds really good. So it’s 2025. We’re about to go into the fall and holiday season. Let me ask you a question. How do you see women right now losing themselves? Like what’s what are some signs that you’re you you’re lost yourself. You’re gone. You just completely lost yourself.

Lisane Basquiat: The biggest sign, and that was kind of the point for me, is when you realize that you are doing more for other people, that you’re open and willing to show up more for other people. And as the shiro and other people’s lives in a way that you’re not willing to do so for yourself. That was a turning moment for me. I was in a really busy day working in corporate at the time and had like a chat going and a meeting going and and had this one moment of realization that as a mother, a very busy mother, mother to two children, as a wife at the time, as a colleague and and running a business, um, in parallel to my corporate role, I was showing up for every one of those roles and wanting to do it exceptionally well. But the one person that was on in my life that I wasn’t willing to step onto the stage for was myself. Uh, and so I think that in 2025 and this is like 20 years later, this is still the, um, position that so many women and so many professional women find ourselves in. We do all the things for everybody, and we expect ourselves to show up fully for these goals and objectives that we have. But if we don’t take care of ourselves, we are, first of all, not modeling for the people that we care about. What what life can look like when we’re willing to take care of ourselves. And and we’re trying to really pour from an empty cup. And I know that sounds cliche, but I really believe that we need to learn how to type a differently.

Lee Kantor: So what do you see as a as like something actionable for an individual? Like how are they recognizing that this might be them, that they might be the the person we’re speaking of? Are there some symptoms, some signs, some signals that are clues that lets a person know that they haven’t been kind of in balance or in harmony with, you know, kind of being the them that they want to be?

Lisane Basquiat: That’s a great question, Lee. The first is when you find yourself stepping away from what you know, you truly believe in meaning when there’s a misalignment from your values. If your value is family. If your value is getting things done with authenticity and you find yourself kind of stepping away from that, that’s probably one sign. And that’s kind of like a sign to the extreme. But it happens in little ways. It’s when you, uh, choose to, um, do more than, you know, you actually can accomplish when you’re feeling overwhelmed is a good one. Uh, if you find yourself losing passion for something that you know is truly, truly important to you, when another sign is when you see that the relationships around you are starting to suffer because you are kind of out of harmony with the things that are important to you versus the things that you also want to accomplish. Uh, another sign of getting to burnout is when you, um, find that you’re not doing things that are fun anymore. Like when you just don’t have time for the things that keep you going. For me, it’s when I go weeks and weeks and weeks of just sitting in front of a computer or thinking about just work, just the things that I know I want to accomplish professionally and, and find that I have weeks and weeks of not being in contact with people that are important to me.

Renita Manley: Oh yeah, that definitely.

Speaker5: Sounds familiar.

Renita Manley: Especially to me. I’m really bad at myself. All I have to ask you this, I do feel like a lot of babies and small business owners. We do know about burnout. We know about being reactive versus being intentional. But yet we all find ourselves in this cycle of pouring more than what we have to offer. So how can we stop that from even happening in the first place? I know we you just talked about the symptoms of it, but how do we actively go about stopping ourselves from putting ourselves in that bad place in the first place?

Lisane Basquiat: Yeah, I think that I think that a lot of, uh, a lot of what gets us to that place is this deep seated belief that we have to prove something, that we have to prove something to people outside of ourselves that we can’t say no. That say that being selfish is a negative thing. And, uh, and that when it comes down to a choice between ourselves and what someone else needs or wants in that moment that we choose, that we have to choose that other person. So the ways to put a stop to that is a to make sure that you’re clear about what your priorities are, what’s important to you. Very often we set off into our day with our list of 3 to 5 things that we’re going to accomplish for the day. And before you know it, we’re responding or reacting to a sense of urgency that’s coming from other people. Everyone’s trying to get all their things done. So I think it’s really important to make sure that you’re very clear about what you are going to accomplish, and that you stay focused on that, and that takes practice. Another thing that you can do is to take a break, take a moment. You don’t have to. And I know some of this sounds overly simplistic, but it is. It’s these little teeny steps that get us into that ditch of burnout that we really have to watch.

Lisane Basquiat: So one is making sure that you take a couple of minutes to just breathe in the middle of the day, or if something when something happens, making ensuring that you give yourself time to process the information that’s happened. And a really good thing that I want to share with all of you is three questions that you can ask yourself when you’re confronted with a situation where you know that you’re doing a little more than you should be doing. The first is what’s really going on here, right? So when you’re really busy, when you’re feeling overwhelmed, and those moments where you feel like you’re being pulled in a thousand different directions, as many of us are while we’re working and also dealing with our families and different things that are going on. Taking a moment to stop, to ask yourself what is really going on here and giving yourself a second to actually hear the answer. Sometimes what’s going on is that you’ve had back to back meetings every day for seven days in a row, and you just need a break. Sometimes what’s really going on is that you’re saying yes to projects, or to doing things that you just simply don’t have the bandwidth to do. So taking a moment and asking yourself, what’s going on here? Can have incredibly positive, um, an incredibly positive impact on the moment.

Lisane Basquiat: The second question is, is this thing mine or is it theirs? Someone comes to ask you for something. Sometimes we get sucked into getting involved in something that, quite frankly, is not ours. So taking a moment to really ask ourselves whether this is for us or whether it’s for someone else, or is there someone else who can do this thing for us? And then the third thing is to ask yourself the question of what is really the truth here. Um, it’s a it’s a very powerful question because a lot of times when you ask yourself what the truth of a situation is, it cuts right through the things that you believe you have to do or the things you believe that you should do. And it gets down to what is real for you if you’re going to take the proper care of yourself that you need to in order to really accomplish the things that are important to you. We go through the week and very often we accomplish a lot of things for a lot of people. And if we’re not prioritizing our piece and prioritizing ourselves as the ones that we’re expecting to drive this car, we wind up places that we really don’t intend to be.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you think that, um, this kind of hustle culture and grind culture is really not working out for a lot of folks that were being kind of, uh, slaves to our, our devices and our tools. And those are are engineered and designed for just continuous use. You know, they’re made for you to scroll forever. They’re made for you to you know, your job nowadays is for 24 over seven. Everybody has to be working nowadays. Uh, but don’t you have to kind of learn how to take control of some of these devices and have them start working for you again, like they were originally designed to do.

Lisane Basquiat: Lee, thank you so much for bringing that up. I yes, I was traveling, as I mentioned to you all before we started with my granddaughter, uh, over the last couple of days. And she’s eight and at one point she held up her iPad and were on the plane, and she had, um, uh, her mom, my daughter had put a little limit on her phone on her recording in progress. And so it said, uh, and so it said screen like screen limit over or something. And I think that that’s just it, where we learn how to be great friends to other people. We have to learn how to be great friends to ourselves. We’re amazing parents, most of us to other people. We really have to learn how to parent ourselves. We have to put limits on the amount of time that we’re willing to scroll endlessly. We have to move ourselves away from that. And sometimes it’s harder to move away from something that it is than it is to move toward things that bring you joy. If what you’re looking to do is to relax, and if part of that is checking in with people that you care about or looking to see what’s going on on the internets, do that for a limited amount of time and get rid of unfollow.

Lisane Basquiat: Do not like the things that are not bringing you joy. The things that are that are making that relaxation time harder than it really needs to be. We don’t. These are just suggestions. These are suggestions that we look at the endless bits of information that are scrolling out there. We have the ability and if we want to be in internal congruency, it’s important for us to make the decisions and take conscious. Take a conscious moment of decisiveness about what it is that we’re going to allow in to ourselves and what we’re not going to allow. And scrolling about all kinds of the horrific things that are happening are just not, um, helpful. And you know it in your body as you’re scrolling, as you’re going through your scrolling. Pay attention to what you’re feeling. And when you’re feeling crappy, get rid of that. So that’s a great question, and I think that more of us need to understand that, uh, these devices are tools. They’re tools for us. And I think we’ve turned it around. We have it a bit twisted.

Renita Manley: It sounds really good. And it makes a lot of sense that, um, we’re supposed to be taking advantage of these devices, but, yeah, it seems like we’re allowing them to take advantage of us. So I do want to also ask you something. Um, for lack of better words, you you’re presenting yourself as a vessel of information for. For small business owners, for babies alike who are trying to ground themselves. If I might ask what? What makes you the special vessel that can deliver such a powerful word to our babies who might be feeling like they are losing themselves or they might need a stronger foundation? How are you qualified? What makes you the one to to break through and tell us what we already know? But we’re just not listening? Yeah.

Lisane Basquiat: Uh, that’s another great question, Renita. Um, what makes me the the guide? I would see myself more as a guide because we all have to do our own, our own work. And what makes me credible in sharing that is a I have 23 years of experience working within a corporate environment. I know what it looks like to work these 12 14 hour days to that to to be, to multitask. To do this as a mother, to do it as a former wife, and to want to do every single thing excellently. I so that’s what has me understand what it’s like to live the life of a very busy entrepreneur. I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2008 full time, and so I know what it takes to navigate the nuance of entrepreneurship the feast, the famine, the, um, the work ethic that it takes, the hard work that it takes. Most of us who are entrepreneurs have that locked down. You don’t need me to tell you about that. What I can help you with is how to bring quality into your life experience I can help you with. How do you shape a foundation? A personal foundation that has you rooted in what your values truly are, what a boundary is, how to set one with yourself, and how to set one with other people.

Lisane Basquiat: I can help you to understand what the strategies are that you’re currently running in your life, that are getting you, the results that you want to have, and the strategies that you may be implementing on autopilot that are getting you to the places that you don’t want to be. Um, ineffective relationships, horrible communication, um, uh, not standing in your truth and your power and your confidence as you’re navigating your role as an entrepreneur. What I can do is help you to get to a place where you are confident about your ability to navigate the emotional and mental aspects of life. And what makes me credible is that I am not just hanging a shingle and saying that I know how to do it. A I’ve done this work myself. There’s nothing that I’m teaching that I’ve not tried and mastered for myself. I am in this practice right along with everyone else. I am a certified coach and have been for many, many years. I am an advanced practitioner and teacher of neuro linguistic programing, which is NLP that a lot of folks have heard of, which is really just the ways that we use language to program the our, our brain waves and I’m sorry, language to program our, um, psychology and the ways that we actually show up in the world and the ways to use language to deprogram the things that take us away from where we want to be.

Lisane Basquiat: Um, I am a teacher of that. I am an advanced practitioner of it. I’m an advanced practitioner of theta and a slew of other things that I bring to the table to ensure that I have more than enough in my toolkit to support very busy, very accomplished, very smart, very intentional women just like myself. I’m doing the work too. It’s a practice. And I also know the difference between showing up in the world as a person who is unhappy and unfulfilled, even while grinding away, hustling away, wanting to have all the best relationships, business results, family, and the folks who are willing to do the work to actually get themselves there. So I’m in it. I’m in it with you. I’ve been there. I can share more about my story and the ways that these tools have helped me. Once we get into a room but I want us, I believe that we can more positively contribute to ourselves and to our families, to our neighborhoods, to our state, to our country. And I think that it all starts with ourselves. And so if you’re willing to do the work, I can get you there. And I have lots of experience doing it.

Renita Manley: I once heard Shonda Rhimes say that years ago when she was scandal, scandal was extremely popular. Shonda said that when she is in season and she’s writing, she’s not going to be the best mom, and she has accepted that. And then she said, then she is being a great mom and and therefore her family. Then the producers and directors are going to be upset because she’s not going to be showing up there. What do you feel about how she’s balancing that thing? Well, that thing called life and how? Well, what do you think about her approach? I just wondered.

Lisane Basquiat: About. Yeah, about what she’s saying. I think it’s a very common challenge that a lot of people put themselves. I think it’s an illusion. I think balance is an illusion. When I was in corporate, that was all. That was the corp speak. It was, you know, work life balance, work life balance. And then someone told them, I heard someone say something years later, and it was that there is no such thing as work life balance. There’s no such thing. There’s harmony. Right? What we can do is we can get to harmony, especially for those of us that don’t have lives that are so prescriptive, where it’s like you spend eight hours working, you spend eight hours doing other things, you spend eight hours sleeping. That just is not the reality for most people either, within corporate and certainly not for folks who are entrepreneurs. Right. So if you’re looking for work life balance, you’re always going to fail Because life does not work out that way. You can line it all up and then one kid gets a cold, it throws off the whole thing, or you have a teenager who needs you and it’s going to, you know, pull your energy there and throw everything off else off. What you can do. And what I strive for is harmony. And what that means is I know what my priorities are, and I know within my priorities the difference between, uh, I have adult children now, but the difference between someone who just needs something from me, um, and someone who really needs me and all of me in that moment.

Lisane Basquiat: And so I know what’s important to me my children, my family, the friends, my community are, are so important to me. And I also know how important my work is to me. And so I’m showing up 100% for everybody with 100% of myself. And what that means is that AI, in learning and setting boundaries and in speaking clearly and in communicating with people. It helps me to get myself out of this illusion that I can break myself into very neat quadrants and be everything for everybody. I can show up here for you in this conversation. Me, Lee and Renita having a great conversation. I am right here. If one of my kids called with something big that was going on, I’d probably ask you to hold for a second so I can deal with that. But I’m here with you. I’m not thinking about the other things that are going on, because guess what? When we hang up, those things are going to be there waiting for me. And I’d rather be in communication and connection and present with this conversation here so that we are all where the three of us are creating a space that’s going to be helpful to other people. There’s enough time. We believe that there isn’t, and there is enough time for the things that are important to us. And some of the things that we spend our time doing are not like other people’s agendas, other people’s sense of urgency, other people’s, you know, antics online.

Lisane Basquiat: If we don’t have time to actually scroll for those. Learning how to set boundaries, understanding what your values are and how to live in alignment with those, um, healing up the parts of ourselves that are running the show in a way that we don’t want our show to be run, and forgiving what needs to be forgiven in the past so that you can clean up the space between yourself and your past, and the space between where you want to be and where you are, enough so that you can bring 100% of yourself into, uh, into your future and into your present And the ultimate thing is joy. And I think that’s something that we believe is nonsense or or fantasy. And I am here to tell you that you can live in joy. There’s a difference between happy, which is maybe what happens when you’re at a club or a party or, you know, hanging out with friends and joy. Joy is I know that I can handle anything that’s coming my way. I know I’m in the driver’s seat of my life. I have quality relationships with every single person I’m in relationship with. Doesn’t mean everything’s rosy all the time, but it means that I know that I’m doing the work to bring quality into my life. And the more you bring it towards you, the more joy you feel and the more peace you feel. And that’s what most of us want now.

Lee Kantor: To lead a life that is closer to joy or includes joy. Uh, can you talk about the six week online experience shape your foundation core that you’ve created just for web, uh, West certified women entrepreneurs? Uh, because I think it’s so important. We’re touching upon a little bit now, but this six weeks online experience is going to really go deep and really give, uh, make an impact on a lot of people. So can you talk about what your objective is for that course and also how people can sign up?

Lisane Basquiat: Absolutely. Um, so my objective is for us to spend six weeks, it’s two hours a week. I think one of the sessions is 2.5 hours, and there are two hours a week over a six week period where we are going to go really, really deep into who you are, what you want, what’s standing in the way, what your beliefs, what the beliefs are that are helping you to accomplish the things that you’re accomplishing. So we’re going to look at what’s working for sure. And we’re going to do more of that. We’re going to look at the things that are not working. And I’m going to teach you how to release those things from the story that you’re living out every day. We’ll look at some programing, meaning how are you, how were you programed and how are you programing yourself toward having the results that you’re having right now? We’ll look at patterns. We’ll look at limiting beliefs. We’ll look at um, uh, as I mentioned before, your values, what do you value and how you actually bring connection between what you value and what you want and what your actions are every day in support of that or taking away from it. We’ll look at the behaviors that, um, that you’re putting into your life story and, and the behaviors that are getting you. The results that you are that you want to have will go through. Some of it will be looking at energetic systems as well. The energetic systems, the chakra system within our systems that help us to get clear about where we are in different facets and aspects of our lives, we will. It’s it’s a journey. It’s an incredible journey of doing what they do. When you build a house, it’s like the potting, making sure that the potting is all taken care of.

Lisane Basquiat: You can’t. It’s not about going in and blowing everything up. It’s about taking a look at things one piece at a time and making sure that you have a strong, clear foundation and that you’re not operating simply from your will, but from an undercurrent of confidence and knowing that you have the tools that will allow you and get you to a place that you truly want to be. Um, many people have gone through this program. The results have been incredible. It’s a safe environment. This isn’t about walking out feeling heavy or any of that. It’s about getting in. We’re going to do the work together, and you will leave with a completely new and fresh approach. There’s not any one way anyone who says there’s like this one program that’s the end all and be all. I don’t know that that’s true, but what I do know is that this is a program that is developed with you in mind. I know what this world looks like. I know what it feels like, and I know that I have watched myself, and the clients that I’ve worked with over decades go from being resentful, overwhelmed with anger as their home, emotion, Motion frustrated? Um, not maybe putting all of their intention and attention into work because they, um, were confident in their ability to have quality personal relationships. But we’re going to look at is all of it, because how you do one thing is how you do everything. And my intention is for you to walk out of this clear, clean, ready to move forward, confident and with willing to take on, to receive a little more joy from yourself.

Renita Manley: Right? You really got me excited when you mentioned the word chakra, because now I know that really means you’re going to be tapping into some some more inner inner elements for these who are out there that are interested in those different aspects of your wellbeing. And one final, very brief question that I want to ask about the workshop that’s coming up, um, for any VBS that I’m interested in signing up, is this going to be more like a Individual personalized experience? Or do you have more of a group approach to the workshop?

Lisane Basquiat: So we’re doing this as a cohort. So we’re going to come in together as a group. It’s going to be online. Uh, I, we, uh, we, we bank is actually handling the registration process. So I think you can, you know, put the information in there for them. Uh, this is a program that I’ve shared publicly, uh, many, many times that we’re bringing specifically for this group of, of individuals. And so we’ll do it as a group. Um, it is a safe. I am known for curating safe environments for people to grow and to learn. Uh, there’ll be some meditation included in it, and, um, and it’s, again, it’s an environment where it’s safe. So it’s not about coming in and, and feeling like, uh, you will feel welcomed. You will feel seen, you will be heard and you’ll be supported toward the next level of your personal growth for sure that I can guarantee you.

Renita Manley: Perfect. And if you’re listening to this and you are interested in signing up for this program, um, if you’re listening to this before October 16th, um, I guess I should ask listeners, should listen, should we be signed up? Um, the program begins September 11th. That’s right. Can anyone happen in the middle of the program, or do you recommend we start from September 11th through October 16th? Every Thursday, every Thursday, September 11th through October 16th. Should we be signing up on that for that first week and then attend every Thursday? Or can we be hopping in the middle and then finish it out?

Lisane Basquiat: You’re signing up for that first week, and you’re going to be on a journey with the other bees that choose to join. This is going to be a we be only space, and it is a program that’s specifically designed to build on itself from one week to the next. So you’re not hopping in and out of it. You’re going to come in for a start. We’ll get together on the 11th of September. We’ll start this journey. Um, you’ll I’ll share more about what the program’s going to actually look like over the six weeks. We’ll go through the six weeks together and then 30 days after, because a lot of times we go to these programs, we get all rah rah, and then we walk away and we forget about it. I don’t want that to happen. What I want is for you to take this information, to apply it practically to your life, which is what you’re going to be doing from one week to the next. There’s no homework, but it’s more about awareness and consciously practicing the tools that you’re going to be learning. We’ll get together 30 days after and we’ll look to see how you’re doing and check in and tweak and course correct whatever needs to be course corrected. My goal, my intention is for you to get this information to solidify your foundation, the core of your being, the core of who you are and how you’re showing up so that you can leave this so you will leave this program and positively impact the other folks that are around you, your family, your community, your work.

Renita Manley: So for certified listening, go to Rebecca West website WBEZ. Hyphen. Events or calendar? I might be messing up, but at the top of our website there is a tab. Go to the events tab. Go to the month of September. Click September 11th and sign up for Shape Your Foundation. It is going to be amazing! Lee. You can take us out.

Lee Kantor: All right. Um, listen, um, if somebody wants to learn more about your business or connect with you, is there a website? Is there an easy way to connect?

Lisane Basquiat: Absolutely. Go to. Com. We’re also on all social media platforms. I also have uh, Shaping Freedom with Lee San Basquiat podcast. Uh, that is an amazing, amazing resource. Uh, talking about all of these things as well. So just look up shaping freedom or listen Basquiat and, uh, and we’re out there. You’ll find information.

Lee Kantor: All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today, doing such important work. And we appreciate you. Thank you. All right. This is Lee Kantor for Renita Manley. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.

Speaker6: Come sit down with. Me.

 

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