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Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA with Tax Goddess Business Services

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High Velocity Radio
Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA with Tax Goddess Business Services
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Shauna A. Wekherlien, CPA, MTax, CTC, CTP, CTS, Tax Goddess, is a highly sought-after Certified Public Accountant and founder of Tax Goddess Business Services, PC, established in 2004. Tax Goddess is a global team of 93+ specialists that uses plain language (not tax code) to help business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs create plans of action to increase the business owner’s bottom line, reduce costs, significantly reduce taxes, increase cash flow, and perform what-if scenario options so that owners know what decisions to make and which paths are best suited to their particular situation.

Shauna is a Certified Public Accountant (AZ) with a master’s degree in Taxation. She is a top 1% Tax Strategist in the entire country (per AICTP).

Before starting her own company, Shauna had garnered experience and sharpened her skills working with different leading corporations such as KPMG and American Express.

With over 24+ years of experience implementing innovative tax solutions, Shauna has continued to actively create tax strategies that have saved businesses and individuals over $1.93 BILLION and counting! Tax-Goddess-Business-Services-logo

Her resourcefulness and mastery in her field have led her to be featured by numerous top broadcast media platforms such as Forbes,CNN Money,Daily Herald,Big News Network, Entrepreneur,CBS, FOX, ABC,Sonoran Living,The List, The Connect Show,The Arizona Republic,Phoenix Women, KFNX, KFYI, AZBiz, NBC, and many more!

Shauna’s passion and enthusiasm for helping business owners is tangible. Her clients rave about working with “The Goddess” in a wide variety of areas including, but not limited to, tax strategy creation, planning, coaching, IRS representation, tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll processing, C-Suite consulting, enterprise digitization & remote models, and entity formation.

She is a recipient of several awards for ingenuity, business intelligence, and leadership in her professional community.

Follow Tax Goddess on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Tax Goddess Business Services, the tax goddess herself, Shauna Wekherlien, how are you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Fantastic. Thank you so much for asking. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing well and really been looking forward to this conversation. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start is if you could share with me and our listening audience. Mission purpose. What are you what are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Shauna Wekherlien: Seana You got it. So specifically for business owners and entrepreneurs, reduce their taxes to the bare legal minimum, and our current average is 6.92%. So if you’re paying more in taxes than 6.92%, that’s what we do.

Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like a noble pursuit to me and certainly close enough to my heart as an entrepreneur. I got to know, how did you get started? What’s the what’s the back story? How did you find yourself in this line of work you are?

Shauna Wekherlien: I love this story. So great question. So I actually started off in astrophysics of all things. Yeah. Not a tax goddess, not even close, completely separate industry. Very long story short, I was at the breakfast table with my mother and she is my goddess, Right? And she was open in the mail and she pushed back from the table, kind of jolted back. And normally she’s a very stoic and a woman pushed back, pulled back from the table through the mail down on the table. This is unacceptable. This is absolutely insane. If she’d gotten a letter from the IRS and they wanted more money. And when your goddess is a daughter of a mother, right, when your goddess is upset, what do you do? You try to help. So, very long story short, ended up completely changing what I do. I found out that taxes is very much a game of chess, so still problem solving with numbers so very close to astrophysics from that standpoint and ended up going down the path of becoming a tax status. So taxes, specialty accounting, finance under major master’s degree in taxation, then certified tax coach, certified tax strategist. So specialty specialty, specialty specialty. And now I get to do what I absolutely love. And yes, my mother is also part of the 6.92% club. So.

Stone Payton: Well, and it’s my understanding that you’re getting to do this all over the planet. You have cracked the code apparently on expanding your team digitally. Can can you speak to that a little bit?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Well, I don’t know how long of a story you want, but yeah, the very long story short is we are now at 89 people in 20 different countries around the globe, all specializing in US tax strategy. So it should be clear about that. We definitely focus on the US tax system. But yeah, going digital was one of the best things we ever did. Started going digital about eight years ago now, so long before the big push, COVID and everything else. It’s definitely been a journey trying to manage cultures from 20 different countries, holiday schedules, management, all all of these things is definitely something new and not something a lot of CPAs even look at, to be honest.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this a while, what what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, you know, absolutely My favorite bit. I get to feel like a superhero basically every day when we deliver a tax plan, right? When we finally get to deliver the results to a client, I have helped a single mother pay 50,000 for her son’s cancer surgery, which was huge for me. It almost makes me tear up even just thinking about it, you know, getting getting to help families That way I’ve been able to help a couple husband and wife put their kids through college when they thought they would have zero money from that standpoint, been able to help turn around businesses, cash flow reviews. And of course, when you’re not paying 37 or 50 or 63% tax, which is the highest tax rate in the country right now in California, and you’re not paying 63 and you’re only paying six, what can you do with that kind of money? Right. I’ve helped people meet their dreams. I helped one guy buy a $1.8 million yacht. That’s what he wanted since he was five. So I’m basically a dream weaver from that standpoint. And it makes me really, really, really happy that I get to get people what they want. So.

Stone Payton: So you strike me as someone who may very well keep count. Do you have any idea? You know how.

Shauna Wekherlien: Much? Really, I do. Really? Yeah. Our last. Our last count was about two months ago. We’re a little over 740 million in savings for our clients. Wow. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. So, yes, very happy with what we get to do for people.

Stone Payton: So what do you think is the differentiator? And maybe it’s more than one that sort of sets you apart from from other people in your domain?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Yeah. Two, two primary things. The first one is I don’t think a lot of people realize that there’s a big difference between a regular tax CPA, you know, somebody that you gather your paperwork and you bring them their documents and they prepare a tax return for you based on what you did and a tax strategist. So I am both. I am a CPA. We do prepare taxes, but my specialty obviously, is strategy. So the way that we look at the world, we look at what you can do before the end of the year, Right. Because once the year is over, whatever you’ve done is what you’ve done according to the eyes of the IRS. Right. So we look at things before the year is over. What kind of changes can you make? What are your goals? What changes are going to work within your goals? Right. Because, for example, some people have kids. Putting their kids through college is really important. Some people don’t. Some people have charities. Some people building their business to go global is important. It’s a very, very, very specific focusing on what strategies are going to work for you and your goals particularly. So it’s a big mindset shift for a lot of people because they don’t even know that somebody like me exists. There’s only 607 certified tax coaches Etsy in the entire US. Where are the people? That’s like the first rank of people that are specialized in tax strategy. There’s according to Google, 660,000 CPAs. So I’m never shocked when somebody says, Yeah, I didn’t even know that you existed, right? There’s not that many. And then the second oh, I’m so sorry. The second piece, besides the passion and being able to go towards people’s goals. The second piece, to be honest with you, is I have a personality. I’m a crazy redhead. If you can’t see me, if this is audio, you know, I am an absolute crazy redhead. And love, love, love. Very passion, right? This is for a lot of people. Taxes is something they do. And for me, this is this is my life. This is my love, baby. So I’ll look at this.

Stone Payton: So I know part of the answer to this next question is going to be mom goddess, who you mentioned earlier in the conversation. But I always like to ask and I really am curious, in your situation, have you had the benefit of of one or more mentors that sort of helped you navigate this terrain of either running the business or expanding globally or any other aspect of this?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. I’m a firm believer that you get a lot further if you listen to people smarter than you. Right. And I’m very blessed to be surrounded by many of those people. So I had a very good friend that I met in my master’s program, and he opened his firm, his CPA firm, ten years before me. So I was very lucky to be able to kind of dodge some potholes with his advice. One of my favorite business coaches. Absolutely. Of all time. The one phrase that he said to me that absolutely I now use in everything and every piece of my life is hope is not a strategy. And that just makes such a difference. Because when you every time you say, well, I hope it’s going to work out, I hope this plan is going to go, Yeah. Hope is not a strategy. So how are you going to fix it? Right. That’s that’s huge for me. And yeah, of course, of course. My mom, you know, actually, very long story short, she was a CPA when she was in her twenties, so I am definitely following along the family footsteps there. So.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a firm like yours? How do you get the get the new clients?

Shauna Wekherlien: Well, you know, the easy. That is right. It’s such a good question because when you look at sales, right, there’s really three components to getting a sale trust, credibility and interest. So interest who is not interested in reducing their tax to 6%? Pretty much no way. So that one’s really easy from that standpoint. And then you have trust and credibility. So credibility. I’ve been lucky enough. I’ve been featured in Forbes, in Entrepreneur, I’ve podcast television. I mean, I’ve written a book and I’m working on book number two. So I’m definitely known in my field. I’m known for what I do. So there’s your credibility and and so trust. I’ll be honest with you, this is kind of the hardest piece because when we meet, when we speak with somebody and we tell them, listen, we know that right now you’re paying 150,000 in tax, we can reduce that. I 130. Right. You’re going to only pay 20,000, whatever that number is, to be honest with you. People think we’re not telling the truth, right? So that’s the third piece. And really, that’s where. Referrals of referrals of referrals come in. Because if I say to you down to 6.92%, you’re not going to tell your friends that they can also get from 63 to 6. Of course you are. So a lot of our stuff is word of mouth from that standpoint.

Stone Payton: Okay. You got to tell me about this book. Let’s start with the title, but I want to hear more about the structure of it and and actually what it was like to sit down and commit your ideas to paper and the experience of authoring a book.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, you were so sweet. All right, Well, so one book is in progress. So working title, I suppose the other book is done. Done. So the first book I wrote was 2014 The Tax Goddess Guide to Starting a Small Business. Of course, for a lot of our clients, they I’m ex KPMG, right? So which is one of the four remaining big accounting firms we used to work on Coca Cola and Pfizer like huge type companies because of my mother, right? I’ve always kind of had more of a pension for the little guy, right? I really like helping out the little guy. So businesses that are making 50 million and less, right? So for a lot of little tiny business owners when they very first start, they have no idea. I mean, I remember when I very first started, I didn’t know how to run a fax machine. I had no idea how to get the paper in the fax machine. It was, you know, little tiny things cause big problems. So especially when you have to start dealing with taxes and accounting and finance, if that’s not your field, it can be very, very scary. So that’s the first book. And then now we have the second book coming out, which is called The 6% Life. And that one, it’s about five chapters in out of eight. So I’m hoping it’ll come out early next year. And that one is very specifically now looking at tax strategy for people that are paying more than 100,000 a year in taxes. So you’ve got your small business now, you’re successful, you’re paying out through the nose. Now what now what can you do to reduce your tax burden?

Stone Payton: So so in either case, did you find that some parts of the book came together pretty quickly and easily and others you struggled with a little bit and had to really think it through and approach it from different angles.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, that’s a great question. Good or bad, the crazy redhead likes to talk. So it was it was very easy for me to to get everything down. But you bring up a very good point. It was easy for me to get it down. There were definitely sections where I thought it was clear, but when a good friend or mentor somebody read it, they’re like, We have no idea what you’re talking about. So there were definitely pieces that needed to be tweaked and loved on and kind of massaged to make it, because this is a big thing for me. Making things human English, not tax code, right? So yeah, that, that definitely took a little bit of love because unfortunately, I’ve got so much tax code swimming around in this redhead head of mine that sometimes it comes out as tax code and not English. So.

Stone Payton: Well, I’m sure they’ll both be wildly successful. But even if they weren’t, I wonder if just going through that process of finding a way to articulate principles and beliefs and experience, I bet it’s had some impact on on maybe crystallizing your own thinking and preparing you to communicate to lay people like me in a way that we can really hear. Did you find it that it really helped you in your practice?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because especially with what we do, people are terrified. They’re terrified of the IRS. They don’t want to make a mistake. They want to make sure that everything is right, crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s, and by getting it down on paper and by discussing it over and over and over. Right. When you become a teacher, you learn how to say things in a way that somebody else understands what it is that you’re saying. So absolutely it helps solidify and clarify. And it gave me a lot of really good examples. Let’s phrase it this way. So, for example, crossing t’s and dotting I’s, everybody knows what that means. So when you’re saying that in the context of using tax strategy and complex tax rules, most people understand, crossing your T’s and dotting your eyes means doing everything legal, but you’re still taking the full letter of the law, right? So, yeah, those those kinds of things, those kind of analogies really popped out. So.

Stone Payton: So I want to swing back to to your days with well, I’m old enough to remember the big eight. I think maybe it was announced, the big four, whatever.

Shauna Wekherlien: Now it’s the big four. Yeah. Yeah.

Stone Payton: But making that transition, I mean, that had to be at least a little bit daunting, right? I mean that was what was making that shift to now you’re, you know, you’re hanging out your shingle, you’re doing your own thing. What was that?

Shauna Wekherlien: Like I’m smiling. It does come back to being a redhead. I have real problems with authority. So, you know, working in the big firm was great. Don’t get me wrong, KPMG was definitely an experience, learned a ton, learned some of the big politics, that kind of thing. But I’m a very direct person to person. I’m going to tell you the truth. I don’t really do politics. I don’t play games. I don’t I don’t do any of that stuff. And so what ended up happening, education was great, but what ended up happening, I call it the Goldilocks effect, right? I went with the big bear firm to learn. Learn some amazing things, went down to a medium size firm, learned an entirely different set of amazing things, and in structuring and trust formation went down to a small firm. Big medium small, went down to a small firm, really learned the human face to face, personal relationship type aspect of what we do in tax. Because again, it can be very scary. And then when I went out on my own, you know, for me it was the perfect world because the authority was me saying, No, you can’t go home right now. I know it’s 10:00, but guess what? You got stuff to do, get on it, you know? So, yeah, it worked out really, really well for me.

Stone Payton: So I’m trying to envision you running out of gas, getting a little bit low on energy. I got to believe that it happened. I can’t see it right now.

Shauna Wekherlien: It does happen. Okay, But it does happen.

Stone Payton: I’ll take your word for when it does. Where do you go? And I don’t necessarily mean a place, but like, how do you recharge and get ready to jump back in there and serve? What does the trick for you?

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. I’m going to say three pieces to it. The first one is I have three dogs and I absolutely love my dogs. So I go outside, I play fetch, I rub tummies, I do some training, like whatever it is for me that gives me away time. So my brain gets a break and I get to love on fluffy fuzzies, which is really hard to German Shepherds and a boxer bug of all things. And so that’s that’s really nice. I love gardening, so I like being out, hands in the soil, planting tomatoes, whatever it is that helps me a ton. Just kind of, again, kind of get reconnected with my self versus I talk to people a lot, right? So I’m a little bit more of an internal list, I guess, from that standpoint. And the third one is when we really, really, really do a good job for somebody like really, really, really. I do those, those cases come up in my mind and I go, Yeah, you know, Shauna, you got to put in those extra 2 hours. You have to because this is really important for this person or that family or whatever it is. I’m very much tied to helping people from that standpoint.

Stone Payton: Well, I suspect you find I know I do personally that it’s important to build in that space the time to do that. And I feel like when we don’t we’re not we’re not serving ourselves and we’re not serving our clients as well as we could. We we got to we got to build that in. And I would like. But before we wrap, if we could, I’d love to leave our listeners with a couple of I’ll call them Pro Tips, a couple of actionable items, things to be thinking about, reading, doing, not doing, just some things that they can begin to act on and saying, look, the the best pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Shauna, the tax goddess. But between now and that step, maybe there’s some things that they can be thinking about to kind of going down this down this path.

Shauna Wekherlien: Absolutely. You know, to two big things come to mind, Right? Education is key. Absolutely. And you named it right. What can you read? What can you watch? What can you do in the tax world? Learning about as many strategies as you can and then figuring out what you think might work for you? Okay. So for example, do you really want to move to Puerto Rico? Do you really want to have a trust that owns all your stuff? Right. There’s there’s not only tax benefits to some of these things, but there’s also human psychology, right? If all of your family is in Texas and you move to Puerto Rico, are you going to be happy? You know, so learning about the different strategies which, to be honest, books these days go out of out of knowledge so quickly. To be very honest with you, YouTube is amazing from that standpoint because you’re always getting the newest strategy. The newest thing. However, don’t just jump on something because you just heard about it, right? Make sure you’re working with a professional, somebody who knows what they’re doing, who can warn you about the pitfalls, Right? The potholes in whatever argument that somebody is producing on YouTube. So definitely learning and reading and watching those kinds of things. Podcasts are amazing for things like that. Same thing. And number two, I think the next best thing is to actually put aside I’m a big fan of. Cash is king. So with a lot of tax strategies, you need to have cash to actually be able to move money, right? So I’m moving money from this pocket to this pocket.

Shauna Wekherlien: They’re both still in my pockets. I still own them. Right. But you need to be able to move money. And so often what happens is we get telephone calls at the end of the year saying, okay, I want to do a strategy. What can I do? Well, you’ve got two things working against you, right? One is time, right? The more time you have to implement strategies, the better. And the second one is cash. So if I tell you, yes, we can do that for you. This strategy, you need 2000 with cash. For this strategy, you need to $100,000 worth cash for. If you don’t have the cash, there are things we can still do. But right. Cash is king. So I am a big fan. If your listeners have heard of something called Profit First, I am a huge fan of taking 30%, three zero, 30% of your gross income. So not not after expenses, not after you’ve paid your bills. 30% of gross every dollar that hits your bank account and putting that in a side account, that money is meant for you, in my opinion, to invest, to be able to do tax strategies, to move money around, to do whatever it is you need to do. And if you can build that habit, especially when you’re young, 30% of gross is just normal. Now. It’s just money that you don’t even look at, that you don’t even touch. It’s just there specifically for investing your strategy or whatever else it is that you want to do. You can build that habit. That’s that’s how I see millionaires, billionaires made at this point.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. We we ought to probably carve out just that question and answer and get that out there for folks to for folks to hear. Quick side note, incidentally, although I still to this day cannot properly pronounce his last name, we interviewed the gentleman who wrote that book and and we run our business accordingly here at the Business Radio X Network. So we yeah, we’re huge fans.

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, I love it. It’s a great model and I do really enjoy especially that you can tweak it for yourself, right? That it’s very customizable to again, what are your goals, your dreams? What is it that you are trying to reach that fits in with my world really, really well? So I love it. That’s so cool.

Stone Payton: All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you and tap into your work?

Shauna Wekherlien: Oh, absolutely. The easiest place to find us is tax goddess dot com. That’s our website. And you’ll see me crazy red head right Right on the home page I think but yeah ex got us dot com. We do have Tik tok and Instagram and Facebook and all the other things but the website’s probably the easiest. You can reach out if you want to chat. Of course you can book an appointment with my team and I and we’d love to chat with you so.

Stone Payton: Well, Seana, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program today. Thank you for investing the time and energy to share your insight and your perspective. This has been an informative, inspiring conversation. I love your enthusiasm. I love your passion for the work. Keep up the good work. And again, thank you so much.

Shauna Wekherlien: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been an absolute joy.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Seana, the tax goddess and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Donna Vallese with Inspiring Leaders

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High Velocity Radio
Donna Vallese with Inspiring Leaders
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Donna-Vallese-Inspiring-LeadersDr. Donna Vallese has been an educator for over 2 decades. She is currently the Director of Learning & Continuous Improvement of Greene Central School District. Inspiring Leaders LLC is your part time business where she facilitates a global network of educational leaders and coaches instructional leaders.

She has experience working at the classroom, school, district, state and university levels in education. Her professional experiences in education have been mostly around urban and rural public education along with innovative public charter schools. Work for Dr. Donna has always been focused on creating equity for children in schools so that they can reach their fullest potential.

Colleagues have often called her the teacher whisperer because she has a way of turning challenges into opportunities and provides support for continuous growth to get teachers on board with transformative practices. She is passionate about effective and research-based teaching and learning practices that hone in on how students learn rather than just implementing what is easy.

Education is not the only thing that Dr. Donna is passionate about. Music has always played a critical role in Dr. Donna’s life. She minored in music for her undergrad and even considered becoming a music teacher at one point. As a professional adult, the love of performing music never left her and when she discovered the first community activist street band she had ever seen, she immediately became hooked when she joined. She now is part of a global community of street bands who all perform for the love of music and to bring attention to important social causes.

When she moved from the Connecticut and Rhode Island Area back to New York State in the Syracuse area, there were no street bands to be found. So, when you are a determined person like Dr. Donna, you find a way to start a band. This past year, Dr. Donna has become a TEDx Speaker, an International Bestselling Author of The Art of Risk and Reward, an International Speaker, and an awardee of the Education 2.0 Outstanding Leadership Award.  To learn more about the work she has been engaged in, you can visit: https://www.inspiringleadersnetwork.com/drdonnav_tedx.

In addition to her passion for teaching and learning, she is also passionate about the uniting force of music. Dr. Donna co-founded UNiTY Street Band, a non-profit, community activist street band in Syracuse, NY. This band’s mission is to put UNiTY back in the CommUNiTY through the joy of music. The band performs at all sorts of local and community events that bring people together. They even founded their own Honk! Festival called Salt City Honk!

Salt City Honk! Has become an annual event that brings other community activist street bands from around the country to Central New York for free performances that break the barriers between the audience and performers, that bring a sense of pure joy, and put music into open spaces where you would least expect to find music.

Connect with Dr. Donna on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Key shifts needed in education
  • Complexities of teaching
  • How people learn best
  • Power of networking educational leaders
  • School turnaround
  • Maintaining work-life balance

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast author, speaker, educator with Inspiring Leaders, Dr. Donna Vallese. How are you?

Donna Vallese: I’m doing great. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing well. I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I got a lot of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but but I think a good place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners alike. Mission, purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks, Dr. Donna?

Donna Vallese: Well, I am really out there. I’ve been an educator for over 20 years and been an educator, leader, educational leader for over a decade. But I’m one of those people that knew I wanted to be a teacher since I was in kindergarten. And I there’s a few pivotal moments in in my life and people in my life who. Shaped me to become the educator that I am to really wrap around the fact that education doesn’t have to look the same all the time for everyone everywhere. That we really need more experiential education. We need to be able to really identify talents in our students. We need to get engagement, not compliance, to really help our students be able to learn and succeed. And so really, I’ve been I’ve been able to be in places that have allowed me to lead really innovative things, things like year round schooling, flexible learning spaces and flexible scheduling, which allow students to take a course in five months or a course in 14 months and graduate any day of the year. So I’m really looking at the needs that we have in front of us and seeing that our educational systems are just really outdated. And and I’m a teacher, right? I’m a teacher through and through. It is a really, really hard job. And but our systems that we have in place are not supporting our teachers and they’re not supporting our kids learning. And so I know that there are places out there that have been able to break some of these systems and get and overcome them. And so I’m really seeking to. Be able to just change the system at large and rather than in these little pockets.

Stone Payton: You bring up a very interesting point, because teaching strikes me as one of those professions, one of those callings that can look a lot easier than it really is. There’s got to be a great deal of complexity and nuance and intricacy to teaching and teaching. Well, that that the layperson just really doesn’t get. Yeah.

Donna Vallese: Absolutely. If you think of the number of people you interact with every single day and the number of things that you do in a day. Everybody has different experiences. They they they retain different amounts of information. And so they’re all in a different place. Our kids are not any different. Right? They all have different experiences. They’re all in a different place. They all learn differently. They have different interests and teachers have to wrap around that. And then to top top that on. So so teachers not only have to understand how each of their students learn, they have to understand in general best practices, but they also end up being the nurse and the mom and the psychologist and the counselor and and and and and then they have to do all this paperwork and we just we just layer and layer and layer things on our teachers that aren’t helping kids and making the job much harder than it really is. But I also like to I like to point out to people that. Trying to understand and get students to learn is really understanding the mind. Right? And so when you when you put that in perspective, the only other profession that really understands the mind would be a brain surgeon. Right? And so a brain surgeon has to be super precise. Well, there is nothing precise about the social science of teaching. Right. And so that makes it even harder.

Donna Vallese: So. Because every single day is going to be different and every single year you’re going to have different students in front of you. So you can’t even completely replicate exactly what you did over and over again. So that is what makes it really challenging. It also is what makes it kind of a calling and makes it really interesting because you’re always trying to figure out what it is that makes a student tick and what it is that’s going to help you get through to every one of your students. I have yet to come across a teacher who does not want to make a difference in a kid’s life, right? Every person I know wakes up in the morning and they’re like, I hope I have a good day. No one ever wakes up and says, I want to go to work and just make sure everybody has a bad day, right? I want to make sure that we’re doing our job well and we pride ourselves on that and and to make things more challenging. The other piece of it is so you go into your if you picture this, you go into your classroom and you have the teacher and you have these students in front of you and you shut the door and that’s it, like it’s you in the students and that’s it. And so when you think about it, a brand new teacher coming out of the classroom or coming out of college and going into the classroom, teaching is the only profession where you are expected to leave college and be just as good as a 15 year veteran.

Donna Vallese: The first day that you enter that classroom and every single day counts. So, for instance, what I mean by this is if you are an electrician or a plumber or a doctor or a nurse, you have to work side by side with someone for a very long time before you actually get get your own reins to to take the lead in the classroom setting. You might get 16 weeks of student teaching. If you’re lucky, some some schools are eight weeks and if you’re really lucky, you might get a year. And then you’re off on your own. You’re expected to get the same results as someone who’s been doing it for a very long time, teaching for a very long time. And so it’s really an interesting thing to try to provide the support that’s needed for teachers when they’re also given. Can you imagine an elementary teacher trying to prepare for six or seven different subjects in a day, but preparing for those six or seven different subjects with 45 minutes of planning time? So you’re planning for 6 hours of instruction with only 45 minutes of planning time. Who can really do that well.

Stone Payton: So where is the lever for your work? Is it at the district level? Is it in-service training at the classroom teacher level? Where do you get to apply the craft?

Donna Vallese: So that’s a really great question. So one of the things I used to always say, I am never going to be a principal. And then I started getting some insight into leadership and I became a principal. So I really want to be able to I’ve been and I’ve been doing this work, working with educational leaders, the leaders. It’s their job to clear the way for teachers, to lay the foundation, to lay the groundwork so that teachers can really succeed. Because if we can do that and support our teachers, our teachers will then support their students. If you’ve ever heard about the Wegmans model, the supermarkets up here in New York State, the Wegmans model is we take care of our employees and our employees take care of our clients. And so if we start applying that model to schools where our district leaders and our school leaders are taking care of our teachers, then our teachers will be better able to take care of our kids.

Stone Payton: What are you finding the most rewarding? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Donna Vallese: I my favorite thing to do is to problem solve. When someone brings a challenge to me and all I do is I start posing questions. Well, why do you think that is? What are the other perspectives that are happening? How else can we look at this? What would happen if I know this sounds like a crazy idea, but what would happen if we tried X, Y, and Z? And then usually those conversations lead into other ideas and then those ideas. Usually something will land with that leader that they can then walk away with an action step, put it in place and come back and say, Oh my gosh, that really worked. All right, so now what’s the next step? And they get really excited because now they’re starting to feel some level of success. And so one of the challenges of our leaders is they’re also getting all this pressure from these broken systems that are above them. And so it’s hard for them to clear the way for the teachers. And so when they’re actually able to do that and to see the results from the teachers down to the students, it just it makes them feel successful. Otherwise, when they’re not seeing the results from teachers and students, they just feel like they’re spinning their wheels. And so I just just like when I was in the classroom, when a student had that aha moment, it’s it’s that same feeling working with leaders when they get that like that moment of, Oh my goodness, this was so great. I’ve got to figure out how to keep replicating and how to keep going on this momentum.

Stone Payton: Now, you have been a TEDx speaker. Tell us a little bit about that experience. What was that like? What do you feel like you learned from it? And yeah, what kind of impact do you think maybe that that might have?

Donna Vallese: Oh, so I did a TEDx talk. So the interesting thing was I had met a TEDx coach and I kept saying, I really want to do a Ted Ted talk, but I don’t know what it’s going to be about. And then I was delivering some professional development that I I’ve delivered multiple times and spun it different ways. And it was really all about student engagement, best practices, how and how we learn and why, like we really need to focus on critical thinking. And so as I was doing this professional development, I was finding myself getting so emphatic and so excited about talking about this topic. So I was like, That’s it. That’s my TED talk. So I contacted the coach. I said, I really want to work with you. I’ve no idea how to land a stage. Can you help me? And so I hired her. She I enrolled in one of her three month courses with a couple of other people. She walked us through the process, taught us how to find stages, taught us how to, and actually gave us feedback along the way on applications and the application process and the interview process and and then putting your talk together. So I was able to land a stage. It took me a few weeks. I think it was like three weeks when I before I landed a stage in a SUNY Geneseo. For those of you that don’t know what a Ted is, Ted is TED talks, but the X part is independent. So they these different locations can license TED and then do an independent Ted TED event. So I did this at SUNY Geneseo up here in New York State and I would I totally I’m already starting to plan and trying to figure out what my next TED talk is going to be because it was an awesome experience.

Donna Vallese: I spent more time planning my TED talk then for a 10 to 15 minute talk, which ended up being 18 minutes, but who’s counting? I spent more time planning that than I typically do, planning an entire five day professional development because I had to memorize, I had to memorize it and hone it in and just make sure it was keyed in on one key idea. And that key idea is the one thing that could really shift education, the one shift that’s really needed in education and that. Is a bigger focus on critical thinking. So learning really should look a whole lot more and feel a whole lot more like the process of learning how to ride a bicycle than it does now. We should not be having hours upon hours upon hours of kids sitting in chairs and listening to teachers lecture at them. That is the easy way, but it is not the way that people learn best. And we have decades upon decades upon decades of research over a century, actually, of research that shows us that that is not how the majority of the population learns, but that is still how we tend to do school. So that is what the TED talk is about. So if you if you were to Google my name, Donna Willis, Ted X or Donna Lee SUNY Geneseo, it you’ll find it. It’ll come up right there.

Stone Payton: Well, that sounds like a marvelous activity for the for the long weekend. So I will make sure that.

Donna Vallese: Yes, there you go. That’s all your homework assignment.

Stone Payton: I do not know where you find the time, but I saw in my notes that you’re also a bestselling author. The book is The Art of Risk and Reward. What was that experience like putting the book together? What have you learned from that?

Donna Vallese: Oh, so I am with my business. I am part of this executive networking group. Executive networking events is what it’s called. And we meet weekly and there’s people in it across the world from all different countries. And so a bunch of us actually authored a book together. I think there were 26 of us we met in Ireland. So we had been talking for well over a year, every single week. We met in Ireland, in Dublin, and then stayed at Crome Castle for five weeks or five days, not five weeks. I wish five days just did it like this awesome mastermind and networking and stuff together and we launched our book there. But so the book, The Art of Risk and Reward, every person, every author has a different chapter, and the chapter is really about a risk that they took on themselves and the reward that it gave them. And so. That some of them are based on business like mine was based more on my business, but others have personal stories in there. It’s really there’s some really heartwarming stories in there. And the people who have written these stories are fantastic and they are all people who are entrepreneurs like me. They have their own businesses. Some of them are also employed full time doing other things like me as well. And they’re just phenomenal people really trying to help people in the world and trying to make a difference in the world. So I have learned so much from these people and created really great relationships. We also got to present our chapters, so we became international speakers and we presented there were eight countries represented in the room at Chrome Castles. So we had I don’t even know if I can list them all but Australia, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Canada, the United States.

Donna Vallese: I want to say Greece. And I don’t know where the eighth. I can’t remember where the eighth country was. I will think of it. But yeah, so it was an incredible experience. It was there that I actually I’ve met two people that I am doing some collaborations with one. One is a counselor and she has a coaching business and we’re going to be doing some webinars together called Leading Through the Messy Middle. It’s about it’s for middle level leaders who are trying to lead up and lead down, and it’s always a big mess. But they’re also in the middle of leading all of these all of these big projects that also get messy. And so being in that middle level leadership is a really stressful place to be. And so we’re focused on those leaders in that. And then I also met a publisher. She’s a special ed director in Texas and has a publishing business, and she is going to be publishing a series of books that I’m in the process of writing called The Teacher Whisperer, because that used to be my nickname, believe it or not. So I’m working on that series, and we’re also working on a series where other educational leaders can can also write chapters like an anthology so that they can share how they have overcome some of the systemic challenges in education. And so that series is going to be called the Educational Matadors, and we’ll end up doing some conferences and and things around that as well. So there’s a lot of things coming up the pike. I’m super excited and thank you for allowing me to share all of that, by the way.

Stone Payton: Absolutely. No, I think it’s fascinating. And one of the things that would be helpful for me and certainly our listeners, many of whom are practitioners of one sort or another, and they have to you know, it’s not just practicing your craft. They we also have to run a business and we have to to sell the work to get it. We have to go to market effectively. How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a person like you, a practice like yours? How do you get the get the chance to get to do the work?

Donna Vallese: Oh, my gosh. This is the one area that I struggle the most with because as an educator, I was never trained in business. I was never trained in marketing. So I have the past three years or so, I’ve spent a lot of money learning how to market from other people. It is part of the reason I’m in the Executive Networking Events group, because there’s a lot of people where I can. I built relationships where I can reach out to someone to ask questions. I’ve learned how to use Facebook ads, which is a whole process. I’ve learned how to build audiences in LinkedIn and in Facebook and social media. I’ve learned how to use programs like Canva to just develop simple, simple graphics to be able to put out there. Love that program. Being able to create sales, funnels and stuff. I didn’t even know what a funnel was. I was like a funnel like the thing that’s in your kitchen. When I when I first started this, I was like, Well, I didn’t even know. I was like, I’ve never heard of a sales funnel. What the heck are you talking about? So now I know what a sales funnel is and you know, being able to use different technology platforms and and calendar invites and it’s just there’s a lot of networking. I’m going to be going to a conference in a couple of weeks out in Las Vegas and Global Education 2.0 conference am accepting an educational leadership award there. I bought a marketing package there so that I can market my stuff as well.

Donna Vallese: One of the people I also met over in Ireland at the Castle through this executive networking event, she’s also an author in the book. She has a speakers bureau and she is now my speaker’s speaking agent, so she’s working on getting me on some stages. So it’s really like building a team networking. And eventually when I’m able to, once I’m able to transition to doing my business full time and bringing in enough money that I’m hoping that I can hire some really great marketer to do my marketing for me because it’s not my favorite part to be honest. But you have to you just have to bite the bullet and learn how to do it. Because what I’ve decided, what I had learned and decided was if you hire someone to do it for you, you really don’t know what to tell them to do or what you want or anything. So you really have to find resources to learn how to do it and to play with it. And it does take time. But I think because I’m learning the language and learning some of the strategies and and learning a little bit of copyright secrets and things like that. That is going to that is really setting me up so that when the time comes for me to hire someone, I’m going to be able to be really clear, crystal clear in what I want. So I mean, that’s leadership 101, right? Clear communication.

Stone Payton: Well, before we wrap, let’s leave our educational leaders, if we could. I’ll call them pro tips. Right. A couple of actionable ideas, maybe something to be reading, something to be doing, not doing some topics, some things to consider if if maybe we’ve opened their mind to to learn a little bit more about this set of topics.

Donna Vallese: I think I think my top two tips. The first one is for leaders to get some coaching training. When you become an educational leader, they do not provide you training in how to coach people. And what you experience often is kind of a top down approach. And real leadership can’t always be that way. It can’t always be top down. You have to. You have to know how to. Build your people up and build them into leaders as well so that they can share the the burden of leadership. It’s really there’s always just so much to do, but it takes coaching to be able to coach them up to do that. And so there’s a transformative coaching. It’s a I can’t think of the name of the author right now. I should have had it right here in front of me. It’s a big black book on Amazon. It’s a little pricey, but it has some really great it goes it goes through why coaching works. It gives you strategies for coaching, it gives you coaching language. It’s kind of like it’s almost like a great coaching Bible. I love to go back and refer to that, but getting the training would be a number one thing and also make sure that you are if you’re going to be working with teachers. Please, please, please become an expert in how people learn. Not just how kids learn, but how adults learn as well. Know what Andrea Goji is? Know how we acquire and remember information. Know what instructional strategies look like and sound like. And feel like. Be able to demonstrate them if you need to and model them in your when you’re delivering professional development to teachers so that you can literally turn around and say let’s debrief that strategy we just use to learn that so that you can use that with your students.

Donna Vallese: And there’s. There’s a great book it was put out I think in the ninety’s it’s a great collection of research that I actually used in my dissertation years ago. It’s called How we Think or how we learn one of one or the other. It’s it’s a pretty thick book but it has a huge collection of research and resources going back to John Dewey and Bruner and Bronfenbrenner and all your major theorists that. You kind of brushed over them in Psychology 101. Or educational psychology. But you really didn’t learn the depth of what they were or maybe even bloom. You didn’t really learn the depth like the first chapter of Bloom’s Taxonomy, which in my TED talk, I talk about we we always learn the taxonomy as a step by step process. But the first chapter in that actual book is the taxonomy is not a step by step process for thinking. All it is is is defining the different levels of thinking that we engage in. That thinking happens in any order at any time. So. So just make sure that you have a really sound understanding of what really great practice looks like and feels like. Make sure that you’ve seen it, that you can describe it, that you can help teachers visualize it and implement it. So those are my top two things. Long winded, but the top two things.

Stone Payton: Fantastic know, and I think it’s incredibly valuable. Thank you for sharing those resources. Okay. What is the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and start tapping into your work?

Donna Vallese: Yeah, so I do have a website w w w dot Inspiring Leaders LLC. I also you can email me Dr. Dot Donna V at Inspiring Leaders LLC and I’m easy to find on LinkedIn or on Facebook as well. If you just type in my name or my company, my company name, I will pop up or just Google me. I’ll pop up to there too. So lots of ways to get in touch with me.

Stone Payton: Well, Dr. Donna, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program today. Thank you for investing the time and energy to hang out with us and share your perspective and keep up the good work.

Donna Vallese: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on here. And and just everyone out there. Just if you’re not an educator, I just hope that you continue that this has helped you have a little bit of understanding in education that that you can really help support the changes that need to come in education.

Stone Payton: Amen. And it’s been my pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Dr. Donna Valise and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Kevin Hein with Konectd Company

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Konectd-logo
High Velocity Radio
Kevin Hein with Konectd Company
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Kevin-Hein-KonectdKevin Hein started Konectd back in 2013 helping business owners transition to mobile websites. Today, he has focused on helping business owners of all verticals and sizes maximize opportunities for them.

Working with companies from start-ups to established ones, he has a solution for you.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Changing marketplace for small business owners
  • Understanding the needs of business owners and not just chasing a sale
  • How business owners are keeping employees today
  • How to work with local in mind
  • Tools that you are using today
  • Tips and tricks for business owners

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Konectd, Mr. Kevin Hein. Good afternoon, sir.

Kevin Hein: How are we doing today, Stone?

Stone Payton: I am doing well and I have been so looking forward to having this conversation. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think. I think a great place to start would be if you could articulate for me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Kevin Hein: Amazing. Well, first off, I want to thank you for bringing me on and looking forward to sharing a little bit with your listeners about what we do today. You know, our focus, our premise is really focusing around the customer needs. We’re not going in and working with these large, large companies on a day to day basis without considering those small local businesses to they have their needs. They’re looking for just help. They have questions. They don’t know who to go to. They’re looking at their day to day marketing or lack thereof. Don’t know where to start and are overwhelmed. Right. Is something as simple as building a Facebook page, a business page, and starting a website, right? So our focus in our team is really coming around as a support staff to their business. And that’s really where our focus and energy has been from the get go.

Stone Payton: Well, and I suspect it’s a moving target or a moving set of targets. Are you finding that there are changes in the marketplace for particularly for those small business owners that you have to help them adapt to and live into?

Kevin Hein: Absolutely. So when I started this business back in 2013, there was a huge shift from going to desk, from desktop to mobile. So that was our primary focus when we started out is getting people to the mobile websites. We’ve since obviously seen that shift go well into the mobile world and we’ve expanded since on what we’re offering from social media SEO websites. But what I’m finding now, just beyond the digital side of things is business owners are starting to age, right? And there are new entrepreneurs coming into the market. And I think that’s amazing. And there’s a lot of tools that they can use out there today. But these aging entrepreneurs are really looking for just a little bit of help to get them to the end of the stretch where they can retire and step back. Right. So understanding what digital presents actually means and where to put their energy and focus, right. We can compare against whether it’s competitors locally or competitors across the nation where they should spend their energy in going forward, whether it be social media or a website, or it might be something as simple as just a one pager explaining what they do and they offer. They don’t need a huge portfolio of pages within a website, but really just a simple explanation of, Hey, we’re here, this is what we offer, here’s how we can help. And that’s really been eye opening, putting that customer view first versus just trying to sell, sell, sell. And that’s not how we bend. That’s not how we’ve started is we’re not out knocking down doors and trying to sell everybody everything that we offer. It’s really focusing and tailoring into what they want and what they’re looking for.

Stone Payton: Well, it strikes me, as you’re speaking, that it’s really important that you genuinely listen to what the customer has to say, what the prospective client has to say, what may be some assumptions, some of which might be a little bit flawed maybe, And you may have to kind of log that and know that you’re going to need to educate and inform, but to in your pursuit to genuinely serve. It sounds like genuinely listening is is a gosh, not just a working discipline. I mean, it sounds like it’s a core value for you guys.

Kevin Hein: Absolutely it is. And the better piece of it, too, And what I’ve really instilled with my employees and my team is first, we’re a family, We work together, we take care of each other. We understand each other’s needs. I have kids. I have a few employees that have kids, you know, and really families first. And I want to instill that into our customer base as well to understand that it’s not straight business all the time. Tell me what’s going on. What are your other struggles? And I’m not necessarily saying personal, but are you having issues? Are you looking for funding? Are you having trouble finding employees or outside of just the digital world, what what can we help with? Because it may not be something that we offer, but we have a huge connection across multiple platforms, whether it be social media or personal throwback, an old phrase Rolodex. Right? And we can we can find those and connect those people to help them out, whether it’s local or regional or national. We can we can get down that path where we’re really just trying to be a resource to help them get down the path that they’re trying to get to. Right. So again, it may not be something we offer, but we listen and try and help where we can. Right. And we may not be the experts, but I know certainly that we can we can connect them with some experts that would get on the path. And in the long term, it just helps our case on what we’re offering as well. Right?

Stone Payton: Yeah. So so what’s the back story, man? How didn’t how in the world did you find yourself in in this line of work?

Kevin Hein: You know, I hopped out of college marketing degree, young and spry and excited, got into the marketing world, work for a very, very large corporation, realized it wasn’t for me. I got sucked into the sales side, did very well, ran a sale work for another organization, actually ran their sales team as a director and enjoyed it. But again, it was the big corporation. It wasn’t a fit for me. So I’ve been able to really marry this sales and marketing viewpoint, which brings again, a lot of value to my customers, I believe as well, because you can write a good marketing strategy, but having any sales perspective behind it is important too. On how the customer thinks, how they’re going to react to certain things. Being able to write copy, that’s correct as well is very important. But again, realizing back a few years I started this in 2013, it’s the the age old started in the garage and now I’m doing this full time type deal. Right. And it’s been fun. It’s been a fun ride. And we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon, but really being able to get down to the nitty gritty with the customers and focus on what their needs are is really the fun part because at the end of the day, I get to go to the customers, whether it’s again via Zoom or I get to go on site, I get to see what they’re doing, I get to learn new things. I get to touch, feel right. I understand manufacturing operations. I understand, you know, the building operations or again, the digital operations that people are running to. And that is really what excites me is I get to interact and create a relationship and help grow with them and watch them grow. That’s really what’s important to us.

Stone Payton: So you spoke earlier in the conversation. You touched on sort of your ethos, your mindset, your value system around selling someone, serving someone versus just trying to to chase a sale. And at the same time, you’ve got to get into that conversation first, right? You have to have that conversation. So have you sort of landed on some sort of discipline process? Have you cracked the code on on getting a chance to have the conversation in the first place? I don’t know. Maybe we put that in the marketing bucket. Do you have a process for for meeting your market? I guess.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. You know, it’s I can’t say that I’ve cracked the code. I don’t know that there is a real code out there because every person is unique, everyone’s different. Although we see with a lot of business owners, they have similarities in problems that they’re running into. Sure, we can create a workflow or something like that that would that would drive some success. But really it’s focusing down and just being a people person again, understanding it as you iterated before, listening intently, providing value to them, whether it’s at a cost or not. At the end of the day, again, if I can help you find a better spark plug for your vehicle or a spark plug for your vehicle, I would be happy to do it again. I think provides no value for me, but it helps them. And at the end of the day, that’s what’s important. But as far as again, that marketing first or sales first, I think it’s so intertwined in my brain, I don’t know which ones coming out at which time. But again, going back to the cracking the code, I think it’s just being genuine, being authentic, being who you are. Right? This isn’t this is who I am.

Kevin Hein: I have three little beautiful babies. I got a gorgeous wife and we make it work. We’re we’re we’re a busy family. And there’s a lot of people, a lot of owners out there that are in the same situation. And you make it work and you understand that not everyone’s out to get you. And that’s where sometimes we run into the roadblock of saying, Oh, you’re just another marketing agency. And I was like, Well, no, actually we do a lot more. And sometimes I feel like we adopt our our clients and I get a text on Wednesday night before before Thanksgiving, and they’re going to they’re going to need something. Something’s going to come up and it’s okay. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help out. And and that’s where really focusing on your culture internally will exponentially show the value that you bring and the support and the familiarity that you bring to these owners, too, because they’ll they’ll understand and they’ll feel the culture that’s coming within. And they can really, over time, will be able to detect if there’s a negative or a bad feel about it. And that’s definitely what we don’t want to instill, right?

Stone Payton: Yeah. Well, let’s talk about culture a little bit, because it’s one thing for you, Kevin Hine, to have this mindset. This ethos, this approach to genuinely serving and helping the client get what they need and want, whether it’s you who provides it or not, it’s clearly yet another to build a team of people who will help you achieve those ends and live into that that value system. Talk a little bit about your own recruiting, developing, retaining and I don’t know, maybe you’re even helping some of your clients on this very issue.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. You know, and I appreciate you pointing that out. It’s something that we sit down through the interview process, you know, like a lot of other people will put an application out there or an opening out there and we’ll get applicants. But what I really focus on is sitting down and speaking with them. I’m not here to ask you, what are your three strengths and three weaknesses? Right? I can look at your resume. I can understand what your what your capabilities are. I may ask a few questions about you. Tell me about working with a client that comes at you negatively or whatnot. And and that’s fine. But really, again, understanding you get that feel with speaking with them and understand what their core values are, too. And look, at the end of the day, I don’t expect my client or my employees to work around the clock. I don’t have that expectation. They shouldn’t have that expectation of me, even though sometimes I feel like I’m doing that, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have that expectation for them. So really what I’ve instilled with them are a few different values. But the biggest piece being that you listen and you help them out on whatever need that they may have or again point them in the right direction. I’m not saying you have to know how to change a spark plug in a car, but hey, hey, here’s your local whatever auto body shop. Here’s who can help you out or have a connection with. And so but the other piece, too, is I’m not here to keep you forever. I understand that you need to move up in your career, and maybe that’s internally, maybe it’s not right. And that’s an okay thing. I want to provide you with all the tools, all the knowledge, all the capabilities that I have, the ability to share with you or our team has to share with you.

Kevin Hein: And if you go and better yourself in a different organization or create your own organization, I fully support it. I want you to understand that. I understand that. I’m asking a lot of what you’re doing on your day to day. It’s time is money, right? I’m asking you as an as an employer to take time away from your family. I’m asking you to maybe work some extra hours because we’re buried in a project. I’m asking you to possibly travel depending on the type of client where we’re going. Right. And I take that all into consideration, and as I said in the beginning, is I consider my employees family. Right. I will do anything for them and I don’t expect anything in return. And that’s the biggest key is I’m not out to. You know, accept anything back to me. Right. And that’s really what I focus on with my employees, is how can I help you? Because if you have the right mindset, the right, whatever it might be, that may be a struggle at home or with family or whatever it might be, if there’s anything I can do to help you out or if you need some extra time off or something happened, I’m here to support you. I’m your cheerleader, and I will back you up all the way. And I think that having that feel versus again, I’ve worked in a few large organizations that you really are a number. My employees are not a number. We have daily communications. We work on a lot of projects together. We have a lot of fun together too. So that’s really my focus around all of that.

Stone Payton: When you stepped out on your own a decade ago, was it at least a little bit scary for you, man? What was that like?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, so I ended up not stepping out right in 2013. I did it a bit on the side just for clarity, but I’ve been out on my own now for I’ve got to be over six years now, which is still a fair amount of time. And I was scared out of my mind. If I’m not, you know, if I’m being honest, it’s and I am not I am being honest. But it was it was terrifying. Right. And my wife looked at me and said, Are you sure this is the route we need to go? And I said, You know what? I have to do it. I can’t be one foot in and one foot out. Right? It’s not going to do anything if I don’t if I don’t take that leap. And I wouldn’t change. Change it for the world, right? Yeah, I work all hours. But you know what? Kids have a Christmas party at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Guess what? I’m going to go disappear at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday for an hour, and then I’ll be back at work. Right.

Stone Payton: So when the when the batteries do run a little bit low and and you need to recharge, where do you go? And I don’t necessarily mean like a physical place, but but how do you sort of get re-inspired get get, get built back up to go back out and try to serve and live into this purpose of yours.

Kevin Hein: Yeah. So my, my quiet place or my place to go to is actually running. As weird as that sounds. I go out and I go for a run and I’ll turn on some music on in the background. But I’ll went on my runs, I turn my music pretty low, just it’s just sent back round noises. I’m huffing and puffing down this down the street or down the sidewalk, but it really clears my mind and gives me a few moments to really soak in everything that maybe I’m a bit overwhelmed on a few projects that are going on. We’re taking on new clients. We have some clients that may be off boarding, which is it happens with everybody and really kind of decompress and then build a plan moving forward. That’s kind of my I’ll call it sacred space, right? And when I go out for a run and I don’t usually go running with anybody, it’s usually just by myself. And that’s my time away to really just process everything. And I come back and I’ll be maybe a bit tired from the run. Physically, mentally, I feel so much clearer and ready to hit the ground running, like you mentioned before, is is that that’s where I really start feeling a lot better and hitting that groove again.

Stone Payton: Well, and it really is so important to make that space for ourselves and for those of us leading organizations to to make that space or the room for it for the people who who we’re trying to generate results with. And and through I mean, it’s it’s critical, man. If you neglect that, you are really putting some things in jeopardy, don’t you think?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree with that.

Stone Payton: So before we went on air, you were sharing with me what I can only describe as as a fervent commitment to a genuine affinity for serving local. Can you speak more to that?

Kevin Hein: Yeah, certainly. So when focusing on yourself, right in talking with the running that I do, and that’s kind of my time away to decompress and breathe and think, you also need to, in lieu of serving yourself, you need to serve your community, really focusing on the growth and value that you bring to your community, whether it be local or regional, because that will in turn better where you live. It’ll better your community, it’ll better your neighbors, it’ll better your schools, it’ll better. Pretty much everything that’s out there, right? So if you focus on local and provide that value again, at times it’s that no cost, right? I’m helping out with the, let’s say the local chamber. Right. Or helping out with even I live in a really small town. Right. So everybody knows everybody and going down to city Hall and helping them because they got a broken page on their website. I’m not charging for that. It’s we’re so small, there’s really only one board. There’s no money there. Right. And they’re doing all the volunteering for sitting on boards and whatnot, part of the park board or part of the Economic Board or anything like that. So it’s going down and doing that. Really focusing on growing and intertwining that community piece is only going to help you in your business in the long run. Again, it just is another layer of. Really taking care of yourself and your community. That’s really a focus of ours because a few of our employees are not local to us. To. To connected. Right. So I instill in them to make sure that they’re getting out and helping their community to as a part of what they’re doing on their day to day as well.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of pro tips, some tangible, actionable things they can be thinking about, reading, doing, not doing around some of these topics. I don’t know, maybe share with them some of the some of the tools that you yourself are using or helping your clients with just something to help them begin to. To move in this direction on some of these key topics.

Kevin Hein: Yeah, absolutely. I’d say first and foremost, working within and going to your chamber meetings, your community meetings, supporting those groups doesn’t necessarily have to be networking and you can sit in a corner. It doesn’t mean you necessarily need to speak, don’t feel like you’re totally obligated to present what you do or who you are or even. But just being a part and understanding what’s going on, I think is the biggest tool that you have out there. Something that I’ve focused on early on in my business kind of got away from because we got really busy but is a focus for me, 2023 is it’s not necessarily a tool as much as I’ve focused on getting out and traveling more and meeting new clients face to face, getting out and shaking hands again. Right? We were shut down here for a bit, but coming back and and again physically seeing people going out on site, seeing clients shaking hands, don’t be afraid that people are going to welcome you in. As far as digital tools. There’s a million out there, right? We offer a business app that people can log in to monitor their digital presence and so on and so forth. So that’s a tool of ours through connected. And you can reach out to me any time if anybody like a demo on that. Other tools we use for social media, we’re big partners with cloud campaign, simple tool for posting, scheduling, anything like that.

Kevin Hein: We’re big WordPress website people. We like to use those tools that are out there to very simple builders, so on and so forth. So those are a few of the tools. But the biggest piece I would say out of all the tools or all the needs that you have out there is just go do something. That’s what I ask people. People get overwhelmed with, Well, I can go to this or I can do that, or I need to learn how to do Photoshop, or I need to learn how to just go do it. Just go create a website. Go go post something out on social media. You know what? When I post it on social media, I got zero likes, did it for a long time, got zero likes. Then I got one follower, then I got two followers. You know, at the end of the day, I don’t think I have that many followers on our on our business page right now as it is, But we’re focused on just doing it, put in, put in the post, put in the time, because it will long term it’s a it’s a time game. You keep doing it, you keep pushing forward, don’t quit. You’re going to be success in your own eyes. And success is measure based on what you feel. It’s not monetary, it’s not a certain threshold that you have to hit. It’s whatever you feel is successful is successful to you.

Stone Payton: A man. All right. What is the best way for our listeners to get connected with you and tap into your work? Man? Whatever you feel like is appropriate? Email, LinkedIn, key URLs. I want to make sure that they can. I want to make it easy for them to connect with you.

Kevin Hein: Yeah, absolutely you can. And I may regret this, but I’ll just put my email out there. You can reach out to me. Kevin at Connected dot com it’s Kevin. Kevin at Connected K on E, C TED.com. They can reach out to me via LinkedIn. I believe it’s LinkedIn backslash k r hine Accion so they can reach out to me. There are probably the two spots that I’m most active that they can reach out to me directly. And again, any questions people have, we’re always happy to help out. And I know there’s always a lot of questions about marketing where they should spend money, where they should spend their energy. Is this working? Is that working? And some of it is testing, right? It doesn’t necessarily mean we have the right answer, but we can walk through their process and see what that looks like.

Stone Payton: Kevin, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for investing the time and energy to share your insight and your perspective. This is been a marvelous conversation and you’re doing really important work, man. Keep up the good work and and know that we sincerely appreciate you, man.

Kevin Hein: Thank you, Stone. I appreciate your time and I appreciate everyone listening today.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Kevin Hein with Connected and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Test Your Subject Line

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BRX Pro Tip: Test Your Subject Line
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BRX Pro Tip: Test Your Subject Line

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, here’s a good solid piece of tactical counsel, test your subject line.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] Yeah. If you’re doing any type of email marketing or any type of emailing, really, you really have to hone in on a good subject line because you don’t want your message to hit the spam folder if you can help it. And I use this tool. It’s a free tool that kind of gives you a ranking on how well your subject line is being perceived and if it’s going to be targeted in spam filters. And that website is omnisend.com/subject-line-tester, omnisend.com/subject-line-tester. And if you go to that website, it’ll have a place for you to just put your subject line in, and then it’ll tell you, it’ll say, “Hey, this was good,” or, “this has a good persuasive – you know, it’s persuasive,” or “this is too complicated. Here are some suggestions.” It’ll say this is using words that tend to be – we’ll put it in a spam folder. So, it’s really useful to at least kind of get an idea if you’re on the right track. I mean, obviously, you don’t have to take their advice exactly, but I would use it as at least a ballpark to say, “Okay, I’m in the right area here,” and then maybe you play around with some of their suggestions on how to add a word here or get rid of a word there that makes your subject line that much more powerful to help you get your open rate a little better and hopefully get more deals closed.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:44] So, that’s omnisend.com/subject-line-tester. If you go to that website, you will find it there. It’s a free tool and I highly recommend it.

WBENC 2022: Cheryl McCants with Impact Consulting Enterprises

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WBENC 2022: Cheryl McCants with Impact Consulting Enterprises
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Cheryl-McCants-GWBC-WBENC-National-ConferenceCheryl McCants, Impact Consulting Enterprises

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here broadcasting live from the WBENC National Conference 2022, inside the Georgia World Congress Center, inside the GWBC booth, Booth 1812. So, stop by and see us if you want to catch up and tell your story. And right now, we’re excited to talk to Cheryl McCants, and she is with Impact Consulting Enterprises. Welcome, Cheryl.

Cheryl McCants: [00:00:40] Thank you. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about Impact Consulting Enterprises. How are you serving folks?

Cheryl McCants: [00:00:49] So, Impact is a communications company that I founded 33 years ago, back in 1989. And we specialize in telling stories that inspire smiles, trust, and confidence.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:02] And so, 33 years overnight success kind of story.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:07] Yeah. A long 33 year overnight success. Exactly.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So, how has the business evolved over the years?

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:14] Well, as most people would guess, the business started before things like what we’re doing now existed.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Like, before the internet.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:24] Before the internet. So, what’s very interesting is I moved our offices not too long ago, and so I had an old pile of business cards that didn’t have email addresses on it, that didn’t have cell phone numbers on it. And my daughter says, “Mom, these cards, why do you have them? They’re not complete.” So, things have evolved.

Cheryl McCants: [00:01:45] What I would say, however, is, as much things change, they still stay the same. So, it’s all about communicating. And we now have different channels of communication. So, we’ve got our podcast, we’ve got our internet, and it’s really all about connecting with people.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] So, that part hasn’t changed. The storytelling part is the same. It’s just the way you do it might have changed a bit.

Cheryl McCants: [00:02:06] Absolutely. It’s the channel of communication.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] So, now, who is the ideal client for you?

Cheryl McCants: [00:02:13] So, ideally, we work with organizations, for profits, not-for profits, government agencies that need to connect and communicate with diverse audiences. It used to be called multicultural marketing. You know, it’s been called a lot of other things. Since the unfortunate murder of George Floyd, lots of corporations have stepped up their commitments to work with businesses that are black-owned or business owners of color. And we work with them to help make sure that their messages are respectful, to make sure that the imagery that they use is not offensive, to make sure that there’s culturally competent communication in all that they do.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:54] So, what is kind of the pain that they’re having where they should be calling Cheryl and her team? Like, what’s a symptom that you’re the solution to?

Cheryl McCants: [00:03:03] So, anybody that’s looking to connect with diverse audiences, if you’ve got a product that you want to sell and you realize that you want to connect with the African-American community, or the Latino community, or the Asian, or the LGBTQ+, or the female audience, and you want to ensure that you don’t have faux pas that we’ve seen in some advertising campaigns that have taken place recently, my team comes on as added bench to your ad agencies. We come on as added bench to your internal comms team. And then, we come on as strategists for those organizations that are really looking to fulfill their commitments 100 percent.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:45] Now, are you looking for more kind of enterprise level companies as a client, or are you looking for more agencies for you to kind of take that bench role for them or a combination?

Cheryl McCants: [00:03:57] We are really looking for more enterprise, like in industries or agencies. We’re currently doing some work with Bristol-Myers Squibb. That’s one of the reasons why we’re here today. And we’re working with them on helping to tell the story about the impact that their investment in diverse suppliers has, not just on that women-owned business or on that minority-owned business, but the communities that the employees and the other partners of those businesses live, work, and play in. So, really looking for other organizations that either need help telling that story, don’t know how to get it together, we can work with them as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] And that’s something important for the corporates to realize that their budgets in some ways are so huge to throw some money at these groups. It’s pocket change for a lot of these folks. But the impact is dramatic.

Cheryl McCants: [00:04:51] The impact is huge.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:52] And I don’t think they really can empathize to the level to understand that that’s the case.

Cheryl McCants: [00:04:57] Right. No, absolutely. So, we also have an initiative called The Great Football Sunday. And the idea is that, if one-tenth of a percent of the Super Bowl campaign budget could be put towards a nonprofit or for-profit, but an organization that works to end homelessness in the city that the Super Bowl is taking place, if we turnkey that around, then I call it the Great Football Sunday, because then everybody would be able to watch the Super Bowl. And in order to watch the Super Bowl, you got to have a T.V. And, hopefully, the T.V. is in a home. So, yes, one-tenth of a percent goes a long way when you’re talking about billions of dollars.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:41] Right. And it’s so important for the corporates to really let that sink in. And then, you help them tell those stories and help them reach the people that need to be reached.

Cheryl McCants: [00:05:50] Right. We help them tell those stories internally and externally. During my work with Nike, for example, we know that your strongest and largest pool of advocates are your employees. So, you want to make sure that when people go home and they’ve got Thanksgiving dinners or they’ve got Mother’s Day celebrations and people say, “Oh, so how’s work?” You hopefully want them to say work is grand, work is great, and here is why.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:14] It’s a story they tell about.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:15] Exactly. So, we work on preparing internal communication support, key messages, video productions, social media management, the media buying, the full spectrum. However, it all ties back to making sure that people know who they should be talking to, when they should be talking to them, and what they should be saying.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:39] So, how is this show working for you? You said you’re here for Bristol.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:42] Here with Bristol-Myers Squibb. I’ve set up an appointment with Amazon for the week after next when I get back to New York.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:50] There you go.

Cheryl McCants: [00:06:51] I’m going to be connecting with Target, 1:00 tomorrow. So, so far, so good. And I’m also really excited about the new energy trends that are coming. And I do believe that offshore wind technology is the next big it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:10] You heard it here first.

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:10] And so, I’ll put it out there. There you go, offshore wind.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:15] So, if somebody wants to learn more and get a hold of you, what’s the website?

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:18] So, you can reach us online at eimpactconsulting.com. I’ve got a podcast, Marketing McCants. You can get some marketing tips. We’re on Facebook. We’re on Instagram. We’re on Twitter. We’re out there. Just look for Impact Consulting Enterprises and Cheryl McCants.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:37] All right. Cheryl, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Cheryl McCants: [00:07:41] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:42] All right. This is Lee Kantor broadcasting live from the WBENC National Conference 2022 inside GWBC Booth 1812. We’ll be back in a few.

 

About WBENC

The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) is a leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping women-owned businesses thrive.WBENC-Logo

We believe diversity promotes innovation, opens doors, and creates partnerships that fuel the economy. That’s why we not only provide the most relied upon certification standard for women-owned businesses, but we also offer the tools to help them succeed.

About GWBC

The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. GWBC-Logo

GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

BRX Pro Tip: The Awful First Draft

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BRX Pro Tip: The Awful First Draft
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BRX Pro Tip: The Awful First Draft

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor, Stone Payton here with you. Lee, today’s topic, the awful first draft.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:10] Yeah. A lot of people are procrastinating writing because they’re afraid their writing’s not very good. And that’s totally normal. A lot of people have insecurities around their writing ability, but I think what they don’t realize that most good writers have the same problem. The first draft of anything that anybody writes usually isn’t that great. And once you kind of reframe that in your head and know, “Oh, it’s normal to have an awful first draft so let me just knock that out as quickly as possible,” then it gives you freedom to just write and don’t judge, just get it all down on paper and then go back and then edit it. And that’s what good writers do. They’re not – the writing isn’t really the hardest part. It’s the editing that is the hardest part to take kind of raw concepts and words and then put them into a cohesive story or a cohesive post or article. That’s really where the rubber hits the road.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:12] So, if you know ahead of time that you’re going to go back over something and you’re going to make it better, then that takes a lot of the pressure off and it should make it less a chore and less something that you’re going to procrastinate around, knowing that, “Hey, today I’m just going to write my awful first draft. I’ll get that down. Then tomorrow I’ll come back and I’ll edit that.” And then, it just takes a lot of the pressure off yourself and you don’t have to make it perfect and you know it’s not going to be perfect. And you just want to get those ideas out of your head and you know that you’re going to make it better after editing it a couple of times.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:48] And then, now, there are so many, so much software out there where you can – you don’t even have to write it. You can just talk off the top of your head into a Google doc and it’ll record it and transcribe it for you and you can edit off of that. So, don’t be afraid of the first draft. It’s going to be bad. Just accept it. That’s the way it is. And then, just know that you’re going to make it better over time.

Mark Herschberg with Cognosco Media

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Mark Herschberg with Cognosco Media
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Mark-Herschberg-headshotMark Herschberg is the author of The Career Toolkit: Essential Skills for Success That No One Taught You and creator of the Brain Bump app.

From tracking criminals and terrorists on the dark web to creating marketplaces and new authentication systems, Mark has spent his career launching and developing new ventures at startups and Fortune 500s and in academia, with over a dozen patents to his name. He helped to start the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program, dubbed MIT’s “career success accelerator,” where he teaches annually.

At MIT, he received a B.S. in physics, a B.S. in electrical engineering & computer science, and a M.Eng. in electrical engineering & computer science, focusing on cryptography. At Harvard Business School, Mark helped create a platform used to teach finance at prominent business schools. He also works with many non-profits, currently serving on the board of Plant A Million Corals.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn and follow Cognosco Media on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can also follow The Career Toolkit on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Cognosco Media. Mr. Mark Herschberg. Good afternoon, sir.

Mark Herschberg: Thanks for having me. It is a pleasure to be here today.

Stone Payton: Well, I have so been looking forward to this conversation. I got a ton of questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Mark Herschberg: One of my passions in life is helping people with their professional efficacy, helping people be more effective in their careers and their lives. And so our books, our apps, the tools we put out, all the stuff that we give away for free. It’s all to help people be more effective and more successful.

Stone Payton: So have you found yourself kind of gravitating to a certain type of client, an industry, a sector, a niche, if you will, Or is it more broad, broader than that?

Mark Herschberg: It is more broad now. I have been teaching at MIT for over 20 years where through the research we’ve done at Sloan, in other places, we’ve refined what these skills are and how best to teach them. And when I teach at MIT, we do orient those lessons a little more for engineers and scientists, because that’s who we have at MIT. But when we put out the book, when we put out the tools, we put the resources, we’ve generalized them because skills like leadership, networking, negotiating, team building, these are universal and they apply in all fields and all disciplines.

Stone Payton: Okay, So I saw a Harvard Business School in my notes. I skipped over or didn’t notice in MIT. I got to hear more about the back story. Man Your path. How in the world did you find yourself doing this kind of work for these kind of people?

Mark Herschberg: And of unexpectedly, I began my career as a software engineer and realized that I wanted to become a CTO, a chief technology officer. What I learned as I understood the role, yes, I had to be a good engineer, but there were a bunch of other skills like negotiating, networking, leadership, hiring people, communication, all these things that you need to be successful as a leader that no one actually stopped to teach me. So when I trained myself, I began to upskill my team and at the same time MIT had gotten similar feedback. Companies hiring our students said, We want to see these skills. And by the way, we’re not having this issue with just MIT students or just engineers or just scientists. This is a universal problem. And research from universities around the country, from hiring firms, from corporations, universally say these skills are hard to find. And if you think about it, because we’re not teaching them. So at MIT, we created the Career Success Accelerator program, where we instill these skills into our students alongside their core math, science and engineering. And I wanted to reach a larger audience. I thought I was writing up some notes that I could share. And what I thought was 20 pages of notes turned out to be a 200 page book unexpectedly.

Stone Payton: So that was the first part of getting the book together. But talk a little bit about that experience. And I’m asking for my own benefit, but also a great many people who tap into this work are aspiring authors, people who are maybe they think maybe they have a book in them. What was that experience like? Did pieces of it come together easier than others yet? Talk to that a little bit.

Mark Herschberg: That I went through an interesting process because I did not plan to write the book. Now, this class we have at MIT, it is a very hands on experiential class. It’s not me and others lecturing at the students and them scribbling notes. They’re doing. They’re practicing. We’re having discussions so they don’t take a lot of notes. And for years I said, we need to help the students. Let’s write up some notes for them to take away. Let’s put these notes online, because MIT pioneered online courseware giving away our content for free for various reasons. That never happened. And when I was traveling a lot for my primary job, I build tech startup companies. I said, I’ve got some downtime. Let me write some notes. I really thought I was writing this 20 pages of notes. But 20 became 40 became 80, and I suddenly had over 100 pages and said, you know, I think there’s a book. So then I had to really step back and say, You can’t just throw a bunch of thoughts together and call it a book. And so I backed up. I went to the research about why are we teaching this and not that? What are other universities seeing? What are those corporate hiring companies seeing and then putting in the structure? So we came up with here are the ten skills that we see requested most often that are not generally taught to anyone. And from my years of teaching, I had the advantage that I know what the key ideas are. I know how to put it succinctly Where are the action items? What are the next questions? So a comment I get often is, Boy, I’m reading your book and I read a page. I have a question on the next page. You answered it. That’s not magic. That’s because I’ve been teaching. So if you are thinking of doing a book, don’t go and do your talks once it’s out. Start by doing your talks or going on radio programs. This will help you refine your content, understand how people will engage with it, and that will create a better book.

Stone Payton: Marvelous pro tip. We may carve that out and just share that. That’s good stuff, man. So now that you’ve been at this a while, what are you finding the most rewarding about the work? What is the most fun for you?

Mark Herschberg: Bone was coming upon the brain bump app. Now, one thing that I love about teaching is when I am in the room doing a big lecture or doing small groups, I can engage, I can see are people learning. I can sometimes see the light bulb go on in their head. And I love that. As an author, as someone going on radio programs like this. I don’t know if people are getting it. I generally think they are because I know how to explain this. I think it works, but you don’t get that feeling. And one of the big challenges that we know from learning is when someone reads a book, as soon as they finish that book, that’s it. They they stop with the content and they forget it all a week or two later. And it’s a terrible experience. We know with students it’s usually about 5 minutes after they walk out of the final. And that’s certainly how I was. So we want to help people retain what they learn to make it useful. And in fact, here’s one of the key limitations with a lot of existing content. If you think about a book where you read something is not where you need something, where you read an idea is not where you need an idea.

Mark Herschberg: So if you read the networking tips in my book, you’re probably doing it sitting at home. You’ve already met your dog, you’ve got a good relationship. You don’t need to build that. But two months later at the conference, that’s where you need those networking tips. So how do we get those tips when and where you need it? And from discussions with people, from all our experience, we create the brain bump app, which is, I think really the next evolution for books and podcasts and other content where we take the key ideas and put it into your hands so you can quickly access it when and where you need it in a context dependent way. And we get a lot more feedback on that. We talk to people, we see them using it. I don’t need to see you reading a book. You’re not probably going to let me watch you read a book, but people tell me about their experience with the app or I’ll sit with them and show, How are you using this app? What are you getting out of it? And that is so nice to see the impact we’re having. And we’ve had a tremendous way to really help people retain what they read in here.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous idea. So are you at this stage in the development of that app and having it out there, taking on other creators, other contributors, or is it confined to this content that we’ve been talking about for now? Or where are you in that?

Mark Herschberg: It is open. We first created a prototype for my book, and so there is you can still find the Career Toolkit app. So my book is The Career Toolkit. There is the Career Toolkit app, which is for free on the Android and iPhone stores, and that has the content from my book. Put it right in your pocket. Pull it up when you need it. But we saw this worked. We did our feedback from users, from content creators, and said, this can work not just for my book. There’s nothing special about how my book is done. We can do this for other books, podcasts, blogs, classes, talks. And we launched a little over a month ago. We’ve gotten some great traction. We continue to add content, so I’m constantly having new authors and content creators add advice from their books and podcasts and shows into the apps. There’s an ever growing list. You as the app user of brain bump you can go get for free from the iPhone and Android stores, and then you just select the blogs, a podcast, the books you want. Get those tips and you can use it one of two ways.

Mark Herschberg: Either you say, you know, I need those networking tips right now before I walk in the room. So you pull it up, you hit that networking tab and you get the tips. So you get the networking, you pull up the networking tag, everything’s tagged like hashtags, and you get this tips that you need. Or you say, I really just want to get better at leading. There’s never a moment where say, I’m about to lead in 2 minutes. I need that tip. You need it, you need it foundationally. You can set it. So at 9 a.m. each morning as you walk into the office, you get a tip, you get a pop up. You don’t even need to open the app. It’s got a little push to your phone when and where you ask for it. We don’t bother you with notifications you didn’t ask for. We don’t want to annoy you. Go ahead. There’s that leadership tip. Great. Swipe it away. 2 seconds a day. But by getting it each and every day, you’re building up that knowledge, that experience. And you’re better. You’re better at retaining it.

Stone Payton: Well, congratulations on the momentum with this thing, man. And I will definitely dive into that. I can see all kinds of applications, even for the work that we’re doing here at the Business Radio network. And of course, as you might imagine, I get to meet and cultivate relationships with a lot of folks who are creating some really solid content and to yet have another way to get it out there. And so effectively, that’s that’s fantastic. Now, you, of course, are no stranger at all to this whole process of of launching a new venture, a startup, helping other people do it. I got to ask, when you are initially working with some of these bright eyed folks who are very passionate about their ideas, do you find that sometimes they they walk into this with I don’t myths maybe a little bit strong, but some misconceptions, some preconceived notions, some some some fundamental assumptions where you have to kind of get them back on track and really help them understand what the path is more likely to look like.

Mark Herschberg: Very much so. And this is an important lesson both for people starting a business in general. I do a lot of tech startups, but also for those of you who are thinking of doing, let’s say, a book or a podcast or content. We often think of the hard work, I’m going to build that app, build that product, build the business, write the book. And boy, that’s grueling. That’s a lot of work. And then people get to the end. I know for books they do. Oh, we got the release party and all that sigh of relief. Here’s the secret When you get to that launch party for your book, when you get to the release for your app or your business, that’s not the end of the race. That is the start in technology. It’s not the best technology that wins. There’s a laundry list of going back to VHS versus Betamax. It is the good enough technology with the better marketing that wins. It is not the best business book out there. That is a New York Times bestseller. It is the not horribly written, good enough business book that has the right press and marketing. So you need to recognize, no matter what your venture, you have to get out there and market it and promote it. And that is a grind. And too many people focus on the creation work, which is obviously important. If you build a bad product, no one wants it, but then you’ve got market it and that’s at least 50% of the work, if not more.

Stone Payton: You clearly serve as a mentor to people in this space and in other domains. Have you had the benefit of one or more mentors that have helped you navigate the terrain in these in these different areas?

Mark Herschberg: I haven’t had as many formal mentors, but I have been lucky with some good managers, some good colleagues and people I could learn from, including just some peers, just some friends. And this is an important note. We often think of mentors as, Oh, you’re you’re 20 years ahead of me down the path, so I need to follow you. But really, we can learn from anyone. Everyone has something they can teach us. And if you keep your eyes and ears open, you can enhance your skills. You can develop and grow from nearly everyone you meet. I think that’s really important for accelerated growth.

Stone Payton: So when I talk to people like you with so much energy, so much enthusiasm, so many irons in the fire, as my dad would say, I’ve learned to ask, so I’m going to. What’s next, man? Where is your energy effort? Focus over the next, I don’t know, ten, 18 months?

Mark Herschberg: Good question. There are a number of things. I have a tech startup that we got some early seed funding for. We should be launching something in about six weeks from the time that we’re recording this towards the end of November 2022. So that should be out probably early January. We have the brain bump app that we mentioned and that app, we’re live, but we have a long roadmap. And equally important, I said marketing is at least as important as the technology piece. So getting more users and hand in hand getting more content on the app from those authors, podcasters and other content creators. And then I’m doing more with the book, especially, I think 2023 is the first year where we’re not at least partially in pandemic mode. We’re an endemic mode, but we’re getting back to normal ish. So the speaking that I do at conferences and at companies that should pick up as well. So those are my three top priorities, plus a course personal things that I want to just get back to.

Stone Payton: Yeah, well, you know what? Before we wrap, let’s do a little bit deeper dive on that one topic, because marketing. Yes, it is so important. I’m sure even you have probably skinned your knee. You may have a little scar tissue. Certainly learned some do’s and some don’ts. Let’s leave our listeners with a few pro tips and things to be thinking about reading, doing, not doing when it comes to this all important topic of of marketing.

Mark Herschberg: Let me give you a really game changing thought on marketing, because a lot of the listeners, they are business people. We think about our business content being marketed, a lot of content marketing. Today’s marketing channels aren’t necessarily optimized for our needs. So let’s think about social media. Social media is great. If you’re doing breaking news, reporters love it or it works great for visual stuff. If you are a model or a cake maker, great. Put those photos online. They do really well. But those of us in business, whether we’re thought leaders or we just have some business that’s not very visual, maybe it’s a tax accounting service. We’re not putting out photos and our content is evergreen. This puts us in a trap because when I post something today, I post something at 3 p.m. today on leadership. Well, let’s think about what happens. Half the people aren’t even on social media that day, so half my followers don’t see it. The ones who do see it. A number of them say, Well, yeah, that’s great, but leadership’s not my issue today. My issue today is trying to get more sales, trying to hire people, some other problems. So I’m not paying attention even though I saw it. And that post fades away because it is temporal. We put things in that chronological order, but that’s a great leadership tip.

Mark Herschberg: And now six months from now, one of my followers, one of my potential customers, they say now I need some leadership advice, but they’re not going back to see what Mark Post six months ago, anything good there? They’re not looking at those emails I send out every week from six months ago. So it’s misaligned to what we need because social media is visual and social media is temporal. What we need are channels where first it’s more content oriented, it’s more text and idea oriented, but it also needs to be a pull, not this push. I’m pushing this idea out when I think it’s best, and I hope that works for my large audience. Instead, we need marketing channels that let the audience feel the ideas to them when and where it’s relevant. Now, this was the idea behind Brain bump. It is Pull is pulling those ideas when they need it. But this is the first step and I think a larger sea change towards media and that you need to think of other ways. You can let your audience pull your information and get your information to be there when and where it’s relevant to them, because that’s going to create a lot more value for them and they will translate that value to your brand.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. That sounds like marvelous counsel. All right. Let’s make sure that our listeners can connect with you. Tap into your work. Let’s leave them with those key URLs where they can access these resources. Whatever you feel like is appropriate and just makes it easy for people to pick up the conversation again on demand as they as they need it.

Mark Herschberg: Now I give you two websites, the first brain bump app that’s brain bump app.com. If you go, that website will direct you to the store’s Android and iPhone stores. We can download the Free Brain Bump app. If you are a content creator and you think your content would be good for this at the bottom of the page, there’s a button to click, there’s a link to click and you click that you fill out. A form takes 30 seconds and I’ll get that and I’ll be in touch with you about getting your content on there. And remember, the app is completely free, so you can check it out, see if it would work for you. My other website, The Career Toolkit. Bbc.com And there’s information about the Career Toolkit book, which has advice on all these skills networking, negotiating, how to hire people, all the stuff they never actually teach us. There’s a whole bunch of other free resources on that website, and that is the career toolkit. Bbc.com.

Stone Payton: Well, Mark, it has been an absolute delight having you on the program this afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us on air, sharing your insight, your perspective and your energy for this man. Keep up the good work.

Mark Herschberg: Well, thank you. It has been a pleasure to spend this time with you.

Stone Payton: Well, it has absolutely been my pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Mark Hirschberg with Conoco Media and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

 

Mindy Paul with Mind, Money & Business

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High Velocity Radio
Mindy Paul with Mind, Money & Business
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Mindy-Paul-HeadshotBefore starting his business coaching and consulting company, Mind, Money & Business, Mindy Paul spent years running his own companies and creating illogical growth in business spanning across multiple industries, even during the economic downturn of 2008-2010.

Now, his passion is turning overworked entrepreneurs into 6, 7 and 8-figure CEOs by helping them leverage timeless business principles employed by business owners across the globe and combining them with today’s most powerful strategies on mindset, manifestation and business growth.

Mindy’s disrupted the online business space with his renowned Mindset, Manifestation and Business principles, which have been taught to over 10,000 people across the globe and is responsible for countless entrepreneurs scaling their business and attracting monthly revenues of 6 and 7-figure leaps consistently.

Connect with Mindy on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you today. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Mind, Money and Business. Mr. Mindy Paul. How are you, man?

Mindy Paul: A wonderful statement. First of all, thank you for having me here. I’ve been really excited to be here with you.

Stone Payton: It is absolutely my pleasure. I have really been looking forward to this conversation. I’ve got a ton of questions. I know we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start would be if you could share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks? Man.

Mindy Paul: I’m here to wake people up. Now, back in 2016, I nearly had a near-death experience and, you know, I was operating way below my potential and I made a deal with God that give me one more chance, and I’m going to make sure that I live it all out and I’m going to make sure anybody that I come across goes all out to and achieves their dreams.

Stone Payton: Okay, So let’s go back a little bit further. I’m always curious to know, how did you get into coaching? What’s the back story? What did you do before this?

Mindy Paul: Oh, well, like most entrepreneurs, I was I was trying one thing, jumping from that to the other to the other and not breaking through, not making any any changes. And, you know, I was halfheartedly going into these businesses, didn’t have the right mindset. And so I was kind of lost like most people without guidance. So I had to find I didn’t know what a mentor was until a friend of mine suggested you need yourself a mentor mentee. Get yourself a mentor. What’s a mentor I thought was a sweet, like mentors, right? So. So I went out and seeked like, start to invest in myself. And I just found that having the right mentor shows you, guide you how to get to your destination fast, hold you accountable. So I didn’t have that in my life. I didn’t know anything about it. So I wanted to become that person to other people because I know the importance of how my mentor helped me to really crack things into place.

Stone Payton: So say more about this, this Binti mentor relationship, because this has been a little bit of a pattern, I’ll say, because I get a chance to to have conversations on air with some very accomplished people. Often they’ve had some sort of struggle and then they have found one or more mentors. But talk a little bit about that relationship and maybe what you’ve learned about how to get the most out of that relationship on either side of the equation, if you could.

Mindy Paul: Sure. Well, here’s the thing. When we want to hire a mentor, we need to find someone who’s already got the results, got the instructions and manual to what we want to accomplish is just like last night, I was one of the ninja foodies. I was about to do some cooking. I thought, if I take this out of the box, I don’t read the instructions. I’m not going to know what to do, when to do and how to do it and how long to cook for, and the recipe is going to be a disaster. So having a mentor is like having an instruction manual where they’ve been where you want to be. They can directly guide you step by step, hold you accountable, give you the recipe that you need to get to the end result. And all you’ve got to do is kind of like, Listen, apply list and apply list and apply it. And before you know it, you’ve come so much further, faster than you would have done on your own.

Stone Payton: And then on the on the side of actually doing the mentoring, are there some, I don’t know, best practices guidelines, some do’s and don’ts about if you’re trying to mentor someone else, that’ll help you help them the best.

Mindy Paul: Sure. So one of the things I look for and is important is having the right attitude when you are in one to work with somebody who wants to change. I have people say, Look, can you help such and such? Can you help my son, my daughter? I can’t help anybody unless they’re ready to be helped. So the first thing they’ve got to have an open mind. They’ve got to be willing. They’ve got to have a desire. It’s not just about the money. People say, Well, I’ve got the money to invest. Money’s the last thing I look for in a prospect. The number one thing I look for is desire being coachable. Are they willing to listen? Are they going to be a pleasure to work with? Are they going to drain my energy? So that’s one of the things I kind of look out for.

Stone Payton: So you’ve been at this a while now. What are you finding the most rewarding man? What are you enjoying the most about the work?

Mindy Paul: I was waking up to messages in my DMS. Mindy, you’ll never guess what just happened. I’ve just done this. I’ve just sent this much money and I’ve had more in one day than I’ve earned in the last year. And I’ll wake up to so many different messages like that consistently. And that’s so rewarding When you help people break past their own limitations, things they could not imagine they could do. And they’re doing it and they’re looking back and they can’t recognize the person they were just like a month ago, two months ago. That’s how fast this stuff happens.

Stone Payton: So we’re not going to gloss over something you touched on very briefly early in the conversation, this near-death experience, if you’re willing. Would you speak a little bit more about kind of what led up to that and go a little deeper on that? That’s I find that fascinating.

Mindy Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So this is going back in 2016, also 37 out of the year at the time. I was just sitting at home with my kids, my parents, and I just felt it’s about 10:00 at night. I just felt this whacking bang headache like something hit me on the side of the head with a brick. And I ended up in hospital. They took me to the stroke unit. They didn’t know if I was having a brain hemorrhage or something. Lots of different things happened, but at that point in my life, I was suffering unconsciously, right from I say unconsciously, I didn’t realize I was suffering, but I was. Lots of things in my business weren’t going right. I was in a bad place financially. And if you’d asked me at that point was I really stressed out on my book, I would kind of say, not really. But underneath, behind the scenes was something going on. And it was kind of like really killing me. I had a lot of guilt about like I’d lost some family money and made some bad investments. And I was I always had a lot of hate towards myself. I had a lot of anger towards myself. And and, you know, that happened to me for a reason. I was I needed a lesson. I had to learn a lesson. I had to go through this learning for me to be where I am today. Yeah, it was right now, when I think about it, just the dark cloud in my mind, just thinking about it, going back to that time where I was. And so I ended up in hospital, got 48 hours. The doctor told me, Let me support the next 40 hours. You could be gone. I’m like, How the hell can this happen to me? This always happens to other people. You know, that wasn’t a part of my movie. I didn’t see this happening to me. And all of a sudden, out of the blue, I get hit with this.

Stone Payton: All right. Let’s talk about the work a little bit, kind of paint for us the picture, if you would, what it’s like for a candidate, a prospective candidate, to kind of come into your circle. Well, especially like the early stages of of you coaching, you working with someone. Who are you helping? What are some of the the big steps that you’re taking with them?

Mindy Paul: Okay, well, I help people that are already in business. So this could be like coaches, consultants, lawyers, doctors, dentists, people with service based industries. So firstly, we take them through a process where I find that kind of where they are, and then I ask them some good questions about where they want to go. Like incomes they want to achieve. And a lot of the time I hear, well, you know, Mindy, realistically, I could do this. I’d be happy. And I’m like, I want to stretch you. I had a lady came to me and her goal was to earn £5,000 in a month. And I’m like, Come on, let’s. Let’s go a bit bigger. Let’s go to 50, 50,000 a month. And she couldn’t even take on the idea of 50,000 a month because that’s she didn’t see herself as a 50,000 a month earner. So I have a process to break you out of your current level of income, psychologically, subconsciously, to higher levels. So I break down those barriers. And before you know it, you’ll start to see shifts that happen. And, you know, you write your First 10-K, you write, you’re hitting 20,000 and you look back, you don’t even recognize the person that you were when we first had that conversation. A lot of times this happens quite fast. It doesn’t take a long time.

Stone Payton: Now you have if I’m if I’m remembering my notes properly really embraced some I don’t know topics principles that for some are a little bit controversial. Some people are kind of skeptical about them. I’m speaking about the law of attraction manifestations, some of this mindset stuff. I’d love for you to speak to that from your perspective, because obviously you’re finding tremendous success in your ability to help people with those things. Yes.

Mindy Paul: One thing that comes to mind saying is if it’s too good to be true, it probably is, right. Now, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. Now we’ve got gravitation. We’ve got the force of gravity right now. If I hold a glass of water and I let it go, it’s going to fall, right? Yeah. Now, that’s a lawful process. Like it doesn’t matter where you are, which country you’re in. Doesn’t matter what color you are, what sex you are. That glass you let it go is going to drop unless you’re in space. Now, why can there not be laws that accumulate the laws that govern the accumulation of money, wealth, success? Why not? Yeah. There’s no there’s no difference between manifesting money. That law that works for the accumulation of wealth, business growth. Right. Then there is gravity. There’s no difference. It’s the same principle, right? It’s a universal law. Whether you believe in God, it’s God’s law or whether you believe in the universe. It’s a universal law works for everyone every time.

Stone Payton: So when did you kind of discover this and what was the process like in terms it’s one thing to kind of adopt it for yourself and try to begin exhibiting the behaviors, the habits, the disciplines, the mindset. And then clearly another, I would think, trying to turn around and help someone else acquire these.

Mindy Paul: Well, I’ll tell you, when I first discovered this, I would be probably about 14 years old, maybe 16 years old. I was at school. I was a really naughty kid, wasn’t a pleasant kid. And I’d always be getting myself into trouble, always in the headmistress office or headmaster’s office. And one I’d always be there. And every time I was in that situation, I start and I start doing this. I was tapping into something and I see myself with the relief of like not being excluded, not going home and getting a pasting from my parents and not, you know, and seeing myself, like overcoming this obstacle. And then that would happen. Then later on I got into when I was 18, 19, my car would break down. I’d end up with a bill that I can’t afford and I’ve got no money. I’ve got five bucks in my bank account, and then my brakes have gone. And then I start to do this. What is he going to feel like when I’ve got a bowl? The bulk of money in my pocket, I can’t even get the money out. This was before we had the card transactions. This is all cash money. Then how is it going to feel when I’ve got so much money in my pocket to pay for the repairs in this car and go out to dinner and go out the club and afterwards? And then I start to manifest money and I start to do this more and more because I knew that there was a force and I didn’t tell anybody about it because I didn’t want to kind of jinx myself like this. I had this magical power that nobody else had, and if I spoke about it, I would lose it. So that’s where the early stages of this start to happen.

Stone Payton: So talk to me, if you would, about the whole sales and marketing process for a guy like you, a practice like yours. A great many of our listeners are entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, other people in the coaching profession who or at least in the professional services world, have you kind of crack the code on the structured process for acquiring? Attracting maybe is the better word in this conversation. New clients.

Mindy Paul: Oh, absolutely. Now, here’s the thing. I used to spend an absolute fortune on on ads, in videos like adverts and magazines, online Facebook ads and all that kind of stuff. And I remember one particular time I was introduced to a lady who had run a marketing agency, and her clients were getting some ridiculous results on about 300,000 a month, which is what I’m doing now. And I got introduced to I thought, You know what? Now I’ve cracked the code. Now my business is guaranteed to hit those like big months. And guess what happened? Nothing. And I was blaming the ad copy. I was blaming, like, the everything you could think of on an advertising platform. I blame everything. I blamed the traffic, everything. But I said, Look, your clients are getting all these results. Why am I? She she. I think she got a bit annoyed with me and she goes, You’re supposed to be a mindset coach and you’ve got the worst mindset out. She goes, The difference is between these people earning all this money. I’m doing the exact same thing for them as I’m you. But the thing is that you don’t have the right mindset.

Mindy Paul: You don’t have the belief with what you’re doing. And she goes, They’ve had the belief. And that was a wake up call for me. The belief was missing. So how can we attract something that we don’t believe we can attract? Because ultimately it’s our belief that tracks this. Now, if we believe that we can’t attract clients, guess what? You can pump all the money that you want into marketing. You can go buy all different courses, high different people, agencies to do your stuff. If that’s your belief, that’s your belief. You want manifest that. So I had to work on my belief systems. Once I start to change my belief systems, I start to attract clients like you could not imagine. But this is one thing if you’re in marketing, right? If you’re in a business right now and you’re running ads, you’re doing marketing and it’s not working and you’ve been at this for some time, there’s other people in your field doing it and cracking it and you’re not. It’s your inner beliefs that’s causing the lack of manifestation.

Stone Payton: So what’s next for you, man? Are you going to continue to grow and expand your individual practice, or are you looking toward, I don’t know, licensing, certifying other people to take some of your methodologies to an either an even broader audience. What’s what’s what’s on your horizon over the next ten, 18 months?

Mindy Paul: Yeah, sure. So we actually really like reaching out to connecting with more people now, really like trying to help more people tap into like now we’re hitting Dubai, we’re in us already with Dubai, Australia. So we’re going kind of worldwide with what we’re doing now. So yeah, we just expanding our business and right now I’m focusing my full attention and energy and helping as many people as possible. And then maybe five years down the road, I might build a team, I might license this stuff out. I know that we’re definitely going to be creating some new courses coming coming up in the near future. I’m in the middle of writing a book which will be out. We’ve got a podcast series and loads of other stuff. Fun stuff.

Stone Payton: All right. Listen, when you when you release that book, please reach out and let’s catch up so that we can tell folks about the book. Okay. So let’s make a future date for that. That’ll be fun. Hey, sure. Before we wrap, let’s leave our listeners with a just a couple of actionable pro tips, some things they can be thinking about doing, not doing to sort of begin to go down this path on some of these topics that you that you describe.

Mindy Paul: Sure. Now, here’s the thing. We’ve got to have a goal that we’re aiming towards, right? It’s got to be written down. It’s got to be descriptive. We don’t just want to sell one, earn more money or win a million bucks. We’ve got to have a very clear, concise goal written down. So if you wanted 1,000,000 million bucks, you want to write down why you want the million four, you’ve got to know there’s got to be a purpose behind the amount that you want. Just wanting more money isn’t going to do it for you, so you’ve got to be excited about what you want. So you’ve got to be going after something that you don’t know how are you going to get, but you really want it. Most people go off to something they they know they can get. They’ve done it before. That’s not the purpose of a goal. The purpose of a goal is to help us grow. So, number one, write out a short statement. It could be half a page of your goal in the present tense. So you start off with I am so happy and grateful now that my business is generating me X amount of money per month and I’m living in. If you have a goal of a certain home, write that down. So write that out just before you go to bed at night. And as you go to bed at night, see yourself. In possession of this gold. Most people go to bed worrying about what’s going to happen tomorrow, but you’ve got to go to bed knowing that this gold has already happened, even though as it happened. You wake up in the morning first thing again, you write that goal out. So now you’re starting to condition your subconscious mind that you already have this. Here’s a beautiful thing. Your subconscious mind doesn’t know what’s real or what’s imagined. You’ve heard that phrase. You tell yourself a lie. Often enough you end up believing it. So this is what we’re doing with our subconscious. So focus on what you do want and not what you don’t want. That’s that’s going to be the ultimate game changer.

Stone Payton: Okay. What is the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Tap into your work, your website, LinkedIn, email, whatever is the best way for them to get connected with you, man.

Mindy Paul: Okay, great. I’ve got one of the places is I’ve got a Facebook group, a private group. It’s called Mind Money and Business do lots of stuff in there. So it’s a great thing to join. I’m on LinkedIn, YouTube as well. Mindy Paul The Facebook page would be the best, and if somebody wants to email me, they can email me at Mindy at Mindy Poole dot com.

Stone Payton: Well, Mindy, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you for getting on the air with us and sharing your story and your perspective. Keep up the good work, man.

Mindy Paul: Thank you. Listen, I want to say thank you for what you’re doing for me and everybody else out there. I think it’s so valuable what you’re doing in this in this, especially in today’s climate, right?

Stone Payton: Absolutely. My pleasure. And I’m quite sincere. Let’s not make this the last on air conversation you and I have. Let’s swing back around as you continue to grow and expand. Release the book. Oh, did you do you already have a podcast? You have a radio show or. That’s one of the things on the horizon for you.

Mindy Paul: Yeah. The podcast is called The Mindy Poole Show. It’s on Spotify. It’s on on the Apple, Apple, or whatever it is. I’m not a techie person, but the Apple podcast thing, they do fantastic.

Stone Payton: Well, we’re going to do this again, with your permission, and this has been fantastic. Thank you again.

Mindy Paul: Thank you, buddy.

Stone Payton: All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today. Mindy Paul with mine money and business and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.

Josh Grode Wolters with Murphy Business Sales

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Buy a Business Near Me
Josh Grode Wolters with Murphy Business Sales
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Josh-Grode-Wolters-headshotJosh Grode Wolters bought his first business, a pink ice cream truck, in high school and has never looked back.

He is currently the owner of a carpet cleaning service and a business broker with Murphy Business Sales.

He enjoys singing opera, running marathons, and is fluent in Spanish.

Connect with Josh on LinkedIn and Facebook.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Importance of a Business Valuation
  • Sales Process Timeline
  • 5 C’s of choosing the right Business Broker: Collaboration, Credentials, Comfort, Connected, and Closings

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Buy a Business Near Me, brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador program, helping business brokers sell more local businesses. Now, here’s your host.

Stone Payton: Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Buy a Business Near Me Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Murphy Business Sales, Mr. Josh Grode Wolters. How are you, man?

Josh Grode Wolters: I’m doing well, Stone. Doing real well. Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: Well, we are delighted to have you on the program, man. And I got a ton of questions. I know we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start is probably if you could share with me and our listeners mission purpose. What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Josh Grode Wolters: Sure. Well, well, as a business broker, we’re in the job of connecting people. One one example that I was given was we’re almost like a minister and we help make marriages happen. Sometimes we help make divorces happen. But at the end of the day, trying to connect businesses for sale with the right buyers.

Stone Payton: So what is the back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Josh Grode Wolters: So I’ve been doing business brokerage for nearly eight years. I started when I moved back home to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and it was kind of the family business. My dad had been doing it for, I think, most of a decade prior to me moving back home and just the chance to work with him and learn from him and do something that I’ve always been passionate about, working with small business owners and using my experience to help folks move on to the next chapter of their lives.

Stone Payton: So something that I’ve begun to learn a little bit more about as I’ve been hosting this series, is this this topic of valuation? Can you speak to that a little bit, why it’s so important, maybe some some tips or some things to be thinking about as as a business getting ready to sell is approaching that part of the process.

Josh Grode Wolters: Absolutely. That’s always how we start our process. And sometimes we have people come to us years in advance and ask us, what is the value of my business now? What are some things I can do to grow that value so that in three or four years when I’m ready to actually move on, I can make sure that I’ve done everything I can to extract, extract the maximum amount of value from the work that I’ve put in. And so we look at a number of factors when valuing a business, and it isn’t always the same. It certainly depends on the industry. But generally speaking, we like to look at the last few years of tax returns or income statements. We like to pair that with a balance sheet, looking at what assets they have and how they’re utilizing those assets. And then we look at the market, we look at other businesses that are sold, other businesses in the same industry, in the same arena and how they have priced and how they’ve sold. Certainly one thing that was difficult for me when I first first started in this business was as a people pleaser. I often took listings and price them where the owner wanted them to be, which isn’t always the right place. And in the last eight years I’ve come to the conclusion that the the difficult conversation ahead of time with a particular seller explaining how we value a business and why it’s valued that way often outweighs the heartache and a headache of listing a business that’s overpriced. So we just try to list list businesses fairly. And then I had the same conversation with the buyer and explain to them why the business is worth what it is and and what that means to them as a buyer.

Stone Payton: So you bring up a good point about timeline, I guess we’ll call it, because, well, for me, me and my business partner, we run the business radio network. We we’re not looking at an exit any time real soon. But there’s probably absolutely zero downside and perhaps some potential upside in still seeking a valuation, getting a handle on where we are so that so that if we do need to do some things to tweak some things to get the valuation up in coming years, we can we can start working on it now, right?

Josh Grode Wolters: Yeah. So often a business owner will come to me. They’ll be at their age to retire, ready to move on. And they’ll say, I’m just done. I’m done. I want to be out of this. I want to sell this yesterday. And that puts us in a difficult position because we need to list the business. And we don’t we don’t want to sound desperate. And so by starting early, write an ounce of prevention kind of deal and just starting those conversations. I can I can do some light consulting and just help buyers adjust their their business for for sale. Sometimes things that we do as business owners and I also I own a small business as well. Things we do to help us in the moment to help us that year with taxes maybe isn’t always the best for building value. And so we can get in a few years ahead of time and we can work with the owners to to structure their business in a way that is best for the impending sale. Then we can often get out ahead of the curve and utilize our tools to the best of their abilities versus being behind the eight ball and having to scramble to find a buyer in a short amount of time.

Stone Payton: So now that you’ve been at this almost a decade, what’s the most rewarding man? What’s the most fun about this kind of work for you?

Josh Grode Wolters: Stone. Don’t get me wrong, I love doing big businesses. I love doing the kind of middle market businesses that are pulling down a million plus dollars to the bottom line, top line to the bottom line a year. But honestly, for me, having been a small business owner and I’ve owned a small business for the last 20 plus years, started when I was in high school, a pink ice cream truck that I ran around the neighborhood. I love I love working with with small business owners, with entrepreneurs. We’re just wired a little differently. We’re we’re kind of crazy, we think, outside the box. And so working on a business that someone has built over the years, that their blood, sweat and tears are are baked into it and allowing them. A successful transfer. That’s that’s the most rewarding part. So I, I don’t have a very large. Minimum business size because I truly believe that small businesses and small business owners are what run this country and what make it great. And I really enjoy working with folks at that level as well.

Stone Payton: Okay, let’s talk about me some. It’s my show. No, no. Back to me and Lee. Right. We’ve got this pretty successful media company. We’ve been at it a while. But I don’t think that I really know and I’m pretty sure Lee doesn’t either. How to go. Go find the right business broker for us. I don’t know what questions to ask. I don’t know what to what to look for. Share some insight, if you would, on on helping us choose the right broker.

Josh Grode Wolters: There are a lot of brokers in this country. Some are great, some aren’t so great. But it’s hard to know what defines a broker ahead of time. So certainly those conversations and any kind of interview, just conversations you can have with a potential broker, someone that’s going to be representing you, are really important things to look out for. Positives and negatives credentials. Someone that has letters after their name. That can go a long way into establishing that trust and that credibility. So things like MBA, obviously if someone has a degree in business, they may have some experience being on for their business brokerage practice. There are other certifications that folks can receive in the business brokerage world, and so looking for those letters and asking brokers about it. Most of us don’t mind talking about ourselves and about the letters after our names. So that’s that’s usually not an issue. I’m part of a network Murphy business where all over the country into Canada. And for me, that is paramount to delivering the best service to my clients. Murphy Business has 200 and some brokers, and we can lean on each other. And that experience to really help us push deals over the finish line. If there’s an industry, a particular sector that I haven’t worked in, I can reach out to my network.

Josh Grode Wolters: Very collaborative group of folks and ask, Has anyone ever done a business like this of this size or this type? With these sort of issues. It really allows us to to leverage the group so that we can make sure that we’re hitting as many people as possible when we’re doing the marketing. As a as a sole practitioner, I would never be able to afford all the subscriptions that we have collectively to promote businesses and to to really get the word out there. Finally, I think after experience and and connections, you want to find a broker that is is someone that you can work with so that you have comfort with and that you can collaborate with, but also is willing to collaborate with others. We just have so much more success when we work with other folks, whether it’s our firm or an outside firm, because we don’t know everybody. And finding those buyers is often the most difficult part of the of the equation. And so being able to collaborate and using our network on a personal professional and then from a firm level are really, really ways that you can ensure you’re getting the best service possible.

Stone Payton: So there’s the marketing of the business that you’re helping someone sell. But then there’s also the sales and marketing of your own services. How does that work? How do you get the new clients?

Josh Grode Wolters: Yeah, it it really you hit it on the head. It’s, it’s selling ourselves to, to find new clients and then selling often the valuation to the, to the seller to say, Hey, here’s what the business is worth and here’s why. And then we go out and find find the buyers. So it’s it’s a33 sale process for us. You know, we use tried and true methods. I just sent out 500 letters earlier this month. And it’s funny because business owners will receive that letter. I’ll get it in the mailbox. They won’t be ready to sell today. It’s really it’s a timing issue. And you got to find someone when they’re in the in the right frame of mind and ready to do it. But they’ll file that letter away and they’ll call me in a year or even more, and they’ll say, Hey, I got you a letter. I don’t know. It wasn’t too long ago. And the look and it was from 2018, you know, and and it’s those kind of things that business owners, they hold on to that and they call us back. They eventually come around.

Josh Grode Wolters: But we couple that with some other strategies using social media, email lists, those kind of things. And after so many years in the business, you develop a network and you develop a reputation that people know that they can go to you for, for the best service. The other the only other substantial source for for my new sellers are actually repeat customers, something that I never thought would exist when I first started in this industry. But folks that I have sold the business to and now they’re looking to sell that and move on to something else. Folks who have sold their business and they’ve lived the retirement life for a few years and now they’re kind of itching to do something else, get into a different field or or develop a hobby or passion into something more. And so those repeat customers are kind of what keep me in the business here. After a certain amount of time, I spend more of my more of my my waking hours, my business hours working with those those folks than having to prospect new lease, which is always nice.

Stone Payton: So talk to me a little bit about deal structure, because you can get pretty creative with the way that you transition out of a business, the way you transition into a business. You’ve probably seen a lot and crafted a lot of different kinds of deal structures, haven’t you?

Josh Grode Wolters: There’s a thousand ways to skin the cat. There’s obviously the purchase price. That’s certainly very, very important, the purchase price, but there’s also the terms that go along with that. We can adjust the down payment. We can adjust how much the seller is going to carry as a as a loan to the new buyer. We can adjust what we call management contracts if we want the seller to stay on for more than the traditional month or so that that comes with the transaction transition for for a smooth handover. They may want to keep the owner on for for a year, maybe more, especially if it’s trade related or if the business is tied strongly to that person individual. So we can adjust that. There are ways kind of to mitigate taxes for the seller, and so we might see a lower purchase price. But because of the way the deal is structured, there could be less taxes. And so ultimately that seller is walking away with more money in their pocket. At the end of the day, a broker who has done a few deals and understands some of these nuances will be able to point the seller, the buyer on both sides of the transaction in the right direction in terms of a bank or a lending partner to use, in terms of a track tax strategy, in terms of deal structure, just to make make things work. It’s it’s often the creative, out-of-the-box thinking that will help us get the most deals done.

Stone Payton: All right, before we wrap, let’s leave if we could, let’s leave our listeners with a couple of actionable pro tips maybe on both sides of the equation, buyers and sellers alike. Some things to be thinking about, reading, doing, not doing, so that they can they can begin to take some action and learn more about this topic.

Josh Grode Wolters: So research goes a long way and and researching business brokers in your area reaching out to other business owners that you know to find out who they’ve used is a good way to start. But I think it kind of comes back to how we started our conversations, don’t it really begins with that valuation piece. And I should mention that a business valuation and market valuation is different, sometimes very different from a valuation used for internal accounting or from an insurance valuation. In terms of how we how we treat tangible assets, etc.. And so having a business broker produce a market valuation is really the key that someone’s looking for. And there are certain rules that we use when we create these these appraisals. And so if someone comes in and tells you, well, I can look at your business and tell you exactly what it’s worth, it’s just take this number and add add your your assets to it, that might get you in the ballpark. But being able to have a method of valuation that then can be explained to a potential buyer is going to be the most important piece to beginning that that journey on business transaction.

Stone Payton: All right, man, what is the best way for our listeners to connect with you? Maybe have a conversation with you or somebody on your team and continue this conversation and maybe tap into to some some additional work on this topic.

Josh Grode Wolters: You know, email and phone, text or call are obviously the easiest way to get a hold of me. My email is pretty simple. It’s my first the first letter, my first name J dot grody grody at Murphy Business. Otherwise, if you search, search for me, search your business broker, I’ll come up and Google. I’ve worked hard to make sure that I rank on those pages. And then just a phone call. Shoot me a text. 6059519555. Try to keep it real simple. Find me on LinkedIn. Find me on Facebook. I try to try to be accessible. And so I love to have those initial conversations and I’m happy to provide any insight and knowledge that I can. Even if someone just just wants that that first first phone call. Not a problem.

Stone Payton: Well, Josh, it has been a real pleasure having you on the program. Informative, inspiring and really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insight and your perspective and the work that you and your team are doing it. So it’s just it’s so important, I personally think, to the fabric of this country. And one of the things that makes this country so great, this whole notion of capitalism and entrepreneurship. Keep up the good work, man.

Josh Grode Wolters: Stone. Thanks for having me. This has been a pleasure talking to you and sharing one of my passions. I appreciate what you do and help them help them get the word out about best business practices for all your listeners.

Stone Payton: Well, it is my pleasure, man. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today, Josh Brody Walters with Murphy Business Sales and everyone here at the Business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Buy a Business near me.

 

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