Business RadioX ®

From the Barracks to the BBQ: A Veteran’s Path to Flavorful Entrepreneurship

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VBR-Jason-Murff-Feature
Veteran Business Radio
From the Barracks to the BBQ: A Veteran's Path to Flavorful Entrepreneurship
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In this episode of Veteran Business Radio, Lee Kanter talks with Jason Murff, founder of Grill Your Ass Off. Jason shares his journey from military service to building a successful gourmet seasoning and jerky business. He discusses the challenges of entrepreneurship, the importance of humor and community, and how his brand supports veterans and first responders. The conversation highlights Grill Your Ass Off’s growth, unique product lineup, and mission to foster camaraderie and mental health awareness within the veteran community.

Jason-MurffGrill Your Ass Off is on a mission to make your food the best tasting thing you have ever put in your mouth. CEO Jason Murff served in United States Army as an Infantryman (11B), as well as in Specialty Unit: The Old Guard in Washington, D.C.

After serving, Jason came back home to Texas and utilized his GI Bill to begin his collegiate career. While attending college, he started blending his favorite flavor profiles and ultimately created a product that he knew would appeal to anyone for anything they are cooking.

After many months of flavor tasting and branding, Grill Your Ass Off was created. Since the company’s creation in 2016, we have been on a wild roller coaster of unprecedented growth! CEO Jason Murff has built Grill Your Ass Off into one of the fastest growing Veteran Owned seasoning companies in the USA, while at the same time giving back to the veteran community.

During his transition from the military into the civilian world, Jason hit a low. As most veterans also experience, he struggled with finding his purpose past service. Growing up Texan, Jason  always had a passion for cooking.

If you ever grew up around the kitchen and experienced the joy that bringing people together around some good tasting food brings, then you’ll definitely understand. Our top mission at Grill Your Ass Off is to providing continued camaraderie through good ASS BBQ. Grill-Your-Ass-Off-Logo

You can see this displayed on every product we create, each item is designed with a military theme so it can give you and a friend a good laugh or bring back a great memory. Every bottle is made in Texas with pride so you can Taste the Freedom. 

As a Veteran Owned Company, we take pride in every point of the journey, from manufacturing to when the product reaches the customer’s hand, ensuring that it is the highest quality and the best service.  

Each product sold proudly supports a true non-profit veteran organization or event. For more information, visit www.GrillYourAssOff.com.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn and follow Grill Your Ass Off on Facebook.

Episode Highlights

  • Transition from military service to entrepreneurship in the food industry
  • Development and launch of a gourmet barbecue seasoning company
  • Challenges faced in product development, manufacturing, and branding
  • Importance of humor and camaraderie in the business mission
  • Community building and identifying core customer base
  • Product lineup designed to resonate with veterans and first responders
  • Growth and expansion of the brand into retail locations and direct-to-consumer sales
  • Navigating regulatory and logistical challenges in food production
  • The role of targeted media and sponsorship in brand visibility
  • Advice for veterans considering entrepreneurship, emphasizing patience and community support

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Veterans Business Radio. Brought to you by ATL vets, providing the tools and support that help veteran owned businesses thrive. For more information, go to ATL vets. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of Veterans Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today’s episode of Veterans Business Radio is brought to you by ATL vets, inspiring veterans to build their foundation of success to and empowering them to become the backbone of society after the inform. For more information go to ATL vets. Today on the show we have Jason Murff who is with Grill Your Ass Off. Welcome.

Jason Murff: Hey, thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Grill Your Ass Off. How you serving, folks?

Jason Murff: Uh, yeah. So grow your ass off. Wasn’t ever anything that I planned on doing. But after being medically separated from the military and, you know, losing that passion and drive and having to make a hard career adjustment, it ended up blossoming into something that has greatly benefited me. And now, uh, is serving others. And this was something to wear whenever I was medically separated from the military. I ended up trying to go down the college route, and I started going to school to actually become a commercial airline pilot, and found out going from the infantry into flying a school bus in the sky was pretty boring and started mixing, uh, seasonings inside the garage. And next thing you know, were taking off. I’m dropping out of college and jumping in two feet with Grill Your Ass Off. Really? The the mission and the purpose with that was humor, because humor got got us through our darkest times of service and food. Food always brought us all together, which gives you our mission statement, which is continued camaraderie through good ass food.

Lee Kantor: So were you always kind of somebody who grilled or dabbled in the kitchen, at least.

Jason Murff: Just here and there? Um, you know, my family, we have a line of entrepreneurs in our family, and most of the time it was just making a quick snack meal or eating out because there wasn’t enough time to, you know, really cook at home. So I wasn’t ever a chef, didn’t go to culinary school or anything like that beforehand. I was a mechanic. I owned firework businesses and served inside the military. So, you know, owning a gourmet barbecue pro, um, business was not not on the roadmap.

Lee Kantor: But you were in Texas, so there’s a lot of barbecue and grilling happening.

Jason Murff: 100%, you know, being stationed in Washington, D.C. you really learn quickly coming from Texas, that there’s a severe lack of flavor up north.

Lee Kantor: And then what got you, like, how’d you kind of come up with that first rendition of a rub?

Jason Murff: So a lot of those first, the original four seasonings, which is our chicken, steak, pork and our Cajun seasoning came from really what I loved utilizing and kind of mixing together with multiple different seasonings growing up my whole entire life and then being stationed in D.C.. Friends and family would send up different seasonings up to me. And so with them sending that up my way. We actually had, you know, multiple different ideas of doing stuff and kind of looking at it and trying to replicate my own, but there was never any thought process or idea of like, hey, let me go start a seasoning company.

Lee Kantor: Right? But at some point, that thought did enter your brain.

Jason Murff: Yeah. And that was whenever I was going to college, so I was flying. I had just gotten my private pilot’s license. I was getting ready to start my instrument rating. And, uh, I was actually back home in Houston, um, and I was staying at my parents house for the weekend because I was doing a motocross race while I was in town. And, um, I was, you know, sitting down and having a drink with my dad. And we started going over, uh, you know, joking back and forth about different ideas. And he’s actually the one that came up with the name Grill Your Ass Off. And I kind of laughed at it and was like, yeah, well, I don’t know how well that name would do. Um, sat on it for just a little while, and then after, uh, having a few drinks, uh, one night I paid a guy 15 bucks on fiber and, uh, Venezuela to draw me a donkey on a grill, grilling its ass off, and that, uh, that pretty much sparked it from there forward. And, you know, the original ideas of the names of the products were calling the guys who I served with what most were still in to figure out, you know, like, what do we call our pork seasoning, what’s called infidel? What do we call ma deuce or steak seasoning. Let’s call it Mall Deuce, because it’s got the heaviest granulatus out of all of the original seasonings.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re going to do your first seasoning, like, was it just throwing things together, or did you have in your head like, okay, this is what I like. And let me see if I can replicate that in kind of a unique way. Like like what was kind of the. At some point you’re throwing spices together and, and tasting us. So what was that kind of experimentation like?

Jason Murff: Uh, a lot of it was just kind of going back on, you know, growing up, what did my dad always use that I liked? What did I start to use once I started doing more of the cooking that I liked, and then just kind of road mapping all of that together and then doing R&D. Like what? It’s so good in Montreal. Steak seasoning. How can I make that better? Um, and just picking apart what are the main winners from these, you know, very successful Seasonings. And then how can we make a spin on it to make it? And what my opinion is better.

Lee Kantor: And then at some point you’re like having to measure stuff and write it down like I need, you know, some pepper, I need some paprika. Like, I need an exact amount. Right? Like you’re in order to replicate this and have the same flavor each time for sure.

Jason Murff: And that’s what, thankfully, you know, coming straight out of the gate, we went and worked with the facility that, um, I had a mutual friend that I didn’t know at the time until we got into talking about it that was actually using to bottle some of his seasonings on the side. So I actually went directly to a facility right out of the gate and had their help bottling and kind of finishing off the flavors, because I’m sure, as you know, once you get inside a business, there’s a whole lot of tools out there that you have no idea exist until you’re in the business. And it’s the same thing with the seasonings. There’s a lot of seasonings and different methods of doing things that you have no idea exist until you’re in it.

Lee Kantor: And so how was that learning curve? Was that something you were like, oh, this is so cool. Like, now it’s, you know, my like there’s so many options, so much opportunity here. Was it kind of overwhelming where like, oh my God, there’s like a million moving parts.

Jason Murff: Um, no, I mean, a lot of it was just like, it’s so cool. And that’s one of the things I love about being an entrepreneur is like, you know, you have those, uh, you have a lot of bad days, but on your good days, you’re doing stuff that you you don’t know how to do. And if you can self educate and have that hunger and have that drive of learning something new, it’s it’s a blast because you’re learning a whole entire new subject that people spend, you know, four years going to college for. And you got, you know, a couple days or a week to be able to try and figure it out to get it going. So it’s always a challenge and a objective to be able to overcome, which makes it a blast for me.

Lee Kantor: Was was coming up with seasonings. Is that a different skill than coming up with like condiments or sauces of salsas that are more kind of liquidy like, is it different but similar? Like, what’s the process like in that it’s different?

Jason Murff: Um, but similar, um, you know, some of the things that, um, you know, a lot of people who make hot sauces at home or certain liquid products will use it from, you know, for instance, our hot sauce, we actually get all of the peppers, um, and flavoring for it, dehydrated and actually ground. So whenever we’re going to create it, we’re rehydrating all of those peppers so we can control the heat level and have it the same across the board. And like that was something I never had any idea. Um, that was the thing, you know, I was fermenting different peppers and trying all sorts of stuff at the house and creating like these amazing hot sauces. But whenever it came to doing like a production run, um, I had no idea until we started working with the correct people to help us, you know, formulate it and get it. Get the product where we wanted it to be.

Lee Kantor: So that’s one of those things where you don’t know what you don’t know until you’re actually in it.

Jason Murff: Yep, 100%. And then, you know, the the other fun side comes with, you know, being away, not working with the government or working for the government anymore, and then finding out some other three letter agencies or four letter agencies that, uh, you got to start working with again.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And that has its own kind of rules and fun and games with that.

Jason Murff: Oh, yeah. You think the, uh, the hurry up and wait and all the, uh, the fun stuff we got out of, you know, serving in the military was gone until you started doing dealing with them.

Lee Kantor: Now, how did the jerky come about?

Jason Murff: The jerky. So whenever we actually launched our jerky. Um, the place that I found to make the jerky for us because I didn’t want to go through standing up a entire facility that was a USDA approved and inspected facility. Um, I actually had reached out to jerky that I received in a care package, and it was some of the best jerky that I had had, and it was just a small mom and pop style business and said, I said, you know, hey, guys, like, I’m looking to do my own line of jerky, you know, kind of. What are your thoughts? Um, and they basically just responded back and said, no, we’re not interested. And, you know, that was super early days. And then, um, I had a few more conversations with them. They still weren’t interested. And then, um, once we started really taking off online, I just sent them a screenshot of our previous month in online sales, and I said, hey, I’m reaching out one more time to try and do business with you. And they called me shortly after receiving that email. Um, and that was one to where we jumped on the phone. We went over recipes. We went over different. You know, this is what we’re looking for in flavor, uh, profiles ideas. And they were help us to they helped us, uh, tremendously on being able to pull off those flavors and activate it, and have a killer line of beef jerky.

Lee Kantor: So when they saw that you were legit and thriving and you didn’t need them that much anymore, then all of a sudden it changed.

Jason Murff: Exactly. And, you know, sometimes that’s the way it is. Like, people don’t want to, you know, hey, we’re good. We don’t need any extra business. But, you know, if you can push them over the edge, give them a little nudge and say, like, hey, we’re not we’re not doing okay. We’re doing really good. Um, you know, you can become one of their biggest vendors very quickly.

Lee Kantor: Now, what was it like to go from kind of online to to try to get into stores? Because that seems like a different animal too.

Jason Murff: So that was actually, uh, it was reverse whenever I first launched it. Um, you know, coming from my family having a, a hardware store and knowing a handful of people with hardware stores, um, just from growing up in that industry, I was like, okay, cool. Like, you know, selling it to stores is going to be super easy. And once you run out of that, you know, close family, friends, Rolodex for me, um, I realized really quick that people don’t care that you started your own line and they have no idea who you are and that they don’t want to carry your product. So it was a lot of, uh, just getting rejected all the time and then realizing, like, hey, let’s establish a brand and have that brand recognition. So whenever I do come back to them, we’re going to blow them out of the water. And so a lot of it I kind of stepped away from the B2B side. And then I started going B2C online. And a lot of that was just social media, um, just going crazy on social media, not even running paid ads, just posting fun and engaging content that people will love.

Lee Kantor: And was it were you getting a lot of military folks as first customers, or was it kind of just free for all?

Jason Murff: Um, it was a free for all at first. And then we started really getting in a groove with the military demographic, the first responder demographic. And then that’s whenever we started, um, you know, we went out on limb, um, didn’t have a bunch of cash flow coming in at the time, and, uh, I, I remember it to this day, you know, uh, my dad, who’s a very successful entrepreneur, um, I sat down and talked with him, and I was like, hey, I got a little bit of money saved up. I think I’m gonna drop it into sponsoring a podcast. They have a crazy good customer base of listeners, and it’s. I have a good feeling it’s my direct, you know, uh, my direct audience. And he told me that he would not do that and that that was not a smart idea. And I went against his will and, um, the initial investment in sponsoring it for that month, we made back in two hours. Um, and that was whenever I was like, oh, crap. Like, there’s some power behind these podcasts, like, let’s go. So, um, that was one of the big, big kick offs because they actually launched the episode, uh, about 12 hours before they had initially told me so. I remember just sitting there and then all of a sudden I had, you know, Shopify hooked up on my phone and I had the notifications on for sales, and my phone just started vibrating like crazy. And I’m like, what the heck is happening right now?

Lee Kantor: Yeah. When you stumble onto the right channel, it’s amazing what can happen.

Jason Murff: Oh for sure. You know, and, um, you know, uh, about three, I think three years ago now is whenever we had our first opportunity for major earned media and we got on Fox News, and, um, you start coming across things like that, and it’s it’s insane the amount of power that some of these platforms have.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And it’s one of those things where, again, you don’t know until you, you do it and then it becomes obvious, you know, which are the, the right places for you to be.

Jason Murff: Yes, 100%. And that’s what makes it fun to it’s it’s the trial and error. And then once you do find what works. And then starting to scale that and just seeing everything, all the pieces fall into place until you have that wrench thrown in it, and then you get to have fun being an entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: It’s not for the faint of heart.

Jason Murff: No.

Lee Kantor: Now, any advice for other veterans out there that are thinking, you know, aspiring entrepreneurs like you, you know, the day before you became, you know, and threw your hat over the fence and said, I’m in. Well, you know, any advice for other people who are contemplating this? But, you know, feeling a little unsure, um, you know, some of your do’s and don’ts maybe, or what it was like to, to just say, okay, you know, screw it. I’m going to go for it.

Jason Murff: Um, I mean, I think a lot of it is, uh, patience is golden. Um, a lot of us want to chase that shiny object. And I know a lot of people jump into entrepreneurship because they think that they’re gonna quit working for the man. They’re going to be able to take vacations whenever they want, work anywhere in the world that they want. Um, and they go over that. They chase that shiny object when in all reality, you’re becoming your own boss. And unfortunately, uh, that boss is going to be working 24 over seven. Um, so I would say, you know, have patience with it. Uh, anything that’s worthwhile, um, that’s going to be around for a while. It’s it’s going to take time to grow. Um, don’t expect things overnight. Um, and just like in the military, you know, we had some days that, you know, you take it meal by meal. Just saying, you know, if I can make it to breakfast, I’m good, and then I can make it to lunch, and then I can make it to dinner on those just bad, bad days. Um, you can do the same thing here. And the entrepreneur space. Um, and, I mean, I think that’s the best thing that I got for him. Um, and other than that is, uh,, you know, one thing that you can’t automate is community. And if you’re if you’re going to grow, you have to have a community behind you. And along with that, a team behind you. And I always try to remind people, don’t forget about the amazing leadership you had, but also don’t forget about the horrible leadership you had and don’t replicate that.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, and when people say they want to be an entrepreneur because they’re tired of working for the man, the the first thing they have to understand is that every one of your customers is the man. Like, you’re now working for each one of those customers. So the man never goes away.

Jason Murff: Oh, yeah. And you’re thinking, you know, you’re going to have all this time off and everything like that. And, uh, one thing that, um, people forget is reps make the talent, and talent doesn’t make the reps.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And there’s no shortcut.

Jason Murff: No. Not whatsoever.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. They’re all looking for that. Oh, I just do this one thing, and then I sit back and the cash flows in. It’s just I it just doesn’t work that way.

Jason Murff: Now I’m still waiting on that. Yeah. If you find that, please let me know.

Lee Kantor: So you mentioned the importance of community. How did you start knowing that? Hey, I’m going to be able to build a community around this brand.

Jason Murff: Uh, really, you know, uh, in the early days, identifying our why. And then as soon as you identify your why, you can very easily target who is your core customer. And thankfully for veterans and first responders and people who just love America and love cooking, that’s a very easy, um, you know, audience to gain into once you earn that recognition of having a quality product. And so as soon as we identified that, we started building groups around that. So, um, and then building the products around those groups. So if you look at our labeling, it’s to tie in and attract veterans, first responders, people who love humor because, you know, we have Madu Steak seasoning. Anyone who served in the military knows what an M2 Browning 50 cals nickname is. And that’s the madhouse. Um, you look at our hot sauce, fire chief. Hot sauce. So you’re instant, you know, you’re going to get recognition with the firefighters out there. And then we have other products like our donkey balls, which are green olive with the habanero stuffed inside of it. So ironically enough, that’s our best selling product inside of hallmark stores. So you can buy grandma birthday card in a jarred donkey ball.

Jason Murff: So, um, and and again, like, the biggest thing for us is just, uh, the goal with it, whenever deep down inside my head was, you know, we had guys that, um, we had one, uh, soldier who, uh, you know, attempted suicide. Um, we had guys that did attempt suicide. I’ve had friends since getting out attempt suicide. And my thing was, if I can just get one person to pick up the bottle, get a laughter, brighten their day. Um, that could save their life. Um. Or, you know, if they can pick up the phone and be like, oh, man. You remember whenever we were downrange and this happened, let me call, you know, Lee, real quick and and see what he’s doing. You know, you could be on that edge and that one phone call or. Hey, buddy, come over. I just got this new gunpowder seasoning. We’re gonna cook some steaks tonight. Like, that was really the goal behind it. And as soon as we started doing that, it’s just like the community came around it. And it was very, very easy to build that.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And food is a great place to build community around. I mean, everybody’s got to eat. So I mean, and and by leaning into it with that, uh, the specificity of the language of the people you’re trying to attract and talking to them in words that only they understand. It just bonds people closer together. I mean, you’re not trying to be something for everyone. You’re something for a certain group of people, and they appreciate it because they want to feel special, because they are special.

Jason Murff: 100%. And you know, with that, at the same time, you also have to be careful not to make the product too much dedicated just for them, because then you start confusing the civilians that really have no idea. Um, and we found that out the hard way because they used to have nomenclature on every single bottle that, uh, ended up getting us in some trouble on certain places that we had to remove a little bit later on down as we continued to grow.

Lee Kantor: But, uh, it sounds like things are going well for. Grow your ass off.

Jason Murff: Yes. Um, you know, we’re getting close to hitting 1400 retail locations across all 50 states, including some international, that carry the product. Um, you know, we’re we’re getting closer and closer to having 300,000 direct to consumer orders with us. Um, we have an amazing team of veterans, first responders, military spouses, um, civilian, um, on our team. And I couldn’t be more happy, uh, to have built the organization, the team and our customers that we consider family that we have.

Lee Kantor: Well, congratulations on all the momentum. Uh, for folks who want to learn more, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Jason Murff: Uh, websites, grill your ass, Ofcom. All the social media is going to be at Grill Your Ass Off. Um, and check out everything there. I mean, we have awesome products. We got awesome recipes on the website. We got a store locator on the website. So if you want to shop local, um, if you want to support the, uh, you know, the giant if we are on Amazon, um, and yeah, no thank you. Thank you again for having us on here. And, um. Yeah. No, it’s been it’s been awesome. Thank you.

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

Jason Murff: Awesome. Thank you.

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

 

How Franchise Organizations Can Leverage Digital Marketing to Thrive in an AI-Driven World

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FMR-Reshift-Media-Feature
Franchise Marketing Radio
How Franchise Organizations Can Leverage Digital Marketing to Thrive in an AI-Driven World
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In this episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Steve Buors, CEO and co-founder of Reshift Media, about digital marketing strategies for franchise organizations. They discuss balancing brand consistency with local customization, the growing impact of AI on search and SEO, and best practices for attracting franchisees. Steve shares insights on using franchise portals, targeted advertising, and the importance of expert guidance to adapt to evolving digital trends. The conversation highlights how franchises can leverage scalable digital marketing and AI-driven strategies to stay competitive and effectively reach both customers and prospective franchisees.

Reshift-Media-logo

Steve-BuorsSteve Buors has over 20 years of digital marketing experience and has earned a reputation for being at the forefront of emerging digital trends.

As the CEO of Reshift Media, Steve specializes in crafting digital strategies that help businesses attract loyal and repeat customers, expand brand awareness, and ignite innovation.

A tenacious and innovative powerhouse, Steve is a sought-after consultant and speaker. His knack for uncovering hidden opportunities and driving growth is unparalleled.

Follow Reshift Media on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Episode Highlights

  • Digital marketing strategies tailored for franchise organizations
  • Balancing brand consistency for franchisors with local customization for franchisees
  • The impact of AI on SEO and search behavior
  • Best practices for emerging franchisors to attract franchisees
  • The role of franchise portals and brokers in franchise marketing
  • Importance of integrated websites for franchise systems
  • Adapting marketing strategies in the evolving digital landscape
  • The significance of paid advertising for local customer acquisition
  • Optimizing content for AI-driven search results
  • Targeted advertising strategies based on demographic and psychographic data

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have CEO and co-founder of Reshift Media, Steve Buors. Welcome.

Steve Buors: Thanks, Lee. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Reshift Media. How are you serving folks?

Steve Buors: So we’re a digital marketing organization that specializes in franchise organizations. So we do everything digitally. You could think of social media search, we build websites, we build apps, and we also do franchise development in terms of finding new franchisees for your organization.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? How’d you get involved in this line of work?

Steve Buors: Myself and my business partner, Kirk. I started the agency about 12 years ago. We saw that there was a gap in the market in terms of franchise organizations and having someone that really understands their business model to be able to serve them better from a digital marketing perspective. And we started with a couple of franchise companies, started solving some problems, and 12 years later, here we are.

Lee Kantor: So what attracted you to the franchise industry?

Steve Buors: Honestly, it’s it was an underserved market, and there was just so much complexity that the big platforms weren’t solving for them. So if you’re a franchise organization, you run a one or you want to run meta advertising or Google advertising across all your locations. It’s actually really tough because it’s really manual and you’re creating multiple campaigns and, you know, it’s a lot of sweat equity. So we ended up developing software and processes to solve those problems at scale. So franchising is all about scalability. And so we created the ability to scale digital marketing for franchise organizations.

Lee Kantor: And in your work before that, were you working just with regular brands, and then you got a client that was in franchising and that’s where the opportunity arose. Or like, how did you kind of dip your toe into franchising for the first time, or were you always working with franchises your whole career?

Steve Buors: No, actually it’s interesting. One of our earlier clients was the UPS store, who’s obviously a franchise, and their president, who’s, you know, still a client of ours. We were working with them to solve his problems, and we were like, man, this there’s there’s a lot of complexity here. And as we started to figure out ways to build scale from a digital marketing perspective for for him, he said, look, you got to come and come to these CFA being the Canadian Franchise Association, the IFA, the International Franchise Association, and share what you guys are doing. And next thing you know, um, we were the franchise digital marketing people and we’re now winning awards. We’ve been named world’s best franchise marketing firm by the Global Franchise Awards three years in a row. We’re number one in entrepreneurs category for franchise marketing firms. We were named disruptor of the Year by International Business Awards. So it’s really. It really just was because we had that one client. He steered us in the direction and now now it’s our thing.

Lee Kantor: Now, one of the challenges I would imagine, when working with franchise is like from a franchisor standpoint, they want the brand, they want more franchisees. But the franchisee in the town just wants more clients from the town. So they want hyper local where the brand may want, you know, a broader reach than that. How do you kind of marry the two?

Steve Buors: I love that question. And that is one of the number one challenges with with franchise digital marketing. The franchisee wants to own their market and do their own thing. They’re an entrepreneur in their market. That’s that’s why they’re a franchisees, because they want to run their own business. Meanwhile, the franchisor obviously is looking for brand consistency and scalability. So That is actually what we spend all of our time solving is that exact problem. So what we’ve done is we’ve developed both software and processes where we’re able to create a standardized campaign that could be Facebook or Instagram or Google or TikTok or Google Performance Max. We create that campaign so it’s scalable and that adheres to brand standards. And then what we do is we publish that to the franchisee to be able to customize for their own needs. So that could be local, targeting their own local budget. Maybe they want to put their own local offer in, um, you know, maybe they want a slightly different terminology in there in terms of how their location is described. And we programmatically serve all the ads off of their local Instagram handle off of their local Facebook page. So what’s happening is you’re getting the best of both worlds, where you’re getting the scalability and brand consistency that the franchisor wants, but the franchisee can now customize it for their market. And the beauty of the whole process we’ve put together is it uses machine learning and it uses automation to reduce cost. So we’re able to run campaigns across thousands of UPS store locations, as an example, at a fraction of the cost that it would typically be to manually create all these campaigns and manage them.

Lee Kantor: And then the franchise owner just passes that cost down to the franchisee that’s built into their marketing spend they have to do.

Steve Buors: Yeah, it’s usually most franchise systems are paying for the software and for our campaign creation through the marketing fund, and the franchisees are paying for their own ad spend. And in some cases, the franchise owners are, you know, charging franchisees directly. And in some cases, we work directly with the franchisees to really give them that white glove customer service, and the franchisee would usually pay for that.

Lee Kantor: Now, do you feel that from a franchisee standpoint, that they need to invest in paid ads in some way, that organic is just too difficult to do for them in a hyperlocal manner.

Steve Buors: Well, we we do a lot of hyper local SEO as well. And obviously with all the AI advancements in search, we’re doing a lot of that. So you can get pretty far from the organic perspective. But it’s it’s not enough, right? Like you need to advertise your business in your local market. So hyper local, uh, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google search ads, that’s how you break through and that’s how you get new customers. Um, they’re going to do their research and they’re going to, you know, search for you locally. Maybe they’re looking for your local hours of operation, maybe they’re looking for your services. But you need to create that impression first, and you need to make sure that they’re even aware you exist before they’re they’re searching for you. So, um, I think it’s both is the real answer. You need proper local SEO to be competitive, but in terms of actually attracting new customers and making sure you get your fair share of business at your local market, you have to advertise.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned AI and obviously that’s a hot topic today. How are you seeing it impact SEO? We’re seeing a lot of people talking about a very large drop in organic search traffic because of of AI. Are you seeing that as well?

Steve Buors: Absolutely. So Google has implemented their AI overviews. So instead of people using the the lists right. The hyperlinked list that traditionally search would have, people are getting the answer they need right in that AI overview on Google. Or they’ve just gone right to AI search. They’re using ChatGPT or Gemini or Cloud or Perplexity or one or the other. True, you know, generative, um, search experiences. Uh, so we are seeing clicks to client websites declined from an organic search perspective. Now, that doesn’t mean you’re not getting visibility. And that’s that’s kind of the big thing we’ve been talking with our clients about is we’ve actually had clients say to us, how do I make sure I’m not in that I overview because I want the click, and that is absolutely the wrong way to think about it. You need to be optimizing to get into those AI overviews and get into ChatGPT and into Gemini. Otherwise, you’re missing out because this is the way search is going in the year two years search won’t even look anything like it does today. We’re the whole, uh, how search works and how we as consumers use it is undergoing a fundamental shift that we haven’t seen since Google was launched, if I’m being honest. Right. Google changed the game when they first launched, and, you know, they used to be Excite and Lycos and all those other search engines that went by the wayside were at that point again, where search will be so fundamentally different that if you as an organization are not optimizing for AI based search, you absolutely will be left behind.

Lee Kantor: So how do you recommend your clients optimize for AI?

Steve Buors: Yeah. So there’s there’s two angles we’re taking. One is optimizing for the eye itself. Um, and kind of a change in mindset where it’s not so much about winning the click, it’s about getting visibility. It’s actually funny because search has always been about getting traffic right. I want to show up as high as I can in the list, and the higher I get in the list, the more clicks I get and the more traffic I get. Um, whereas now search is becoming more of an awareness play in some ways because, um, they’re giving searches, giving you that one answer. So your job as a brand now is to get into that answer. So what that means is you’re creating content that the AI search engine can actually use, and you’re shifting from kind of a thought process around targeting keywords instead targeting useful content. Um, that is more conversational that the search engine can use. So that means things like creating a great FAQ on your website that directly answers questions. Creating how two guides. Product comparisons are great because people are like which products better? Compare these features to these features, providing real opinions and insights. Not just not just fluff, right? Like actual insights and content with actual factual value. And it also means you got to you got to think a little bit off your own website, because obviously your website is a great source of content about your company, your products, your services. But the AI search engine is crawling the entire web to give answers to questions.

Steve Buors: So you need to start thinking about how can you be represented on, um, other forums. Uh, Reddit in particular is is well used by the the generative AI to find information. Core is another one, uh, making sure that your Google business profile is completely up to date with information. If you have a Wikipedia listing, fantastic. If you can be on Wikipedia, you know not every company you know merits a Wikipedia entry, but if you have one, that’s amazing. Social mentions. User generated content is huge. Uh, influencer generated content is actually even more valuable in this, um, in this sort of context, um, and listicles, which is basically, uh, other content creators creating lists saying like, you know, who’s the who’s the world’s best franchise marketing firm as an example and listing your company in there. So it’s it’s a lot of different things to be able to index for the I o reviews. And then at the same time, we have a whole, um, a whole process we’re following to help franchise systems rank even better for local searches, which tend to not be as AI overview generated uh, response centric uh, which does elicit a click. So local search is still a thing. People finding stuff in their in their area and clicking. There is a whole thing that we’re doing to be able to still get clicks, but at the same time you need to optimize for the the AI overview, otherwise you’ll be left behind.

Lee Kantor: Does it matter if the brand, like the franchisor, has a website, and the franchisees website are kind of a part of that franchise website, or does every franchisee need their own kind of unique space that isn’t touching the franchise owners? Um, website?

Steve Buors: Uh, the best approach we’ve found is to actually have one integrated website. So where you got a single domain? Again, if I use the UPS store as an example, right. Um, you don’t want to have UPS store. Com and then UPS store, you know waco.com and Dallas com. Because what ends up happening is the search engine doesn’t necessarily connect all those dots per se, that that’s one company and one set of content. It’s actually more powerful to have a single URL the UPS store. Com or, you know, slash phoenix. Um, and what’s nice about that then is kind of a sense of a rising tide lifts all ships. So if all of your local microsites in this case are well done, so they should have lots of content, they should have differentiated local content. So it’s not that your franchisee shouldn’t be doing anything for SEO locally. In fact, they should be doing a lot. But they do that in part of your network, part of your website, because then each of those local sites that’s strong in their own right, they all help each other. And one of the big selling propositions you have then is a franchise system is, hey, if you join our franchise and we create a microsite for you, as soon as we bolt you onto our network, you’re already having a better chance of ranking than if you’re trying to do this on your own. It becomes actually a bit of a selling point for people to join your franchise, quite honestly.

Lee Kantor: And then they just create content under that microsite and that benefits them locally, plus it benefits the the totality of the franchise.

Steve Buors: Absolutely. And the franchisees benefiting from the strength of the other franchisees. And they’re benefiting from the strength of the overall company website. So it is really a symbiotic relationship. All of those local microsites with people creating content, the franchisees creating content helps the company and the company. Creating content helps the franchisee and the franchisees are helping each other. And it’s that kind of scale and trust and authority that you’re building with search engines that that really helps from a franchise perspective. In fact, it’s in our opinion, it’s one of the franchise organization superpowers that you really can’t do with a lot of other business models. So it actually is one of the key things we recommend to our clients to really have a, I call, an unfair advantage in terms of ranking for searches.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients, are they typically B2C or B2B? What is a typical franchise client for you nowadays?

Steve Buors: Oh, we work with all kinds of franchise systems. So B2B, B2C, it’s it’s amazing. There’s a franchise for everything. We got a franchise system. We’re working with the where they they do batting cages. We got one where they do dumpster rentals. We got pet services, we have insurance, we have financials. So we work with all kinds of franchise systems. We work across across the world. We’re in 22 different countries with more than 200 different brands. So what’s interesting is the fundamentals of the franchise model are always the same in terms of the scalability and the opportunities, but the implementation is always different, right? Every every different sector has their own challenges, competitive set, consumers, etc. so it keeps life interesting, but we are able to add value on almost every type of industry we we come across. That’s a franchise.

Lee Kantor: Now any advice for that emerging Franchise or that is trying to attract franchisees. Are there some do’s and don’ts that you’ve learned over the years that help them, you know, effectively launch?

Steve Buors: Yes, absolutely. So, um, get your fundamentals right early. So I know it’s tough because you’re you probably don’t have as much cash as you like. You just spent all your money getting your legals in order and you’re just trying to get franchisees. Um, but have a great website. Uh, franchisees look at that. Right? Because they’re buying into your system and they’re buying into your brand. So it’s not just about having a great looking store and touring them of your local store and showing them how awesome it is. Oftentimes, the first thing your customer, your potential customer is going to see is your website. And so the franchisee knows that and they’re looking at the website. Is it good? Is it something I want to buy into? Do you have this thought out. How do you rank for searches? What’s your digital marketing approach? Is there some sort of technology I’m using that makes my life easier? So one of the best pieces of advice we always give, and we do work with a lot of emerging brands, is let’s get this right from the outset. And that way you now have a repeatable, scalable model that you can implement going forward, and you’re not trying to change things and improve things once you’re at 50 units, because when you’re at 50 units or 100 units, sure you have more money and you’ve got more ability to do things, but now you’re trying to change all these locations and trying to change how you do things. You’re just introducing more pain for yourself later. Get it right in the first place. Set yourself up for success, and then you can point to that when you’re bringing franchisees on to say, look, we’re ready to go. We have a great website. We’ve got a firm here who’s doing all this great SEO for us. You join us and we’re going to take off.

Lee Kantor: Now, have the tactics shifted from when you’re searching for a new franchisees because of AI, is there a different strategy you have to deploy? Um, you know, from that regard?

Steve Buors: Yeah, for sure. So we do a lot of franchise development advertising and SEO, and the same sort of issues that are occurring on the B2C side are definitely occurring on the front dev side, where you’re not getting as many click thrus, but people are doing their homework. So again, it’s it’s a bit of a mind shift where you have to recognize that the purchase journey for a prospective franchisee is almost entirely self-managed now. It’s not a matter of they have very little information and they’re just reaching out to franchise systems. No, they’ve done their homework. They’ve looked at your competitors. They’ve thought about their lifestyle. They’ve thought about, you know, what sort of sector they want to be in. And they’re doing all that research when you don’t even know it. They’re looking at your website, your competitor’s websites. They’re looking at whatever comes up on the search engine from an AI overviews or whatever ChatGPT or Gemini are telling them. So it’s so important to be active at all levels of the purchase funnel. Don’t just sit there and run search ads and try and get people right at the point of conversion. Yeah, that feels good because your cost per leads lower and your conversion rate is probably higher. But I guarantee you you are missing out on all those people who earlier in their in their purchase journey, didn’t even know you existed. And so you never entered their competitive set. So you need to be active in creating content. In being mentioned in articles, being on lists of top franchise orders, just making sure that your presence on the web as a place you know the people should want to buy a franchise is is very visible because you need to be in those eye overviews. You need to be in those ChatGPT results. Otherwise, you’re going to miss out, and people will just bypass your brand altogether and buy someone else’s.

Lee Kantor: Now, how do you feel about all the portals and the franchise brokers and things like that? Is that is should that is that a complimentary piece? Is that replace some of the marketing and advertising spend?

Steve Buors: Another great question. So to me, um, there’s there is a place for the listing, uh, organizations where, you know, you pay them to obviously list your franchise and they’re advertising essentially on, on your behalf to draw traffic into their portal. So if you’re an earlier franchise and you don’t have a lot of search visibility, you don’t have a big budget for creating content and trying to get a footprint. That’s a great way to get into consideration. Set right. If someone’s looking for a pizza franchise and you know you can get on that listing, uh, in your a newer, uh, pizza concept, then you can get in someone’s consideration set just because they’re using that particular portal. Uh, and they happen to be looking for a pizza franchise there. So particularly for newer stage, um, franchise organizations, I think that there’s real value there as you get big enough on your own. And if you’re able to actually create a large enough footprint on your own, uh, being a digital footprint, I mean, if you have enough to be able to invest in some advertising, make sure your SEO is up to snuff. That becomes less important, I find, because you really want to convert the people on your own, on your own website. And if you’re kind of one of the bigger companies in your industry, you don’t really need the listing engine quite as much anymore, because all someone’s going to do there is see some of your smaller competitors that maybe wouldn’t have done as well of you as you in the search engine anyway. So I think a lot of that depends on where you are as an organization and how much. Um, I’d say visibility and notoriety you have. And every again, every franchise is different. A lot of our clients actually aren’t on those listing engines anymore, because we’ve been able to build up their SEO and build up their marketing to the point where they’re getting good deal flow without it.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about if you’re a brand that is kind of unique? Like, I could see where a pizza place, you know, they want to be in the conversation. They don’t want to be, you know, just kind of left out. But if you’re like that batting cage company where there’s probably not a dozen competitors. Um, is that more or less important than to, uh, you know, be in those kind of, uh, portals and lists?

Steve Buors: Uh, again, it depends on the concept, but yeah, if someone’s just more generally looking for a franchise, they don’t quite have their concept figured out yet, then for sure. And particularly if you can be featured on one of those portals, you know, you pay for whatever the platinum sponsorship and you, you get some visibility. Absolutely. There’s value there. And again, particularly if you’re, um, an unusual franchise concept and maybe you’re in a, uh, early stages of your growth. I see value there for sure. Now, having said that, you know, if you have specific areas you’re looking for, you can do outbound advertising quite cost effectively to try and increase awareness of your concept, um, and target people who might be interested if they fit a certain profile. Um, but I would say as a general statement, I would see more value in the portals in that scenario.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. To me, it’s a tricky situation when you’re trying to sell a franchisee, a potential franchisee. It’s almost kind of a a needle in a haystack situation. Like how do you find the right fit for your brand as opposed to, you know, because they don’t know what they don’t know yet? And, um, do you recommend for emerging franchise franchise brands to target specific geographies to find that needle in the haystack that’s the right fit for their brand or do kind of macro? Let me just evangelize the brand, and then the right person will pop up wherever they happen to pop up.

Steve Buors: They’re a great question. So, um, the it depends on your growth aspirations. So if you have a smaller budget and a lot of franchise systems, you want to be able to grow Row nearby because you got your distribution there and you have your supply chain handy. Like as an example, if you’re on the West Coast, you don’t necessarily want a franchise location on the East Coast because it’s gonna be hard to service them. So if if you’re newer and you’re looking to expand within your area and you only have limited budget, then absolutely. And we do that quite a bit where it’s here’s the best pockets of people where we want to match a new franchise location based on the demographics or psychographics of potential customers. Um, that works great. And what I love about that is your advertising can be so specific where it’s not just, hey, come get a come get a pizza franchise. It’s like, hey, do you want a pizza franchise in Portland? And it actually very much increases the quality of the leads. You get the propensity for conversion, and you’re able to kind of outcompete other brands who maybe aren’t being quite so specific.

Lee Kantor: Now is a typical franchise Buyer. And in today’s market, are they kind of open to anything? They’re just looking for the right kind of lifestyle, financial fit for themselves because, um, I interview a lot of franchisees and a lot of franchisors, and it seems like there’s a good percentage of franchisees that hadn’t heard of the brand before or hadn’t considered that brand before they purchased, but it wasn’t after they were made aware of how it works and what their responsibilities would be. Then they then they added it to their consideration set. And like, what’s the mindset of this aspiring franchisee?

Steve Buors: It’s a great question. So everyone’s different. So so some people, they know they want to own a bakery franchise right. And they they love baking and that’s their passion. Et cetera. Etc.. But there is absolutely a group of people who are like, I want to be in business for myself. I like the franchise model because, you know, I get a proven system and a proven approach. Uh, we watch, uh, search volume for franchising quite closely, and there are a lot of searches that are quite general. Buy a franchise franchise opportunities. Best franchise to own that don’t have any sector in there. And those searches are incredibly high every month. And so there is a lot of people who kind of start with a mentality of, I want to be in business for myself. What’s a good business that provides me a sort of lifestyle I want and is in an area I want to I want to live and work. Um, now there’s obviously people, like I said, who very much say I want to be a baker, and I love baking and I’m going to do that. But we’ve had really good success kind of targeting that top of funnel to help shape the person’s journey to a degree where, hey, this is a great franchise system that fits your lifestyle. Um, and then they kind of go through their process and rate into consideration set from day one.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, it’s a it’s an evolving market. And it’s just interesting how AI is kind of now permeating this. And and the different pivots that franchise brands have to be aware of and franchisees have to be aware of in order to kind of take advantage of these new opportunities.

Steve Buors: Well, absolutely. And it’s funny because, you know, your general consumers, a lot of them are being exposed to AI searches through through Google because the AI overviews is is very visible. And obviously Google being the number one search engine in the world, but you’re getting more and more people who are using the free versions of ChatGPT or Gemini or Perplexity, where it’s a very different experience. It’s almost more like a conversation as opposed to a search. And we are certainly seeing more and more opportunities on those types of searches. And again, that’s that’s the future of search. No one knows exactly what it’s going to look like, but it’s certainly going to look something like that. It’s going to look much different than the list of blue links that we’re used to seeing. And so from a consumer perspective, a franchisee perspective, just how we as humans find information, products, services, business to buy, that is changing quite fundamentally.

Lee Kantor: Yeah, I agree 100%. I think that what’s happening is we got kind of taught by the Googles of the world that if, you know, I ask Google a question, it pulls up a bunch of links, and I have to then go to those links to find the answer. And now I is just answering the question so I don’t have to go anymore. I have the answer that I want. And from a consumer standpoint, that’s a lot easier. And it’s a lot closer to what I my expectation was initially, but it changes the game for any of these businesses that were putting out content or paying for ads in order to be seen by these consumers.

Steve Buors: Oh, absolutely. Well, in fact, when you say it like that, it sounds kind of ridiculous, right? That that’s how search worked. It’s like, hey, where can you know who’s a great plumber near me? It’s like, here’s a list of links. You go figure it out, right?

Lee Kantor: Right. That’s what it was. That right? Wasn’t that. That’s what search engines were.

Steve Buors: They were exactly. Yeah. At the painstakingly click every link and oh no, this isn’t what I want or oh yeah, I guess that’s it or whatever. Right. Whereas now it’s like, here’s the answer. Um, from a consumer perspective, it’s it’s tremendous. I’m I’m a huge fan. Everyone you talk to is a huge fan. It’s the businesses where this is a massive problem because you said it right off the top of this conversation, traffic is declining. Organic search traffic is absolutely declining because people don’t need to click through. So businesses are struggling with how do I turn visibility in an AI overview or a ChatGPT search? How do I turn that into business for me? And that’s the mind shift that’s happening right now.

Lee Kantor: And that’s why you need a marketing specialist to help you, because the marketing person is trying to solve this. That’s their livelihood at stake here. Where you as a consumer or a business owner of one thing, you just care how it impacts you. But a marketer, this is all they’re thinking about 20%. They have to solve this or they go out of business.

Steve Buors: Well, yes, we have been working on it a lot. You’re exactly right.

Lee Kantor: Right. But that’s why they should hire an expert in this, not just, you know, kind of read a blog post and think you figured it out. I mean, this thing’s changing minute by minute.

Steve Buors: It absolutely is. And nobody knows who’s going to win. Right. Like it’s so cheap. Chatgpt obviously made a huge splash when, you know, kind of suddenly everyone was talking with generative AI and suddenly Google and everyone else was, was pushing their own AI out the door. We don’t know as, as a consumer base, exactly what the winner is going to look like. And we don’t even know what the winning medium is going to be like. A lot of this search is still happening through through text, on a keyboard, on your on your phone or your desktop. Stop. But voice search is taking off like crazy. And so if you look at people under 20 years old, they don’t they don’t type on their phones anymore. They literally talk to the phone. Hey, Siri, you know, where’s the best place for me to get some pizza? Well, think about that in the context of generative AI and the single answer you’re getting like, Holy moly, it’s no more about here’s a top three pizza places. It’s like, this is it. This is the place you should go. And it’s going to tell you that verbally, as opposed to reading it on a screen like it’s crazy. Just when you start to think about how far this is going to go.

Lee Kantor: Right. And you mentioned that the young people who are kind of AI natives or digital natives, they’re using it in a different way than maybe the more affluent business owner who’s older in a different generation is using it. So there’s a large disconnect where the older person who has the funds is spending money, as opposed to how their consumer is really using the thing. So again, this is why having an expert on your team is critical, so you kind of understand the blind spots you might have or the biases you might have when you’re dealing with this, because those young people are not using these tools like the older people are using these tools. So you need an expert by your side in order to do this.

Steve Buors: Well, I completely agree, of course. And it is true. You know, you talk to the business owner or the head of marketing and you got to be careful because because their bias is coming to play. And we as business people spend, you know, a good chunk of our day in front of these big monitors doing work. That isn’t how the vast majority of people interact with your website. That isn’t how the vast majority of the people interact with the internet. They’re doing it on their phones, and more and more, they’re doing it with their voice through their home speaker or in car or just even on their phones. Again, like I said, you watch someone under 20 if they want to do a search on their phone, they don’t type it. They say it and that is indicative of where this is all going.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff man. I can talk to you all day about this. It’s fascinating and it’s ever changing. Uh, if somebody wants to learn more about your services or get Ahold of you or somebody on the team to improve their chances of being found, uh, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Steve Buors: Uh, website is medium.com. And if you ever want to connect with me, I love having these conversations. You can get me at Steve at Medium.com. That’s my personal email. Happy to chat with anyone anytime.

Lee Kantor: Well, Steve, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Steve Buors: Thanks, Leigh. Appreciate you having me on the show. And I really enjoyed the conversation.

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

 

BRX Pro Tip: Why Podcasts Are So Popular

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with David on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

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

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

David Bitan: Hello Lee. Thanks for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Bitan: Exactly.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Core Values Drive IT Excellence

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

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

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

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

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.

Episode Highlights

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

Transcript-iconThis transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

 

TRANSCRIPT

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

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

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

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

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

Joshua Kornitsky: That’s a rarity.

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

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

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

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

Chris Chao: Amen to.

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

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

Joshua Kornitsky: Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Chao: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joshua Kornitsky: Good. Good and bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Chao: Right, right. Absolutely.

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

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

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

Chris Chao: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joshua Kornitsky: He’s in a tuxedo today.

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

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

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

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

 

BRX Pro Tip: Stuck is Not Stopped

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

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

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

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

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

BRX Pro Tip: Case Study – BRX Association Show

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BRX Pro Tip: Case Study – BRX Association Show

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

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

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

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

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

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