Business RadioX ®

Nick Marcarelli With Shadow-Soft

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Nick Marcarelli With Shadow-Soft
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Nick Marcarelli is passionate about building great teams to tackle modern business challenges. He oversees the day to day engineering practice and business operations at Shadow-Soft. He works closely with the Shadow-Soft team and customers to develop engineering solutions to solve IT business needs. Previously he spent 7 years managing a technology rental and leasing portfolio for a subsidiary of TD Synnex.​ He is an avid sports fan and enjoys cooking meals for friends and family.​

Connect with Nick on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Common challenges that small to large enterprises are trying to solve with transformational infrastructure
  • How do organizations evaluate technology decisions with all the noise from industry
  • How to insulate your organization from the hype of the new shiny tool
  • What buzzword technology concepts are actually solving organizational challenges in technology
  • How do local partnerships foster innovation

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Nick Marcarelli with Shadow Soft. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Shadow Soft. How you serving folks?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:00:48] Sure. Appreciate it. So Shadow Soft is a integrator in the Kubernetes and kind of modern platform space. What that means for those that aren’t in tech is we we help customers ranging from kind of upper mid market into enterprise, build their platforms to host applications and serve their customers. So we help with all the kind of the boring stuff in the data center that helps make everything move so that you as a consumer get the things that you need.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] So if they’re not working with you, how are they attacking this problem?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:01:21] A lot of a lot of companies are, you know, building it on their own. I’d say most companies take that approach initially and from a sustainment perspective. So they have data centers or maybe they’re all in in the cloud these days and they’re building that out with their teams. But one of the hard things about building teams that can sustain and innovate is that you can’t know everything. So we focus on a specific set of technologies and we come in and help with project based work into some longer term sustainment as necessary.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:54] So a lot of times these folks think, Oh, we can just deploy our own people on this and then they quickly realize that they’re in over their head or it’s evolving too quickly and they need an expert.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:02:05] Yes, that’s absolutely correct. And that’s the gap that we try to fill for these organizations, is that it’s hard to be an expert in everything. We’re not an expert in everything, but the areas that we focus on, we can really help propel that innovation forward so they can meet the demands of their customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:23] So what are some of the symptoms that they’re having if they decided to deploy their own team that maybe, you know, dangers ahead and maybe we should be kind of getting some help here? Like what are some of the things that they run into where they’re like, okay, this is going to get this is harder than I thought.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:02:41] There’s a there’s a few there’s a few symptoms that are most common. We found that, you know, someone will come in, leadership will come in on the technology side and say, this is where we’re going. And then what if that leadership changes halfway through that transformation? Or maybe it doesn’t really get off the ground or maybe it does. And there’s a staff challenge where, you know, people go to a new company. So keeping the right people, the, you know, the people that have those skills in place, that’s a big challenge in the marketplace. Tech is very competitive. But also sometimes we we set out to do something and then we have to go a different direction. And I think that’s that’s where we end up. Meeting customers in the marketplace is we set off to do this, we built this thing and now that leadership is gone or we’ve lost the staff to support it, we don’t know which way to go. So like we really try to bridge the gap there to go, let’s get you, you know, a right sized vision for what you can do. Let’s assess the areas, the gaps that we can try to upskill around and then let’s set you up for success.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:45] Now, how do you help your clients kind of avoid that shiny object syndrome where they heard or read a blog post or a or a podcast about some new technology and they’re like, Oh, that’s the solution. You know, it sounds good. They’re I’m all in. And then they want to, you know, go down this rabbit hole where a lot of times those things end up poorly. How do you kind of manage the expectations and help your clients, you know, in that manner?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:04:17] There a lot of noise? I would call it in tech, where you have, you know, all these companies, these, you know, software vendors that are building offerings for customers and they’re all competing against each other. So everyone’s representing their solution as the end all to all problems. And it’s our job to help educate customers on not falling for that trap. And this is so prevalent in just tech, not lots of industries, but in technology specifically because everyone wants to be first. They want to be doing the new innovative thing? Well, sometimes the new innovative thing is not it’s not ready for prime time. So we spend a lot of time. Assessing the maturity of those solutions in the market, making recommendations based off our experiences and really clarifying and identifying those core concepts and technology. We’re we’re very focused around terminology, buzzwords, you know, kind of buzzword. Bingo is what we call it in the industry. And one of the big challenges around that is a customer may go, Oh, I really want this buzzword. Ai is a good one right now. I think everybody on earth is exposed to that, you know, artificial intelligence. And we have programs that are going to replace jobs and do all the thinking for us. None of that is true at this point. It’s just the new shiny thing that we’re all kind of obsessing about that’s been happening in tech for about 4 or 5 years. It’s just kind of become a consumerism thing because ChatGPT at this point.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:00] Yeah, it’s funny that I mean, people have been talking to Siri and their Amazon Echo for years now and not connecting the dots that that was a form of I.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:06:13] Absolutely. Yeah. The whole natural language processing thing is not new. It’s been around for. You know, in principle ten years. And it’s embedded in the kind of the way that we exist as people for for good or for worse. But yeah, AI is not new. It’s just it’s becoming. A relatively powerful construct in technology now, but it’s the journey is really just started.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:43] Well, getting back to how you serve your clients. You mentioned a lot of times you start with a project. What are those kind of initial first projects typically for your client? Like what’s that initial pain that one of your clients says, You know what, help us with this, this, this. We’re having a hard time here. And then maybe over time your value becomes evident and it evolves into larger and larger work.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:07:08] Usually it starts with a customer. As you just explain goes, I need help. I need I need a path. Please, please help us God. So what we typically start out with is an assessment, because usually, especially with the technology side of the house, there’s not a lot of documentation. Um, a lot of that institutional knowledge maybe is left the organization. So we have to go in and we have to go. What do you have? And then we measure that against what we would you know, we would say our best practices around a certain project. So in a world where we’re focused on Kubernetes. You know, that usually starts with we have these eight frameworks that we operate from and we go through and we assess with the customer, okay, against this framework of architecture, you know, do you have the required components to have a sound architecture? Do you have the right components for security? Do you have the right components for disaster recovery and backup? You know, if that ever came into play. These are core technology concepts, but it’s a little hard to see all the things you need to do when you’re living in the fire. So we go in there and we assess and then we build a roadmap usually over 12 months, and we help rate. These are high risk items that would be low effort that’ll that’ll mitigate that risk that you have today. And we’ll build a plan to address those things, whether it’s through adding of services or redeployment of infrastructure and applications. We may decide that a certain application needs to be completely refactored because it doesn’t fit the needs of the platform and the end customer. So all of those things kind of get drawn down into what we would call the assessment part, which for us, you know, usually ranges between 2 to 4 weeks and it’s immersive and it’s a collaborative thing, but we’re using our experience in the marketplace to guide customers towards best practices.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:10] How do you or do you have a way to kind of. Keep your talent pipeline filled.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:09:21] It’s a great question. Everybody struggles with it. So. So do we. So what we’ve found is we like to take smart people and help build them. So because we’re a consultancy, it’s it’s not just about having a person in seat to fill a role. Customers are leaning on us to be experts. So we have a very focused view on training and upskilling because that has to translate to our customers. So we’re always looking for, you know, the right type of. You know, related individuals, you know, that have a background in that and then adding in the tooling and the experiences so that they can go apply that for customers for their benefit. So, you know, just like anywhere we’re we’re finding raw talent, we’re training them, we’re guiding them, we’re bringing them along. And, you know, we’re always learning there’s not a person on our team that is not spending time learning new things, new concepts, new products, because the world is innovating at a speed that’s hard to keep up with. So we stay very focused on our lane around Kubernetes and automation work and the open source world. So we stay focused on that. And then we we attempt to learn and apply as much as we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:41] But you’ve also built an academy and offer courses to help upskill folks.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:10:46] That’s correct. And that’s something we’ve been doing specifically around Kubernetes, because though Kubernetes has been around for, you know, 7 or 8 years and. In principle, the adoption of it in commercial industry is really happening right now and it’s complicated. And it also is a shift away from the way. The business has been managed previously. So there’s some similar parallels. Right. You go, okay, well this is basically a virtual data center, but it’s not a virtual machine. So there’s some some differences in approach and the way you develop software and the way you sustain that infrastructure. So we built this academy to help give customers some education on understanding the differences in the way that we run. Infrastructure and applications in the old way. And what this new way is really built for. And not everything is a great fit for the new way. So it’s a big part of helping customers and helping other technologists that maybe are interested to understand those differences. And then we continually add the more technical concepts. So we’re focusing on the business technology concepts and adding the technology, you know, hands on concepts along the way with our Academy.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:11] So how has the Atlanta technology ecosystem impacted your business?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:12:18] Well, Atlanta is a great innovation for technology. It’s a hub for it. There’s lots of great companies in Atlanta. We’re really the. You know, we’re the commerce of the Southeast, right? Everything kind of comes through here. So we may have, you know, large banking and finance financial institutions, but they’re they look like technology companies. Right? Everybody’s everyone’s a software company. So for us, it’s been great. It’s created a tremendous amount of opportunity locally. And there’s a lot of great talent in Atlanta. So while everyone thinks of technology innovation, they probably think of Silicon Valley. There’s these hotspots, especially in the Southeast, but definitely in Atlanta where. The companies that are headquartered here have huge technology requirements, which means we have a great concentration of excellent software engineering here. So we we find that great. We you know, Atlanta is very collaborative, which I don’t think you can say about every portion of the country. So we’re happy to be here and helping out, you know, local companies that are focused on innovating.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:25] And what is that ideal fit customer for you right now?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:13:29] Generally, you know, we would say. It’s more about what they want to do, but our customer base tends to look like. Upper mid market. So, you know, that’s kind of a generic term, so I’ll be more specific. Um, you know, $1 billion in revenue up is usually a great fit because of the technologies. They require sophistication and they require people and they require some budget. But what’s really cool is that a lot of these newer companies that may be, you know, born in the cloud going about it a different way, maybe they’re software companies. They’re they’re using the same technologies that we’re working with, you know, in a Fortune 500. So it gives us a wide range. So we’ve actually, in the last few years been helping out a lot of companies that would be much smaller, even small medium business, but highly sophisticated from a technology perspective. So for us, a customer that’s, you know, using Kubernetes as a platform to deliver their services, great fit for us, um, high velocity verticals. So think transportation, manufacturing, fintech, great fit for us retail because of all the data that is processed and collected. So that high velocity kind of vertical is a great fit for us to come in and be helpful in their journey.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:51] And if they’re interested in engaging with you, they can go to the website and then there’s ways to, you know, if they’re looking for help with talent, they can they can kind of take a course there or if they want to get an assessment, is that all available on the website?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:15:09] Yeah, So they can definitely come to our website and it’ll see, you’ll see our the way we go to market for customers and the types of things that we like to help with. So we have a whole center of excellence around Kubernetes. Um, we have our academy as we spoke about previously, where they could sign up and they could consume some of the later, you know, technology trends related to Kubernetes. And yeah, you can reach out and we can, you know, talk through what a project looks like and what that assessment looks like, or if you know what you want to do already, we can help scope that out and provide you a project plan for how we could how we could engage.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:47] And what’s the coordinates? What’s the website?

Nick Marcarelli: [00:15:51] Uh, shadow Softcom Shadow. Soft with a hyphen in between.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:56] Shadow hyphen. Soft.com. There you go. All right, Nick. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Nick Marcarelli: [00:16:04] Thanks for the time.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:05] Appreciate it. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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John Philbin With Spectacular at Work

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Chicago Business Radio
Chicago Business Radio
John Philbin With Spectacular at Work
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Firmspace-sponsor-bannerA proud workaholic, John Philbin has always known how important it is to love what you do. As the founder of Spectacular at Work, he helps companies compete + win and helps them create cultures where their people thrive. He advises CEOs and develops future business leaders around the world. He and his team coach leaders and up-and-comers, help companies determine who to hire to make their company stronger, and architect leading people processes to make sure companies have a steady flow of future leaders that fit their culture.

He works with some of the most respected companies in the world (Blue Cross Blue Shield, PWC, Aon, Reebok, McDonalds) and with companies who aspire to be great. Really any company that wants to be better at the people stuff, no matter the size or industry.

Connect with John on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Right time to plan for succession planning
  • What does succession planning entail
  • Finding the right talent to fit the roles needed to operate a successful company

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Brought to you by Firm Space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm spacecom. Now, here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter. And before we get started, as always, today’s show is sponsored by Firm Space, thanks to Firm Space because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we got a good one for you today. On today’s show, we have the CEO and founder of Spectacular at Work. So please welcome John Philbin. Welcome to the show, John.

John Philbin: [00:00:44] Hey, thanks so much. It’s great to be here.

Max Kantor: [00:00:46] Excited to talk to you about everything you’re doing. So let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit about Spectacular at Work.

John Philbin: [00:00:52] Oh, sure. Spectacular Work is a management consulting firm that specializes in leadership development and organizational effectiveness. And what that means is we help organizations to organize themselves effectively and to help leaders be ready to ensure that their company can compete and win.

Max Kantor: [00:01:15] Now, how did you get involved with Spectacular at Work?

John Philbin: [00:01:19] Yeah, so I founded Spectacular at Work in 2019. Just maybe a little background with that help. Sure. Yeah. So I trained as a psychologist and I was a traditional psychologist helping people with their emotional problems. And I sort of found my way into business on a part time basis. I wasn’t really that interested in it when I started. I was really interested in, again, doing clinical work and helping people with their life struggles. But I talked my way into a firm that did some consulting related to what I do now, and I like I found my life’s work. It was really pretty obvious right away that this was my field. And so that was a firm that I got started in. 25 years ago. I started a firm with this great guy, Ed Goldman from Hewitt. Some listeners might know Ed Guttman. He wrote a couple of great business books, and he and I started a firm together. We built it. I ran that for 15 years, and then I sold my majority stake before starting Spectacular at work in 2019. And along the way, I’ve worked with, you know, thousands of executives, hundreds over 100 CEOs and over 100 CFOs. And I tend to help companies at the top with leadership development and succession planning.

Max Kantor: [00:02:47] So when spectacular work goes in to a company, what are you exactly doing to help them? How are you helping your clients?

John Philbin: [00:02:56] Yeah, I think there are 2 or 3 key things we do. So one thing that we do is help them decide who the right team members are. So we have a practice that we refer to as our assessment practice, and that focuses primarily on helping companies define the kind of capabilities they need. So what kind of people do they need in order to play key leadership roles? That’s one. Then the second is helping develop the next generation of leaders, and that is a combination of leadership and succession planning and what we’re doing. There is some assessment, some coaching and a lot of 360 work. And what we do is we help leaders build a plan for themselves to be ready to take on more responsibility. And the idea behind this kind of work is that we’re accelerating the development of the highest, highest potential people in the organization. And so that’s a second thing. And then we help a lot with team effectiveness, particularly helping the leadership team come together, have a shared set of goals so that they’re working on the same thing. You know, it’s very easy, Max, for leaders to come together and believe that they’re aligned but really work at cross purposes. And so staying aligned is an important it’s really an imperative for leadership teams. And we have processes that really help leadership teams get aligned and stay aligned so that they’re really competing with. Their competitors in the marketplace not competing with each other on the leadership team.

Max Kantor: [00:05:03] And are these processes when you come in and you kind of lead these workshops or help the company like understand this, are these processes that the company can still utilize after you guys leave? So this is like long term.

John Philbin: [00:05:18] They definitely are. So what we’re doing is we are trying to build capability that remains once we’re gone. So I’m a big believer in the importance of management routines and management routines are really just the business language for habits. And what we do is we help leaders and leadership teams develop the right habits to take what they get taught and they start to implement with us and use it in the long term. There’s Max. There’s one other piece of work that’s related to that that maybe I’ll spend one minute on. And we at spectacular work, we have a partnership with a virtual reality business simulation firm, and that’s a mouthful. And what it means is we work with a firm that helps leaders practice skills by going through business simulations. So we teach leaders and help them practice the skills around things like giving feedback and getting people motivated and aligned for change, things that are changing in their organization. So and our partnership with this virtual reality business simulation firm, which is the name of that firm, is Immersion. That’s another part of our work really helping strengthen organizations capabilities.

Max Kantor: [00:07:05] You’ve talked a lot about leadership development and also you brought up a little earlier succession planning. Now, can you talk about how those two things go together, but then also how they’re two different things?

John Philbin: [00:07:18] Sure. Yeah. There is sort of a muddy line between leadership development and succession planning and leadership development in some ways is the more general term. And and the idea behind leadership development is again, this. It’s accelerating people’s readiness to take on broader responsibility. So strengthening people’s ability to take on different parts of the organization. So moving from one job to another or getting promoted and taking on significantly more responsibility and succession planning is the part of leadership development that is focused on defined roles. So helping a company. Uh, ready its candidates to be the next CEO. So all companies have a CEO, but at some point that CEO is going to move on or retire and having there’s. Lots of economic value associated with making sure that you have a steady flow of the right kind of future leaders. And many, many companies don’t spend as much time getting themselves organized to be sure that they’re going to have a good candidate or set of candidates for each job in the company. And so one of the things we help companies do and I’m sorry, one of the things we help companies do is have a ongoing process so that they have ready now successors for as many leadership jobs as possible, as many executive and senior management jobs as possible.

Max Kantor: [00:09:19] So for you, what’s the state of the art succession planning?

John Philbin: [00:09:23] Mm Yeah. The, you know, succession planning and a lot of companies looks like, uh, what we sometimes refer to as replacement planning. And that is they, they have a couple of people who they know are going to take on more responsibility in the future. They have somebody who will probably be the next CEO and they have somebody who will probably be the next CFO or the next head of HR or general counsel. And to to a lot of companies, that’s succession planning and that’s really replacement planning. And there are some real challenges associated with replacement planning, what succession planning is. Is having a clearly defined set of expectations associated with a role. Meaning we believe that our next general council really needs to have these skills. Needs to be this kind of leader and needs to have this set of expertise and background knowledge, for example. And so defining the target for future candidates to have to hit is the first step in succession planning. Really understanding what the expectations of that role are going to be in the future. And that’s the tricky part. Succession planning is about readying the organization for the future. And what a lot of companies do is they have a current CEO and they decide that the next CEO should look a lot like the current one.

John Philbin: [00:11:14] Well, the conditions are going to change over the intervening years. And so what what’s really important at the start of succession planning is having this defined set of expectations for what the role looks like. And then it’s identifying people in the organization who the leadership team and often the board of directors believe have the underlying skills that can be developed into one of those senior roles or one of those executive roles at the company. And this takes a number of forms. It usually includes some form of assessment and the there are very common forms. I mentioned earlier the 360, where you ask everyone around the individual whether or not or you ask them to paint a picture of the candidate’s strengths and development needs. Often we get involved because we have assessed thousands of executives over the years and we help identify what are the gaps between a particular candidate’s readiness now and what those requirements are for the job. So in a lot of ways, a central piece of succession planning is developing a gap analysis. And and then once you’ve developed a gap, so you have someone who has run a is financially quite literate. They have been a general manager of a division, but it’s a global company and they don’t have any experience outside running businesses outside the United States.

John Philbin: [00:13:12] And so finding ways to get the candidate. Experience. Doing things that they haven’t done before is an important part, and sometimes that means putting them in a job rotation. So moving them from the job they’re currently in into another job. And sometimes it means getting them involved in other ways in developing those skills. We’re big believers that the vast majority of of development occurs on the job, but things like executive development in at at major universities. Executive coaching, project based learning. There are a number of tools that we use that help people develop the skills now for big roles like a CEO job or any senior executive role. You’re never going to be able to give someone every experience that’s necessary to be ready. What you’re trying to do is choose the most important ones and determine whether or not the candidate is able to grow those skills over time. So that’s at the heart of succession planning. Once someone moves into a new role, then they often benefit from some support, some mentoring from someone who has had a similar role or some executive coaching and executive coaching and is a key service that we provide as well.

Max Kantor: [00:14:58] Now, John, for my final question for you, this is a question I like to ask all my guests. For you, what is the most rewarding thing about what you get to do with Spectacular at work?

John Philbin: [00:15:11] Gosh, I really have a pretty great job. So there are a number of parts, but if I could only choose one. Working with people, getting them ready for a job that they are really motivated by and really care about and are really excited about. And then when they come back to me, sometimes five and ten years later and they say that work we did set me on a path that I don’t think I could have achieved on my own. I get to work with incredibly talented people and, you know, we’re just an extra little ingredient in really talented people’s ability to take on more responsibility. That’s probably the most satisfying part of my career and the thing that’s the most motivating.

Max Kantor: [00:16:07] And John, if people want to learn more about Spectacular at work, how can they find you guys a website or social media?

John Philbin: [00:16:16] Yeah. So we are busy on LinkedIn in particular and we’re at Spectacular at work. Three words. And if people want to reach out to me, the easiest way to get me is John J. O h n at spectacular@work.com.

Max Kantor: [00:16:37] Awesome. Well, John, it was a pleasure talking with you today. I mean, your answers were so informative and so thoughtful, and I just really enjoyed talking with you about Spectacular at Work. You guys are doing a lot of good work for the community.

John Philbin: [00:16:51] Max, I really appreciate the time. Thanks for making it such an easy conversation today.

Max Kantor: [00:16:55] Anytime, John. Anytime. And thank you for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:17:06] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm Space.com.

Zac Larson With IntentGen Financial Partners

by

Chicago Business Radio
Chicago Business Radio
Zac Larson With IntentGen Financial Partners
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Firmspace-sponsor-bannerWhen Zac Larson launched his career in the financial services industry nearly two decades ago, he wanted to take a different route than most. One that was purpose-driven rather than fear-driven. One that focused on the joy of living generously and serving others, not just selling products. The opportunity to do just that presented itself to Zac in 2001 when he joined Thrivent.

And today, as a founding partner of IntentGen Financial Partners, he is able to live out these values – empowering people to make intentional financial decisions so they can live with greater purpose. Zac and his wife, Kristin, have been married since 2003 and have four boys. In his free time, he likes to coach his sons’ basketball teams and enjoys golf, scuba diving, skiing and bike riding. He also serves in many roles at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.

Connect with Zac on LinkedIn and follow IntentGen Financial Partners on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Retirement income planning
  • Investment management
  • Wealth transfer
  • Tax efficiency strategies
  • Generosity- Creative Charitable Planning

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studio in Chicago, Illinois. It’s time for Chicago Business Radio. Brought to you by firm Space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm spacecom. Now, here’s your host.

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter. And before we get started, as always, today’s show is sponsored by Firm Space, thanks to Firm Space because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we got a really good one for you today. On today’s show, we have a founding partner and wealth advisor at IntentGen Financial Partners. So please welcome to the show, Zach Larson. Welcome to the show, Zach.

Zac Larson: [00:00:47] Thank you. It’s great to be here with you.

Max Kantor: [00:00:49] I’m excited to talk to you about everything you’re doing. So let’s jump right in. Tell me a little bit about intention.

Zac Larson: [00:00:54] Well, first of all, there’s a lot of financial management, financial planning companies that are out there. And in some ways we’re very similar to those. We help people manage their money, the efficient with taxes, protect their their plan and and take care of people they care about. But there’s some really unique that I think we’re doing in that message is resonating with people and that’s helping them focus on intentionality. Meaning what do they want their money to do for them? What do they want their their life, their impact, their experiences to be? And it is such a privilege. It’s so much fun to just dig into that with people and help them figure out what they can accomplish.

Max Kantor: [00:01:29] So what exactly is your role within intention?

Zac Larson: [00:01:33] My role is two parts. I for 20 years have helped people one on one think about the purpose of their money. So we talk about asset allocation and all sorts of investments and tax tax, things that nobody really loves to talk about, but we all need to. And then we focus on how they want to use their money, what they want it to do for them. So that’s probably about half my time with intention or maybe two thirds of it. Even still, the other part is in leadership and development. We have been blessed with growth over the last 15 years especially and have a phenomenal team of of colleagues that I get to work with. And so we’re we’re talking about their career path, their advancement, their fulfillment, and also looking at opportunities to grow our company in terms of hiring more great people or acquiring other advisors.

Max Kantor: [00:02:25] And how did you get into this line of work and then how did intention come to be?

Zac Larson: [00:02:31] Well, for some reason I’ve always either been blessed or cursed, maybe with enjoying and understanding numbers. And so it was just something I’ve known that I wanted to do for a long time. I did internships in college. I went to a little school in Illinois called Augustana College and started into this career right. Right out of school. And intention came about because three, four years in, I had worked with other colleagues. I became good friends with a mentor of mine, someone who became a friend and a colleague. His name is Corey Schmidt. And we realized that we had some very complementary skills and had more fun and could do more when we worked together. So we we began in 2005 working together and and grew a team from there. And intention came about specifically six years ago as we went into a more independent space within the financial planning world. And independence just gives us autonomy to run a business the way that we need and bring in the products and solutions and and expertise that our clients need.

Max Kantor: [00:03:38] Now, you touched on this a little bit ago, but, you know, for a lot of people, money is an awkward thing. It’s hard to talk about. It’s hard to discuss, but it’s so important. We all need it. We all use it. So how do you help people use and and grow and give their money with intention?

Zac Larson: [00:03:55] Most people, when we meet them, have done a lot of things kind of accidentally. They’ve learned perhaps from parents, they’ve learned the hard way and they’re just kind of going through life. And most most people do not want to do a budget and we don’t spend a lot of time on that either. We talk about aligning your money with your priorities right off the bat. So let’s take an example. If you’re in your working years and you’re like most people, you get your paycheck, you do life, you pay your bills, and then at the end of the month, you probably have a little bit of guilt around, Oh, I wish I would have given some more or I wish I would have saved some more. And we try to just help people flip that script and say, if there’s places you care about that you want to give to, whether it’s a local charity, a church, family members do that first be be purposeful with it, be intentional, and then let’s put money into savings. We call them save to spend accounts and save to save. And just the the specific automated, systematic process of doing those things first and then spending once left starts to change the game for people.

Max Kantor: [00:05:03] So you’re helping people with money in different areas of their life. I know you just mentioned like philanthropic ways. Also, I know retirement investment. So what would someone need help with for them to come to you?

Zac Larson: [00:05:19] Yeah, we we have built a company that tries to meet people where they are on their financial journey. And so there aren’t minimums. And we have a team and a partnership to help wherever a person is. But our niche really is in the retirement transition phase. So we look at plus or minus five years of retirement. You’re trying to figure out how you can do it or you’re in it and you’re saying, What else can I be doing? And in that phase, there’s a key financial and emotional transition that happens. People move from accumulation to utilization or accumulation to distribution. So they’ve been saving they’ve hopefully been seeing their net worth grow over time and now they’re seeing how do I use it? That’s where we step in and I think have some great unique perspectives on how to give them confidence, to spend it, to enjoy it, but also make sure that they don’t run out of it and that they can take care of the people and places that they want.

Max Kantor: [00:06:17] You’ve talked about, you know, giving back. Why do you think it’s important to give back? And can you describe how how you do this year to year?

Zac Larson: [00:06:27] Yeah, there’s both, I think, a philosophical and a practical edge to that. So for Theosophically, I believe that’s just what we’re called as people to do is to take care of others. I think if you come from a faith perspective, that’s that’s part of most faiths. If you come from just being part of a community, there is a desire to take care of others. But I think also from a practical sense, people need that in their plan. And I use this phrase a lot. I’ve seen it happen with clients. Imagine you hit this retire of yours, whether it’s a boat, whether it’s a new home, and then you go to enjoy it for the first time and you look around and you’re like, Dang, I just got this boat of my dreams, this house of my dreams, this trip of my dreams, and somebody else is already doing it better. And if we measure ourselves against others and against the world, there’s there’s just never enough. And then if you look the other direction, there are people who who have it way worse who who are dealing with tough stuff that need some support. And I think generosity helps to balance that scale of saying no against the world. There’s never enough. But maybe I’m in a spot where I do have enough and I can support some other people. And it it provides such great balance and perspectives in people’s lives.

Max Kantor: [00:07:48] Now, Zach, you mentioned that you are writing a book. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Zac Larson: [00:07:53] Yeah, the book has been on my mind for a lot of years and it really is about how to empower people to spend and give and live with intentionality and retirement. And yet it’s not so much a how to book. It’s trying to be a vessel, be a voice for people’s stories who have done this well, who have experienced the freedom that says, you know what, I have saved, I’ve prepared for this, and there’s more that I can do. So we talk about empowering people to live intentionally or to live with greater purpose. That can mean a lot of things. It could mean you’re ready to retire sooner, to give more than you had been, to start a business to help your kids or grandkids with college, to take family on a trip, to have experiences with friends, all sorts of things. And a lot of times people don’t have the process to do that well and they don’t have a plan that gives them confidence. And that’s what what we get to be part of all the time. So this book will will be out later this year. And the goal is to be a give give a chance for people’s voice to be heard, for their stories, to give other people confidence around their retirement.

Max Kantor: [00:09:07] Now, is there a certain age or certain financial level where people should begin thinking about their retirement plans?

Zac Larson: [00:09:16] Yeah. With within that five year mark I mentioned, I think people really need to go from a theoretical view on retirement or a hypothetical and actually start thinking practically about where will this happen. So if you’re a long ways from that, there’s things we can help you do to get ready so that it’s an easier transition. But if you’re in that zone, then I’ll just share a concrete example from a meeting this morning. A person had a a couple had accumulated a lot of cash in their last few years before retirement, and they said, we’ll just spend down our cash first. And what they didn’t realize is that they would be in such a low tax bracket, they wouldn’t even get to use their deductions if they just spent cash. So we helped them look at a balance of where to take money from from different types of accounts, IRAs, 401. Ks insurance, annuities, cash and say you’ve got all these tools. Let’s let’s find the right mix to get you the money that you need so that you can maximize what your opportunities are with it totally.

Max Kantor: [00:10:18] Going into retirement can be both thrilling and exciting, but also it can be scary and with intention. It seems like you guys are there to help make the process as easy and seamless a transition as possible.

Zac Larson: [00:10:32] Well, that’s that’s certainly the goal. I had a great learning experience last summer. We had prepared as a company for a lifelong dream I had, which was to take an extended sabbatical. I’ve got four teenage boys and my wife and I wanted to have some time with them. So we learned a lot how to to run our company well and take care of clients. But I learned a lot personally, and I found out in my free time I happen to spend money. I have hobbies that are expensive. And it was a great learning experience for people thinking about retirement. Because if you have hobbies that require money, some of those rules of thumb won’t work for you. You can’t live on 80% of what you’re used to because you might actually spend more when you have more free time. Conversely, some people have hobbies that don’t take any money and they could actually live on a lot less. So we want to personalize a plan for people. There’s three things that go into that we talk a lot about impact. Who do you want to have impact on experiences and then purpose? What is it that you’re going to be doing and how does your financial plan support your IEP, your impact, experience and purpose?

Max Kantor: [00:11:42] Now, Zach, for my last question for you, it’s a question I like to ask every guest that comes on Chicago Business Radio for you. What is the most rewarding part about what you get to do?

Zac Larson: [00:11:54] It’s seeing people realize. That their possibilities can actually be probabilities. They can do these things. They’ve dreamed of it. And we put those dreams into action. And it sounds a little, you know, like a Make a Wish foundation or something. It’s not. This is people’s lifelong savings. It’s their hard work. But we’re giving them a process or a plan that equips them to go take action on things that they’ve maybe always wanted to do. And I read a great quote last summer. It said, The quickest way for a dream to die is to wait. And we help people get started. We help them stop waiting and make those plans happen. And it’s it’s incredibly rewarding.

Max Kantor: [00:12:39] I love that quote. That’s that’s a good one. If people want to learn more about intention or they want to work with you guys in some capacity, how can they learn more? Do you have a website? Social media, Of course.

Zac Larson: [00:12:51] Check us out on Facebook. Check us out on our website. The website is intention.com into entgegen.com. They can look me up on LinkedIn and send a request and we’ll connect that way. So would appreciate people who want to learn more.

Max Kantor: [00:13:09] Totally. Well Zach, thank you so much for being on Chicago Business Radio today. You’re doing great work and we appreciate you being on the show.

Zac Larson: [00:13:17] Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks.

Max Kantor: [00:13:19] And thank you to listening for another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:13:27] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by firm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firm Space.com.

Marguerite Pressley Davis With Finance Savvy CEO

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Marguerite Pressley Davis With Finance Savvy CEO
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Marguerite Pressley Davis is a former Wall Street analyst who became an advocate for entrepreneurs in Atlanta and beyond. She is the founder and CEO of Finance Savvy CEO, a privately held company which improves financial literacy and business finance among entrepreneurs as a way to increase their profitability and to close the country’s gender and racial wealth gap. Through her work, she has helped small business owners to raise over $33 million in capital and increase their annual profits on average by 63%. She has two decades of international business experience which includes her work at Goldman Sachs, controlling over a $2 billion portfolio of private equity, alternative energy and commercial real estate investments.

Connect with Marguerite on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Should Atlanta’s small businesses worry about a recession
  • The Do’s and Don’ts of creating a financial plan for starting your business
  • Why every small business owner should consult with a financial coach before they raise capital
  • How can entrepreneurs and small business owners protect themselves from bank collapses like Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have Marguerite Pressley Davis and she is with Finance Savvy CEO. Welcome, Marguerite.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:00:38] Thank you, Lee Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:40] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about finance savvy CEO. How are you serving folks?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:00:45] Yeah, absolutely. So at finance savvy CEO, we really focus on helping small business owners and entrepreneurs to really enhance their financial confidence and competence when it comes to the money side of running a business. So we focus on through our programs and membership only we focus on financial planning and overall financial education to help you make better business decisions. With the financial impact in mind.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:16] Now, are you working primarily as an educator or also as a financial planner or wealth manager?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:01:22] Yeah, yeah, great question. So ultimately, yes to the financial educator piece, but we only work with small business owners and entrepreneurs. So for the business finance side of things, so we don’t do kind of the wealth planning that some of our friends in the personal finance space do. But one of our core programs actually is your profit playbook, where we focus on financial planning for their small business. You know, what we see a lot is that small business owners and entrepreneurs, when they try to either A, raise capital or B, just operate daily in their operations, they really have questions around, well, I have limited amount of funds, limited amount of capital, so how can I make the best use of it? So that’s where our financial planning side of the house for their business comes into play.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:10] And is that a do it for you or do it with you or do it yourself offering? Yeah.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:02:16] So we we do it, do it with you. One of the things that I strongly believe in, what we really promote at finance savvy CEO is that we want our small business owners and entrepreneurs to feel empowered with their finances. We want them to feel confident that, Hey, I understand what’s happening financially. And by me understanding it as that business owner, it’s going to help me make better decisions. So we are all about at finance savvy CEO the do it with you model. So for example when we’re going through your profit playbook, we are actively working with our small business owners and entrepreneurs, hearing them through step by step how they’re doing it. But we’re there with them holding their hands because at the end of the day, we want them to be able to stand on their own two feet when they’re talking to investors or they’re with their team making a decision. We want them to hear us in the back of their heads saying, okay, I understand why I’m doing this. I understand the implications. So we’re all about doing it with you so that you can stand on your own two feet financially as a small business owner or entrepreneur.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:22] And then what is the profile of your ideal client? Are they at the beginning stages where they may not have a CPA or a bookkeeper, or are they more established and the those resources aren’t kind of providing the intelligence intelligence that you are?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:03:38] Yeah. Yeah. So ultimately, we work with clients across the spectrum of both revenue size as well as industry. So let me talk about the revenue size first. So sometimes our clients span between $0 in revenue, meaning their pre revenue, and they want to get things right from the start when they’re starting their business. They may have gone into it because they absolutely love what they do, but they don’t really necessarily understand or have a strong grasp on finances and the money side of business. So for those entrepreneurs and small business owners that are just getting started, we support them to to ensure that they have a great foundation of understanding of the financial decisions that they’ll have to make. But also we help them to say what is realistic for your financial plans, what’s realistic for how much you need to fundraise? And then that spans all the way as well too. We have companies in our community that are at the $10 Million revenue mark, but their questions are a bit different. They’re there because they say, Hey, we’re at ten, but we’re wanting to scale. We want to have that exit and you know, five years out, ten years out.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:04:49] And we have to ensure that we’re doing that. As a CEO, I’m making strong financial decisions. So it really ranges across revenue size and across industry. Now to the second part of your question. Is it like, hey, they don’t have a CFO, they don’t have a CPA, a bookkeeper? No. One of the things that we recommend is it’s what I like to call the financial trifecta. So the financial trifecta that I recommend, like every single entrepreneur in small business have, is like they have that bookkeeper on their staff or that’s outsourced. They have that accountant and the tax. On their team, but we also promote that that is still no substitution for you as the business owner. Being able to get intimately involved in your finances so that you can have intelligent conversations with your bookkeeper, so you can have intelligent conversations with your accountant, because ultimately they’re they’re steering the company forward, not the support resources. So we say that, hey, still is that CEO, we want you to know it, understand it, but definitely work with that financial trifecta as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:55] So what’s your backstory? How did you kind of find the heart to serve these people in this manner?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:06:01] Yeah, so I have been in the finance industry for almost going on 20 years now. Um, I actually started out on Wall Street. I was at Merrill Lynch, then transitioned to Goldman Sachs, where I focused on private equity and commercial real estate investments. So we invested in everything from like concrete companies to hotels and casinos and that to date myself. But back in the last recession we saw around the 2007, 2008 time frame, um, you know, we had this whole thesis around our investments built around that Vegas would be recession proof. And that thesis was absolutely wrong. And as we saw back then, the markets tanked, hotels went under, casinos went under in Vegas. But for me, it was my first realization that the work that I did, I didn’t want it to be so closely tied to something I couldn’t control. I can’t control the markets. So for me, it was the catalyst to say that I wanted to work directly with the CEOs, directly with the CFOs before those businesses went downhill. So I transitioned to a career in mergers and acquisitions consulting. It was all about buying and selling businesses, divesting unprofitable business units, and did that for about half a decade, worked in some really cool places like Ireland and Amsterdam and Mexico. But what I realized after that point was that when I reflected back to the last recession, we had small business owners were going out of business much faster than corporations.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:07:43] And so the missing component there that I found was really it was the mismanagement of finances, the lack of understanding of some of these small business owners for how to navigate really challenging times, just like we’re seeing now in the economy. So I from there, I started my own tech company. It was a retail tech company just to ensure that I could make that transition from the corporate space into the finance space. And, you know, for a lot of small business owners, the reality was, is that, you know, even if they went to MBA program and, you know, I was at NYU, but you learn a lot about corporate finance, that doesn’t always translate to how is a CEO? Do I think about my small business finances? So from there I found myself at a pivot point after we exited my first tech company and it was like, What’s next? I went on to work at a $25 million venture fund as a managing director, creating investor readiness programs, getting in small businesses ready to raise capital. And that was the missing piece. At that point, the light bulb went off. Hey, I really need to double down on making sure that small businesses stay in business longer. They’re actually profitable so they can generate wealth, not take away from wealth. And from that finance savvy CEO is born as we know it today.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:02] And then when you were trying to build this community, were the lessons learned kind of challenging to go from kind of a big corporate and dealing with, you know, mega companies with unlimited, seemingly unlimited resources, you know, to a person with a dream, you know, at their kitchen table. And, you know, was it difficult for you to kind of relate to that person and kind of see the struggle that they’re going through and have that level of empathy to really kind of feel like you can make an impact on them because the impact on that person is more personal, I think. And it’s more like you see the results with your eyes and how it affects their family and their neighborhood and their friends and their community.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:09:48] Oh, yeah. Lee, you’re so spot on there. You know, I we did for my team. We did bonuses this past year. You know, at the end of every year. And it’s the impact is not only on the businesses, but it’s also like as a small business owner that, you know, having my team and seeing the impact it has on them. Like one of my workers sent me a picture of a mattress that she was able to buy her parents with her business. So you’re right. It’s like that life impact they’re having. And so it was a different transition for me. Lee And I think that that was one of the biggest catalysts point of why I made the transition to small businesses, because in the corporate space, you find a way to, you know, save them a million, 5 million, and they want 10 million more. But when we’re talking about small businesses, like on average, our clients will grow their profits at least 63% on average when they start working with us. So that can mean a different life for them, a different ability of how they can pour into their own communities. And so it’s a bit of the why, why I do what I do is because of the immediate impact that you see.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:10:57] I think for small business owners and entrepreneurs, though, the biggest lesson learned for me as I transitioned over was that it is every decision that they make. It has a life impact for them, right? So if they have a month that’s unprofitable or a year that’s unprofitable, that may mean less that they’re able to do for their families, less that they’re able to do for their community a real immediate impact. Whereas in the corporate world it is, okay, let’s just roll it over to the next quarter. So what I love about that in the work that I do is that I’m able to not only change the trajectory of what they can save, what they can pay themselves, what they are able to do. As it relates to hiring most of our business owners, they make, at least for those that are the zero revenue point, within 24 months, they’re making their first hire and that has a larger economic impact that they have immediately. So you’re spot on with that. Definitely a transition there. But it’s also part of the crux of the why of that transition for me from corporate to small business.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:05] So let’s educate some of our listeners. You brought up a point earlier and you used the word one of the metrics that matter, I would assume, is profit. You didn’t say revenue. And to me, as a small business owner and having interviewed thousands of small business owners, I think a lot of people keep their eye on the wrong ball sometimes and they think that revenue is the most important thing and you can have all the revenue you want without profit and you’re not going to be in business very long.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:12:35] Oh yeah. Oh yeah, spot on. So I think that, you know, for for decades, even if you look in the VC space there, they were using revenue as this metric. But I see revenue is almost a vanity metric. It is great you write your business can’t survive without sales. But the challenges with that is it’s not just about what you make, it’s about what you keep of what you’re making. Like I have had clients where they were making $1 million a year. Let’s call it, but they were only keeping less than $5,000 of it. But then I had companies who were only making 50,000 and they were keeping $25,000 of it. So who’s better off? Right? So I think one of the things that we have to change as a small business community and what I what we’re constantly pushing and finding finance savvy CEO is it’s about the financial management. It’s not just what’s coming in, but it’s what are you keeping? And I’ll even take it a step further. It’s not only what you’re keeping in profits, it is what are you doing to grow that money? So we also have to elevate ourselves also from the profits. How much of it is you’re keeping? Are you keeping? And that has a lot to do with again, how are you managing the money that comes in? How are you making those really tough decisions around how you’re allocating that capital, what you’re spending? But then also, what are you doing to grow it? How are you thinking about investing? Those profits. How are you thinking about what gets retained so that your business can grow into that vision that you have.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:10] Now in some of your work helping your clients with like, say, maybe they have several service offerings, but you see, if you do a deep dive and the metrics, the financial kind of signals that that each one of them has, one of them might be a loser and it might be popular and there might you it might be hurting you. Every sale could be, in essence, kind of damaging your business, even though, like you said, we call those metrics, the vanity metrics cause metrics where it looks like you’re killing it. But in reality, you could be kind of putting yourself out of business. Do you help the client analyze kind of, you know, put a PNL on each one of their service offerings to see, okay, do more of this and less of this, and maybe you should change the price of this because you’re losing money on every one of these.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:15:01] Oh, yeah.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:15:03] Absolutely. And I get so excited about that because that’s the core of one of the service offerings that we have is around the financial analysis piece. And sometimes what you’ll find is that when someone isn’t comfortable with the numbers, what they do is they avoid looking at their finances. And what I tell every small business owner and entrepreneur, I say it’s like you had lunch and you have a piece of spinach in your teeth. Well, how’d you just looked in the mirror? You could have taken that spinach out your teeth, right? It’s the same way with the finances of taking that time to analyze the end of every month, every quarter, every week, depending the frequency, depend on your business. But taking that time to see what’s truly happening, you know, sometimes when we’re making sales again, it’s vanity. It feels good, it feels great. We’re selling out. But you have to take that step back and say, But is it worth it? Am I only making so many sales because I’m spending more in marketing than I’m actually generating in the revenue? Or is it the fact that I’m selling because my price is so low so I can’t even cover my cost? So that’s exactly one of the core areas that we focus on is the analysis piece. But to also your second point there around the pricing, one of the things that we do is we have a pricing lab and a lot of the times what I find is that small business owners and entrepreneurs, when I said, Hey, how’d you come up with your pricing, they’ll tell me, Oh, well, I just looked at my closest competitor and that seemed about right.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:16:32] And I’m like, Hey, we can’t do that because we don’t even know how our competitors came up with their price. And now you’re just taking their prices. So being able to really do detailed analysis around the pricing, understanding the key value points that they’re delivering, what makes them different, justifying that that price that they’re charging is even sustainable is one of the core pieces in that analytics that we do. Now, another piece to that, what I recommend that every entrepreneur and small business owner is doing is something, what we call it finance savvy CEO is financial wellness checkups. Now these financial wellness checkups, you deep dive into what is truly the profitability that you have. Not only is a company wide, but your different revenue streams, your different product offerings so that you can see, hey, is this something we need to keep on or do we need to see if there’s adjustments that we need to make? Or does it just need to be retired altogether?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:32] Now walk me through. Say, okay, I’ve heard what you’re saying. I like you as a person. I think you’re smart. I think you have all the qualifications I need to be successful. I’m in. What is that kind of onboarding? First types of conversations you’re having with me to get me up and running so that I can have, you know, a solid financial plan moving forward?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:17:55] Yeah, absolutely. So we’re having that conversation. Loved all the nice compliments now, but one of the first things that we do to get our clients onboarded with your profit playbook, where is the group financial planning that we do? We also do some one on one financial planning as well through more so the consulting agency side of things. But ultimately, one of the first things that we do is we never assume that is like the, the biggest, um, you know, it’s a huge core value of mine and finance savvy CEO. So we never assume that you have anything to bring to the table. What I mean by anything to the table you can come to us for, for support without any historical financial information. Meaning you may say, Marguerite, I don’t have any past financials to give to you. I’ve never done that. You know, I haven’t had the bookkeeper. I haven’t had an accountant. Help me. I have nothing. So we never assume you have those things coming in. So we start from ground zero. So when you get to us, we do an intake survey. And that intake survey is going to give us more information about just your business, your tenure in business, the types of products or services that you have, the challenges, the pain points that you have. But most importantly, Lee, when you get onboarded, the one core thing that we are focused on is where are you trying to go? I care a lot less about where you’ve been versus where you’re trying to go. What is that vision for your company? Because depending on where you’re going to go, we could build totally different financial plans, financial roadmaps, financial projections. Because if you tell me, Hey, Marguerite, my goal is to exit my business in five years.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:19:37] Or if you tell me, Hey, Marguerite, you know I want to keep this business and hand it off to my kids one day. Well, to that entrepreneur, that tells me you want to exit in five years, we’re going to build out a more aggressive financial plan for your business that allows for a lot higher growth so that you’re going to be more attractive to investors so that you can show the market size is really there and you’re able to tap into it and you’re able to capture a good portion of that market. It’s going to be an Uber growth model. We’re going to we’re going to build there. But now if you tell me that maybe you’re building that business from your retirement and you really just need this to to to maintain for your family, your risk averse, well then we’re going to build a much more conservative financial plan for your business. We’re not going to do as many aggressive marketing strategies. Maybe we may even ensure that the cash reserve that you have for your business is a lot more is a lot bigger than that company that told me they just want to exit in five years. Right? So, so I’ll summarize that and say the biggest thing that we need from you when you on board is clarity in that vision. Where do you want to go? So we can ensure that the plan is specific from, you know, templates here. That’s, you know, broken arrows is no, it’s about building out a financial plan, a financial roadmap that makes sense for where you’re going and that meets you in a place that you’re comfortable taking your company. Because after all, you’re the visionary.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:03] Now, once you hand me this plan, is it Now I’m off and you’re giving me homework and I have to do some work here or or there’s recommendations Like what? What happens next? And how do you keep me accountable?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:21:16] Yeah, absolutely. So once you have your plan in hand and you know you have your financial plan, you’re clear on that road of where you’re going. We actually have something it’s called our finance savvy CEO collective, and that’s our ongoing membership program. So what we hear from our founders, our CEOs, is that they really love exactly the word you used accountability, the ongoing accountability to make sure that they’re sticking with their plans. And guess what? Sometimes you can stick with the plan and things don’t happen as planned, and that’s okay. So the purpose of the membership that we do is our clients come into the membership and it’s monthly ongoing accountability and support. So ultimately what’s happening here is if things get off rail, things get off track. We’re talking about adjustments that can be made. If things are going great and you want to change things. Those are the discussions that we’re having inside of our membership. I think one of the biggest things that I see for small business owners and entrepreneurs is they build these financial plans. And, you know, to your listeners, right, if you have a financial plan and it’s sitting up on the shelf and you haven’t used it, I think one of the biggest things is, is why aren’t you using it? Did you get somebody to just build it for you and you weren’t active in the process? So it’s not connected.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:22:31] Being with you. It’s not meaningful. A financial plan. You have to actively use it. So one of the core things that’s really important is the ongoing accountability. So no matter if it’s your part of our membership and or not and you’re getting support, every entrepreneur needs to be able to say, Am I checking in on this financial plan? Am I making sure we’re going in the right direction? It’s no different than in your car where you have your gas light, you’re monitoring your speed. You keep a check on it to make sure you’re in the right direction. Because if you’re not looking at that gas light in it, it comes on and you’re 30 miles away from a gas station, you could be in trouble. It’s the exact same thing with the financial plan. If you’re not actively using it, you’re not actively monitoring. How are you doing Compared to plan, you could easily be off rails and your business could be headed to a downturn. So I love that we have the membership lead because that’s that monthly accountability where we’re doing our what I call our money dates. That’s where we’re doing our hours, our quarterly business reviews, the whole nine.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:36] And that’s an important component, right? Without that, it’s really difficult to grow if you’re not kind of keeping track. You can’t just, you know, use your bank statements as a measure of how well you’re doing. You have to really be looking at this on a regular basis in a strategic manner and really kind of diving into the numbers. Because without really understanding this, it’s really difficult to grow. You’re hoping for a lot of things to go well if just and you have control over more things than maybe you think.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:24:08] Oh yeah, oh yeah, you’re so right. And keep in mind too, I love what you said. If like you’re just looking at your bank statements, what you’re doing there is your bank statements have already happened. Right? So it’s almost by time you’re looking at your bank statements, you’re looking at something in the past. I really challenge small business owners and entrepreneurs to not just look at the past. Yes, the past can help inform our future, but what a financial plan does is it allows you to be forward thinking. It allows you to be proactive. You know, if you kind of think of a boat, if you’re just sitting on the boat, sure, the boat could just drift any direction. But what if you’re actively steering that boat? What if you’re actually actively taking it into the direction that you want? You’re going to get totally different results.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:53] Good stuff. Well, Marguerite, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:24:59] Thank you, Lee. Appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:01] Well, if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on your team, where should they go? What are the coordinates and where do you have a lot of resources to get them started, right?

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:25:12] Yeah, absolutely. So you can connect with us on finance savvy.com or just Marguerite Presley davis.com. One of the things with free resources if you go to finance savvy cio.com there is a ton of free resources on there. If you check out our blogs we have free downloads resources of recommended you know, support resources that we love. And then, you know, if you’re if you’re ready to take the step with more support, we you can find out more about our membership program as well as your profit playbook. But you can always also just shoot a note on the contact form. I’m always happy to connect with small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:54] Thank you again for sharing your story.

Marguerite Pressley Davis: [00:25:56] Thank you. Lee Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Jasmine Young With Southern Heritage Financial Group & The Financial Literacy Institute

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Jasmine Young With Southern Heritage Financial Group & The Financial Literacy Institute
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Native to Indian Ridge, Alabama, Jasmine Young is a Certified Public Accountant and Tax Strategist with over 15 years of experience in Government and Public Accounting. The creator of the ‘My CPA is Black’ brand, she is dedicated to the diversification and representation of minority CPAs in the accounting industry.

​Young founded Southern Heritage Financial Group. Based in Atlanta, the organization’s mission is to spread financial literacy globally, one family at a time. Her academic milestones include a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Alabama A&M University. Upon completing her degree, she received a Certified Public Accountant license from the Georgia State Board of Accountancy. She currently serves as a member of the Atlanta Chapter of the National Association of Black Accountants, the Atlanta Chapter of the Georgia Society of CPAs, and the National Society of Black Certified Public Accountants.​

​Young supports the visions of her community by providing resources and services to ignite passion, drive, and legacy and ultimately increase generational wealth for generations to come.

Connect with Jasmine in LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The Connection between Financial Health & Mental Health (May is Mental Health Awareness Month)
  • H.O.P.E. Initiative Program – Young’s newly released program that helps families of color locate the right real estate team to purchase a home
  • How the Pressure of Social Media Impacts Families’ Spending & Consumption
  • Black Wall Street – How her non-profit creates an annual summer event, but this year they’ve shifted their focus to provide smaller impactful events for the communities. She’s looking for ways to give back.
  • How her non-profit host annual and quarterly financial events throughout the year in underrepresented communities
  • The future of the economy and what she projects from a Financial CPA

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Jasmine Young with the Financial Literacy Institute. Welcome.

Jasmine Young: [00:00:45] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the Financial Literacy Institute, how you serving folks.

Jasmine Young: [00:00:53] Absolutely. So the Financial Literacy Institute is a 500 and 1C3 that I founded to basically provide educational courses, programs and resources to underprivileged and underrepresented communities to help them become more financially literate and to combat financial instability.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:13] So what was the genesis of the idea? What made you get involved with this?

Jasmine Young: [00:01:19] I actually started having a passion for financial literacy back in high school when one of my peers made a comment to me that she thought that I was fed with a silver spoon and didn’t think that parents grew up poor. So they actually created a life for my brother and I to where we didn’t have to live the life that they lived. And they gave us a very basic understanding of what it means to be a financially literate and responsible adult and want it to be the resource that my peers and their families needed. So that’s how it was born.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:49] So when you have this idea of improving financial literacy, the nuts and bolts of it, you have to decide who do I want to help first, right? Because there’s so many people in need. Did you decide to help, you know, young people, maybe older people, like how did you decide how to create kind of information for for the group that’s important to you?

Jasmine Young: [00:02:10] So we actually create courses for all ages simply because when you look at African Americans and the wealth gap, it’s been widening since the demise of Black Wall Street. So we decided that, you know, it’s important for us to create resources for all ages kids, adults, as well as teenagers, so that we can make sure that the information is being recycled. And it is being discussed with all ages. Because in the African American community, unfortunately, we don’t really talk about financial literacy. And a lot of times people learn about financial literacy through their mistakes. So that’s why we didn’t want to just deal with adults. We wanted to talk to kids as well because we want to get that information into them as early as possible so that we can continue a better cycle of being financially literate.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:01] So what’s an example of the way you serve kind of young people when it comes to financial literacy?

Jasmine Young: [00:03:07] So we actually go into the schools. We’ve done a couple of schools here in Atlanta where we actually put together courses about financial literacy. For example, we did a budgeting course and for the small kids, we actually teach them how to count money. We teach them how to save. We give them a choice of do you want to use your money to buy candy or would you rather save your money for college? And we start teaching them early concepts like that to kind of get them acclimated to what financial literacy is and how? Yes, money is important, but the bigger picture of that is being a financially responsible adult.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] Now, when you started doing this, when did you realize, hey, we have something here, this is going to really make a big impact?

Jasmine Young: [00:03:53] I would say, well, we started it during COVID and we started just sharing information on social media and just doing like $5 classes. And the classes were constantly booked. And that’s when we realized that, hey, you know, people really do care about this. Of course, everyone was at home during that time quarantining, so social media was kind of the outlet for a lot of people. And we realized that people were not just using social media as a way to release, but they were using it as a way to learn. And that’s how we figured out, you know what, this is going to be the way for us to get the information to the masses without them even having to leave their homes.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:32] So what you you bring up social media as a great way to share information that’s important like this. But social media also kind of can create some pressure and expectations for some people and impact how they spend their money and and how they invest their money. Can you talk a little bit about how social media may be negatively impact some folks?

Jasmine Young: [00:04:53] Absolutely. Absolutely. So what you just mentioned is actually a part of financial trauma. A lot of people do spend their money in ways because they’re trying to make up for their lack of things. So they see somebody on social media with a brand new car or a brand new outfit or a purse, and it pressures them into going to buy things that they really don’t have the money to spend. And that’s one of the negative connotations, not just of social media, but just of being financially literate and. Altogether. A lot of people don’t realize that financial literacy is 50% application and the other 50% is psychological. Like, why do you spend the spend your money the way you spend it? What are you spending it on and what’s the purpose of it? And I tell people all the time, the one way to become financially literate is to address that trauma. So social media actually weighs heavily on a lot of the spending decisions that most Americans make.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:51] Do they even realize that, though.

Jasmine Young: [00:05:53] They don’t realize it because they’ve done it for so long? Hence the reason why we call it financial trauma. A lot of people don’t realize that they’re operating out of that and not because of any other reason. So we like to point that trauma out to people, talk about that trauma, and then provide them ways to get out of that habit.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:16] So what’s an example of a way that somebody could cut down on some of their social media so they’re not kind of being hypnotized by some of these negative influences?

Jasmine Young: [00:06:28] I always tell people to monitor who it is you’re getting this information from because a lot of a lot of these pages on social media, a lot of people give out financial advice and they’re not necessarily financial advisors or CPAs. So a lot of the information is sensationalized. So I always tell people to, you know, limit those those types of accounts that you’re following where people are giving you sensationalized information and they’re not really giving you the entire story. So just limiting those those sensationalized social media accounts can help as well. And then also surround yourself with people who are working through their financial trauma. So if you’re you know, you’re used to going out with people who like to spend money, it’s Friday. They just got paid. They want to go to the mall. You may want to change your group of friends to people who don’t necessarily do that every weekend. So it’s the little things that we really don’t pay attention to that can have a big effect on how we actually spend our money and how it affects our financial wellness as a whole.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] And your background is one of a CPA, right? That is.

Jasmine Young: [00:07:39] Correct. I am a CPA.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:40] So you’ve seen this stuff firsthand. You’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work firsthand.

Jasmine Young: [00:07:46] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:48] Now, and some of the you mentioned a lot of education is part of your work, but you create events as well.

Jasmine Young: [00:07:54] We do do events. So our events basically stem from the programs that we put together to provide people with things that we do in the community outside of the courses to get them even interested in financial literacy. It’s such a saturated topic, um, a sensationalized topic as well. So we want to make sure that people actually see what it is we’re doing and get interested in that versus just being on the bandwagon of, Oh, they’re talking about financial literacy.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:30] Now in your work, do you have a niche that you serve, or are you pretty much a CPA for any any type of client?

Jasmine Young: [00:08:38] So we actually provide service to the professional services. So of course, your doctors, your lawyers, we do the logistics industry and the sports entertainment and film industry.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:50] Now, how did you decide upon those groups to serve? Because a lot of people think, Oh, I’m a CPA, I’ll serve everybody because everybody needs my work. But you decided to create niches. Why was that important?

Jasmine Young: [00:09:04] I think it’s important. Well, number one, because the accounting industry is so large, no one can serve everybody. So it was important to find an area, um, that I was comfortable in that I was familiar with and that I was interested in, um, in order to provide those services. So the logistics industry, I actually grew up in that industry as a kid because my, my uncles and cousins were all truck drivers. So I was very familiar with how the industry worked with professional services. Um, of course I’m a CPA. Being a professional service, I know what types of accounting solutions a professional service person may need. So that made it easier to go that route. And then with the sports and entertainment industry, because I realized that financial literacy is lacking in that specific industry, That is what made me choose that industry as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:59] And you bring up an interesting point. People think that people in sports and entertainment who make lots and lots of money already figured a lot of this out, but a lot of them haven’t figured it out and have some bad, bad habits. Right. That can really hurt them. There’s a large percentage of professional athletes that have filed bankruptcy.

Jasmine Young: [00:10:20] Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s the very reason why we chose it, because if you don’t realize it, a lot of those people are acting out of financial trauma as well. They buy a lot of things to fit in with other celebrities and people in the industry, and they don’t realize that they’re shooting themselves in the foot by their spending habits as well. And sometimes, unfortunately, they do get to a point where they have to file bankruptcy or they lose everything that they have. And that’s one of the reasons why pick the pick that industry is because I wanted to be able to help those people keep their money.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:55] Now, as part of some of these financial literacy, where does kind of real estate and owning a home fit in or does it.

Jasmine Young: [00:11:04] It does. So so real estate is actually a part of asset management and asset protection. And what people don’t realize is buying real estate is actually a way that you can kind of become your own bank. For example, right now in the housing market, uh, homes are appreciating in value, which means that it’s creating equity. So your home is able to build money that you could be able to access versus going to a bank and getting another loan. So, um, I always tell people anything that causes you to generate revenue, accumulate revenue, something that appreciates and value is part of financial literacy. So of course, buying real estate, whether it’s your home or if you’re investing in properties, those things help create wealth as well because those things continue to create, generate money over time. So it definitely falls into the financial literacy aspect.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:01] Now when you’re recommending things like buying a home or investing in real estate, when a person says, Well, that sounds great, but I don’t have any money, I’m kind of living paycheck to paycheck. Are there some strategies you can share to help that person, or is it, you know, is that just they’re going to be left behind?

Jasmine Young: [00:12:20] So the first thing we always recommend for someone who’s who wants to buy a home is start start with the basics of financial literacy, which is budgeting. We go and look at your budget and see how much money you’re making, how much disposable income you have. That way we can see if you can start saving for a down payment for a home or if there are ways that you are using your money that’s not helping you get closer to becoming a homeowner. We start to do those things, um, in the budgeting process to help get you on track. And then of course, we look at your your credit as well to see, you know, what could you possibly afford? Do you have the credit score to afford you a home? Of course, there’s first time homebuyer programs out there that we also look into. So there’s a way for everyone. Now, of course, everyone won’t be able to afford the same size home or the same price home, if you will, but home ownership can be for everybody.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:17] So and it doesn’t require just, you know, never spending a dollar. It just requires kind of understanding. Right. But you have to understand where the money is coming and going from. So you can make choices because every choice has a trade off, right? You can I can buy, you know, go out to dinner every night or I can save for a down payment for a house. You know, I can make that choice.

Jasmine Young: [00:13:42] That is correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:44] And when you’re working with folks, are you just kind of telling them this information or is there a way to kind of help them when they get, you know, frustrated or they have questions or they need kind of a little more guidance and coaching?

Jasmine Young: [00:13:59] Yeah. So we actually coach them through the entire process. We review their bank statements to see what they’re spending money on. We then provide them a budget based off of what we’ve seen in that analysis, and then we do check ins with them on a consistent basis to see how they’re measuring up to the budgets we we created and just provide them advice and just an advisor along the way to help them get through it. Like I said, we can get financial literacy is 50% application, but the other 50% is psychological and that’s something that no one can can fix for you. But you you have to have the discipline and the will to want to meet the goal that you’re trying to meet.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:42] In today’s world where there are so many online subscriptions, there’s people that are spending hundreds of dollars a month just on things they’re probably not even using anymore that they signed up for months ago.

Jasmine Young: [00:14:54] Absolutely. And that’s one of the go to’s that we always see when we’re doing a financial analysis is how many subscriptions do they have? And then we total those up and show them to them. And and you’re right, people are spending hundreds of dollars a month on subscriptions that they don’t even use.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Yeah, well, it’s so important to have information and good information so you can make informed decisions because you’ve got to, especially young people have to take advantage of the power of compounding. I mean, that is that is the magic. And the sooner you get going and it doesn’t matter the amount when you start just get in the habit of saving that will pay dividends. Your future. You will appreciate your present you if you can get that right.

Jasmine Young: [00:15:35] Absolutely. I definitely agree.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:37] Well, if somebody wants to connect with you and learn more about what you got going on, what’s the website, what’s the best way to do it?

Jasmine Young: [00:15:44] Absolutely. So you can go to fly inc.org. That’s the T for the Financial Literacy Institute. So t f l i inc.org.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:56] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jasmine Young: [00:16:01] Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:03] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Michael Williams With Bank Of America

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Michael Williams With Bank Of America
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Michael Williams holds the corporate title of Senior Vice President and a Small Business Banker Manager for Bank of America. He is responsible for leading 13 Small Business Bankers across Greater Atlanta. This team is responsible for delivering the full capabilities of our company to small business owners.

Williams joined Bank of America in July of 2011 as a Consumer Market Manager in Augusta, Georgia. During his 12 years, he has held multiple leadership roles in different markets and segments across our consumer, advance client solutions and small business enterprise prior to his current assignment. He has championed various region and divisional initiatives and takes pride in being a change agent.

Prior to joining Bank of America he successfully held such positions as Regional Service Director, District Manager and Community Bank President during his ten year career with another Top 5 Financial Services Institution. During this time he received a great deal recognition for his success in sales, service, operations and team member development.

He is committed to building high performing teams through the coaching and development of others by consistently and effectively executing trend based and real time coaching sessions with direct reports. He defines success by his ability to make himself available to all team members as a sounding board as well as mentor, coach and to provide career developmental advance.

Michael is an active leader within the community, volunteering and supporting organizations such as Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Autism Society and Special Olympics.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What economic factors are small business owners most concerned about
  • How are entrepreneurs managing their business as a potential recession looms
  • Labor shortages
  • Implementing sustainable practices
  • Concern over rising interest rates is growing for small business owners, and they’re split when evaluating how this will impact their decision to seek financing this year – how is Bank of America helping to ease those concerns as a potential lender

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Michael Williams with Bank of America. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Williams: [00:00:43] Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Well, you are the senior vice president, small business banking manager, Atlanta North. And your firm has recently released a survey about small business. Can you share a little bit about some of the findings?

Michael Williams: [00:00:59] Yeah, it was. You know, we typically have a spring small business owner survey and we’re very excited about the results. One of the one of the key themes that came through is that despite the ever changing economic landscape, our small business owners have a positive business outlook. When you look at the data, two thirds believe that their revenue will increase over the next 12 months. So that’s pretty exciting to see. Our small business owners and entrepreneurs are still very bullish about the upcoming year.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] Now, how are you defining small business? Because a lot of different entities define it in a lot of different ways. And for the mom and pop person that’s running a store downtown versus, you know, a $50 Million business, $100 million business, sometimes that’s categorized as small business. Can you tell us how your firm defined it?

Michael Williams: [00:01:59] Yeah. So small business is defined as anyone with one employees to typically under 50 employees revenues no more than $5 Million. So what you’ll find is in our survey of a thousand small business owners, a good portion of those across the US would be defined as what we consider our mom and pop small businesses as well. So we’re well represented demographics here.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] Now, were there any surprises or is that a surprise to you to see that level of optimism? I talked to small business owners every day. So, I mean, it’s hard to be in a small business without being optimistic. So that didn’t shock me. But were there any surprises other than that for you?

Michael Williams: [00:02:46] What I think about surprises, no, that didn’t surprise me because, you know, our small business owners have success and they’re confident in their ability to manage their business. Right. And so that optimism comes from things that they can control. Right. Certain things within the business that they can control outweigh in some situations some of the challenges that they feel they’ll have to overcome, especially when you think about the last few years and having to really deal with a global health crisis as well as a rising interest rate environment. Small business owners have, you know. Come up with a new set of skills that allow them to quickly adapt and learn from situations and challenges within the environment. So I wasn’t surprised by that at all.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Now, you mentioned some of the challenges that are facing small business like interest rates raising for credit. You know, there’s inflation. A lot of folks during the pandemic especially were dealing with supply chain. How does a small business owner kind of manage these large economic issues that are out of their control for the most part? Have you have you learned anything from that?

Michael Williams: [00:04:12] Yes. When it comes to, you know, things like inflation, you know, small business owners, you know, tell us that inflation and supply chain, as you mentioned, remain a challenge for the business owner as they adapt. 88% of small business owners say inflation is currently impacting their business, and that’s holding steady from what we saw last spring in the survey as well. And so this is forcing small business owners to increase prices. About 60% of the folks who had concerns about inflation shared that one of the ways they were dealing with it as they were increasing prices, another a little over 40% stated that they were reevaluating their business spending over the next year. And they’re also starting to reduce some business costs and a little over 25% even reported some sales being lost, you know, as the impact of inflation.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Now, what are you hearing about kind of these issues regarding talent? Talent challenges are impacting businesses of all sizes. I would imagine that small businesses are no exception to this, as there’s a help wanted sign out. You know, if you go down the street, almost every business has one.

Michael Williams: [00:05:42] Yes, right. It’s a very competitive market when it comes to labor. And the labor shortage continues to be a concern across the country. And so small business owners recognize that overcoming this challenge and and the importance of remaining competitive in the marketplace requires listening to and acting based on the needs of their employees. Many say that they’re taking action to improve their labor outlook for the long term. For example, over the next 12 months, over half of the small business owners have implemented additional perks and benefits to attract new talent. Right? Starting with increasing base pay for new employees, allowing one of the things we learned from the health crisis, right, allowing remote and hybrid work environments, introducing new employee training programs, as well as providing additional health care benefits as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] Now, are you finding any interest for small businesses to lean on technology regarding automation or robotics? Even this chatgpt I’m seeing involved is in customer service and even order taking in some places. I recently was at a totally robotic automated pizza kiosk that exists now and is operational here in Atlanta, where you can buy a freshly made pizza through a vending machine. Are you seeing any of those kind of, you know, as that being part of the talent solution is to automate or create robotics around, you know, tasks that had been previously done by humans?

Michael Williams: [00:07:39] I definitely think so. What we’re seeing that, like you said, right in different, you know, pop up coffeehouses and things I think about around town as well. But it’s amazing how innovative the business owners are right there looking ahead to the future to find ways to implement new technologies that will help not only differentiate their business from competitors, but also find new ways to optimize their staffing and their overall strategy. So, you know, when I think about digital as well and just how technology’s going to impact their ability to take care of clients, 80% of small business owners have digitally optimized their business right. Most are using it not only to expand their profits, but also to reach out to new customers. So, you know, some of the things in the survey, 60% of small business owners have been able to accept more forms of. Cashless payment and 52% of conducted business banking online to add convenience as well. So we’re seeing that in our industry also.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:58] Now, are you finding that a larger and larger percentage of businesses are becoming cashless and that once you make that leap to cashless, that becomes another person you can automate away because you can have a kiosk, just deal with the transaction.

Michael Williams: [00:09:15] Yeah, you know, I don’t know if it’s necessarily about automating away. I do think there’s some benefit to being cashless when there’s a labor shortage, definitely 100%. But most of the businesses are, you know, from people I’m meeting with out in the field. And just the overall theme I’m hearing in the survey are just trying to find more convenient and safer ways to do business and allow clients their customer base to interface with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:50] Well, I mean, the the reality is the reality, right? So are more and more businesses cashless today than they were last year or five years ago?

Michael Williams: [00:10:01] Yeah, I would definitely say more are right. You know, going back to it, you know, 60% of the business owners have been able are now, you know. Accepting some form of cashless payment. So that definitely has increased even over the last 2 to 3 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:22] Now, is that when they say cashless, is that exclusively cashless? Because I’m finding more and more places exclusively cashless.

Michael Williams: [00:10:31] You know what? Our survey didn’t get that deep into it. But I would tell you that overall it was they’re doing some form of cashless. That 60% may not be, you know, strictly cashless, but they are doing more than they did a few years ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:50] Are you seeing in the places that have clients that want to use cash, these reverse ATMs where they you put cash in and like a gift card comes out to the store?

Michael Williams: [00:11:03] Yeah, definitely. Harry Clients look into that technology, work closely with different firms and IT areas to provide that option as well. So that’s definitely an increase that you’re seeing businesses go to.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:21] Also now having a partner like Bank of America banker that they can trust is to me, critical in the growth of any small business. You need to have somebody that’s out there paying attention to all these kind of macro events that are happening to see how they might impact you in a micro level. Can you talk about how Bank of America works with their small business clients to help them either leverage a new technology or just give them the heads up that, hey, pay attention to this because this is coming and it’s impacting a lot of folks and you might be next.

Michael Williams: [00:11:58] Yeah. Listen, we have an ad for 2023. We will continue to continue to partner with small businesses to provide tools and guidance on their path to growth as they’re starting up a business or even as we work through recovery. As we think about possible recession looming, we are always looking for ways to deepen relationships with our clients through enhanced offers and engagement. And to your point, our technology, right, our powerful technology tools are a part of that. Bank of America small business clients can manage their business effectively through customizable, customizable digital tools like our cash flow monitoring, our connected app, our mobile check deposits, as well as Zelle. So there’s this transactions can be more convenient. We’re also looking at different technology that will allow client business clients to have access to their business credit scores, right? So they’re able to monitor the credit health through free access to their business credit score via our Bank of America or Business Advantage 360 online banking. So being able to just leverage the tools for convenience, have someone there on a day to day basis locally giving you advice, and then also being able to monitor your overall credit Health will really help our clients as they look to expand over the next 12 months and beyond and also as they look to think about getting access to additional working capital. Billy, what I’ll tell you most I’m proud of is our small business specialists, right? At Bank of America. We have a small business team that’s ready and equipped to help our business owners with the unique challenges that they face day to day.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:06] So if you were advising a small business owner, how often would you have them meet with one of the Bank of America small business specialists and have a conversation about their business and, you know, just maybe just kind of develop that personal relationship so that when the time is needed, they are there for them to help them grow their business.

Michael Williams: [00:14:34] Yeah.

Michael Williams: [00:14:35] I would I would answer that question a couple of ways. Right. First, it depends on the needs of the business overall. Sometimes you may have unexpected events come up, and that’s why we’re so proud of the local presence we have and all of the communities we serve. We also have our small business resources through Bank of America, dotcom small business resources. But to directly answer your question, I would say at least every 90 days at the top end of that, maybe six months, but I would say about every 90 days is a good time to connect with a with your local small business specialist just to let him or her know a little bit more about what’s going on in your business so we can. Stay up to date on the business priorities. Any life priorities that may be going on, as well as keep the client up to date on technology advances and different offers and promotions that we may have available as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:41] Well, Michael, if somebody wants to learn more about your survey or connect with one of the small business specialists, what’s the website? What’s the best way to get ahold of somebody on your team?

Michael Williams: [00:15:52] Yeah, the best way to get a hold of someone on our team is Bank of america.com/small business. From there you’ll be able to make appointments. You’d also be able to get a link to our resource site and within that resource site is also the a lot of the data we’re referencing here as it relates to our small business owner report.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:18] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Michael Williams: [00:16:23] Hey, I appreciate you as well. And I got to tell you, I really enjoyed one of your recent podcasts where you talked about the top three tips for overcoming sales objections.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:34] All right. Well, thank you for that. Michael Williams, Bank of America, Lee Kantor. This is it for Atlanta Business Radio for today. We will see you all next time.

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Daniel Klein With Joseph Studios

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Daniel Klein With Joseph Studios
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Daniel Klein is Joseph Studios‘ Founder and CEO. His intelligence, corporate, and digital marketing experience spans 15 years. Formerly, he supported National and US/Partner Clients. After writing a book in 2016 and contracting some of his friends to help with content, graphics and editing, they decided to stay together and form a marketing agency. In his role with at Joseph Studios, he ensures the brand’s and client’s growth via excellent digital marketing.

Connect with Joseph Studios on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Business growth
  • How to build a successful marketing agency
  • How to use AI for business and marketing
  • How to continue to scale and grow in 2023
  • How to launch a business in 2023

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have Daniel Klein with Joseph Studios. Welcome, Daniel.

Daniel Klein: [00:00:43] Hey, Lee. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Joseph’s Studios, how you serving folks.

Daniel Klein: [00:00:49] So Joseph Studios is an organic focused marketing and PR agency here in Atlanta, been in Atlanta since 2017. But we’re a remote agency across the whole US, predominantly focused on what we call deep insight. It’s the ability to find, join and influence your ideal buyers basically anywhere on the digital landscape. It’s pretty cool.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] So what does an ideal client look like for you?

Daniel Klein: [00:01:12] Ideal clients for us are those who are trying to influence a particular person. They have a need, they have a lifestyle they’re trying to reach or solution they’re trying to get at. They might hang out in specific areas of the Internet and the brand that’s trying to reach out to them just doesn’t have a good lay of the land, as it were, or they’re specifically trying to reach these subgroups. And so what we can do is we can very quickly understand who is in each brand’s area of operations and who are the key players within these social networks. And we can build messaging that resonates with that particular person, much like the book Love Languages, where everyone needs to have I Love You said in a slightly different way. This is that at scale and from a marketing and PR aspect. So it’s being able to say things in a very niche way to each type of person, kind of kind of like when your mom asks you something, you might say it differently than if your dad asks for something. It’s the same approach just at scale. Now, does.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:08] It work better for B2C or B2B or does it matter?

Daniel Klein: [00:02:12] So we have both. So we’re one of three agencies authorized to work on behalf of Rolex USA. We’re supporting major streaming services online. We’re also supporting mom and pops who are getting started in e-commerce. So it works great from the B2B perspective and that we can target like the leadership teams of major brands and build psychographic profiles for those groups of people and then message them in those niche ways that we know they’re going to resonate and get attention and attraction with them. We can also get broad, broad spectrum appeal. So if you’re trying to influence someone through a distributor network, let’s say, for example, for the beverage industry or you’re trying to grow grassroots style campaign for, say, HVAC or some sort of like electrical generation capability, we can do that too. It’s finding joining and influencing those ideal buyers literally anywhere.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:03] Now are the tactics you use, are they advertising? Are they PR or is it a combination?

Daniel Klein: [00:03:09] It’ll be a combination. So we’ll build a package that’s unique to each person based on the needs that they have. So, for example, if you’re just getting started and you’re about to launch, there might be some awareness activities that we need to do and we’ll build out campaigns that are going to grow that awareness. There might be retargeting efforts, there might be client acquisition and lifetime customer value campaigns that we do to keep and then build on that that follower base and that client base that you have. So when you show up at Joseph Studios, we’re going to have a package that’s built specifically for you in the place that you are in your entrepreneurial journey or your brand journey. And that gets you a specific way of down the path. And we’ll measure those results every month and every quarter, and we’ll update the plan as we go. As part of an iterative process improvement methodology.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:57] Now, do you come into your clients kind of on a one off project when you start and then it grows from there? Or is this something where either they’ve never had a marketing partner before or they had a bad experience and they want someone just to take over the whole show?

Daniel Klein: [00:04:13] Yeah, so great question. We do have brands that come to us with very specific goals in mind. Perfect. We can help them out. We can have we have brands that come to us because they work with several agencies that aren’t working well with each other and they’re not talking to each other. So they send it over to us and bring it all in house under one roof. We have brands that want us to do everything. We have a lot of clients who are new or new ish chief marketing officers, probably within like 4 to 6 months of landing that job and their board of directors gives them an absurd amount of work that they have to get done. And they’re just like, My gosh, I can’t get all this done in one go. This is insane. And then they hire us to be their one stop shop for everything marketing, ads and PR There’s no right or wrong way to go down that path. And that’s that’s kind of the the difficult part of being in business is it might work for one person, it might not work for their competition. And understanding those nuances, understanding what works, and then systematically growing the what we would call verticals or the campaigns that are working while understanding the limitations.

Daniel Klein: [00:05:21] That’s that’s why you would hire an agency like. Joseph Studios. And to your point, there are plenty of bad actors out there and there are low barriers to entry when it comes to marketing. Any any mechanic. For example, I used to be a mechanic, but any mechanic can wake up one day and be like, You know what this is? This is a thing for me. But I tell you, it’s it’s a discipline. It’s a profession. And we’ve been at this profession for literal years. I’ve been doing this nonstop every day for seven straight years. And my teammates have between 5 and 7 full time dedicated years doing this and nothing else. And so if you come to us and you’re looking for a social media manager or a PR manager, they’ve been doing that their entire career. They see this as their profession and their career, and they’re very focused and driven towards making sure that you have the absolute best outcome possible. So it really is dependent on who you go with. But when you go with Joseph Studios, you’re going to be in excellent hands.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:17] Now, I’m a big believer in having people who are experts do what they do and walk me through what that first conversation is like to make sure that when you’re when someone’s dealing with you, you know that you can help them get the outcome they desire and they know they’re dealing with somebody that’s kind of an expert. So it’s kind of a vetting for both of you. What is that first conversation look like? I would imagine you’re asking a lot more questions of them than maybe they anticipate.

Daniel Klein: [00:06:51] Yeah, a lot of times that first conversation, we don’t really go over any presentation materials whatsoever and it’s just understanding what they want the next step to be and what they want the outcomes to be and what they’ve tried before, and doing a little bit of ideation with them and working with them. But it’s that first meeting really is a free consultation and I can answer questions along the way. So can my teammates. We can brainstorm ideas and solutions and come up with really great campaigns or the frameworks. But it’s that first meeting, that discovery meeting is not a sales call. It is very much free consultation work.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] So what are some of the questions you’ll ask?

Daniel Klein: [00:07:34] Some of the questions will ask include Where are you today in your brand journey? What are you hoping to achieve? Where do you hope to go? It’ll include What are you currently doing and trying? Is it working? What are you measuring and how are you measuring it? It fits into some of the things that you might see in the corporate world. There’s two frameworks that come to mind. One is called Smart. It’s a way of setting goals. Smart stands for sizable, measurable, attainable, realistic and. Time. Time bound, I believe. Relevant and time bound. So understanding where our clients goals are from a smart perspective, super duper important. The other is called Dmaic. Dmaic. Define measure, analyze, improve and control. And the questions in that instance are going to help us understand how is their ability to control and monitor and improve upon their current situation today, and what can we do to enhance that? So a lot of the initial questions that we ask are trying to understand how in control of their own process are there. Are they what goals and aspirations do they have and how well defined are they? And if not, and we’re kind of starting from scratch, that’s okay too. That’s probably 30, 40% of the companies out there. They’re just looking for help. They just need to get things under control. They just need to grow. They just need to know that their marketing and advertising dollars are going to make them profit. And so they would hire an agency like Joseph Studios and we come in and make sure that that happens.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:07] Now, do you have any advice for the entrepreneur that’s out there on how to leverage AI? I it’s in the news every day. People are talking about it. It seems overwhelming for some folks. It seems like something you should lock up and never look at for other folks. How would you recommend your clients and or prospective clients to at least kind of dabble with AI to to know what it is, number one, but also know how to best leverage it moving forward?

Daniel Klein: [00:09:37] Sure. Yeah. So we use AI here at the agency. The way we use it is not to be any kind of corner cutting. That’s not what it’s for. What we use AI for is to introduce our teammates and ourselves and our clients to new ideas quickly. So if we wanted to come up with a list of 20 podcast titles, 30 seconds, boom, done right there, and instead of coming up with a whole bunch of really creative, cool, clever ideas over a 2 or 3 hour period, we can iterate through 60 pretty creative ideas and at very least get an idea of what we’re hoping for. If you need to get access to specific information very quickly, it’s a great tool. Think of it more as a calculator than it is like a one stop end all, be all solution. And it’s definitely not omnipresent or all knowing or anything else. It does make mistakes. It does have typos and it does provide factually incorrect, inactive, inaccurate information. So use it, but use it as a tool just like you would a shovel, just like you would a forklift. It’s a it’s a cool whiz bang thing that will absolutely become a part of our shared future. But it is not a solution that I would replace a human with. Not at all.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:59] Now, do you have any marketing advice for the listener right now, something that’s actionable that they could be doing today that they’re probably not doing?

Daniel Klein: [00:11:09] Some things that I don’t see people doing that I think they absolutely should. More direct to consumer. I think going more direct to consumer is a good thing. But again, it depends on the industry. So any time you’re able to build a relationship with your end consumer and help showcase that, their life is going to be better as a result of choosing your brand versus other brands, that’s when you’re winning. That’s when you’re systematically winning, whether it be through ads or PR or marketing or anything else. Building those relationships at scale is something that I think more brands should be doing. And doing that in more authentic and genuine ways is definitely something that we’re not doing enough of as a market industry, but absolutely should.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:58] Now, is there a niche that you specialize in or are you pretty industry agnostic?

Daniel Klein: [00:12:03] Industry agnostic. But the common denominator between all the brands we represent is that they want to build relationships with their end consumers. They want to improve upon their lives. They want to better their lives. They want to be there for them. They don’t want to be a logo. They want to be a group of humans who have come together as a company and want to better the lives of others. That’s that’s what we’re after. We we don’t necessarily we’re not necessarily the best approach for any kind of like the cheapest is the best type solution. So if if your brand is a commodity or it’s like, just get this this kind of stuff out there, we don’t really care about quality, then Joseph Studios might not be the best approach, but if you care about quality, you care about your customers. You want to be a human and you want to be more than a logo, then we’re a great we’re a great choice.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Daniel Klein: [00:13:01] Oh, how can you help me?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] Yeah. Do you need more talent? You need more clients. What are you looking for?

Daniel Klein: [00:13:08] That’s a great question. I think at the moment we are looking for a chief marketing officer. If you can believe it, we’re looking for a chief marketing officer, someone who can be there for our clients from the very beginning and help them realize a shared vision. We have some really great team members, and I think it’s time that we we look for a chief marketing officer. So if you’re out there and the Atlanta or US market and you’re you’re considering that next step in your career and you’re thinking, you know what, I think I would be a great chief marketing officer for a handful of high caliber client companies within an agency, then let us know.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:48] Good stuff. Well, Daniel, if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on your team, what is the coordinates? What’s the website?

Daniel Klein: [00:13:55] Check us out at Joseph studios.net. And you can also check me out on LinkedIn and you can send us an email. Our contact information is on the contact page of our website and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:06] All right. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Daniel Klein: [00:14:10] Thanks, Lee. Appreciate you.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:12] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

About Our Sponsor

OnPay’sOnPay-Dots payroll services and HR software give you more time to focus on what’s most important. Rated “Excellent” by PC Magazine, we make it easy to pay employees fast, we automate all payroll taxes, and we even keep all your HR and benefits organized and compliant.

Our award-winning customer service includes an accuracy guarantee, deep integrations with popular accounting software, and we’ll even enter all your employee information for you — whether you have five employees or 500. Take a closer look to see all the ways we can save you time and money in the back office.

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

John Letter With Proem Behavioral Health

by

Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
John Letter With Proem Behavioral Health
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John Letter is CEO of Proem Behavioral Health, formerly nView Health, developer of the evidence-based clinical workflow software engine that helps providers triage patients and produce better mental health outcomes. He is an experienced healthcare executive serving most recently as the President and COO of a successful population health company in the sleep health space. He works tirelessly to help teams achieve sustainable growth while over-delivering on customer promises each day

At Proem, he is responsible for overall strategic direction, working alongside an incredible team focused on building digital health tools to help providers get the right answers, diagnoses and outcomes for their patients the first time. John and his wife reside in Atlanta and have two grown children.

Connect with John on LinkedIn and follow Proem Health on Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Proem Behavioral Health key challenges it’s looking to solve for the market it serves
  • Users of their technology and how do they come to know about it
  • Sort of challenges the users of this technology face – and how is this helpful to them achieving their healthcare mission and patient care goals
  • Mental health awareness needs to have significant levels of visibility all year round in our society and within healthcare and within the business community
  • Advice for aspiring entrepreneurs wanting to address the challenges faced by both healthcare workers and people who are directly in need of mental health services

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio. Brought to you by on pay. Atlanta’s New standard in payroll. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Atlanta Business Radio, we have John Letter with Proem Behavioral Health. Welcome, John.

John Letter: [00:00:44] Thank you for having me. Lee It’s great to be on with you. Well, I’m.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] So excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your firm, how you serving folks.

John Letter: [00:00:51] Yeah. So by way of background, proem behavioral health is a we call it a workflow technology engine. It’s a software product that was developed using really best in class assessment tools from the foremost psychiatrists and psychologists around the world that developed these tools to comprehensively and accurately assess broad patient populations to help get to the right diagnosis and then certainly to follow patients. These were renowned psychologists and psychiatrists that we built exclusive digital licensure with to provide these services around the world. And really what we do is we work with providers of behavioral health to screen large populations, say, say a primary care physician that’s seeing many patients can screen these patients to determine if further evaluation is necessary. So there’s a population based approach to it. And then for those that require further evaluation, we have what are called structured interviews, effectively our comprehensive interviews that are looking at a multitude of possibilities. As an example, if someone’s dealing with what they believe to be anxiety, these tools are designed to uncover. Is there something driving that anxiety? Is there a traumatic event that a person has had in their past? So it’s really about triaging and comprehensively determining what the issue most likely is, and then that that gives a provider a great understanding very quickly through the use of technology. And then when they make determinations as to what’s happening, it allows our platform, allows they and their patients to sort of follow the progress of their treatment so that they have visibility and an understanding and a dashboarding manner of reporting way how their therapy is working for them. So that’s really program in a nutshell.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:54] Now for the layperson that isn’t kind of on top of these issues and isn’t aware of maybe even some of them behavioral health. You mentioned psychiatry as one of the people who deal in behavioral health, but that includes also addiction. There’s other things that a person that could be afflicted with a variety of ailments fall under that umbrella of behavioral health. Can you kind of explain some of them or or at least identify what some of those kind of bigger buckets are?

John Letter: [00:03:25] Yeah, it’s a great question. And you’re exactly.

[00:03:27] Right. We say those that are providing behavioral health services, they’re providing them in different settings for different reasons. You mentioned substance use disorder clinics. It’s it’s some of the providers that we help, right? Typically when and typically is in a majority of the cases, when someone’s suffering from a substance use disorder, as it’s called, uncovering underlying mental illness or behavioral health issues is very, very important to treating that substance use disorder. The same is true for pediatric care for for children or primary care physicians, behavioral behavioral health providers, or frankly, researchers that are researching and developing new drugs or new medical devices or behavioral health information. So it’s a very broad spectrum with of behavioral health that we’re helping to.

John Letter: [00:04:26] Help them get it right, frankly. And I think the other thing to note is that it’s not just psychiatrists or psychologists. There are licensed clinical social workers and what we call qualified health professionals, licensed clinical social workers, licensed professional professional counselors, MDS, DOS, DS, PhDs. So very broad range of folks that are providing behavioral health care.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:53] And this this also can be geared to folks that have like chronic issues, right? Because staying compliant with a protocol or a way of dealing with their issues and they’re not if they’re not compliant, then all of a sudden that’s a domino effect that can affect many things. So in order to get them on the right path, you have to kind of know where to begin and how to kind of keep them on track, right?

John Letter: [00:05:19] You’re exactly right. I was reading yesterday something from I believe it was the American College of Physicians that talked about treating diabetics. And one of the one of the protocols that you follow in treating a diabetic is to look for underlying mental illness, co-occurring things, comorbid things that are happening to that patient so that you can properly address those in the procurement of better care for the diabetes. So you’re exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:50] So how did this come about? Like, what’s your back story?

John Letter: [00:05:55] Uh, problems started with our founder who is a family practitioner, um, that dealt with some personal tragedy in his life. And, and as a practitioner wondered, um, how can I miss it? You know, I’m a doctor, I’m supposed to see these things. So he started researching how do we get the right tools in the hands of the people that are the frontline at the time, family physicians, primary care physicians, and how do we assess broad populations? And he kept finding his way into the clinical and academic research world where all of these this great thinking and these tools were designed to include or exclude someone from a depression drug study, for instance. You don’t want a person in a depression drug trial that has underlying bipolar two disorder because that the efficacy of that depression drug will not meet the FDA standards. So he found himself there and then realized through these licensing agreements, hey, you know, we can take error out. We can take bias out by building these into modern technology interfaces that do a lot of the the legwork, the algorithmic work that sits behind a lot of these complex tools. So that’s really how Proem came about.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:28] Now, um, so how does it work? Like give me an example, say that I have one of these disorders or an addiction. How does the, the software help my, the person that’s taking care of me? Number one, make sure they got they got me on the right path. Number two, keep me on that path. Like. Like how does it kind of watch my back and protect me from myself some of the times?

John Letter: [00:07:53] Yeah, that’s the what we call outcomes measures and dashboarding. So the ability to look at a, a person once they’ve been diagnosed and a treatment plan has been acted, now you’re talking about what you’re saying, like, how do I stay on the rails, if you will? We have these tools that are designed that automatically follow the patient through by assessing them on a continuous basis to ensure across multiple pieces from from managing symptoms. So if you’re treating a person for depression, there are symptoms that you’re treating, right? So we have the ability to look at Lee once a week between therapy sessions and ask him how he’s doing with those symptoms. In addition, we look at what in in the behavioral health world is a very critical thing to ensuring successful treatment. It’s therapeutic alliance. So am I getting along with my doctor and vice versa? Are we getting each other? So that’s another piece of it. So you’ve got you know, you’re managing symptoms, you’re ensuring that the patient and the clinician are aligned. And if not, what do we need to do to do that? And then ultimately we’re looking at a third piece of it that’s called functional impairment. But effectively, how are you doing in your life? So you may think that your symptoms of anxiety or depression are getting better, but if you’ve also told us that you’ve missed work for the last five days, the clinician wants to have that conversation. So it’s really a comprehensive look into how am I doing through my treatment and how quickly in real time through technology, can we make adjustment adjustments as a patient and a provider together to help you get where you need to go?

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Now, are these kind of interactions done using technology, or is it a human to human interaction where someone is calling or someone is emailing or there’s some kind of a human, you know, checking in? Because I would imagine with today’s technology and all of the, you know, watch devices, you have, you can glean a lot of information that maybe the person’s telling you one thing, but they’re, you know, resting heart rate is telling you something else.

John Letter: [00:10:15] You are exactly right. And, you know, if we were to have a conversation about where it’s going, that is certainly a significant part of what’s in in our near future and things that we’re investigating. One of the things that we try and make sure as it relates to what we what you’re calling passive data collection is the accuracy of it, the clinical efficacy of it, and then the patient acceptance of it. But in terms of how it’s delivered, there are multiple ways that it’s delivered. It is all delivered through technology. There are there are patient responses so a patient can self-report. Through that through the technology platform back to their clinician in real time in between visits. There are times that when you’re in a visit that a clinician may be performing this on your behalf or asking you questions, if you will. All of which is done within the platform to provide real time results. And then there are confederates that can, you know, provide these things on a clinician’s behalf. A nurse practitioner or someone else that, you know is interacting with the patient prior to. But it’s all delivered through technology. But you’re hitting on what the future is. How do we use passive technology to ensure heart rate’s a great thing that you mentioned heart rate variability. You may be saying one thing, but your heart rate variability is telling us another. So there’s a there’s a lot of really cool things to help this world that we that are certainly on our roadmap now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:55] Are the interactions as simple as like they could receive a text that says, How are you feeling right now?

John Letter: [00:12:01] Yes, it can be as simple as that. We use primarily or are these evidence based, what are called monitors and functional impairment tools that are that are simple questionnaires that people respond, you know, treating mental illness. There is an an x ray machine or an MRI. It’s it’s very complex. So. How people respond is very important. But it’s you know, it’s how a clinician reacts to that response based on their experience with the patient and their experience in general. That’s really important. Context in treatment.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:37] And how are the patients responding to this? Is this something that they’re open to or is this just another thing they’ve got to do? And then they’re saying whatever they got to say to be done with it?

John Letter: [00:12:47] Yeah. Acceptance is, you know, I’ve been in healthcare now for about ten years. And what’s really interesting about behavioral health is, is because of a lot of the frustration that has existed. And, you know, patients that are ping ponged around when they find what’s working for them and their clinician, we find that they’re very engaged, allowing a patient to be part of their treatment, to visualize, to see the differences over time so that it’s not a black box, It’s not something that I don’t go as one psychologist said to me recently, your patients don’t just come in and lie on the couch. And we we stand there with our arms folded and take notes. There’s a lot more to it. So we have found that involving the patient in showing them this is working for you has really created great engagement with them.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:44] And then are there or what are they the safeguards to just prevent a person from just telling you what you want to hear?

John Letter: [00:13:54] Yeah, we’re we’re providing support. It’s always up to the clinician, the expert, to ultimately determine the truthfulness. Whether whether someone’s just trying to get you off. That’s why we’re looking at it in a in a multi dimensional way. You may be saying one thing here, but doing another elsewhere. So these these tools are built with those kind of.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:23] Checks and balances. Are kind of.

John Letter: [00:14:24] Those things in mind? Yeah, yeah. That’s that’s we could talk for hours about this, but, um, yeah. And I will tell you that, you know, to the extent that to the extent that, um, passive data that’s collected can be beneficial and it’s efficacious, I think there’s a huge opportunity in treating in the world of treating behavioral health issues.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:48] Well, I think it’s fascinating. Just the just kind of the category of behavioral health is fascinating to me. And then now you layer on technology to help in that area. I think there’s a lot of possibilities. What has kind of been the experience of probably a lot of folks that are in the behavioral health side of the the room, you know, embracing technology and embracing all these tools? And has that been a smooth transition to like, because you’re really a tech firm, you know, and you’re delivering this service to this space that there’s a lot of folks in there that may not be, as you know, kind of have that tech startup be early adopter mentality that a lot of tech folks have.

John Letter: [00:15:31] Yeah, I you know, I would we look at these things every day sort of who is the ideal customer. Um I would tell you there are those and you’re always going to have naysayers. There are people that you know.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:44] Um, no, it’s been done in different way for a long time and they don’t want to be the first one in the pool.

John Letter: [00:15:50] And that’s it. So, you know, if you look at the adoption curve in the, in the classic sense, those are sort of would be the laggards. Um, I will tell you that, that we find ourselves with those that are more tech savvy. Um, you know, it’s more natural to them. But what we find more broadly is people that are that providers that are really focused on having more data at their fingertips and making their practice more efficient. Because you and I both know there’s less and less time. There’s there’s tons of pressure on providers to get it right and quickly to move on. So we’ve had pretty good acceptance rates as it relates to helping them get to the right answers more quickly and efficiently. So so technology obviously does that. But I would be I would be fooling us both if I were to tell you that there aren’t laggers that exist in every domain of business, particularly when you’re dealing with technology.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:53] Now, I would think, though, in some ways this is a good time to be having a service and a product like yours because mental health is so at the fore. It seems like there’s so much more acceptance like this generation, there’s so much less shame around a lot of these issues that back in the day, maybe when we were younger, there was some shame there was that nobody was talking about a lot of these issues. But now it seems that the more and more people talk about it, more and more people are taking action and getting help.

John Letter: [00:17:25] Yeah, it is happening. And, you know, I think there’s a natural evolution for anything. I think a lot of health care is is still to an extent, stigmatized. As I’ve said to people many times, you know, people don’t stand around the water cooler if there were one and say they’re I’m aging myself and say, hey, I’m a type two diabetic, how about you? So there is this sort of there’s an opportunity within mental health that I think doesn’t exist in other places, a larger opportunity because of that, it’s become mainstream. You know, we that we have thought leaders or celebrities that are comfortably talking about their experiences, we’re fooling ourselves if we don’t think that we don’t deal with some sort of behavioral health issue or mental illness in our lives. It’s just a reality. So to the extent that we continue the conversation, um, make it acceptable to have the conversation, the more and more we do that, I believe the the less and less stigmatized mental illness and seeking help will be.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:40] Yeah, I mean, you were talking about people aren’t, you know, bragging about having diabetes. I mean some people I don’t want to say they’re bragging, but they are outwardly talking about how they’ve been in therapy and how they’ve gotten help. And, you know, they’re encouraging their peers to to go down those paths where, I mean, that’s really a new world for a lot of folks. That wasn’t the case for forever.

John Letter: [00:19:05] You know, they used to be called mental institutions or sanatoriums, like just by virtue of the history of treating mental illness, there is sort of this scourge associated with it. And I think you’re right. I think generationally, um. It’s it’s become more acceptable and to an extent maybe more fashionable is probably a poor term for it. But that’s great from our perspective. Like that’s step one. Yeah. Do something about it is step two and the most important thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:42] And then and I think because a lot of these younger people are looking at technology to solve a problem they have faster. So anything you have along these lines that does that, they’re in, you know, they’ll give it a shot. Yes.

John Letter: [00:19:58] You’re right. And you know, the I think the one thing that’s also important to note here is that. Although, you know, the the illnesses themselves and we say mental illness for a reason because it is it’s like a physical illness that’s the parody part of the paradigm that we’re trying to, you know, convey. Um, although it’s very complex, it’s very treatable and, you know, getting help. There’s only good that can come of it. So, you know, it’s it’s although the issue may be complex, there are ways that you can solve it provided that you’re willing to put the proverbial work in.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:44] So what do you need more of? How can we help you? Or do you need more talent? You need more technologists, You need more clients. What do you need?

John Letter: [00:20:52] You always you always need more of all the above clients. I think we appreciate that sort of getting the word out. This ability to provide thought leadership to a marketplace from our perspective, you know, to the extent that we can have conversations with your with your listeners that are dealing with these issues, hospital systems dealing with overwrought emergency departments, because people don’t have a place to turn behavioral health specialists or primary care specialists that are seeing these things on a typical basis, we can help them get the right answers. If it’s nothing more than giving a primary care physician a head start as to where to send a patient if they themselves won’t treat them. That is is sort of we hope that venues like this allow us to to open up doors to.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:55] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the coordinates? What’s the website.

John Letter: [00:22:02] Yeah please do go to prom. Health.com p r o m h e a l t h.com and ask to speak with us. We would love to talk to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:14] Well, John, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

John Letter: [00:22:19] Thank you, Lee. We really appreciate you offering this this opportunity. All right.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:23] This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Matthew Lis With Crestcom International

by

Columbus Business Radio
Columbus Business Radio
Matthew Lis With Crestcom International
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Matthew Lis, President at Crestcom Internationl

He has lived most of his life in Ohio. He received his BSME from OSU and MBA from Miami University.
Matt has engineering, operations and distribution experience. He enjoys helping the next generation of leaders prepare for their future.

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Leadership Development training

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Columbus, Ohio. It’s time for Columbus Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Columbus Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Matt Lis with Crestcom International. Welcome, Matt.

Matt Lis: [00:00:29] Well, thank you, Lee. I appreciate you having me on today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Crestcom, how you serving folks.

Matt Lis: [00:00:37] Crestcom is a leadership development company. We have developed a great program that’s 12 month training program that’s all live facilitated that helps develop your managers into better leaders.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:53] So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in kind of leadership development?

Matt Lis: [00:00:58] Well, I’ve been involved in all kinds of operations manufacturing, distribution, engineering. I had a quite a broad variety of background. So I have a lot of experience in managing and working with others. And prior to this, I was leading companies and running companies, and I actually took this training and figured it was so impactful that it would make sense for me to allow to lend my, you know, experience and background to help develop our next generation of leaders.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:33] Now, do you feel that leaders are born or are they can they be taught some of these things? Is this something that just comes naturally to certain folks, or is it something that anybody can be taught if the training is right?

Matt Lis: [00:01:46] Well, leadership is a lot like becoming a parent. You know, you aren’t, you know, trained for leadership. You are, you know, brought into it by, okay, hey, you’re going to be a you’re the best accountant. So now we’re going to make you our manager. And you have to really want to become a leader and you have to work at it and you have to apply some skills and some practice and some education to it. And that’s what our program does, because most companies are very good at, you know, developing their employees, let’s say, from day to day, functional group, right. Their job duties. But they don’t give them training to help them develop their management skills and become the leaders that we really need. And our program addresses that. And that that is, you know, we have about 12 fundamental skills that we use in our training to help you craft your leadership talents.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:41] Now, is there any kind of symptoms my organization might be having where leadership training is the solution? Like what are some of the clues that I might not be noticing or connecting the dots that I need leadership development training for my team?

Matt Lis: [00:02:56] Well, one big red flag to me is silos, because when you have silos, that means your team isn’t working together and they aren’t on the same page. So they might not know your strategic direction as a whole. So that that is a big lack of communication. You know, you don’t have productive teams. You might need to look at your generations, you know, the different generations you have at your work. You know, if you have problems with your groups not really knowing what direction they’re working on or what they should be working on, that’s a big sign that the leadership needs some support and some, you know, training to help them develop that.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:38] Now, when you were earlier in your career, did you have a coach or did you have any type of mentor that helped kind of guide you or lead you?

Matt Lis: [00:03:48] Well, when I was younger, I had quite a few different managers that I’ve worked with, but I went back and got my MBA and that’s a very theoretical training program you go through. So if you like to write papers, the MBA is perfect, but if you really want to be a, let’s say on the ground, learning and developing yourself, a leadership program like this is is much more, you know, tailored to the person that really wants to craft their skills because this is hands on. We do case studies, we do exercises. We do a lot of group discussions and we learn from our video faculty. So it’s a really well-rounded program that, you know, allows you to move forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:40] So can you walk us through what it would be like? Say, I raised my hand and I say, Matt, this is perfect. I would love to do this. So what kind of does it feel like for me now that once I’ve agreed to do this, what does that kind of the onboarding and the launching of a program look like?

Matt Lis: [00:04:56] Sure. Well, the first thing I’m going to do with you is I’m going to pump the. Breaks a minute and say, hey, before you actually sign on the dotted line, let’s do our test drive because you’re going to be investing a lot of time and money in it. And we offer a free 2.5 hour test drive. We call our Leadership Skills workshop, and that allows me to come to your facility. You bring in your management staff. We go through a 2.5 hour program that simulates on one of our training sessions and that allows you to test drive a lot of things. It allows you to test drive the program, and the material allows you to test drive myself as your facilitator, because if we don’t have a good connection, your staff will not have good, you know, results and out of the training. And then you also get to see if your staff is engaged and what kind of returns you can expect from the training program. And if all that looks good, then let’s move forward, because I wouldn’t want you to buy a car just with a brochure. Right? You want to go test drive it and see how you like it. And it’s same with leadership development. You should really understand the material, the facilitator and your team’s engagement, and then we can get you signed up. And it’s a 12 month program. You get two classes per month and each class is two hours. And we broke it up that way. So it allows you to really stay engaged and not get overwhelmed. So you get 48 hours of training. And as well as each month we do a one hour coaching session to help you get your participants engaged, where they actually create their own personal action plans to put our training to use. Because if you don’t change your behavior, i.e. use the training, you’re just wasting your money because it’s really entertainment at that point. So we’re very different from that standpoint that we require our our participants to hold themselves accountable, to use our training.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:07] Well, you bring up a good point. A lot of folks maybe have training fatigue that they’ve gone through a lot of these classes or they’ve taken these one off things. A consultant comes in and sells them something and, you know, they got a manual and it’s just sitting on a desk, you know, in a in a closet somewhere. And it’s never kind of cracked open. What let’s talk about that accountability part of it, because it sounds like a really important point of differentiation. How do you kind of help your clients help themselves by holding them accountable?

Matt Lis: [00:07:41] Well, at at and at the end and that during our module trainings, we point out some potential areas that could be action items because in each session we have about 4 or 5 different points that we’re kind of learning and training the students on. And during the the final, you know, end of the conclusion, we talk about getting prep for your personal action plans. And what we do is we have a online learning portal where they can go in and then they can identify the most important or most impactful subject to the training session they did and write that down and then they can decide how they want to use it. Now, that’s a big point because if we were to say, Here’s your homework, go do this and put this into place at your work, they don’t own it, right? So we allow them to make their own project, you know, what do they want to do? It might be as simple as having a meeting with someone and using the skills we learned and apply that in the meeting. Sometimes it’s working with their teams, with it to save some money and be more effective or gain productivity. But we let them make the pick because then they own it and then they have, you know, the responsibility to actually put it in place and close their own action items and submit for success and when they submit their.

Matt Lis: [00:09:09] Their findings are there. The final project of it, they gets wrapped up into our learning portal and their managers get to approve the results. So, for instance, if someone said they made a change and it’s saving them $8,000 on that change, the manager can look at that and, you know, have a question and say, let’s talk about this. And maybe they agree it’s a $4,000 improvement, right? Then the manager can approve it and then it gets like locked into the the year end results and we can give them a great spreadsheet that shows all the areas that their people have improved in and the changes that have been made and the results. So it’s a very impactful report for the CEOs of the managers to know they are getting something back for their money that they’re spending. We know our typical customers get a return on investment 6 to $8 for every dollar they invest in our program. So they get a great return on investment.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Now, is your typical client just one of these mega enterprise level organizations or is this some some of the training can benefit a small to mid sized company as well?

Matt Lis: [00:10:28] Yeah, that’s a great question, Lee, because yes, have we worked with the big mega companies? Yes, we’ve worked with Coca Cola and Sony and Toyota and companies like that. But that’s a very small portion of our client list. Our our true clients are that small to mid sized company, you know, from 20 people to 250. That’s the majority, probably 90% of all of our business because we know they don’t have the resources to create a leadership program, nor do they have the ability to, you know, spend a lot of time trying to find one that would be a fit for them. So we we specifically target that market because we know they need the most support. And the best part about it is the small to mid size managers. They’re used to doing a lot of different things, so they’re very receptive to the training and they get a lot out of it, more so than if you’re pigeonholed in a very large company and you don’t see the big picture of your organization.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:34] Now, do you have a niche that you serve that’s a sweet spot for you based on your previous experience experience, or is this something that’s kind of industry agnostic?

Matt Lis: [00:11:44] Well, it’s it’s very much for anyone that either leads, manages or supervises people. We aren’t tied to any specific industry because like I said before, we don’t get into your specific trainings, right? We are teaching leadership skills and it translates to any industry, not only industry, but it translates into your personal life. And a lot of these leadership skills, boy, when you become a parent, they can be very beneficial, especially when you get into negotiations with your little ones because you know, you don’t realize it. But leadership is not just a 9 to 5 job. Leadership is what you do your whole life and 24 over seven.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:36] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice, is it is there a website? Is there a place they can go? Can they hire you as a speaker? Maybe as just a way to kind of get to know you a little bit first? Or is it something they have to commit to a, you know, an engagement before you come in?

Matt Lis: [00:12:56] No, certainly I’m open to speaking to groups because it’s a great way to help people understand the benefits of leadership development. We have a great website at ww.com.com and you can also reach me by email at matlis at cruise.com dot com. So it’s M82 dot Ellis at cruise.com dot com. That’s crs2. Com.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:29] Well, Matt, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you greatly.

Matt Lis: [00:13:36] I really enjoyed this and I’m looking forward to, you know, hearing back from some of your listeners and seeing how we can help them and make their lives and their employees lives much more beneficial.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:49] Amen to that. Well, thank you again. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Columbus Business Radio.

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