Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Steve Kahan With Insight Partners

November 9, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Steve Kahan With Insight Partners

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Steve Kahan, Marketing Expert at Insight Partners.

He has successfully helped grow seven startup companies from the early stage to going public or being sold, resulting in $5 billion in shareholder value. Steven is the author of Amazon’s best-seller, Be a Startup Superstar. Steven’s newest book is called High-Velocity Digital Marketing.

Connect with Steve on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Anatomy of a $1 Billion Exit
The situation was on day 1 at Thycotic – where revenue was flat
The big bets the company made
The modern digital marketing strategies the company put in place – that any company can replicate
Easy-to-implement strategies for getting found online, providing the most critical information, and getting buyers to purchase—fast.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Steve Kahan with INSIGHT Partners. Welcome, Steve.

Steve Kahan: [00:00:26] Thank you for having me, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Insight Partners. How are you serving folks?

Steve Kahan: [00:00:33] Yeah, So Insight Partners is one of the world’s largest venture capital companies. And I advise a number of portfolio companies on their digital marketing.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] And what’s your backstory? How did you get into this line of work?

Steve Kahan: [00:00:49] So I really am a 30 year veteran of startups in particular, focused in on marketing. And and really, if you if you look at my background, I’ve been blessed to have work with seven startups, all of which have successfully sold or have gone public, generating a little over 5 billion in shareholder value.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:14] So did you start out just within one startup and then that grew and then you got kind of the bug and you jump from, you know, one site exited, then you jump to another one.

Steve Kahan: [00:01:24] Yeah, that’s pretty much the story. But, you know, for me, I did not take the traditional path. And I remember when I was growing up, my father used to tell me so many times just, Hey, get your degree. Go to work for a large corporation. You work hard, they’ll take care of you and you’ll have a great career. And I remember about a year and a half in, and I was staring at this pile of claims that I was supposed to process that that day. And then looking at my bank account and wondering, how on earth will I ever get ahead? And the student loans would eat my paychecks before they ever even got a chance to hit my bank account. And so I asked an important question to myself at that point, which was, how could I earn a great living loving what I do? And so for me, I quickly realized I needed to kind of get out of working for a large corporation and get in to the startup world where there’d be very much like minded entrepreneurs. And and as you say, I got the bug and have never left.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:34] Now, when you’re working at a venture firm like you are, how do you kind of view the entrepreneur? How do you view that startup founder? Are you seeing them like, I know you’ve kind of gone through the path multiple times, but has that perception shifted when you’re looking at kind of the other side of the ledger?

Steve Kahan: [00:02:56] Yeah. So for me, it’s it’s a it’s a great question because although I now sort of work with the venture capital company, when you have 30 years of being in the trenches, of having to do the work that a lot of the entrepreneurs that I’m advising are doing, What they’re not getting, for example, is advice from a super smart, young sort of person who’s got a background in in banking or financials who who really has all the book smarts in the world but has never really done it right. And so for me, I have a great empathy with respect to what the entrepreneurs are going through. And what I try to do is, is try to utilize a lot of the experience that I have, in particular with what works and then focus in on providing advice that helps them to accelerate revenue at reasonable cost.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:01] Now, anyone, any entrepreneur that’s going the venture route, isn’t it the expectation when you go that route, it’s like a home run or a grand slam or an out, like you’re not interested in manufacturing runs and and being okay with singles as a result?

Steve Kahan: [00:04:22] Well, in terms of the investment philosophy, the organization is always looking for home runs, but they’re singles, there’s doubles and there’s triples. And I, for example, have have have hit the singles, doubles, triples and home runs as well. And so, you know, you always a every single deal that you invest in always looks like it’s going to be that home run, at least in Excel. Right. And then the real world sort of gets in the way, if you will. Right. And so so you you certainly are looking for those home runs and you try to counsel and provide great guidance. That would enable the entrepreneur to achieve that. But realistically, that’s not the case all the time, even though you’re shooting for it for sure.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:15] Now, with your lens as a marketer, do you see companies differently? Like are you able to advise folks maybe that have an idea that is are generating singles and you can, with your marketing skill, move them up to a double, triple home run?

Steve Kahan: [00:05:33] Yeah, 100%. I mean, what I find is that there was an interesting study that I recently read where 83% of the CEOs expect their marketing to drive most of their companies growth. And yet the Harvard Business Review said roughly 80% of CEOs are dissatisfied with their marketing results. And and so what you find is, is that there’s a lot of sales and marketing leaders who feel a little bit overwhelmed by revenue expectations they can’t meet. And part of at least the advice that I give is that the way people buy now has totally changed. Right. And so there’s a lot of organizations that interestingly hasn’t kept up with that. And a great example is if you think about it, just think about it in your own life, right? If you’re going to go buy a car, you probably are not looking forward to going to ten different dealerships and working with sales reps at those ten dealerships. Again, nothing, nothing against those those reps. But what you’re doing is you’re going to be searching online. You’re going to go do some Google searches. You’re going to understand the various options that you have. You might build your own car, you’re going to read reviews. You’ll probably even know what the pricing is and what it should be. Right. And that’s the way people are buying now. And so when you think of that, that a lot of organizations haven’t adopted an approach that enables them to grow revenue, given the fact that their buyers are now relying on digital content to make their purchase decisions.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:27] And that’s a major shift because historically the salesperson was kind of the gatekeeper of the information and now the consumer has the information at their fingertips and then the salesperson has to really just be the Sherpa that’s guiding them through the the buying decision that makes sense for them.

Steve Kahan: [00:07:49] That’s right. And what it means in in just very specific terms is that there’s a new level of information parity during the buying process that has totally changed how marketers have to interact with potential buyers to influence them towards their product and services. And so the bottom line is, is you’ve got to be great online, right? And if you want to consistently grow revenue, you have to be able to do it by delivering great content in an environment where people are going to scan quickly to quickly, then make a decision whether or not they’re going to read on. Right. And so you’ve got seconds, right? And so being great in that environment is is is not easy. But but but I’ve been able to do it. I’ve been able to crack that code. And and that’s a lot of the advice that I also try to provide the organizations that I work with.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:54] But isn’t it I mean, that tactic of being brief but high quality information, enticing, compelling that works, I would think, for the person maybe at the beginning of their journey. But when they’re ready to make that actual buying decision, don’t they want to go deep and really validate their instinct?

Steve Kahan: [00:09:16] Yes. And Right. And so so what that means in in practical terms is that you’ve got to be able to understand and deliver content across the full spectrum of the buyer’s journey. Right. So when they’re educating themselves at the top, when they’re considering different solutions, when they might actually go just refine their search forward and start to look at a specific solution or a specific couple of vendors to to evaluate all the way through the purchase. And you’ve got to be able to connect with them across all of those stages. And if you don’t have great content across the full spectrum of the buyer’s journey, that will zap the. Velocity out of any high velocity digital marketing strategy.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:10] Now, how important is it in this journey, like especially in startups where you don’t have buyers yet? Maybe you have an idea. How do you kind of get actionable information when you don’t have kind of a baked solution yet?

Steve Kahan: [00:10:27] Well, the way that I would advise people to to look at that is that they’ve got to really understand the status quo. Right? And so the status quo represents the current situation, how the buyer is serving their their needs now. And and this really matters in the scenario that you outlined, because you often don’t lose business to a competitor, you lose it to the status quo. Right. And so oftentimes you’ll hear someone say, gee, we’re just not interested or I’m not interested because what I’ve got is good enough, Right? And so so you’ve got to ask potential buyers about the status quo, have them to describe, for example, their current process for for what they’re doing today, what their operations are, how they and their team stay on top of the challenge, how they don’t get overwhelmed by it. What are some of the tools and products that they use today? What are they like about them? What don’t they like? Right. And so by understanding that status quo and communicating very specifically against it, it enables you to tackle that problem head on.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:52] Now, I think that you brought up a very important point here in terms of learning how to position your product or service, how to speak the language of your prospective customer. You have to really have conversations, human to human conversations, and understand the language they’re using, the search terms, they’re using the the outcomes they’re desiring. You have to really get to know them. And a lot of founders, at least the ones I’ve spoke to, they have an ego maybe, or a point of view that they understand and they really can develop personas, but they don’t really have the data to validate those personas that makes sense in their head. And then you can’t not have conversations with people who are buyers and or potential buyers. That’s where the rubber hits the road. That’s where you’re going to get that edge to create that high velocity result you’re talking about.

Steve Kahan: [00:12:57] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, what you’ve got to be able to do is you’ve got to understand the entire context of the buyer’s world and and you’ve got to regularly talk with customers and then beyond. Just that is that if you look at a lot of the organizations that actually do talk with customers is that they they ask them questions that just so happens to align with the solution that they sell. So they’re almost leading them towards the solution because that that’s what they want to hear. And so you’ve got to ask certain questions in which you don’t do that, and then you’ve got to pay very close attention to the specific language that those potential customers use. Because then in your content, in your ads, you want to reflect that language back at them. Because one of the major marketing fallacies is that like, gee, if we could just be super creative, that that’s going to really help us to to stand out and win. And the truth is, is that the buyers don’t care how clever your marketing department is. They want to work with people who understand and empathize with them, and speaking their language proves that you do exactly that.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:22] Yeah, I remember when I was in school, one of the lessons they taught I have a degree in advertising was it’s not creative unless it sells and a lot of marketers get hung up with the creative part and not the selling part.

Steve Kahan: [00:14:36] Yeah, absolutely right. And then when you’re asking those questions, then you’re starting to get a better sense of also what people are Googling for. Now, you can get a lot of the stats of what the what the search numbers are on specific terms, but really understanding that, I mean, you’ve got to be great on Google, right? And so that’s whenever someone’s going to buy something today there, they’re there oftentimes. Going to Google, Right. And and and being great on Google is a key in this environment in order to sustain growth.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:14] Now let’s share some advice, maybe for a couple of different people. Let’s start out with the the new startup founder. Maybe there that person that had a corporate job and is thinking, you know what, I’m going to take this plunge and I’m going to pursue startups as maybe a pivot in my career. Any advice for that person that’s going from a corporate background into the startup world? What are some do’s and don’ts for that individual?

Steve Kahan: [00:15:40] Yeah, so the way that first of all, I, I think of startups, right? So I never founded my own company. I always went to companies at least had some sort of revenue that were taxed to them. Right. And so what I look for and what I try to always find is that a lot of the entrepreneurs out there, they have good stories, right? But what you’re looking for is a situation in which there’s both a good story as well as a good chance for success. So what I look for first and foremost are quality people that share my values, right? And so if you can’t respect, trust and admire the people involved, move on and look for others, that that sort of rock your world have complementary skill sets. I look for a concept that fills a big market need in which that market need is a must solve problem. Right? And so it’s why I’ve sort of gravitated mostly towards cybersecurity. And I don’t worry if there is competition, I worry if there’s not competition. I look for a great product that I believe in, one in which that I would want to purchase or recommend myself. Right? And that I could go to work every day for with a passion for what that company creates and my role in creating it. And then I also look for that the startup is is funded well enough, right? You don’t want to choose a startup that doesn’t have a long enough runway to get off the ground, right? So you want to check to see that the company is properly funded and capitalize. You have the best chance for growth and stability. I found that if you look at those core attributes when you’re evaluating companies, odds are that you’ll be selecting a company that has the potential to win big.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:41] Now, I know a lot of your background and work is in the startup world. Does your in your latest book, High Velocity Digital Marketing, does any of that pertain to maybe that individual that’s in professional services that they’re that they themselves are marketers or they themselves are an accountant or a doctor? Do do those same strategies work in like kind of a B to B consultant world?

Steve Kahan: [00:18:09] Absolutely right. And so, you know, like if you look at even just understanding your ideal target buyer, right, in in great ways, I mean, when I started at the last company I was at where we went from 5 million to 145 million in five years and exited for 1.4 billion. When I joined on day one, I asked the founders and the management who the customer was, and they said it was it was cybersecurity company, right? And they said that our our, our, our customers are the chief information security officers. Right. And so they were like, Steve, you should know that this is we’re we’re cybersecurity company And I started to interview the the customers. And what I found was it wasn’t the the people responsible for i.t security at all. It was actually i.t admins. It was the techies in the trenches. Right. And so in many ways those are the folks who are never going to read an analyst report. They want stuff fast. Easy, right? They they aware in many hats. They’re going to read reviews. They’re going to hang out online in certain places where the the i.t. Security people who are creating policy or worried about regulatory compliance are are not right. And so when you think of companies of all sizes, no matter what your role, there are very fundamental things in this case. This established company didn’t even know who its ideal buyer was right and so that that lesson of of focusing on your ideal target buyer for example, is is something that a lot of people in organizations across different roles oftentimes take for granted. And as a result, when their marketing digitally their marketing in the wrong places and they wonder why they’re not getting the return that they expected.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:14] But in your example, not only were they looking in the wrong places, they were dismissing your question like they were. So they were so confident that they knew it didn’t even occur to them to look somewhere else.

Steve Kahan: [00:20:30] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and then it plays out, right? And so, like, if you think about it, we wanted to launch a podcast. And so the last thing I wanted to do was to launch a podcast that, like, nobody’s listening to. So knowing that our target customer were these IT admins, I went to partner with an organization that was the leading provider of training to I.T admins and they did some podcast. I offered up a partnership with a cybersecurity podcast and because we tapped into that huge customer base that they had literally within weeks we had one of the largest cybersecurity podcasts around the globe. Right? But that all emanated from knowing who we were going after and then being, I guess, sort of entrepreneurial enough to say, Gee, who can we partner with where at very little cost, we could have a huge podcast and do it at Lightspeed.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:36] Yeah. So I mean, it’s a great lesson for people out there. And again, it’s you’ve got to get out of your office and talk to the real buyers, not just assume you know, because even if what you thought was true when you started may not be true today.

Steve Kahan: [00:21:53] Yeah, for sure. I mean, and those needs change, right? Markets evolve, competitors evolve. I remember we were taking a position around simplicity, ease of use, right? Because it aligned with what our buyers wanted and it really started to work. And so our £800 gorilla competitor that actually had a complex product started messaging all around simplicity. So I got online and I started Googling for their documentation, their products documentation, and ours was about 30 pages. And I found that their product documentation was over 1500 pages long, and I compared their documentation to the fifth largest novel ever written in human history and trained our sales and partners on that. And, and literally their attempt at matching our messaging ended and, and it never recovered for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:59] Good stuff. Well, for you, what? Could we be doing more for you? What do you need more of? How can we help you?

Steve Kahan: [00:23:07] Well, really, I’m more about helping others. Right. And so what would help me is, is that I just wrote a new book called High Velocity Digital Marketing. It’s really focused on the digital marketing strategies that we’re talking a little bit about here. And it’s very much a how to, by the way, where people could implement what they learn literally that same day. And so I guess if it provides value, what would help me is that I get gratification at at least at this point in my career is is just hearing back from others that they tried some things that that that worked or any feedback that they might have that that would be most helpful for me would be just helping others succeed.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:56] Now, in this book, it’s very tactical. And is is this something that you have to have a big budget in order to leverage digital marketing? Or are there ways, like you mentioned, partnering and doing things with others that may be you can do it in a more affordable rate?

Steve Kahan: [00:24:12] Yeah, I mean, that’s what it’s all about, right? I mean, I mean, another example is, is that which I, I go into detail, but like we talked just a little bit about being great on Google and you could pay super expensive SEO consultants or read 500 page books and your head will be spinning. Right? And so what we did is we identified our coveted keywords, right? These were the ones that people were searching on whenever we created content, whether it was web content or or other types of content, we would have our SEO expert meet with that content creator, make sure we were covering the appropriate keywords. They would meet again at the end of the project to make sure that they were incorporated, and then we would expose the content so that Google could scan it right? And just simply that process, as well as creating content that our partners love, which gave us a lot of backlinks, enable us to punch far above our weight. And so that just implementing a process like that and I go into other things as well, can really help any listener and their company to become great on Google.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:29] Well, if somebody wants to get a hold of the book or connect with you and your team, what is the way to do that?

Steve Kahan: [00:25:35] Well, my book, High Velocity Digital Marketing, is available wherever you would buy books online like Amazon and I could be connected with at Be a Startup Superstar.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:49] All right, Steve, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Steve Kahan: [00:25:54] Well, thank you for having me. Lee. It is my pleasure.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:57] All right. This is Lee Kantor. Until next time on high velocity radio.

Simon Severino With Strategy Sprints GmbH

November 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Simon Severino With Strategy Sprints GmbH

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Simon Severino helps business owners in SaaS and Services run their companies more effectively which results in sales that soar. Trusted by Google, Roche, Consilience Ventures, Amgen, and AbbVie.

He created the Strategy Sprints™ Method that doubles revenue in 90 days by getting owners out of the weeds. He is a TEDx speaker, Contributor to Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, and member of the SVBS Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.

Connect with Simon on LinkedIn and follow Strategy Sprints on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Shortening the path to ‘wow’.
“Strategy Sprints”
3 CEO habits
Walkthrough process with new clients

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 high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Simon Severino with Strategy Sprints. Welcome, Simon.

Simon Severino: [00:00:26] Hey, everybody. Happy to talk. High velocity and sprints goes well together.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] There you go. Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about strategy sprints. How are you serving folks?

Simon Severino: [00:00:37] We coach people to have better sales and marketing and to run their business in a way that is more conducive to a good life rather than just a great business. So basically we want to have them feel great now while they are scaling their business versus feel great. If insert your if here, if I sell, if this happens, if that happens because it never happens. But what really happens is right now the process of exploring, of building and of scaling, and we are the coaches who help do that with more fun, with more grace.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:17] Now, do you have a niche that you serve? I mean, being an entrepreneur or a small business person that covers a lot of ground, do you work in certain areas?

Simon Severino: [00:01:26] We work only with B2B businesses, mainly agencies, consultancies and B2B software.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:34] And then what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Simon Severino: [00:01:39] So I started 21 years ago in a global consultancy where I would do this work for the big brands across the globe. On Monday I was in New York. On Thursday I was in Paris and on on Saturday I was in Shanghai doing it for different teams. The question was always the same question How do we enter a market? How do we crush it in the market and how do we stay in the market? How do we stay competitive? How do we stay relevant? And those questions are still around here. If you run a business right now, whatever the business is, you are asking yourself, what’s the right thing to do For me to stay in the market, to crush it in the market, to stay relevant, to stay competitive? What do I need to change? What do I need to keep? Or just being doing more? What do I need to do less? These are the questions that we get asked every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:38] Now, when a client comes to you, are they typically experiencing a certain type of frustration or are they at a plateau or are they losing business or are they just kind of getting burnt out? What is kind of the reason that they reach out to you?

Simon Severino: [00:02:53] Typical reason is they feel like they have hit a plateau. If they just do more, it doesn’t bring more results. It would just burn them out. So their current situation is. Every project starts from scratch like every client. They cannot reuse current modules. They are restarting every client project from from scratch, which means there is a lot of manual activities. It’s a ton of input from their side and the business is dependent on them. So they feel like if they go for a four weeks vacation, they would have guilt feelings and sneak sneak away from the beach to have a phone call. That’s usually the situation when they come to us.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:45] Now, when they’re working with you, is there a typical process you go through for every client? Do you kind of walk through? They have to do some pre homework before they start working with you or do you just start listening to them and then just kind of coming up with a plan to help them solve whatever problem they have and help them reach whatever outcome they desire?

Simon Severino: [00:04:11] Yes, we just start listening. There is no pre work. The only pre requisite is that you want to scale the business because our goal will be to double revenue in 90 days. And so this will be the most intense project for your next 90 days. In the first month we will work on simplifying your offer, packaging the offer better, having it convert more. So it will be an offer as simple as VW revenue in 90 days. If you can say it that quickly, that simply then it’s highly referable. People can get out and refer to you, People can become your affiliate partners. And so the first part is to simplify it in a way that it actually gets across. The second part. Is to increase by 25% the sales time. So to shorten the time from awareness to closing by 25%. Many people take six months, eight months, ten months to close a deal, to close a new client. And so we will reduce that to 2 to 3 weeks using our templates and swipe copies. The second part is we will reduce the increase the conversion rate by 25%. Conversion rate is you are talking to ten people per week, you are closing five, then you have a 50% conversion rate. Now we will increase that rate because it’s usually below 50 and we want to have it around 50%. So we will increase that by 25%. And the third thing is increasing the price for the offer that you are currently selling by 25%, by de-risking the decision for the client and by improving the positioning and what it is compared to with compared to. And so when you increase those three things by 25%, which is what the strategy is Prince method is all about, then you have increased revenue by 99%.

Simon Severino: [00:06:24] Now you have almost doubled revenue and you have more cash flow, which means that the team is more relaxed and you are now more in grace and in in in a calm, productive state which will now be felt by your clients as being much more fun to work with. So you will lose less clients and they will refer much more to you. But this is what we do in the first month. Simplifying things, just finding what’s currently working for you, doing doing that more and doing less of everything else. So the team will have much less activities because they have now only one main offer and we are improving each part of that offer every week. And then the second part is increasing those three key strategies, 25% more conversion rate, 25% faster, saves time and 25% more dollars for the same offer, which increases cash flow. And then the third month is writing all that down in form of processes so that it’s less people dependent. Now it’s a machine that’s working. And when we write down the processes, which we call SOP, standard operating procedures, now you can hire people, you can change people, people can get six or go go on vacation. But the whole system is still resilient, is adaptive, is capable of having self correction and self-healing properties, which you want to have, especially in these times, in this very volatile times, you have a system that can cope, self-heal, self-correct, self decide, and now it’s less dependent on on people.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:26] Now is that your consultancy? So it’s a 90 day sprint. That’s what people are buying from you. Or is it something that okay, once we’ve tackled one line of business, now we do it again for a different one and we just keep it going from there? Or is that kind of the end of your time with them that all it takes is 90 days to kind of solve their problem and get them on the right track?

Simon Severino: [00:08:51] Yeah, most clients just book one sprint for 90 days and that optimizes one main offer for them and they don’t need more. Then they have a more simple business which is converting more. They have now more life. They have systems that work that’s fine for them and and some then pick a second sprint. So they say, All right, I have now one offer that’s working like a machine. Now, can I stack a second offer on top of that? And so of course, when you have optimized one, you could now start a second one. This is how you create multiple revenue streams stacked upon each other. And so, yes, some do a second sprint, but you actually don’t need many. It’s enough. If you do one, you have one systemized business and then you can enjoy your life because that business is enough to create, you know, to feed multiple families. And so for most people, that’s enough.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:56] Can you share a story? You don’t have to name in the name of the client, but just talk us through the challenge that they had and how you were able to inject your system into their world and get them to a new level.

Simon Severino: [00:10:08] Sure. So Sonny Abdul-Jabbar in Los Angeles, he’s printed and he’s a consultant. He runs an attack consultancy. So everything that you need, he is the guy that you would call if you are in Los Angeles and say, Sonny, I need developers. I have this tech problem. Can you solve this tech problem? And he’s the most networked guy and he would find it. Now, the problem was that he was offering many different things. Like most service businesses, they start offering they they get asked for multiple things and they say yes. And then quite quickly, you have 17 different offers in 17 different projects. So what happens is that your profitability goes down and you are working a lot for. Not much more net profit. So he felt that just doing more of that will not be conducive to growth. And so he sprinted. And his goal was to to simplify and to systemize the business. So all of those different things that he was offering, we asked him if you could only pick one Sunny, which is the most profitable of all these offers. He picked one. It was. Just consulting on blockchain related topics. So of all the possible technological challenges, he picked blockchain technology and then we said, Alright, who is of all your last 50 clients? Which one is the ideal client? And he picked one.

Simon Severino: [00:12:00] And then we designed the flow of his things to be around that main offer for exactly that kind of people that he wanted to serve. And we simplified everything else. He started a weekly lengthy newsletter, which was called The Three Things Blockchain You Need to Know this Week. Very simple, but very coherent. And so the whole brand was now very simple, very coherent, very easy to tell what they stand for. They are the blockchain guys. You have any technical blockchain question, Those are your people. And so sales went through the roof. He wrote us then a wonderful client testimonial, which is on our website, and it says, In this strategy, Sprint, my sales went through the roof. And it was just in the first month just simplifying and then in the second and third month systematizing and scaling. That was basically the work for him. And that’s a very typical sprint, a typical situation for agencies, consultancies that they. They’re doing too much and they’re offering too much.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:13] Now, it seems to me at the heart of this is being clear on your offer and what is going to be the offer that resonates with that ideal client as part of your system. Are you doing any interviewing of their ideal client to really understand what it is that they need and what it is they’re getting from this your client like? How important is that understanding of the real motivations of the of the client’s client in order to come up with that simplified offer that resonates.

Simon Severino: [00:13:52] Great question. Yes, it’s very important. And yes, there are also interviews. So we have 274 blueprints and templates ready for our clients. And some of them are interviews. We have even three types of interviews and we have the whole slab copy is exactly what they ask, how long the interview goes, how many people they need to interview, and there are many variations of doing it yourself. And then there are delegated versions where your team interviews them, and then there are even fully automated versions where just emails ask them these questions. And yes, these are three of our 274 blueprints. Plug and play ready are very important because you really need to use their words. So we then use the words that we collect in these interviews on the website, on the email subject line. So this is the masterclass of marketing when you use the exact words that your clients use. Because, you know, you can you can use your technical words, but that’s not how they think. You have to use the words that they use. That will increase your or your Google ranking, that will increase the resonance and the they will feel understood when you use their words, literally their words. Then they will say, Oh, yeah, that’s me. He gets me. Oh, yeah. Click.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:29] So is that a mistake you see firms making is they’re not really empathizing enough with their client. They’re kind of just talking in the language that they understand about their service and product and not through the lens of how the buyer buys, but rather how they’re selling.

Simon Severino: [00:15:52] Totally. Yes. And we are all doing this in different degrees. But if you go to your website right now, whoever you are listening to this, think of your current website. What are the first words? What are the first 10 seconds that I experience? Are you talking my language? Are you talking the language of the user who is there for the first time? Are you talking to them like you would talk to a stranger visiting your place for the first time? Or are you talking from your perspective? And so most of our websites, if we are honest, we are talking from our perspective, Hey, this is who we are. This is what we can do for you. We don’t start with, Hey, this is who you are. I see you. I know how it feels. I know that you have this problem, this problem, and that this feels hard. You know what? Those three people also have this problem. Look what we did with them. Can we do it with you? Find out. That would be a good flow for for a website. For example, if this happens in the first 10 seconds, that’s a good website and you can check our strategies please dot com. We always try to have that flow optimized and it’s converting quite well. But most, most websites are just talking features. They are talking from their perspective. We are engineers. We have built great features. Okay. But I don’t know how you’re talking to me or to something else. Is this built for small businesses or for big businesses? We are not connected yet, so I’m not interested in your features. Do you see me? That’s what I want to know in the beginning. And are you talking to me now?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:40] Especially for your professional services clients. Is it something that you need to have? Like you have a book. You have a lot of thought leadership on your website. Are those kind of must haves? In today’s day and age, when it comes to selling this type of knowledge? Or is that a nice to have?

Simon Severino: [00:18:02] That’s a good question. And it’s different for everybody listening right now. I don’t think anybody needs anything. I think you can run a great business without a website, actually. Probably the core component are an email list. Good operations, meaning that you actually deliver value around to vitals. You either help them decrease costs or you help them save time, or you help them increase sales. Time and money are two vital things. If you have some operations, some core core delivery, that really helps them with either time or money. I think that’s a must. And the second is that you really care about that, that you really want to go deeper, understand them, make them win, because they will feel it. These two, I think, are a must. And then that you really show up, that you really consistently show up for them, are there for them, and are interested in evolving and are interested in their feedback because you will implement that feedback. So this is the must. Something else is a nice to have.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:26] What? What do you need more? How can we help you? Do you need more entrepreneurs to go through the system? Do you need more business coaches to get certified in your system? What? What are the things we could be doing to help you?

Simon Severino: [00:19:42] I need as many people as possible to grab the book because they they can navigate the next months much better if they have our proven processes and they are in the book. The book is strategist Prince Dotcom and they can grab it on Amazon.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:01] So the book is the first step in kind of connecting with you and your team. If you go through the book, you learn, implement some of that stuff. It’ll improve your business and it might make you ready to invest in a more substantive relationship with your team and or maybe join and partner with you.

Simon Severino: [00:20:22] Yeah, most people cannot afford a 1 to 1 sprint coach, but the book is a great starting point and many checklists, many blueprints are in there and they can go very far just by implementing what’s what’s in the book. And it’s step by step. Every chapter is exactly very practical. So most people will get most value just by doing what’s in the book strategy sprints. And then some of them might say, All right, I came so far and I want to go even farther, and they will call us. They will then go to strategy sprints dot com and have a call with us.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:59] And are those 274 templates in the book or some of them?

Simon Severino: [00:21:04] Yes, like 35 of them are in there.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:07] Okay. So it gives you a good feel for your methodology.

Simon Severino: [00:21:11] Totally. Yes. And it can probably help them save a ton of time because they can now focus on what they are best at and and don’t have to think about the process of how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to do client onboarding, because that’s in the book and they just focus on what they are great at.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:34] Well, Simon, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Simon Severino: [00:21:42] Thank you. Keep rolling, everybody.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:44] All right. And that’s strategy sprints with an ESPN.com. All right, This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on high velocity radio.

Kevin Song With withco

November 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Kevin Song With withco

00:00 /

Kevin Song is withco’s Founder & CEO. Driven by the experience of his family’s Brooklyn grocery store being displaced, Kevin started withco to make it exciting to be a small business owner in America again.

He’s spent his career investing in, managing, and advising over 50 companies and has deployed over $1B of equity capital.

Kevin graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Economics and was a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient for Social Entrepreneurship.

Connect with Kevin on LinkedIn and follow withco on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Kevin’s story and how he came to found withco
How withco helps small business owners
The state of small business real estate
Broad economic trends that impact small businesses

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 on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Atlanta Business Radio we have Kevin song with withco. Welcome, Kevin. I am doing well I am so excited to learn about your company. Tell us about withco how are you serving folks.

Kevin Song: [00:00:51] Yeah definitely so withco we are an acquisition firm that helps small business owners become commercial property owners all across the United States. We do that through our financial product called Lease to own. We think that mortgages are pretty unattainable for most small business owners. We think leases are not a good option, especially for the best best business owners. And so we’ve created this third option that really helps small business owners turn into really fantastic owners of properties and in that hopefully help them build generational wealth versus get to this place.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] Now, when you’re saying small business, how are you defining small? I mean, the government has one definition and a lot of small business owners have another.

Kevin Song: [00:01:39] Yeah, definitely. So I think from a very baseline perspective, we do use the Small Business Administration’s guidance on what defines a small business, but it comes in all shapes and sizes. And so we look at everything from doctors and dentists to people starting up retail concepts to people who are in the concrete polishing business. So of course your local restaurants and neighborhood services.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] So then the property you’re looking there, you’re talking about, it could be, like you said, kind of a mom and pop small salon that’s a standalone building to a larger office building.

Kevin Song: [00:02:20] Yeah, that’s right. It could be mom and Pops who want to buy a single location and have a very permanent relationship with that community. It could be an entrepreneur who is looking to scale a concept from one to many locations, and it could be anything sort of in between.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:40] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Kevin Song: [00:02:45] Yeah. So I started the company in 2019, actually. Quite a little bit of a personal story. My family had a grocery store in Brooklyn for about two decades. Mom and dad, good people ran that thing. Blood, sweat and tears. That a lot of good things for the community. I think that was just a part of running a good local business. And yeah, long story short, we got a phone call from a big developer who decided to raise our rents, and so we lost that business three weeks and we actually lost our home after a few months. And I was 11 when this was happening. And so really trying to understand why the heck this was happening in the first place. But the question that I asked then and still sits with me to this day and I sort of become the kernel to start with CO was why being really successful and creating a lot of value in that community actually ended up leading to our own demise. That question of why are there really good, fantastic entrepreneurs and families across America who effectively displaced themselves by being really successful? That became the real genesis to start the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] So ironically, the more value that your folks were providing the community, the more valuable that property became. And that ultimately led to them being kind of removed from their the neighborhood that they built and served.

Kevin Song: [00:04:16] Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s like the greatest irony of them all. It’s the fact that we built the system that, you know, kind of markets itself as rewarding hard work and success. But through that hard work and success, you actually end up destroying a lot of the value that you created. I don’t think that’s an America that we’re really proud of. And I think when something like displacement actually happens, it’s this sort of identity crisis that we face, that the reality of our situation actually is not congruent with the identity that we have. And so that instance not only happens on a small local corner in Brooklyn, but it’s happening more systemically across the country. And one of the reasons that we’re in Atlanta and we’re in Georgia in general is because we think this is going to be one of the next sort of epicenters where so many people are moving there, so much, so much is changing. And that’s in no small part because of the fantastic local entrepreneurship that exists and the great local businesses. And so we want to support as many fantastic entrepreneurs as we can to sort of ride the wave that they’ve actually created.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:38] Now, what percentage of small businesses own their own property? Is it just a super small number?

Kevin Song: [00:05:47] Yeah, literally. Raz 0%. It is one of these weird sort of instances where it’s mostly these sort of like mom and pop landlords that actually work and sell and invest into these properties. And I think in that it’s really, really easy to sort of understand why some of these bigger sort of issues exist in the first place. Know, we think the issue isn’t that like a local landlord is making a practical decision for their family on who to work with and why. It’s really that the system has been put in place where a small local business, you know, we use coffee shop, you know, doesn’t really stand a chance against like a Starbucks when, you know, you’re competing on price and kind of rents and all of that sort of stuff that actually are important decisions. And so, yeah, there’s there’s a lot of sort of systemic sort of thinking that we do because ultimately it drives to a conclusion and that again, like I don’t think any of us are really, really proud of.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:03] And it’s one of those things I don’t think people realize that a lot of larger franchises or businesses that have stores around there really real estate plays more than they are business plays, or that business is just a part of what the what the real business is.

Kevin Song: [00:07:24] Oh, yeah. I mean, we know some well known entrepreneurs who, you know, for example, in New York City have told us that they’ve made more money on selling or owning their real estate than they’ve had on selling millions of pastrami sandwiches, creating sort of a different method or way for small business owners who are truly putting their blood, sweat and tears into creating a great operation and letting them get on sort of this path to a different type of wealth creation is something that makes us proud to come to work every day. And I think we’ll hopefully be the foundation to to change a lot of the way that even America thinks about small business. We think it should be this career path that’s accessible and exciting and wealth creating and not perceived to be this thing that’s very risky or very passion driven exclusively. It should be a really good decision for your family. And we think real estate ownership is just just the start of that path for great business owners in America.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] It’s funny that you bring up the delis in New York. Most of the kind of name brand delis aren’t there anymore because of this.

Kevin Song: [00:08:48] Yeah, that’s right. But, you know, 305, this house is curated. Katz’s Deli is going strong. They’ve been there for over 100 years and I don’t think they’re going anywhere. And I think it’s in no small part because they own 250,000 ST.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:02] Right, they own the building, so therefore their future is kind of safe.

Kevin Song: [00:09:08] Yeah. And again, it’s this sort of like weird platform risk that exists that is like great irony that we’ve set up for ourselves where business owners work really hard to make their business and therefore their place extremely valuable. Yet aren’t the ones that actually get to cash out on that value. And it comes from the fact that mortgages and ownership are highly inaccessible for most business owners. You know, they cannot save a down payment because it’s an impossible amount of money. They also do not know how to buy commercial real estate and for good reason. It’s a very esoteric product. And, you know, unlike even buying a home, which has been very, very consumer ized and educated and government supported small businesses, no one knows really how to buy commercial real estate except for a handful of companies and people. And, you know, again, on the other side of the lease is just this product that is so counterproductive. You end up you know, if you do really well, you end up raising your own rents or having someone pay more for the space that you and the neighborhood that you’ve created, most likely a big business or you have a big developer or someone else who has a genuine higher use of that space come in. And so we’re sort of in the business of trying to serve small business owners to sort of have as many options as they can to to build wealth. And one of those main pathways and sort of the foundational layer we think for businesses that occupy space is just to make sure the relationship with that space is not only secure and that you have control over it, but that it’s something that is an extremely good return on your investment because you’re probably not only operating a great business, you’re probably spending a lot of money to make that space wonderful, and you’re also doing a lot of great things for that neighborhood.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] So how does it work? How do I know if my business is the right business to take advantage of this opportunity? How does the whole process work?

Kevin Song: [00:11:26] Yeah, sometimes we’ll find you, but we welcome people to come find us any day of the week you go to with Darko, you can learn a lot about how we work and what we’re doing. On that. You’ll sort of tell us what your situation is. Maybe you’re in an existing space that you love and it’s the one for you, and you want us to help you buy that specific building. Maybe you’re coming at the end of a lease term and you want to move and look for a space that’s bigger, smaller, exactly the same. Or maybe you want to grow. Maybe you have a few or one really successful location. Your landlord is never going to sell it to you, but you want to open up your second or seventh or 15th location of a business and we can help you with that too. Once you sort of come to with Echo and go through that onboarding process, you’ll get sort of white glove treatment from our team to really help you kind of understand near how to invest in real estate with your business. We want to make it as easy and informative and we want to create options for you as much as possible. And so by uploading your information and telling us what you’re looking for, giving us your lease and letting us really understand your purchasing power, we can be extremely consultative in trying to create as many options for you as we possibly can.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] So say hypothetically, I have a I’m a doctor, you know, it’s my own practice. I’ve been, you know, leasing in this space for a period of time. I make, you know, X number of dollars a year. You see how much I’m paying in rent? The lease is coming to an end. You know, my size is okay, maybe I could always go bigger. I come to your website, I fill out some forms, I have a conversation, and you are going to take that data and then say, Hey, you know what? Down the street, here’s a building that might be appropriate and you help me move or help me acquire it. How? How does it work?

Kevin Song: [00:13:41] Yeah, we’ll be we’ll be fully turnkey, fully consultative to you. So it could be a like this space that I’m in, my lease is expiring and, you know, my landlord has asked me, do I want to buy the building in which you like the building, in which case we will help you price that building, make an offer, run the entire due diligence process for you, and basically give you back the key. So you’re now on a lease to own agreement with us Every year that you pay rent, When you’re on your agreement, you get part of it back effectively in the form of a down payment credit. And over the course of our lease term, our goal is to build you up to a full down payment that you need to actually buy the property back from us. And we do. We run sort of every process of that journey. If you’re interested in moving or expanding, we’ll help you actually find those new locations. We work with great brokers across the country. We understand kind of the inventory, the real estate that’s out there that’s possible to purchase. And so whether you’re coming to us with a property in mind, it could be the one you’re in or the one down the street that you saw for sale sign on, or you need us to start from scratch and actually understand if the one you’re in is the right one for you and help you find new locations, that can be great options for your business.

Kevin Song: [00:15:13] We’ll take it all the way through from beginning to end. And the idea is to also not only run that process for you and make it something that you can you can rely on. We also want to build trust with you by actually educating you on why we’re making some of the decisions that we’re making, because we are, in effect, making them together. We don’t succeed unless you become our buyer. We want you to own the building. And so we’re buying lease to owning and then selling the building to you. And we both need to understand why this thing that can be the most transformative experience of your life can be the thing that sets your family up for generational wealth. Why, that’s a fantastic decision for both sides.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:04] So I’m not just trading one landlord for another. You’re help your partnering with me to help me at some point be the landlord for myself and own the space.

Kevin Song: [00:16:16] Yeah yeah exactly. You know, I think business owners already have an ownership mindset, right? Like, no one’s building a business, you know, for just a short period of time. At least the ones that we want to work with, they’re building a business because this is what they’re called to do or this is what they need to do or this is what really motivates them. And so we’re with them sort of every step of the way, and we want to make sure that they are, in effect, making a fantastic investment decision for themselves, where they’re making a fantastic return on their time by running a great business. And that might be, you know, creating great profits for them. We want to make sure that those profits stay within their their hands by making sure the real estate is secure. And also in that same breath, actually helping them capitalize on that work that they’re already doing in that space by educating them and doing the work for them to make them sort of evolve them from being just a small business owner into a community, into being both a small business owner and the literal community owner by owning a piece of property.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:37] Now, when you’re talking to a small business owners, is this kind of a mindset shift? Are you having to educate them on on the understanding that they are kind of vulnerable in the situation as a tenant rather than a, you know, the owner of the property?

Kevin Song: [00:17:53] Yeah, definitely. I mean, we want no one likes surprises in the world of real estate, right? It’s not like no one likes when the landlord and the tenant have the conversation six months before the lease six fires and the landlord says, Well, actually I’ve got a double year rent, you know, the neighbor, the neighborhood, and that business owner kind of go up in arms and say, you know, this is this is like an infringement on the community rights. And it should be like that should be the feeling, actually, because, you know, losing like a cornerstone of your neighborhood is like. I don’t know, like Coca Cola going out of business in America because they can’t resign their lease like that local corner store or that local cornerstone, like failing to exist in the local economy and local society is. Absolutely tragic thing. And so we are sort of in that business of trying to help these business owners really get on that path and in that education and understanding and really changing your mindset from being someone who operates a great local business on a daily, weekly, monthly business into someone who can really think about how to build something for the long run. Because odds are if you’re if you’re great, you’re already doing that. We’re just trying to walk you across that bridge of being a renter to an owner and enabling you to do that financially and with sort of the means and the education.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:39] Well, I just don’t think that most business owners understand how vulnerable they are. Like you’re mentioning some stories, you know, where they raise the rent double or triple. I mean, I’ve heard just recently a store here locally in Atlanta, they raised it four and one half times. And it can happen to anybody. And and you are vulnerable. And if you have an opportunity to take control of some of the this risk by investing in yourself and investing in your building specifically with the help of somebody who knows their way around, I think it’s definitely something you should be considering. I mean, I just don’t think that the typical business owner understands how vulnerable that that at the end of a lease, you’re your rent can go up at whatever number that the landlord wants it to.

Kevin Song: [00:20:30] No, that’s right. That’s right. I mean, I think one of the great philosophers said something like, you know, a healthy man, you know, thinks about a million things and a sick man thinks about one thing. I think real estate and the relationship with the space is very, very similar to kind of that sickness. Right? It’s like it is the thing that is so foundational. It is the thing that your entire business runs on top of. Yet, you know, I think it’s easy to sort of forget what that relationship actually means for the survival and the thriving of your business. And so one of the first things that we ask for from a business owner is the lease, because we once we see that lease, can actually tell you, well, hey, you have three years left on your lease, that’s great. Like you might have you might be on a great lease today, but actually, like there are a lot of cranes going up in Atlanta right now. And, you know, these big brands are actually coming in. And so even though you have the security of your lease today for the next three or so years and you did a really good job of figuring out how to get a lease that would protect you for for a period of time. But it is a slow moving car crash. We know what’s going to happen at the end of that at the end of that lease term, which is your landlord is going to be shopping around and asking, you know, my lease coffee shop is interesting, but Starbucks is willing to pay me three times as much because Atlanta became you know, this part of Atlanta became really cool.

Kevin Song: [00:22:11] And now Starbucks wants to capitalize on that or, hey, like this big developer is coming into town and they’re willing to pay me a lot of money to actually make this this face really meaningful financial sort of opportunity for me. And so, again, like, it’s really about preparation. Like we don’t want small business owners to be caught by surprise about what’s going to happen. And with that preparation, we can actually advise the business owner. All right. Hey, like your lease today, the current relationship that you have with your space is actually really good. You are sort of tracking where the market is. And so by the end of that lease term, unless you just genuinely want to own like you probably have a good option to sign another lease set of fair term. Or it could be that, hey, like we just want you to know the price of rents in this market for compared to where you are today is actually already doubled. And so there is going to be this car crash, really tough negotiation that’s going to happen. And we want to prepare you whether that means helping you think about other options that you could potentially move to, whether it means making an offer to your landlord today so that maybe you can you can take advantage of sort of having that relationship for the next three years. Some places already. And so, yeah, again, all of this is about making sure the small business owner has all of the options in front of them to have the best relationship with space, including one which is around permanent ownership and wealth creation through their business.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:52] And you’re open to talking to people with several years left on their lease. They don’t have to be ready to move, you know, in six months or 12 months. You all talk to anybody, right?

Kevin Song: [00:24:02] Yeah, we’ll talk to everyone. We want people to come through our doors. We want to be really helpful and supportive. We know like starting a small business and running one successfully doesn’t happen by accident. And so all of that work and, you know, blood, sweat and tears again, that you’ve you’ve you’ve you’ve done to create value. We want you to keep it. And ultimately we understand that you coming to our doors today may mean we’re not going to be able to have a meaningful conversation with you if you’re not ready for ownership or you have too much time left on your lease before you can make make a move. But ultimately, it is again about providing great options to business owners, which once we have that information, What is your current relationship or relationships with space through releases and where is the market? And also how is your business doing? We’ve we want situations where someone comes to us, give us gives us this information and tells us what they’re looking for and we tell them, hey, we’ve got nothing for you right now because your business isn’t ready. Once we have that information and we see that your business does become ready because your profit margins go up or you’re about a year left on your lease, we can start really creating great options for you. It’s just again, like business owners have no business in or no reason to have thought that this was something that was extremely possible for them. We want to enable and empower and educate them to prove to them that this is one of the best ways to actually run a business and to create security and control and wealth through having a fantastic local business.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:10] So if somebody wants to learn more, have more substantive conversation with somebody on your team, what’s the way to do that? What’s the website?

Kevin Song: [00:26:17] Yeah, with that super easy should be some great sort of easy options there to sort of go go through the journey. You could also contact partnerships with ICO directly if there’s something more urgent. But I would, I would recommend Watsco as a place to learn more and to start the journey.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:38] Well, Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Kevin Song: [00:26:43] Yeah, thanks so much. We really, really excited. Thanks.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:45] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Henry Ravenel With Southeastern Chamber of Commerce

November 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Association Leadership Radio

Henry Ravenel With Southeastern Chamber of Commerce

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In 2005, after studying Psychology and Government & Foreign Affairs at Hampden-Sydney College in Hampden-Sydney, VA, Henry headed back to the Carolinas to pursue his dreams. Installed as Chief Executive Officer of a Charleston Networking Association in 2005 by former U.S. Majority Whip James Clyburn, Henry began his journey as a leader. After six years of operating the alliance as a membership-based networking association, Henry amended the name of the organization to the Southeastern Chamber of Commerce, carrying all rights pertaining thereto.

Today, Henry L. Ravenel Jr. leads this organization through a lens of new millennium success, structure and positive regional impact. He oversees the chamber’s Future Agendas and Public Policy initiatives at the international level, along with the countless day-to-day operations of the organization at large.

In a short period, Henry established a Southeast Regional growth plan, which has been effective for dozens of large and small companies. Henry has assisted the Southeastern Chamber of Commerce, its Board of Governors and its hard-working investors, in embracing new business challenges associated with aggressive communication initiatives and campaigns, all designed to bring great benefits for the region.

The chamber’s success across the region has been based on its vitality and ability to stay on the cutting edge of ever-changing business and economic trends. As a young chamber, SCC witnessed the need for a “millennial powerhouse”, moving forward to define and establish this concept through seven core cluster target areas that affect business development. The “powerhouse” has provided support to business owners and individual entrepreneurs who have encountered tough advocacy issues that are currently in front of local, state and national government.

Prior to building the foundation of the Southeastern Chamber, Henry was a manager with Veolia, an international transit company. He also became a valued leader at Kiawah Development Partners, Inc., which operated many subsidiaries such as the Doonbeg Golf Club in Ireland and the Christophe Harbor on the island of St. Kitts,West Indies. Henry currently owns Henry’s Transmission & Roadside Assistance, Inc. based out of Ravenel, SC. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Market Street Gentlemen Society, a private wealth society based out of Charleston, SC.

Henry held numerous military leadership positions throughout his educational career in Camden, SC. He served as a member of the Camden Military Academy Board of Alumni, class president and battalion adjutant.

As part of his duties while leading the efforts of the Southeastern Chamber, Henry also serves as Executive Board Chairman to its new Board of Governors. He is actively involved in many faith- based projects and holds various positions with Sounds of Praise International Ministries, a growing Christian ministry led by world-renowned Bishop Dr. Allen H. Simmons. Henry is happily married to M. Dunice Ravenel, a Human Resources Supervisor with the U.S.Department of State.

Connect with Henry on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Upcoming initiatives the SCC and its subsidiaries
Small businesses in navigating through the economy since Covid-19 outbreak, vaccines, and overall adaption
Pro/Cons of new wave of energy for small businesses
Corporate America in adapting to the inflation of entrepreneurship and its overall impact on today’s workforce

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Association Leadership Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Henry Ravenel with Southeastern Chamber of Commerce. Welcome, Henry.

Henry Ravenel: [00:00:33] Thank you, Lee, for having me. Pretty excited about today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about the Southeastern Chamber of Commerce. How are you serving, folks?

Henry Ravenel: [00:00:43] Well, the Southeastern Chamber is extremely busy these days as a business networking association. We were founded in 2005. We service about 893 members across the southeast, particularly comprising of small business entities. They make up hospitality and tourism, health care, green energy consortium, nightlife, entertainment and of course, technology, which is something big across the southeast. Certainly a pleasure to talk about all of the growth that’s happening not only in the chamber, but I think in the region as a whole and then, of course, across America. We were, as I said, founded in Charleston, South Carolina, in oh five, about ten years shy of the closing of our military tourism base there in Charleston. And we developed our assisted our communities there with developing plans that would come up with a stronger blue and white collar industry there in Charleston that would make things sufficient for years to come so that if another big closing like that of a manufacturing dependent, that many of the residents and local market was depending on, if that were to happen again, we would be ready. So we were founded during a very unique time, but we are all about networking, training and promoting our members and we’re always looking to do that through an innovative form of development. Well, that’s a little bit about our chamber now.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] What was the thinking to have the chamber focus on the Southeast rather than just the community or the city or even the Metro?

Henry Ravenel: [00:02:26] Well, you know, they have about three or four different chambers that are in Charleston and just right there servicing the Charleston area. But no one is looking at interconnectedness on a regional basis. And a lot of our contractors want to do business abroad. They want to do business outside of the local market. And we decided to do what we saw that other chambers weren’t doing and that still have the small business improvement areas that cover a specific locale, but then give them the opportunity to connect for contracts and bids and opportunities abroad as well. When I say abroad, of course, outside of our headquarter market of South Carolina, with doing that, we’ve been able to structure divisions, to have cross collaboration with other divisions to do business. So whether it’s bidding on a project at a stadium in Atlanta or whether it’s looking for government contracting state of Raleigh, North Carolina, our members love that cross collaboration and we wanted to make a regional impact while still giving them a small time hometown feel.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:37] Now, as a leader of an organization like that, how do you kind of help them, the members connect with each other and create maybe events that encourage that type of collaboration across borders?

Henry Ravenel: [00:03:51] Well, we do that through a lot of our events and service. You said a key word there, events and whether it’s our NENO conference, which stands for Stop Entrepreneurship Next Gen Opportunity, or whether it’s through some of our local festivals that we put on as an organization, we’re always looking to connect those members, whether it’s through international trade, us being a 500 1z6. We just did two tours in Africa to talk about international collaboration and US trading and employment opportunities in the hospitality and tourism industry. You know, all all the way down to just some of the programs we do from city to city and state to state. Those include our restaurant festivals and, you know, food and beverage events that all drive our members with the opportunity to do business abroad and in the local area. So those are just to name a few of some of our programs and events that we provide to the members across the borders.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:58] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Henry Ravenel: [00:05:02] You know, I went to Camden Military Academy and finished there in high school, came out second in command. So leadership wasn’t a stranger to me tipping off to college, which was done in Hampton, Sydney and Hampton, Virginia, Hampton, Sydney, Virginia, and then got into Charleston and just realized there was a need for a millennial based networking organization that focused on small business. Like I said, we had had our traditional chambers that had been around Charleston Metro chamber, one of the greatest. Organizations in Charleston had been around since 1776, but they had a very traditional structure and a very traditional way of doing business. So when we looked at that and we looked at the amount of college graduates and high school students that were coming out of high school locally and college locally, but matriculating on to other areas like Atlanta and Charlotte. We had to bridge a gap there. And we thought that the chamber, with the first step, being networking and future collaboration, would be able to bridge that gap and which it did. But how do we. We asked ourselves back then, how did we go to those cities like Charlotte and Atlanta and Raleigh and those that were close by and grab our next generation of trailblazers that had took off? And then we figured out that if we created cross-border collaborations on a regional level, that may have the opportunity to bring them back home and strengthen the workforce, but still give them the opportunity to tour and visit and have friends in other markets, that we could create good synergy and collaboration to do business with them. Still feeling exposed, getting proper exposure, but yet having that hometown town feel to come back and contribute to the market. So that’s how all that got started. And some of the ideas that we had when this came about.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:54] Can you share a story where you were able to help a member kind of build one of those cross-border relationships that took maybe either one or both of those organizations to a new level? You don’t have to name the name of the organization, but maybe the challenge that they had and what they were looking for and how were they they were able to achieve it.

Henry Ravenel: [00:07:15] Uh, yeah, I could give you a I guess I could give you kind of on the advocate standpoint without me. That sounds like an interview question. They’re like a, like a job interview question. But I think I could give you a example of how we assist one of our members with advocacy. We had a member that. You know, services something in the health and beauty industry. So it’s a it’s a nail industry. And a lot of their employees that come to the states come from abroad. So they were dealing with a testing and a international examination period through the License Labor and Review Board, which is linked to our State House and some of our local state officials there. We were able to assist him with streamlining a easier testing process for some of his employees to come into the country because his unique services that he offered is sometimes not something that a lot of our local workforce would like to do or would like to be trained. So we took him in and met with local officials and some of our state officials and politicians that were all involved with that committee and build policy and law process that made it difficult for him to get some employees and help. So we had to travel to various markets and do some analytics and data to prove his argument and then bring it to the board for review. And so our cross-border collaboration in the return on investment for that member came from him being able to see that he had a local business organization that fought in front of local, state and national government for things that affected his business. We went from Columbia to Raleigh back to Charleston to prove the importance of why this small business that has 12 locations really needed not only the support of his chamber, but support of those that are passing laws that affect his business.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] Now, if you were going to give advice to an entrepreneur or small business owner on the best way to leverage this Southeastern Chamber of Commerce membership, what would you say is the most important thing they could be doing?

Henry Ravenel: [00:09:36] Well, follow our return on investment strategy. I think we’re the only chamber that offers a 180 day return on investment plan that tells you once you sign up to become a member and you invest in our products and services, how do you gain the most of your ROI? So we’ve got a roadmap plan that we give out and it tells you on your 30th day or 60th day, your 100 and your 90th day in 120th day, what you should be looking for, what are the type of events that you should be engaged in? Not only that, I think we’re the only chamber that offers customized membership, meaning that member has the opportunity to come and sit in front of us and talk about what are their needs for their business. You know, traditional structures. Typically you sign up for a chamber of commerce, you list off your list of benefits and it’s the take it or leave it thing, you know, get in where you fit in. We saw that that was problematic for industries like chamber. So the Southeastern Chamber rolled out a millennial plan to customize memberships. So we take the question you asked me and we give it back to the member.

Henry Ravenel: [00:10:43] What is it that you’re joining this organization for? In section F of our application, we ask, Do you need government contracting? You need networking, you need marketing, you need visibility. And when they check that box, we put them into a system and then we look at our calendar for the year and our programs and our services. So we mix and match those opportunities to what they signed up for. And we’ve seen that members like that because they get a greater and direct return on investment other than just being thrown to the wolves, which is kind of like sometimes how these modern day groups and organizations do things. So I would say to any member interested in looking at getting the best bang on their buck for joining the Southeastern Chamber is to follow the plan we give you, which is that our strategy in the beginning and then when we sit and talk to you during that interview process and we ask you what is your expectation and what is your prospective return on investment from the organization, that you answer that thoroughly so that we can do our job and deliver.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now what do you need more of? How can we help you? Do you need more members? Do you need more kind of corporate partners, more sponsors? How can we help you?

Henry Ravenel: [00:11:54] We’re always looking for collaboration and partnerships and but we’re very specific family chamber. So at that same time, we want to make sure that partnerships are strategic for our organization because we are a different type of chamber. So I would say what we need from organizations like yours and other partners in the airways and in the media realm that have large followings is just to help us promote the small business, family office, family style businesses. We are the training ground and the hub for those type businesses. And if you can help us get the word out about our organization specifically wanting to service those markets, that would be of great help to us. Not to mention we’re rolling out a plan that’s a lot to do with green energy, putting more smart energy hubs in a lot of our southern markets. We’re working on bidirectional green energy and with solar panels and electric car charging stations. It’s going to be a big tech green tech wave for the 2023 plan of the chamber. So any businesses that are connected in those spaces are always good referrals for our chamber. With some of the new bills and laws that have came out and some of the business that we’re going to be doing across the region was specifically in the energy and in green space. So all of those are good referrals. That’s how you can help and certainly we would appreciate that.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:32] So now, having worked in this space for a minute, are you bullish about the next generation of entrepreneurs? Are you excited about their contribution to the economy?

Henry Ravenel: [00:13:46] Well, I’m excited if we’re able to continue to understand them, because millennials have to understand Gen Zs as Gen Ys had to understand millennials. And I think that they can contribute a lot. Our Gen Z generation can contribute a lot to the economy, but I do think they need to realize that it’s comfortable that it sounds it’s not going to be able to be done from your pillow in your bedroom. Even though we’re a millennial and innovative chamber, we still believe in shaking hands. We still believe in face to face interaction. We still believe in closing a deal at a table. And and so I think it’s going to be a balance. It’s going to be a balance between the two generations. And we’re here to help find that balance. We’ve been finding it. And and so I think that we do have a bright future. To answer your question, with the the next generation of trailblazers, we just got to be able to pinpoint their thought process and how they think things. And then we’ve got to model the workforce to fit them. Some may say, no, we should take our corporate structure that we have and we should have them level up. But you try to tell people that have to run our nation and our workplaces and our small business models that are next in line. As others phase out, you try to tell them that they’ve got to do this and they’ve got to do that. And I think that’s the problem. They don’t want to hear that. So we’ve got to figure out a way to meet them in the middle. We need their technology. They need our wisdom, they need our strength. And together, when you can put that all in one hand, you’ve got a great fits.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:31] And it’s important contributors like you and your team that are being that bridge to help make that happen.

Henry Ravenel: [00:15:38] Absolutely. And we enjoy it. We enjoy every bit of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:41] Now, if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Henry Ravenel: [00:15:46] Yeah, you can reach us at Southeastern Chamber dot org. On December 1st, we’ll roll out our new interactive website. So we’ve had our website now for about seven years and we’re rolling out a new website on the 1st of December. But to reach us for now, you can reach us at our current website, which is Southeastern Chamber dot org. Of course you can call the chamber direct at 8435562863 or also on our. All of our modern modern social media links such as Instagram. We have Southeastern chamber page there, Facebook and Twitter, so you can reach us in those markets as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:34] Well, congratulations on all the success and thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you will lead.

Henry Ravenel: [00:16:41] Thank you for having us. And we look forward to doing some collaboration, probably working with you again in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:46] Sounds good. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

Kristin Zhivago With Zhivago Partners

November 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

High Velocity Radio

Kristin Zhivago With Zhivago Partners

00:00 /

Kristin Zhivago is the president of Zhivago Partners, a digital marketing agency that uses successful digital marketing methods and channels to produce qualified leads for its B2B and B2C clients. Zhivago is author of “Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy,” selected by Forbes as one of the top sales and marketing books.

As a revenue coach for decades, Zhivago has helped hundreds of CEOs and entrepreneurs increase their revenue and has interviewed thousands of customers as part of our work. She founded Zhivago Partners in 2017.

Connect with Kristin on LinkedIn and follow Zhivago Partners on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The most difficult thing about increasing revenue
The biggest mistake CEOs make
The shortcut to increasing revenue that anyone can put into practice
The four types of products and services in the world, and making sure you are selling yours correctly, based on the category yours falls into
“The gap” when it comes to growing a company
The biggest lesson learned as a revenue coach for decades

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 high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Kristine Zhivago with Zhivago Partners. Welcome.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:00:25] Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your practice. How are you serving folks?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:00:31] What was the last part of your question?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] How are you helping people?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:00:35] Oh, we basically help people sell more. That’s my goal in life to help company owners sell more. Been doing it for years. I’ve been a revenue coach for decades, mostly helping CEOs and entrepreneurs sell more by understanding what their customers want to buy and how they want to buy it. I’m an expert on the customers buying process.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] What was the genesis of this discovery, of this skill set you had?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:01:01] Well, I started out selling very young. In fact, at 17, I was the first as far as I know, I was the first woman to sell machine shop tools in the United States. And it was kind of humiliating because they just gave me a catalog and told me to go sell. So I really I learned quickly that I needed to know more about the product in order to sell. And I also just I made it a vow to myself that I would learn everything I could about technology and selling. And I’ve been doing that ever since.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:36] Now, when you went out and started being a revenue coach and working on helping others, was that something that just organically happened in your career after you were a successful salesperson? You were like, Hey, I can you know, selling is selling. It doesn’t matter what industry I can, you know, apply these same tools and help other people wherever they are.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:01:58] Well, actually what happened, I was selling a number of different things, and then my husband and I opened an ad agency in Silicon Valley, and we did that for about 12 years. And I started that revenue coaching work. Then what really changed my whole outlook on marketing and selling is I would go into companies and they would say, Here’s what’s important to our customers. It’s a list, you know, and it made sense, perfectly logical. Then I would go out and interview their customers and the list was always different than what the company had given me. So I knew that what they were doing was marketing incorrectly because they weren’t addressing something. I call the mindset of the customer when they set out to buy, which is their desires, their concerns and their questions. If you don’t know specifically what they are, your marketing efforts will all be wasted. So that really started me on this path. And then once the Macintosh came out, I looked at my husband and said, You know what, They’re all going to go in house. I’m going to help them. So I labeled myself as a revenue coach, and I did that for a number of decades before opening my digital agency.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] And then is the same strategies, whether you’re selling kind of human to human in person, the same as digitally, if I’m using, you know, Facebook ads or LinkedIn or Google ads.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:03:25] Oh, absolutely. It’s even more important because the message is all you have. If the message is off, if they come to your website and they don’t see themselves, they don’t understand what you’re selling and what’s what it would do for them if it doesn’t press their buttons, they will leave immediately and they won’t come back. So it’s even more important in the digital arena.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] Now is the first step in in this process. What you discovered is just talking to your customers like that seems to be a common strategy in a lot of startups is, you know, you do 100 discovery calls.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:04:03] Yeah, you don’t need to do 100, though. If you do if you do the surveying the way I recommend. And by the way, in my book, Roadmap to Revenue How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy. I spell this out. I’ve done thousands of these interviews. I’ve learned a lot of lessons. I basically get on the phone with them. You make an appointment so they have time and you ask open ended questions. Surveys don’t work. Surveys are your assumptions put in the form of questions so you don’t really learn anything new. Now, the great thing about in-depth phone interviews and you should do it by phone so there’s no human contact kind of body language issues or anything like that, and they can talk to you while they’re driving or whatever on their cell phone. The the thing that’s interesting about this is by the fifth to seventh phone call. You have the trends. You have bankable information that will continue to show up. If you interviewed 40 people and I’ve done that, I’ve had big companies say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. You have to interview 40 people. And honestly, by the seventh call, what we were learning was the same all the way through to the 40th person.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:22] Now the person doing the questioning, do they have to be the CEO or is it better to be kind of not the person that’s that emotionally invested in the outcome?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:05:32] It’s better to be not mostly because the person on the other side of the line will try to be very polite. I mean, I’ve even had situations where I was interviewing some guy who was running a factory, and the machine, my client’s machine that he was using to build all of his products was down when I call them. And every third word was F, and he was just really upset. And I said, You know, I’ve never done this before, but you seem to be really upset. Let’s get the CEO on the phone and see if we can work this out. So we did. And he was a completely different person to the CEO. He was super polite. So the CEO really didn’t get the full gist of his anger at not being able to manufacture these things while was basically out of business while the machine was down. So it’s better to have a third party, but that third party has to be someone who’s familiar with the products and so on. So they don’t they don’t bore the customer because customers will get off the phone pretty quickly if they get bored.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:42] Now, can you share a story of maybe the most insight you were able to glean from this and and maybe the most disparate from what the assumptions that the client had? And then what was the reality of after speaking to the client, you know, their client, what they discovered?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:06:58] Yeah. One of my favorite examples is a company that sold software to companies who did field service of any type. So this is kind of an operating system for field service companies. You know, they sent technicians out into the field and the company, the CEO was very technical, wonderful guy, and they were really proud of their integration with QuickBooks because, of course, QuickBooks was the standard. So everybody thought big deal, and they were very proud of how elegantly they did that integration with QuickBooks. So I get people on the phone, and when that subject came up, the customers were like, Well, yeah, everybody integrates with QuickBooks. That’s not a big deal. So to them it was like at the bottom of their list, It was like, airplanes have to fly, food has to take.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:52] That was it was just table stakes for them.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:07:55] Exactly. Perfect word for it. Yeah. Baseline industry promises, what I call it. So it turns out that the thing that made them buy that product was that when you’re first talking to a customer and you’re entering their information where they are and what their their equipment is and instructions and all of that, you enter it once and then it automatically populates all the other parts of the program, the invoices, the directions to the techs, all that stuff, because these were usually small businesses and they hated entering data more than once. Any entrepreneur will tell you they hate double entry. It’s terrible, inefficient thing. So we ended up rebranding the company. They were called Pioneer Interactive or something like that, which didn’t tell anybody anything about what they sold. And we ended up calling it Field One. You enter the data in once and it populates all the other fields and field, one in the sense that they were sending people out into the field. They ended up selling the company. They did so well. They sold the company in Microsoft. And it was I mean, it was a massive turnaround. But we’ve done this many times with clients very similar exact kind of you find out the truth and then you use the truth to interact with your customers and they they respond, your revenue goes up.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:25] So now what is the kind of the the biggest mistakes that you see people make over and over again? Is it just this not like is everything at the heart of it the polling of your clients and asking them why they bought?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:09:38] Yeah, that’s why I called my book Road Map to Revenue because if I mean, you’re selling the customers, you’re selling the people, they have these desires, concerns and questions. I mean, if you think of it as a buyer, you know this if they answer your questions to your satisfaction, you’re going to buy from them. If they don’t, you’re not. It’s really simple. And most people think they know what customers want or they’re shy about talking to customers or they’re egotistical about it. They’re too proud. And so they don’t do it. The ego drives the problem. So, you know, I kept thinking I would solve the problem in life could go on, but every company still has this problem. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:26] Now, is it something that you solve at once and then you’re good for a while? Or is it should you be doing this on an ongoing basis?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:10:33] Yeah, that’s another wonderful thing about it. Even as fast as markets move and change, customer mindsets don’t change that much over time. If you’re in a super fast moving market, doing it every six months or so is sufficient. Now, obviously, if there’s a massive change like you’ve got a pandemic or something, then you have to reassess because the desires, concerns and questions may change radically and you have to be on board. But as a general rule, you can do this every six months, once a year, and just make sure you’re on the right, still on the right track.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:13] And it’s just a matter of getting your book, kind of taking those questions and using that as a guide and then just polling a half a dozen clients every six months.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:11:26] Yeah, half a dozen clients of any given type. So if you’ve got dealers and customers or dealers and distributors or so on or VPNs and and workers and CEOs, then you still have to talk to 5 to 7 people of a given type.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now, when you have that, when you are asking these open ended questions and they are probably going to talk a little bit and hopefully ramble a bit, and then within that there’s going to be, I guess, the nuggets of truth or the you’ll get you’ll glean the heart of the, you know, the key reasons that they made the purchase or that they were interested.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:12:05] Yeah. So what I do is I give the clients a conversation report. That’s a transcription of all the conversations broken into categories. So here are the answers to all the answers to that question, which, by the way, I can tell the person at the beginning of the interview that I’m going to do that. So it’s anonymous, which means they can speak openly. So that’s great. Then I also give him a summary and recommendations report. So I end up personally taking the hours that it takes to read through that conversation, report and bulletin using the findings so that anyone in the company can look at that and immediately understand. They can scan through that document and say, Oh, we see the big the big picture here and people will use the exact same phrase to describe that big picture thing, even though they’ve never talked to each other. It’s fascinating to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] And when you’re when you’re doing like, you know, call one to call to the call three, are you kind of using the information you’re learning as you go to help in kind of gleaning these nuggets? Or is it something where you’ve got to be kind of every time, the first time, and just ask them as if this the first time you’ve ever talked to anybody about this?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:13:27] It’s kind of a combination. I mean, obviously, if someone brings up something in the first call, that’s a total surprise. And and then the second person doesn’t mention it. I might at the end of the interview because you definitely don’t want to impact the interview in any way. But at the end of the interview, I might say, well, one person did mention this. What do you think of that now? By the way, I did that with that company that wanted me to talk to 40 people. By the ninth call, I thought, you know what? I’m wasting their money here, so I better start getting some more value. So I did that at the very end of the conversation, I might say, You know, I’ve talked to three people that mentioned this. What do you think? But you do have to be careful not to lead them or make your ideas end up in that report. It has to all be the customer stuff and you can’t sell to them either. You’ve got to just be interviewing. The minute you start selling, they’ll start playing poker and they’ll clam up and they won’t tell you anything.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:29] Now, what’s the kind of the frame you have to give them where they’re even open to having this type of conversation?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:14:37] Usually we used to just send the emails myself out to prospective interviewees, but I’ve found lately that it’s better to have the client send out the emails and say, We’re just trying to improve. We just need a half an hour of your time, open ended questions and we’ll set up an appointment. Interestingly, contrary to what you see in the movies and popular entertainment, most people are nice and they’re and they’re happy to be helpful. And this is one of those things where they don’t have to prepare, they don’t have to do any work. They just have to show up and start talking. So it’s kind of fun work. It’s not that hard.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:22] And they feel like they’re helping, right? They they they feel like they’re helping and giving back.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:15:27] Yes, exactly. And because they are customers, they have already invested in your company and they want you to succeed. That’s one of the prime things about this is you talk to people who have already bought from you, so you’re reverse engineering successful sales. You’re trying to find out their buying process so that you can replicate it and support it. And they want you to be successful. So they’re way more open to talking to you after they’ve bought.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:58] Now, so does it not work as well, like with a freemium product, like to to talk to someone who’s maybe using it for free or benefiting without paying and then asking them what it would take to move them to be paying.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:16:12] Oh, you could you could do that kind of interview. Sure it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. Yeah, you do it. You might have to adjust your questions a little bit, but yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:21] So it could work. Like somebody that’s a startup that doesn’t have maybe clients yet, but is just testing an idea or concept?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:16:29] Yes, it’s harder to do that. I mean, most of my clients are established companies that are trying to sell more, and I’ve known this from the beginning that it’s harder to find people. You have to find prospective customers who are not friends because one of the mistakes entrepreneurs make is they sell to their friends and then they hire a salesperson who’s selling to people who don’t know them. And the entrepreneur is like, Well, why are you having so much trouble? I didn’t have any trouble, but he was selling to his friends. So yes, it’s a little harder. You have to find the people. You still follow the basic pattern and as soon as you do start having customers, you should start doing this because that’s the real deal. You want to talk to people who’ve already gone through the buying process. They know you and your product.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:19] Now, is it is it helpful or is that like how is making that transition from early adopters to more mainstream? Because early adopters tend to try new things and take more risk and will take a flier on something where somebody who is less are more risk averse, is more hesitant. Does that change the the messaging? Does that change how you approach sales?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:17:45] Yes. Yes, obviously. And again, going back to their desires, concerns and questions, the concerns thing is a big deal. Nobody. There’s no such thing as a virgin environment when you’re selling. Everybody has been through millions of buying processes and and they’ve all become very sophisticated customers with our digital age and everything. The desire, the concerns might change when you’re talking to the people who are more risk adverse. But you’re still going to hear some of that with the people who wanted to try it for free. Because it’s not just money, it’s also time. It’s also being willing to invest the time to learn something or try something new. And that’s a risk too. So there will be some commonalities between the early adopters and the people that come after.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:39] Now, have you found after doing this, I would imagine across multiple industries and in multiple products and services that there’s kind of ways to chunk these out? Are there kind of. Certain types of products and services that like everybody kind of falls into. And then once you’ve kind of put yourself in that box, then you can, you know, optimize for that.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:19:06] Yes and no. One of the mistakes people make is they look at their competition and say, here’s what they’re doing. We’ll do that to. That’s okay for things like SEO where you’re finding the keywords that they’re being found for and the clicks they’re getting for those keywords, but. Your company, your product, your management team. The decisions that you make are very different from those of your competitors. So people look at the whole thing and every company is different and there might be a reason why they would go with one company over another and it might not be what you think. So you do have to be you can’t generalize this stuff. The specificity of this is actually what makes it work. And then you get that very specific message. Right. And they see it when they first come to your site or see your product or whatever, and they go, Yep, that’s me. Oh, good. They get it. They get it. It’s got to be very specific. You can’t just say makes you sexier, healthier, richer. Nobody pays any attention to that stuff anymore.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:15] And the more specific you are where the person kind of believes, oh, they get me, they’re talking right to me. That’s that’s what you’re shooting for?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:20:24] Yep.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:26] And then how do you. Is there once you get this information, do you help move the person from. Oh, they get me to. Okay, I think I’ll buy this or I’ll at least consider this to okay, I buy this and maybe I’ll tell my friends, like, do you help them through all the kind of the path of a client to not just being a client, but to be like kind of a raving fan as well?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:20:52] Yes. Short answer to that question. The buying process is all the way through those stages. I’m thinking about buying it, I’m buying it, and then after I buy it, I react to it somehow. All of that helps your sales. All of that drives revenue. So you don’t just stop with the sale. In fact, the companies that continue and cross-sell and upsell or make sure that people are happy, those are the ones that leverage the revenue they already have and turn it into more revenue.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:27] And is that low hanging fruit for most businesses that they’re not really kind of leveraging to the fullest? Is that existing client? It seems like a lot of folks focus on the new client more than the existing client.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:21:41] You’re absolutely right. And yes, that’s that is I can’t tell you how many companies could do so much better if they just turned around and looked at what they already have. They already have customers. Those customers can help them sell more to other customers if they ask them the right questions. That’s the first part. And the second part is reaching out and keeping in touch and being there for them. It’s sort of shocking to me how much money is wasted on bad messages because they never did talk to the very people they were taught they were selling to. And then afterwards they just drop them like a hot rock and go on to the next one. It’s just it’s crazy. There’s so much revenue. I have I’ve helped a lot of people sell through recessions, and that’s one of the first things you do, is you look for that low hanging fruit that’s sitting in your backyard already.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:40] Why do you think that people are more kind of enamored with the stranger rather than the people that are already there buying from them?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:22:50] Well, part of it is that sometimes the CEO doesn’t like customers. You know, they just they’re sort of a non social. And I found this a lot in the tech industry. They were they were not people people. They were equipment people and system people. And they really thought customers were a bit of a bother. So there’s that aspect. There’s also just feeling embarrassed about going back to them, like, why should we go back to them? What’s what can we offer them? And you have to think about that. I have one client who’s just a master at leveraging the customers they already have and giving new customers new reasons to reach out to them. And one of the things that we did, they sell a particular type of a lift for a data center. So you move your equipment around with this lift. It’s a motorized dolly kind of thing. And one of the things we did was we built a database of all the servers in the world and whether this machine can pick them up or not. And there’s thousands of servers. There’s a big project. But it’s a wonderful idea. And it’s helping customers, existing customers and new customers. So that kind of thing where you look and say the real question. That you ask yourself every single day is, how can I help these people? Given the resources that I have, how can I help these people?

Lee Kantor: [00:24:24] Right. And I think that’s that’s kind of a gap for most salespeople. They’re trying to sell something instead of just trying to help somebody. And and if they just started focusing on just helping more people, whether they buy their service or product or not, I think they’re going to sell more because they’re going to be a resource, then they’re not going to be another vendor.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:24:46] Yeah, this same client I’m talking about, actually, the salespeople were replaced with customer service people and they help the customer by. So whatever their issue is, supply chain problems or they need something right away, or they need a particular kind of thing, those people are dedicated to helping the customer. And sometimes you’re right, they don’t make a they’re not on commission, they don’t make any kind of commission if they help them or not. So they’re just helpful people and their revenue has gone through the roof. It’s masterful, wonderful thing to do. I’ve been advocating that for years.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:30] What makes people afraid to try that?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:25:34] Well, there is this mentality that sales works, that if you get a guy on the phone pounding the phones, a guy or gal, and they’re just going after the cut, that it’s going to work. It makes perfect sense. It’s way less complicated than marketing. So people just do it. But it’s it’s it’s so broken now. I mean, how many of us see spam possible spam on our cell phone and we don’t answer the phone? You know, how many of us avoid salespeople? And we’re getting really good at it with all of our technology and everything. The usual pushy sales methods do not work and haven’t worked for years, and we still do it. It’s crazy.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:19] Now, is there a lesson that stands out for you in your kind of career in helping so many folks increase their revenue? Is there kind of one big aha or one big message you’d like to share?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:26:32] Yeah, the message is what I’ve been saying, which is your customers will help you sell if you are humble enough to listen to them and ask them the right questions in the right way, they will absolutely help you sell and the information you get will be a big AHA to you. And sometimes I bring the information back in. The CEO says, Well, I knew that. But I didn’t know it was that important. I didn’t know that was the main reason that people bought from us, for example. So you might sort of know it, but you don’t realize until I’ve talked to these people and they come back with a report and you say, Oh my goodness, everybody said the same thing. So it does require humility. You do have to be willing to listen. But, you know, customers are where money comes from. So it’s a really good idea to to listen to them and take their advice.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:29] Now, who is your ideal client? Is it the the company or is it an agent? Do you work with other agencies? Like how do you how do you get your clients?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:27:43] I have been marketing myself for decades, writing blog articles, appearing on podcasts and so on, and I just keep getting this message out there. And every so often somebody listens to it and says, Oh man, this woman gets it. I got to talk to her and it makes sense to them. And we’re just off and running or people read the book or whatever. My perfect client is an established business that is not having much luck with digital marketing, which is why I started this agency back in 2017. Now, I’ve been in business before that for decades, but this was obvious to me as a revenue coach that so many established businesses were suffering because they’d hired a social person and it didn’t work. Or they tried SEO and it didn’t work, and they’re just super frustrated and they just they they’re worried because the marketing is all digital now, and if they can’t make that work, they’re really in trouble. So that’s that’s my that’s my perfect client. My only other rule is that I don’t work with jerks. I have no clients and no jerk workers. So we’re all we’re doing all day long is helping each other. It’s a wonderful environment. I’m happier working now than I’ve ever been in my life. It’s just so much fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:04] And it doesn’t matter if they’re B2B or B2C.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:29:07] No, we do both.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:10] And then the outcome that they would get by working with you, you would help kind of hone in on the proper messaging and also even to the point of executing the knowledge, they’re into actionable marketing pieces that can be rolled out.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:29:25] We build, we build digital marketing campaigns, we do some non digital stuff, but basically we build digital campaigns that work and bring in qualified leads. That’s another thing. We’re not we don’t just want to bring in lots of leads, we want to bring in the right leads. And so that’s we just fine tune it. We use a variety of methods, whatever is appropriate online advertising, SEO, content marketing, email, marketing, social, all of those things, whatever is appropriate, whatever supports the customer’s buying process, that’s what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:01] And if somebody wants to learn more, what’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on the team?

Kristin Zhivago: [00:30:07] All they have to do is either just Google my name, Christine Zhivago, I’m going to be all page one. They can go to Zhivago Partners, Dotcom. Everything they need is there, including my phone number and other ways to get in touch with us and very accessible. And I have a team of about 2025 people.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:27] And that’s the HIV Argot Partners.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:30:32] Yep, exactly. Well, can get the book on Amazon road map to revenue. How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:39] Well, Kristen, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Kristin Zhivago: [00:30:45] Thank you. Good questions. I enjoyed it.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:47] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on High velocity radio. And.

Seth Radman With Infinite Giving

November 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Seth Radman With Infinite Giving

00:00 /

Seth Radman, Co-Founder & CTO of Infinite Giving.

He is an Atlanta-based tech entrepreneur and Georgia Tech alum who has started and grown multiple successful companies. He is a 4x startup founder with 2 exits, and he has built 40+ products used by more than 300 million people.

Seth was previously the Founder & CEO of Crescendo, an AI music training app used by over 1 million musicians that was acquired by Ultimate Guitar in 2019. He also built Upbeat Music App, a real-time virtual music platform acquired by MakeMusic in 2022.

Currently, he is Co-Founder & CTO at Infinite Giving, a modern investment platform for nonprofits. Seth has been featured by Apple, Forbes and TechCrunch, and he serves as a coach and advisor to startups in Atlanta and the southeast.

Connect with Seth on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Fintech for nonprofits, Infinite Giving (current startup)
Coaching and mentoring early stage founders
Going through 4 startups with 2 exits
Prioritizing mental health as a founder

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:25] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And these are very favorite ones. These are the GSU ENI radio special editions and today is going to be a good one. Today we have Seth Radman and he is with Infinite Giving. He was recently a judge at the Main Street event over at the GSU football stadium. Welcome, Seth.

Seth Radman: [00:00:47] Hey, thanks for having me here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, I’m so excited to learn. First of all, tell us about Infinite giving. How are you serving folks?

Seth Radman: [00:00:55] Yeah, I’m happy to talk about I’m going to give it. So I’ve partnered up with Karen Houghton. She was previously the vice president at Atlanta Tech Village, and we have built a beautiful online platform that helps nonprofits invest reserve funds, create endowments and accept stock and crypto donations. So a lot of the things that they’re already doing that are kind of archaic with big banks and PDF forms, we’ve created a platform to help automate fully online.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:20] So now this is nonprofits of any size or do they have to have a certain kind of supply of money to be used in this manner for it to make sense?

Seth Radman: [00:01:31] We serve nonprofits of any size. Most of our customers so far are less than $20 million in assets under management, usually because once you’re bigger than that, typically you have your own people internally that help you manage stuff. So probably the more small to medium sized nonprofits, but we also do serve some very large ones with our crypto indoctrination tools to make things easier for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] Now what’s kind of the pain they’re having where infinite giving solves a problem for them?

Seth Radman: [00:01:56] Yeah, there’s really there’s really two big pain points. And really the the background for this is when COVID happened, we went on lockdown. A lot of nonprofits either got more emergency relief funding than they’ve ever gotten before or unfortunately, they had to shut down and close up shop because they just couldn’t meet ends meet. And so the net result is a lot of nonprofits have an excess of cash, at least if they’re still around. And so as we’ve seen in the past couple of years, just based on the way the stock market has moved and crypto and especially with inflation rate where it is, a lot of nonprofits are looking to invest their reserve funds or create endowments to create longer term sustainable growth. The challenge with that is working with big banks can be really tough for nonprofits. They don’t meet the greed index. They’re not going to grow as quickly as other for profit companies. And since they’re not for profit and tax exempt, there’s higher risk for things like money laundering. And so the risk level is just a lot higher for traditional banks, and it’s a very poor experience with high fees. So we’ve created a platform that essentially, instead of you having to work with manual PDFs on a 4 to 6 week process to open an account with another big bank, for us, it takes about just 10 minutes online.

Seth Radman: [00:03:05] So that’s that’s one way we help people with investing their funds in low risk, low cost ETFs and index funds. The other way is through alternate asset donations. You know, probably I don’t know the exact number, but it’s got to be at least 80 or 90% of the world’s wealth is held in stock, not cash. Yet nonprofits continually are primarily asking donors for cash. And so what we do is we make it a lot easier for nonprofits to donate stock to nonprofits. Sorry, for donors to donate stock to nonprofits, which is the most tax advantageous way to give right now. It’s very clunky to do that. Usually you have to fill out a PDF form, you have to sign it, you have to email it to your financial advisor. Then they do stuff. It’s a pain. Again, we’ve changed that so that it’s a two minute form online and we connect with your bank and give the instructions for you to transfer that over. So essentially helping nonprofits manage everything except for cash that they interact with, that’s the big problem that we’re trying to solve now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:01] Is it a difficult conversation to have with leaders of nonprofits to make this kind of a change? Because it seems kind of large, at least they could perceive it as being this massive change?

Seth Radman: [00:04:13] That’s a really great question. What we’ve found so far is a lot of executive directors, a lot of executive directors and CFOs absolutely love this. It’s the product that they wish they had years ago. They can’t wait to get on board. I think the bigger challenge is typically navigating the politics within your board to get this approved, that some nonprofits require board approval to move forward with this. And usually from what we found, there’s usually one or two people on the board who have a background in finance and would think that it’d be better for them to personally manage the funds, which is a pretty big conflict of interest. So I think just navigating the politics around that is a big deal. But honestly, the problem is so big for a lot of these nonprofit leaders. It’s causing them such a headache to be missing out with inflation the way it is and to have to call a traditional wealth advisor every time they want to know their balance or get a giant stack of PDF reports just to see how they’re doing that they want in. I think it’s a matter of using the right tactics to persuade the rest of the leadership in the organization that it’s the right move for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:12] Now, in your free time, when you’re not leading this organization, you invest a lot of time mentoring and serving the startup ecosystem. Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the less? Since you’ve learned through going through so many startups, including infinite giving and how you kind of relate that to what a startup founder maybe who is going through it for the first time.

Seth Radman: [00:05:36] Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. I really enjoy mentoring and coaching other founders. I had a lot of fantastic mentors for me and I went through the Critics program at Georgia Tech, which was fantastic. Now I’m a coach for that program as well as an advisor for some startups at Georgia State and others across the Southeast. I think the probably biggest lesson, that biggest piece of advice that I really try to drill into a lot of the founders I work with is just spend more time with your customer. A lot of founders jump straight into building the product because that’s the fun, exciting thing to do. And and I get it. I’m a software engineer myself. I really like to build. It’s fun to hunker yourself down and build, build, build. But the reality is a lot of people are building things that unfortunately no one wants. And so it’s really important to be talking to your customer a lot more than you’d expect. And that’s one of the biggest failures that I’ve had. I’ve I’ve built over 40 iPhone apps and probably only three or four of them have had more than a thousand downloads because I built what I thought were cool ideas without actually talking to customers and making sure that it was solving a real problem for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:37] Now, as that relates to infinite giving, was this something that when you and Karen and your team were kind of brainstorming, you’re like, Oh, this is a no brainer. They’re going to just, you know, compounding down the door. This solves it’s so obvious. And then when you got into the weeds of this and you realize there’s always that one kind of rogue person that doesn’t want to give up control or has their own agenda. And it’s a little trickier navigating those politics than maybe how you pictured it on the whiteboard.

Seth Radman: [00:07:07] Yeah, it’s definitely we’ve definitely had some curveballs and things have been different than how we expected. Karen, my co-founder and our CEO, she used to run a nonprofit. She has that background. She really understands what it’s like to get burnt out in this endless fundraising cycle. And so I think our mission of helping nonprofits has stayed the same. How we do that has shifted a little bit. I don’t think it’s difficult to anticipate what the market’s going to do with the market being all over the place where it is right now. Some folks are more hesitant to investing, even though that arguably could be one of the best times while prices are low. So we’ve we’ve shifted a little bit towards some of our asset giving tools, helping with stock donation and endowments. But no doubt we did not know things right off the bat. But there is one thing we did that I highly recommend for a lot of entrepreneurs, which is before we wrote a single line of code, we did 100 customer interviews, we talked with 100 nonprofit leaders and we tried to understand, Hey, how are you currently managing your funds? What are you doing for stock donations, crypto donations? And we heard the same thing from a lot of them, which is, Oh man, we we know we should be investing. We just haven’t gotten around to it because we’re not quite sure where to start. We’re not quite sure how to even go about crypto donations, but we know we should be because all the research says that the average crypto donation size is much bigger than cash or stock. So we definitely validated the problem talking to a lot of customers. But once we built the product, it’s an experiment. There’s a lot of unknown variables that come into play and we’ve definitely had to pivot and adjust as we get feedback from our customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:37] Now, how do you take that information and and then relate it to pricing? How do you know? You know, you interview these hundred people who are probably in some way or another, an ideal prospect, some of them at least. How do you know? Hey, that’s worth a dollar, that’s worth $100. That’s worth, you know, $1,000,000. How do you kind of know the sweet spot or kind of can project somewhat of a sweet spot of pricing so you can begin offering it to the market?

Seth Radman: [00:09:06] Pricing is one of those things that is is really tough. I think there’s really only one way to truly do pricing right, which is to test it, right. You have to test lots of different pricing with lots of different customers for us for good or for bad, because we’re in a regulated industry and as an investment advisor, there are certain things that we have to engrave into our product a little more rigidly than you would with a more dynamic pricing model for other products. So for us, for our advisory services, we have a fixed fee based on your balance for assets under management that we’re registered with CC and we have to stick to that. We do have a SAS product that is a monthly fee that frankly we’ve just experimented with with different price points and we want to call with the prospect we’re going through everything, they’re sold on the product and then we get to the end when we’re talking about the fee and the cost and we’re looking at their emotional reaction, we’re looking at our close rates, we’re looking at the emails that we get after these calls to see if they want to move forward or if they don’t and what their pricing threshold is. But most of the time, frankly, what we do is we ask them, hey, what’s your budget for a technology like this to improve sustainability and increase your donations? I think for consumer products, it’s maybe a little bit of a taboo subject to say, hey, how much would you pay for this? You know, humans will tell you what they think they’d pay, but you really don’t know for sure until they convert. But for organizations, it’s usually a little more cut and dry. Not always, but a little more. Where there’s typically a budget specifically for things like this. And if you ask people, at least that’s a good starting point. But from my experience, the only way to truly know pricing is to start with your what you think is your best gut at first and experiment. Do split tests and see what the data shows.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:47] Now, in your experience going through several start ups, several exits, can you talk about kind of and maybe this is a bit of a taboo subject, maybe not so much today, but definitely, probably when you started, it was the kind of the mental health of a founder. You know, at one point there was just, you know, you’re living 24 seven and you’re proud of 24 or seven, 30, 65, Hustle, hustle, hustle. And today that seems to be a little less at least overt. At least.

Seth Radman: [00:11:18] Yeah. I’m so glad you brought this up because it’s not talked about enough. I was one of those people with my first couple of startups, my first app company, Plutonium Apps, and my my next startup Crescendo. I was one of those people working 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. And the truth is that can only last you so long, right? You have to neglect so many other aspects of your life, your physical health, yours, your relationships with other people, eating, sleeping. You know, these are all things that you should be doing during the day. And I went through a period of time where I just was I kind of lost myself to the grind, just working as much as I could every day to move things forward. And it broke me where I essentially I had to take about a month off and I almost quit just because I was falling apart. And now I’m definitely one of those people who is in it for the long run that I’m trying to build not only sustainable business but also a sustainable lifestyle and a sustainable schedule for myself to be able to pursue this because I don’t want to be doing this just for another year or two.

Seth Radman: [00:12:19] I’d like I’d like to be doing this ideally for decades, the building products that people love. And so yeah, now my schedule is, is much better that I rarely work more than 8 hours a day. Sometimes it’s even less than that. If I’ve a time block where I have very focused and I’ve found that if I’m really dedicating a couple of hours to doing one thing with no distractions, no notifications, no email, no slack, that I can get a lot done in a short period of time. So I’ve I’ve really started focusing more on doing less, but making sure that I’m doing the important things and I’m doing them better, and also having the right balance of my day to spend time with my wife, with my cat, to be getting exercise and going rock climbing or playing saxophone and having some balance so that I can take breaks as needed and be able to sustain this for a longer period of time.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] Now, do you have any tips or advice for the listener regarding prioritizing? Because that’s at the heart of this. You have to have a true north. You have to have an idea of what is that most important thing, not the most urgent thing, but the most important thing. How do you kind of how did you solve that riddle?

Seth Radman: [00:13:25] Yeah, that’s a that’s a tough one. You really have to think about what’s most important in life. And then also with your business, what’s going to move things forward. And so for me, I mean, people, friends, family are at the top of everything that it really doesn’t matter what’s going on in my business. If something comes up with a really close friend or family member, I’m going to drop everything and they’re going to come first. But in terms of the business, there’s an exercise that I like to do that I think it’s something Warren Buffett or some other successful person did that I’ve copied and really enjoyed. You know, we all have to do lists and we probably have a ton of things on these To-Do lists. One thing that I like to do is I’ll create the top ten things on my mind that I really want to get done today. And then I’ll cross out. What I think are the five least important things. So there’s only five remaining and then I’ll cross out two more. So there’s only three, and then I’ll circle one item. What I believe is the most important thing. The key thing is not only to focus on doing that one most important thing, but to explicitly not do any of the other things on that list. There are so many distractions, so many easy wins that I can check off that list. I really try to structure each day by focusing on what is the single one most important thing that I can do to move my business forward. And usually there’s multiple things, but man, having that kind of laser like focus is really difficult. It takes a lot of discipline because there’s so many other shiny, catchy things that sometimes could be more fun or more exciting. But I really found that being consistent with the daily sometimes mundane tasks like sending code emails that move your business forward, that’s that’s really the key to making progress.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:01] Now, you recently were a judge at the Main Street event for GSU. Can you talk about your experience there and the caliber of founder that is coming out of that program?

Seth Radman: [00:15:12] Man the advantage issue is fantastic. The founders were so well-prepared, the pitches were fantastic. As a judge, we I really struggled to evaluate who I thought should be first, second and third place because they were all so fantastic. I think we’re seeing incredible ideas coming out of universities with with college students that are just very creative and have a lot of ambition and a lot of persistence to move forward with things that they’re passionate about. So the startups that I think are fantastic, I think there’s an important thing to note, which is, you know, just statistically, from what I’ve seen from these university accelerator programs, I don’t think we expect that all of them are going to continue working on their startup a few years from now. Some are going to decide to move on to other ideas. Some of them will fail, some of them will succeed. But I really have no doubt that the experience of building their company, going out to get customers, building the product, pitching in front of an audience, learning how to present yourself regardless of the path that these young founders take. I think it’s going to be an incredible skill set that will help them if they’re at a bigger company, leading innovation or leading change from within. If they do decide to do their own thing and are working on a smaller team or startup or really whatever path, whatever path they take, I, I know for me, entrepreneurship has really been personal development disguised as professional development that obviously I’m working to build a business, working to get customers. But I think by doing startups I’ve learned more about myself and how I can grow as a person. And I’m I have no doubt that the founders at GSA will be doing that too, because they were just off the chart in terms of talent, probably one of the most impressive university accelerator pitches that I’ve seen in quite a long time.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:54] And I love the fact that it’s not it’s not just tech only. It’s everything’s probably tech enabled, but tech’s part of it, obviously. But it’s not just kind of the same software app startups that you see in other events.

Seth Radman: [00:17:12] Yeah, I mean, I think nowadays people think every startup has to be a SAS mobile app or web app that can scale to be $1,000,000,000 company. But man, there’s a lot of great service businesses or great lifestyle businesses that will never get beyond a million, 5 million, 10 million or even 100,000 in revenue, but can be fantastic businesses. So I think it’s important not to fit all startups into one bucket of being the typical SAS or tech product that’s going to scale and grow quickly. There’s a lot of great service businesses out there and tech enabled services that do a lot of good and are quite fulfilling and adventurous for the founders that run them right.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:50] And as you mentioned, that those skills are transferable no matter what you decide to do for the rest of your life.

Seth Radman: [00:17:56] Absolutely. And I’ve seen this a lot through Crate X, through GSU. There’s a lot of founders who decide that either the startup lifestyle isn’t for them or they’re not in love with the startup they do. And what do they do next? They go to lead in strong leadership positions at other companies. They go into another startup. They go and find a different career path. That is exciting. But I have yet to find a founder who says the trajectory of their life wasn’t changed through building a startup because it just opens up this whole new path of opportunity and growth in such a short period of time that I haven’t really found in lots of other places.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:30] Well, so thank you so much for sharing your story today. If folks want to want to learn more about Internet giving, what is the website there?

Seth Radman: [00:18:38] Yeah, you can find us at Infinite Giving dotcom or you can hit me up on LinkedIn. Send me a message. We’ll be happy to chat.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:45] And if you go to just a LinkedIn. Seth Radman Radman. They can find you on LinkedIn.

Seth Radman: [00:18:52] Yep, you’ll find me with the saxophone next to my name.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:54] Good stuff. Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work for the community, for your company, and for those kids out there that you’re inspiring to pursue Entrepreneurship. I think it’s super important. And we appreciate you.

Seth Radman: [00:19:10] Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to come on here and chat and share a little more of my story.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:14] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radios, GSU, any radio show.

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Alla Adam with Biohack.yourself

November 3, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Startup Showdown Podcast

Alla Adam with Biohack.yourself

00:00 /

Alla Adam is a VC Coach at Biohack.yourself. She helps humans solve problems before they happen. Alla is the author of 3 Playbooks:

Million Dollar Coach Playbook
Million Dollar Investor Playbook
Million Dollar Negotiator Playbook

She has been successfully future-proofing humans across the globe since 2003.

USPs: Transformational coaching technique ‘Microsteps to Success’ + ‘NaaS’ = Negotiations as a Service.

The Client list includes but is not limited to smart humans & teams from Amazon, Google, Kraft Heinz, Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Danone, PepsiCo, Nestle, JTI, Ernst & Young, BlaBlaCar, Forbes, London Business School, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, etc.

Connect wtih Alla on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

About startup coaching & mentoring
Strategic negotiations
Investing

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly 120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software Web3, Healthcare, Tech, FinTech, and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:39] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Startup Showdown podcast, and this is going to be a good one, but before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Alla Adam with biohack.yourself. Welcome.

Alla Adam: [00:00:59] Thank you so much, Lee. I should be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] I am so excited to get to know you and learn more before we get too far into things. Oh, tell me about biohack.yourself. How are you serving folks?

Alla Adam: [00:01:10] Well, I’m a lean startup and VC coach, as well as a negotiator, investor and author. And I embrace all this roles via biohack.yourself and then.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] But what’s your back story? How did you get how did you get to here right now? Like, what have you been doing up to this point to get to the point you are today?

Alla Adam: [00:01:30] Well, I started investing in startups in 2003. Back then, I was not so popular and I was one of the very few early bird investors, I guess I can say, in Bitcoin. And at that time I decided also to try to be a founder. So I ended up founding a search and selection business in Europe. Now we call it a chart tech, but at that time we didn’t have this fantasy worlds. So yeah, I ended up thinking how, how can I implement and use the five languages that I speak fluently on a daily basis? So it led me to the idea of coaching and mentoring and authoring three playbooks on coaching, investing and negotiations respectively. So pretty much my story in brief now.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:24] What do you enjoy most about working with startups and startup founders?

Alla Adam: [00:02:29] You know, I really enjoy and admire the courage of founders like their insatiable curiosity, their hunger for progress. I truly believe that startups are the best form of business that the humankind was able to come up with.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:50] Now, having worked with a lot of these folks, is there kind of some mistakes you see them making where you’re like, Oh, here we go again. Why do they keep doing this?

Alla Adam: [00:02:59] I think that all mistakes they’re making for most are the very first mistakes, very first startup founders mistakes. So that’s okay. And a lot of them are actually learning super fast. So in this case, mistakes become lessons. So I won’t say that the mistakes that they’re making are annoying or shall not be there. No, they shall be there. Everyone makes mistakes when hiring the team or fundraising or testing the MVP. Right? So that’s a little okay. And it’s not about the quantity of the mistakes, it’s about the quality. So the point is to make smarter mistakes every single time you make a mistake. Right. Fail better, fail often and fail better.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:55] And then maybe for your own mental health to reframe mistake as learning.

Alla Adam: [00:04:03] Mistake is a lesson. It is a lesson. Essentially, you make it you understand that it’s a mistake. It’s like you are aware that you will not repeat it and you label it as a lesson and essentially you can transform it into. The lesson not only for you but for someone else as well. You can teach somebody else. Like I am mentoring start ups, so I’m helping them not to make the same mistakes again or avoid mistakes in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] Now, among the superpowers you have are skills and negotiation. Is there any advice you can give a startup founder or founder when it comes to negotiation, whether it’s in a sales perspective or even maybe from getting investor perspective?

Alla Adam: [00:04:55] My advice would be ask questions. Get very curious about your counterparty. Prepare like invest a lot in preparation, ask questions and be silent most of the time. Listen, really listen. It’s called active listening. Just apply the skills of active listening. Ask questions why questions? Ask what questions, ask how questions. Don’t try to be smarter than you really are. Like if you don’t know some something, say, Well, I can’t give you the answer right now. I will be able to do it tomorrow, for example, or give me some time.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:41] Now. How do you coach people up when it comes to being coachable? Because that’s a lot of this, too, right? Like someone’s not going to invest in a business that they don’t feel the founder is coaching, isn’t coachable.

Alla Adam: [00:05:55] Mm hmm. I have a strong belief that every single human is coachable. The point is to express it. We, none of us is perfect. We all lack certain skills, different skills. In one skills, we’re better one set of skills. The other set of skills, we completely suck. So. I would say the point is to establish your areas for improvement for yourself. And afterwards we open for coaching. Again. It’s. I really don’t believe that there is a human on this planet among all the 8 billion of us who is not coachable. No, I don’t believe that it’s true.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] So you think that everybody is coachable and it’s up to the coach to kind of find a way in to to find the way that the communicate best with them?

Alla Adam: [00:07:00] Absolutely. Everybody is coachable. It’s up for a person for a coach to be open for coaching. Say, I have no idea how this is actually going to help me, but I am open. Let’s try it. And it’s about the coach to find the ways, pinpoint the exact ways that actually are suitable for this coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] Now in part of your journey thus far, you’ve. You’re an author. How did that come about?

Alla Adam: [00:07:39] Well. Pretty much my clients have been asking me a lot of questions about how they can become coaches, how they can become investors, and how they can become better in negotiating. And I decided to write playbooks which are very practical books with like exact guideline, pretty much. So that’s it. Demand preposition. I understood that the demand was there and I decided to write this playbooks. Actually, I’m working on my fourth playbook right now, so we’ll see.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:20] Now.

Alla Adam: [00:08:20] See the world later on in November.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:24] What is your writing process like? Because, you know, a lot of people say they want to be an author, but it’s it’s to have written several books like you have is pretty impressive. What is your process for writing a book?

Alla Adam: [00:08:38] So my secret formula is. Sit down. Silence your phone. Put it on airplane mode and write until the little blood drops appear on your forehead. Pretty much. I write my books very fast. Like I can invest up to 10 hours per day with some breaks for eating, using the restroom, whatever, walking my dog. And afterwards I write. I write them fast. And then I check, fact check, do all kinds of additional research, do some types of interviews, search for some additional information. So the part of writing does not take me so long. And it’s not. It’s not exhausting at all. It’s like a game. It’s actually very interesting to see how the words are forming in sentences on the paper. I tend to actually use the paper to write, write it down, not type it on the computer.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:50] So the first step is you just get it all out of your head as quickly as possible, and then you go back.

Alla Adam: [00:09:55] In.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:56] And then just edit it.

Alla Adam: [00:09:57] And anything to disturb you. Any type of business meetings? Nothing. I block specific time slots for my writing and nobody. Not my partner, not my dog. Nobody can disturb me and disturb me during this time. So yeah. And get it all out and then shape it like, you know, Michelangelo, I think, was the one who actually said that. It’s the it’s the rock, right? That contains the sculpture. I just help it to get out. So I have the same attitude towards writing books. Like I already wrote it in my mind. I just need to get out. Get it out on paper.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] Now, how did you hear about Startup Showdown and Panoramic Ventures? How’d they get on your radar?

Alla Adam: [00:10:50] Well, one of my business connections, a fellow investor actually suggested that this might be an interesting new mentoring opportunity for me. For me. And I heard about startups show down when they were doing their very first competition. Which competition? So yeah, one of the very first mentors. So I decided to give it a try and so far I really enjoyed this experience.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:20] Now, what advice would you give a startup going through a startup shutdown to get the most out of the experiences or anything that you would recommend in terms of preparation or you know, how they should attack it or get the most out or learn from it.

Alla Adam: [00:11:37] I would recommend to shorten that the pitch to pretty much a one pager and not go through the slides with the mentors, but just give that general overview. Use maximum 3 minutes for it, be fast, be energetic, and afterwards ask a bunch of questions like we usually have a list of 100 questions for your mentors because per day you get four mentors. That’s the maximum for startup founders. And make sure that all of your mentors answer all of your questions because you are not there for getting the feedback regarding your pitch deck, because your pitch deck is going to suck anyways. It’s going to be imperfect no matter what you do. So. It actually doesn’t matter that much. A lot of most successful founders probably that I know, they just did the pitch deck during the pitch and they say, okay, let’s stop it here. Let’s just talk. So this is why we created this startup. This is what we need right now. This is how we plan to grow. And then they get the investment. So don’t get fixated on PowerPoint, make it short and make sure to ask a lot of questions.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:04] Now in your practice, part of what you do is coaching for startup founders. Is there a niche that you specialize in or are you kind of industry agnostic when it comes to startup coaching and mentoring?

Alla Adam: [00:13:18] I specialized mostly in. Coaching regarding that topic of investments. So how to raise. The Fund, no matter if it’s Pre-seed or A or Series B or post IPO or actually how to do the IPO or SPARK or MBAs. So everything. All topics about money. Let’s put it this way. How to get it. How to manage it. How to make sure to get more and multiply it. But as well as everything else, including building the team, including negotiations with investors, negotiations with co-founders, negotiations with key team members. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:12] Now, is there any one piece of advice you would give a startup founder when it comes to negotiating, when it comes to specifically to take a deal or not take a deal? There are certain red flags or green lights that you can let people know to either pay attention to and they’ll be on the lookout for.

Alla Adam: [00:14:34] I would say ask investor why they want to give you money. That’s a very unusual question, because investors are. Kinda came through here, something like, okay, well we need money. Just give us money and we will be happy. No ask. Be curious about why they want to give you this specific sum of money or in case they want to become the lead investor. Ask them. Make sure of what what exactly is behind it, what kinds of goals they actually assign you. Consciously or unconsciously, that’s probably the most important negotiation tip. As for red flags, there are I mean, you will uncover the red flags with the question why? Because if the investor plans to get the return on investment in, let’s say six months, that’s probably not doable. So this case, you just don’t accept the offer.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:45] Right? By asking why, then you can’t really get to the heart of what they need and what they want and what they see and the opportunity.

Alla Adam: [00:15:52] Yeah, yeah. And start at the founders, they really ask this question like, why is it important for you? Why do you actually want to give money to me, to us, to our startup, not 20 billion startups that are in the world. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:12] So if somebody wants to learn more and have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what is the best way to find you or get a of you?

Alla Adam: [00:16:20] Linkedin. I’m waiting. Anybody can send me the direct message or shoot a connection. We had a request and. I always answer. I read all my messages and I always answered.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:37] Well, congratulations on all your success, and thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Alla Adam: [00:16:45] My pleasure. Thank you very much.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:47] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:16:53] As always, thanks for joining us. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe to the Startup Showdown podcast. So you get the latest episode as it drops wherever you listen to podcasts to learn more and apply to our next startup showdown pitch competition visit showdown vs that’s showdown dot DC. All right. That’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

Katrina Butler With KRB Executive Services

November 2, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Richmond Business Radio

Katrina Butler With KRB Executive Services

00:00 /

Based in RVA, Katrina Butler is the founder and CEO of KRB Executive Services LLC – a virtual support agency that works solely with women entrepreneurs. Starting her business right at the beginning of the pandemic, this self-proclaimed “chaos organizer” has been sharpening her skills and has joined the ranks of Dubsado Certified Specialists and Asana Services Partners.

She spends her days helping her clients increase their productivity & smash their business goals. She is known for her kind-hearted yet no-nonsense approach to organization, creating & implementing systems, and pre-planning. She enjoys taking the vision and ideas that her clients have and helping them become a reality.

Connect with Katrina on LinkedIn and follow KRB Executive Services on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Mindset when moving from Employee to Entrepreneur to Business Owner
Business Systems & Automation
Budget-friendly small business resources

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Richmond, Virginia. It’s time for Richmond Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here another episode of Richmond Business Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor War Cry Consulting Solutions, supporting women to lean into their purpose, craft their vision and crush their goals. Today on Richmond Business Radio, we have Katrina Butler and she is with KRB Executive Services. Welcome, Katrina.

Katrina Butler: [00:00:44] Thank you, Lee, for having me. How are you?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am doing well. I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about KRB Executive Services. How are you serving folks?

Katrina Butler: [00:00:53] Sure. So Crab Executive Services is a virtual support agency for female entrepreneurs and business owners with service based businesses. So basically, we kind of offer online business management, which is kind of handling those day to day operations and of course like helping them with invoicing or emails or scheduling or recruiting new team members, helping them with events and social media and those things. And then of course also offering project management for some of my monthly clients. But usually I just have those for people that are having either a product or an event launch or things like that to help them get things in place.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:37] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this line of work?

Katrina Butler: [00:01:41] So I actually started my business a few years ago, though it wasn’t a business, it was just something I was doing on the side, you know, helping my mom, actually, with her own business while I was still, you know, employed regular 9 to 5. And then a bit before the whole lockdown part of the pandemic happened. I’ve actually laid off from my job. And so I was actually encouraged to really, like, go for it full time, just putting everything in here and, you know, just trying to figure out like what I can do in that space because in that virtual assistant space, it’s really a broad term. There’s so many things that people can do remotely to be of service and figuring out who it is that I really want to serve. But yes, so that was February of 2020, and I’m still here going full time in my business.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:34] Now, when did you start getting clues like, Hey, this thing’s going to work out? I think I have what it takes and I think there’s enough business out there to keep me and my team busy.

Katrina Butler: [00:02:45] So I would say probably in there, maybe like December of 2020, I was like, okay, this is going to work. Because I think also at the beginning, you know, I don’t think any of us realize how long this pandemic was going to last. And I was like, Oh, it’ll be over soon, and then I’ll just find a new job. So I was just doing temp stuff. And then in May of 2020, I was in a car accident and totaled my vehicle. So I was like, okay, well there goes going out to work, so I’m going to be stuck at home. So there’s no, you know, I really have to go after it. So in that span of like seven months of figuring out, okay, how do I get my first client to actually be like, okay, I’m really booking people now. So maybe about December of 2020, January of 2021, I was like, okay, yeah, I can do this.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:32] Now, how was that early time when you before you had kind of a steady flow of business? How do you how do you start an online virtual assistant executive service business without, you know, having kind of a, you know, not being a celebrity to have a whole pool of people to tap into? How do you get the ball rolling at the very, very beginning?

Katrina Butler: [00:03:54] So the first thing I did after, you know, of course, looking online was I found some groups on Facebook of other people that were already in this industry and, you know, learning, okay, what do I need to do first? Okay, start, you know, the basics, get a website, you know, start creating a portfolio of things that you’ve already done, getting a business license, as you know. And Virginia didn’t really, you know, cost as much as, you know, most people think it would. Getting registered, just taking those steps of what to do. It definitely helped to get a score mentor to help with those initial steps of starting a business because you know you want to be above board and then just learning from other people, you know, asking questions and groups and learning from others mistakes and figuring out, you know, what works for me and what doesn’t. And it’s definitely been it’s definitely been a learning experience, figuring out, you know, who I want to work with, what I was going to offer, you know, what are you going to price things at? Because I never run a business before. And unfortunately, it’s not exactly something that they teach in like school. So you just kind of have to learn as you go.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:08] Now, how important was it kind of shifting the mindset from going from somebody who worked? Or somebody else to being your own boss, to now having clients or a team you have to manage. Those are all slightly different kind of ways to approach the mental part of the equation.

Katrina Butler: [00:05:27] Yeah, so actually I would say that was kind of the hardest part for me, honestly. One, I’m a really big introvert, so having to like, put yourself out there and be like, Hey, this is what I can do and I can help you, you know, do this. Like pick me with that. Just kind of having to learn how to sell yourself without looking like you’re selling was definitely a big thing, but also trying to shift away from that employee. Mindset, I guess, of, okay, well, these are the hours that I work. Usually, you know, you’re at a job, they set your hours, they tell you when you’re going to work and how much you’re going to make and what your benefits are. And then you agree to that for your time versus and this you’re letting them know, this is what I charge. This is when I work, when I’m available, and having to be bold and then keeping those boundaries, you know, telling yourself, okay, I don’t work for them, I’m working with them, providing a service. That was honestly one of the hardest shifts for me. But once it clicked, it, it clicked.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:36] Now, once once you kind of made that shift in your mind, did it change how you approached kind of the day to day thing? Because, like, if you’re working for somebody else, one way to look at it is my boss is my client, and I am providing a service for my client, which is my boss. Or if you’re an entrepreneur, you know, you now have 20 bosses because each of your clients or your boss.

Katrina Butler: [00:07:03] Um, yeah. So when I when I approach it, I don’t think of my clients as my boss. I kind of approach it and approach them, like from the very beginning of like, you know. It’s kind of like having a part of their business without being a business partner. Like, my goal is to help you succeed and be great and, you know, increase your productivity, increase your revenue and things like that based off of, you know, whatever systems they have in place or if they’re honestly just starting to delegate. Teaching them how to build both systems. So I think of it more of a partnership than, you know, my client is my boss.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:49] Do you. So your superpower became kind of how to develop and execute business systems and automation.

Katrina Butler: [00:07:57] Yeah. So my background initially is in hospitality. So I actually have a degree in culinary arts. So I don’t know if you ever seen a behind the scenes of a kitchen. It kind of like flows. And the first thing that they teach you on your first day of culinary school is about mise en place, which means everything in its place. And so I’ve always been a planner, like as a personality train organizer. I love spreadsheets and having things in order, things having a flow, everything having a place. And so when I learned that that was something that you could do in this virtual industry of helping people get their business processes in place so that things can be repeatable without always having to be hands on. And I was just like the light bulb went off and I was like, okay, this is what I want to do with this.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:47] Now, any advice for business people out there right now? What are some easy kind of systems they could put in place, or at least some of the foundational elements that if they were to do this, they would at least they would be prepared to have a good conversation with you if they needed more help, but at least would get them off on the right foot.

Katrina Butler: [00:09:06] Yeah. So I do have like a page of resources on my website, but off the top of my head, my main two or actually I’ll give you three that I use in my business are DeSoto, which is a CRM and it doesn’t cost a lot per month. I use a sauna which even has a really great free plan, and that’s a project management tool for organizing and planning events and launches and tasks that need to be done repeatedly. And then I also use planner Lee, which is kind of similar. It’s a social media scheduler and planner, which, you know, a lot of people use. Metta Business Suite. The reason I use Planner Lee is because not only can I post to Instagram and Facebook, but also Twitter and Pinterest, and they also just in these past couple of months have added the feature where you can auto post your reels, which is a really big timesaver as we know that Instagram is shifting away from images to video and these past couple of years. So I would say having at least some of those things in order having a CRM, a project management tool and a system for scheduling your your content and things like that are some of the things that you can do when you’re just starting out that don’t cost a lot of money.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:30] And then you decide as part of your business to not just start using certain tools, but you become kind of deeper in their ecosystem. You become a certified or you become a partner with them.

Katrina Butler: [00:10:42] Yes. Yes, I did. So when we were talking about how I was getting started in this business and those Facebook groups, one of them had this training like Vault, and you could go in there for, you know, a flat rate each month and go through trainings. And that’s where I learned about DeSoto. And I was like, okay, I need this for my business. And as I was learning it just by doing, I was like, okay, I love this. And so I went through their certification process and exam to become a certified specialist. And then I was using a sauna. I’m like, Oh, this is great. You know, let me go through their thing. And they used to be called certified pros. They’re now called Asana partners. And I would be either for services or solutions. So I just was like, I love this so much. I was like, I can teach people about it now and help them implement that in their business, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:36] So now can you share can you share a story where maybe you started working with someone and they were in a state of chaos and you were able to come in and help organize them and put them on a better footing and maybe help take their business to a new level. You don’t have to name the name of the business, but maybe share the challenge they had and how you were able to help them.

Katrina Butler: [00:11:57] Yeah, so I had a client that kind of had a few different brands going on. Of course, you know, women that are juggling, especially with kids as well too, and trying to have, you know, get these businesses off the ground. I actually met her in 2020, like in the summer, so during the middle of the pandemic. And just. Needing some help with taking her business virtual. As a lot of businesses we’re doing and then just kind of separating out those brands to say, okay, so this is what you need for this business. So each brand has to have their own social media account for Facebook and Instagram, not all together, and this is how you can get things scheduled and this is where we can go and plan the events that you have ahead of time and what needs to happen before these events take place, like booking a location or, you know, a food menu or how much you’re going to charge. And do you need to create a registration form or landing page, really just trying to get those in order so that it can be repeatable. So if you have a workshop one time, once you have it planned out, you can do it over and over and over again. And so that’s something that we have been working towards these past couple of years together, getting those three businesses together.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:15] And is that part of the deliverable you offer your clients as not only do you do the work, but you give them kind of a playbook on how to replicate this in the future?

Katrina Butler: [00:13:23] Yeah, so I take what they have or what they want and then build upon it. So some people may or may not be familiar with the term SOPs, which is your standard operating procedure, kind of like writing that out. So if something were to happen, you know, down the line and we’re not working together anymore, you still have basically a playbook for your business. You can tell people, This is my business, this is how it runs so that they can get into it’s kind of like a training manual, but digital.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:54] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your work, get on your calendar or just peruse some of the resources you have. Is there a website?

Katrina Butler: [00:14:03] Absolutely. They can go to my website, CRP, Executive services dot com, where they can view services, they can review my resources page and they can book a consultation call with me, which is, you know, a free call just to learn more about what we’re doing or if they already know that they need help with their business, then we can chat about that too.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:25] Well, Katrina, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Katrina Butler: [00:14:30] Thank you, Lee, for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Richmond Business Radio.

Ted Rupp With Kovitz Investment Group

November 2, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Chicago Business Radio

Ted Rupp With Kovitz Investment Group

00:00 /

Ted Rupp currently serves as Co-President of Kovitz. In this role, he oversees the firm’s strategic initiatives, as well as its corporate development efforts.

Previously, Ted has worked on the firm’s private equity offerings and served as Chief Financial Officer of both Kovitz and a regional coffee and tea distributor. Ted is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and serves on the board of Social Venture Partners Chicago.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from DePaul University and his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Connect with Ted on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Firm growth
Culture and community
Differentiators from other wealth management firms

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the business radio 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 Space.com. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:21] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Chicago Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor firm Space. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Chicago Business Radio, we have Ted Rupp with Kovitz Investment Group. Welcome, Ted.

Ted Rupp: [00:00:40] Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:41] I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to tell us about Kovitz. How are you serving folks?

Ted Rupp: [00:00:46] Sure. So Kovitz Investment Group is a full service wealth management firm that’s been around for nearly 20 years. We manage about 7 billion in assets for around 2200 different clients and doing everything from individual stock selection and fixed income selection all the way through kind of full scale financial planning.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] Now, at the beginning, was it always that way, a full service firm, or was it something that evolved over time as the needs of your clients grew?

Ted Rupp: [00:01:17] It’s actually evolved quite a bit over time. When we first launched back in 2003, we were primarily just a stock and bond firm, just doing pure kind of investment management for our clients. Shortly thereafter, about a year later, we had an individual join our firm that had a much more kind of detailed financial planning experience from his time at Deloitte and another company called ACO. And he really kind of turned us into kind of full scale financial planning firm moving beyond just kind of investment management.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:51] On your website, the headline is Covets is a value based wealth management firm. Why is value based important enough for you to kind of headline your website with that language?

Ted Rupp: [00:02:03] Sure. So it’s it’s a bit of a play on words to a certain extent, given that we’ve always had kind of a value tilt in kind of how we select public stocks. But that being said, we feel it goes beyond just stock selection into kind of how we value our clients, our employees, and how we portray that in kind of our everyday actions.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] So what some examples of how it plays out in the culture of your firm.

Ted Rupp: [00:02:30] Yeah, so great example, kind of more recent example is we actually participate in the Crain’s Best Places to Work initiative. So that came out just a couple of weeks ago and we’ve only done that for the last couple of years now. But it’s been a great tool both in terms of kind of benchmarking ourselves against our peers. But I’d almost argue more importantly is we get a great survey of our employees that comes along with it on an anonymous basis, and the results of that survey are really utilized to help us drive value to our employee base, listening to them, making sure that we’re competitive on benefit packages, pay, communicating things properly, that sort of thing.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:10] And in today’s tight kind of job market, having a culture and a big why is really compelling when people are choosing where to work and where to spend their time.

Ted Rupp: [00:03:21] Yeah, exactly. It’s an incredibly competitive market. Maybe softened a touch here in the last few months, but still at that point where we need a lot of different aspects to appeal to prospective candidates, particularly given that while we are nearly 100 person firm that’s still small compared to a Goldman Sachs or other people in our space that have a much more well-recognized brand name.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:48] Now when the economy is kind of chaotic like it is today and there’s so much volatility, is that a good time for firms like yours?

Ted Rupp: [00:03:58] Definitely. That’s how we’ve really grown in the past. It’s during times of market turmoil like this where I’d say both kind of from the employee aspect, where there are kind of really good candidates out there that are typically available that are might not have been available before that we want to kind of pounce on. But really in terms of gaining new business as well and new clients, this tends to be a time where some advisors will free will kind of freeze up when speaking to their clients and are more apprehensive about actually reaching out because their clients might not be happy with how their portfolios have performed during this period of time. But we on the other hand, really try to take a much more proactive approach and really kind of make it known what exactly is happening, why it’s happening, our belief in kind of where things are going from here. And luckily that’s really kind of proven out that once those customers are clients, get comfortable with what we’re telling them, that’s when they’re sending referrals our way as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:09] Now, is it a time when, you know, when the market’s going up and up and up and it’s a bull market? Everybody’s system is kind of working, but when there’s turmoil like this, then all of a sudden, you know, yesterday’s plan isn’t so great anymore. Are people kind of self-aware enough to say, hey, you know, maybe that I was just kind of riding this wave and that it is better to have kind of a trusted advisor like covets on my team to protect me from myself. Because a lot of those people that are individuals that are going out there, you know, with their gut or their system, you know, this takes a steady hand during this time in order to really benefit, you know, down the road.

Ted Rupp: [00:05:52] That’s exactly right. It’s I often say that I think that the biggest value that we provide to our clients is actually kind of in the behavioral finance world of really just kind of keeping our clients from doing something that they they shouldn’t be doing because they’re acting based on emotion, not based on kind of rational business sense. And because of that, it’s it definitely puts us in a position where we’re able to capitalize on things. And a perfect example could be on a day like today where you have certain stocks where earnings are coming out and the certain stocks might be getting decimated and it would be very hard to go buy those stocks at a time like this when a lot of people are getting out of them. So it’s it’s really allowed us to have kind of a much more open dialog with our clients and help them understand exactly why we’re doing things.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:49] Now, is that just built into the service with covets that you are going to do these kind of wellness checks maybe throughout the year so you can kind of remind people, Hey, we have a plan here, and I’m not going to just make knee jerk moves because of a headline.

Ted Rupp: [00:07:08] Right. It’s it’s all about creating that initial financial plan and managing the portfolio to perform against that plan over time. And even in times of turbulence like this, just reminding everybody of why they have the plan and what exactly we’re doing in order to make sure that that can still be achieved.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:31] So how do you kind of keep those lines of communication open? You mentioned that you that your firm is reaching out to people proactively during this time where some firms are, you know, just hiding under the desk and hoping it goes away.

Ted Rupp: [00:07:45] Yeah. So it can be done in a variety of ways, I think. Clearly, as of the last several years, more and more firms are leaning heavily on communicating through just electronic means and whether it be emails or newsletters or anything like that. But really, I think what matters most now is just picking up the phone and having that that live conversation with someone rather than relying on them reading something that’s just kind of been published to them. Well, it’s great to have both. At the end of the day, I think the the live conversation matters the.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:23] Most because at the heart of this, it’s a relationship, right? This isn’t they’re not just kind of lines on the spreadsheet. These are human beings that have needs and they have an outcome they desire, and they’re hiring you to help them achieve that.

Ted Rupp: [00:08:37] Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s something that needs to be revisited often and probably reinforced even more often than it’s being revisited. So it’s just a constant process.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:49] Now, part of we talked a little bit about how the culture of the firm is important and immersing yourself in the community seems to be important also for covets. Can you talk a little about your work with the social venture partners of Chicago?

Ted Rupp: [00:09:07] Yeah, so I got involved with social venture partners about seven years ago and it takes a venture capital style approach to investing in the nonprofit space. And I’d say kind of similar to my involvement in that a lot of our other partners at the firm had kind of their own causes that they were actively involved in. And so about three years ago, Mitch Coates and I were actually attending a function and we just kind of said to ourselves, Why can’t we do something like this? And so what we actually did is we put together an organization called the Coates Cares Foundation, and the thinking there was that it would be a good way for us to get our employee base kind of involved in thinking about the nonprofit space, but at the same time kind of leaning on a lot of the people that we work with in the business community raising dollars that way. Holding an event to raise additional dollars and then using kind of a similar approach to what we do with social venture partners, where we actually then go invest in non-profits in the Chicago area.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:21] So how has that worked for you?

Ted Rupp: [00:10:25] It’s worked out very well. It probably could have gone better if COVID had not kind of derailed our event, I think, two different times. But luckily we appear to be back on track. We have. So we’ve held one event so far. We have our second one planned for May of next year. It’s a casino night at theater on the lake. And so first event went great. And we all know that you kind of work out the kinks on that one. And so I expect the second one to be even better.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:57] Now, how is the nonprofit community? Are they gravitating towards this? Is that, you know, kind of treating a nonprofit or like a startup? Is that idea at least resonating with folks?

Ted Rupp: [00:11:11] Yeah, it’s it’s a strategy that’s been employed by or deployed, I should say, by by several organizations, kind of like social venture partners. But yeah, it’s something that I think is is great because it gives people like our 100 employees a look at what’s going on in the nonprofit space, allows them to then either volunteer their time or donate their dollars to those causes. And at the same time being part of something that’s a bigger initiative that can have kind of a more material financial impact on a firm.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:49] Then. Are the nonprofits open to the that concept, though, of iterating, you know, kind of cutting loose the things that maybe aren’t working, Maybe they have to kind of mash up or maybe they have to consolidate. Is that because that seems a little not like typical nonprofit thinking?

Ted Rupp: [00:12:09] I think it depends. And yeah, I think that there are definitely those that are open to a lot of that. That way of thinking, those tend to be the ones that I know, at least through social venture partners that we’ve gravitated more towards. But yeah, it’s, it’s a constantly evolving space and it’s it’s a very fragmented space as well where you have a lot of groups doing similar things, but kind of in their own unique way and just making sure that they can kind of work together well enough to have the biggest impact right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:47] I think that’s fantastic. I wish more nonprofits would take that kind of mindset of let’s join forces instead of each of us just, you know, kind of touching one little point on the elephant. You know, we can all grab the elephant if we all do work together.

Ted Rupp: [00:13:03] Right? Yeah, exactly. I think a big challenge is typically you have a very strong nonprofit leader that that ultimately is incredibly passionate about what they do and how they do it. And it’s not always necessarily the easiest thing in the world to to kind of meld those together. But yeah, certainly there’s there are examples of where that’s happened and had just a really outsized impact on the community.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:34] Yeah, I, I especially during a downturn in the economy, this is where they should be joining forces and kind of working together instead of kind of being splintered.

Ted Rupp: [00:13:45] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:47] Now, getting back to. Can you talk a little bit like walk me through the onboarding. Are your clients? I would imagine they are. They’re moving if they’re coming to covets. They’ve had a wealth management firm and they’re moving to you. Is that accurate?

Ted Rupp: [00:14:02] Oftentimes that’s the case, not necessarily all the time. Particularly, our Orange County operation tends to have a lot of kind of more of the do it yourself camp. But yeah, for the most part, a client typically coming to us has been with some other sort of wealth advisor in the past.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:24] And is the reason they’re moving is that what we discussed earlier, there wasn’t those lines of communication weren’t open, they were frustrated. Maybe they wanted to do something and they weren’t getting their attention they felt they deserved.

Ted Rupp: [00:14:37] I think that’s a big reason. Sometimes it’s it’s purely just investment performance related as well. I think one of our biggest differentiators is a lot of what we do on the investment side of things are our own proprietary strategies. So I think we can speak very well to the investment piece of the equation rather than just kind of relying upon kind of more high level either asset allocation pieces or I guess I would say just kind of particular managers that somebody is selected, whereas we can speak to the individual stocks selected or particular strategies that we’re in charge of.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:20] Now, when you come when they kind of choose you to be part of their trusted advisory team at that point, are you kind of quarterbacking this or are you just a role player on their team? Because I would think that kind of the wealth is is at the heart of a lot of the decisions they’re going to make as a family regarding legacy, regarding health care insurance, not just, you know, the investment dollars.

Ted Rupp: [00:15:49] Right when we onboard the client, there’s a very lengthy questionnaire that they complete for us, the kind of details as much as they can on their financial situation. And we’ll go through and evaluate that in a variety of different levels, whether it be something that may be kind of on the more basic side, like insurance all the way through kind of tax and estate planning. And then based on kind of the outcome of that and the financial planning work that we do in terms of kind of what they’re looking to accomplish, we’ll then help coordinate with the various outside parties, whether it be tax accountants, estate planning attorneys or or something along those lines to really kind of help bring everybody together.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:36] Now, are your clients like what is the profile of an ideal client for you? Is it a business owner or is it somebody who’s inherited money or are they celebrities, athletes, all the above?

Ted Rupp: [00:16:49] Yeah, we’re we’re definitely more in the all of the above camp. I would say our our current base of clients tends to focus more on kind of executives, business owners and professionals. But yeah, certainly kind of our typical client really just kind of looking at the numbers has about three and one half million under management with us. We do have $1,000,000 minimum. And so really kind of anybody that’s that fits that profile that really does want to get kind of very hands on. Financial planning seems to be a good fit for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:27] So what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need more employees? You need more clients. You need more nonprofits to serve. How can we help you?

Ted Rupp: [00:17:38] Yeah, well, ultimately, I think just being on the show here and getting our name out there helps with all of those things. You never know which one you’re going to need at a particular point in time. So yeah, it really just kind of being on here is great. And for anybody that’s listening that would like to hear more, just feel free to visit our website and we’d love to talk to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:59] And then what’s the URL for the website.

Ted Rupp: [00:18:02] Is W-w-what that’s k0v is and Victor I is and Tom Z is in zebra dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:11] Well, Ted, thank you so much for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Ted Rupp: [00:18:16] Yeah. Thank you very much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:18] All right. This is Lee Kantor Will next time on Chicago Business Radio.

Intro: [00:18:23] 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.