Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Martine Resnick With The Lola

September 26, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Martine Resnick With The Lola

00:00 /

Martine Resnick, Co-Founder at The Lola.

After almost 20 years of building brands for global companies, she realized the traditional corporate environment no longer fit her life. Compounded by adding the pressures of a growing family to an already busy schedule, she noticed the same feelings of frustration from her friends and peers, and she began looking for solutions.

Martine’s search led to the conclusion that women are taught to fit into a world that wasn’t built for them, and conforming to these socially accepted boxes wasn’t working. These boxes lack the freedom, inclusive culture, support systems, and personal spaces women so badly need to thrive in the workplace.

Ready to make a change, inspired by the social climate, and with the foundation of building female-forward brands across media, television, beauty, retail and interior design, she set out to create a meaningful space and community for professional women through The Lola. The name The Lola is inspired by her young daughter and the next generation of women she represents.

Connect with Martine on LinkedIn and follow The Lola on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The power of community and intentionally building your network
To build your own personalized support system (and why)
Group accountability and peer support can help you achieve your biggest goals
A community that will help you feel less burned out and alone as a woman in business
It’s not a zero-sum game how supporting other women helps all women rise

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at onpay.com. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Martin Resnick with The Lola. Welcome, Martin.

Martine Resnick: [00:00:42] Hey, Lee, how are you doing?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] I am doing well. I’m so excited to get caught up with The Lola. For those who don’t know, can you share a little bit about what you’re up to?

Martine Resnick: [00:00:53] Yeah, absolutely. So we are a women’s co-working space in Atlanta. We’re also a community and a digital community, and we’re based in our fourth ward right behind pump city market. We are we’ve been open three years. We opened right before a pandemic, which was always fun, opening any business with a physical space in a pandemic. But but yeah, we’re still here and we’re thriving. And we actually had a big event at the Lola last night bringing our members and women together.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:24] So how has the business changed? Like you mentioned, the pandemic happened and folks are kind of interacting with work and doing work and community a little differently today than they were a couple of years ago.

Martine Resnick: [00:01:38] Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously through the pandemic, when we weren’t able to meet in-person, we pivoted everything online pretty much within a week, which was kind of crazy because we were doing three or four or five events, sometimes on a bad week or a good week, however you look at it in person. And so we moved all of that online. And I think one thing that that showed us very quickly was, is that we were piecing it together community together with Zoom, with Slack, with Eventbrite, with all these different platforms. So we quickly realized we needed a one community hub to bring everyone together. And so we launched that for a new platform with Mighty Networks, which I really love. We don’t build the software, so I think they keep it up to date, they listen to their community, they teach you how to use it and how to build community effectively in the online space. So now we can host events and programing and have conversations between members, community groups and promote all of our in-person stuff and our happenings at the space through the platform. So I would say that members now are interacting. Everyone’s obviously much more comfortable with Zoom and technology and the app on their phone, and I think that just presents a lot more opportunity for connection where you don’t have to physically be together, but you can still feel connected to your community and ask questions and get support remotely.

Martine Resnick: [00:03:06] But I will say there is still a huge amount of value in in-person connections and I think that’s shown by members very keen to come back together. And it’s funny because before the pandemic, if we’d have said speed networking, everyone would have run a mile. But we were talking to a group of our members and they said, Honestly, I just need to reconnect with people and I need to do it quickly because I’ve neglected my relationships a lot in the last couple of years. So if you can just get us connected to as many other members as possible, that would be great. So I never thought I would hear anyone say that. But obviously we do networking a little differently at the Lola and it is very much built relationships and authenticity and spending time with one another so that collaborations and partnerships come more organically. But still, I think people are really craving in-person connection right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:00] Yeah, we’re seeing the same thing we have. We a lot of our business is done in person as well. And especially historically, we’ve done a lot of work remotely doing broadcasts from events and tradeshows and conferences and things like that. And then through the pandemic, obviously that wasn’t happening, but now it’s starting to open up again and you feel a real sense of hunger for people to just you know, they get so excited, hugging and shaking hands and just kind of these things that we used to take for granted are now like something, you know, that they’re celebrating.

Martine Resnick: [00:04:35] Yeah. The show. And I think as well, you know, before we did most things in person and I think it’s been interesting. So things that are like learning opportunities now, like workshops, we still do those digitally because it gives more people the opportunity to join depending on busy schedules. And we can also record it and post the replay and it can be more interactive with slides and stuff like that. So some of those experiences actually lend themselves really well to a digital environment that anything that’s like social or connection or, you know, if we have like vibrant speakers and stuff, then those things obviously lend themselves more for the physical space. So it’s been interesting and fun to kind of play with thinking about which situation suits best depending on what we’re talking about.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:23] Now, your business, obviously, community and relationships are are kind. The secret sauce. Are you finding other entrepreneurs kind of leaning on community and relationships as tools to build their businesses as well?

Martine Resnick: [00:05:40] Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I would say that honestly, at the core of what we do and I think and I mean even Eileen, my co-founder and I, I feel like, especially through the pandemic community, is how we built the Lola from the start. And even more so, I feel like I’m learning from other entrepreneurs every day organically. And yeah, I think it’s I think it’s really important, apart from any important part of any kind of business growth strategy, is, is your community a network? And some communities say don’t promote yourself or sell your business inside the platform. And I and I understand why they would say that, because sometimes it can feel really spammy and people aren’t there for the right reasons. But because we know people know what they’re getting into at the Lola and they really want to be there because they truly want to be part of a supportive community. It never feels like that. So we even have like a channel in the platform where it literally says, Promote yourself, tell us what you’re doing, celebrate your wins, tell us about your new launch. So yeah, we and in some ways we have to really encourage it because I think people hold back on doing that and we’re like, no, no, please. That’s, that’s why we’re here is to help each other, support each other. And we often buy services, products, consulting advice from each other because we’re all kind of in it together. And you can’t be an expert in everything.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:12] Yeah, that’s I understand. I agree with you that, you know, they don’t a lot of platforms don’t want it to be this. Just pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch, pitch. But in most people’s lives are so busy, it’s hard to help another person without some financial compensation. Like you have to get paid in order to survive. So if everybody knows that, you know, the more you’re getting paid, obviously, the more people you can be helping. So if you can reframe selling to helping, you know, maybe it’ll help people kind of get past that. It’s almost like a mental block.

Martine Resnick: [00:07:50] Yeah. No, for sure. And actually, it’s interesting that you say that. I just came out of a workshop we did with Kate Meier, and we were talking about nurturing sales and your business. And actually and I have a true believer in this, sales is always kind of felt as a sleazy kind of thing or you don’t want to do it because you don’t want to be pushy. But actually, if you look at it more of like, how can I help solve problems and support my community organically without then you’re not directly selling, you’re solving problems for people and the problems that you would then sell with your services. So I think they get to know you through that lens and they’re like, Well, hey, this person solved all these things for me and now I want more of that. And now I’m willing to pay for their membership or their service or their product because I want more of what they’re offering.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:46] Yeah, it’s sales kind of has a bad rap, I think, and a lot of people are afraid of it. But without sales, I mean, you know, nobody eats as the saying goes, you know, somebody has to sell somebody something in order to kind of continue to be in business. I mean, that’s what this is about. Yeah.

Martine Resnick: [00:09:06] So absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:09] Now, do you have any advice for folks that are looking to maybe invest in their community and and build a network that can really serve as a support system for themselves? Is there any advice on how to do that? Or and obviously, I’m sure you can share a lot about the why you should do it because since it’s at the core of your business as well.

Martine Resnick: [00:09:34] Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think intentionally building your support system or call it your network is really, really, really important. And I think you have to come from a place I think you have to start from a place where you start with your values and your why. Like, why does my business exist? What am I about? What are my values? What are the values of my business? And often in entrepreneurship, our personal values are somewhat attached to our business values because that’s why we start businesses in the first place. But I think when you get really clear on your why and build your goals for your business through the values, then I think then it becomes quite apparent like like what are the kind of people you want in your network who’s also who also are aligned with your values and kind of your goals and are heading in the same direction? And then what I think once you’re kind of clear on that solid foundation, then I think it’s identifying what gaps do I have? Like we’re all we all kind of have a skill set in something like my career was built on marketing and branding and so I’m really comfortable in that space. But I’ve been in corporate for 20 years before I started my own business, and there were some other areas that I was like, Hey, I don’t I mean, I’m in marketing, but I’m not a tech person. I don’t know how to code or build my own website or I certainly don’t know how to build a good one. I think we built our first one using Squarespace, but then I was like, Okay, now we’re kind of more grown up.

Martine Resnick: [00:11:10] It’s like, I need somebody that knows what they’re doing to really build this solidly so we get good SEO. So I think really thinking about like, what’s your kind of what are you really good at? Focus on that and then build your network and your community around around the things that you are not good at and learn from and who can you learn from and start from that place like you don’t even have to become that customer. People put out blog posts and free content and downloads and workbooks. Just spend time learning and listening and following people. And then when it feels like then it’s the right time or a good fit, then you can kind of consider supporting them more and buying their products. And then also I think it’s important to, you know, we have friends, we have family, we have people from our maybe our ex corporate careers. But I think the people that really understand the boat we’re in are other entrepreneurs and other like minded entrepreneurs, like the entrepreneurs at the LOLA. And the members are very kind of purpose driven. Like we all kind of really want to build businesses that we feel connected to. So it’s finding more of those people because I think it’s a self-perpetuating cycle, right? You surround yourself with smart, ambitious people who are trying to do the same thing you do, and it’s just a snowball effect. So like it helps pull you along.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:38] Now when you’re working with your members and your clients, how are you helping them kind of wring out the most value on. Service because there’s a lot of co-working spaces. I know yours is focused on women, but you’re always have to kind of push that value line. Are you is it constantly about education? Is it are you proactively helping them network with each other? What are some of the kind of the deliverables a new member can expect when they’re part of the LOLA community?

Martine Resnick: [00:13:13] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it’s obviously before the pandemic, I think we were maybe 60, 40, 60% entrepreneurs, 40% corporate women. And that’s definitely shifted a little more in the direction of entrepreneurs through the pandemic. So I think it’s bringing those women together and kind of saying, okay, when they first enter the Lola, what do we first want them to do? Well, we want them to meet other members and build that community and build that network. And I think we’re getting better at this. And I think we are, in fact, overhauling our onboarding program now because we really want that first connection, that first impact to be we want you to meet other people, because that just starts a snowball of inspiration, connections, collaborations and ideas before we can even solve problems with workshops and events and programing. So the first thing we want them to do is join. We have a goals and accountability group. That’s a great place to start because everybody has goals and and it’s always hard to kind of stay true to those goals. So that’s one of the first places we want them to go to meet other people. Another program that we encourage new members to join is Cultivate Connections, which is a peer to peer mentoring program where we match members with other members who are maybe one is a couple steps ahead, maybe they’re in the same place, and then we rotate them every six weeks so that they’re meeting other new people.

Martine Resnick: [00:14:52] And then, yeah, we offer. So it’s almost like a 12 month program when you join the Lola. So we have a monthly theme each month and and attached to that monthly theme, we’ll put out articles and we’ll bring in speakers and we’ll host workshops. And that is, again, it’s an education opportunity. And often other members are speaking at those events or hosting those workshops, and we try and keep that in the community because there’s so much knowledge and so much value. And we also work with Friends of the Law as well, and other people outside because we want to make sure we’re bringing in the best people we can. But again, those environments are connections. Connection is also a goal of those. So yes, we want to share some knowledge, but then how do we bring members together to brainstorm and workshop and mastermind some of their problems together so that they can help each other? And it’s amazing. I mean, we just had one now where we were brainstorming the brand promise for the business so that you can more effectively sell your business. And four or five members were having like aha moments left, right and center because they said, Oh, when you set that, that made me think of another thing and I just changed my brand promise. And here, what do you think of this? It was kind of real time masterminding, which I always love to see.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:12] Now, is there a story you could share that maybe kind of brings the Lola to life for our listeners in terms of what is the possibilities? Is there kind of a serendipitous meeting that happened with between members that enabled one or both of them to get to a new level? Is there a story that’s rewarding or memorable to you that can kind of encapsulates the value promise of the Lola?

Martine Resnick: [00:16:40] Yeah, of course. So this was actually a story from early on that always kind of like warms my heart and I think about it. So one of our members, Amy’s APHIS, hosts a life design program and she’s actually about to kick off a new one this October. And it’s something we’ve done always. And and she basically uses design thinking to help you design the life that you that you want. And so you go through this six week program and again, you’re kind of you’re mapping out two or three or four options and then honing in over time on one so that you’re not limiting your thinking. And so through one of these programs, we had a member, Scarlett, who has a really awesome candle like handmade candle brand called Young Gentry. And she was in a transition period where she had been in business with her sister, and her sister was also a full time lawyer. So there was some transition going on with the business and they’d also been in business a few years, and so she was trying to take it to the next level and so in. The Life Design Program. They come up with Odyssey Plans, which is kind of one. So after they’ve kind of thrown all the ideas out, then they hone in on their plan and then present it. And then the group come together and kind of hack and brainstorm like with them. And I think through that process we call it Scarlet’s Sleep and she really like took leaps and bounds that could have taken her months to come up with alone. But in that one session she was able to workshop with other members and really take her where she was going to take a business next to another level, which was just awesome to see.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:29] Yeah, it’s amazing when like minded people who have a heart of service come together. Just magic can happen.

Martine Resnick: [00:18:38] Yeah, really. And it’s interesting because it doesn’t happen. I mean, as I mentioned, I spent a long time in corporate and great cultures, great communities like really great people to work with. But what I realized when I stepped out of that environment and came into the Lola when we were building the Lola community, suddenly it felt very different. The energy really shifted. Everyone was really there to help each other. The competitive kind of edge had gone and it truly was like, How can I help you? And really like, what can I do to help you and how? And that just is really magical. And I think even if you have a corporate career, I think having an environment or a space or a community network that’s outside of that is really important because you will get you don’t have to filter so much. You’re not there’s not the corporate politics that sometimes goes on. And really no one’s yeah. No one’s trying to be even if they have very similar businesses. I see those people get together and and work together and collaborate like we had two members that both had like bookkeeping, accountancy, businesses and when one was really busy they would send the other one clients and they really were offering the same services. But instead of seeing that as a negative thing, they, they just work together.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:03] Yeah. I think it’s so important today to have a community that you have are filled with people you trust, that you’re rooting for, that you’re supporting and celebrating. I think in today’s world it’s just we’re bombarded with so much and we need kind of that safe place so that we are not as stressed and we’re not getting burnt out and we don’t feel isolated. I think that that everybody needs that nowadays.

Martine Resnick: [00:20:32] Yeah. I mean, we’re we’re social. Humans are social. And I think we thrive in connection and collaboration.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:42] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about the Lola, where can they go?

Martine Resnick: [00:20:46] Yeah, if you want to go to our website, it’s the dash Lola dot com. We have some great kind of free gifts on there. You can download our guide How to build high quality connections in business, and that will put you into our welcome series. So you’ll get for about a week, you’ll get emails and you’ll learn more about us. Or if you just want to sign up for our newsletter, you can do that at the bottom of our home page.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:13] And then also for folks who are listening that may not be in the metro Atlanta area, there’s still a digital membership as well, right?

Martine Resnick: [00:21:22] That’s right. Yeah, you can if you go to the NOLA.com and click on the membership tab or forward slash memberships, you’ll see there are two membership options. We have coworking in person and then for a smaller amount you can join our digital only membership and we have monthly, quarterly and annual payment plans.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:44] Well, Martin, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Martine Resnick: [00:21:50] Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:52] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on the Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:21:59] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at paycom.

About Our Sponsor

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

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

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Roger Barnette With MessageGears

September 26, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Roger Barnette With MessageGears

00:00 /

Roger Barnette has spent the past two decades leading companies in the Atlanta tech scene, growing multiple businesses from inception to acquisition. He is currently the CEO of MessageGears, a unique cross-channel campaign management provider that’s a homegrown Atlanta startup. He’s received numerous awards, including Atlanta Internet Marketer of the Year and Emory’s Goizueta Business School Outstanding Recent Alumni award. He’s a member of YPO — Southern 7 Chapter and a mentor at Techstars Atlanta.

Connect with Roger on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Company culture
Scaling a high-growth business
Enterprise-focused SaaS/tech solutions
Atlanta tech scene

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. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay.com. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Roger Barnette with MessageGears. Welcome, Roger.

Roger Barnette: [00:00:42] It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about MessageGears, how you serve in folks.

Roger Barnette: [00:00:49] It MessageGears is a customer engagement platform. We work primarily with really big consumer brands like in Atlanta, Home Depot and Chick fil A. Send all of their emails through our platform to their customers. But we work with a lot of great brands like Expedia and Open Table and Geico and Indeed.com and and many more. And so for these brands put us at the center of their customer marketing activities. We let them personalize communications across email, SMS and mobile post messages at scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:23] So what was kind of the genesis of the idea? Where did you see the opportunity?

Roger Barnette: [00:01:28] Well, the opportunity really is that it’s hard to personalize customer communications at scale. When you have millions of customers, when you have lots of data on your customers, it’s really hard to get that data into traditional software to let them personalize it scale. And so we have a unique architecture. It’s a hybrid architecture solution that lets customers access their data within their data environment, yet send through a multitenant SAS cloud. And so it really gets the best of both worlds, allowing you to get rapid personalization without any data security concerns, but still send and personalize at scale and in real time. It’s been game changing for our customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:09] Can you share an example of how it’s been game changing? Like what was what were they previously? How were how were they previously benefiting from their email and now how are they kind of growing because of it?

Roger Barnette: [00:02:23] That’s a great question. So the most straightforward example is there’s a couple large US retailers that had the same type of issue where they would know what offer they wanted to send. Roger Barnett But because of the way their email solutions worked and their work with our competitors are really large software companies like Salesforce, Marketing, Cloud and Oracle Responses and Adobe Campaign. But the way all of these software solutions work is really hard to have them access everything you know about your customers in real time. And so when our brands, current customers were using one of those traditional marketing clouds, it would take them somewhere between three and five days between the time they decided Roger Barnett needs to see this particular offer. So at the time it made it into my email inbox and with message gears is virtually real time. As soon as you want to get it out the door, we make it easy and seamless, all the while cluttering your the number of software vendors you need to use to make that happen.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:28] Now, is the personalization. At what level of the personalization is it that I know that you were on the website. I know that you looked at the red jacket so I can make you a red jacket offer. And I know that maybe you’re not as price sensitive as somebody else, so I can charge maybe closer to retail. I don’t have to make an offer. Like what? What’s the type of personalization that comes with this?

Roger Barnette: [00:03:53] Well, it’s all of those things, but also including additional things like what have you done in the store? And maybe even more importantly, what type of engagement will you be most responsive to? Would you rather receive an email or a message on your phone through a mobile push or a message on your phone through a text message? And that contacts might be during what day of week and what time of day? You might be more interactive with your mobile phone on the weekend and the evenings, but during the weekdays, perhaps an email might might be better for you. I mean, what we see is across our brands is that when when they’re able to deliver an experience for their customers that surprises and delights and is meaningful, then marketing doesn’t seem intrusive. Intrusive, it seems helpful. And so but if they’re sending out a blast email to all of their customers at the same time on the same channel, because that’s all they’re capable of doing, then that’s when email becomes annoying and feels more like spam.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:59] And that’s kind of the art of this, right? You want to always have that balance and you always want to be obviously leaning to the surprise and delight rather than the just bombarding of messaging. That’s irrelevant.

Roger Barnette: [00:05:10] Well, that’s exactly right. And what what these big brands are seeing is that the challenge of personalizing across all your customers in real time becomes exponentially more difficult if you have 10 million customers instead of 10,000 customers. It’s kind of a paradox in that way that a lot of. Small businesses using tools built for small businesses like MailChimp, another Atlanta brand. It’s sometimes easier for them to personalize across all of their customers than these massive consumer brands that have so many more resources. But because you have tens of millions of customers and exponentially more data, it becomes that much more difficult to do to do that at scale.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:57] It’s that it’s one of those kind of blessing curse where you have so much data, but it’s just really difficult to leverage that amount of data in an effective way. And your solution kind of solves that.

Roger Barnette: [00:06:09] That’s exactly right.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:12] Now, let’s talk a little bit about, you know, this isn’t your first rodeo. So let’s talk about, you know, how you maybe have learned from previous adventures and have built the company culture that you’re proud of and and, you know, growing this enterprise software solution.

Roger Barnette: [00:06:32] I’m I guess you would call me a serial entrepreneur. I started my first software company when I was in graduate school getting my MBA at Emory with several co-founders that were there and sold that business in early 2000 to Ask Jeeves. I started another company in 2004 in Atlanta called Search Ignite, and we sold that business pretty early on. But I, I stayed around and ran ran that company and left after I would say after about 11 or 12 years and was very proud of what we built, you know, a global business with over 500 employees and over $100 million in revenue. But I left that company in 20. Late 2016 to come to message gears for a couple of reasons. One is that I really had the itch to build something new. I did not start message gears, but message Gears was still early in its growth trajectory. When I joined, we had about ten people. We have over 100 people right now. And also, I was really enamored with the technology and the people here. We had a very unique technology. We solved the problem that I just described in a very unique way. And I saw that we had the potential to really disrupt a very, very big industry where everybody was doing things the same way and it was really ripe for someone to come in and shake things up. And so I’ve been here almost six years, and and that’s what we’ve really tried to do. So you asked about.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:20] Yeah, I’d like to know more about the culture. So you come into this operation and, and now you’re going to put your stamp on things. So how did you kind of address the culture and what have you done to kind of create the thriving culture that most people are shooting for?

Roger Barnette: [00:08:38] Well, we we were very purposeful when I joined about the kind of culture we wanted to build here at Message Gears. I, in my previous entrepreneurial stints of growing companies, you know, I was very focused on. I’m building the business and on strategy and on the culture amongst the team that reported directly to me and I think less so around trying to create a seamless culture that permeates throughout the entire organization. And when you have a bigger company, you know, at times when I thought culture at previous companies I ran could use some tweaking, if you will. Know, the bigger the company is, the harder it is. And so one of the things that that I focused on first here, even before we really started thinking about how we’re going to focus this business, how we’re going to invest, what we’re going to do to to grow quickly. The number one thing the first thing we did on our first executive retreat was talk about culture and our company values and the kind of company we want to come to work for every day. And so, you know, two months in, we created a list of nine company values that message gears and the kind of business we all want to work for, all the kind of business we’ll be excited to work for, for years and decades to come. And my message to the team was, was a simple one. It was like, we’re going, we will grow as a company, and as we grow, we will have a culture.

Roger Barnette: [00:10:12] And we can either choose what that culture is going to be and purposefully drive to build that culture, or the culture will choose us. And then we might like the culture. We might we might not. So so we’ve really made the culture the center of our business and things like we innovate. You know, we’re we’re biased towards action. We’re action oriented and results driven. We make our clients successful. We assume goodwill, but are intolerant of corrosive behavior. We act with positive energy. Pretty basic things that I think on the surface everyone would agree on. But we remind ourselves of these values every week at our company meetings. When we’re interviewing employees, we tell them this is what we expect of them on a day to day basis. And occasionally we have to admonish and even let employees go because they don’t fit within the culture, which is really what’s expected of them and how they should treat their their fellow employees or our customers. So it really helps drive everything, everything we do. You know, we spend all of us spend an inordinate amount of time in our lives and certainly our lives that we’re awake and out of bed working. And, you know, my job for my employees is to make it as great of a work environment as possible.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:39] Now, in in today’s kind of employee climate, is that having kind of strong values and having a clear mission? Is that kind of a must have nowadays in order to attract and retain the type of people you want and need to grow your company?

Roger Barnette: [00:11:58] I certainly think it is. I would say that for message givers, it absolutely is. It’s very part and parcel with who we are as a business, how we define ourselves. And we have grand aspirations as a company. And this is our North Star. We are not going to lose sight of this and who we are while we’re expecting a lot of each other as we grow and continue to do pretty amazing things as a business. I will also say that our values I’m not one to say our values are the same values and mission every other company should have. There are a lot of companies that have very cutthroat cultures that work very well for them and are very successful, and I’m sure they attract a different type of employee that wants to go work at those types of businesses. But this is the kind of values and culture that works for my skills and the kind of company I personally want to lead. And so as long as we’re all aligned with these values, I think we can go out and do great things and outperform and be more nimble and get ahead of the pack as well as any other company.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:10] Now, you mentioned you’ve been part of the Atlanta tech scene for a minute. Can you share a little bit about maybe how we’ve kind of grown and and where you see us growing into the future?

Roger Barnette: [00:13:26] The tech scene here is certainly matured a great deal. I mean, I started my first company in 1997 or 98. You know they’re there. The. We are a more mature and vast. And welcoming and supporting tech ecosystem first for startups today than we ever have. And I try to be as involved in that as I possibly can through things like being a mentor at Techstars. And I’m on the board at the Atlantic City Council and, you know, sticking I try to stay in touch with earlier entrepreneurs in Atlanta to give back because frankly, when I was getting started, there were so many mentors that I found that were so generous with their time and advice for no other reason, except that they wanted to help out and give their time and advice. And so I try to do that. But what’s great about young, burgeoning entrepreneurs today in Atlanta is that it is a much bigger, more mature, more robust ecosystem. One of the things that really helps that is the fact that it’s easier now to raise money in Atlanta from anywhere in the world than it was when I started my first venture back businesses.

Roger Barnette: [00:14:51] I don’t know that there’s a lot. There are additional Atlanta based funds now than there were then, but not exponentially so or certainly doesn’t seem that way to me. But I think with the Internet and remote work. The venture capital ecosystem is absolutely exploded nationally and their desire to invest in technology hubs like Atlanta. It has grown dramatically. And so it’s just easier to raise capital no matter where the firms are. And I think that a lot of firms look at Atlanta as a place where they can probably get a little bit better terms than they can in Silicon Valley or New York or LA or some other or Seattle or some more expensive parts of the country. So I think it’s good for both the Atlanta ecosystem and for venture capital groups outside of Atlanta. Not to say that that the venture capitalists who are here and have been here for some time aren’t great because they’re all they all are. And they’re all really good and supportive of the community. But for the entrepreneurs and the founders and the CEOs, raising capital, access to capital is easier than it’s than it’s ever been.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:01] Now, any advice maybe for your younger self? You mentioned having gone through a lot of startups. If you were to advise yourself and your first startup, what some advice you would give that young man.

Roger Barnette: [00:16:17] That is a great question. My my first entrepreneur venture, I was in my late twenties and I was in very much a a shoot for the moon IPO or nothing mentality. And then my, my second startup that I started from a standing start, I had two young kids and and a wife that was working. And, you know, I was probably too conservative. I probably was saying, you know what? A sliding double or good solid base hit might be good enough for this next venture. You know, I think finding that middle ground of kind of shooting for the stars but but being grounded and and taking a practical approach, you know, trying to thread that needle, if you will, is something that’s possible. And I think I’ve gotten better at as I’ve as I’ve done more of these and I’ve gotten older and got more experience as a manager and leader. I do think you can always have making the appropriate amount of investments, funding, funding growth through losses, but with the right amount, understanding, you know, your runway and access to capital and keeping flexibility open for a variety of different outcomes is something that is is difficult, but is I think that’s the job.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:46] And if somebody is out there listening, that’s an enterprise level organization that’s looking for this kind of SaaS solution. What is the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Roger Barnette: [00:17:58] Absolutely reach out to me directly. My name is Roger r0er at Message Gamescom and we would love to talk to you. If you are a brand that has millions of customers and you have trouble personalizing your communication with them at scale, we’re more powerful, we’re more data secure and we’re less expensive. We’d love to talk to you.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] And that’s message gears, dotcom to learn more.

Roger Barnette: [00:18:23] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:25] All right, Roger. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Roger Barnette: [00:18:31] I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:33] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:18:42] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on paycom.

About Our Sponsor

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Scott Ryan With Montra

September 22, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Scott Ryan With Montra

00:00 /

Scott Ryan, CEO at Montra.

Scott has more than 20 years of experience in successfully building and selling companies that develop products in the IT infrastructure and media technology industries.

His exits include Concurrent Computer, Senoia Systems, Asankya Networks, and Elastic Networks. Additionally, Scott’s leadership experience includes running successful teams at storage leader, EMC; networking leader, Nortel Networks; and consulting innovator, North Highland. Scott has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Theatre in addition to a Masters of Business Administration in Marketing, both from Vanderbilt Unversity.

Follow Montra on LinkedIn and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Inc. 5000
Remote IT Trends
IT Logistics
Why workforce identity?

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] 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 Scott Ryan with Montra. Welcome, Scott.

Scott Ryan: [00:00:48] Thanks, Lee. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Mantra. How you serving folks?

Scott Ryan: [00:00:55] It’s a montra is sort of a next generation or re-imagining of the way people do managed it. So we do everything with a remote first mindset. So we focus on remote I.T. for remote offices, remote people and remote devices.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:11] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did this come about?

Scott Ryan: [00:01:15] So my initial interest in managed services came back when I had sold a company to EMC, the storage guys that are now part of Dell. We had a strategic initiative to look at the managed services market and how it was affecting our business. This is going back a number of years and that got my initial interest in the space. And then I met up with some people that I had worked with previously years ago. My business partner, Matthew Singley in particular, and sort of talking about the space and what could be done to innovate in the space. And that really became the genesis of it. So about three years ago, we acquired another small MSSP in Atlanta called Midtown Technology Partners, and we use that as the base to really get the company started with the idea that we believed that software was really at the key to provide better leverage to the kinds of services that people are used to delivering. You know, kind of on site and in person we thought could be done much better in a much more scalable way through software.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:18] So how many iterations did it take for you to get a service that you were happy with, that you knew that, Hey, we got something here and we can scale this?

Scott Ryan: [00:02:27] Well, that’s a good question. From a software standpoint, you know, we follow a continuous development process. And so with biweekly sprints, we’re constantly creating new features and new capabilities in the software. It’s really been to answer the question maybe a little bit differently. When we got started, what I kept saying to the team was, you know, we’re really still a managed IT services company with some software that backs us up with the services that we deliver. But at some point we were going to be able to sort of turn the script around and really be a SAS company that has a managed I.T service team that can back up what we’re delivering through software. And it’s really been sort of mid-year of this year that I feel like we’ve really built enough capability into the software that we could sort of turn the company into a software company more than a service company.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:21] Is that kind of when you cross that threshold, is that what you think brought you into the INC 5000?

Scott Ryan: [00:03:29] Well, the INC 5000 recognizes growth over a three year period, sort of looking backwards over three years. So we just got this for the growth that we’ve seen over the past three years. So I would say that is much of a recognition of our capability to just generate business. And there’s a couple of things, a little bit of it I guess would be software, but first and foremost is just the ability to go take the current base of customers that we had, go deliver services we believe in in a better way, more effective way to grow that base of business with new customers. And then we landed one customer in particular, which I think we have announced is Picks a lot, which is a automated camera technology. They’re really the leader in the space for sports, automated camera technology. And with them together, they sort of led us into an area of our software that has really created a lot of, we believe, uniqueness and innovation in what we do. And in effect, what we are is doing what we call device logistics. It’s sort of third party logistics for hardware devices. And that really came to fruition a couple of years ago. And we just sort of grown that base of software that’s really on the device logistics side of our business. And then last year, early part of last year, we went through a customer discovery process with our current customers to get a better idea of, hey, we had some of the basic dashboard boarding data integration through APIs, trouble ticketing tied into the API, into the UI and through APIs. We had all that built, but we were really looking for where are the biggest pain points that our customers were seeing or prospective customers in the mid-market that we weren’t doing business with today. What were the big issues? And it became really obvious we. Quickly that there was one issue that jumped up above everything else. And it wasn’t cybersecurity and it wasn’t cloud management. And it wasn’t, you know, I guess the typical things that I guess everyone talks about, right.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:42] It wasn’t the usual suspects.

Scott Ryan: [00:05:44] No, not at all. And we had this sort of we tried to create a scientific process of just asking people without presenting any options to them and then turning around and presenting options to them. And what it turned out is employee onboarding. And onboarding specifically for what’s called onboarding. And onboarding was the number one concern everybody was wrestling with. It was an issue that everyone had had prior to COVID. But COVID really exacerbated this problem, which is the fact that the amount of automation and the amount of complexity that goes into onboarding an employee or onboarding them from an I.T. function was really, I guess, the weaknesses in those processes. And most companies were really getting exposed when employees were not coming into the office, when they were being hired remotely, work remotely their whole time they were with a company and then they were onboarded remotely and may not have ever stepped foot in an office of the companies. So how you do that effectively cost effectively and most importantly in a cyber secure and compliant manner, was obviously an area that a lot of our customers and prospects were wrestling with. So we built a whole module in our software. We now call X and say X is the device module, X is the employee module, and they’re really the two modules are focused on the employee logistics around it and the device logistics around it.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] Now, when a company gets that right, is is it helping maybe retain the employees? Is it helping, you know, communicating the culture? Is it helping in those areas as well? Or is it just kind of an efficient way of getting people into the start working fast?

Scott Ryan: [00:07:34] I think the efficiency and sort of ROI is really the primary driver, I think, with most clients that are looking at this. I think the other two drivers are cyber compliance. So especially when you offered an employee if your company is in the health care space, so it’s affected by HIPAA or if you’re in the financial services space and affected by FINRA or other regulations, you have to show that your employees only have access to the data that they should have access to and that there is a way to log when they leave. That you really did remove their rights to use the devices that were the company devices, and you remove their credentials or rights to be able to access all the applications. And that sounds really simple, but the the average company now has three times more devices than they do people. The average company that’s in the mid-market has over 100 SAS applications. So with each one a different user ID and log in and we haven’t run into the company yet where a single sign on system like Microsoft so or Okta or one of those can cover all 100 applications, it typically will cover 20 to 30 of them. The other ones still have to be you know, the accounts have to be provisioned independently. So there’s a security component that is a really big concern for all companies across the board. And then there is this, as you sort of imply here, there is this sort of reinforcement of of a corporate culture or, you know, a corporate desire to take care of their own employees in a way that they feel like they are wrapped in and excuse me, a part of the company, even though that they may be remote. And that has definitely with some of our consulting firms and tech firms, that has been a big concern for them, is that they can deliver on their promise to their new employees and ongoing employees, that they will be sort of cared for as part of the family during their employment process.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:35] Now, you mentioned not only do you have kind of this influx of remote workers and now you have all their devices and and now kind of multiple platforms that you have to deal with. And is your solution? It sounds like it’s kind of agnostic. It doesn’t really matter or does it matter when they have that much complexity amongst people and devices?

Scott Ryan: [00:10:00] Well, I would say the more complexity there is, the more value add our software provides to us to simplifying the workflow. So we design into our software basic workflows of from the start of say on an onboarding, it starts with an h.R is system integration so that when a new employee is put into say, hey, vlocity or, or paycom or one of those systems, we have a webhook that would see that new employee and immediately gets pulled into our system and the IT department, either internal i.t or employees of the mantra can then pick up the necessary tasks that need to be done for that particular type of employee. So in the task and workflow can be different based upon whether it’s a sales and marketing or engineering or management employee and go through the whole process. Similarly, for one person, two devices that are working out in the field, out of the edge, independently of people, we can work the entire logistics of warehousing those devices if they want us to warehousing inventory them, dynamically showing the inventory, including latest software version so that we can update software if it’s been sitting in the warehouse too long and then manage them managing all the way through the forward logistics of fulfillment and pushing those devices out into the field and then the reverse logistics of getting those devices back if they can’t be repaired in the field and then we can repair them in our facility as well.

Scott Ryan: [00:11:32] So certainly from our standpoint, the more of those overall complex functions that a customer has, the more value we can provide for them overall. And so we’re typically looking at mid-market sized companies. So companies that would have 100 employees at a minimum or more. Oftentimes, most of our companies are in high growth mode. So we like working with innovative companies, growing companies, companies that have sort of unique problems about edge delivery, either of devices or their people need to work out of the edge of the network, whether it’s in retail or whether it’s sales or other roles or people are naturally not sitting in an office someplace. Those kinds of customers, we can add a tremendous amount of value for those customers now.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:28] So when they’re in the high growth, when they’re in high growth mode, are they seeing kind of the problems that, you know, they’re about to see like that or they do they are they self aware to know that, hey, you know, we are growing fast with these things are going to be multiplying really quickly. We’re going to need a more robust solution than what we have now. Are they open to having those kind of conversations with you at that point there that they can kind of see the future?

Scott Ryan: [00:12:54] I wish they all did. No, I think we certainly have most like most companies that are out there, I think especially companies that are executing really well and then, you know, going through a lot of growth, they’re oftentimes just dealing with the things that are kind of 30, 60, 90 in front of them. And so oftentimes we are coming in, you know, trying to solve a problem that already exists as opposed to understanding the problems on the horizon and could be a large way of hitting them soon. I think with our best customers, what they are seeing is they’re seeing the beginnings of the problem. It hasn’t it’s bubbled up to maybe a top ten or maybe top five problem, but not because it’s the wheels are falling off the bus and their operation, but because they’re, you know, they’re visionary enough to be able to see that, hey, this is about to become a really big problem because we have more employees coming on board or about to do a rollout to 1000 locations of our devices. And we really don’t have our processes in place, and that’s exactly when we start to get engaged with customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:03] So is that that’s when you would like to get engaged a little sooner, though, right? In a perfect world.

Scott Ryan: [00:14:09] In a perfect world, we would love to get involved sooner. And I think from our standpoint, as we grow, part of our sales responsibility is going to be being able to communicate to prospective customers why they need to be concerned about these issues even before they think they may see them. What we’re really trying to help customers do is take some capabilities that have been available in software and consulting services to the Fortune 500 under multimillion dollar projects and multimillion dollar implementations, and sort of standardizing the processes a bit and saying, well, look, it’s going to be semi customized for your environment, but it’s going to be much more cost effective for you to implement. So you’re better off going ahead and implementing this now rather than trying to wait until. You have a multimillion dollar implementation that needs to be done when you’re a couple of billion dollar company. We’re really looking for the companies that are growing and seeing these issues coming in front of them.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:14] Right. Because if they see it, it’s like you said earlier, when they see it, when there’s, you know, 50 or 100 and then they’re going to get to 1000, it’s only going to get worse. So you better fix it now. It’s like pay me now or pay me later.

Scott Ryan: [00:15:26] Right. And we certainly have had implementations where there’s effectively extra money, rush fees and things that are being paid to actually get the implementation done more quickly. But I will say, you know, maybe it’s to our detriment, but our ability to integrate quickly with systems of record that most of our customers have in their operation allows us to onboard customer typically in 30 to 90 days, depending on the complexity of of what we’re getting onboarded with. And they can start seeing the value in the ROI within that one quarter. We aren’t talking about even in the worst scenarios that we’ve seen so far, we’re not talking about year long integrations. I will say, though, what we often see with customers today is they’ll get started with us with one particular thing that we can do, like, Hey, I really need help. I’m adding lots of new people and I need help with onboarding those people. Or we had one large consulting firm who was actually doing a major refresh on their laptops and they just needed everything all forwarded and actually securely erased because their clients didn’t want that data. They wanted proof, quite frankly, that that data was not going to be knowable or feasible by other future clients. And we’ll often, as I say, get involved in one particular type of project like that. And then and then by executing well on it, by getting used to having the visibility and the awareness kind of up to date information that our software provides for them is something that customers just aren’t used to seeing, especially in the mid-market. They just aren’t used to having that kind of up to the minute inventory information, process information about where an onboarding is or where an onboarding is. And once they sort of get a taste of that, they are so far looking for us to do more for them, to give them more visibility in more areas of their operation.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:33] So that’s typically your first point of entry at this point, like on a project, you’re working on a project because they have something that they need triaged, so they bring you in to kind of solve some urgent issue.

Scott Ryan: [00:17:49] Exactly. The that is almost innately our typical entry points are in one of two ways. Someone has an immediate need that oftentimes comes from feeling a particular pain about maybe having trouble onboarding a lot of employees quickly or maybe turned into a cyber compliance problem where they weren’t able to prove who had access to what and what part of their operation. Or in the more favorable scenarios, we are getting a lot of referrals from our current customers and those customers are coming in. We’ve signed a major television broadcast network, we’ve signed a major baseball league, and those purely came in by recommendations from current customers. And so we were able to be a little bit more planful in the way we are onboarding them as customers.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:43] So what’s next? Are you seeing any kind of trends in the marketplace that you think you can leverage? What what do you what’s next for mantra?

Scott Ryan: [00:18:54] Well, for us, we’re we’re in a growth mode where what’s next for us is to we actually don’t have any salespeople. So the growth that we’ve seen so far has really been through relationships that I’ve had in my business partner have had and then referrals, as I mentioned, from other customers and the inorganic acquisition that we did at the beginning of the company. For us, we’re really standardizing what we’re building out in the software and then building out a team internally to help us sell that. As we look at who we target, it’s really for what’s next. It’s really expanding on what we’re currently doing. So we’re looking for customers that are outside the US that are building hardware and are looking for sort of an engineering heavy logistics partner that can help them with the deployment of their technology in the US and Canada. So we’ve actually brought on one sales person in Europe to help us find other AMEA based companies similar to what we’ve done with picks a lot because pick slots are actually based in Israel. And then what we also look are looking to expand on is the employee side of the logistics and the laptop and employee side of that. And that’s really looking at us based companies that are in the mid-market and that are we would sort of broadly put into the category of information workers. So consultants, legal, tech and media companies where the assets that are sitting in those laptops that those employees are using actually are extremely important or the intellectual property of the company. And because of that, those companies have a lot of worries, concerns, issues associated with the security of that information and the privacy of that information. And so we’re really just looking to expand what we’re currently doing into more customers of that type.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:55] So if somebody wanted to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website? What’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Scott Ryan: [00:21:02] Yeah. So it’s absolutely it’s a ww w mantra. I o and it’s Monterey. It’s actually, by the way, a word and have lobby that means safe protected place. It’s not necessarily a play on the Sanskrit word, but if you go there and go to one of the contact us buttons, you can absolutely reach us there. And anyone that wants to reach out to me directly, they can reach me at Scott at Monterey Audio as well, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions and serve anyone that’s interested.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:36] Well, Scott, congratulations on all the growth and success. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Scott Ryan: [00:21:42] Actually, thanks for having me on your show.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:45] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:21:52] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on paycom.

About Our Sponsor

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Xavier Hatten Jr. With Xnalysis

September 22, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Xavier Hatten Jr. With Xnalysis

00:00 /

Xavier Hatten, Founder & CEO at Xnalysis, a financial services company that was founded on the basis of financial literacy, ethics, and the creation of exponential growth for their customers. They were built to offer our customers an array of products that range from simple to complex to increase the awareness of their finances, expand their financial independence, and promote generational wealth.

Connect with Xavier on LinkedIn and follow Xnalysis on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Finances amongst Millenials and GenZ
Business Credit
Business Funding
Budgeting and Forecasting
Personal Finances regarding Income and Expenses
Building Generational Wealth
Breaking Generational Curses

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:00] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Lee Kantor here. I am so excited to be doing today’s show. It is one of my favorite series that we do. It’s the GSU ENI radio series, and today on the show we have Xavier Hatten with Xnalysis. Welcome to Xavier.

Xavier Hatten: [00:00:44] Hey, man. Hey, Lee. Hi. Thanks for having me today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:47] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about your firm. How are you serving folks?

Xavier Hatten: [00:00:53] Yeah, so Xnalysis is a financial service company and basically helps people and small businesses with their finances. Just investing, budgeting, credit advice, everyday financial advice. Whether you spend $10 on Starbucks or all the way into how to get you prepared to buy your first home. So make sure you know that we can increase in our clients financial literacy here, ethics analysis and also just concern that we’re making the best financial decisions on the day to day as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] So how did you come up with this idea? What was the kind of spark that got this thing going?

Xavier Hatten: [00:01:28] Yeah, so I came up with Xnalysis is basically I was like, Hey, I think I want to make a lot of money in my lifetime, but I need to also know how to manage the money that I do make. So coming from a small time, small town, Lagrange, Georgia, I came to a big city. Georgia State University, started off my undergrad degree with accounting and figured out I wanted a little bit more of a challenge. So that’s when I added my finance degree going into my junior year, graduated undergrad, accounting and finance, and just quickly learned as I went to college, I learned a lot about how to be a great analyst for a company, you know, just learning about just a lot of different financial terms and things of that sort. But I saw that I didn’t learn a lot of financial literacy. I didn’t know how to open up my first bank account coming from a college. I didn’t know how to read my credit report when I was coming straight from college. I didn’t know how to manage my credit cards that I did have or how credit cards have impacted me in a positive or negative way. You know, just these different financial things that I think that every adult or young adult should know about. So that’s when I started a company X Analysis, which is a financial service company, which is going to help people just increase their financial literacy, just kind of help make it better a better financial decision on a daily basis. I also saw they’re just kind of in minority communities. I also didn’t have a lot of financial literacy knowledge just when it came to small things like four and one K understanding, even choosing your benefits and how they’re going to help you in the long run. We didn’t really know a lot about, so I wanted to kind of create this company to kind of have a platform where we increase everybody’s financial literacy. I have clients where I can help them with their small business finances, their personal budget, and just more independence in that source.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:10] So is this kind of a pay for services model? Is it a membership model, a subscription model? How do you plan on monetizing this?

Xavier Hatten: [00:03:20] Yeah. So right now we have both we have a membership which is called the X Score, basically where you pay a $14.9 fee a month and you can get basically just free services such as, you know, weekly financial emails, newsletters, right? You get some export gear as well, get pretty much you get everything that you would get from a standpoint of not getting getting a service. So that’s our membership portion. And then our service person is when we have monthly clients and financial consultations where we sit down with people on a daily or monthly basis, whatever they prefer, and you just give them as much as financial knowledge that we have and we just kind of learn and build together and ensure their that their finances are intact from a bookkeeping standpoint, from a creative investment standpoint, and we just meet them on a monthly basis for our monthly membership. Now we do have one time fees as well, which is financial consultations, where I meet one on one with clients or people that are interested in getting taking their finances to the next level and basically basically just having that one hour meeting to get to know their finances, how we can improve over over the next six months or a year or three months, if they will do it on a short term basis and how we can take their we can help them meet their financial goals.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:36] So when you came up with the idea, at what point like did you talk to people around you to kind of get a feel for, okay, is this obviously it’s something important? There’s no denying that. But is it something that people are are willing and able to pay for it? Did you have any conversations about that in terms of, okay, this is great, this is useful, but is this a path, you know, to is there an F kind of financial commitment on the client’s part to really not only grow the business on your part, but also for them to benefit?

Xavier Hatten: [00:05:12] Yeah. So started the company out. Our analysis started in January 2020. If you can imagine two months before a global pandemic, I had to kind of change things up a little bit. So basically it’s now started off as a spreadsheet company. I got a lot of feedback and I had a lot of focus groups for people basically to figure out how I can help them with their financial literacy. And at that time, it was a lot of it’s a lot of small businesses in the metro area being introduced on a daily basis. So a lot of people say helping them just keep up with their finances and making sure they’re not attached to their personal finances and their business finances. So basically bookkeeping. So I wanted to kind of figure that out and how I can make it easier for small business owners to do their bookkeeping. So it was started off as an Excel spreadsheet company based on what I made Excel spreadsheets for different businesses and put in different features in different businesses based on what the business owner wanted in their spreadsheet. But I quickly saw as the pandemic hit in March 2020 that around June or July of 2020 that I had to pivot the company for order for it to survive.

Xavier Hatten: [00:06:18] So after I’d at least around 9 to 11 spreadsheet within our first 2 to 3 months, I got to do some follow up meetings with those same clients and they kind of let me know that they love the spreadsheet, but they just don’t have time to go and input the data into the spreadsheet. So once I learned that they don’t have any time to kind of do their financials because as a small business owner, you’re trying to focus on all other areas. Basically what I did was I went back and said, I want to change this company up and pretty much have this company where it is a financial service company. So instead of me making the spreadsheet for the small business owners, I actually when I actually started doing the bookkeeping and started helping them with their investment and building their business credit, they’re doing a lot of different things when it came to their finances. And then on the personal side, they wanted budgeting and things of that sort as well. And that’s when I started creating the monthly membership. We offer two different packages, gold and platinum packages, and just based on what you what you like and what you prefer is going to differ. So two monthly packages.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:21] And then when did you realize, hey, I’m on to something here. Was that something that once you let people know this was available, they were signing up. You were getting signups pretty quickly?

Xavier Hatten: [00:07:33] Well, I wouldn’t say pretty quickly. So after I pivoted the company, I kind of sit now for a couple of months. I’m just trying to figure out where I can where I can take the company in the midst of a pandemic. So around June, I got my first monthly client in August 2021. And from from there I probably got my second client in November 2020. No, I’m sorry. November 20. I got my first time in August 2020 and then I got my second client in November of 2020. And now, right now we have 14 monthly clients standing today and September 2022. We have about seven other clients that book our financial consultation on a on a bi weekly basis and 14 monthly clients where we actually hammered their business and their personal finances on a monthly basis, send them updates and meet with them every month and things of that sort.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:20] So it’s it seems to be a nice, steady growth that you’ve achieved so far.

Xavier Hatten: [00:08:25] Yeah. Nice, steady growth right now. When I got to about five or six, I figured I couldn’t handle the marketing piece of it no more. So around November 20, 21 or October ten or 21, I hired a social media manager. And then in January 2022, I hired a CPA to kind of do all the taxes and kind of help me with the financial side of things. And then in March, I hired another another one of my employees who who has her master’s of accountancy as well, and really, really good with finances and numbers. And I hired her. So right now we are a team of four different people, one social media manager, one CPA, to kind of help them, the tech side of things, and another which is our chief rock star.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:08] Now, any advice for other founders that are going through this? How do you kind of build a team that’s very complementary when, you know, obviously you don’t have unlimited funds?

Xavier Hatten: [00:09:19] Yeah, I think one of the best things you have to do, you’ve got to get people they’re going to believe in to your vision and believe in your brand. Bringing people on just from monetary, you know, just for monetary purposes when you first starting is going to be pretty hard and it’s going to be hard for you to find people to believe in your brand and ties in this search. But you’ve got to really fight through it. Having limited funds when you first started, not being able to pay people, but having way more work than you can handle as one person is something that I struggled with for probably a year until I was able to find that person, my social media manager, which was my first hire. After that, it allowed me to give him a no wait time, giving away a portion of basically some money for time. Allow me to scale the company even more and allow me to focus on getting more clients. Looking at the financials, how can we just how can we scale its analysis to the next level? And every time you hire someone, it just allows you to free up more and more time to get to that next level. So just being so I know some small business owners that have way more work than they can take, but not just their yet when it comes to their financials. But just stay with it, continue to push hard, continue to push your brand and continue to make sure that you scale it at the appropriate level. And then you’re knowing the right time is to hire your first associate. And after you hire the first one, you’re only time to hire the second and third and fourth. And just building that team surrounding you that believes in your brand just as much as you do now.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:40] With so many people just struggling to make ends meet, how do you help them kind of change their mindset to think in terms of generational wealth?

Xavier Hatten: [00:10:49] Yeah, so generational wealth is something is just one of the terms that near and dear to my heart just because that’s something that I feel like generational work. I actually made a T-shirt that says Generational wealth starts with me. I think just make a sound. Financial decisions will help you in a sense of just getting to that generational wealth standpoint. Like you said, we’re in a time where people don’t have unlimited funds and dinosaurs. I know we’re not just in the midst of a pandemic anymore, but what the pandemic has done is left a lot of trail of just like a lot of different things. That is hard for people to come back from, especially financially. So that’s why I always recommend people to start off with my finances across the station or to join the export first to kind of build up your financial knowledge and get that mental stamp and get to get to a point where you’re a mental standpoint. You know that, hey, I should be spending money on this, I should be budgeting my using the 15, 30, 20 rule when it comes to my paycheck, I should be making sure I’m investing to my four and one K at least up to the match with the company is going to match within that for one K for the year.

Xavier Hatten: [00:11:53] So just having those different mindsets and mentality. Get out of my one on one financing, consultations and export. And then when you’re ready to say, Hey, I think I’ll make enough money now to afford a full time financial service company like it’s now exist. I really need to get my finances in order and take my stuff to the next level as far as my budgeting, investing, savings, building my credit, building business credit. And then like I said, I always tell my clients because once you get in there first contact with me after that final second consultation, we stay in contact forever. You know, I still check in on you and every couple of months or every couple of weeks, just depending on where you went and your financial status of things. And whenever you’re ready to make the transition over to a monthly client, analysis will always be here for you to make that transition. So just turn that all the way back into generational wealth. Making those smart financial decisions on a daily basis is going to help you start the generational wealth, whether it’s already started in your family, or are you going to be the first one to start?

Lee Kantor: [00:12:49] Yeah, the sooner you can get compounding working for you, the better. And even starting small is is a great way to start. It’s just starting and having that discipline to just kind of keep investing, you know, day after day, week after week, month after month. That’s what builds generational wealth.

Xavier Hatten: [00:13:09] Yep. Yeah. You get it. It definitely wants to build generational wealth. Just that compounding. Just keep making those great, farsighted financial decisions will able to help you just start generational wealth, even if it’s starting small, right? Starting small when it comes to finances will allow you to you continue to compound and making starting small when it comes to saving or your flow on came. You’re going to look up at 510 years and say wow I have a lot of money. Yeah. Or I made great financial decision to kind of experience some type of financial freedom.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:40] Now, how did you find out about the Main Street Fund? How did you get involved with them?

Xavier Hatten: [00:13:46] Actually one of my clients won the Main Street phone demo day last year and kind of set out a thought that my company would be a great fit for the Main Street funding program. I really love the program. I’m really, really glad that my client referred me to the program and just the things I’ve learned within this program over the last 4 to 5 months. It’s something that can hold very dear to my heart and continue to help scale my business and become a better business owner each and every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:16] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Xavier Hatten: [00:14:20] So just kind of from a standpoint, how can you help on the Main Street program.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] Now for your company? How can we help you grow your company? What do you need? Do you need investors? Do you need more clients? You need more. What do you need?

Xavier Hatten: [00:14:36] Yeah, it’s a great question. I think what I need right now, I just want to kind of being able to scale that company up into the next level. Right. So as far as getting more getting more into the school system where I teach juniors and seniors financial literacy, that kind of goes hand in hand with helps with governor. Governor Kemp knew financial literacy law that he put in place, basically saying that by 2025 and 2026 school year that our financial literacy capacity to be in high school, we need to have half of credit, half of credit financially, of course, to graduate high school. So taking things to the next level, being able to do partnerships with different school systems, different brands, getting awareness of financial literacy to get more clients and just take it to the next level. Next step is what I’m looking for and what needs to be what needs to happen for X analysis to go to the upper echelon or to that next step as a financial service company?

Lee Kantor: [00:15:35] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, is there a website? What’s the best way to get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

Xavier Hatten: [00:15:42] Yeah, the best way to get ahold of me. We have an email info analysis dot com. All of our social media is x x analysis. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. We got it all. And then we also have our website x analysis dot com where you can go on and fill out a contact form and get in contact with one of our one of the people that worked in my company acknowledges and we’ll be in contact back within 24 to 48 hours.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:10] Well, Xavier, congratulations on all the success and momentum. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Xavier Hatten: [00:16:18] Thank you so much for having me on this on this radio. I really, really appreciate it. And just thanks for everybody who’s out there listening to this. Listen to this interview. I will listen to this interview really much. Appreciate it. For all the this this, all the hard work and all the ground that you helped me put into analysis, just the support and just the knowledge that you also help me just get out there. I really appreciate everyone to help ex-Nazis to get to where they are today.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] All right. That’s a wrap. This is Lee Kantor. We will see you all next time on GSU. Any radio?

Intro: [00:16:52] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at onpay.com.

About Our Sponsor

Follow OnPay on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter

Larry McHugh With Atlanta Technology Angels

September 22, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Startup Showdown Podcast

Larry McHugh With Atlanta Technology Angels

00:00 /

Larry McHugh, Executive Committee at Atlanta Technology Angels.

After over four decades of a successful career in marketing, advertising and sales, it’s time to pay it forward. Larry McHugh now focuses on supporting startup entrepreneurs with mentoring, leading seminars, making connections, and facilitating angel investments.

His professional career demonstrated a consistent record of achievement in dynamic organizations, primarily in the business of advertising and higher education. He has experience in strategic planning, business development, sales training, marketing, and staffing with P&L responsibilities.

He has a solid record of analytical thinking and creating innovative solutions that benefit both employers and clients.

Connect with Larry on LinkedIn and follow him on Facebook

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Resources for entrepreneurs (startupatlanta.com)
ATA fund entrepreneurs
The Entrepreneurship Center at the Urban League
Venture Atlanta (applications open)

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 Web three, health care, 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, and this is going to be a good one, so I hope you get your pencil and paper ready. You’re going to learn a lot from this guest today. 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 Larry McHugh and he is with Atlanta Technology Angels. Welcome, Larry.

Larry Mchugh: [00:01:04] Glad to be here, Lee. Well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] For those who aren’t familiar, can you share a little bit about Atlanta Technology Angels? How you serving folks?

Larry Mchugh: [00:01:13] Sure. I joined them several years ago and have been on the board for a little over five years, the Atlanta Technology Angels or ATA, it’s a nonprofit organization run by its members. The individual members are accredited investors. And what we do is we connect early stage startups to capital.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:34] And then can you explain for people maybe that aren’t super clear the difference between like an angel, a VC, private equity? Can you explain kind of the stages?

Larry Mchugh: [00:01:45] Stages is a good word. The first stage when an entrepreneur is getting started, it’s usually backed by friends and family because they have so little traction generally. And when they do get some traction, meaning some paying customers, that’s a good time to go look for angel investors when they need some revenue to scale. They’ve got something, they’ve got a minimum viable product, they’ve got it in the market. They’ve identified the problem, they have a solution and they need some revenue to scale. So that’s where angels usually come in. And then as they progress into what’s often called a Series A, that’s when the venture capitalists get involved. A typical angel investment might be 102 hundred and 300,000, where venture capitalists will start in the millions, usually around 3 to $5 million. So the the valuation of the company has increased dramatically, as is the funding levels.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:43] And then the reason a person decides to become an angel versus a VC is is it just they like early stage companies more the the, you know, formation foundation building blocks of those companies more than something that’s kind of ongoing and already kind of passed a certain test.

Larry Mchugh: [00:03:02] That’s a good way to put it. Lee I got involved after being a mentor at Georgia Tech’s ATC for several years, and I supported the entrepreneurs there as a mentor. And then there are several Atta members who are mentors at the DC, and one of them asked me to come to a meeting about with the Atta and I went to a couple of meetings, checked them out, which anybody else can do as well, and then got involved. I’d say about seven years ago. And the attraction to me was supporting entrepreneurs is something I’ve been doing for over ten years and the investment part is just the ability to help support them a little financially. With the Atta and most other angel groups, it’s the individual members decide if they want to invest in a company, and if so, for how much? So our average investment this year we’ve done let’s see, we’ve done six deals this year so far with an average investment of about $100,000. And generally speaking, there’s more than one group that invests in a round for an angel in the startups.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:21] And your background a little bit. You came from a startup or did you come from Enterprise and then kind of got into startups later?

Larry Mchugh: [00:04:30] That’s more, more like Enterprise. I joined the Weather Channel back when cable television was disruptive technology disrupting broadcast, and they brought me to Atlanta to be advertising sales manager in 1989, and things were growing very well. We had very rapid growth, good profitability early on, and this thing called the Internet came along in the mid nineties and literally nobody knew what to do with that. Weather.com became one of the significant players in the early days and the next technology to jump in was mobile technology. And if you look at your phone, the Weather Channel is the number one or at least it was the number one app on phones, usually preloaded on both Android and Apple phones. So I moved with the technology as it started, but it was a fun ride. I was with the Weather Channel for about 13 years in their high growth era.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:32] Now, when you’re working today, when you’re working with these founders, a lot of them are first time founders or they’re new entrepreneurs that maybe they don’t have kind of a family background of coming from other entrepreneurs. How do you kind of work with them? What is the like what’s an example of a meeting you would have with a founder? What are some of the questions you ask and what do you expect them to be prepared with?

Larry Mchugh: [00:05:59] There’s actually courses to teach entrepreneurs to get ready. In fact, the Atta leads a seminar at the ATC called Investor Readiness, which is a two hour seminar that helps entrepreneurs with what they need to know, how they need to be organized right down to how big the type on their pitch deck should be. So there’s a lot of preparation that goes into it. And one of the first things there are several key things that we look for. Number one is A is as my friend Nelson Chu would say, a hair on fire kind of problem. And oftentimes the entrepreneur has personally dealt with that particular problem and knows it may be from a family member or from their corporate experience, whatever. But the you start with the problem and then you get into the technology, which is the solution. And if I can understand the problem and the solution, not necessarily the technology, I’m not a technologist, but if I can understand those two things, then we look at the team. Do they have a strong team that knows what they’re doing, knows the industry has appropriate experience, appropriate balance, not just engineers, not just MBAs, but a good balance of skills. And the cliche is often that investors are betting on the jockey, not on the horse. In other words, the team is more important than the company in many cases.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:29] So if somebody is a founder and they’re going about it and they went the first step, they got their friends and family to invest, or maybe they’ve invested all of their money. Or they have customers. Maybe they have. A little bit of traction. Is there any resources here in Atlanta that you could recommend for that person so they can be prepared to take those next steps?

Larry Mchugh: [00:07:53] Absolutely. In fact, for years I would meet with entrepreneurs and I would tell them, write this down. Start up Atlantic.com. I’m on that board of directors as well. And Startup Atlantic.com has an ecosystem guide, which is invaluable resource. It breaks down everything from co-working spaces to incubators, accelerators, angel capital groups, venture capital groups. Even what you should be reading, like Atlanta, Eno and Hippopotamus are critical. Must-read As I say, for both entrepreneurs and investors, they both do a great job of covering the ecosystem itself. So Startup Atlanta is a wonderful guide, and this year we’ve done a few things to improve it. First, up until this year, if you went on there and asked to see the guide, what you got was a PDF which was not very user friendly. And what we’ve done this year is digitize it still in those categories, all those different resources to the best of our ability that are available. And if you see something you’re interested in, you just click on it and you go right to that organization’s homepage. The second thing we did in the spirit of diversity, equity and inclusion is we developed a separate section for underserved entrepreneurs. And the headline there is Inclusive Innovation. So it’s resources organizations that focus on supporting entrepreneurs who are either female or minorities. And the third thing we did is we actually added one just for women called female founders. So when I would meet entrepreneurs, I would say, write this down. And it just breaks down the ecosystem and is a great organization to make those resources available, most of which are free or at minimal cost to the entrepreneur. And as you’ve done in past episodes, there’s an awful lot of resources in Atlanta for entrepreneurs.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:02] Now, how do you think Atlanta is doing when it comes to serving this maybe underserved community of entrepreneurs?

Larry Mchugh: [00:10:12] Well, panoramic does start with them. They have shifted their focus from Buckhead Investment Partners to renaming it panoramic, and they are now focused its not exclusively primarily on underserved entrepreneurs and the program that they they run. The startup showdown is a great indication of that. But there’s plenty of other organizations like Startup Runway. You’ve had people from the tech village on. They have It Takes a Village program. The Russell Center is an incredible resource. It’s going to revitalize the west side of Atlanta, run by Jay Bailey. It’s a great organization. Another one that I’m involved with is the Entrepreneurship Center at the Urban League of Greater Atlanta. We’ve helped literally hundreds of entrepreneurs and not just in technology, but anybody that wants to start a business. The Urban League’s Entrepreneurship Center has programs for that and things like Launchpad two X, which supports female entrepreneurs and new very new resources like Greenwood Banking System, which just bought the gathering spot. So there are numerous resources for underserved entrepreneurs. And again, in Startup Atlantic.com, there’s a section specifically targeting those folks. So I think Atlanta is way ahead of the curve in supporting, you know, you hear numbers of 1% female or 3% black or whatever. But my experience in Atlanta is it’s very, very different. In fact, the Atta tracked our investments from 2015 to 2020, and literally 48% of the investments we made were in companies led by either women or minority entrepreneurs. So I think Atlanta might be leading the country in support in that area.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:14] Yeah, I think Atlanta’s unique in that, you know, not only do we have investors now that are willing to support these underserved, but also the robust university system you mentioned at D.C. a little bit. We’re also involved with GSA’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute that’s hitting it. You know, another group of people that are typically not served by this chair.

Larry Mchugh: [00:12:40] Does a good job there. I’ve been a mentor. There as well. And beyond Georgia Tech, Georgia State Emory has an entrepreneurship center, the HBCUs. Right. Yeah. Morehouse has a tremendous program run by Tiffany Bussey. She does a great job. And one of the things that I’ve noticed in Atlanta, as well as just the focus, is that all these disparate organizations, even if they could be considered competitive, the degree of cooperation and collaboration is nothing like you’d see in like Philadelphia or New York, where in my opinion, it’s often a zero sum game where the only way I can win is for you to lose. So I’ve been amazed at the degree of support and cooperation, volunteer efforts that are that are out there and all the other mentors that do. The start up showdown with panoramic is just one example.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:43] Now you’ve had the opportunity to live and travel around the country in some of the largest cities in America. How would you, if you were kind of starting from scratch and trying to build an Atlanta type ecosystem? How would you recommend some of these, maybe not the larger cities, but maybe even secondary sized cities do that to create that that ecosystem of collaboration and cooperation amongst a variety of businesses and business associations.

Larry Mchugh: [00:14:16] I think every significant city has in Dallas, Austin, New York, Boston, obviously Silicon Valley with Y Combinator and all the resources out there. But even I spent a couple of years in Chattanooga and they have an under the. The the league the Chamber of Commerce excuse me. They have an organization, a building called the Incubator, which provides subsidized rent and mentorship for entrepreneurship of all levels. And some tremendous successes have come out. While I was there, I also was a mentor at what’s called the co lab or the company lab. Again, it’s a great facility in the heart of the city that offers free resources for entrepreneurs so that entrepreneurship is alive and well. I believe everywhere in the country and maybe just a different degrees. But again, with like for example, with Venture Atlanta coming up here in October, there will be investors and entrepreneurs coming not just from the southeast, but some investors will come from San Francisco and New York and other places. So it’s compared to what the universe for entrepreneurship was, let’s say just ten or 15 years ago. It’s a different world. Colleges like. Georgia State, for example, and Georgia Tech. They both you can major in entrepreneurship as a major and of course is targeting to that. Georgia Tech has the Create X program, which has very active support and financing for entrepreneurs. So there is a tremendous amount and it’s very it’s very much more evident than it was several years ago.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:07] Yeah. It’s so important in today’s world to even if they decide not to become an entrepreneur, but just to have that entrepreneur mindset of, you know, experimenting, iterating, you know, selling something, you know, networking, building relationships, all of these skills that you use as a founder are things that are transferable whether you stay in the startup world or get a real corporate job.

Larry Mchugh: [00:16:36] Absolutely. In fact, there was an article recently interviewing Sig Mosely considered the godfather of Angel Investing, and he’s also now a venture capitalist, as you know well. But Sig says it all starts with sales. And one of the courses that I do lead a seminar at the ATC is Sales Skills for Entrepreneurs. And I start with the headline that no sales, no business, and my background is in advertising, marketing and sales. So that’s, that’s where I try to help the entrepreneurs like for example, at Georgia Tech or they’re mostly engineering or computer science of different types. And I could name some cases where they had a great product but couldn’t present to prospective customers at all. And fortunately, most of them are coachable. And one example that turned their sales around that came out of Georgia Tech’s dorms literally is the fixed app guy by the name of John Gattuso. Started that. And last I heard he was doing and he struggled in the beginning to get sales. And I last I heard he was doing about $125 Million a year. So it’s a process and it can be learned. It’s no one’s born knowing how to sell. And the cliche about the fast talking salesman is just that it’s a cliche. It’s it’s it’s not the reality.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:08] Right? It’s one of those things that a lot of people just kind of self-sabotage themselves because they have a almost a bias against selling. They don’t want to be seen as a sales person or they have a negative connotation associated with selling. But like you said, I.

Larry Mchugh: [00:18:24] Can tell you a story personally. When I was in college, I was asked to interview by Procter and Gamble and I did no homework. I showed up, I bummed a cigaret off the interview and I said, Oh, what are you interviewing for? And he said, Sales. And I said, I don’t want to be in sales. And we had a nice chat. And long story short, after about five more interviews, I wound up working for Procter and Gamble in advertising.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:50] Yeah, which is I mean, that sale, I didn’t.

Larry Mchugh: [00:18:53] Want to be in sales even though my entire career.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:56] Is in sales. Right. And like you said earlier, like nobody eats unless you sell something. So sales is at the heart of every organization whether you want to want it or not. Right. So now any advice for that kind of first time founder, maybe somebody going through this process if they were preparing for a start up showdown or one of these type events, what kind of advice would you give them in order to kind of make the most of that opportunity?

Larry Mchugh: [00:19:23] I would strongly suggest they start with an incubator like Atlanta Tech Village, like ATC, like the Russell Center, like Launchpad two X. We all don’t know what we don’t know. And these organizations exist to support entrepreneurs, to help them learn what they need to do to start a good, thriving business. And having been involved with with several of them, they’re all good. What I would encourage entrepreneurs is to go to Startup Atlanta and look at the learning sources, the section there, and check them out there. There are lots of resources. And like I said earlier, most of them are free and or like for example, ATC, DC charges, I believe $25 a quarter, $100 a year, paid in four installments. So most anybody can afford that. And and candidly, that’s just so people have skin in the game. I learned when I had a big expense account that clients if there was no cost involved, there was no value and people would just blow off great opportunities for entertainment, meals, travel. Whatever. So most of this stuff is is free or at minimal cost. And again, start with start up atlantic.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:51] So what’s your favorite part of working with and mentoring startups and entrepreneurs?

Larry Mchugh: [00:20:58] I get a jazz out of helping people succeed. Most recently with the panoramic start up showdown there last group I had a chance to mentor a woman by the name of Ani Rodriguez in Miami, who has a company called Journey Track, which is basically helping user experience in HR kind of issues. And I’m not going to say that it was because of my coaching, but when they had I coached her in the semifinal round and she made it to the finals and then she won the 120,000. Most recently, that was on the 15th of June. So to see someone go from struggling to having a real good start, it’s, it’s it’s very rewarding to me. I haven’t had a real job for about seven years, and it’s my time to give back, which I really enjoy, and mentoring other companies, helping them with some stuff that they don’t know. It’s very rewarding.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:02] Well, Larry, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you. You mentioned start of Atlantic.com as somebody who’s interested in Atlanta Technology Angels. Is there a website for them as well?

Larry Mchugh: [00:22:14] Yes, that’s Angel Atlanta or Dot org. And one more plug for Startup Atlanta. The applications for Startup Atlanta annual awards is now open until the 29th, and those awards will be held on October 12th. So recognizing the people in the community that have done well and the people being honored this year is Entrepreneurs of the Year are Ben Ben Chestnut, who started MailChimp and Andrew Young, who is one of the principals in Greenwood and obviously a former mayor of Atlanta. Right.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:56] Well, thank you again for sharing your story, doing important work. And we appreciate you.

Larry Mchugh: [00:23:01] My pleasure, Lee. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:03] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:23:09] 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 VC. That’s Showdown Dot VC. All right, that’s all for this week. Goodbye for now.

Paola Isaac Baraya With Broward County, Office of Economic and Small Business

September 21, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

South Florida Business Radio

Paola Isaac Baraya With Broward County, Office of Economic and Small Business

00:00 /

Paola Isaac Baraya is working at Broward County – Office of Economic & Small Business Development as Economic Development Specialist – International Trade. She is a 2013 Recipient of the Organization of Women in International Trade (OWIT) “International Business Woman of the Year Award -Service Category”.

Broward County is a diverse, vibrant, urban community with parks, beaches, and green space. Broward has something for everyone. Positioned at the center of Southeast Florida, they are environmentally and economically sustainable and a gateway to the international marketplace. Broward County is a regional body working together with government partners and stakeholders to achieve common goals.

Connect with Paola on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The 7th Annual Florida International Trade and Cultural Expo FITC

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Lee Kantor here another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor does trade law. Your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio. We have Paola Isaac and she is with the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business. Welcome.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:00:35] Thank you very much for having me. Very happy to be part of this special radio broadcast.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:40] Well, I’m excited to learn more what you’re up to. But before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business? How are you serving, folks?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:00:50] Yes, of course. So the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business, where the agency inside of Broward County government, which is the second largest county in the state of Florida, and we serve economic development in terms of business attraction, business retention, but also we have small business development services such as certification for small businesses that want to sell their products and services to our purchasing agency. And as well, we have an entrepreneurship program and I offer international trade program geared towards export education and promotion.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So how did you get into this line of work? It must be very rewarding work.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:01:29] Yes. I love I’m very passionate about what I do. And I think it’s important because there’s still a lot of businesses that want to learn how to export. And what I’ve known is from the US standpoint, less than 1% of businesses export. So we need to bring more visibility that there is 95% of the purchasing power outside of the United States. But how did I start getting into this? I’m originally from Canada and I studied marketing and international business, and I moved here to South Florida 15 years ago. I worked mainly in the private sector and logistics with the horticulture industry, but then little by little got involved into the public sector. And I was executive director of the Fort Lauderdale Sister Cities Program, which is a twinning program between cities around the world, bringing Internet international delegation from different countries, and then was involved with the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance. They are our arm, let’s say, for attracting investment to the county. And then I’ve been about now nine years promoting international trade and export for Broward County.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:36] So now let’s talk a little bit about international trade. You mentioned that most businesses tend to just kind of sell either just in their community or just in the United States. And there’s a real opportunity to export some of your goods. But a lot of folks are either afraid or they just don’t know what they don’t know. Can you kind of share maybe a little bit about some of the myths to dispel some of the myths about exporting?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:03:03] Yes, definitely so. Most small business, because our county is formed mainly of small businesses, they’re preoccupied with the day to day survival and making sales in a domestic market. And sometimes, especially when we have a downturn in the economy, or, for example, we had the situation with the pandemic, they don’t have the time where they feel intimidated to see that there’s opportunities in other markets where about their product would be very well received. So this is what we’re trying to do. And we created a program called the 11 Steps to Exporting a Roadmap to Your Exporting Success. We introduced this program in 2014, and since then we’ve been educating 3500 companies on becoming export ready, we call it. And we also won the President’s Award for export. It’s it’s a very prestigious award founded by President Kennedy. And we went to Washington, D.C. in 2019 to receive that award for step to step step by step program that kind of demystifies the exporting process.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:07] Now, it’s very important to you, obviously, teaching people how to export, but it’s so much so that you’re part of an expo that is kind of just focusing on exporting.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:04:22] Yeah. So in addition to our 11 steps to exporting, which we offer it as a, as a free seminar and webinar, especially during the pandemic, it was a webinar. We also have other series when it’s called Doing Business with the World, where we invite consulates and trade agencies from different countries to talk about the best business opportunities or export opportunities in their country. But we also introduced about seven years ago a big conference called the Florida International Trade and Cultural Expo, known in the community as FTS Fitzy, which are all the first letters of the name of the Congress. And this was created seven years ago by one of our commissioner, Del Vecchio, that was a proponent of international trade. And we believe that we need to invite all these country contacts we have from all over the world to bring them here in our own backyard and Fort Lauderdale, and also to promote culture because understanding and doing business with another country, it’s important to understand as well their culture. So this has been seven years and we’re happy to have this event again October 19 and 20th at our Broward County Convention Center. It’s a free event, so we welcome the entire community and your audience to participate. And we’re going to be receiving over 60 countries that will be represented by their governments coming in from their country or their local the local consulate or trade agency.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:53] So who should attend? Who are the folks out there that are listening that should be really considering attending this event?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:06:02] Well, traditionally this event is for businesses that want to look, explore opportunities in other countries. They want to learn how to export or import. And there’s also going to be a buyers panel. They want to meet potential buyers. So traditionally it’s for those types of businesses and could be small, medium or large. But what I really feel is this event is for everybody doesn’t you don’t have to own a business. You can just be curious in terms of, well, what can I export to the Bahamas or what about tourism to Italy? Because there will be a component where we cover tourism and culture. So I really feel this this event is for everybody and but definitely for small business or even medium large businesses that want to expand their sales to other countries. They can meet strategic contacts there. And probably, as you know, it’s all about building relationships when you do business not only here in the US but in other countries as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] Now, you mentioned some of the education there, like learning about the 11 steps exporting, but is there going to be like an opportunity for folks to maybe do some? I’ve seen it at some events, kind of like speed dating where you go and meet a lot of people to kind of really understand or at least briefly get a glimpse of what they have to offer and what you have to offer to see if it’s a fit.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:07:22] Yes. And I’m so glad you asked that, because we’re going to have an activity called speed matchmaking with the countries. And while there are 60 countries participating in that activity, I think we’re going to expect about 15 countries. That will have roundtables and every 10 minutes businesses can switch and meet different countries. They’re also going to be the the services offered by the local, state and federal government. So we’re going to have there the US Department of Commerce, Exim Bank Enterprise, Florida, which is the State Agency for Trade and Investment. They’re going to be also resources that the companies can do, let’s say speed matchmaking or speed dating with, as you say.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:04] Now, is this like if I had an idea in the back of my head, like, oh, you know what? I wonder if this would work in, say, Guatemala. Will there be, you know, possibly somebody from Guatemala there that I can just bounce the idea off of to get an idea of, hey, maybe this is worth pursuing?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:08:23] Well, actually from Guatemala, we’re going to have the highest level guest. We received verbal confirmation from the president himself. The president of Guatemala will be on our presidential panel. We’re also going to have a former president from Guatemala. And there’s going to be other presidents or former presidents on this special presidential panel. We’re going to have on October 19 as part of our grand opening ceremony at 8 a.m. on October 19. So it’s a not to be missed part of the show. And there will be also representative. There will be a delegation coming from Guatemala and every country we’re going to be listing soon on our website under participating countries, who’s coming from every country if is it a business delegation or the actual president or a minister from that country? So we’re going to be listing that very soon. We’re updating that part of the website. In the meanwhile, on the website, we do have the confirmed dignitaries that are on top of the page from different countries that are coming that have already confirmed.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:27] Now, is there a story you can share of maybe in your experience with folks exporting success story, maybe explain what the challenge was or what they maybe were afraid of and how maybe not necessarily with your help, but you encourage them to export. And then now their business grew to a new level. Do you have any kind of success stories like that? You don’t have to name the name of the company, but just maybe explain what the challenge was and how they were able to overcome it and really benefit from exporting.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:09:59] Yes, of course. I think it was more an opportunity than a challenge. But last year when we had the fight, we had a delegation from Dubai and we had His Excellency Dawood al-Qazzaz, who came and spoke about a conference that he organizes in the month of March in Dubai. And after he participated that day, we decided to bring a trade delegation with three of our mayors and some businesses from Broward County. So there was a business there that sells cosmetics. They manufacture cosmetics here in Hollywood, and they came with us on the trade mission, and they were able to expand their sales by 100,000. And I think that that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have that delegation come to visit, and we didn’t open that opportunity to then travel in the country because a company can come to say, and it might not be right away that there’s a sale, they’ll make the relationship and then they’ll be able to like, in this case, travel to that country and then finalize or sell or be able to develop it. That takes it. It’s not like you’re going to come to a conference and the next day you boom, you’re going to have 100,000. And it could happen. But, you know, it’s more to open doors here and to be realistic and to learn. And also another quick example on the how to import panel that actually Jennifer Diaz is organizing with the trade law. We’re going to have the agencies, US, Customs, FDA, US, DEA that are going to talk about these challenges with regulations, because those can be issues that sometimes companies have with FDA or the government agencies and they’ll be directly there representative, that can help them answer their questions.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:44] Now, for folks who want to attend, is this something that they have to get tickets ahead of time because it’ll sell out? What’s the best way to kind of lock in your spot?

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:11:55] Yes. The best way to attend there is a free general admission and it’s to register on our website. The website address is fairly simple. I’m going to just repeat it a couple of times. As you as I mentioned before, the event is called Fitzy. Fitzy. And so our website is f I see the word expo dot com. So there’s only one E between pizza and ex post. So F I see the word expo and companies can register there for free to attend as a general admission if they want an exhibit table. We are already sold out for the exhibitor table. We’re going to leave registration open until tomorrow to tomorrow. But we are closing registration, so that’s already pretty full for a world expo. But definitely we encourage anybody that wants to attend on the free general admission. They can participate and we still have a few rooms available for sponsorships which are also listed on our website.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:58] So there are still sponsor opportunities available.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:13:03] Yes, there’s a few sponsor opportunity available. And but for the exhibitor registration, we’re going to be closing this tomorrow or latest Wednesday. So but if anybody is interested in sponsoring, they can reach out to us via the website. We have our contact information there. There’s also a tab with all the sponsorship levels and a portal to register directly there. And our phone number is there as well. But I can I can give the phone number over as well, if you like.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:34] Sure.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:13:36] So our phone number is I’m going to spell it slowly because I know some people might be writing down 9543576400. Again, that’s 954357 6400.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:54] Good stuff and thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:14:02] Thank you so much for having me. And and we’re very excited because we don’t have to. I mean, yes, you eventually have to travel to these countries, but we have these opportunities which where all these countries are traveling. Some countries are coming from Africa 20 hours last year, we had the mayor of Accra, Ghana, that travel even during the pandemic. 20 hours to come here to visit us. And it’s a tremendous opportunity for the local community to come and meet with these delegations and open doors to new markets.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:32] That’s right. And it’s all in our backyard. And you can meet you just think about your travel budget, your saving of just going to this one event and that that website again is Fitzy expo dot com. Paula, thank you again for sharing your story. Thank you.

Paola Isaac Baraya: [00:14:54] Thank you so much for having me. It’s a great pleasure.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:56] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on South Florida Business Radio.

Amir Helmy With HealthAppy Tech LLC

September 21, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Amir Helmy With HealthAppy Tech LLC

00:00 /

Amir Helmy is a recent computer science graduate from Georgia Tech, and CEO of HealthAppy Tech. Since high school Amir has been interested in pursuing research related to epilepsy and mobile health, and published research related to mobile fall detection algorithms.

While in college he refined his computer science skills and specialized in research on mobile health algorithms and signal processing. He also published research in mobile health algorithm development. Most of these publications are specific to epilepsy and seizure detection.

Through Georgia Tech’s Create X startup launch program, Amir founded HealthAppy Tech was able to take the research to an initial prototype, called Epipal. Since then the Epipal patient prototype has over 10k+ downloads and has been received well by users

Epipal is now at a pivotal inflection point and has much room for innovation and improvement. After graduating this past spring, Amir has started working full time on the HealthAppy Tech project.He is excited to be taking his technical background and extensive research expertise in this domain in a commercial direction to lead this company to improve the lives of millions living with epilepsy and their families.

Connect with Amir on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Current status and success and failures
Their customer discovery to current pivot realization/journey
The impact their company aims for
The grand vision when their company is successful
The unique use of machine learning and AI in their platform

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:03] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio, brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll and HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on pay. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Atlanta Business Radio and these are my very favorite episodes the Gesu any radio episodes. And today on the show we have Amir Helmy and he is with HealthAppy Tech LLC. Welcome, Amir.

Amir Helmy: [00:00:48] Thank you, Lee. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about HealthAppy Tech. How are you serving folks?

Amir Helmy: [00:00:56] Yeah, absolutely. We are a health tech company. We produce we make software specifically. Our mission is to create software that helps families with neurological diseases or families with an individual with neurological diseases. More specifically, right now, we are focused on the epilepsy community. So we develop family centered software that helps epilepsy families live safely and get peace of mind by managing their loved one’s epilepsy effectively.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So what was the genesis of the idea? How did you get started in this kind of direction?

Amir Helmy: [00:01:30] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I’m now graduated from college, but the story actually goes way back to when I was in high school and I had a classmate who had epilepsy and I could see how they were trying to how they struggled to stay safe and manage their epilepsy on a day to day basis with their family. And when the science fair rolled around for for the high school, I was into programing at the time, just basic mobile apps like car racing games, things of that nature. So I knew how to use the sensors in the phone and I started doing research with individuals at the University of Florida where I went. I went to high school in Florida into using a smartphone to detect seizures. And that research continued into my college years when I moved to Atlanta and I ended up we’re now taking that research that was on seizure detection, mobile algorithms for for epilepsy safety and making it commercial through this Apple family platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:30] So was that the first time that people had used their phone as a way to even detect that a seizure was happening?

Amir Helmy: [00:02:38] So there is quite a few. There’s been a lot of research on seizure detection, actually. However, most of the research that is done involves specific devices, you know, custom wearables. And so those can be like a very common one is the empathic embrace. Watch. Those are hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And they also require a really expensive monthly subscription. And their accuracy is kind of vary it varies depending on the individual with epilepsy if it works for them or not. And so by being a software only solution, we actually wanted to purposefully stay away from any hardware so that we could also provide something that’s affordable and accessible to many individuals in the epilepsy community, also specifically families that are in underrepresented communities that have a loved one living with epilepsy. Sometimes they can’t afford those very expensive monitoring devices. So we are we were the first ones to develop a mobile algorithm for seizure detection software, only using a phone or ubiquitous smartwatch. And we’ve continued to refine it throughout the years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:47] So you’re kind of leaning on the technology and the accelerometer of the phone?

Amir Helmy: [00:03:51] Yeah. So I mean, over the years, even just doing research in this space, we’ve seen everyday smartphones and everyday wearable devices become more and more capable. So, you know, back in back when we first started this research, we were just using the accelerometer sensor in the phone. And then then we added the gyroscope. And now you can start also incorporating other modalities like heart rate from everyday wearable smartwatch if someone has that. And then also you can look at different there’s activity recognition APIs that, you know, Google and Apple have come up with. So you can put them in sequences alongside these accelerometer readings and these other sensor readings like heart rate readings, and have a pretty good algorithm at trying to classify whether there’s an emergency event with high probability or not. So yes, originally it was just accelerometer sensor in the phone and that’s like the core of the algorithm. But we also added other modalities through our iterations.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:47] And so it’s relying primarily on the phone or the watch device. Does it also like kind of pair, like if they have a Fitbit or a woop or one of those more robust kind of fitness trackers?

Amir Helmy: [00:05:02] Right now, we don’t have the capability. We haven’t we’re not compatible with those devices that you mentioned. It’s the everyday the wear OS for Google. And then now we’re developing also the iOS and the Apple Watch version as well. But I think a lot of these devices are going to be on similar operating systems soon, so we should be able to be compatible with them. But yeah, it does depend. Like the either the phone has to be on you or your watch has to be on your wrist or both. Rhythm will work in terms of detecting dangerous epilepsy event.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:33] Now, what stage are you at right now? Do you is this out in the wild yet? Do you have beta folks testing this?

Amir Helmy: [00:05:41] So what’s interesting is we actually took the algorithm that I’ve been discussing for a while now and we put it in an application that we put live on the Google play store. It’s called EPI Pal, and it’s a patient facing version of the application. So individuals with epilepsy would download it. We would detect their seizures, help them have a digital journal for their events, which is really important when they go to see their care provider or doctor for improved treatment, we would help them with their medications, give them analytics, all these kinds of things. And that application got actually over 10,000 downloads and it’s rated over four stars in the Google Play store, and it’s been there for a year or so. But one thing that’s very interesting that we realized in talking to a lot of our customers, our users of the application and going to different epilepsy events and talking to families is we realize that epilepsy, safety and management is we kept coming back to this this realization that epilepsy safety and management is really a family effort in many, many cases. So we wanted to really approach the problem the correct way.

Amir Helmy: [00:06:42] And so right now we’re actually kind of rehashing what Apple is and we’re taking it down from the Google play store and we’re doing something new, which is a family facing platform for individuals that are familiar with Life360. That’s kind of like a similar, analogous, you know, the structure of our application that we’re putting out now that we’ve realized that epilepsy management and safety is the most is most effective when the family is all working together and it’s collaborative, we’re onboarding families into our new platform in digital family circles. So a lot of the features from our previous application that was live will carry over. But the stage we’re at now is we’re developing we’re pivoting slightly, pivoting based on our extensive experience in this field, actually launching a reasonably successful product, getting feedback. And then now we’re pivoting to what we believe is an even better solution for this community. So that is still in the development and beta testing stage right now. Hopefully it’ll be live within a month. Now, family platform.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:41] The family platform. So if I have epilepsy, I have the app on my phone, I’m having a seizure. Is it something where now that’s also notifying my circle?

Amir Helmy: [00:07:52] Yeah, absolutely. So there’s a couple of benefits from having this family circle, digital family circle onboarded. So let’s say, like you’re an individual in high school, like my old classmate who has epilepsy and, you know, your family. Yes, of course. If there’s if a seizure is detected, your family will be notified. Not only that, based on the cycles and patterns of individuals, particularly particular epilepsy, we can also predict seizures a little bit beforehand with some new research that’s come out. You know, we can kind of raise like a yellow or orange flag if, you know, certain indicators match up for for a potential seizure, that’s going to happen. So there’s prediction and detection and then there’s other safety features as well that are family involved. So a family can passively if individual with epilepsy allows for it, they can passively check on or monitor the individual with epilepsy without bothering them with a passive check in. And also every day management becomes collaborative with the family platform. So there’s a shared journal which is really, really important when it comes to epilepsy, sharing a regular journal of what’s happening, how you’re feeling, your medications, your auras before a seizure, your epilepsy events with your doctor that has become collaborative. So a patient with epilepsy can input their information, but also that information can be supplemented from those closest to them that really have a sharp eye on what’s happening with their loved one’s epilepsy.

Amir Helmy: [00:09:19] They can supplement information, they can take videos of seizures and upload it as well. The thing with epilepsy is oftentimes during seizure events, because it’s a brain related disease, is individuals will forget exactly what happened or how long an epilepsy event lasted, or if they took their medication or not, they can be very hazy coming out of a like after a seizure, the state after seizure. So, you know, having a platform that gently reminds the family to input really important information helps put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Later, when a shared journal is shared with a doctor, for instance, medications is also become a collaborative family thing where family can remind gently or monitor, you know, from a distance the medication adherence over time. So if there’s an adolescent with epilepsy who is slowly gaining their independence and living a free life, the family can have the peace of mind as they monitor the manage and manage, help manage the epilepsy from a distance digitally. And also they have all those safety features. So they know if an emergency event, seizure event is going to happen beforehand or during a seizure event. And then also their loved one can have the. That they need and want while also staying safe.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:34] Now, do you have any advice for other founders? It’s a it’s fantastic that you’ve gotten an idea off the ground, out of your head into real world. And then you you know, you were running with it. And then even though it was successful, you kind of paused and reevaluated and decided to then kind of pause that and then go a different direction. Can you share some advice for other founders when it comes to doing that type of a pivot? You know, a lot of folks who are on a path and are getting any kind of hint of success are kind of always doubling down on that. But you chose to kind of reevaluate at that point and then chose a different path. Can you talk about that, how that decision was made and and how you kind of looked at the trade offs of of going a new way?

Amir Helmy: [00:11:24] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first of all, the first thing I would say that was effective for us and, you know, obviously, we’re still kind of early on in our company. So hopefully, you know, the pivot pays off and we end up making a really good impact in the epilepsy space and the health tech and neurological disease space in general. But the thing that really made things clear for us was talking to individual our our customers, talking to individuals and families with epilepsy, you know, going to getting, getting as they like, getting out of the building, whether that’s virtually reaching out to people, everyone that would email us with an issue, we would ask to chat with them about their experience using the application. We would do a lot of customer discovery even after our product was live. And we would we also saw, you know, for us, we kept a good eye for software, which is something that’s super important, is retention. So we kept our eye on the retention and we saw that while the retention was okay and good, we felt that it could be better. So we felt like a key piece of the understanding our customer was missing. So we made an active effort to get out there and talk to everyone that we could.

Amir Helmy: [00:12:43] We went to epilepsy events here in Atlanta and we just talked to families and individuals with epilepsy. And it just kind of became really clear the approach that we needed to take. And furthermore, what helped also solidify this pivot was being validated by the not only just talking to the customers and coming up with with the idea for for taking this new direction on our own and then just going for it. But we also validated by some of our close testers previously they really liked this idea. And also professional foundations like the Epilepsy Foundation awarded us like an innovation award this year for the idea behind this pivot. So all the validation that came from the customers, you know, really trying to discover the truth about individuals and families with epilepsy becoming obsessed with that, you know, really shed a light on a lot of insights and angles that we weren’t didn’t know before. And then the validation from the professional foundation just kind of hammered it home that this is what we need to do, and now we’re pivoting and we’re all in on this new direction and we’ll see how it goes.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:05] Now, can you talk a little bit about your experience with Main Street? How has that been? What inspired you to apply for that and what have you gotten out of it?

Amir Helmy: [00:14:16] Yeah, absolutely. So my my involvement with me should actually started with my brother, who’s my co founder and a student at GSU, and he became aware of the mainstream program. And it just seemed like a really good opportunity to mingle with other really great entrepreneurs. And kind of at the same time that we applied for the mainstream program was when we started to think of this pivot. And so kind of building from the ground up, we got a lot of benefit from the mentors that were in the mainstream program. I think that’s the that’s the biggest thing. What I was really impressed with the Mainstreet program is the quality of the mentors that are there from MK, who’s leading it, and his really no nonsense, straightforward advice that gets things moving quickly to David Eckhoff and other people that have come and talked at the Main Street program and closely work with us. You know, they’re seasoned vets entrepreneurship and they take things from the bottom up. They you know, they really lay down, I think, a solid groundwork for for for building a successful MVP in business. And when we were going through that pivot, customer discovery and taking a new approach to building our MDP was really important.

Amir Helmy: [00:15:44] And those are the mentors that are at the Mainstreet program really helped a lot and kind of helping us recognize what’s necessary, what’s unnecessary mistakes in approaching customer discovery and making assumptions about your customer and really the truth behind your customer and moving fast as well, you know, and keeping us on track and accountable to our goals. So yeah, if I had to just say one huge thing about the Mainstreet program, highly recommend because of the quality of people that are running it. Are involved in in mentoring the companies along. They really care about not only the success of the companies, but I feel like the growth of the entrepreneurs as well as like to have the proper mindset to approaching identifying problems, solving problems and building businesses around that. So I would say a lot of the seminars and advice that we’ve gotten from the mainstream program is really invaluable, not only for the startup that we’re currently doing, but for myself and my co founder, my brother, as you know, young individuals who want to be entrepreneurs long term.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:01] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

Amir Helmy: [00:17:05] Yeah, absolutely. At this at this point in time, right now, we’re kind of looking for I mean, we’re we’re beta testing in the epilepsy space. So if there’s families out there that are listening to this, perhaps that have epilepsy, please reach out. And we would love to talk to you and have you onboard the platform a little bit early. Any feedback and advice that we can get from even if you don’t have epilepsy, but if you’re an expert in UI or UX, it’ll really help the community as a whole going forward. Also, partnerships and investment. We’re looking to raise money soon, probably in the next coming months. We have some non-dilutive funding and grants right now. And so with that leverage, we think that raising around maybe strategic soon and then partnerships as well. So other individuals that have run successful health tech companies, if they have advice, people that have been through the FDA regulatory process as well or done work with pharmaceutical companies because at the end of the day, also, a lot of the data that we collect on our platform is really useful to clinical trials and validation or efficacy of certain drugs for epilepsy, because that’s how epilepsy is managed. So yeah, partnerships in that, in that regard, people that are in the form of space or have worked with pharma before and gone through the FDA regulatory process, if they would reach out with their input, advice and guidance, that would be hugely helpful.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:41] So if somebody wants to learn more, connect with you or somebody on the team. Is there a website or a best way to get a hold of you?

Amir Helmy: [00:18:47] Yeah, absolutely. Our website is still being updated, but there is a live website health app dotcom, just the name of the company dot com. And also on LinkedIn, you know, you can connect with me directly and my corporate email as well is just my name at health dot com. Feel free to reach out.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:09] Good stuff. Well, Amir, congratulations on all the success and the momentum. You’re doing important work. And we appreciate you.

Amir Helmy: [00:19:17] Appreciate you. Thank you for having me on and for for encouraging us along our journey as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:22] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on GSU. Any radio?

Intro: [00:19:32] Today’s episode of Atlanta Business Radio is brought to you by on pay. Built in Atlanta, on pay is the top rated payroll in HR software anywhere. Get one month free at on paycom.

Maria Castro With Love Purse

September 20, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Chicago Business Radio

Maria Castro With Love Purse

00:00 /

Maria Castro, Founder and CEO of Inspiration of Love Purse, a nonprofit that is “putting love on the shoulders of women in need, one #LovePurse at a time” and has collected and gifted almost 7000 purses since March 2021. Donations have been distributed in Illinois, Texas, Puerto Rico, Tennessee, Missouri, Mexico, Canada, and the Ukraine. The idea for starting this mission was to help women in domestic violence, homeless & human trafficking shelters realize that they matter, they are respected, thought of, and loved. Maria believes that sharing your Tx3’s #TimeTalentsTreasures is a requirement and not an option in life.

She currently serves as the Chairwoman for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Chicago Chapter, Telemundo Chicago’s Action Board, Women’s Business Development Center’s Advisory Council, A Silver Lining Foundation, and the DePaul Art Museum Board of Directors. She is a co-author of Today’s Inspired Latinas Volume V, Today’s Inspired Leader Volume II, Hispanic Stars Rising, A New Face of Power Inaugural Edition and the author of Kindness (part of the Word Power Series Collection). Maria has served as a panelist, moderator, keynote speaker, and MC for numerous events and as a speaker for Latina Talks (New York Times & Chicago).

She has received numerous award acknowledgements; Negocios Now 2019 Who’s Who Hispanic Chicago, 2019 Aurora Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce’ Hispanic Catalyst Champion, YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, People with Disabilities Champion Award from Seguin Services, Corporate Visionary award from El Valor, 2020 Hispanic Style Latina of Influence, 2020 Today’s Inspired Latina’s Woman of the Year Award, National Diversity Council’s 2021 Top Latino Leader, 2021 Chicago Latina Expo Business Leader Award, International Women’s Day 2022 Honoree, Negocios Now 2022 Who’s Who in Hispanic Business and the 2009 proclamation of Maria Castro day in the City of Aurora.

Connect with Maria on LinkedIn and follow her on Facebook.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The start of the Love Purse
Their mission
Inaugural Gala
Number of purses they have donated

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Max Kantor: [00:00:21] Hey, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kantor. And before we get started, as always, today’s show is sponsored by firm SpaceX, thanks to firm Space, because without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. And we’ve got a really good one for you today. On today’s episode, we have the founder and CEO of Inspiration of Love Purse. So please welcome Maria Castro. Welcome to the show, Maria.

Maria Castro: [00:00:46] Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me.

Max Kantor: [00:00:49] I’m excited to talk to you and learn all about Love Purse. So let’s jump right in. What is Love purse? How to get started.

Maria Castro: [00:00:56] Oh, my gosh. So Love Purse is actually a mission that I say helps us to put love on the shoulders of women in need, one love purse at a time. And back during the pandemic last year, in March of 2021, I was speaking to a person who probably is so very well known here in Chicago, Nellie Vasquez, Roland, who is the founder of A Safe Haven in Chicago, which is a homeless shelter. And she mentioned to me a need that they had and basically just said, you know, we could really use some help and gathering some toiletries for the women, especially, that were coming in in droves because they were being locked down with their abusers and they had lost jobs in the service industry and so on and so forth. And so I just basically said, go ahead, send me the list and I will do the best that I can to get some stuff for you. But let me figure out how I can reach out to my enormous network of people that I know. And hence, here we are today in 2022, and we are surpassing 7000 purses filled with toiletries for women, not just here in Illinois, but around the world, actually.

Max Kantor: [00:02:12] Wow. So something that I find interesting about it is obviously you can put toiletries in so many different things, but you decide on the purse. Why did you pick purses?

Maria Castro: [00:02:22] Well, that’s a great question. So a purse is not just a purse. And I say that because all of us women who have for so many years carried the same purse perhaps. And in there you have everything from your kids trinkets that they’ve made you from school to pictures of your parents or grandparents or grandkids. In the case of my mother, who always has a rosary in her purse to pray for someone, it’s very special to us. And when you have to leave in the middle of the night, you know, because of danger and you walk out with nothing but the shirt on your back, you lose that and you don’t have that. So this really signifies you have that back, you have hope again. You have the faith in people again versus just running out and not having anything. Now you have it filled with all the toiletries that you don’t have to share with somebody that you can actually have as your own again, so that you can start that all over again and gather those trinkets and gather those pictures and what have you. It signifies so much more than just fashion.

Max Kantor: [00:03:31] So you’ve mentioned toiletries a couple of times. What types of toiletries are best for a love purse? Purse.

Maria Castro: [00:03:39] Okay. So my question to Nelly when this happened was send me a list of what each person needs when they arrive at your shelter. And that was everything from shampoo full-size mind you, shampoos, conditioners, lotions, feminine hygiene products, slippers for the shower, a washcloth. I mean, all the things that they need, the moment that they enter that shelter that they need to have for themselves. Because because of CDC guidelines, you can no longer share those. And so it’s vital to a person, not just a woman, but a child or husband, whatever. It’s vital to have those pieces of toiletries that you need when you walk into that particular shelter. And so that is one of the most essential parts. But the most important part is the note of inspiration that we absolutely, positively have to have in each purse. And that is just a written note to the woman telling her that she matters, that she is somebody that she’s loved and she’s thought of and she’s paid for by the person gifting that purse to her.

Max Kantor: [00:04:52] I love that you guys do that. When I read that on your website, it’s so special. I mean, just giving a purse, it’s. Giving, you know, these these women, it’s almost like it becomes a part of their personality. It gives them something to represent them. And then when you give that personalized note, it’s just that extra touch. So when you were developing the idea for Love Purse, how did the idea for the note of inspiration come about and why do you feel it’s so important to include that?

Maria Castro: [00:05:20] Thank you for asking that, Max. So the day that I went out and bought like seven of everything that was requested from Nelly, I thought to myself, I watch all these purses. I rather I watched all these bags filled with things. And I thought to myself, I can’t give somebody who already feels down on their luck and feeling like they’ve been really beaten down, like just this plastic bag. It made no sense to me. I thought if that was me, I wouldn’t want it to come in a plastic bag. So I thought about that for a few seconds and I said, What if I go on to Amazon and I find some really nice size purses that can fit all of these full sized toiletries in them? And I did. I went to Amazon and I bought all these purses and I was filling them up. And as I filled them off, I thought to myself, what an inspiration this will be to somebody on the receiving end. However, what if I added a note just letting them know that they matter, that they’re beautiful, that this too shall pass one day? And I thought, I’ll do that. And so I wrote all the notes I throw through it, all of the bags, all of the purses. And I thought, Wow, I was so excited about it. And I felt my love personally going into each and every single purse I was feeling. And I said to my husband, I go, You know what? This is a love purse. This is filled with love from me to the person who I may never meet in my lifetime, but nonetheless it is filled with my love. It’s a love purse. So I ran to my local printer, asked him to make a T-shirt that said Hashtag love purse on it so that I could put it out on social media and hopefully get people to realize the importance of this. And certainly, you know, that this was a need that we needed to feel as women empowering women. And so I did. And honestly, I had no idea what would happen after that.

Max Kantor: [00:07:29] Totally. So you guys, you started in Chicago. How did you start expanding to other cities and like you said, around the world?

Maria Castro: [00:07:37] Well, and that’s because of the unbelievable social media that we have today. Right. So I’m over 60 and I’m not technically savvy whatsoever, I can tell you right now. But when I started posting it and putting it on LinkedIn and on Twitter and on Instagram and Facebook, I started getting all of these people responding and saying, Oh my God, I just saw this. Oh my God, my friend posted this. Oh my God, my friend donated a purse. And I started getting inquiries from Canada, from Mexico, you know, from Tennessee, from Texas. I mean, it was amazing. And they were saying, we love this, we love this. How can we be a part of this movement? And I thought, well, you just have to collect some purses and toiletries and tell me what shelter in your local market needs to be helped. I would look them up to make sure that they were a 563 in good standing. And if they were, which all of them were, I would say, wonderful, let’s go for it. And then they would in turn act as an angel ambassador in that particular city or country and start passing out these purses to women in need.

Max Kantor: [00:08:58] Gotcha. Well, that was going to be my next question is asking what an angel ambassador is. And I love that term because you know what you all are doing. You know you’re doing the work of angels. So it’s the perfect name.

Maria Castro: [00:09:11] Oh, my God. You know what? This would not be 7000 purses plus today had it not been for the angels that I have out there. And I had to call them that because that’s what they are. They hold that title so proudly and they have helped me so much to get the word out, to get purses in that particular country or city and just have been like, how what else can we do to help you is basically the question, not how can we help you, but what else can we do? And I think that when you put something out there in the universe that is so universal to somebody that is in need, it just becomes kind of it gets a life of its own, really. And I could not do this work with. Out the village of people that are helping me.

Max Kantor: [00:10:01] Now, you all have your inaugural gala coming up. Tell me a little bit about that.

Maria Castro: [00:10:06] Oh, my gosh, Max, if I could just scream from the mountaintops, I would. So October six, it’s a Thursday evening at this beautiful mansion in Elmhurst that we found that has a brick road leading to the entrance. We are hosting our first inaugural event, which is called There’s No Place Like Home because there really is not. And the theme is The Wizard of Oz. And so the yellow brick road that will lead to this entrance and the doors open. And you have everybody there from Dorothy to the scarecrow to the Good Witch and the Bad Witch, and it is just going to be a magical night. And we do have a amazing keynote speaker who is a man, former Super Bowl champion who has gone through domestic violence with his own mother. Dennis McKinnon, he will be speaking as our keynote speaker and be really re speaking on behalf of men who have gone through this trauma themselves with their own mothers. And so I think that the night will be not only magical, but it will just be so profound to hear it from somebody who is like a well known Super Bowl champ that he, too, had gone through this with his own mother.

Max Kantor: [00:11:24] Yeah, well, it sounds like an incredible event to get everyone together and talk about this common goal that you all stand for. So for people who are interested in learning more about the gala or attending it, how can they learn more?

Maria Castro: [00:11:37] Oh, my gosh. So w w w dot love dot org. We absolutely would just love for anybody and everybody who’s listening to come and support us. The need is so great, Max. I wish that I had enough to go around, but I don’t. And so my goal is to certainly surpass 50,000 this year, although we’re only at 10,000. But I really want to help anybody and everybody out there, whether it’s human trafficking, homelessness or domestic violence. We hear you. We see you. And we want to make sure that somehow or another we help you. And so for those who can’t make it to our gala, donating $5, $20, $100, it doesn’t matter, because all of that goes to the mission. I keep nothing from that. Everything that I get, I put toward buying more purses, buying more toiletries, and just really getting the word out to make sure that we help women in need.

Max Kantor: [00:12:36] Now, Maria, I ask every guest who comes on Chicago Business Radio this question, and I can anticipate what your answer will be, but I’m eager to hear it for you. What is the most rewarding part of what you do?

Maria Castro: [00:12:51] Oh, my gosh. Well, I have to say that it’s the women on the receiving end that I hear stories from now. You have to understand that when a woman is in a trafficking shelter or a domestic violence shelter, it’s very private. So I don’t get to meet them face to face. But I hear the stories from the executive directors or the CEOs from the organizations that tell me on a regular basis what the effect is on these women. And that is that they feel hope again, that they feel that somebody cared, that somebody loved them that didn’t even know them and is sending them this love and this purse. And so when I think about all the women that we’ve helped and we’ve helped more than 7000 today, in one year, I think to myself, I got this like my board and I my angel investors, we got this. So if anybody ever has a doubt that if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, then they have no idea. Because that is so true. The mom is the one that holds the family together. And when she is in despair and she is in need, when she receives something that kind of gives her an indication that things will be okay, then she’s okay. And we have to make sure that we understand that because I have seen a few of them. And when their children see how happy the moms are to open these purses, to read the notes, to smell the, you know, the shampoo and conditioners and different things, they’re so excited for their moms because they see their moms happy again. And I think that we have to realize that again if mama happy and nobody happy in that house. So I’m just ecstatic that it has gotten to the point where it has. But again, I’m very grateful to my board of directors, to my sponsors, to the people who have stepped up and said, I want to help.

Max Kantor: [00:14:49] So if any of our listeners are interested in either donating purses or buying purses for love, purse or toiletries or anything like that, how can they get involved?

Maria Castro: [00:14:59] Oh my gosh. So our website has everything on there. We love dot org. It has all the toiletries needed for each and every individual purse. It has a link where they can go and buy purses under $20, which is what we request. Really, everything is on there. All they have to do is just check on it and they can always email me at Maria at Luv dot org and I’m happy to respond to anybody that reaches out.

Max Kantor: [00:15:24] Well, Maria, it’s been such a joy to talk to you. I mean, you’re doing amazing work in the community. You have such a big heart and just honestly, it’s been such a pleasure getting to interview today on Chicago Business Radio.

Maria Castro: [00:15:36] Thank you so much, Max. I appreciate the opportunity. And hopefully people will hear it. They’ll realize the need and they’ll reach out.

Max Kantor: [00:15:43] Absolutely. And thanks to you for listening to another episode of Chicago Business Radio. I’m your host, Max Kanter, and we’ll see you next time.

Intro: [00:15:53] This episode of Chicago Business Radio has been brought to you by farm space, your private sanctuary for productivity and growth. To learn more, go to firmspace.com.

John Wensveen With The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation

September 20, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

South Florida Business Radio

John Wensveen With The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation

00:00 /

Dr. John Wensveen, is Chief Innovation Officer at Nova Southeastern University and Executive Director of the Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation responsible for overseeing a multimillion-dollar public-private partnership to support the growing entrepreneurial ecosystem in Broward County and South Florida.

John’s higher education experience includes faculty and senior leadership positions at Miami Dade College, Purdue University, Dowling College, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. John’s entrepreneurship and industry experience include senior leadership positions at Mango Aviation Partners, Radixx International, Airline Visions, InterVISTAS, Marriott Vacation Club International, MAX Jet Airways, and Canada 3000 Airlines. John earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in International Air Transport and Business from Cardiff University (United Kingdom) and a B.A. in Geography and Transportation Land Use Planning from the University of Victoria (Canada).

Connect with Dr. John on LinkedIn and follow Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation on Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Trends in Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship
World’s first theme park for entrepreneurs (Levan Center)
South Florida Space Day (Oct. 12)
South Florida Innovation Day (Oct. 26)

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in South Florida. It’s time for South Florida Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor here, another episode of South Florida Business Radio. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Diaz Trade Law, your customs expert today on South Florida Business Radio. We have John Wensveen with the Allan B Levan Center of NSU, Broward Center of Innovation. That’s quite the mouthful, John. Welcome to the show.

John Wensveen: [00:00:38] Hi. Hey, it is quite the mouthful. Thank you. And we can just call the Levan Center to make it easy for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Thank you. So tell us about the Levan Center. How are you serving folks?

John Wensveen: [00:00:49] So I have the most incredible job in the world. I personally believe I’m the chief innovation officer at Nova Southeastern University, but also executive director of the Allan B Levan and NSU Broward Center of Innovation. And what I’ve been able to do is tie my roles into one and my job and my team’s job is to completely disrupt South Florida as a region around the three themes of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. And what we’ve done is we’ve actually built the world’s very first theme park for entrepreneurs, and we have figured out how to reverse engineer this, because the success of an entrepreneur, literally from birth of an idea right through successful exit of a company or global expansion. And what we’ve done is we’ve designed and built a 54,000 square foot theme park, which is about the same size of a bed, bath and beyond, just to put it in scope. And within it, we’ve created this amazing infrastructure that allows us to create customized programs and events and wraparound services where we essentially have a giant collision station that for the very first time in our nation and around the world, entrepreneurs are forced to collide with academia, industry, government funders, wraparound service providers, professional networks and a whole lot more. And our real job here is to be an economic development engine for South Florida that has local, regional, national and international impact that ultimately creates new businesses and scales those businesses and make sure that they’re sustainable, which then results in the creation of new industry here in the region, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] Now, you mentioned that this effort is in disrupting kind of the way things are being done currently. Is there like what was the genesis of the idea and where are you getting your methodology to kind of at least test the water in this manner?

John Wensveen: [00:02:33] Well, it’s really interesting when you look at the trends and challenges around technology. Generally speaking, globally, there are all kinds of trends that are occurring. And what’s happening is you’re seeing more and more creation of what we would call incubators and accelerators, where you incubate ideas and then you accelerate those ideas into commercialized enterprise. And what happened about four years ago, there was a philanthropist here in South Florida, Alan Lavan, that had an amazing conversation with the president of Nova Southeastern University and said, we’re really concerned about the future of talent and really the qualified, skilled talent for the future around the theme of technology. Where are we going to create those skills? How are you going to recruit them and retain them here in our region and to to accelerate? What happened was that conversation then made its way to Broward County. And at that time, the mayor and the commissioners listened to this idea of the possible creation of end quote and Innovation Center that would be located here in Fort Lauderdale. And it was a unanimous decision to move forward in a public private partnership was formed where both NSU, Florida and Broward County came together and financially CO invested into the creation of this concept. And then I was recruited into the position two and a half years ago and really understood what that vision was. And then we grew that into something much bigger, knowing that there are a number of trends and challenges and opportunities that needed immediate strategies, not just locally but in the US and then internationally.

John Wensveen: [00:04:04] And with that said, it was let’s go and figure out what that infrastructure or tool will will look like. So we did a thorough analysis, literally international research, and we found that these incubators and accelerators were what we would call one and done programs where they may have focused on an idea and then the entrepreneur leaves them and then they go off onto their own journey without the support that they required. And we realize that that was a true opportunity for us here in South Florida to, number one, link the whole region collectively so that we act as that gorilla glue that identifies all of the stakeholders and opportunities and required infrastructure that we need to be that economic development engine. And then we built it all under this one roof and we technically opened our doors on April 27th. This last year, a little bit slowed down with the COVID situation where we had to go virtual for our programing and various types of events. But in that short period of time, we were already shown that we’re disrupting the market around the creation of new technologies and a new talent skills pipeline. To support these emerging tech sector opportunities. We’ve created new companies, new jobs. We’re scaling these businesses. So it’s just been phenomenal.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:16] So your mission is to take them not just from an idea to a launch, but to an idea from launch to growth to maybe even post growth to legacy, to come back and then mentor and then kind of repeat the process. So you want to like have the whole life cycle of the entrepreneur at least playing in your theme park?

John Wensveen: [00:05:37] Exactly. I mean, you used the correct word, their life cycle. And there are a lot of pieces of infrastructure throughout the nation that truly focus on small business and help the small business owners and entrepreneurs to launch their business and hopefully sustain their business. But there are very few resources anywhere that really allow that small business to go to the next level. So we provide access opportunities that allow that to happen and truly scale. So we’re focused on not necessarily the small business we’re focused on. Well, how do you create that small business into a national international organization, or how do you create a franchise model out of out of that? You think about things like Kindle as an example that came out of an innovation center. Other things like Uber Eats and Lyft and and and things like that all came out of innovation centers. So how do we create that next Amazon, if you will?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:29] Now, one of the advantages, like a Silicon Valley has they have a density of entrepreneurs and the density of startups happening so that invariably as they fail, which a lot of them will fail, there’s a place for the the entrepreneur to land and maybe do a mash up with somebody else who has something interesting going on. How are you addressing kind of some of that or a way to jumpstart some of that density so that the entrepreneur doesn’t take one shot and fails and then just says, well, maybe I gotta get a real job.

John Wensveen: [00:07:03] Mm hmm. Well, it’s interesting that you mentioned Silicon Valley, because sometimes in recent times, we’re finding that we’re now being called the Silicon Valley of the East. And I and my feathers go up whenever I hear that, because we are not and nor should we ever be. So Florida is a very unique region. And it’s interesting when you look at Miami-Dade County, Broward County, Palm Beach County, everybody has a very similar agenda. And one of those agenda items is to become a designated technology hub, just like Silicon Valley did. And when you look at national rankings across the United States, all of the cities that are ranked as a technology hub are actually ranked as cities, with the exception of the Silicon Valley area. So that whole Greater San Francisco area is one region that’s defined rather than just a city. And the other area here in South Florida is the track that we’re on is that this whole region will become a defined technology hub. And Silicon Valley, you’re absolutely correct. They have all of this infrastructure, they have density, and it’s very unique and they have an entire ecosystem. But what’s also interesting is a lot of trends are now showing there’s an exodus out of Silicon Valley and that infrastructure is actually starting to break up and in the future is a little bit different than the path that we’ve historically been on. So what we’re doing is we’re certainly adapting from some of the successes of Silicon Valley, and then we’re creating those opportunities here in South Florida, but also recognizing that we have to create our own set of parameters because we’re a completely different region than anywhere else in the country, even county by county, by county. But it’s on its way. And a lot of that Silicon Valley talent and knowledge and resources is now flowing right here into South Florida. That exodus is moving in this direction.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] Now, are there going to be some specialties that that you’re targeting, that, you know, some niches that you’re saying, okay, we want to be best in class in, you know, A, B and C? Are there some areas of technology or business that you want to be the go to place for that to occur?

John Wensveen: [00:08:59] Yes, absolutely. So I would say that we’re planting a number of flags that are really reinventing what we do here in our own region. So originally when we started with this concept, we were going to be focused on what we call the defined targeted industries in South Florida, really the high wage, high growth sectors. And then as we began to get more involved in what we were doing, we realized that we should move away from targeted industries and really focus on what we call digital economies or economies of the future. And with that, we realized that technology is the underpin. That’s what’s linking all of this together. So in terms of focusing on specific industries, we’re not we’re really focused on technology because technology supports every industry and will only do so more as we move into the future. So the flags that we’re planting are around things like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, spatial computing, which most people are not familiar with. And there’s an amazing opportunity there. And then another interesting thing that we’ve done is we realized that South Florida is completely disconnected from the space sector, but there are so many businesses here in existence and future businesses that with a slight pivot, they can support. Court space, and we found that the opportunities to enter space, the barriers are coming down because of the privatization and commercialization, and there’s more of a need for the small entrepreneur to support that sector. So that’s one of our unique specialties. And in fact, on October the 12th, we’re launching the very, very first South Florida Space Day, and it will be a collision station bringing those stakeholders together through the South Florida region, but also the state of Florida, where we have partners here like Nassau and Space Florida and the Space Foundation, who’s a very strong collaborative partner with us, to create that awareness and show what those opportunities are.

John Wensveen: [00:10:48] And then again, mix the private and public sectors together so that we could actually move forward and that space slide right here. And then the other one that we’re planting is cybersecurity. And this is a huge one. Cybersecurity is probably the most important piece of technology that we can talk about right now. And if you ask a sea level executive what keeps you up at night, they usually say there’s two things. One, it’s cybersecurity. Is my infrastructure safe, and the other is around talent. And how do I find that skill, talent to support my industry? And what we recently did is we opened up a military grade cybersecurity range. And I would like to say that it is the most powerful resource of its kind in the southeast region of the United States that allows NSU to create new programs around cybersecurity to fulfill those talent needs, but also to work with other academic partners, industry and government at all different levels from from a training perspective at the entry mid and advanced levels, but also to allow you to simulate real life scenarios so that you can be reactive and proactive within your own industry environment.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:48] Now, you mentioned this kind of partnership, public, private. Obviously, you’re housed at a university. Is there an opportunity for businesses to kind of partner with NDSU maybe and say, okay, you know what, we don’t have enough cybersecurity folks. So can we help you develop a curriculum or some classes that will help educate your students in this and then give them kind of a direct pipeline to us or other companies like us to further their career?

John Wensveen: [00:12:21] You’re absolutely speaking my language. And sometimes people will look at me and say, What is this guy talking about? When I tell you? What I’m about to say is that there’s a huge disconnect between academia, whether it’s a public institution or a private institution and industry. And for years, the academic world has dictated to industry what they think their needs are. And then industry is turning around and saying, that’s not correct, or our needs are X, Y and Z. So infrastructure, like the pieces that we are building, allow us to be the bridge that connects the academic worlds with the worlds of industry and government as examples. And then we can find out what is it that industry truly needs. So in this particular case, that’s a cybersecurity expert, but I’m not getting the right knowledge and skills or personality out of these academic programs. We then create opportunities for industry and academia to co-invest with one another so an industry partner could come to us and say, Here’s our need short, medium and long term, how can you help us? And then we as an institution and as an innovation center, they can say, okay, we’ll co-develop that curriculum.

John Wensveen: [00:13:27] You invest into the infrastructure with us and then we’ll create those pipelines that you so desperately need. And we make these long term co-investing strategic partnerships where we’re not just sitting around a table having a coffee and a bagel, we’re actually walking and talking collectively together. And that’s a it sounds like it’s an easy formula for some of the challenges that we have in the world and reality. It is we just need to do a better job all over the world to make sure that industry and academia are coming together as one. And if you look at the data, academic institutions globally are actually decreasing. So every day there’s there’s an institution closing its doors while the corporations are now developing their own training, their own universities in-house to create the talent and the skills that they require if they can’t get it from from other means. So there’s a huge transition occurring in this world right now. And I think you’re going to see more co-investors, strategic partnerships, where we we collectively think as one rather than not being on parallel paths with each other.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] Now, are you seeing any trends regarding at least the mindset of entrepreneurship amongst young people? Is are they kind of at least changing their thinking from I’m going to get a job to I’m going to bet on myself.

John Wensveen: [00:14:44] So if you ask me that question 2 to 2 and a half years ago, my answers would be a little bit different than they are today. And I think that the the COVID global pandemic has really altered the pathways that a lot of young people are on. Their way of thinking and doing has changed. And some will say it’s just the fat and others will say that this is the way of the world moving forward. And what we have found with this whole, quote, great resignation is that just the attitude and perspective of people, generally speaking, has changed where they have increased demands in terms of what they want with their day to day lifestyle, how they work, how they think, how they do, if you will. And I think there are some cons that have come with that. And but the pros is that people are learning to reinvent themselves. So we go through these phases of survive, adapt, recover, and now we’re in that rethink mode. And it’s entrepreneurs at all levels from from young minds trying to do something with creating a business to to more established entrepreneurs that have been successful or not successful throughout their own journey. And what we’re finding is that the COVID situation created new business opportunities and most of those being virtually accessible. So there are new types of businesses, new types of industries, new types of economies requiring new types of mindsets and skills that we would probably have never addressed if the pandemic never did not occur.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] Now, is there an effort to maybe educate younger and younger people about this entrepreneurship mindset? Because to me, that’s almost a must have that you have to you have to change the way you’re thinking, even if you’re going to get a real job in terms of working in an enterprise. If you could think of your boss as your client, it changes how you behave and it changes how you think. Are you seeing any of that happening where that kind of mindset training or at least opening their mind to that type of thinking is trickling down through college, through high school, through even middle school and elementary school.

John Wensveen: [00:16:48] Elaine I think it’s an international impact that’s starting to happen, and I think that some regions of the world are probably further ahead than we are here in in North America, where a mindset is something that you have to educate and create awareness about. And there’s always been this belief that in order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be born with it in your blood. You just can’t become an entrepreneur. You’re born with it. And I completely disagree with that. I don’t think a lot of people even understand what entrepreneurship is. So that so what we’re doing specifically with the lab and center of innovation is we actually have programing around seminars and workshops and eventually certifications. And as part of what we call our Founder’s Journey program, which are very complex, very categorized multi week programs, the innovation mindset is introduced and we start with, well, what is innovation? It’s, it’s a word that people use all the time, but they don’t necessarily understand what it means and that anybody virtually can be an entrepreneur, even if they don’t think so. But it’s part of our mission is to be able to educate and explain what that is and show what that pathway looks like. Even if you’re an employee in corporate America, you still are an entrepreneur in many cases and only refer to that as entrepreneurship. So how do you build companies from from within? So everybody that crosses my path, I look at them as you’re an innovator, you’re a disruptor, you’re an entrepreneur or an entrepreneur. But there is a way to to educate. And the global trends are showing that more and more of this innovation mindset and entrepreneurial mindset is being embedded into curriculum and more hands on experience and exposure to networks that maybe you didn’t have access to before.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:24] Now, what about the underserved folks that aren’t maybe, maybe aren’t there aren’t as many numbers of them in maybe the engineering schools, the technology innovation area, or there an effort, an outreach for them to at least learn or get a taste of this. So then that might alter their not only their career path or their future, but also their family and their community.

John Wensveen: [00:18:51] Absolutely. I think the key word there is accessibility. And many of these underserved zip codes and demographics simply don’t have awareness or maybe they don’t even have the technology to be able to learn about certain things. So if you look in South Florida about the percentage of people that don’t even have access to the Internet, it would blow your mind where everybody just assumes that you are from a technology perspective, can access anything you want. And the reality is that’s not true. So what we do with our own programing is we actually work with different types of organizations in the public and private sectors to to go into those communities and bring those communities to us. But we’re taking that even a step further. We recently received a a federal grant where we will now build an innovation center on wheels. So imagine bringing your innovation center into those underserved communities, but also creating bridges of opportunity to bring them to you. So as part of our outreach, we will be going into the South Florida region, to the underserved areas, to the underserved demographics, to increase accessibility in terms of opportunity. And some of the best entrepreneurs in this world come from from those types of zones or demographics. And our job is to find them and figure out how we can accelerate their success.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:08] Yeah, I think there’s a tremendous opportunity there because there are such consumers of technology, but they’re not creators of it. And there has to be a path for them to to be the creators and that kind of next generation of entrepreneur.

John Wensveen: [00:20:22] Absolutely. And I think that one of the things that we sometimes ignore is what the life cycle of that entrepreneur looks like. So let’s start at the very beginning. How do you get to those young children so that they understand that there’s a pathway? And I’m a firm believer in using a baseball diamond as an analogy that most types of programs out there look at the baseball diamond, and if you can get the batter to first base, then that’s success. And then hopefully they get to second and eventually cross home. We look at things a little bit differently, so we measure success of an individual right from the very beginning before they do anything. So they’re batting at the home plate and we figure out how do we get you to third base first, then second, then first, and then ultimately to where you started. And by doing that, we create a very strategic map, if you will, that also allows like a highway. And we what we do is we provide off ramps or exits so that if you come into a challenge while there’s an off ramp, it allows you to get back on that on that highway. And that’s a model that’s never been completely perfected. And we’re going to do our best to make sure that we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:26] So you’re kind of keeping the end in mind and reverse engineering to to the beginning?

John Wensveen: [00:21:33] Absolutely. And we’ve already got a number of examples where we’ve actually steered some people back onto that pathway. And there’s some really interesting successes coming out of the Levant center of innovation right now and NDSU as a as an institution. And it’s changed people’s. Lives right down to faculty within academic disciplines. A lot of faculty, they may concentrate on research or writing a white paper or going to a conference, not even recognizing that the research that they’re doing can actually be commercialized. So we’re developing that programing infrastructure too, so that they have more of an innovative mindset and can think more like an entrepreneur so they can actually commercialize on that research.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:08] So what do you need more of? How can we help?

John Wensveen: [00:22:12] Oh, we need a lot of things. So I think the thing that we probably need the most help with is just simply awareness. How do we let the world know that this incredible resource exists right here in South Florida? And the best way to do that is to truly invite people to come and see it. So you can see videos and you can see pictures and you can hear about things. But when you come here, you truly do walk into that theme park atmosphere. And I would say that 99% of all individuals that come through when they get to the last space on a on an official tour, say, oh, my gosh, wow, you’ve thought about everything. How do I get involved? And there’s something for everybody. It’s not just the entrepreneur, it’s the entire ecosystem that makes that entrepreneur successful. So how do we do more outreach to find those entrepreneurs, and particularly at the early stage, how do we find those investors? And from all the different angles that exist out there, from the angel investors to the venture capitalists, how do we find those professional and social networks that we can embed in here? And how do we find more mentors and program facilitators that are looking to give back to that community to to make individuals successful? But it’s really awareness at the end of the day.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:18] So if somebody wants to learn more about Space Day or Innovation Day or anything about the Lavon Center as their website, what’s the best way to to learn more or get a hold of you or somebody on your team?

John Wensveen: [00:23:30] Sure. So the best way to get a hold of us is to go to our website and it’s Nova and Nova edu is slash innovation and I’m all over LinkedIn. That’s my big social media platform. And I encourage people to to send a link to me and we’ll connect and, and I’ll get my team involved. And October the 12th is the very first South Florida space dates and all day event bringing in the space world here. And then October 26th is the very first South Florida Innovation Day, where we’re bringing the whole innovation community and South Florida together. And that is a partnership with Emerge Americas, which is a very substantial event that takes place every April in Miami. And they’re a great partner to help promote and support us with that particular event on October 26.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:14] Well, congratulations on all the success, John. You’re doing important work, and we appreciate you.

John Wensveen: [00:24:20] Well, thank you, Lee. I appreciate you as well. And thank you for helping spread our message.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:24] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll be back in a few at South Florida Business Radio.