Business RadioX ®

Shondell Varcianna With Varci Media

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ShondellVarcianna
Atlanta Business Radio
Shondell Varcianna With Varci Media
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ShondellVarciannaShondell Varcianna is the owner of Varci Media. A content writing company that helps financial institutions save time by writing content that speaks to their target audience. Shondell and her team have transformed their clients blogs into a solution provider for their customers.

Connect with Shondell on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Writing content for a particular group of people
  • The importance of having a strategy on how you’ll promote your content
  • Be consistent with publishing content
  • Only publish content that speaks to your customers and your target audience

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. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] 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 Land of Business Radio, we have Shondell Varcianna and she is with Varci Media. Welcome.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:00:49] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about varci media. How are you serving, folks?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:00:56] Yeah, we’re we’re a content writing company. We write blog posts, newsletters and web pages for financial institutions.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:04] So what’s your back story? How’d you get into this line of work?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:01:07] Okay. I’m originally from Canada. I was born and raised in Toronto and my whole career was actually in banking. And when I was 20, I had purchased my first property and I purchased a second one at about 25, and I paid both mortgages off when I was 31. So my girlfriend suggested that I start helping people do the same thing, and she suggested that I start blogging. So I thought, Wait, that’s not a bad idea. So I started a blog and it became popular and over time, magazines and radio stations started contacting me, wanting to hear my story. And that led to companies reaching out to me and wanting me to write for them. So that, in a nutshell, is how the business got started. I was still working my full time job at the time and didn’t have enough time to write, so I started hiring writers and then the business just kept growing. And then I, you know, I quit my job and moved the business to Atlanta, Georgia, which is where we are today.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] And then these financial organizations that hire you, are they like kind of large institutional banks and things like that, or are they smaller, like financial advisors? Like who is your ideal client?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:02:19] Both, actually. So we we work from the largest institutions to the local credit union, so we don’t write for financial advisors. It’s just financial, mainly banks, credit unions and mortgage companies. That’s our ideal clientele.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:35] And then if they’re not working with you, how are they kind of attacking this content problem or do they not see it as something that they should be doing?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:02:43] Well, normally with our clients, we don’t do a lot of convincing in terms of content. So if they don’t kind of understand the importance of content, we don’t do a lot of convincing. We kind of want them to come already with the idea of knowing that content is important. So by the time they come to us, they’ve seen us somewhere online or seen us or heard us on a podcast or seen us at an event. And they usually come already understanding that the importance of content, the institutions that don’t outsource typically have an entire department that does different kinds of marketing. The content is one component of of marketing because of course, you know, there’s there’s so many other ways to market their services. So content is one component and the ones that outsource are typically the ones that just don’t have the staff to write content and or they just they have the staff, but they just don’t have enough time. So those are the two reasons why they’ll typically outsource.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] Now, one, when one of these institutions raises their hand and say, Chandel, we’re ready, we’d like you to kind of help us be better in this. Are the topics kind of similar from institution, institution or do? Or is there really kind of different types of content that are appropriate for these different types of institutions, you know, but to the layperson, they kind of all look similar.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:04:15] Great question. So the content is always based on who they’re targeting. So we don’t believe in just kind of writing what you think is trending or what’s happening. The content should always be tailored around being a part of the conversation that your ideal customer is already having. So the questions that your target audience has, the complaints that they have, the misconceptions that they have, those are the that’s the type of content you should be creating, addressing their pain points, addressing their concerns, answering their questions and things like that. So different institutions are targeting different people. So if they are targeting the same people, they still may have different questions because they’re in completely different markets. So, you know, somebody a first time homebuyer in New York City may have different questions than a first time home buyer in Columbus, Georgia, just because it’s two completely different markets. So we will be speaking to different people all the time simply because there are different audiences in different markets and different products and people want to know different things. So the content should always be tailored around what their ideal customer wants to know.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:27] Now how do you help? Your people that are doing the writing kind of captured the voice of the company you’re working with, because I would imagine while they are all, I would imagine somewhat similar in the sense that they’re serious and they’re not kind of irreverent at like some maybe some of them are, but I would imagine that’s the exception. But how do you capture the voice of the company through kind of your writers like that seems, you know, so it stays consistent with their brand.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:06:01] Yeah. Wonderful question. And that’s a great question because we we always come in at under as ghostwriters, like by the time we start writing for our clientele, they already have a lot of content either on their website, they’ve got brochures, they already have their own voice. So we are coming in as ghostwriters. So we start before we even start writing. We, we do a client content brief with each of our clients and it’s like a seven page questionnaire that we go through with them. And it gives us a lot of background information on who they are as a, as a corporation, who they are as a brand. What kind of message are they wanting to relate to their ideal customer? And then we also have to get to know their ideal customer because they are speaking to the ideal customer. And we’re trying to bridge that gap between what the institution has, the products and services and what their ideal customer wants. We’ve got to bridge that gap. So we do a lot of behind the scenes work before we even start writing, and then we stop their website, of course, because that is going to give us and their marketing material and their brochures a lot of the content that they already have.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:07:07] We have to study that to get their voice tone, format style to how they want it. And we ask a lot of questions about those things before we start stocking their website as well. So that’s how we get their voice, right. The other thing too is we also come 90, I would say about 90% of our clients, we come up with the topics for them. So we will come up with the topics for them based on what they’re focused on, based on what their ideal customer wants to know. And we’ll also come up with an outline before we even start writing. So we create an editorial calendar and that includes the topics as well as an outline of what’s going to be written in each piece that is approved by our client before we even start writing. So they’re very aware of what’s going to be in each piece. So it is in line with who they are and the message that they’re trying to relate to their ideal client.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:59] Now, in this case, is your writing kind of B to B to C or is it B to B to B in the sense that you’re the people you’re writing for? Are they kind of just individual people that might be interested in a bank or credit union? Or are they somebody part of a company that’s saying, okay, I’m going to use this bank, this I’m changing bank. So this is kind of more of a business decision than a personal decision.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:08:26] We write for B2B and B2C, so B2C is the majority of the content we write. So it’s the the bank, the mortgage company or the credit union writing to their customer who’s going to be buying a house, getting a car loan, getting a credit card, getting investments. So that would be B to C. So we’re typically writing for them. And then we also write for mortgage companies that are targeting brokers. So that would be B to B, so they’ve got their own brokerage and we do write a lot of content for brokers as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:55] So that’s similar, but different because the tone, I would imagine would be different.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:09:00] The questions and everything is different. The broker is not really wanting to know so much about a particular area, school districts, things like that. They were wanting to know how quick can I get my loan approved for my particular client? They want to know the different mortgage products that are out there, the minimum credit, credit scores, so that they can offer that to their particular client. So those the audiences are completely different. The questions are completely different. So the content would be completely different for those two audiences.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:34] Now, when you’re now, let’s talk about maybe some advice for the listener who is thinking about, you know, kind of using this content marketing strategy, which obviously you believe heavily in, right? You don’t believe the written word has. That’s a fad, right? Like the world isn’t going to turn exclusively to Tik-tok for information. Right. You still believe in the written word?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:09:57] It’s actually I actually believe in many forms of content. We just focus on the written word. But I believe in video. I believe in audio, which is what we’re doing right now. I think that you need to provide it all to your audience because you never know how your audience wants to consume content. Some people prefer to read, some people prefer to listen, some people prefer to watch. It’s kind of like when Amazon used to just sell books and then they now they sell Kindle. Now, now you can read the book on your phone and now you could also listen to the book through all. So they’re just providing many ways for their audience to consume content. So we’re focused on the written word, but I believe in it all. I think you should be providing as many ways and make it as easy as possible for your ideal customer to consume content. I do video to get clients, so it’s not again, our company is just written, but I believe that you should you should never limit yourself to how you market because as I said, you never know how your your ideal customer wants to consume content and you always want to make it as easy as possible for them to consume your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:03] And then what do you feel about are there rules of thumb when it comes to how often you should publish whatever it is, whether it’s print or video or audio? Is this something that should be happening multiple times a day, once a week, once a quarter? Like what’s a rhythm that makes sense to you and this niche that you serve?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:11:22] I would say multiple times per day on social media, a minimum of one a week on your website. Blog posts can be repurposed and broken into two weeks worth of social media posts, so I’m really big on repurposing content as well. Just always remember, especially if you’re focused on organic content, the more you publish content, the more your audience sees you. Unless you’re getting more high level than you’re doing ads where you can actually target and be very specific with who sees your content. If you’re focused on organic, you’ve got to post often because you’re all of your followers do not see all the content that you post. They’re not always online at the time you post it. Some of them may not even be online for a few days. So the more you, the more you post, the more attention you’ll get on your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:09] So you have to create kind of that brand ubiquity so that you want to feel that you want your customer to feel like whenever they look around their names, they’re so reminds them because you never know when they’re going to buy or want to be in the market to buy 100% correct.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:12:23] You never know if they’re ready. They could be ready in six months, but it’s also brand awareness as well. And at the same time, while you’re publishing multiple pieces, you’re starting to create that know like and trust factor, which is what we all need in order for people to do business with us. So over time, as you’re educating your clients, as you’re producing videos, you’re producing written content, as you’re producing audio, they’re getting to know who you are as a brand, and then they can determine whether they even like you, because if they don’t like you, they’re of course they’re not going to do business with you. But all of that helps to build that relationship with your ideal customer so that when they’re ready, you’re right there to help them with their mortgage needs or investment needs or whatever.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:03] Now, how do you when you’re working with a client, maybe early on, how do you kind of manage their expectations when it comes to the results of your work? Because this seems like a long term play, that this isn’t something like you write a post and like, Hey, where’s the customer that came from that like, you know, it’s not like kind of a direct line between one article and then a client like this is something it sounds like it’s a long term investment that you’re really investing in your brand and educating people over time so that eventually you win them over when they are ready to buy.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:13:37] Yes, I believe that. Excuse me. And we’re really transparent that if they’re needing immediate results, then you’ve got to do some type of paper click ads or Facebook ads. You’ve got to you’ve got to pay for some type of ad spend in order to get the immediate results. The organic content is always a long game because it that’s part of building the relationship. And I think you should be doing both. I think you should be doing pay per click ads, social media ads, as well as organic because the organic is good to nurture the long term relationships. You never really want a client who’s just going to come and give you a checking account and then not bring them more, not get a mortgage with you or not get some credit cards or not get a car loan like you want the whole gamut of products with them. And that typically will come through relationships, through how well they know you, how well they like you. Do they trust you to have all those products with you? So that will come typically with the organic content. So I think you should always be doing both.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:43] And is it one of those things where maybe the person who is responding to an ad might be more transactional minded, where the person responding to an article might be more relationship minded?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:14:53] Exactly. Exactly. So and that’s the reason why I think both the you know, the pay per click ads will get the immediate client, but you want to keep the client. And if you’re constantly educating people and when I say educating, I’m more I’m more addressing their pain points. So especially with financial institutions, because you can have customers from 18 until retirement. So if you stick with them along their journey, there’s really no need for them to leave if you’re if you’re helping them along the way. So it’s it’s when they get upset or when they don’t feel like. You’re there for them, then they jump ship. But I mean, when you think about it, once you once you start banking with an institution, you’ve already registered all your bills to get paid with them. Like it’s it’s a hassle to leave and it’s easier to just be with who you already have an existing relationship with. But because there’s so much competition out there, if you’re not part of their journey, if you’re not continuing to build that relationship with your audience, they will jump ship simply because the rates are lower. Or they didn’t even know that you had to have a particular product. But another institution has been in their ear, you know, every week or every day, so they naturally just gravitated towards them. So if you’re as long as you’re a part of that journey and and you’re thinking long term, long game, you’ve you should always have a good relationship with your ideal customer and continue to deepen those relationships so that you continue to get the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:20] Now, can you share a story? Obviously don’t name the name of the institution, but maybe they came to you. Maybe they were a little skeptical. Maybe they were burned in the past and they were a little gun shy. But when you started working with them, you were able to take them to a new level.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:16:35] Yeah, we hear some great stories. There was an institution that we were working with, we’ve been with them for. We’ve been working with them for a few years now. But we when we started with them, they really wanted to capture the first time homebuyer in their local area. And we I suggested that we start writing a series of first time homebuyer posts so they would come back. Once they subscribe every week, they would they would get a new a new post about the next step in the home buying process. And about eight months later, the marketing director contacted me and she was telling me about a young lady who bought their first her first home. And she was she she came to them because of the blog post that we wrote and she subscribed. And every week she would get it. And she was thinking about buying but wasn’t sure. And we went into everything. We went into minimum, minimum credit requirements, the minimum down payments that you have different things to look for, different things you should look for when you’re wanting to move into a different area. If you have kids, how to look up school district ratings and all that kind of stuff, like we we went through the whole gamut of what you need to go through at the very beginning to actually the closing day and then moving in and then, you know, things that you need to be aware of, maintenance issues that could come up if it’s not a brand new home and things like that. And she had ended up getting a mortgage with this institution, moved in and came back and shared with them that she was the first person in her entire family to ever buy a home, and she didn’t think it was possible.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:18:09] And as she started reading some of the information that the institute well, some of the stuff that we wrote, she started to educate herself on what was required to buy a home, and she didn’t even think she qualified. But when she started reading the posts on, you know, the minimum down payments, how much you should, how much you need in closing costs, things like that. She started to think, You know what, I’m in a position where I think I could apply. And she applied. Got it. And now she’s living in her, you know, her dream home. And she’s a single parent. So, you know, that was one of those feel good stories where and we don’t always hear these stories. We don’t always hear the feedback when it comes to people buying their first home and things like that. But the feedback we normally hear is, you know, because we’re very big on results. So a lot of times when we write content, they’re doing some type of search engine optimization as well. So we want to know things like, you know, what keywords are they focused on? Are the clients converting? Are they clicking the call to action? Are they staying on the page or are they clicking the internal links? That helps us to know if the content is engaging. So we look at that. That’s the kind of result, the information we get. But those feel good stories when the client’s customer comes back and shares those things with us is heartwarming for all of us, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:19:26] The impact is real. I mean, that’s the thing. It’s it’s indisputable the impact, that’s for sure.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:19:32] Oh, yeah. And I was raised by a single mom. So that particular story really hit home with me because it’s, you know, it’s a huge purchase. But at the same time, you know, when when when a little child sees a mother stretching out and buying a home, then that little child could now start to believe in themselves and say, well, if Mommy did this, maybe I can do this, maybe I could dream bigger. So that was a beautiful story.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:56] Now, before we wrap, you’ve achieved so much and you have an interesting Facebook group strategy. Do you mind sharing a little bit about how you marketing and go to market to find your, you know, target audience and get business from them? Do you mind sharing that Facebook group story, the strategy?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:20:15] Yeah. So we we we don’t use Facebook groups to get our clients, but our clients use Facebook groups to gain clients for themselves so I can share. What we do and what our clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:29] Okay, sure.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:20:30] Yeah. But yeah, we actually get the majority of our clients come from LinkedIn. So remember I was saying, well, I don’t know if I did say it, but you should always be where your target audience is. That’s where you always have to be. That’s where you should be focused. Our target audience is on LinkedIn, so we have a complete LinkedIn strategy for Reach Out. I post on LinkedIn every single day. I comment on my ideal customers post every single day on LinkedIn. So that’s just part of building my brand. The team does that as well. We’re very strategic when it comes to LinkedIn, simply because our ideal audience is there for Facebook groups. What I suggest for and this is for institutions that are not and not even just institutions like anybody can do this. But if you are trying to find out what your ideal customer wants and if they are on Facebook, Facebook groups are really, really huge for that. So for our our our clients, they let’s say they’re focused on home buyers or let’s say our ideal customer wants to target people who buy rental properties. So I would suggest that they join Facebook groups where investors are in there. So and they’ve got a bunch of different Facebook groups where people are wanting to buy a house, people are wanting to buy rental property.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:21:50] So join those Facebook groups where your ideal customer is. Once you get into these Facebook groups, just be a fly on the wall. Just listen to what people are saying for a few months. Look for patterns, look for common questions that people have or similar questions. Look for complaints that what are people complaining about? Look for misconceptions? What are people confused about? What do they think? What are they saying? But it’s incorrect. And your content should be focused around those things that your ideal customer are complaining about, questions they have in misconceptions. Now, if you could provide value, if you can answer some of the questions that people have in these groups, if you could address some of their complaints, do that. Don’t. You can’t sell yourself in a lot of these groups, but you don’t need to. If you’re answering enough questions, then on your Facebook page, whether it’s your business Facebook page or your personal Facebook page, it should be decked out. And what I mean by that is it should have exactly what you do. Contact information. Easy, easy way to get a hold of you. All of that should be on your Facebook page exactly what you do.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:22:53] Because oftentimes when you’re commenting in these groups and people see you a lot, they’re going to click to your Facebook page and probably raise your hand and contact you and ask, Can you help me with a mortgage or are you familiar with this particular product? This is my situation. Can you help that? That’s typically how it goes and at the same time, you should be creating content, addressing what they’re talking about in these groups. So it’s a holistic approach. Then you can take it a step further and if you want to get into some search engine optimization, the same things that they’re talking about in these groups, look for Google keywords that match them, and now you can start a search engine optimization strategy. You can also, if you want to start doing Facebook ads, you can also start doing Facebook ads around the complaints and the concerns that people have in these groups. And you can target the same people in these groups. So Facebook groups, in my opinion, are huge for research and for finding topics to to write about, to do video about that will address the pain points that your ideal audience has.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:56] Well. Shontell Congratulations on all the success. If somebody wants to learn more and maybe get on your calendar or, you know, find out more about your organization, can you share the website?

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:09] Yeah. And thank you so much. Yeah, our website is vast media, VA, RC Media and my my handle everywhere is Shawn del Valle. I’m on LinkedIn most often, but I’m on Facebook as well. I’m on Instagram, not so much on Instagram, but LinkedIn is where you can get a hold of me the most.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:28] And then at your website, medium.com, there’s you have a blog like you have a lot of a lot of education there as well.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:38] Yes. Yeah. There’s a lot of free stuff. You can download our blog content checklist. We’ve got a guide, we’ve got blog posts there. I post a lot on LinkedIn as well, so we’re always providing some type of educational piece to help you with your content.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:52] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Shondell Varcianna: [00:24:56] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:58] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:25:05] 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 add on paycom.

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Felton E. Lewis III With Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association

by

Felton Lewis
Association Leadership Radio
Felton E. Lewis III With Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association
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Felton Lewis Felton E. Lewis, President and CEO at Lab References Advisory Group/Ride Share Drivers Association.

He has been in the Insurance Business for 45+ years. He is a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business (Air Force). They pivoted to PPE Equipment when the Covid-19 Virus came and now that it is abating we are getting back to our Core Values and seeing the need to provide assistance to Ride Share Drivers.

Connect with Felton on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Drivers are not employees, independent contractors.
  • Drivers have no benefits, health insurance, dental insurance, disability etc.
  • Drivers Safety is at risk from some violent passengers
  • Many female drivers have been sexually assaulted
  • Protecting drivers and providing them with benefits they need for them and their families

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:20] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Felton Lewis III, and he is with the Rideshare Drivers Association. Welcome, Felton.

Felton Lewis III: [00:00:34] Thank you, Kan, appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Rideshare Drivers Association.

Felton Lewis III: [00:00:42] Well, we started it. We had a vice president of diversity working with us, and then she went to Lyft and as a service-disabled veteran on business, she said she thought she can get us a meeting with the founders of the company. And so we started the Rideshare Drivers Association to benefit the 1.5 million Lyft drivers, although there are more Uber drivers than Lyft drivers. But we had someone, Brinda Smith on the inside that Lyft, so we proceeded to offer it to live and we met with them a couple of months ago and the founder and a couple of the members on their board and we let them know, in fact, we have a Lyft driver, Freddie Stewart. And on my LinkedIn post, his comment, they said it would be good if he could give his experience with Live and what happened with Mr. Stewart. He’s been with Lyft for over six years, over 10,000 rides that he’s picked up. But last December his wife died and his wife had all the family benefits. He has a 12 year old daughter, so the health insurance, dental and all of that came through her employer. And as a Lyft contracted employee, he has no benefits. So when she died, he lost all the benefits.

Felton Lewis III: [00:02:04] So it left him and his daughter trying to fend for themselves. So we let him know that if he could give us some video of his experience that we could share with the founders of Lyft, that it might assist. And Brenda thought it was a great idea because now you have a Lyft driver for six years, 10,000 rides, given his experience. And since none of these companies, they don’t want to be their drivers title employees, they’re subcontractors, they’re independent contractors. They’re 1099 employees, not even employees. They’re just 1099 person. So if they get hurt on the job, if they don’t have any, there’s no workman’s comp that covers their injuries or anything because they’re not an employee. So we presented to the founders in the group that we have a program that will provide their members health insurance, dental vision programs and disability, and they can do it based on number of years. They spent like $1.5 billion to retain and recruit drivers last year. And we said would it be a lot less to just reward drivers for their faithful service by allowing them to have shares that the company would pay for? But the driver is getting it as a tool for faithful service to live.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:30] But but then they become a member of your association and you’re handling kind of the benefits and the insurance.

Felton Lewis III: [00:03:37] Yes, sir. Yeah. They become a member of our association, so we have little packages that we can put together for them.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:43] So did they go for that? Did Lyft go for that?

Felton Lewis III: [00:03:47] Well, what happened? Their stock went down. And they dropped everything. They stopped talking to us. So I told my son, I think we ought to approach Uber because Uber has more drivers than Lyft. And Uber has a health insurance program that’s horrible. It’s $10,000 deductible, 15, 20,000 deductible in a driver. Can’t I mean, the deductible will put him in bankruptcy. It doesn’t make any sense. So my son said, well, let’s just wait to see what happens with Lyft. And like I told him, well, I’m a service disabled veteran and I’m not used to having people put us on hold for months at their pace, I mean, especially since there are opportunities for others. So we haven’t cracked a nut yet. We haven’t been able to have Lyft or Uber say, okay, well, we’ll provide some kind of incentive. Stay with us for X amount of years. You get this complete, so many drives, you get that we just haven’t come to a meeting of the mind. They realize there’s a problem. In fact, many of the women and drivers are being assaulted. Fact Lyft is being sued because women drivers have been sexually assaulted.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:14] Now, what about going directly to the drivers and just not going through these big organizations? Because there’s a lot of I mean, there’s Uber and there’s Lyft, but there’s DoorDash. There’s lots of other driving and rideshare apps out there. I know those are the largest and most active, but there’s a lot of people doing this kind of work. So wouldn’t anybody doing this kind of double sided market work?

Felton Lewis III: [00:05:38] Yeah, they would benefit. But it’s not like they make a lot of money, you know, to be able to afford the health insurance package, even the US dot gov, you know, they get low premiums but the same thing with them, they get a high deductible and the deductible is what kills you ten, 15 to $20000. You just can’t afford it. If you get a hospital bill and it’s $10,000 and you got a $10,000 deductible, that’s that’s your bill now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:12] So you have an association right now or you’re trying to start an association. Do you have any members thus far?

Felton Lewis III: [00:06:19] No, we hadn’t promoted it. We just went and get the AI in the articles and corporations and whatever because we were trying to get. One of the companies to say, okay, well, just have your members come to our association and we’ll provide the benefits, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:06:37] But then that would require them paying you.

Felton Lewis III: [00:06:41] Well, they’re paying the drivers. And if if it’s a benefit to retain, I mean, rather than spend 1.5 billion to try to retain drivers each year, I mean, it would be a lot less the program that we’re offering now.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:56] If you went directly to each driver, how much would it cost the driver?

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:02] Depending on the basic package, $49 a month would get them free prescriptions, telehealth, one dental, which is a dental program.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:18] Right. So $49 a month, they can afford that.

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:22] Yeah, but it doesn’t give them health insurance.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:25] So how much to get health insurance in that mix?

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:29] No, we’re talking about three, 405, six, $700, depending on the size of the family.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:35] So that’s where it becomes where it gets more expensive. So it’s less affordable for these folks.

Felton Lewis III: [00:07:44] Yes. Yeah. And we’re trying to see if the company realized they’re benefiting from the drivers, providing a service to them and they’re making millions, billions of dollars doing what they do. Why not? Instead of spend 1.5 billion to try to recruit and retain drivers, why not give your faithful drivers like Freddy Stewart, who’s been with you six years and 10,000 rides, give them some type of incentive to stay with you. Make it worthwhile for them to keep.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:21] Right. I mean, but you’re asking them to make this business decision. And obviously, they’ve chosen not to. But you have if your mission is to serve rideshare drivers, then you really don’t care who pays for the the premium. Right. So you can get a sponsor to kind of co-brand your association. That’s not just Lyft. It could be anybody. It could be, you know, some restaurant chain. It could be it could be anybody. It could be your insurance company. I mean, there’s lots of folks that can afford that want they would want these drivers as clients for them. I mean, why not expand beyond the two big rideshare companies? I mean, they obviously don’t have an interest in doing this. Why don’t you just find somebody else who would benefit from having relationships with millions of rideshare drivers?

Felton Lewis III: [00:09:13] Yes. And like you said, there’s Instacart. There are a whole lot of different rideshare, Walmart, cab people delivering groceries, Myers, Kroger’s, and so all of them independent contractors like Uber drivers and Lyft drivers.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:32] Right. So there must be a reason why that all those big companies are going that way. And the reason is probably they have a lot of drivers and they don’t have to pay anything and then they’re going to get them. But they know they churn through them because they can’t it’s not sustainable for a long periods of time. But there must be other companies that would benefit from having relationships with millions of drivers?

Felton Lewis III: [00:09:56] I would think so. Even Domino’s Pizza, you know, all of them now everybody is delivering. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:03] Right. So now for you, starting an association, I mean, this is a noble cause for you to help all these millions of people that are really struggling out there. I mean, they’re making they want the flexible hours. They want to be able to turn on and off the app and work whenever they feel like it. And they make, I guess, they think is a fair it’s a fair trade for them to make the money for doing the work they’re doing. But like you said, they don’t have any benefits, they don’t have insurance, they don’t have disability, they don’t have all these things that a traditional employee would have. What kind of was the catalyst for you to get involved in helping all these people?

Felton Lewis III: [00:10:43] Freddie Stewart He grew up with my son here in Battle Creek. He’s in Denver, Colorado.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:48] So you knew him? It was personal for you?

Felton Lewis III: [00:10:51] It was personal, yeah. And his wife had died and he had a 12 year old daughter and he had no benefits.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:59] So now starting an association, though, that’s a big undertaking. Had you ever been involved in associations before?

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:07] Oh, yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] So you’ve been involved in associations. So you knew how it worked and you knew how to get one set up and you knew how to kind of fund it.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:18] Yeah, I’m not a spring chicken. I’m 80 years old, so I’ve been around the block a while and I’ve been involved in accounting and business law and self employed for over 50 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] So so you know, as being self employed that that lifestyle doesn’t come with benefits usually.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:37] Right? Right. But if you make enough money, you can buy the benefits, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:11:40] So you think the challenge for drivers are they don’t make enough money to buy the benefits.

Felton Lewis III: [00:11:46] Right. Without some support from the company that’s benefiting from their labor? You know, I mean, these guys are I mean, and if you I mean, Lyft and Uber now have a program where you can lease one of their cars, but it’s astronomical. I mean, that’s ridiculous. And then if you buy if you use your own car and the engine blows out. How do you replace the engine of the transmission? How do you keep your car service? And we offer that as a benefit to a company called High Speed X that offers oil changes, express lube and things like that for the drivers to.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:27] Right. So you’re trying to kind of put together a package that has all of the things that a driver could benefit from having.

Felton Lewis III: [00:12:34] Yes, sir. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:36] And it’s just a matter of getting more drivers to either sign up for it and pay the price and pay the money for that or partner with another organization that has the funds that will sponsor, in essence, each of these drivers.

Felton Lewis III: [00:12:49] Right? Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:52] Well, that’s a tough it’s tough. That’s a tough one. I mean, you know, you’re you’re asking for these companies to invest a lot of money and change their business plan. So, I mean, it’s going to be a.

Felton Lewis III: [00:13:03] Challenge when I have to do it anyway, because so many drivers have been assaulted, especially females sexually assaulted. I mean, if you go on Uber and you see you just put in a search or a rideshare drivers or Uber drivers, Lyft after that has been assaulted. Even killed. In fact, like I said, there’s a big billion dollar lawsuit against Lyft now because it’s not one or two. It’s several hundreds of female employees being sexually assaulted. So they don’t have any kind of protection, any kind of benefits.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:41] Right. But there’s also lots of people signing up for this app because they want the flexibility and they want that fits in their lifestyle. So, I mean, the companies will change when there’s a reason to change. So thus far, the pain of all of that isn’t greater than the pain of just getting new a new driver.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:04] Right? Correct. But now they have this suit against him, you know.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:10] Right. But I’m sure that’s not the first suit. I bet they’ve been sued since day one.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:15] Probably problem. And they feel as though they have the lawyers and the legal to settle. Without losing any benefits or the company going out of business.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:33] Right. I mean, those kind of large businesses, it becomes a math problem, really. You know, which one is the thing that is going to cost them more.

Felton Lewis III: [00:14:44] With cost more? Yeah. And about the dollar.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:47] And then right now it’s cheaper for them all to be 1099. That pain isn’t greater yet. At some point, maybe with government regulations or different states changing the rules about 1099 independent contractors versus employees. Then the pain.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:05] Necessary movement now to unionize in New York and California. So.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:10] Right. But we’ll see. I mean, that’s a I mean, it’s those examples have been few and far between.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:17] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:19] So you got your work cut out for you, Feldman.

Felton Lewis III: [00:15:23] Yeah, but we are right. We’re we’re taking our time, but we’re not in any rush to, you know, create any strikes between us and the companies or us in the drivers. It’s not it’s like, here’s a benefit from someone who grew up with my son who works at.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:43] Lyft right now. What about just kind of getting a bunch of drivers on the wait list to show to all these larger firms like, look, I got a million drivers that want this. You know, you’ll have a lot more compelling case if you have a whole lot of drivers signed up, you know, for this program.

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:03] That’s a great idea. Never thought of it. Yeah. We can present it to them that we have x amount of drivers who are in need of this program and they sign a little document. We have that showing that they would love to have.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:21] It right if they had it, they they’d take it, you know, kind of thing.

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:25] Right. Right. So great idea.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:27] Well, that might help you get the momentum you need. So you got to just get in front of the drivers and just offer it and say, hey, if this existed. Would you sign up for this?

Felton Lewis III: [00:16:37] Yeah, well, and that’s the key is how do we get to the drivers? I mean, even though I’m on LinkedIn and I have 30,000 connections, I have very, very, very few Lyft and Uber driver connecting. I don’t know if they use LinkedIn, I don’t know what how do we get to them?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:56] Right. That’s the that’s the secret. I mean. I mean.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:02] How do we get to them to let them.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:04] Know? Right. Because a Lyft driver or an Uber driver is probably not putting that on LinkedIn because they probably just do this as a side hustle. They have another job that they’re just trying to squeeze in a few hours here and there.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:17] Correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:18] Between their other job?

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:20] Yes, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:21] So that is going to be a challenge. But there might be kind of Facebook groups or other LinkedIn groups for Uber drivers or rideshare drivers where they hang out.

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:33] Okay. We’ll check it out. Check it out.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:36] So any advice for someone who’s starting a brand new association of how to get those initial members? How do you get people kind of engaged with you at the very earliest stages?

Felton Lewis III: [00:17:50] Well, we thought if we go to the big companies, that would be the way to do it, because they have the people. But it hasn’t worked that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:00] Not yet. But any anything in your 80 years of of life and the other associations you work with, like how do you get those initial members? Or How do you find those people?

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:12] Well, we have constant contact. We have different types of email. But, you know, then you’ve got to pay for that service. Godaddy the same thing. We have like 12,000 disabled veteran emails. We thought we start out with the veterans and and what they’re asking is exorbitant just to send out emails.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:36] Yeah. I guess that’s how you get them one at a time, right? I mean, there’s no easy way of getting them.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:41] No easy way to get them. So if some company unless the company said, well, here’s the new program.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:47] Right. If they endorse it and then offer it to their people, then that’s kind of a shortcut. But otherwise, it’s one at a time.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:55] One at a time. Yes, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:56] So I.

Felton Lewis III: [00:18:57] Appreciate.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:57] If somebody wants to learn more, what’s the best way to get a hold of you?

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:03] On our website, lab references. Dot com or they can email me at fell fl3 at live references dot com or they can call me at 2697198797.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:20] Well, Felton, I mean, you’re fighting the good fight. Best of luck. And thank you so much for sharing your story today.

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:26] I appreciate you, sir.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:28] Thanks, Lee. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

Felton Lewis III: [00:19:34] Thank you. Bye bye.

 

Spark Stories Episode 16

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SparkStories20225
Spark Stories
Spark Stories Episode 16
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Cindy AbelCindy Abel is an intuitive entrepreneur determined to make a difference in the lives of young women. As a co-founder she has created liv2Bme a positive, supportive social app for teen girls that inspires healthy self-images through kind interactions and meaningful connections. She has seen first-hand how social media interactions can affect girls.

liv2Bme is being created as a positive place online where girls can connect with peers who have common interests, goals, and concerns. liv2Bme strives to be safe space for girls as they share the ideas, thoughts, and images that define them. And the liv2Bme dream is to build an online community that understands how to express honest feelings in a way that respects other.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Welcome to Spark Stories, where entrepreneurs and experts share their brand story and how they found their spark, the spark that started it all.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:00:13] Welcome to Spark stories like business radio brought to you by the Atlanta Business Radio Network. Every week, entrepreneurs and experts share the stories behind the brand who they are, what they do, and why their brands matter. I’m your host, Clarissa Jaye Sparks. In our own series, we dive into the everyday operations of inspiring business owners in our community. You can listen live on Saturdays at 10:00 PM or the rebroadcast at WW dot Business RadioX dot com. Today we’re going to talk about social media and women entrepreneurs. How can we leverage social media? Please allow me to introduce one of our amazing community leaders who owns it, Cindy Abel. She is an intuitive entrepreneur determined to make a difference in the lives of young women. As a co-founder, she has created Live to Be Me, a positive, supportive social app for teen girls that inspires healthy self images through kind interactions and meaningful connections. She has seen firsthand how social media interactions can affect girls lives. To Be Me is being created as a positive place online where girls can connect with peers who have common interests, goals and concerns live to be made strives to be a safe space for girls as they share their ideas, thoughts and images that define them. And the Live to be dream is to build an online community that understands how to express honest feelings in a way that respects others. Cindy is taking the step to launch your company and you’re brave, braving the world of entrepreneurship. I have three questions for you. Please tell the listeners who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. Please introduce yourself.

Cindy Abel: [00:01:59] Well, I’m Cindy Abel and I started Cofounded liv2Bme with my partner Tasha Marks. We started this because as moms with teenage girls, we had a really big gut feeling that something was wrong with social media when they first started using all the tools that are out there. And a mom’s gut usually is directed by the actions that they’re seeing with their children and their friends. So for us, we saw a lot of exclusionary behavior. We saw, you know, girls trying to attain perfectionism. And if they didn’t get 100 likes in an hour, they take down their post off of Instagram. So just some behaviors that as a mom were disturbing to us, quite frankly. When we started this, it was a few years ago, and we we started with a website for girls to test out, you know, the idea that there could be a community that was positive and supportive and sort of embrace this group, think of being together, doing something good. And we really felt like we saw a lot of things go on in that first iteration of the website that spoke to that it. The company went on pause for about six years. And in 2020, you know, one of the challenges we had early on when we were discussing this topic with different people in the community, other businesses, was there wasn’t a whole lot of data supporting our moms gut feeling.

Cindy Abel: [00:03:37] There wasn’t data out there readily available saying that there was something wrong with social media, that it actually was creating mental health issues like depression, anxiety and increase in body image issues and eating disorders. Those kind of statistics that if you’re familiar with the news today, we’ve been bombarded in the last year with the Wall Street files and the Facebook whistleblower who have brought to our attention that. Facebook itself has been doing research for years about teenagers. They wanted to understand why they were losing market share to Tik Tok and Snapchat. So they started doing their own internal research. And what we now know is that one in three teen girls has body image issues because they use the Instagram app. So it’s no longer in a place where I have to dig to find the supporting information. It’s out there, there’s research available, and so live to be me. A couple of years ago, when we decided to start this back up, really became an effort to turn the social media model as it exists today upside down. What we wanted to do was create a place that felt supportive, kind, authentic, where girls could go into a community and talk real about real issues they face every day and receive valuable feedback and advice from peers and mentors. So our community, we created the minimum viable product version of the app so that we could test out our concepts and ideas.

Cindy Abel: [00:05:20] We knew that this app needed to be an app that was research driven and data driven. We wanted to make sure that girls got on our app and actually felt better as a result of using it. And as a result, today we have partnerships with the University of Georgia. We’re involved in research studies to make sure that we’re doing just that. We’re social enterprise company. We believe that our our first priority is the teenage population that we’re serving. And we want to make sure that we’re making a positive impact on their lives given all the mental health challenges that are out there right now. So while we’re not a mental health app, we aim to improve the mental health resiliency of teen girls. The community is for 13 to 18 year old teens, and we have a model, a business model that includes community mentors or moderators that actually go through training their college age females, which in our future business model, when we are actually live out there in the world, will train these young women to in mental health resiliency and mentoring best practices concepts so that the mentors that are actually just a step away from where they used to be as teens themselves are the ones that are being the mentors for the teenagers in the community.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:06:47] Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that, Cindy. You made several interesting points that I kind of want to circle back to. When did you first start the organization?

Cindy Abel: [00:06:57] We first started the first iteration of the organization in 2012 and 2012.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:07:02] And when did you pivot and rebrand?

Cindy Abel: [00:07:05] We pivoted and rebranded in 2020, 2020.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:07:08] So you had been in operations for quite some time. What? Determine you and your co-founder to say, you know what, we need to pause, reevaluate, rebrand and relaunch.

Cindy Abel: [00:07:22] That’s a great question. And really, it’s more about life and circumstances in life than anything else. We were out there pitching our idea and the investment community in Atlanta. And back then I as I mentioned before, there wasn’t a whole lot of people that understood social media, especially older people in the business community that, you know, are the investors out there. So that was a challenge. That was a big challenge. We didn’t have supporting data, so it wasn’t like we could go out and Google, you know, what are the issues that are facing girls out there that are using social media today? So we you know, we had a lot of challenges at the beginning. And so, you know, my co-founder and I both had other things in our lives that we were doing. We’re both very involved philanthropically. We have I have three kids. She has two kids. We were in the high school, middle school, high school years send off to college years. You know, my business partner took on another job, a full time job to support her family. And I had several things that were coming my way as well that I had to say yes to.

Cindy Abel: [00:08:38] An example of that is in 2016, I was the interim CEO of Hands on Atlanta for for a while while we were looking for a new leader. And that sort of took my life over for a while. My husband ran for Congress one year, so I was really the supporting arm of that from a business perspective, like uplifting the business behind that. So we just had some other things that kind of took us off the path. And I think as we, you know, my husband and I sold our we have had an IT technology company in the Atlanta community for 23 years, and that sale was official in 2016 as well. So there were just a lot of changes and a lot of things going on in both of our lives. And in 2020 we looked at this organization and said, Wow, it seems let’s do a little research, but it seems like it’s more relevant than we ever thought it was and we came back to it.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:09:36] So very good. So again, you saw a need in the market and you said, you know what, we can pause, we can revamp and relaunch what you did, but you brought up look, you’re already making several interesting points, something that women entrepreneurs struggle with in the very beginnings. The early stages of their business is work life balance. Now, you said you took on the role of a CEO, your wife, your mom, your community leader. What advice would you give our listeners about work life balance or does that really exist?

Cindy Abel: [00:10:11] You know, I grew up when I graduated from college. I started my career at Andersen Consulting back then, which is now Accenture. The the the world of a consultant as a single person at the time was a great place for me to start my career as I married and started having children. The the reality of living in that world as a career person really was challenging. And I think the same challenges exist for many, many women today that want to have the balance of having a family and a balanced life in that family versus still having a career. So I think oftentimes I applaud women that stay home. I applaud women that are still working, that are balancing children. I applaud women that never had a family and just pursued their careers and their dreams. There’s so many different stories out there about, you know, women and their struggles just to be in a career and advance the career. I my personal story is that I have three children. I wanted to make sure, you know, it was very, very important to me. I grew up in a rather dysfunctional environment when I grew up, and it was really important for me to make sure that I was present for them. And so when we started our own company, Able Solutions, we really focused. My husband fortunately had the same value system. We really focused on making sure I could keep my foot in the game. But you know as well, try to do both. But, you know, let’s let’s face it, it’s still challenging. It doesn’t matter who you are.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:11:54] It doesn’t matter who you are. We all have a different path that we have to take. And that’s it’s so important to applaud women and not have comparison syndrome. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other. So I think that’s very important to keep that in the forefront of your goals so that you. Art so you can still move forward and still live the life that you deserve. Live to be, yeah.

Cindy Abel: [00:12:18] Live to be.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:12:20] Live to be. Which is really good. Now, when you were starting, you talked about having the data. Let’s talk about how important having the facts before you actually go to the market.

Cindy Abel: [00:12:32] It’s something I think a lot of. I’m not sure. I just think a lot of people place emphasis on when when you’re in the business community, it’s really, really important to be data driven and you can have a phenomenal idea. But to build something and just believe that people are going to come is probably not a very smart way to start.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:12:57] And so the Field of Dreams Building They Will Come doesn’t always work.

Cindy Abel: [00:13:01] I don’t think it always does work in a practical way. I mean, we we knew that at our first iteration of this whole idea is, you know, we saw first hand we could talk about it all day long. But, you know, if we didn’t have concepts that really drove the audience to want to be in our community, then it wasn’t going to be successful. So we’re really driving this second iteration of the app around data, around understanding the needs of teens. We have a business partner, Robin Farrell, and her husband Tim, who have a company called Sharpen, which actually has mental health resiliency content that they’ve been building for years, research and evidence based content. And we’re partnering with them under the notion of we want to infuse those positive mental health resiliency tactics in our community to again, add to the data that we’re actually making somebody feel better as a result of using our app.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:14:05] So is that what separates you and that’s your differentiator from other apps or other programs that are out there?

Cindy Abel: [00:14:14] I think so. I think several there’s three what I consider key differentiators. One is that we really want to to solidify this concept around group think if you create a community where everybody has a certain mantra that they live by, I think we have all experienced it in the business world. We’ve been in environments before where we’re coming in new and we don’t really understand the scene or what’s going on in the environment that we’re in from a business perspective or maybe from a, you know, you’re entering into a board member or some kind of volunteer engagement with a nonprofit organization where groupthink kind of takes over and you question yourself because you don’t have the institutional knowledge of the organization maybe, and you rely on others for that. So in our groupthink world, we really think that there’s a world where a community of girls can come together and self-police themselves, knowing that the community is about one thing and that’s empowering one another. The second point is this mental health resiliency content, and the idea that we want to improve mental health outcomes were not a mental health app. We’re a community.

Cindy Abel: [00:15:30] But that doesn’t mean that that’s not at the forefront of our minds is improving anxiety or the feeling of being alone in a world where all our teens are so very connected. But yet there, you know, the research is showing they’re feeling more lonely and disconnected to than ever. So creating that environment in that space. And then the third differentiator is we’re really focusing on this mentoring impact. There are tons and tons of data points out there about the benefits of having mentors. You know, we’ve experienced it maybe later than some of the younger generation that’s coming into the professional world now. It would have been great if I had a mentor when I entered the corporate world. I didn’t have that. But even more so when the numbers out there tell you that if you’re mentored as a teen, your chances of being successful later on in life go up tremendously. So this concept around having mentors in the community that have just lived the experience of being a teenage girl and making sure that those young women that we hire are trained to be as helpful as possible.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:16:47] Those are great differentiators and putting that out to the market, how do you attract your teens?

Cindy Abel: [00:16:55] I believe that that’s going to be the most challenging part of our app. It’s not that we don’t have interest at all when we talk. We’re out there talking to nonprofits right now. We’re out there talking to educational institutions. There is a lot of appetite for this. There’s a lot of appetite. There’s a lot of teens out there looking for alternatives. We know that there’s evidence out there to prove that. I think that it’s important for us to just make sure that we create an experience and listen to this audience about what they want. So we started a pilot program this summer. We are not only, you know. Asking our community of beta testers what they want in the app, what they like, what they don’t like. And we’re frankly, I’m just going to be honest, we’re minimum viable product. So it’s not that snazzy. It’s certainly not Instagram right now or tick tock.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:17:53] It’s on its way.

Cindy Abel: [00:17:54] It’s on its way. So we’re we’re looking to the future to build something that’s compelling like that, but in a positive way, a way that engages the community in a healthy way and not in an unhealthy way, which a lot of the algorithms out there on the current social media platforms do. So I just think, you know, we’re primed with trying to get people on the app to inform every decision that we make.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:18:20] So out of your beta and your pilot testing, what has been your greatest learning?

Cindy Abel: [00:18:27] It’s been really interesting at this first phase moment of our pilot. You know, our initial thing was we had to go out and find mentors. We had to find college age females that this concept resonated with. And we are keeping the initial test of this very small intentionally. We want to know our community and we, you know, put the feelers out there to a lot of local universities. We have a really close partnership with the University of Georgia Department of Public Health, and we’ve used a lot of their interns to help us build the infrastructure around the app. But we also have some mentors that are from the Emory community, Kennesaw, Georgia State. And it’s really inspiring to me when these young women applied to be mentors on our app, just the type of things that they said and the reasons that they were doing it. You know, whether they had a younger sister that was still in high school that they saw being influenced by social media in a way that they didn’t like or had body image issues. There’s one young woman that she herself has gone through struggles with an eating disorder, and she just wanted to be part of a solution to help her in her journey to recover. So everybody’s got such a great story and it’s really inspiring to me to see these young 20 somethings come forward and really want to jump in and be part of some movement that’s that’s helpful to younger people.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:20:01] That’s awesome. You mentioned institutions like Emory, UGA. Let’s talk about the important importance of partnerships. Yes.

Cindy Abel: [00:20:11] For a startup company that’s pre-revenue. I’m I’m very fortunate that in the last six months, I have my first private equity investor. She’s invested in the company. She remains she does not want to be known, but she is a wonderful, wonderful person. She really believes in what we’re trying to do. And she also has three daughters of her own, so it really resonated with her. But the partnerships in the community have been what’s enabled us to propel forward as a pre-revenue company and somebody that is is doing all the day to day legwork myself and somebody that doesn’t necessarily have like you do a great marketing, in-depth marketing background. I know that I have to reach my audience on social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and Tik Tok, because 15 million women between the ages of ten and 19 in the US alone are on one, two or all three of those platforms. So I need to be able to reach them and communicate about the app and I needed expertise. So the university system has proven to be an invaluable partner to me. It’s where I found my marketing interns that run my social media Instagram feed have helped me build my following from 300 to 3000.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:21:37] Oh, look at you.

Cindy Abel: [00:21:38] Yes, none of that I would have been able to do on my own. And my interns have been just wonderful. And then the public health interns that are really vested in this whole concept and trying to build the infrastructure around the app and make sure that it’s researched and data based. So the universities have been extremely helpful as partnerships to me and the nonprofit community as well.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:22:05] Right? So through this conversation, I realized that you have several target markets, not only girls, but even like I said, your secondary partners with the university, with public health organizations to mental health organizations, and it’s all data driven. So thumbs up to you for putting in the work. A lot of the time people like to start on Instagram and Tik Tok with all of the social media platforms, but don’t do the back end to support their growth. So look, again, so I applaud you for that and live TV, you guys are doing a great job and it’s going to help you to continue to gain traction. So that’s I guess with having your interns, you’re building partnerships, you’re building community. You’re building. A system that can live on from generation to generation after after you leave here. Yes, exactly. And that’s a part of developing and growing women and doing that during doing that through mentorship. I think a lot of us lack those opportunities to have someone to go to and say, hey, this is I need help in this area. And Cyndi, you have not been afraid to ask for help.

Cindy Abel: [00:23:21] I have asked for a lot. And I’m fortunate I’m very fortunate that a lot of people the idea has just resonated. And I think so many people have stood up to introduce me to people, you know, you know, and I know how important networking and communication and connections are in our community. And I’ve reached out and not been afraid to ask. I have to ask for help. And I’ve just been really just blessed with so many people coming to my aid. Yeah, you know, I have one intern, and this makes me so happy. When she started with me marketing intern, she told me that she wished she had a community like this when she was young because she is the daughter of two immigrants and they came to the US. So she’s first generation college and she really didn’t know how to navigate anything. And she said had she had a community like this to ask questions or to find people to lead her, she really would have been helped a lot. So yes.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:24:28] That’s a good thing. And speaking of community, how can my community support leave it to be?

Cindy Abel: [00:24:36] You know what, you already are. Thank you for inviting me to come today.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:24:40] Okay, great. We start there.

Cindy Abel: [00:24:43] I think, you know, there’s just not understanding all you know, I’m a I’m really good at technology, I feel like. But there’s a lot of technology. I don’t know. You know, I I’ve been studying social media and technology for a long time. So I’m really looking for partners in the community that really want to create a new type of social media that changes the way we value our teens instead of profiting off of them by, you know, feeding them algorithms that are not good for them and, you know, companies capitalizing on that and making a lot of these tech giants rich when they know that some of the stuff that they’re doing is inherently causing harm, but just finding those technology partners out in the community that are really engaged in these conversations. There’s a nonprofit organization called Center for Humane Tech, which was really the catalyst when I first started doing my early research in 2020 for, you know, giving me the ammunition I needed to move forward. They have on their website something called a ledger of harms, and they were talking about all the issues I’m talking with you about today. So finding the community, your community, you know, you have a lot of connections in the community. I like to share my connections with other people, but I just think staying involved, you know, I’ve it’s been suggested that I need to start exploring going to some of these conferences out there that are talking about these issues. And I’m looking at a lot of ways to, you know, invest in that as well. So.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:26:28] Yeah, visibility is very important. And, you know, your social enterprise and this is indeed a social dilemma. It is. And you have found you identified the problem, you’ve created a solution, and now the end users or the girls are going to benefit from the data and the research that you are driving from these higher education institutions as well as these community service organizations. So again, we applaud you for recognizing now, I guess I know it’s going to come up because it comes up all the time for me when you’re niche focused and you’re targeting girls. What about the boys?

Cindy Abel: [00:27:13] Yeah, it does come up a lot. Yeah. Lived to Be Me is a name that allows inclusivity. So maybe one day it’ll be, you know, my son says that this is necessary for girls, but he says there are needs for boys, too. But, you know, he likes to tell me often that young women and young men use social media very, very differently. Okay, girls are we’re more emotional creatures. We like to talk to our girlfriends about the issues that are deeply affecting us. And we face boys are a little, as he says, you know, closed on those topics. So. Not that that’s a good thing. But, you know, we’ve had a lot of recent discussions in the media as well about COVID and mental health, the mental health crisis. You know, the American Association of Pediatrics, if I got that name right, I hope I did. That organization has come out saying that we’ve got a crisis we’ve got to address with young people in this country and so many aspects. And that’s boys and girls, boys. So yeah. So it’s not that I don’t care about the boys, it’s just I felt that as initially I needed a focus somewhere and I felt like this was my greater understanding given that I came, you know, equipped with two daughters that were short their friends and they were showing me their needs.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:28:40] I get it. I have a running joke here, which she sparks, and I like to say he sparks, too.

Cindy Abel: [00:28:45] That’s great.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:28:46] Yeah. So we touch everybody when there is a need for those who aren’t as far along on the journey of entrepreneurship and then development of their product, what advice would you give?

Cindy Abel: [00:28:58] You know, you get you get so much advice along the way, really good intentioned advice. I’ve had conversations that I didn’t like to hear, you know, conversations with a social impact investor that says there are a lot of great smart people out there trying to, you know, solve similar problem to this. What makes you think, you know, you’re the one to do it? And I, I just carry on every day knowing that I might be a small cog in the wheel. But if I can make a difference in the life of just, you know, a couple of teen girls and some mentors, I consider that successful. And the reason I chose the social enterprise route from a business model perspective, which is what a lot of people refer to right now and in the community as B Corp was because I wanted to differentiate myself. I want to I want to make a profit and I want to make a profit so I can sustain the business, but also so that I can give back in areas that I need to give back in. So supporting those nonprofits out there that might not be able to afford technology and might might need a hand. So, you know, in order to do all this, honestly, Clarissa, one of the biggest the biggest, biggest challenges I have is raising capital. Right. And I need to raise that capital pretty immediately for the next iteration of the app, which, you know, will hopefully prove to be just a great version that we can release to the public and start getting into people’s hands. So.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:30:38] Yeah, okay. Yeah. Capital is a common issue for most early stage entrepreneurs and women entrepreneurs, and particularly when we’re going out to pitch our ideas. So we’ll keep that in mind. So lastly, you know, how can we learn more about you, more about the organization so that we can hopefully get you some funds?

Cindy Abel: [00:30:59] Yeah. Thank you. You can go to our website Live to be me, live the number to the letter B and that name originated from my co-founders daughter’s email address. So she, you know, had an email for her daughter when she was traveling an AOL account. I think it was AOL. Right. But our website has a lot of information. I’m open to be contacted. I’m an open book. You can go to my LinkedIn profile and my my email is out there. I’m looking to connect with anybody that has an interest in this topic.

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks: [00:31:39] Yeah, sorry. So we know where to find you now. So thank you for sharing who you are, what you do, and why your brand matters. Here on Spark Stories, we celebrate business owners today in every day listeners. Please remember to support local businesses and express your support on their social media platforms. Thank you and create a great day.

Intro: [00:32:01] Thank you for listening to Spark Stories. If you’re looking for more help in gaining focus, come check out our website where you can find episode show notes, browse our archives and access free resources like worksheets, trainings, events and more. It’s all at WW she sparks.

About Your Host

sparkstories2022

Dr. Clarissa J. Sparks is a personal brand strategist, trainer, mentor, and investor for women entrepreneurs. She is the founder of She Sparks, a brand strategy design consultancy.

Using her ten-plus years of branding & marketing experience, Dr. Sparks has supported over 4,000 women entrepreneurs in gaining clarity on who they are, what they do, and how they can brand, market, and grow their businesses. Using her Brand Thinking™ Blueprint & Action Plan she gives entrepreneurs the resources and support they need to become the go-to expert in their industry.

Follow Dr. Clarissa Sparks on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Jason Burchard With RootNote

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Startup Showdown Podcast
Jason Burchard With RootNote
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rootnote

JasonBurchardJason Burchard is a co-founder at RootNote where they’re using data to help digital creators build better businesses.

Prior to jumping into the complex world of creator data, he co-founded one of the first equity-based investment firms that invests directly into creators, worked at a seed stage social impact venture capital firm in London, and consulted as a senior consultant at a Texas-based consultancy.

Jason holds a BSc in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and MSc in Management from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About RootNote
  • The creator economy
  • Importance of data

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] We’ll come back to the Startup Showdown podcast, where we discuss pitching, funding and scaling startups. Join us as we interview winners, mentors and judges of the monthly $120,000 pitch competition powered by Panoramic Ventures. We also discuss the latest updates in software web3, health care, tech, fintech and more. Now sit tight as we interview this week’s guest and their journey through entrepreneurship.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Lee Kantor here another episode of Startup Showdown, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, Panoramic Ventures. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Startup Showdown, we have Jason Burchard with Rude Note. Welcome, Jason.

Jason Burchard: [00:00:55] Hey, Lee, it’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] Well, I’m so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Route Note. How are you serving folks?

Jason Burchard: [00:01:02] Yeah, so we’re building a business intelligence product for digital creators. There are over 640 million people in the world with over 1000 followers of what you would consider to be nano influencers. And we live in this crazy world today where literally anybody can build a brand around digital content. One of the things that we’ve kind of recognized over the past few years is that these creative businesses. They basically operate at the intersection of creativity, which is obviously paramount to the business and then data. And as you can imagine, the vast majority of creators who are building brands around the content, they’re not data scientists, they’re not data analysts, but they have to use it in their day to day business. So we we’re building a SAS product that makes data analytics and intelligence accessible to literally anyone and helps digital creators make better decisions using data.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:00] Now, a historically hasn’t I mean, people have been talking about data, big data. You know, this conversation has been going on for a long, long time in that regard. But when you kind of add an add on the creator piece and that creator is and I’m sure you’ve cast a wide net on who a creator is. Right? That could be a musician. That could be an artist. That could be a blogger like that. That term fits a lot of folks. How do you help them not only just capture the data, but make kind of actionable decisions based on the data? Because the data has always been there. It’s just a matter of how do you find what’s important and kind of ignore what’s not important and not get distracted by things that seem important but probably aren’t important?

Jason Burchard: [00:02:46] That’s a great point. It’s one of the challenges that we’re we’re kind of faced with in 2022 is that there is a ton of data that’s available. Huge corporations have been facing this forever. And the reality is that anyone who’s trying to build a business around their content, what’s e-commerce and everything else, they have to be paying attention to social media numbers, engagement across multiple platforms. If you are a podcast or you’re creating music, you’ve got to be paying attention to who’s listening to you on Spotify or Apple or Pandora or all of the different content streaming sites. If you’re a live streamer, you’re looking at what your average watch time and view time is on Twitch. There are all of these very complex analytics that factor in in a business that ultimately you need to understand one kind of looking at what’s actually driving revenue when wherever we’re looking at somebody’s Shopify, their E Commerce platform or their MailChimp email is really understanding kind of what those metrics are. And you really hit the nail on the head there. The question is, how do you actually make all of this data actionable? And one of the things that we realized early on is because data is all over the place, it’s really, really hard to even understand where to begin. So the first step in what we’re first kind of solving is just that challenge of getting all of this data into one place just like any other company or business would need. And the second part of that is making data actionable.

Jason Burchard: [00:04:10] One of the first things that we’re doing there is we’re helping creators build out their suite of products. And services are what we’re calling a creator stack. As you can imagine, there is so much information out there about different products and platforms and services, and anyone running a small or medium sized business can tell you how overwhelming that process can be. So the first thing that we’re doing is using data and generating basically the ability and kind of telling people what other platforms and products and services that they can look towards that will help them. From there, we’re diving deeper into engagement, analytics, benchmarking. One of the fundamental questions that we want to enable every user to be able to answer is just simply, is this working? And I challenge you to ask the vast majority of creators if they can tell you whether or not a particular strategy is or isn’t working without really diving into that data. So that’s moving beyond just kind of the stack building. We’re getting into more of the kind of prescriptive and predictive analytics when it comes to forecasting future earnings and understanding what some of those kind of key revenue drivers are. And eventually, obviously, we’ll be going full circle and in the end cost data as well so that we can start looking at ROI on various marketing campaigns and initiatives. But it all starts at one place and that’s that’s getting the information into a centralized location.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:39] So how did this problem get on your radar to solve? Like, what’s your back story? How did this subject matter become of interest for you?

Jason Burchard: [00:05:50] So if you would have asked me five years ago if I would be building a SAS platform, I would have told you no way. I actually started my career in consulting later, work in social impact venture capital and based on my experiences, experiences in those areas, I got really fascinated by this idea of building an equity based investment model for investing in creators like startups. So my initial kind of objective with being an entrepreneur was to help scale a more capital efficient model for kind of supporting creative entrepreneurs. What we learned in that process was that there is this huge, huge challenge with data creators. We’re doing very complex businesses around multiple recurring income streams, and nobody had a great picture of their kind of company when it came to data. So that’s kind of what inspired us. We were actually looking for a solution ourselves to help kind of consolidate all of this data. As I was doing due diligence and trying to help our portfolio companies understand how they were doing. And we couldn’t find anything out there in the market. And once we realized that this was a really large problem that we weren’t facing alone. And then no one has built the solution yet. We decided that it’d be a good opportunity for us to take it on.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:16] Now, when you’re dealing with creators, you’re not dealing typically with, you know, the hyper technical person. This is a person that, you know, wants to create something and wants to focus primarily in their dream of dreams, to be a creator and not be a data scientist, like you said, are you able to is your platform or do you aspire for your platform to be something where that this creative person can say, you know what, if I push on these three levers, I am going, my dream will come true, you know, or if I avoid this lever over here, that’s going to be better than than doing something else. Like it’s simplified to the point where I know kind of what to do each day.

Jason Burchard: [00:08:00] Yeah, that’s a great point. One of the things that we really want to be able to help people do is just understand what is and wasn’t, what is and what is not working. Because as you can imagine, the challenge of running a business around content is that it’s incredibly time intensive and you really don’t have a lot of bandwidth to spend on digging into the finer details. So our mission is to make data analytics accessible to literally anyone and make it as easy as just plugging in your data and getting started from day one. One of our advisors and investors likes to think of the product as a as a data scientist in your pocket. And obviously we have a ways to go before we get into the full functionality and building everything that we can out with ML and I. But yeah, the basic tenant is going to be using using data to help creators make better business decisions in a way that’s very easy to understand and use. Obviously, we’re building a B2B product because we do see creators as small and medium sized businesses, but the B in this case behaves a lot more like a C or consumer. So the challenge is building something that is so simple and easy and intuitive to use that anyone is comfortable trying it, but also complex and robust enough to handle the challenge of doing real technical data, insights and analysis.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:32] So walk me through. I’m a creator. How like, what do I do to, you know, input data into the system? And then what is kind of a dashboard or some of the actionable information going to look like?

Jason Burchard: [00:09:47] Yeah. So we think about data and kind of three different buckets. We think about social data, we think about streaming data, which can be any type of content streaming data. And then we think about revenue data. And so as a creator, whenever you first sign up for the product, you’re effectively invited to go over to the My Accounts page, where based on the platforms that we currently integrate with and support, you can start going down the list and connecting your accounts. This is the MVP version of our product. We’re actually getting ready to launch version 2.0 of the product where in addition to connecting accounts that you already have and that you are currently using, we’re actually starting to build in the ability for us to recommend date recommend platforms based on what we know about your career. One of the other challenges that most creators face, and I think what a lot of intelligence and analytics platforms fail to provide is context to data. So one of the things that we’re doing from a very early stage is we’re enabling creators to go in and set goals around specific KPIs, whether that is growing, let’s say a specific social media channel like TikTok or it’s reaching a certain number of streamers on a platform like YouTube or Spotify or Twitch, really providing context to that data so that we can also start curating content specifically kind of educational walk through content that we actually create ourselves as well on how to do things to enhance whatever platform you’re targeting or going after. So those are the first kind of initial insights, is providing context to data, providing education around that content, and then also helping creators to build out their, their, their stats in the future. In the near future, we’re going to be effectively scaling some of the things that we’ve been doing on a manual basis. We’re actually we’ve been going in and running some very specific analyzes on creator accounts and making very specific recommendations. We’ll be building that into the actual tech stack itself as we continue this journey from our pre-seed to seed state.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:04] So now say I’m on TikTok and that’s my platform that I use and I’m trying to obviously grow my followers. I’m trying to monetize in some manner, I guess by advertising. I guess that’s a typical way and say I have a million followers. What is some of the information that you’d be able to glean from that? And what like are you going to tell me, oh, you know what, you should post, you know, ten times a week, not seven, or you should post try posting in the evening more, not the morning or partner with these five influencers. Like, like what type of information is going to come out of your, your platform?

Jason Burchard: [00:12:45] Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you know, first and foremost, obviously, the engagement that we can glean from TikTok, so so follower growth, engagement data, one of the things that we’ve recognized from an early stage in our early beta test is that the vast majority of creators, they don’t know how they’re doing relative to how they should be doing. So if I say, Hey, Lee, you’ve got a 5% engagement rate on TikTok, you’re sitting there thinking, okay, great. I think maybe, is that good? Is that bad? And if you’re not truly familiar with the platform and how things work in reality, that that’s not that great. Tiktok generally has a much higher engagement rate. However, if I said, Lee, you’ve got a 5% engagement rate on Instagram, you know, you should be jumping up and down because that’s that’s incredible. And so helping kind of understand how the creators understand that question is what you’re doing in this platform specifically working. And then if we can target those areas, once we’ve identified what your engagement rate is, that is the opportunity to go in and say, hey, you know, you are you’re doing great. You’re you’re compared to everyone else. You’re right on track. You’re you’re doing fantastically. Keep it up. Or if we know that you’re kind of over under indexing based on the data that we’re saying we can start recommending area of improvement. Now as far as the you should post more, you should post less. I think there are some other platforms out there that are doing a great job of that. We certainly do want to get into that space as well. But for right now, it’s more about comparing your engagement rate on tick tock compared to that to your engagement rates on Facebook and Instagram. And then looking at some of your other various channels, whether that’s your YouTube or or Twitch or Shopify or we’re finding that we can be most helpful right now to users who are building their their content across multiple platforms as opposed to necessarily just one platform specifically.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:52] So you’re giving me context in terms of how I’m doing relative to how others are doing in the same platform. So I can say, you know what, maybe I should invest more time here than there because I’m already getting more traction there.

Jason Burchard: [00:15:06] Exactly. And it’s one of those things, if we are able to create an account for you and then we recognize that you haven’t connected your email list, that actually gives us an opportunity to start kind of telling you about other products and services, whether that’s MailChimp or SendGrid or there’s tens to hundreds of them at this point of different email providers where you can start focusing on building your brand outside of just one specific channel. Because the reality is, is as a creator, the more that you can do to own your audience or your community or your data, the better. Position you’re going to be in the long haul when it comes to ultimately monetizing your brand.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:52] Yeah, if you can figure that out and really encourage creators, I talk to them all the time and that’s one of my big pet peeves is you’re going to have to bring as many people off any of these third party platforms as possible into your own ecosystem. So you better figure out a way to do that.

Jason Burchard: [00:16:08] Absolutely. It is about building organic, true relationships with a niche community. And it’s it’s been said over and over again the value of having 1000 true fans, you know, 1000 true fans who are paying $100 a year, you know, it’s $100,000 a year as a creator. So it’s one of those it’s not a small opportunity for the ones who can capitalize on true community and relationships.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:42] Now, when you built this business, you built it with your brother. Can you talk about how that came up and kind of maybe share some advice about going on an adventure like this with a family member?

Jason Burchard: [00:16:55] Yeah, absolutely. I would say my brother Jeremy is amazing. Fantastic. We’re very different. I think that’s one of the reasons why we work so well together is that we we have very different backgrounds. Jeremy has actually been a professional creator for over a decade. He’s got a band, he’s on Spotify, YouTube. He actually just completed an accelerator program run by a large creator, economy focused company. And he’s very much a thought leader in this space. He’s been a music journalist as well and interviewed everyone from Leon produced Taylor Swift and in between. So he is very much our kind of ideal user and use case. So working with him provides a level of context that I am incredibly grateful for that we have. He is a frequent beta tester of a lot of new features of these different social platforms and backends of different products. So I think that through him we have a very good eye for the problem and lens as far as as working together. As I mentioned, we are very different, which I think lends itself well to a very collaborative relationship. I like to describe myself as the spreadsheets and PowerPoint guy, and he’s he’s the technical title’s chief creative officer. So he writes all of our original content and everything kind of relevant to the creatives that we’re serving. So as far as advice, you know, we I think we’ve always had a unique relationship. I think that one of the things that I’ve had to learn is not to be not to be the big brother, let’s be the business partner. So I think I’ve had a few missteps in that regard, but I’ve learned over time how to kind of separate the two things. And I think one of the challenges is always separating. Work from personal and family. And that’s I mean, I’ll be honest, I don’t think we’ve done a great job of that. We most of our conversations do rely or revolve around the business, but trying to get better at separating those as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:14] Yeah, I’ve done a lot of shows with family owned businesses and that dynamic, you know, of turning it off at the holidays, you know, with your family around you or other siblings. I don’t know if you have other siblings that aren’t involved in the in this. You know, it gets a little tricky. And, you know, you have to be mindful and you have to, you know, kind of walls around things just for your own mental health.

Jason Burchard: [00:19:38] Absolutely. And what you bring up about mental health is paramount, because obviously, you know that there’s nothing there’s nothing fast about building a company or a startup together as much as we’re led to believe, it’s a pretty long journey. So and I will say to you, it’s been great having a co-founder who I’ve had the luxury of knowing for, I guess, 33 years, 32 years. So I think that there are benefits to that when you really understand how somebody works before you have an opportunity to actually work with them in a professional capacity.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:21] Yeah, I mean, you get you get the benefit is obviously the trust is there and the watching of each other’s back is there. The negative might be that sometimes you’re fighting about issues that took place when you were ten and it’s just a, you know, kind of a new version of that.

Jason Burchard: [00:20:36] Yeah, there’s there can certainly be some ingrained behaviors from growing up together, but yeah, so, so far, so good.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:47] Now talk about why you decided to take part in Startup Showdown. How did that get on your radar and why was it important for you to kind of go through that process?

Jason Burchard: [00:20:56] Yeah. So we’re we’re we’re based in Nashville, Tennessee, and we’re always looking. Obviously different opportunities to work with different partners and obviously throughout the US but also in the Southeast and panoramic popped up on our radar as an individual, an innovative fund based out of Atlanta. And we kind of stumbled upon them and then saw that they had this this startup showdown kind of pitching competition and seemed like a really interesting opportunity for us to get out and get in front of a new audience and really just kind of test our ideas, test the pitch and kind of see what the general reception was to it. So yeah, it was a great opportunity to get out there and I was thrilled to hear that they were launching a podcast and have continue to the narrative and the journey of sharing startup stories.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:54] So what was kind of the most beneficial part of the startup shutdown process? Was there anything, any kind of intel you gleaned or anything that you were able to say, Oh, that’s really good. Let’s focus more on that or less of this.

Jason Burchard: [00:22:09] Yeah. I think I think anytime you have the opportunity to really work with a team who is used to seeing thousands and thousands of pitches and refine your pitch in front of a team, I think it’s fantastic. That was a great opportunity to get in front of them in multiple rounds and get constructive and helpful feedback. I think as founders we can live in an echo chamber sometimes and so it’s nice to get that that outside perspective in a really safe and encouraging environment. And then as far as kind of post pitching competition, it also led to some visibility. We actually met a journalist who ended up wanting to write a story about us after the competition, and that actually ended up turning into some organic relationships with strategic investment partners. And it ended up kind of really broadening our visibility in the greater Atlanta area, which was fantastic for us. Obviously being based in Nashville.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:16] So what’s next for root note? What do you need more of? How can we help?

Jason Burchard: [00:23:22] Yeah, well, thank you for asking me. We are in the middle of actually closing out a pre-seed round right now. We’re getting ready to launch the second iteration of our platform. So we’ve been experimenting with our MVP for the past year and have gotten some really incredible feedback from our early beta users, and we’ve been incorporating that into the next launch of the product. So very excited to get that out there. We were getting ready to release a mobile version, which we’re incredibly excited about. Obviously, working with creators is very important and then excited to get this fundraising round close so that we can get back to get back to building and to the business development.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:06] So if somebody wants to connect with you or your team or take a look at Root now, what is the website.

Jason Burchard: [00:24:12] Yeah, the website is going to be WW W dot root node dot co. So that’s dot co. And then they are also free to email me at JSON at root noko as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:26] Well, Jason, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jason Burchard: [00:24:30] All right. Thank you so much for giving me the time. We.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:33] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Startup Showdown.

Intro: [00:24:38] 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.

Musheer Ahmed With Codoxo

by

Musheer Ahmed
Atlanta Business Radio
Musheer Ahmed With Codoxo
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CodoxoMusheer AhmedDr. Musheer Ahmed is the CEO and Founder of Codoxo. He founded Codoxo (formerly named FraudScope) to help make our healthcare system more affordable and effective. Codoxo’s Forensic AI Platform uses patented technology to identify problems and suspicious behavior earlier than traditional techniques, which helps ensure our scarce healthcare dollars go to real patient care. Dr. Ahmed developed this technology as a part of his Ph.D. dissertation at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

A report by the JASON advisory group, the prestigious scientific advisory panel to the US government, reinforced that his doctoral research tackled some of the biggest challenges within the emerging health data infrastructure in the United States. Several media outlets have interviewed Dr. Ahmed for his work in reducing healthcare fraud, waste, and abuse. When he’s not fighting healthcare fraud, you’ll find him volunteering for various causes and spending time with his family.

Follow Codoxo on Twitter and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • About Musheer’s background
  • About Codoxo
  • The types of fraud schemes Codoxo’s AI is uncovering
  • AI evolving to help reduce costs in U.S. healthcare

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 unpaid. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] 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 Atlanta Business Radio, we have Musheer Ahmed with Codoxo. Welcome Musheer.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:00:50] Thank you, Lee. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:52] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Codoxo. How are you serving folks?

Musheer Ahmed: [00:00:57] So at Codoxo, our goal is to make the health care system more affordable and effective for everyone. At America, we spend more on health care than any other nation in the world today. Unfortunately, not all of that money is going to real patient care a significant amount. According to some estimates, 3 to 10% of health care expenditure is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse in the healthcare system. And despite these losses being an order of magnitude higher than other industries, we’ve seen very little innovation happen in this space compared to those industries, with reports saying that only a fraction of that fraud, waste, abuse is currently being identified by these products. So this is the core issue that Codo xo is helping identify and addressing this major fraud, waste, abuse problem in the health care today.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:49] So what are some examples of fraud, waste and abuse in health care?

Musheer Ahmed: [00:01:53] So that’s a great question. So fraud, waste, abuse and sometimes people put an error is actually a spectrum of payment issues in health care. So fraud is defined by those things that are provider and typically it’s mostly providers more so than members may engage intentionally in deriving certain payments that they may not be eligible for or authorized to get. Let me give you an example. Let me start off with the most egregious ones. For example, there was a provider, an oncologist in Michigan, who said almost all his patients had cancer, put them through chemotherapy. But it was later identified that a majority of his patients never had cancer to begin with. But he engaged in that process, ruining those people’s lives just so he could file over $30 million in insurance claims and and just become rich. So that’s a very egregious example. Another example of pure intentional fraud is fictitious claims. So fictitious claims. An example of that is a phantom clinic, which is a clinic that does not exist in real life. It could just be a UPS mailbox address that looks like a real street address, but they still provide their identities, patient identities, file claims for maybe 4 to 6 months for 10 to $20 Million, and then shut down that clinic, move to another state and repeat that process.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:03:19] So that has been prevalent for a while in the past, and that’s an example of fictitious claims. Then you have waste and abuse, which is not as bad, but you’re looking at procedures that are maybe medically unnecessary. They are not providing any benefit to the patient. Or maybe you’re you’re prescribing brand name drugs that are very, very expensive. When there is a generic alternative that is much more economical, that’s equally effective, causing wasteful expenses into the health care system. So that, I would say, are examples of the entire spectrum of fraud, waste, abuse that exists in this space. And Lisa, the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association estimates the 3 to 10% figure that I mentioned to you earlier, and we know last year we spent almost 4.2 or $4.3 trillion on health care. So that 3 to 10% translates to hundreds of billions of dollars lost every single year in the US to this problem which which affects every individual paying more than $1,000, then they should be on the health care that they’re receiving.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:34] And when you’re describing all of this fraud and abuse, it it sounds like it’s never the the patient. It’s always the clinic or some scammer that’s that’s taking advantage of the patient.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:04:49] So the patients do engage in fraud, waste, abuse as well. But in terms of the financial impact, it is driven significantly by providers, which would be physicians or are facilities, etc.. So they are definitely causing more of an economic impact and financial impact to this problem as opposed to members. Members do engage in that, but the financial impact is largely not driven by them.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:19] And then Cardiaco solution is to use artificial intelligence to uncover some of this fraud.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:05:29] Yes. So I come from an academic background. So I received my PhD at Georgia Tech and my PhD was focused around developing sophisticated AI based technologies to help address this problem. So this problem has been going on for a long time, and we at Georgia Tech love to find hard problems and try to solve them, which is what got me really, really excited and interested in this space. And the root of the issue is that fraud, waste, abuse teams are constantly evolving. The major schemes that are happening today are very different from the major schemes of, let’s say, last year or maybe even two years ago. They’re constantly changing. However, the detection capabilities were largely static and they were really good at finding schemes we’ve seen in the past and maybe a few schemes some experts had predicted, but they weren’t really proactive in identifying what’s the new scheme that fraudsters are coming up with so we can stop bleeding and minimize the financial impact very quickly. So what would happen is a new scheme would come up today and that would go on sometimes for months, in some cases even years bleeding. We have organizations in millions or tens of millions of dollars before someone would stumble upon it and take action. So our goal at Georgia Tech, which formed the basis of the core technology at products today, was we want to develop a proactive AI capability that’s able to identify new schemes as quickly as they emerge, give that intelligence to our customers, allow them to take action to minimize the financial impact by stopping the bleeding very quickly. And that’s the core basis of what we do really, really well. But of course, since then, we’ve we’ve had a ton of impact. We’ve already helped our customers save over $500 million, which we’re really proud of.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:21] Now, how is this problem different than like kind of some of these cybersecurity problems where you’re trying to identify hackers or schemers that are trying to infiltrate a business to do something nefarious? Is it similar? Are the bad guys similar in that? In some cases in that area, they’re nation states because there’s so much money involved? Or are these individual just bad guys that have found a way to, you know, make money by exploiting the health care system?

Musheer Ahmed: [00:07:53] That’s a great question, Liane. Actually, so my PhD at Georgia Tech has actually in the cybersecurity space and I took a unique, unique path of focusing my entire dissertation in health care. Even though I was a part of the cybersecurity department and a lot of the ideas that I’m bringing into the health care space and put out so continues to work on and bring to our customers that are really, really unique, are actually founded in the cybersecurity space. And you’re absolutely right, we in the cybersecurity world are always trying to keep up with evolving threats. But there are certain things about health care that make it really, really different. And so just to take an example in general, comparing health care not just to cybersecurity, but other industries in general, their health care payments tend to be really, really complex. It’s a it’s a complex system that we’ve evolved over time. And sometimes we need to make a decision without having all all the data points necessary and all the data points that may be able to influence the payment. To give you some examples of that, you may have medical records that can influence what should the actual allowed payment be. You may have contracts that are not standardized with providers that may also cause variations in payments.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:09:10] And you may need we need to make a decision in health care at the payment point without necessarily having access to the medical record or having access to even the contract information. So their decisions that need to be made really, really quickly, there’s no standardization and how certain things may be paid across different providers just based on different issues the member may have been facing with. The other thing that is very unique about the health care space is what is the impact of a false positive. Now let’s say you’re and just to compare simplistically, you look at the credit card space, you deny a transaction, what’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? The cardholder is going to try the card again or use another card in healthcare if you deny payment. Now, that could lead to significant issues and in some cases you may even end up in court because of something that you care that you may have denied a member. So the stakes are higher, the data points are fewer, the complexity is greater. So it’s it’s a much more challenging problem to solve in the healthcare space.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:16] But but when it comes time to for payment, like usually if I’m paying something on my credit card, it’s happening at that instant. But in health care, if I’m paying something, it could be a year after I had that treatment.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:10:29] That’s absolutely correct. So it’s the claim itself. I think there is a time period within which the provider will submit a claim to the health plan. Once the health plan receives the claim, there is the they are laws that require the claim to be paid. But unfortunately, the system doesn’t operate in as real time a manner as it should, and which is actually very indicative of the lack of adoption of new technology in the healthcare space. And health care has unfortunately not adopted not just those kinds of real time processing capabilities, but even the AI capabilities. We were the pioneers of bringing AI into this space. And since then, then the impact we’ve been able to show with the savings we’ve been able to bring to these clients, the industry has now started asking for AI capabilities. Now health plans understand the value and other players have been asked to also bring the AI capabilities into this space. So your you’re hitting spot on on something that’s been very common in health care, the lack of adoption of new technology. But we are really proud of that product. So to lead the way to show the industry on how they should be operating, we’re hoping at some point we do get to real time payments and health care, but we are a long way off now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:51] Today, they’re now using AI to reduce costs by, you know, kind of sniffing out the fraud as it’s happening or as quickly as possible is obviously that saves money. Has the AI evolved to the other side of the equation to help, you know, identify illnesses faster or to be able to make diagnosis quicker?

Musheer Ahmed: [00:12:17] There are there are a lot of AI initiatives. And what I would say is, even though the industry has been reluctant to bring about AI in most areas and just adopt new technology in general, I think COVID became a catalyst for the healthcare industry to really take a look and understand, okay, how do we need to change? There were a lot of things, a lot of pressures that were put on the health care system. And I think that mindset is slowly changing now. And there are a lot of AI initiatives that are actually gaining a lot of traction and spotlight and attention. They are several initiatives just focusing on what you just described on the ability to find diseases faster. There’s a lot of A.I. companies that can help. For example, just to give you a quick example, look at radiology scans and predict, okay, this person is going to land with some kind of disease in the future. That may not be very, very prevalent in that radiology scan that you may be looking at. So I think there’s a ton of work going on. The industry is heading in the right direction, but just not fast enough compared to where the level of adoption you’ve seen at other places.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:31] Now, it sounds like it’s a in some way it’s a dangerous area. Like if if I can predict this person is going to potentially down the road have some problem, then I can increase their insurance now knowing that ahead of time that I’m going to have to pay out. Like how does that all play together? Because that seems really murky.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:13:55] Yes, that is that’s definitely they are going to be some gray areas, Ali. And of course, a lot of times government influences on what can and cannot be done, such as the preexisting conditions, actually impact your insurance premiums or not, or are they covered or not? So I think they will be a role that the government may play in regulating some of these things. But you’re absolutely right. I think as this technology becomes more sophisticated, they are they are things that we need to manage better going forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:36] So what’s next for Oxo? How can we help?

Musheer Ahmed: [00:14:39] So Cardoso. So I think we’re really excited about the impact we’ve had so far. Class research just did an independent study on our customers and they gave us an A-plus rating. 100% of our customers would buy again and would recommend to others. We are even more excited about what we can do in the future and the impact we can actually have in this space. We’ve actually come about with new innovative products that just don’t exist in this space. So two of them that I’ll quickly mentioned here, one of them is provider scope, which is our ability to engage and collaborate with providers in helping make the health care system more affordable and effective. So we give providers an early warning system so they can proactively change their own behavior, ensure they are following the coding guidelines and CMS guidelines on claim submission so we can weed out a lot of costs that were caused due to incorrect coding or even audit code that helps automate the workflow and bring about the level of efficiencies that we haven’t seen in this space today. I think I’ve put actually we’ve doubled our headcount over the last 12 months. We continue to add people who are really mission driven and really care about our goal of making the health care system more affordable and effective. So if there’s anyone listening who would like to really make an impact in the health care space, we’d love to have you on our team. Definitely do reach out to us and we’d love to have a conversation. And if there are plans out there that would like to engage with us, we work with health plans. We work with government agencies and also in the pharmacy benefit space. Now, if you’d like to use our technology and bring about the kind of results so we are able to bring about, we’d also love to hear from you.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:31] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Musheer Ahmed: [00:16:36] Thank you so much, Lee. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:38] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:16:45] 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.

 

Everett O’Keefe With Ignite Press

by

Ignite press
High Velocity Radio
Everett O'Keefe With Ignite Press
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Everett O'KeefeEverett O’Keefe is a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and International #1 Bestselling Author. The Power of the Published is his most recent solo work. He has also helped create and launch more than 100 bestselling books for his clients. Everett speaks across the nation on the power of publishing. He is the founder of Ignite Press, a hybrid publishing company that specializes in helping entrepreneurs, as well as business and medical professionals, ignite their businesses by becoming bestselling authors.

Everett is sought out as a speaker, coach, and consultant by authors and marketing experts worldwide. With a passion for entrepreneurialism, Everett helps his clients become recognized experts in their fields through speaking and authorship while allowing his clients to focus on their own areas of giftedness.

Connect with Everett on LinkedIn and follow Ignite Press on Facebook

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Karen Wesloh With The Harrington Company

by

KarenWesloh
Association Leadership Radio
Karen Wesloh With The Harrington Company
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THCHorizontalRGBLogoKarenWeslohKaren Wesloh, CAE, CMP, Partner & Senior Account Executive at The Harrington Company.

Karen’s 30 years of experience in association management provides her with the knowledge and background needed to support and guide associations through a wide variety of challenges and opportunities. One of her most valuable skills is her ability to bring together volunteer leaders with different priorities and help them to move forward in a cohesive way for the good of the organization and its members.

Karen is passionate about staying on the cusp of industry best practices and trends and is among a select group of association executives that hold both the Certified Association Executive (CAE) designation and the Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) designation. She served on the Board of Directors of the AMC Institute (AMCI) and is a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and Associations North.

Karen graduated cum laude from the University of St. Thomas with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Economics. She earned her Master of Business Administration in Marketing and Strategic Management from The Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota where she focused on non-profit management.

Karen’s hobbies include stained glass mosaics and scuba diving. She enjoys both warm and cold-water diving and has received a Master Diver Certification.

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • The Incentive Marketing Association
  • Some of the characteristics that help associations to be successful
  • About The Harrington Company

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here another episode of Association Leadership Radio. And this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Karen Wesloh, who’s a partner and senior account executive with the Harrington Company and also the executive director with Incentive Marketing Association. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Wesloh: [00:00:37] Thank you for having me. I appreciate.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Well, I’m excited to learn what you got going on. But let’s start with the Incentive Marketing Association. How are you serving, folks?

Karen Wesloh: [00:00:47] I’m sorry. I have to ask you to repeat that.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:51] Tell us a little bit about Incentive Marketing Association.

Karen Wesloh: [00:00:54] Well, the Incentive Marketing Association is a trade association and referred to it as IMA. And the mission for the association is to advocate for and promote the use of recognition and incentives to improve business performance. And that’s a particularly important role right now. Where things stand with in society in terms of building loyalty with customers, but especially building loyalty with employees.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] So so their work is a lot has a lot to do with kind of employee retention and client retention and things like that.

Karen Wesloh: [00:01:30] Absolutely. And a lot of their efforts are are focused on outward communication and really promoting the use of incentives and recognition and also providing people with the tools and the resources so that they can have successful programs. It’s a very multifaceted, global organization, and they have a lot of subgroups or strategic industry groups, as they call them, within the association for the various verticals in the industry recognition, solution providers, gift cards, brand name merchandise, travel and events and activities and that kind of thing. So that it really is all encompassing for the organization and for the industry. And then we also have a very strong European chapter as well as some additional international regional groups.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] So how long have you been executive director?

Karen Wesloh: [00:02:27] Since January 1st, 2016. And it’s been it’s a it’s a great job and great members to work with.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:35] Now, what are some of the challenges? You know, we read about this great resignation. So obviously it’s top of mind for a lot of companies to keep their people. Has that impacted your business? I mean, the association’s work, obviously.

Karen Wesloh: [00:02:51] Yes, absolutely. Especially the recognition portion of the organization. And it’s really brought a lot of attention to the work that we’re doing. And as I said, one of our main goals is getting the information out there to help people successfully be able to build incentive and recognition programs and implement them.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:13] And is there, as part of your work at the association, kind of coming up with research that supports how important this is?

Karen Wesloh: [00:03:20] We did have some really great research working with other organizations and the industry that we presented at the conference we just had in Snowbird, Utah. And that was, I think, very valuable to the association members. We work with the Incentive Federation, which is a affiliated organization as well as the Incentive Research Foundation. And they both presented some, some really, really great research at our conference.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:49] So that must be pretty rewarding work, kind of plugging yourself into an association and leading them for all these years.

Karen Wesloh: [00:03:58] Absolutely. And I’ve been with the Harrington Company, the Association of Management Company that manages Incentive Marketing Association for 30 years. And I will say that part of the satisfaction with this position comes from the fact that many, many years ago, when there wasn’t a lot of available education and nonprofit management, I decided that that’s what I wanted to do and kind of built my own MBA program area of nonprofit management. And it’s it’s so rewarding and interesting because you’re working with leaders in the industry, and they’re the people that really are the most dedicated and passionate. And a lot of times they get involved because they want to give something back and they want to serve as mentors to people in the industry. And so that makes it a lot of fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:51] Now, as a partner at Harrington, how many other associations is Harrington serving?

Karen Wesloh: [00:04:57] Well, I only work with the Incentive Marketing Association. The Harrington Company manages 25 associations.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:04] Wow. So there’s never a dull moment in that office?

Karen Wesloh: [00:05:07] No, there isn’t. It’s. It’s so great. The reason I’ve enjoyed the job for 30 years is because even though. Our associations we work with. Stay with us for a long time and I’ll work with organizations for ten or more years. You have a lot of contact with other associations and other industries and you learn so much about so many industries. It’s wonderful.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:34] Now, is it a challenge to kind of wear those two hats, one where you’re so specifically involved in one association and immersed in that? But then this other hat where there’s, like you said, 20 plus other associations that are part of the organization, but you’re learning from them as well. So I guess there’s some cross-pollination of best practices and learnings.

Karen Wesloh: [00:05:55] Absolutely. One of the best advantages of working with an association management company, of course, the most important advantage of working with the association management company is that you have access to skills and experience and talents that for small and medium associations that you wouldn’t have if you were having a smaller staff on their own, and you have access to marketing and graphic design and that kind of thing. But one of the greatest values also is the fact that we share best practices, we share information. We have other leaders and other executive directors we can lean on and communicate with and brainstorm with. And that’s been especially helpful the last few years.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:44] And then I would imagine because of these associations, like you mentioned earlier, there are so many volunteers involved in an association, it’s hard for a person who has a full time job elsewhere to also take on the responsibility of leading their association as well. So to have an expert like your firm come in and do some of that heavy lifting for them, it allows them to kind of stay in their lane and be that subject matter expert and get the most out of the association.

Karen Wesloh: [00:07:10] Absolutely. It gives them the opportunity to really not have to worry about the implementation. They really can focus on the strategy and moving the association forward in the right direction. And that’s the critical thing that we can offer. As I said, it’s just the depth of the skill and the experience. And also, I think it is important, though, for the volunteers to to make sure that they have meaningful and valuable input and they feel like they are really making a contribution to bringing the association forward and not lose sight of that that that that their role and how important that is.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:57] Now, you mentioned, you know, some of the advantages for the smaller associations that don’t have the depth of staff that you have that Harrington would bring to the table. Is there a sweet spot that you work with? Like, are they a certain number of members? Like, those are some criteria that makes a good fit for Harrington.

Karen Wesloh: [00:08:18] You know, I would say not really. I think that it’s not just very, very small organizations. Organizations even with that could have a standalone staff of maybe four or five people. They’re still not going to have access to the professional accountants and the graphic designer. And as I said, social media, strategic marketing, all of the technology that you would have with a larger association management company.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:52] So is there any advice for maybe an association is at that. Maybe they have their growing pains where it’s time to make a decision, like maybe they started on their own and it’s time to now say, hey, are we going to continue on this path or should we team up with professionals like Harrington? What is some advice for them to, you know, the trade offs back and forth to make a decision that would help them kind of thrive and flourish in the future?

Karen Wesloh: [00:09:22] Actually, a number of the associations we work with did come from a standalone staff and I think more and more. As technology has become such a critical and important thing for an association to communicate with their members, that that was a big decision factor in coming to a management company. It’s it’s a lot of times it is that technology, it’s making sure you’re keeping up with. Again, the best practices, the social media and the marketing is a big part of what they gain. And that’s a big part of their decision making, is just, again, having access to some of that expertise members expect more now than they ever have before. And they really want that sophistication and professionalism in the association.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:16] Is there any kind of symptoms that they’re going through that maybe it’s member attrition or they’re not you know, they’re not resigning as as often as they did before? They’re kind of losing members or they’re having a hard time getting volunteers or they’re having a hard time getting engagement from the largest players in the niche. What are some symptoms that Harrington would be a good fit for them, or at least explore a conversation.

Karen Wesloh: [00:10:44] I think any of those that you mentioned would again, that’s especially where they’re looking for that marketing and that being able to refine the member value and to deliver that member value and what they’re looking for, understand what they’re looking for, deliver it and then communicate back to them what you’re delivering. That that is one of the critical points, as you said, if there’s an attrition of members. A lot of times it’s actually because their current staff is retiring. They’ll have an executive director for many years and they’re retiring. And they look at this as a as a good opportunity to really revive the association and get it, give it some new life and give it some new energy.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:30] Is there anything you could share? Maybe at the Incentive Marketing Association that was something that you implemented that was able to take that association to a new level.

Karen Wesloh: [00:11:43] I think it’s less about technology than maybe some of the experience and also having some really, really great leaders in place when we started working with them. But with them, the thing that has really turned them in a great direction is bringing all of those subgroups together and really having them all partner with each other, even though the verticals are sometimes competing with each other for the same customers. But really having them all move together with a good, forward, positive momentum and then added to that, again, reaching out to the members, understanding what was critical to them. Defining that member value. Implementing what they’re looking for and then communicating it back to them. And I think that has really we’re we’re in a really good trajectory and that is what has brought the organization there, those factors.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:47] Now, having been involved in associations for so many years. Can you share some maybe the characteristics of a well run association versus some of the red flags of a not so well run association?

Karen Wesloh: [00:13:02] Well, you hit on you hit on one of the main things in most good association management education. They will tell you how critical it is for the board to focus on strategy and on moving the association forward and not get down in the weeds and really focus more on the administrative. It’s really easy to focus on the administrative and strategy is a harder thing to really work on and define and and implement. And so really keeping an association focused on strategy, but as I said, also really offering those the the volunteer leaders and the members opportunities to feel like they’re part of a group and part of a solution and part of moving the industry and the association forward. And that’s what builds loyalty, is recognizing how important they are to the industry. And so I think those are the things that make a good, positive association. And again, just focusing on the wrong things or deciding what they think members want rather than doing a survey and really understanding what members want. Those are also some things that can get association’s into trouble.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] So it must be so much fun to be doing the work you’re doing. You’re you’re serving this group at the Incentive Marketing Association. You’re helping lead them through a somewhat chaotic time, that’s for sure. And then also, you’re part of an organization that’s helping dozens of other associations. So thank you for doing that. I mean, that’s a lot of work and a lot to balance, and it sounds like you’re doing a great job.

Karen Wesloh: [00:14:52] Excellent. Thank you. I enjoy it so much and I’ve had so many wonderful experiences and so I gain so much from all of the volunteers we work with. They should gain something out of it. But I do too. Every. Learning from some of these industry leaders has always a tremendous benefit.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:12] Yeah. And I think it’s important for folks to really appreciate the the people that are doing the work to lead these associations. There are a lot of volunteers involved, and these associations are critical for the industries that they serve, not only as role modeling, what could be and what you want to get out of it, but also as a place for young people to learn and giving them the opportunity to lead at that level as well. So I think they serve multiple purposes and they’re critical for any thriving industry.

Karen Wesloh: [00:15:45] I absolutely agree. I think that, again, a lot of times there’s there’s different phases of of people that get that get involved in associations. Oftentimes, that younger group are looking for not only mentorship, but connections and networking. But then you have people that are at a different phase in their career. And really what they’re looking for is to give back and to really build the next generation. And it’s, again, working with those leaders that really see the world from that perspective is that’s what’s so rewarding about.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:22] It, right? And that’s a critical element if you’re association doesn’t have a path for those people to give back and to have some sort of a legacy, then you’re really missing out.

Karen Wesloh: [00:16:31] Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s what those by having the subgroups in this particular association where each of these subgroups has their own board, their own committees, their own activities, it has just so many layers and opportunity for people to get involved in meaningful ways. And that’s one of the things that I think helped us come through the Rocky last few years that the world has had in a in a very strong place.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:03] Well, if somebody wants to learn more about incentive marketing association, what are the coordinates for that.

Karen Wesloh: [00:17:09] That is ww w dot incentive marketing dot org.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:14] And then Harrington, if there’s an association out there that is looking for help or wants to take their association to a new level, what is the coordinates for harrington.

Karen Wesloh: [00:17:24] That is W WW dot Harrington company.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:29] Well, Karen, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Karen Wesloh: [00:17:33] Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to share.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Association Leadership Radio.

Heather Fortner With SignatureFD

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Atlanta Business Radio
Atlanta Business Radio
Heather Fortner With SignatureFD
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Heather Fortner, CEO and Partner at SignatureFD.

As CEO, Heather leans into her passion for listening – to the SignatureFD team, our clients, and the industry – to create and implement the organization’s vision and mission to impact the lives of 10,000 families.

Practicing a “coach with empathy” leadership style, Heather leverages her unique ability to harmonize people’s passions and talents to build teams and lead organizations that deliver excellent and inspiring client experiences.

Previously serving as Chief Operating Officer, Chief Compliance Officer, and President of SignatureFD, Fortner has learned, navigated, and held strategic oversight for every aspect of the organization.

A highly-sought-after leader in the industry, Fortner is regularly asked to speak on the ever-changing landscape of wealth management. See a small sample of her previous speaking and media engagements below.

Additionally, in 2021, Heather was awarded CEO of the Year by WealthManagement.com for the category Individual RIA Firm Leaders.

Follow SignatureFD on Facebook and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Career journey
  • Net Worthwhile
  • Helping high-net-worth families use their wealth to truly live a great life

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 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 Atlanta Business Radio. We have Heather Fortner, the CEO and partner with Signature PhD. Welcome, Heather.

Heather Fortner: [00:00:53] Thanks, Lee. Great to be here with you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:55] Well, I’m excited to catch up. But for the folks who aren’t familiar. Can you tell us a little bit about Signature PhD? How are you serving folks?

Heather Fortner: [00:01:03] Yeah, I’d love to. We are a $6 billion independent registered investment advisor in Atlanta. We have offices in Atlanta and in Charlotte, and we are celebrating our 25th year anniversary this year.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] Well, congratulations on that. You have kind of worked your way through the ranks at signature to get to where you are today.

Heather Fortner: [00:01:27] Yeah, yeah, I started. It’s been almost 20 years. I started in February of 2003 as a client care associate and have held many, many positions through the firm. Was the chief compliance officer for 15 years and then also kind of built the operational platform of the firm becoming CEO and then president and now will have been CEO for two years in October of this year.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:55] So when you first started, did you dream this dream? Was this how it was supposed to end?

Heather Fortner: [00:02:00] You know, I’m not sure that anybody could have dreamed that dream. Lee I knew that and knew that I loved to be busy. I knew that I loved the business and I knew that. I always tell people I am my worst self when I am bored. So I knew that I was willing to do whatever I could to just keep learning. And I have to tell you, building building a business is just a very fascinating and fun journey. So I’ve just been very blessed.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:28] Well, having seen the business from kind of a variety of viewing points, does that you think that gives you kind of a competitive advantage as the leader now of the firm?

Heather Fortner: [00:02:39] You know, I think that the benefit of having really grown up through the business when I started with Signature PhD, we were about 250 million under management and we had probably six or seven team members at the time. So having been with the business that long and having such different vantage points, I think the benefit that it gives me is that it allows me to be able to pull threads all the way through the organization to know intended and unintended consequences when we make a decision. And that that I do believe as a leader is a benefit within the business itself.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:20] Yeah, I think that a leader of anything, whether it’s a company, whether you’re in politics or government, to have kind of worked at a low level and and kind of earned your way up the ladder, gives you a different perspective. I mean, you your your empathy gene is a lot different than someone who just pops in from another firm. And if they were just made CEO of this firm.

Heather Fortner: [00:03:47] I completely agree. I think it it enhances our ability not only to understand how the decisions affect the client experience, but also how it affects the team member experience. And when you have those long standing relationships and you know people for who they are and not just as a number, it changes things. It changes things for the better, in my opinion.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:13] Well, part of your mission, as I understand it, is to help high net worth families kind of use their wealth to truly live a great life. Can you talk about that mission and how it kind of came to be?

Heather Fortner: [00:04:29] Yeah, absolutely. Overall, we want to serve 10,000 families. We want to help 10,000 families live their net worth while in our definition of net worthwhile is really just the intersection of a family’s wealth, which is more than just their money. Money is just a tool. Wealth can be time, it can be health, it can be resources, it can be money. It can be all of those things where the intersection of your wealth overlaps the things that you find worthwhile. And many times people don’t necessarily know what it is. They haven’t they haven’t had the freedom to sit down and really define the things in their life that are worthwhile to them, that the dreams, the hopes that they have not only for themselves, but for their families. And so we hope to be able to come alongside, to partner with families, to provide the confidence. For them to free up their worries and concerns, because, quite frankly, there are a lot of worries and concerns that come for people with money to be able to free some of those up, to provide a space where people can lean in and say, you know what? These are the real things that I want to accomplish in my life. These are the things that really matter to me. These are the things that I want to grow and live and give and protect that matter to me. And then our job is professionals is to come alongside with expertise and say, well, here’s, here’s some options on how we can build that plan.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:05] Now, having a plan is critical and whatever stage you are in your life and your career, when we’re in this kind of turbulent time that we are today, it is especially important to have a plan. Can you talk a little bit because a lot of folks, when they have a plan and they’re young, that’s fantastic because right now, the the economy, the market is kind of upside down and you’re buying everything on sale if you believe in our economy and our system. Right. But if you’re like 70. This is where a plan really is important because this is, you know, when you’re not having the ability to buy things on sale and catch up, you look at your net worth and your net worth while differently.

Heather Fortner: [00:06:57] That’s right. That’s right. You know, I love the fact that you bring that up. I was just having a conversation with some of our team yesterday. I spent a lot of time talking to our advisors about what their conversations are with their clients. And it’s fascinating because the overall sentiment is that when you have put in the time on the front side, when you have done the work to create the plan, to be sure that those things that need protecting are protected. When those things that are important to you, that you have a plan to provide for those things, and then and then that you have secured, whether it’s income, whether it’s giving or whether it’s whatever those things are that are important to you. When you’ve built a plan around each one of those, it’s okay when you start to have turbulent times because you will have those consistently. The history, the history of the market, we all know it. But when you have taken the time to insulate those things that are important to you and build a plan that can accommodate those turbulent times, you still have freedom to go and live your life without all of that worry. And I think that that’s the thing that as financial professionals, that’s where we really thrive in helping our clients, is seeing someone who has built a solid plan, has identified those things, has worked the plan, and is now in their seventies or in their retirement. And they’re not worried when it’s turbulent times. That is success for us as professional advice givers.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:39] Yeah, and that’s for the folks who don’t have a professional advisor. This is when you need them. This is this is when it becomes clear that you have to have a plan. You can’t just whenever circumstances change and they do constantly, if you’re making kind of major adjustments, you don’t have a plan.

Heather Fortner: [00:09:03] Yeah, yeah, I agree. I also think it’s so critical. The behavioral component of finance is just you cannot discount how important it is to to really, quote unquote, know thyself in one of these environments, to know those triggers that you have around money, to know those those those issues that are going to create, whether it’s anxiety or fear or worry or whatever it might be for you to be able to call those out and know what they are and then have that unbiased, objective thought partner that in the moment when you are experiencing whatever those emotions or feelings may be, knows you, knows your goals, knows your plan, and can really step in as a thought partner for you to help get you through the time where you may pull the plug out of fear and not need to. Because guess what? Objectively, you’re going to be fine. We’ve built for it, we’ve planned for it. We’re going to hold the course. And, you know, living in that community and having that thought partner, it’s really critically important, I think.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Yeah. Now it sounds like empathy is an important component of your coaching style, your teaching style, your leading style. Can you talk about how you coach empathy to folks maybe on your team or maybe that’s the only people you hire that have that kind of trait? But empathy is, again, a secret sauce, something that not everybody has, and especially I would imagine as you’re going through wealth advisor school, in college or in your learning, I don’t know if they have classes on empathy. That’s usually not part of the test.

Heather Fortner: [00:10:56] Yeah, no, that training I got when I did my graduate work in counseling. So I will say there is there is training for that type of stuff and those are skills that can actually be developed and learned, but they are not necessarily a component of a core finance curriculum. I do think that the majority of professionals in the finance world, most of the people that I know, they’re helpers and they love to be able they have an enormous helping gene, but they also have an enormous capacity to be an expert in their technical field. So you usually find people who are passionate about helping. Others. They just happen to be very competent and have an expertise in the financial arena as well. I do think, however, just from my background and my training, that those are skills, those skills of empathy, those skills of the soft skills, the emotional quotient can be developed over time. But it is something, first of all, that you have to be willing to learn, and it requires a level of self awareness that some people are not willing to pursue. But it also requires work. It requires you to say, I’m going to develop this skill and I’m going to practice this skill consistently, not only at work, but in my personal life as well. And I think that level of commitment, that level of self awareness, those are the people that typically can develop those skills well over time.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:37] So for leaders out there that want to help their team develop those skills, is there something actionable that you can share that maybe you do with your team that can help them be better leaders?

Heather Fortner: [00:12:48] Yeah, you know, I think one of the things first of all, it has to start with self, it has to be that you are willing to pick the log out of your own eye before you try to pick the speck out of someone else’s, you know. And there’s a ton of ways that you can do that. There’s meditation, there’s counseling, there’s therapy, there’s there’s all kinds of stuff that you can do there. There’s coaching, great coaching. I have two external executive coaches that I use myself, but then there are also resources. So not only do we do coaching internally in our organization, but we get coach training for the people in our organization who are doing coaching. So there are plenty of professionals out there. We actually partnered with a team that had done some of the coaching training over at Emory and brought them into our organization, not only to do coach training for our team, but to be an on call resource for our other directors and leaders in the organization that if they had questions or they were experiencing issues, if they needed coaching themselves around, I need a safe place to process what I’m feeling or what’s happening on my team that they have someone external to the organization to call as well. That is is, I believe, qualified and able to give them sound advice on how to move forward.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:22] Yeah, it’s fascinating how this career has evolved over the years. I remember my dad was involved in the stock market decades ago and I can’t in a million years envision the person who is advising him of having that kind of training. I mean, his conversations were always about some hot tip or some, you know, it’s time to make a move or things like that.

Heather Fortner: [00:14:46] And I do think that that’s part of the difference in a broker dealer mentality versus a registered investment advisor mentality. And over the years in the industry, we have seen a lot of convergence of those two things because people do recognize that other humans, they want to be in community and they want to be in relationship. They don’t necessarily just want transactional advice, which is is really what you’re talking about.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:19] Right. And to me, it’s changed dramatically. I mean, this industry has evolved dramatically.

Heather Fortner: [00:15:26] Absolutely it has. And it’s also created you know, there’s if you look into any type of research about our industry, it’s also created some confusion for the consumer around who actually is an unbiased advisor, who is getting paid based on what they’re selling or not selling or advice or not advice. And so some of the regulatory bodies have really been focused on trying to create ways that the public can be well informed on those issues as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:05] Right. Because it is I mean, not only do you have the confusion there, you have the individual person being able to do some of this, work themselves with these robo advisors that aren’t human, that. Right. So there is a lot of confusion out there to the public for the people that you serve. Who is that ideal client for you? Who is that kind of family or individual that is the best fit for signature PhD?

Heather Fortner: [00:16:36] You know, I love that question. I, I think if you had to ask me. The most ideal client for not even for us, but for any registered investment advisor, it would be the very first component would be a delegator. Someone who really wants to hire an expert in the area of planning and financial expertise, wants that help, and then wants to really incorporate that advice into their plan and delegate a lot the majority of that work to the team that they have hired for people who really want to do it themselves. Those people that are going to robo advisors, they want to be in there, they want to be doing the research, they want to be directing which investments at what time and those types of things. I would say a relationship with a registered investment advisor would be difficult in that regard because that’s not really how registered investment advisors work. That is definitely a more transactional based. The registered investment advisor relationship is definitely more collaborative and and really requiring someone who wants a comprehensive help in a delegation type way. Now for Signature PhD specifically, we are so blessed that we have so many communities, different communities with expertise and different in different areas. So we have Signature Exact, which serves a corporate executive community, we have signature law, we have Signature Health Signature Pro, which serves professional athletes. So we have signature women. We have very, very vertical niches, very focused on certain types of communities of clients, which is really been not only wonderful for our client base because we can serve them with an expertise of planning in that specific area, but also wonderful for our team members because they are able to serve the communities that they’re passionate about.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:02] Because they get to kind of go deep within a niche and then really figure out kind of the nuances there and really kind of anticipate needs of clients.

Heather Fortner: [00:19:12] Exactly right. So for example, our signature entrepreneur team, they are highly skilled in dealing with closely held businesses. Tax implications of that M&A type transactions, how you do startups like that is their passion and their love, and they have seen it over and over and over again. So they are very, very qualified to work with owners of small businesses and entrepreneurs that look very different than our signature pro group. Who is they understand the NFL and NFL contracts inside and out. Right. That that is that is a niche that absolutely looks very different than another niche. But the expertise, the very deep technical expertise in that area, it is necessary when you are trying to give quality advice to someone in that community.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:12] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the coordinates?

Heather Fortner: [00:20:18] Absolutely. www.signaturefd.com. Our whole team is listed on the website as well as our different communities. So please there is a contact us page. Please reach out. We would love to have a conversation with anyone.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:36] Well, Heather, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Heather Fortner: [00:20:41] Thank you. We appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:42] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

Intro: [00:20:50] 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

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

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

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Jerry Flanagan With JDog Brands

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JDog-Brands-logo
Franchise Marketing Radio
Jerry Flanagan With JDog Brands
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Brought To You By SeoSamba . . . Comprehensive, High Performing Marketing Solutions For Mature And Emerging Franchise Brands . . . To Supercharge Your Franchise Marketing, Go To seosamba.com.

JDog Brands is a 100 million dollar franchise system servicing customers all around the US. With over 260 franchises nationwide, we are largest Veteran Franchise in the world.

We offer our unique business model to Veterans and Veteran Family members exclusively. My mission continues to create business opportunities and employment for every man and woman whoever served our great country.

Jerry FlanaganJerry Flanagan is CEO and Founder at JDog Brands. Jerry is an Army Veteran and entrepreneur who, along with his wife Tracy, have created a national Veteran brand dedicated to empowering Veterans through entrepreneurship.

Rooted in the Military values of Respect, Integrity, and Trust, the JDog®️ Junk Removal & Hauling and JDog®️ Carpet Cleaning & Floor Care franchise systems have become a nationwide movement, creating business and employment opportunities for Veterans and Veteran family members.

Jerry launched the first JDog Junk Removal & Hauling franchise in 2011. It was a two-person operation – Jerry hauled junk and Tracy managed the back office. As a Veteran, Jerry gained trust and credibility with customers quickly, and referrals came easy. Within a year, he had more business than one person could handle and began hiring local Veterans who embodied the brand’s values.

Through Jerry’s vision and leadership, JDog Junk Removal & Hauling has since grown to hundreds of locations, 90 percent of which are Veteran owned. To date, the company has created more than 1,000 job opportunities across the United States.

Jerry served in the Army from 1987 to 1989, and the National Guard from 1991-1993 and finished at the top of his class. He was awarded the Army Achievement Medal. Since transitioning back to the civilian world, Jerry has committed himself to helping Veterans be successful in business.

He teaches an entrepreneurial boot camp for Veterans at St. Joseph’s University, and at Boots to Business for Veterans, an entrepreneurial program offered through the U.S. Small Business Administration. He is a Strategic Advisor for Grunt Style, a Patriotic apparel company committed to creating a quality product while supporting the Military and First Responders communities. He also sits on the Board of Directors for the Grunt Style Foundation.

Jerry also founded the JDog Foundation, whose mission is to support Military Veterans and Military Veteran-related causes – with a particular focus on Veteran suicide prevention and PTSD.

Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn and follow JDog Brands on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • What JDog Brands is and their mission
  • How Jerry created the brand / concept
  • JDog Brand’s growth over the past few years
  • About the partnership with Irreverent Warriors

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio. Brought to you by SeoSamba comprehensive high performing marketing solutions for mature and emerging franchise brands. To Supercharge Your Franchise Marketing. Go to seosamba.com. That’s seosamba.com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:32] Lee Kantor here another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have Jerry Flanagan with JDog Brands. Welcome, Jerry.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:00:42] Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about JDog. How are you serving folks?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:00:49] Yeah, sure. So JDog is the world’s largest military veteran franchise system. We started in 2011 just with one truck and one trailer, and we’ve expanded and exploded into over 270 locations around the country. And we’ve added a carpet cleaning and floor care service as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:07] So can you talk about the beginning days? What was the genesis of the idea?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:01:13] Well, my wife and I had come off of a personal bankruptcy. Our business had failed. Coming off the recession, we were in the retail world and I needed to do something that was recession proof while I looked for a real job. And it turned out that junk removal was a recession proof business. So I had a jeep. We took we took the jeep and we bought a trailer and I started hauling junk in my neighborhood. A customer found out that I was a military veteran. They thanked me for my military service and they said, You should let the entire world know that you’re a military veteran service in the community. And that’s what we did. We started branding JAG. We put a big bulldog on the truck and camouflage, and everyone knew that we were in the military.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:54] So what was how did you even think of, like, junk removal like?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:01:58] So when I was researching for recession proof businesses, the businesses that were the most popular were pharmaceutical sales, the medical field, trash and junk. And I said, you know, junk removal. I’m a pretty strong guy. I can pick up pianos, refrigerators, hot tubs. I think I’m going to go into that space. And when I started hauling junk, my wife and I just put index cards out with our phone number on and we said veteran, owned and operated. The entire community got behind the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:28] But what about how did you know about the math of the business that the math was going to work out?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:02:34] Google is your best friend, right? Youtube videos. I researched what the other guys were doing. There’s a company called one 800 Got Junk and Junk KING And all these other companies that kind of laid the groundwork for the business. So I kind of looked what they were doing and lowered my prices and offered a stronger and better and more personal service. And especially being a military veteran, customers would open up their door and thank me for my service before I even started.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:59] And then when did kind of the light bulb go off and go, you know what, this could be a franchise.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:03:05] Well, that was my wife’s idea. That was in 2012. Our previous business was a franchise model. We did swing sets, birthday parties, and that failed, but we did have some franchise experience. So it was her idea. She saw the unemployment rate for veterans was around 12% back then and she said, we already know how to franchise. Let’s put something together, put a playbook together and let’s franchise to our our fellow veterans.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:29] And was it that simple? Build it and they will come.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:03:32] You know, a lot of hard work, a lot of marketing dollars had to be spent. I had to raise money with some investors. And finally, in 2014, we were able to really go national.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:43] Like, what were some of the breadcrumbs that gave you clues that this thing had traction and it was going to work?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:03:48] Well, I would haul junk away in. The margins were great and I was able to recycle the items. I was able to donate a lot of the items. So my cost to dump the items were really low. I was keeping everything out of the landfill I could and those customers were calling me back saying, Hey, I have a friend, they want to use you. My church wants to use me, my mom wants to use you, my office wants to use you. Everyone wanted to use our brand because it was a military brand. They wanted to give back to the military. And it was very fortunate for us that this is going on all over the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:19] And then you said, let’s just lean into this and then let’s see where it takes us.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:04:24] Yeah, because when you’re a military veteran, I served in the Army. When you get out, you don’t have any real direction. You get lost. When you’re in the military, you’re consumed with brotherhood and sisterhood and the work ethic that you learn and the things you do together. And the country is missing that. And I noticed that over the last decade that when we open this thing up, people are coming to JAG to buy a franchise so they can hire their brothers and sisters. I mean, the goal for the company is to get the unemployment rate for veterans to under 1%. And we’re finding that when a franchise opens up, that’s what they want to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:00] Now, one of the you educate the listener a little bit about what it’s like when you do leave the military service. I think there’s some misconceptions that they think that, Oh, you’re just on some sort of a path and they’re taking care of you, but it’s kind of they’re cutting the string pretty quickly.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:05:15] They cut it very quickly. They put you through something called TAPS, which is a transitioning program, and they send you on your way. And if you don’t have the right experience when you apply for a job, most human resource people don’t know what your military experience means. They don’t know that you oversaw ten. 30 people or you managed millions of dollars of equipment. They don’t understand your leadership skills. You can’t put it on a resume because they don’t understand it. So I think that the hiring process is a problem from the civilian space.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:43] And then this is where somebody like you can come in and give them a path that makes sense. It aligns with their values, it aligns with their skill set, and it gives them a path out from feeling that sense of being lost or disconnected.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:05:58] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, our motto here is respect, integrity and trust. And we put that to work. When we show up early at the customer’s home, we say, yes, sir, yes, ma’am. You know, the service industry is missing that. And we provide that with our military veterans when they come to work every day. And when the veteran starts opening up in a market, they go crazy. Everyone’s like, I look, I love the veterans. I want to see the trucks. You know, our bulldog is our mascot. And it’s really cool. It’s cool to get a service experience with the civilian people to say Thank you for your military service. I didn’t know that much about the military until I met you. Come into my home.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:32] And then the flip side of that is not every vet thinks of themselves, maybe as a business owner or entrepreneur, by opening their mind to that and kind of opening the mindset to an entrepreneurial lifestyle that really can be a game changer as well.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:06:49] Yeah, the beauty of franchising and the reason we went there is because we can control it. You know, it’s a playbook. It’s one week here at J Dog University. We train you how to pick up the junk, how to clean the floors, what your pricing should be, how to build SEO marketing, how to manage your dollars, your budgets, your pal re review your panels with you so you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself. And the formula works really well because if you get the right veterans in our system, they do follow orders pretty well.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:19] And that’s the key. The right veteran. Right. This isn’t for everybody.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:07:24] It’s not for every veteran. Just like in the real world. Right? There’s veterans out there that just they served and they don’t want to listen to anybody. Well, that’s not that’s not our model. You need to listen to us. You need to follow the playbook. This is not something where you sign on the dotted line and you’re free Willy out there. You need to follow our franchise system. And and that’s why it’s really important we have a process here where you’ve got to go through multiple calls in an in-person interview to be approved for a franchise.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:50] So what are some of the qualities you’re looking for? You mentioned the ability to be coachable. That’s an important component. But also you don’t want the kind of the the free willy or the maverick out there saying, hey, that’s good, what you started. But, you know, I got some my my own ideas over here.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:08:09] Yeah. I mean, the company really has become a brand and you need to really believe in the brand. I mean, the three things we focus on, AJ Dog is to get the unemployment rate under 1%. So we need you to go out there and try to find veterans and hire them. Number two, you need you want to be a business owner. We want to put veterans into business ownership so they can really create real equity value for themselves. And number three, we want to focus on the mental health of veterans and prevent veterans suicide. If you feel those three things are important to you, you’re going to make a very good franchise for us. As far as the other technical things go, we’ve got it all figured out. We know how to take apart computers, we know how to recycle. We’d have stripped wire. We’ve done all those things we’d have had. We’d had to put all that type of stuff together. But it’s really the work ethic is what we’re looking for.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:54] Right? So you’ve got to follow the playbook, but bring your best self and really believe in the mission because that’s at the heart of all of this.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:09:01] Yeah, you have to believe in the mission because again, like I said, there are certain veterans that get out just don’t want to do anything with the military. And that’s not us. We want other companies to see what we’re doing, how we’re hiring veterans, how what effect we have on the community. We people love what we do. They use us all the time. It’s great because we have competition that’s been out there for 30, 40 years and we’re able to go in and take some of that business simply because we have a relationship with that customer.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:29] Now, talk about this partnership you have with Irreverent Warriors.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:09:34] Sure. So irreverent warriors. Basically, what they do is they want to focus on the mental health and preventing veteran suicide with humor. They have these silky hikes that are nationwide and they bring hundreds of veterans together and they just do a simple ten mile march, walk right through all the cities around the country. And it’s fantastic. A lot of the veterans that are really dealing with PTSD and problems and issues, they miss the camaraderie. And when you put some selfies on and you’re marching through the heat or even in the wintertime with your fellow veterans, you get to meet people that you haven’t seen, talk about the military, your experience, and it really gets their mind off of some of the problems they’re dealing with.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:15] And then how did that come about?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:10:18] So I’m heavily involved with the veteran community. I met one of the the vice president there at a Reverend Warriors, and he told me about it. I said, You know what, I’ve got to try this thing. And so I went out and I was actually just got done by. Back surgery, so I couldn’t do the march. So I jumped in the truck and I was a safety vehicle. And my wife and I followed these veterans all around the city of Philadelphia. And I’m watching people coming out of their homes clapping, waving, cheering them on. Just so proud of the service that all these veterans had given. And, you know, we’re missing that in America right now. We’re missing that. These veterans that put their life on the line and went overseas and and did all kinds of things for us, you know, the civilian community doesn’t know much about them. So when you see them out there marching around, having a great time, Tracy and I fell in love with the mission. And our company is is a sponsor and a donor and we’re definitely a fan.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:09] And these events like what is the irreverent mean? Like, how is the fun part kind of part of this?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:11:15] You know, what happens is they get together, they’re in their silks, they sign up and they do a march like you did in the military. If you were in the military, you did these 15 mile road marches and then they do a little bit of bar crawling. They do it hit a couple of restaurants, a couple of bars. They have lunch. And it’s it’s so simple that unless you experience it and you’re a veteran, you really don’t understand it. But we know what the outcome is. The outcome is they make friends. They connect on Facebook and LinkedIn, and they’re a phone call away in case someone needs somebody. So it’s really important.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:50] So they took something that was kind of drudgery in the military and tried to make it fun and relatable because they’ve all all the people in the military have gone through a version of this. But this is kind of a funner version of it.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:12:04] Yeah. You’re almost making fun of ourselves, right? Like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen me on a picture of me, but when I threw Silk is on, it was hysterical. My whole office was laughing, and it’s just something that just gets your mind off reality every day. And a lot of these veterans are suffering more than others. And it’s just another tool. Instead of going to the VA or going on prescription medicine, this is just fun, humor and camaraderie.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:29] Right. But it’s still in the framework of something they’re familiar with from the military.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:12:33] Absolutely. There’s a little bit of cadence that goes on and there’s some singing and it’s really fun.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:40] Well, that’s great that you connected with them and that seems perfectly aligned with your brand.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:12:45] Absolutely. Yep. We’re we’re expecting to do maybe 13 to 15 hikes with them this year. So our fellow franchisees are all around the country are getting involved, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:56] So that that organization is nationwide as well.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:13:00] Correct? Yep. They do over 100 hikes a year.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:05] Wow, that’s great. Now for you, are you looking to continue the expansion in certain regions or is kind of the world your oyster at this point?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:13:13] Oh, we’re we’re growing everywhere. I mean, our plan at J. Dog is to make sure a military veteran that served in every zip code in the country, it belongs to our organization and can buy a franchise even when their towns are maybe ten or 20,000 population in the middle of the country, we have a program that’s a lower tier, very affordable program where you can still haul junk in your community but be part of our bigger mission. So we’re looking at major cities, we’re looking at suburbs and we’re looking at the smallest towns in America. We just want to make sure that if you’re a military veteran, you have a chance to own your own business and reap that reward, you know, of of equity and building a nice life.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:55] And you’re trying to do it pretty much for anybody, no matter how much money they have.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:14:00] Exactly. And we’ve lowered our tier dollar investments for smaller communities. So if you’re in a small community, we have a tier three. If you’re in a big community like a Philadelphia or Pittsburgh or one of those other towns, then then it’s a tier one, but it’s all related to to the amount of business we think you can do in a market.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:19] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the coordinates?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:14:26] Yeah, it’s very simple. It’s a jd.com, JD JD.com. And when you go to that site, you can read all about our foundation. You can you can apply for a job. If you’re a veteran, look into the franchising or you can schedule a service. If you’re just a customer, you can schedule a carpet cleaning service or a junk removal service.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:45] Now, has there been any cases where somebody started as an employee and eventually got their own franchise?

Jerry Flanagan: [00:14:51] Yeah, as a matter of fact, my first employee was was a guy here in my area. He built up four locations and he recently sold those four locations for a substantial amount of money. So he went through the whole process. He was ten years of working in Georgia, built up his market and sold.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:09] So there’s a path for pretty much everybody if you kind of believe in the mission and want to do the work.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:15:15] Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:16] Well, Jerry, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Jerry Flanagan: [00:15:21] Thanks for having.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:21] Me. All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

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