Jacob Lapera, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Brian Helfrich With Summit Coffee

March 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Franchise Marketing Radio

Brian Helfrich With Summit Coffee

00:00 /

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.

Brian Helfrich is the CEO and majority owner of Summit Coffee, which he has led since 2011. Under Brian’s leadership, Summit has expanded from one café in Davidson, North Carolina, to a national coffee and lifestyle brand. Brian is responsible for Summit’s vision, branding, and talent recruitment, and really likes his job.

Brian has a degree in Creative Writing and Theater from Davidson College, is married and has two kids, and can generally be found running every morning in the dark.

Follow Summit Coffee on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Choosing to franchise
Team commitment and experience
Brand standards
Sustainability plays a critical role in your business model
Retail sales

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Welcome to Franchise Marketing Radio, brought to you by Akosombo Comprehensive, high performing marketing solutions for mature and emerging franchise brands to supercharge your franchise marketing. Go to SEO Samba dot com that’s SEO samba dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Franchise Marketing Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show we have Brian Helfrich and he is with Summit Coffee. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Helfrich: [00:00:41] Hey, 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 Summit Coffee.

Brian Helfrich: [00:00:47] Summit Coffee is a coffee roaster and franchisor based in North Carolina. We’ve been around for twenty four years but have had a significant growth phase in the last two or three years. The mirrors are our step into franchising. So functionally, we’re a, you know, a company with a long foundation, but we operate as a startup.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Now talk about the transition from going from not being a franchise to being a franchise. What was the thought process behind that?

Brian Helfrich: [00:01:16] Yeah, it’s a great question and one we get off and I think for a long time and I associated franchising with a stigma of these national chains and impersonal experience. And what I found is that franchising really is the opposite. And I think as stomach coffee started to expand, we are effectiveness was based on how we were able to activate on a local level. And we need to empower local owners and local entrepreneurs to bring some coffee to life in their communities and their neighborhoods, rather than us trying to do it as a corporation across multiple markets.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:50] So now when you decided to do that, what was the hardest part of that transition? Because it’s one thing of having your own people, your own, say your own kind of vision, and then now you’re kind of recruiting other people who have to be of like mind, at least philosophically, like mind financially in order to pull it off. How did you kind of navigate those waters?

Brian Helfrich: [00:02:16] Yeah. So there’s been a lot of challenges, but you know, to answer your question, what is the hardest for us? It was identifying parts of our brand and what we sold, you know, that were scalable, not everything that worked in one or two or three of our locations, which were all corporate owned, are the same over seven locations or 17 locations. And so identifying the core products and the core parts of our brand that we wanted to really lean into as we scaled was the steepest and also the most important learning curve.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] What about identifying the appropriate franchisee? Was that a difficult or was that easier than you imagined?

Brian Helfrich: [00:02:57] It’s been difficult. I mean, you have to learn how to say no, you know, you can’t say yes to everyone who wants to open a summit coffee. And I think it’s tempting, especially as an early franchisor, to say yes to someone who’s prepared to write you a check for the franchise fee. But the reality is the same thing that caused the apprehension to getting into franchising in the first place, which is, gosh, I’m giving my brand to somebody else. You have to use that same filter when you’re selling a franchise, will this person? You know, be nice to work with, and we enter it into it as a partnership, not necessarily a sale. And so it’s, you know, 10 year relationship, a franchise contract that you are entering into. And so you need to be really thoughtful about who you want to be communicating with in some cases on a daily basis for the next 10 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Now at this stage, are you looking for folks that are kind of rolling up their sleeves that are, you know, making coffee and or, you know, actually part and doing the operations of the franchise? Or are you is is this an opportunity for somebody who already has a bunch of maybe food franchises and this is just adding one to their portfolio that’s in the coffee realm?

Brian Helfrich: [00:04:02] No, I would say that we are open to both senators because we have both. I think that our business works well with people who are active investors. We certainly don’t want it to be a passive investment. And so we have a minimum amount of in-person on the ground time that’s required from somebody from the ownership or ownership group. But also, you know, coffee is really great, but the quality of coffee, you know, can be taught. What we’re care more about is business development and marketing and community engagement. And so we try to set up our franchisees to be spending more of their energy focused on those things rather than on making lattes on a busy Saturday morning.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:43] Now are the folks that are coming up to you, like kind of coffee nerds that are like, Oh, this is a dream come true. I love coffee. This is fantastic. And then you’re trying to explain to him, well, the coffee part, you know, I can train you on. But this community ambassador person and this person that immerses themselves in the community really, you know, has to love their town. That’s, you know, maybe they didn’t think they were signing up for that, too.

Brian Helfrich: [00:05:06] Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, we were very thoughtful in how we marketed our franchise, and we are trying to cater toward people that aren’t necessarily coffee nerds, so to speak, because I think we found out early that people who are really particular about how they do coffee are not going to be as inclined to be part of a franchise system. Those are the people that want to have more control over their menu where they’re sourcing their products from. So we found ourselves being more appealing to people who were interested in, you know, getting into entrepreneurship, people that wanted a potential career transition and starting to lay the groundwork with one store and hopefully opening multiple stores. So we are not having much sales conversation at all with people who are real coffee nerds and we have coffee drinkers and people that love coffee. But it’s more about what coffee does and allows, which is connectivity and, you know, happiness and joy.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:02] Now are the people that are attracted to the brand so far are some of them, those folks that were just recently, you know, maybe part of the great resignation where they’re just saying, Hey, you know, life has got to be more than this cubicle. I want to kind of carve my own path here. Or are you finding some of those people raising their hand and saying, Hey, this looks like a great second act for me.

Brian Helfrich: [00:06:24] Yes, that’s exactly right. And you know, people aren’t diving all the way in. We’re in an early stage franchisor, and so they’re not diving in like I’m quitting my career. But I think it’s interesting to time out our move into franchising with the COVID pandemic and the great resignation because we filed our PhD in February of 2020. And obviously, you know, things started shutting down a few days later. And so it has been going in alignment with people who were analyzing how they’re spending their time in life and saying, You know, I love my job or I like my job or my job pays me well, but I want to do something else that I feel like is more fun or has more meaning or has an alternative revenue stream. And so that is sort of how we’ve capitalized and grown during the pandemic.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:14] Now, have you figured out this a challenge for a lot of emerging franchises, kind of how to find the right folks in those local markets that you’re trying to serve? Have you stumbled upon a marketing and sales kind of funnel that works for you?

Brian Helfrich: [00:07:30] You know, we’re doing things pretty organically. We we do most of our work in-house and so we do a lot of digital advertising. We run ads on LinkedIn and in Facebook and those appropriate platforms. We’re doing open houses at our existing cafes. So that’s more the organic advertising we have found, at least for our first, you know, we’ve sold it, we’ve sold 10 franchises and our in the two years. So we’ve been doing this and all of them had at least some vague familiarity with some coffee. And I think that has been helpful, especially so we’re doing direct marketing to our customers through newsletters, in-store signage, some of this more organic stuff, you know, as we scale and try to enter new markets, that’s going to be a different conversation. So we just ramped up digital advertising efforts and are are sort of filtering through all of those new leads that we’re getting right now.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:19] Now, as part of the different revenue streams in a coffee shop, are there. What kind of ways to leverage that national as you expand the the the brand? Is there going to be some way for the local franchisees to kind of leverage those the brand in terms of retail sales?

Brian Helfrich: [00:08:41] Yeah, I mean, I think I understand your question, I mean, what is our what is our national well,

Lee Kantor: [00:08:47] Like, say, I have a store in a market and then I have a customer that, you know, drinks the coffee when they’re there, but they also would love to have it, you know, kind of arrive on their doorstep every month. Am I going to benefit from that? Or is that something that is just the corporate gets the benefit of that?

Brian Helfrich: [00:09:06] You know, the corporate does. So we own, you know, it’s a blessing and a curse. We own the supply chain because we are the coffee importer, roaster and distributor. So any e-commerce business is run through a summer coffee roasting, which is a separate company. We encourage our stores. They all sell the retail coffee in their stores and do a good job with that. And so for people that are in store and have a good experience there, know there’s bags that line the shelves that are delivered weekly that customers can take home with them. And we also do have a grocery that are surrounding our retail stores, too. So from a big overhead perspective, we are trying to build brands in the market and give customers several different ways to interact with some coffee.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:49] Now is it possible if I’m in a local market and I have a customer that wants to private label or white label the coffee, is that a revenue stream for a franchisee?

Brian Helfrich: [00:09:59] It is. And since everything runs through our roasting company, we we run everything through that. But if the franchisee were to set up a relationship with a business or a restaurant or whatever brand, whatever it may be, there is a shared a shared profit system on that.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:17] Now, having, you know, 10 or so franchises out in the wild now, what kind of been a surprise learning for you that, hey, didn’t see that coming?

Brian Helfrich: [00:10:29] Yeah. Like I said early on, I think there’s two things. Like I said first was that what works in one market doesn’t necessarily work in another. At the same time, our our top five selling items are the same across every store. So like our core coffee is super scalable and then there’s varying parts to our operations which change. I think the hardest part has been quality control, and ultimately we ended up hiring somebody into a position a few months ago to really be focused just on that. Which is why I said coffee is not super hard. We do want a pretty consistent product, and that’s something that Starbucks is honestly nailed down is Starbucks are ubiquitous, but also a Starbucks latte tastes pretty similar from one cafe to the next, and we want to make sure that our coffee quality translates from Georgia to North Carolina.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:22] Now, how have you chosen the markets you’re in right now? Is it just been whoever raised their hand, or is it some strategy that target certain parts of the country first and then expand from there?

Brian Helfrich: [00:11:33] Yeah, it’s definitely strategically based. So we are clustering around new markets in North Carolina, and so our approach and expansion will be what we call cluster expansion. And so rather than doing one store here, one store there and also rather than just slowly expanding from where we are, we’re targeting markets that we think our emerging cities and where we can really build a brand. So if they’re under saturated with craft coffee companies, we feel like we can go in there and really be a preferred coffee company for a lot of the locals who live there. So we’re targeting a city like Atlanta, for example. You know, there’s a ton of people that live in Atlanta, and there’s not a lot of ownership in the local craft coffee scene. And so we feel like we can go in there and open five to 10 plus stores and really build a brand that matters there.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:26] And then that way, there are some economies of scale. When you do the marketing, totally.

Brian Helfrich: [00:12:31] There’s bread, so there’s economies of scale of marketing, training, supply chain. All that stuff is important. But yeah, so we’re also doing branding work that, you know, benefits ten stores instead of one store.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:43] Now is there a certain kind of characteristics of a good market you you mentioned kind of up and coming or maybe tech oriented? Or is it college towns or is it, you know, some like what are some of the qualities these clusters have?

Brian Helfrich: [00:12:59] Yeah, I mean, I think young families is our best and most successful demographic. And so, you know, older millennials, younger Gen Xers, I think, are big people that have kids and starting to have kids, and we have success in college towns. But really, that works. And so it’s cities where that has, you know, we’re going into Atlanta, for example, and we’re targeting the several different vibrant suburbs of Atlanta rather than the downtown Atlanta area. And so I think any city where people are moving to and families are popping up in good school districts, you know, are pretty good prerequisites for success. The other thing I would mention is cities that have an affinity for craft food and drinks. So people, cities with good restaurants, scenes or good brewery scenes are usually a good pre-requisite for markets that are going to like some coffee.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:57] Now, has there been a success story you can share that maybe somebody got into this first time franchisee and then have just been knocking that out of the park?

Brian Helfrich: [00:14:07] Yeah, I mean, one of our first groups within a town called Huntersville North Carolina, and it was three friends, three golf buddies who wanted to get into a business together, all have other jobs, but I think saw something on LinkedIn about it, and they had a vague familiarity with Summit. But I didn’t know them personally. And when they went in and they built out a store and sort of recognized that in in and around neighborhoods where they lived, there was a lack of not only craft coffee but also of a community gathering space. And so they opened last summer and from day one have been profitable. And, you know, just lines of people and, you know, single people and young families. And it’s really been a great success story from the first day, which obviously is, you know, always what we hope for, but never what we expect now.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:58] Has the experience changed or are we getting back to some semblance of pre-pandemic experience for the coffee drinker where they would hang out there, do their work? Or is it mostly still come in, get it and leave?

Brian Helfrich: [00:15:15] I think it’s coming back around. I. And I think there are some things, some habits that have changed probably forever, so we one of the things we did early in the pandemic is we built a mobile app to provide convenience and also some sort of safety security for customers who are more concerned about not interacting too long with inside spaces or with other people. So I think that will continue to be popular and grow. And so we’ll continue to put energy and resources into that. But I do think, as we’ve seen in the past, even just the last few weeks and last summer, when it felt like there was some optimism again that people want to get back together, they want to bring their friends together to over coffee or all of our cafes have beer and wine. And I do think that providing a good community space is going to be important. And ultimately, I think if the pandemic had really lasted for four months or six months, their changes would have been more permanent. I think because it’s been two years, I think. It’s given people a really long time to realize what they’re missing in terms of social connectivity, and so people are excited to come and hang out again.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:25] Now is there different models for the store? Like, is there a drive thru model or is it all like in store?

Brian Helfrich: [00:16:32] Yeah. There’s different models we’ve not done drive through yet, but I’d be surprised if we don’t have one in the next couple of years. So we we design every store customizable and so we do not have a one size fits all, which is very different from most franchisors. And it’s definitely more work for us. But we also feel like is more authentic and genuine to the local communities that every summit looks the same. So. And it depends ultimately where we are. So we have one in a high tourist, high pedestrian market that’s a much smaller store where people aren’t going to sit down all day, but they sort of want to be in a place where they can get a cup of coffee and get a great experience and then move on with the rest of their day. And then we have other ones that are more suburban wear, bigger square footage, more patio space, and those are going to be different looking cafés, obviously. So we have a range of what a smart coffee can look like, and I’m sure that we will both hone in on those things, but also continue to expand like through a drive thru model.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:29] So if somebody wants to learn more about the opportunity, what’s the website website?

Brian Helfrich: [00:17:34] Is Summit Coffee franchising good stuff?

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Brian Helfrich: [00:17:45] Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Franchise Marketing Radio.

Karen V. Mills With Mills Law, LLC

March 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Karen V. Mills With Mills Law, LLC

00:00 /

Karen Mills has an electrical engineering degree from Georgia Tech and she is also a registered professional engineer. she worked 4.5 years as an engineer before resigning and attending law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law.

She is the Managing Member of a boutique law firm in Atlanta, GA, Mills Law, LLC, where she specialized in corporate transactional, contracts, and business law. They just celebrated the 11th year anniversary of her law firm.

In addition to having her own law firm, she also has a food products company KVM Enterprises, LLC dba Miss Jenny’s Treats where their product is Simply Divine Pecans, which make for a good treat for yourself and a great gift for others.

She is an Adjunct Professor at Emory University School of Law. she is currently on sabbatical from Emory so that she can focus on creating legal resources and educational training for entrepreneurs and business owners because she knows first-hand that so many of them are in need of such legal resources.

Connect with Karen on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

3 legal pitfalls for business owners and entrepreneurs
Types of attorneys that can impact a business

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 onpay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio and this is going to be a fun one today on the show we have Karen Mills with Mills Law. Welcome, Karen.

Karen Mills: [00:00:35] Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:37] Well, I’m so excited to learn about your practice. Tell us a little bit about Mills law. How are you serving folks?

Karen Mills: [00:00:43] Ok, so. Mills Law LLC is a boutique law firm located here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we specialize in corporate transactional contracts and business law. I like to say we do everything from helping you form the entity to selling the entity and a lot in between and a lot in between the shoes, the contract review, negotiation and drafting.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:03] Well, what’s your backstory? Have you always been interested in law?

Karen Mills: [00:01:07] Well, you know, it’s funny. I always wanted to be an attorney. It was just a ninth grade of high school. But what happened is the summer. After my junior year of high school, I attended a program at Georgia Tech called Mike Minority. Introduction to Engineering fell in love with electrical engineering and Georgia Tech. So I have an electrical engineering degree, worked as an engineer for about four and a half years up in the North Carolina area. And then once I became a registered professional engineer, I quit and went to law school at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:39] Now, after graduating law school, did you join one of these large firms or have you always worked in boutique firms?

Karen Mills: [00:01:47] I actually did join a mid-sized firm on one of the oldest here in Atlanta, and I worked my way up from associate to partner there and then started my own firm with another attorney in 2010 and and realized, really, I laugh out loud, say how tight I am and realize I need to be by myself. So I formed Mills Law Associates at that time in January of 2011. So I have actually just a few weeks ago celebrated my 11th anniversary of my own firm. And I guess I’ve been practicing law now for a little over twenty two years.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:25] Well, congratulations. That’s quite an achievement.

Karen Mills: [00:02:27] Thank you.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:29] Now what? So what attracted you to having your own firm? Like, what are the kind of the four for maybe aspiring attorneys out there? What would be some of the trade offs of having your own firm as opposed to working for, like you said, in a midsize or even with a smaller firm?

Karen Mills: [00:02:48] I laughed. I always joke that once I was left the big firm and was at just me, I said I missed the mailroom. That’s how I missed the mailroom and having the luxury of having that laugh out loud. But no, I always say to folks when talking about being on their own and entrepreneur, you know, the best part of it, it’s just you. The worst part about it is just you. I mean, my thing is if you do not kill, you don’t eat. So a lot of times is that, you know, when you have clients, you’re looking for clients, when you don’t have clients, you’re looking for clients. So you’re always looking for clients, right? But you know, I guess with the big firm, of course, you have a lot more departments there and a lot more collaborative collaboration between the various departments. Now I do have collaboration now as a solo practitioner, but I team up with other solo and small firm as needed because it’s quite a few of us who have been partners at mid to large sized firms and now we have our own practice or a small practice.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:56] Now is there any advice you can share for entrepreneurs or maybe solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, small business owners when it comes to kind of legal issues that maybe they’re not paying as much attention to as they should?

Karen Mills: [00:04:13] Yeah, a few things, there’s some of these little pitfalls that I constantly see out here, one of the things that I often see and even when I’m doing my presentations, is incomplete corporate records and a lot of times one of the things I ask is what is a corporate board? And I added that to a lot of my presentations because there was someone that I knew well who worked in supplier development at a Fortune 500 company. And of course, you know, being a Fortune 500 company, people of course, want to do business with them. And they stated that when they were sitting across the table from various individuals and they would say a term like corporate. And those individuals looked like a deer in headlights. They were like, OK and what she stated she wanted to say. But what she didn’t know was that if you don’t understand the term like corporate minute book is not likely, you would get a contract at that kind of company, a Fortune 500 company. So when she told me that this was years ago, I try to make it an effort to when I’m doing presentations to ask whether people actually have a corporate minute book. And, you know, it’s just basically the official written record. You know that it’s going to contain all of the governing documentation, as well as the documented approval of various transactions of the owners and offices of the entity.

Karen Mills: [00:05:30] And a lot of times, people, you know, because we’re good at forming a lot of our entities online ourselves. So we’re, you know, we’ll do the name reservation with the secretary of State. We’ll file the articles of organization. If we’re limited liability company, we’ll file the articles of incorporation if we’re a corporation and typically that may be where we stop. Well, we also need if we’re a limited liability company, let’s make sure we have an operating agreement. We also want to make sure that we have, if you often ask prove to me, you’re the owner of the company when I’m presentations and people pull out business cards and I’m like, Look, I can go to say, get a business card that says, no, nothing like that doesn’t prove it. Show me the ownership at your equity ownership certificate. Whether it’s a limited liability company, you have your unit certificate or your member certificate. If you are a corporation, you’re going to have a share certificate or a stock certificate. And those are the kinds of things, of course, that you’ll find in the corporate minute book. You’ll find the consents where you are approving, authorizing even from the formation of the entity or various purchases, especially significant purchases that may be there. And you also have the corporate seal. You know, oftentimes if we are executing real estate related documents or maybe some bank financing documents and on that signature block there, in addition to the, you know, name printed by all of that information, they may have S.E.A.L.

Karen Mills: [00:06:50] Which of course, they want you to embossed the corporate seal. So that also comes in the corporate minute book. And so, you know, and you can google it and see know. But I want to make sure when I tell people that they can Google and find corporate minute book, make sure that you know what you’re doing to be able to prepare the documentation properly because things have to make sure they are in alignment so that when you have your corporate minute book and often the information that’s in it, you may need it for certification. You may be applying for certification as a minority owned business, a woman owned business or a disadvantaged business enterprise. You might even somebody may want to invest in your company, and they may be asking for that documentation. And what you don’t want to happen is when they request the contents of it, you’re telling them, hold on, you know, give me about a month and I can get that to you because that wouldn’t look well ahead for at all. So you want to make sure that you’re keeping up with that kind of information initially so that you don’t have to try to recreate the wheel when you have those investors or someone may want to purchase your company or you’re trying to apply for various certifications.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:01] Now, do you find that most small, even mid-sized companies, they don’t. They’re kind of underrepresented that they’re not leaning on the advice of attorneys enough, especially, you know, you want to get some of these your ducks in a row right from the beginning, so you don’t have any surprises later on because at some point most people want to sell their business. They want to, you know, get partners, get loans, get money, get certified for a variety of different things. And if you don’t do some of this foundational stuff right at the beginning, it can really hurt you later on.

Karen Mills: [00:08:36] That’s exactly right, we see it often. You know, and I like I explained early, I do corporate transactional contracts and business also strictly transactional work. I hate to see it when I have potential clients come to me who’ve already entered into a contract, and either they’re not getting paid or something else is wrong. And at that point, all I can do is refer them to a litigator. And I mean, they’re the ones that are going into court. They’re doing all this and it’s like, you know, it’s costly and you just want to tell them, you know, Oh, if you only come to me on the front end, maybe once I reviewed that contract, I could have told you that it was one where you don’t get paid unless maybe the prime contractor gets paid. And so, you know, you signed off on that. I’m like, Did you pay attention to that when you initially reviewed the contract? And a lot of times it’s like, Well, you know, I looked for the payment provision and sold it, and they told me it was going to be a two year contract. So I look for the term and it’s like, you can’t just look at those things while they are key provisions are very important. Every single word in a contract count. So you have to take time to review it or you have somebody to review it. And oftentimes what I’m finding is that people are often intimidated by attorneys. They, of course, sometimes it may be cost prohibitive as they think, because of course, sometimes they don’t see the value in our services, sometimes until after the fact. And you know, sometimes you know, like, I was selling a couple of potential clients yesterday, you know, a lot of us who are small and solo practitioners, we’re small businesses too. So we understand about small business ownership and entrepreneurship. So we are sensitive to that. And then often when we see people who are trying to do things the right way, sometimes you’d be amazed at how people will work with you regarding certain things.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:31] Now, in addition to being an attorney, you’re also an entrepreneur. Can you talk a little bit about your food products adventure?

Karen Mills: [00:10:40] Yeah, so I laughed. It’s CVM Enterprises LLC doing business as Miss Treats as a play off of my late mother’s name. Her name was Jeanette and it’s Miss Janice treats. And so when I was an associate at the firm years ago at holiday season, my sister had given me a recipe for spicy scones. I made those and bored people went crazy over them and they were like, Oh, you need to make these all the time. I was like, Are you kidding me? I’m like, I am barely able to keep up with my legal hours. You think I want to do this on a regular? We’ll fast forward 15 years later, I said, You know what? Let me try and see if anybody would really want to buy these things. So I’m originally born and raised in Macon, Georgia, so I went to a flea market down there. This was in December of twenty fifteen, and I said, You know what? Let me see if anybody would want to buy these. So I ended up engaging a graphic designer to make a pecan with eyelashes and boots. That was hilarious, and that was a get a little, got some mason jars and, you know, Miss Jenny Spice becomes and I learned a couple of things. One. It’s funny because when I was trying to give them to people to taste this, they were like, Are they hot? I’m like, Hot. No, they sugar cinnamon mix. But I was like, OK, the name spice becomes OK, so I said, I’m going to have to change the name. And then I realized that people did want to purchase them. So I said, for twenty sixteen, I’m going to launch a website and I’m going to change the name. So now they’re mischin these treats simply divine pecans.

Karen Mills: [00:12:03] I have a website and we actually celebrated the fifth year anniversary last year, so we’re getting ready to approach the sixth anniversary soon. And I say, look, they came about because I was making them for gifts for colleagues and clients. So I make them, you know, I make them now, of course, commercial kitchen doing all of that. But I said they make great gifts because that’s what they were intended for initially. So I get, you know, holiday season is extremely busy with making those gifts. And I I love it. I get so many stories about when they are received as gifts. I remember one consultant. He had sent quite a few out to various clients, and he said one client called him about two or three times afterwards. And then he called me. He was like, What did you put in there? Did you put something in addition to that one? 10? I was like, No. He said, this lady has called me three times about Typekit. I said, Well, what? You have to look at it that with that being is you just got three touch points that you could talk to their client about something. So I was like, So I love it. The stories that I get every single year about people loving the taste of them and they just, you know, laugh out loud if they have some folks who like, you know, you’re going to cause us to get divorced because I got home one day and there were no pecans left and I’m considering it, I think I might need to divorce him for trying to leave me without any pecan. So it’s just so many stories around here. But like I say, they make great gifts for others or good treat for yourself.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:34] So any advice for that as. Hiring a person who has maybe a family recipe that in the back of their head, they said, You know what, maybe I could make a go of this. What would be some, some things they can do to take action to see if it’s viable or not? Because, you know, some of these things, you know, might taste good to your family, but to the public, it may not be as wonderful.

Karen Mills: [00:13:56] Exactly, and I would suggest doing something like I did where you’re like, you know what? You can go down to a flea market where you just pay a booth rent and see whether people are receptive to them. And once I realize that others were receptive, I was like, You know what? This seems like it may be a good idea commercially. So, you know, do that taste testing and see if somebody wants to want your product and then, you know, go full speed ahead as far as making sure you know you’re going to have a website. You know, engage somebody or get some ideas regarding marketing and then don’t let anybody. I laugh because, you know, I say it’s not rocket science. The recipe, right? And I’m like, but a lot of times people are paying for the convenience. I’ll get people to say, Oh, I make these becomes. But you know what? I love it because you’re making them. You know, that means I don’t have the headache of it. So you know, you have to realize one thing I’ve learned over the years, they said people pay for answers, they don’t pay for problems. So if you can be an answer to someone, go full speed ahead. And my attitude is I want to die empty. So any gift and talent that I have, I’m going to use it. So when folks see me selling the pecans and I’m practicing law and I was, you know, an engineer and then an educator because I’ve also been an adjunct professor at Emory Law School teaching contract drafting. I’m like, Look, any gift and talent I have, I’m going to use it. Don’t feel like that. You have to stay in one particular position or a silo. Use them all, use your gifts and talents.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:26] Now, now getting back to your law firm is the do you have an ideal kind of profile of a client or do you do you do you work with certain types of entities?

Karen Mills: [00:15:39] No, you know, I have a wide variety, I have Fortune 500 companies where I assist their in-house, they have huge in-house legal departments. I do that and then I also assist the individual, the ones who are just starting out, who has no idea about starting a business so that sometimes they’re just relying on me regarding, you know, like what should I do now? So it’s a variety. And you know, of course, I only have so much time to be able to serve everyone. But, you know, I always laugh, I joke. Sometimes I’m like folks who need legal services and can pay for them, not in order, but an inch. But, but I have a wide variety, and I think what happens a lot of times is people sometimes don’t understand the the different practice areas that can actually impact their business. I’ll get someone to say, Karen, I’m about to buy a building or purchase some land. I was like, OK, I need to get you to commercial real estate attorney or I have some some issues related to copyright trademark need to get you to an intellectual property attorney. You tell me, OK, Karen, I think I might have some. Some folks that are in this are interested in investing in my business. Well, I want to make sure to get you to a securities attorney. So there are so many different kinds of practice areas that can impact the business. And what you want to do is get someone to me that’s practicing in that particular area day in, day out because to me, they’re going to be cost effective and then they definitely know what they’re talking about.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:09] So now on your website, do you have resources for folks that maybe they’re not ready or maybe they can’t afford to hire you today? But are there resources there for them to maybe just learn a little bit so they can at least get some baby steps or foundational information so they’re off in the right direction on the right foot?

Karen Mills: [00:17:32] I do. If you go to my website is Mills Law LLC. That’s Emil’s L.A. LLC. You go to the legal learning page and you’ll see I have some free webinars there that talks about pitfalls. I have some paid webinars, and I even just coauthored a legal resource guide workbook with Antoinette Ball from the organization Women’s Entrepreneurial Opportunity Project. And it is entitled Avoiding Business Conflicts. Avoiding Business Conflicts is five important contracts and legal documents for entrepreneurs and business owners. And how it came about is because, you know, they their organization is a nonprofit organization we offer and they help female business owners. But we also they also have male members as well. And and then for me and my practice area of just seeing day in, day out some of these pitfalls, what we were trying to do is create a resource because like when I do those presentations, you know, people aren’t going to what they don’t know in front of people. So it’s like, you know what? And they know they don’t know what. They’re afraid to ask questions. So if this kind of workbook can be used in the comfort of their home or the comfort of their office, where they are getting samples of certain documents, and so what happens is it’s kind of takes you on a journey. It’s a small business owner of a tech company who meets somebody at a chamber and realizes that they I think they may be an angel investor and they want to share some information with them.

Karen Mills: [00:19:04] They realize, say, I need a non-disclosure confidentiality agreement, so that’s the first agreement in there. Then they realize that you have someone that needs to come in to service their computers, but they don’t have a services agreement. So the next agreement is a services agreement. Then they realize, you know what? I have too much work for me to handle, but I and I can’t afford an employee, but maybe I can engage an independent contractor. So we have an independent contract agreement in there. Then they’re at the point when they’re ready and able to hire an employee and sustain an employee. So we have an employment offer letter. And then the final. The fifth agreement that we have a sample of in there is that they are ready to team with others as individuals or as an entity to respond to a request for proposal. So we have a teaming agreement to respond to request for proposal. So those are the five documents that we have in there. We have samples of them in there. We actually have information that describes key provisions in there. We have work sheets in there that will help you determine whether that particular agreement is appropriate for you at this time.

Karen Mills: [00:20:12] And then we also have some legal ease and then where we make it to where it can be, where a layperson can understand some of these legal terms. And and the goal was to be able to create affordable, quality resources because you could pull every form that I mentioned. You could pull it online somewhere. But the key is, are you going to understand those key provisions? And so what I also have done on that website as well on my website, you will see that I have and they’ll be starting next month. We’re going to be doing webinars that will go over a couple of those chapters. So it’s going to be three webinars, one during the intro in the first chapter. Second webinar is the third and fourth chapter in there as well. And then the last one we’ll have that will go over that final chapters as well. So, you know, we’re just trying to making those going to be probably about 30 minute webinars, but just trying to give you some overall general information because what we’re trying to do is empower you, equip you OK, as well as educate you. And that’s what we’re trying to do for the entrepreneurs and business owners.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:24] Well, congratulations on all the success. You’re just doing so much good work and so many areas. It just must be so rewarding for you to attack each day.

Karen Mills: [00:21:38] Thank you, thank you so much, and I greatly appreciate this opportunity because just trying to make sure that people are aware of this information. I think that makes all the world of difference because sometimes you know, we perish because of the lack of knowledge. And if we can just educate some of these entrepreneurs and business owners, I think it will help build them, build their legal foundation and then help them in being sustainable and help them with their growth as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:06] And then can you share the websites one more time, the law firm and and the pecan treats as well?

Karen Mills: [00:22:14] Ok, thank you. Ok, so the law firm website is Mills Law LLC. So am I. Ls La LLC. And then for the Food Products Company, which is CBRM Enterprises LLC doing business as misogynist treats, it’s Miss Jenny’s treats dot com. That’s M ISG and NYS TR S.A.T.s dot com. So it’s Miss Jenny’s treats dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:44] Well, Karen, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Karen Mills: [00:22:49] Thank you so much for having me and just let me know if I can provide any additional information.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:55] You got it. All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll sell next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Ken Robbins With Response Mine Interactive

March 4, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Ken Robbins With Response Mine Interactive

00:00 /

RMI CEO & Founder Ken Robbins got his start in business when he dropped out of Georgia Tech and earned his real estate license. He began knocking on doors—sometimes 150/day— and became the youngest board-certified multi-million dollar producer at age 24. The man behind one of those doors was a veteran ad agency owner who recruited Ken out of real estate to start a new initiative at his then agency, BKV, and eventually backed him, founding RMI in 2001.

In 2009, Ken realized that the agency was suffering a mid-life crisis. RMI lost a major account, some valuable talent was leaving for greener pastures, internal politics were increasing, and quality was decreasing. Something had to change. That’s when Ken found a group of CEOs called The Brain Trust and mentors- Tom Cramer and Bill Schwarz. Through their advice and counsel and using the concepts of Systems Thinking, Ken and his team transformed RMI to focus on competitive advantage, leverage points, self-disclosure, employee self-management, and deep Trusted Advisor client service.

Ken has been featured in articles in Inventor’s Digest, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Strategic Healthcare Marketing. Ken has also been a featured contributor to the best-selling books, Socialnomics and The Digital Leader and is an avid Keynote Speaker and business podcast guest.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Biggest issues with transitioning to a remote workforce
Big mistake in business
Marketing the next 24-36 months out

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor onpay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the Atlanta Business Radio. We have an old friend, Ken Robbins, with Response Mine Interactive. Welcome, Ken.

Ken Robbins: [00:00:43] Thank you. Thanks. Glad to be

Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Here. Well, I’m excited to catch up with you. For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit about response. Mind interactive. How are you serving, folks?

Ken Robbins: [00:00:53] Well, we’re a digital agency, we’re based here in Atlanta, but we have a lot of national clients and we do many of the things you’d recognize search SEO and some of the things that maybe aren’t aren’t as common, which are more complex data analytics. And we launched a call center since the last time you and I spoke and have over 100 employees now taken doing telesales.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:19] So now how has it been? You’ve kind of been along for the ride for this whole technology wave. Probably the beginning of the internet, right? Your firm started at the beginning of the internet.

Ken Robbins: [00:01:34] Just about 2001, so we’ve been in business 20 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:38] So how has how have you seen it kind of evolve in the Atlanta area? Have we been pretty good or have we been ahead? Have we been kind of fast followers? How do you kind of see the trends in digital marketing coming out of Atlanta?

Ken Robbins: [00:01:53] Well, I’m afraid the word is out that Atlanta is and has been a hotbed of technology of internet innovation and execution of marketing since the beginning, I mean, you know, there’s lots of venture capital here. There is lots of M&A occurring here and there’s lots of incubators here. So it’s we’re on the cutting edge. I think that, you know, it used to be like, we’d like to have a little Silicon Valley here in Atlanta. I think Silicon Valley would like to have a little bit of Atlanta in it.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:30] Now what? Why do you think that Atlanta was able to blossom into this kind of tech hub that we are now and attract the venture capital, attract kind of these mega companies? What what was unique about Atlanta that allowed it to kind of really blossom?

Ken Robbins: [00:02:47] You know, I I don’t if I were going to surmise, I mean, I’m sure there’s a panoply of reasons. But it certainly the the fact that Atlanta is a transportation hub. The fact that there is a low cost of living generally compared to other parts of the country, you know, probably half the cost of living that it is in California and a 20 or 30 percent discount from New York and Chicago and other sort of. Major metros the whole south has been on fire with growth for the last 30 years. We have no natural boundaries, so there’s great housing environment and I think all those are attractants. And then as much as I, I, I I try to discount this, I think that it’s a very friendly business environment, tax environment, and those things have all conspired to form a recipe of let’s take a look at Atlanta for building Verizon’s headquarters. Let’s take a look at Atlanta for building these headquarters. And that’s been a huge attraction. You only need a few in terms of technology. You only a few companies that are technology leaders, and they bring in engineers that attract more talent and b and that sort of lays a fertile ground. The fact that Georgia Tech is here in Atlanta is certainly an artesian well of talent and thinking and forethought. So all those things together.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:28] Now, how does that come into play when you’re talking about employees now that it seems like employees aren’t really tied to a physical office as much as they were in the past? So all those things are great. But now, if a person can live anywhere in the world, how do you kind of take advantage of the fact that you can now be looking at talent from everywhere in the world? But on the flip side, it’s hard to have everybody in the world kind of absorb your culture and absorb kind of the the secret sauce that makes your firm, you know, different and unique from others.

Ken Robbins: [00:05:05] I’m going to tell you right now this is the thing that keeps me up at night. It’s absolutely the thing that keeps me up at night. We now have employees in 20 states. And since the beginning of the pandemic, we, you know, we exited in March of 2020, like a lot of people did on what we thought was a temporary basis. We had 85 employees and now we have over two hundred in just two years. And but while while for us, the advantage is we can recruit in other other states, other parts of the country. So can everyone else. And this year, since the beginning of the year, I’ve lost three employees to companies in California. And the reason is because in California, they’re accustomed to paying a higher base salary. Now they’re familiar with remote and more comfortable with it. And so, you know, I’m subject to the same poaching now at a greater scale across the country. But I think your question was, how do you how do you how do you continue the culture? And that is really the thing. The recruiting is we’re all we all are, are sort of live under the same forces of recruiting in our industries. But the culture is really a hard thing, and I’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of time trying to figure this out and try to get it right, and I recognized probably a few months into going fully remote that it’s there are there are certain environmental impact benefits to being inside of an office that you literally can’t duplicate the the organic coaching and consulting that happens before a meeting and after a meeting doesn’t really occur.

Ken Robbins: [00:06:58] Now the water cooler talk the Hey, let’s go get lunch together. Those things are really dampened or eliminated altogether when you’ve got employees spread out across the nation. So you have to compensate for that and you’ve got to be more intentional about employee recognition, employee outreach. For example, you know, on my task list, I am have set a goal for myself, and many of my executives have done the same, something similar. I call 50 employees that are not on the executive team every single quarter. I just go down the phone list and like, Who do I need to talk to? Who haven’t I spoken to in a while and I call them out of the blue and ask, How how’s it going? What’s going on with the family? How’s the house? And what are you working on these days? What’s what are the things that you would like to see? And have you had a chance to go meet with anybody that’s near you if you’re down in Florida, we’ve got several employees in Florida, go get lunch with them. We’ve tried to expand a lot of outreach like that. So I think you can have a great remote working culture. Many people do it, but there has to be a plan and a design around it. Does that make sense?

Lee Kantor: [00:08:14] Yeah, I think it has to be intentional, like you’re saying, and it’s funny because I know that you personally are an experience junkie. I know you like to do stuff that’s maybe a little unusual to other people, but you really like to kind of wring life out, you know, the joy out of life. And I think that that’s part of the culture that cultural advantage that you might have is that you like that to permeate your your business as well, like you’re saying to to schedule and block time to connect as human beings with your employees, that it sounds like common sense, but not everybody is willing to do that. A lot of people, a lot of leaders kind of sit back in this ivory tower and then, you know, have this great vision of how things should be and then send the minions to work. But it sounds like you’re really putting an effort to be intentional and to connect and to really create that human to human bond, that human to human experience that elevates you and your firm. And that’s probably helped you over the years. You know, keep clients because I know you have clients that have been around forever and that you have employees that have been around forever. So I think that that’s what separates kind of the top performing firms, the ones that, you know, take the time to put in an effort like that.

Ken Robbins: [00:09:33] Well, I I I agree, you know, it’s easy to make money, it’s easy to have a job. What’s harder is to is to commit to no one, especially in a remote environment, continuing the interpersonal relationships with people which often develop an office environment. And the second thing is, you know, for years, there’s been a lot of talk about Work-Life Balance. Since the dawn of the BlackBerry, at least in my personal experience, that’s what I observed. There’s been this overlap and often interference between work life balance because you could get emails at home and now you get everything at home because you’re working remote, the whole office just pours into your life or can 24-7. So I think one of the things we’re really trying to think about and we’re struggling to get right because employees, you know, they have a sense of duty. We’re struggling to get right, which is getting people disconnected. Get offline, take some time away, go on vacation, put an out of office notice up. I think that’s probably the forefront of one of the issues we’re trying to address right now because we don’t want to overwork employees and we don’t want to burn people out. That just makes them harder to retain, and it’s not fun for anyone.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:05] Now, can you talk a little bit about you’re an independent digital agency and you’ve been recognized as one of the top ones for a long time? Why was it important to kind of stay independent?

Ken Robbins: [00:11:20] I think that, you know, anybody in the digital ad agency business over a couple of million in revenues, and certainly we have a lot more than that. We’re probably this year we’re probably trending for $20 million in revenues. Any anybody of any size, there’s been role up after roll up. They come in waves. It happened in the mid-2000s and it happened around 10 in 2012. And then it’s been sort of a steady drip of of M&A activity and roll ups of digital agencies. And why? Because the internet’s been growing. I mean, the last two years has been another booster shot. It’s like lighter fluid on the plane of digital activity, digital delivery, digital marketing. So certainly the pull has been there. But for me, I’m 58, and I got to be honest with you, I am still having an incredible amount of fun. I love the people I work with, have a fantastic executive team and I mean, I don’t want to come across, you know, sounding pollyannaish, but I get up in the morning with. I, you know, 10 new ideas. The problem for me is not calling everyone saying, Hey, let’s try this. What about this? Have you thought about that and sort of letting people get the work done and not interfering with them with with too much volatility in new ideas? Let me give you an example. So we started out as. As a digital ad agency serving clients, and we still do that, we have fantastic national level clients, many of them publicly traded. But a few years ago we added a call center and that call center has exploded with growth. That’s a whole new business unto itself. And so that that newness is exciting and it’s it’s, you know, I don’t I don’t want to liquidate. I’m not really looking for an equity event and none of my my investors are and you know, I’m still having a lot of fun now.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:31] How do you see kind of the the landscape in the next year or so now that we’re coming out of the pandemic? Now you have. I mean, every day is a new adventure. Now you have, you know, a war in the Russia, Ukraine. I mean, there’s so much chaos in the world. How do you see kind of American marketing? Are you seeing that? Are you still bullish on that despite the chaos?

Ken Robbins: [00:13:58] Um, certainly I am, I’m unfortunately, I’m an optimist. Any downturns, I always have a sense they’re going to turn around, they’re going to turn around pretty quickly. I mean, you know, in terms of the entire economy, I wouldn’t ever be so presumptuous as to predict what’s going to happen. It seems like we had a really good run from the stock market standpoint, from economic activity standpoint. We’ve got a number of headwinds right now. We’re probably due for some, for some type of recession coming up. The headwinds of staffing that many, many and probably most companies are facing. I mean, I have friends that own restaurants and all of them used to be open seven days a week, and all of them have some type of limit in hours now because they can’t find the staff so that that staffing constraint probably is a bigger headwind than what’s going on over in, you know, on the other side of the world. Not that we shouldn’t pay attention and be mindful of what’s happening in the world. I just don’t think it has that great of an impact, right? This moment on economic activity and business activity. Here’s what I do think this is probably a more seminal event in the recent recent years. There are millions of people who didn’t realize how how flip and easy it is to get your groceries delivered, aisle flip and how easy it is to work from home. We as a company had no idea that it would be easy to attract, retain, train, equip and work and collaborate on a remote basis. None of my executive team wants to go back to full time in the office.

Ken Robbins: [00:15:50] They want it to be completely optional on a per meeting basis. I think the work from home and the delivery economy are going to be massive drivers of change over the next five years and probably the next decade. So what does that mean? More Home Office, more more investment in a person’s home and their environment? I never really had an office at home, but right now I’m speaking to you from a fully equipped bedroom that’s now set up as as as a home office with lights, camera, action screens and even a whiteboard attached to the wall. There’s going to be more investment in maybe outdoor living and things like that. I’d like to spend a lot of time out outside, so that’s my retreat, leaving the office inside and going outside and getting on phone calls. But I think the. The work from home environment will will is naturally automatically already changing the nature of the labor force and then the delivery economy is has exploded on the scene. Even though a lot of the major firms aren’t necessarily turning a profit yet, it is the consumers who realize, holy cow, it’s so easy. I I don’t have to go battle the grocery store after work. I can have stuff delivered at 10 a.m. because I’m at home and I can have somebody deliver, deliver my groceries at home. So I think we’re moving into a greater level of convenience and home life and home centric living. Then we we had ever, probably in the history of the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:38] Now how about share a little advice since you are expert in digital marketing? Any digital marketing advice for that entrepreneur that’s out there listening that just, you know, wants to kind of do it themselves? And maybe they’re not ready for an agency like yours, but they want some low hanging fruit that any entrepreneur or solopreneur somebody out there that’s kind of going out on their own that maybe they can take advantage of that. Maybe they’re not.

Ken Robbins: [00:18:09] Well, I think the easy the absolute easiest thing is to. Focus on customer experience and customer service. So your marketing will get done organically without any effort. It will get done on Google reviews and on Yelp reviews and and each of the major review platforms and on Facebook and and such so that marketing occurs based upon the customer’s experience. I’ve got to write up a review for a restaurant I went to. I went to one of Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen restaurants this past weekend in Nevada and my experience was different than what I expected. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to don’t want to know spoilers. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. No spoilers, but it was different than what I expected for a celebrity chef. And so, you know, I’m personally committed to writing up a review. I kept the receipt of everything that we ate, so I could remember all the different entrees. And that’ll cue into what people said about about what they thought about their entree and the service that we got. So that in itself is some of the most powerful marketing that’s going on. It literally is it is broadcast word of mouth. That’s what these review elements are on Google, Yelp and Facebook and such. So that’s probably the first thing if you don’t get that right. It doesn’t matter if you have a $10000 a month or one hundred thousand a month marketing budget, it’s going to be hard to overcome getting that wrong. So that’s the first thing I would say give good service.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:52] Yeah, and that’s something that a lot of people, they’re not they don’t take enough time kind of investing in. They think that it’s easier to invest in ads than it is to invest in their own people and just kind of jazz hands up their own experience in their own store, restaurant, whatever it might be. And I think that’s a missed opportunity. I think you’re exactly right.

Ken Robbins: [00:20:15] Yeah. Leigh, I think there’s a second thing that people can do, and that is. Every single one of us can become a journalist for our own business. Got an iPhone, you got a camera, you’ve got a video recorder in your pocket and you can post to the internet. So setting up an Instagram account, setting up a Facebook account. Shooting videos and and taking pictures of customers. User experience your employees. Your process. So if you own a restaurant, don’t just put up pictures of the menu items that are your you know or shot professionally. Put up pictures of people eating in a restaurant, put up pictures of conversations that are having those. Shoot some video footage of your staff making drinks and and cooking food back in the kitchen or taking deliveries. That then becomes an interesting story, and it draws in your user base that that type of content development is so easy it doesn’t require any money. All these things are free, and most entrepreneurs just miss that. I don’t even care if you if you own an insurance agency, think about that an insurance agency can be boring. That’s not true at all. It’s it can be made exciting. What if you’re on the phone and you’re trying to give a quote on on some commercial building that’s in a hurricane zone? There’s a story there that’s actually quite fascinating about the fact that it costs so much more and it’s more difficult to insure something in down in Florida. Does that make sense? So, so there’s a whole world of organic opportunity and marketing that I think that many businesses miss.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:00] Yeah, I think they take for granted what they know and what they’re doing, and they think because they do it every day. It’s not anything interesting to anybody else, but I think that people are hungry for that kind of behind the scenes, what what it’s really like experience. Yeah. Yeah. Now, can you share a story of maybe somebody one of your clients or somebody you don’t have to name the name, but somebody that maybe was struggling, maybe they plateaued and then you got involved, your firm got involved and you helped take them to a new level. Maybe they didn’t even imagine they could get to.

Ken Robbins: [00:22:37] Oh, sure, I mean, you know, there’s there’s there are lots of specialists in the world of marketing advertising, there are people who specialize in just PR and and people who specialize in just branding or maybe TV agencies, et cetera. Obviously, we’re we’re primarily a digital marketing firm. But I think that the best type of client that comes to us is one that’s struggling with a math problem. And that math problem always revolves around my cost per sale or my cost per new customer is getting excessive. Maybe I was buying keywords at 30 cents a click, and now they’re three dollars a click. And so it’s too expensive for me to do my marketing now or I can’t seem to grow. You know, I spent a million dollars in marketing and now I try to spend $2 million and I just don’t get the same bang for the buck. So those are typically the types of clients that come to us and the types of problems that that that we solve. So an example of this is a few years ago we took on a we took on a medical practice called Laser Spine Institute based out of Florida.

Ken Robbins: [00:23:51] Now, Laser Spine Institute had a math problem. It was costing them seven or $8000 to acquire a new patient, and they were only getting a couple of thousand of them a month. That is the perfect type of client for us. So because we can always find ways to make that more efficient. Two years after we happened as a client, they were getting six and 7000 patients a month at a cost per new patient under $3000. So the marketing cost of acquiring a new patient was half of what it was, and they were getting more than double the amount of new patients per month, which is a great, great, great story for us. You know, it’s a lot of kudos to the staff, a lot of hard work trying to figure out how to better track, how to find the pockets of new patient opportunities, how to test ad copy and things like that. And you know, I’m doing a little bit of bragging now on the teams. But you know, it’s their hard work that really and problem solving and tracking tracking the heck out of everything that leads to that type of success.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:01] Good stuff. Well, if somebody wants to learn more about the firm and maybe get on your calendar or somebody on the team’s calendar, what’s the best way to do that? What’s the website?

Ken Robbins: [00:25:12] Well, they can come to response or response mine digital. Either those two good sites will get you to get you to us and get you to me and, you know, be happy to have a conversation.

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

Ken Robbins: [00:25:31] Leon, thank you. Have a great day, man.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:32] All right, this is Lee Kantor, we’ll see you next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

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Kevin Monroe With X Factor Consulting

March 1, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Woodstock Proud

Kevin Monroe With X Factor Consulting

00:00 /

From the time Kevin Monroe was a teenager, he’s been on a quest to make the world a better place. That desire has prompted a variety of professional endeavors leading to launching X Factor Consulting in 2005.

He discovered the Power of Gratitude almost four years ago now, while in a dark place and difficult season of life. Little did he know then, that his embracing gratitude would be the spark that would fuel a movement to grow gratitude globally.

Kevin is known for helping people explore, express, and experience gratitude and believes gratitude is the gateway to abundance and that gratitude is an essential skill for the beyond-COVID world that is emerging.

Connect with Kevin on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. This is Woodstock proud, spotlighting the individuals, businesses and organizations that make Woodstock one of the premiere destinations in metro Atlanta to live, work and play. Now, here’s your host.

Jim Bulger: [00:00:28] Hello, and welcome back once again to Woodstock, proud here on Business RadioX, where we spotlight and we celebrate some of the individuals that are making a difference in our community. I’m your host, Jim Bulger. Now today, I’m thrilled to give you a chance to get better acquainted with one of the most authentically happy people I’ve ever met. Kevin Monroe is the founder of X Factor Consulting here in Woodstock, a company that is changing both individuals and organizations through an intentional focus on gratitude. And as I’ve personally experienced, as I think you’re going to hear as we talk, Kevin is one of those people that has a unique gift that every time you talk to him, you feel inspired. You always walk away thinking deep thoughts about what he said, but you always feel a little bit better about the world around you too. So Kevin, welcome to Woodstock. Proud.

Kevin Monroe: [00:01:31] And no pressure. No pressure.

Jim Bulger: [00:01:34] No, that’s true. So there’s so much I want to touch on and we’ll go into a lot of detail later. But for those who maybe aren’t all that acquainted with you, let’s start with a brief overall description of X Factor consulting and the work you’re doing.

Kevin Monroe: [00:01:52] All right, so Jim, the way I first off, welcome listening. You’re listening today. I want to say welcome. Thanks. You have a lot of choices of where you listen. And so the fact that you’re listening to us says something about you says something great about you. Wow. The way I I say, I’ve had a lot of interesting, a lot of audacious sounding titles through the years, the ones that mean most to me now are husband, father, papa. That’s what my grandkids call me, papa, friend and Jim. Over the last three and a half years, I’ve picked up this other title that I actually kind of learned to love. Now that’s gratitude guide. So I love the way I say it. From the time I was 13, 14 years old, I’ve known I wanted to make the world a better place. I often think it has something to do. I grew up not that far from here, a couple hours down the road in Perry, Georgia, small town, Georgia. The Coca-Cola commercial, maybe that was what influenced me, remember the people on the hill somewhere in Switzerland? I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, right? Have a coke and a smile. I don’t know. But some time from the time I was 13, 14 years old till this day, which has been a lot of years in between. I just wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted it to matter that I live, that I passed through.

Kevin Monroe: [00:03:24] And so that’s taken me down a very zigzag path through the years, done different things. But ultimately it led to starting a business 17 years ago. Now this business X Factor consulting. It was kind of funny when you and I were kicking some ideas around. I said something to you when we started the business. X Factor X Factor meant a lot of things to me. X meant, you know, there was this mysterious quality or quantity. It also meant excellence and it meant multiplication. Those were all of those things. So we had this idea. X Factor consulting. Well, I think over the last three years, I really zeroed in on what is the ultimate X Factor and that X Factor is gratitude. The gratitude. If you go to my website, you’ll see these words, and I remember it was my web designer, Susie, that put them on the site when she was doing work and she she showed me the type of the site, the prototype and right there on the front, it says gratitude changes everything. And I’m like, Wow, Susie, gratitude changes everything. She says, Well, I got that from you. You do believe that, don’t you? And I’m like, Well, well, yes, I believe it. I just don’t know if I’m ready to make that the claim to the world, right? What if others don’t believe it’s because it doesn’t matter? Do you believe it? I’m like, Yeah, I believe it. Gratitude changes everything.

Jim Bulger: [00:04:50] So that was, as you said, 17 years ago, yep. And. So as a gratitude guide, the work you’re doing right now is you’re using a number of different channels and a number of different ways of doing that. Talk about a few of those.

Kevin Monroe: [00:05:09] Well, OK. And I guess somewhere we’ll talk about the story that led to this. But but what I do now? I had an epiphany. Well, it was about two years ago this time, friend of mine Tracy Fenton. She’s the founder of an organization called World Blue Blue, creating freedom centered workplaces around the world. Tracy said to me, Hey Kevin, would you do a webinar for our leadership cohort? And I’m like, Of course I would. Tracy, what do you want me to do it on? And Tracy like Duck Gratitude and Jim. That was that first moment when I started realizing, Wow. People have now identified me as the gratitude guy or gratitude guide. And I also realize then that there have been a lot of other things people have identified me as through the years and this idea of being the gratitude guy or guide. You know, if I go to my my grave and this is what’s written on the tombstone, here lies one grateful fella. I can live with that, right, well, maybe I die with that, but but there have been a lot of worse things said, right? Oh, he was a curmudgeon. He was always cranky or those types of things. I mean, those things. Wow. You know, he just always seemed angry. Is that what you want said about your here? Lies one grateful fellow. So when when Tracy asked me to do a webinar, I said, Well, gosh, Tracy. Doing a webinar just doesn’t seem the right way to approach gratitude. And she goes, What do you mean? I said, you know, a talking head that shows up for, you know, how most webinars are. They introduce the speaker, the speaker comes on, and it’s a one way push of information for forty five minutes. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. Let me tell you about this.

Kevin Monroe: [00:06:58] You know, in the world, in the space of gratitude, we could talk about what happens in your brain and in your body, oxytocin and and serotonin and all of these, you know, things that are happening neurobiological to you. And then at the end of that, people go, Well, that was interesting. I might well, that just doesn’t seem to be the approach, I said. She said, What do you want to do? I said, I don’t know. Let me think about it. So over the next seven, eight days, I was thinking about it and I live right down the street here. We live in Farmington. All Arnold Middle Road live there for almost 30 years now and I walk every day and one morning on a walk. It just hit me. I stopped, whipped out my phone and in five minutes created the outline what I wanted to do. And I went back to Tracy and I said, Hey, Tracy, I don’t want to do a webinar. I want to do a gratitude encounter. And she goes, OK, what’s that? I said, it’s an opportunity for people to explore, express and experience gratitude. And Jim, it was a week or so later I landed on this phrase that gratitude experience is better than gratitude explained, right? So a webinar is inviting people to explain, you know, and that’s the talking head. Mm hmm. What difference does that make now? I have an intellectual understanding of the benefits of gratitude, but I’m no more grateful than I was before. I’ve not expressed gratitude. So what? What I do and what I’ve done over these past two years is create environments where people do those three things explore, express and experience gratitude. And that is what shifts something in us and shifts something in our world.

Jim Bulger: [00:08:43] Now, one of my favorite things is to hear about the journey that people and businesses have gone through to get where they are now. So over those 17 years. Talk about some of the major milestones you’ve experienced in how X Factor has evolved over those years.

Kevin Monroe: [00:09:03] Yeah, so you know, I love this question. As I said, X Factor kind of took on my quest in life and that was to make the world a better place. So when we started in two thousand five and when I think back then we set out to serve nonprofit organizations and in two thousand five, I would say the nonprofit sector pretty much had the lock on the do good part of the world, right? And there are all kinds of nonprofits, and they’re addressing different issues or different concerns focused on different things human services, arts, education, you know, those type poverty alleviation, homelessness. And so we set out to help small and medium sized nonprofits because most nonprofits and nonprofit leaders you probably have traveled this month. Most nonprofits have a cause that they’re really passionate about. But when they start a nonprofit, then all of a sudden they understand they have a business that they have to lead. So what we started doing was helping people address the business side of nonprofit to free them up, to do the service side, the cause related side. And so we did that for a number of years. And then all of a sudden, 2008 through 2010, I went to graduate school, went to Gonzaga, got a master’s in organizational leadership. I chose Gonzaga because it was one of the few graduate schools in the country with a focus on servant leadership, and I was drawn to servant leadership.

Kevin Monroe: [00:10:35] So I mean, grad school at Gonzaga. And I by that time, I’d been blogging for years, had several blogs. We had three blogs that we wrote in the nonprofit sector. Two of those I wrote, one a business partner wrote, and we had this following. And then all of a sudden I started writing more about servant leadership and this this two years grad school at Gonzaga opened up a lot of things in my mind, and at that time, I started realizing the world has changed, right? And one of the changes in the world was so much social entrepreneurship, social corporate, social responsibility. Companies like Tom Hughes have come along that are create this for profit model that ties doing well with doing good. They’re making money, but every time you buy a pair of Tom’s shoes, they’re giving a pair of shoes. And now you have bombas socks doing the same thing with socks, and you have so many corporations that were looking for ways. How can we to make the world a better place? So that’s happening in the world. I start working in this field of leadership and I was writing blogging about servant leadership and about that time I’m introduced to a I meet a guy on Twitter, and he was the incoming CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership.

Kevin Monroe: [00:11:52] Robert Greenleaf is the guy who coined the term servant leadership in 1970 with an essay, The Servant as Leader. And then a few weeks later, I’m offered the opportunity to launch a consulting arm of Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership called Greenleaf Consulting Partners and help businesses. Business leaders apply and implement the concepts of servant leadership. So that created a new opportunity. We’re still making the world a better place. We’re helping leaders who want to put people first in the way they lead, apply and implement servant leadership so that just gradually open doors. So two and a half years I do work. It was all contract work. I was always I was never an employee, always a consultant still did that through X Factor. But doing this work and then all of a sudden that, you know, things just evolved, right? And now I’ve understood, and I remember I was in Cartersville one Sunday morning sitting under a big oak tree, and I realized there were three two word pairings that described all of the organizations that I had worked with that I loved working with that these organizations. One of these three two word pairings applied to them or two or the winning trifecta, all three, they were either purpose driven, people focused or values based.

Kevin Monroe: [00:13:18] And those were the kind of companies that were drawn to servant leadership. They’re drawn to servant leadership because they’re in the world to advance a cause, serve a purpose. They want to take care of their people or, you know, one of the best, most highly respected servant leadership organizations on the planet. Headquartered here in Atlanta, Georgia, Chick fil A, they hit all three of those purpose driven people led value space. Sure, right. And so when you look at organizations like that and Mark Miller, who was at that time senior vice president of Chick fil A, wrote books on servant leadership and. The principles that Chick-Fil-A put into practice, so you had organizations like that and that just opened the door to where I started doing more leadership work in the corporate sector with these types of organizations. So when I look at this, Jim, I realize now I’m probably on version. If you think of the business like a software, we’re on version 5.0 of the company, right? 1.0 was this nonprofit consulting firm, 2.0 was this leadership firm. And then we started into the purpose space, which was really 3.0, and then we were trying to figure out 4.0. And that was more around purpose and values and culture, recognizing that the companies that are purpose driven people led, people, values based.

Kevin Monroe: [00:14:49] They’re also really and you get this from your job, your work with work, thrive. Want to have a culture sure that that represents those values, a culture that values people? So I started doing a lot of culture work that also involved leadership. And then there was this little thing happened. And I don’t know. Maybe you realize it, or maybe you don’t. Seven hundred and seventeen days ago today, seven hundred and seventeen days ago today, the world changed. It was seven hundred and seventeen days ago today when the World Health Organization declared the global pandemic COVID coronavirus and the business I had, like so many other people, evaporated. Mm hmm. Right. I mean, because what I did was a lot of in-person events speaking at corporations conferences and every one of those that was booked was all of a sudden UN booked one of my biggest customers. They said, OK, we’re going to do this. We’re going to put it off a quarter. Ok, we’re going to put it off two quarters. We’re not going to do anything until late 2021. Oh, we’re not sure we’re going to do anything in 2021, right? And and so there was just this. Opportunity called no business

Jim Bulger: [00:16:13] Well, and I know that as we were talking back in twenty eighteen, there was a shift in the business. Talk a little bit about that.

Kevin Monroe: [00:16:24] Oh, and I happen to bring that journal today. Oh, so I’ve pulled this journal out. So twenty fifteen I reconnected with an old mentor. I met him in early 2000. I meet him in twenty fifteen. Yeah, twenty fifteen. We reconnect. Twenty know. Twenty sixteen twenty sixteen when we reconnect. And he says, Hey Kevin, would you join me in praying fifteen minutes a day? And I looked at my. Are you serious? I haven’t prayed 15 minutes in the last year or the last two years, and you want me to pray 15 minutes a day? And he said, Well, what I mean is by pray 15 minutes a day is is open. Your Bible, sit down with a journal and just see, you know, if there’s something you want to say to God, God wants to say to you, I’m like, OK, I’ll give it a try. At that time, I was in time blocking mastery that came out of Gary Keller’s work with the book The One Thing, and Gary taught this idea that it really takes sixty six days to get grounded in a habit. It’s more than twenty one. The numbers go from twenty one to maybe two hundred and something, but sixty six days you kind of get in a groove. So I had a sixty six day chart. I was doing some other things to get in the habit. So I started a prayer habit of day one, day two, and I opened a journal and I started writing the day number just to see so.

Kevin Monroe: [00:17:49] I can say that because I mean, you can see right here, I’m not lying April 17th was day seven forty four right day seven forty four, so day seven forty four of this journey April 17th. Now I have no idea if this had some bearing that it was two days after April 15th is why I found myself in such a dark, depressed state that morning. But business, you know, I’m trying to figure things out in business. Business wasn’t. Well, let’s just be honest, business wasn’t good, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t good, I was struggling and and I’ve had as I look back over life, I can see three periods where I really dipped into depression, you know, and had those bouts of yeah, the first one happened in 2002, when I had left Corporate World joined a high tech startup that. September 11th, 2001, buried that high tech, high tech startup, as well as many other things in our country, right? And and so we the business failed. I was trying to figure out what to do went into this dark space. But fast forward to 2007 20, 18, April 17th. It was one of those mornings. Now I’m a morning person. Your morning person, Jim.

Jim Bulger: [00:19:04] Not at all. Not at all. So, oh, there’s owls and robins, and I am definitely in Team Owl.

Kevin Monroe: [00:19:10] Ok? Ok, so I am up usually between 4:30 5:00 in the morning without an alarm clock just up ready to go. And but that morning, that morning was like, no, there was just I couldn’t get out of bed, right? Yeah. And you know, I woke up several times like, No, I’m not feeling it. There’s nothing here, just don’t want to get up. And I recognized that I’ve known that before, when that starts coming. I’m at the precipice. I’m at the edge, right? These are tough days, dark moments. But if you linger there, you start going down the slippery slope and pretty soon you’re in about a depression again. So I knew that was coming, but I woke up that morning, seven, dragged myself out of bed, go into my office and having this daily routine. I’m a big believer in daily routines, rhythms, rituals, whatever word you call it, care to call it. For me, it’s more I think of it as a rhythm and a ritual than than just routine. Part of that is reading something inspirational. Part of that is prayer, meditation, listening to silence, or some kind of guided meditation for ten minutes. Well, that morning there was nothing I just didn’t want to block. Right? Maybe, maybe. Gosh, could it be possible that somebody’s listening to us right now that you can relate to this, that your morning this morning was? I didn’t want to get up.

Kevin Monroe: [00:20:36] I’m not feeling it now, right? It’s Day seven 17 of a pandemic. Life is tough right now for a lot of people. That morning I couldn’t get up. I finally got up, opened my prayer journal and there was just nothing to pray. And I wrote these words and they’re still here. Holy Spirit, you are the creative spark of the universe. Spark creativity in me. Close the book laid down on the floor. It’s in what I consider liminal space that that moment between you’re still partially awake, partially asleep, you’re in and out. You’re not, you know, it’s a it’s a days, right? It’s just this fog light down on the floor in my office was was that was the prayer I’d prayed. And forty five minutes later, I sat up erect and there was an idea, an idea. And the idea was like eighty five percent fully formed when it was there. When I sat up and it was to host what we would call the extraordinary experiment, that we would create a 90 day program 13 weeks and over those 13 weeks each week would have a challenge and we would invite people into the challenge. We’d lay out the challenge on Monday. On Wednesday, we’d give some additional resources. On Friday, we’d ask people to reflect back and see what happened in your life this week and when you did these things that we invited you to consider and find what you wanted to do.

Kevin Monroe: [00:21:59] Might your life feel a little more extra ordinary, right? Because I think a lot of people are like me when I look in the mirror. Any time I look in the mirror, I see a guy that’s just an ordinary guy, right? I’m a few pounds overweight of where I’d like to be right now was never super athletic. I was always the last kid chosen for the team. Gosh, that experience happened a couple of months ago at a family thing. We were choosing teams for a family game and our our granddaughter, Emma picked her one year old brother who can’t do anything drawing before she picked me to be on her team, right? So it’s just this funny thing. But. Could we feel a little more extraordinary? Could life be more extraordinary? And so we laid out 13 weeks and weeks, six of those 13 weeks, we labeled the gratitude challenge. And in that week, as I said, we did a video on Monday. So on the Monday video, when we’re preparing that, it’s the first time in my life when I began questioning, is there a difference between being thankful and being grateful? What does it really mean to have gratitude? And Jim, those 13 weeks set me on a different path began to spark new possibilities. And and it really opened the door to this world of gratitude.

Jim Bulger: [00:23:31] Well, and let’s do let’s do a deeper dove into that because. It sounds like such a simple idea, the need to be grateful, and I think most people, if you were to ask them, they consider themselves to be grateful, to be appreciative, to be thankful, to count their blessings. You know, Thanksgiving, we go around the table and everybody says what they’re thankful for. And the typical responses come up. I’m thankful for family and health and friends. And as you say, a lot of people use the terms thankful and grateful interchangeably, yeah, but you see a real difference between those.

Kevin Monroe: [00:24:10] Talk about that. Well, I’ve discovered a difference between those part of it out of my own experience. So I think about this. So I grew up, as I said in Perry, Georgia, small town, I remember. And I was taught and I was going to say a lot of our listeners, you know, growing up, especially around Woodstock, where where deep south we’ve been taught manners and being thankful is part of good manners. I remember the time I’m probably six years old. I was a little chubby kid. My dad cut my hair every two weeks, set us up on a chair, you know, and just buzzed it back. So I had this buzzed head. My parents left me for the day with the neighbors, the Richardsons and I remember and I don’t remember whether or not my mom pointed her finger. It seems like she did. Remember your manners, son. Remember your manners. You’re going to be at the Richardsons. So Mrs. Richardson. So this is, you know, like nineteen sixty five. So I’ll just be honest, she fixed me a sandwich right now. Today, she would have prepared a sandwich, but we just said she fixed me a sandwich. She hands it to me on a plate and I hear my mom’s voice. Remember your manners and I look up at her and I say, You’re welcome.

Kevin Monroe: [00:25:24] And she rubs my fuzzy little head and says, Nice try. I think you meant thank you. Right. So that’s that. But but what does that typify? Besides my confusion, it typifies this transactional nature, which is what we often attribute to saying, Thanks. And you’re listening. I’m wondering, did you drive? Did you go through a drive through today? Did you interact with a barista? Did they hand you a cup of coffee and did you say thanks? Or, you know, maybe just grunt. But if you did say things, did you actually think about that and take the cup of coffee and think about, I’m sitting here and I see all my coffee logo on the wall of the studio. You know, my friends, Harry and Leticia and Al, they are the farmers. They are related to the farmers that grew the beans. And I was at all coffee earlier this week and the semi was unloading a trailer full of beans that had come from their fifth generation Honduran farms in. Honduras. So they know, and when you drink muffins roasted on the coffee, there’s actually a Marvin who grew the beans, right? So do you think about? Hmm. I think about the farmer that grew the being, the people that harvested the beans, the people that roasted the beans, the people that bagged the beans, the people that shipped the beans, the people that unloaded the beans, the people that put them on the truck, the people that shipped them from the truck to the the Roastery.

Kevin Monroe: [00:26:49] The people that roasted the coffee, the people that now get that deliver it to your local coffee shop, wherever that is. And then the barista brews it. Hand you a cup and you go, thanks. Or do you look at the barista and make a human connection to them in the moment? This is what my dad taught me. If somebody is wearing a name badge on their uniform or on their shirt. That’s for your sake, not theirs. They know their name, they don’t have to look and go, Oh yeah, I’m Kevin. No, it’s for our benefit. What if you engage the barista by name and you go and you say, Hey Jim, man? Thanks for this awesome cup of coffee. It looks like you really put yourself into making this today. Thank you. Right. And you made my day or whatever that is right now. All of a sudden we’ve stopped being transactional and we’ve elevated that. Now, if you want to talk about the ultimate transactional expression of thanks, I think back I grew up when Kmart’s were around. You remember Kmarts?

Jim Bulger: [00:27:50] Absolutely.

Kevin Monroe: [00:27:51] So Kmart’s back in the day when I shopped Kmart’s, they had the cash register. No, no scanners, right? And the the cashier would have to punch in the numbers of everything. Well, there was a little square piece of of a laminated paper on every Kmart register, and it said, T y yfc Katie. Thank you for shopping at Kmart today, and every cashier at the end of every transaction was supposed to say to the customer, What

Jim Bulger: [00:28:28] Thank you for shopping at Kmart today?

Kevin Monroe: [00:28:30] Now did they really mean that? Were they thinking, Wow, you, you made my job possible? No, that’s transaction. Now I will tell you my fate. One of my favorite stories of when I saw this different, I was I don’t remember where I was flying in from back in the day right before COVID. I used to fly a lot. One day I was flying, I’d been upgraded. So I’m in the front of the plane on Delta and this flight attendant, she’s coming down the row and she stops at every row and she bends down on her knees and she looks to the people on her right, the left side of the plane. She talks to them. Then she looks to the people on the left, and I happen to be on her left the right side of the plane. She comes down. I’m about four rows back in first class. She gets star rows. She talks to the people across. Then she turns to us and she says these words. I love my job as a Delta flight attendant. I just love it. It gives me joy in life and its customers like you who are frequent fliers who make my job possible. Thank you for flying Delta now. Every Delta flight I’ve ever been on. There’s some point when a flight attendant comes over the P.A. Hey, we want to welcome all of our medallion members today. Whether you’re your gold silver, you know, platinum diamond. Thank you for choosing Delta that goes in one ear and out the other. This lady stopping looking me in the eye and the person seated next to me in the eye. Sharing that, that’s gratitude. That’s gratitude, right?

Jim Bulger: [00:30:10] So it sounds like I mean, this is much more intentional, intentional.

Kevin Monroe: [00:30:14] Yeah, that’s a great word.

Jim Bulger: [00:30:15] And going back to the Kmart story, I know you’ve developed what you call the gratitude framework. Yeah, yeah. And quickly walk us through that.

Kevin Monroe: [00:30:26] Ok, so I developed this gratitude framework as we were. I was creating content for we host a program called 30 Days in the Power of Gratitude. They’re micro coaching sessions over this, and I was trying to take people on a journey and trying to explain this. I was like, How do I explain this? Well, I started reflecting on my journey back when I heard You ought to be grateful. Right? That’s gratitude as an obligation where it’s social convention. And if we fail and maybe it’s a command, right?

Jim Bulger: [00:30:56] And it’s a note on the cash

Kevin Monroe: [00:30:57] Register note on the cash register. Thank you for shopping at Kmart today, right? That kind of thing. That’s that’s our obligation. And if I fail to deliver on something that’s an obligation, what are you normally feel? Guilt, shame. Right, oh, I feel bad, I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. Well, then if we go up the kind of the next level in this is what I consider to be hacked. And there’s so many people that present gratitude as a life hack having a bad day. Stop, pause. Think of something to be grateful for and get out of that, that law. I still believe there’s validity in that. But who wants to stop there, right? So its obligation, it’s hacked. Well, maybe we go a little further and we begin to develop a practice of gratitude. When gratitude becomes a practice, we’re looking for rhythm and routine. You know, write the journal right, right. Three things you’re grateful for today, and there’s nothing wrong with writing three things you’re grateful for today. But I’ve had so many conversations just this week about this. I can do my my three things that I used to be grateful for. I really got that down to where I could do that in seven seconds and check it off the list and say, Well, I’m done. I was grateful today. Was I right? So we’re getting into that practice. Well, maybe you want to go beyond practice and you begin to look for this to become habituated in your life? Right. So then you’re looking for routines or triggers. You’re looking for these things that spark you to remember the habit I have.

Kevin Monroe: [00:32:37] Well, I have a friend. She heard me tell about an executive that carries three stones in his pocket, and the goal is every time he expressed his gratitude, he moves a stone from the right, the left pocket to the right pocket, with the goal being that the three stones that started in the left pocket at the end of the day, they’re in the right pocket. So my friend Christie bought three silicon bracelets that were, you know, attractive starts with them on her left wrist when she pauses to express gratitude moves one from the left wrist to the right wrist. Those are things triggers. Well, it’s good to have habit. Well, what if we go further and what if gratitude becomes our mindset and that it becomes like the operating system of the human computer of our brain? And that anything that comes into our life, we begin to filter it through the lens of gratitude and we begin to find the good things on even the not so good days or the not so good seasons of life, which I think you know something about some of those seasons, Jim. Well, then if we go a little further on this and this framework, to me, the ultimate goal now is where gratitude becomes our lifestyle. It’s our DNA. It’s who we are. Gratitude is not something we do once a day or twice a day. It’s who we are throughout the day and people begin to think of us as grateful people. And then we’re living in joy.

Jim Bulger: [00:34:04] Well, in listening to you and as I said in the beginning, you always make me think and. As I’m listening to you, you know, there’s there’s another continuum that comes to mind, and one is that when we feel grateful and it’s unspoken and it just sits with us. And then there’s expressing it, yep. And then there’s exhibiting it. But I think a lot of it going back to you, talk to most people, they consider themselves grateful. That’s because they feel grateful. They may not be expressing it. They may not be talking to that person stuff and they may not be exhibiting it. I mean. I think gratitude is one of those things you can see in somebody, too.

Kevin Monroe: [00:34:51] Do you agree? Oh man, I so agree on this. So there are three things there, at least, that I want to unpack. One of those, William Arthur Ward, actually talked about this, he said. To feel gratitude and not express. It is like to wrap a present and not give it right. So you’ve wrapped this, you bought a present, you wrapped it up and just leave it right. That’s gratitude. Unexpressed. And now in our work, we ask, What does gratitude feel like? Where do you feel gratitude in your body when you’re feeling grateful? Maybe it is watching a sunrise or a sunset, or maybe it’s enjoying a meal that your loved one prepared for you? Or maybe it’s holding that newborn, baby or grandbaby and looking at the the majesty of this new creation and all of us, I mean, you’re feeling something right and it’s overflowing in your heart. And so how do we then express gratitude? And then what was the third thing there? I don’t know. It slipped me at the moment. It’ll come back, Jim.

Jim Bulger: [00:35:52] Ok, well, you know, while this sounds like a personal development, yeah, yeah. Internal individual concept. You’ve been very successful in instilling the need for gratitude into groups within companies, within organizations. And I think while some people may think that’s just a nice thing to do or a good behavior. You found it to be a necessary and critical component of a successful organization, so let’s talk a little bit about that and the measurable benefits that it has an organization.

Kevin Monroe: [00:36:29] So that was the third point, that was the third point a moment ago. Now that there is something right, it’s one thing to feel gratitude personally. And I will tell you, I mean, here’s how I stumbled on this and where I want to go is there’s something magical when we do gratitude in community as part of a group. Now we I stumbled on this. I stumped. So in twenty nineteen, yeah, twenty nineteen, we started hosting gratitude challenges and these were all email based and we had a 10 day program that we were inviting people into. And and we ended up having gosh, we ran 20 challenges, had 2500 people from 53 countries of the world. Join us in these challenges. We started having problems trying to get email delivered right and emails were getting caught in corporate servers that they were getting to the server, but they were not getting through the server to the desktop. So we’re looking, how do we fix this? How do we fix this? And I remember a community based platform, so we went to this community based platform simply to get away from email as the delivery vehicle.

Kevin Monroe: [00:37:41] Mm hmm. When we I still remember the very first challenge we hosted on a community based platform, we have a couple of hundred, well, 300 people in this challenge. And all of a sudden and we’re just sharing a daily prompt is what we were doing at that time. And a daily prompt could be like the beauty of nature. And you know, where what have you experienced in nature lately that sparks or inspires gratitude in your your life? Share that post a picture. And all of a sudden people started posting pictures and folks were like, Oh wow! And and global community. We’re seeing sunrises from whales or sunsets in Wales and Australia coast and, you know, all parts of the world. It’s like, Wow, wow, wow. And then somebody would say, What are you grateful for? Related We’d do the family challenge or the favorite book challenge or mentor challenge and people and somebody would write something, and I’d read what somebody else wrote, and that sparked additional gratitude in me. And somebody else would share something. And it was like, Oh, wow, when we share gratitude, it grows even deeper.

Jim Bulger: [00:38:51] It’s contagious, it’s

Kevin Monroe: [00:38:52] Contagious and it gets better together. And so, Jim, I’ve never read about that experience. I mean, this wasn’t something I read in the literature and then went to do. We just discovered this in the trenches, and then I started hosting events, more events. These gratitude encounters where we bring people into a group. I still do this doing one. This coming Tuesday, 12 noon Eastern Time. Feel free to join us. You’re listening. But we do these gratitude encounters and what people say. Gratitude allows them to connect quickly, deeply with other people. We have people from around the world join come in as strangers have this experience. And at the end of an hour, they they say, not me, say we arrived as strangers. We’re leaving as friends, right? The shared experience of gratitude allows us to connect with people of different ethnicity, people of different culture, different language, different faith. But we realize how much alike we are.

Jim Bulger: [00:39:55] Now that’s the pandemic we need.

Kevin Monroe: [00:39:57] That’s absolutely, absolutely. So then you take this into the workplace. Yeah, yeah. So I’ve had the opportunity. Oh, OK. So I started hosting gratitude encounters. I did the first one in August 2020. Then in September 2020, I was on a morning walk. September 10th, walking through the neighborhood in this question was just in my mind of all of the things that energize and excite you. What is the one thing that has the broadest appeal in the greatest impact? And for me, I knew then my answer was immediately gratitude. And that was the day, Jim. That was the day when I went officially all the way in to developing a gratitude business and a consultancy. And what we’d really say is that we’re growing a global ecosystem of gratitude. And I hosted I started hosting these monthly sessions in October. A guy attends the October one in November. He goes, You know, this is a commercial service, don’t you? And I’m like, No, I didn’t. He goes, Let me help you. So we put it together as a service. We started promoting these and then we started offering these two companies. And and now I can say, I mean, I remember the first company, Opera and Domino’s out of New Mexico hired me.

Kevin Monroe: [00:41:12] December 16, 2020 did the first commercial gratitude encounter. And this was a team that had had a lot of hardships to overcome through the gratitude. I mean, through the pandemic, right the first nine months of the pandemic. They were in a tough place and then all of a sudden, through gratitude, they started having breakthroughs and they started building things. So in 2021, they wanted to build on a platform of abundance. That was their theme. They said, Can you help us with abundance? I’m like, Wow, wow. Gratitude is the gateway to abundance. What if we started doing gratitude? So we did gratitude encounters with every department in their organization? They started working mindful mindfulness moments and gratitude moments into every meeting they hosted. Wow. And they began with mindfulness moments. And what are we grateful for? And they started seeing this shift throughout their culture, and that’s what we’ve seen. Other companies where they see that gratitude creates a much more positive culture, a much more committed team. And so we’ve started doing these type things, all kinds of different things companies do and all size companies doing it.

Jim Bulger: [00:42:26] Well, I’m going to guess both from the work you’re doing and the work I do that when you have that kind of a culture. It raises productivity. It increases efficiency, engagement, engagement, employee retention. People tend to stay in environments that they

Kevin Monroe: [00:42:45] Where they feel appreciated.

Jim Bulger: [00:42:47] Well, you know, there’s been research for years and years and years. The number one reason why people leave companies is they don’t feel appreciated, right? And you actually make a commitment to these companies of what an immediate difference you can make, right?

Kevin Monroe: [00:43:04] Yeah. So we’ve been tracking things for 18 months now, and we finally realized that one of the metrics for companies that are really focused on the happiness of their employees. And there’s a lot of research around that, but we can boost employee happiness by twenty five percent in an hour. Wow. And if we don’t, we’ll give you your money back. But I’ve done this. And what? Two weeks ago today, two weeks ago today, I was doing sessions for Pfizer Canada, and in the final we asked people, What’s something you’re carrying with you from this session today? And the first response was the happiness I feel right now. Hope it lasts a long, long time. Right? Because when you. Ok, Wayne Dyer said. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. That’s what gratitude does. Gratitude provides you a different lens through which to look at. And all of a sudden you’re seeing that your your life is a life of abundance. Your work well, rather than just being all of these things you complained about. There’s some really good things here.

Kevin Monroe: [00:44:17] There’s some amazing people here. Our company has values. One of the things we do is is gratitude for values. What’s a value you’ve seen in place in how your company makes decisions or how you relate to people, employees, vendors, clients and all of a sudden you start hearing stories? I mean, the first time I ever did this, one of the stories this was right after the summer race riots of 2020, there was a company in Canada, Biggio. One of their values was diversity and respect, and some of the ethnic minorities that were in the session said I heard them tell these stories that, hey, last summer when when this was all going down, my boss or my boss’s boss called me and ask, Are you OK? Are you having any kind of harassment? Anything making you uncomfortable in the workplace or at home in the community is there? And they’re like, Oh my gosh. I felt respected. I felt valued. I saw what had been a word on the wall. I saw it active in the way we related to one another. I’m grateful for that value.

Jim Bulger: [00:45:28] And going back to your earlier comment, too, I mean, this is specific. I mean, it is intentional. It’s not the manager who walks up and down the rows of desks saying, Hey, good job. Good job, good job. This is real intentional. Going back to yeah. So we only have a little bit of time left. But let me run through a couple of things here. One is, you mentioned COVID and obviously over the last two years between the COVID pandemic, the economy, world politics, it’s caused people’s emotions and their views to change. In what you’ve seen through your work, has that had an effect on gratitude, has gratitude increased or decreased?

Kevin Monroe: [00:46:14] Yes. Okay, so no, seriously. So in some places of the world, gratitude has decreased. Right? I mean, man, 717 days. Here’s something I observed. I did not know this. It was day 500 of the pandemic. I was doing a session for a group in Europe, the Public Services People Managers Association of the United Kingdom, PMA doing a session for them. I was in Florida where I was doing the session from woke up 3:30 in the morning and this was the thought in my mind. Hope fades in crisis. Hope fades in crisis now. Things I had said before. Hope grows in gratitude, hope grows in gratitude gratitude. I love to think of gratitude as a catalyst. And I’m not a chemist. I may not have made such a good grade in chemistry, but that’s we won’t go there. But I did look up catalysts. The catalyst is something a substance that causes other things to to grow faster or to react in a more positive way to grow without being consumed in the process. So I think of gratitude is the ultimate catalyst and what grows in in the good soil of gratitude, kindness, appreciation, respect.

Kevin Monroe: [00:47:32] Joy, happiness, all of these things, they grow in the soil of gratitude, so some companies have lost gratitude, right? I mean, there are a lot of companies that have lost gratitude. A lot of other companies have realized that. And here’s what I would say. The shortest way to answer your question is I believe gratitude is absolutely now an essential skill for the world and the world of work that’s seeking to emerge post-pandemic. Gratitude. It’s it’s not an optional anymore. It’s not a nice option to have. You’ve got to have gratitude to, and gratitude creates one of the real benefits of gratitude that we all need personally and in business. Workplace resilience. Resilience being grateful. Boost resilience. People that are grateful have higher levels of resilience. They bounce back more quickly. They’re not as knocked off or knocked down, or don’t stay down as long when they’re knocked down, right? So this whole idea of resilience, it grows in gratitude. So I believe gratitude is absolutely essential for the workplace and the world going forward.

Jim Bulger: [00:48:46] So I have to ask you with with the years that you’ve been doing this and. Being the gratitude guide for so many other people across Geographics, across cultures. How has that changed you?

Kevin Monroe: [00:49:06] Yeah, well. I feel gratitude a lot more often now. And I mean, I say this in programs I lead, I feel gratitude rising up in my body and leaking out my eyes, right? I mean, that’s why I’m moved to tears with gratitude, right? When I see that gratitude really does change things. And when I see experience it, hear stories of the difference gratitude makes. Now I can show you on my phone right here. You can see I have a lock screen. I have a gratitude lock screen. We created these last year gratitude lock screens. Do you know how many times a day you pick up your phone?

Jim Bulger: [00:49:53] Way too many.

Kevin Monroe: [00:49:54] So and I host a lot of programs that are app based programs now. But the last time I checked, I picked up my phone hundred and thirty times a day. One hundred and thirty times a day. Now I have this this lock screen right now, and it’s the one I’ve had ever since we created gratitude lock screens. My mom mine is my favorite and Voss camp quotation. No amount of regret changes the past. No amount of anxiety changes the future. Any amount of gratitude changes the present. So, Jim. Every time I pick up my phone, I see that I have to clear that, but now I’m not saying that every time I do, I pause and express gratitude. But what if 10 percent of the time I pick up my phone, I pick up my phone 130 times a day. What if 13 of those times I pause for just a second and I and so hey, if you want to know when we’re talking about gratitude, what does this look like? I think it is as simple as these three things pause. Notice. Express. So pause and you’re listening right now. Just pause. And here’s something that I often do in exercise. I do this for myself.

Kevin Monroe: [00:51:09] I do this in corporations. Look back over the last hour, the hour before you came into this meeting. What’s something good that happened in that hour? Was there an interaction? Was there a phone call? Was there an email? You know, so what’s something good of the last 60 Minutes? We call this the last 60 Minutes challenge. You can do this as many times a day as you want. Just stop and look back over the last 60 Minutes. Go, what? What really good happened? What do I want to notice from this hour? And when I noticed that, what do I want to express gratitude for? Right. So that Paul’s notice expressed, so I pause. Oh, so something. Wow. Something that’s different in my life now. And this is a 20 20 to fresh reality. I made it. I made a decision in 2020 2022 that every day to the degree I could, I was going to spend moments of absolute silence and stillness. And I actually believe gratitude makes that possible for me. Right, that being grateful allows me to be at peace, to slow down, to push the pause button, to put my phone away and to be in the moment.

Jim Bulger: [00:52:23] Well, and I was going to ask you, I mean, for someone listening. You know, I’m sure they’re inspired by you and they say, OK, I get it, I want that. And what can I do today? What can I do right now? And I think what you just said with the 60 minute challenge is a great tip. I want to ask you to share one other thing that I heard on one of your sessions that I sat in on, and that was the I have two syndrome.

Kevin Monroe: [00:52:51] Yeah. Ok, so gratitude for me. Something else that changes it. It takes me out of any time I hear myself say, You roll the eyes. I have to fill in the blank, whatever that is. Wow, what if we just paused and we use the pause to reframe that? We use gratitude to go, Hmm, I get to do this now, right? This afternoon, I was on a call with a colleague and I was like, Oh my gosh. I have to go meet, Jim. No, no, no, it wasn’t that it was like, Hey, can can we transfer this call from Zoom to my phone so I can get moving to get to the appointment? So there’s something else, Jim. I have pre gratitude now, right? What if you have gratitude in advance for something that’s not yet happened? So this morning I’m thinking, Oh, here’s pre gratitude I want to have not just not just from I have to to I get to, but I’m going to express gratitude in advance that at two o’clock this afternoon, I get to sit down with Jim. We get to go on air and we get to talk real time about the power of gratitude and the gratitude that the difference gratitude will make in your life. And to issue an invitation. So I got one more if you want to. If you want to do something that will grow gratitude in your life, pick up your phone as soon as you finish listening to us. Think of somebody that you are grateful for the difference they’ve made in your life this week. You got somebody in mind. Think of that person whenever it is that you hear this, pick up your phone or whatever the messaging platform you, you use and send that person a message and say, I’m grateful for you, I’m thankful for you. Whatever words you want to use and give a little reason because, right, because you did this, you mean this to me or whatever and see what happens? So feel it, express it and then be deliberate, intentional back to your word, intentional. Communicate your gratitude for someone to that someone.

Jim Bulger: [00:55:05] Well, the reason I ask you to bring that up is that I know it had an impression on me that I have to to I get to because I would find myself during the day, Oh, I have to make dinner. Oh, I have to go to this meeting. Oh, I have to do this. I have to do that. And all of a sudden I’m saying, Wow, I get to make dinner. I get to go to this meeting. You know, how many people would, you know, trade places with me in an instant? And all the things that we take for granted and we just don’t appreciate them.

Kevin Monroe: [00:55:37] So, G.K. Chesterton said, we can either take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Jim Bulger: [00:55:43] There you go. So as you look to the future, let’s talk about X Factor consulting. What’s the future goals, future vision, what do you want to accomplish?

Kevin Monroe: [00:55:55] We want we want to see a world transformed through gratitude and workplaces of the world transformed through gratitude. Yeah. So I’m not I’m not the kind of guy that that quantifies that and says a million billion. But I want to reach as many people as possible, and I want to invite people into the experience of gratitude, right, that people get to experience gratitude and have their lives, their families and their teams, their workplaces transformed by the experience of gratitude.

Jim Bulger: [00:56:31] And whether it’s a, you know, online session or a year long program with an organization. Some people may be a little hesitant, they might say, I’m kind of a private person, I don’t know that I’m going to be comfortable doing that. I can tell you through sitting in at some of these, there is a contagious aspect to him. Absolutely. And as people start sharing, other people start sharing and it just it’s those triggers. So if someone would like to contact you and learn more about embracing gratitude, either as an individual or as an organization, what’s the best way they can reach out to you?

Kevin Monroe: [00:57:08] Well, I do something crazy, Jim. Plus one four zero four seven one three zero seven one three Call Text me Seriously. Call or text me that is my cell phone number. Probably better to text first, so I actually know that you’re not a robot. When you call or go to Kevin de Munroe website, you can reach me there. You can find information on all of our programs we host. Right now, we’re hosting a seven day exploration of gratitude. A week from Monday, we launch our next 30 days in the power of gratitude. First and third Tuesdays of the month I host a gratitude encounter 12:00 noon Eastern Time. You can get information on all of those, or you can set up a call to talk about what we could do to customize and co-create a gratitude program for your company that accomplishes the desires you have, the desires and dreams you have for your company.

Jim Bulger: [00:58:06] You are living it every day, aren’t you?

Kevin Monroe: [00:58:09] I get it. I live it every day.

Jim Bulger: [00:58:11] You get to live it every day. Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your time, your insights with us. I know you’ve made us all a little bit more aware of the opportunities we have to show more gratitude, and we are truly grateful for the work you’re doing and the ways that you’re changing lives and organizations out there. We wish you and X Factor consulting every success in the future. Thank you so much.

Kevin Monroe: [00:58:40] Thank you, Jim. My privilege being here with you and for you listening to us today.

Jim Bulger: [00:58:46] And thank you. I’ll add my thanks. Thank you for listening to Woodstock. Proud. We hope you enjoyed getting to know our guest, Kevin Monroe a little bit better. Until next time, this is Jim Bulger saying Take good care of yourself. Please stay safe and we will talk with you again. Real soon.

Trusted Advisor Radio: Mike Sena With Mike Sena Advisors and Jeffrey Snow With Path & Post Real Estate

March 1, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Cherokee Business Radio

Trusted Advisor Radio: Mike Sena With Mike Sena Advisors and Jeffrey Snow With Path & Post Real Estate

00:00 /

Mike Sena, Owner of Mike Sena Advisors, Inc.

Fired from his first two corporate jobs, Mike has been on his own ever since, creating and running several businesses. Along the way, he’s learned a lot about life, happiness, and money.

Mike is a father, speaker, author, TEDx organizer, and weekend polo player. He loves working with good-fit clients to improve their circumstances and outcomes. Most of his clients have come from other advisors, most own a business, many are seven-figure wealthy, all enjoy a personalized experience and comfort at night.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

Jeffrey Snow, Commercial Specialist at Path & Post Real Estate

Jeff brings extensive professional experience in all manner of commercial real estate. His career began in the early 80’s he worked with Westinghouse Communities and Coral Ridge Properties, in the development and marketing of properties. Executive experiences in merger and acquisitions, property management development, building, marketing, business consulting, and coaching.

Throughout his career he has been responsible for the sale of developed land for 3,800+ apartments and condominiums in Coral Springs and Ft. Lauderdale. Extensive experience in shopping centers, involved in over 30 acquisitions and dispositions including all aspects of asset management. Industrial development of 300,000 square feet of both build to suit and for sale products.

Jeff understands the challenges and day-to-day issues of being a business owner. His own entrepreneurial background includes starting five businesses and has been involved in establishing two non Profit organizations.

As the Chairman of the Board of the Economic Development Council of Coral Springs, earned the Industry Appreciation Award in 1989 and 1990 for adding 140,000 SF in manufacturing space and over 200 new jobs to Coral Springs. Jeff, CLS (Certified Leasing Specialist), ICSC Chairman Speakers Committee Member and Area Governor and President of Cherokee Toastmasters.

Currently with Path and Post Real Estate, Commercial Division. Building and land disposition and acquisitions as well as leasing properties as third party negotiators.\

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:23] Well, welcome to this very special edition of Cherokee Business Radio, it is our inaugural Trusted Advisor series, and I can’t think of a better way to kick it off than to bring back to the Business RadioX microphone with Mike Sena advisors. Mr. Mike Sena, how are you, buddy?

Mike Sena: [00:00:41] I am great. It’s it’s a. So far, so good this winter.

Stone Payton: [00:00:46] I think it’s even better since we turned your headphones up. We just did a sound check before we started this and they’re like, Yeah, it sounds great. And then Mike starts pointing at me. So these are the things that happen when you do inaugural stuff, right? So before we dove into the whole conversation, Mike’s brought a guest with him, Jeff Snow. I get the last name. I remember that right before we get into that conversation, though, Mike, let’s remind the listeners, it’s probably been a while since you’ve been on air with us. What are you advising about man mission purpose? What are you out there trying to do for folks with your practice?

Mike Sena: [00:01:18] I advise people on managing their money, and the financial planning side of my business is quite crucial. I tell folks that I make my money managing money, but the value I bring is in the planning. And so we spend a lot of time building a highly personalized financial planning fee only practice. So I don’t sell insurance and I don’t sell securities. All I really sell is my expertize, my experience, my opinion, and I’ve been doing this for a lot of years. I like to tell folks I was fired from my first two jobs. I’ve been all my own ever since, so I’ve learned a lot about life, business and money over the years.

Stone Payton: [00:01:58] And now you took a little bit of a different approach, although I have seen it some, but it’s it’s a fee based approach as opposed to selling products and receiving a commission. Am I am I getting that right?

Mike Sena: [00:02:08] Pretty close. We’re actually fee only,

Stone Payton: [00:02:10] Which the only pure name

Mike Sena: [00:02:12] Is. The only income I get is when my client writes me a check and there’s different ways of doing that. But I don’t sell any products. I don’t make any money from the sale of a product or a transaction. I don’t get referral kickbacks. I don’t get kickbacks from mutual funds. It’s a very unique kind of one on one situation with my clients and to me, the beauty of this I have no other master to serve. Right now, I’m going to get on a soapbox here. But if you’re a banker, if you’re an insurance agent, you’ve got several masters to serve. One of them is a quota system. You’ve got to bring in the dollars or you’ll be shown the door. Aha. And I’m not saying it’s conflicts of interest, but it certainly is there. And with me, it’s just me and my client. No other master to serve alligator. I love it. I have so much fun with it, and I make a difference in people’s lives.

Stone Payton: [00:03:09] Well, everybody knows Mike it now. But was it tough in the early going? Was it because it strikes me that that would be a tough thing in the early going to get off the ground, a financial advisor kind of practice

Mike Sena: [00:03:20] Or you have no idea. And so most of my professional career, I owned the night business for a lot of years and people go, Well, how do you go from it to managing money? And it’s right. I was a business guy. I had a partner that was the it side. We had a great partnership, a great run, a great relationship. The company is still going, but it changed a lot. I just wasn’t having fun with it anymore. And I said, You know, this financial planning, I think I got ahead for that and I think it would be great. And it’s a couple of things I will tell you. You can’t get too much more intimate with your clothes on than actually talking about your money. It’s very deep for a lot of folks, and I tend to be what I call a left brain introvert. I’m really good technically with what I do, but there’s a lot of emotional aspects, and I’ve had to learn how to use the right side of my brain, how to listen and how to help people make the most of what they have. And I had a situation last week and it’s husband and wife. Longer story here, but basically the wife wants a car the husband doesn’t, and I know the situation pretty well.

Mike Sena: [00:04:34] But I think, you know, I think you guys should get the car. She goes, Yay. It’s just it’s a really interesting dynamic. And when I started off in the business, I wanted to work with younger, less or affluent people. And everybody told me that you never make any money with that. And I said, Watch me, and it turns out they were right. It was really hard to make money with younger, less or affluent people. There is a maturity level and there you have to reach a certain level. People know what they don’t know. And so there was a maturity thing, there was an income thing, and for a lot of younger people, it’s hard to justify to three point four hundred dollars a month for a financial plan or a financial planner. It’s not something you can touch. It’s not a life insurance policy. It’s not an annuity, right? It’s something a little more ethereal that unfolds over time. But honestly, it’s like compound interest. It works. And over time, you’d be amazed at what will happen to your life working with a family financial planner

Stone Payton: [00:05:43] And you keep your eyes open. You’ve got your your finger on the pulse of things you. You’re not locked into one set of strategies. What particular tactics? And I think today’s episode is kind of going to lean us into that because you have you’re really beginning to pay some attention to and try to help some of your clients at least understand and learn a little bit about this. This this area of commercial real estate.

Mike Sena: [00:06:07] Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in the real estate business. I love investment real estate, but I can tell you I never wanted to be a landlord. And being married, raising a son, having a business, it was only so much to go around. I love the stock market, but about a third of my clients, the bulk of their wealth is in investment real estate. Is that right? Either homes or commercial properties? I’ve got a client, in fact, that my guess is going to talk to next week who’s got an office building in downtown cortisol. They’re looking to sell. I just I love investment real estate, so let me tee it up with Jeff Snow. We’ve been friends for a lot of years. Jeff, you’ve been in the real estate business longer than you might like to admit, but 30 or so years, is that right? 1980 OK, yeah. So Jeff Snow was the man he’s been in commercial real estate, starting off in South Florida. Then you moved to Georgia. What about 15, 18 years ago?

Jeff Snow: [00:07:06] 2006?

Mike Sena: [00:07:06] Yes, OK. And you’ve been through. You’ve seen a lot that’s happened. Yeah. And one of the things I wanted to talk about is in my mind, there’s really three ways to generate wealth over time. The easiest is with the stock market 401k, that kind of thing. Next, easiest is investment real estate, putting some money aside, buying some properties, doing a little at a time and let it compound over periods of time. And the third way is to be a business owner, own your own business, and that is by far in my mind, the most difficult. Not everybody has a mindset or a head for that type of endeavor, but commercial real estate. One thing is I want to talk about Jeff is, where do you see? Opportunities in commercial real estate today.

Jeff Snow: [00:07:58] Well, thank you very much, Mike, and thanks for inviting me here. I really appreciate it. I’ve been in commercial real estate since 1980, and I started off doing what you were just talking about selling businesses. And you’re absolutely right. There’s a lot of people that really want a business. They have the money, but they don’t have the temperament for it because it does take a certain kind of person to have a group of people working for you all day long in one location. And that wasn’t really my forte, but I did do a lot of that in the very beginning of when I first started in real estate. I went to a small gathering one time and somebody gave my name to the gentleman that ran the Westinghouse division of of our real estate company down in South Florida. And he called me up, and we interviewed a couple of times and came to came to to an agreement that I would go to work for him and he would take me under his tutelage to teach me commercial real estate. I was extremely excited until they told me I wasn’t making any money unless I sold something, but that’s OK. But I got into the development of warehouses and shopping centers at that time, and the company was or is Westinghouse Communities West, the under Westinghouse commercial, and it was called Core Ridge Properties, and they owned a piece of property in the northwest section of Broward County, Florida. And with that, I moved there.

Jeff Snow: [00:09:35] And I’m trying to remember exactly, but in 1979, there were 37000 people there, and my job was to help develop the entire area. Today there’s over two hundred and twenty thousand people in the same large area. So we developed an industrial park and a couple of shopping centers that we built. Meaning the company built and I was involved in helping with that and then helping with the actual marketing of the properties too. So I was it was it was a great education for it didn’t cost me anything like the other education cost me, but I was so glad to be out of computers, mainframe operations and and programing that was not just didn’t work out for me, but I want to say one thing about commercial real estate. Everything starts with the land and all of you know, you just walk outside and look around and you’d wish you’d bought a piece of property that is now. Worth ten times what it was there, if if that even even more than that and I’ve been in Georgia since 2006 07 and when I when I came here and saw what Cherokee looked like, I loved it. It was a nice, small little community. There were some problems coming because 2008 hit and 2009 and 10 11. Yeah, and it it changed, but it was still a small community. And then as soon as we started coming out of the. Recession. It exploded, and it was really exciting. And then when that’s when I realized, Wow, I wish I had bought that piece of property back there on that corner.

Jeff Snow: [00:11:23] It’s now the church I go to. And it’s a huge piece of property, so everything starts with the land. If you invest in land, there’s it’s a long term. It’s usually a longer term use unless you’re going to be using it for whatever the use might be put in an industrial building on it or whatever multifamily. And you’re asking about, Oh, let me back up to the land thing for a second. You wanted me to tell you a couple of anecdotes, so I’m in the middle of selling properties and being involved in the development part of it too, but selling the properties to developers. Hal Wenzel, who is a very big developer in Israel, also in Long Island, decided to start building in Coral Springs, Florida. He bought a piece of property from me, and it was 17 acres, approximately. And that was right when we were going through our tree ordinance, and he could not get that land cleared for anything. It just took it was taking forever, I mean, months and months and months. Sunday morning, he shows up with a bulldozer by himself, and he took down every tree that he wanted to take down. Just gone. And of course, he ended up in jail, but that’s beside the point. He got rid of the trees he built the shopping center, moved back to Israel. I’m sure you’re very happy right now. But that’s a land deal right now is is a long term use.

Jeff Snow: [00:12:57] I mean, it takes a long time to get things develop these days. I’ve moved over to the multifamily business side of real estate commercial real estate. And when I say multifamily, everything four units above four units is is what I consider commercial real estate. And that has to be commercial loans, commercial development loans, et cetera. So I was involved in a lot of multifamily. You can imagine if we were jumping from 37000 people to what they had anticipated, which is about 100000. They were going to have to have a lot of housing. So in the interim there, for about two and a half three years, we sold close to 10000 units. So that’s a lot of pieces of property that have to be readied for development. And it was a very it was a really exciting time. It was fantastic. And Mr. Holliday bought a piece of property for me and happened to be in my neighborhood, not too far from me. And it was a good sized piece of property. It’s about twenty six acres. And his problem was they had a special little lizard, somebody at the EPA found on his property. Needless to say, they weren’t there on a Monday morning for some reason they were just all gone. Got the development done. But this is how these guys think they this is going to a let’s get it done and whatever it takes, they’re going to get it done. And they do.

Mike Sena: [00:14:29] Well, you have to. I mean, time is money. And so my dad was in commercial and industrial real estate and he bought or brokered primarily warehousing, and he would get a percentage, a small percentage every month for 30 years from that lease. And it funded his retirement. It really worked out quite well and reminded me of something I want to bring up to that might be of interest to people. A lot of folks want to use their IRA to invest in real estate, and it’s typically a terrible idea. You can expound on it, but there’s so many tax advantages to owning real estate depreciation and and the like. You lose all of that capital gains tax treatment inside an IRA, but raw land is a perfect example that you can use your IRA to purchase because there’s no depreciation on land, there’s no income from it. It’s it’s just a capital gain when you sell it at some point in time.

Jeff Snow: [00:15:28] Exactly. And if you wanted a retirement someplace and the Tennessee mountains or even North Georgia, you buy the property and you sit on it and it’s going to it’s in a majority of the time. It’s going to increase in value, and it’s just because there’s more of us people around that want the land. That’s it. It’s very simple. So the multifamily business was a was a very big business at that point, and my company called Ridge Properties. What they would do is to everything, to prepare the land, to build a building on it, and they made their money by doing it for single family homes. And it became a it’s a huge company still, and their single family homes division was not part of what we did. They already own the land where they had owned the land for years, developed it, and that’s what the single family came from. Then I once I got a little bit of the multifamily stuff done, we started building warehouses in the industrial park and it’s a light industrial park. It’s not heavy, meaning that there’s no major manufacturing. There’s no chemical off breed, no smoke coming out of anything other than maybe steam. But we built a fairly unique industrial part in that it was contained all in one section so that if you didn’t want to see it, you could drive right through the entire city and you’ll never see it if you don’t know where it is. And that was a that was an important point for the company because they did, they wanted to hide the what would be negative to to, they think, people buying it. Yeah, and they didn’t put single family homes anywhere near the industrial park. But it’s it’s almost fully built out now. And this has been in many, many years, but it’s a probably a three square mile area. So it’s a pretty good size, pretty good size, and it’s right up against the Everglades.

Mike Sena: [00:17:16] So getting closer to home? Yeah, where do you see taking place? You and I have talked a little bit about opportunities in northern Cherokee County, Pickens County, Dawson County being just slightly outside of where it’s super hot right now. You want to talk about that for a minute?

Jeff Snow: [00:17:35] Absolutely. I believe there’s there’s a lot of people. I just had a client. I luckily found him a piece of property in Cherokee County, and I say luckily, because it’s very hard to find what he needed in Cherokee. People are going towards Pickens, Gilmer, et cetera. There is a little problem up there. You know, there’s a very little water. They have to import their water or it has to be by well. So any kind of large manufacturing is not going to make it up there unless they figure out a way to to pump the water in. And that’s that’s a it is a problem for both Pickens and Gilmer County. Dawson County, I believe, does have access to Altoona, and they can get some water from it. They may even have their own reservoir that I don’t know about. Okay, interesting. Yeah, but I think the development up that way, first of all, it’s going to be mostly single and low multifamily to two, three or four units. But I don’t think you’re going to find a whole bunch of new apartment buildings coming out of the ground. They just don’t have the access, the capacity for it, and they went through a good recession with us, but they came out of it quicker because everything that they had was smaller properties. Industrial industrial right now is very is very big because people can’t find what they need. My client is in a four acre parcel right now down near Jamison Road. And he has he has 60 trailers, 60 and for four acres does not hold that much.

Jeff Snow: [00:19:08] So he has the rent property. So he’s creating this property in ball ground, and it’s going to be half of the property is his and then we’re marketing the other half for one of my favorite things, which is self storage. Ok, yeah, yeah. Self storage is a very interesting market. I met a guy, two people Bruce Manley and Buzz Victor Buzz. Victor wrote the book on self storage. They consider him the grandfather of self-storage development, and he did it all up and down the turnpikes in different places that they started. Now it’s become a huge industry. It’s a very different industry. There are no leases. It’s only you can only rent by the month. You might have an agreement for a year, but you can only rent by the month and the average person that goes into a self-storage, they visit it one time per month. How many just think about how many times an apartment with two people driving or three people driving, how many times they have to enter and leave is the maintenance is extremely low. The income is it’s not passive, but it’s pretty close to passive income because right now everybody’s doing it by credit card. Yeah, the to find the property for it to go on. Is easier than it used to be, because the the counties, especially up around here, are being pretty flexible about what they’re allowing. They allowed it in general, commercial a lot of places, they have to have an industrial land, but here is in general commercial.

Jeff Snow: [00:20:42] Mm hmm. But I I was involved with Buzz, Victor and Bruce, mainly in South Florida, and we found built sold 14 facilities. Wow. And a couple of those were. One was Miami Beach, where it was less than a three quarters of an acre. And it went up seven seven storeys high. Very. You have to be innovative and work outside the box. Another one that I sold. The guys had it was called store everything. They were right on Miami Beach, on the line of Miami Beach. They had a wine cellar. They had a place you could put your car into. That was a double concreted wall if you want. I mean, this place is close enough to the ocean that you could get some pretty nasty stuff with a hurricane, but they would store anything. And the one big thing that self-storage doesn’t like is chemicals, and they would store that so cool. And that is pretty much light industrial. And most of what we have here in in Cherokee County, up this way, Cherokee and and even over and foresight is light industrial. The heavy industrial there is some, but it’s few and far between. The crane company up on background on East Cherokee, is a huge industrial heavy industrial. They have they make their own cranes. They they weld it and put it together. And then there are a few others, but most of them are in light industrial, which is and it could be a huge organization, but they just don’t manufacture and create the problems that the EPA would not like them for.

Jeff Snow: [00:22:12] Ok. It’s hard enough as it is a lot of those industrial buildings now. Our distribution centers as Amazon built here in town. Fedex has them in town, in town, I mean, in the metro area of Atlanta. Huge one. Huge ups. Facility for distribution and all they’re doing is taking in something, possibly repackaging it and then shipping it out, and a lot of times they don’t repackage it, they just take it in and ship it out in a different way. So it goes through a big truck to the distribution, to a small truck, and that’s a huge thing around here. And if you know what the corridor is between Atlanta and and Charlotte, that I-85 corridor, if you drive up that corridor and you and you can look around, not where you’re going 90 miles an hour like you’re doing your BMW. But if you look around, you can. You can see some of the huge ore operations that are there. One of them is one of my favorites that you and I both know the gentleman that invented the electric nail gun. John Whiteside Rudder Yeah. And he the Ryobi factory up there is almost three million square feet. It is absolutely tremendous. It’s huge. And that’s not even the headquarters, but Brio is huge for Home Depot. Is there anything that I’m missing that you’d like me to talk about?

Mike Sena: [00:23:41] Well, we’re getting a pretty good overview. What I’m thinking is there are any number of opportunities. Yes. One of the things I want to talk about, particularly for clients that I would typically serve, that you might serve that Stone might know, is this Airbnb phenomenon. Short term rentals? Would you mind talk a little bit about that? What what do you see in your crystal ball?

Jeff Snow: [00:24:04] Yeah, we’ve talked about this before. Yeah, I have a couple of Airbnb’s and they they’ve worked out for me very, very well. But I am. I’m a control freak when it comes to that. So I know who they are, where they’re going, what they’re using it for, how long they’re going to be there. I’m pretty and I mean, over and above what quote Airbnb does and Airbnb is is just is the name of a company. But that’s where everything came from when they started doing couch surfing in San Francisco, San Diego, San Francisco. Yeah. So as in both of you, I’m sure have families or have been on a vacation where you’ve rented a house, rented a property, a condo, something that’s all it is, is is your your quote Airbnb experience is somebody may be doing it on a much smaller scale than having a huge condo building. My my dad lived off Fort Myers and we used to go down there to his place and we rented a two very large condos. We took over the whole floor with our family, about 40 people, and that was the same thing. It’s just that, just a different way of looking at it. One of the negatives of having a Airbnb and you didn’t. You do need to know what the negatives are, are people that are going to go in there and destroy it, or people that are going to go in there and have huge parties that they’re that they’re bringing in people that have no responsibility for what’s going on. And once you if you can control that and there’s a lot of electronic things that they have listening, they have a listening microphones that go to your phone so you can take care of it.

Mike Sena: [00:25:40] I’ve heard of that kind of stuff.

Jeff Snow: [00:25:42] Yep. Cameras and some of this stuff is what’s legal and what’s not legal. You have to look that up yourself. I, I tend to create my own rules as I go.

Mike Sena: [00:25:53] Well, you kind of have to. It reminds me my in-laws were very astute investors. They owned a quadriplegics down in marathon key. Three of the units were full time residents and one unit was short term vacation, whatever, and it worked out fabulously for them. There were they and another married couple owned the buildings, and they’ve owned it for years and it’s provided. Very reliable income, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Snow: [00:26:24] My brother and I own a unit down in Orlando, and probably 70 percent of the units are in a a weekly or a condo situation, not timeshare, but a condo type situation like what Airbnb would offer. And it’s a huge community. It’s big enough to have its own water park inside. And so, like I said, about 70 percent of the of the people that are that own units are use it for Airbnb and Airbnb. There’s probably 80 other different platforms that you can rent your homes through. Each one of them has their own little tweaking thing that they work, but it’s a fabulous business. It’s a great way to make some extra money. If you have a if you have a unit or a location that you can build up, a friend of ours found a place.

Mike Sena: [00:27:17] Regina Regina, I’m thinking about her. Yeah, she’s very astute.

Jeff Snow: [00:27:21] Yes, she is. Yeah, and she found a place and fixed it up and was using it for herself. And then she just started using Airbnb as it was very successful.

Mike Sena: [00:27:29] One of the things I’d like to talk about is. How do you finance this stuff? You know, we all hear the commercials. No money down. But we know that’s not really legitimate. What would you consider is reasonable? Do you go to a bank? Do you find private investors? Do you save up enough cash? You do it steps at a time. Well, what would be your advice for somebody looking to get

Jeff Snow: [00:27:52] Started up until we got in this conversation, till we got to Airbnb? Everything I’ve talked about is going to be basically a loan from a financial institution, whether it’s a bank or a credit union or a big enough property. In a lot of the apartments that I was talking about, they’re financed by insurance companies and the insurance companies do. If you’ve ever seen where their headquarters are, you can see why they have all the money. I’m going to take $10000 from you and I’m going to give you a piece of paper. And that’s it. Yes. Yeah. And I’m going to invest that. So where can you do the investments? It’s changed over the years. Those of you that are old enough remember savings and loans and savings. The loans were a great way to get an income loan for, for instance, a four Plex or a six Plex or whatever it might be that they they had their own limits they had. They also have their limits, as credit unions do today of the areas they can lend in. And so if you were if you were going to use the savings and loan credit union, that would be a great way of doing it because you become a member and the interest rates almost always are lower. Yeah. Same thing with a credit union. They’re not always lower, but a lot of times they are. But they’re their requirements are less. But they do hold the the loan within the bank. They don’t resell it. A majority of the time, I’d say 100 percent. So then financing right now we are using small banks. We don’t recommend people go to the big big five or 10, whatever the banks are.

Jeff Snow: [00:29:26] But we have some small banks that are working out fabulously for small offices. We are finishing an office project on Sixers Road and Main Street in River Park. We’re actually have one unit left out of 50 something units, and almost every single one of them in there are done by a small bank. Ok. And the bank will hold the paper, meaning they hold the mortgage. They don’t resell it. They don’t have to go out and get money. They have investors that put the money up. Then when you move into a larger situation, for instance, this this company that I have this buying the property up in ball ground, it’s a pretty big project, probably close to $5 million and they’ve gone to a company. I can’t say the name because I don’t remember the name, but they have. That company had to split it with another bank because it was bigger than what they wanted. But that happens a lot. I mean, in financing, they’re one of their biggest concerns right now is when can we close and is it going to be for? Is it going to be before the. Interest rates go up. Yeah, now every time the interest rates go up and you know this, you’re in the finance business, the amount of people that can do what they wanted to just simply by buying a home that gets reduced real quickly if it goes up a half a point. And they just can’t qualify for the for the amount of home that they have. And right now, I heard on the radio the other day, I couldn’t believe it. They said there’s only 9800 homes available in the Atlanta area.

Stone Payton: [00:31:00] 19:00 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Jeff Snow: [00:31:03] Do you? I don’t know if you remember ever looking at the sign in Marietta heading south on seventy five. And during the during 2009 2010, I would take my wife to work and was 110000 homes and call us now or whatever. I mean, that’s simply amazing. So the value of single family and multifamily is going to continue. I mean, it’s the value in my own neighborhood has been phenomenal. I just it’s really hard to believe how fast it’s gone up. And the whole idea of that is, as a finance person, Mike is to know when to get out. When are you going to sell the house? Because if you look at that curve of when it’s going up, when does it turn? Yeah, nobody knows when it’s going to go down again and when it gets at the bottom, when’s it going to turn back up again? People don’t know that. So it’s a roller coaster. So the financing part, you can also there’s private financing, a lot of private financing. People have money. They put it with people like Mike. They’ve created a nest egg and now they want to invest it in something. It might be a little bit more sketchy. It might be a little bit, not a Class A product, Class B, Class C or help somebody, maybe a family member put a put a project together that would either be an income project or possibly even for a business.

Jeff Snow: [00:32:21] And so financing is is an important way to go. And I know you’ve put together a lot of deals that were private financing, that people needed money to do something and you’ve made it, you’ve made it work for them and that that does work for the interest rates. They’re they vary from what, over from whatever. But if you go to a hard money lender, meaning you’re not going to a bank, but you’re going to somebody because you want to flip a house or you want to buy a house and fix it up, that interest rates are going to be very high, but it’s going to be a short term loan six months to a year, and you’re going to have to pay for the privilege of borrowing that money a couple of percentage points and then the high percentage on what the interest is. But it’s only for a short period of time till you can get the house back to what it is. And most of the time those guys are very savvy home flippers themselves. They know what’s going on,

Mike Sena: [00:33:12] You know, getting to that. One of the things I have learned over the years is, to a degree, no matter what you want to do, you have to have some experience. You have to have some knowledge. There are any number of things that can go awry that can go wrong and any kind of purchase. And I’d like to come back with also my favorite saying. We touched on a little bit, but I believe no matter what you’re buying, that the money is always made on the buy. And if you buy the property at a good price, chances are you’re going to do fine. Mm hmm. Real estate stocks there are longer term investments. This house flipping business, though it just it seems so seductive because you hear these people, they’re just making gazillions of dollars flipping houses. But I got to tell you, you got to have your act together really, really well, and you’ve got to turn that property over quick. And one of the things, particularly with stocks and real estate. Is you’ve got to keep your emotion out of it, it’s got to be a business transaction, start to finish. Yeah. How many times do you run into people that get emotionally attached to a commercial deal? It’s probably not as much as buying a home,

Jeff Snow: [00:34:20] But I had I had. I’ve had two partners that I flipped homes with the first one. Great guy. Cold is a fish that we would. I mean, he could have three babies. A woman holding three babies crying and he would kick them out of the house. Yeah. The second one, just a little bit of a it doesn’t even have to be a tear. And he bends. Yeah, so there’s different personalities on both ends of that. Yeah. But if keeping the keeping the emotions out of it is very important, you have to know what your numbers are now when you’re buying a house. And all of us here you married.

Stone Payton: [00:34:58] Yes, sir. Yeah, all of us here. Otherwise I wouldn’t even get to be here.

Jeff Snow: [00:35:03] All of us are either married or we’re married and know that we’re not the ones that are buying the house. It’s really the wife. Look at these faces, and that’s an emotional decision. Now the bank is going to decide how much you can put up, how much house you can buy. But if if she doesn’t like it, if the kitchen is bad, if the bathrooms are bad, I mean, unless she’s an investor and I was very lucky that my wife’s an investor, she she used to flip out, she used to build them herself. And so when we went to look at a property, we owned a number of properties. When we went to look at a property, she’d have that in her head of what the property’s going to be worth at the end. But keeping the emotions out of it for like an industrial property or retail property, et cetera, is very important. I didn’t get to retail because I worked for after the. My time with the court properties, I went to work for retail companies. I’m sorry. Yeah, well, these are no, these are not. I wasn’t on the in the store stuff. I hear

Mike Sena: [00:36:12] You. But even so, there’s that’s a different mindset in retail.

Jeff Snow: [00:36:16] Oh, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. Very, very, very different. And I worked for two, three very large companies. One of them was priced legacy out of San Diego. The other one was Kim. And the other one was Conover out of, well, actually, they’re out of Boca Raton, and all of them had started in unique ways. Mr. Conover was a. Refugee in World War Two, he had fought for the Polish in World War Two, and he came over, he and his brother bought a motel, fixed it all up and marble floors, they actually were tile layers is what they did, tile or floor layers, whatever it was back then. And he owned about 20 million square feet of property, but he never sold the hotel. He always held on to the hotel. Yeah, very, really nice guy. Absolutely. I had no vices whatsoever, not women, not smoking, not drinking. But he could gamble half a million dollars in the Bahamas in one weekend, easily the nice guy. But he could do it. But you could offer him a bet on anything that was. I always thought that was great. But retail is is huge.

Jeff Snow: [00:37:28] Obviously, that’s where we buy our groceries. That’s what we go, get our clothes. That’s where we get a number of things that even like a cup of coffee or would what would be a McDonald’s or most? Most cantina. So the the big boxes is what I had started with, and I would find tenants. Negotiations are long and tenuous. Leases are huge, but the tenant moves in eventually and creates a store and hopefully that the market is going to maintain that they do so much research up front. So if you know that there’s a public schooling in someplace and you can buy property near it, buy it because they have they’ve put in hundreds of hours, thousands of hours of time to make sure that that property is going to make it. So the retail has been has always been very big. I’ve done a number of retail transactions. It’s it’s an excellent income. But as you say, it can be very fickle too soon. As you start taking a downturn in the market, it’s going to be one of the first things that goes down in retail.

Mike Sena: [00:38:39] I’m thinking of one of my favorite stories, I actually chronicle that in the book I wrote several years ago. I don’t remember the name of the guy who’s a great guy, and he immigrated to Canada years and years ago. We really had nothing and he was working, I think, for either General Motors or Ford outside of Toronto, and there was a vacant lot next door. And he was thinking to himself, I bet that General Motors, for whatever they’re going to need this for parking or something down the road. And he just kind of put together he and his brother bought this property. They waited a few years. Sure enough, GM bought the property and that got him started in the real estate business. And you start off small and you just keep building it like any other endeavor. And the point of the story was, fast forward, I guess, to the 70s or 80s. He was vacationing at home in Greece. His son gave him a call, said there’s an advertisement in the paper. They’re trying to sell the Pontiac Silverdome. What do you think, dad? They ended up. They made an offer on it and they bought the Silverdome. They was going to repurpose it for soccer and MMA and how you say the car shows and stuff. It’s amazing how some people see value were. Nobody else. Does I need to follow back up on that story to see how that really worked out for him? Because I know it didn’t quite work out the way he thought, but he got a fabulous deal. Well, the Pontiac Silverdome, so you just never know. You start small and you keep building and you learn it’s a it’s a fabulous way to generate wealth.

Jeff Snow: [00:40:18] Absolutely. And you’re you’re you’re right. As long as you can keep that momentum going and keep looking at new stuff and don’t spend all your money. Yeah, I think I’ve got the guy’s name is a Rod Carew. Is he the tall baseball player? Yeah. Okay. So Rod has always been. It was taught when he was a kid. I saw an interview. He did always have two incomes, put one away and use the other one when he was in playing baseball. He never touched the money in baseball. Other than to put it in investments. He started out with one duplex. When I saw the interview, probably three or four years ago, he owned over sixteen thousand apartments. Wow. Worldwide, nationwide, and when I say he owned, he was. He was the major shareholder and he took. He took one of his incomes and always put it away for investment and the other one he lived on. That’s I mean, that’s if you can do that. That’s fantastic.

Mike Sena: [00:41:17] Kind of reminds me another one of my favorite little sayings. You can divide people into any number of groups, but one of my favorites is two types of people those that think about spending money and those that think about making money. Yeah, and it’s an entirely different mindset. If you want to generate wealth over time, you want to be thinking about How can I make money? How can I invest money? How will this look ten years from now, right?

Jeff Snow: [00:41:44] And it’s you have a. Well, when I met you, you had a 13 year old and I have a number of children. Sometimes it’s hard to get them to understand. It’s got to be four down the road you can’t think of right now. What are you going to do to go out and party? What are you going to do down the road when you when, when, when you get to my age and you want to slow down a little bit, you might not be able to it. And yeah, but that’s up to you. One of the things I wanted to get into was net leases.

Mike Sena: [00:42:12] Yeah, tell us about that, please.

Jeff Snow: [00:42:14] Net lease is I’m going to use an example of a Starbuck. They build a Starbucks down on Highway 92, and it costs them two and a half million dollars to build it. They will open it up as a Starbucks. They will make sure that it’s a successful Starbucks. There’s different timing that people hold on to it, but typically a year to two years. And then they will go to the market and say, I will sell this Starbucks building to an investor, and the investor is going to pay X amount of dollars for two point five million, whatever it might be. And he is going to get a return of whatever the cap rate is. So if it’s a higher cap rate, he makes more. If it’s a great area and they know they’re going to be getting a lot of business, the cap rates a little bit lower. What’s the cap rate? Cap rate is when you take the income, the and take away the expenses and how much money you put into it and what is going to be your return. Ok, so it’s basically the return. Yeah. And if you almost any place you go to, if it’s got a large big box in it, for instance, Kohl’s and what’s the store next to them? The Old Navy? Ok.

Jeff Snow: [00:43:22] Both of those are freestanding buildings, even though they don’t look at their freestanding buildings and they’ve sold those to the market. So probably 10 to $12 million. They sold them to the market. The market means somebody bought that building. They have nothing to do with the. They can’t the only thing they can do is they have to maintain the building, they have to maintain the roof and not the doors, but pretty much the rest of the building. And by doing that, they’re going to get a very nice return on their investment of whatever, whatever, whatever it might be, five percent, six percent. And it’s a pretty solid return because even if the company, which a lot of people understand this, even if the business has decided to close that store, they’re still paying the rent. So you’ve seen a lot of especially Walgreens, CVS and Rite Aid that they’ve contracted recently. And so a lot of vacant stores, well, the company, Walgreens or whoever it is, is still paying the rent, the rent, and it sits vacant, typically until it almost runs out, unless somebody is willing to step up and purchase that

Mike Sena: [00:44:30] And repurpose it for something else. Exactly. Going back to what an individual sees that nobody else sees.

Jeff Snow: [00:44:36] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And they work. They work at the corner of in crabapple. They took an old Walgreens and they made it into. What is the hardware store? It’s like, oh,

Mike Sena: [00:44:50] Urban hardware, urban

Jeff Snow: [00:44:51] Hardware. That’s you. Yeah, that’s urban hardware. And that’s right, it’s in the silos. Yes. Yeah. And so that’s a ten ten to fourteen thousand foot building. And now they could be leasing it from the owner, but more than likely they bought it and they’ve done the same thing. They flipped it to another investor because urban hardware is going to be around for a while, and that makes a big difference to me. Even Home Depot’s Lowe’s, all of the stores that you think about, almost all of them build it like that. So they’re built for, especially Wal-Mart. Wal-mart builds everything for cash they don’t put, they don’t take any financing. They don’t have to. They just wait one day and they can collect enough money to do that, but they’ll build it for cash and then they want to take their cash out and go to build another store. And investors are standing in line for those kind of deals because they’re solid. They’re not going anywhere. I moved here when the one on 92 in trickle mode opened up. Ok, yeah. And I happened to meet the investor that was doing it. He was just smiling ear to ear. He just said he was doing. He was going to be doing great.

Mike Sena: [00:45:56] Well, once again you start small, you learn, you keep rolling it over and investing and buying a little more, a little more. Right. And next thing you know, we’re talking about real money. Yeah.

Jeff Snow: [00:46:07] You asked me to to. What is Nostradamus to? Predict, yeah, predict what the market’s going to do. Yeah. I know about as much as you do, Michael, and, you know, more than I do much more. We’re quite frankly, with this company that I’m with now, when we’re developing, we’re being brokers, we’re looking for opportunities, land and purchases. We’re looking at six months down the road. We actually put together a plan for six, six months, three years. And some of this came to get most of this came together after the last election. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We and I mean, obviously with a with a war that just started, yes, it was yesterday or the day before. Yeah, it could change everything literally could change everything. Somebody gets stupid and they push their finger on a certain button. I mean, we don’t know what’s going to happen. So that’s why we’re looking at six months down the road. We’re not we’re not going that we’re going to buy a piece of property and know that we can we can build on in three years. We’re not doing that. We are we are hedging our bets that do as much as we can right now in that period of time. And you know, we could go out of year, year and a half, but we’re right now every six months, we’re looking at that. And if we’re going forward, we’re just extending that three year thing. Interest rates this week, this as a Monday or whatever day they’re meeting is going to go up. What a half a point,

Mike Sena: [00:47:44] Maybe a quarter or half a quarter to a health kind of ladder all the way up the line? Right?

Jeff Snow: [00:47:49] But exactly. And that’s the bank rate, but it’s still going to go up the line.

Mike Sena: [00:47:54] Yeah, they’ve got a we could really go way out here, but they’ve got a very interesting mandate the Federal Reserve. There is an election coming up. They are, to a degree, somewhat political. You never know what they’re going to do. They signal this. They signal that they talk in terms that really nobody understands, right? It’s. Now we’ve talked enough stone, right? We’re living in the Twilight Zone. This is there’s so many things that’s coming so fast, it’s hard to process. But what I come back to again is land is always going to be with us and commercial real estate. There are ups and downs, but if you can weather the storms, it’s a great way to generate wealth over time. Yeah.

Jeff Snow: [00:48:40] And if you pay attention to what Georgia Department of Traffic does and you see and you can look out what their three year plan is, yeah, you can get a pretty good idea or an idea. And that three year plan almost never is going to be what they’re going to be building. But that three year plan is going to tell you where the corners are going to be, where the area is going to be for retail or industrial, whatever it might be. But the same thing we did in Florida with the Florida Department of Transportation. They know what’s going to be happening because they’ve got the mandate that it has to be done down the road has to be done today for down the road. I mean, look at what our traffic is. I live out where you used to live in hickory flat. I mean, the traffic has just gotten. So we used to be able to pull up to our egress where where we’re leaving the our subdivision and just kind of glide through and go, Oh, you run over by two 18 wheelers, you try that today. Our dump trucks actually dump trucks, so it’s somewhat related.

Mike Sena: [00:49:45] This was interesting. I have cousins from Connecticut that were visiting earlier this month. He’s in the construction business. He’s semi-retired, he’s a finished carpenter. We’re driving around and their eyeballs were popping out of their heads, they’re from Connecticut, there’s nothing going on in Connecticut and we’re building on every street corner Woodstock, Cherokee County, Buckhead, Midtown. The South is cooking, it’s on fire and I don’t see any substantial. Roadblocks other than, of course, the vast unknown. There’s just not enough. Single family homes, multifamily homes, industrial parks to satisfy buyers right now, I see this train going a number of years into the future.

Jeff Snow: [00:50:34] Yeah, and you’re right. Listening to prognosticators of what’s going to be happening in multi and single family multifamily there, just the increase might not be the 16 percent of what it was last year, but it’s going to keep going up. There’s just not enough housing. This has got nothing to do with what happened in 2008 and nine, right? Nothing at all. Yeah. And it’s the the and that housing, it’s housing ahead of commercial right now. A lot of times it’s commercial ahead of housing, it’s going to come where it is. But right now it’s housing ahead of commercial. So wherever you’re putting the housing, that’s where the commercial is going to show up eventually.

Mike Sena: [00:51:09] All right. So I just have a question, an engineering question just popped into my head. You’re welcome St. to participate. I don’t know. I just got back from Florida. I’m driving down I-75 to the turnpike and right at the turnpike and seventy five is the villages. Yes, which is one of the largest planned communities on planet Earth. They are building thousands of single family homes, both sides of the turnpike. And I’m wondering the engineering aspect and the planning to get the water in and the sewage out and the infrastructure, all of that stuff. It’s mind blowing to me.

Stone Payton: [00:51:47] Well, I can give you a little bit of a tertiary perspective on this, my brother is the CEO of the Florida Homebuilders Association. Wow. Now, Rusty cannot drive a nail. He don’t know anything about building a home, but he spends his time and his staff spend their time in the the political arena trying to get things passed, trying to block this, you know, pass that. And there’s a lot of it has to do with engineering everything from septic to the flow of water. And that’s a full time job for he and his staff to try to get. So that’s that’s all I know.

Mike Sena: [00:52:24] Wow. It just it kind of mind boggles me a little bit. But once again, with all of this development taking place there, adjacent properties got to be pretty good investments. Getting back to we all wish that we’re standing on a piece of property. I wish I’d have bought this one. I had one of my favorite stories. There’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is at four hundred and 285, its big, gleaming structure. My dad, I’ll never forget he was saying, you know. We were hundreds of dollars apart, an acre on this island, hundreds of dollars, hundreds of dollars, it’s millions of dollars an acre now. It’s all about timing, it’s all about the numbers, but it’s also about having a little foresight and seeing what’s possible.

Jeff Snow: [00:53:14] Yes, in the villages, I have a couple of friends, one just moved there and one’s been there for quite a while and I was speaking to Frank when he visited up here. They’re just finishing their 81st golf course. 81, Golf 81. They’re just finishing it. That is. It’s amazing. Can you imagine you’ve been in there?

Mike Sena: [00:53:35] Yeah, I’m not. No. It’s a it’s a treat.

Stone Payton: [00:53:39] It’s probably worth an excursion just to go hang out, right? It is.

Jeff Snow: [00:53:42] I would love to have the golf cart franchise for them.

Mike Sena: [00:53:46] Yeah, the the bridge going across the turnpike is a golf cart only, I believe.

Jeff Snow: [00:53:50] Exactly. Yeah, wow. And the they have their own sewer treatment plants, OK? They were required to do that. One of the positive things about that, and you’re probably your your brother knows about this is they built it and I’m not sure they meant to built it right on top of the aquifer that runs north to south in south in Florida.

Mike Sena: [00:54:12] I was wondering about that.

Jeff Snow: [00:54:13] Yeah, yeah, I mean, they’re in the Everglades. I mean, you just hang out there the way you find out, let’s go there in June and just don’t put any bug spray on it. You’ll find out they are in the Everglades, but that aquifer goes right underneath so they can get plenty of water into how they how they.

Mike Sena: [00:54:33] Protect it and it, maintain it still. Yeah, probably weightier questions for another day.

Jeff Snow: [00:54:39] Yes. And they’re probably making enough money that they can figure it out themselves.

Mike Sena: [00:54:44] One of the things I wanted to try and accomplish with this conversation is to encourage people to keep your minds open and to have an imagination. You just never know how a property can be repurposed or can fit in with your long term investment objectives. I love the stock market, but I love real estate too. I got a client in Hilton Head. Longer story here, but he is going to buy some property for friends of his to run a bar. And I said it’s. Go for it. He’s got to own the property. He’s going to be the landlord. He’s not going to be a bartender. He’s not going to be in the restaurant business. He’s going to be in the landowning business. And it’s a little town called Bluffton, which Jasper County, South Carolina, fastest growing county in South Carolina. Bluffton is in my mind. I like like Woodstock. They’re doing a lot of things great. I just I don’t see a lot of risk for him, and I see another income stream, which is what he needs is three or four income

Jeff Snow: [00:55:44] Streams, which we all do, right?

Mike Sena: [00:55:46] We all do. Yeah. So the more income streams you can develop in your life, the better off you’re going to be. Which reminds me another person that you and I both know Chris Myers. Yeah, a chiropractor in in Canton. I don’t think he would object, but he owns his office building. But he bought some property in Pickens County, and they’re building a house up there. They’re going to sell the bridgman house and he is going to have either goats or sheep. He’s kind of have some kind of blueberries, I think, and then they’re going to do either glamping or a little Airbnb type things on the property. It’s going to have about four or five different income streams. Brilliant, man. Yeah. And these are the kind of things that you want to think about us. Have an open mind. And Jeff, how can people reach you if they want to learn more?

Jeff Snow: [00:56:34] Well, I’m with path and post real estate. It’s located here in Cherokee County. My phone number is nine five four two one four zero five three six. That’s the first cell phone number I ever had, and I’ll never remember another one, so I kept it all this time. And very simply, Jeff at Path Jpost.com.

Mike Sena: [00:57:02] All right, cool. And you’re happy to have conversations with people that want to learn about how they can get in, get into real estate, get started with real estate.

Jeff Snow: [00:57:11] You and I are both in Toastmasters. Yeah. One of the reasons I got into Toastmasters is I would go around to real estate offices and I’d explain to them what Coleridge Properties does and explain to them that, you know, we own all the land, we develop it and any questions you have give me a call. My referral business skyrocketed after I did that because most people, most real estate agents, don’t want to do commercial. It’s a different animal. It’s totally different. And I’d be more than happy to answer any questions anybody has, even if it’s just a question has nothing to do with what they want to do. I’ll be happy to answer it.

Mike Sena: [00:57:48] Sounds great, stone.

Stone Payton: [00:57:50] Well, this has been fantastic, so informative for me because Holly and I have kind of reached that point in our lives where we should be exploring something like this and we should be getting expert counsel from people like you and Jeff Snow. So this is what a marvelous way to spend a Friday morning. Let’s make sure that we leave our listeners with your contact info to whatever you think is appropriate. Linkedin website, phone, whatever, whatever.

Mike Sena: [00:58:14] Mike S. Advisors. Mike Mike Seena Advisors were the only certified financial planners highly personalized. That’s the best way to reach me. And Jeff, thanks for coming on. This has been a delight. And I’ll say again, I grew up in the real estate business. I love it. It’s a great way to generate wealth over time.

Jeff Snow: [00:58:38] Yeah, and I appreciate it. Michael, thank you very much for inviting me. We’ve talked so many times over the years about different things, and this has been exciting. I really enjoyed doing it and I’ll be happy to help anybody that wants that.

Mike Sena: [00:58:49] Sounds good.

Stone Payton: [00:58:51] All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our host today, Mike Seena, our guest Jeff Snow and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying We’ll see you next time on Trusted Advisors radio.

Jean Durham With Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching

February 28, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Atlanta Business Radio

Jean Durham With Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching

00:00 /

Jean Durham, Master Certified Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach at ILEC

Jean has more than 20 years of military service and has recently retired. The Marine Corps has definitely taught her that organizational skills coupled with hard work pays off; loyalty and teamwork are a must for the task at hand; and that a culture of strong leadership can really make a difference.

Her new calling is to help leaders become the absolute best versions of themselves. She wants to help change the world, and she knows that can happen one leader at a time.

As an executive coach, she enjoys working with and helping people with the same drive, compassion, understanding, and sense of adventure that she possesses.

Connect with Jean on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Executive and leadership coaching is more important than ever post-pandemic
Help women overcome gender inequality in the workplace

TRANSCRIPT

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

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the Atlanta Business Radio. We have Jean Durham with intelligent leadership executive coaching. Welcome, Gene.

Jean Durham: [00:00:43] Hi, thank you, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:44] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about your practice. How are you serving, folks?

Jean Durham: [00:00:50] Yeah. So intelligent leadership executive coaching. We’re dedicated to growing strong leaders at every level, building cultures and and driving results. Of course, so I’ll seize coaching methodology. It includes a proven philosophy system and tools that empower leaders and future leaders to unlock and unleash their potential. So really, Ilex purpose is to accelerate the development of these leaders while helping organizations build and sustain strong cultures.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Now what’s your backstory? How did you get involved in coaching?

Jean Durham: [00:01:27] So I was active duty in the Marine Corps in my transition was slowly approaching. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after the Marine Corps. And and just so you have it. There was a transition coach that reached out to me via LinkedIn. So he and I worked for several months trying to figure out what what it was that I wanted to do, what my calling was, and I knew that I didn’t want a corporate position. I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur in franchising. Just it sounded right up my alley. And we went through a couple of them, which I didn’t feel was a good fit for me. But he introduced me to Elysse and I was like, Yes, that is my calling. That’s what I would like to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:10] Now let’s talk a little bit about that transition period. Here you were. Your career was in the armed services and now you’re transitioning into civilian life. And for some people, that could be overwhelming, it’s like, I don’t know if I can do anything other than what I have been doing, but for other people it might be like I can do whatever I want now, you know, the world is my oyster. There’s infinite choices. How did you kind of navigate that? You know, the, you know, the trap of some sort of scarcity, but also the trap of so much abundance that it’s, you know, it’s almost paralyzing.

Jean Durham: [00:02:46] Right? I know exactly what you’re saying. You know, it’s it’s a rarity that you’re going to find a marine who truly like joins and then wants to do more than four years. I think we’re all just doing four year increments until, you know, twenty two years passes and it’s like, OK, I think it’s time to move on and do something. It’s risky. It’s scary. Absolutely. But no one, no one ever did anything great being scared all the time, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:03:16] But how did you kind of narrow your choices like you looked at franchising? And I would imagine some of the appeal of franchising is there’s a structure. There is already kind of a roadmap that I, if I’m a good steward to this, then I should become successful. That’s attractive to a lot of people as opposed to you had the background to to have your own kind of internal philosophy of coaching and leadership based on your history. So something drew you to a already an existing methodology.

Jean Durham: [00:03:49] Definitely. I am a big believer in big fan of structure and organization, you can imagine. But the best part about me being a coach with Elysse is that I get to take my experience from before and couple it with this awesome coaching system. And it’s it’s a really nice package of what I get to do. So I don’t lose anything. I get to be me and use the system at the same time.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] So it kind of shores up some of the structure and operations that maybe you weren’t familiar with or didn’t already have fully baked. So you can start kind of off and running and just kind of leapfrog from that foundation into your own kind of skill set?

Jean Durham: [00:04:32] Yes. Yes, precisely.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:35] Now in your in the world you were in is a male dominated field, obviously. Is part of your practice going to be kind of aimed at women who are in male dominated fields? Is that an area of practice for you or you’re taking all comers?

Jean Durham: [00:04:52] Of course, I want to help as many people as as I can, absolutely. But helping women who are in male dominated industries, I that is a that is a demographic that I’m very interested in helping. Absolutely.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:08] So how do you go about the kind of the sales and marketing for that? Like, how do you identify people to even start having these conversations with?

Jean Durham: [00:05:18] Sure. I mean, so I was in the Marine Corps for four, twenty two years, and so I know what it’s like to be the only woman in the room or the only woman at the table. And I know what it’s like to have a little bit of time before your voice is heard. But you know, what I learned is that I had every right to be in that room or at that table because I earned it. And sometimes working twice as hard as men is is what it takes. But it is noticed and the people who might have questioned my ability to do my job well that that ceased. And so that’s something that I that’s my unique perspective that I can bring to the table.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:01] And then how do you identify the women out there that might be going through the same thing, but maybe don’t have that support and maybe that inner confidence? Or maybe they have some sort of imposter syndrome that they aren’t kind of worthy of where they’d like to go? How do you identify them so you can help them?

Jean Durham: [00:06:22] Well, it’s it’s going to take a lot of conversation, and that’s my job. And that’s what I want to do is I want to establish relationships with with these folks. And so of course, I I don’t think I can show up at a production company and be like, Yes, that’s the woman she needs. My help. It’s just it’s it’s going to be a lot of meeting people and kind of digging out like what the challenges are and where I can help.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] Now in your journey to find IAC, I guess you worked with a coach yourself to help identify a variety of franchises of which you chose ILC. Are there kind of do you see some sorts of referral partners in your future that you could be working with to collaborate so that they can? You can work together to identify that ideal client fit and or serve that group.

Jean Durham: [00:07:18] Oh, sure. I actually am looking into a couple of groups here in Savannah. It’s a it’s a pure it’s like a yeah, it’s like what you said, it’s a referral network, so we’re all out to help each other. I’m definitely joining a lot of different groups in that arena.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:36] Now, when you retired from the Marines and began this kind of journey, does the armed services provide kind of a pathway or are they just say, Well, that’s your last day, you know, good luck. And off you go it.

Jean Durham: [00:07:56] Know there is a transition readiness seminar that every marine is is required to go through upon transitioning out. So the Marine Corps has has set me up appropriately.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:09] And then what was it like kind of that first day that you were untethered from the Marines?

Jean Durham: [00:08:16] It was very weird. I know that’s probably not the best word I could use, but it truly was. It was I. I no longer was required to wear the uniform that I had been wearing for 20 twenty years. It it definitely put my thoughts and feelings about the Marine Corps in perspective. While you’re in, you might be like, Oh, well, this is kind of awful, and I think I really need to move on. And then that last day, you’re like, No, no, no, no, no, I really want to stay in now. I miss you guys already.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:50] Did you find that that you your identity kind of changed because like when you were part of a team like the Marines for a period of time, that’s how you probably identified. And then now you’re a former marine. Do you feel like kind of a little bit of an outsider?

Jean Durham: [00:09:08] I do, and I do. It’s because that’s that was one thing that made me truly unique is I was a female in the Marine Corps. The percentages are so low, I think I made up six percent. That’s a very small number. And then it’s almost like I lost it. But upon my transitioning transition out, I, I did not realize how many people, how many veterans were out there that were like, No, no, no, we’re we’re still a family and you were still a marine and you can count on us and we’re here for you and like, OK, I love this. This is great.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:46] Yeah, it’s one of those, I guess, transitioning from anything that you’ve been so intimately involved in for so many years. It becomes part of you. And then when you kind of take that next step in the journey, you know, it’s it leaves a mark. Definitely now being part of a franchise like ILC also comes with some support and teamwork. Have they set you up to be successful in your market or what are some of the things they’ve done to help you kind of launch your practice?

Jean Durham: [00:10:22] Oh my goodness, this has been some of the most supportive staff I have ever worked with. They were with me every step of the way leading up to me being awarded the franchise. And that did not stop. Once I got the franchise, they I have calls with them on a weekly basis to make sure that everything is going well. They honestly, I had no idea I had someone pitch my story to you on my behalf, and I just I’m ecstatic. Like, there’s there’s only so much marketing I can do. And then you’ve got this extra team out there that’s like posting content on your behalf and reaching out to the media to be interviewed. And I’m just I’m it’s so wonderful.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:08] So let’s share some advice or maybe some of the wisdom you’ve learned over the years for the listener out there, maybe it’s that woman that’s in a male dominated field. What is some things they could be doing today? What some action they could be taking in order to, you know, take their career or their business to a new level?

Jean Durham: [00:11:28] Sure, absolutely. I’ve got a couple of things, so it might be a long answer. First and foremost, lead by example. Women have always been and will continue to be under the microscope, and unfortunately, that when a mistake is made, it’s noticed. So it starts with how you carry and conduct yourself. You know, you want to model and develop the behaviors that you expect. And I want to coach women into becoming more self-aware, getting more comfortable with being vulnerable. And when I say vulnerable vulnerability is associated with feelings of fear and uncertainty, absolutely. But when someone is truly vulnerable, it, it builds trust it. Builds empathy and understanding it opens us up for growth, and it allows us to be our authentic selves. I would like to encourage women to showcase their talents. So I mean, confidence is built through helping someone realize their self-worth. And it’s it’s a it’s a game changer. And, you know, women have a voice and they have a unique perspective that men just don’t have. So when they speak up, it builds credibility and increases their confidence. And I mean, at the end of the day, women might just have to be their own advocate.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:53] Now you mentioned earlier working in the film and entertainment industry, how did you kind of get involved in that group?

Jean Durham: [00:13:02] Well, the film industry, it it fascinates me as a whole. I just like I like everything about it, especially the behind the scenes stuff, what goes into it? But of course, over the past few years, I think it’s gotten highlighted for some, some negative things and. I I wanted to get into that in particular, just because there are certain beliefs about women’s leadership abilities. There are harmful stereotypes. There are, of course, the sexual harassment and women as a whole in the film industry, they’re underrepresented. And so that’s that’s definitely an area that I would like to to try to help.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:48] Yeah. And Georgia has this, you know, kind of a this burgeoning film industry that we are taking the country in the world by storm, by producing so much stuff here. So there’s definitely opportunity.

Jean Durham: [00:14:00] Oh, definitely. Oh my gosh. Great state.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:03] Now for you in your practice, is there anything that you would recommend a somebody transitioning to think about when it comes to launching into a career in coaching? I know you went the route of a franchise, but there’s a lot of other routes for a person. But but to have the confidence and to transfer some of that knowledge and just I mean, the military does a great job in creating leaders. There’s nobody that trains probably more leaders than the military. And I think that this country in the world would be better served if more of the more out there leading, you know, and get some of that brainpower working to make the country better and better place. Any advice for that person to take that step and to get into coaching into a leadership training?

Jean Durham: [00:14:57] Oh, oh my goodness. Because you’re right there, there are so many different programs. Oh, if I keep keep doing leadership development yourself. I just made a post earlier on LinkedIn about how I joined the local Marine Corps League and it’s like, you know, you don’t want to. You don’t want to get the training and then just sit and try to to to train, folks. You have to continually evolve with with what you’re you’re putting out there to the world. So read more Listen to more podcasts. Listen to Atlanta Business Radio. Just continually educate yourself.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:40] Yeah, I think that sometimes when you’re so immersed in something, you might take it for granted and not realize the gift that you have and that that has been kind of given to you, that you have an opportunity to really make a big impact. And don’t sell yourself short. I think that all the people that transition out of the military have a lot to offer, and then businesses would be smart to really think about them as employees. And a lot of those veterans should consider, you know, doing their own thing and helping other people level up.

Jean Durham: [00:16:14] Oh, absolutely. Thank you for saying that.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:17] Yeah, I think it’s a it’s a it’s a wonderful resource that the country has, and I think we take it for granted. And I think a lot of the veterans don’t really appreciate all the value that they have to give. And I think that there’s a lot of opportunity there that we can all benefit by the work and the sacrifice that the military folks have already given. But there’s there’s a lot of work to be done.

Jean Durham: [00:16:42] No. Absolutely, yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:45] So now if somebody wants to learn more about your practice and get on your calendar, what is the best way to connect with you? Do you have a website?

Jean Durham: [00:16:53] Oh, I sure do. It is extremely long. So do you want me to just go ahead and say it?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:58] Hey, you said we’ll put it in the link, but why don’t you say it out loud?

Jean Durham: [00:17:02] Ok, it’s if you go to Jeanne Durham dot intelligent leadership for education or for executive coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:11] Right. And that’s G.A.. And you are a smart, intelligent leadership.

Jean Durham: [00:17:19] That’s correct.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:20] Well, Jean, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Jean Durham: [00:17:26] Oh, thank you so much for having me on today, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:28] All right, this is Lee Kantor UCL next time on Atlanta Business Radio.

About Our Sponsor

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Jammie Wong With Hawaiian Galore Inc

February 28, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Oahu Business Radio

Jammie Wong With Hawaiian Galore Inc

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Jammie Wong, Sales Training and Marketing consultant at Hawaiian Galore Inc

Born and raised in Hawaii, Jammie has over 20 years of experience in the HVAC/Construction industry. The various positions she has filled have been as a customer service rep, dispatcher, accounting and financials, office manager, estimating and project management, sales and marketing, and service manager. She has also worked in the industrial real estate industry, where she helped with the leasing and lead generation for potential clients.

She started training on Cardone University and increased the sales of the company she worked for by 40%. She helped another construction startup company build out their service department by selling over $1.5 million and closing 30 service contracts within 18 months using the techniques taught by Grant Cardone. Jammie decided to partner with Grant Cardone and become a Licensee so that she could help bring Grant’s training to businesses in Hawaii. Jammie believes that with Grant’s training, businesses can grow and scale to 10X levels which will not only impact the business owners lives but also the lives of their employees.

“When you impact the employee’s lives, you impact the business. I believe customer service starts from within the company, and with Grant’s training you can create a WOW customer service experience for everyone!”

Connect with Jammie on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Customer service
Employees are your customers
Sales and marketing
Personal development
Helping businesses become successful

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting Live from the Business RadioXStudios in Oahu, Hawaii. It’s time for Oahu Business Radio.Now here’s your host

Lee Kantor: [00:00:17] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Oahu Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor facility access. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the show. We have Jammie Wong and she is with Hawaiian galore. Welcome, Jamie.

Jammie Wong: [00:00:37] Thanks, Lee.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:38] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about Hawaiian Glor. How are you serving, folks?

Jammie Wong: [00:00:44] So Hawaiian Galore is a consulting and coaching company that I started so that I can help businesses learn how to transform their processes within their company to improve their culture and their customer service.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:57] Now, how did you kind of stumble upon that? A lot of folks take their processes for granted. What got you into the process business?

Jammie Wong: [00:01:07] Well, I got into it recently because I’ve always been an employee and within the companies I’ve been in, I realized that there’s a lot of different things that are missing in order to help the individual employee succeed within the company. So I decided, well, I think this is something that needs to be spoken about and taught more to business owners. They need help with that so that they can help their employees win. Ultimately, the company wins.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:34] Now is there a certain areas in certain processes you work on? Like, do you work more in sales? Do you work more in just operations or customer service? Is there an area you specialize in?

Jammie Wong: [00:01:46] So actually, it’s overall right because I’ve been in every single department that you mentioned, but it initially starts with the operations part because when you first interact with the customer, whoever they get greeted by, that’s where the interaction starts. So let’s start from there and then able to work its way into each different department because ultimately every department works with your customer. So you want the customer to have a continuous and a continuous good flow of communication within the company where where one department speaks, the next one is just continuous flow. So it makes the customer happy, makes the customer service exceptional.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:23] Now do you find that a lot of business leaders, they kind of take their employees for granted and they don’t really view them as one of their customers?

Jammie Wong: [00:02:33] Yes. And I think that that is the number one customer for an employer is their employees, because if they don’t teach and train their employees how to handle customers and what needs to be done, then they’ll just wing it. And once they wing it, it gets very disruptive and it breaks up the flow. So you have a lot of unhappy customers right from the beginning, which includes the employees because no one likes an unhappy customer. They don’t know how to deal with it. So then they start passing them off.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:00] Now, if you treat your employees right, I would imagine that you have happier, better employees and it’s easier to find new ones in case you if you need more.

Jammie Wong: [00:03:11] Well, definitely because when you teach and help and train and make an employee successful, the best referral a company can get is word of mouth. And the word of mouth that’s most successful to me is by an employee because they’ll go, speak about it to the individual customers, they’ll tell about it to other people. So that is the most powerful referral is a happy employee

Lee Kantor: [00:03:32] Now is having a happy employee as simple as just, oh, pay them more because that’s all they want is more money? Or is there other things you’ve been doing to get a happy employee?

Jammie Wong: [00:03:43] Right? So to get a happy employee, you actually need to find out what it is that they want. What are their goals? What are they seeking? I mean, a lot of people might say, OK, the pay, they’ll start off with the pay. But it’s not really the p, because when you start talking and interacting with your individual employees, you find out there’s different things. So if you help them achieve their goals, then they’ll help the company achieve their goals and then it becomes a win win for everybody. So it takes a lot of communication, which is what I help business owners with because everything starts with communication.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:17] Now, so we’ve talked a little bit about how a company could kind of get the most out of their employees and, you know, that’s a great starting point. But is there other activities they can be doing when it comes to like, say, sales and marketing to kind of beef that up a little bit?

Jammie Wong: [00:04:34] Sure. I mean, there’s a lot of different things that can be taught and changed, and you can actually encourage the employees to do some of those sales do some of the marketing. So when you have customers calling in just with questions, they can start doing the sales processes there. Or, you know, you can encourage social media or like this, like a podcast or an interview, or they could be talking to other people about it and even getting referrals from the customers when the customers call in. If they have a great experience, the individual employee can do that. And what you can do ultimately right as an employer is to incentivize the employees. The departments make it more lucrative if it’s a win win, not just, you know, a bonus type structure, but more of an incentive.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:18] Now in your work, are you specializing in certain industries or niches, or is this something that any business of any size can benefit from?

Jammie Wong: [00:05:28] Well, any business can benefit from this, but my specialty is in the fact industry, so I’ve been in it in for twenty five years, so that is my little niche. But as I said, any company can benefit from, you know, transforming their processes and starting with the individual employee to help the company.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:47] Now what the say in one of these fact companies out there that are listening, what is the type of problem they’re having or challenge that they’re going through where working with you or somebody on your team would help them? Like, what’s a symptom that they might be having that you might be able to help them solve?

Jammie Wong: [00:06:05] Well, the the biggest problem that usually happens is that when the customer calls in, they’re so busy that they don’t respond to the customer. So the customer gets very frustrated, right? So whoever gets that first initial contact with the customer, they they’re not prepared how to handle it. And then it just gets shoved off or the customer gets more upset and then gets up and up and up right until you come to the manager. So what I do is I would go in and I would help the individual employees. So like the initial call, right? You train the employee how to handle the initial call. And then another problem they have is the response time. You know, everybody in the industry knows right that when everybody’s hot or it’s leaking or broken, they want to fix now. So that’s a situation that can be remedied very easily by training and helping to teach the individual employee how to handle that.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:58] Yeah, I find a lot of organizations rather than just communicate and tell the truth, they either ignore the situation and then, like, they’re too busy, so they don’t even bother because look, I’m too busy. I couldn’t get to them if I wanted to. Rather than just say, You know what, I can’t get to it for seven days and then someone will call you back or seven days, I’ll send a person. If you just tell me what’s going on, you have a chance of keeping my business. If you ignore me or just ghost me, then I’m not going to ever use you, and I’m going to talk bad about you.

Jammie Wong: [00:07:32] Exactly. And that is such a big problem. I mean, there is ways to save, for your example, right? It’s going to take somebody seven days to get there. You can still have somebody continually call the customer in case there was an opening. You know, just you can find ways to work things out, you know, communicate with the customer, but keep them in the loop no matter what. That is the biggest problem, I see.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] Yeah, it’s it’s so funny because it’s so hard to get new clients and people who are getting calls from people who want to do business with them. They just ignore it and take it for granted. And then at some point, business slows down. They’re like, Where what do I have to do to get new business? It’s like you had all this business and then you threw it away.

Jammie Wong: [00:08:14] Exactly right. So that’s also a good part, right? You can ask once you take care of the customer, you can ask them for referrals, right? You can post that on your website. You can post that on your social media. But all of that takes communication with the customer and making sure that your employee knows how to handle the customers in the right way.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:32] Now, do you find in your work that you’re really helping these leaders with their personal development to help them with their leadership skills and help them with their communication skills?

Jammie Wong: [00:08:42] Yes, because that’s the biggest part for anybody, right? Like John Maxwell. He has the law of the land, so you won’t be able to bring in anybody else whose lead is higher than you rate. So you have to continually grow your own lead as an employer so that you can help your employees grow. Also, because everything stops with the leader, it begins and ends with the leader. So if you as a leader are not growing and continually changing and looking for different ways where you can improve the situation in your company and the culture, then really your employees have no chance of growing either.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:16] So now for you in your entrepreneurial journey, what has been the most rewarding part for making this kind of shift from kind of being an employee to now leading your own firm?

Jammie Wong: [00:09:28] To me, the the biggest impact for me is that I really enjoy seeing the transformation in a different companies and the people that I’ve worked with and helped to see the different changes, to see the growth because I think with growth, there’s always more opportunity and you know, everybody can succeed, right? They just need to be trained and then you just need to make it more efficient and have everybody win.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:55] Now in your career, was there a mentor or a leader that really resonated with you that helped take you to a new level?

Jammie Wong: [00:10:02] So I am a colonel licensee and I started following him. I’d seen a couple to three years ago and he has a training program, which I utilize daily. And what it is is, you know, everybody thinks it’s just sales training, but I’ve come to find out it’s a lot more. It’s a personal development. But because of the things that he teaches, I’ve learned and I’ve grown right. So I’ve found other mentors like Brendan Dawson. So all of these different types of mentorships, they’ve helped me to grow, and that’s why I really want to help business owners see that they can also grow and that they can offer potential and opportunity for their employees.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:40] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice, maybe get on your calendar. What is the best way to do that? Do you have a website or through LinkedIn or one of the social platforms?

Jammie Wong: [00:10:51] Sure, they can get a hold of me on my website. It’s at Hawaiian or I am also on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at the real Jamie Wong. And then I also have at the real Jamie Wong website also so

Lee Kantor: [00:11:07] Well, congratulations on all the success you’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jammie Wong: [00:11:13] Thanks, Lee. I appreciate the opportunity.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:15] All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Oahu Business Radio.

Nekita J. Sullivan With Yoga Therapy Bar

February 28, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

GWBC Radio

Nekita J. Sullivan With Yoga Therapy Bar

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Nekita Sullivan was born and educated in the Palmetto State of South Carolina. She is a graduate of Clemson University, Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston), and American Intercontinental University. She is a certified health education specialist, licensed physical therapist, certified hand therapist, certified yoga teacher, and yoga alliance certified yoga continuing education provider.

She has 20 + years of experience as a health and wellness professional for seniors, kids, adults, athletes, special needs, and more. She is also the owner of Yoga Therapy Bar a holistic yoga physical therapy studio in downtown Clemson which exclusively offers a specialty of yoga and physical therapy to improve physical and mental health and wellness.

Follow Yoga Therapy Bar on Facebook and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

The difference between yoga and yoga therapy
Yoga therapy to manage physical stress such as pain or mental stress such as anxiety
The most common pain or physical stressor in America
Holistic stress management plans
Mental health mindfulness programs
Educate our kids to manage their stress

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of GWBC Open for Business. And this is going to be a fun one. Today, on the show, we have Nekita Sullivan with Yoga Therapy Bar. Welcome, Nekita!

Nekita Sullivan: [00:00:29] Hi, how are you today?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:31] I am doing great. I am so excited to be talking to you. But before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about Yoga Therapy Bar, how you’re serving folks.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:00:40] Absolutely. Yoga Therapy Bar is a specialty. I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy and a Certified Yoga Teacher. So, what I do is I use physical therapy and yoga together. I blend them for yoga therapy specialty. So, instead of just having a generic yoga class, I actually use yoga for therapeutic means. So, if someone has issues with back pain, neck pain, headaches after an injury, I specifically use yoga and physical therapy together to give them a better outcome.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:01:20] So, most Americans, eight out of 10 Americans, have back pain, low back pain. So that is usually the most requested injury for people that I see. So all of my yoga poses will be intentionally targeted towards improving low back pain instead of just getting a hodgepodge of yoga poses.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:45] So, now, what was the genesis of the idea to kind of do this mash-up between physical therapy and yoga? How did you kind of conclude like, hey, maybe there’s a way to combine these two to get the best of both worlds?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:01:59] Yes, because they both have such unique offerings. But when you blend the two together, it superpowers them. So, not only do you get the benefits of just physical therapy, you can use it in addition to yoga, which gives you a holistic service so you get the benefits of the physical stress relief but you also get the benefits of the mental stress relief with using the meditation and the breathwork in addition to the physical asanas, is what they’re called poses. It’s just a great and unique experience, and I get so many people who come to me and say that their doctor wanted them to try either yoga or physical therapy to help with their illnesses and injuries. So I decided why not let’s use them both because we can no longer approach our health from just a physical standpoint or a mental standpoint because we’re all in one. Our physical affects our mental. Our mental effects are physical. So as a holistic offering, I use them both to affect our entire body.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:16] Now, when you started the business, was it always focused on combining the both? So you’re talking to, I would imagine your clients are people who have some sort of pain or stress that they’re looking to deal with in this kind of unconventional manner?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:03:34] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:34] Or, whereas like a yoga studio might be like, “Oh, I like yoga. That’s the way I exercise.” So they may not be coming for a specific pain, they just enjoy it. So, it seems like it’s a slightly different client.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:03:46] Yes, it can be, but I get both. I get people who come just for yoga. And when they find out that I am able to tailor it to their particular needs and customize it, it’s like a bonus for them. So at the beginning of every class that I have, that is a group class, I will ask everyone in that class if they have any specific preferences, if they have any injuries, anything that I need to be attentive to, anything that I need to be precautionary of, because I will modify all of my poses for people who need some sort of precautionary modification. Or, what I can do for people who have specific needs is I offer them some one-on-one treatment. And that way, when I’m with them by themselves, we specifically work on whatever they need help with so they have my undivided attention.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:47] And then, yoga is a practice that uses a lot of props and ways to help a beginner kind of get in the right position for the pose. Are you using those props and more in order to help from the therapeutic standpoint?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:05:03] As a physical therapist, I have the expert ability to be able to provide those types of services with and without props, which is what makes me a little bit more unique than your typical yoga teacher. I do use stretch straps for people who need a little bit more assistance. I also have yoga bands, balls, pilates balls. But I try to get people to get comfortable with using their own body, their own body weight before they start adding tools. Because as a beginner, yoga can be a little intimidating. So it is so important for me to get people to be comfortable with just moving their bodies before I start adding tools. But tools are a good addition and supplement when the time is right.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:04] Now, a lot of organizations and corporations are adding wellness programs for their employees. Is this something that an organization can take advantage of with your firm? Is there some corporate program that you offer?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:06:20] Yes. Absolutely. I am actually in the middle of doing some corporate services for contracting because there are so many firms, corporations, the government, the military right now who are looking for wellness professionals and independent health practitioners to make videos and to join their wellness platforms that are virtual and the apps. Because due to the pandemic, a lot of people are having restrictions with accessing health care. So, they’re now trying to provide health care via virtual wellness platforms and apps so that they can reach people all over the world.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:07:06] So, for example, the military is trying to provide more corporate wellness apps to reach all of their employees that are stationed throughout the world. You’ve got people like BMW, Mercedes, a lot of these large corporations who are teaming up with apps and wellness platforms to be able to provide virtual services for all of their thousands of employees. So, the world of health care and wellness, for yoga teachers, for physical therapists, for other health practitioners is expanding so that we can meet the need and the demand for virtual services and telehealth services.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] Now, how would you kind of, I don’t want to say persuade but maybe open the mind of somebody who has never done yoga? Maybe, they have certain feelings about it. They’re not sure. How would you kind of ease them into practice like yours so that they can kind of get some relief from some of the stress and some of the pains that they’ve been probably dealing with than just accepting as this is the way it is when there can be a way out of this?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:08:24] Yes. And I try to get everyone to recognize that their level of comfort is always going to be different from someone else’s. So, a good way to ease into yoga is to start with just a couple of poses, two or three. And there are poses that combine movements for your entire body. For example, one of the most popular is child’s pose. And if you can do a child’s pose correctly, you can almost affect every joint in your body.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:09:03] So, I always get people to start off with maybe one or two, maybe even three poses, and just so they can feel what it feels like to get their bodies in different positions. And then, you can progress up to sequences. Maybe, let’s try poses that last for a duration of five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Let’s try a class for 30 minutes. And then, eventually, we work ourselves up to an hour, if you like. And what we can do for that entire hour is modify anything that we need to modify based on how your body feels. You need to know when to pull back, when to do a little bit more. And that’s why it’s great to actually have an instructor to help you modify and make changes so that you don’t hurt yourself or cause yourself any sort of negative experience with learning something that’s new.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:05] Right. And I think that especially – I think for people who have been hesitant to try yoga for whatever reason and they’ve just accepted that “oh, I’m not flexible,” or “this is just the range of motion my neck has, and that’s just the way that it is,” or they’re dealing with a lot of stress, I think they’re missing an opportunity just to learn about it. And, I think there are some baby steps they can be taken whether it’s just, like you said, just sitting in one pose and just breathing and just feeling what that feels like and understanding the power of your breath and then just feeling your muscles kind of give in a little bit if you can stay in that pose for a beat or two and it just changes kind of your perspective of the world I think if you can open your mind to this.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:10:55] Yes, yes. And that’s part of the power and part of the magic of yoga. Because it’s not just a physical – it’s not just a physical experience with the breathing, with the meditation, with you responding to your body and listening to how it reacts to these poses, will take you in a different place. It’s a totally different way of exercising than what you’re used to. But you’re absolutely right. You have to be receptive to trying something that’s a little bit different. That’s probably going to make you feel a way that you’ve never felt before. But also you have to be kind to yourself and know that if you have restrictions, for example, like you said you can’t turn your neck but so far in one direction, that’s not going to be fixed in one day.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:11:49] So, you can’t give up on flexibility for something that has bothered you for 10 years and expect for it to just magically go away after doing it for two or three sessions. You have to give your time – your body time to adapt to doing something new. And most people respond to yoga by saying I’m not flexible. That’s a very common response. But flexibility is not usually something that we just magically have. It’s something that you have to actually work for and challenge yourself to accomplish.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:12:29] Yoga teachers are just not naturally flexible. Some of us may have some flexible body parts, but we also practice yoga in order to improve our flexibility. So, you have to be kind to yourself and allow yourself to improve and progress over time, but also know that that progression is going to be determined by how much consistency and how much commitment you’re willing to give yoga.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:00] Yeah, amen to that. And it’s a challenge, I think, for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially in that everything is go, go, go, faster, faster, I have to get there faster. And then, that sometimes moves into their exercise and fitness and wellness programs, and they think everything has to be a hit class in order to get benefits, where yoga is that kind of breath of fresh air, where you’re like, “Okay. Let’s just relax a little bit and breathe and just slow everything down.” And that is, I think, so necessary in today’s world because there are so many stressors whether it’s physical or mental that yoga and yoga therapy addresses.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:13:41] Yes. That is so true. One of the things that the pandemic has layered upon us is stressors, stressors, stressors, physical and mental. So you’ve got people who are fatigued, mentally exhausted, depressed, anxious, all of those mental stressors. Then, you’ve got all of these people who are now working from home, spending all these hours sitting in a chair behind a desk, even our students who are now having more neck pain, more back pain, more headaches than ever before. So, you’ve got all of these physical and mental stressors. But you have to approach them from a holistic manner in order to affect both of them. So, you can’t just fix the physical and leave the mental because it’s eventually going to affect the other. You can’t just address the mental and then leave the physical because the mental is going to eventually affect the physical.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:14:46] And that’s why Yoga Therapy Bar is such a different approach to yoga because I affect stress management from the physical and the mental side. You have to have both, and that’s the magic of yoga. It allows you to be able to affect both your physical health and your mental health. So, I try to get people to understand that they’ve got to approach it from both perspectives or else the other is going to eventually overcome and take the other, and there’s going to be that recurrent cycle that you just can’t seem to get rid of.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:27] Now, can you walk the listener through what is one of your programs or one of your stress management plans look like? What is it – what can they expect? Because a lot of times people have a fear of the unknown so they don’t even take that first step. So if you can kind of paint a picture of what happens if they raise their hand and say, “You know what? I’m interested in Yoga Therapy Bar,” what would the program look like? What are some of the maybe the pre-work they have to do or what do they have to do to get ready to experience this?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:15:57] Yes. So, I always try to get them to understand what it is they really want. Some people may think, “You know what? I really want to challenge myself from the yoga perspective,” or, “I’ve got an injury, back injury, that I’ve been dealing with for years, so I may need more of the physical therapy component.” So, I’m going to combine both.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:16:22] So if we need to truly affect an injury like low back pain, I’m going to give you more of a focus on the physical therapy perspective at the beginning. And we are going to blend the yoga in as well so that we affect the physical, we get a little bit of the mental end. And when things start improving and you start progressing, we balance them out. So we’re getting some physical therapy and yoga at the same time. So no longer will you get more physical at the beginning and just a little bit of the mental from the yoga, we’re going to balance them out so you’re getting the physical therapy along with the yoga postures, asanas, along with meditation, along with breathing exercises. And I also give a home exercise program through a virtual app that you can either access from your telephone, through text, or through email. So, it’s not your typical yoga experience. You get a lot of meat and potatoes with yoga therapy.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:33] Now, for the people who aren’t familiar with yoga, is there any like special equipment? Do I need – if I’m going to do this at my house, do I have to, now, all of a sudden, buy all this stuff? Or is it something that I can practice, you know, just with stuff I have around the house?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:17:51] Yes, very much can practice with anything you have around the house. Even with some of my group classes, people will come with yoga mats. Some people will come with towels, but I would definitely like to advise everyone to get a yoga mat. That’s really the only piece of equipment that you need. You can do it in your home. You can do it at your office. You can do it outdoors. I even have chair yoga classes that I do for people who are seniors, for people who are at work and don’t have access to a yoga mat, for people with special needs who are in wheelchairs and who cannot get on the floor. So that’s another great thing about yoga is there are so many different ways you can modify it. You can even do it in a chair.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:43] Well, I mean, can you share? Is there something you could share? I know we’re not on video, but is there something someone could do right now that’s listening in a chair? What’s something they could do that would maybe relieve some stress or maybe help them a little bit?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:18:58] Very simple. This is one of the basic things that I tell everyone who’s sitting at their desk for hours a day, or for someone who sits in their car and has very long commutes. So what’s happening when we sit most of the day is our spine, our back is curved. It’s flexed. And it does not like to be in one position for a very long period of time or else it will start producing pain signals. So, one of the things that you absolutely have to do if you’ve been sitting for a long day is put both of your feet flat on the floor. You’re going to put both of your hands behind your head and clasp your fingers together, and you’re going to sit straight up. So what you’re trying to do is extend your spine. And with your hands behind your head, you’re going to pull your elbows open, which is going to extend everything, open up your rib cage, and allow your lungs to take a deep breath. That’s just basic extension.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:20:07] If you have the ability to do that in your office, you’re going to do it standing up against your wall so that you can get your head, your elbows, and your hands up against the wall and make your spine very straight. And to oppose that extension, what we’re going to do is take our hands down, by our side, by your knees and see if you can actually make your fingertips touch the floor. That’s going to give your spine a full flexion, a full bend, a full curve, so you’ve gone from complete spine flexion with bending to complete spine extension with putting your hands behind your head and opening up. If you don’t have the ability to do that standing, you’re just going to do it from your chair. And that gives your spine just a little bit of risk from being in the same position for too long, which it absolutely hates.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:08] And then, that’s something you do for, you know, one time? Is there like, you do it 10 times, you do it for 30 seconds? Like, how long do you have to do it to see some benefit?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:21:20] Okay. So, this is where your individual listening to your body comes in. You don’t want to do anything that’s going to give you excruciating pain or send pain traveling. Okay? So, that’s how you’ll know how far you need to go. But you’re always going to want to aim for doing something about five to 10 repetitions if you can. And if you’re able to have that much time to do five to 10 repetitions with each position, you want to be able to hold it for approximately five seconds. So, you’re going to try to do five to 10 repetitions, and with each position, you’re going to try to hold it for about five seconds. That’s just a good generic start.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:11] Well, Nekita, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Can you tell us a little bit about why it was important for you to get involved with GWBC?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:22:21] Absolutely. They do a great job of supporting entrepreneurs, especially women entrepreneurs. During the pandemic, they have sent out so much information to support and inspire and encourage and provide resources, and that’s why I am so thankful and so grateful for them because otherwise, I may not have been able to receive some of that information and also network and communicate with women that I had met all over the country.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:58] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your practice or if there’s an organization out there that would like to implement some of your programs into their wellness program, what’s the best way to get a hold of you? Do you have a website?

Nekita Sullivan: [00:23:10] I absolutely do. It is, of course, www.yogatherapybar.com and you know we’re living in this technological world, so it is so very easy to catch up with me by email. My email is info, I-N-F-O, @yogatherapybar.com. That comes directly to me. I’m also on Facebook and Instagram with the same handle, Yoga Therapy Bar. So, there are so many ways to get a hold of me and take a look at some of the cool things that we’re doing, trying to help people manage their stress from a mental and physical perspective, a holistic offering. You got to approach the whole body.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:59] Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work, and we appreciate you.

Nekita Sullivan: [00:24:04] Thank you so much for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:07] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see y’all next time on GWBC Open for Business.

About GWBC

The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business.

GWBC^® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Brion Nazzaro With Association of Certified Commercial Cannabis Experts

February 25, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

Association Leadership Radio

Brion Nazzaro With Association of Certified Commercial Cannabis Experts

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Brion Nazzaro is the President of the Association of Certified Commercial Cannabis Experts (ACCCE). Brion brings 20 years of risk management and compliance experience in officer and board roles specifically resolving high complexity Memorandums of Understanding, Cease and Desist Orders, and other enforcement actions in highly regulated businesses. ACCCE is a member organization dedicated to advancing the professional knowledge, skills, and experience for those committed to reducing public harm, increasing public safety, and promoting the sound operation of the licensed cannabis market through cannabis risk management.

Brion holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science and MBA concentrated in finance from the University of Denver. In addition, Brion has achieved recognition as a Certified Commercial Cannabis Expert (CCCE), Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and NACD Governance Fellow.

Connect with Brion on LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

Commercial Cannabis Industry need a risk management association
Commercial Cannabis Businesses need a qualified Compliance or Risk Officer
Why should a Commercial Cannabis Business want a risk-based approach?
When should a Commercial Cannabis Business look for a qualified Compliance or Risk Officer?

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: [00:00:15] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Association Leadership Radio, and this is going to be a fun one. Today on the show, we have Brion Nazzaro with the Association of Certified Commercial Cannabis Experts. Welcome, Brion.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:00:28] Hi, Lee. Happy to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:29] Thanks. Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to before we get started. Can you tell us a little bit about the Association of Certified Commercial Cannabis Experts? How are you serving, folks?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:00:40] Sure. We’re a membership driven association. We really focus in on our professional compliance and risk management experts out there in the cannabis industry. We’re trying to provide them the information they need curated in the way that they need it, provide the resources that they can implement their programs at their specific operations, and give them a way to understand how to enhance these programs over time without having to redo everything that they’ve done before and come out with a really efficient and effective way to help commercial cannabis businesses sell their products and remain compliant.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:18] Now, can you educate the listener a little bit about kind of where we’re at from the history of the industry? It’s relatively new in America, and you know, it’s going through. It’s a variety of, I guess, growing pains. Can you talk about where we’re at and where you see it going in the near future?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:01:38] Sure, in 2021, we had about 16 to 20 billion dollars worth of cannabis product sales. We have roughly 18 states that allow recreational and thirty six that allow some sort of medical marijuana. When I use the word state just realized there are territories out there like D.C. or Puerto Rico that I’m lumping into this and it’s really started to go across the nation. I mean, we’re also seeing it internationally. Obviously, Canada to the North has done a lot of work to make it federally legal. You have a lot of medicinal use over in Europe, specifically in Germany and a lot of production around the rest of the world as people are starting to see the global market for cannabis and the real consumer demand for this in in the markets that it’s legal in. It has had a checkered past. I mean, it kind of reminds me what I thought of as prohibition of alcohol before where it was still going on. If was still pretty strong in the culture and when prohibition ended, you had a lot of people trying to figure out how to make their way in the licensed market. And you really had a lot more controls going on. You know, I remember back in history class where they were like, Yeah, there was gin blindness and moonshine was was hurting people. Well, that’s the reason to go into a regulated market is there are government officials that are trying to make sure that the safety and the soundness of the market is maintained so that that consumers can rely on the products that they’re about to buy. So we’ve had a lot of improvements in the overall industry. We’ve had a lot of improvements in how culturally the consumers are looking at the cannabis product and realizing that even if that’s not a choice, that they want to make their medicinal applications, their recreational applications, and really, it’s just allowing people that want to have access to this cannabis product can find a safe and sound market that can serve that need.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:41] Now is the is prohibition. Is that a fair kind of a data point to use as the path that it went on as the path that that cannabis is going to go on, like when they when prohibition ended and people can buy alcohol, did they have the same kind of banking issues and financial challenges that the cannabis companies are struggling with?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:04:08] I think that’s an interesting issue. I doubt it because anti-money laundering is the main regulation that really keeps banks from financial institutions, from serving this business. That’s really an 80s construct. And so prohibition was before that. I imagine there were some questions and some stigmas, but it probably wasn’t coming from the same angles that it’s coming from today. Really, what what we’ve seen is that the government looks at certain entity types like financial institutions as gatekeepers to the overall financial services market. And the obligation when you get a charter or a license to operate in financial services is to make sure that illicit activity doesn’t run through there. You can’t help organized crime essentially, right? And so that’s really what. Causing the banking issue now, I’m sure there was probably a lot of other issues like I’m sure there were seizures, I’m sure there was other things where once something becomes legal doesn’t mean that everybody got the message that day. You know, I imagine law enforcement did did take legitimate seizures of alcohol. I’m hypothesizing at this point, but it would seem to make sense because it’s hard to tell everybody, OK, this thing that was illegal. Here’s how it can be legal. But there are still many ways that it would be illegal, and it’s very confusing for those that are enforcing the laws. And I think that’s where a lot of crossover is is happening today, as it would have been in the past.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:39] And isn’t this where kind of the value of your organization really comes to the fore is that somebody has to stay on top of this because it’s a moving target, it’s changing. It seems like on a regular basis and somebody has to kind of be the somebody who understands this and the ins and outs and the risks and the opportunities somebody has to kind of watch the back of the people that are are doing the work kind of in the local markets.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:06:07] Absolutely. It’s risk and reward. I mean, it really has to go together because you’re not always trying to mitigate risk if it’s really going to affect the reward that you want and you’re not always trying to to take all the reward at the cost of all the risk. And so the way that I would push this out further is you’ve got a great point that things are changing and that’s what you want from compliance and risk people. You don’t want us just beating the same issue over and over again because essentially it’s diminishing returns. You know, at some point, that issue is probably as mitigated as it needs to be. It’s as efficiently and effectively managed by the business. Start looking at the other things that hurt the safety and soundness of licensed cannabis market or the risks that are are likely to put your business at risk and focus on those because that will drive value into the business. Compliance and risk don’t survive if the business doesn’t survive. So you want these these qualified risk and compliance people to understand how to balance business objectives with risk mitigation and reward, or you’re going to get a one sided outcome.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:15] Now, some of the challenges that not only are you dealing with kind of the local issues, but you also have federal issues that it’s just difficult to get a clear understanding of where anybody stands in any given moment.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:07:31] There’s all sorts of issues and look in highly regulated industries. That’s what they really mean. It’s so easy to cross the line and have noncompliance or misconduct as essentially a legal activity that happens because the business is so highly regulated and the outputs are so highly regulated. A mistake can actually cause you larger issues, then less regulated industries. And so within this, what you’re really trying to find is somebody that can help the management committee and the investors and the regulators understand that the business has an intent to comply because that’s the first step when you’re really looking at compliance and risk mitigation. I would say almost all owners and investors want to know, Well, how did you reduce my criminal exposure? I wouldn’t like to go to jail, and that does happen occasionally in in highly regulated industries, because that’s how they keep the industries in line is criminal and civil and administrative exposures. And so you really want this qualified person that, yes, understands the risks, but truly understands those drivers of criminal, civil, administrative and reputational exposure so that no matter what the risk is, they can manage those aspects for you and tell you confidently why either it’s mitigated to a certain level or eliminated so that you can go focus in on your business objectives, grow your business, have that better product really compete in the market that you joined? You didn’t join a compliance and risk market. You joined a cannabis products market that’s probably where you want to compete.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:07] Right. And and nobody would. I would think that when they signed up for this, they weren’t saying, Hey, let’s figure out ways to beat the system. They were just trying to take advantage of an opportunity and they they want to play by the rules. It just that it just gets to me. It’s very confusing and there’s a lot of inadvertent mistakes that could be really painful.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:09:31] And that’s the problem. They’re not necessarily inadvertent, but they’re also not meaning to be illegal. Look, there’s a lot of energy as an entrepreneur. I mean, every day you have to put your mind towards something, and when you have an exciting avenue, it’s hard to see all the other things around you, which is why you’re supposed to have this group of trusted advisors. We normally talk about them as the C-suite or executive management or senior management, but it’s this group that’s that’s supposed to keep you from getting tunnel vision and pull you back and be like, Look, the idea overall probably has legs, but we’re going to have to trim and shape different parts of this to make sure that it fits within the legal construct of what in this case, a cannabis product or cannabis service can be. And I think that’s that’s the the big thing that people miss. The point of the compliance and risk officer is to help everybody else see, look, where is there a great idea that has merit in the marketplace and where do you step over the line and you might be adding criminal or civil exposure to your business? And that can actually destroy a lot of value in all the other things that you’ve done. This one product or is one service brings down the rest of your business. Was it really worth doing that? And that’s where you need that trusted advisor to come back and say, Look, you can see why this might be across the line, and here are the options that we might have to bring it back inside the bounds, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:10:55] And constraints and parameters are part of every business. I mean, everybody has to deal with it to some extent. Obviously, there’s the cannabis industry has its own unique challenges, but there’s there’s always constraints, not like no one can do anything they want to do just because they want to do it. So I mean, that’s just part of being an entrepreneur now for you. You know, in this organization, what are some of the challenges you have of elevating these issues to the fore and getting people to become members and support the work that you’re doing?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:11:28] A lot of it comes around what the cannabis industry really is to to to to the overall environment of business. We don’t normally get highly regulated industries that enter the market and in their 10th year are generating $20 billion of revenue. I mean, that’s just huge numbers to put up on the board, and we don’t we haven’t had a lot of new entries to highly regulated. And the problem with that is that it goes back to that first problem we were talking about banking, right? Banking expects that highly regulated industries have a risk based approach, that they’ve matured these processes and can show how they’re managing their risk so that they don’t put the financial services at risk. But that’s because most highly regulated industries have been around for 30 plus years. They’ve had time to mature this, you know, companies that are just coming online today or just been around for three years or five years or didn’t know the expectations 10 years ago, you just can’t hold them to the same level you’re expecting. For these companies to mature over time, but that is a hard story to tell, to executive management, to tell the regulators, to tell to a lot of third parties as you’re serving this emerging industry that, hey, we’re not going to have the same controls as arms dealers, as oil and gas, as pharmaceuticals, food manufacturing, as go down the list because we just haven’t had the time. But the nice thing is it won’t take us 30 years to get there because we do know how to identify the best practices, risk management that go across industries.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:13:01] We do know what the risk management frameworks are for these other highly regulated critical business relationships that are needed in cannabis. And so we can start talking to them and saying, OK, well, here’s the plan. Here’s how we prioritize it, and here’s how you know that. We’ve at least reduced our criminal exposure or eliminated to the point that’s reasonable. And here’s how we’re working on our civil exposure. And here’s how you can trust that if we find something non-compliant or illicit, we’re not shoving it under the mat. We’re going to deal with it and we’re going to deal with it in a way that is recognized by the government generally comes down to deferred prosecution. You’re trying to show that when you have an issue that could materially impact the safety or soundness of the licensed cannabis market, that you’re not just coming back and saying, Well, I’ll pay people off to not talk about it. You’re coming back and saying, Look, I’m going to remediate the issue, try and make it as low impact as possible on the impacted parties. And then going forward, this is how I’m going to change my practices to make sure that issues like this don’t occur or occur less frequently and at a lower impact. And that’s really what what is expected in highly regulated industries.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:07] So now who should become a member of your association?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:14:11] Right. We mainly focus in on compliance and risk professionals. So from the entry level all the way up to the board level, the lead risk or compliance director at a company that said we still work with the overall entities through alliance memberships, so we focus in on the individual members for risk and compliance specific. There are some needs for CEOs or CEOs to understand risk operations. They will also join. And then on the company side, if your brand is trying to show their their strong risk culture and say, this is why you should allow us to expand into future markets and be larger than most of our competition, we work with a lot of companies like that where they need that public acknowledgment that they are actually intending to comply. And it’s not just words. There’s actual practices that are being put in place. There’s actual formalization. And then the third category is the vendors and regulators, those involved in risk and compliance management in the commercial cannabis industry, but not plant touching. They also need to understand what are the risks that we should expect operators to manage. What are the risks most likely to affect these businesses? What are the best practices that we should look for in place that these operators so that we don’t have ridiculous requests like give us everything about you and we want a picture of you on your honeymoon because we need to know you’re married to whoever you’re married to. I mean, it gets really hard out there when everybody’s trying to make up what the risks are that you’re exposed to and then figure out what they could ask for. You want somebody to help guide you and say, Look, these are kind of the standard documentations. If you have a risk that you’re otherwise trying to manage. Sure, you might need to do something, Nick, but you should ask yourself, is that really a risk that is going to emanate from your commercial cannabis business? Clients, customers?

Lee Kantor: [00:16:02] Now those are the people that should join when they do join. What are some of the benefits of the membership? Obviously, they’re getting a lot of thought leadership. They’re getting a lot of interacting with other people, kind of fighting this same fight. But there are some specific benefits of becoming a member.

Brion Nazzaro: [00:16:21] Yeah, it’s about having the right tool chest and risking compliance fight fight with their mind. You wouldn’t want a carpenter to go out there professional carpenter and show up without a toolbox. You know you don’t want them screwing you and screws with their fingers. It’s the same thing for compliance and risk professionals. They need these tools. So policies, procedures, practices, ways to conceptualize what the risks are so they can explain it to others. And the value of an association is we curate the information that comes across, and we also make it so that our resources and our tools can interact with each other and build on top of each other so that your compliance and risk person is really focusing in on managing the risks specific to your business. Not trying to find the information that they’re looking for just through Google or go get a policy out of the pharmaceutical and trying to adopt it to their their business. You know, we’ve done a lot of that legwork for them so that it integrates well and that there’s a way that they can demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the risk management practices and also show that if noncompliance. Misconduct happens that there’s a reasonable way that the business was trying to manage this, and that is part of the defense, you know, when you get in trouble. It really comes down to fines and penalties. You’re almost always going to get the fine because something went wrong. But the penalty can be mitigated pretty materially because if you’ve already done everything the government’s expecting you to do. Then why should they penalize you further than just saying, Yeah, you did do the bad thing? Here’s the fine. There’s no reason to go further to that penalty phase. So really just setting it up so that this professional has the tools that they need, the tools work together, it becomes efficient and effective, and it actually has that outcome that they’re looking for should something go go wrong.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:13] Now, as part of your offering some sort of certification where people become certified in this specialty?

Brion Nazzaro: [00:18:20] Absolutely. So part of any deferred prosecution standard that we’re aware of around the world is that especially in compliance and risk, the business can’t just say we intend not to break the law. Every business would say that if that was the defense, what you have to show is that you had a reasonably qualified person who managed this aspect of the business desire from a day to day perspective. Most of these these deferred prosecution standards call out for this qualification, but they don’t say what it is. And so you can you can show it through a few different ways. You might have history or experience. You might be able to lean on maybe your accounting, auditing background or your legal background. But but risk management and compliance is open to all. There’s not a specific standard for it. So if you’re coming from a different educational background or a different history, and what you need to be able to show is that you understand what this industry is, what the what the risks are specific to the commercial cannabis industry and what the risks are specific to your business. And you have to show that you had a reasonable concept methodology to bring this all together so that if something goes wrong, people could look at it and say, you know, there was actually a lot of good things that this business was doing. They fixed, you know, eight to 10 things that could have been bigger risks in the future, and they just hadn’t had time to prioritize this risk yet. They’re on the right track. We can rely on them to understand how to manage this in the future because this person is qualified to lead the company and be that trusted advisor among executive management to to manage the risk. And that’s what the qualification of the certification is really about is you have to be able to demonstrate that you weren’t just somebody, but you’re the right somebody to help the company understand what they need to manage.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:10] Now, if somebody wants to learn more or get involved with the association, is there a website

Brion Nazzaro: [00:20:16] There is ace dot org? It’s a c c c org. So three C’s and we have a lot of our information up there. Please feel free to contact us through any of the web forms or reach out to myself at Brian D-R.I. Own at ace org.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:35] Good stuff. Well, Brian, congratulations on all the success you’re doing. Important work and we appreciate you. Thank you. All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on association leadership radio.