John Ray, Author at Business RadioX ® Page

Lydia Hilton, Berman Fink Van Horn, and Ron Cole, Shred 415 Alpharetta

July 2, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Lydia Hilton, Berman Fink Van Horn, and Ron Cole, Shred 415 Alpharetta

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**Host John Ray with guests Lydia Hilton and Ron Cole**

“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 146: Lydia Hilton, Berman Fink Van Horn, and Ron Cole, Shred 415 Alpharetta

On this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio,” host John Ray interviews drone law authority Lydia Hilton, an attorney with Berman Fink Van Horn, and Ron Cole, owner of the Alpharetta location of Shred 415, one of the fastest growing fitness studios in the country.

Lydia Hilton, Berman Fink Van Horn

Lydia Hilton is an attorney with Berman Fink Van Horn. She had 25 years of experience helping clients respond to a bankruptcy or financial distress of their borrowers or customers when one of her clients asked how they could legally operate small unmanned aircraft for business. Since then Lydia has applied her entrepreneurial versatility to the emerging area of “drone law,” establishing herself as a recognized speaker and presenter. She was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal concerning drones and privacy, has spoken at national energy drone conferences, legal seminars, and will be speaking again at InterDrone this fall.

Being part of a full-service business law firm is critical to her practice area. Berman Fink Van Horn helps start and grow a business, avoiding and navigating challenges along the way. For more information go to www.bfvlaw.com or email Lydia directly at lhilton@bfvlaw.com.

Ron Cole, Shred 415 Alpharetta

Ron Cole, along with his wife Melissa, are the Owner/Operators of Shred 415 Alpharetta.

Forget about one-size-fits-all fitness; say goodbye to self-doubt; and get ready to defy your own expectations. Shred415 is coming to Alpharetta, and they’re about to change the way you work out.

Shred 415 takes High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) to the next level. Shred415 is a 60-minute instructor-led group fitness class that combines strength and cardio broken down into four 15-minute segments. It’s an efficient and effective workout, specifically designed to adapt to your goals. Shred 415 is for everyone, regardless of fitness level. You choose the weights, you choose the speeds, you see the results. We empower you to go further.

Shred 415 creates a Community of Shredders, offers Childcare for Little Ones in our Kids Lounge (6 weeks to 13 years) and delivers a memorable Fitness Experience through Passionate Certified Trainers and Staff.

For more information call 470-413-8933 or email alpharetta@shred415.com.

“North Fulton Business Radio” is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®, located inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. Renasant Bank has humble roots, starting in 1904 as a $100,000 bank in a Lee County, Mississippi, bakery. Since then, Renasant has grown to become one of the Southeast’s strongest financial institutions with approximately $12.9 billion in assets and more than 190 banking, lending, wealth management and financial services offices in Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida. All of Renasant’s success stems from each of their banker’s commitment to investing in their communities as a way of better understanding the people they serve. At Renasant Bank, they understand you because they work and live alongside you every day.

Larry Cole, Online Technology Associates (OTA), and Gerald Potts, Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers

June 27, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Larry Cole, Online Technology Associates (OTA), and Gerald Potts, Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers

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**John Ray, Gerald Potts, and Larry Cole**

“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 145: Larry Cole, Online Technology Associates (OTA), and Gerald Potts, Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers

In this episode of “North Fulton Business Radio,” it’s time to save money and time on phone systems and automobiles, as host John Ray interviews Larry Cole of Online Technology Associates and Gerald Potts with Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers.

Larry Cole, Online Technology Associates (OTA)

Larry Cole is a Managing Partner with Online Technology Associates (OTA). OTA is an independent business telecom agency, providing service will all of the top tier, as well as niche telecom providers. Our services include, internet service, dedicated fiber optic circuits, voice and phone service and equipment. They work for their clients, but are paid by the carriers, so their clients never receive a bill for their services. Call them and you will never have to talk to your phone or internet company again. For more information, call 770-446-7199 or go to http://www.ota1.com/.

Gerald Potts, Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers

Gerald Potts is the Owner of Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers. Myriad Motorsports Auto Brokers is a purveyor of fine off-lease motor cars at below market pricing. Gerald buys premium vehicles at various dealer-only auto auctions in the United States. Vehicles are shipped to clients not only across the United States but around the world. For more information, call Gerald directly at 770-754-0089, and to see Gerald’s latest listings, go to http://mmab.business/.

Decision Vision Episode 21: Do I Need an Investment Banker? – An Interview with Roger Furrer, Brady Ware Capital

June 27, 2019 by John Ray

Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 21: Do I Need an Investment Banker? - An Interview with Roger Furrer, Brady Ware Capital

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**Roger Furrer, Director of Brady Ware Capital**

Do I Need an Investment Banker?

Do I need an investment banker to sell my company? How does the sale process work? What’s the difference between an investment banker and a business broker? Roger Furrer, Director of Brady Ware Capital, answers these questions and much more in a interview with Michael Blake, Host of “Decision Vision.”

Roger Furrer, Brady Ware & Company

Roger Furrer is a Director at Brady Ware Capital, the investment banking arm of Brady Ware & Company. Roger joined Brady Ware in 2016, and prior to that served as COO and Managing Partner at Bannockburn Global Forex, LLC. Additionally, Roger enjoyed over 30 years in the banking industry in which he held various senior management positions, including leading teams focused on middle-market companies.

Roger leverages this expertise to help family-owned businesses and management teams maximize the value of their investments. He guides business owners through the sale of their business, or assists them in securing the liquidity needed to grow their business.

For more information, contact Roger at rfurrer@bradyware.com or at 937-238-9401.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Michael Blake is Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast series and a Director of Brady Ware & Company. Mike specializes in the valuation of intellectual property-driven firms, such as software firms, aerospace firms and professional services firms, most frequently in the capacity as a transaction advisor, helping clients obtain great outcomes from complex transaction opportunities. He is also a specialist in the appraisal of intellectual properties as stand-alone assets, such as software, trade secrets, and patents.

Mike has been a full-time business appraiser for 13 years with public accounting firms, boutique business appraisal firms, and an owner of his own firm. Prior to that, he spent 8 years in venture capital and investment banking, including transactions in the U.S., Israel, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company is a regional full-service accounting and advisory firm which helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality. Brady Ware services clients nationally from its offices in Alpharetta, GA; Columbus and Dayton, OH; and Richmond, IN. The firm is growth minded, committed to the regions in which they operate, and most importantly, they make significant investments in their people and service offerings to meet the changing financial needs of those they are privileged to serve. The firm is dedicated to providing results that make a difference for its clients.

Decision Vision Podcast Series

“Decision Vision” is a podcast covering topics and issues facing small business owners and connecting them with solutions from leading experts. This series is presented by Brady Ware & Company. If you are a decision maker for a small business, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at decisionvision@bradyware.com and make sure to listen to every Thursday to the “Decision Vision” podcast. Past episodes of “Decision Vision” can be found here. “Decision Vision” is produced and broadcast by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:06] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting advisory board that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make visions a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:24] And welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different business topic. But rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:43] My name is Mike Blake, and I’m your host for today’s program. I’m a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton, Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:10] Today, we’re going to talk about hiring an investment banker. And I think this is an important subject because investment banks, I think, oddly enough, have a lot of mystery around them. In many cases, particularly if you’re a small business, you may only use an investment banker once in your entire life. Maybe even hopefully once in your entire life. You do one exit, you make a boatload of money, and then you get on your yacht, or you go to your mountain villa or your Italian Sicilian hideaway, and never have to do anything again. And one of the parties that kind of makes that possible for that lucrative exit is the investment banker.

Michael Blake: [00:01:56] Now, I happen to have a lot of respect for investment bankers because early in my career, I did the investment banking thing. And let me tell you – I’ll get on my soapbox a little bit, and I have no problem with that – for all the for all the junk that investment bankers take, and you hear investment bankers brought up in Congress that they don’t pay enough taxes and whatnot, I challenge any of them to walk in the shoes of a successful investment banker for two years and see kind of how they do with that.

Michael Blake: [00:02:38] It is not a 9:00 to 5:00 job, unless your definition of 9:00 to 5:00 is 9:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the morning. It is not a Monday-through-Friday job. It is an always-on job. And I can tell you for a fact that those folks, if they’re a success at all, really earn their fees. And if you don’t kind of live that lifestyle, you just are not in the business very long. That’s just all there is to it.

Michael Blake: [00:03:06] And so, I washed out, and I took a step back, and I went into business valuation, which is, let’s say, a much more work/life balance-friendly profession. Although, sometimes, my wife will wonder about that. But I wanted to kind of get that on the table because when you hire an investment banker, it’s a very important decision. If they’re any good at all, they ain’t cheap. And they can often be the difference between an exit that makes you comfortable for a while, and maybe pays for a vacation, or some of your kids education, versus retiring, or possibly leaving or creating legacy wealth.

Michael Blake: [00:03:50] So, with that, let’s kind of introduce our guest here. I have with us Roger Furrer, who is a director at Brady Ware Capital, which is our firm’s captive mergers and acquisitions specialized business unit. And they help business owners and entrepreneurs understand, increase, and unlock the value of their businesses. Business owners, often, find that managing the complexities of transaction’s an overwhelming experience. So, they can even find it overwhelming when they have help, I can tell you that for a fact. And you need an advocate that’s going to be out there representing you aggressively in the marketplace and helping you find not just an opportunity, not just Mr. Right or Mrs. Right, Mrs. Right now, but Mr. or Mrs. Right.

Michael Blake: [00:04:37] And that’s what Brady Ware does. And they help ease those challenges and let you continue running your business successfully throughout that transaction. That part’s really important because I can tell you, having worked on a lot of transactions myself, not in the investment banking capacity but as the advisor, selling your business is so physically and emotionally consuming that it can be difficult to actually continue running your business and sort of forget. You can easily lose sight of the fact that until that money hits escrow or until money hits your bank account, you get a wire confirmation, that deal is not done. And if you are not paying attention, all of a sudden, you may be left with a less valuable business than what you started with. But we’ll get into that.

Michael Blake: [00:05:24] Roger joined Brady Ware’s mergers and acquisition team in 2016. As I said, he’s a director. He has more than 30 years of experience in banking – i.e. 15 times more than I do – where he led teams focused on middle market companies. He leverages his banking experience as middle market companies to help family-owned businesses and management teams maximize the value of their investments. Specifically, he guides business owners through the sale of their business or assist them in securing the liquidity needed to grow that business. And with that, Roger, thank you so much and welcome to the program.

Roger Furrer: [00:06:00] Thank you, Mike, I appreciate being a part of the discussion.

Michael Blake: [00:06:03] So, Roger, let’s start with some basic vocabulary because I’m not sure everybody knows what an investment banker does. I think there’s an image out there of what an investment banker is, but I think there’s a misconception. So, kind of in your own words, if you had to kind of describe your job, what is it?

Roger Furrer: [00:06:26] Well, sure. One of the things that people misconstrue about the term is when they hear investment, they think it revolves around stocks, and bonds, and that type of thing. So, that’s one thing that we’re not. So, I would say investment bankers do a multitude of things. Some have more well-rounded services than others. At Brady Ware Capital, we help companies evaluate their strategic options around how do you liquidate or transition your business and discuss possible selling options for them. But we, also, help them uncover, perhaps, opportunities to acquire other companies or merge with other companies, and analyze the returns around that. At Brady Ware Capital, too, we also help companies raise the appropriate bank debt, or subordinate it, or mezzanine debt for the situation that they’re dealing with.

Michael Blake: [00:07:30] Okay, yeah. And so, when we say investment banker, one, I mean, you’re not lending money yourself, but you may be an intermediary to the folks who are lending money. And that first job description that you put out there, really, is more of a wealth or financial advisor when you’re dealing with analyzing stocks and bonds. And the exception may be if you’re the kind of investment bank that is taking companies public, and you’re dealing with public securities but that isn’t you guys. And for the most part, that’s not going to be our listener base. So, we can probably set that definition to the side, at least, for the moment.

Michael Blake: [00:08:09] So, one thing — and I have to confess, I don’t really know the answer to this question in a very clear way. So, I’m very curious to hear your answer to this. And that is, what is the difference, if there is any, between an investment banker and a business broker? Because you hear those terms both used a lot, but I also know many investment bankers that bristle a little bit if you call them a business broker and vice versa. So, I’m curious, is the difference meaningful enough? If so, how would you characterize it?

Roger Furrer: [00:08:41] Well, first of all, Mike, I’d say that there’s a lot of overlap in the term. So, I think, when people define a broker, they think about a transaction being completed, a commercial real estate property, a residential property, a broker being someone that executes the trade of a stock or a bond. So, I would say that I am a business broker, but I would prefer to be identified as an investment banker more so that also helps bring a transaction to fruition. So, I think, in in our terms and in the markets that we deal with, I think, business brokers, generally, deal with smaller-sized companies, and typically list the business for sale, and identify an asking price for that business, much like you would with a piece of a real property.

Roger Furrer: [00:09:48] I think the difference between an investment banker, I believe, is in a higher strategic value proposition, if you will, where when we’re representing a company for sale, we go about an entire marketing process and identify who we see as the best strategic and financial buyers for that entity, so that we’re able to drive the highest and best value for that company. I hope that helps you from a differentiation perspective.

Michael Blake: [00:10:26] It does. And not the suck up to because I’m not, it’s actually the best definition I’ve actually heard. The best distinction I’ve actually heard between the two. So, for the first time, I think I can actually explain it to somebody else, which is the definition of a good understanding. So, what is the investment banker-client relationship look like if it’s a very good one? I think, when clients sign onto to pursue a strategic transaction, we use that generic term deliberately for the moment, I sometimes wonder, particularly if they’ve never been in that kind of transaction environment before, if clients really, frankly, know what it is that they’re getting into. So, maybe could you kind of shed some insight and give us some of the inside baseball in terms of what that relationship looks like on a day-to-day, in a month-to-month basis?

Roger Furrer: [00:11:28] Sure. Maybe to define an ideal relationship, I kind of start by saying the process to sell a business and to discuss the strategic options leading up to selling a business could be a 6, to 9, to 12-month process. So, with that being said, you’re going to spend a lot of time as the business owner with the investment banker that you choose to work with. So, I think it’s very important that you have a degree of chemistry with those folks, that everybody likes working with each other, and that the investment banker is able to also work effectively with the management team of the company and work with other outside advisors, such as their attorney, or accountant, et cetera that’s going to be working through this process.

Roger Furrer: [00:12:19] And the reason that is important, it’s not so much the time frame, but it’s the intensity during that time period. I might talk with my customer daily, twice a day, many times a day, depending on where we’re at in the process. So, there is a tremendous amount of interaction that you’re dealing with during the course of the process of selling that business.

Roger Furrer: [00:12:45] I think, the other thing that I would suggest that that somebody look for in an investment banker, and I’m I’m sucking up a little bit and touting some of my background, but I think somebody that has some experience, a multitude of experience in different business environments because there are technical, legal, accounting, financial, emotional, all kinds of issues that come up during the course of the process. And so, I think, dealing with somebody with a well-rounded background is also very important in the process.

Michael Blake: [00:13:27] I’ll underscore that because that’s also important in what I do. As you know, and if our listeners have listened to these other podcasts, I specialize in technology businesses and professional services firms, – i.e. businesses that have mostly intangible assets. And the process of selling/buying a business and those industries is candidly very different from, say, buying or selling an orthopedic practice, or even a manufacturing company, or a high-tech engineering situation, or the engineering professional services. But the point is all these kinds of transactions or businesses have their own little nuances that have to be figured out and anticipated, preferably, well in advance. And there’s a lot of value to having seen a lot of stuff because every deal will have a surprise or two that’s just unavoidable, but you’d like to keep those those surprises down to a minimum to a dull roar.

Roger Furrer: [00:14:39] And the ability to draw back on past experience and be able to connect the situation from one experience to another and say, “In this situation, this is how it was dealt with,” as kind of a starting point in understanding the discussion.

Michael Blake: [00:14:55] Yes. As I like to say, there needs to be some benefit, in my case, to having gray hair and two arthritic ankles. And what you get in exchange for that is a little bit of experience, and been there, done that, and got the T-shirt. So, one thing that I think a lot of folks don’t know if they haven’t worked in the investment bank yet is that there’s a difference between sell side and buy side transactions. Of course, a sell side transaction, meaning that you’re working for the seller, and a buy side transaction, meaning that you’re working for a buyer. And most investment bankers I know, and I truly don’t know if this is the case for you – I should, but I don’t – but most investment bankers have a preference to work on sell side transactions. So, I guess, my two-part question is, is that the case for you guys at Brady Ware Capital? And if so, why is that? Why is there a preference to work on the sell side?

Roger Furrer: [00:15:59] Well, it’s interesting that you bring this up, Mike. This morning, I was talking to another investment banker that we have a strategic alliance with, and we were introducing ourselves to another party, and they asked if he does buy side engagements, and he said, “No, I flat out refused them.” So-

Michael Blake: [00:16:19] Yeah, I’ve heard that.

Roger Furrer: [00:16:21] So, first of all, Brady Ware Capital’s preference is most certainly to do with sell side engagements. We do take on a limited amount of buy side engagements when the situation seems right for ourselves and the client. But the reason for the preference is — and this may seem a little bit strange at first, but with a sell side engagement, you know you have one willing party to start with. You have someone that has engaged you to go find a buyer, they’re ready to sell. When you do a buy side engagement, the buyer says that they want to grow from strategic acquisition or otherwise, but in many cases, it’s very difficult to define what it is that they’re looking for and trying to identify the right party to be a participant on the other end of the transaction.

Roger Furrer: [00:17:20] And if you’re able to find the perfect fit, and talk to, and find, and get financials, and identify the right selling party for that transaction, well, they work for sale when you call them, so you kind of flip the leverage in terms of the monetary value that was going to be exchanged. You kind of flip that leverage over to them because you reached out to them and created a situation that they weren’t ready for. So, it would be the same thing if I showed up at your doorstep and your house wasn’t for sale, but I said that I wanted to buy it because it was the perfect fit for me. And you kind of take a step back and go, “Well, it’s not that really for sale, but if you paid me 50% over market value, it might be for sale.”

Michael Blake: [00:18:13] Yeah, that’s right.

Roger Furrer: [00:18:13] And so, when that happens, right now, my buyer, who was a willing participant, says, “Well, wait a minute, I’m not going to pay that for that company.” So, it’s very difficult to find the perfect fit in a buy side engagement.

Michael Blake: [00:18:29] It’s like trying to solve one equation with two unknowns, I guess. And for the most part, at least larger companies, they won’t hire a buy side investment banker representative, and that’s why they’ll hire instead of vice president of business development, they’ll have a corporate development team if they’re large enough. And that’s kind of their job to go out there and hunt for those businesses to acquire. And that’s probably the more common model, wouldn’t you say?

Roger Furrer: [00:19:00] I would definitely agree with that, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:19:02] Yeah. So, how do folks like you, frankly, get paid? In my practice, 90% of my fees are on a fixed basis. I don’t think the investment banking world really works that way. So, how are investment banking fee structures on a sell side engagement typically put together?

Roger Furrer: [00:19:30] Well, I wouldn’t have answered it this way, except for how you stated it with yours are 90% percent. Ours are probably 90% variable. So, for the most part, we are compensated when success happens. And back to your introduction, that’s when the wire transfer goes through. So, most investment bankers will receive a retainer at the beginning of a sale process, and they might receive another retainer or two throughout the course of the engagement at various stages in the process. But, again, most of our fees come from the transaction success actually happening. And those fees would range from roughly a few percentage points on up to maybe 7% or 8% of the sale, depending on the size of the transaction.

Michael Blake: [00:20:26] And the risk level, I would imagine as well, correct? In other words, if you think the deal is going to be easier to do, the fee might be a little bit less. Or does it matter? Maybe it doesn’t.

Roger Furrer: [00:20:40] I’ll say I’ll answer that a couple ways, Mike. One is by our very nature, and kind of the structure of our pricing is built around success, the idea is to identify projects that we would work on that we feel that we’re going to achieve success. And that’s a mutually determined between ourselves and our client. In other words, if we value the business, I’ll just use a number of 5 million, and our customer says that, “I’m not going to sell for anything less than 10,” then we probably don’t see a pathway to success with that. At that juncture, we might work with the customer more about how to achieve a valuation of $10 million at that point in time. So, if we don’t see a pathway to success, I’d say there’d be two things that we would do. One is not become engaged; or secondly, if the client wants us to continue through a process, we would probably change the pricing structure, so that it’s more fixed versus variable.

Michael Blake: [00:21:54] Got it, okay. And the way you described that just made me realize something, and it goes back to the previous question of buy side versus sell side. If your compensation is going to be a factor of or driven by the size of the deal, and you’re working on a buy side engagement, you’re kind of working against yourself, right, because you’d be trying to drive down a price, but in so doing, driving down your fees. Now, that would be a pretty hard balancing act to sustain in any event.

Roger Furrer: [00:22:26] Yeah, we’re a little bit — and our pricing structure, we like to be in neutral lockstep with our clients, so that we’re not in a situation like that where we’re not trying to drive the price down, so we drive our fee down. Correct.

Michael Blake: [00:22:44] All right.

Roger Furrer: [00:22:44] And, also, back to your buy side situation, because I described before that it’s difficult to identify and achieve success with it, and that’s the nature and structure of our compensation system is based on success, you don’t want to get into a lot of situations where you don’t see a pathway to success.

Michael Blake: [00:23:05] Yeah. That’s a good way to not be in business very long.

Roger Furrer: [00:23:09] Correct.

Michael Blake: [00:23:13] So, take us through a sales process. Let’s say somebody has been — you’re now engaged, and you’re ready to put a business on the market for sale at some point. I’m guessing there’s some preparation that goes into the process, but I don’t want to answer that question. I’ll let you answer that question. What does that process look like?

Roger Furrer: [00:23:37] Sure. Maybe before getting engaged, I’d like to take a step back and discuss the process of getting engaged. So, I mean, it sounds a little bit like a marriage here. So, what are you trying to accomplish, business owner? What are your objectives? Are you trying to transition your business to your management team? Are you trying to transition your business to relatives, cousins, daughters, sons, whatever it might be? Or are you trying to exit 100% of the business on sale to a strategic party? A financial party? Are you trying to retain some ownership and partner with somebody to take you further and help you grow your business in another direction, perhaps, geographically or from product diversification, whatever that might be? So, I think the first part in thinking about a sale process is really identifying and discussing, what are you trying to do with this? What’s the right solution for you? Because that’s going to drive the marketing process that we go through.

Michael Blake: [00:24:54] So-

Roger Furrer: [00:24:55] Is that helpful?

Michael Blake: [00:24:56] No, no, it is. I’m glad you brought us back to that point because I think it’s very important. I’m guessing the process where or the number of clients that you, or any good investment banker has, or if someone just sort of calls you up and says, “Hey, an investment bank,” “Great. I’ll send you a letter. Sign it.” Next thing you know, you’re engaged. I’ll bet that’s pretty close to zero, right?

Roger Furrer: [00:25:20] That would be less than zero, yes.

Michael Blake: [00:25:22] Yeah, right. So, you’ve had months of of conversations. This is something a lot of people don’t realize about investment banking is folks like you invest a ton of time, energy, and expertise in that pre-engagement relationship-building period where you’re trying to understand (A), business, and (B), the goals of the owners, and make sure those are something that you can realistically accomplish.

Roger Furrer: [00:25:55] That’s correct. And as part of that process, it’s also identifying a value range of that business, so that you understand what the potential outcome could be as a result of the marketing process. So, back to my example of the $5 million valuation where the business owner feels that 10 is their exit number, now, we’ve got to step back and talk about ways to get that business valuation up. So, I digress a little bit from your question on the sales process and what happens when you get engaged, but I thought that was a good backdrop.

Roger Furrer: [00:26:32] With that being said, so to directly answer your ,question through an engagement process, and we describe it as a several different steps that we go through throughout that 6 to 9-month process that we discussed before, where we literally write marketing material on the business by gathering financial data, understanding the products, the markets, the sales process, whatever it might be that are positioning the business as to why this is an outstanding investment consideration for a potential buyer to look at. So, we go through the entire marketing process and understanding the business.

Roger Furrer: [00:27:21] And then, as part of that process, we set down and identify who we see as potential buyers for this business. And how we do that is we review companies that might be direct competitors of the customer. They might have ancillary businesses associated with this particular business. They could be large suppliers to the business or have other strategic interests that could align with purchasing of a particular company that we’re representing.

Roger Furrer: [00:28:00] We also identify what we’ll call financial buyers, who, broadly speaking, would be identified as private equity groups or, perhaps, family offices that engage in private equity transactions. Private equity can be a very powerful option for people, especially who are interested in retaining some ownership and continuing on a go-forward basis. Typically, these financial buyers also have a strategic interest in an industry. So, a private equity firm that has a specialty in managing manufacturing companies probably isn’t going to be interested in a retailing business, as an example, but it’s usually something that’s tangential to the business that they’re already in. So, those are the things that we go through at the start of that process. And then, we literally do hand-to-hand combat outreach to the leadership team of these prospective buyers and send marketing material to them in an attempt to get them interested in this company.

Michael Blake: [00:29:22] Yeah. I like the way that you mentioned that hand-to-hand combat. And just as an aside, you mentioned, you bring up family offices because I think that’s a relatively new trend. When many of us think about private equity — I’m sorry, financial buyers, we go right to private equity. But as you know, I’m doing an increasing amount of work with family offices and dynastic wealth, and they’re starting to become a more important player as a financial buyer of buying operating businesses. At least, I’m seeing that. Are you seeing the same thing?

Roger Furrer: [00:30:00] We are. They, too, like others, are looking for profitable ways to deploy the capital that they have to invest, and they see this as one of the avenues that they might allocate a portion of their portfolio.

Michael Blake: [00:30:18] So, typically — just, let’s do a rain show. I don’t want to nail you down, but I still think it’s important in terms of managing expectations. When you and a client agree to work together – excuse me – how do you set expectations or what expectations you typically set in terms of how long it will take from, “We’re signing this engagement letter,” until you’re going to sell the business, and money wire transfers go through.

Roger Furrer: [00:30:52] Sure. I’ll start with the end answer, and I’ll break it down in stages for you, Mike. The end answer is probably six to eight months from the start of the process to the wire transfer clearing. We say it’s about a month doing our market preparation and marketing material. Another month to six weeks in terms of executing the marketing process, and identifying potential buyers, and outreach, and getting indications of interest from those buyers. Another six weeks or so in terms of providing additional information, hosting those companies on site for visits, and ultimately picking the right party and negotiating a letter of intent that we all agree on. So, that’s about — I’ll call that maybe four months total there. And then, it could be another three months or so to develop documentation, do the due diligence research that the buyer is going to do, and ultimately get to the closing process.

Michael Blake: [00:31:59] So, there’s a question I want to make sure that I — a conversation I want to make sure I have with you because I think this is very important for our listeners, and I’m sure that you’ve addressed it. And that is part of the compensation model is there is a retainer involved. And to be candid, I actually advise clients that hiring an investment banker that requires a retainer, I think, is a good thing, because that’s what helps keep the investment banker interested, especially when the deal isn’t particularly active as opposed to — and we know business brokers tend to be more like this, so they’ll operate without that retainer where there’s a purely a success fee out there, and you’re going to get the very definition of ADHD, and that whichever deal happens to be getting transact – I’m sorry – traction today is the one that’s going to get your attention. That means that yours is going to go to the bottom of the pile. Can you comment on that? Does that make any sense to you?

Roger Furrer: [00:33:09] Well, I would say what went through my mind, Mike, is I’ve seen investment bankers that charge a monthly retainer. I’m not a big fan of that. And in advising a client, I would advise a client against that because that just keeps the meter running and doesn’t necessarily drive one to success. The retainer fees that we have and the way that we restructure it is around hitting certain benchmarks, so that there is demonstrated progress in the work that we’re doing.

Roger Furrer: [00:33:48] Now, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re going to close the transaction, but, for example, having a retainer that hits when the letter of intent is signed, that shows that work was done, and progress was made, and this keeps us engaged and kind of covers our expenses, and time, and effort in working through to the closing process. So, I’m a big fan of retainers that way that are benchmark-driven. I’m not a big fan of retainers that are driven by the turn of the calendar.

Michael Blake: [00:34:21] Okay, good, good. So, have you ever run into a scenario where a prospect kind of raises the question of, “Well, my law firm says they know buyers, and my CPA firm says they know buyers, and maybe I can just let them sell my business and not have to pay the fee”? Do you ever encounter that? And if you do, how do you respond to that?

Roger Furrer: [00:34:50] We encounter it frequently. And the way that we address it is a number of ways. First of all, there’s many great accountants and attorneys that I’ve worked with through these processes, and many of them may have the capabilities to do these. I’ll call them one-off transactions from time to time, where buyer reaches out directly to the seller to get a transaction completed. That could work. I don’t advise that you should approach it that way, but that could work. I find it, I don’t know, I’ll use the term laughable, that accountants and attorneys would do outreach to identify potential buyers, and try and get them interested, and do the work that we do.

Roger Furrer: [00:35:46] So, they certainly have some skill sets that help in the process. But the other thing I’d say is that they’re rarely staffed to handle those steps to do it. I mean, we work constantly on a deal. Constantly, we might spend half a day for six months on a particular deal. I don’t see an accountant or an attorney having the ability to do that based on the other workloads that they have. So, we always hear about the realtors sale, the FSBO, the for sale by owner. I certainly don’t think that is the recommended approach.

Roger Furrer: [00:36:23] Independent of the advisors, here’s the other thing that I think is the critical piece of this. So, it’s a very specialized and, at times, sensitive process, which I’ve just articulated, but the business owner and the management team needs to focus on running the business and maintaining the value of the business. If you devote an inordinate amount of time to the selling process itself and the business suffers, guess what, you just diminish the value that you thought you were saving by not paying the investment banker fee. So, how is the expression? What’s the saying? “If you act as your own attorney, you have a fool for a client.” I think this is pretty similar to that.

Roger Furrer: [00:37:15] You’ve used the term before about trying to do this cheaply. Well, we certainly believe a thousand percent of the time that the process, and the effort, and the marketing approach that we do is way, way more offset. Our costs are way, way more offset by the value that we drive in the business. So, first of all, don’t do it yourself because your business is going to suffer. If you’re in a situation where you can spend six to nine months working on the selling process, I challenge that that just doesn’t happen in business very often that you can establish a new role for yourself and not do your current job. So, don’t do that is my huge advice with that.

Michael Blake: [00:38:11] So, the bullet point here is do not try this at home.

Roger Furrer: [00:38:13] Yeah, no.

Michael Blake: [00:38:15] And I agree with that, and I’ve seen it happen even with an investment banker involved. And I think, frankly, one of the values that you guys bring to the table is understanding how to manage your clients’ time to make sure they are still managing their business because there’s the dynamic of work that if your eyes off the ball on the business, that’s one thing. Over time, you could probably recover it. But the other part that, I think, is extremely hard to recover from is psychological. It’s that once your mind is kind of one foot out the door, and you’re thinking more about that condominium in Costa Rica than you are your business on a day-to-day basis, I think it’s very hard for you to snap yourself out of that and get back into full on business non-exit mode.

Roger Furrer: [00:39:15] I would completely concur with that. And I think one of the things that we do in the process is the coaching aspect of it about making sure that the business is still performing. Now, obviously, these situations occur where that doesn’t happen, but the idea is to make sure that people are maintained and maintained in their focus on where they should be to maintain the value of the business during this six to eight-month cycle.

Michael Blake: [00:39:49] So, we are talking to our Roger Furrer of Brady Ware Capital. And we’re talking about whether you should hire an investment bank. I’ve just got a couple more questions, and I want to let you go because I know you’ve got deals that you’re working on right now. But one question I want to make sure that we do cover is investment banks such as Brady Ware Capital are not just about buying and selling businesses, are they? There are other kind of ancillary — I don’t want to say ancillary because that sounds like they’re not important, but there are other important services that you offer to clients as well, as do other many investment banks. Could you talk about that for a minute?

Roger Furrer: [00:40:30] Yeah. I think a couple of things that we do well also. And I think having Brady Ware Capital being a part of Brady Ware, the accounting practice, gives us the unique capabilities of being able to work with what we would call transaction specialists that are able to be participants in a due diligence process and identifying issues that might arise in the financials of a target company, as an example, or preparing the seller for issues that might come up with their target company. So, I would broadly categorize that as transaction services type of work.

Roger Furrer: [00:41:14] Additionally, we also participate in what I would call corporate finance, which would be helping companies analyze potential cash flow and return on equity metrics for an investment that they’re making, an acquisition that they’re making, those types of things to make sure that they’re on the right path from a financial perspective. And finally, I believe I mentioned before, we do assist in capital raises. Most traditionally we have worked in the area of bank debt and other mezzanine debt that would assist the company with their capital structure.

Michael Blake: [00:41:58] Now, you mentioned debt. Sort of noticeably absent in that conversation then is equity. Does that mean that you’re not as aggressively pursuing transactions where you might help somebody raise equity capital?

Roger Furrer: [00:42:14] We do not do that as a routine. No, Mike. It’s almost one of those situations that I would parallel with the buy side discussion in that trying to find the right fit of equity participants with a particular equity need is maybe needle in a haystack type of approach. I would say, more typically. from an equity raise perspective would be around the potential transition of some of the ownership, maybe a minority ownership perspective, to provide liquidity to the primary owner or perhaps to engage in some expansion activity or acquisition activity. There is a fair amount of private equity groups that do specialize in taking a minority ownership position. So, when that scenario arises, that might be something that would be part of a process in an equity capital raise. But rarely do we do one-off type, if you will, for smaller dollar amounts to bring equity into a business.

Michael Blake: [00:43:34] So, if Wiley Coyote is coming to you, and he’s trying to raise venture capital for his roadrunner catching machine, that’s not a good fit.

Roger Furrer: [00:43:43] I know Wiley Coyote had some great Acme machine that I remember as a kid. We might invest in that.

Michael Blake: [00:43:50] Now, there you go.

Roger Furrer: [00:43:52] But yes, that is not one of our strong suits.

Michael Blake: [00:43:57] All right. So, Roger, this has been great. There’s other questions we could ask, but I know we’ll let you get back to it. If somebody wants to contact you and learn more about investment banking, and how investment banks can help a company from a strategic perspective, and maybe a bit more about Brady Ware Capital, how can they best find you?

Roger Furrer: [00:44:21] Well, I’ll tell you that, but before I do, I think there’s one other point that I think that we should talk about with the listeners. A lot of times, we’ve talked about a party not doing it at home yourself type of thing and doing it for sale by owner. When people get outreach from a buyer who calls them directly and thinks that they should engage in an acquisition discussion, investment bankers are very useful in that process as well in that the first thing that we do is help with the identification of what the value of that business should be. And, also, kind of go back to the starting point that we had before is, what are you trying to accomplish, business owner, around your goals and objectives with transition? So, I just thought that was worthwhile to bring up to before actioning.

Roger Furrer: [00:45:19] With that said, in answer to your question on how to get a hold of me, my email address is rfurrer@bradyware.com or anyone may reach me on my cell at area code 937-238-9401.

Michael Blake: [00:45:43] Okay, Roger, thanks very much for that. I think there’s a lot of good content for someone who’s thinking about whether or not they need to retain an investment bank. Chances are if you’re thinking about it, you’re probably doing. And Roger’s a great place to start.

Michael Blake: [00:45:58] That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Roger Furrer so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We explore a new topic each week. So, please tune in so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow: Episode 11, Making the Move to Assisted Living, An Interview with Derek Bailey, The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Agency

June 26, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Studio

To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow: Episode 11, Making the Move to Assisted Living, An Interview with Derek Bailey, The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Agency

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Episode 11, Making the Move to Assisted Living

What signs do I need to look for to know my loved one might need assisted living? What should I do to make this transition easier? On this episode of “To Your Health with Dr. Jim Morrow,” Dr. Morrow addresses these questions and much more with Derek Bailey of The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Agency. “To Your Health” is brought to you by Morrow Family Medicine, which brings the CARE back to healthcare.

Derek Bailey, The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Agency

**Derek Bailey, The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Service**

Derek Bailey is the Owner of The Right Move Senior Resource and Placement Agency. The Right Move provides free professional consultation services to local seniors and their families in the Southeast. With years of valuable experience in the local healthcare industry, they are equipped, informed, and connected to ensure you are comfortable with who you trust to provide the necessary level of healthcare for you or your family. If you find yourself faced with a decision on assisted or independent senior living options, in-home personal care, nursing home care, or anything else related to seniors, reach out and allow them to help you make… THE RIGHT MOVE. For more information, go to http://rightmoveresource.com/ or call 770-880-0706.

About Morrow Family Medicine and Dr. Jim Morrow

Morrow Family Medicine is an award-winning, state-of-the-art family practice with offices in Cumming and Milton, Georgia. The practice combines healthcare information technology with old-fashioned care to provide the type of care that many are in search of today. Two physicians, three physician assistants and two nurse practitioners are supported by a knowledgeable and friendly staff to make your visit to Morrow Family Medicine one that will remind you of the way healthcare should be. At Morrow Family Medicine, we like to say we are “bringing the care back to healthcare!” Morrow Family Medicine has been named the “Best of Forsyth” in Family Medicine in all five years of the award, is a three-time consecutive winner of the “Best of North Atlanta” by readers of Appen Media, and the 2019 winner of “Best of Life” in North Fulton County.

Dr. Jim Morrow, Morrow Family Medicine, and Host of “To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow”

Dr. Jim Morrow is the founder and CEO of Morrow Family Medicine. He has been a trailblazer and evangelist in the area of healthcare information technology, was named Physician IT Leader of the Year by HIMSS, a HIMSS Davies Award Winner, the Cumming-Forsyth Chamber of Commerce Steve Bloom Award Winner as Entrepreneur of the Year and he received a Phoenix Award as Community Leader of the Year from the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. He is married to Peggie Morrow and together they founded the Forsyth BYOT Benefit, a charity in Forsyth County to support students in need of technology and devices. They have two Goldendoodles, a gaggle of grandchildren and enjoy life on and around Lake Lanier.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MorrowFamMed/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/7788088/admin/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/toyourhealthMD

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:09] Broadcasting live from the North Fulton Business RadioX Studio, it’s time for To Your Health with Dr. Jim Morrow. To Your Health is brought to you by Morrow Family Medicine, an award-winning primary care practice, which brings the care back to health care.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:00:25] Hello, this is Dr. Jim Morrow. I’m with Morrow Family Medicine. We have offices in Cumming and Milton, Georgia. At Morrow Family Medicine, we try to use all the technology that we can, and at the same time, use old-fashioned ideas and old-fashioned care to give you the sort of care that you need and you deserve. We realize that you have many choices when it comes to where you receive your health care, and we do appreciate it when that choice is Morrow Family Medicine.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:00:53] We’re here at the Renasant Bank on Windward Parkway in Alpharetta, Georgia. Again, here with John Ray. John’s running the board. John’s looking out for e-mails and tweets. How are you doing over there, John?

John Ray: [00:01:04] I’m doing great. How are you doing, Jim?

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:01:06] I’m great.

John Ray: [00:01:07] Good.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:01:07] I’m great.

John Ray: [00:01:07] Good.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:01:08] So, you can email or tweet the show. The email address is drjim@toyourhealth.md or you can tweet us on Twitter. We’re @toyourhealthmd. And we’re very excited today. We’re going to talk today about assisted living and how to help move your parents or your loved one from one home, probably, to a facility that’s not exactly like their home. And we’re very lucky today to have Derek Bailey with us. Derek is the Owner and Founder of the Right Move Senior Resource. And he helps people do this every day. Hey, Derek.

Derek Bailey: [00:01:44] Hey, Dr. Morrow. How you doing?

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:01:46] I’m good. I’m good. I really appreciate you being here.

Derek Bailey: [00:01:48] We appreciate the opportunity, definitely.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:01:50] So, you’re the second guess that we’ve had. And I’m enjoying this. It’s a little bit different from just sitting here and lecturing to our listeners. And I’m kind of liking this. I do appreciate you coming. So, if you would, Derek, start off by telling us about your business, and what it is you do, and how you manage to do it.

Derek Bailey: [00:02:08] Yeah. So, thanks again for the opportunity. Definitely excited to be here with you on the show. The Right Move Senior Resource is here for one reason. We’re here to help seniors navigate care and help them find the right option for them. My background, I spent five years doing hospice care, four years in the hospital setting, and just really saw a need to help families navigate care. I think we do a good job of planning for retirement and kind of getting ready for those years of life. But nobody really wants to talk about the last five or six years of life, and the care that might come up that you need, and the cost for that care, and who can provide that care.

Derek Bailey: [00:02:44] So, after seeing those needs, we decided just to step out and try to fill that need. So, our business, we come in alongside families that are going through situations when mom or dad can no longer stay at home safely. We help them either bring care into the home to help make it safer, or when looking at assisted living senior living options, our goal is to help them find the one that fits their specific needs, their budget, their care needs, their location, and then their preferences on finishes, on amenities, things like that. But, again, at the end of the day, our goal is to help them feel comfortable with who’s providing care for their loved one at that point in time.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:03:23] Super. And I know that’s a real need when talking to families that have elderly loved ones. I think they’re two incredibly difficult conversations. One is, “Dad, you can’t drive anymore.” And this is the second one is, “What we’re going to do now that you shouldn’t be at the house by yourself?” So, you hear a lot of people talk about assisted living. And if you drive around the area where we live, there’s an assisted living facility either present or going up on every corner, it seemed like. So, tell our audience exactly what it means when you’re talking about assisted living.

Derek Bailey: [00:03:54] Yeah. So, assisted living is a residential alternative to living at home. So, when an individual might need help with what we call activities of daily living – cooking for themselves, or bathing, medication management, maybe toileting, things like that, and they can no longer do it in their home safely alone – we look at assisted living where they would have their own apartment, where they can kind of have their own space, but there is care available there for them to help them with their activities of daily living. Also, these assisted livings can help with traveling to appointments, taking them to their doctor’s appointments, things like that. So, again, assisted living is for those who may need a little bit of extra help with their activities of daily living and can no longer do them independently at home.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:04:42] Well, you mentioned care being available, and I think that’s a point that distinguishes some of these different types of facilities. In the typical assisted living facility, what kind of care would people expect to have that are ready for them?

Derek Bailey: [00:04:57] Yeah. So, there’s actually two different licensures of what we normally see in assisted living or what you see on the side of the road driving down Highway 9 with the 15 that had been built up and down Highway 9. There’s two different licensures – assisted living and personal care. Assisted living license, they have to have a nurse on staff in the building around the clock that is there for nursing needs. Although they don’t manage a lot of the major nursing needs that might arise, but, typically, they’re going to have a certified nursing assistant, the CNA.

Derek Bailey: [00:05:27] And the CNA’s role is to come in and assist them with bathing, dressing, helping them to the toilet, and helping them to know the dining hall if they need help with meals and feeding, but also medication management. That’s a big part. A lot of times, what takes someone from home to assisted living is they’re not managing their medications appropriately. And you know as well as a doctor, taking your medications as prescribed on time is very important to managing certain diseases. And so, that takes them into the assisted living where they can handle that, where they have certified medication technicians or the certified nursing assistants that come in and make sure they’re taking their medications properly.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:06:09] And a lot of the assisted living facilities have gradations of care. Tell me a little bit about the independent, versus assisted, versus memory, and so forth.

Derek Bailey: [00:06:21] Yeah, that’s part of what we do in the process of helping a family. So, when we meet with a family, that’s the first thing we do is we assess their care needs. What are those activities of daily living that they need help with? Do they need medication management? Things like that, because all of these independent living, assisted living options, they might not be the right fit for that family.

Derek Bailey: [00:06:43] So, independent living is more of an independent apartment where they don’t need help with those types of things. They’re there more for maybe the meal preparation, maybe socialization. Mom or dad has been isolated in the home for a while, and it’s just nice to get them in and around other people. But they don’t need that much help in the independent living world. When they start to need that help we talked about, the activities of daily living, the help with bathing, to help with dressing, that’s when we look at the assisted living. And to be honest, the assisted livings, they all range in the level of care that they can provide. So, you know that your loved one needs assisted living, but which one can provide the care that we actually need? And that’s what we do. We help them figure out which assisted living can manage their specific care needs.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:07:30] And with any of these facilities, of course, paying forward is always a concern. To what degree does traditional insurance or Medicare Medicaid play a role in this?

Derek Bailey: [00:07:41] No, it’s a great question. Every family wants to know who’s paying for it.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:07:44] Yeah.

Derek Bailey: [00:07:45] At this point in time, when it comes to independent living, assisted living here in the State of Georgia, the majority of it is private pay by the individual or the family. The only help or care that Medicare or traditional health insurance would actually pay for in the assisted living would be if they needed physical therapy, occupational therapy, or skilled nursing that kind of comes in either through home health or through a third-party therapy provider in the building. That’s what insurance would cover. But as far as the room and board, the daily care at an assisted living, the majority of it is going to be paid by the family.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:08:21] And do you have a a range of prices in mind, in general? Tell me about that.

Derek Bailey: [00:08:27] So, it’s a very wide range. As you’ve noticed, all of them being built, they all provide different amenities, different levels of service. And so, on the low end for assisted living, you’re going to be looking in the the $2500 range for probably a shared apartment where you might be in the same apartment with someone else, all the way up to some of the higher end assisted living is are going to cost you $7000 or $8000 dollars a month. So, it’s a very wide range. The average for assisted living apartment here in the Greater Atlanta area is around $3600 a month. So, it’s not cheap when you look at the number, but we try to get families to understand that they’re getting their room and board, all their utilities paid, the food, the activities, and then the care is all lumped into that one number. So, it might look like a very large number, but at the end of the day, you’re getting a lot in that one fee per month. But again, it’s private pay, and it’s a wide range of options to choose from.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:09:26] Well, it’s good to have a lot of options in a lot of different facilities that do have those different amenities, so people can have a price range to pick from.

John Ray: [00:09:34] Yeah.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:09:35] So, if my loved one – my mother, for example – is getting older and starting to get a little bit frail, what are some of the things I need to be on the lookout for to know that this is a conversation needs to be had?

Derek Bailey: [00:09:48] Yeah, that’s a great question. So, I think we need to start having this conversation much earlier before we start to have issues. The bulk of our clients call us when it’s in the middle of it. And it’s very difficult to make rational decisions when you’re in the thick of things. But at any point in time, when you notice medications being missed, or you’ve noticed they’ve had to go to the physician a few extra times for urinary tract infections, or just losing weight, or overall just getting tired. Also, if you notice their meals, and if they’re not cooking for themselves anymore, or if you’re dropping off meals for them, and they’re not eating them, those types of things are kind of good indicators that maybe mom or dad’s not able to care for themselves anymore. With my grandmother, for instance, we started noticing she kept a very clean house her whole life, and then we started to notice dust piling up, and trash starting not to get taken out, and just little subtle things where we noticed her behavior was different, and we noticed it was time for her to start looking at some senior living options for her.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:10:54] That’s great. I appreciate that. I know we have episodes or incidences in the office where we’ll have conversations with family. And, usually, they’re pretty good about noticing that kind of thing, but I like the idea of starting to have that conversation earlier. I never had the privilege of knowing my wife’s mother, but she tells a story about when her mother was getting older, she said, “We need to go look at places where I can live.” And then, my wife, Peggy, will laugh and say she wasn’t sure if that was just because she didn’t want to live with one of her children, or she just want to take the burden off. But it is a large burden. And I think talking about it earlier, and knowing what somebody’s desires are before they get to the point of being in serious need is a very good idea. So, the transition from home to assisted living or other has got to be a very difficult one for everybody involved. Do you have ideas about what can make it easier other than that early conversation?

Derek Bailey: [00:11:50] Yeah. So, a few things I think are very important because, like you said, two of the conversations that are the hardest, “I’m taking your keys away,” and “You can no longer live alone.” You’re taken their way to get around, and taken their independence, and then you’re taking them from their home. So, it is a very big deal. The couple of things that I think have worked with us with families is, obviously, the early conversation. But when the conversation’s too late, it’s getting them involved in the conversation. Asking the senior, the aging loved one, “What are you hoping for in your next home?” And I think really being honest with them as to why we’re having to look at the senior living options as the alternative to what’s been going on.

Derek Bailey: [00:12:32] And then the next thing is getting them involved in the process. So, letting them see the options if we can physically do that. Get them to the options, let them have some input and questions to each assisted living, let them try the food at the assisted living before they make a decision. Really getting them involved in the process gives them a sense that they’re in control of their future rather than someone else is controlling their future for them. I think that’s the biggest thing because we all have kids. We tell our kids what to do. And at some point in time, that role is going to reverse, and that’s very hard. So, allowing them to feel like they still have some power, and some say in their decision making process is important.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:13:14] And you mentioned checking out the food and that kind of thing. And obviously, visiting these places is very important. And I think they’re all very, very open to that. I hear from patients that they’ve done a good bit of that kind of thing. But once you move in, and you’re there, and it’s also very new. I’m sure a lot of elderly people or anybody who would be likely to be this way are tempted to just stay in their room and not get involved. And have you seen that the staffs actually try to encourage them to come out and play, if you will?

Derek Bailey: [00:13:43] That’s part of what I think separates some of the good assisted livings from some of the ones that are just kind of middle of the pack or mediocre. They’re actively trying to engage their new residents because that’s very important. That first couple of weeks is a big deal. They know they’re moving someone from their home to a place where they are no longer by themselves completely. So, actively having the activities director come and get them out of the room, getting them to come sit for meals, or they put on a lot of events at these places. So, just really trying to push the resident, the new resident to come out when they can.

Derek Bailey: [00:14:18] What I’ve found to work great in a lot of the assisted livings is they have a team of actual residents that that’s their new job, their purpose. They are there to acclimate a new resident. So, they try to buddy them up with somebody that’s kind of like them or similar situations, and really help them feel comfortable, and using their own residents to help push the new residents into the more social side of things there.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:14:44] Oh, that’s an awesome idea. I did not know that. I think that’s a great thing for them to do because it does give them that purpose. And plus, who better to explain to people what it’s like there other than a resident? That’s a great idea. I like that. So, in facilities around the area and, really, in any area, you’ve got the assisted living, and whether it’s independent, or assisted, or memory care. But then, nursing home is a whole different animal. So, if you would explain the difference between nursing home and what we’ve talked about so far?

Derek Bailey: [00:15:20] Yeah. So, nursing home or the traditional skilled nursing facility is there for a much higher level of care that might be needed by a patient. So, if someone is to the point where they are bedridden, or maybe they have certain wounds or diseases that require constant monitoring by a skilled nurse, then we need to look at a skilled nursing home for that situation. Growing up, like my wife’s grandmother, for instance, she thinks all of these places are nursing homes that, “I don’t want to be put into a home.” She thinks some of the nicest assisted living as a home or a nursing home. So, trying to get her to understand the difference, we have that conversation all the time. But when someone requires skilled nursing, 24/7, that’s when we’re looking at a skilled nursing home or nursing facility.

Derek Bailey: [00:16:07] Assisted livings now, with this new assisted living license, can handle someone who may take two people to get from bed to chair. They may be able to wheel themselves around a little bit. But once someone is completely bedridden or needs that nursing attention throughout the day, then we need to look at skilled nursing homes.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:16:28] And I know you said that you spent time in hospice. And the home health people are, obviously, involved in the assisted living side. Do you find that the use of home health is able to delay the move to a nursing home for a lot of the people that are in assisted living?

Derek Bailey: [00:16:46] Definitely. And, also, using hospice in the assisted living. Through some licensures and things like that, if home health is managing a lot of the nursing care needs, if it’s a few times a week that they need bandage changes, or just checkups, and things like that, then definitely the home health nurse, the aides can come in and help someone age in place. That’s one of the biggest movements, I think, over the last few years in the assisted living world here, especially in Georgia, is aging in place. And they have begun to use hospice to allow that to happen even at end of life. As long as hospice is involved, the assisted living can, for the most part, manage someone and allow them to stay in their own room throughout the whole process until they pass away. So, you have noticed with the assisted living licenses changes recently, plus hospice being more involved, that we may not have to move to nursing home that towards the end of life if we can help it.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:17:45] And in the assisted living centers, do they use sitters in that area either 24 hours or evening sitters? Is that something that this center will allow them to do?

Derek Bailey: [00:17:59] Yeah, at times. So, there will be times that that might be needed. For the most part, the assisted living is going to be staffed well enough to handle the routine care for a resident, the getting them bathed once a day or getting them their medications. But, sometimes, let’s say, after a hospital stay, they come back to the assisted living, and they may need more hourly care than what the normal assisted living could manage. They’ll allow sitters to come in and stay with the resident. And it may only be for a few days just to get them acclimated back into being in the assisted living. But they definitely do rely on sitter services, CNAs to come in and help residents when they need more care than what the assisted living can provide.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:18:42] And whether you’re talking about assisted living or nursing home, I think I know the answer for nursing home, but a lot of these patients need specialized diets. And I know in an assisted living, it’s very much a cafeteria style situation. Are they able to prepare specialized meals for patients?

Derek Bailey: [00:18:58] They are. And again, that’s where there’s a lot of newer communities coming out and focusing on those types of things. As the assisted living world is getting bigger and bigger, and they’re allowed to care for more individuals as far as their care needs, you have seen catering to certain diet types, diet restrictions, whether it’s cardiac diet, low sodium diets. Families are able to make that part of their plan moving into the assisted living. And most of them have a chef onboard, and they’re now cooking meals to order.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:19:30] Wow.

Derek Bailey: [00:19:31] And so, especially the higher end assisted livings can cook meals to order, much like a restaurant style, and they’ll know a specific resident’s diet restrictions if it’s been put in there when they move in.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:19:45] Super. Now, you mentioned a minute ago how the roles seem to flip, and it’s a different point in time for every single family, of course. But at some point, the child becomes a caregiver. Do you have advice for that caregiver as far as not just making the decision about where but about how to best go about making this as painless as possible?

Derek Bailey: [00:20:08] Yeah. Well, that’s something that’s really been on my mind – really, my heart – over the last couple months is that caregiver burnout. We get a lot of clients from the ER, where it’s thrown in their face, where mom and dad has had some type of accident, and they had no idea that mom or dad couldn’t live on their own. So, now they’re picking up the pieces. Where do I go from here? What do I do? How do I get mom and dad to the doctor’s office? How do I manage their medications? And caregiver burnout is a huge problem that I think we face here as our parents age, and those roles reverse, and you’re kind of thrust into a situation that you weren’t prepared for.

Derek Bailey: [00:20:43] So, we’re actually working on kind of a program to help families with that. But I’ll briefly talk about some things that I think we need to focus on. Number one is care. Can they provide the care they need independently? And so, can they manage their own medications? Can they get to the restroom safely? Can they cook for themselves? Those types of things. Number two is the transportation. Can they safely drive themselves to appointments, to social activities? If not, that may fall to the caregiver. So, coming up with a plan for transportation is important to not overwhelm the kid who’s probably still transporting kids around as well.

Derek Bailey: [00:21:25] Another one is the legal side of things. Can you legally make decisions for your parents for their care? So, speaking with an elder care attorney about power of attorneys, both financial and health care, talking about their wishes towards the end of life and being prepared for those conversations, having the legal ability to make those decisions for your parents when they can no longer make those, that’s important. So, speaking with an elder care attorney and getting some of those legal documents taken care of.

Derek Bailey: [00:21:55] Another one of those things to look at is nutrition. Nutrition is a huge part of aging and healthy aging. And it’s really important to make sure our loved ones are eating properly. And so, when you’re thrust into that caregiver role, that’s something that you have to think about. Can they cook for themselves? Is it healthy food? If not, how do we bring them food? Do we deliver it? And that’s a lot of burden on the caregiver. Or are there services that can provide that?

Derek Bailey: [00:22:20] So, these are all things that we’ve been really putting a lot of time and effort into coming up with solutions for. So, hopefully, stay tuned, we’ll have a really nice package for caregivers to really hand them over and say, “Here’s what we have seen that works, and these are the things you need to focus on to keep you from burning out.” Because at the end of the day, they’re going to be caregiver, they’re there to make decisions, but we want to make sure they still have time to be the son, the daughter. We got to make sure they still have time to love their loved ones and not just be thinking about the care that they need.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:22:51] I think that’s a great idea. And I think any physician or any practice that deals with adult geriatric medicine would want to have that little packet on hand somewhere to be able to help people out because we do have that conversation quite a bit. And you’re absolutely right about the caregivers. They are running their household, dealing with their family, their children. They’ve got soccer, and school, and projects. And then, they also have to be dealing with the problems that their elderly parents bring. And it bothers them a lot. And I think being able to be aware of that and provide them some sort of assistance is something that would go a long way towards making this entire experience a little bit more tolerable for.

Derek Bailey: [00:23:32] And we also recommend connecting with caregiver support groups. One of our employees actually puts one on monthly. She’s in the Hall County area. But find a local caregiver support group where you can get connected with other people going through the same issue. There’s strength in numbers. There’s ideas that we’ve all tried or others have tried that have worked or not worked. And it’s nice to get around people that can support you and let you know you’re not going through this alone and that there’s help out there for it. So, definitely look into local caregiver support groups.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:24:02] I think that’s a great idea. And I know in talking to some of the children of elderly parents that they’ve always felt like this is a very difficult conversation to have, but once they start getting into the conversation and actually dealing with the fact that this loved one is suffering a loss – whether it’s loss of control, or loss of money, or loss of freedom, or independence, whatever it might be – that it makes the entire process a little bit easier because it’s just out in the open, and they can have the conversation, and the caregiver doesn’t have to feel that entire burden on them every minute of every day, which I think is a big problem for a lot of caregivers. So, I appreciate you talking about that.

Derek Bailey: [00:24:44] Yeah.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:24:45] So, I’ve got a list here of do’s and don’ts for friends and relatives of people who are moving and making this sort of transition. Things like if you’re asked help with sorting, and packing, and moving. And I think that’s kind of a no-brainer. Listen to your loved one as they talk about what they left behind. It’d be helpful even if you don’t agree with the decision to move. And I’ve seen that happen, and I’m sure you have to, where you’ve got three children, and they have to have a tiebreaker to decide whether or not this should even happen. In your experience, tell me a little bit, if you can, about how you would advise the friends and relatives to help make these things they should do to help make this a little bit better transition?

Derek Bailey: [00:25:28] Yeah, definitely. I think that one of the big things you said there was listen. As our parents age, they just want to be heard sometimes. And so, actively listening to some of their issues or concerns, and helping them understand the move, and helping them try to alleviate some of the issues is very important. But then, also, helping them communicate that to the assisted living that they’ve moved into, because a lot of times, we don’t communicate what we’re upset about or what’s bothering us. And if the assisted living doesn’t know what’s bothering the person, the new resident, then they can’t fix it. So, listen and be an active part communicating with the assisted living.

Derek Bailey: [00:26:04] Another thing I think is to be there, to be present. You don’t have to be there 24/7 because, I think, that can be a little excessive and cause more burnout but do schedule visits. The assisted living allows the resident to come and go. So, go get them, take them to lunch just like you normally would. Try to add some of those routine things that you were doing with them at home, but continue to do that in the assisted living, and help them feel like not every part of life has changed, and that they haven’t just been dropped off somewhere and left. I think that’s one of the biggest fears is, again, back to my wife’s grandmother, “Just don’t drop me off at a home and leave me.” That’s what she keeps saying.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:26:43] Well, that continuity is absolutely huge. And I think it’s a gigantic change for everybody in the family now that this person is actually living there. So, I think that’s really good advice. And one thing you said is to listen. We’ve both talked about that. And I think it’s important to listen and not feel like you have to fix that, which has, men, we’re fixers, and we’re trying to pull that nail out of the head, and it can be very difficult. So, about things that you shouldn’t do, I know one of the things that loved ones shouldn’t do is to just feel like they’re going to take over the entire process and run everything. But do you have ideas about other things that are bad ideas during this transition?

Derek Bailey: [00:27:28] Yes. So, I think that’s a great one to not think that the assisted living is just going to take over for you, that they’re going to be involved and help them make the care decisions moving forward. But a few things, I think, to not do. Try not to focus on all the negatives about a particular community. Once you come in, you’re going to see things, you’re going to notice things that might bother you, but address those with the assisted living and try not to bring those up with the loved one. You don’t want to give them more fuel for the fire that might cause them to really be unhappy.

Derek Bailey: [00:28:03] I would say don’t not show up. Don’t ignore the loved one. If they call, answer. If they need you to come, come by and visit. Be very involved. And then, don’t ignore the assisted living. The assisted living is, now, kind of filling in that caregiver role. And so, they need your advice on what mom or dad likes or what their routines might be. So, don’t ignore the assisted living as well. Make sure you’re there helping them now care for your loved one as you have done for so many years before.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:28:34] Right, right. Well, I think that’s all great advice. It’s very informative for me. And I even work in the environment. So, it’s a good thing for me to know. And I’m sure it’s very good for our listeners. If you would tell everybody how they can get in touch with you at the Right Move?

Derek Bailey: [00:28:48] Yeah, definitely. You can check us out online. Our website is www.rightmoveresource.com. That’s R-I-G-H-T Move Resource dot com. You can definitely give us a call. Our phone number is 770-880-0706. Check us out on Facebook, anything like that. But definitely just reach out. We’re here to help. We’re very in-person. So, give us a call, reach out online, and we’ll get somebody connected with you definitely.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:29:15] All right. And I’m wondering, John’s over here at the board, I’m wondering if we have any questions that anyone’s emailed or tweeted to us.

John Ray: [00:29:22] The question is, how much time do we have, right, because I’ve got several questions here. So, let’s start with a couple, and we’ll see how this goes. So, one question here is, how far in advance, knowing that things change rapidly with seniors and what their journey is, how far in advance should someone be in touch with you, Derek?

Derek Bailey: [00:29:47] I think as early as possible. If there comes a point where a loved one or an aging parent is actively saying, “We need to start thinking about this,” jump on it because you may not get that opportunity. A lot of aging people, they don’t want to talk about these issues, but if it comes up in a conversation or as soon as you notice some type of change, reach out. We may not be looking for assisted living within the next year, but there may be other resources that we need to be looking into that we can connect them with, whether it’s some care coming into the home or looking at setting up for VA benefits or Medicaid things because a lot of the financial help that can help pay for assisted living would be through the VA or through Medicaid. And that takes years to plan for now that there’s look back periods and things like that. So, it’s never too early to reach out. And if it’s just a phone call, we’re more than happy to give 10, 15, 20 minutes of our time just to offer up some suggestions now and to tell them to call us back at this point in time when you need some more help.

John Ray: [00:30:49] So, another question we’ve got here – I’m summarizing this – that this individual says, “Hey, I know that there are some facilities where that are a combination of assisted living and memory care that, I guess, are kind of sequential in terms of the way a senior’s journey might go. And if I think my parent has a memory issue, should they go in early to get priority for that memory care unit? Is that the way that works in these facilities?” The concern is getting into memory care units that, sometimes, have limited capacity. That’s the bottom line on the question.

Derek Bailey: [00:31:38] Yeah, definitely, definitely. It’s much easier to move into a memory care if you’re already a resident of that building. You definitely have first priority. Especially if you find one that you like above others, it’s definitely important to get into that building and be in the assisted living environment. That way, you have first priority. But also, and what studies have found out, and what we’ve noticed is with those memory issues that can advance, a lot of times, if we get them into assisted living earlier, and as they receive the routine care, their medications are taken correctly, their incontinence issues are addressed, we can actually stay out of memory care for much — stay out of there longer. So, we can stay in the assisted living world and really thrive there first and push off moving into memory care until a much later date.

Derek Bailey: [00:32:26] Memory care is much more expensive than the assisted living. So, if we can help save them some money by staying in the assisted living longer, help the individual with the aging process and kind of stave off the results of what dementia and Alzheimer’s can do later on, that’s a good idea to get into assisted living earlier.

John Ray: [00:32:44] Okay. One more question if we got time for one more, Jim.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:32:47] All right then.

John Ray: [00:32:48] Okay. So, here’s someone that’s written in, and they say, “I don’t trust online reviews.” So, I can sympathize with that. And that’s obviously where you come in in terms of giving onsite help with places that folks ought to look at, maybe places they ought to avoid. “How do you continue to monitor what’s going on at different facilities? How do you do that?”

Derek Bailey: [00:33:18] That’s a great question. That’s very important. There is a lot of information online. And the reason I started my business is really because of that, because there’s a lot of misinformation, and there’s a lot of people out there that are going to take your information, and really not correctly guide you to where you need to be. So, we are on the ground in these facilities weekly, monthly, visiting them, keeping up with our clients that are moving in and out of these facilities. And we’re making sure that they’re doing the right things.

Derek Bailey: [00:33:47] Things change all the time. We know staffing changes all the time. So, we try to keep on top of that as the boots on the ground, so to speak. And that’s why I wanted to be different. I wanted us to be in the communities, knowing the options, and knowing who’s providing great care at that point time. We also do follow up surveys with all of our clients. So, we do incremental every-two-month surveys to make sure that they’re happy, that they’re doing a good job. And we stay on top of any issues that might come up. So, if we’re getting bad surveys from a particular community, we know maybe we need to go help them address that situation or we can tell our future clients these are the issues we’ve had with that. So, it’s very important to stay in the communities, to stay talking with our previous clients to make sure they’re getting good care.

John Ray: [00:34:32] I think that’s what we’ve got time for. But we ought to let everyone know that if they’ve got further questions, they can put them on our Facebook page, and we can make sure that Derek gets those questions. We can answer them there.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:34:43] Absolutely.

John Ray: [00:34:43] Right?

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:34:43] Yes, absolutely. They can e-mail. Once again, the email is drjim@toyourhealth.md. And on Twitter, @toyourhealthmd. We are on Facebook. It’s To Your Health on Facebook. Morrow Family Medicine’s Facebook page, of course, is there if you want to leave a message there. And we will definitely connect you with Derek.

Dr. Jim Morrow: [00:35:02] I do want to remind everybody that Morrow Family Medicine has a walk-in hour every morning, Monday through Friday, 7:30 to 8:30. If you decide one evening there’s something you need to have checked out, whether it’s a cough, cold, bellyache, rash, ask a question, doesn’t matter to us, if you feel the need to be seen, you can just show up at one of our offices Monday through Friday, 7:30 to 8:30, and we will see you. That way, there’s never a day you can’t be seen at Morrow Family Medicine. And I do believe that’s all we have for today. So, this is Dr. Jim Morrow, and that’s To Your Health.

Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs

June 25, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs

00:00 /

**NFBR producer Diane Lasorda with Garrett Massey, Founder and President of Polyglot Labs**

“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 144: Garrett Massey, Polyglot Labs

Garrett Massey describes the custom websites and web applications his company, Polyglot Labs, designs for clients as he speaks with host John Ray on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio.”

Garrett Massey, Founder and President, Polyglot Labs

**Garrett Massey, Founder & President, Polyglot Labs**

Polyglot Labs is a technology solutions company that works with speed and creativity to solve business challenges with technology smarts and likable personality. They do that through two specialized companies they call labs – Eyesore and Cortex Digital.

Eyesore builds awesome websites and digital marketing that make companies look good and drive business. Find Eyesore at eyesoreinc.com.

Cortex Digital innovates elegant, web-based solutions for back-end processes, databases, and systems that improve technology investments and business results. Find Cortex Digital at cortexdigitalinc.com.

Learn more about how their custom digital solutions can help you simplify processes, solve problems, and make your work and life better at www.polyglotlabs.com.

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:07] Live from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank, the bank that specializes in understanding you, it’s time for North Fulton Business Radio.

John Ray: [00:00:20] And hello again everyone. Welcome to another edition of North Fulton Business Radio. I’m John Ray, and we are coming to you from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank. We love Renasant Bank and the great hosts they are for our studio location here in beautiful Alpharetta.

John Ray: [00:00:40] I want to welcome — we’ve got a great guest, and he’s a fun guest. He really is a fun guest, but I’m going to let him convince you of that, folks. Garrett Massey with Polyglot Labs. Garrett, it’s great to have you here.

Garrett Massey: [00:00:55] Thank you, sir.

John Ray: [00:00:56] So, you win the award. The Business RadioX Award that have just come up with for the most creative names for a company, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:01:05] Thank you.

John Ray: [00:01:05] You’ve got three different creative names for the different enterprises you’re involved with. Tell us about Polyglot Labs and what you do.

Garrett Massey: [00:01:14] Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, Polyglot Labs is a technology solutions company that’s comprised of currently a couple of different labs, one called Eyesore and one called Cortex. Eyesore is a website design and development company that works with small and large businesses, as well as digital marketing agencies as a white-label partner to design and develop really good-looking websites. Cortex is an application development company that creates both web and mobile apps focused on solving some type of workflow, business process, issue, streamlining things, and making the end clients, as well as the business more money.

John Ray: [00:02:04] Cool. So, for those that already know you, this is a little bit of a change.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:09] It’s true.

John Ray: [00:02:09] So, you were originally Eyesore, and you’ve just changed the name of, let’s call it the mother company, to Polyglot Labs. And then, you’ve got two different business lines, and you’ve clearly defined those with these two names – Eyesore and Cortex Digital.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:26] Sure, sure.

John Ray: [00:02:27] I got all that right.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:28] You did.

John Ray: [00:02:29] Good.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:29] You did, you did. Yes.

John Ray: [00:02:30] Okay, cool.

Garrett Massey: [00:02:30] Our brand release was actually last Friday from Polyglot Labs. So, a few of our partners had heard the name prior to that point, but most of our clients and partners were not familiar with it. So, it gave us an opportunity to kind of branch out. We’re still doing the same types of work that we’ve done, but it gives us the ability to kind of focus our marketing efforts and really how we engage with our clients in kind of a more individual way.

John Ray: [00:03:00] Sure. So, I find it interesting that you call these two entities labs. Explain why.

Garrett Massey: [00:03:09] Yeah, definitely. So, we chose to use the terminology “labs” internally because we really liked the feel of an experimental approach. We do not come to the table with a solution that’s in our back pocket. We do not come to the table with a product off the shelf. We do come to the table with — it’s a process that we can use to hone in on what the best solution is for any particular client. What that’s done for us and for our clients is, really, it helps us hone in on what exactly they need, our client’s needs, and gives us the ability to do work that’s a little bit different every time. Kind of keeps our creative folks really engaged in the process because we’re not doing the same thing day in and day out. There’s always a little bit of a challenge there.

John Ray: [00:04:01] And you’re not, I guess, pushing product as it were, right, the term, but you’re not focused in on what your sacred elephants are-

Garrett Massey: [00:04:11] Sure.

John Ray: [00:04:12] … or sacred cows, or whatever animal that is. You’re really about looking at clients from what their needs are and what the problems they need solutions for as opposed to whatever you’ve got on the shelf now.

Garrett Massey: [00:04:29] Yeah, exactly, exactly. One of my favorite examples of that, I get probably two or three phone calls a week, this is anywhere from small business to large business, wanting an app. Everybody wants an app. And the first thing I do is try to talk them out of it because that is a profitable line of business for us, it’s shiny object for a lot of people, but it’s not a good fit for most scenarios. So, kind of taking that off the table, take a step back, and evaluating what folks really need gives us the ability to kind of help them nail down what will ultimately serve them the best.

John Ray: [00:05:09] And sometimes clients don’t know what they need, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:05:14] True.

John Ray: [00:05:14] So, you have to — that requires a little bit of a — it’s not that they are dumb or anything like that. It’s just that having that conversation and having that open inquiry as to, “Hey, we might not have everything on the shelf. So, let’s talk a little bit about what it is you’re trying to get to,” may help them clarify some things they really didn’t have a good handle on to begin with just because they hadn’t been asked the questions.

Garrett Massey: [00:05:40] Oh, yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. We believe in doing discovery up front is really, really key. We work with clients that have an amazing technical competency, and we were with folks that don’t. And they know a lot about their business, a lot about their problems, a lot about what they may think that they need from a technology solution, but we get to help them step through that process and why isn’t that being the best solution.

John Ray: [00:06:09] So, let’s talk a little bit, Garrett, about the Eyesore side of the business. So, Eyesore builds websites. That’s not like my teenager in the garage building with a website builder, right? It’s a little more complicated than that-

Garrett Massey: [00:06:29] It is.

John Ray: [00:06:29] … in terms of the kind of projects that you do.

Garrett Massey: [00:06:31] It is, it is. So, I started Eyesore two and a half years ago as a website design and development company, right. That’s kind of where we focused on. My background, at that point, had been in computer science. I’d just gotten out of college. So, I always had an interest in more complex projects. And we still do brochureware websites, buy page, about us, home page, contact us kind of deal because those do really serve an important purpose.

Garrett Massey: [00:07:00] We, also, develop more in-depth websites a lot of times for a lot of our marketing agency partners, other partners we serve as their technical team to help implement what their client ultimately needs. So, roughly, 60% to 70% of the work that we do on the Eyesore side of the world is in that white-label space where we’re partnering with a digital agency, a traditional marketing agency, video, event planning agencies to ultimately design and develop their clients’ projects. And that can look like a five-page website or that can look like a 12,000-page website that has a lot of custom functionality built in.

John Ray: [00:07:44] And for those that don’t know, that’s pretty common in the world of marketing agencies, digital agencies, that kind of thing to partner together. And so, you really come along as the highly technical side of a marketing agency that really don’t have any of those kind of folks typically, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:08:05] Sure, sure.

John Ray: [00:08:05] I mean, they’re more, I guess, right-brained kind of creative types, and they don’t have that technical expertise. You bring that to them.

Garrett Massey: [00:08:14] Definitely, definitely. The marketing agency, a lot of them, especially the Atlanta area, began to realize several years ago that it’s not in their client’s best interests, and it’s not in their best interest to keep everything in-house. So, the number of partnerships that we’ve seen, not only in just market agency hiring a developer to write a website or whatever, but video production, event production, AI, all the cool stuff that goes into a successful marketing campaign, they’re realizing, “Hey, we can partner somebody else, and we can kind of hone in and focus,” because there’s enough work for everybody to go around. And if they can partner with the best in the business to do each particular aspect of what they do, the end client ultimately gets a better product, a better experience, and it shows.

John Ray: [00:09:08] Folks, we’re speaking with Garrett Massey. And Garrett is the President and Founder of Polyglot Labs. Now, talk a little bit, if you would, about — I mean, it’s one thing for me to say you build a lot more sophisticated websites. It’s another thing to put that into something that our folks out there understand. Talk a little bit about maybe an example of some of the work you’ve done there.

Garrett Massey: [00:09:35] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. On the Eyesore side, we’ve worked on many, many complex projects over the years on the website side of the world. One of my most memorable projects, one of the agencies that was employed by the US Military was hit up by the US Military to build a new website for the US 3rd Army, which is the army that is the combination of the Army, the Navy, the ,Marines the Air Force, all that stationed over in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, all the places that you really don’t want to be.

John Ray: [00:10:10] Oh wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:10:10] And they had a timeline of two weeks to build what turned out to be a 12,000-page website. So, we were able to successively not only design, and develop, and launch a website in that timeframe, we also had to learn an entirely new programming language and content management system to actually execute that project. So, it actually took two and a half weeks only because they held us up. It’s kind one of the more memorable projects on the website side of the world.

Garrett Massey: [00:10:46] On the application side of the world, gosh, we developed the application that the 2016 Democratic National Convention used to assign all of the hotel rooms to their delegates. So, it’s not just a matter of having 50 different delegation groups. It’s actually about a thousand. So, each stay, each lobbying group, the Kennedy family has a delegation. It’s kind of crazy. But prior to this solution that we developed being in place, they were actually planning all this using post-it notes. So, they’d have a big wall, and they would write down on the wall or on a post-it note the name of the delegation, how many attendees they had, and they would mark off the 5000 different hotels they had for that particular location for that year. And they would assign rooms based on post-it notes.

Garrett Massey: [00:11:43] So, we were actually able to come in and develop a web application that automated that entire process. It was so successful that they literally had to change the Democratic National Convention Committee’s passwords to get them out of it, so they could finalize the numbers. They had so much fun in their playing in different scenarios, figuring out, “Hey, put this group over here. That changes this and that.” So-

John Ray: [00:12:07] Wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:12:10] … kind of bringing it down to the small business side of the world, some of the applications we’ve developed really helped streamline processes in a little bit of a different way. One of my favorite examples, we have a relatively local client in the State of Georgia that is an in-home health care provider, and they have hundreds and hundreds of in-home health care providers that go out to people’s homes and assist assist their folks. They had a time clock system that would involve folks going to these people’s homes, picking up a landline, and calling in, and it would actually clock them in, and they’d call in again, and clock them out. Well, several years ago, this little a trend, not many people have landlines anymore.

Garrett Massey: [00:12:58] So, we developed a mobile app that the in-home health care providers were able to download on their phones, and go out, and actually clock in from the app, clock out from the app. We did a cool thing there. We planted a QR code in the folks’ homes, so you could scan it with the app, and it will clock you in. Well, QR codes can be copied, right. So, it wasn’t in the background, but it occurred, we actually grabbed their GPS coordinates at the same time that they scanned the QR code.

John Ray: [00:13:32] Oh boy.

Garrett Massey: [00:13:33] So, the first month it was running, we actually busted somebody checking in at McDonald’s, a few miles away from the patient’s home. So, that added a level of kind of validation-

John Ray: [00:13:48] Wow.

Garrett Massey: [00:13:48] … and type of feel to that. We also integrated in that particular application a series of text messages, a text messaging system setting. So, anytime there was an availability for a position, the folks in that particular area would receive text messages and all sorts of cool stuff.

John Ray: [00:14:05] So, for that client, you were solving a problem they didn’t know they had.

Garrett Massey: [00:14:10] Correct, correct. It was easier. It’s one point in time when the whole landline thing was relevant. They become less so, and they basically did not have the ability to clock in and clock out. And through developing this process, we kind of weeded out some folks that they didn’t necessarily knew that they had.

John Ray: [00:14:32] Yeah. Back to what we were saying earlier about bringing solutions to clients as opposed to the product off the shelf. The product off the shelf wouldn’t necessarily have solved that problem, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:14:43] No, it would not, it would not. And I mentioned earlier that we enjoy doing a discovery session on the front end of our projects. We get a good clean idea of what’s going on. We also like doing — and the word “agile” in my world, anyways, has been overused to death. It’s the idea of iteratively working on solving a problem in chunks of time called sprints, right. So, you’re kind of stepping through that process. We we enjoy taking elements from that process because we don’t want a client to be waiting 18 months for us to build something. We want to be able to put something out that has some value, that has some use, and then work with them to continue improving that because in 18 months, a lot can change in a business.

John Ray: [00:15:35] For sure.

Garrett Massey: [00:15:36] In three months, a lot can change in a business. So, the issues that may have been addressed at the very beginning of a project, a few months later may have changed or new ones may come to light.

John Ray: [00:15:50] We’re speaking with Garrett Massey. And Garret is the Founder and President of Polyglot Labs. So, I guess, the solutions, the applications that you develop come through the Cortex Digital side. I’m curious how that started because it’s interesting that if you’ve developed a pretty sophisticated business out of one that maybe for some companies is not so sophisticated, but you’ve developed a pretty high-end business in terms of the technology solutions you bring to the table.

Garrett Massey: [00:16:32] Sure, sure. There are a ton of folks out there that build websites. There are ton of folks out there that build websites really well.

John Ray: [00:16:39] And nothing against them by the way, right?

Garrett Massey: [00:16:41] Absolutely not, absolutely not. With my background, like I mentioned earlier, my undergrad is in Computer Science. So, when starting, I understood a lot of the theory that goes into what makes computer work, what makes good software work. And so, always had an interest in solving more complex problems. Very passionate about building excellent web presences that serve a need that we kind of meet a goal. But we had the opportunity early on to tackle some more in depth into the problems that our clients may have.

Garrett Massey: [00:17:16] And what it’s done for us on the Eyesore side is give us the ability to be a true technical partner to not only our agency partners but also our clients. We don’t have to give up because we ran into an issue that we can’t solve. We have a whole team of programmers. And that’s one of our kind of value-adds to our partners is we have an entire team of in-house developers. It’s not just one person. Solopreneurs in our space are great, but they run into the issue of being siloed away from everybody else. And, obviously, the internet kind of helps mitigate that. But at the end of the day, when you run into an issue, and you can lean over to someone sitting next to you and say, “Hey, what’s going on with this? Have you seen this before?” and work collaboratively to solve the issue, that gives an end client, really, a better product and a better experience because it’s all taken care of.

John Ray: [00:18:17] For sure, for sure. Now, I’m interested, and I’m sure our listeners are too because there’s always a search for talent, how do you get the programming talent you’re always looking for? Because there’s always a shortage of talent. So, how do you get the folks that you’re looking for? And here’s the real secret, how do you get them, if you’re headquartered in Griffin Georgia, because that’s where your headquarters is?

Garrett Massey: [00:18:46] Oh, yeah.

John Ray: [00:18:46] Right?

Garrett Massey: [00:18:47] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:18:47] So, I mean, you’ve got quite a few issues there. You have to address in building your business.

Garrett Massey: [00:18:53] Yeah. I remember the first time you and I met, you were shocked to learn that I had a problem-finding talent and programmers in Griffin, Georgia.

John Ray: [00:18:59] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:18:59] Your mind was blown

John Ray: [00:19:01] My mind was blown. It still is.

Garrett Massey: [00:19:05] Griffin’s a really cool place but is not exactly Silicon Valley.

John Ray: [00:19:09] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:19:10] And that actually has some unique benefits for us. So, to answer your first question on how we acquire talent, most of our folks, and we employed 15 or 16, folks something like that, most of our folks start out with us as interns, and they’re from the area or have an interest in living in the area. One of those recent fellows we hired lived up in North Georgia in a small town, wanted to live a little farther south in a small town. So, it worked out. But we try to keep a steady influx of paid interns in-house to give us the ability to, hey, they can do work for us that we don’t have to do, so that’s fantastic, but it gives us the ability to kind of get a true insight into folks as to how they work, what their strengths are, and whether or not they’d be a good fit to kind of keep on a little longer than just an intern.

John Ray: [00:20:08] Sure.

Garrett Massey: [00:20:10] So, most of our folks, as I mentioned, are kind of from our area or have a really strong interest in working in our area. We have some folks that live and work in Atlanta, but most of our folks are actually down in Griffin.

John Ray: [00:20:29] Pretty cool. So, I’m curious about what this split with Eyesore, with Cortex Digital, the split off that you have with these two that they’re still part of the same company, of course, Polyglot Labs, but why you thought that was necessary? Is it for marketing reasons solely or is there something else going on that makes sense?

Garrett Massey: [00:21:00] Yeah, definitely. So, we, really from day one, had two sides to our house. And there was overlap, and there still is overlap. We’ve always had what we call, at the time, a frontend and a backend side. Now, we call it kind of a digital presence side and a product development side. And even down our physical space. Half of our team is in one part of our offices, and the other half’s in the other, but there has always kind of been a logical distinction there.

Garrett Massey: [00:21:32] What we found back in the fall, we did a big survey of our clients, current and former clients, and asked them a handful of questions about what they like about us, what they don’t like, which was not too much, I’m proud of that, but then also kind of what the branding and messaging that we had in place for Eyesore kind of meant to them. And what we found was the types of products, and solutions, and services that we offer on what’s now the Eyesore side and what’s down the Cortex side really spoke to two different target audiences.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:16] And our goal with kind of the split from a marketing perspective was just that, it was for marketing purposes. Eyesore has a really, really fun personality. It’s really engaging and kind of creative. Cortex is fun and engaging as well, but it’s a little more buttoned up. It’s the branding that everybody will be seeing kind of roll out of the next several weeks. We’re coming up with stuff like whitepapers and you know.

John Ray: [00:22:48] Oh dear.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:49] Yeah, right?

John Ray: [00:22:51] That sounds pretty serious.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:52] It is, it is, it is.

John Ray: [00:22:54] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:22:54] I work with a bunch of really, really smart people, thank goodness, but yes. So, the short answer to your question is yes, it was primarily for marketing purposes. Same team doing the same types of work, just spend a little bit differently.

John Ray: [00:23:09] Okay. So, I have to ask, do you spend most of your time on the buttoned-up side, or you over on the kind of wild and crazy side, Garrett? Which side are you on, buddy?

Garrett Massey: [00:23:21] I-

John Ray: [00:23:21] I’ve stopped [indiscernible].

Garrett Massey: [00:23:24] Yeah. No, in our offices, I bring chaos wherever I go.

John Ray: [00:23:29] Right.

Garrett Massey: [00:23:29] So, my personality is definitely more on the Eyesore side of the world, but I did tuck my shirt in for you today.

John Ray: [00:23:37] Well, thank you.

Garrett Massey: [00:23:37] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:23:40] We appreciate that. Though, seriously, I think you bring a lot of fun to your business. And I’d love for you to talk a little bit about that because that’s obviously part of keeping good employees, regardless of how attractive they are. I mean, because good people, whatever they do, will leave if they’re not having fun at what they do.

Garrett Massey: [00:24:08] Right, very right, yeah. Yeah, it’s — I think your question there is as how do we retain people and how is fun part of that.

John Ray: [00:24:18] Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Garrett Massey: [00:24:20] And it really is a huge, huge part. So, I think, the biggest thing is not forcing any of it. There’s not some master strategy that I put in place to make sure people have X amount of fun, so they’ll around twice as long or anything like that. Not anything that maniacal or well thought out. But I do believe that if people enjoy what they do, they feel valued, they feel like they’re part of a team, and they will stick around. The folks that that work made have made a conscious decision to work with us, and they are part of kind of building and defining that culture that we have.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:09] When we originally planned on kind of breaking out a piece of Eyesore and calling it something else, the idea of Polyglot Labs, of kind of a mother company was not really on our radar. It was not really part of that plan. But in kind of talking through and hashing out, started to realize that, hey, people are kind of seeing us kind of split into two different entities, and there was nothing juju or anything like that going on, but it’s still one that there was a division there. And our team is really, really close knit. We go to lunch together every day. We do all sorts of crazy stuff. We can talk to them on the radio every day.

John Ray: [00:25:50] Well, we’re not regulated by the FCC so-

Garrett Massey: [00:25:52] Sweet, yeah, yeah. That’s right, that’s right. I forgot about that.

John Ray: [00:25:56] Right. We’re a podcast network, buddy.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:56] Yeah, there you go.

John Ray: [00:25:56] So, okay.

Garrett Massey: [00:25:58] There you go. Well, in case my mom is listening.

John Ray: [00:26:00] Oh, okay, okay. Okay. Well, let’s button it up. Yeah, okay.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:05] Exactly, exactly. But the idea of Polyglot Labs came out of that kind of concern kind of consciousness of that being a thing. We wanted folks to feel like they’re still part of the same team because they are. Want to feel pride in kind of both sides of the business individually, but everybody is part of the same team. And so, I think that feeling is really pervasive in Polyglot, and that’s been a big success for us.

John Ray: [00:26:34] So, unlike the big tech companies we read about that they’ve installed a massage table, or a pinball machine, or free lunch, or whatever they’ve got, right, whatever happy stuff they’ve got, it’s really more about how you treat people. Imagine that.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:52] Right? Right?

John Ray: [00:26:52] Imagine that.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:53] Yeah. It’s-

John Ray: [00:26:54] What a revolutionary concept.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:56] I patented it, trademarked it, and own it.

John Ray: [00:26:58] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:26:58] But, yeah. No, it really is. And we have a very strict no divas rule in our office. So, particularly in the programming world, there are a lot of kind of lone wolf types that are very proud of the way that they do things. We don’t allow that. So, that’s another kind of facet of kind of what loops everybody in together. Nobody’s afraid to go ask for help. Nobody’s siloed away. So, it’s a ton of these little small things really kind of add up to having an organization that everybody enjoys being a part of 99% of the time. There’s that 1% where we’ve gone to each other’s nerves, but that’s pretty minimal.

John Ray: [00:27:46] And you’ve got some pretty intense work you’re doing. I mean, you described this project you did for the Armed Forces that was a very compressed two-week project where if you don’t have that emotional bank account fully deposited with your employees, you’re going to have problems when it comes to projects like that.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:11] Yeah. It’s huge. The buy-in that we have is astronomical. And my job is to really make sure we don’t take that for granted.

John Ray: [00:28:23] And happy employees make for happy customers.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:25] They do.

John Ray: [00:28:27] Yeah.

Garrett Massey: [00:28:27] They do. It’s just like this big beautiful circle where everybody tries to make everybody else happy. Then, things just kind of work out.

John Ray: [00:28:34] That’s great, that’s great. Great story from Garrett Massey. He’s the Founder and President of Polyglot Labs in Griffin, beautiful Griffin, Georgia. And Griffin is beautiful. That’s not a throwaway line. It’s a pretty town. So, Griffin, for those that have heard what you had to say, would like to hear more from you, like to check you out, tell them how to do. How to be in touch?

Garrett Massey: [00:28:57] Definitely, definitely. You can check us out at polyglotlabs.com. So, a polyglot is someone that speaks in multiple languages, right, or a polyglot program, or somebody that works in multiple languages. So, polyglot, P-O-L-Y-G-L-O-T, polyglotlabs.com and all of our information is there.

John Ray: [00:29:17] Outstanding, Garrett, thanks for being with us.

Garrett Massey: [00:29:18] Thank you. Appreciate it.

John Ray: [00:29:19] Absolutely.

John Ray: [00:29:21] Folks, today, you’re more connected than ever, and whether it’s your friends, or your family, or your life, Renasant understands how you bank, offering the mobile banking services that you need. Renasant also knows that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. And that’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. For more information, go to renasantbank.com. That’s Renasant Bank understanding you. Member FDIC.

John Ray: [00:29:55] A reminder that you can listen to this show every Tuesday morning live at 11:30 a.m. Or if you miss any of our live shows, no problem. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, whatever your favorite podcast app is – Overcast happens to be mine – or go online at northfultonbusinessradio.com. Check out the archive of our old shows there. Got some great guests just like Garrett that we’ve had here today. Please also follow us on Twitter, on Facebook, North Fulton BRX. That’s North Fulton BRX.

John Ray: [00:30:39] So, for our guest, Garrett Massey of Polyglot Labs, easy for me to say, I’m John Ray. Join us next time here on North Fulton Business Radio.

Outro: [00:30:56] Today, you’re connected more than ever – your friends, your family, your life. And banking is what you do on your time anywhere you like. Renasant understands how you back, offering mobile banking services you need. At Renasant, we also understand that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. That’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. Renasant Bank, understanding you. Member FDIC.

Decision Vision Episode 20: Am I Ready for Workplace Violence?, An Interview for Bruce Blythe, R3 Continuum

June 20, 2019 by John Ray

Decision Vision

Decision Vision Episode 20: Am I Ready for Workplace Violence?, An Interview for Bruce Blythe, R3 Continuum

00:00 /

Am I Ready for Workplace Violence?

Workplace violence is a much more common phenomenon than some believe. What are the personality characteristics of someone who might initiate a workplace violence incident? How should you mitigate the risk of these incidents? Michael Blake, Host of the “Decision Vision” podcast, addresses these questions and more with workplace violence expert Bruce Blythe of R3 Continuum.

Bruce Blythe, R3 Continuum

Bruce Blythe is the Owner and Executive Chairman of R3 Continuum. R3 Continuum provides employers with integrated crisis readiness, crisis response, and employee return-to-work services. They have assisted hundreds of companies worldwide with crisis, workplace violence, and business continuity planning, training, and exercising. They also provide consultations worldwide for diffusing serious disputes, hostilities, and workplace violence threats. R3 also works with insurers and large employers in accelerating employee return-to-work for workers comp disability and nonoccupational injury claims through North America and Australia.

Bruce Blythe is recognized internationally as an crisis management expert. He has been personally involved in resolutions of crises such as such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the September 11th terror attacks, mass murders at the US Postal Service, and the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings. He serves as a consultant to numerous Fortune 500 executives and managers in strategic crisis leadership preparedness and response. Widely regarded as a thought leader in the crisis management and business continuity industries, Bruce is author of Blindsided: A Manager’s Guide to Crisis Leadership. Bruce has served in the military police of the US Marine Corps, is a certified clinical psychologist, has been a consultant to the FBI in workplace violence and terrorism, and has appeared on numerous national media outlets.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Brady Ware & Company

Decision Vision Podcast Series

Visit Brady Ware & Company on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/brady-ware/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bradywareCPAs/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradyWare

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bradywarecompany/

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:04] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions. Brought to you by Brady Ware & Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:23] And welcome back to another episode of Decision Vision, a podcast giving you, the listener, clear vision to make great decisions. In each episode, we discuss the process of decision making on a different topic. Rather than making recommendations because everyone’s circumstances are different, we talk to subject matter experts about how they would recommend thinking about that decision.

Michael Blake: [00:00:42] My name is Mike Blake, and I am your host for today’s program. I am a Director at Brady Ware & Company, a full-service accounting firm based in Dayton Ohio, with offices in Dayton; Columbus, Ohio; Richmond, Indiana; and Alpharetta, Georgia, which is where we are recording today. Brady Ware is sponsoring this podcast. If you like this podcast, please subscribe on your favorite podcast aggregator, and please also consider leaving a review of the podcast as well.

Michael Blake: [00:01:07] Today’s topic is violence in the workplace. And in preparing for this program, I did a little bit of research, and I was surprised to learn the statistics. According to the National Safety Council, assaults are the fourth leading cause of workplace deaths in the United States. In 2017, assaults resulted in 18,400 and 458 fatalities. And to me, that was a stunning number. And anybody listening to this podcast, we’ve heard of the catastrophic workplace incidents. Often, a disgruntled or terminated employee that comes back to the workplace with a gun and ends in tragedy.

Michael Blake: [00:01:58] But what I’ve learned in doing background research for the show and, also, thanks to my long and dear relationship with our guest whom I’ll introduced in a minute, this is a much more common phenomenon than I think most people realize. And maybe that’s good. Maybe if we realized how dangerous it can be to actually go to work, we wouldn’t want to go to work anymore. So, maybe that’s a good thing.

Michael Blake: [00:02:26] But thankfully there are people like our guest today that help people both prepare for these incidents, mitigate the risk of them happening, and the damage occurs that when they do, and also inevitably when somebody kind of falls through the cracks, picking up the pieces when it happens.

Michael Blake: [00:02:48] And so, to that end, it is my immense pleasure to introduce, again, might my dear friend and longtime client, Bruce Blythe, who is an internationally acclaimed crisis management expert. He is the Owner and Executive Chairman of R3 Continuum, that provides employers with integrated crisis readiness, crisis response, and employee return-to-work services.

Michael Blake: [00:03:12] They have assisted hundreds of companies worldwide with crisis, workplace violence, and business continuity planning, training, and exercising. They also provide consultations worldwide for diffusing serious disputes, hostilities, and workplace violence threats. On average, they respond onsite to 1300 international workplace crises of all sorts per month. Finally, they work with insurers and large employers in accelerating employee return-to-work for workers comp disability and nonoccupational injury claims through North America and Australia.

Michael Blake: [00:03:48] Mr. Blythe has been personally involved in crises such as — and by personally involved, meaning resolving them, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the September 11th terror attacks, mass murders at the US Postal Service, and the Oklahoma City and Boston Marathon bombings, commercial air crashes, rescue of kidnap-and-ransom hostages in Colombia and Ecuador, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, floods, and reputational crises.

Michael Blake: [00:04:16] He serves as a consultant to numerous Fortune 500 executives and managers in strategic crisis leadership preparedness and response. Widely regarded as a thought leader in the crisis management and business continuity industries, Bruce is author of Blindsided: A Manager’s Guide to Crisis Leadership. A book, which I’ve read by the way, and I firmly recommend. He has served in the military police of the US Marine Corps is a certified clinical psychologist and has been a consultant to the FBI in workplace violence and terrorism.

Michael Blake: [00:04:48] Bruce appeared on NBC Today’s Show, CNN, ABC’s 20/20, CBS’ 48 Hours. Pretty much, if they ever talk about this subject, Bruce is the guy that they call. And I can tell you that when he speaks, he commands a pretty high fee for doing that. So, I appreciate him giving us a slight discount for coming on the program. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. Bruce knows what he’s talking about. Bruce Blythe, thanks so much for coming on the program.

Bruce Blythe: [00:05:16] Well, you just made me nervous, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:05:19] I doubt that. I know you too well. I very much doubt that. You and I have known each other since R1. It’s been a while since it got to R3 Continuum. But let’s start with a little bit of a vocabulary lesson for the audience. When we hear about workplace violence, what forms does that take? As I mentioned in the intro, we all have heard about the gunman coming to the workplace and shooting lots of people. Is that the most prevalent form or what other forms of workplace violence do you encounter and try to help mitigate or resolve?

Bruce Blythe: [00:06:04] Sure. Well, the shootings are the least prevalent actually. The most prevalent forms of workplace violence are things like verbal and nonverbal threats, threat of violence, intimidation, bullying. Some of the sexual harassment, or sexual assault, or sexual violation kind of issues where people feel threatened. Stalking is certainly one of those things. And sometimes, it’s with a vengeance. And other times, it’s what they call a [radamania] where somebody has an unrelenting attraction to — usually, it’s a male toward a female, and won’t let go, and they just keep stalking or whatever. And that could be both physically, as well as on social media, or e-mails, or whatever. Fights certainly play into that. Hostilities of all sorts.

Bruce Blythe: [00:06:59] Those are the things that are most likely to occur in the workplace. And many of those things, then, are precursors to more serious levels of violence. The good news is that most people make threats. Most people who are hostile do not come in with a gun. So, that’s the good news. The bad news is we don’t know which one of those people are going to be the ones that end up shooting. We have a hard time. There is no psychological test, or list in the newspaper, or whatever that tells us who’s going to be the shooter, if you will, in the workplace.

Michael Blake: [00:07:33] And to your point, it’s so much more common than I realized. I actually was in Salt Lake City last week for a conference. And as it turned out, I had a layover. Actually, the first time in my life, I had a flight canceled on me. I had to be shipped off to a hotel. And I was in the bar having a beverage. I happened to sit next down next to a lady who has a a company in California. And we got to talking a little bit. And she was on her way where she had just fired somebody at one of their offices, and that person shoved her, tried to choke her, and, ultimately, of course, had to be separate and escorted out of the building.

Michael Blake: [00:08:19] And she told me that’s something that’s happened to her multiple times. And my jaw just dropped. In spite of the conversations you and I have had, it’s happened to her so many times that she had almost a nonchalance about it, and I was stunned. How common is that where maybe there are some workplaces where things like events like this can be so common that you almost get numb to it?

Bruce Blythe: [00:08:47] Well, I don’t know that you’re actually numb to it. I would be surprised if she’s numb to it. She can be nonchalant all she wants, but the fact of the matter is that she’s been lucky enough that she survived these things and not been hurt. So, I think that, sometimes, when you just dodge a bullet enough times, you think, “From that, I won’t get it.” The good news is that most of the time, even people that are hostile, that have triggers, like being fired, or feeling unfairly treated, or whatever it may be, that they’ve got a grievance about. Most people don’t actually act out violently in a very severe manner.

Bruce Blythe: [00:09:22] So, there’s certainly some warning signs there. I would recommend to her that she take a look at what can she do to address those kinds of things to be ready. So, many times, it’s kind of, “Well, I hope they don’t get violent.” Then, they do, and it’s like, “Oh my gosh.” And they get out of it by the skin of their teeth. But there’s some things that you could do to set up the room and set up the entire thing about who’s there, and maybe even have security or a police officer that may be not visible or may be visible. It depends on how you want to do it. But to actually plan out the contingencies, I think, is a really good idea. And we hope people do that. And so, many times, we know, they don’t think about it. You don’t like to think about things like that being worse than what you’ve experienced before.

Michael Blake: [00:10:09] And to a point, I kind of want to finish off the vocabulary part because I know another part of the business that, at least, you’ve dealt with, this scenario that you’ve dealt with in the past, has been violence that occurs due to crime, like a convenience store robbery, something of that nature. That’s sort of a different animal, isn’t it?

Bruce Blythe: [00:10:31] Oh sure. And it’s really hard to stop those kinds of things. Now, retail, customer service jobs, certainly taxi drivers. Less the Uber and Lyft type drivers because the people are identified who go in. A taxi driver, it takes somebody that’s anonymous, and they don’t know who they’re picking up. Police, certainly, they’re in the line of fire a lot. And interestingly, a real hotbed for violence is in medical arenas. So, hospitals, certainly emergency rooms, that sort of thing. A lot of violence in those situations.

Michael Blake: [00:11:09] I read something about that. That, in fact, with health care facilities and even nursing home facilities, the violence tends to be fairly prevalent. What are the kind of the scenarios that kind of set people off to that degree in your experience?

Bruce Blythe: [00:11:25] Well, when we talk about somebody just coming from the public that’s anonymous that may or may not have anything to do with the workplace, then, certainly, there’s nothing you can do about that. If a workplace has a high percentage of women in the workplace, there is an increased likelihood of domestic violence coming into the workplace. It happens a lot that. It could happen to men with a strange female spouse, or girlfriend, or whatever, but that’s less likely. But in those situations where you know that the person — you know them, or you’ve got a relationship with them, typically, it helps to understand the violent mind.

Bruce Blythe: [00:12:09] I think this is a big piece of what’s missing because so many times, the naive organizations, when they have a threat, they think about, “All right. There are temporary restraining order. Let’s call the police and have them arrested. And let’s get some guards with guns or without guns, either way. Maybe some cameras as well.” And if you stop and think about it, a restraining order didn’t stop anybody that would likely create violence. You think of some show, the kid that shot all the people at the Virginia Tech. I mean, they talked about having a restraining order on him because there was a young coed that was feeling intimidated by him, but that wouldn’t stop him. I mean, to violate a restraining order is no big deal when, actually, what you’re doing out there is shooting people. So, those kinds of things aren’t really what’s going to stop them.

Bruce Blythe: [00:12:59] To understand the violent mind, there’s basically three things that we see a common mental pattern. It’s interesting how again, and again, and again, as we deal with threatening individuals, the same mental algorithm and the same mental patterns are there. What is it that sets them off?

Bruce Blythe: [00:13:16] Number one, they get ego problems, okay. And what I mean by that is they have extremely or profoundly low self-esteem. I’m not talking about the kind of insecurities we all have. I’m too short, or I way too much, or don’t like my hair. We all have that, okay. I’m talking about people that have profoundly low self-esteem. And then, they don’t get into self-acceptance, or they don’t deal with it. Instead, what they do is they try to feel superior to other people.

Bruce Blythe: [00:13:43] And then, it becomes very important that they must win. They must stay ahead of other people. And they have to keep blowing up that leaky balloon, that is their ego. And if anybody challenges them – that happens in traffic, when somebody gets cut off. I mean, just like you’re not going to do something that’s going to cause me any inconvenience. So, the ego is one piece of it. That ego, low self-esteem. So, one thing you’re going to do, of course, is build them up.

Bruce Blythe: [00:14:10] The second thing is they would need to feel heard and understood. So many times, and like with this woman that you met in Salt Lake, the issue here is that so many times, they don’t feel heard and understood. And because they feel cut off, what happens is, then, they resort to whatever they can, to even the score. And too many times, it’s hostility or violence. So, you want to let them feel heard and understood because they almost always feel like they need to be heard and understood. Even some show, this kid in Virginia Tech, had a mutism disorder, whatever. People said they never heard the guy talk. He was just painfully shy, apparently. But even he left a manifesto on a videotape in his room because he wanted to be heard even from the grave because he knew what he’s going to do.

Bruce Blythe: [00:14:58] The third thing. So, it’s ego, it’s feel heard and understood. And then, the third thing is they tend to feel unfairly treated. We all have a strong sense of right and wrong, and they tend to feel unfairly treated. So, what can we do to come up with a win/win? It doesn’t mean we’re going to give the person a job back when they got fired, but it maybe we’re not going to challenge their unemployment compensation, those kinds of things. We’re going to give you a neutral reference if you have somebody call us for when you’re looking for another job. Those are the kinds of things that can help you understand where they’re coming from, and it can help reduce the likelihood that they’re going to take that next step.

Michael Blake: [00:15:40] So, we talked about health care facilities, a little bit about taxicabs. Are there other kind of industries and types of workplaces that tend to be more prone to violence? For example, I work for a CPA firm. Do I need to be afraid walking in one day and get popped in the mouth, or what other kind of high-risk industries out there?

Bruce Blythe: [00:16:02] Well, it’s a little bit like swimming in the ocean. You hear about the shark attacks and go, “Oh my gosh. I’m not going in the ocean.” A lot of people are afraid to do that. The fact of the matter is, statistically, the odds are very, very low that you’re going to get attacked by a shark if you swim in the ocean. The same thing about going to work. The overwhelming odds are that you’re not going to have to worry, Mike, when you go into work, or anybody else, that the odds are that nothing’s going to happen to you from a from a shooting standpoint. There may be some hostilities, there maybe some uncomfortable situations, but the serious kinds of workplace violence are very unlikely.

Bruce Blythe: [00:16:39] But I think back of, what are the kinds of organizations that are most prone? Back in the ’90s, I was involved in helping the US Postal Service with their mass shooting, some multiple mass shootings. So, they had one after another in different locations.

Michael Blake: [00:16:55] I remember that one.

Bruce Blythe: [00:16:56] And while I, certainly, wasn’t the only architect of helping them come up with this solution, it was a multifaceted, one of the things that was most important that, actually, once they set up a workplace violence program, including a policy, training for supervisors’ procedures of threat, a notification system, all those different kinds of things, the US Postal Service went for eight years without another shooting. That was with 750,000 employees at the time. Huge employer.

Bruce Blythe: [00:17:26] So, what is it that increases the likelihood for like the Postal Service and other organizations? Usually, and probably the thing that helped the Postal Service the most, was the fact that the supervisors were promoted from being a letter carrier to supervisor with no training whatsoever on how to manage people, how to let them feel fairly treated, how to give them — feel cared for, that sort of thing, give them positive regard. So, in those toxic environments where a supervisor or management is hostile toward employees or the employees feel unfairly treated, there’s that word again, they don’t feel heard and understood, they feel disempowered, those are the kinds of places where you’re more likely to have somebody to well up, and here they come. So, I guess, I would stop right there with that.

Michael Blake: [00:18:22] Yeah. And let me ask you this because I can think of other — I’ll even say with my own industry. A lot of what you’re describing is frequent in the accounting industry. We tend to promote people based on the fact they’re really good at auditing financial statements, and writing out 1040 forms, but we don’t necessarily do a great job of training them to be managers, especially if we’re not in the national firms. And we have our busy season. So, people putting in 60-70 hours a week. And thank God, I’m hitting my head, which is made of wood, that to my knowledge in the history of our firm, we’ve never had a workplace violence incident or anything like that.

Michael Blake: [00:19:03] I wonder if another element is that maybe you also kind of feel trapped in your job that if you work for the Postal Service, we know the benefits they have. The skills may or may not transfer easily to a private organization. Seniority is just sort of everything that you don’t even necessarily have that as an escape valve necessarily that you can just say, “Take this job and shove it. I’m going to find another one.” Do you think that’s a factor as well?

Bruce Blythe: [00:19:29] Absolutely sure. And, again, if, in fact, the job is such that you feel like, “I just can’t get another job with this kind of benefits, or with the seniority I’ve got, And I got to start all over again, or I can’t make the kind of money I’m making here, so I’m stuck with it. But I’m really, really frustrated with the way I feel like I’m being treated.” Again, it goes into the ego issues that, “I feel like a marginalized. I feel like I’m not heard and understood,” or “I can talk to them, and there’s no action. I feel unfairly treated.” Those are the kinds of things where some people are going to well up.

Bruce Blythe: [00:20:06] Interestingly, the people that don’t say anything that’s well up many times are the ones who are going to come up with the serious finals versus the people who are verbal about it, and maybe make threats, or loud and boisterous. It doesn’t mean those kinds of people aren’t going to be violent someday, but it’s that cold calculating person that doesn’t say anything many times are the ones that may be the problem. So, you need to kind of draw them out.

Bruce Blythe: [00:20:35] One of the ways that we diffuse threatening situations, and we don’t get the easy ones. Somebody who’s got the guns, they showed the co-worker in the car, and in the trunk of the car, and this is what I’m going to use. I’m the supervisor, and that kind of thing. They maybe got a history of violence. They don’t call us on the easy ones. We get called on the hard ones. One of the approaches we take and dealing with these things is — there’s no psychological test, there’s no way to really know for sure who’s going to be violent and who’s not. So, one thing to try to do is get inside their head.

Bruce Blythe: [00:21:11] And the way to do that is to make contact with them. Mike, if you were a person that is making threats, you felt unfairly treated at work, maybe you got ,fired whatever, if I were to contact you maybe by phone or face-to-face, however we’d like to do it, as a neutral third party and say something to the effect of, “My name is Bruce Blythe. I’m a neutral third party that’s being called in by X, Y, Z management. And basically, they understand you may feel unfairly treated or have a concern with whatever’s going on. And so, what I’d like to do, my job is to hear and understand your side of this situation, knowing there’s two sides to every story. And my job will be to report that back to management to make sure that this situation is handled fairly.” Let me ask you a question now, like you’ve been asking me, how would you respond if if you had somebody contact you like that?

Michael Blake: [00:22:07] Oh. I mean, I you would like to think positively. And look, I’m a repressed Irish Catholic, and I’ll be the first to admit it. So, I don’t own a gun. They terrify me. But I do kind of have that personality of internalizing and sort of have the long fuse. And my teenager will tell you that when the long fuse sort of hits zero, it’s not something he wants to be around. So, I do think that that — I think that engagement makes a big difference. You just got to have that safety valve.

Bruce Blythe: [00:22:51] Well, what happens in real life, because we’ve done this just hundreds and hundreds of times with individuals as you think, well, here’s this guy calling, I don’t know who he is, or contacting me, and I don’t know who he is. And so, I wouldn’t talk to them. In reality, we can hardly get all that out, my little scenario I just gave you there, before they start talking. Sometimes, I say, “I don’t want to talk to you, but…” And then, they’re still talking 30 minutes later. We know they want to feel heard and understood. We know they want to feel fairly treated. We know that if we build them up and find some good things about him. I do everything I can to like these people when I’m dealing with them. People don’t like the anti-social, hostile person.

Bruce Blythe: [00:23:33] And so, here, we’re in a situation where we can actually let this person feel heard and understood, fairly treated. And they’re not going to get the job back if that’s what they’re after, but what we can do is maybe come up with a compromise. We can better assess where they’re coming from or what their intentions are. We can talk to them about alternatives. We can serve as a conduit of communication, so they feel empowered when we pass the word on to management. Of course, management has more information on how better to handle this situation. So, it’s just we understand what the violent mind; and therefore, we know how to deal with it and how to help companies deal with that as well.

Michael Blake: [00:24:14] So, I’d like to go back to the of the Postal Service example. I didn’t realize — I knew you’d worked on it. I didn’t realize you had that kind of impact. And it’s worth kind of refreshing that that — I mean the Postal Services issues were so bad that the American lexicon adopted the term going postal to describe somebody that had just flown off the handle basically. So, should every organization have a plan like that, or do large organizations need more in-detail plans, or smaller have maybe more sketchy ones or more kind of outline-oriented ones set that way? If I’m a business owner, and I’m listening to this conversation, how do I think about whether or not I needed to retain you or somebody like you to put something like that in place?

Bruce Blythe: [00:25:06] Well, okay. So, the Postal Service had what? Was it something like 15 mass shootings in different locations around their system? And once they came up with a comprehensive workplace violence program, the key component there was to train supervisors on how to manage people and how to do it in a caring, fair manner, and not quite so autocratic.

Bruce Blythe: [00:25:32] So, they went for eight years with 750,000 employees, and the one employee that broke the eight-year record was somebody that hadn’t been with the company for three years. She was living in another city, went back to Southern California three years later. She was known for howling at the moon, talking to the moon, filling up her car with gasoline naked. I could go down the list. This is a crazy lady, okay. So, it wasn’t really their fault that an ex-employee came in and did the shooting even eight years later. They had a very effective program. The proof’s in the pudding.

Bruce Blythe: [00:26:09] So, if I’m an employer, it’s like, “All right. Well, wait a minute. I got workplace violence, you know. It’s like, you know. All right. So, Bruce here is saying that just having a temporary restraining order, which isn’t necessarily going to work.” If I were to shoot somebody, a restraining order is not going to stop it. It may stop some people from getting together, which is going to cause fights, which may lead into other kinds of violence. So, I’m not saying they’re not effective, but they’re not an end all be all. Call the police. If I get arrested because I made a threat or because I am threatening, first of all, I may not have done enough that I’m going to get arrested. And police don’t like to even deal with these things. If somebody hadn’t done anything yet, then they’d want to go deal with things where somebody had done something. So, that’s not necessarily going to work.

Bruce Blythe: [00:26:55] And, of course, having guards there, most places don’t want to have guns there. So, a guard with a walkie talkie is not going to stop anybody nor is a camera that it really has an intent. So, what do you need to have as a healthy company that wants to address this issue? Basically, four things, I would recommend. Number one, you want to have a policy that is well-publicized about workplace violence. There’s a lot of really good workplace violence policies out there. And it’s pretty much down to an art and science now what ought to be included there. It’s different in different organizations but, certainly, getting access to a policy is something to be pretty easy if you want to just do it on the cheap.

Bruce Blythe: [00:27:38] The second thing then is threat notification system. A threat notification system is one where employees understand that if there is a threatening situation, what they can do — and it’s a gut level feeling. Many times, that gut level feeling is what tells you more than anything else. Yeah, they may make a threat. Yeah, they may act in intimidating. Yes, they may have a history of violence, which are all indicators, okay, that they may be violent, but it’s that gut level feeling that says, “This is a person, I think, could really do it.”

Bruce Blythe: [00:28:08] So, if you have a threat notification system that people will use where they feel comfortable doing it. I don’t want to report somebody if they’re going to say, “Well, Reese said you were making threats.” Now, I’m on the hit list. I don’t want to do that. So, a good policy threat notification system.

Bruce Blythe: [00:28:25] And, now, if they get notified, you better have a threat management team that’s trained, that has standardized guidelines, which is the fourth thing. But I guess we clump that all together – a well-trained threat management team that has standardized checklists on how to handle this thing beyond the restraining order and calling the police, but some guidelines on how do you diffuse these situations. What are best practices? Those are the things that you need to have at a bare minimum, I would say. A policy threat notification system, and then the threat management team with standardized guidelines.

Michael Blake: [00:29:01] Okay, good. So, we’ve talked a little bit about restraining orders. That’s come up a couple of times. And I agree with you, they don’t seem to be that effective. And I think one of the reasons that they’re not that effective is that a shooter seems intent on not coming out alive from that incident themselves. It seems, more often than not, they take their own lives, or they wind up not being apprehended alive. I’m guessing that’s also another reason the restraining order is not all that effective. You can’t enforce it when they’re dead. Is that a common pathology for the workplace shooter that they’re just planning on doing as much destruction as they can on the way out?

Bruce Blythe: [00:29:44] 40% of the time, according to the government statistics, yes. 40% of the time, people commit suicide to do this kind of thing. Half the time, the others that are still alive, police officers may kill them. So, the fact of the matter is, certainly, it’s a risky business. If you want to live for long, you don’t want to be a workplace shooter. But with that said, the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t really matter if they’re going to act out violently, and then decide to kill themselves or not. In any case, the fact of the matter is that they feel unfairly treated, they want to commit a vengeance or whatever, or, sometimes, they just want to feel significant. I think so many of these school shootings, these kids, they feel like a nobody, that they’re an outcast or whatever. In their minds, they would rather feel significant in a negative way, and even die out of it than to feel like a nobody. And, again, it’s related to ego, it’s related to feeling unfairly treated, it’s feeling like they’re not heard and understood, and here they come.

Michael Blake: [00:31:00] We’re talking to Bruce Blythe, who is the Chairman of R3 Continuum, one of the world’s leading experts on workplace violence. I want to be respectful of your time. I just have a couple more questions if you can hang in there.

Bruce Blythe: [00:31:14] Sure.

Michael Blake: [00:31:15] One is, of course, even with the best of intentions, workplace violence happens. How can you and how can a company help kind of pick up the pieces after a workplace violence incident? Where do you kind of — if that happens in my office, where do I kind of go from there?

Bruce Blythe: [00:31:36] Well, we respond, you mentioned, 1300 times. I think it’s up to 1600 times per month now to crisis situations of all sorts. One of the common entry points for us and the one of the common calls we get is for crisis counseling. And so, there’s a social expectation, I guess, in the workplace that if, in fact, something traumatic like this happens, employers are expected to respond with a caring response. And so many times, they don’t know what that is. An employer that doesn’t have a preparedness ready for this kind of thing, they’re going to say, “Our hearts go out to the families, blah, blah, blah.” It rings hollow at this point. So, instead, caring is not a feeling. It’s behavioral. And so, employees must feel like they’re cared for. And, certainly, bringing in crisis counselors who are specialists in this kind of arena is helpful.

Bruce Blythe: [00:32:40] One of the things that I remember, I keep going back to Virginia Tech. I guess, I’m stuck on that today. But there were so many counselors who were saying, “I can help. I can help. Here I am.” The biggest issue was keeping counselors away. So, you certainly want to have people that know what they’re doing, that are skilled at this. You don’t want a plastic surgeon doing your heart surgery. And the same kind of thing. Just because you’re a mental health professional, it doesn’t mean you know how to handle these situations. So, one thing is to address the needs of those people who have been victimized. And it’s not just of the employees that work. It might be the families, it might be the people that are in the hospitals that have been injured. Who knows what else?

Bruce Blythe: [00:33:21] The second thing is that management must be doing the right things as well. And so, a big piece of what we do is helping companies understand, the company management understand how do you show caring, how do you do the right things, how soon do you bring employees back, what you need to do before you bring them back to work, how do you show caring over time, and how do you assess people who may have delayed responses, that sort of thing. So, it really comes from preparedness. But at a minimum, if you’re not prepared, then to get somebody in there that has been there before that can help out.

Bruce Blythe: [00:34:04] Just one quick other point about this, and that is at Syracuse University, several years ago, did a study about what leaders and organizations are the best crisis managers. And one of the correlates they came up with was that those managers who had an outside neutral third party who could help out, that was trusted, okay, and that was not emotionally involved in this thing, that had an idea of how to handle this thing. It was most helpful because when you’re inside the crisis’ bubble, it’s really hard to see outside that bubble, and what’s going on, and what their perspectives are, and what you should be saying, and how you’re being perceived, and how to address this thing. It’s a whirlwind, and it’s unexpected, and it’s high consequence, and people are watching, go on down the list. It’s very difficult if you don’t have somebody on the outside just kind of help steer the direction for you to, at least, assist. Not to take over but to assist in good management and what to do.

Michael Blake: [00:35:08] Bruce, as often as a case, I could talk to three hours of this, and we still wouldn’t run out of material. But I know you got things to do, and you have one of 1600 incidents to respond to this month.

Bruce Blythe: [00:35:21] Not all. I can’t do them all. Thank you. I’ve got a good network, but thank you.

Michael Blake: [00:35:26] But how can people contact you for more information if they want to learn more about this topic or more about the kind of services you guys provide?

Bruce Blythe: [00:35:36] Well, R3 Continuum, I mean, just look them up online. A lot of times, people don’t know how to spell continuum, which is two Us in it. So, our web addresses are r3c.com, probably the best way to do it. Just contact us that way. All of our contact information is there at r3c.com.

Michael Blake: [00:35:57] Bruce, thank you so much. And the next time you’re in Atlanta, I owe you dinner.

Bruce Blythe: [00:36:01] Hey, that sounds good to me. I’m coming soon.

Michael Blake: [00:36:05] There, excellent. So, that’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Bruce Blythe so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us. We’ll be exploring a new topic each week, so please tune in, so that when you’re faced with your next business decision, you have clear vision when making it. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider leaving a review with your favorite podcast aggregator. It helps people find us, so that we can help them. Once again, this is Mike Blake. Our sponsor’s Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

The GNFCC 400 Insider: Millennials in the Workplace, An Interview with Hilary Lew, City of Alpharetta, and Sophia Niemeyer, Smile Doctors Braces

June 19, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Studio

The GNFCC 400 Insider: Millennials in the Workplace, An Interview with Hilary Lew, City of Alpharetta, and Sophia Niemeyer, Smile Doctors Braces

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**Hilary Lew, Tori Kerlin, and Sophia Niemeyer**

Episode 25, Millennials in the Workplace

There’s been a lot of conversation about the defining characteristics of millennials, particularly about their impact on the workplace. So why don’t we hear from millennials themselves and get their perspectives? That’s exactly what this edition of the “GNFCC 400 Insider” features, as GNFCC Communications Coordinator Tori Kerlin interviews Hilary Lew, City of Alpharetta, and Sophia Niemeyer, Smile Doctors Braces.

Hilary Lew, Special Events Coordinator, City of Alpharetta

Hilary Lew is a millennial living in Georgia, originally from Honolulu, Hawaii. A graduate of Georgia Tech, she currently works with the City of Alpharetta’s special events division to produce annual food, music, and art festivals for one of the fastest growing cities in the state. She lends her experience in event planning to other nonprofit organizations, serving on the Board of Directors for the Atlanta International Night Market and on Concrete Jungle’s event planning committee. Committed to seeking dynamic social environments, she also works part-time at Ameris Bank Amphitheater, her first job out of high school. You can find Hilary on Instagram @hillabalew.

Sophia Niemeyer, Local Marketing Liaison, Smile Doctors Braces

Sophia Niemeyer is a 2012 graduate of Milton High School in Milton, GA and a graduate of St. Catherine University in St. Paul, MN with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Communication Studies and a minor in History. After graduating college, Sophia returned to North Fulton to begin her career having gained experience in both nonprofit and the private sector. Currently, Sophia is a Local Marketing Liaison for Smile Doctors Braces and helps with local marketing efforts in twelve states, including three clinics in North Fulton. Sophia is a regular at Pro Alliance and other chamber events and firmly believes in the power of community involvement. Outside of the office, Sophia is a 200 Hour certified yoga teacher and practices at Lift Yoga in Alpharetta, GA.

About GNFCC and “The GNFCC 400 Insider”

**Tori Kerlin, Communications Coordinator, GNFCC**

“The GNFCC 400 Insider” (formerly “North Atlanta’s Bizlink”) is presented by the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce (GNFCC). The host for this episode is Tori Kerlin, Communications Coordinator for GNFCC.

The Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce is a private, non-profit, member-driven organization comprised of over 1400 business enterprises, civic organizations, educational institutions and individuals. Their service area includes Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Milton, Mountain Park, Roswell and Sandy Springs. GNFCC is the leading voice on economic development, business growth and quality of life issues in North Fulton County.

The GNFCC promotes the interests of our members by assuming a leadership role in making North Fulton an excellent place to work, live, play and stay. They provide one voice for all local businesses to influence decision makers, recommend legislation, and protect the valuable resources that make North Fulton a popular place to live.

For more information on GNFCC and its North Fulton County service area, follow this link or call (770) 993-8806.

Gregg Burkhalter, “The LinkedIn Guy” and Personal Branding Coach

June 18, 2019 by John Ray

North Fulton Business Radio

Gregg Burkhalter, "The LinkedIn Guy" and Personal Branding Coach

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“North Fulton Business Radio,” Episode 143: Gregg Burkhalter, “The LinkedIn Guy” and Personal Branding Coach

Why is building and maintaining a personal brand so important? Why should corporations not just encourage but train their employees on using LinkedIn to build their personal brand? Gregg Burkhalter answers these questions and much more as he speaks with Host John Ray on this edition of “North Fulton Business Radio.”

Gregg Burkhalter, “The LinkedIn Guy” and Personal Branding Coach

Gregg Burkhalter is a recognized authority on Personal Branding and LinkedIn. He has helped countless professionals in the U.S. and abroad define and grow their Personal Brand using LinkedIn.

Gregg spent the first part of his professional career behind the microphone at radio stations in Savannah, Jacksonville, Charleston, and Atlanta. Following his radio years, Gregg worked in national music marketing and distribution.

Today, Gregg is known by many as “The LinkedIn Guy”. He provides Personal Branding Coaching and LinkedIn Training via one-on-one and group training sessions, corporate presentations and webinars. He is also a frequent speaker at civic and chamber events and area universities.

For more information or to connect with Gregg, you can go to Gregg’s website or connect with him on LinkedIn here.

Show Transcript

Intro: [00:00:06] Live from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank, the bank that specializes in understanding you, it’s time for North Fulton Business Radio.

John Ray: [00:00:19] And hello again, everyone. Welcome to another edition of North Fulton Business Radio. I’m John Ray. And we are coming to you from the Business RadioX Studio inside Renasant Bank. Folks, today, you’re connected more than ever, whether it’s your friends, your family, or your life. Renasant understands how you bank, offering the mobile banking services you need. Renasant also knows that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. That’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. For more information, go to renasantbank.com Renasant Bank, understanding you. Member of FDIC.

John Ray: [00:01:02] And I want to move to an old friend, a great guy, serves his clients extraordinarily well, Gregg Burkhalter, the LinkedIn guy.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:01:15] Hello, John Ray.

John Ray: [00:01:17] A personal branding coach.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:01:17] Great to be here. Thank you. By the way, your studio is amazing.

John Ray: [00:01:21] You like it?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:01:22] I think you took it up a notch or two, man.

John Ray: [00:01:23] Well, thank you. Well, you were here, I guess, maybe a year or so ago. And you were at our old place, and we’ve moved on up.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:01:32] I will agree. This is a great facility. Renasant is like a prime location to do this kind of thing. So, congratulations.

John Ray: [00:01:38] Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. So, for those that don’t know you, and those that are increasingly smaller number of people that don’t know Gregg Burkhalter, but for those that don’t know you, tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:01:51] Well, Gregg Burkhalter is a personal branding coach who happens to be known as the LinkedIn Guy. And what I do is I help professionals define their personal brand and work with them on a strategy to build that brand. There is a couple of ways you do that. You do it in person, and you do it online. And, of course, my tool of choice for doing it online is LinkedIn. And, originally, I started out doing more one-on-one training sessions. That was sort of my business model. I and did very well at it and got to really work with some elite clients. I continue to work with some elite clients on personals consulting, but I recognized early on that if I want to have the biggest impact on the most number of people, I’ve got to do some corporate stuff.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:02:31] So, I’ve got to expose myself to more group presentations. And that’s sort of my focus change in the last year or so where I’m doing more corporate and group presentations. And I’m enjoying that. And the reception has been very overwhelming because what’s so cool is, is the company marketing landscape has dramatically changed in the last year. Most are aware, some or not. The way that market to your customer and the way you attract new clients has totally changed. And we’ll probably get into that conversation later on, but that fact has allowed me to talk to more companies.

John Ray: [00:03:00] Yeah, I do want to get into that because you really kind of eat your own cooking, shall we say, because your branding has changed over time, and you started out really focused on LinkedIn, the platform, and you are now really talking about how LinkedIn is a tactic in a bigger strategy, which is, how do you brand yourself personally and professionally.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:03:26] Correct. I believe when you define your personal brand, you don’t define a brand that’s going to be your brand from now until you quit doing what you’re doing. You’ve got to always be constantly making yourself aware, is my brand value the same as it was a year ago? And if it’s not, what components have increased in value? And I recognize that my personal branding skill set was increasingly my value of [indiscernible].

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:03:49] So, recognizing that fact after a couple of friends brought it to my attention, I decided to put a little bit more emphasis on the personal branding. Once I did that, the timing could not have been better. The business environment started to recognize the value of personal branding, I had people ready to hear my message about personal branding, and that exposure continues to grow. So, the timing was good, and I’m on the path now to spread the word about your personal brand is your gateway to career success and building relationships as part of building that personal brand.

John Ray: [00:04:18] There are a lot of perceptions, Gregg, about what a personal brand is. Why don’t you give your definition? What is a personal brand?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:04:26] My definition is your personal brand is what people think, feel, or say when they hear your name, or they see your face or name. The short version for that real worthy explanation is this – your brand’s not what you say you are, that’s what other people say you are. And believe it or not, whether you know it, you have a personal brand. You may not be aware of what it is, but you really do know. And a good way to start that query into figuring out what is your personal brand, Google your name. That’s what everybody in the world does when they hear of you or meet you,

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:04:58] In fact, when you go on a job interview, or you’re going to have a meeting with somebody, don’t be worried about that first impression when you walk in the room. That’s your second impression. They already have the first impression. They’ve Googled your name, they’ve checked out your LinkedIn profile. They’re looking to see if the person they found online is the same person that walks through that door.

John Ray: [00:05:17] If it all matches up-

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:05:18] That’s right. Hopefully, you’ve got them so jazzed up by your online presence. Then, when you come in, in person, you just nail it.

John Ray: [00:05:25] Got you. So, you’ve got a personal brand whether you know it or not, so you better tend to it. Now, there are a lot of different aspects to this, whether you’re a job seeker, whether you’re an entrepreneur, professional services provider, whether you’re employee in corporate. Maybe talk a little bit about those different aspects of someone carrying a personal brand.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:05:51] Well, let’s just say you’re a job seeker out there, your personal brand can make the difference between you getting a job and not getting the job. If you’re competing against someone else with similar education, similar skill set, if you have a strong personal brand, you’re going to get that gig. In fact, I don’t know if you’ve recognized this, but the professional toolbox is totally different than it was, say, five years ago. In fact, when I came along, my professional toolbox was a real skinny flat toolbox. It had two things in it – my education and my experience. Now, the toolbox of the professional man and woman is huge. It has two new power tools that will change your life and your career. Those two new power tools are a strong personal brand and an engaged professional network. Those last two will change your life.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:06:39] Now, when you’re working for a company, we’re talking about personal branding. When you’re working there, you’ve got to build up your credibility in a company. You do that by being more active, being a fixture at a store front for the company to help spread the brand, become a thought leader for your company. Those kind of things build your personal brand inside of the company, which increases your value and also attracts more people to your company. So, personal branding for company exposure is very important.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:07:04] Let’s talk about career loss. I talk with a lot of C-level executives. They have a challenge with personal branding because as ladder career C-level executives, that term is totally new to them. They’ve been underneath that corporate veil for 20 or 30 years, and they’re about to leave it. That is extremely scary. So, when I talk to a lot of C-level people, I start out as a cheerleader, re-motivator, re-imager, brander. I go through the whole process. I’m pointing them in the right direction. And this past week, I had a situation arise that actually created a brand-new talking point for me I’ve never said before. I’m going to give it to you right now.

John Ray: [00:07:41] Okay, lay it on me.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:07:42] If you are a C-level executive, and you’re about to retire, you have to make the decision, at least, six months before you retire, is there any possibility you might change your mind and come back in the workforce? Because if you think you might change your mind, you better maintain your digital presence while you’re thinking it out. If you leave the workforce and get sull and dormant for six months or so, and try to come back, it is a tough task. So, again, if you’re C-level level out there, and you’re about to retire, do some soul searching. Do you want to continue to work? Is there a possibility? If there is, continue to be present in the professional world because it’s harder to stay present and energize that presence than to totally go away and try to reintroduce yourself to people who have forgotten about you.

John Ray: [00:08:30] Sure, sure. We’re speaking with Gregg Burkhalter. He’s the LinkedIn Guy, Greggburkhalter.com. Now, Gregg, let’s come back around a dive into LinkedIn for a second because you are the LinkedIn Guy. LinkedIn has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. I mean, we could point to the Microsoft acquisition and all the investments that Microsoft has made in the platform. How has that changed for the better for using LinkedIn as a personal branding tool?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:09:03] Well, I’ll tell you, Microsoft’s purchase, I was a little concerned when I first heard about it, but here we are three years later roughly, I’m extremely impressed. I can tell that Microsoft has put a lot more resources into LinkedIn. I can tell they’re really focused on making the platform easier to use, making it where people are engaged and want to use the platform, and creating tools and resources not only to build digital relationships but also take digital relationships and maintain those in the real world. It’s going both ways now with certain things that LinkedIn have in their app program. So, I’m really impressed with that.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:09:37] There’s always new features coming out every single day to help you do things on LinkedIn to grow your brand. One of the latest ones is video. As you well know in anything nowadays, video is a prime component in brand exposure and also getting your message out there. So, LinkedIn now has video. LinkedIn is also rolling out, limited basis so far, LinkedIn Live, which is a streaming service. Most people aren’t even aware that LinkedIn has added a cell phone mobile app. You can do voice messaging and video messaging easily from your device.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:10:08] Also, talking about building those real-world relationships from digital relationships, when you’re out there in the field, you can take out your LinkedIn mobile app, and you can share locations with somebody you’re going to be meeting with, and also check your calendar from inside of LinkedIn, and make an appointment to meet somebody using the LinkedIn app. Some really cool stuff like that. Also, if you’re at a gathering, like a networking event, you can bring out your LinkedIn mobile app, and push a button, and you can see all the people within like a hundred feet of you in that room. A great way to build connections with people you don’t know. So, LinkedIn is focused on connections, expanding the network. 630 million people on LinkedIn right now, so they are growing rapidly. That $26.2 billion purchase by Microsoft has proven to be a winner for them.

John Ray: [00:10:52] Sure, absolutely. Now, let’s get back to that C-level executive or that corporate employee. So, you’ve listed all these different additional enhancements that LinkedIn has laid out there for us to use. And I can see somebody out there right now saying, “Greg, I don’t have enough time as it is right now. How am I going to distinguish between all these different aspects of LinkedIn I should use, not use? What should I pay attention to? What should my focus be?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:11:26] Your focus should be on having a strategy because just being on LinkedIn is not the strategy. It’s, what am I going to do? When am I going to do it? How am I going to do it? As a corporation or a company right now, I can tell you, you’re number one focused on trying to grow your brand is building the personal brands of your employees because your employees are the gateway to brand exposure for your company. As I alluded to earlier in our conversation, one of the main changes in the business environment now is your customer and your future employee don’t believe that company message like they used to. They’re a little skeptical about because you’re marketing to them. What do they believe? They believe the personal brand and the messages of your employees.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:12:06] So, empower your employees to be ambassadors for your company because they are the ones that actually create the relational connection with your customer. People do business with people. They are the person they get attracted to. So, empower your employees. Not only does it help your brand grow for your company, it’s a good professional development item for your employees. It makes them know that you care about them, tends to make them stay around longer, and they also are turning to people who are thought leaders for your company, it can really help generate some real goodwill for your company.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:12:39] So, you cannot walk away from branding your employees. The old saying is “Why do I want to brand my employees? Somebody might hire them away.” What if you don’t brand them? That is the worst scenario right now. In fact, I brought a quote in with me. I was hoping I’d have opportunity to do this because I read an article yesterday on LinkedIn by Mark Schaefer. In fact, I shared it on my profile. And this quote was just eye opening. And I want to make sure I got it right. He said, “If you’re still on the fence about personal branding and its cumulative impact in the business world, you’re on a probable path of obsolescence.”

John Ray: [00:13:14] Wow.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:13:16] That pretty well sums it up right there.

John Ray: [00:13:17] It does, it does. But I’ve got to push back here a little bit. So, if I’m at a big company, I’ve got a manic chase for good people because that’s always a problem, keeping and retaining good people for any company, why do I want to highlight them on LinkedIn? You talked a little bit about that but dig into that a little deeper because that scares me if I’m an employer.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:13:46] All right. Well, let me give you a figure that might make you more charismatic to that idea. On average, the employees of a company have ten times more followers than the company has followers. So, in other words-

John Ray: [00:13:58] Even the biggest corporations?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:13:59] Correct.

John Ray: [00:14:00] Really?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:14:01] The biggest corporations have a lot of employees. You take the connections of all your employees and add those up and take how many followers you have on the LinkedIn company page, you probably have ten times more followers of your employee pages than you did a company page. They provide the exposure. And there’s something about a personal message and an emotional message that is more received, better received than a pitch on the company page. If I were you, connect with someone on LinkedIn as a general rule, you’re not inviting me to pitch you on anything.

John Ray: [00:14:29] True.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:14:29] You’re inviting in to build a relationship, a relationship based on trust and the value you bring to them. Company page, when you follow a company page, you’re saying, “Please sell me something and please pitch me.” So, tell me about the whole deal how business is done nowadays. Relationships are a big part of the business process. As you probably have noticed, especially in the B2B world, the sale does not go very fast. It takes a lot of nurturing along the way. You don’t send somebody an offer, and, automatically, it closes. There’s a lot of relationships, a lot of conversations occur. So, that emotional relationship of the nurturing of the deal is very important on you closing that deal. And chances are great. If you didn’t have a strong personal brand, and you were not able to build a relationship with a future client, you’re not going to get that sell anyway.

John Ray: [00:15:16] It strikes me that — and I’m going to affirm where you’re coming from on this. It strikes me that it’s pretty shortsighted to think that LinkedIn is the only way for good people to be found, that recruiters, that their whole business is finding good people, and they were doing that long before LinkedIn came along, right? So, it’s a little counter-intuitive to think that, “Well, if we can just keep our employees off of LinkedIn, they won’t be found.”

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:15:45] Well, you keep your employees off LinkedIn, and your customers will never see your brand at the level that you see it. In fact, on LinkedIn, during my presentations when I talk, I talk about the fact that most people on LinkedIn are not looking for you, they discover you. Especially your customers, your customers not looking for you. They discover you. And 90% of the time they discover you, it’s not on your company page. It is on the personal page of one of your employees who has created engaging content that they’ve seen and said, “You know what, this person is a thought leader.” That’s how they find. Of course, there are some people hunting for you on LinkedIn. As you said, recruiters might be looking for you. And, also, people don’t want to sell you stuff, but your customers and your future employees, as a general rule, they discover you.

John Ray: [00:16:26] True.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:16:27] They discover the magic of your brand as conveyed by your employees.

John Ray: [00:16:31] We’re speaking with Gregg Burkhalter, the LinkedIn guy and personal branding coach and expert. Now, Gregg, how do you work with a company that says, “Okay, I bite. I want to work with you. Help me. Help my employees build our brands.” That’s plural, “Build our brands together.”

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:16:54] Got you. Well, there’s not one size fits. The beginning of that process is a conversation at length about what their business is about, who their customers are, the challenges they’re having on LinkedIn. And whenever I know I’m going to talk to somebody about a LinkedIn training session in the future, I never look at their LinkedIn profile before I speak to them, and I never look at their company page. I want to put myself in the position of their customer or future client. When I talk to them for the very first time, they tell me what they’re about. I listen to what they say. And then, when I go to their LinkedIn profile or company page, I know if there’s a disconnect or what’s going on there.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:17:31] Once I do that assessment, then I know what I can do. As a general rule, most companies now in the corporate world could really benefit greatly from my one hour or what I call the LinkedIn Power Hour. It has taken me several years to be able to get them 60 minutes of time a total overview of LinkedIn – what it’s about, the psychology, what you do, how to build your personal brand, and give you a to-do list of what you do every day on LinkedIn. It’s taken a while to get there, but I’ve got that down. So, every company could benefit from that.

John Ray: [00:18:01] True.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:18:01] There’s an extended version of that, which includes a one hour of hands-on LinkedIn training, where we build the foundation of LinkedIn, and then we go under the hood of LinkedIn, and show you what everything does, including the buttons you’ve never seen before, and I give you an opportunity to watch me do my daily activity on LinkedIn, to hear my psychology, to see about psychology, to see my technique. So, when you leave there, you’re empowered with confidence to go out there and start using LinkedIn.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:18:28] Now, here’s the thing that happens a lot of times when I train companies, I have to warn them. I’ll go into a company, we’ll talk about LinkedIn, and they get fired up. And the first thing they want to do is the next day, go out on LinkedIn, and blow it wide open with content. You can’t do that.

John Ray: [00:18:44] Right. You can’t turn the battleship in one day, right?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:18:48] But you know what, it gets people thinking about me because when that happens, they say they must have heard Gregg Burkhalter speak. I get blamed for that all the time. So, as a general rule, if you’re not active on LinkedIn, you’ve got to ease your way into it because LinkedIn is really not about you, it’s about the value you bring to the community. So, if you get on LinkedIn from 0 to 100, what that feels like is you walking into a networking group, walking in the door, and passing out your cards and flyers to everyone in the room, and leaving the room, and never saying a word. What they say is, “Who was that?” So, you got to have a strategy on LinkedIn. It’s not 100 miles an hour out of the gate.

John Ray: [00:19:24] Now, let’s back up to that point where you’re checking out someone’s profile and that kind of thing, that when you get to that point, is that where the term that I’ve seen on your profile page, brandstorming — I’ll get that right. Brainstorming, is that where that term comes in?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:19:41] Brandstorming comes shortly after that.

John Ray: [00:19:44] Okay.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:19:44] I hear them talk about what they think their brand is about, I’ll look at their profile, and then I give them what I feel as a first impression of brand is. So, that is the beginning of the brandstorming session. And we kind of talk back and forth. I want to know, in priority, what are the most important things in what you’re trying to do? Tell me some of the things. What are your branding items that you feel in your mind are the most important things? And I listen to them tell me those items. Well, they may either tell me those items in non-clear terms. I have to clarify in better terms what they’re trying to say, or they don’t have them in the right order based on what I read. So, we try to figure out, what is their personal brand? What is that?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:20:20] Then, once we do that, we got decide, how do we present that brand in a humble yet confident way to attract people to their brand, so over a period of time, people would come engaged with their brand, see them as a thought authority, and want to do business with them? The true magic of LinkedIn is you know your brand is really growing when the cold calls slow down and the inbound calls increase. It’s a wonderful spot to be to be only receiving inbound calls and responding inbound calls. That’s when you know you have blown it wide open.

John Ray: [00:20:50] Now, I know there are some folks that say, “Well, hey, Gregg, I’ve already got all those real connections. I’ve already got all those calls. I’ve got a large customer base. So, why do I need to do all this work on LinkedIn?”

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:21:04] I hope you keep those people. I hope they live to be 150 to 200 years old because you’re not growing your base. Here’s the reality. In today’s world, I don’t care how many real relationships you have. If you haven’t digitized those relationships and put them on LinkedIn, so people can see your name and their digital workday, you’re not thought of. You’re not top of mind. In fact, you’re going to end up forgotten. So, you’ve got to have your relationships. They’re great to have them in person. Even both places in person. But digitize them, so you can nurture them and watch those relationships grow because a relationship of somebody in the digital realm is a daily relationship. You know what’s going on in their life every single day. There is no catching up to do when you meet that person. There’s only a continuing to grow the relationship. So, digitize them, put them on LinkedIn, help you out.

John Ray: [00:21:52] Yeah, sure. Now, I want to just take a little side. I’ve got a daughter in college. So, I want to take a little sidebar here to talk about college students because I know you’ve been doing some speaking at colleges, even high schools, and talking to them about how undergraduates, MBA students need to improve their personal brand or establish that personal brand even before they get out in the workplace.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:22:23] Correct. You got to realize, LinkedIn has been around since 2003, but among the current college graduates right now, it’s not the channel of choice they’ve been using. They’ve been using Facebook and Instagram. And I have to make them aware of, first of all, the value of LinkedIn and the value of their personal brand because going forward, your personal brand is going to be your key to success. I mean, if you don’t have a personal brand-building strategy, you’re not going on the right path to start your career.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:22:49] In fact, if you’re working right now, I’d venture to say in the next 5 years, 10 years, it might even be 20 years down the road, if you’re working right now, at some point in your career, your personal brand is going to be your only chance of making a living. It’s the only tool you got. And it’s also going to allow you to work at the level you’re accustomed to working. If you don’t have that personal brand, you’re going to be hurting in the business world. So, build your brand, protect your brand. And after you built your brand and people believe your brand, one of the great benefits of that is you can share your brand. Help other people build their brand. It’s a giving thing too. Once you get it, you give it. So, personal branding is virtual, yeah. Career-wise personal branding is very important.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:23:30] Now, the fine line you have to walk is this, you have your personal brand, and you work for a company. Working for a company, you’re going to share their brand with them, you’re going to share your personal brand, you’re going to promote the company, but you cannot sell out your personal brand to your company. If you sell out your personal brand where your brand is based exclusively on where you work, if you ever lose that job, your brand is going to take a hit. Make sure you maintain your own personal brand skills that are not directly tied to your company, that are transferable should the need be down the road. But you do want to have a strong brand because you are valuable to your employee, you are going to be a brand exposure for your employee, but you also are looking out for yourself too. So, maintain your own personal brand.

John Ray: [00:24:14] And, again, back to the whole point about companies and how companies should react to these phenomena, they’ve got a line to walk, right? I mean, they really want to encourage that employee to not only help them build the company brand but understand the benefits of building that personal brand. They are encouraging that employee to build their own brand.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:24:36] With this company helping people build personal branding scenarios started rolling out, initially, companies tried to be too structured on that. They set forth a social media policy. And all of a sudden, their employees became robots. People can recognize robots. You’ve got to let your employees have their own personality, their personal skill set. You’ve got to make them real people. Let real people that work for your company share content, build relationships, and represent your company. You’ll be successful. But if it feels plastic, and generic, and a unified effort to do something, it’s not real. It’s not going to work. So, that’s why you got to work with the employee to help them.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:25:15] Now, one thing you do want to do is make sure your employees, even though you give them some freedom to build their brand, there should be some recognition of exactly what is a strong brand and what is the proper way to represent themselves and your company. You’ve got to have some kind of strategy and focus on that. But a day-by-day, “Here’s what the company wants you to do,” it shouldn’t be quite that regimented.

John Ray: [00:25:35] True.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:25:36] Represent the company, build your brand, help the company.

John Ray: [00:25:39] Now, again, Gregg Burkhalter, gregburkhalter.com, personal branding coach, and expert, and the LinkedIn guy. You’re a great example of this yourself. I mean, you have gone from essentially a Metro Atlanta guy to the point where the other day, I saw you were training on LinkedIn, of course, training a group of college students in Canada. Wow. I mean, you have extended your own brand out there, and you’re obviously eating your own cooking. So, talk about that maybe a little bit about that journey, but also how you handle those kind of clients that are out there remote like that. Do you travel to them? Do you do that remotely? How do you do that?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:26:31] It’s a great honor to have people from other countries and other states reach out to me because it gives me an opportunity to do what I’m trying to do – have as much impact as possible on the most number of people. So, how do I train people? Well, originally, it was training people in person. But, now, I spend probably more of my time training people via the internet, doing one-on-one coaching via the internet. And in fact, I’ve done, in the last six months, three keynote speaking presentations from my desktop at home to groups. It works flawlessly. And that’s how I talk to a lot of the colleges out of town. I do a speaking presentation. They gather the students in an auditorium, project me on the screen, it works great.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:27:09] So, technology is wonderful. It allows me the opportunity to get to other people and have a personal branding LinkedIn conversation with them and just expand my network. Because if you’re on LinkedIn, and you’re staying in a small little pond, that’s not growing your brand. You’ve got to get into the LinkedIn ocean.

John Ray: [00:27:24] Sure.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:27:25] I mean, most people on LinkedIn, what they’re doing is they’re the kind of hunting. They’re hunting for customers, or they’re hunting for somebody that might know one of their customers. All this little hunting is in a small pond or field. You’ve got to get in the ocean. The way you get in the ocean, you’ve got to start fishing. Having a strong bite, which is a LinkedIn profile that’s buttoned up and a fishing pole, which happens to be the LinkedIn ecosystem, which you use with a strategy to expose your brand. If you’re fishing, I don’t care how the hunting is going, at some point, those fishes are going to start jumping in your boat. And what I’ve noticed lately is I’m actually hunting for fish. I hunt for someone I want to put into my ocean, so I can feed them until they bite. So, that’s what I’m doing right now. So, a lot of these out-of-town engagements are people I have never spoken to who have heard of my name through my brand exposure.

John Ray: [00:28:15] Wow. So, again, eating your own cooking, doing it exactly the way you counsel others to do it, which is exciting for folks to see. Now, in terms of some your in-person events, you have a couple of different events that are interesting. I think Connected is one of them. You can talk a little bit about that one. And, also, LinkedIn After Hours. Give us a little lowdown on those events.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:28:46] Well, the Connected event is something I came up with back in 2015. It was a concept of allowing my LinkedIn connections and my connections’ connections to get together and have some in-person networking. It worked out really good, so I’ve continued to do that a couple of three times a year. I have one of those coming up on July, July 17th. I did one back in January with over a hundred folks there. Hoping this one is going to be another big event to. So, I would love for you to come join us for that.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:29:11] And following that in a couple of months, I have another one of my signature events. It’s more of a training top event. It is called LinkedIn After Hours. And the tagline I came up with was, “It’s never too late on LinkedIn.” It’s kind of like a play on words.

John Ray: [00:29:25] Yeah, of course, yeah.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:29:26] But it gives an opportunity for people who are working who want to come learn LinkedIn, work on their personal brand, and their boss not know. It’s a two-hour workshop, very similar to like my two-hour corporate training where you can come in and get the total meat of LinkedIn and leave with a strategy of what you should be doing every day on LinkedIn. Of course, when I do these public training workshops, the two-hour one, the LinkedIn After Hours, where I go into a corporation, of course, I’ll leave you with materials behind that you can reference later on because if anybody’s ever heard of the LinkedIn Guy speak, what’s the term you use? The faucet’s going to be turned on? John, I’ve heard this.

John Ray: [00:30:00] It’s true.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:30:00] The faucet gets turned on.

John Ray: [00:30:01] True.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:30:01] So, I’ve never been known for holding back information. So, when you come, we’ll fill you up with some good stuff, and we’ll give you some notes to take home with you.

John Ray: [00:30:10] Yeah. You deliver a lot of value at all your events. But folks, if you’re listening to this show in the podcast form maybe after the dates that Gregg gave, obviously, go and follow Gregg on LinkedIn, and you’ll announce those events in the future-

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:30:31] Correct, correct.

John Ray: [00:30:31] … as they come along. So, Gregg, I guess, to kind of wrap it up here, if I’m either a company or an individual, I’m really interested in maybe a success story or two, folks that you have worked with recently that you’ve made a big impact on.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:30:55] Well, it’s a pleasure to be able to work with people and have impact on lives.

John Ray: [00:30:59] It’s true.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:30:59] A lot of times, the people never really reach back out to you and tell you how it went. So, sometimes, you don’t know. But a couple of recent stories, one is about nine months ago, I had a CFO at a major oil company who had lost his job. Unfortunately, he had never really used his LinkedIn account, had no knowledge of LinkedIn. So, I was able to work with him one-on-one to help update his LinkedIn profile, gave him a strategy of job search and daily LinkedIn activity. And four months after I worked with him, he said, “Hey, I’ve got a new gig. I’m working for a private company. I’m a CFO.” So, that’s wonderful.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:31:32] I have notes from people all the time that I’m humbled when they send it to me. They’re telling me that, “Your presentation that I attended, you don’t know this, but it changed my trajectory.” I get those all the time.

John Ray: [00:31:42] Wow.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:31:43] Names I can’t quote, but I get them all the time, and I’m so honored that they would take time to let me know that. Because someone took time with me when I was at a career juncture prior to being the LinkedIn Guy. I had an individual sit down with me and go, “Greg, I want to try to help you get your strategy together for growing your brand and what you want to do.” Had someone not done that for me, I would not be talking to you today.

John Ray: [00:32:07] Wow.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:32:07] So, I enjoy helping others. People enjoy knowing that somebody cares about them, that they are vested and have them succeed, and they have no ulterior motives other than for them succeed. And that’s why I enjoy helping people. I want them to succeed.

John Ray: [00:32:22] That’s fantastic, yeah. And I see that from you on LinkedIn. I know you get on there, and you really promote others in a good way. I mean, in the good work that they are doing. And that resonates with us. That’s what we try to do here at Business RadioX. And it’s exciting to see that in terms of the way you play that out on LinkedIn. So, congratulations on your success. And the information you’re sharing with folks and the lives you’re changing, for those that want more information, would like to be in touch with you and connect with you, how do they do that?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:32:59] Well, I would love for them to connect with me on LinkedIn.

John Ray: [00:33:00] Of course, a badge to that, right?

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:33:02] Yeah. The direct link on that is linkedin.com/in/gregburkhalter, or you can visit my website. It’s gregburkhalter.com. If you want to kind of check out what I’ve been doing lately, you can Google the LinkedIn guy. I’m so fortunate to show up number one in search in the world as the LinkedIn Guy.

John Ray: [00:33:21] Look at you.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:33:24] What that is, John, is just talking to a lot of groups. I’ve spoken to hundreds of groups in the last year. That was my secret to getting my SEO where it is right now. So, the way the cards fell, I love the way they fell.

John Ray: [00:33:35] I love it. That’s great, that’s great. Gregg Burkhalter, gregburkhalter.com, personal branding coach, and expert, and the LinkedIn Guy. Thanks for being with us.

Gregg Burkhalter: [00:33:46] Thank you again, John. I really enjoyed it. Hope to see you again soon.

John Ray: [00:33:49] I’ll look forward to it.

John Ray: [00:33:51] Folks if you need help with the headaches of administrative tasks, bookkeeping, marketing, presentations, or workshops, well go engage a smart and reliable office angel. They’re not a temp agency or placement firm, Office Angels matches your business support needs with angels who have the talent and experience necessary to help you maintain and grow your business on an ongoing or as-needed basis. It’s your terms, it’s your timeline. They lend a hand when needed and fly off when the job is finished. Find out more at officeangels.us or call Chief Executive Angel Essie Escobedo at 770-442-9246.

John Ray: [00:34:29] And a reminder, you can listen to this show every Tuesday morning live at 11:30 a.m. And if you missed any of our live shows, we are on all the major podcast platforms – iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify. There’s probably two or three that just got released this morning. But we put this show out on all those major podcast apps. So, search for North Fulton Business Radio on your favorite app, find us there, or you can go online at northfultonbusinessradio.com and listen to us from your computer or from your phone. You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook, North Fulton BRX. You can find us there as well. We’d love to have you connect there. So, for my guest, Gregg Burkhalter, I’m John Ray. Join us next time here on North Fulton Business Radio.

Outro: [00:35:37] Today, you’re connected more than ever- your friends, your family your life – and banking is what you do on your time anywhere you like. Renasant understands how you bank, offering mobile banking services you need. At Renasant, we also understand that, sometimes, you need to speak to real people with real answers. That’s why Renasant has more than 170 convenient locations throughout the South ready to serve you. Renasant Bank, understanding you. Member FDIC.

Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat: Cadence Bank

June 18, 2019 by John Ray

Business Beat

Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat: Cadence Bank

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**John Jackson, Bradley Carroll, Sam Tortorici, Randy Schultz, and BJ Green**

Show Summary

A team of senior officers from Cadence Bank, led by CEO Sam Tortorici, joined this edition of Frazier & Deeter’s “Business Beat.” Topics included the recent merger with State Bank & Trust, serving Georgia and the North Fulton market specifically, and . This inspiring story of business success is brought to you by Alpharetta CPA firm Frazier & Deeter.

Cadence Bank

Cadence Bank is a regional bank that excels in two areas – above and beyond. With locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas, Cadence provides corporations, businesses and consumers with a full range of innovative banking and financial solutions.

Committed to helping its clients succeed financially, Cadence’s experienced bankers take the time to discover more about their clients’ banking needs and pain points, building long-lasting relationships that work. This is accomplished through an array of services including commercial and business banking, treasury management, specialized lending, commercial real estate, payroll and insurance services, SBA lending, foreign exchange, wealth management, investment and trust services, financial planning, consumer banking, and mortgage lending.

See why Forbes ranks Cadence among the “Best Banks in America”.

Learn more at cadencebank.com.

Sam Tortorici, CEO of Cadence Bank

Sam Tortorici is Chief Executive Officer and Director of Cadence Bank, N.A. and serves as President of Cadence Bancorporation. Tortorici has served in this role since July 2011, during which time Cadence has completed four acquisitions, raised debt capital and completed an Initial Public Offering to support the bank’s growth. Today, Cadence ranks as the 75^th largest bank in the country.

A Birmingham, Alabama native, Tortorici graduated from the University of Alabama’s School of Accountancy. Upon graduation, he began a 24-year career at Regions Bank and predecessor AmSouth Bank where he held a number of senior commercial, finance and general banking leadership roles, including Chief Financial Officer of AmSouth and head of Regions’ Commercial & Industrial and Specialized Industries business. While at Regions/AmSouth, Tortorici held other key leadership positions for sales and service across a variety of business units, including Central Region President overseeing the Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina markets. He also led a failed bank acquisition by Regions in the Atlanta market and helped to sizably grow Regions’ presence in Metro Atlanta.

Tortorici resides in Atlanta and presently serves on the board of directors for the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce and the Buckhead Coalition.

Randy Schultz, Managing Director, Specialized Industries

Randy Schultz has extensive banking experience, having held leadership roles in commercial banking, corporate and investment banking, and global treasury management. He formed Regions Banking Group (RRB) in April 2009 and prior thereto managed Bank of America’s Restaurant and Beverage Finance Group (“RBFG”) from 1996 to 2006. Schultz joined Cadence Bank in 2011, and as the Managing Director, Specialized Industries is responsible for leading delivery of the full range of Cadence services to branded restaurant, technology and healthcare companies. He also oversees Cadence’s SBA business. Randy and his wife Cathy live in Roswell, GA where he is the chair of the Roswell DDA and a member of Art Around Selection Committee.

John W. Jackson, Atlanta Commercial Banking Regional President

**John Jackson, Atlanta Commercial Banking Regional President, Cadence Bank**

John Jackson has been a banker in Atlanta for more than 30 years, having advanced through the leadership ranks of Atlanta’s most prominent middle market banks. He spent 15 years with Bank South focusing on retail banking, consumer lending, mortgage lending and commercial lending. In 1991, Jackson joined SouthTrust where his leadership responsibility grew from regional manager of East Metro Atlanta in 1991 to regional president of SouthTrust in Jacksonville, Florida. In 2004, Jackson co-founded Bank of Atlanta and served as its president and CEO. He built the bank into a profitable $230 million operation before it was acquired by State Bank and Trust in 2014. Jackson currently serves as Atlanta Commercial Banking Regional President of Cadence Bank, previously State Bank and Trust.

An Atlanta native, Jackson serves on the boards of the Winship Cancer Institute, Covenant House of Georgia, Carter Center Board of Councilors, Desire Street Ministries, Soloman’s Temple and Kaiser Permanente. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Georgia and serves as a member of the Terry Dean’s Advisory Council.

BJ Green, Georgia Commercial Banking Executive

BJ Green oversees the strategic development, growth, quality and profitability of commercial middle market activities for Cadence Bank in Georgia. With more than 25 years of industry experience, Green previously served as senior vice president and commercial banking team manager for SunTrust Bank’s Atlanta division, where his team focused on meeting the banking needs of companies in the food and beverage, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, goods and equipment, and energy sectors. Green joined SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. in 2007 in the syndicated and leveraged finance department before moving to oil and gas investment banking in 2013. Prior to joining SunTrust, Green was with Banc of America Securities, LLC for seven years and Wachovia Bank for five years. He holds an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Frazier & Deeter

The Alpharetta office of Frazier & Deeter is home to a thriving CPA tax practice and Employee Benefit Plan Services group. CPAs and advisors in the Frazier & Deeter Alpharetta office serve clients across North Georgia and around the country with services such as personal tax planning, estate planning, business tax planning, business tax compliance, state and local tax planning, financial statement reviews, financial statement audits, employee benefit plan audits, internal audit outsourcing, cyber security, data privacy, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and other regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and more. Alpharetta CPA professionals serve clients ranging from business owners and executives to large corporations.

Bradley Carroll, host of this edition of Frazier & Deeter’s “Business Beat,” is a Principal in the Process, Risk, and Governance Department with Frazier & Deeter, CPAs as their Financial Services Practice Leader. Bradley also serves on the Financial Services Advisory Board of the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA). As a member of this Board, he has advocated on Capitol Hill on behalf of IIA initiatives.Carroll has been a member of the IIA for over 20 years. He has given presentations on QAIP, Fraud, CoSourcing and OutSourcing, Annual Risk Assessments, Inherent vs. Residual Risk, Risk Assessment vs Control Evaluations, Data Analytics, BSA Independent Testing, IPPF, KPIs for Audit Committee Reporting, and has presented at the IIA’s All Star Conference, past Financial Services Exchanges, the IIA’s International Conference, various local IIA Chapters and various banking groups. He is a CPA, CIA, CFSA, CRMA, is Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF), and has a Qualification in Internal Audit Leadership (QIAL) by the IIA. He has a BBA in Accounting and is currently working on an MBA in Data Analytics.