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NORTH ATLANTA’S BIZLINK: North Fulton Education Leaders Allison Townsend, 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, and Dr. Doannie Tran, Fulton County Schools

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North Fulton Studio
North Fulton Studio
NORTH ATLANTA’S BIZLINK: North Fulton Education Leaders Allison Townsend, 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, and Dr. Doannie Tran, Fulton County Schools
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Dr. Doannie Tran, Kali Boatright, and Allison Townsend

Allison Townsend, 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, Barnwell Elementary School

Allison Townsend, 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, Barnwell Elementary School

As the 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, Mrs. Allison Townsend passionately believes each child should have a voice in his or her learning. She is dedicated to helping teachers create transparent classroom environments where, together with their students, they can make connections and have an impact beyond the four walls of their classrooms.

Since graduating from Clemson University in 2012, Allison Townsend has been a teacher in Fulton County Schools in Atlanta, Georgia. She has taught pre-k, 3rd, and 4th grades at Shakerag and Barnwell Elementary Schools. She inspires her students to grow beyond “engagement” to “ownership” by empowering them with a co-planning learning model she has created. She is also an advocate for transparency in education by inviting parents, teachers, and community members into her classroom, coaching teachers at her school, presenting at conferences, and using Twitter as a window into her classroom. Her mission is to inspire students and teachers to take risks, connect with people from around the world, and smile along the way!

In her role as 2019 Georgia Teacher of the Year, Mrs. Townsend is traveling the state as an advocate for students and teachers and spreading her message of student ownership, transparency in education, and the power of human connection.

Dr. Doannie Tran, Fulton County Schools

Dr. Doannie Tran, Fulton County Schools

Dr. Doannie Tran is the Assistant Superintendent for Innovative Programs for Fulton County Schools. He is also overseeing the launch of FCS’s two innovative STEM schools, including the North Fulton STEM High School located in Alpharetta and to be opened in Fall 2020.

Doannie gradated from North Springs High School in Sandy Springs, GA and earned a Chemistry degree from the University of Georgia before joining Teach For America where he taught middle school science in Oakland, California. After moving to Boston, Doannie taught high school science in Boston before joining the staff of Teach For America to launch the Massachusetts region in 2009. Doannie was responsible for professional development for all new TFA teachers in Massachusetts. He built up their partnership with Boston University, where he has also served on faculty. During that time, the Massachusetts region was in the top 10% of all regions in terms of effectiveness, satisfaction and retention of teachers. The 2014 NCTQ/US News and World Report study of teacher preparation programs gave the program Doannie designed and executed the only high rating given to an alternative certification program.

Doannie received his doctorate in education leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As a graduate student, he trained extensively in design thinking and Lean Startup methodologies and was sponsored as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at NewSchools Venture Fund. As an entrepreneur, he used design thinking and Lean principles to launch an education company called the Teaching Genome that provided teachers with insight into their teaching styles and used that knowledge to better support coaching and professional learning communities.

Doannie left his startup to join the leadership team of Boston Public Schools as Assistant Superintendent for Academics and Professional Learning. In that role, he focused on ensuring that every educator had high-quality curricular options and were competent in evidence-based instructional practices. He led a team of twenty-two teachers and over seventy central office experts to collaboratively develop the Essentials for Instructional Equity, Boston Public School’s vision for instruction that closes opportunity gaps. He led the collaboration of central office departments and dozens of teacher leaders to develop learning experiences that align to the Essentials, and to date, thousands of teachers have engaged in these courses.

Doannie is married to Holly Gooding, also a UGA alum and adolescent medicine physician at Emory and has two small children, Elliot (7) and Louise (5).

About GNFCC and “North Atlanta’s Bizlink”

Kali Boatright, President and CEO of the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce

“North Atlanta’s Bizlink” is presented by the Greater North Fulton Chamber of Commerce (GNFCC) and is hosted by Kali Boatright, President and CEO of 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.

Dr. Doannie Tran and Allison Townsend

 

Decision Vision Episode 16: Should I locate my business in an incubator or accelerator? – An Interview with Sanjay Parekh, Prototype Prime

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 16: Should I locate my business in an incubator or accelerator? – An Interview with Sanjay Parekh, Prototype Prime
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Michael Blake, Host of “Decision Vision,” and Sanjay Parekh, co-founder of Prototype Prime

Should I locate my business in an incubator or accelerator?

What’s the difference between an incubator and an accelerator? Should I locate my business in an incubator? What are the factors I should consider? On this episode of “Decision Vision,” Host Michael Blake speaks with Sanjay Parekh, co-founder of Prototype Prime, on these questions and more.

Sanjay Parekh, Prototype Prime

Sanjay Parekh, Prototype Prime

Sanjay Parekh is a co-founder of Prototype Prime. Prototype Prime is a 501(c)3 non-profit hardware & software startup incubator. Their mission is to provide startup companies with the support they need to launch and scale. Funded by the City of Peachtree Corners. Prototype Prime is a regional affiliate of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) at Georgia Tech, and is located just 30 minutes north of Atlanta.

Sanjay Sanjay a co-founder of Prototype Prime, a non-profit incubator and a serial technology entrepreneur. In addition to co-founding Prototype Prime, Sanjay is a co-founder of MailMosh, a startup focused on making email a better experience. He is also the co-host of Tech Talk Y’all, a self-proclaimed tech comedy podcast.

Previously Sanjay launched Startup Riot, a conference for startups which pioneered the three minute, four slide presentation format. Prior to founding Startup Riot, Sanjay was the founding CEO of Digital Envoy and the inventor of the company’s patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. At Digital Envoy, Sanjay led the company to raise $12 million in angel and venture funding. Digital Envoy was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.

Sanjay holds an electrical engineering degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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 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: [00:00:01] 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: [00:00:20] 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: [00:00:37] 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: [00:01:03] So, today’s topic is about co-working spaces, accelerators, incubators, and there are probably three or four other names for these kinds of places that I’m not even familiar with yet. I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but they have popped up like dandelions all over Atlanta in the last five years. And even in my hometown of Chamblee that has, I think, a population of about 30,000 people, we have, at least, two co-working spaces, accelerators, of which I’m aware. And I happen to be a member of one of them. It’s a nice place to kind of hang out. It’s at the airport, and a place we’re allowed to have meetings. They do a good job.

Michael Blake: [00:01:42] But for the most, it’s very likely that if you can listen to this podcast, there is a co-working space, an accelerator, an incubator near you. And you might be kind of wondering, does it make sense for me to be in one of these places? What’s it all about? Why are they generating the interest and the buzz they are? Why are some of my competitors there? Why are a lot of startups there? And is it right for me, whether I’m a startup or a more mature company?8

Michael Blake: [00:02:11] And today, we are joined by my pal, Sanjay Parekh, who is one of the true OGs of the startup community here in the Atlanta area. Unlike me, who’s basically been one of the world’s ugliest cheerleaders for about 12 years or so, he has actually started companies, had exits, ran a very important organization called Startup Riot about the same time as we were doing Startup Lounge. And I’m proudly wearing one of the Startup Riot T-shirts here today. And Sanjay has been about as active as anybody for as long as anybody in the startup community.

Michael Blake: [00:02:50] And one of the hats that he is wearing at this point is he is co-founder of Prototype Prime. He is a serial technology entrepreneur. He’s currently founder of MailMosh, a startup focused on making e-mail a better experience. And maybe we’ll get some information about that. As I mentioned before, he’s co-founder of the startup — not really so much a startup anymore, but an accelerator – I guess. Sanjay will probably correct me – called Prototype Prime that is in the northern Atlanta Metro area, about three miles north of where I live.

Michael Blake: [00:03:21] He’s also the co-host of his own podcast called Tech Talk Y’all, a podcast covering technology with a Southern flair. And if you haven’t, I listened to a couple of episodes. If you’re into technology, and you want to understand the local, sort of, southern, the Southeastern startup scene, because it is different from other places in the country, you really ought to give it a listen.

Michael Blake: [00:03:41] Previously, Sanjay launched Startup Riot, a conference for startups, which pioneered the three-minute, four-slide presentation format. And that was an extremely important event. I think they got up to hundreds of attendees and was eventually holding these things downtown. And the thing I loved about it was that Sanjay was not afraid to use the vaudeville hook either. If you went 301, you are done. And think about pitches that if they drag, man, they are tedious. And Sanjay made sure that didn’t happen.

Michael Blake: [00:04:12] Prior to founding Startup Riot, he founded Founder Fables, an off-the-record conference for founders. He was also the founding CEO of a company called Digital Envoy, and the inventor of the company’s patented NetAcuity IP intelligence technology. At Digital Envoy, Sanjay led the company to raise $12 million in angel and venture funding. Digital Envoy was acquired by Landmark Communications in June 2007.

Michael Blake: [00:04:36] He holds an Electrical Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and an MBA from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. And weren’t you on also one of those special European study grants? Was it called the MacArthur grant? I’m trying to remember.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:04:50] No. It was actually the Marshall Memorial Fellowship.

Michael Blake: [00:04:52] That’s what it is, okay.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:04:53] Yeah, yeah. So, that was in ’04, and it was a month-long trip. It’s a fantastic trip. They take Americans to Europe for a month, and Europeans come to the US for a month. And, really, it’s about building better transatlantic relations between. It’s really, kind of, a gift back to us. It’s from the German Marshall Fund of the United States. It’s a gift back to us from the people and government of Germany for the help that we gave them during the Marshall Plan post-World War 2.

Michael Blake: [00:05:17] I wonder if that program’s still going on today?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:20] It is, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:05:21] Okay.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:21] And it’s still a pretty strong program because it’s an important thing. I think between Europeans and Americans, we need to understand each other better.

Michael Blake: [00:05:28] More than ever today, right?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:30] Yeah. And you realize as you travel that Europeans are different, right? You’ve got the Eastern European, versus Western, versus Southern. It’s all very different in their mentality. I had a very different experience based on the places I went to.

Michael Blake: [00:05:44] Yeah. As you know, I lived in Eastern Europe for a number of years.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:47] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:05:47] And that kind of experience does change you, I think.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:51] Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Blake: [00:05:52] And for me, that kind of experience led me to look at kind of what is the other person thinking.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:05:59] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:05:59] Not just sort of have my mouth open, which is what I normally would have done before I went over there. But instead, what is the other person’s viewpoint. And the best way to do that is to actually kind of be in that room, right.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:10] Right, exactly. And be receptive to the feedback and their perspective of what you’re doing. Like, we got railed on. I mean, if you can imagine 2004, and the things that we were doing, and what was going on in the world, we got kind of blamed for a bunch of stuff that we didn’t necessarily agree with, and because our country and our government was doing those things. And so, it was hard.

Michael Blake: [00:06:30] Yeah.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:30] I will say when we went to Poland, that was a nice respite from all of that because those Poles, they love us.

Michael Blake: [00:06:37] They do. They do. I’ve been to Poland a little bit. And you’re absolutely right. They roll out the red carpet.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:06:42] That is a great country for Americans. I really love my time there.

Michael Blake: [00:06:47] So, let’s jump in. So, we were talking, and I was talking in the intro about this advent of co-working, and accelerators, and incubators. And so, Prototype Prime was not the first in by any stretch of the imagination.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:05] Absolutely not, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:07:05] So, you saw all these other co-working spaces, all these other — I’m just going to call them spaces because it just takes too long to go slash, slash, slash.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:15] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:07:16] Right. All these spaces, what made you think that we needed frankly another one? What’s the differentiator? What was the market need?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:23] Yeah. Well, so, for me, I definitely saw a need on the northern arc of Atlanta. There’s a lot of stuff going on inside the city, inside the perimeter, but not as much around the kind of northern arc. But honestly, I was not really looking to start one of these. I was on a panel that ATDC was doing probably about three years ago now.

Michael Blake: [00:07:43] That’s the Advanced Technology Development Center at Georgia Tech.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:07:46] Right. And our mutual friend, Jen Bennett, was running it then. She was GM. And they’d been asked by the City of Peachtree Corners to come up and do a panel to, kind of, figure out the appetite of doing an incubator there. And Jen was like, “I know you live up that way. Would you mind doing this?” And as most things, when somebody asks me to come and speak, I’m always happy to do it, with the caveat that they should know that, look, I’m going to tell you things that you’re probably not going to agree with or be happy about me saying, but it’s because that’s what I believe. You don’t have to listen to what I say. You don’t have to do what I have to say. It’s just that’s what I believe.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:08:21] And so, I did exactly that on this panel. And then, afterwards — and I laid it out. I told them like, “These are the things that are wrong here, and these are the things that you need to fix to make this all work.” The mayor’s wife, Debbie Mason, came up to me and said, “I love what you had to say. Let me introduce you to the Mayor.” Introduced to Mike Mason, who is still currently the mayor of Peachtree Corners. And we started this series of breakfast, and it was really just me unloading on him all the ideas that I had that he should go do.

Michael Blake: [00:08:48] That sounds like your dream conversation.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:08:50] Absolutely. Like, “Let me tell you everything you should do, and I’m not going to do any of it. You execute it, and I’m going to just cheer from the sidelines.” But by the end of that, he was basically going, he’s like, “Well, obviously, I want you.” And it wasn’t obvious to me. “Obviously, I want you to come in, and help with this thing, and help start it up.” And so, I actually have never told him yes. I told him no a bunch. I even went to his house and told him no because I was busy at Georgia Tech at that point. And somehow, still, I ended up managing to be involved with this thing and helping found it.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:09:21] So, that’s how that whole thing happened. And I’ll tell you, it’s been a great experience. The city — it’s a non-profit. Prototype Prime is a nonprofit, standalone. The city funds it. So, funds the budget every year. And they let me do a lot of crazy things. I believe a few things strongly about Atlanta that we’ve got great art, great music, great film, great startups, great corporates, great non-profits, but these things don’t talk to one another.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:09:44] And I think that’s a challenge in almost every city out there where you have got these great silos of stuff, but they don’t cross-pollinate. And so, if anybody is out there in another city, if you’re thinking about what you can do better for your city, it’s trying to figure out ways for that to happen, that cross-pollination happen.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:00] So, one of the things that I did is I engaged with Atlanta artist to come and do artwork on the walls, right. So, when we started, it was a depressing building. It was white walls everywhere, very echoey, nobody was there. And now, there’s a lot of artwork. People walk in and they feel the energy. They feel the vibe of the place. And it’s been great for us. That’s not the right answer for every place, but it was the right answer for us.

Michael Blake: [00:10:23] So, when you were telling the mayor of Prototype Prime and-

Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:28] Peachtree Corners.

Michael Blake: [00:10:30] Sorry, Peachtree Corners, what they needed to fix what, were some of the top three or four things you thought needed to be fixed and done differently?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:39] Yeah. One of my top things was, and still is, is transportation. So, we’re in Gwinnett County. We have MARTA. The closest MARTA stop is Doraville, which is maybe a 10 or 12-minute ride.

Michael Blake: [00:10:52] It’s closer to me in Chamblee than it is to you in Peachtree Corners.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:10:55] Right, exactly. Now here’s the thing. So, there is a Gwinnett County bus, that is in Tech Park, that will take you to Marta. So, I said it’s a 10 to 12-minute ride by car. It will take you over an hour on that bus.

Michael Blake: [00:11:07] And you just had a referendum, unfortunately, on joining MARTA. And it was surprisingly strongly defeated actually.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:15] Yeah. There’s a lot of discussion about that, and why that happened, and the timing of it, and all these kinds of things but-

Michael Blake: [00:11:20] Read the editorials in ajc.com for that.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:23] Right, exactly. But I think that will eventually change down the line because the makeup of Gwinnett County is changing. And it’s the largest county in the Metro area, and there’s so many jobs, there’s so many people commuting in and out of that county that if we’re going to actually fix and address the transportation issues across Metro Atlanta, it’s got to involve Gwinnett County and be a part of that puzzle.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:11:42] So, that was one of the major things that I told them that needs to be it. But the other parts were we’re really kind of being engaged with the startups and really helping out in a lot of stuff. So, one of the things that I asked them to do is something that passed in the City of Atlanta where we did this thing, or the City of Atlanta did this thing where the business licenses for early stage startups are waived for the first couple of years. And so, that’s an ordinance in the City of Atlanta.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:11] I think it’s absolutely great. I think all of the cities and municipalities in Metro Atlanta should pass the same exact thing. I asked the Mayor and the City Council of Peachtree Corners to pass that. They basically took the text of the City of Atlanta ordinance and passed it as well.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:24] So, that was one of those things like, okay, I understand you’re going to do this, and you’re going to put money behind it, but you’ve got to show more of that support than just, “Hey, we set up this thing, start companies, and have them be here,” right. It’s got to be that whole messaging. And a couple hundred dollars a year is really not going to change the calculus of a startup failing or succeeding, but it sends the message.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:12:46] And so, right along with that, having City Council folks and the Mayor in the space, around the space, just around, even if they’re not meeting with teams, it’s important because it sends that message that this is something that they care about, and this is something that they support.

Michael Blake: [00:13:01] Now, you mentioned the geography. And geography is important everywhere. But Atlanta has a strange geography. There’s this emotional barrier of our Ring Road 285.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:11] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:13:11] You feel like you need a passport to kind of cross over. I sold my company and joined a firm that’s up in Alpharetta. So, I live inside the perimeter now. I occasionally commute outside the perimeter. And the thing you don’t realize until you do it, and you probably do know this, I’m sure you know this, is that it’s actually very different communities. Like if I go to startup events in Buckhead, Midtown, the usual suspects, you know most of the people in the room.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:39] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:13:39] Alpharetta, I know two people in a room full of a hundred. And until you do that, you don’t realize how different those communities are, and how important that geographic segmentation is.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:13:51] Yeah. And that kind of goes back to that same idea of we need these things to cross-pollinate, right. As a metro city, we’re not going to continue to improve our startup community unless those communities are cross-pollinating, right. I mean, we should be able to go into an event in Alpharetta or wherever and know more than two people. That’s not good.

Michael Blake: [00:14:12] Yeah. And yeah, that’s right. So, you’re trying to fix this a little bit now with Prototype Prime. Other than the geographic location and the message you’re trying to send, what are some of the other differentiating features in your mind?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:14:26] Yeah. So, number one, it’s a nonprofit. So, my view on this was this is not something that is associated with me as a name. This is something that I’m building to be a long-term asset in the community. So, I often talk about as of this year, the 81-year plan. How do we get to the year 2100 with what we’re doing right now? I don’t really care about the next couple of years. I really care about Prototype Prime being around at the turn of the next century and still helping people.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:14:57] So, that is my focus. I have a concern about other facilities in and around town, and even across the US that are these for-profit places. I don’t really know that they’re going to be around at the turn of the next century. Is Prototype Prime going to be? I don’t know. I hope so. That’s what we’ve been building for. And that’s the message that I keep sending that we’re focused on the year 2100. So, we’re trying to make decisions that are based on the long-term, not on the short-term with the space.

Michael Blake: [00:15:25] And how do those kinds of decisions differ? How would a decision maybe you’re faced with, if you’re thinking of a five-year horizon versus a 2100 horizon, what’s the difference?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:15:38] Yeah. So, I think part of it is being a nonprofit. That builds in that idea that this is going to pass from hand to hand. It’s not going to start with a founder. And then, when they’re tired of it, it’s going to shut down. This is definitely going to live on.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:15:51] The other part of it is some of the moves that we’ve made. So, recently, we got granted $1.8 million by the Federal Government to buy the building that we’re in. We were leasing it from a landlord, which was not the city. We, now, own that building completely. So, 25,000 square feet owned by the organization. So, it has a home. It’s not going to go away from that home, or maybe down the road, it well when it sells that building and moves into another building.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:16:15] Alongside of that, we’ve been forging these partnerships. So, we’re building this advanced autonomous test track. So, a vehicle test track, 1.4-mile loop inside of Tech Park, where vehicle companies can come and test out their vehicles on this dedicated track that is dedicated, but it still interacts with the public. So, there’s that interaction. Alongside of that, Sprint is coming in and doing a 5G deployment inside of Tech Park, starting from our building. So, it’s called Curiosity Lab. And that’s an opportunity for this next stage of startups to be able to use next-generation communication technologies.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:16:50] So, it’s trying to build in all of these things that really create an excitement. And the fact that we’re in Tech Park, which used to be the hotbed of telecom, kind of, innovation in Atlanta that’s kind of gone away, but we’re trying to bring it all back. So, it’s not just telecom. It’s a bunch of other things. It’s vehicles, it’s software startups, it’s all of these things. And hopefully, they’ll graduate from our place, and then move close by, and so we can still be involved with them.

Michael Blake: [00:17:15] So, a common theme that I can hear from, at least, the Sprint and the car track exercise is that those are prototyping resources.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:23] Yeah. Essentially, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:17:24] What do you know, Prototype Prime, prototyping resource.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:27] Right, Prime being the first place that you do your prototype, right. That’s your call.

Michael Blake: [00:17:30] Is that deliberate? Are there other prototyping resources as well, maker spaces, things of that nature?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:17:35] Yeah, exactly. So, we’re one of only two spaces – the other one being a TDC in Atlanta – that has a design and development lab. So, we’ve got a lab. We’ve got a handful of teams that use that lab. One of them has grown tremendously with us. Trellis started with two people. They’re now, I think, 16. And they build all their products in our lab. So, we’ve got 3D printers. We’ve got soldering stations. I mean, you name it, we’ve got it.

Michael Blake: [00:18:01] So, I want to come back to this 2100 description because I think that’s fascinating. So, I’m going off script a little bit. The typical space model is you help a company for some period of time.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:19] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:18:20] And then they “graduate”, right?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:22] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:18:22] You slash encourage them to leave, kick them out, whatever.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:25] Yeah, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:18:27] Is the fact that you’re, kind of, designed for longevity from day one, does that mean that that part of the model changes too, or maybe you’d love it if a company stayed there for 10 years?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:37] Yeah. So, no. We don’t want companies to stay there for long term.

Michael Blake: [00:18:41] Okay.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:18:41] Really, the goal is to help them early, early stage when they’re just fledgling companies, get them to the point where they’re starting to scale. So, our three tag lines are dream it, build it, scale it. That’s what we help entrepreneurs do. So, dream it when they’re just starting out, figuring out what to do. Build it when they’re starting to build their company, and then when they’re starting to scale. But as they start to scale, that’s the time for them to get pushed out.

Michael Blake: [00:19:01] Okay.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:19:02] So, we actually had one team, that was our second team in. So, Trellis was our first team in, grew from two people to 16 now. Our second team in site grew from a single founder to, now, I think, it’s about 18 or 20 people. And they were actually getting to the size where I was starting to talk to them about it’s going to be time to leave soon. And the founder said, “Yeah, we’re not going to leave.” And I said, “”No, no. I’m not kidding. I’m serious that you guys are just getting too big.” And this was only when we had the downstairs. And so, they said, “No. We like it here too much. We don’t want to leave.”

Sanjay Parekh: [00:19:35] And so, with the upstairs, City Hall used to upstairs, and they left, that opened up the possibility for us to take over the upstairs. So, we ended up taking a third of the space upstairs dedicating it to them. And so, we have a different relationship with them now. But I think that was a one-off. I don’t think we’re going to do that again. When they leave in a couple of years, that space is probably going to get reclaimed and be just regular startup space that people are coming in, there for a little while.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:01] My plan has always been three to four years, at the most, that we would hold onto a team. We want teams to graduate from us, and then move on to the Atlanta Tech Village, Switch Yard, Flat Iron, Strongbox, Atlanta Tech Park — Park Tech — Tech Park Atlanta. Tech Park Atlanta.

Michael Blake: [00:20:20] Yeah.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:20] Yeah. I always get that confused, 22TechPark. Like any of those places. The Alpharetta. Any of those places. We really view ourselves as the early, early stage. And we’re going to help the companies get their feet under them and get going, so that they can graduate to these other places. And the other places don’t have to worry about the viability of those teams. They know that they’re going to come in. They know what they’re doing. They’re going to continue to grow. And they’ll probably, at some point, outgrow those spaces as well. But I think that’s good.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:20:49] And the reason why we view ourselves that way is that, again, to that 2100 view, this was an area that I saw was lacking, and all of those places that I mentioned are run by friends of mine. And I didn’t ever want to compete with friends of mine because we have so many challenges and every city has challenges. Like why try to compete over the same things over and over again. Figure out something new and something different. And that’s what we decided to do with Prototype Prime.

Michael Blake: [00:21:16] In that respect, it’s like Startup Riot and Startup Lounge all over again, right?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:19] Yeah. No, exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:21:19] We need to be careful that we weren’t marginalizing somebody else inadvertently.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:24] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:21:24] Because the goal for both of our organizations was put ourselves out of business-

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:28] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:21:28] … which, thankfully, we did.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:29] Yeah. Exactly, yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:21:30] So-

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:30] Although everybody still keeps telling me that they wish that Startup Riot would come back. And I tell them that that boat has sailed at this point.

Michael Blake: [00:21:37] I have to say the same thing about Startup Lounge.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:39] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:21:39] But everybody wishes it would come back, but they also wished that I would do it. And that’s not happening.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:44] Yeah. I say the same thing. I’m like, “Yeah, if you want to do it, I’m happy to give you all the stuff. I got stickers still. I would cheer you on.”

Michael Blake: [00:21:52] We’ll give you the nuclear launch codes to the website, everything.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:55] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:21:55] No, man, I got too much stuff going on.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:21:56] No, no, no, I’m too busy. I e-mailed 3000 people saying, “Who wants take it over?”

Michael Blake: [00:22:01] I remember that.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:01] Crickets.

Michael Blake: [00:22:03] I remember that. And that’s the evolution of the market.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:08] It is. And truth to be told, like you know this as well, events are hard to do. And I don’t blame anybody for not taking it up because it’s a painful exercise, and I don’t wish that on anybody.

Michael Blake: [00:22:19] Yeah. I mean, you got to love it. And neither of us got paid for it either.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:24] No, exactly. Yeah. Labor of love for both of them.

Michael Blake: [00:22:26] Definitely. So, where does Prototype Prime fit, in your mind? It doesn’t sound like it’s really co-working space. Is it an accelerator? Is it an incubator? Is it a hybrid? Is it something else? Maybe the distinction is not meaningful. What bucket would you put it into?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:22:45] So, we call ourselves an incubator. So, to me, an incubator is a place that helps companies like this but doesn’t put money in. To me, an accelerator is a place where you have a structured program, as well as money that’s going in as an investment.

Michael Blake: [00:22:59] Okay. So, GT Flashpoint, for example, was an accelerator.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:03] That’s an accelerator.

Michael Blake: [00:23:04] Because they had money in the wings kind of for-

Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:05] Absolutely, absolutely.

Michael Blake: [00:23:06] Okay.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:06] Yeah. And it might not be money that’s directly from the program, but it might be a side fund, which is what Flashpoint was. And I don’t know if that’s changed now. But Atlanta Tech Village, to me, is more of a co-working space than it is an incubator-

Michael Blake: [00:23:21] I agree.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:22] … or an accelerator. So, for us, an incubator is that we’re still pretty heavily involved with teams. So, we’re around, we’re meeting with teams. I was just there yesterday chitchatting with a handful of teams, talking about their problems, giving them ideas, things like that; whereas, in a co-working space you don’t necessarily have that.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:23:39] And all of these though, you do have the serendipity, the casual kind of interaction that ends up happening. You’re running into folks and you might find the aha solution to whatever problem you’ve been struggling with. So, that’s, I think, the benefit of doing any one of these. But as an incubator, I think we’re a little bit different. We don’t have a deadline that says, “You’ve got to get out by then.”

Michael Blake: [00:24:00] Right, okay. So, what kinds of companies do you think incubator — I’ll focus on incubator and accelerators. What kinds of companies you think do best in those kinds of environments?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:13] Yeah. So, for an accelerator, they usually have a target kind of market niche that they can help with. So, I would focus on that. Incubators are, often, the same way as well. So, we are a hardware and software incubator. We are not a lifestyle business incubator or anything else like that. So, if you’re starting up dry cleaning stores or barbershop, you should not come to Prototype Prime. We are not going to be able to help you. And it’s not that we don’t love you, it’s just that we don’t have the skills to help in that environment.

Michael Blake: [00:24:38] That’s not your thing.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:39] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:24:39] You don’t know anything about running a dry cleaning business.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:40] No, not at all. I have no idea. I don’t know the issues you’re going to face or anything else like that. Your best to go to a place where you’re served and helped by people that understand your space. So, that’s, I think, number one that you should think about.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:24:55] The other thing is that somebody that’s actually willing to be coachable and listen to feedback. All the feedback is not going to be dead-on accurate. You’ve got to figure out for yourself what’s right and wrong, but you’ve got to be, at least, open and willing to listen to it.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:10] And I’ll give you an example. I was interviewing an entrepreneur just not too long ago. So, we screen all the companies coming into Prototype Prime to make sure that, first of all, we’re a good fit for them, that we can help them with the things that they’re working on, but that they are also a good fit for us, that they’re going to be somebody that we want to have in the space, that makes sense, that we’re going to actually be able to help because they’re listening.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:31] This particular entrepreneur, I said something, they only had a handful of customers. and I said, “You know what? I think what you need to do is probably go out, and get some more customers first, and drive revenue before you start deciding to build custom products because I don’t know that you necessarily know what your customers want.” Well, this ticked off the entrepreneur, stood up halfway through the meeting. At that point, shook my hand, and said, “Well, thank you very much.” And stormed out of the meeting.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:25:56] That’s not the right personality. Even generally, if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to have a thick skin. People are going to call your baby ugly. That’s just what it is. And so, you’ve got to have that conviction. You’ve got to have that understanding and that drive to be able to take it, and take that criticism, prove them wrong, but do it in a way that doesn’t burn bridges either. Like that entrepreneur, if he ever asked me for help, I’m going to be like, “Yeah, no.” Because I’m not going to introduce somebody like that to somebody I know and burn the bridge that I might have with them.

Michael Blake: [00:26:26] All right. I got to share this story with you.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:30] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:26:30] So, as you know, I’ve done office hours for a decade or so.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:34] Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Blake: [00:26:34] And years ago, a guy came and wanted my opinion on his business. In fact, I didn’t say it was even a baby, it’s more of like a wombat. I mean, they’re just so far off in left field. And he was upset, got up, left, and didn’t even paid his check. I wanted him to cover his check.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:26:54] Okay.

Michael Blake: [00:26:54] And then, about six months later, I got a handwritten note. And basically, he shut down his business. And he wrote me a note apologizing, had a $20 bill in it, cash, and said, “I’m so sorry. You were the one person who was honest with me. All my friends and family were cheerleading because they thought I was the supportive thing to do. They would have helped me more had they said my baby was really a wombat. And I wouldn’t waste all this time and money.” So, sometimes, you get that sort of delayed gratification, but for people that invest so much, it’s so hard for them to hear that.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:33] It is.

Michael Blake: [00:27:35] And maybe the first time somebody has ever said that to them.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:37] Right, absolutely. And I always try to be honest with entrepreneurs, and probably just like you, in a nice way.

Michael Blake: [00:27:43] Yeah.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:43] Right. We’re not going to do it ruthlessly, but-

Michael Blake: [00:27:46] We don’t go Simon Cowell on them.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:27:47] Exactly. But we try to do it in a way that is helpful to the entrepreneur because I agree with you. And this is why I always ask people when I do presentations or anything else, I want you to tell me what I did wrong. That’s all I care about. I don’t want to know how I did right because, obviously, I tried my best. I wouldn’t have come here and done anything if I wasn’t trying my best. So, I want you to tell me all the wrong things.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:10] And I think a lot of times, people need that permission from you to be able to tell you what you did wrong. But that’s generally what I do. That’s did on that panel for Peachtree Corners. I’m going to tell you what I think is wrong, like what you’re going to mess up on, and what you’re messing up on right now because that’s the only way to get better.

Michael Blake: [00:28:28] So, you’ve had a long entrepreneurial journey.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:32] I think you just called me old.

Michael Blake: [00:28:34] Nope. You called yourself old. You’ve had a long and storied entrepreneurial journey. And a lot of these places just did not exist back in ’07, ’08, and the ATL

Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:45] Yeah, yeah/

Michael Blake: [00:28:47] How would your journey have been different? Wouldn’t it have been different if there had been things like this available back when you were a pup?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:28:54] Yeah, I think it absolutely would’ve been different. I remember starting my first company. So, I came up with the idea for Digital Envoy in ’99, went full time in 2000. There, basically, was nobody as a mentor for me. There was nobody to learn from. Went to a few events that were technology-oriented around town, but they were basically wall-to-wall service providers just trying to sell me stuff. There was nobody trying to actually help.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:29:19] And so, I think, from kind of the capital of perspective, if there had been places like this, my costs would have been a lot less. I probably could have raised a lot less money, and been a lot more effective. But on the other side of it, I think I could have gotten to a point of solving things and getting the right answers quicker.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:29:39] I’ll give you an example. It’s kind of a minor example, but when we had our first office, me and my two co-founders, we’d never started a company before. This is the first -time starting a company. I was, at this point, 20 — having our first office, 25 years old, 26 years old, something like that. And a guy from the Better Business Bureau came in to sign us to operate. We’re like, “Oh, yeah. We’ll sign.” It was free. So, we’re like, “Yeah, sure. We can do that.” And so, he’s filling out the paperwork right there, and then he asked us – and we’d been in this office for a couple months at this point – “So, yeah. So, where’s your business license?” We’re like, “It must be in the mail. We haven’t got any yet. It’s in the mail. We’ll let you know that once we get it.”

Michael Blake: [00:30:19] Of course, you have business license

Sanjay Parekh: [00:30:21] Yeah. So, that very same day, our CFO ran to the City of Duluth and got our first business license because we didn’t know we needed one. Nobody tells you that. And look, it was a minor issue, even if we’d gotten caught and fined, it probably wouldn’t have been that outrageous. But, still, it’s those little things that just helped you along that process and speed you up in terms of making things happen that had we been in a space like that, we would have just not had to worry about some of those things. We wouldn’t have to worry about which accounting firm are we’re going to go with, or which law firm are we going to go with, or who do we use for X, Y, and Z, or how do we do benefits. Like all of that stuff would’ve been solved, and all that stuff is just the cruft garbage stuff that you have to do in starting a company, but it adds no value. It’s not the thing that you’re around for.

Michael Blake: [00:31:08] It’s like stock options valuations.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:09] Yeah. You’ve got to do it, but it doesn’t add any value.

Michael Blake: [00:31:15] No, it does not. I mean, it’s a distraction.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:17] It is, absolutely.

Michael Blake: [00:31:19] So, one last question. I know we got to get you out of here. I know you got some other stuff you got to do today, as you always do. But I want to ask you one other question, as a new — I don’t know that it’s a new concept but a new term called a colliding space. Have you heard that term before?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:33] I’ve heard that term people talk about. Yeah. Serendipity, collisions, and things like that. I don’t know exactly what a colliding space is and how that’s different from a co-working space, but I think all of us are essentially built for that.

Michael Blake: [00:31:47] Yeah.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:47] I was at Prototype Prime yesterday and randomly happened to see – you might know – CBQ, Charles Brian Quinn, with Greenzie, the robotic lawnmowing company.

Michael Blake: [00:31:56] I know of them, but don’t know him.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:31:58] Okay. So, CBQ has been around Atlanta for quite some time, and I was surprised to see him there. He was like, “Oh, yeah, we’re going to be doing some,” because we’ve got the autonomous advanced vehicle stuff. It’s like, “We’re going to be doing some autonomous lawn mowing alongside of all that.” I was like, “That’s kind of cool,” right.

Sanjay Parekh: [00:32:17] And having those random collisions. And then, I saw he was meeting with the Trellis team, which is monitoring water usage for farmers in their crop fields. And so, having those kind of serendipity, kind of collisions happening, I think, that’s a great thing. That’s a great thing for Atlanta. It’s a great thing for any city. And so, if governments are listening to this, anybody that’s in a municipality, if there’s one thing that you want to try to help do is create those collisions between people that are doing innovative stuff because you never know how they might be able to help one another.

Michael Blake: [00:32:49] So, we’re just about out of time, but we, obviously, can have a three-hour conversation on this, and then some. But if somebody wants to ask you a question, maybe follow up, can they reach out to you? And if so, how best can they contact you?

Sanjay Parekh: [00:33:02] Yeah. The best place always, for me, is on Twitter. So, I’m @Sanjay, that’s S-A-N-J-A-Y. I’m pretty responsive on Twitter. You can @ me, and my DMs are open, so you can private message me if it’s something you don’t want to plaster publicly on Twitter.

Michael Blake: [00:33:17] Okay. Well, very good. That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I’d like to thank Sanjay so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us.

Michael Blake: [00:33:25] 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 decision when making it. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider leaving a review through your favorite podcast aggregator. That 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.

Sonja Smith, Fotopia, and Sallie Boyles, Write Lady Inc.

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North Fulton Business Radio
North Fulton Business Radio
Sonja Smith, Fotopia, and Sallie Boyles, Write Lady Inc.
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Host John Ray, Sallie Boyles of Write Lady, Inc., and Sonja Smith of Fotopia

Sonja Smith, Fotopia

Sonja Smith, Fotopia

Sonja Smith is the Director of Sales, North America, for Fotopia. At Fotopia, they design easy to use software application exclusively for SharePoint and Office 365 that enhance its features and functionalities. With the Fotopia Viewer application, you can scan, view, edit, annotate, and redact data on documents from within SharePoint allowing you to collaborate with internal and external teams securely.

Fotopia also solves transactional content management challenges. Fotopia Capture will allow you to scan 50,000 pages a day of transactional data, such as invoices, employee files, and finance directly to SharePoint.  With Fotopia Discovery, the Search and Retrieve application provides access to your data in the blink of an eye so you can find the right document, at the right time, to make the right decisions.

If you’d like more information, you can reach Sonja at (404) 806-7496 or go to www.fotopiatech.com.

Sallie Boyles, Write Lady Inc.

Sallie Boyles, Write Lady Inc.

Combining her marketing experience and writing talent, Sallie Wolper Boyles launched Write Lady Inc. in 2003. Based in Atlanta, Write Lady provides freelance ghostwriting, copy writing, journalism and editing services to a wide assortment of clients—aspiring authors, creative and PR agencies, website developers, publishers, business and nonprofit executives, professionals and entrepreneurs—wherever they happen to be.

You can read her blog, learn more about her services, and contact Write Lady Inc. via www.writelady.com or connect with Sallie Boyles through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallieboyles/.

    

 

 

 

 

“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.

To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow: Episode 9, Lyme Disease

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North Fulton Studio
North Fulton Studio
To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow: Episode 9, Lyme Disease
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Dr. Jim Morrow, Morrow Family Medicine, and Host of “To Your Health With Dr. Jim Morrow”

Episode 9, Lyme Disease

What causes Lyme Disease? What about chronic Lyme Disease? What is it about some treatments of chronic Lyme Disease that should be concerning?  On this episode of “To Your Heath,” Dr. Jim Morrow addresses these questions and more. Dr. Morrow also talks about why he maintains ownership of his practice and what that means for his patients.

Dr. Morrow’s Show Notes on Lyme Disease

  • Today, I am going to talk about Lyme Disease, and before I am finished, I suspect that some of you will be shaking your heads and changing the dial, metaphorically at least.
  • Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, is the most common tick-borne illness in the United States.
    • Transmission occurs primarily through the bite of an infected deer tick.
    • Lyme disease cases are concentrated in the Northeast and upper Midwest, with 14 states accounting for over 96% of cases reported to CDC.
    • Georgia has had cases of documented Lyme disease but the numbers are very low.
    • Identification of an erythema migrans rash following a tick bite is the ONLY clinical manifestation sufficient to make the diagnosis of Lyme disease in the absence of laboratory confirmation.
    • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a two-tier approach using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay initially, followed by the more specific Western blot to confirm the diagnosis when the assay samples are positive or equivocal.
      • This is a tremendous point of conflict among patients. The test reports a series of positive or negative “bands” that correspond to possible infection.
        • In order for the test to be POSITIVE, you MUST have FIVE or more positive bands. This is due to cross-reaction or false positive results on any one band.
        • Very often, when we get these results back, 1-3 bands are positive. I have seen too many times when the patient, or even on occasion, the clinician, made the diagnosis of Lyme disease based on this.
  • This is just wrong and is completely unfair to the patient. And it can make the patient vulnerable to the mountain of information available that would make them believe that they could someday have what has been labeled as “chronic Lyme disease”
  • The treatment of Lyme disease is determined mainly by the clinical manifestations of the disease.
  • Doxycycline is often the preferred agent for oral treatment because of its activity against other tick-borne illnesses.
  • Preventive measures include
    • avoiding areas with high tick burdens,
    • wearing protective clothing,
    • using tick repellants (e.g., DEET),
    • performing frequent body checks and
    • bathing following outdoor activities, and
    • instituting environmental landscape modifications (e.g., grass mowing, deer exclusion fencing) to reduce the tick burden.
  • Although there is controversy regarding treatment of post–Lyme disease syndrome and chronic Lyme disease, there is no biologic or clinical trial evidence indicating that prolonged antibiotic therapy is of benefit.
  • Symptoms of early Lyme disease usually begin one to two weeks after a tick bite (range of three to 30 days)
  • There are three well-recognized clinical stages of Lyme disease, and clinical manifestations are different at each stage.
  • As many as 80 percent of patients develop the characteristic erythema migrans rash, which may be confused with other similar conditions.
  • Erythema migrans is classically reported as a single lesion
    • most commonly appears as a uniform red oval rash with average size of about 7-8 inches. It can be as small as a couple of inches.
  • Approximately 19 percent of Lyme rashes are a “bull’s-eye” rash. So, if you are basing the diagnosis only on a bulls eye rash, you could easily miss this.
  • Multiple similar rashes may occur in up to 10 to 20 percent of patients.
  • Associated symptoms are similar to a nonspecific viral illness and often include fatigue, malaise, fever, chills, myalgia, and headache.
  • Following this initial stage, the bacteria disseminate systemically via the lymphatic system or blood.
  • With untreated disease, the most common sites of extra-cutaneous involvement are the joints, nervous system, and cardiovascular system.

Stages of Lyme Disease

  • Early localized
    • Erythema migrans – (typical rash)
    • Virus-like illness (e.g., fatigue, malaise, fever, chills, myalgia, headache)
  • Early disseminated:
    • Cardiac (e.g., atrioventricular block)
    • Dermatologic (e.g., multiple erythema migrans lesions)
    • Musculoskeletal (e.g., arthralgia, myalgia)
    • Neurologic (e.g., lymphocytic meningitis, facial nerve palsy, encephalitis)
  • Late
    • Arthritis (can be one or multiple joints)
    • Neurologic symptoms (e.g., encephalomyelitis, peripheral neuropathy)
  • These are associated with a positive test for Lyme disease

Chronic Lyme Disease

  • Symptoms attributed to Chronic Lyme Disease are chronic pain, fatigue, neurocognitive, and behavioral symptoms
    • Clinicians who subscribe to the idea that chronic Lyme is a real entity will misread, either intentionally or through ignorance, the lab tests for Lyme disease.
    • Too often, they will explain to the patient that the only treatment for their symptoms is long-term antibiotic treatment with or without some other very involved, complex and almost always wasteful treatment THAT ONLY THEY CAN PROVIDE.
    • Perhaps the most recognized and contentious facet of this debate is whether it is effective, appropriate, or even acceptable to treat patients with protracted antibiotic courses based on a clinical diagnosis of CLD.
    • Patients and their families spend an unbelievable amount of money every year on these treatments. Thousands and thousands of dollars are wasted and just handed over to unscrupulous physicians who prey on the hardship of others.
  • The dialogue over CLD provokes strong feelings, and has been more acrimonious than any other aspect of Lyme disease.
    • Many patients who have been diagnosed with CLD have experienced great personal suffering; this is true regardless of whether Lyme infection is responsible for their experience.
    • On top of this, many patients with a CLD diagnosis share the idea that the medical community has failed to effectively explain or treat their illnesses.
      • In support of this patient base is a community of physicians and alternative treatment providers as well as a politically active advocacy community.
      • This community promotes legislation that has attempted to shield CLD specialists from medical board discipline and medicolegal liability for unorthodox practices, to mandate insurance coverage of extended parenteral antibiotics, and most visibly to challenge legally a Lyme disease practice guideline.
      • The advocacy community commonly argues that Lyme disease is grossly underdiagnosed and is responsible for an enormous breadth of illness; they also argue that the general scientific and public health establishments ignore or even cover up evidence to this effect.
      • A large body of information about CLD has emerged on the Internet and other media, mostly in the forms of patient testimonials and promotional materials by CLD providers.
      • This volume of information can be confusing and difficult to navigate.
    • The concept of CLD has for the most part been rejected. Clinical practice guidelines discourage the diagnosis of CLD and recommend against treating patients with prolonged or repeated antibiotic courses.
      • National and state public health bodies agree with this rejection of CLD.
      • Within the medical community, only a small minority of physicians have accepted this diagnosis: 2.1%
    • Many patients referred for Lyme disease are ultimately found to have a rheumatologic or neurologic diagnosis.
      • Rheumatologic diagnoses commonly misdiagnosed as Lyme disease include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, degenerative diseases of the spine.
      • Some patients are found to have neurologic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, demyelinating diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, neuropathies, and dementia.
      • Some CLD advocates have argued that these various conditions are simply manifestations of Lyme disease, but these hypotheses are unable to be proven.
      • There is no evidence that these conditions are related to Lyme infection at any time.
    • Bottom line on chronic Lyme disease is that there is just no science behind it. No study has ever shown a definitive link between these vague symptoms and Lyme disease.
      • The only information even found with the infamous Google search is found on non-medical sites. Websites of any scientific value (those reporting actual scientific studies) reveal NO DATA supporting chronic Lyme disease.
      • The symptoms of chronic Lyme can sometime be explained by other REAL disease processes, but more often than not, these symptoms are just the symptoms of life. They can happen to anyone and do happen to a huge percentage of people in the everyday living of life.

(Information included in these notes comes, in part, from the American Academy of Family Physicians website at www.aafp.org.)

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

Inspiring Women, Episode 1: Are Your “Nevers” Your Opportunities?

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Inspiring Women PodCast with Betty Collins
Inspiring Women PodCast with Betty Collins
Inspiring Women, Episode 1: Are Your "Nevers" Your Opportunities?
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Betty’s Show Notes

The “nevers” became my opportunities once I chose to consider them. Why do we say “never” first?

1) Youth and inexperience
2) Lack of confidence
3) Easy is easier
4) No guidance
5) Fear is paralyzing

My “nevers” included:
Never going to use my accounting degree.
Never going to be a CPA.
Never going to be the employer, content with being an employee.
Never going to merge.

My “never” became “Maybe, OK, Probably” and finally “Yes” due to influencers and facing my challenges.

What are your challenges?
Do you value who you are – no one will ever value you as much as YOU
Are you leveraging your uniqueness?
Are you paralyzed by fear?
When and how you do say NO – that is not a never!

“Nevers” just may be your opportunities.
Be more aware of the people in your life. Ask more questions versus acceptance.  No one will value you more than you. Paralyzed by fear, you will miss your moment.  Leverage your uniqueness, it is your journey.

“Inspiring Women” Podcast Series

“Inspiring Women” is THE podcast that advances women toward economic, social and political achievement. The show is hosted by Betty Collins, CPA, and presented by Brady Ware and Company. Brady Ware is committed to empowering women to go their distance in the workplace and at home. Past episodes of “Inspiring Women” can be found here.

Show Transcript

Betty Collins: [00:00:06] So here I am 30 years later and I’m a shareholder and a director of a CPA firm. We’re regional with about 20 owners. We hover in that area. Probably 150 plus employees. I’ve been elected to the board of directors in my company by my peers. And then a year ago I was appointed to be lead of one of our offices. So we have four of those people in our office. But the fun thing probably the energy that fuels me to do what I do is I get to direct a Women’s Initiative. 60 percent of our employees are women in Brady Ware.

Betty Collins: [00:00:56] And so it’s not about entitlement, it’s about empowerment. So that’s why I get a lot of energy from that. I love what I do every day. Probably what makes the “Why” for me is I’m a business owner advising business owners. I wish I would have had that a long time ago in my own life as a small business owner. So it’s really my passion because I believe that the marketplace is huge and the business community plays a role in making sure that employers have employees who are families and households. And so I get to do that every day. And then I get to give back. I support a really great organization, the WSBA, which is about women in business. Small, accelerating, moving along. And then I’m the president elect for NAWBO, which is the National Association of Women Business Owners. And the Columbus chapter is the largest in the country. So that’s 30 years later. So I go “Wow, how did I get here? Why am I here?”.

Betty Collins: [00:02:04] And here’s my story. And really it comes down to all the “Nevers.” Everything I said never to really became my opportunity. And if it would have not been open after I said “Never” I would have never been where I am right now. So what I want to do is is kind of go back 30 years ago and talk about the process of those “Nevers.”

Betty Collins: [00:02:30] You know I’m a practical thinker. My world is really small which a lot of us live in. But the greatest thing along the way was others saw in me what I didn’t see. And that’s a good thing. And it’s a bad thing. But I’ll talk about that later. But generally I would start a sentence “I would never do that.” Now any time I say never I go “I shouldn’t be saying never. What am I missing?”

Betty Collins: [00:02:56] My “Nevers” were this. I was never going to be an accountant. Even though I had a college degree to do that. I was never going to get a CPA. It was “Who cares about that? Right?” I don’t want to take a test and go through all that agony. Let alone own a CPA firm or stay in public accounting or now go to a big company merge into a company. Every one of those things I said no to. Never an accountant. Never a CPA. Never an owner. And never going to merge. And those four things were the catalyst to all my opportunities.

Betty Collins: [00:03:34] So “Never” going to use my accounting degree. I chose accounting because I had to choose a major. It was not a passion. It was a good way to get a job, right?! Fortunately, I did find that when I was 50 that accounting can be passionate and I can be passionate about what I’m doing. I definitely see that in my two kids who at 20 chose college majors because it’s what they wanted to do in life. I didn’t do that till 50. So I took the first job, of course, that’s offered to me. Now I have a job and I have that paycheck every two weeks. And it took me to an upstate New York town called Rochester. And I loved it. Except I was a Buckeye at heart and want to be back in Ohio. So I came back. And how I came back was, my neighbor of my parents owned a CPA firm and said I can give you a job tomorrow. But I go I don’t want to be an accountant. But I need a job to get back to Ohio. So my second choice was that I would come and be an accountant. But I said I’m only staying for a while. This is not what I want to do. So no passion, no dream, everything was logical. Those types of things.

Betty Collins: [00:04:40] So I came back, started working there and I actually kind of liked it. But I was “Never” going to be a CPA. He challenged me over and over to do and I didn’t want to do it. And then he moved on and another owner came into play. And he said, “You act like an owner, why wouldn’t you be one?” I said, “Well, I don’t want to be a CPA.” I didn’t really want to be an accountant. I’m “never” going to be a CPA because I “never” want to own the company. And so he made me a great offer and said, “You act like an owner. I’ll make you one immediately if you just get your CPA.” How do you turn that down? Because most people had to have clients and build rapport. I didn’t have to do that. So I said okay fine, I’m going to be an accountant for a little bit longer and I’ll go get my CPA and maybe become an owner. And so in 2009, I became that owner. And for 10 years we built an amazing business. I was content. It was a good thing.

Betty Collins: [00:05:38] Well then people started calling saying “Hey, would you like to merge?” Of course I “never” going to merge. I’ve got a nice little gig. I know my next 10 years. I live in a small world. Remember I’m a logical person. And so I said this is what I’m going to do. I don’t want to merge. So my partner at that time said I think you need to meet Brian Carr of Brady Ware. I said bring him on. I will be glad to meet him. I’ll see what he’s like. And we immediately had this synergy.

Betty Collins: [00:06:08] And so I said I guess I could merge. I mean, if I can be a CPA and I can own a business, I guess I can merge. And so that’s what I did. So it was those “Nevers” that was like “Wow.” But I didn’t want the pressure of making payroll. I just wanted to be paid. I didn’t want to take risks. That isn’t comfortable for me. And I wanted to work for clients not find clients. That’s two very different things. So all of this went against my little small world. All of this went against the things I didn’t think I wanted to do. But yet I started this podcast with “This is what I’m doing today.” So I’m certainly glad that I now can look back and think if I would have said never and stuck with that I would not have this opportunity that I have right now.

[00:06:58] So you have to go. What are the things I’m saying “Never” to? And I don’t care what age you are. Because the “Maybe,” the “OK,” the “Probably,” and finally the “Yes,” may really just turn into something that’s amazing.

Betty Collins: [00:07:14] So how did that happen for me? Because I look at this as I just evolved into this and now hindsight shows me this along the way. So I want to make sure people know you don’t have to go and evolve and hope it all works out. So influencers are the biggest thing about your “Nevers.” Because there are times you need to say no. There are times it’s just absolutely no.

Betty Collins: [00:07:41] But I have great influencers. So Jane Davis was probably really my first mentor. And she, in the 70s, went through things, like divorce, when it wasn’t popular. And she married a guy named Randy Nipps. He was the first accounting firm that I worked for that merged into Nipps Brown Collins, eventually Brady Ware. But Jane was a big huge influencer. And when you look at the influencers right now in your life. what are they influencing you in?

Betty Collins: [00:08:12] So my first boss was Austin Swallow, who showed me that integrity and faith could be drivers and you could still be a business person and make money. So it’s all OK.

Betty Collins: [00:08:24] The second one was Randy Nipps who showed me the value of your employees. You don’t have that, you can’t continue to grow, you can’t grow at all. They’re your biggest asset.

Betty Collins: [00:08:36] Gary Brown showed me loyalty and focus. Those are the things that drive you to next levels. And he had a passion for his client which are people with disabilities. That was always the underline of everything he did.

Betty Collins: [00:08:49] And then Brian Carr, who is now the CEO I work for. He’s a person of vision. He’s always thinking about something bigger and that there’s always more. And I worked for each one of these men. And I was always the “Never.” And they were going you need to say yes. So I was lucky that I had that. They saw in me what I didn’t see. And while that’s all sounds great, what if I would have seen it? Then I could have had maybe a little more control of my destiny. Not that I needed to but you have to look back and ask that, right? So if I would just say yes on my own instead of yes to maybe what somebody else was saying I should be, I might have gone further and farther. I don’t know. So I look at that and say great, I had these influencers and these were the different things. However, I needed to see in me that I could do this. They saw it. But there were challenges with like anything in any career. And now I want to make sure that people don’t go through the challenges, the things that I went through.

Betty Collins: [00:09:55] You have to value who you are. It can’t be somebody else valuing you. You have to do it. You have to leverage your uniqueness. I’m surrounded by experts. I’m surrounded by technicians. I’m surrounded by people with really big careers. Yet I have things that they don’t. Which is I’m very personable and very passionate. I make sure I find the right technician because they’re everywhere. And I have a relationship with a client because I’m a business owner helping business owners. And I can see that the business marketing community has to have us in order to have those households that form communities. So I have a uniqueness of looking at things differently.

Betty Collins: [00:10:44] Paralyzed by fear will get you nowhere, even if you say yes to your opportunity. When I first came to Brady Ware, the first day I was downtown in my big office I could see The Scioto Mile on one side and the Capitol on the other. And I had the same computer, the same mouse, the same software, the same employees. And I sat there having no idea what to do. I was paralyzed by fear because I’m surrounded by experts and big career and now I’m in a big company. So I said yes but yet I’m paralyzed for the opportunity. So I left that day knowing what to do, which was go to lunch. And I went to lunch and I came back, because I talked to my husband he said, “This is your moment don’t miss it. Are you kidding? This is your moment.” So I didn’t. I did not let fear paralyze me once I said the “Yes.” And so again the opportunity came out. But there are times you have to understand there’s a “Yes” which promotes the opportunity but there’s “No” which means you didn’t go down the wrong path. And sometimes you just need someone to help you understand which ones those are.

Betty Collins: [00:11:51] So hopefully what your takeaway is today from the things of my story to you, because we all have a story, is “Nevers” just may be your opportunity. So take a mental note of when did I say never today. Or just even how many times you’ll say “Never” and “No” in a day. You’ll be surprised.

Betty Collins: [00:12:13] You have to be more aware of the people in your life, the influencers you are with right now. How are they influencing you? Are they the things you really believe? Are they the things that want to drive you? I mean I had great people of integrity and loyalty and vision and big picture. You have to ask more questions before you accept something. And women don’t do that. They just accept the circumstance. Men always ask questions.

Betty Collins: [00:12:39] No one will ever value you more than you. Don’t let somebody dictate your worth. And don’t let somebody take advantage of what you’re worth. Because they will.

Betty Collins: [00:12:51] Don’t be paralyzed by that fear, because you’ll miss your moment. And others saw my value and directed my path. My next 10 years I’m directing my path and I’m never going to say never. Ha. It’s a mindset. I only want opportunity if I choose to take it.

Frazier & Deeter’s Business Beat: Scott Ballard, Northside Anesthesiology Consultants

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Business Beat
Business Beat
Frazier & Deeter's Business Beat: Scott Ballard, Northside Anesthesiology Consultants
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Dr. Scott Ballard, Northside Anesthesiology Consultants, Jen Portilla, Frazier & Deeter, and Roger Lusby, Frazier & Deeter, on “Business Beat” presented by Alpharetta CPA firm Frazier & Deeter

Show Summary

Dr. Scott Ballard of Northside Anesthesiology Consultants joins Frazier & Deeter’s “Business Beat” to talk about managing the growth of his practice, the business challenges in medicine today, and recruiting physicians for a growing practice. This inspiring story of business success is brought to you by Alpharetta CPA firm Frazier & Deeter.

Dr. Scott Ballard, Northside Anesthesiology Consultants

Dr. Scott Ballard, Northside Anesthesiology Consultants

Dr. Scott Ballard is the Chairman and a practicing anesthesiologist at Northside Anesthesiology Consultants.  Northside Anesthesiology Consultants (NAC) is one of the largest anesthesiology groups in the country.  By the end of the summer we will have 75 anesthesiologists and nearly 170 anesthetists.  NAC covers all three of the Northside hospitals as well as about 18 surgery centers.  NAC partnered with a large corporate partner in late 2015, now known as Envision.  Envision is the largest employer of physicians in the country.  NAC is the sole aneasthesiology provider in the Northside system.

 

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.

Roger Lusby, Managing Partner of Alpharetta CPA firm Frazier & Deeter

Roger Lusby, host of Frazier & Deeter’s “Business Beat,” is the Alpharetta Office Managing Partner for Frazier & Deeter. He is also a member of the Tax Department in charge of coordinating tax and accounting services for our clientele. His responsibilities include a review of a variety of tax returns with an emphasis in the individual, estate, and corporate areas. Client assistance is also provided in the areas of financial planning, executive compensation and stock option planning, estate and succession planning, international planning (FBAR, SFOP), health care, real estate, manufacturing, technology and service companies.

 

Find Frazier & Deeter on social media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frazier-&-deeter-llc/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FrazierDeeter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/frazierdeeter

Past episodes of Frazier & Deeter’s “Business Beat” can be found here.

 

North Fulton Business Radio

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North-Fulton-Business-Radio-Collage640x360As the recognized “Voice of Business” in North Fulton, host John Ray features the area’s top business leaders, who offer their insights and success stories.

Broadcasting Live from the North Fulton Business RadioX ® studio located inside Renasant Bank.

 

Decision Vision Episode 15: Data Security – An Interview with Charles Hoff, Data Security University

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Decision Vision
Decision Vision
Decision Vision Episode 15: Data Security – An Interview with Charles Hoff, Data Security University
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Michael Blake, Host of “Decision Vision,” and Charles Hoff, CEO of Data Security University

Data Security

How big is the problem of hacking worldwide? How do I protect my business? If I experience a data breach, what should I do? In this edition of “Decision Vision,” Charles Hoff, CEO of Data Security University, answers these questions and more in an important conversation with “Decision Vision” host Michael Blake.

Charles Hoff, Data Security University

Charles Hoff, CEO of Data Security University

Charles Hoff is the CEO and Co-Founder of Data Security University. Data Security University (DSU) provides its clients with its innovative Security to the 6th Power platform.  The platform enables organizations, along with their SMB customers, franchisees, and government agencies, and vendors, to seamlessly receive and manage 1) Data Security and Privacy Regulation education/training;  2) Financial Calculation of specific data security exposure;  3) Security Risk Assessments;   4) Vulnerability Scoring;  5) Immediate Customized Action Planning to significantly mitigate exposure, and 6) Connection to the most reputable Managed Service and Data Security Technology providers.

Charles is very proud of the fact that Data Security University has helped business operators throughout varied industries understand and take action to better safeguard their organizations from devastating data security breaches.

Although Charles has traveled the world extensively, he took advantage of the excellent schools close to his hometown of Atlanta, having received his BA from Emory University, JD from UGA Law School and EMBA from Kennesaw State University. Charles and his wonderful wife Eileen are proud to call both Atlanta and Charleston, SC their homes. Charles and Eileen’s greatest joy emanates from their family consisting of their adult children and son-in-law – Alex, Mallory, and Ben.

Michael Blake, Brady Ware & Company

Mike Blake, Host of “Decision Vision”

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 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: [00:00:01] Welcome to Decision Vision, a podcast series focusing on critical business decisions, brought to you by Brady Ware n& Company. Brady Ware is a regional, full-service accounting and advisory firm that helps businesses and entrepreneurs make vision a reality.

Michael Blake: [00:00:20] 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’re discussing the process of decision making on a different 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: [00:00:37] My name is Mike Blake, and I am 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’re 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: [00:01:03] Today, we’re going to talk about data security. And helping us out today as Charles Hoff, CEO of Data Security University. DSU was established just over four years ago with the mission of demystifying the regulatory and contractual obligations of small and medium-sized businesses to comply with data security standards including NAST, PCI, DSS, and GDPR. And I’m sure we’ll find out what those things actually mean in the interview.

Michael Blake: [00:01:30] DSU’s commitment to communicating in plain English while delivering engaging patent-pending products resonated with business operators who had very little time to learn how to keep their customers’ business, personal, and credit card data secure. Data Security University’s unique products deliver interactive education while assessing an organization’s security vulnerabilities and providing a tailored action plan for data protection.

Michael Blake: [00:01:54] Data Security University’s customers recognize the shorthand for this approach to educate, calculate, assess, score, action plan, connect to experts. In addition, they’re able to leverage Data Security University’s cybersecurity, PCI, and GDPR assessment tools to benefit from its backend big data analytics, while marketing their own related security products and services.

Michael Blake: [00:02:19] Although Charles has traveled the world extensively, he took advantage of the excellent schools close to his hometown of Atlanta, having received his bachelor’s degree from Emory University, his law degree from the University of Georgia Law School, and his executive MBA from Kennesaw State University. Charles and his wife, Eileen, are proud to call both Atlanta and Charleston, South Carolina their homes. Charles and Eileen’s greatest joy emanates from their family consisting of their adult children and son-in-law Alex, Mallory, and Ben. And on a personal note, first of all, Charleston has an awesome town. I love it every time that I go there.

Charles Hoff: [00:02:52] Ain’t it great?

Michael Blake: [00:02:52] When I grow up, I got to retire there.

Charles Hoff: [00:02:54] It’s a special place.

Michael Blake: [00:02:56] And Charles and I have known each other for a long time. It’s got to be at least 10 years.

Charles Hoff: [00:02:59] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:03:00] I don’t think that I’ve met an attorney who smiles and laughs as much as you do. And in a nice way, not a sort of rubbing-your-hands-greedily certain way.

Charles Hoff: [00:03:08] I appreciate that.

Michael Blake: [00:03:09] But in a very good natured way. I find that it’s just a joy to talk to you. So, thanks for coming on.

Charles Hoff: [00:03:18] Thank you, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:03:18] I really appreciate that.

Charles Hoff: [00:03:18] It’s always great to see you.

Michael Blake: [00:03:20] So, you’re a recovering attorney. When we last did business together, we’re involved in a litigation case involving a restaurant chain.

Charles Hoff: [00:03:28] Right, right.

Michael Blake: [00:03:29] I don’t do litigation anymore. I don’t think you do. Do you do law anymore? Do you practice law?

Charles Hoff: [00:03:33] Not anymore. No. I just leverage my legal background.

Michael Blake: [00:03:35] So, you’re completely out of the practice of law entirely?

Charles Hoff: [00:03:37] Yes, yes.

Michael Blake: [00:03:38] So, what led you to chuck all that and get into data security education?

Charles Hoff: [00:03:45] Great question. The funny thing is, Mike, that the common thread in my entire career has been data security and fraud. My 20 years at Equifax, a lot of friends kid me that I was doing ID theft and fraud before it was cool, but that was the beginning. And then, when I became General Counsel for the Georgia Restaurant Association and saw all these restaurants experiencing these tragic security breaches, and many of them going out of business, unfortunately.

Charles Hoff: [00:04:15] And the National Restaurant Association knew my background, and they said “Gee, we have 300,000 plus members that are suffering these terrible breaches. They don’t know how to comply fully with payment card industry, data security standards. Can you help them? Can you consult? Can you train? Can you help?” And I said, “I would be happy to do so.”

Charles Hoff: [00:04:37] It was very old school at the time. I went around the country making speeches, doing the whitepapers, even webinars. But one thing I found with very technical material like this, people’s eyes glaze over. And they have only so much. I mean, these are very successful. And at the time it was restaurant tours We, of course, branched out considerably. But they have very important jobs to do, and they only have so much time where they could focus on something other than their operations.

Charles Hoff: [00:05:06] So, the genesis of the company was I had a very good friend, I still do, who was one the top guys in Web MD, one of the first guys in. And he said, “Gee, make it engaging. Make it as entertaining as possible and get them through it as quickly.”

Charles Hoff: [00:05:22] And so, that’s really what started. And that’s how we got into it. And after I started doing it, I realized, “Gee, I so much better enjoy this than I did handling class action suits,” which even though is against the bad guys when you had breaches, still, I loved this process. We’re in a very quick and an easy fashion. We do demystify and help in terms of remedying it.

Michael Blake: [00:05:47] That entertaining part, I’m going to go off script for a minute because I haven’t really heard this elevator pitch for that. Entertaining part is important, right, because you want to get your kids to eat their vegetables, but there’s nothing wrong with putting over the sauce on them.

Charles Hoff: [00:06:01] Right, exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:06:02] If that’s what it takes to eat the vegetables, right? If you’re going to have people go through that education, why not not make it a waterboarding session to get through, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:06:12] So true.

Michael Blake: [00:06:12] There’s no reason you can’t do that if you take the time and make the effort. It doesn’t have to be a yuck-yucksession. But it doesn’t sort of have to be Ben Stein and Ferris Bueller’s day off either, just, sort of, droning on in front of the audience, right?

Michael Blake: [00:06:25] Yeah, you’re absolutely right. I mean, it’s got to be user friendly. It’s got to be non-technical. And we take a lot of pride in our videos because even though, in some fashion, they may appear to be lighthearted, they really get to the very core, and they’re short, and people get through it, and they said, “Gee, that was a painless way of learning something that that was so incredible in terms of it normally being very dense but breaking it out in that fashion.”

Michael Blake: [00:06:50] So, how long is your typical video?

Charles Hoff: [00:06:52] You don’t want to make it more than three minutes if you can, if you can avoid it.

Michael Blake: [00:06:56] Three minutes, really?

Charles Hoff: [00:06:56] Typically. Sometimes, we go a little bit over but not much.

Michael Blake: [00:07:00] You can teach what you need in three minutes?

Charles Hoff: [00:07:01] You can give a nice primer. You could lay the foundation. And that’s what we try to achieve with the videos.

Michael Blake: [00:07:08] And so, in the way that you’re — I know I’m going off script, but this is fine. So, in the way that you model, do people pay by the video? Do they buy a subscription? How does that whole arrangement work?

Charles Hoff: [00:07:18] Yeah. You got a great question there. In terms of our business model, we really provide to sum for the many. We have a model, which we provide a license for our application. I’ll go into it in a moment, if you like, security of 6th power. But we have companies like Paychex, there’s some great Atlanta companies that we’re very proud to call our own as customers, INSUREtrust, and we have a number of them that you would know, Bluefin. And what they do is they license and white label or gray label our platform.

Charles Hoff: [00:08:03] And so, by virtue of doing that, their customers, their vendors, their franchisees – for instance, like Jimmy John’s Franchisee Association is a customer – they’re able to have access throughout the year, anytime they want, as many times as they need to the education, the training, and the risk assessment.

Michael Blake: [00:08:26] So, you said something in the intro here where you are in data security before data security was cool. Why is it suddenly cool now?

Charles Hoff: [00:08:36] Well, in terms of cool, this become something that has become a great occupation. And it’s funny, when I first got into this, there were very few law firms that even touched it. And, now, just about every reputable law firm has their own cybersecurity team.

Charles Hoff: [00:08:57] And it is so essential. I mean, it’s the greatest existential threat that small businesses have. And of course, even the large ones, for that matter, but it’ll take a small and medium-sized business into bankruptcy before you know it. And we can get into that, of course.

Charles Hoff: [00:09:17] And the frightening thing is that by 2021 they’re expected to have $6 trillion, that’s what the T, $6 trillion of losses attributed to cybersecurity breaches.

Michael Blake: [00:09:29] That’s a big number.

Charles Hoff: [00:09:31] It is. It was $3 trillion in 2015. This year, you’re looking at about $11.4 billion as a result of ransomware, which we can discuss as well. So, with those kind of numbers with, very frankly, national security, we’re into a cyberwar, at this point. It’s so critical to everything that in the way we live our democracy, our economy. And so, it’s a huge, huge issue.

Michael Blake: [00:10:03] So, I grew up with computers, I’m Generation X. And data security in the very early sort of the 8-bit Atari, Commodore, Apple era, it was really about pirating games, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:10:16] Exactly.

Michael Blake: [00:10:17] I’m getting a copy of Zaxxon or whatever.

Charles Hoff: [00:10:19] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:10:21] But now, it’s had to evolve. Then, we want to semi online data services like CompuServe, and Prodigy, and those guys. But even then, I don’t think data security is necessarily a big deal. It’s got to be that just everything now is just so connected, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:10:38] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:10:38] And it’s just dizzying. Probably, the average person, including myself, probably doesn’t understand just how exposed we all are.

Charles Hoff: [00:10:46] And that’s what’s so frightening really. And that’s what we try to do in just a short period of time. Again, going back to making it user-friendly, non-technical, and giving people a foundation as quickly as possible because there’s so much to it, and it is so dense, and complex that it’s so easy for people to just — I mean, you’re a technical guy, you know this stuff, but so many people just say, “Hey, look, I don’t have time for this. I’m getting confused,” and just throw their hands up. And you want to avoid that at all cost.

Michael Blake: [00:11:18] I mean, for me, the data security evolved for me as far as antivirus software, and antiadware, and things being loaded onto your browser. But it’s even beyond that now, right? I mean, that’s all well and good, but just knowing you have up-to-date virus software doesn’t mean your data is secure, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:11:41] That’s a start.

Michael Blake: [00:11:41] It’s a start.

Charles Hoff: [00:11:42] It’s a start, Mike, yeah. Then, you add to it penetration testing, vulnerability testing, VPN routers, the firewall, the point-to-point encryption, the tokenization, the EMV, which is the chip and pin, multi-factor authentication. The list goes on and on. But the good news is, the very good news is approximately 90% of all breaches can be avoided by just simple safeguards. It’s a matter of taking people, process, and technology. And in an integrated fashion, making it work. It doesn’t have to be as complicated as it initially sounds.

Michael Blake: [00:12:25] Yeah, that’s a great point. I’ve studied this a little bit and indirectly experienced it. I’ve done some studies on the value impact on companies of data breaches and what happens to them. And that’s beyond the scope of this conversation. But I clearly remember one of the incidents that was cited. I think it was a VA Hospital in Minnesota. And they had 4000 medical records exposed because some guy wandered off the street, asked the nurse if he could borrow a laptop, and she gave it to him, and just walked out with the laptop.

Charles Hoff: [00:12:59] Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:13:00] Right. That’s not a technical thing. If somebody asks a laptop, say no.

Charles Hoff: [00:13:04] Well, that’s exactly right. And what people forget so many times, and it get lost in technology, that approximately 90% of breaches are employee-related. I mean, they’re bringing in tablets, they got the mobile devices. they got the laptops. And, of course, so many are victims to phishing and spear phishing. And it just is an awful situation. As a matter of fact, the stats — and I’ll apologize for getting too much into stats.

Michael Blake: [00:13:36] No, I love it.

Charles Hoff: [00:13:37] They are very profound. They’re very sobering. If you look at a small business, the average amount of malicious emails and over 90% of ransomware come in through these malicious e-mails. You’re looking at nine phishing emails a month on average. So, if you’re a small company with 10 employees, that’s 90 times where it’s just with emails. Through guys, like a trusted source, trying to fool you.

Charles Hoff: [00:14:13] And look, it’s great if it doesn’t get through the firewall, or you got an email filter that’s working. But what it comes down to is employees have to be well-trained and understand that even though it looks like it’s coming from my CEO, and I need to pay attention not to click. And so, training is so very, very essential.

Michael Blake: [00:14:36] And point of fact, a dear friend of mine was a CFO of a nonprofit, and she lost her job because she fell victim to a spear phishing attack. Wind up invert. She thought that her boss had asked for tax returns of certain donors. She sent them. All of a sudden, that data is exposed, and she had to take the blame for it, and she was out. That was it.

Charles Hoff: [00:15:03] There’s too many war stories like that. Here in Atlanta, in the Atlanta area, there is a company where you had a CEO, a small company, but the CEO, I believe, he had to attend a funeral. The COO was going to a conference, an event. And, of course, everybody posts with social media now. So, it’s not difficult for the bad guys to really determine who your children or the names of your children, your wife, spouse, husband. And you had a situation where they, actually, did some spear phishing for the controller who was left in the office. It looked like it was coming from the CEO, the e-mail, saying that. “Look, I’m away at a funeral.” I’ll make up a name. “Fred is off to the conference. We’re doing a quick, quick acquisition, a small one. First, confirm that you got this e-mail, and that you’re aware that it’s coming from me. And just give me confirmation of that fact.”

Charles Hoff: [00:16:01] And she shouted right back. “Yes, Mr. Jones. And condolences in terms of the funeral.” And he said, “Well, thank you. Let’s go ahead, and I’m going to have a lawyer contact you. And so, we can get the wiring instructions because we need to make this happen immediately while I’m out of town.” And sure enough, she wired the money, $1.7 million.

Michael Blake: [00:16:24] And just spear phishing, for those of you who are listening or may not know, spear phishing is like a phishing attack, but is more targeted and sophisticated, and that the perpetrators are able to mimic somebody, usually, inside the organization that you would expect to receive an email from.

Charles Hoff: [00:16:43] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:16:43] So, it doesn’t look like a Nigerian gold scam or anything like that, but it looks like somebody that you trust. And in the case of my friend’s organization, I’m bias, but, to me, the organization was at fault because they’d never provided any training. She’d never heard of spear phishing before then. Nobody in the organization was. She just got unlucky, and the perpetrators got lucky. They picked on the right organization at the right time. Yes, she has some blame, but it was really that it occurred because there was a systemic failure.

Charles Hoff: [00:17:15] Unquestionably. And that’s why phishing, testing, simulation, it’s critical because it’s gone so sophisticated. And so, it’s very, very important to not only train but test constantly. And we want to do our partner, we provide that, and we even do a gamification to keep them incented.

Michael Blake: [00:17:35] And like so many things, the attacker only has to be successful once.

Charles Hoff: [00:17:45] That’s right.

Michael Blake: [00:17:45] And they may be attacking literally millions of times if they’re using bots of some kind, right? A small percentage gets through, but you talked about that nine-person firm, and the 90 things that get through, if you even have a 1% failure rate, that’s a disaster. If you have a a one-thousandth of 1% failure rate, it’s probably still a disaster.

Charles Hoff: [00:18:08] Absolutely. And, again, some more stories. Orthopedic Group, I understand they’re worth. I’ve heard figures like 150 million. They were victims. And they ended up selling their hospital for zero for $1 because their value had been taken all the way down because of all the personal records, the health records that were exposed or breached. I mean, look at the city of Atlanta. I mean, you had ransomware. It wasn’t that long ago. You know what that demand was for, by the way?

Michael Blake: [00:18:39] I don’t recall.

Charles Hoff: [00:18:39] It was $51,000. And the City of Atlanta refused it, which a lot of companies and entities do. And you can go both ways on whether they should or not. The FBI still recommends that you don’t, but a lot do. The end result, $17 million in recovery fees, another $5 million to build out the infrastructure that was damaged.

Michael Blake: [00:19:02] So, I’m a small business owner, I’m listening to this. I’m either reaching for scotch, or breathing into a brown paper bag, or maybe I’m doing both, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:19:13] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:19:14] As a small business owner, I mean, I don’t have the resources that a Home Depot. Even they even had a major breach. Target did. Almost everyone we can name probably has had one, or they’re going to the next five years.

Charles Hoff: [00:19:26] True

Michael Blake: [00:19:27] I’m a small business. What do I need to do? How can I, in some economical way, protect myself from just this onslaught of people that are trying to rip off my data and sink my company?

Charles Hoff: [00:19:43] Right. Well, the first listed really is to understand that even though you’re a small business, and you don’t think that maybe anybody’s targeting you, well, the fact of the matter is that the last statistics I’ve seen are 61% have actually been the target of the hackers.

Michael Blake: [00:20:02] It makes sense, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:20:03] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:20:03] You’re less likely to have protection.

Charles Hoff: [00:20:04] Well, that’s it. It’s because of exactly what you say, that they don’t have the resources. They are really lean. But so often, they don’t think that they’re exposed. And what really happens is that they call it, the hackers call it spray and pray, where they just really — it’s a shotgun type effect in terms of what they do with phishing and ransomware and see what sticks. And it just that’s where the opening and vulnerability just happens be with those small and medium-sized businesses. And unfortunately, they be they become a target.

Charles Hoff: [00:20:44] So, the first thing is to realize that there’s a good likelihood that you’re going to be breached. And then, do something about it. Be proactive. I’ve had too many clients, unfortunately, come to me after the fact where they become very knowledgeable that they’ve been breached and what they should have done. But this is the time to do it.

Charles Hoff: [00:21:04] And you start out with, first of all, doing an inventory of your sensitive data- healthcare data, personal data, a customer credit card data, where everything is kept and the systems what you have. And then, really, you have trusted certified professionals. And it’s part of what we do to connect with the most trusted in the field, the most reputable, because you can have a problem if you don’t go to the right people.

Charles Hoff: [00:21:33] But have them perform an audit. But you’ll be a partner with them, and understand what they’re doing, and then put together — again, going back to that people, process, and technology, and having an integrated layered approach, making sure that you have an incent recovery plan because you can’t make it up as you go. It’s like a crisis management. You’re in that crisis, you’ve got to move, you’ve got to have the playbook. And you need to have a recovery plan we’re getting back that data. And those are things that are so very critical in the equation.

Michael Blake: [00:22:12] So, let’s put ourselves in the seat of people that you were once very closely involved with a restaurant. Restaurants get $2 million of revenue. If they’re doing great, they’re clearing $100,000, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:22:29] Yeah. Yes.

Michael Blake: [00:22:30] Can those businesses afford to be secure realistically?

Charles Hoff: [00:22:33] Yes. Realistically, yes.

Michael Blake: [00:22:37] Okay.

Charles Hoff: [00:22:37] And that’s a great takeaway here, Mike. And that’s a good news because it doesn’t have to be that expensive.

Michael Blake: [00:22:45] Because I think about all these nerds coming in and doing simulations, and audits, and stuff, I mean, that sounds expensive.

Charles Hoff: [00:22:52] Look, it is with large enterprises, and when you talk about the assessments and analysis. And that’s why we focus. I’d like my legacy to be that I helped these small and medium-sized businesses avoid breaches because it’s an incredible loss when they get hit. And they don’t realize that there’s different ways it could happen. But if they’re using credit cards, they have an agreement with their merchant acquirers. And a lot of small and medium-sized business think, “I’m covered because I’ve got a great card processor, I got a great POS company behind me,” and they don’t realize that in the fine print of the merchant acquirer agreement, it stipulates that they have to be compliant with payment card industry data security standards.

Charles Hoff: [00:23:45] And you look at 12 pretty straightforward requirements, but there’s over 300 subcomponents. And if they fail, and they find out very quickly when they fail because when there’s a breach, the first thing they find out is there’s got to be a forensic audit, and there’s a select number of auditors that the merchant acquirer will allow to come in. It’s a very intrusive process. And that can add up to 6,000, 7,000, 8,000, 9,000, 10,000 a pop for each location. And then they find out, too, that the merchant acquirer contractually can freeze their accounts receivable, six figures.

Charles Hoff: [00:24:22] And I don’t know that many small to medium-sized restaurants and franchisees that can survive for any length of time having $100,000 or so. And then, there’s penalties and fees that the merchant acquirer can assess, charge backs, charges for re-issuance of cards, remediation, litigation comes into play, oftentimes. So, it’s no wonder that so many of these small and medium-sized businesses go out.

Michael Blake: [00:24:51] So, the short answer is, I mean, this is just a new cost of doing business, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:24:55] It is. It’s the reality. And even, sometimes, I hear with larger enterprises, we serve a good many larger enterprises that, of course, have a lot of smaller customers, and franchisee, chains, locations. And, sometimes, you’ll have where, “Gee, we’re going to get to this. We know it’s important.” But we have a couple of really high-charging executives that there’s revenue projects that the IT Department needs to work on first. And very frankly, we even had them, I’m not going to name the company, but we heard that, and they were breached before we could do anything for them, which is really unfortunate.

Michael Blake: [00:25:40] So, actually, that brings up another questions. So, let’s say somebody is listening to this too late, or they’re acting on it too late. I’m a small company, or any company. I guess that part doesn’t matter. And I discover that I’ve likely been breached. What do I do?

Charles Hoff: [00:25:57] Well, it depends on what kind of breach. But the first thing that they should do really is get in touch with an attorney who is proficient and expert in this field. A lot of lawyers aren’t. You want to call your merchant acquirer if it’s a card information, your POS provider, but law enforcement comes into play in a hurry. And you want to make sure, oftentimes, it’s Secret Service. Now, the FBI is taking even more responsibility.

Michael Blake: [00:26:27] The Secret Service, really?

Charles Hoff: [00:26:28] The Secret Service. Well, a lot of this really comes down to Homeland Security.

Michael Blake: [00:26:32] I guess so, yeah.

Charles Hoff: [00:26:33] And we’ll talk about it in a little while if you like, but they’re always looking to see if nation states are involved as well. So, in terms of law enforcement, normally, it’s not the locals, it’s the Secret Service and the FBI. They get involved. It’s that serious. And, of course, they have the expertise, and the capabilities, and resources to really do what needs to be done from a forensic standpoint.

Michael Blake: [00:26:58] Now, a lot of companies are putting their data into the cloud now. Small companies, I did when I had my own firm, I had everything on one drive.

Charles Hoff: [00:27:04] Right.

Michael Blake: [00:27:06] Should that give me any comfort that my data is any more secure that if we’re just sort of sitting around on a client computer or if I’m hosting my own server?

Charles Hoff: [00:27:15] Well, the answer is a qualified yes. I mean it’s — But I was with somebody the other day who said, “Well, I checked off that box. We should be good. We’re in the cloud.” Well, think about that. I mean, really, you need to make sure that, one, it’s a very reputable company. And you need to ask a lot of questions and take a look at that agreement because the way they look at it is it’s a shared risk. And, again, a lot of things, sure, you don’t have to worry about servers anymore and backups, but the same time, all those other things, the employee issues are still there. So, you have that.

Charles Hoff: [00:27:53] And these cloud servers are the targets of a lot of attacks because, naturally, there’s so many company information, so many companies involved with that that they’re a bigger target. And so, they get attacked. And I even heard of a situation to where there was an issue as to when a company, there was a dispute as far as payment paying to the cloud service provider, and the cloud service provider took their data. They said, “That’s ours. If you look at the contract that, it belongs to us now.”.

Charles Hoff: [00:28:26] So, it is risk sharing. It is something where I do advocate a cloud solution, but really do your homework, and make sure it’s the right one, and don’t kid yourself in terms of believing that once you do that, that your worries are over.

Michael Blake: [00:28:43] Right. Because somebody could still give away that laptop, but if it has access to your One Drive account-

Charles Hoff: [00:28:47] Precisely.

Michael Blake: [00:28:48] … it doesn’t matter, you still have that vulnerability.

Charles Hoff: [00:28:50] That’s exactly right, Mike.

Michael Blake: [00:28:51] So, what about insurance, is this a risk that you can purchase insurance against?

Charles Hoff: [00:28:59] Well, the answer is yes. And there’s some very good cybersecurity policies out there. And as you can imagine, more and more carriers have gone into this. Years ago, that wasn’t the case. Now, again, a caveat that you have to take a look very carefully at the wording of those insurance policies. I mean, they may not cover penalties. It may not cover forensic audits, attorneys’ fees. I mean, there’s so many different things that could be excluded, and you’re on your own, and you’re really having a problem.

Charles Hoff: [00:29:32] So, as a matter of fact, one of our clients’ customers, INSUREtrust, they are a pioneer in cybersecurity and security of 6th power, working with them to make sure that through their brokers, folks can really pay attention to that.

Michael Blake: [00:29:47] Are there certain kinds of businesses that tend to be more attractive targets or tend to be more vulnerable than others?

Charles Hoff: [00:29:54] Well, the answer is yes. First of all, we talked about the ones who are most vulnerable are the ones that aren’t paying attention and are doing what they need to in the way of safeguards. But as far as the vulnerable companies are concerned, I mean, look at — and it’s a little scary when you look at our power grid, utility companies, energy. I mean, now, they’re getting to the point where they’re really paying attention, and there’s new regulations. of course, governments, with this executive order last year that government agencies have to do assessments now. So, that’s the good news. But if you look at the sensitivity with government information, in South Carolina, there was a big breach a few years ago.

Michael Blake: [00:30:37] I remember that.

Charles Hoff: [00:30:38] Yeah. I think it was $3.8 million. I mean, excuse me, 3.8 million personal records.

Michael Blake: [00:30:42] Data records.

Charles Hoff: [00:30:44] … data records that were affected and compromised. And just think how powerful that information is. And a lot of times, these hackers, with a credit card information, there’s a short shelf life, and they have to really do what they can there in terms of fraud. But that’s not the case with our social security numbers, and date of birth, and we have children that will come of age, and more people start making money. And it’s a treasure trove.

Charles Hoff: [00:31:15] So, the government, unfortunately, has been vulnerable. Healthcare with that Anthem breach, remember that? That was, I believe, about 78 million people were affected by that. And right now, you have in America, one in eight Americans have had their health information compromised, which is very sobering. And a lot of people and a lot of commentators will tell you that the next big thing outside of ransomware is that — and everybody is watching to see these data aggregators, which have so much information, so much more than even Equifax, my old employer. And they have sensitive information.

Charles Hoff: [00:31:59] I mean, when you have information that deals with health, I hate to bring it up, but Ashley Madison with that breach, there were actually some suicides, there were some extortion.

Michael Blake: [00:32:11] They went out of business overnight.

Charles Hoff: [00:32:13] And you had where people actually were shamed because what was on. And then, you had people with healthcare items selling their medical records that they don’t want released. So, there is so much sensitivity, and there’s so much vulnerability to that kind of data.

Michael Blake: [00:32:31] And I speculate, but don’t know. I’m curious. Are companies that have electronic point of sale, do they tend to be more vulnerable than others just because those kinds of businesses, by necessity, have a front-facing, basically, portal to their data to the public? Is that fair to say?

Charles Hoff: [00:32:53] Well, yes. I mean, the good news is point of sale systems had gone better. But the thing that people don’t realize so many times, customers don’t realize, is that when they get the POS system they’re represented that, “Hey, this is PCI-compliant.” What they do after with that system may very well take it out of compliance. And it’s how you use them. You have employees surfing. I mean, there’s so many different ways that there could be an issue. It may not be the system itself but how the system is applied.

Michael Blake: [00:33:27] There’s a lot of talk about hacking of foreign origin. Most notably North Korea, Russia, and China. Is that accurate? Is most of the breaching activity indeed coming from abroad, or is that just sort of so much media attention, but there’s just as much coming domestically?

Charles Hoff: [00:33:54] No, that’s pretty accurate. I mean, we have our share domestically. But you have from abroad two different types. You have the nation state, where it’s actually the governments we’re talking about. You mentioned North Korea. Iran is part of that too and China. Of course, China is where we’re now on in terms of influence as far as IP. So, you have the nation states. And then, you have the individuals where, oftentimes, law enforcers are more lax.

Charles Hoff: [00:34:22] And it’s interesting that there are theories about why you have so many of these hackers, these individual hackers, or syndicates in Eastern Europe. And these other sites that we’re talking about. And some people speculate it’s because they have early education, heavy IT training in the lower schools, middle schools; and yet, they do not have a Silicon Valley and the type of opportunities in companies in the private sector to really take that skill and do something good and beneficial to it.

Charles Hoff: [00:34:57] And that’s not condoning in any way, but it’s just a theory as to why there may be so many out there focusing their attention. These are bright people. They could and should be spending their time doing something on the good side and making their money properly. And they probably make a lot given how bright they are.

Michael Blake: [00:35:15] Well, I guess, it goes back to the very old adage, right, “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.”

Charles Hoff: [00:35:21] True. Very, very true.

Michael Blake: [00:35:22] And I suspect, also, that a cyber criminal in Russia knows that they’re not going to be prosecuted-

Charles Hoff: [00:35:30] That’s right.

Charles Hoff: [00:35:32] … for hacking an American system.

Charles Hoff: [00:35:34] That’s exactly right.

Michael Blake: [00:35:35] They’re just not as long as-

Charles Hoff: [00:35:36] They could be a hero.

Michael Blake: [00:35:36] They could be a hero, right. They could get a medal, right?

Charles Hoff: [00:35:39] Yeah.

Michael Blake: [00:35:40] So, as long as our relationship with the Russians is the way it is, they can practice that with impunity. So-

Charles Hoff: [00:35:46] Unfortunately so.

Michael Blake: [00:35:50] One last question I want to cover before we wrap up today is about GDPR. There’s a lot of coverage in that in the media. It’s obvious that it’s a European data standard or data security standard. Can you talk a little bit about that? And at what point does a typical American business need to be concerned with that?

Charles Hoff: [00:36:15] Well, that’s a great question. GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation. And that came into effect last May. And, really, what you’re seeing here, and it is considered to be the biggest privacy change, a dramatic change in well over 20 years. I mean, now, parliament EU, the parliament passed this. And it’s a matter of law. So, it’s not just best practices or standards they have to require.

Charles Hoff: [00:36:49] And really, what’s fascinating about this, and I’m sure you read with Zuckerberg where he said, he’s been grilled, and Facebook executives have been grilled, shouldn’t there be a GDPR kind of regulation in the States? And he actually said that he would advocate for some form of regulations modeled after the GDPR. And what the GDPR and what the GDPR is all about is it really gives back to to individuals, to consumers the right to have some control and to manage their personal data.

Charles Hoff: [00:37:31] And it gets to the point where data subjects have the right to ask the company what information it has about them and what the company does with this information. In addition, data subject has the right to ask for corrections. They can object the processing, they get larger complaint, and they can even ask for deletion of the information.

Michael Blake: [00:37:56] So, this is a sea change. And it’s something that US companies have to deal with now, on two levels. One is that if you are, say, in the hospitality field, travel, software engineer, a marketing company wherein you have that kind of personal information on EU residents. Look, if you have a targeted website, and you do business with Europe, then you are affected by this. And it is something that is enforceable, and the penalties are incredible. You have where it could be up to 2% or 4% depending how egregious it is of the total global annual turnover, which, of course, is-

Michael Blake: [00:38:39] Revenue.

Charles Hoff: [00:38:40] Yes, yes, made by everybody else, or £10 million or £20 million, whichever is greater. So, you’re looking at something that really has teeth in it. And what you’re seeing now is you’ve heard of the CCPA, the California Consumer Privacy Act, which goes into effect beginning of next year 2020. They have modeled their regulations after the GDPR. And you’re going to see other states now take that up. You may end up with a patchwork of states doing that. And then, there’s a talk about the Federal Government doing a National Government as well.

Charles Hoff: [00:39:18] So, it’s something that is a lot of people are excited about. It’s going to change things dramatically. But the good news is that consumers, now, are going to have the ability to better control, and manage, and give consent to how data about them, personal data is being used, particularly if it’s other than what was obtained for, the purpose it was obtained for.

Michael Blake: [00:39:45] All right. So, we’re running out of time here, and we’re only scratching the surface. This is such a deep topic. This could easily be a one-week seminar, and where even then, we’re just getting started. If someone wants to contact you to learn more about this, maybe explore what their company’s needs are, how can they find you?

Charles Hoff: [00:40:05] We’d be delighted to talk to them. They could look at about.datasecurityu.com. And they can call me at 404-245-6751 or e-mail me at choff@datasecurityu.com. Be delighted to, this is my life, and delighted to talk, and however we can help.

Michael Blake: [00:40:31] Okay. Well, very good. That’s going to wrap it up for today’s program. I would like to thank Charles Hoff so much for joining us and sharing his expertise with us.

Michael Blake: [00:40:39] 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 is Brady Ware & Company. And this has been the Decision Vision Podcast.

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