A 360-View of Success | RSS.com
When you want to know more about the people in the stands, in the audience or online, you need a full 360-view. That’s where FanThreeSixty comes in. CEO Troy Tetzlaff joins the podcast to give us insight into their fan data platform, corporate culture, and how to speak up and be heard. In our marketing tip we are taking a look at whether you should be on every social media platform.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This Small Business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising & Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Troy Tetzlaff, CEO at FanThreeSixty. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
Should you be on every social media platform? It’s an interesting question and we have some thoughts. There are a ton of social media platforms out there besides the ones that we all know and love or know and hate. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, you know all those, and you may have accounts already on most of them, but there are also a million new ones in development all the time. That way, once I discover and start using it, my daughter can leave the platform because now it’s lame.
For your business, we want to protect your brand. So if you see some up-and-coming social media sites or even some of the giant ones, make sure you have an account on there that protects your brand name. But that doesn’t mean you need to be active and ever put any content out there. Small businesses don’t have the luxury of being everywhere. That takes time, that takes money. Even with platforms that publish across multiple social media sites at the same time, it’s a lot of time and attention to be there and know what people are saying about you and to you. So just don’t.
Pick the ones where your customers are right now. Those are the ones you should be paying attention to. When your ongoing customer survey work tells you that there’s a new one on the horizon that your customers are actually using, start to be there if it makes sense for your business. But don’t feel bad if you leave the others behind. Prioritize your marketing and focus on being where your audience is. And that’s our tip for today.
Welcome back to the show. I am here with Troy Tetzlaff. He is the CEO of FanThreeSixty. Troy, welcome to the show.
Troy Teztlaff:
Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here with you all.
Jeff Randolph:
The pleasure is all on this side of the table, really. Tell us about FanThreeSixty. What is FanThreeSixty? Give us an overview.
Troy Teztlaff:
No, what is FanThreeSixty? Our tagline is data fueled, results driven. So we’re mainly a data analytics company with data at the center. We help our clients in sports or live entertainment or venue management really understand their fans, their members, their patrons. And then help optimize things for their business, ticket sales, digital marketing. We offer many products, email, texting, mobile app to help them accomplish their goals but be more targeted, segmented for better results.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, you know, in targeting and segmenting, you’re speaking our language.
Troy Teztlaff:
I like that.
Jeff Randolph:
We do like the targeting and the segmenting here. Well, let’s dive into some of the insights that you give clients because you’re using real-time modeling and machine learning to give clients things like lead scoring and recency, frequency, monetary analysis, which is amazing. And to help understand the likelihood of renewing tickets. Tell us what you’ve been able to do for clients?
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, I think it really varies a lot by client. Some are very digital marketing focused. So it’s fan base growth, it’s engagement with the mobile app, and increasing those rates, day over day. Because we think it’s 365 days you should be on your mobile app, not just during the season.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, of course, if you’re a real fan.
Troy Teztlaff:
If you’re a real die-hard fan.
Jeff Randolph:
If you’re a real fan.
Troy Teztlaff:
We have categories for the real die-hard fan of course. But four times ROI for University of Kansas when they started using our solutions. So that was a really good result. We’ll do things very targeted as well. As an example, one of our clients was having trouble selling some tickets for a home game against an opponent. It was near Veterans Day. So they decided to use our information around likely veteran or active duty to help give them ticketing offers.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding.
Troy Teztlaff:
At the same time, they did use our last-minute ticket buyer algorithm. So we look at different factors of fans to help predict, are they a last-minute ticket buyer? So distance to venue, things like that. Are they engaged with the brand? And help them increase their ticketed sales with basically two email campaigns for $80,000. And that was things that we could accumulate for the team to make it so much more efficient for them. So that’s just one of those examples where if you can get the information organized in a way, have it presented for better decision-making, and also just to be a lot more efficient.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. Right. Well I can assume that the organization size has a lot to do with that. KU Athletics is huge and we’re talking about big numbers of ticket sales and you’ve got a good staff of people there to help support that.
Troy Teztlaff:
Correct.
Jeff Randolph:
But if you have a one-person ticket shop, they can’t possibly come up with a plan to deal with this kind of data and in an actionable way. But you’ve been able to do that.
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, exactly. For instance, one of our clients is United Soccer League. We work with the league and also individual clubs throughout the United States. One of the clubs just used a ticketing promotion, mobile-only offer for merchandise sales, and they saw a spike of $3,000 in one day for the merchandise sales. Now at the same time, that’s a nice number for them, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Sure, sure.
Troy Teztlaff:
But at the same time, they were targeting people who are active mobile users who had bought in the past, give them offers. And you get those kind of results.
Jeff Randolph:
Wow. It’s just activating their fan base because you know the data, you have access to the data and you’ve built an infrastructure around it.
Troy Teztlaff:
Correct.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s amazing. Special Olympics is a new client that you just picked up as well. Special Olympics of Kansas.
Troy Teztlaff:
That’s correct.
Jeff Randolph:
Friends of ours, friends of ours at EAG as well. Tell me about that, because they don’t have a ticketed price for that. So they don’t really know who’s in the stand or what’s going on around that.
Troy Teztlaff:
Exactly. When we initially had conversations with Special Olympics Kansas, it was very exciting to hear about their goals as an organization, the outreach, the connectedness. And as you bring up, better identifying who’s at their event? Is it athlete, is it volunteers? So they’re using our mobile app that we worked with them on and functionality within it, just a membership card. So now you can scan a membership card as you enter the venue, as you come in to volunteer, and now they know exactly who’s there, who showed up.
They can keep a history of it, they can do better outreach as far as volunteers that have volunteered two or more times. Have a better interaction with them, have a better experience, let alone their athletes. And understanding what athletes are highly engaged, showing up to multiple events, all those types of things. And then even goes to the parents and their friends and family. Yeah, it’s a pretty exciting partnership. We just got started earlier this year and we’re really looking forward to how we can leverage that at their events going forward.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, when you bring on clients like KU Athletics and Special Olympics at the same time, that says a lot about the product itself. But also I’ll transition this into the work hard, play hard piece because I know growth has had you hiring on a fairly regular basis. I look at your Facebook feed and I see that those great work hard, play hard moments like the skee-ball tournament or ping pong tournaments at an arcade or desk decorating contest, that speaks to culture, and we of course love hearing about the intentional building of culture. What is that, that culture you’re creating at FanThreeSixty?
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, culture is an interesting work because there’s so many facets to it. But just the work hard, play hard, at least for me, my job’s kind of to get out of the way. To set a direction, like what are the types of things that I think we should do as a team? Set the budget, have associates, our associates form a team themselves, help them come up with ideas. And then what we’ve been doing is having voting on those events.
And I think a big thing is doing something different and that appeals to our associates and is often a surprise. So we have an event coming up actually in a couple of weeks where we’ll get together at Up-Down, just after a company meeting in the morning, and then we will go have some fun, play some games, play some skee-ball. But I also think it comes down to a little bit of a surprise too.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah.
Troy Teztlaff:
One time last summer, and it just happened to be 98 degrees just like yesterday.
Jeff Randolph:
Just like it is around here right now.
Troy Teztlaff:
Yes. And we had an ice cream truck come in after a meeting and people didn’t expect it. It was like they were little kids again going up and getting their favorite drumstick. But that was something that I think helps build our culture.
And then it’s the behaviors, and you have to model behaviors. We believe really big in empowerment and bringing on great people, setting a direction, but then getting out of the way. Let the associates help develop that culture as well. And I think we got a really open, relaxed work, hybrid policy, work from home on a couple of days a week really helps as well. So give our associates the flexibility, but then they pay us back with the hard work as part of it.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, this sounds like everything that is ideal. Surprise and delight is a great way to go, whether you’re talking about your Facebook followers or employees. Well done.
Troy Teztlaff:
Thanks.
Jeff Randolph:
What is next for FanThreeSixty? Where do you go from here?
Troy Teztlaff:
I think what we’ve seen with our company as far as our clients, we’ve been focusing more on live entertainment venues. So I think one of our big clients are Nederlander Theaters, I can mention them. So they are live theaters throughout the West Coast, throughout the United States. They use our mobile app to help better understand their fans and digitally market.
I think you’ll see us start to push more into the entertainment space because the problems are still there, just like a University of Kansas football game, who’s in my venue? Those are the same questions they’re asking, how do I grow my base to go to come to my events? So I think we’ll push more into that area.
And then I think we’re always looking for the next innovation to help our clients plan things. So instead of focusing on how do I optimize ticket sales for one game? Could be what are the 10 strategies I need to use to optimize ticket sales for my whole season? And using data and trends to help predict and give ideas instead of just starting with zero.
Jeff Randolph:
Absolutely.
Troy Teztlaff:
So we’re really looking forward to innovating in that regard from a product perspective. And I think that’s going to help us position ourselves differently of really helping our clients plan, execute things with data at the base.
Jeff Randolph:
Outstanding. That’s everything I’ve wanted to know about FanThreeSixty. I think it’s time to go into the lightning round.
Troy Teztlaff:
I like it.
Jeff Randolph:
So that we can figure out more about you and what drives you and all of that kind of stuff. Are you ready for that?
Troy Teztlaff:
Let’s do it.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay, here we go. You have no way to know anything that we might possibly talk about in this one. And I’ll start out with, you are a former chemist.
Troy Teztlaff:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Master’s degree in organic photochemisty. What should the rest of us know about photochemistry that we don’t already know?
Troy Teztlaff:
That is very interesting question. Chemistry is everywhere we look, right? And I think instead of giving the chemistry Ted talk, what I will do because the viewership may go down.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m going to a ten-minute photochemistry set here.
Troy Teztlaff:
But I can talk about how I use my skills from being a chemist in every day at work and in life. And I think what drew me to become a chemist was the problem-solving aspect. Helping fix things, experimenting like, “Let’s try this.” But having a reason and a thought behind it, coming up with a plan. And I think I brought that to my business career and it’s something that I use every day at FanThreeSixty. It’s we shouldn’t wait for everything to be perfect, but let’s have a plan and a thought.
Jeff Randolph:
How outstanding, yeah.
Troy Teztlaff:
And then let’s experiment and then let’s look at the results and adjust.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, because you were a research scientist at little startups like Pfizer and Procter & Gamble.
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, small companies.
Jeff Randolph:
Were you working on anything exciting for that? There was one guy that we came across who invented Tide PODS basically.
Troy Teztlaff:
Oh, wow.
Jeff Randolph:
And you just go, “Whoa, hey, you’ve done some things.” Were you working on anything exciting at those places?
Troy Teztlaff:
There was a couple big projects I was on. One was helping make Xalatan, which was a glaucoma medication at the time. It was a billion dollar drug at the time. But what was interesting is the doses was so small, you made it only once every 18 months.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, wow.
Troy Teztlaff:
So we were responsible for making that one time.
Jeff Randolph:
Basically, the same product.
Troy Teztlaff:
So to be mixing something up in a big vat and know it’s worth a billion dollars, it was kind of stressful. But then also is optimizing a lot of processes to make drugs. You’re probably aware of allergy medications like Flonase, things like that. So it was a really great time in my career, I learned a lot. But also I think it strengthened my understanding of what I wanted to do in the future. And I think that’s a career lesson for anyone, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Troy Teztlaff:
How do you use your skills to then push yourself forward?
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. How does this lead you to that? And I’ll come back to FanThreeSixty for a second. What is your sport? Do you have a sport?
Troy Teztlaff:
I love to golf.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, perfect. Perfect.
Troy Teztlaff:
I don’t know that I’m a great golfer, but I love to golf. And then my secondary one is baseball. I love the Royals and I love that sport.
Jeff Randolph:
Gotcha. Good low handicap kind of golf or just a weekend warrior kind of golfer?
Troy Teztlaff:
I’m a single-digit handicapper that sometimes can get around there and other days it’s like I never golfed before.
Jeff Randolph:
I see you. I see you. I see you.
What is your favorite social media platform?
Troy Teztlaff:
Favorite social media platform I think is Instagram. I’m a little bit more visual and I also like the fact of being able to see aspects of a brand or a person, not just in the words, but what they portray through pictures in their vision.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, outstanding. I know there’s a connection to soccer through the company founder, Cliff Illig. Kansas City is going to host a few early-round World Cup games in a couple of years. First, soccer, yes or no? Are you a fan? You follow or don’t follow?
Troy Teztlaff:
I definitely am a fan. I follow. Second quick answer is no, I don’t have a line on tickets, just in case you’re wondering.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s appropriate. Thanks for heading that one off. I do appreciate that.
Given the world that you live in at FanThreeSixty and understanding crowds and the way things work, what is Kansas City in for? Do you have any prediction about what happens when we host some World Cup games coming up?
Troy Teztlaff:
Boy, that’s a really large question. I think it’s going to be so exciting for the metro area. It’s going to put us on the map like we’ve never thought before because now we’re going to be on a world stage. And also the hosting, training sites for whatever teams get selected, I think is going to be so influential for the future of Kansas City as well. And putting our best foot forward as a region is going to be an amazing, I think an amazing point for us to build on as a metro going in the next decade.
That’s what I’m most excited about. We’re going to have so much activity from a fan activity in Kansas City around the metro. There won’t be a person that won’t be touched by the World Cup when we host it here.
Jeff Randolph:
Absolutely. When we hosted the World Cup in 1994, I lived in Chicago for about three weeks during that summer where I just lived there. That was where I went, and at an extended-stay hotel place. Everything’s crowded, but Chicago deals with that. For me, it was the pickup games of soccer where you just go to a random field and there are just a million different people out there who don’t know each other and somebody’s got a ball. And you go, “All right, you guys and us, and here we go. Let’s make this happen.”
Troy Teztlaff:
The common game, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Nobody spoke the same language. You just go crazy and have a great time.
Troy Teztlaff:
Right. It’s very cool.
Jeff Randolph:
Should be fun. Should be fun. When you think back to the path that got you to this point, was there a teacher or coach or mentor who gave you some business or life advice that you’ve really taken to heart and you remember all the time?
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, no, I’ve been very fortunate throughout my education and career to have great mentors. I think what was always amazing to me, looking back on it, was the greatest mentors are right place, right time for you, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Troy Teztlaff:
To give you certain guidance. I can remember it was my transition from being a chemist into the business world, and my boss was always also my mentor. And he reflected to me, “Troy, you have great ideas, but you’re not talking enough. You’re not bringing it up. Be more assertive in a professional way because people need to hear your ideas.”
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, outstanding.
Troy Teztlaff:
And it was one of those things that was a great step forward for me because I could think through, “Oh, I’m going to come up with a great plan.” But if you don’t share it, people don’t know, right? It’s a very common sense thing, but being a new person in business, having to earn your stripes. But at the same time, if you don’t communicate, I always say, “If you don’t communicate to your boss what you want, how are you ever going to get it?” And I think that’s something that I learned from that. And also then focused on, “Hey, is this the time where I can help and bring ideas up and discuss it?” And I think it just pushed me in a different direction.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s great life advice.
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah. So that really helped me in my career and helped me with that transition.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, outstanding life advice. Yeah, you should follow that all the time. And right advice, right time, and it’s given us little things like Flonase, which I’m probably on right now. So thank you very much for that.
Troy Tetzlaff, I’m taking you out of the lightning round. Well done. You’ve survived that.
Troy Teztlaff:
Thank you so much. It was touch and go.
Jeff Randolph:
There’s nothing to it. Nothing to it at all. Let’s see. Tell everybody where they can learn more about FanThreeSixty and you and where would you send people?
Troy Teztlaff:
Yeah, so we’re all on the socials. It’s FanThreeSixty, one word, all spelled out. You can find us on Twitter, LinkedIn. And also our website, www.fanthreesixty.com. Just been upgraded and it’s a really good experience, and I think you’ll be able to quickly learn what we’re all about. Perfect.
Jeff Randolph:
Troy Tetzlaff, CEO at FanThreeSixty. Thanks for being with us today.
Troy Teztlaff:
Thanks a lot, Jeff. It was a lot of fun.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks so much to our guest, Troy Tetzlaff. And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com, if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.
May 31, 2024
Ep. 38: The Big Biscuit Rises
The Big Biscuit lovingly bakes more than 2 million biscuits every year — and counting. The Big Biscuit President Chad Offerdahl joins us on the podcast to talk about their 27 locations in 4 states, and the very intentional culture he’s built to drive success well into the future. In our marketing tip, we challenge you to take the “I” out of judging your creative.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. And this week we sit down with Chad Offerdahl. He’s the president of The Big Biscuit. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about. For today’s marketing tip, let’s take a look at judging creative work. We’re presented with some kind of creative work from our marketing department or our agency.
Graphic design is in the eye of the beholder. A lot of people judge good graphic design by whether they like the look or not. As a result, judging creative work gets filled with a lot of I statements. “I like that logo. I don’t like blue.” But will it be attractive to your customers? Good agencies and good designers leave the ego at the door. They let your brand voice lead the way. Every color, texture, shape, font and image plays a part in conveying your brand message. Good designers and good agencies lean into that. Creativity is very collaborative. It’s a collaborative process. And yes, there are best practices that good designers will follow to make good creative work.
But when reviewing that creative, take the I out of it. Challenge yourself not to say, “I don’t like blue.” Instead, focus on questions like, “Will my customers like this? Will my customers see my brand voice come through in this?” Then you can judge good graphic design and you’ll be happy because it’s good strategic graphic design for your brand. And that’s the marketing tip for today. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m sitting down with Chad Offerdahl. He is president of The Big Biscuit. Chad, welcome to the show.
Chad Offerdahl:
Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited.
Jeff Randolph:
Absolutely. Let’s get into The Big Biscuit. You have 27 Big Biscuit locations in four states and over 2 million biscuits baked per year, which is an accomplishment. Give us the origin story of The Big Biscuit.
Chad Offerdahl:
It’s been a wild ride. When you say it like that and you put those stats out there, it’s still kind of crazy to think. But yeah, we’ve been at this for a while now. We’ve been doing Big Biscuit for about 14 years.
Big Biscuit originally got its start in Independence, Missouri right here in Kansas City, and it’s in an old farmhouse. For those of you that have eaten there, you know what I’m talking about. You can tell it’s an original, and operated there for about five years. And then the founder, his name was Dan, opened up a second location in Blue Springs five years later and operated that for quite a while. And then just by chance, ended up eating in his restaurants around 2010 and just thought, “Man, this is awesome. People are really enjoying this. The food is good, it’s got great bones. We need to learn more.” So, asked to meet with Dan and just find out, “What are your plans with this thing?” And he basically said, “Look, I don’t have any plans for Big Biscuit. I’m happy with these two.” So we got into conversations with him and said, “Hey, we think this has some bones. We want to take this somewhere.”
And so long story short, we made a deal with him and bought the company lock stock & barrel and said, “Okay, we’re going to do this thing.”
Jeff Randolph:
It’s happening. It’s happening now.
Chad Offerdahl:
“You know, we’re going to do this.” So we about a year later, opened up the next location in Shawnee, Kansas. Shawnee, Mission Parkway, and started refining the brand. Really just focused on optimizing our procedures, our policies, doing a bit of menu refinement, decor, physical plant, all that kind of stuff. And from there we just very deliberately and systematically started growing the brand one store a year for a while. And then once we got a little more comfortable with that and felt like we had a better grasp, maybe two stores a year. And I’m excited to say that this year so far we’ve opened four locations and we think we’re going to get at least another one or two this year.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, you’ve moved into Arkansas as well?
Chad Offerdahl:
Our first Arkansas location will be opening later this year.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. Man, this is exciting. I mean, I’ll throw out that Independence Big Biscuit was my hometown Big Biscuit. I’ve been there. Oh, I’ve been there.
Chad Offerdahl:
So you know. I mean, you’ve probably eaten in the sun room and seen all old decor.
Jeff Randolph:
100%. You get to enjoy all of the texture on the walls and everything, all of that.
Chad Offerdahl:
Yeah, we love it. It’s like you can still go visit the original McDonalds.
Jeff Randolph:
Yes, it does feel like that.
Chad Offerdahl:
Yeah, we’re proud of that location. We’re going to keep it as is because that’s where we started.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s good, it’s good. Well, and you had franchising on your agenda from day one of acquisition. What’s the most challenging part about deciding to franchise a great restaurant concept? Because you walked in and you had a great concept already. When you start thinking about franchising, what are those challenges?
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh man, where do I start? Just the quick answer is it’s a completely different business, and it was very humbling to get into franchising. We did have that vision from day one of what we want to use franchising as a part of our growth strategy. But until you get into it, franchising, being a franchisor for the first time, like I said, it’s very humbling. You may understand your business. We understood Big Biscuit business and restaurant business and hospitality, but franchising is a completely different business. Your product is no longer service or food or things like that. Your product is now the business itself, and the learning curve was massive. I mean hell, I’m still learning a lot about it day by day even with existing franchisees and we’re growing. It’s a fun business. I love it. But it definitely on the outset was very humbling to say, “Okay, I got to go back to school here and learn a new business.”
Jeff Randolph:
Right. And how much of that new business is really the consistency portion? Because if I walk into a Big Biscuit in one state, I want to know what to expect in another. I don’t want to go, “Oh wow, that’s an entirely different kind of cuisine.”
Chad Offerdahl:
Well if you don’t have consistency, you don’t have a franchise.
Jeff Randolph:
You don’t have a franchise.
Chad Offerdahl:
It’s like you can go to any McDonald’s in the world and get the same Big Mac, right? If you don’t have consistency, you don’t have a franchise or at least one worth investing. It’s you want to be able to go anywhere and get the same Jim’s Platter at any Big Biscuit you visit regardless of the state. And that creates simplicity not only for our team and people that are running our restaurants, but it creates that reliability and comfort for our guest.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, absolutely. I want to talk about the corporate culture even still because it’s the other part that goes along with the franchise. It’s very intentional. I’m reading into it from the outside, but I’m seeing everything from being intentional about who you want as a franchisor partner, so people who understand being a brand ambassador and having that kind of conservative capital structure to Big Biscuit headquarters book club where you bond as a company while you’re diving into management and growth and even personal relationship kind of issues. How do you describe the importance of that culture and that very intentional building of that culture?
Chad Offerdahl:
Well, I think it’s everything. You hear so many companies or most companies these days talking about their culture, right?
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a throwaway.
Chad Offerdahl:
It’s very in, right? And the part that I struggle with when I hear that is a lot or many people say it, but not many deliver on it. And that makes it hard for our company. And I recognize I’m biased, but we really do have an incredible culture and group of people. And when we go and we talk about it, I know that it’s not met with a full understanding because so many people claim that.
But the fact is culture, whether it’s intentional or not, your company has a culture, right? Whether the one you intend or if you don’t intend on a culture, you still have one. And that’s where you see companies that have very poor cultures. But as far as the breakdown of what makes a great culture, it’s treat people the way you want to be treated, the golden rule. I mean I don’t want to oversimplify it, but culture is very simple. If you just treat people well and give them latitude to make mistakes, I mean, that’s one of the biggest things that I push with our people all the time is this is a safe space. We’re on the same team. We’re trying to accomplish the same objectives.
If you’re going to make a mistake, make it quickly, learn from it, move on. It’s how many of us have worked in companies where you are terrified to make a mistake because of whatever retribution or punishment or outcasting you’re going to get from that. We don’t have time or space for that in our company. We have too much we’re trying to accomplish. We’re growing too quickly, and we’re just capable of so much more. And we recognize that we’re human. You look at companies, companies are simply a gathering of humans trying to accomplish the same thing. So we’re going to make mistakes. Let’s just make them quick and move on.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. There are a lot of marketing cases in innovation where if you feel too afraid to innovate because of whatever consequence, because you’re not going to be treated like you are human and you’re afraid of getting fired, well, you don’t innovate. You don’t push boundaries. You don’t try. You don’t open up to new opportunities. So, amazing stuff that you’re doing in the culture.
Chad Offerdahl:
Yeah, it’s one of the most important things that I focus on is just making our company not only a place people want to visit and frequent, but a place that people want to work at and interact with. And when you have that high level of comfort and you build these bonds inside the company, it’s key. I mean, especially in the restaurant industry, but any company, adaptability is vital to your survival. I mean, the restaurant industry just went through the worst event that has arguably ever been experienced by the restaurant industry, and we saw tremendous success. We opened three restaurants in the first 12 months of Covid-
Jeff Randolph:
Of 2020.
Chad Offerdahl:
… and we’re proud of that. And I say it is solely because we had a team that was brought in. I mean, I’m not going to say it was easy because it was not easy. But we had a team that just is so brought in, they said, “All right, we got to figure this out. What do we need to do?” We came together, we fought through it, and we kept going. And that’s what separated us from a lot of our competition and other companies is that we had the team, we had the bonds, we had the trust. And that means everything.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, absolutely. If you’re looking back and you’re looking at first year entrepreneur you, what advice would you give to that guy?
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh, so much.
Jeff Randolph:
I’ve learned so much. I’ve learned so much.
Chad Offerdahl:
You look back on it and go, “Man, I don’t even know how we did it.” I would say probably the first thing that comes to mind is controlling your time. Especially early on in a business, you can be pulled a million different directions. The number of hats you’re wearing is massive.
Jeff Randolph:
Significant, yeah.
Chad Offerdahl:
So you’ve got to be very intentional about your time. If I was talking to myself, it would be intentional about your time, control your calendar or your calendar will control you, and it’s okay to say no to things. You’ve got to prioritize. I’m a big Jocko guy. He talks about prioritize and execute. It’s vital, especially when you’re in a leadership role or you own a business or whatever it is, you’ve got to prioritize how your time is being spent. Focus on the right things and then execute. And I know that’s something I could have used early on is you know what, you’ve got to say no to some opportunities and you’ve got to control your time. Plan in advance and make it meaningful because there’s too many things we’ve got to do.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Chad Offerdahl:
Probably another thing would be knowing your numbers. And this is a Tilman Fertitta quote, if you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business. And that’s definitely something early on I know I didn’t focus on enough. It was I got to take care of the guest, I got to make sure there’s food in the building, everything’s clean. All the things that have to be done, but didn’t focus enough on knowing the numbers to better understand the business. And so that would be an important one I would advise myself on is you’ve got to know it. You’ve got to understand it so that you can make better decisions, be more adaptable, and see around the corner.
Jeff Randolph:
And so you’ve given that advice to your first year entrepreneur self. Are you in a good place with those things now? Do you feel like, “I’ve got that under control.” Or do you still struggle with that and it’s still something you continually work on?
Chad Offerdahl:
Well, I don’t ever feel like I’ve arrived at a destination. I’m very much a it’s not a destination, it’s a journey kind of person. I definitely have a very strong understanding of the business now with the numbers, but I always try to learn more every day. And I spend a lot of time even getting the advice from some of my higher employees, my executives of, “Help me with some metrics that you’re seeing.” And seeking advice constantly. But there can be analysis paralysis of where you can just take it too far.
I don’t necessarily need to know how many forks are used in a given restaurant on a given day. That’s not going to help make the business better. But there’s a lot of good data out there that will help us make better decisions, and it’s important that we’re watching it. Not only just from a financial perspective, but also what our guests are saying, what they’re wanting, how our employees are feeling about the company. There’s a lot of important data out there that if we don’t pay attention to it, it’s happening whether or not we see it. So we might as well be aware of it so we can take action on it.
Jeff Randolph:
Gotcha. Great, solid answer. That’s good advice to give to yourself and come back.
Chad Offerdahl:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
I think it’s time for the lightning round. Are you ready to go into the lightning round?
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh boy, I’m nervous. All right.
Jeff Randolph:
Nothing to it, nothing to it.
Chad Offerdahl:
Let’s go.
Jeff Randolph:
There are no rules in the lightning round. If I hand you a Big Biscuit menu this morning, what’s your order going to be?
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh, it’d probably have to be a ranchero. It’s got our steak on it. It’s an omelet with potatoes, and I would probably order it instead of with toast, with fruit.
Jeff Randolph:
With fruit? Well, because you’re on a journey today. We’re trying to stay fit.
Chad Offerdahl:
Clean it up a little bit, yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right, just a little bit. There’s so many ways you can make good choices there. Early in your career, you were also a cook. That’s 100% a skill with a difficulty level that most people don’t appreciate. Are there ways that you’d say that that experience behind the line kind of helps you with the entrepreneur work that you do today?
Chad Offerdahl:
Undoubtedly. Not only just working as a cook in The Big Biscuit so that it allows me to better run this business, understanding it all the way through. But yeah. I mean, that’s a tough job. I mean, you’re working over a hot grill all day, spilling things on yourself. And if you can work through difficult times like that, it hardens you and makes you more resilient for sure.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. You’re focused on quality, you’re working at pace. Do you get that sense of creativity and accomplishment out of cooking anything today?
Chad Offerdahl:
Well, I do love to cook, so I would say yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a creative outlet. One of my favorite things we do right now is when it comes to menu development. I don’t know when this is going to air, but we’re pretty close to rolling out a very fun new beverage menu.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, exciting.
Chad Offerdahl:
So that’ll be out here pretty soon. But we’re very excited about trying new things and getting feedback from our guests and seeing how we can develop and curate a menu that excites people. I mean, it’s one of my favorite things I do.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. I feel like I have to cook everything when I get home because that is my creative outlet. That’s the opportunity for me to do exactly what you’re saying. Was there a teacher or coach in your past that gave you some advice or taught some intangible lesson that you keep with you today?
Chad Offerdahl:
There is one I can think of. One of my elementary school teachers. Actually fifth grade, Ms. Putnam was her name.
Jeff Randolph:
See, I like the shout out. Shout out to Ms. Putnam.
Chad Offerdahl:
I will never forget I was very unorganized with pretty much everything in my life whether it was school or sports or anything like that. And she sat me down one day. I was young so I don’t know clearly, but I don’t know if it was out of frustration or just out of like, “I’m going to help this kid.” But she took the time to devote to giving me tools on how to better be organized with not only my schoolwork and my time and everything, but just how I prioritize things in my personal life and whatnot of what I’m doing in the mornings. And for some reason, that just sticks with me. And it was a long time ago. I mean, it was fifth grade elementary school. But I remember it to this day that it was just a transformative thing for me of you know how important it is to be intentional with how I use my time and how I organize and things like that.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, spectacular lesson. Thanks Ms. Putnam, appreciate you. You’re a second generation entrepreneur and restaurateur. Your dad was in a fairly large Sonic franchise with 36 or 37 locations. So you had a role model for both restaurant management and entrepreneurship. What impact did that have on your mindset going into this adventure?
Chad Offerdahl:
Watching him do the Sonic business growing up, I was always so fascinated. And I knew probably going into high school about that time, I want to do the restaurant business. I love the idea of taking care of people and getting to be a part of a big team, working hard to provide a great service. And he was able to teach me so much, and he still teaches me a lot to this day. I mean, we learned a lot from each other. But it was great to see what the potential was for that business, but also the hard work that goes in behind it. A lot of people like to romanticize specifically the restaurant business. I mean, how many times have we heard of, “I want to start a restaurant.”
Like yeah, it’s fun. I won’t lie. The restaurant business is fun, but it’s not easy. And having that role model was great because it gave a lot of perspective of knowing, “Okay, I understand what I’m biting off here.” And that’s why I briefly went to MU for business and hotel management. I was committed like, “This is what I’m going to do.” And so I’m very grateful that I had him as a role model to see that.
Jeff Randolph:
And how about as you turn that mirror around and look at your own children, do you hope that they become a own a restaurant, or become an entrepreneur or none of those things?
Chad Offerdahl:
I would love if one of my children took interest in the business. If they don’t, I’m not going to be heartbroken. But I would love to be able to share that. And if nothing else, even if they don’t take an interest in the business, I’d love for them to learn more and know about it just to understand what their dad did before they were around or when they were very young children just to get an idea of how things work and what it takes to accomplish big things.
Jeff Randolph:
They can watch you manage your calendar and say no appropriately.
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh, you know they’re going to get calendar management schooling for me.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s appropriate. That’s a great life skill. Good foundational stuff. How do you celebrate a big win, whether that’s a new franchise opening or something personal, a family achievement, some goal that you’ve hit. How do you celebrate that?
Chad Offerdahl:
We do a number of different things. Specifically when we open a franchise location, something we’ve started doing now is when we’re on site opening the store, the night before we’re going to do our grand opening I take the team out and we get a big sushi dinner.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, nice.
Chad Offerdahl:
It happened by accident. We started that probably five or six stores ago now. We just so happened the night before, “Hey, let’s go out and get some dinner and celebrate, get some sushi.” And it kind of just stuck.
Jeff Randolph:
Now it’s a thing.
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh yeah. Now it’s like, “We cannot miss. It’s sushi before the grand opening day.” And other things we’ll do, like with our office crew here in Kansas City or our Kansas City based restaurants of when we have wins, we celebrate those publicly. If someone achieves an anniversary or we just recently celebrated a retirement, someone who’s been with us for 15 years, we get together and we take the time to have non-work-related just celebration. Whether that’s going out to eat or we go to a Royals game or we love doing Chicken N Pickle, shout out to them. I mean, we do a lot of different things. I mean, that’s part of culture. I mean, it’d be so easy just to glaze over that and say, “Man, we’re busy.” But you got to take the time. I mean, we focus so much in our business on what we can be doing better and what’s not going perfect, you’ve got to slow down sometimes and focus on the wins so that you don’t just get so bogged down with all of the opportunities.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, of the opportunities. And what a great way to phrase it too. Instead of saying all of the challenges that I faced, it’s the opportunities. Well done. So nice to hear about the culture and it’s very intentional. I love what you guys are doing. You’ve survived the lightning round. That’s it.
Chad Offerdahl:
Oh, thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
Consider this a big win you can celebrate with a pre-meal sushi. So tell people where they can find you, whether that’s franchise information or you personally, or where they can find a menu. Where do you want people to go to learn more?
Chad Offerdahl:
Yeah, so anybody who wants to learn more about Big Biscuit or visit one of our restaurants, bigbiscuit.com. We’ve got 17 locations here in Kansas City, and we’re starting to grow our footprint down in Oklahoma and soon Arkansas. But then for more information on me, I’m on LinkedIn, Chad Offerdahl. You’ll find me. I’m pretty sure The Big Biscuit logo is right behind my head.
Jeff Randolph:
Probably, yep.
Chad Offerdahl:
And I think that’s it.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s it. Nice. Nicely done. Chad Offerdahl, president at Big Biscuit. Thanks for being with us today.
Chad Offerdahl:
Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show thanks to our guest, Chad Offerdahl from The Big Biscuit. And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.
May 24, 202422 min
Ep. 37: Developing Nonprofit Boards with Growing Good
Celeste Carlson used her experience as a program officer for a local community foundation to fuel her consultancy at Growing Good, where she helps nonprofits grow capacity. Listen in for tips about making sure your grant funding matches your organization’s expertise – plus a tip to target your audience after they’ve left the building.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast, I’m Jeff Randolph. This Small Business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising & Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice business owners can use to keep moving forward.
This week we sit down with Celeste Carlson. She’s the founder of Growing Good, a consulting agency that works to increase nonprofit capacity. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
On today’s tip, we’re just going to talk about a tactic that you can use and not everybody knows you can do this. Get your tinfoil hat ready because we’re about to target an audience. Let’s imagine you missed a trade show. Your target audience was there. It was a great show. It’s a shame you can’t put messages in front of them anymore. You missed that opportunity.
Well, now, marketers can look back in time at a place at a time. If your phone was on in that building, we can target you for a few months after that event with a display banner ad campaign. Or let’s imagine you were at American football game in October at Arrowhead Stadium where the Kansas City Chiefs play.
A manufacturer of Chiefs’ flags knows that’s the audience they’re after and can target people who were there that October day between noon and 3:00 and serve some ads to that group to let them know about their Chiefs’ flags. It’s a target-rich environment of people who won’t look at that ad as spam. Work here to find out how they were being targeted.
If it starts your brand working, you could also do that with a competitor location, tinfoil hat engaged. That is your marketing tip for today.
All right. Welcome back to the show. We are talking with Celeste Carlson. She’s the founder of Growing Good, a consulting agency that works to increase nonprofit capacity. Celeste, welcome to the show.
Celeste Carlson:
Thanks. I’m so glad you have me.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re happy to have you. We met at a small business chamber event and said, “We could talk to a lot of people about good governance and stuff.” First, well, tell us about Growing Good and what you do.
Celeste Carlson:
Sure. Just a little bit about our background. I think this might resonate with some of your listeners. We started because of life circumstances. I have a daughter who needs some significant support. We had a house fire that when I was done with the house fire, my employer was ready for me to come back, but my house wasn’t ready for me to live in it.
In order to have the flexibility of time, I was like, “Well, I guess I’m starting my business now.” We started in 2022. My passion is to help as many nonprofits as I can. I could work for a nonprofit, but my passion is more broad than a singular focus.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Yeah. You have so much more love you could give …
Celeste Carlson:
Exactly.
Jeff Randolph:
… to a bunch of nonprofit clients because you started out in the middle of Kansas and you have moved recently to the Kansas City area. If people don’t know you already, that’s got to be why.
Celeste Carlson:
That’s exactly it. We’re right at a year here in Kansas City and me having my own business allowed me to move, which was fabulous. Last year I’ve been working really hard just to network with people. I’ve been a member of Nonprofit Connect and the Chambers and Central Exchange and different things to be able to get me out there and networking with people.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about some of the work that you do with nonprofits then.
Celeste Carlson:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re going to do a deeper dive into board development and training because that’s one of the first things we talked about when we sat down.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
What area did nonprofits seem to struggle with the most? What are you bringing to the table when it comes to that?
Celeste Carlson:
Sure. I think that depends on the life cycle of the nonprofit. Newer nonprofits or younger nonprofits are going to be mostly focused on fundraising. More established nonprofits, though fundraising is an element, they’re also really looking for sustainability, which comes from knowledge and expertise of their board members.
Jeff Randolph:
Board members, the human capital side of things.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. Exactly.
Jeff Randolph:
When you’re working with a nonprofit and helping to develop that board, what kinds of things are you doing? Are you expanding their knowledge? Are you increasing the level of discussion in that board? Are you talking about, “Hey, here’s what the board is supposed to do and talking about board roles?” Where do you focus then?
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. Yes to all of the above.
Jeff Randolph:
All of those. Check all.
Celeste Carlson:
Where I like to start is I like to survey the board and I begin with their perspective on the strengths and weaknesses of the organization and the board as a whole.
Jeff Randolph:
Board self-assessment kind of stuff.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Okay.
Celeste Carlson:
But then I take it a step further and I ask them their personal contribution and how they view their personal contribution, strengths and weaknesses on the board. Then I take all of that information, it comes to me directly. It is confidential, so that they don’t have to worry about …
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. The executive director knowing too much …
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff Randolph:
… too well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. Then I just compile it in such a way that it is kept confidential. Then I build a training that is specific and unique to their needs.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, nice. Yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
There’s a couple of varieties that can happen. One is subject, of course, you can do succession planning or strategic planning or figuring out their roles, how they are supposed to fundraise, relationship building what that looks like and how that leads to fundraising.
Then the other element that is customizable is the delivery. Sometimes they may want a full day of a board retreat and we can do all of it at once, or sometimes they might just want little 20 to 30 minutes snippets at their regularly scheduled board meetings and so it doesn’t take an extra …
Jeff Randolph:
Right. You don’t have to do extra meetings for all of that to happen.
Celeste Carlson:
Right. Yeah. Some people are just so busy that that’s not really a feasible option.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. An executive director can work with you and figure out how do I get my board to be more … I don’t know, a bunch of words we could fill in the blank from here, more active, more focused on mission, or more helpful in a good positive way, any of those things?
Celeste Carlson:
Any of those things. How do I get them to show up? Or if there are times when it’s best to invite a person to vacate their seat.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
How do we have that conversation as well? I mean, that’s important … that’s a hard conversation to have. Yeah. That’s helpful too.
Jeff Randolph:
Coaching them through that difficult sometimes process. Always, that’s an always difficult process. There’s not an easy way to do that. Understanding roles and responsibilities on a nonprofit board can be a real issue. No two boards I’ve seen are exactly the same. No two organizations seem to be in the same place as it relates to where board member work ends and where staff work begins, and all of that.
How does that typical relationship with you start? Does an executive director know that they want their board to go from here to here and engage you to do that? Or do you really help explore that process with an executive director? What does an executive director need to know?
Celeste Carlson:
The executive director needs to know that their board must be in agreement with working with me for it to be a process that actually works.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Board members need to be on the same page. I understand that because when it comes to board members, if your board is butting heads with you as an executive director, you’re in for a short run on this one. This is what we call a resume generating event.
You want to make sure that you are on the same board, you’re on the same page with your board, and you’re moving forward. Best to have that conversation between an executive director and a board before they ever talk to you? Or is it really something … I guess I’m seeing it more from the perspective of I’m an executive director, I’ve got a board that I need to get from point A to point B. You can help me get there.
But before we have the board engaged in, “Hey, do we need to call in some extra help here?” It may be helpful for the executive director to have a conversation with you to say, “Hey, here’s what I’m trying to do. Is that something that you can do? Is that something that … Do you see a path for us? What’s the best way to get started?”
Because then I can see a board member, a board discussion where the executive director is talking to them and saying, “Hey, I’ve identified somebody who can help, but you’ve got to be on the same page with me here. We have to all agree that this is the right path forward so that it’s not just expected to generically come up at a board meeting.”
Celeste Carlson:
Well, not just that, but I mean, I have a teenager and if I tell that teenager, “You need to do this,” then it’s a fight. I think the same happens between CEOs and boards, both directions. You need to do this. I mean, you could meet with some resistance versus if you are talking about … I can help share that language and help offer some guidance on how to have that conversation with your board so that they are able to see the value of the work that I do.
Vice versa, if a board member is talking to me because they’re struggling with their CEO, that is also the reverse can be true too.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, however they get in touch with you, it seems like that’s the right thing for them to do.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Let me go back in time in the rest of your career because you had a career as a program officer for your local community foundation, which gives you some valuable insight into how nonprofits should approach grant funding. That also, if I pause in the middle of that question for a second, you do offer a lot of grant development work there, right?
Celeste Carlson:
I do. Often that’s how I’m approached. People, organizations often see money as the thing.
Jeff Randolph:
The thing. Sure. For some reason, I don’t know why …
Celeste Carlson:
A couple of things. One, I like to look at it that money isn’t always the issue. I think if you have a strong solid board who is doing their job appropriately and networking and whatever, then money follows. But I also think your question implies that there should be a good fit between an organization asking for funding and the funder who is offering those funds.
I’ve seen many examples where a funder says, “We’re putting out a grant for this.” The organization is like, “Ooh, that’s money. I need to figure out a program so that I can get that funding.”
Jeff Randolph:
I need to develop or create a program to fit that grant. Yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
That is the exact wrong thing to do. Because it can cause mission creep and whatever requirements you have to fulfill that grant after you get it. It’s not free money. There’s usually some kind of reporting or something attached to it. The implication that there needs to be a good fit is absolutely spot on.
I have a couple of tools. One is a database that I have a subscription to that when you hire me, that’s part of what you’re getting is my ability to research these funders.
Jeff Randolph:
To find grants that fit what I’m already doing …
Celeste Carlson:
Exactly. That you don’t …
Jeff Randolph:
… that I don’t have to create some new program to try to fit. Then I’m learning while I go about how to do this program and not being as effective as I could be.
Celeste Carlson:
Right. That’s the first step is just seeing that high-level bird’s eye view if it’s a good fit. Then anything else, grant writing and applying for grants and getting grants is relationship-based.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
When I go through those profiles, if I find something that is a good fit, the next step is for that organization to reach out to the funder and to build that relationship. As a program officer, it was a lot easier for me to represent an organization when I knew the organization and I knew the program that they were wanting to have funded. I would go to the committee and I could be a good advocate for them when I understood what they were trying to do.
Jeff Randolph:
Right. Right. You also point to the past results to say, “If we put our money as the foundation here into this program, it’s a good investment. We’re going to see actual results from this versus I created this program from scratch just to apply for this grant.”
Celeste Carlson:
Just for you.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s untested. It’s unproven. Yeah. That’s …
Celeste Carlson:
I’ve seen that. That’s hard. I can’t defend that.
Jeff Randolph:
Don’t do that. Don’t do that. But you also do some program development work as part of what you offer. I take it that is well in advance of a grant situation happening.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. Part of that is, again, it’s about relationships. It’s trying to identify what you’re trying to accomplish with that program and seeing if there are other collaborations that can happen before you even start. That if you’re wanting to offer housing but you don’t have a building, nobody’s going to give you a half a million dollars to buy a building and renovate it to offer housing.
Jeff Randolph:
That eventually when that project gets finished, you’re able to do that.
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. That once you get started and gain some traction, and then it’s a process. Yeah. I can help you figure out what that timeline might look like and how to build those relationships to make it a feasible program that funders want to fund.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Celeste, I think it’s time to go into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Celeste Carlson:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
You have no way to know what I could be asking after this. We’ve talked concept. We know we were going to talk about Growing Good. I think we’ve definitely learned a lot about Growing Good. Thank you for telling us.
Celeste Carlson:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
But now, here we go. Are you ready?
Celeste Carlson:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Let’s do this. Because I know you have been to more than your share of nonprofit fundraising events and dinners and that kind of thing. Complete this sentence, just once, I’d like to attend a nonprofit fundraiser that served this as the main course.
Celeste Carlson:
Tuna tartare.
Jeff Randolph:
Tuna tartare. It’s so far away from nonprofit chicken.
Celeste Carlson:
Exactly.
Jeff Randolph:
That we could definitely have some tuna tartare. You are from McPherson, Kansas. You spent a lot of time in McPherson. The next time that we’re driving by, what restaurant should we all stop at and what are we ordering?
Celeste Carlson:
Well, it’s not a restaurant, but it’s a place that I worked for a while. It’s Three Rings Brewery.
Jeff Randolph:
I saw that on a map. I almost just dove into questions about that. But I would love to hear all about Three Rings Brewery.
Celeste Carlson:
Okay. Full confession. I’m not a beer drinker, typically.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s okay. I am. I’ll carry that weight for all of us.
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. Well, it was a great job and I loved it. But one of my favorite beers that they have is seasonal, and it’s out every other year. It’s called the Blackbird.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay.
Celeste Carlson:
It’s really good. It’s a sour. It’s aged in a whiskey barrel.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, whiskey barrel sour. Fascinating.
Celeste Carlson:
So good. I can’t get enough of it. It’s dangerous. It’s good that they don’t only have it every so often.
Jeff Randolph:
You don’t describe yourself as a beer drinker, but you’re saying this bourbon barrel-aged is sour is one of the go-tos for you. Fascinating.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
You may have a better palate for this than you think. Think about all the nonprofit organizations out there that are struggling to fulfill mission for whatever reason.
Celeste Carlson:
Okay.
Jeff Randolph:
You get to give a gift to all of them to solve one problem. What problem that nonprofit organizations face would you like to solve for them with just a snap of the fingers? You don’t have to know how to do it. But if you could remove this burden from nonprofits what would you do?
Celeste Carlson:
Oh, that’s a tough question. Well, I think if … I say money isn’t always the only issue. But if that were the thing that were removed from their plate and they could really focus on their mission development and their board development and really just focus on being able to offer their community what they want to offer …
Jeff Randolph:
Focus on the service instead, and providing that thing that they do. If you could just give them all the funding, that would be it and help them communicate as a board. It’s almost like that’s exactly what you tried to develop as you build Growing Good. You’re solving that problem for them. The downside is they have to do some work.
Celeste Carlson:
They do. No.
Jeff Randolph:
You can’t just snap your fingers. That’s a shame. I had like to ask about a model nonprofit organization. Who do you think is crushing it? This can be a national, whatever level. But as a nonprofit, who do you look at and just go, “Man, whatever they’re doing, that’s it. They’re crushing it.”
Celeste Carlson:
Well, I’m going to go back to my roots in McPherson. There was an organization called Steps to End Poverty.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay.
Celeste Carlson:
They hired a young whippersnapper and he did a great job of getting to know us as a funder and the community, and worked really hard to ensure that the people that he was serving, which were people in poverty, were at the table as part of the discussion.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, wow. Yeah.
Celeste Carlson:
I mean, even back when this organization started in McPherson, they were really adamant about making sure that those who were being served were those helping make decisions about that service. I think that’s key when you’re trying to help anyone. They need to be a part of the solution.
Jeff Randolph:
Not be opposed to it anyway or resentful that they’re getting this assistance or whatever.
Celeste Carlson:
Right.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. No. There are a lot of good examples that live within everything that you just said. I don’t know. Maybe I was thinking when I put that question out that you were going to go with a major international nonprofit or something like that, that was doing all kinds of like, “Hey, Goodwill, they’re really crushing it. We love them.” No. You went even smaller and with a very personal example. That’s well done.
Celeste Carlson:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
How do you celebrate a big win? Let’s imagine that you helped a nonprofit, everything went exactly the way it was supposed to go, and just a giant thing crossed off your to-do list. How do you celebrate that?
Celeste Carlson:
Oh. Well, that’s a good question. The last time I had a big win, I went and bought a new backpack.
Jeff Randolph:
See, everybody has their own thing. Was it just time?
Celeste Carlson:
It was time.
Jeff Randolph:
Did it feel like a splurge?
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. It did. It was a Fossil leather backpack. Yes. It was a splurge. But I made sure that I earned it.
Jeff Randolph:
You earned it. You put it all out there. All right. Celeste Carlson, founder of Growing Good. Where can people find more information? Where can they find you if they want to know more?
Celeste Carlson:
Yeah. My website is growinggoodconsulting.com. I am on LinkedIn, /celeste-carlson. For anybody who mentions that they’ve heard this podcast, I would like to offer a 30% discount and that is good for the rest of 2024.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, this may be our first offer. This may be our first valuable offer.
Celeste Carlson:
Really?
Jeff Randolph:
I know. Can you imagine that? Nobody said, “Hey, if you do this, you get free,” whatever, ever. No. That’s great. Well done. Well done.
Celeste Carlson:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
We appreciate it. That’ll be good. I hope you get just more work than you can … You can get a number of Fossil backpacks in every color.
Celeste Carlson:
There we go.
Jeff Randolph:
That is what I’m hoping for you. Please help everyone.
Celeste Carlson:
Yes. Please. I need to build my collection.
Jeff Randolph:
All the nonprofits can get board development happening, and it’ll be a much better place. All right. Celeste, thanks for being with us on the podcast today.
Celeste Carlson:
Thank you so much.
Jeff Randolph:
That is our show. Thanks so much to our guest, Celeste Carlson, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.
May 17, 202420 min
Ep. 36: The Spot to Fight Food Apartheid
Chef Shanita McAfee Bryant is the founder of The Prospect KC. We stop in for a coffee and conversation to talk about The Prospect KC’s amazing work fighting food apartheid, promoting food education, and teaching the next generation of chefs. And you can just stop it with the cake pops anytime you want. Plus, our marketing tip is going to help you focus your marketing by helping you test the factors that make the biggest impact.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Shanita McAfee-Bryant. She’s the executive director and founder of TheProspectKC.org. But first we’ve got another marketing business tip for you.
In our tip today, we want to talk about how we prioritize our marketing and how we get the most bang for our buck in all of the things that we’re doing. In all of that planning, where do we get the most bang for our buck? What should we be testing? What should we be looking at? If we want to prioritize our marketing, we know we should be A-B testing some factor of our ads so that we use the best messages more frequently once we find out what those messages are. So it makes sense to test something. But what should we test? When we look at the variables, the media plan accounts for about 13% of the success of that campaign in terms of contribution to sales. So the media plan, that’s what channel you want your ad to run in and how much money you’re spending to do it. 13% of the contribution to sales.
The other P’s in marketing, marketing’s famous for P’s like price and promotion and distribution or place if you want to make it a P word. Account for just 35% of that contribution to sales. So we’ve got a 13% in the media plan and we’ve got 35% for all kinds of other things. Well, if you want to know what you should really focus on when it comes to testing, where you can make the most impact, test the ad quality. The ad itself, how it resonates with the audience, what gets them to click, what gets them to remember that ad. That ad itself accounts for 52% of the success in contributing to sales. So if you’re going to save budget and time, so you can do some testing, test that creative and it will have the biggest impact for you. That’s our marketing tip.
Welcome back to the podcast. I am here with Shanita McAfee-Bryant. She’s the executive director and founder of TheProspectKC.org. Shanita, welcome to the show.
Chef Shanita:
Hi. Thank you guys for having me. I’m excited.
Jeff Randolph:
And we’re here at The Prospect KC.
Chef Shanita:
We are.
Jeff Randolph:
Theo and I have already gotten our morning coffee. We’re very excited to be here.
Chef Shanita:
You guys are a step ahead of me.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, I know we can find it for you if we had to.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
First, let’s talk about The Prospect KC. You have labeled it as a culinary social enterprise, and I want to get to all of the components of what makes that up. But give us the kind of overall vision of this place.
Chef Shanita:
We are a customer-facing sixteen-week workforce development program. So I like to say customer-facing because when you are here ordering your coffee or getting your sandwich or your croissant or whatever, you have entered a live training environment.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh man.
Chef Shanita:
And 99% of the time the person who is handling your food, taking your order or making your coffee is one of our prospects or trainees. So that’s what… In a nutshell if I had to condense it down.
Jeff Randolph:
If you had to boil it down to just the most intense version of that. So The Spot is part of this, and so you may see The Spot around. Sustainably sourced coffee shop and fresh grocer.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Tell us about that.
Chef Shanita:
So we have the coffee and then we are hopefully this summer we’ll be able to, we kind of opened under gun fire last year, so a lot of things that we wanted to do, we didn’t get quite the way we wanted them. So we started our market, we have that with produce from Canby’s, but you will see this summer some grab-and-go and some more items where people are able to get some healthy, nutritious meals that they could just heat and eat as well. So that’ll kind of come into that. There’s some spices in there now. And then we have our cohort Alpha, that’s our first cohort. They’re developing some items that you can purchase on the shelves and things like that, granola. So that part is growing.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. Yeah. And you’ve also got the neighborhood account, so community members can enroll for grocery funds and that stuff?
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, so that is really simple. I was kind of thinking of when my grandparents grew up and they were in this neighborhood when they first moved here and there were corner markets and things like that, and sometimes you just didn’t have it right and you could put it on your account and come back and settle up later.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh gotcha.
Chef Shanita:
But they were still going to let you get your necessities.
Jeff Randolph:
Can still eat today.
Chef Shanita:
Yes. So it’s that same premise, except for instead of our guests or community members having to come back and settle up, the community settles up for them so they’re able to get what they need. And it’s not one of those kind of things where… I’ve been places and they have programs like that and it’s like you got to fill out a form and I need to know your blood type and can you put your first child up as collateral for this sandwich that you absolutely need to eat. We’re not trying to make it that way.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
Even this summer, we plan on even expanding that program out to make it even easier. So at the register, you could just buy a meal right then if you wanted to, and then we’ll have a board and people can just pull a voucher off the…
Jeff Randolph:
Pull a voucher and go.
Chef Shanita:
And go. In a very casual way. I don’t like how sometimes within food access people feel like you have to have no money in order to need access to food.
Jeff Randolph:
I have some money and so I really shouldn’t take this or whatever.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah. But sometimes you have some money and that money is, if we’re being realistic, is allocated to other things. And healthy food might not be the thing that you can allocate your funds to. And so we don’t want that to be a situation where you have to make a choice.
Jeff Randolph:
Like food deserts or food apartheid are issues that you have at your…
Chef Shanita:
Yes. I’m more of a food apartheid girlie and less of a food desert girl.
Jeff Randolph:
Less of a food desert.
Chef Shanita:
Not a food desert person at all.
Jeff Randolph:
Talk to us about the food apartheid side of things.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah. So apartheid speaks to systems. Desert speaks to, it’s a term or something that people get to use. It’s like, for example, when you look at photos of the Civil Rights movement and they’re all in black and white. Well, that’s because they want you to perceive that was a long time ago. My grandparents and my parents were born at that time. I have colored pictures of them, so I know they had colored film during that timeframe.
Jeff Randolph:
That was possible. But…
Chef Shanita:
Same thing with a desert. When you say desert, it’s like, oh, what could we possibly do about this?
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
There’s absolutely nothing. When you speak to apartheid, we know that particularly when we get to the east side of Kansas City, this financial disinvestment was intentional. So when we just say, let’s just call it what it is.
Jeff Randolph:
Call it what it is.
Chef Shanita:
We are in this situation because of intentionality by people who did not live in the neighborhood and really wanted it to be the way that it is. So that’s why I’m more of an apartheid girlie.
Jeff Randolph:
And part of that, you’ve got the Kitchen Confidence Program workshop that helps fight food apartheid. Tell us more about that program.
Chef Shanita:
So that came out of COVID. During, we were funny. We launched a nonprofit January 13th, 2020.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah. It was a good time to do that. It was really…
Chef Shanita:
It was in January, in March.
Jeff Randolph:
In March, different story.
Chef Shanita:
All of our plans failed and we had to pivot into something else. I don’t even like saying the word pivot. It’s so traumatizing. I feel like for a year and a half, I was perpetually pivoting.
Jeff Randolph:
I was pivoting so much that my pivot foot got…
Chef Shanita:
Really pivoted.
Jeff Randolph:
Pivoted right off my foot.
Chef Shanita:
So what we are trying to look at now, what we came out of that is dealing with food access does not mean giving people food. There’s a next step to that, which comes with a nutritional education piece of it. And for a lot of people who have not had access to food, there’s a shame factor in that. You get shamed for buying your groceries at the Zip Mart. As if people were like, forget Walmart, I’d rather go to the corner store.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Chef Shanita:
Right? In most cases, that’s what’s available. So they have to shop where it’s available because there’s not a lot of opportunities to get anywhere else. So with the confidence class, it’s us really working on repairing that relationship that people have with food, because for a lot of people, we’ve learned that it’s a survival thing. “I just need to live, so I’m going to eat something”. And not more of an enjoyment factor. “I want to think about what I’m going eat. I’m going to…” No, I just need to live, so I’m going to eat. So that’s kind of where that came from. It’s just working on people and understanding that, hey, you don’t know because you don’t know. And that’s okay, but that’s why we’re here to make this easy.
I have some chef friends who write recipes. I’m like, girl, who’s going to make that? I don’t want to make it. And I have the skill set.
Jeff Randolph:
You have 120 ingredients there.
Chef Shanita:
There’s a lot of steps. Can you get that in about six, seven steps?
Jeff Randolph:
That is an entire dishwasher full of…
Chef Shanita:
Dishes.
Jeff Randolph:
Things that you will need to clean right afterward.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, no one’s doing that. So we want to make it accessible. We want to make it easy. And then most importantly, we want to make it culturally appropriate. A lot of times people who are dealing with access issues rely on pantry systems, and if you have a different food culture, you have a hard time really accessing the things that are special and near and dear and would be something that you grew up eating.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it sounds like exactly the right thing to help fight that food apartheid. Education is an important piece. I think if we can learn more, whether that’s the poverty side of things, where if I have one ingredient and I know what I can, like the billion things I could do with that ingredient, then I have a lot more opportunity to survive on just that one thing.
Chef Shanita:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
But if I look at that giant cut of meat and go, “I don’t know, we could put it in the oven”, then my skill set doesn’t have…
Chef Shanita:
Boil it.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, I don’t have enough tools to really get where I need to go.
Chef Shanita:
Right. It works, but the education piece, I think sometimes people who are working in that space feel like education is one way. It’s a one-way street. It’s actually a two-way street. Because in order for me to effectively teach someone something, I have to be willing to learn about what they need. And then a lot of times in this food access space, we are more about telling people what they need and less about listening to what they need. So it has to be a little bit of both.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, I love the philosophies. Let me stay on this kind of philosophical piece for a second, because I want to talk Gumbo Fest.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
On the one hand, it’s a competition. You had your second annual competition in October of 2023, but it’s also a philosophy, and the way I understand it, you were inspired by a book called The Gumbo Coalition that uses gumbo as a metaphor to bring together some of those diverse backgrounds, dive into the competition, the metaphor, all of that. All of that.
Chef Shanita:
I think that when we look at this community, whenever I get to speak about what’s happening, even, we’re just going to narrow this down to the district, what’s happening in the district. You think that it’s just people feel like it’s one-sided. Like there’s residents here, there’s businesses here, and that’s a huge part of the gumbo. But you have to have traveler’s here who spend dollars, you have to have city support. You have to have large development or business support. So we are not going to be able to reinvest or revitalize this neighborhood if we’re only relying on two pieces of the gumbo. That makes a very nasty gumbo. You don’t want to eat just the stock. You’re like, okay, it’s a brothy broth.
Jeff Randolph:
Right, right.
Chef Shanita:
Thank you for, but no. Or you don’t want to have just the trinity or just the root. You kind need all of those pieces in order to make something successful.
And the beautiful part about gumbo is that there’s a hundred million different ways to make a gumbo, right? So no one person’s particular gumbo is the exact way to do it. You can do it all different kinds of ways and still come up with something that is tasty and beautiful. So that’s kind of the philosophy behind Gumbo Fest, is really bringing people into the district for a family fun, positive time, and getting to showcase some of the art and some of the culture that’s here to people who might not have even thought about coming down here before.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. And I can’t get out of this interview section without saying you won Cutthroat Kitchen.
Chef Shanita:
I did.
Jeff Randolph:
Tell me about that experience and what changed for you after that episode.
Chef Shanita:
It was intense and nothing changed.
Jeff Randolph:
Nothing. Nothing changed.
Chef Shanita:
Not really. It was intense, and honestly, it was just more of a personal journey for me. I think that all throughout my entrepreneurship and just my chefdom, I don’t know if that’s a word. Let’s call it that.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re going to say that. It’s chefdom.
Chef Shanita:
My chefdom, the person that I’m in most competition with is myself, and I’m always looking for ways to challenge myself, push myself to the next level, and be the best version of me that I could possibly be. So that was a challenge for me. It’s something that I competed in college when I was in culinary school. I mean, not nearly in that intensive of a setting, but it was intense in its own right. So it was just one of those kind of things where, can I still do this?
Jeff Randolph:
I think the answer was yes, though.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
I think the answer was…
Chef Shanita:
Thank God.
Jeff Randolph:
You absolutely did that.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
No, we… Check out that episode. It’s a good episode. You’re ready to go into a lightning round? Do you want…
Chef Shanita:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Jeff Randolph:
You ready for this?
Chef Shanita:
All right.
Jeff Randolph:
Here we go here in a shout-out to the Bon Appetit food cast, my first question for you is butter or olive oil?
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
Is it always?
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
Butter. No question.
Chef Shanita:
Butter.
Jeff Randolph:
As much as we can get.
Chef Shanita:
Is it a carb? I need it.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Perfect.
Chef Shanita:
I think it’s a vegetable.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. It’s a… Butter is a vegetable. You can use it everywhere. In the lightning round, I sometimes ask people about that desert island food, the food that they can eat all the time, anytime. This is my go-to food, I will eat this no matter what. If I just had it yesterday, I’m having it again today. Do you have one of those?
Chef Shanita:
Grilled cheese and Raising Cane’s.
Jeff Randolph:
And Raising Cane’s? There’s a lot of comfort going on there. I can see what that is.
Chef Shanita:
If don’t go to Raising Cane’s when I leave here two or three times a week, there’s something wrong with me.
Jeff Randolph:
Fascinating. As a chef then, do you look at Raising Cane’s and go, “I know I can make that sauce. I can duplicate that sauce.”
Chef Shanita:
I can. I’m not.
Jeff Randolph:
I can do the chicken the same way.
Chef Shanita:
I couldn’t.
Jeff Randolph:
But you want that comfort and you want it fast.
Chef Shanita:
It’s hot.
Jeff Randolph:
And it’s ready to go.
Chef Shanita:
It’s fast, and I can eat by the time I leave from there and get home. I’m done eating and I can go right to bed.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. What about a piece of cooking equipment that you couldn’t live without? Is there a, “Oh, this makes my life so easy.”?
Chef Shanita:
I just need a good knife. That’s it. A good knife. I can do a lot with that. Nice, sharp, good knife.
Jeff Randolph:
Is there a food that, a food fad that you can totally live without? Like something that you’re seeing in the food world? What is that?
Chef Shanita:
Cake pops?
Jeff Randolph:
Cake pops. No more cake pops. Yeah.
Chef Shanita:
Cake pops are gross.
Jeff Randolph:
I was going to say, maybe it’s the kind of thing like an egg on everything where it’s just fried egg on a burger, fried egg on a pizza, fried egg on whatever.
Chef Shanita:
That too, but really cake pops gross me out.
Jeff Randolph:
I like that.
Chef Shanita:
They really gross me out.
Jeff Randolph:
I could do without cake pops as well.
Chef Shanita:
We could have skipped over that whole genre of things.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect. What aspect of the business do you wish you knew more about, that you wish you had a better handle on? Because entrepreneurship, the cooking side is one thing, right? You’ve got that side down, but what about the business do you wish you knew more about?
Chef Shanita:
I don’t know that I wish I knew more about it, but I wish I had a magic wand to solve it. It’s the ever-evolving customer expectations. That’s the part that’s always the unknown factor. We can plan for everything else, but we cannot plan for that.
Jeff Randolph:
For what people are into at the moment?
Chef Shanita:
What people are into.
Jeff Randolph:
What you’re excited about. And so you were just talking when you came in here about a menu change and menu change is happening today.
Chef Shanita:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Is the menu change trying to deal with that? You’re trying to guess where people are going back?
Chef Shanita:
The menu change is more about seasonality and creativity.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay.
Chef Shanita:
Y’all have to understand that we get tired of making this stuff.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure.
Chef Shanita:
People are like, “But I like that sandwich.” “Okay, well, I’ve made like 700 of them. I literally don’t want to smell, see, look or have anything else to do with it.”
Jeff Randolph:
And if that’s the most popular thing.
Chef Shanita:
Also, there are other sandwiches.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. And if that’s the most popular thing and people keep coming in for it, then it’s that double-edged sword.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
You come from a strong family of entrepreneurs. I saw an interview that said that your father built a janitorial service company with more than 300 employees. What role did that have on your mindset in starting down this journey?
Chef Shanita:
I think that watching him and participating in that, I was not disillusioned about what entrepreneurship was. I think a lot of people come into entrepreneurship cause they think they’re going to be their own boss. That’s the not at it at all. Actually I’m not my own boss. And they think that you get time off and you get to make your schedule and you get to… Successful entrepreneurs are people who deal with extreme personal sacrifice and personal discomfort all of the time.
Jeff Randolph:
All the time.
Chef Shanita:
All of the time. And then if that’s not what you want to do, then I suggest that you don’t become an entrepreneur.
Jeff Randolph:
Let someone else have the headache and just do a good job for that person.
Chef Shanita:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, yeah. How about passing along that tradition of either entrepreneurship or cooking to your kids? What is it that you hope you pass along?
Chef Shanita:
I don’t necessarily know that they will be entrepreneurs. They might. I think what I would like for them to see is my grit and my perseverance, and then they take on those characteristics and then they can apply that to anything that they decide that they want to do. And a little bit of discipline. So those are the three things that I would want for them to have. They don’t necessarily have to be… And I think if we tie it all the way back to The Prospect, that’s what I’m trying to show or trying to work with in this live action environment where they’re seeing us work is that it takes grit, it takes perseverance, and it takes discipline. Those are the three things, and you have to be consistent in that all the time, even when things get weird.
Jeff Randolph:
I could not wrap it up any better than in what you just said. I’m going to say, let’s see. First you’re out of the lightning round. Congratulations. Well done.
Chef Shanita:
Yay.
Jeff Randolph:
Where can people find you if they want to know more, if they want to connect?
Chef Shanita:
Well, I live here. You can find me sleeping on the blue couch. No, I’m just kidding. But also I’m serious. No, all of our socials are really consistent. It’s mine and Chef Shanita personally. And then all of this stuff for here is The Prospect KC. We keep it real simple. So it’s easy to find us.
Jeff Randolph:
Hey, highly recommend. Come down, hang out. Have a great cup of coffee and a different sandwich every time.
Chef Shanita:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
Shanita McAfee-Bryant, executive director, and founder of The Prospect KC, thanks for being with us on the show.
Chef Shanita:
Thank you guys for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Chef Shanita McAfee-Bryant. And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.
May 10, 202432 min
Ep. 35: You want your logo on that?
Joe Beveridge is the 4th generation President & CEO of Russell-Hampton Company. If you’ve ever seen a Rotary logo on any product, he’s likely involved! Our conversation with Joe talks about multi-generational business ownership, expansion and acquisitions, and the 2026 World Cup, to name just a few. In this week’s marketing tip, we encourage you to check those long-held assumptions about your audience so you don’t get in your own way.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week, we sit down with Joe Beveridge, he’s the president and CEO of Russell Hampton Company, but first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
All right. Our marketing tip for today is all about making sure that you check yourself. Just check yourself. I’m going to throw out some things that I have heard over time, and the following are real statements made by leadership about what they know about their customers. When they say, “Who are our customers?” they say things like, “My customers don’t buy because they saw an ad,” or, “My customers don’t use the website. That’s not how we get new customers,” or, “Nobody reads anything anymore. Nobody reads anything anymore,” “Our customers are all men between 35 and 50,” or, “Our customers don’t use Facebook,” or, “We can’t advertise in April. Everyone is in Paris in April.”
Yup, all real things, and while we can laugh at a few of them, there are clearly some miscues in there, right? With analytics these days, a lot of these things are very easy to prove wrong, and we can look at the traffic to your website and even break it down by demographics like age and gender most of the time, and know what time of the day they browse and how long they do that.
The point is as you’re thinking about your customers and how to reach them, try to give yourself a little check and don’t just resort back to the broad general stroke of what you think your customers know from historical times and from meeting somebody. Have somebody look at the demographics and actually prove to you what your customers do and who they are and where they go online because another real quick, small point to this, your customers change. They change over time because we all change over time.
Maybe we didn’t use Facebook before, but now we do or vice versa or we only use it for employment related things because we want to ask people who’ve been there or who’ve worked there, how their experience was or Twitter started as Twitter and then became X, and maybe some people didn’t like that and so they left or they’re using it differently or it has changed fundamentally in some way or there’s a new social media channel in town and it’s getting a lot more attention than it used to or than it ever had. Your audience shifts over time. Make sure you know who your customers are today so that you don’t lose out on targeting them tomorrow.
Welcome back to the show. I am here with Joe Beveridge. He is president and CEO of Russell Hampton Company. Joe, welcome to the show.
Joe Beveridge:
Thank you. Appreciate you having me.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, absolutely, and the company, let’s talk Russell Hampton for a minute. The company was founded in 1920, and you are the fourth generation of Rotarian serving as president of the Russell Hampton Company. You are the world’s largest and most respected provider of Rotary Club supplies and awards and personalized gifts and apparel and signage and everything else that goes along with that. Tell us about the Rotary portion of the business.
Joe Beveridge:
Absolutely. So as you said, the company was founded in 1920. My wife’s great grandfather was in the first Rotary Club Downtown Chicago, and he and a business partner, they grew tired of trying to obtain supplies in Chicago, and so they thought there should be a convenient one-stop shop, and thus the Russell Hampton Company was born. Of course, as everybody would have guessed, their last names were Heppner and McCready.
Jeff Randolph:
Yup. That’s the way it goes.
Joe Beveridge:
Now, lots of people call, ask for Russell, Mr. Hampton, whoever, but yeah, the story is my wife’s great grandfather and her business partner wanted to keep their egos and names out of the business. So the strange but true fact for the day is they had a map of the United States out in front of them, covered their eyes, and let their hand fall where it did, and so one landed on Russell County Kansas and the other was Hampton County, South Carolina, and that was where the name came from. Strange but true.
Jeff Randolph:
That is the most amazing origin story for a name that anybody could ever have. You’ve been doing the Rotary side of things for a very long time where you’re supplying all of the Rotary Clubs, and this is your busy travel season as well, right? You’re out doing everything.
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah, exactly. So as you said, travel season, Rotary has these, they call them PETS. It’s an acronym per President-Elect Training Seminars. So they train all of the incoming presidents around the country for getting ready to take over their year. Rotary’s year starts July 1st, so it runs July through June. So February and March, we’re travel, travel, travel, travel, go, and now April, May, June, we are producing all of the things because every club worldwide is having their year-end awards and recognition banquets, and not just specific to Rotary, but just kind of in our industry in general. People have their tasks and jobs and whatever those entail, and it’s not 100% I was hired or brought on to focus solely on getting club supplies, awards, promotional products, apparel. That’s always a piece. So typically, it’s the piece that people think of last, and so everything’s like, “I need this in by Tuesday.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right.
Joe Beveridge:
“When did I have to start ordering all this that we need?”
Jeff Randolph:
I’ve been to the headquarters. I’ve seen the machines that etch things onto a Yeti and all of the materials that are cut out and all of the awards, you have all of that there. It’s a fascinating tour.
Joe Beveridge:
Yes. So we are super excited about that, and that’s one of the benefits because of the longevity over a hundred years with Rotary is over the years, we’ve just added so many capabilities, and actually, since you’ve been there last, we did construction.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, man.
Joe Beveridge:
So when you come in now where that front desk is, it’s all gone. We have a huge, well, huge, relatively speaking, new boardroom there, and then where we had that printer you saw, we built its own little cool little room where everything’s climate controlled, but yes, that is something that’s really unique and cool to Russell Hampton because a lot of people in our industry don’t actually physically touch or do-
Jeff Randolph:
Do stuff, yeah, they don’t do their own manufacturing of that.
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah, it’s awesome. So we’re not trying to do just one piece at a time. That’s a tough way to make a living, but the beauty is it gives us a ton of flexibility. So especially with our larger clients in general, you have the big orders, and some of those we may not touch. That might be something that we middleman from the manufacturer, import from overseas, but a lot of it too, because we can do it, whether it’s embroidering one shirt, one hat, one bag, etching one Yeti, printing on whatever, because it does happen. Hey, we have a board member that’s retiring and we’re recognizing him next Thursday, can I get a Callaway pullover and a Yeti? Actually, yeah, we can do that.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, and that would strike fear into the hearts of most people in your industry, I think, where they go, “No. No, you can’t and I don’t even want you to think about it anymore.” You have all of this experience serving Rotary. You also then decided it made sense to be a company apparel and merchandise store as well. Tell us about that side of the business.
Joe Beveridge:
So we had always serviced non-Rotary, corporate clients, other nonprofits. We just weren’t intentional about it, but as we were out and about or people may actually then even be Rotarians that had other career and/or other involved in other groups. It finally hit a tipping point about 2012, similar timing to when I joined the Helzberg mentoring program, so it was great. So I really focused on that with my mentor as far as growing and starting that piece of the company, but it just made a ton of sense.
So we had a group of people that were doing everything. We got to certain point where it made sense to start a separate division. Now, we still have one company, and we are working obviously with the same equipment, buying from the same supplier. So there’s a lot of synergies there as far as our purchasing and getting free and bound for aid and stuff like that, but yeah, it’s been great.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, and tell me if you had to summarize that, what stands out, what makes you different, why you guys versus somebody else, what is that thing?
Joe Beveridge:
Well, I would say a lot of similarities to here at EAG. We call it high touch, high trust. We love the whole relationship. You’ve been over there. You walk in, you can just feel the family business. There’s the dogs. We love that relationship. We love it when people are so busy and when they come in, and after they’re taking the tour and envisioning all the things we can do and they’re like, “Yes, I have somebody that will …” So it’s off of their plate. They don’t have to go search and find everything. We’re the resource that does that. We like to get their whole calendar.
Sometimes there are things you do every year. Hey, we always get these, maybe it’s some sort of lawn care company or a painting company and they have apparel they go through, could be a company that does the awards every year or sponsors the golf tournament. Well, we put those things on our calendars, and so we’re coming to them months in advance not just to, “Hey, are you going to order anything?” but, “Hey, last year you guys did this. We found four items here that we’re recommending. Is there anything else you’d like to see?” So you couple that with all of the things we can do in-house for large orders, importing, and then small runs, personalization, quick turnaround, and that really is the secret sauce.
Jeff Randolph:
The secret sauce is backed up by a customer service kind of mentality that I’ll stand by because I’ve got a story about a client that we have that we came to you guys with for some Hawaiian shirts, some custom Hawaiian shirts. By the end of the process, our person helped us out so much in just thinking through it and thinking through deadlines and finding different suppliers that could meet something very specific, whether that was in the manufacturing of it or in the timing of it, working around holidays in different parts of the planet. By the end of it, I think we wanted to buy her one of the shirts and say, “Thank you very much for doing all of that work to get there.” So I’ll throw that out just on our own.
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, thank you. It’s great to hear. We do our whole purpose, four business purpose, and everybody knows this. There is to provide exceptional customer experience and exceptionals that can bring into mind a lot of thoughts. So I’m always like, “It’s not glitter and fireworks, but exceptional is everybody just does that little extra.” It’s not just customer service on the phone, although making sure that we’ve asked all the right questions, have the details, but a lot of times it goes back to production and somebody’s getting ready to etch or engrave something and they catch something that doesn’t look great, and they make a call and they catch an error or even if they don’t, they say, “Hey, this doesn’t look like … We just want to verify.”
It’s still those little things. It gets to the shipping room and we’re shipping something wherever and they’re like, “You know what? You asked that. We send it this method, but we could send it this method and it would save you money and still be there by your need by date.” It’s just a bunch of little things. So we do exactly what we say we’re going to do, but providing just that little exceptional extra.
Jeff Randolph:
Thank you for doing exactly that. You are already the world’s largest and most respected provider of Rotary Club supplies. Recently, you have acquired all-star awards and ad specialties as well. Tell us about that and how that’s going.
Joe Beveridge:
Yes, and so that’s been amazing. It is been really interesting. Honestly, sometimes the stars just align. An acquisition was on our calendar, but we were trying to tackle some other events beforehand, but sometimes opportunity happens when it happens. In fact, we just celebrated. Myself and the previous owners last night went out for dinner. We had a little delayed on that.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, sure. As a celebration?
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah, but it was wonderful. So they have a great, great business, a couple locations in the Kansas City area. So it’s off of 39th Street, kind of over by KU Med, and then they have a showroom. I said, “They know it’s all we.” We have a showroom, yes, over off of 87th and Pflumm as well. So they did a good business as far as just financials, but it was mutual. What attracted us to them because they had a larger, more corporatey large company buyer, and they selected us over that, and it was because of the cultures. Their culture and our culture, their people and our people, so similar, and that was what’s made it, I mean, just no-brainer. Just getting in there, we’re getting in the nuts and bolts of having … Now, we’re working on systems and software.
Jeff Randolph:
System integration.
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah, and that’s a little challenging, but obviously, you know that going into it, but the people and just being immersed in there and trying to learn, I know we’ve been in the industry forever, but learning that business exactly, and just their processes that they were running has been interesting. I’ve learned a lot. I think we’ve shared we’ve both learned a lot, but we were talking about it last night at dinner. It’s just both sides are very grateful that we ran into one another because it was a chance meeting, actually, also.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, sometimes these things happen. Well, it’s a great combination of two Kansas City based companies that come together and have that customer service mentality at its heart. I can only see great things happening as a result of that. So good acquisition. It’s a question we ask business owners here on the show from time to time. You’ve been working at Russell Hampton for nearly 20 years now. You took over as president in 2015. What’s something that you did in 2015 that you wouldn’t do again today if you had to go back and do that?
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, man.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s the rear view mirror. You’re looking in the rear view at how you would change things and mistakes maybe that you made earlier, things that you don’t bother to do anymore because it just takes up time.
Joe Beveridge:
Sure. That’s a great question. There’s so much, and so much of it too is, as I say, as you know better, you do better, and I think education-wise, oh, man, I’m not sure if I have a specific what I would do differently. I think probably as you age or gain experience, you don’t sweat the details quite as much. You would pine simple things like what clothing, if we’re picking polos or something, you’d back and forth and this one, what do you want? That one [inaudible 00:16:06] At the end of the day, you have two quality products, and people don’t see all the stuff that goes behind the scenes. I just would eat up so much of time in life on sweating a little-
Jeff Randolph:
Thinking about a lot of different things.
Joe Beveridge:
Yes. So I’d probably say that making those decisions and not losing as much sleep on it.
Jeff Randolph:
When you think back out of all the things that you lost sleep about that you’re just like, “I could get that sleep back. It would be great if I did.” What is next for Russell Hampton? Where do you go from here?
Joe Beveridge:
So right now, we’re just trying to get through our busy seasons. Both All-Star and Russell Hampton are in our busiest I would say probably 10 weeks of the year. So we’re just running right now, but what we’re looking to do is complete our year, so getting all of the systems and software, as we mentioned, up and running, and just get that ironed out, have both sides of the company, and then also, we’ve been working on equipment capabilities, kind of document for both sides, making sure that we’re doing exchanges between production departments and customer service and just sharing that information and really taking advantage of our synergies.
Then we also added several new pieces of equipment. So we are trying to make, right now we’re in the process of sourcing and we’re working with suppliers to get the best products, best pricing, and then we’re also working through the EOS process as well. So nothing’s going on.
Jeff Randolph:
No, you’re just relaxing and kicking back. Man, thanks for carving out time to even talk with us today. I appreciate that. Let’s speed things along by getting into the lightning round.
Joe Beveridge:
All right.
Jeff Randolph:
Are you ready for the lightning round?
Joe Beveridge:
I think so.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. You have no way to know what I might ask at this point, and I’ll start out. We’re going to just jump in and get super deep right away. Legacy is one of those words that carries a lot of burden with it a lot of times. We work with several family-owned, multi-generational kind of businesses, and you can tell that there’s more than just the business riding on the company. Do you feel that weight of legacy or are you able to put that feeling aside and just focus on today’s business?
Joe Beveridge:
Sometimes I feel it. It’s one of those things where when you’re fourth generation and the business has lasted so long and for a very long time, so I had several years of overlap with my in-laws, and like I said, we do family dinners every Sunday or most Sundays. We’re a very tight family. I think it was probably there’s some generational and/or they were so close to retirement that their risk tolerant and mine were on opposite ends of the spectrum. So for all the years, I was trying to push, “We need to do this.” I see huge opportunities for us, but there’s always that shred that’s like, “Man, if you crash this thing into the ground after a century,” and they’re all looking at you like, “I told you.” So I would say it’s a very small sliver, but every once that creeps in your head, you’re like, “Oh, my God, no.”
Both sides of the company have amazing teams, and I would tell you, we have not integrated in EOS over All-Star yet just as we have so many irons on fire, but going through that process, we’re not quite a year in, and Russell Hampton has been amazing. I’m overly one of my, I don’t know if it’s a flaw and fatal flaw, but one of my things is I’m overly inclusive. So EOS, they have a really good model, but it’s pretty rigid, but I will say we’re working with David Blackwell. He’s been very flexible with us, which has been great. He’s been a great fit for us in general. He’s got an energy that matches ours, but usually, they want your team to be four to seven and I have like 16. So overly inclusive, but we have a great team and they bring a lot to the table, and I think David would tell you the same, so anyway.
Jeff Randolph:
There’s value in having [inaudible 00:20:22]
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
Every time you’re on a board and you become president, you have that, “Oh, please don’t let this crash on my watch.”
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, my God.
Jeff Randolph:
But it’s good that you don’t feel that every day. That’s just a background noise.
Joe Beveridge:
Well, then there’s the, “Oh, is that going to be a fifth generation?” and I’m like, “Oh, man, that’s a ton of pressure,” and I don’t want to put that pressure on my kids. I don’t even want to plant that seed. If they have the desire, maybe, but at 12, 14 and 16, that’s so far off.
Jeff Randolph:
We’ll see. One of the things that we have in common is soccer coaching, and I’ll jump into that, but that was always the way I felt about it with my daughter that … I coached women’s soccer for all kinds of years, like a decade or so at some pretty decent high levels. In doing that, I always thought, “Hey, if my daughter wants to play, great, but if she doesn’t want to play, I’m not going to force her to do that.” I’ve seen too many people who are just sad and don’t want to play would fake an injury to get out of playing, and you don’t want that for your kids. So yeah, understanding whether that fifth generation is coming is, yeah, that’s interesting.
Joe Beveridge:
We’ll see. We’ll maybe start getting them in there for the summers and working and-
Jeff Randolph:
If they develop a love for it, and that’s a channel that you can feed that, but don’t push it. It’ll happen if it happened. Let’s keep going on the soccer thing for a second because you are a coach. The 2026 World Cup is coming to Kansas City. Kansas City was lucky enough to have the ability to host a few games first round and a second round. Do you have a favorite World Cup team?
Joe Beveridge:
Well, US, of course.
Jeff Randolph:
We could talk about this. I will maybe lose some followers if we do because I may not back that US thing.
Joe Beveridge:
I mean, love to see them do well, but I don’t know, I watch a lot of the Bundesliga, so I love the German teams. Obviously, Brazil is always Brazil.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, but Brazil is like if you walk into a casino and say, “Man, I hope the house takes everybody’s money today,” you’re betting on the odds on favor. Do you think the US has a shot this year?
Joe Beveridge:
No.
Jeff Randolph:
Thank you for that.
Joe Beveridge:
I’m just going to keep it short. I do think, I mean, just looking at all of the development that the US is putting into the sport and just being in Kansas City, soccer capital of the country, right? I think next World Cup might be … Are we going to win it? I don’t know, but should we be up there?
Jeff Randolph:
Should we be more competitive than we are?
Joe Beveridge:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, 100%, we should be more competitive than we are.
Joe Beveridge:
I feel like we’re starting to hit that tipping point. There’s so many more players not just going overseas, but playing prominent roles on prominent teams. I just give that another World Cup, maybe two, that’s a long time, but it’s going-
Jeff Randolph:
It may take that … Well, as long as we see some of those improvements, as long as we see that we beat the island nation with the population of Cleveland handily every time we play them, that’s what should happen when it doesn’t, and you go, “Look, you have 5.5 million people to choose from on this team and we have 500 million. Why? Why is this?” So I talk a lot of trash about the US program, but man, I would love to see them do well. I would so much love to see them do well, so I hope they get that under control.
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah, I think it’s coming. I think it’s common, and even just having people like Messi now, they’re coming here for their twilight, but still, I mean, wow. I’m sure you’ve watched plenty of their games. It’s still incredible.
Jeff Randolph:
You’re still watching great soccer, and I think fans see that and go, “Yes, this is the way we ought to be. Let’s hold ourselves to a higher standard.” I’m a fan. I would love to see that happen. I’ll move on from soccer. Let’s move on from soccer. Relationships matter in your world quite a bit, and you hire product specialists and customer support people who understand their customer’s needs and suggest great products that fit that bill. I’m curious what qualities you look for in that frontline staff that make them so amazing to work for. If we look at Southwest Airlines and famous marketing cases throughout time, they hire differently. They hire for those kinds of skills. How do you find that frontline staff? What are you looking for?
Joe Beveridge:
What we try to do, now it’s not exact science, is obviously, we love people that love people, but in what we do, you obviously have to have attention to detail. So those are kind of like job requirement, the type, but what we’re really looking for is commitment to people. Are they committed? Are they going to go that extra mile? Do they have a track record of demonstrating that? That’s what we really … You have your little required for each role, each job, but ultimately, I don’t care if it’s, like I said, in the shipping room, production, purchasing or customer service. It’s do you have that in your makeup? Do you genuinely care about things? Are you committed to it?
We’re a pretty great place to work. I’ll say we have our busy season and then we have our times that aren’t so busy. So we don’t ask for a lot. We just always say the customer comes first. We will do what it takes to fulfill our obligations, do what we said we’re going to do, and if that means, “Man, I got to come in or stay little later to get it done,” we’re going to do that, but on the flip side, there’s parts of the year too where we’re nice and slow. So it’s a nice balance.
Then there’s a huge layer of trust. We call it high touch, high trust with customers, but also internally with each other. I think that creates a world of flexibility. So say if we all are adults and we take care of our responsibilities, we communicate with our teammates, life happens. People have things they have to go do, and that’s great. It creates flexibility and it’s just a good culture, and so that’s a long answer to your question.
Jeff Randolph:
It is, but that’s the answer. I mean, that really is the answer. Let’s talk about business travel to kind of wrap a few things up here because you are in your busiest travel season getting out there. Is there a best part of business travel for you? Is there a part that is actually rewarding? Is there a part that that’s fulfilling, whether that’s the purpose of the travel, the people you’re seeing or otherwise?
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, man, yes. So I’m highly social. So to be clear, what this travel is specifically on the Rotary side of the business. So when they’re having all of these training seminars, and so there might be on a small side, 400, and on the bigger side might be closer to a thousand people, and these aren’t at convention centers. Typically, they’re in hotels, the large hotels. We go and over the years of doing this nearly two decades, the club presidents who are coming in or presidents-elect are new, but the people at the district level that are running these events all went through these ranks, and they are, a lot of them are repeat, so we’ve built relationships with them.
Of course, you make a bunch of friends over the years, and even friends with the other vendors, even if it’s competitor. I mean, actually, we acquired a business in Rotary in 2019 because of those relationships, but it’s great. The funny thing is doing trade show stuff. You’re the first one there in the morning, you got to make sure your booth’s open and looks presentable, and then you’re there until they go into their banquet for dinner, cover it all up, then you eat. Then it’s not a requirement that we do the hospitalities, and quite frankly, I enjoy them, but it is definitely where a lot of those relationships are solidified, and I do enjoy it. My wife does not. After six weeks in a row, I’m just dragging, and she’s like … She’s home with three kids also dragging, just not having quite as much fun as I did. I mean, not that it’s not work, so I’d say yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
So it’s the relationships. It’s the people that you get to see. It’s difficult at a Rotary type event not to have that kind of relationship thing develop or you meet some people who are genuinely pretty cool. I know you wove in a lot of the negatives in with that answer. What is the worst part of business travel?
Joe Beveridge:
Oh, if I could show up and the booth was magically there and then leave and it just packed itself and came home, the setup and tear down is rough.
Jeff Randolph:
It is brutal, yeah.
Joe Beveridge:
It takes like four to five hours to put it together, and then maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. We’ve streamlined it. Call it three to four to put up and two and a half to three to tear down.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a lot. That’s a heavy lift. That’s a heavy lift.
Joe Beveridge:
When you’ve been there up, the booth opens at 7:00, so you’re there at 6:00, 6:30. You work till they go to dinner at 6:00. Then you pack until 9:00 or 10:00 and you’re just like, “Oh, my God, you’re so tired.” So that’s the part. If I could have a crew that magically just that happened, the job would be great.
Jeff Randolph:
So we’ll end it on a positive note. When we get back to Kansas City and you’re back home, what’s the thing you have to have for food? What’s the, “I’ve missed you for 10 weeks” kind of food?
Joe Beveridge:
All right. Usually, so grilling out. My family, we’re big into red meat here in the heartland, so it’s usually getting some steaks and putting that on the grill.
Jeff Randolph:
Perfect.
Joe Beveridge:
At home, seeing the family, we’re not going anywhere.
Jeff Randolph:
Relaxed.
Joe Beveridge:
Grilling out, yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Comfy clothes.
Joe Beveridge:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
Grill. Excellent. Joe Beveridge, President and CEO of Russell Hampton Company, tell us where people can find you, where can they get more information if they want to set up their own company store, if they want to order all the coolest, latest merch.
Joe Beveridge:
Sure. Absolutely. So in general, if you would like to go, just check things out, I want to go browse, russellhampton.com is our general landing page, and you’ll see when you hit that page, there’s an option. If you’re a Rotary customer, you can go to the Rotary web store. You can go to the corporate web store is what we call a non-Rotary, and on that, it’s literally that site pulls from all of the reputable suppliers or at least most of them. So there’s probably close to a million products you can surf and search. That’s what I’m saying. You are welcome to do that all day long or just call us and we’ll do it for you.
Jeff Randolph:
They will do it for you.
Joe Beveridge:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
You should definitely do that.
Joe Beveridge:
Yeah. Sorry.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, no, no, that’s perfectly fine. Yeah, russelhampton.com, find all the stuff. Joe Beveridge, President, CEO of Russell Hampton Company, thanks for being here today.
Joe Beveridge:
Absolutely, and I did want to say also I’m super accessible. If you wanted to email me personally, it’s joe@ruh.com, and I’m happy to make the introductions. We love to give tours, so we can tell you we do all of these things, but come see us. We have dogs. Hopefully you love dogs too. They’re very friendly. Thanks for having me. This has been awesome.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a good tour. Thanks so much for being here.
And that is our show. Thanks so much to our guest, Joe Beveridge, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.
May 7, 20241 hr 3 min
Ep. 34: Adjust Your 2024 Strategy Plan with Insights from Top Experts
We’re on location for a special episode with a group of your peers as we get expert insights and actionable strategies to ensure your business not only adapts but thrives in the evolving landscape of 2024. How’s that 2024 plan working out after Q1?
Our featured panelist for this special episode includes:
Rich Cornell, Senior Consultant with RPS Benefits by Design. Learn from Rich how to bend the benefits cost curve while improving employee engagement.
Katheigh Degen, Co-owner of Twin Financial. Benefit from Katheigh’s expertise in working with business owners to identify how to use the business to achieve their personal financial goals.
Angela Eberhart, Director of Crown CFO. Angela has more than 20 years of varied experience and proven expertise guiding businesses with financial insight and strategic planning.
Mike Jackson, President of Pendello Solutions. With two decades of experience in the industry that changes more than any other, he’s up for the challenge.
Tricia Luedke, Vice President at Enterprise Bank. Hear what can be done from a true concierge for everything businesses need, through Tricia’s very personalized community bank experience with expertise in business banking.
Michele Markham, Owner of EAG Advertising & Marketing. From her experience running an agency that serves small businesses throughout Kansas City and beyond, Michele will speak to the marketing strategies and tactics for both B2B and B2C companies, along with the trends that could change everything.
Valerie Vaughn, Certified Mergers & Acquisitions Professional with Apex Business Advisors. Planning to plan to sell your business in the future? Find out what you don’t know from Valerie, who has been successfully consulting with business owners through the process of confidentially selling their business for the past decade.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph and as always this small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing, but not as always, today we have a special episode. Don’t you like it when your favorite podcast does something a little bit different and captures audio from like a live show in front of a studio audience? I mean, sure the format’s different and the sound quality’s different and your time investment is a hundred percent different, but you get a deeper sense and a deeper dive into some serious issues that impact entrepreneurs and business owners. Well, that’s what we have for you today. We’re going to take you into a packed room of business owners and entrepreneurs where I get to moderate a panel of business advisors from a trusted advisor group and discuss issues that are critical today. And the theme is about being at the end of Q1 and seeing everything about your marketing plan change or your business plan change from current conditions to opportunities to election years. How’s that annual plan working out for you?
Well, these business advisors from all the places where you would need business advice have some thoughts. The panelists are going to introduce themselves in just a minute and you’ll see a full list of who these people are in the show notes. I would encourage you to reach out to these people and you may find some things that resonate with you and hit particularly close to home. So go ahead and mentally place yourself in a crowded room of your peers for this session and, like the people who could attend in person, I think you’re going to walk away with plenty of thoughts about how to protect your business and keep moving forward in this year. Here we go. Thank you for being here. I see a lot of faces that I recognize from panels that we’ve done just like this in the past, so thank you for coming back. For the new people, welcome. We’re happy to have you here. I’ll bring up the panel in a minute and we will have a nice conversation, but I wanted to set the stage a little bit.
First on the back of the program, you can’t tell the players without a program. Right? So on the back of this, you’ll have all of the speakers today. And we’ll, as this trusted group of advisors was having conversations in 2024 with some of their clients, they saw a lot of commonality where people were saying, hey, my 2024 plan is already off the rails, or, hey, we just got thrown a curve ball, or my industry has just gone soft and I don’t know what to do about that. And so in getting prepared for that, they were hearing a lot of these same kinds of conversations and said, you know, it may be time for another panel discussion. Let’s see if we can’t get people in the room and listen to the kind of advice that we have. So before I bring up the panel, I wanted to start out, not with questions exactly, but just to kind of get a sense from the audience of what’s going on in your world for 2024. How’s that plan working out for you? Are you still good? Everybody good so far?
Show of hands how many people, yep, going along smooth as could be, can’t be better? There’s a secret right over here. We don’t know what that is yet, but we’re very excited to find out. So for the rest of you, what are the kinds of things that you’re seeing that are impacting your plans that were so well done? What kinds of things are you seeing? ‘Cause I know we’ve already had a conversation about some, you know, my industry has just kind of gone soft. We’re expecting John Cross back there. Good to see you. You know, expecting 40% down in the primary industry he’s selling into. Other things, who’s brave enough to throw out what they’re dealing with right now? Yeah.
Audience 1:
Number of customers is up, but average order volume is down.
Jeff Randolph:
People are being a little stingy with average order volume. Okay. Common, yes. What else? Yeah.
Audience 2:
Taking much longer to get the purchase orders in.
Jeff Randolph:
Longer, longer time…
Audience 2:
Nothing going away…
Jeff Randolph:
… of the sales cycle?
Audience 2:
… just months to get the purchase orders.
Jeff Randolph:
Longer times, people dragging their feet for whatever reason. Other things? Yeah.
Audience 3:
Finding qualified help.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh. HR issues. That’s a thing that happens. Yeah. For sure. Other things? Yeah.
Audience 4:
Construction costs.
Jeff Randolph:
Construction costs being much lower than you expected. Maybe not. Okay. Other things? I want to make sure that we’re hearing some of the same kind of issues because when the panel comes up, you know, part of their answers will likely address these things. So anything else you want to hear about? We will also do Q&A at the end. So have those questions ready. Yeah. Don?
Audience 5 (Don):
Supply chain, but not the way we think. The fact that everybody bought a bunch when things were tight and now they don’t need it.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Audience 5 (Don):
out their inventory.
Jeff Randolph:
Some very lumpy cycles and inventory and that kind thing. Yes?
Audience 6:
Managing growth.
Jeff Randolph:
Growth. How do we manage this growth? Because it’s out of control. How do we move it?
Audience 6:
Kansas City is a hotspot right now for construction. There is a lot of work.
Jeff Randolph:
And the costs are also higher.
Audience 6:
A lot of opportunities.
Jeff Randolph:
So that’s always fun. We’re going to get to all of these topics and if you’ve got questions, please do have them in mind as we go along. We’ll have time for questions at the end and we’ll make sure that we answer those. We pulled some questions in just as people were RSVP’ing. They had some questions. So we’ll have some of those questions plus the ones that the panel has come up with. So without any further fanfare, let’s get the panel up here. Shall we? I’ll have the panel start to introduce themselves.
Valerie Vaughn:
I’m Valerie Vaughn with Apex Business Advisors and I help the owners of privately held businesses confidentially sell when they’re ready to exit. Many businesses aren’t ready for sale without a little bit of prep. So I frequently work with business owners for several years prior to help them understand value drivers and what they can do to optimize the terms when they do their market.
Rich Cornell:
Rich Cornell RPS Benefits by Design and I work with employers and their teams in employee benefits strategy, execution, negotiation.
Michele Markham:
And I’m Michele Markham with EAG Advertising and Marketing and we’re a marketing and brand agency for small and growing businesses and non-profits. And this is a great panel. I try to deflect attention to my nose with the Band-Aid, but don’t let that make you not pay attention to the panel.
Katheigh Degen:
Good morning. I’m Katheigh Degen, co-owner of Twin Financial. And what my passion and love is working with business owners and helping them be prepared and for the business and using the business for their own financial well-being and getting them prepared.
Mike Jackson:
I’m Mike Jackson. I’m president of Pendello Solutions. We provide technology management for small businesses that includes IT support, cybersecurity, and strategic advising.
Tricia Luedke:
And I’ll round it out. I’m Tricia Luedke. I am with Enterprise Bank and Trust. I’m in the Treasury department. That is not wealth management. That is banking services for you, so online banking, ways of really helping your cash flow and your revenue cycle move forward. So yeah, I’m the banker and we’re missing Angela, which is with Crown CFO. She is our fractional CFO for hire. So I’m going to try to answer some of her questions.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. I’ll have you give the mic back to Mike and we’ll have that be the first question. Are you ready? Because you can’t talk about 2024 unless we talk about AI. Am I right? There’s a lot going on. So let’s have an IT guy tell us a little bit about this. But when it comes to AI, what’s the best way to approach it and make use of the new technology knowing it could significantly improve the efficiency of our business? Should we change priorities for the rest of the year based on what’s going on with AI?
Mike Jackson:
There’s a lot to unpack there and as we said, you know, you can’t go anywhere these days without hearing about AI. It’s in absolutely everything. If whatever you’re looking at isn’t powered by AI, we just kind of ignore it completely. Actually I was looking at something the other day about golf clubs and said they’re powered by AI. I think that’s not helping my swing that much. I know where they were going in terms of the design is probably not going to do that much for my swing. But in terms of AI, I think there’s a couple of key things that we need to look at and we need to evaluate. So first of all, security guy here, I’m going to go down there first. You know, we have to understand where our data is. So yeah, when ChatGPT came about a year and a half ago now, they took the world by storm.
Mike Jackson:
Everybody was throwing questions in there, data in there, all sorts of stuff. And I use that significantly. You know, if you want to go find new restaurants in Kansas City, fantastic, great, great thing to do. But we do have to be careful what we’re putting into AI. You know, if you go download your client list and you have your contacts in there and saying generate an email and send it to these, that data is now out on the web and it’s essentially training the models with your data. And that’s ultimately what we want to be careful of. We got to make sure we know how our data is being used. So if you’re looking at some sort of artificial intelligence platform, the first thing I would look at is where is the data? Is your data private? Is it being used to train the models? And usually they’ll say, no, this data is not, your data’s not being used to train the models.
Mike Jackson:
So the other thing is we have to understand what is our focus? What are we trying to solve with artificial intelligence? A part of it might be we’re just looking to play around perfectly fine. I do it the all time honestly. So that’s part of what we do is to kind of mess around these things and understand how they’re going to impact businesses. But are we trying to solve something specifically, are we trying to, you know, we talked about it’s hard to find a good help in Kansas City right now with the labor market. So are we trying to automate something possibly through the use of artificial intelligence? What’s our focus? And then we can then approach and say, okay, if I’m trying to solve a true issue, how can, is there a tool out there, is an application or something that utilizes artificial intelligence.
Jeff Randolph:
Have you pass them mic to Michele next because we can’t not talk about marketing and AI. Marketing has been impacted by AI for a very long time. It’s kind of built into some of the tools that we use for a long time. But a question for Michele, we can’t talk about marketing without asking about AI. So let’s start asking how a small business should use AI, things like ChatGPT for their market. How should we do that?
Michele Markham:
Well, a lot of different ways. So the first thing, as you mentioned, AI has been around a long time. I mean it actually started in the ’50s and then we’ve been using it for SEO purposes in agencies for about 20 years. And so I think people do think, like you said, you know, a year and a half ago ChatGPT came out and everybody was like AI, this whole new thing, but it has been around for a very long time. So it really is about how you use it. And so there are some things that you can do that maybe you haven’t been able to get to from a marketing perspective yourself or you’re paying an agency for and you’re thinking, okay, now that ChatGPT is here, I can use this and you can use it a lot of things. You can use it for idea generation on content.
Michele Markham:
You can use it to dig in a little bit deeper on things, but there is a point where how you use it can really make a difference in terms of it standing out. And I liken it to, you know, yes, you can do your own taxes but do you? You need that expertise. Yes. You can watch DIY videos and do some things, but then, you know, you need someone else in there. And it all comes down to kind of the prompts and how to ask the questions and how to dig in for more information. ChatGPT is a very nice public tool, but there are other tools that you can subscribe to or agencies subscribe to. They get really down and slice and dice your data and look at it in different ways. And as Mike mentioned, you don’t want that out there in something public that then they’re using your data for everything.
Michele Markham:
And the really interesting thing is how you use ChatGPT can vary so much between a B2B business or a B2C business. And there are a lot of different ways. I actually did a search, I had ChatGPT tell me, okay, how do I use ChatGPT in marketing? And so the things that it brought up are things that we recommend as well. But then it would bring up things like, you know, for B2B, have a loyalty program and give somebody a thing so that when they make X number of purchases. Well, you know, Don, it’s not buy six pneumatic conveying systems and get one free kind of thing, so it can lead you down the wrong road.
Michele Markham:
And I know intuitively you see that’s an easy example, but some of these other things that you really need to get into can make a huge difference. The tools you can use, some of the ones that are free to use, some of the ones that you can subscribe to, some of the ones that agencies use, we could talk an hour for those. I do have a handout and I have some handouts or we’re happy to talk more about what’s out, you know, how to use AI if you’re a B2B company, if you’re a B2C company, and then the effect of your brand and AI. So we’ll have that handout for everybody to look at because it gets really in-depth. But we are happy to talk to anybody about this. You don’t have to be a client of ours to talk about this anytime because it’s an ever-changing hot topic.
Jeff Randolph:
Could you pass that to Katheigh for a moment because I want to switch topics a little bit to really talk about changing priorities. So we’ve all dealt with that so far this year. And Katheigh, I don’t know if you know this, it’s an election year. As a business financial advisor, how are you preparing your clients for doing business in an election year?
Katheigh Degen:
Normally, meaning no more the election, because your business should be based on your goals and your objectives, not everybody else’s or what’s going on in the economy in that manner and still take action. Many times people think that the market’s going to go down or up or be affected by the election. History will show you and tell you that it has very, very, very level effect on the market, the election does. In fact, in the last 20, 30 years there’s only been two candidates or presidents that didn’t get elected and that’s when the market went down and that’s the only time that in the last 20 or 30 years that the market has gone down. So actually the evidence says with incumbents, the market will actually improve and get a little bit better because of course the incumbents are working to make the economy stronger. So you may not see a down market until the second year when the new president or a president comes in. So just be normal, whatever that is now. Stay with your goals and objectives and stay focused on that.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. If you’ll pass that to Mike. I’ve got technology, and if technology and changing priorities tend to go hand in hand, from a technology perspective, how do we stay focused on a plan when the next best thing is just continually being released? It’s right around the corner.
Mike Jackson:
Yeah. There’s always going to be some tool, something that’s going to solve all of your problems up there. We see them every single day and even as we look at it from a cyber security perspective, there’s going to be something that’s going to protect you 100% no matter what you’re doing, where you are, what you’re clicking on. First of all, it’s not true. And, you know, as we look at it from a security perspective, in general, I think that it comes down to having a strategy. What is your strategy to protect yourself? What is your strategy that you have for the year? Don’t deviate from that simply because there’s something that’s going to solve all your problems. And that’s more than just a technology statement there, but we’re living in a world of SaaS applications, software to service application and you can buy those and it’s a recurring model and everything and this one is going to solve my problems.
Mike Jackson:
Many of them will. Many of them might. But make sure, you know, similar to artificial intelligence make sure you have a strategy of truly what you’re trying to solve there. What’s your plan for implementation? How are you going to see that through? That’s not just something you changed overnight. These are things that you should plan out over the course of time. And how does that impact your priorities per the year? So if you set these prior for a year, 90 days ago, what that was, how are those change, those tools, those applications, your technology strategy, how is that going to help you to achieve those priorities?
Jeff Randolph:
We had a question submitted when we were coming into, when we were doing registration for this event. And I’ll have Michele answer, if we can. It wasn’t from an EAG client. I should probably preface that. A B2B service company in the construction industry said, I’ve been really good about having a marketing plan each year and actually following it. It’s a big reason we’ve been growing. I’ve felt really good coming into 2024, even though we were seeing softness in the industry late last year, but this first quarter has been rough to the point where I have to cut expenses including pausing our marketing because I don’t want to spend my budget on the wrong thing. What should I do?
Michele Markham:
What should I do? We actually hear this a lot and whether you’re a B2B or a B2C company, there are three key things. And the first one is make sure your marketing plan is always built in a priority order from top down. When you find yourself in a soft economy or find yourself with clients who are delaying decisions, whatever, you know okay, I do need to cut some marketing expense and you can cut from the bottom up and you know which of those things are delivering more to you and less to you that are more supporting the bigger things. The next is in really nearly every case if you cannot do anything except one thing, it’s your search engine optimization. And even if you think my clients know where I am, I have a location, they do this, they’re not really looking for me on the web, what’s happening in your industry is people are looking for different solutions.
Michele Markham:
They’re looking, in the soft economy sometimes they’re not buying, sometimes they’re saying, okay, we thought we’d do this. Can we look for something else? You know, we kind of have to pivot and being found is the biggest thing. So I think that’s one of those things because you are feeling softness in your industry, your competitors are feeling that same crunch. And so what happens with search engine optimization is if you stop that, then they could be getting a competitive advantage over you. When things turn around, you’ve fallen so far down in the rankings, then you’re spending the next 6, 9, 12 months trying to get back to where you were before. So, you know, number one, marketing plan in priority order, so you know where to cut; second, search engine optimization; and then the third thing is strengthening those relationships with your key accounts. Your key clients already working with you, you know, they’re having the same problem. So you are trying to figure out how do I get more sales? How do I maintain sales? How do I do this?
Michele Markham:
They’re struggling and that’s why they’re not buying from you or buying as much from you or maybe buying lower ticket items from you so they’re having a hard time. So strengthening those relationships saying how do we get in here and roll up our sleeves and dig into this together shows that you’re in this with them. And it’s the same thing with those key prospects. You know, everybody has a prospect list, whether it’s people who have come into them or those people that you’ve identified, I really want to get to these people. It’s like have those conversations. Usually we’re done talking about COVID in 2020, but one of the things that we did in 2020 was we just said to our clients, what do you need? And it was just how can we be there for them? Whether we were spending extra time to help them dig in and understand things, it was just being there by their side. And so when you’re having that softness in your industry, it’s really that’s where the relationships will come in because they’ll stick with you through the hard times and be back when it gets stronger.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. Pass it this way to Valerie, because I’m going to ask Valerie if this is a good time to sell my business. The Business Journal had an article not long ago that it said that merger and acquisition activity plummeted in 2023. I was planning to put my business on the market in 2024. Is it a bad time to sell or should I wait?
Valerie Vaughn:
Yeah. I read that article too and I was surprised because that’s not what we experienced at Apex Business Advisors. Last year was the best year that Apex had ever had, and eight of the 14 advisors had their best year ever. Businesses that we listed sold quickly and we were able to bring multiple offers so that the seller had options. It was a seller’s market and we expect the trend to continue in 2024.
Jeff Randolph:
How far in advance do you want people to start talking to you though before we decide to sell next week?
Valerie Vaughn:
Ideally, several years.
Jeff Randolph:
Thank you. That’s a good note. Good note. Let’s pass that down to Tricia. In that spirit of changing priorities, I am so far off my budget already. What do I do?
Tricia Luedke:
You talk to your advisors. So budget is something that you think about long-term. You know, your budget is something that you need to sit down with your CFO, really visit with them about your strategic plan and where you need things to be. But you need to really don’t do it one time and then put it away. You need to continue to look at that on a monthly basis to see, oh my gosh, did I hire someone new and now I need to switch gears and where am I going to move that money. Right? Did I buy a new piece of equipment and now I need to do something there? So forecasting, look at those budgets on a monthly basis to see where you are, but then also how does that work into your budget?
Tricia Luedke:
So visit with your banker early. I notice a lot of people are like, oh my banker. I want to talk to them last. No. You want to talk to us early. Get us on your plan early so we can be your teammate. Talk to your CFO, your controller. Find out what is going on, not just with your industry but also within your company and know what you’re looking for and plan that and talk to your advisors. You know? I mean, marketing could go up, but you need to know where to reallocate those funds and you need to think about that. I think we’re all seeing early. Right? So that’s what I would say. Get with your advisors and don’t wait.
Jeff Randolph:
All right, Katheigh, you may want to weigh in on this one. How has the economy in the last few quarters impacted business valuations?
Katheigh Degen:
Business valuations have, they’re not affected that much by two quarters. Okay? Your business valuation is based off between five to three years. That needs the history. But when we talk about that valuation, what most people don’t recognize or forget and talk about budgets, budgets are important, but as a business owner, you really need to think about yourself and what you are taking out of the business. And I say that because many business owners, when the budget gets tight, forgets to pay themselves and they decide, okay, but that you need to have the budget run so you do pay yourself because when you go sell the business, no one’s going to buy a business that the business owner can’t afford to take money. Okay?
Katheigh Degen:
So you have to think and be aware of that. I’m not a big budget person. I’m a really big saving person. So when you have a cash flow, if you have different, professional word, buckets that you have put money aside out of the business or in the business that you can get to, that’s when cash flow, what happens the bankers. I mean, you don’t have enough. When you have good cash flow, you’re not saving enough money to put aside for the rainy day when you don’t have good cash flow. So that is a huge item for business owners is understanding how to protect and keep their cash flow.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and keep that microphone for a second because Michele has already talked about staying focused on your plan and prioritizing things. If what we’re trying to do is drive results and stay focused on something, Katheigh, what mindset should I have as a business owner to be able to do that? How do I keep focused on the prize?
Katheigh Degen:
I’m going to tell you go back to the day that you asked yourself and you decided to get in business for yourself. Because at the end of the day, I think that’s the thing that business owners end up forgetting. When you get in the day to day and the junk and all of that is why am I doing this? What made me become a business owner? I got to deal with employees and cash flow. And so why is it? Was it to have security? Was it to provide your family a future? Is it to employ? Actually I’m proud that I actually employ 10 people and that I am ultimately responsible for their well-being because it gets a little heavy, but at the end of the day, that gives me another purpose. So that’s really a challenge is try to remember what you love about your business, why you’re in business, and go back to the basics and that will get you back on course, I think, when you’re deciding what to do.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. I’ll pass that down this way to Valerie because I’m going to read this one off. This was another one that came in and focuses on the survey. So a recent nationwide survey of business intermediaries revealed that during Q4 of 2023 buyers have become increasingly selective. The survey indicates that well-managed businesses with strong fundamentals and growth potential are still receiving high valuations and garnering buyer interest. However less robust companies are being overlooked. What steps can I take to ensure that my business attracts a lot of buyer interest and receives a premium valuation when I decide to sell?
Valerie Vaughn:
There’s a lot there. There’s a really specific question.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Valerie Vaughn:
Yeah. Well, I think that it’s always been that quality businesses are sold first. Nobody really wants to buy a distressed business, but there are things, there are many things that a business owner can do to increase the value of their business, keep it up. But I’ll just focus on a few. So numbers first, numbers are always very important. Buyers and lenders look at numbers under a microscope, so having revenue and earnings that are trending up is best. Stable is okay. I have seen in recent years that business owners aren’t keeping up with the economy and they aren’t raising the price of their goods or services fast enough. So continue to make sure that you’re aware of how your products and services should be priced, that your margins aren’t eroding. Keep the revenue and profit up and then always focus on operational efficiency.
Valerie Vaughn:
I was talking about numbers. I’ve said this so many times. You’ve probably heard me say it a lot. Keep business and personal expenses separate. It just makes for a cleaner, more valuable sale when you go to exit your business. Other things, I’m going to reiterate what Katheigh said. Owners pay yourself a fair market salary. Fair market compensation shows that you’re really confident that your business is going to remain profitable and it adds to the value of your business. Then many of you own the real estate that your business is located in. Make sure that you’re paying yourself again, fair market rent. Some business owners pay themselves more than a fair market. Some pay less. Paying fair market is best. Over or under just kind of complicates the sale. And paying fair market actually increases the value of both your business and your real estate.
Jeff Randolph:
Go ahead and keep that for a second. Have you been receiving more solicitations to buy a business so far…
Rich Cornell:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
… like to buy your business? A lot of those?
Rich Cornell:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
Can you address that a little bit? Why is this happening? What’s going on here? Why are we getting all these?
Valerie Vaughn:
Yeah. That’s a great question. I mentioned earlier that I was surprised about The Business Journal article because Apex had a great year and we had seen businesses sell quickly and multiple offers very frequently for asking price. They are more buyers than quality businesses on the market. And so what’s happening is private equity groups, investors are coming to down market. They’re looking at smaller businesses than they would’ve looked at previously. Meanwhile, individuals who want to escape corporate America and become entrepreneurs are looking at those same smaller businesses and small is relative. It can range from, you know, $500,000 in revenue up to 20 million in revenue or higher. Small is just a word. Right? So in short, there are a lot of buyers looking at very few businesses. It’s the supply and demand question. In order to be successful with their business acquisition search, buyers are having to get more aggressive, more assertive. They’re getting more repetitive, and they’re going directly to owners and making explicit offers. So that’s what’s happening.
Valerie Vaughn:
You know, if you’re in the mood to sell or if someone sounds really interesting as the buyer, I would suggest that you take their contact information, thank them, and say, I’ll get back to you shortly. I want to talk to my M&A advisor, my business broker before we go forward. And if you don’t have a business broker, get one. Find one that’s knowledgeable and that you trust. But what you really want is someone on your side who’s controlling the process and looking after your interests instead of letting that buyer, that one buyer take away your negotiating power and control the process to their interests. So that’s what’s happening and that’s my recommendation, if someone calls and you’re interested.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. Well, let’s hand it back to Rich because we’re going to hear a little bit more about HR and benefits for this question. We’ve succeeded and failed with various approaches to wellness over the past few years, walk at lunch or a vendor supported points and awards, education showing up, and cheering on employees at a 5K. Are there things that we can do to improve our health insurance risk profile to be more attractive in the market?
Rich Cornell:
Good question. We’re going to start with something you cannot do, so don’t, because it’s illegal. You cannot walk down the hall and ask Bob or Mary to jump off your plan and into Medicare. It’s against the law. What you can do is ask your advisor team to help you in that area educating Bob and Mary. Because if Bob and Mary qualify for Medicare, there’s a reason that Medicare doesn’t want them and they would prefer that they say on your books, but they’re probably better off, their max out-of-pocket exposure might go down by 90 or even 95% if they moved to Medicare for similar costs out of pocket on a monthly basis. And then meanwhile, you and your broker, your advisor team can go to the market with a younger, probably healthier group. And we had a recent example this week where the general manager and her right-hand man left the group, went to Medicare and she’s saying just the other day, wait, my max out-of-pocket is now $240 and then the premiums on the renewal are lower than this? Yes. Yes. That’s true.
Rich Cornell:
Another area that you can look at, and by the way, if you are Bob and Mary and you’re the owner of the business, you can have that conversation with yourself. That’s not against the law. Another area that you can look to giant corporations and many of them now are focusing their employer contribution on employees and reducing, pulling away, or even penalizing spouses. And if a company that’s generating a gazillion dollars can do that, you might look at the ramifications of doing that yourself. Because in many cases the higher risk people tend to be the spouses. Just the way it is. So again, you can’t chase them, but you can pivot to take a look at the way that’s done.
Jeff Randolph:
Go ahead and keep that for a second because before we get out of here, I wanted to make sure that we get back to resources that may be found in some of those benefit plans that we should inform our team about. I think you had some interesting insights on finding some of those last time we talked. So what kind of resources could we find in those benefit plans?
Rich Cornell:
There are some areas that are already baked into your benefits plan most likely. Employee assistance programs have blossomed considerably and more vendors are giving you face-to-face access, or your team members face-to-face, for counseling, be it grief counseling, relationship, work-life balance, different life struggles, unlimited online telephone support. But if your team doesn’t know about it, it’s not there. And so I would educate, re-educate, reiterate that freebie. And then another one that has burgeoned since the pandemic time is telehealth. Telehealth used to be the stepchild in the health industry and it’s now become much more mainstream.
Rich Cornell:
There are many, many more physical and emotional issues that people can address and really the big sale there is you can address it without sitting in a waiting room for an hour and a half with a bunch of sick people. And in many cases you can do so with a $0 copay. So as a member, that’s a win-win-win. From a group standpoint, it comes back to making your group more attractive at renewal, at marketing. The vendors love it when you use telehealth and you don’t go to the real doctor and they will reward you in terms of rates.
Jeff Randolph:
Michele, I’m going to make marketing and sales fight for a second. Marketing is producing leads, but sales isn’t closing my leads, but it’s the same sales team I’ve had and I know they’re capable of closing leads. What are we going to do we need to do to fix that kind of gap?
Michele Markham:
So much. You know, a lot of it it is a focus and I made some notes here that I wanted to make sure I hit on, but you want to enhance the marketing strategies and then optimize sales processes. And a key point in there is sales processes. And I’ll go into a few things. First, you have to establish a really, really strong relationship and feedback loop between marketing and sales. Marketing can sometimes assume, you know, we’re the brand stewards and we know what’s best for sales, and we can dictate from our thrones. Sales can sometimes blame marketing when sales are bad and they can take marketing for granted when sales are good. It’s not because of the marketing. It’s because I’m an awesome salesperson. So you have those things going back. But marketing always has to remember is sales teams can provide such valuable insight into why leads are not converting and then marketing can use that to adjust the strategies in messaging and in targeting. It can help ensure that content aligns with the needs and the pain points of your target audience.
Michele Markham:
The needs and pain points don’t stay the same. Even if your service or product stays the same, the needs and pain points at different times can really change. There was talk about, you know, getting your business ready for sale and getting your financials in place and a lot of times we’ll find a lot of our customers when they’re getting ready to sell, suddenly they’re wanting to beef up their marketing and let’s get all of these sales in. Other times we’ll find that some of our clients are investing in technology, investing in equipment because they’re getting ready to sell. Which is going to be an expense to them. They’re looking at that. So sometimes it’s really getting close to those prospects and kind of understanding where are they? And I know they’re not always going to tell you I’m thinking about putting my business up for sale, but you can start probing and start to learn those telltale signs.
Michele Markham:
The next part, and it kind of ties into the AI aspect, is you may be getting a lot of leads for your marketing, but do you know how qualified those leads are? And so ensuring you have that lead scoring and that qualification process to ensure that only the high quality leads actually make it to your sales team. So it involves assigning lead scores based on their actions, engagement levels. It’s looking at these people did this. What’s that like audience doing? How do we engage with them differently? What got this person into me that actually bought and how do I find more of them? And it’s so much in all of that data. So it takes analyzing the data. It takes looking at sales history. It’s a deep dive into the prospects won and lost and an analysis of your existing clients. And it’s not easy, but it’s valuable.
Michele Markham:
It’s sales and marketing working together on that, it’s just so key. And then a third thing is implementing marketing automation tools to nurture the leads effectively through the sales funnel. Not every lead is ready to purchase immediately and you want to tell, you know, a few questions ago I talked about stay close to them, build those relationships, but you can’t have your salesperson calling that prospect every single day. But you can set up automation and nurturing things where they’re staying in front of them and they’re hearing from your company and they’re hearing from the brand. And you can those so much based on what that person is interested in and have those nurturing things come directly from your salesperson through automation, so they’re not spending the time typing up the emails and everything and having all of those touch points. And then, you know, although marketing is my business, I do know it can’t do everything.
Michele Markham:
Your sales team is your most valuable asset, always has been, always will be. So invest in that ongoing sales training and development to enhance the skills of your sales team. Your best salespeople still sometimes need to be reminded of the basics and it may be you’ve got a sales manager, you’ve got a leader that can do that one-on-one training, but it’s got to be an ongoing thing. But if you’re focusing on training from that consultative selling, the negotiation skills, the product knowledge, the handling objections, all of that, use that. We’ve got one in the room actually that is really good at this. Dan, you may even want to add to some of this.
Dan:
You got the throat, just keep going.
Michele Markham:
Where marketing belongs. No. It’s just funny as I’m saying this, I’m like, oh my gosh, he’s right there.
Michele Markham:
But it is. It’s focusing on that training and it’s doing things. Your marketing team or your marketing agency can help you really review and optimize your sales process, ensuring it’s streamlined, that it’s clear, that it’s consistent across the team. Every salesperson has their own way of doing things, so you’re not trying to turn them all into clones, but it’s understanding what are their skills and then how do you bring all of this in together and it’s really, like I said, it takes humility to work together on all of that a lot of times, but it’s just if you use all of the tools and you use the people and use the experience to just constantly analyze the data, I mean it’s analyze, analyze, analyze data over and over and look at it and tweak. It’s just not a one and done kind of process. Dan, anything to add?
Dan:
And with your sales process, you know, if you’re going to change it, I would say, tweak it. So a lot of times we go and something works and then it stops working for a couple of days. Then we just completely changed it [inaudible 00:44:05] tweak it so you can understand as you make that change, okay, what does it do to the numbers, what does it do to area your close rate, all that kind of stuff. Because then you actually navigate it to analyze and evaluate so you can make it changes.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s great. Let’s Start with Tricia on this one. Because we’re going to switch up and since our plan many times has derailed, let’s continue to predict the future and see where we’re going from here. And I’ll start with what will the Fed do to interest rates with your crystal ball and how should I react?
Tricia Luedke:
My crystal ball. You know, we bankers have advisors too and our advisors are telling us basically that rates are going to come down. I know my mortgage people are excited. When rates hit six people start looking around, so they’re loving it. They’re seeing the sixes now. Lenders are loving it that it’s coming down. I will say that the Fed does not want to be connected to any political party. I know we mentioned that earlier. So I can’t tell you that they’re all going to do it after the presidential election. We’ve just been told that they’ll probably move it down by 75 basis points throughout the year.
Tricia Luedke:
So they meet eight times a year. If you didn’t know that, it’s out there on the web. You can kind of watch it. But they’re probably still going to continue to move down. I think everyone is talking about the economy going great. Inflation’s still a little high. So, you know, they’re watching both of those things pretty steadily and what we’ve been told is that they really have an eye on the threes, but I don’t think we’re going to hit threes this year. So I think that’s probably 2025 so steadily it’s going to go down. But that’s all going to depend on the economy and the inflation.
Katheigh Degen:
Thank you for that information and here’s more information. Don’t just wait and watch rates. I can’t tell you how many times people lose opportunity because they are waiting to do something. If you make a decision and I’m a big decision, you make a decision, make it that day, move on, re-evaluate it, not every month, but re-evaluate it annually because in my many years I almost get the number yet, many years of being in business where my clients have taken advantage is they made the decision when they were in the room at that time and those who didn’t make a decision to move forward, they usually are the ones coming back saying, gosh, I wish I would’ve done that. So we don’t know what happens at anytime.
Jeff Randolph:
This is when they start fighting every single time.
Tricia Luedke:
Sorry. Do you want to change seats? Well, and I was going to just kind of jump on that bandwagon again, know your numbers. You know your bankers always saying know your numbers. We talked to someone else already mentioned it today to me. You’ve got to know your numbers. Don’t make a gut decision without talking to your banker, without talking to your CFO for hire or your CFO yourself. Know your numbers. Don’t go out and spend. Cash is king, so don’t go out and spend your cash just because you have a lot of cash right now, so I’m going to go buy a bunch of equipment, but then I can’t pay for my employees who are going to run the equipment.
Tricia Luedke:
Or I use cash for it when I could have done a term loan for it because cash is king. So, you know, don’t make those gut decisions with really not talking to your banker. You don’t have to listen to your banker and you can be in the room and be like, yeah, right, no, if you don’t want to. You can talk to multiple people, your CFO for hire, talk to your wealth advisor. You know, make sure that you’re making those decisions, not just because you have a ton of cash. You want to make the decision that’s best for your company and how you’re growing with that budget, with that plan to move forward.
Jeff Randolph:
Michele, we’re going to predict the future in marketing. What’s the biggest change in marketing so far in 2024 that we should really be paying attention to?
Michele Markham:
Well, you think I’m going to say AI but I’m not. I’m also not going to say social influencers. But AI contributes to this, but the biggest change in marketing is giving your clients or your customers the very best experience possible with your brand. Those who don’t are absolutely losing prospects. What this means is you must absolutely factor user experience into your marketing plan. Everything isn’t about data, but it’s not just about the numbers. Understanding how people use your website, when they use it, when they stop using it, where do they drop off, when do they return to it, other websites that they visit.
Michele Markham:
I mean, we now have access to things that allow us to see, hey, people came here, where did they go after this? Who else are they looking at? Who else are they visiting? And so much more, sometimes it’s little things like just seeing people are going to your website and they’re trying to click on something but it’s not clickable, but it tells you that’s the kind of information they’re interested in, so how can you make it easier for them to give to you? How can you make it easier for them to not leave and to engage? Because at the end of the day, what we want from any website visitor is we want that call or we want that form filled out.
Michele Markham:
So I think it’s really imperative that you make that very easy and then that you use some of these tools and these data that we can have access to to understand what they’re doing and then finding those like audiences of people and targeting them because if you get your experience with them tied down, then targeting those other people, they’re going to have the same real good experience. And it used to be that this was a huge investment for businesses to get this kind of data, especially the data to understand where are the customers going or the prospects going when they leave me, leave my website. What else are they doing? But it really can be done affordably and to a point where you can’t afford not to. It’s just you can’t have the same, you don’t have to build a new website every year, but you can’t have the same website sit out there for years because the way people use them change constantly.
Jeff Randolph:
Throw it back to Tricia, if you would, because I’m going to lob a softball at her. Before we open this up to Q&A, one softball question for you.
Tricia Luedke:
All right. I’m ready.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re here at the end of Q1. When should I start the process of looking at 2025?
Tricia Luedke:
Now.
Tricia Luedke:
Right now.
Jeff Randolph:
Wrap it up.
Tricia Luedke:
Absolutely. So it’s so funny, I love, I just moved jobs, and they’re always like, where do you want to be in three to five years? I don’t know. Where’s the company going to be in three to five years? You tell me where I can strategically put myself. Same thing with your business. You know, know your plan. Know where you want to go. Think about if you’re adding a new product, if you are going to jump on something completely different and add a new tool, whatever, you need to plan for that and you need to plan now and you need to plan with your advisors so you are not leaving out what’s important like what kind of vehicle in the banking industry that you need. And then don’t forget about fraud protection. It’s so, so important for businesses. I know a lot of people don’t want to pay for it because it’s not if it happens to me, but when it happens to me. And that’s so important. So think about just where you want to be in the future, what you need to do, but protect where you are now.
Jeff Randolph:
Let’s open. We’ve got five or so minutes to open this up to questions from you guys. You’ve got a great group of trusted business advisors up here. Let them have it. What kind of questions do you have? Who’s here?
Jeff Randolph:
Dan.
Dan:
So I want to piggyback on what Patricia was talking about. When you say fraud protection, could you be a little more specific.
Tricia Luedke:
I can. So if checks, people are still writing checks, and so check protection, positive pay, payee positive pay, knowing when you write your checks or your third party is writing your checks, what the check number is, who the person is. Every time you write a check, your account number and your routing number are out there in the system and tons of people are touching it, so check protection is important, so is ACH protection. So anything that you’re doing on the computers through ACH, Direct Deposit, paying your vendors, all of those kind of mechanisms can be protected and the bank has tools to help you with that. So all of that.
Katheigh Degen:
There’s a key for that.
Tricia Luedke:
Always a value-added benefit to that. Worse. Yes. There is a value, but that value is less every month than what it’s going to cost you. I mean you can just look up the cases. If someone, you know, a check got stolen and somebody washed it and they still do that. It’s crazy. I don’t remember when that movie came out, Catch Me If You Can, but it still happens. I just had someone this year wash a check, write a different amount, and she was silly enough that she didn’t have her own account, so she used her buddy and her buddy lost $200, the bank captured everything else back, but they still washed it and was able to take that information. Luckily they had protection and so the controller saw that and said, oh, that check is not our check. It doesn’t have our logo on it. It doesn’t have this on it. It doesn’t look right. So we were able to stop it right away. Those are the kind of things. And of course added value.
Katheigh Degen:
Sorry.
Tricia Luedke:
Yes.
Speaker 21:
I would pick up on this as well. And just that we encountered an issue with the ACH where one of our employees basically fell for a scam and he had access to be able to transfer money. So in our case, it wasn’t $200, it was $25,000. And my bank wouldn’t protect, didn’t protect me, so I had zero protection on that. Lesson learned, be careful who you give access to in your accounts and get that protection.
Tricia Luedke:
Absolutely. So not only do you want to protect yourself with that software, but you also want to protect yourself with your own employees. A lot of smaller businesses, mom and dad, your brother, your sister are working with you. A lot of other times you have other people, but you need dual authentication. You need to have one person making sure that they’re doing the process of writing the checks. Then somebody else is the one who’s hitting the button to approve it and making sure that it goes out both electronically and written. You want to make sure that you probably don’t have two family members doing the same thing. ‘Cause I’m always worth more than my sister thinks I’m worth. But also just to make sure that you’re protecting yourself. You don’t want your office manager whose been your office manager for 25 years knowing everything, right, so for her own good and your own good.
Jeff Randolph:
Next question right there. Yeah.
Speaker 22:
Kind of, I guess for you and you, the Ransomware Act versus fraud and the benefits to firewall security versus paying for insurance and dealing with it, what are you guys seeing kind of as the best way to handle that?
Mike Jackson:
Yeah. So for the first one I’d say I do recommend cybersecurity insurance and that’s just like you get car insurance and everything. They’re protecting you for a number of different items. For the ransomware, you know, it depends on your insurance. So some will pay for it. Some will not. You know, and it usually depends on the protections that you have in place, and there’s questionnaires there is that you complete for your insurance agency. So those are very important. It’s something we help with because a lot of times if you answer yes, we have something in place, and it turns out you don’t, and that’s how you have an incident, as we call them. Is that a nice word? Then they’re going to say, well, you told us you had this, but it turns out you didn’t. So, you know, ransomware it’s still increasing year over year. There’s no doubt about that. It is the predominant way that they are getting money.
Mike Jackson:
So, you know, I think it’s important to understand what does your cybersecurity insurance policy have in there? What does it cover? What doesn’t it? They’re not all the same. Just saying you have cybersecurity insurance does not make you covered. So it’s important to understand what you have in there, but then as well, you know, have as many protections in place as you can. And there is that balance there that we still have people do your job so we can lock things down so much that you can’t do your job. so that’s not the point here, but have the protections in place that if one thing does fail, you have something else to protect you.
Katheigh Degen:
Can I add to that? That’s not insurance that I do, but I work with small business owners and just FYI I don’t think any of us are too small. I had an architect firm and they only probably had, they have 15 employees and she walked in the office and she had ransom and literally it shut her down and they were asking her, and they probably do three to 4 million in revenue, but they were asking her for $500,000 to be able to get to her information. The good news was she did have insurance and I think it was a locked-in guy and he just basically said to her in passing I think you need to make sure you have it. And she had it, you know, have it. But it was a huge, huge stressful situation that she was able to protect.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. And Mike, correct me if I’m wrong, but we’re hearing more that it’s not a question of if it’s a question of when this kind of thing happens to you. Right?
Mike Jackson:
This is correct. Yeah. I can’t remember the exact numbers from last year, but I think it was somewhere in the range of 40% of all small businesses had some sort of incident. And those that did, I think it was 50% of those had a second one because they didn’t close the holes. They didn’t learn from the mistakes that happened in first place. So a lot of times they think, hey, we had one, we’re good. No. The bad guys say, oh, you’re a target. Yes. It is increasing every year and it doesn’t matter the size. You know, we see it, was it Liberty Hospital that was a couple months ago? I think it was December. As large as that, all the way to we’ve seen a two-person law firm.
Jeff Randolph:
Is there another question we could end on?
Tricia Luedke:
Training, you must train your employees not to click on links, to do certain things, and to really hover over the person who’s saying they want something. If it’s something that they need immediately, it’s probably not what they need. If it’s your banker supposedly asking for your account number, your social security number, your date of birth, holy cow, we all have that information. Don’t send any of that kind of stuff. Don’t click on any of those kind of things. Call your bank. Call that vendor who’s saying that they need a wire sent out immediately and ask them, is this really you?
Tricia Luedke:
Is something that needs? We do training all the time on it, and I’m still amazed at some of the new stuff that’s coming out. And when I hover over, I’m like I can’t see it. It’s because I’m old. But I can’t see where it looks like that is not the right company. So look at the verbiage also, broken English, all those of things. You think you hear it all the time, but then when someone sends you something and you’re like, oh my gosh, I got to pay them, or they’re going to stop my supplies from coming, then you just get all that anxiety and then you just do something right away and that’s where they get you.
Mike Jackson:
And AI is making that more [inaudible 01:00:56] that it used to be if you saw, you received the email with broken English, it was very obvious.
Tricia Luedke:
Right.
Mike Jackson:
They’re using artificial intelligence too to write these emails so they can crack an email and send it to a list of thousand people in less than five minutes. And so, you know, that’s still something to look for, but they’re getting really good.
Jeff Randolph:
Michele?
Michele Markham:
Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
We’ll wrap it up on your comment.
Michele Markham:
Oh. Well, in that-
Jeff Randolph:
So make it golden.
Michele Markham:
Oh my gosh.
Tricia Luedke:
No pressure.
Michele Markham:
But it’s adding onto those things. It’s when we use the AI tools, and Mike touched on this before, it’s making sure it’s not going out in the public because so many times you’re using AI operationally. You know, it’s not just in marketing, but you’re using it operationally. And that stuff goes out there and they’re getting people’s cell phone numbers. They’re getting people’s work numbers, work email address, personal email addresses. We are getting them. And on the training part, when I first thought about the training part, make sure you’re also training any type of interns, temporary workers, contract workers. We had an intern who got a text from me saying I need, and, you know, he’s a young guy. He’s a student.
Tricia Luedke:
Texting is their life.
Michele Markham:
Again, so he got a text from me, from the president of the company that said I need these gift cards. He literally went to Walmart and bought the gift cards, and luckily we were able to, you know, they were Apple cards and we were able to get it back for him, but he didn’t go through our normal training ’cause he was an intern, because he was a temp worker. You know, sometimes we’ll give, you give interns or, you know, hey, do this research project or dig into this for me. And they’re out there using some of these AI open tools and putting information in there that they shouldn’t.
Jeff Randolph:
I can close the panel out and say thank you for everything, all of the advice, all of the answers. Thank you very much. You get a sense of the kind of questions that they answer on a daily basis. And they can’t exactly do this, but I’m standing over here and I can. If you’ve heard something that resonates, if you want to dive into… And that was the event. Thank you for listening to this special episode. I know I said that in closing, but just the carving out time to talk to these people and your own trusted advisors in marketing or banking or finance or your business broker or IT or HR. If you do that, it’s going to make you feel much more comfortable. Trust me. You’ll feel better if you get some advice from people who know what they’re doing, so use that resource. Thanks a lot. Thanks for listening. We’ll catch you next time on The Small Business Miracles Podcast.
May 3, 202421 min
Ep. 33: Drafting Your Way to Better Education Outcomes with BLAQUE KC
Dr. Cokethea Hill is a true force for advocacy in education, helping local charter schools find a match with the best advocates, training them, and drafting them NFL style into school board positions. Tune in to hear all about it and what’s next for BLAQUE KC. Plus, what can The Princess Bride teach us about doing a SWOT analysis?
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We are going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward.
This week we sit down with Dr. Cokethea Hill. She is the founder and CEO of BLAQUE KANSAS CITY. You want to tune in for her. But first we’ve got another small business marketing tip that we could talk about. So, let’s do that. For today’s tip, I’d like to start with the Princess Bride, you know that movie. They’re breaking into the castle and Westley says, “What I wouldn’t give for a Holocaust cloak.”
The Princess Bride (1987) – Dread Pirate Roberts:
“What I wouldn’t give for a Holocaust cloak.”
Jeff Randolph:
So, Andre the Giant… Okay, Fezzik, if you want to go that way. It’s tough not to see him as Andre the Giant. Fezzik whips one out of his pack and Westley says, “Well, why didn’t you list that among our assets?”
The Princess Bride (1987) – Dread Pirate Roberts:
“Why didn’t you list that among our assets in the first place?”
Jeff Randolph:
When you’re planning for your marketing, it’s important to list out all of your assets in the process. That’s where we can get really creative. And a SWOT analysis is a good way to put all of that information on the board so we can stare at it. So, a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A lot of us have had that in our background, in our educational background, as we were learning about marketing.
SWOT analysis. Put all of those things there. List out all of the strengths. List out all of the weaknesses, all of the opportunities, all of the threats. That way you can take a step back and stare at that. Really think through all of your assets. Do you have a relationship with a celebrity? Do you have a relative who owns a printing company? Does your staff all have a TikTok channel with a bigger following than your company page has? Can you write? Are you good on camera?
Any of those things that may come into play, list that out. Whatever those things are, list them among your assets. Then as you plan, you’re drawing creative lines between and among those strengths and opportunities in your SWOT matrix. If you don’t have all of those things listed, your matrix and those connections can only be as good as the assets that you put in there. Give it a try. List all of those things out. Then you can draw some creative connections and make sure that you’re really seeing the whole picture. That is our marketing tip.
Hey, welcome back to the show. I am joined by Dr. Cokethea Hill. She is founder and CEO of BLAQUE KC. Welcome to the show.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
First, some definition. BLAQUE KC, that’s an acronym. Black Leaders Advancing Quality Urban Education, “a grassroots movement of parents and teachers and young leaders and advocates unapologetically focused on improving educational outcomes for Black students in Kansas City and beyond.”
So, man, that’s everything you would ever hope it would be. That’s great. For those who don’t know, introduce us to BLAQUE KC and your mission.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Awesome, thank you. So, prior to starting BLAQUE, I’ve had the privilege of serving Kansas City in a number of ways. I was on the Kansas City Public School Board. I’ve served on the city council. I’ve worked for the Kauffman Scholars, and so I’ve been in and around education for about 20 years. And my last stop before starting BLAQUE KC was working for a collective fund that made investments directly in schools to improve the outcomes. And what I noticed is that even though there were a lot of investment and a lot of energy, it wasn’t coordinated and we were not seeing the outcomes of Black kids significantly improve.
And so BLAQUE was a way to be unapologetic, to disaggregate data by race, and to foster conversations and collaborations so we can tease out, what’s happening in our schools to which Black students are getting the short end of the stick in terms of academic outcomes. So, BLAQUE was formed. We’re a 501(c)(4). Many people might not know that. We’re a nonprofit, but that (c)(4) designation allows us to engage in the political process by endorsing candidates and supporting them for elected services on boards.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk even more about the elected services on boards. Because we were just joined… Before we hit record, Michele Markham was here. Michele, of course, is the CEO/owner of EAG Advertising and Marketing where we sit at this very moment. And she is also involved heavily in Academie Lafayette, where she just drafted some board members. You created a concept to improve outcomes by drafting people to serve in board positions. Give us a little backstory of that draft and how that came about and what you’re doing.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Sure. Well, in our public school system, we have our traditional public schools, and those school board members have to be elected by the people that represent that school district. But charter schools, which are tuition-free public schools, their boards are appointed. So, the members of the board get to vote for candidates to join their board. And I think in around 2019, there was an article by KCUR that says, “Hey, even though our classrooms are becoming more diverse, our school boards are largely white.”
And we understand that representation does matter when you’re making decisions about schools, about kids, about families. And so in, I think 2023, there was this talk about Kansas City getting the NFL draft. So, I had this idea. I said, “Oh man, before the draft, there’s so much excitement in Kansas City about the NFL draft. Let’s do a charter school board draft.” And it’s similar just to the NFL Draft. We recruit schools. They serve as teams, and then we open up an application and we ask folks that are interested in joining a school board to apply.
There’s an interview process. And then once we create the pool of candidates, the next four months is really about them learning the educational landscape, meeting all of the charter schools who have signed up for the draft. We do a school board speed dating round. They have a chance to tour the schools. They learn about the charter school landscape, academic achievement. And really we spend two or three days doing a deep dive in school board governance.
We know that it’s not just about getting on the school board, but do you know how to govern a board correctly? And so that four months culminates with draft night, which is hosted at Arrowhead. It’s a high fashion event. It’s a plated dinner, but it’s a lot of fun. And so up until that moment, the BLAQUE team doesn’t know who schools will pick. The candidates are not sure what schools will pick them. About two or three days before the draft, the schools go into a lottery. So, that helps them determine the order of their picks.
And we do that close to the draft so that they actually meet every candidate. If you had the number one draft pick, you would say, “I’m going to find my candidate, and I may not be engaging with all the others.” So, we wait until the end. But it’s really a lot of fun. Schools love it. In 2022, we placed 15 candidates on 12 charter school boards. 100% of those candidates were still serving in 2024. And then we just placed 18 candidates on charter schools and one candidate on a nonprofit board. Because nonprofits are like, “Hey, can you do a nonprofit board draft?” So, we were really excited about the support we’ve been given.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, and you’re not just finding people just at a restaurant. You’re finding people who are amazingly qualified and just needed to be pointed in the right direction to serve and to give back. Talk a little bit about some of the kind of candidates that you’re bringing in.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Yes, high caliber candidates. So, we interview our schools and we ask them, “What profile of a board member, what gaps do you have on your board?” Most will say real estate, finance. Everyone needs a lawyer, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Sure.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
So, lawyers are always top billing. Some folks might say, “Really, I want an entrepreneur. I want someone in DEI. I want someone who understands social-emotional learning.” So, we take those profiles. We actively go through our networks. We post it publicly. But in 2015, we had two municipal judges. One judge is now a federal appointed judge, Ardie Bland, who’s serving on a charter school.
We had Melesa Johnson, who at the time was the deputy council for the mayor’s office. She still works in the mayor’s office. We’ve had Terrell Jolly, who is an entrepreneur who works in incremental redevelopment. So, going into neighborhoods, turning homes that have been abandoned around for families. Just high level folks.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Terrell Jolly, you can go back and listen to his interview on our podcast. You bring in good people For all of this. This is amazing. And it isn’t just the high caliber of people where you’re bringing people in. You’re also training them to be a good board member, to provide good governance. The whole package is everything you’re doing. Man, this is an exciting event.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
It is.
Jeff Randolph:
Let me ask also, because there are many things that BLAQUE KC does. Your six-week Summer Freedom School, tell us about that. It’s an innovative program that’s changing lives one child at a time to address literacy.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Yes. Literacy is such a huge challenge, not only in Kansas City but just around the country. When we first started BLAQUE, what we did is we said, “Let’s do a data exercise.” We pulled school district’s annual performance report card. That’s the annual assessment that every school district takes. We looked at the state of Missouri, Independence, Lee Summit, Hickman, Center, charter schools, KCPS, and we disaggregated their data by race. And what we found is that for African-American students, they’re getting the lowest possible outcomes.
Just across the state, when we look at the state data, we know that when we look at eighth graders, only 28% of all eighth graders are on grade level. When we think about math, that’s 25%. Only three in 10 Missouri students are on grade level with reading. So, we said, “Hey, what can we do?” We know that school districts and schools are often challenged during those summer months. There’s not a lot of funding around out-of-school time during the summer. But we also learned in the research that when kids are not in an enrichment program, they often have what they call summer loss, right?
Jeff Randolph:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
So, all of that good investment that teachers are pouring in around literacy, if you’re not engaged during the summer actively reading, you sometimes lose that skill. And so Freedom Schools, Kansas City had a rich history. Kauffman Foundation funded Freedom Schools for about 10 years. There were 20 different sites. And it went away. And so we said, “Hey, let’s bring it back.” Freedom Schools is an evidence-based national model from Children’s Defense Fund based out of D.C. We brought that model here. We had 50 kids last year. This year we’ll have 150 kids across two sites. And so we’re just doing our part to make sure that we are helping schools and communities really push for literacy so our kids can have better outcomes.
One last thing I’ll say about Freedom Schools is the unique model brings college students from all around the country. But particularly for us, we recruit kids that are from Kansas City with ties in Kansas City that are in college coming home. They serve as teachers. So, you have that near peer where elementary kids, first through fifth grade are able to look at a college student that looks like them and say, “Oh man, I want to go to college. I know someone who’s gone to college.” And just that affirmation, it’s just a really great program. We invite you to come over this summer and check us out.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah, everyone should do that. And participate. If you ever get a phone call from Cokethea-
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Please.
Jeff Randolph:
… please take that phone call. Answer that phone call. You’re helping everything. What’s next for BLAQUE KC? What do you have in the pipeline that you can talk about? We don’t want anything before it’s time. But what happens next?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
So, we spent our first three years really working to build a culture of advocacy, working with parents to understand pathways to access quality schools. I know you had Leslie Kohlmeyer on here.
Jeff Randolph:
Yes, we did.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
So, Show Me KC Schools is one of our partners that helps families navigate. But really building their advocacy muscle so that they can talk about what are the needs that their kids have and how to effectuate change. And so that was great. We place people on school boards. We’ve been doing school board governance. But really we want to impact the in-school factors.
So, over these next two years, BLAQUE will be using our dollars, our resources, to invest in schools that want to improve school quality. We’ll be helping new schools that want to start in Kansas City. A lot of people will talk about these niche models of schools that we don’t have here, but we have around the country. And so we’ll be investing in creating cohesion in our K through 12 systems so that we can improve quality outcomes for every student. So, we’re excited about that.
Jeff Randolph:
As well you should be. Leslie Kohlmeyer, by the way, may have… First, she described you as a force.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you, Leslie.
Jeff Randolph:
So, let’s just… And tremendously accurate. But she also may have given us a question for the lightning round.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
All right.
Jeff Randolph:
So, if you’re ready, I’m going to put you in the lightning round. Are you ready?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Take a sip of water.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, just be ready. Prepare yourself mentally. You have no way to know what might be asked in the lightning round. You are exploring some innovative ways to support the reimagination of education through the metaverse. What do we know about education in the metaverse right now and where that’s going?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
So, listen, I have a 10-year-old and I have to pry his device off of him, the Oculus. Kids are just in a different imaginative space than we were in. And so we said, “Well, hey, we’re going to go into the metaverse and we created a library.” It’s a literacy metaverse. Kids can put on their Oculus, be with their friends, walk through, pick a book, have a book read to them, or they can play competitive games all focused around literacy. So, we are super excited to dive into the metaverse. And when you go to our website, we’ll create a link to allow more folks to get in. But for this summer, it is just for our kids in Freedom School.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh man, that’s an exciting place to be exploring even. That’s good.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
We think we can Zoom teachers in to actually have class in the metaverse. So, we are going to try that in After School Academy. Because teachers want to spend time at home with their families. They don’t necessarily want to work on a Saturday. But for 90 minutes getting into Zoom, getting on a headset, being in the metaverse teaching. So, we’ll see how that plays out.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, man. Well, best of luck.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thanks.
Jeff Randolph:
If it’s anything like all of the other things you’ve had your hands on, it’s going to be an amazing success.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
What’s the best business advice that you’ve gotten? Because you started out and you’ve had to cobble a lot of things together. When you look back on business advice you’ve gotten as an entrepreneur, what would you say is some real solid advice?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
I would say two things that have been super helpful to me is always knowing my why. Why am I in this space? Why is this work important to me? What is it that I want to achieve? And how will this space be different because me or my business or my network of colleagues got invested in it? That’s one.
And the second thing is, always do temperature checks. We do temperature checks with communities, with schools, with families to help us co-create what are the best innovations and things that we should bring back to our community. So, those are two things that have helped me through success and challenges, remembering my why.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, that’s solid advice. That is great advice to have no matter what. What part of the business do you wish you knew more about or you wish you could make more progress in?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
The part of the business that I wish I knew more about is, there are a lot of resources for entrepreneurs, but when you’re in the nonprofit space and you’re starting your own organization, you’re in this mix where you’re not truly a nonprofit that’s established. You are starting an organization much like an entrepreneur. And I wish I would’ve known about benefits packages or how do I create the retirement plan? We’ve learned that.
We got really great consultants, but those are just some things that you never imagined that one day when you start something that only you have this burning desire in your heart that later, two, three years later, you have five people or 10 people. And so you have to take care of people. As much as we take care of our kids in our community, our staff at BLAQUE is important to me and I want to make sure that they are better and they leave financially better, in a better position when they came to BLAQUE. So, I wish I would’ve known more about that.
Jeff Randolph:
You start this journey as an entrepreneur because you have a lot of passion and you want to make some change happen, and you’re like, “I’m going to take that on and I can take that on.” And you don’t realize at the time, that also means you have to have a working knowledge of human resources and marketing and accounting and everything else that goes into it. Yeah.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
And marketing is so key. I’m still learning. I’m still trying to figure out. We have a great director of comms that does TikTok and LinkedIn and all those things, but so much of the good work that you do, no one knows unless you market it.
Jeff Randolph:
Unless you tell somebody. Yeah.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Unless you tell somebody. So, that is super important.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, it seems like more people are hearing about it, so I’d say there’s some good work happening there.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
Here’s the next question. If you were a Golden Girl-
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Oh, I love the Golden Girls.
Jeff Randolph:
… which Golden Girl would you be and why?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Do not judge me, but I would be Blanche. I love Blanche. I think Blanche is self-confident. Blanche goes for what she wants. She’s unapologetic in who she is. I love the Golden Girls. And if I was not going to be Blanche, I would be Sophia.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yes.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Because Sophia tells really great jokes. She does slick digs. She’s wise. So, yes, I’m a Golden Girl fan. Somebody must’ve told you.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m not saying Leslie Kohlmeyer helped with this question at all, but that may be the best question ever. I like the idea of Sophia as well, because you can say whatever you want to somebody and you still have the charisma not to get punched.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
That’s right.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s a win in my book. I’d like to ask how you celebrate a big win. When you get that report back about how many amazing people were at the school board draft, or you just finished that event or something like that, how do you celebrate a big win? How do you stop and mark that time?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
I could get better. I’ll be completely honest with you. I am always thinking about the next thing that even my team tells me, “Hey, sometimes you have to sit back and say, ‘Yes, this is great.'” And I think for me, it’s usually I’m running a bath, sitting in a bubble bath, having a glass of wine. But I struggle with that. I really do.
Jeff Randolph:
Because it’s always on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Yeah. And when you’re so close to it, even say the draft, I’m thinking about the million little things that I’m like, “I should have done this,” that nobody else experiences. Everyone says it’s better. But I think it is really important to stop and celebrate, because it is fuel to keep you going in those tough seasons. But I’m always like, “Okay, we did this. Great. Check. List the next thing. Okay, great. Check. What’s the next thing?” So, I can work on it.
Jeff Randolph:
And especially as you have staff, it’s good to hear that your staff even says, “Hey, let’s celebrate for a second. Let’s pause.” And if your staff tells you that, listen.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
I do. I do. Oftentimes what we’ve done is we take spring break. We have three weeks off between Christmas and New Years-
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, nice.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
… and so I like to reward the team with time away from work. That’s probably the biggest thing. We enjoy lunch together. We do retreats. But for the most part I say, “Step away.” You’ve got to have work-life balance. Some people say that there’s no such thing. There’s just life. But this is not your life. It’s a part of your life. It certainly shouldn’t consume all of your life. So, take a break.
Jeff Randolph:
And if you can come back and be that much more energized and that much more recharged and ready to go for the next round, yeah, that’s a good way to go. You’ve made it through the lightning round. There’s nothing else I’m going to ask in this lightning round. So, tell people where they can find you. Where can they get more information? How do they get involved? How do they become the next board member that’s recruited? All of those things. Where do they go?
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Well, the next draft will be in 2026, so you have some time to get ready. But follow us. All of our social media handles, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook is @BLAQUEKC. That’s at B-L-A-Q-U-E-K-C. You can definitely hit us up on our website at BLAQUEKC.com. And just stay tuned. We have so many exciting things in store, and so I hope that you follow us. I hope that you come to some of our events, and I hope that you send us notes of encouragement or criticism. We take both because we really want to be the best interest of the community.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, when Michele Markham walked in and said, “Oh, yeah, no, we got a new board member from that event,” and she’s thrilled about it. So, you’re doing some very good things-
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you.
Jeff Randolph:
… and some right things. Dr. Cokethea Hill, founder and CEO of BLAQUE KANSAS CITY, thanks for being with us on the podcast.
Dr. Cokethea Hill:
Thank you for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Dr. Cokethea Hill, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe. Leave us a five star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any questions. Until then, we’re going to be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.
April 26, 202417 min
Ep. 32: Selfish Volunteers are Cool
Giving back through volunteerism and mentorship is altruistic. It’s also selfish because you get so much of the feels out of it! We caught Theodis Watson to talk about his mentorship, volunteerism, community development, and financial literacy. Plus, some very timely advice on using AI to create unoriginal content on your website.
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This Small Business Podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We’re going to talk about marketing, and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Theodis Watson. He’s the director of Community Development for Cross First Bank. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about.
This week we have just as much news as we have tip, and that’s about AI-generated content. I mean, you knew it couldn’t last, right? You can’t just have AI crank out all your blog posts. Yes, it does a great job pulling from the content that exists on the internet right now, it saves you a ton of time, it’s smart, it’s good, but AI can only be as good as the garbage you put into it. Google knows what you want. You want original thought. Because of that, you’re going to see core algorithm updates from Google, and you’re going to see some new and improved spam policies. I expect the combination is going to reduce that low-quality, unoriginal content and the search results by about 40%. And that’s what a lot of AI-generated content is, unoriginal content that pulls from a bunch of existing information you can already find out there. So what do you do? It’s the same thing we’ve been telling you to do.
Sure, let AI help you generate some concepts and thoughts, even a first draft, but a human with a brain and a perspective and a little bit of expertise needs to be involved in the process. Take your own thoughts and put them in there. At the end of the day, Google always wants to provide the best content and the best answers to users. Don’t mess with that. Focus on what you want to read and watch on your website and keep moving forward with that. Work smart, but think long-term quality. All right, welcome back to the show. We are here with Theodis Watson. He’s the director of community development at Cross First Bank and the national President of the Urban Financial Services Coalition. Theodis, welcome to the show.
Theodis Watson:
Hey, thank you. Happy to be here.
Jeff Randolph:
Excellent. Well, we met at the greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce Small Business Superstars event, and when we talked, you wanted to make sure we could talk about community impact on the podcast, which is something that Cross First focuses on. Talk about what that means and why small businesses and nonprofits need to pay attention to that.
Theodis Watson:
Yeah, absolutely. First, I just want to say thank you for allowing me to be here.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah.
Theodis Watson:
And secondly, just a disclaimer, these thoughts are on Theodis Watson, not on behalf of Cross First Bank.
Jeff Randolph:
Important.
Theodis Watson:
I love what I do. But yeah, so Cross First Bank, just a little bit, local bank based in Leewood, Kansas. We’ll be celebrating 17 years this year. We’re about nine markets. But my as director of community development is kind of a three-pronged approach. And so it’s one, creating products and services for organizations to target small to medium-sized businesses. For example, we have a small business pro suite product where we target businesses with a million dollars and less of gross annual revenues, how to get them access to capital, resources to be successful. Secondly, I educate the community and even our clients about the many services or programs that are available here in Kansas City. We have several small business resources here, and just really trying to get them engaged into those programs that allow them to, again, be successful and build relationships. And then lastly, just identifying community organizations that are making an impact or that are serving a purpose and how are we able to partner with them and make impact, build impact to supporting their causes in their initiative.
So it’s a great opportunity and we’re leaning into that and we know there’s significant opportunities out there, but there’s also a significant amount of need out there, and so that’s what I’m here to do.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, thanks for being here to do exactly that.
Theodis Watson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
I should mention when we met at that Kansas City Chamber of Commerce event, we talked about the need and community impact, and it wasn’t until you handed over a business card that we were like, “Oh, Cross First Bank, we do have a…” Full disclosure, “We do have a relationship with a certain bank.”
Theodis Watson:
Yeah, let’s talk about it.
Jeff Randolph:
Out there. So full disclosure there, but…
Theodis Watson:
Excellent.
Jeff Randolph:
It really is you that we wanted to talk to. You’re the incoming national President for the Urban Financial Services Coalition, which is a nonprofit made up of minority professionals in the financial services industry. The goal of the organization is to provide services to assist minority youth pursuing careers in financial services. Talk about that organization and the why behind it as the national president now.
Theodis Watson:
Oh yeah. It’s a great opportunity. It’s a great honor to be able to serve the community, the financial service industry. Urban Financial Services Coalition, honestly, we’re very excited that we’re celebrating 50 years here in Kansas City, April 11th and 12th at the Federal Reserve Bank. All of the banking systems have been really great partners of ours in addition to others. But we are excited to celebrate this milestone. It’s a great opportunity to support an organization and to be representative of an organization that is a minority organization and more specifically built for black financial service professionals and who mentored, nurtured, sponsored, and supported many minority professionals in this industry. So it’s a great opportunity. And basically we have three pillars, which is economic development, which are economic development, educational advancement, and professional development.
And so how do we do that is various by many opportunities with Toastmaster programs, we offer mentorship programs, scholarship opportunities for traditional and non-traditional students entering in either the business or financial related degrees. Mark One program is one of our capstone programs where we focus on high school and early college students for that next level of development as they are developing for their careers. We also do a view from the top series where we have senior leaders who come in and talk about whatever their expertise are and be able to provide us insight to what’s happening in the industry. We also provide financial education. We encourage several of our chapters. We have about eight chapters across the country, and we encourage them to do financial education courses and professional development within their own respective cities. And then lastly, a big program that we are very excited started off in 2022 that came out of the pandemic was how do we lead the engagement, lead the charge with an inclusive culture competency experience. It’s a mouthful.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah.
Theodis Watson:
I’ll just say ICCE for short. But basically it’s identifying biases within the financial service industry and how we engage internally within our industry and externally with our communities to be better partners. And so it’s been very enlightening, it’s just a great experience, it’s a great… I say a great experience, not a training program. Those are just a few ways of how we are able to engage, how we are able to build community, how we are able to build future leaders in the industry within our organization and their current organizations who they currently represent. And so it’s just a great opportunity, great cause. And so ultimately the goal is to, like you said, build intentionality with targeting the youth to get into the financial service industry, but also see more senior leaders of color, women in the C-suite positions in the financial service industry, and how do we do that is by developing our own.
Jeff Randolph:
Man, that organization seems like you do a billion things, and all of them are pretty comprehensive start to finish. I was excited to hear something like Toastmasters as part of that, where being able to go out and speak to people is half the battle. That’s a great organization.
Theodis Watson:
And what I learned through Toastmasters and specifically, yes, it is about how to engage and how to think from the fly and be able to present, but it also teaches you how to project manage and how to build your own team because there’s different responsibilities you have to do if you have to manage or be the Toastmaster of the day. And so there’s a lot of other skillsets that come along with it. But it’s a great program. I was intimidated going into it at first. But no, it’s helped me tremendously.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, outstanding. Community development is part of your title, and in doing that, we know that you’re out there talking to a whole lot of different organizations. As you’re talking to small businesses, small business owners out there in the community, what are the biggest needs that you’re hearing?
Theodis Watson:
Yes. What I hear is everyone is looking for access to capital. How do I get access to cash? How can I grow my business? But what I feel, and this is, again, my disclaimer, this is Theo’s thoughts, not Cross First Bank’s, but what I feel the biggest need is individuals being more intentional with regarding education, educating business owners, what they need, how to get access to capital, how to build their team, how do they also build relationships with their teams. So insurance agents, attorneys, bankers, we can go on and on about your accountants. So those are people who should be within your team helping you be successful. And then lastly, just thought leadership from individuals who want to see individuals win, businesses win, like marketing, doing podcasts and just understanding and listening to how you can better your business, better your program, how you can market better, whatever that is, how do we engage them and connect them with people who can help them do that better?
Access to capital is great, but it’s one thing giving a person money and they have no path or roadmap of how to utilize that, but giving them the education, giving them the resources, and then giving them the money, I’d say that’s probably the biggest need I’m understanding and learning as I’m out here connected with the business community.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, it’s the connection of who you know and making sure that you’re surrounding yourself with that trusted group of advisors who can help you get where you need to go.
Theodis Watson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
All tremendously important. Theodis Watson, I think you’re ready to enter the lightning round. Are you ready to do this?
Theodis Watson:
Let’s do it.
Jeff Randolph:
Okay. As you know, this strikes fear into the hearts of mortals.
Theodis Watson:
I love it.
Jeff Randolph:
Now, you have no way to know what kind of things I might ask. No topics in general. And I’ll start it out this way. I’ll say that banking is the career, for sure, but I stare at your LinkedIn profile and you’ve got at least 17 volunteer slots on your LinkedIn profile, six are probably active, but that’s six active things that you’re doing. What does giving back through volunteerism and mentorship mean to you?
Theodis Watson:
Oh, man, that’s a great question. Honestly, it’s just really seeing people win and creating impact. One of the things I’ve learned and talked to one of my mentors a couple of weeks back was, I’ve grown exponentially from giving back, either from new jobs, new careers, new opportunities internally, spiritually, and just things that just keeps me going. So I would say what that means is it’s finding me a purpose. I found a purpose, so that’s what gets me going every morning, every day, knowing that I’m able to create an impact for someone, which ultimately turns back to making me feel a lot better about myself and what I’m doing. So leaving a legacy is very important to me. And so, yeah, just being able to give back, share resources, share my experiences is what keeps me engaged and want to continue to do more.
Jeff Randolph:
So there’s the one side of that is, I’ve gotten here, I feel like I need to give back, I feel like that’s something I can do, but the selfish part of it is something that I don’t know that we focus on as much, and that is, you get something out of it.
Theodis Watson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
You get utility out of that, you get the feels out of that.
Theodis Watson:
Absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
You are energized to go do more things because of that. You feel good.
Theodis Watson:
And just some of the relationships I’ve built. I mean, I literally can call Esther George, the old federal Reserve bank president, and say, “Hello, how you doing? Hey, I’m thinking about this thing. What do you think?” And she will pick up my call or have a conversation with me, go to lunch. There’s no way I would have those opportunities if I didn’t give back, if I wasn’t involved in community support. And there’s countless other names that I can name of people who are established and said, “Yeah, Theo, I’ll pick up the call,” Just for the simple fact of me being involved and engaged and we’ve connected through this community work.
Jeff Randolph:
And not all of us can name drop federal Reserve chairs.
Theodis Watson:
I’m on it. I can keep going.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s alright. Let’s talk about food for a second. Do you have a desert island food, something that you could eat every day for the rest of your life and not get tired of it?
Theodis Watson:
Oh, Mexican food. I could eat tacos, taco salad, anything. Yeah.
Jeff Randolph:
Here’s my difficulty with Mexican food because I suffer from the same thing, I could do that every single day, is that I also want a margarita or two at the same time.
Theodis Watson:
See, I knew it was about 10 o’clock in the morning, I didn’t want to bring that up, but absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m there for it. I’m absolutely there for it. If we give you the power to change the world by changing the way that people think or act or some other big change in the world, how would you change the world to make it a better place?
Theodis Watson:
Wow, that is a great question.
Jeff Randolph:
You don’t have to have it all solved.
Theodis Watson:
I don’t have to have it solved.
Jeff Randolph:
You don’t have to have a solve for it. But what needs to change that would be a much better place to be?
Theodis Watson:
I would just say giving people the power to think beyond their current capabilities. If I had a power to be able to tell people that things will be okay, you can solve problems if you get the right resources, if you find the right people. I think the power of thought, the power of thinking, the power of possibility, if I had the opportunity to engage and give people that, that will be my superpower, my one way of being able to change the world.
Jeff Randolph:
But when you were volunteering, when you’re mentoring, when you’re giving back to the community, I think you’re doing exactly that. We just need to scale it to the rest of the world from here.
Theodis Watson:
Hey, let’s do it.
Jeff Randolph:
How do you celebrate a big win? Let’s say that you’ve accomplished something, you tick something off a bucket list or just a big to-do list item. What are you going to do to celebrate?
Theodis Watson:
Oh, man, you said margaritas, right?
Jeff Randolph:
I did say margaritas.
Theodis Watson:
That’s one way for sure. But you know what? Just celebrating is looking forward to the next one, next opportunity, next win. That’s what keeps me motivated, keeps me going. I was just listening to a podcast today where they were saying, Coach K has this, you think forward, next play process. So celebrate it, enjoy it for that 30 minutes and let’s get to the next play. And so that’s one way I celebrate is, how can I just be better than I was before? How do I make a bigger impact the day before? And so that’s how I celebrate. But ultimately just winding down, a nice margarita and chilling with family and getting ready for the next day.
Jeff Randolph:
We can split that bottle of tequila.
Theodis Watson:
Let’s do that. Oh, man. Oh yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. Theodis Watson, where can people find you if they want to learn more, if they want to get involved in some way, how do they find you?
Theodis Watson:
Absolutely. You can find me on LinkedIn. I promised myself and my son, I will get better on other technologies. But LinkedIn is where you’ll find me, Theodis Watson. I call myself the community’s banker because I think there is a resource that I can find and help and support, and I’ve been fortunate enough to support all communities from the high net worth to the low to moderate income areas. So I’m glad to hear, glad to support. So LinkedIn is where you can find me. And again, hopefully by the end of 2024, I’ll have an Instagram active or something like that. We’ll find out.
Jeff Randolph:
Then we’ll have to dive deep into the Instagram and find out what’s there. What’s your perspective?
Theodis Watson:
I need some work on that. You might have to help me with that.
Jeff Randolph:
There’s image. There’s image involved. All right. Theodis Watson, director of Community Development for Cross First Bank and National President of the Urban Financial Services Coalition, thanks for being with us on the show today.
Theodis Watson:
Oh, my pleasure.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Theodis Watson, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another Small Business Miracle.
April 19, 202426 min
Ep. 31: Balancing Entrepreneur Burnout with Coach Cami
Cami Travis Groves is a transformation coach who wants to stop all those self-limiting beliefs you have so you can run that business like a champ. You want a marketing tip? This week we talk about the importance of investing in UX – the way a user experiences your brand
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast, I’m Jeff Randolph. This small business podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We are going to talk about marketing. We’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we sit down with Cami Travis-Groves. She’s a transformation coach, recovering graphic designer, keynote speaker, author, publisher, and so much more. But first, we’ve got another small business marketing tip to talk about. Here it is.
It’s time for a marketing tip. You know, one of the biggest changes in marketing’s focus so far in 2024, besides artificial intelligence, is in your user experience. More companies are finally looking at giving your clients and customers the best experience possible with your brand. And those who don’t focus on the best user experience are losing prospects, and those who do are gaining.
What this means is you absolutely have to factor user experience into your marketing plan. We live by data and everything is about data. And it’s not just the numbers. It’s understanding how people use your website, when they use it, where they stop using it, how often they return to it, what other websites are they visiting afterward, what are they doing when they aren’t engaging with you, and so much more. We can watch website users, and sometimes it’s the little things like seeing that people are trying to click on something that isn’t clickable, letting you know that they have interest in those words or that subject and want more information, but they can’t get that information.
So the more you learn about how people are engaging with your brand and making it easy for them, the easier it is to find like audiences of those same people and target them with your marketing. It used to be that small businesses couldn’t really afford this kind of research. Now, it’s being done so much more affordably, and the reality is that you can’t afford not to if you want to adapt to this big shift in the way that marketing works. That is today’s marketing tip.
Welcome back to the show. I am here with Cami Travis-Groves. That’s Coach Cami. She’s a transformation coach, a recovering graphic designer, keynote speaker, author, publisher, and so much more. Cami, welcome to the show.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, happy to have you. I mean, I know we’ve seen each other so many times at Marketing Club-related activities around town for, I don’t know, more than a decade. Let’s just leave it at more than a decade, and we’ll go with that. So it’s good to have you where we can just kind of talk and hang out with microphones.
Cami Travis-Groves:
I agree.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, let’s talk about… Because you help creatives and entrepreneurs identify the cause of self-limiting beliefs like imposter syndrome and get into more of a growth mindset. Talk about the work that you’re doing with coaching, because if we’re watching on the Zoom screen for clips, for video, you’ve got this great Coach Cami logo in the back. I mean, talk about a great screen grab for this episode, so thanks for doing that. But yeah, tell us about Coach Cami.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Oh, I love, absolutely love what I do. After 30 plus years, I just stopped counting at 30 years, I recognized that designing only checked two of the boxes for me to feel fulfilled. The first one was that it comes easy, the second, people pay me for it. But the third thing it was missing, and that was at the end of the day of designing, I was exhausted. At the end of the day of coaching, I am alive, and thriving, and excited. I can take on the world.
Jeff Randolph:
It says quite a bit, doesn’t it?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know, I had no idea. So the work that I do with coaching is I mainly help creatives, but I also help, like one of my clients I met with yesterday as a business owner in Chicago, and it has nothing to do with creativity, but the work that we do, I use creativity as a tool, because everyone is a creative, and creativity helps heal. It helps heal those inner wounds that are causing us to be on autopilot, that make us miss the things that can be seen from an objective, outside viewpoint. That’s what a coach’s job is, is just to provide that objective outside viewpoint.
Jeff Randolph:
“I’m a neutral third party with all kinds of information that can help you get where you need to go, but you’re too close to the situation.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
Exactly. It’s really hard to read the label from inside the jar.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that, I like that. And so some of the topics that you’re tackling are self-limiting beliefs, like imposter syndrome. So tell me a little bit more about that and a typical person that you may run into.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Most of the people who come to me for coaching say, “I need better clients,” or, “I need a better system,” or, “I need to access more creativity.” And some of those problems are external. They’re out there, and they’re usually a direct reflection of what’s happening inside you. And I don’t like dealing with those outside things, because those are symptoms.
It’s like going to the doctor and saying, “Yeah, my foot hurts,” and he gives you pain medicine. It’s like, “Well, that’s nice, but what’s causing it?” And I deal with causes, so that they don’t come back. I give people tools to manage those limiting beliefs, like imposter syndrome, and help people see how their own operating system, their own default thoughts and behaviors are usually what’s holding them back. It’s not an external force, it’s the inside stuff, and you can’t fix what you can’t see. So I help people see those things and I help them transform themselves.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s valuable work that needs to be done, and we could all learn a little something from just taking a look inside. I want to keep going on that line of thought, though, of improving people and getting the most out of human body, human mind. And talk about your speaking career for a second, because one of the speaking topics that you present on is about burning out. Hard work brings success. And a lot of business owners do just that, and they do that to the nth degree. We work hard, but there may be a fine line between working too hard and burning out. Talk about that fine line, and what an entrepreneur should be on the lookout for as we continually push that limit.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Kind of what I brought up in the beginning is that the three boxes that your career, your entrepreneurship, your job, your whatever should tick are does it come relatively easily or is it a constant struggle? Will people pay you for it? Will they pay you well enough for it? And then at the end of the day, how’s your energy. If you are still excited, and I’m not talking about just, “Whew, that was a long day. I’m tired.” But at the end of the day, if the thought of going back and doing the same thing tomorrow makes you want to cry or makes you want to stay in bed, there’s some things that need to be evaluated there, that if you still love what you’re doing, but you’re not refueling your tank, you’re running on empty. You cannot pour from an empty vessel.
Jeff Randolph:
And so really paying more attention to the gauges, right, in our own body and understanding a little bit more about, “Are we running in the red here?” Yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, it’s important to pay attention to what your body is telling you. Our cranial brain is not our only source of information. We have 40,000 thinking neural cells in our heart and we have 100 million thinking neural cells in our gut, the same amount as a cat has in its brain. And it’s so common that we dismiss gut feelings or second guess what our heart is telling us. But when our brain, our heart, and our gut are in alignment, snap decisions are possible and they’re right. So it’s really imperative that you follow the energy. If doing what you love is bringing you energy and you’re finding a way to refuel your tank daily, weekly, monthly, then it’s sustainable. If your business is at the center of your life and you’re not taking care of your body, you’re not taking care of your spiritual, emotional, creative, social, all of that wellbeing, you’re going to burn out. So I help people identify those signs and work on themselves. They do the work to refuel themselves.
Jeff Randolph:
And is refueling, is that as simple as, “Hey, I’m aware of these signs and symptoms. I know that I’m at a point where I need to do something different so that I can give back again, I can pour from a full pitcher,” is that as simple as saying, “Looks like it’s time to go play golf,” or, “Time to go fly fishing”? Is it as simple as just recharging like that, or is there a lot more that an individual may need to do?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, there are six different categories, and I cover this in my latest book. It’s physical: Are you sleeping enough? Are you eating colorful, nutritionally-dense food? Are you moving your body? Those are the three big pieces of the physical piece. Emotional: Are you allowing yourself to feel your emotions as you feel them or are you taping down the negative ones to deal with later? Well, they don’t go away, and chances are you’re not dealing with them. The creative piece: Are you allowing yourself a creative outlet that doesn’t require anything to look a certain way or to be a certain way? We are creative in nature and that creative expression helps us heal.
The social piece of it is are you spending time with people who adore you? We are social animals and any more our isolation is costing us our health. And it’s really, really important that we get all of our facets reflected back to us, not just by one person, but by people who are older than us, who are younger than us, who are more experienced, less experienced, so that we understand what value we bring to the world. Back when we lived in hunter-gatherer societies, we got this all the time, and we just don’t now. But social is really important, and the pandemic just exacerbated that.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, you-
Cami Travis-Groves:
The spiritual piece of this-
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, go ahead.
Cami Travis-Groves:
I’m almost done, this is the fifth piece, the spiritual piece of it is spending time in stillness and sitting in the discomfort of whatever it is you’re feeling or in the comfort of whatever it is you’re feeling, getting in tune and really familiar with your inner landscape, because that’s where a lot of our decisions are made, right? So it’s good to tend that landscape. And then the last piece is the mental piece. If your best friend talked to you the way you talk to yourself, would you still be friends? So these are all areas of self-care that should be at your center of your day. Anything else in the center has to be temporary.
Sometimes, your kids are sick or your business takes precedent, and that takes center stage, which is fine for a short time, but you’ve got to put yourself back in center stage, so that you have the capacity to take care of your loved ones who then support you, and the paying work, which then supports you. And then the final circle outside of that is your community, your volunteer work, your friend circle, whatever then which supports you. So it has to stay in that order. And a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, especially in startup phase, the business takes center stage and they think, “Well, I’ll sleep later.” Yes, but no, that’s not sustainable.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s not enough, yeah. And I just wanted to make sure that we jumped in and were able to talk about your book afterwards. Since you mentioned the book and you mentioned the pandemic even, I wanted to talk about that, because you have three books available on Amazon right now. The one I wanted to focus on is the Inner Growth Workbook for Creatives: Journey from Scarcity to Abundance. And you started that workbook because of the pandemic and you said, “If my days are numbered because of this, what will I regret not having done?” And I thought that was, man, if we all paid attention to the kinds of things that we think like this and took action on it, what couldn’t be done? Tell us about the book. And I know we’ve already gotten into a little bit about it already. So yeah, origin story, what’s going on with that book?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah. I started doing volunteer mentoring with this amazing worldwide group called ADPList, stands for Amazing Design People List, and it provides free mentoring worldwide. We’re up to over 22,000 mentors now. It went viral, grassroots, viral, and we’ve crossed the threshold, well over 100 million minutes of mentoring. So I started doing these one-on-one mentoring, and I noticed after a while that I was having the same conversation over and over again. And I thought, “Hmm, I want…” And it was impactful, and I want to be able to give people this information on a larger scale.
So I approached the founders, Felix and James, and I said, “Is there any way I can do this instead of one-to-one, one to many?” And they said, “Yes, we’re working on it,” and they were working on group sessions, “And in the meantime, here’s a webinar.” And so I did a webinar for six months, and I realized this is kind of what I want to do. And actually, that’s how the podcast started. I asked if I could re-release all that audio, and they said, “Sure, do whatever you want with it.” So I thought, “Well, dang, now I’m a podcaster.”
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. “Now I have a podcast, man.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
But all the conversations that I had, the foundation of inner work, which most people are just not familiar with, they’re like, “Inner work, what is that, like meditation? What is that?” Like I was saying earlier, it’s about getting really familiar with that inner landscape. So all those conversations I had turned into the book. I wrote it in two months, in June and July of 2021, and I thought, “If I die tomorrow, this is the legacy I want to leave. I want to provide people with a foot in the door to inner growth, and peace, and happiness, and freedom, and the sense of wellbeing that coaching can provide, that inner work can provide that most people are just not familiar with.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s fair. I want to have gone back in time and have done exactly the same thing, well done. And good job listening to yourself and what needed to come out of… How much of that is just the creative’s job, is just saying, “Hey, this is inside me and it’s got to get out somehow. It’s got to be on paper, it’s got to be in a sculpture, it’s got to be somewhere”?
Cami Travis-Groves:
That’s a good question. I am not sure. For me, it was my son exposed us to COVID, and I thought, “What if I get this and die? I will really regret not-”
Jeff Randolph:
It’s sobering, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, and I thought, “Okay, what else do I want to do? I don’t want to wait to get sick and I don’t want to start all this.” I thought, “I just need to get this done, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.” My inner critic, I had an inner critic attack soon as I sat down to write it. My inner critic said, “Who do you think you are writing this book?” And that’s normal. Having that voice is normal, but my inner critic is male, go figure. And his name is Cruella. We’ve had long, long conversations on paper, but I understand his value is in picking things apart, finding flaws. He’s really good at that.
So as soon as I sat down to write this and I hear this obnoxious voice, I say, “Wait, when the manuscript is done, I need you to really look at it and tear it apart if need be. Flesh out things that are wimpy, and cut things that are too wordy, and make sure that there’s clarity.” And that’s exactly what that part of me did. So that’s kind of what I teach people is how to utilize all of the parts, understanding why you have an inner critic, why that part of you is questioning you, what value is there, and then accessing all the other parts of yourself that are usually subconscious, that you are not aware of or are fighting to suppress.
Jeff Randolph:
You’re an experienced entrepreneur, you’ve built your own business, and you’ve contributed to the visual success of so many other businesses as well. You’ve contributed to success in getting people’s brains, and minds, and everything aligned, and focused, and ready to move forward. What’s something that you may have done in year one of the business that you wouldn’t do today if you had it to do over again?
Cami Travis-Groves:
I’ll talk about the graphic design business first, because I made a pretty awesome kerfuffle in the beginning. There was a company that hired me that created radio jingles, and they needed a logo. They wanted their sound file to be in the background of their logo, the visual of the wave file.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
And the very first proof, I knew I nailed it. Very, very first idea. And he kept saying, “Well, can I see this? Can I see that?” And I didn’t limit the number of proofs. I was young and naive, and I started numbering the proofs. And on proof 81, I thought, “Okay, this is ridiculous. I’m just going to, that first one that I love, I’m going to put that back in,” and that was proof number 82. And he said, “Oh, finally, this is it.”
Jeff Randolph:
“Got it.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
And I didn’t know what I didn’t know, I had no idea. So the mistake I made was not trusting my gut, not standing up for what I knew was good, not believing that I knew better than he did when it came to logos.
Jeff Randolph:
That is great advice that we should apply across the board to so many things. Cami, I’m taking you into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Let’s go.
Jeff Randolph:
All right, so you have no previous knowledge of any of the kind of topics that we may talk about here in the lightning round. We’re going to look for shorter sound bite answers, but if we need to, we’ll dive into it. We’ll talk through those. Our first question in the lightning round, you have a podcast as well, it’s called Deep Dive: Coaching for Creatives. Who’s been your favorite guest on the podcast so far?
Cami Travis-Groves:
My mentor, Peleg Top. That’s an easy one.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, and give us a little bit of why that… So mentor for sure, so there’s that connection.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yes, he’s my mentor and coach. I met him at a design conference, and we can’t figure out which one, because we kept going to it years and years. It feels like I’ve known him for decades. He used to own a small boutique agency in LA called Top Designs, and he had tiny, little clients like the Grammys, so he knows what the creative path is like. He realized, kind of like I did, after how many years of being in the industry, it’s not fulfilling, and that people kept coming to him for advice and asking questions, and he thought, “I just need to follow my gut on this.”
So he developed a course called The 100 Days of Creative High Growth, and it’s receiving coaching every day, an hour to two hours a day, for 100 days straight. No weekends off, no holidays off. It’s intense, it’s amazing, it’s not for everyone. That’s the coaching that I went through that changed my life, that changed the trajectory of my career, that made me realize, “This coaching thing is what I am really passionate about.” I’ve been coaching people my whole life, now I get paid for it and I ask permission first.
Jeff Randolph:
Now it’s defined, now it’s a thing that you’re doing.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yes.
Jeff Randolph:
I’m going to stay on your podcast for a minute. What is your dream or who is your guest as a podcast, dream? This is like the big get, you could be happy because, “I’ll point to this episode the entire time.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
Oh, gosh. The first name that comes up is Mel Robbins or Oprah, because she’s done so much work in the trauma field.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
There’s a great book called What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey that really defines how anything that happens in your childhood could be defined as trauma, and how that trauma could still be operating and still be in an unclosed loop in your system, that makes your default behaviors and thoughts go away, that’s not as helpful to you as they could be. So I myself, I was traumatized as a kid. And on the ACE test, which is the Adverse Childhood Experience test, it’s a score from zero to 10, most people score a zero or a one, maybe a two, things get serious when you score a four or more, I scored an eight.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, very intense, and understanding and processing that has healed me. I’m a functioning, happy, healthy grownup now, as opposed to someone who is struggling. When people ask me how I’m doing, I say, “I thrive.” So this book, and Oprah Winfrey would be freaking amazing to have on my… Or Dr. Bruce Perry, either one would be amazing to have on my podcast.
Jeff Randolph:
Those are both good picks. I’m going to keep going on this concept of changing the world for a second. If we give you the power to change the world by changing the way that people think, or act, or other big change in the world, how would you change the world to make it a better place?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, first of all, I would keep the things that are already working well. So many people-
Jeff Randolph:
First, do no harm.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Yeah, well, and so many people think we would need to change everything. There’s a whole lot that’s working really, really well. And an abundant mindset focuses on what you can do with what you have. And it’s the opposite of a scarcity mindset, which is focusing what you can’t do because of what you don’t have. And if I could just have everyone just gaze a little bit more towards that abundant mindset, to notice where they are in any given moment, and to choose to operate from a base of love instead of a base of fear, the world would improve itself.
Jeff Randolph:
There are a lot of youth development people out there who see that growth mindset and abundance mindset kind of thing and go, “Yep, you’re right. That’d do it, if we just did that.”
Cami Travis-Groves:
The only people we can heal is ourselves. The only person who is inside of our control is ourselves. That’s the only thing. And if everyone just focused a little bit more on that, on operating from love, paying attention to fear, deciding, observing it, and then making decisions based on who they want to become, who they are becoming, instead of who they used to be, the world would, like I said, just improve itself.
Jeff Randolph:
Much better place. Let’s talk about your creative work for a minute, because you have what we’d call a strong career in design. Is there a project that you look back on and say, “Yep, that’s my favorite. I did that.” I’m literally asking you to pick your favorite child right now.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Ooh, probably my latest book.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, really? Yeah.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Because it was so fun. I don’t normally do watercolor, and the cover and all of the inside art is all watercolor that I did by hand.
Jeff Randolph:
Oh, that’s nice. And it’s a passion project as well. It’s something that you felt very strongly about, had to come out, and that is the Inner Growth Workbook for Creatives: Journey from Scarcity to Abundance. I’ll throw the plug in, sure.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thanks, thanks. Yeah, the act of designing books is amazing. When you’re faced with just a plain old black and white manuscript, and you understand its content, and you just design the cover and the inside pages that sings its content, that is a victory to me. And my friend, Terri Trespicio, she’s like, “You know, Cami, isn’t that what you do with your coaching clients?” I’m like, “Whoa, mind blown.”
Jeff Randolph:
There it is. Coach Cami, you have survived the lightning round. Where can people find you? If they want more information, if they want to learn more, if they want to get in touch with you, how do they find you?
Cami Travis-Groves:
Well, my website’s ridiculously easy to remember: My name, C-A-M-I, and it’s iMac backwards. What did I work on? Okay, so Cami, and then dot what I do, coach. www.camiimac.com/.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s too easy. That’s a too easy place for people to find you. Cami, thank you for being on the podcast today. We appreciate you being here.
Cami Travis-Groves:
Thank you for having me, Jeff. I appreciate you.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Coach Cami, and thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five star rating, and review. Drop us a line on the website at eagadv.com, if you have any thoughts. Until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another small business miracle.
April 12, 202429 min
Ep. 30: From Gents to Golf with Serial Entrepreneur Ben Davis
Ben Davis is the host of the ‘Untrapped Entrepreneur’ podcast and a seasoned serial entrepreneur, and founder of The Gents Place. Ben joins us to give advice on the importance of culture, balancing your work and life, and how giving back gives you all the feels. In today’s marketing tip, we’re prioritizing our marketing tactics by understanding best practices and measurement for our tactics.
untrapped.com
Transcript:
Jeff Randolph:
Welcome to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. I’m Jeff Randolph. This Small Business Podcast is brought to you by EAG Advertising and Marketing. We are going to talk about marketing and we’re also here to celebrate entrepreneurs. We have marketing news and advice that business owners can use to keep moving forward. This week we get to sit down with Ben Davis. He is the host of the Untrapped Entrepreneur Podcast and founder, president, and chairman of the board for The Gents Place. We’ll hear from him right after this marketing tip.
For today’s marketing tip, we are continuing our series on how to prioritize your marketing. Let’s talk about measuring your progress and best practices, because that will help us prioritize. We’re testing something very quickly, moving on to the next tactic. But before that, we really need to understand measurement and best practices. We’re always testing to get the best response and we’re trying to fail fast. If something doesn’t work and we have a limited budget, let’s not spend several months figuring out that this tactic just doesn’t work for us. Even though, we think it should. If it doesn’t work, get out of it fast. Fail fast so we can move on to a different tactic, or a different mix of tactics that we think will work for our business, our unique competitive set, unique market, unique everything. Here’s the thing though, if we’re measuring and we’re deciding what isn’t working, we have to have a handle on what the best practices are.
We need to make sure we’re doing it right. And that we know what a good result is for that tactic. First, let’s look at doing it right. Take a billboard ad, when you see a billboard, you have seven words max, as a rule of thumb. People are supposed to be concentrating on driving at 70 miles an hour while they’re driving. And your billboard message needs to be brief and high level. I’ve seen billboards with paragraphs of text or way too many competing images. If you load that billboard up with a million things and nobody can even find the logo to know who to call, you’re not doing it right. So you can’t then say, “Well, we tried billboards and they didn’t work for us.” So you have to understand the best practices of the creative and the channel, but you also have to understand how to measure that tactic.
A billboard is going to give you awareness more than direct response. But that awareness improves the rate at which your response happens. It’s like the tide that lifts all boats. Any of those awareness pieces generally improve the results of your other tactics that are more digital. So a paid search ad, SEO, or something else. It helps people look at something and go, “Oh yeah, I recognize that name.” So billboards, if we dive into that example for a little longer, billboards act as a support media. And a lot of times, they’ll help other tactics perform better over time. Billboards don’t work just the one time when someone drives past it. We look at how many cell phone calls you get from that. The repetition helps people remember who you are, that top line message that you have, or that top line image. Measuring whether or not a billboard works for you, is a very different animal. And a set of measurements than just, “How many cell phone calls did we get when they were driving past, while they were actively looking at that billboard?”
We need to make sure we’re doing it right. And we need to know what a good result is for that tactic. After that, we can look at the budget we’ve spent, that’s relative to the other tactics, and see if one is giving us a better result for the investment, then we can make that choice. But first, we have to make sure we know whether a one percent conversion rate is good in this channel or if it’s terrible. A one percent conversion of everyone who saw my TV ad may be great because hundreds of thousands of people saw that ad. But a one percent conversion of my sales calls may be terrible, because I may see a hundred sales prospects every year. And only closing the one to get a 1% response, may be totally unacceptable. So measuring your progress, understanding what’s working for you, so we can prioritize your marketing, that’s today’s marketing tip.
All right. Welcome to the show. I want to introduce somebody here, our next guest. It’s Ben Davis. He is the dynamic host of the Untrapped Entrepreneur Podcast and a seasoned serial entrepreneur who has built multiple seven and eight figure businesses, ranging from retail, healthcare, to personal care. He’s attracted world-class investors to his companies, including Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, and Hall of Famer, Emmitt Smith. Through his podcast, Ben creates a space for authentic conversation and learning, shedding light on the less talked about aspects of entrepreneurship, and inviting listeners to explore the true essence of being an entrepreneur. He’s also the founder, president, and chairman of the board of The Gents Place. Please welcome Ben Davis to the show, Ben.
Ben Davis:
Thanks for having me.
Jeff Randolph:
We’re happy to have you here. So again, we’re happy to have you here because I think your background is going to speak volumes to everybody here. I want to talk about that podcast first though, Untrapped, the Untrapped Entrepreneur Podcast. You talk with seasoned business owners about the traps that lie on every entrepreneurial journey and how to escape them. What are some of those traps that you tackle on the show? And I’m expecting to sense a whole lot of head nodding from listeners as they hear these common traps.
Ben Davis:
Man, there’s so many, as you know, as an entrepreneur. What I try to do on the Untrapped Entrepreneur Show is, get people talking about the things they don’t normally talk about, the things that they’re scared to talk about. Maybe they almost went bankrupt one time and nobody knows. Maybe they lost their marriage or were real close to losing their marriage, and they didn’t want anyone to know about it. I try to uncover those things that are the real traps. It’s not the, “Hey, here’s how to get a bank loan,” and “If you’re running a little short on money.” It’s hard as an interviewer to pull that out. I think I was successful in some cases, so far in the show. And other ones, I’m like, “Dang it, man, you told me that off the air, but you didn’t go there on the show.” So yeah, I don’t know if people like me or hate me after the show, because I really do try to get them to say things I haven’t said before.
Jeff Randolph:
Well, and there’s so much there. There’s so many traps. I mean, you’ve got content for days on this one. Let’s keep talking about the podcast though, because you took your second season in a very different direction, and I think that it’s great. You’re focused on marriage and business. You threw that out there in your description of the other traps of, you’re married, you’ve got a family, you’ve got other things to think about. You’re talking about the role of your spouse in the business and everything that they bring to the table. But also, the boundaries that you need to set up to keep things very happy, to keep you centered as a couple, first and foremost. Describe what you’re trying to do in that season two topic.
Ben Davis:
When you’re an entrepreneur, you have a significant other in most cases, whether it’s someone that you’re married to, girlfriend, or boyfriend. But what I realized is that everybody has this unique relationship, in this case, season two was, you’re actually married, with your spouse. Some of these relationships were, “My spouse and I work the business together all day, every day, and we’ve been doing it for 10 or 15 years.” Others, it’s the polar opposite, “She doesn’t even know what I do.” And there’s everything in between. I was just fascinated with, you’re married… And my wife and I have been together since we were 16 years old. You’re married, running a business, how do you guys make that work? And I specifically interviewed people who had not been divorced.
Jeff Randolph:
Right.
Ben Davis:
There’s nothing against being divorced, but I wanted to interview someone, they’re like, “You made it work. You made the business work, you made marriage work.” I think what you’ll find in season two is just, it’s looking at the same… It’s not an issue, it’s just a reality. The same reality of being married and owning your business from a 360-degree view. And there were some opposing views from show to show, like, “I tell my spouse everything,” to “I tell my spouse only what he or she needs to know.”
Jeff Randolph:
And your own story comes out as part of the season. I’ve enjoyed listening to that, as well, where you’ve had to fire your spouse. That was a moment, that was a thing that happened. And yet, you’re still alive, thriving, and you’re still growing strong.
Ben Davis:
Oh man, I hope that topic comes up on every podcast I’m on, that I fired my wife. I don’t know if she would enjoy that, but we both get a laugh out of it now. It wasn’t fun at the time. But there comes a day of reckoning when you work with your spouse on, is this going to work in the future? And I don’t know, just based on people I’ve interviewed, I don’t know if there’s any perfect situation that has avoided that. But our day of reckoning was, “This is not sustainable the way we’re doing it, and we have to restructure.”
And we did, we restructured. We reorganized, then we separated into lanes, and we can’t report into each other. So if there’s any hierarchy there, it’s just not going to work. That was our solution is, like, “Stay in your lane. We can give each other feedback, but don’t tell me what to do.” My wife’s favorite phrase in life is, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
Jeff Randolph:
I understand that. I get it. It looked like you had such good boundary setting, and good communication at the heart of all of that. And if you can make that work, it’s the best. Have there been any unexpected lessons or new revelations as part of this season and all of its interviews?
Ben Davis:
There’s been a lot. One of the episodes with Marshall Morris really hit home with me, because it was something I shared. We’re both married, both have kids, and he has a family motto, a family phrase, or family values. And it was like, “Never give up. Persistence wins, finish well.” Something like that where, it was just a solid set of words for his family to live by, for he and his wife, and his family.
And for us it was, “We take winning shots.” I tell my kids that. I’m a big basketball fan, but, “We take winning shots.” We’re not afraid to have three seconds on the clock, everybody on the team is looking around going, “Who’s going to shoot it?” And it’s like, “I’ll shoot it.” I’ll go on the harsh edge of reality, and if I make it, I get some of the glory. If I miss it, I can handle it.
Jeff Randolph:
It’s a lesson learned, yeah.
Ben Davis:
Yeah. And I think, whether it’s being married or married with kids, having some sort of foundation there for you to go back to. That was one of the things that hit home with me. There’s a ton of lessons out there in terms of communication. And another one, I think it was Chris Royalty, he said, “In business when nothing is said, things are usually going great.” It’s like, “Oh, hey Jeff, how are things going? Oh, good? Okay, awesome.” But he said, “In marriage, it’s the exact opposite.” Being married and running a business, it’s like, “If nothing’s being said, something’s probably wrong.” It’s pretty insightful.
Jeff Randolph:
There’s something stewing under there that needs to come up.
Ben Davis:
If everything’s, fine, fine, fine, it’s probably not, fine, fine, fine.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right, absolutely. And yeah, winners want the ball at the end of the game. When the game’s on the line, winners want the ball. You’re a true serial entrepreneur. In addition to, The gents place and the podcast, you’re a principal for USA Gloves. You’re a brand owner for Rascal and Cliff Supply, in the men’s personal care industry, co-founder of Servant Health and Operation Gentlemen. You’re doing amazing things with homeless and veterans.
When you manage your time across all of these different ventures, how do you define what gets your attention? Is it, whatever’s on fire or struggling, or do you have a system to give attention to each of these things as needed?
Ben Davis:
Definitely a system. Many years ago I set up, and I’m religious about it, either weekly or biweekly meetings, calls, just touch bases, even if there is nothing planned to talk about. We talked two days before, ad hoc, but our weekly meeting is coming up on Wednesday. I always keep those meetings, very few exceptions. And sometimes, the call is really short when I’m checking in with a manager, a business partner, an investor, as a board member to a CEO, I keep that call. And the beautiful thing is, when you keep a cadence like that, and there’s nothing to talk about in business, you end up talking about life, and that’s valuable.
It’s like, “Okay, business is great. Hey man, how’s your kid?” I have two kids that have had major health issues. My middle son has had four open heart surgeries. Looks like, we just got news, he may have to have another. But just connecting with people as humans, when you set that time out, it tells them, “You’re important. My time, you know, is important. I know your time is important.” And I think that’s the magic of it. If you’re constantly just reactive, it’s really difficult to manage multiple things at once.
Jeff Randolph:
And tough to be getting into that proactive mindset. So, all of the work downstream, seems to get jumbled up, and you’re always reacting instead of planning for the future. Yeah, good call. I like it. Let’s talk about growth for a minute, and The Gents Place, specifically. It’s a membership-based club where you get more than a haircut. You get an experience where you can hang out before or after, network, or take a meeting, to generally belong and invest in yourself. You’ve got 11 locations in five states. It’s been great to hear that story of growth on the podcast. I’m curious, what is something that you may have done in year one of the business, that you wouldn’t do today, if you had it to do all over again, retrospective vision being what it is?
Ben Davis:
This is a three-hour answer, Jeff.
Jeff Randolph:
True. Well, answer in all three hours. We’ll cut it down to the three words that are… No.
Ben Davis:
I’ll pick one. I was 25 years old when I started my business. I had no money. Borrowed from grandma and the bank. And I decided to do my own bookkeeping. I was going to learn QuickBooks, I was going to do my own bookkeeping, I was going to manage the place, I was going to work the front desk, I was going to do the ordering. I would never do that again in any business, ever again, and have not made that mistake since. I see, whether it’s some of our franchisees, or other new business owners, spend time on bookkeeping. I’m like, “Dude, the world is flat, for $400 a month, you never have to do bookkeeping. Whether you use someone in Colombia or a part-time mom, there’s a million bookkeepers. Stop doing that.” That would be my one recommendation for listeners, if you are doing your own bookkeeping and you own the business, even if you own a bookkeeping business, you shouldn’t be doing your own bookkeeping.
Jeff Randolph:
Someone else should be looking at that. And someone who knows what they’re doing, keeps up on all of those things, yes, absolutely.
Ben Davis:
The caveat to that, it doesn’t mean that you’re not looking at your financials diligently. You’re not managing the business by financial statements. It just means you’re not keying in the invoice in the QuickBooks.
Jeff Randolph:
The day-to-day, absolutely. I want to pivot just a little bit and talk culture, because you have built culture very intentionally. And it really is something that’s all encompassing. It’s that set of values that drives what you do and who you attract to the business, in terms of customers, but also in terms of employees. Give us a sense of why it was so important to make sure there was a culture that reflected your personal values and could help the organization grow.
Ben Davis:
I came from the insurance business, which is now Goosehead Insurance, which was taken public by all my buddies from childhood that I recruited into the company. I was the fifth employee there, I grew it to about 150 people, and then I left to start The Gents Place. What I learned in the insurance business was, we were in a commodity business. Everybody sold insurance. And we were selling auto and home insurance. This wasn’t anything special or fancy. We were selling the same Progressive policy as an independent agent, as someone else. And we had to differentiate ourselves. The way that we did that is, I created the Client Service Department. I went down to UT Austin and attended an Executive Education Class on the Experiential Economy. I learned about Starbucks, what they did, Disney, and Nordstrom. I came back and I helped implement a system that set us apart from a service standpoint.
Well, along with that, comes culture, like, that you’re a commodity for the consumer in that business, you’re also a commodity as an employer for the employee. You’re just any other insurance owner and insurance manager. When I went into the high-end barber shop, we call it a Barber and Business Club now, when I went into that business, I saw a lot of the same things. It’s a haircut, how could we differentiate that? We did a good job differentiating it on the service menu, making it membership based, the facility, the bar, and everything that went into it. I knew that we had to differentiate ourselves as an employer. And so that began my journey on, how do we do that? Talking to our people, “Hey, do you value health insurance, 401k?” We started to implement these things really early on in the business.
We put a matching 401k program in within the first year, and we were the very first company to do that. Even when the team members didn’t necessarily understand what a 401k was, or value it, they talked about it with their friends. “Oh, these guys offer matching 401k.” They probably, I am certain of it, had no idea what that even meant. But it was just something that was different, it added value, and it thought about them.
I think, for your listeners, everyone wants to build a really great culture. It has to be differentiated. It can’t be, “Okay, let’s go see what my competitor’s doing, and copy and paste that.” This is how I think as an entrepreneur, I look at what everybody else is doing, and then I sit down quietly and think, “What are they not doing? And that’s what I’m going to do.”
Jeff Randolph:
And bringing in the best practices from other industries to say, “Hey, Starbucks does this for healthcare,” or other amazing culture and HR kind of innovations, you bring this in now. Don’t be just on parody with the competition, do better. Nicely done. I want to use that as an opportunity to get us into the lightning round. Are you ready for the lightning round?
Ben Davis:
I mean, I don’t know because you didn’t tell me what you were going to ask me.
Jeff Randolph:
Exactly right. We’ve at least given topic selection for all the questions we’ve talked about before, so you know a little bit about what’s coming. Now, you don’t.
Ben Davis:
I’m going to come from a place of confidence, Jeff, and say, “Yes, I am ready.”
Jeff Randolph:
That’s the way to do it.
Ben Davis:
Even though, I’m really scared.
Jeff Randolph:
Shorter sound bite answers. I’m going to do this. This is our first ever audio lightning round. I’m going to share an audio clip with you from one of your shows. And I’m going to see a little bit of reaction out of that. Here we go. This is our first ever. We’ll see how it goes.
Ben Davis:
“How do you manage the work/life balance as a serial entrepreneur and what advice you would give to others struggling with this?” My answer, don’t play golf. I’m serious about this. I don’t have time to play golf because I love pouring into my businesses, into my family, and into just simply relaxing. Golf is this sport that takes three, four, five, six, seven hours, all day to enjoy, that it really just cuts out, in most cases, an entire day out of my life, that I just can’t afford to give up. I love golf. I love the guys that play golf. But if you’re really a serial entrepreneur and you’re trying to get balance or invest in all these different aspects of your life that are important to you, you may have to cut something else out, like golf, or something similar, in order to make it work.
Jeff Randolph:
I’ll stop sharing that audio clip right there, so that we can get a sense of it. First, there’s a lot to unpack there. Why do you hate golf so much? Why is this?
Ben Davis:
I feel like the PGA is going to come after me after that.
Jeff Randolph:
They need to. No, actually, it’s interesting because it does talk about priority. You’re totally right. But there are a great number of golf simulators out there now, that will let you play Pebble Beach in an hour, if you’d like, or a Top Golf company, where you can just be out there for a limited amount of time, and you don’t have to be that good. We still hold onto that. Do you pick golf because it’s the obvious, this is a four- or five-hour bit of your life that you’re never going to get back, or does it stretch out to anything that is other hobby?
Ben Davis:
It stretches out to anything. But what I have lodged in my mind is, business has changed. And 20, 30, 40 years ago… My godparents taught me how to play golf when I was 10 years old because they said, “Benjamin, you’re going to need this one day, because this is where deals are done. This is how you fit into the business world.” And things have fundamentally changed. That’s still around, but country clubs are declining, and the way to, “Get business done,” is not solely a five-hour golf outing. It could be, but things have changed a lot. And so, my point mentioning that is, if you’re still hearing that from… And God bless my godparents, my parents, and everybody before, but if you’re still hearing, “This is what you need to do to fit in,” there’s probably a better use of five hours of your time.
Jeff Randolph:
One hundred percent, yeah. I heard the same thing in seventh grade, “You need to start playing golf so that you can do business.” And that was what we did. My brother and I finished a round of golf, 18 holes with a cart. There was nobody in front of us. We finished in under two hours, the entire 18 round course. And we looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to go to the bar or something after this, because no one can know it only takes two hours to play.”
Ben Davis:
Who had blocked out five hours of their lives.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. This is not… Nobody should know that this is-
Ben Davis:
It does help that you’re really good too, by the way. It’s five hours for me. It’s two hours for you, Jeff.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s right. It’s something like that. What aspect of business do you wish you knew more about that you had a better handle on?
Ben Davis:
I think finance. I’m a finance major, but I didn’t spend all my time in finance. I spent all my time running my business. And I’m fascinated with AI, Power BI, and Microsoft. I just hired a great finance guy and my whole world’s opened up. So yeah, I think finance would be it, if I could go back in time and learn more.
Jeff Randolph:
Learn a little bit more. Good. And at least you want to learn a little bit more about it. That’s interesting, instead of just saying, “Yeah, I’m never touching it.” Next question, serial entrepreneurs have that brain that leads them into whatever the next thing is, and saying, yes, all the time to that next thing. What has been a heartbreaking no that you’ve had to force yourself to say, that keeps coming back to the surface? You want to say yes to it, but you keep saying, no, over and over. And maybe if it isn’t a no, it’s a, “I can’t focus on that yet, but man, that’s a thing I want to explore.”
Ben Davis:
I have one of these at any given moment.
Jeff Randolph:
That’s the brain. That’s the brain. It’s a thing.
Ben Davis:
I won’t tell you the specific business opportunity because it is a little unique, but I have an opportunity right now, and this happens frequently. But this one is nagging at me. I have somebody saying, “We need to start this business. Will you help me? I have a proprietary channel. I have a proprietary lead source. No one has this. I know you can help me with five hours of your week. I know you can.” I’m like, “Let’s pause, let’s wait.” And then he keeps bringing more evidence. I’m going, “He’s right.”
Jeff Randolph:
He’s right.
Ben Davis:
But does it mean… Just because I can, does it mean I should? And I have to tell my… That’s what goes on in my brain, literally that phrase, and I’m probably going to end up doing it. I don’t know how to stop that, necessarily.
Jeff Randolph:
If we’ve learned nothing from Jurassic Park, it’s, just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should be doing it. And dinosaurs happened after that. If you don’t have that five hours now, to dedicate to that new venture, that can be a challenge.
Ben Davis:
There are two words though, I’ll tell you that I think could be helpful. There’s advice out there that says, “Say, yes, to everything, and you never know where it leads.” There’s advice out there that says, “Learn to say, no.” And for me, my two words are, “It depends.” That causes me pause to reflect and say, “It depends. Do I want more money, more work/life balance? Do I want to pay it forward?” There’s going to be a reason why I take that next step. I tell myself that too, “It depends. Think about it and then make a decision.”
Jeff Randolph:
You mentioned on the podcast one time that your dad doesn’t know what you do. You thought that he might get it when he walked into The Gent’s Place, but ultimately, he didn’t quite get it. I think there are a lot of us that resonate with that these days. And maybe even goes back to that, “You should play golf if you want to do business.” Do you think we all strive for that recognition from our parents, or is it really okay, if they don’t get it, if other people don’t really understand?
Ben Davis:
Yeah, I mean, everyone has a different relationship with their parents. Certainly for me, my dad was military. There was an expectation that you do great, and when you don’t do great, what’s wrong? I remember coming home, my mom was like, “Why’d you get a 92?” I’m like, “That’s an A.” She goes, “Yeah, but that was your lowest grade. You got 98s on everything else.” And I’m like, “I can’t win here.”
Jeff Randolph:
Eight points, yeah.
Ben Davis:
Yeah. So for me, yes. I certainly feel like I’ve accomplished that. I’m okay with my dad not knowing everything I do. But yeah, you want to make your parents proud. If you were growing in a household where there was a high standard, there were values, and there were expectations, no question.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah. Last question in the lightning round, how do you celebrate a big win, whether that’s personal, a family, a sporting event, or whatever, how do you celebrate once that’s done?
Ben Davis:
I was going to tell you, popping bottles, but I don’t drink alcohol. Probably, wish I could do that, or wanted to. I always picture Mark Cuban with a cigar in his mouth, and 2011 Dallas Mavs win. For me, it’s different now as I’ve gotten older. And I know this is lightning round, but I’ll give you a little perspective on this. Before it was about, showing people I won. “I got this, I’m going to go to the newspaper, I’m going to go online, and I’m going to let everybody know what happened.” David Vinoy, in my season two show said, “You don’t need to dunk on everybody, but sometimes when you have a competitor that challenges you, they need to be dunked on sometimes.” And so that’s how, I think, where I was early on in my entrepreneurial journey. If I could dunk on somebody, I would. Now, I try to take that win and turn it into some sort of contribution.
And I’ll still put that out there because I want people to know, when you win, you’re doing it for a purpose. And so I have on my LinkedIn profile, “I make money to make a positive difference.” So that’s my humblebrag is, when I win, it’s like, “Oh yeah, we’re going to donate some extra meals to a homeless veteran, because we got this win,” or “We’re going to go out and put some money into a scholarship fund.” It just makes me feel good. And then, I like putting that out there, so other people might do the same thing, and not buy the Lambo. They go and do something a little bit different.
Jeff Randolph:
Yeah, I think that may give you a much better sense of accomplishment and good feeling than popping bottles. That’s a win. Ben Davis, host of the Untrapped Entrepreneur Podcast, where can people find you if they’re ready to learn more?
Ben Davis:
Yeah, easiest place is most of my handles, if not all, are Untrapped Pod, P-O-D, on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. So go follow me there, or just go to Untrapped.com.
Jeff Randolph:
All right. And Ben, thank you for being with us today on the podcast. Appreciate you being here.
Ben Davis:
Jeff, thanks so much.
Jeff Randolph:
And that is our show. Thanks to our guest, Ben Davis. And thank you for listening to the Small Business Miracles Podcast. Remember to subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and review, drop us a line on the website at Eagadv.com, if you have any thoughts. And until then, we’ll be out here helping entrepreneurs with another, Small Business Miracle.
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