  Pavement reconstruction and maintenance is one of the largest spending categories for commercial property owners in terms of yearly maintenance. Owning a big market share in this industry in the Colorado market, http://www.dacs.co/ (DACS Asphalt and Paving), one of the largest and fastest growing pavement reconstruction and maintenance firms serving the state’s front range. A selectee for the 2020 Titan 100, its President, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondunn7/ (Jason Dunn) leads from the front and invests a lot in continuously improving himself so that he can lead by example. In this conversation with Bob Roark and TITAN CEO Founder, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaime-nespor-zawmon-b861731/ (Jaime Zawmon), Jason discusses what he believes are the marks of a true industry leader in a highly-specific niche. A humble leader and a team player, Jason is a good example that other leaders in blue collar industries should look up to. --- Watch the episode here:Leading From The Front With Guest Jason Dunn, President Of DACS Asphalt And Paving, And Co-Host Jaime Zawmon, Founder Of TITAN CEOWe have quite a treat. I have my co-host, Jaime Zawmon. She is the Founder and President of https://www.titanceo.com/ (Titan CEO). Our guest is Jason Dunn. He's the President of http://www.dacs.co/ (DACS Asphalt and Concrete). Thank you, Jaime. Thank you, Jason, for being on the show. Jason, tell us a little bit about your company and who you serve. DACS Asphalt and Concrete is one of the largest and fastest-growing pavement reconstruction and maintenance firms serving the front range of Colorado. We serve commercial property owners and commercial property managers across the front range, all things pavement. That's one of the largest spending categories they have per year in terms of maintenance items. Whether it's us having to repave an entire apartment complex parking lot or take care of a single broken piece of curb and gutter from a snowplow, we take care of that for our customers. In the parking lot out here, there's a pothole and periodically the crew shows up. That's an interesting niche paving market. What drove you to that particular niche? A few things are special about this market. One is it's a good business itself. I was a business analyst for many years. I'm accustomed to looking for characteristics and businesses that make them great, sustainable, generators of free cashflow, but one of the things that attracted me to this business too is it's a low bar industry. This is blue-collar world where my competitors oftentimes work growing up in concrete and asphalt and then doing their best as business owners once they grew an attractive firm. If you bring business sophistication, especially from outside of this industry into this world, it gives you an ability to easily differentiate for the customer. If the customer recognizes it, that makes it an exciting opportunity for us. For you, when you say front range, what's the furthest north you go? what's the furthest south that you go? It's a little bit nebulous, but it's Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. We’ll go down as far south as Pueblo if needed. My team finished with an overnight, nearly camping trip through the mountains because we were serving some convenience stores that seventeen of this same brand of the store needed work throughout the mountain area. We packed up the crews, overnighted them and got that work done. We can be moving around, but it's Colorado Springs to Fort Collins.   Jason, first of all, we're so excited to recognize you as a 2020 Titan 100. I've got a copy of the book in which you were profiled. This book recognizes 100 of Colorado's top CEOs and C-level executives, https://www.titanceo.com/titan-100 (Colorado-100 Titans of Industry). Being a Titan of the industry is about finding your niche and you have definitely found that in what you're doing. I'd like to ask you what characteristics do you believe that it takes to be...

Business Leaders Podcast

Leading From The Front With Guest Jason Dunn, President Of DACS Asphalt And Paving, And Co-Host Jaime Zawmon, Founder Of TITAN CEO

  In one way or another, everybody leaves their business. Prepare well for the inevitable by knowing your exit strategy. In this episode, Bob Roark talks with Donna and Gary Thiel, small service business owners who, after more than 30-plus years, has closed the sale of their business. They share their journey and offer great insights about the process, for when you also decide on selling your business. Follow along to learn about who to talk to and what to do during this important business decision. --- Watch the episode here:Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="" title="The Process Of Selling Your Business With Donna And Gary Thiel" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] The Process Of Selling Your Business With Donna And Gary ThielWe have Donna and Gary Thiel. Thank you for your time. This is going to be a little bit different episode. We're going to talk about the journey between deciding to sell your business and the process. First off, tell us a little bit about your business. We own a small service business. Window cleaning was our main function. We did everything from residential to high rise. We also did snow removal services through the winter months. How long had you run the business? I originally bought it in fall 1986. I had worked for the company for about 6 or 7 years prior to that. Donna came in ‘96, ‘97-ish. She came in and helped with a lot of things like accounting stuff. What was the date that you closed on the sale of your business? March 1 of 2019. You ran that for a long time, 30-plus years. There's that ongoing discussion that you hear from business owners. At some point, you're going to exit the business in one way or another. Everybody leaves their business I suppose. What was that thought process like when you started thinking about selling your business? The stress level got high. The economy was good in Denver and stuff, but that brought along some difficulties of finding help and things like that. The salaries had gone way up in the city. It got difficult to compete and finding enough good people to get the work done to stay competitive was getting difficult. I would imagine it's not the everyday person that wants to hang over the side of a high rise. They are a different old breed. There are a lot of them out there. It’s some of the bigger companies and a lot of the construction industry was even taking employees that would normally be doing things in our industry. They had increased salaries much and benefits and it got difficult. I think about the challenges when you're in a full-employment economy. You and Donna got together and made it a decision that it was time to sell the business. Once you had that decision in place, what were your next steps to try to identify how or who you are going to use to help you sell? We were lucky because Marla is one of our accounts in my work in commercial packaging. I'm a broker. We automatically went to her and started asking questions. She comes involved with Keith and Keith was amazing. Marla is a unique individual. She is the CEO of https://raincatcher.com/ (Raincatcher). You were fortunate you had a contact within the industry. You started working with Keith. For that process of going through, what was the process from when you started talking with Keith to when the business was effectively ready to go on the market? What was that like? [bctt tweet="You got to wait until it's completely done and not get wound up." username=""] There was some work involved. There were a lot of things they were asking for that we weren't expecting. We attempted to sell it ourselves. We're probably about 1.5 years before going out and seeking a broker in Raincatcher and such. What was that like? That got a bit frustrating. We had a couple of people that showed interest. We didn't know all the ins and outs of how to deal with them, and all...

The Process Of Selling Your Business With Donna And Gary Thiel

  What are potential buyers looking for in a business? While there is no such thing as perfect acquisition criteria, different buyers do have their preferences in terms of what industry the company is in, what its corporate structure and company culture looks like, and what the reason for the owner’s exit is. Taking a break from the usual format, Bob Roark interviews someone who is looking to acquire a business. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasseger/ (Nick Seger) is the president of https://parklandfield.com/ (Parkland Field Management), a search fund that intends to become the succession plan for a business inColorado or the surrounding states. Coming from a family business background, Nick has deep respect for business and is not looking for a quick flip as private equities tend to do. He plans to hold on to the business to see it grow and provide long-term value to its employees, customers, shareholders and community. What is his criteria for acquisition? What does a handoff transition period look like? What does he think business owners have to do to make their company attractive to search funds if they’re planning to sell? Nick shares all of these in this episode. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/DbL4zSzZDdQ[/embed] Business Acquisition Criteria: From The Buyer’s Perspective With Nick SegerWe have Nick Seger. He's the President of https://parklandfield.com/ (Parkland Field Management). Nick is a recent arrival to Denver. He's in search of a company to acquire. This show is a little different and many times we talk to business owners that have an existing business. They may be looking to transition their business or they may be looking at some point to sell. In this case, what we have is a potential buyer of a business. We're going to explore some of Nick's thoughts and also the view from the buyer's eyes when you're looking at a business. Nick, thank you for taking the time to be on the show. Thanks for having me, Bob. Nick, tell me a little bit about your business and a little bit backstory on you. I moved out to Denver over the 4th of July 2020 weekend. My significant other and I were living in Chicago before this. We were trying to figure out where we wanted to start that next phase of our lives and I had gone out and raised a little bit of money from some investors, which I'm sure we'll touch on here in a little bit. She was graduating from a Master's program and we figured Denver was a great place. She's from San Diego, I'm from Indiana and we picked up and drove the U-Haul out here and brought our puppy out. I've been searching for a company out here in Colorado. I appreciate you giving me some space here to talk about it. For you, people go, “You raised some money from some investors but you didn't just start.” You come from a family business background. I do. I grew up back in Indiana. My family still runs a third-generation agriculture business, turkeys and chickens. My grandfather started the business decades ago. My father has seven brothers, grew up in a large German Catholic family and large agriculture community back in Indiana. My dad and his five living brothers still run that business. People ask me all the time, “Why did I do this?” I tell them all the time that I had never seen the path to success being anything other than being a business owner. Where I grew up, it was the largest town within 60, 70 miles. I tell people the nearest Starbucks was 60 miles away. There were no consultants, bankers, lawyers, accountants or tech companies. That didn't exist in my hometown. What I saw as success in business was being a small business owner. That's always what I grew up wanting to do. I had always thought I'd go back and help run my family's business one day but they have strict rules. You have to go out and prove yourself in the world before and so I did. I went out and worked in finance and sales marketing for ten years. I was at Wells Fargo for a number of...

Business Acquisition Criteria: From The Buyer’s Perspective With Nick Seger

  What are potential buyers looking for in a business? While there is no such thing as perfect acquisition criteria, different buyers do have their preferences in terms of what industry the company is in, what its corporate structure and company culture looks like, and what the reason for the owner’s exit is. Taking a break from the usual format, Bob Roark interviews someone who is looking to acquire a business. Parkland Field Management (https://parklandfield.com/), a search fund that intends to become the succession plan for a business inColorado or the surrounding states. Coming from a family business background, Nick has deep respect for business and is not looking for a quick flip as private equities tend to do. He plans to hold on to the business to see it grow and provide long-term value to its employees, customers, shareholders and community. What is his criteria for acquisition? What does a handoff transition period look like? What does he think business owners have to do to make their company attractive to search funds if they’re planning to sell? Nick shares all of these in this episode. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/DbL4zSzZDdQ[/embed] Business Acquisition Criteria: From The Buyer’s Perspective With Nick SegerWe have Nick Seger. He's the President of (https://parklandfield.com/). Nick is a recent arrival to Denver. He's in search of a company to acquire. This show is a little different and many times we talk to business owners that have an existing business. They may be looking to transition their business or they may be looking at some point to sell. In this case, what we have is a potential buyer of a business. We're going to explore some of Nick's thoughts and also the view from the buyer's eyes when you're looking at a business. Nick, thank you for taking the time to be on the show. Thanks for having me, Bob. Nick, tell me a little bit about your business and a little bit backstory on you. I moved out to Denver over the 4th of July 2020 weekend. My significant other and I were living in Chicago before this. We were trying to figure out where we wanted to start that next phase of our lives and I had gone out and raised a little bit of money from some investors, which I'm sure we'll touch on here in a little bit. She was graduating from a Master's program and we figured Denver was a great place. She's from San Diego, I'm from Indiana and we picked up and drove the U-Haul out here and brought our puppy out. I've been searching for a company out here in Colorado. I appreciate you giving me some space here to talk about it. For you, people go, “You raised some money from some investors but you didn't just start.” You come from a family business background. I do. I grew up back in Indiana. My family still runs a third-generation agriculture business, turkeys and chickens. My grandfather started the business decades ago. My father has seven brothers, grew up in a large German Catholic family and large agriculture community back in Indiana. My dad and his five living brothers still run that business. People ask me all the time, “Why did I do this?” I tell them all the time that I had never seen the path to success being anything other than being a business owner. Where I grew up, it was the largest town within 60, 70 miles. I tell people the nearest Starbucks was 60 miles away. There were no consultants, bankers, lawyers, accountants or tech companies. That didn't exist in my hometown. What I saw as success in business was being a small business owner. That's always what I grew up wanting to do. I had always thought I'd go back and help run my family's business one day but they have strict rules. You have to go out and prove yourself in the world before and so I did. I went out and worked in finance and sales marketing for ten years. I was at Wells Fargo for a number of years and towards the latter half of my career was in more of a business development sales type role. I...

  Who you surround yourself matters. Especially in business, being in a circle of successful CEOs and entrepreneurs can offer a lot to how you position yourself to succeed as well. In this episode, Bob Roark interviews Titan 100 (https://www.titanceo.com/titan-100) feels like and what benefits they can expect. Learning from these great people, Jaime then tells us some of the important traits successful people have that took them to where they are now. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/zsRAoHJhhJE[/embed] TITAN CEO: Why Surrounding Yourself With Successful People Matters With Jaime ZawmonWe are fortunate we have Jaime Zawmon. She is the President of (https://www.titanceo.com/). She's graciously agreed to be a guest to talk about what she's doing with the TITAN CEO Group. Jaime, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve. Thanks for having me, Bob. First and foremost, TITAN CEO is a company that I started that is essentially a CEO Peer Group, or a series of different CEO Peer Groups. We work with Colorado area-based companies, CEOs ranging traditionally between $1 million and about $50 million in annual company revenues. We work to do experience sharing, to help CEOs work through business-related challenges. We also work on building business valuation inside some of the work that we do with the CEOs because every CEO is looking to grow their business either, to build it as a lifestyle business or to grow it in order to sell it. That's a big blend of what we do within our groups. You're somewhat of a resident of the Rocky Mountain area. Tell us a little bit about your background because you have a long history of working with CEOs. I'm from the East Coast, originally born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. I went to school at Towson University in Baltimore County. I was recruited to a magazine publishing company back in 2003. I fell in love with the concept because the magazine was a magazine that was focused on CEOs, and every month we would feature one of the region's most enterprising CEOs. We would tell their story on the cover of the magazine. We would write about the success and/or the failure, obstacles, trials, and tribulations of running a company and growing it. We did that on a monthly basis. After about a year, I went to the owner and said, "I love this concept. We should expand it to Washington DC." He made me a partner and I moved down to DC. In 2005, we launched with Ted Leonsis, the former Chairman and CEO of AOL on the cover of our first magazine and we took stride ever since. We grew the magazine to seven cities up and down the East Coast, reaching over 100,000 CEOs on a consistent basis. We pioneered award programs that recognized the best of the best. We recognized CEOs that created incredible cultures, those that were technology-based CEOs, or growth companies CEOs, and the 50 fastest growing companies in each region. I've always surrounded myself with some of the region's most enterprising CEOs and it was an incredible ride. During that time I met my husband on a ski trip, ironically in Colorado, which is what brought him back to the East Coast for me for a short period of time and then I made the promise that I would eventually move back to Colorado for him because it's such a beautiful state. I can see where you compare Denver and Baltimore. It was like, "Your love for the water or your love for the mountains?" Unfortunately, I'm more of a water baby than I'm a mountain lover, but I'm an avid skier and so as my husband.   I grew up in the deep South on the Lake, so I'm a water skier and you go, "It's a lot colder when you do the skiing up here." I'm the business owner going I don't know that I'm familiar with the TITAN 100. How do I find information? What it takes to qualify? To explain a little bit more about how that evolved, I have always believed that it's important that who you surround yourself with matters, which is one of the reasons...

TITAN CEO: Why Surrounding Yourself With Successful People Matters With Jaime Zawmon

  The healthcare industry has been so slow in adopting digital technology to deliver its services that it took COVID-19 for telemedicine to be taken seriously by virtue of necessity. WorldClinic (https://worldclinic.com/), pioneered the company’s innovative concierge telemedicine model at a time when almost nobody else was doing it. More than two decades ago, Dr. Dan took the challenge of leveraging connectivity to deliver healthcare to people who need it, wherever they are. Through all the challenges, he successfully built WorldClinic into what it is now, a concierge level telemedicine practice that serves families, executives and corporations. During this time of pandemic when everyone is forced to do physical distancing, telemedicine is booming and providers will certainly have a lot to learn from WorldClinic’s best practices. Joining Bob Roark on the podcast, Dr. Dan explains the rationale for telemedicine, its brief history and the future that the post-COVID world holds for it. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/reYEV4ERSvI[/embed] Pioneering Concierge Telemedicine With Dr. Daniel Carlin, CEO Of WorldClinicWe have a real treat. We have Dr. Dan Carlin. He's the Founder and CEO of (https://worldclinic.com/). He pioneered WorldClinic’s innovative concierge telemedicine model. He's a national leader in the field of telemedicine. He's a recognized pioneer in the delivery of medical care to distant populations, board-certified emergency physician, and a former US Navy Medical Officer. Commander Carlin, thank you so much for being on the show. I haven't received that title for years but I still love hearing it. It's a privilege to have you on the show. For the business owners out there, it's extremely important as you work hard, you have a tendency, or at least most that I know of, to neglect healthcare. When you have a liquidity event, it seems like you wake up with all the things you want to do, and your health condition is not going to support your efforts. For Dr. Carlin to be on the show and talk about what we can do about that, tell us a bit about what WorldClinic is about. How you got into a clinic? Before I jump in there, I wanted the audience to know that I'm an entrepreneur also. I'm a physician but I'm not in the big white tower of medicine here. I want to talk on the ground level like this is what's going on. I've built a successful practice and a company. These issues I'm talking about are also personal. I want to speak one-on-one around this stuff. Let me tell you about WorldClinic. It's a 22-year-old telemedicine practice. Back in the ‘90s, I was a pioneer trying to figure out how do I deliver healthcare at a distance using the internet. I had a big vision for it. I've seen most of that vision come to pass. It hasn't been easy. It's been a lot of struggles along the way but also a lot of some amazing successes. In 2020, this is a private concierge level telemedicine practice. We take care of families, executives, corporations. We've gone from superyachts, because my naval background suited me well for taking care of ships, to the families that own those superyachts to the companies in the portfolios of the families. At this point, we've broadened out to taking care of and in some cases, C-Suite executives or an entire workforce. We did that classic marketing strategy thing of start with a niche market and expand and use technology to scale. We still have our original families. Most of them are still with us many years later. They are several generations worth and lots of corporate executives, but I'm happy to report we're on now taking care of a lot of line workers, construction workers, these kinds of things. It's been a fun, challenging journey. The biggest thing I've seen, I want to close the loop here, is I know a ton of entrepreneurs that put their healthcare, their basic health and wellness as a 3rd, 4th or 5th place issue behind their business and their family. I want...

Pioneering Concierge Telemedicine With Dr. Daniel Carlin, CEO Of WorldClinic

  The industry leader for custom-made 3D-printed casts and splints in the United States, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piacet?challengeId=AQEKxqSnpI3RAQAAAXNH9STA4_9Qc_0PXAusuKieWixRULrMyRzXrzAnhUJA3QzbqBzgqP0ydVh47rZV2cvxBSp8wFferOcY8g&submissionId=c16e2249-bc4c-2116-5181-6747c350aa0a) about the face masks. Dr. Kaplan and Eric share their experiences wearing the face mask, while Diana explains how they’ve added the product line using their existing technology. They also dive into the company’s cast and its benefits for athletes and regular patients. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/D1uoZyaf3ls[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/35545366-dcb7-43e9-88da-fa25f01cdb23/blp-diana-hall-dr.mp3" title="ActivArmor™ With Diana Hall, Dr. Kevin Kaplan And Eric Miller" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] ActivArmor™ With Diana Hall, Dr. Kevin Kaplan And Eric MillerWe have three guests on the show. We have Diana Hall. She's the President and COO of (https://www.linkedin.com/in/piacet?challengeId=AQEKxqSnpI3RAQAAAXNH9STA4_9Qc_0PXAusuKieWixRULrMyRzXrzAnhUJA3QzbqBzgqP0ydVh47rZV2cvxBSp8wFferOcY8g&submissionId=c16e2249-bc4c-2116-5181-6747c350aa0a). He's a critical care flight nurse and paramedic and a Major in the Wyoming Air National Guard. We're going to be talking about ActivArmor, both their casts and their face masks. Eric, tell me a little bit about the face masks and why they're useful and attractive for you to use in your business. I work on the helicopter, and also work in an ICU. One of the big complaints, if you talk to any healthcare worker about masks, and if you have to wear these things, every time you breathe or exhale, your glasses are fogging up. The ActivArmor mask, I got a 3D scan of my face. This thing fits directly on my face and I don't get that fog in my glasses. I can tell you, if you're in a helicopter, you can't have that happening. It's a safety issue. Being in an ICU, after twelve-hour shifts, it's irritating. The other great thing is the ability to be able to see facial expressions and stuff, especially with patients. It's already scary enough. In this, you can see if you're smiling. If they have trouble hearing, they can see your lips. They're a fantastic tool and the fact that they're N95s, which is great for the situation with the COVID. I use mine all the time. Eric, you said that you were out flying and that you got your sound boom to work with the mask on. That's another big issue for me. I can put my visor down. It works like it goes over my nose and then putting the microphone to the side, I was able to still communicate within the cabin with the other crew members and discuss the patient. It was fantastic. You were talking about an interest in the hearing-impaired school and potential uses of those masks for the instructors at the school. Could you talk a little bit about your thoughts there? I was approached by somebody when I was wearing the mask and he says, “I am a teacher for the hearing impaired. Where did you get that mask?” I told them about ActivArmor and he said, “Do you think we can get some of those masks?” I said, “The custom ones, you want to be using them all the time. There's a price point on those, but they also make some other ones that are probably more affordable for what you're looking for staff.” As soon as there are materials ready again, I'm going to buy some and have them try it out and see if that works. Being able to see and read the lips is an important aspect of the hearing-impaired community, not just the sign language. This is a little bit backward, but we got everybody together, which you guys can imagine might be a tad challenging with everybody's efforts in the community. Diana, if you would, going backward, the mask came along later in the product cycle for you...

ActivArmor™ With Diana Hall, Dr. Kevin Kaplan And Eric Miller

  Many business owners are understandably extremely passionate about their business. Sometimes, they are too passionate that they fail to view their business from the buyer's perspective. When that business life cycle finally hits the break, they find themselves having seller's remorse from selling their business without maximizing its value early on. In this episode, Bob Roark is joined by co-host and CEO of IBVA (https://www.ibva.biz/About.html) and IBVA Pros. Together, they discuss assessing your business and making adjustments from there in terms of valuation, moving from micro to macro that touches the people, processes, and systems involved. Join this great business coaching session to learn how to maximize the value of drivers of your business. --- Watch the episode here:  Maximizing Your Business’ Value With Co-Host And CEO Of Raincatcher, Marla DiCarlo, And Guests, Jim Gilbert And Allen HarveyBusiness CoachingWe're doing a continuation of the series with my co-host, Marla DiCarlo. She's the CEO and Cofounder of (https://jimgilbertcpa.com/). In the previous episode, they were going through the details of the sale of a business that they ran together in Denver. Marla's company handled that transaction. What I wanted to cover with Jim and Allen with Marla's help is to unpack the skillsets that both of these gentlemen bring to the table and their insights to the businessowner mindset and skillsets. Some of the levers and tools that they can have in place that will help them run their business. We talked about this a lot before we started. We'll start off alphabetically. Allen, if you would tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve? I'm an independent valuation expert. I do professional certified business appraisals. We also work on calculations, which are not independent certified business appraisals. I work for IBVA and IBVA Pros is the team that we put together with some other evaluation experts. I’m teaming with a valuation expert by the name of Mike Dougan, who is a veteran appraiser in the industry We are also developing some relationships and teams with other appraisers as well. We have a team approach to our appraisal practice. That's what I do. We are at IBVAPros.com (http://www.IBVAPros.com). I'm a CPA. I run a CPA consulting practice. We have three sides of our business. One side is the traditional accounting bookkeeping day-to-day, which helped many clients’ Cloud-based accounting. I've got the business side where I work on lots of CFO, controller, advisory business, and then the other side of our business, which is my passion is technology. How do you apply technology? I spent a lot of time working with my greatest love is merger and acquisition. I spent a lot of time helping my owners, both buyer and seller, be successful and how to get to those processes and achieve maximum value on whether you're buying or selling. Marla, you and I are friends. We've talked a lot and we've had a number of episodes. Talk a little bit about what you do at Raincatcher and then we'll try to weave together while we're all on this show together. At Raincatcher, we help entrepreneurs to sell their companies and more importantly, to maximize the full value before they sell. That's something we see owners are either aware that they're leaving money on the table or that they have options before they decide to sell their company. We're here because Jim and Allen are a big part of the affiliates that we use to help those owners make sure that they don't have seller’s remorse, maximize value. Thank you for that. That's exactly why you're here. I think about the business owner and for many of them, it's their life's work. They're extremely passionate. They know everything about that particular service or product that they have. I think what they fail to do, or in many cases difficult to do is view their business from the buyer's perspective. There's the difference that we talked about...

Maximizing Your Business’ Value With Co-Host And CEO Of Raincatcher, Marla DiCarlo, And Guests, Jim Gilbert And Allen Harvey

  When you enter the world of business, you have to be ready to experience setbacks and develop inventive ways to overcome them. We have all read somewhere that good business owners can step away from their business and still have things run smoothly as they envisioned. You’ll know you’re dead wrong when you hear about the sobering experience of Marla DiCarlo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marladicarlo/), the owner and CEO of Raincatcher, the leading business brokerage firm in the US. Susan and Marla have worked with each other and are bound by their passion for helping small businesses overcome adversity and achieve success – something that is of extreme value now as we navigate these difficult times. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/FBxA0-IQ7yg[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/703e9ac6-61cb-488e-b640-c602009b3361/blp-marla-dicarlo-susan-frew.mp3" title="Overcoming Setbacks In Business With Susan Frew" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] Overcoming Setbacks In Business With Susan FrewCo-hosted by Marla DiCarloWe have a special treat. We're going to do a joint hosted podcast. My co-host is Marla DiCarlo. She's a good friend and she's the CEO and Co-owner of (https://advisor.fixthisnext.com/). I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for taking the time, Susan. If you would, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve. I was a business coach for a long time after a corporate career. I was on an international assignment. When I came back, I became a business coach and coached unintentionally seventeen different trades. Through that, I met my husband who is in the plumbing, heating and air conditioning business. We started our own company called Sunshine Plumbing, Heating & Air. Things were going great. We had massive growth. I started going around speaking about how we grew our company. It was awesome. I wrote a book about all of that. I realized that I had made a very bad hiring decision. While I was traveling, a lot of bad things were happening to my company. There were some embezzlement and some theft, a lot of mismanagement and we almost lost it. We have been successful in turning it around. It's my passion to go back to coaching and continue speaking as well to help business owners to avoid what I went through because it was a real nail biter. I didn't think we were going to pull it out, but people like Marla who have known me for a long time encouraged me to coach myself for a minute. She knows that I could do it, but it was definitely with a lot of encouragement because I have given up a couple of times. I think about drinking your own tea where you go through and go, “I'm a coach and I coached before.” There's got to be some level of looking in the mirror and you go, “I coached this, what the heck?” I think about the advice that you might offer to a business owner based on your true veils. What might you tell a business owner based on your experience? As business owners and what you hear a lot and different books that you read, is you need to be able to step away from your business and it will run without you. You just sit on a beach and collect checks. That is possible and it is probable but you need to put a lot of effort into your systems, key performance indicators, financial drivers, know how to monitor them remotely and know how to wall them off from the wrong people or else you could get in a lot of trouble. That's what happened to us. I thought I was monitoring KPIs, bank accounts, QuickBooks and everything else. Clearly, when you have a wolf in the hen house, it is challenging. It's very difficult to figure that out because you don't expect that someone's going to do that. Marla, you are a professional CFO prior to Raincatcher for many companies. If they’re the business owners that are reading out there...

Overcoming Setbacks In Business With Susan Frew

  There is no doubt about the skills that each of us possesses; what is often lacking is the right mindset to turn those into success. (https://www.amazon.com/Think-Say-Do-Disrupting-Systemic-ebook/dp/B08D7767BZ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=) and other books. As he talks with host Bob Roark on the show, partake of the incredible wisdom he has accumulated over the decades in the areas of mindset, motivation, self-development, and personal mastery. With Charmas, you can learn how to make excellence a habit and success a default state. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/DMKWnGX4E7Q[/embed] Building Champion CEOs With Charmas LeeOur special guest is Charmas Lee. He is the Owner of (https://www.amazon.com/Think-Say-Do-Disrupting-Systemic/dp/1094901032). He's the author of six additional books. He's prolific and a two-time TEDx speaker. He also speaks to Vistage groups across the country. Charmas, thanks so much for taking the time. Thank you much for this opportunity. I'm glad to be here. We're going to have some fun. Tell me about your business and who you serve. The name of the business is Building Champions. We specialize in personal and professional development. I've been a coach for over 32 years, eclipsed the 10,000-hour rule 2.5 times. What I've seen is with victory in site, I've seen many people slip into mediocrity. We create comprehensive strategies for those who are trying to move in a different direction, provided with a purpose plan and a clear set of priorities and get them to knock the ball out of the park. I read the Think Say Do book. I also was lucky enough to see you speak at a Vistage group. I am exposed to your work. You're working in the athletic arena at the Olympic level. You've done track and field. I've had a chance to work with athletes in the National Football League, senior level of figure skaters, USA track and field, and the World Boxing Organization. I think of figure skaters and boxers, they both got to move on their feet or bad things happen. They've got to have excellent footwork, but more than that, they have to have the right mindset. They've got to bring the right mindset every single day, especially in the competitive environment. [bctt tweet="Start with the vision and then move forward from there." username=""] Maybe years ago, the mindset wasn't that much of a buzzword. I’ve got kids and I try to coach my kids and they're older. We talk about mindset and approach. Having mindset and keeping a mindset are two distinct skillsets. When you're working with the athlete that's on the long grind to get to a honed edge, what do you do to help them keep their mindset?  The most important factor is it's going to start with their attitude. My responsibility is to ensure that they bring the right attitude so that they'll have the right perspective. It’s funny how the mind works. Based on the attitude, it will determine how you see others and how others see you and it plays such a big role. The second thing is that we have to create a series of habits, practices, and rituals that they perform on a daily basis. I want them to get to a place where when they don't perform a habit, practice or ritual that we've designed, for example an AM or a PM ritual, by creating incredibly uncomfortable. What that will do is that will set the tempo and press the agenda for the day, whether it be in the training or the competition environment. We implemented mental fortitude routines. We call them mental mastery routines. Sometimes they're amazing that these athletes are trained to put a full script together in black and white and memorize it, including sights sounds and smells and things of that nature of the environment they're about to go into. They can visibly or visually see what's going to take place during the competition, whether it be boxing or whatever the case may be. They already have a strategy in place on what's going to...

Building Champion CEOs With Charmas Lee

  One of the great indicators of a business' growth is its ability to function without the business owner. This entails a lot of task delegation, taking off some of the weight from the business owner's shoulders and passing it down to those who can do them better and more efficiently. If you feel you are at this stage in your business already, this episode will provide you with some great insights about that transition. Bob Roark interviews  LifePoint Strategies (https://lifept.co/) , a company that works with business owners who want a business that can run without them. Either you want to prepare for an exit or focus on the things that really matter and would make good use of your focus, Terri shows you the steps and the strategies to make that move while maximizing your business' value without skipping a beat. Dive deep into this great conversation to know the amazing services they offer and more. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/vcCayoIi-Hs[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="" title="A Business That Runs Without A Business Owner With Terri Starck" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] A Business That Runs Without A Business Owner With Terri StarckWe're extremely fortunate because we have Terri Starck. She is the Founder and Business Strategist with (https://lifept.co/) . Terri, thanks for taking the time. Thank you for having me, Bob. Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve. LifePoint Strategies works with business owners who want a business that can run without them. They either want that because they're almost ready to sell and they want to maximize the value of their business prior to selling. They want a business that runs without them so that they can focus on the things that matter to them. Maybe they like to do more strategic work for their business. Potentially, they want to get back in the field and do the things that they enjoy doing and the reason why they started the business in the first place. Some of them quite honestly just want to play more golf. The way I play golf, that wouldn't help much. I would spend all my time in the field not playing golf for sure. For the business owners, that sounds interesting. I'm going to try to play the role of the business owner and ask you some questions. That sounds intriguing. How do you work? When a business owner calls us, we start by going through what we call the discovery phase. It is where we come into the business and interview some of the key players, the owner, COO, CFO, management team players, and some of the key employees. Once we interview them, we'll have a good feel for the overall business because we take them through what we call the business assessment. We'll then take a look at their finances, P&Ls, and do a pretty good in-depth financial analysis. After that, we do a leadership assessment to identify any of the gaps that they have in their leaders, maybe communication or abilities to confront or resolve issues, those types of things. Finally, we go through what we call our walkabout. We walk around the business and get the feel of the company and the culture for how people interact with each other and how the businesses run overall. Once we do the discovery phase, then we move on and go through the strategy days. Those are two days that are packed with taking the information that we have gotten from the discovery phase. We will then prioritize what has to be done in order to achieve the financial goals of the owner as well as the leadership development goals. Anything else that needs to be done either to maximize the value of the business or get the business running on its own without the owner. Once we do the strategy days, then we're off to the implementation phase. In the implementation phase, we implement the findings that we...

A Business That Runs Without A Business Owner With Terri Starck

  One of the great indicators of a business' growth is its ability to function without the business owner. This entails a lot of task delegation, taking off some of the weight from the business owner's shoulders and passing it down to those who can do them better and more efficiently. If you feel you are at this stage in your business already, this episode will provide you with some great insights about that transition. Bob Roark interviews  LifePoint Strategies (https://lifept.co/) , a company that works with business owners who want a business that can run without them. Either you want to prepare for an exit or focus on the things that really matter and would make good use of your focus, Terri shows you the steps and the strategies to make that move while maximizing your business' value without skipping a beat. Dive deep into this great conversation to know the amazing services they offer and more. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/vcCayoIi-Hs[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="" title="A Business That Runs Without A Business Owner With Terri Starck" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] A Business That Runs Without A Business Owner With Terri StarckWe're extremely fortunate because we have Terri Starck. She is the Founder and Business Strategist with (https://lifept.co/) . Terri, thanks for taking the time. Thank you for having me, Bob. Tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve. LifePoint Strategies works with business owners who want a business that can run without them. They either want that because they're almost ready to sell and they want to maximize the value of their business prior to selling. They want a business that runs without them so that they can focus on the things that matter to them. Maybe they like to do more strategic work for their business. Potentially, they want to get back in the field and do the things that they enjoy doing and the reason why they started the business in the first place. Some of them quite honestly just want to play more golf. The way I play golf, that wouldn't help much. I would spend all my time in the field not playing golf for sure. For the business owners, that sounds interesting. I'm going to try to play the role of the business owner and ask you some questions. That sounds intriguing. How do you work? When a business owner calls us, we start by going through what we call the discovery phase. It is where we come into the business and interview some of the key players, the owner, COO, CFO, management team players, and some of the key employees. Once we interview them, we'll have a good feel for the overall business because we take them through what we call the business assessment. We'll then take a look at their finances, P&Ls, and do a pretty good in-depth financial analysis. After that, we do a leadership assessment to identify any of the gaps that they have in their leaders, maybe communication or abilities to confront or resolve issues, those types of things. Finally, we go through what we call our walkabout. We walk around the business and get the feel of the company and the culture for how people interact with each other and how the businesses run overall. Once we do the discovery phase, then we move on and go through the strategy days. Those are two days that are packed with taking the information that we have gotten from the discovery phase. We will then prioritize what has to be done in order to achieve the financial goals of the owner as well as the leadership development goals. Anything else that needs to be done either to maximize the value of the business or get the business running on its own without the owner. Once we do the strategy days, then we're off to the implementation phase. In the implementation phase, we implement the findings that we have....

  Immunization is an important subject to talk about, especially in the midst of a pandemic like COVID-19. While traditional immunization methods are popular as ever, more and more companies are seeking out methods for needle-free immunization that mitigate some of the risks presented by needle immunization. Bob Roark is joined by PharmaJet (https://pharmajet.com/) , to discuss the pressing impetus for investing more resources into needle-free immunization. Let Bob and Heather take you through this vital topic with a spirited conversation. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYQTMdkD5qI[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="" title="The Pressing Need For Needle-Free Immunization With Heather Callender-Potters" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] The Pressing Need For Needle-Free Immunization With Heather Callender-PottersMy guest is Heather Potters. She's the Vice Chairman, Global Business Development Officer, and Cofounder of (https://pharmajet.com/) . Welcome, Heather. It's exciting for me. Thank you. I'm so excited to have this time with you and get your story out there, which it's already out there, but at least through this channel. If you could talk about PharmaJet's vision and your vision is needle-free applications for immunization and the story of why you started there and why that's still your focus. My mother and me cofounded the business. We wanted to make sure that we made a contribution to healthcare. She had experienced needles, she'd seen reused and there was a call to action by the World Health Organization because they were witnessing needle reuse about whether or not somebody could develop a needle-free immunization tool. We decided to rise to that occasion. When we looked at the market, immunization is global. We all share the healthcare burden. We're in the midst of something around Coronavirus where it's abundantly clear that if people are healthy, they're at work, the economy works. If a group of people is healthy, then the population generally is healthy. We focused on what we could do around taking needles out of the garbage dumps and the risk of reuse and needlestick and then that immunization market that's growing in perpetuity. More people being born, more need for immunization. If you fast forward to where we are, the exciting thing is that over time we've been able to prove that you might be able to move from the muscle to the skin and functionally reduce the dose of the vaccine by 80% and get the same immune response. It’s nifty. It's around the immunology that our skin has. Our body's barriers are always protecting us from things. The other exciting thing is that we kept seeing this glimmer of making vaccines work better. In particular in nucleic acid vaccines, messenger RNA, and DNA vaccines, we tend to see a multiple of higher immune response versus needle-based delivery. There's a whole slew of things, whether or not it's infectious disease or oncology, things coming to market to address disease concerns that we don't have treatment for. Like on the infectious disease side, it could be Zika and now also COVID. On the oncology side, it could be someone who's manifested HPV, cervical cancer, lung cancer, or leukemia. Lots of things that give us joy around near-term immunization, medium-term, reduce the dose in the longer-term of bringing things to market that don't have vaccine cures. [caption id="attachment_5238" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Needle-Free Immunization: A significant percentage of people avoid immunization because they don't like needles.[/caption]   Thinking about the mechanics, my memory goes back to when I was a little boy. I got my polio sugar cube with a little red dot on it. We have certainly progressed a long way since then. For you with the jet...

The Pressing Need For Needle-Free Immunization With Heather Callender-Potters

  The COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone to take a good, long look at how things were being run once upon a time and see how things can change for the ultimate benefit of public health. One of these fields is the technology sector, where every day, companies find new uses for existing technologies to help the world adapt to the crisis.  Visual Globe (http://www.visual-globe.com/) . They sit down with Bob Roark to discuss how artificial intelligence can be used to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The time to act about the crisis is now, and with these technologies on hand, we might just be able to make the full recovery we need to. --- Watch the episode here:[embed]https://youtu.be/z6Wu4OZRGr0[/embed] Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/80f18bbf-8247-4a3c-8638-8dae067bf2b2/blp-mike-blakeman-trevor-chandler.mp3" title="Using Artificial Intelligence To Combat The COVID-19 Pandemic With Mike Blakeman And Trevor Chandler" image="http://businessleaderspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/BLP-SquareLogo-WhiteBlueBG1400x1400.png" background="default"] Using Artificial Intelligence To Combat The COVID-19 Pandemic With Mike Blakeman And Trevor ChandlerMy name is Mike Blakeman. I’m the CTO of Visual Globe (http://www.visual-globe.com/) . With me is Trevor Chandler, our CTO for our technology and what we're doing now. I know, Bob, you wanted us to share our vision and what we're trying to do with our experience and solutions. We’ll be talking more about that technology here. The thing I wanted to do, which I typically do, is you guys have created an ability to solve some particular problems. You were working in the utility space and then we had the pandemic come along. You took, adjusted, and adapted to also solve this problem. If you would talk about what problems or benefits you bring to the utility space and then also talk about the benefits that you're bringing to the safety of the community in the COVID timeframe. I’ll give a brief overview of what the company's doing now and what we're about to do with the wellness program. I’ll allow Trevor to go into the details of the technology and his experience with artificial intelligence. Our company is strictly focused on data and information that we receive from our customers regardless of the market we're serving. Now we're serving power and telecom, but the information that we receive, it's all about taking raw data and converting that to information. We convert that to put that into insight and actionable items that they can react to. This has been on extracting information out of images that we collect on the distribution poles for telecom power and the ability to go out to the field and capture transformers with infrared technology to be able to determine if there those assets are healthy. As a company, Visual Globe is focused on physical assets that you can see on earth and to determine their wellness, condition, and maintenance and what needs to be handled and what the decisions need to be made in order for something to be reacted to or supported by others in the field. Right now, our contracts are simply going out and doing auditing at poles on the transformers and those who are attaching their equipment to the poles and be able to pull that information right out of the images based upon artificial intelligence and the automated feature extraction. Let me move it over to Trevor. He’ll talk more about the technology as it relates to what we're doing and then we'll move into what we see as a great opportunity for people to get back to work using our technology.   What we're going to go through here is there's a benefit from this company, first in the utility space pole and equipment and monitoring and creating intelligence from the data extraction. We were issued the COVID pandemic. Data extraction and looking at heat signatures and so on map nicely over

Using Artificial Intelligence To Combat The COVID-19 Pandemic With Mike Blakeman And Trevor Chandler

  It is going to be a very different stage for marketing as we come out of the ashes of the COVID-19 pandemic and into a brave new world. To talk about what this pivot means for the promotional marketing space, Pica Marketing Group (https://www.picamarketinggroup.com/) join Bob Roark on the show. With decades of experience in coming up with innovative marketing solutions for businesses, Paul and Stephanie are experts in promotional marketing and spreading the marketing message using promotional tools and products. Listen as they talk about the future of promotional marketing in the post-COVID world and share some very amusing and incredible stories of marketing strategies that you never thought anyone could have pulled off. --- Listen to the podcast here:[smart_track_player url="" title="Promotional Marketing In The Post-COVID World With Paul And Stephanie Zafarana" ] Promotional Marketing In The Post-COVID World With Paul And Stephanie ZafaranaWe have a special episode. I have my good friend Stephanie Zafarana and her husband Paul on. They're from (https://www.picamarketinggroup.com/) . We're going to talk about marketing post-COVID pandemic and what they're doing to serve their clients. Stephanie, Paul, welcome to your episode. Thanks for having us. Tell us a little bit about the Pica Marketing Group and who you serve. Pica Marketing Group was conceived in 2008. There isn't a better time to start a company. We learned a lot of lessons starting in such a crazy environment, but we incorporated it because we saw the needs that not only were our clients and people in the marketing community looking for innovative marketing ideas. They were looking for hard numbered returns. They were their board of directors and all of the people that they report to for real numbers. No longer was it okay to throw money at the marketing and sales department without any actual results. That is why we call it Pica Marketing Group because pica is a unit of measurement. It plays well to our audience. We work on serving nonprofit organizations, healthcare, and then manufacturing. Those are the vertical markets that we serve the best and we engage in a couple of different ways. We have some large clients where we're able to plug into their already established marketing department and be that outside voice. We’re that different perspective to help them accomplish a particular project. Be plugged in to some of those smaller organizations that maybe have a person that's the office manager/marketing director. We become the marketing department for them, offering ideas, working and collaborating to get their message out, but doing that heavy lifting. It seems to work well for our clients. The great part is we find ourselves dealing with all sides of projects. Nothing's too big and too small. The more creative, the more fun we all tend to have. In the end, it is about results. We like to start the conversation with what you are trying to accomplish and work from there. It's been an interesting time. We're starting to come out of some of the quarantine and restrictive movement events post-COVID. A lot of the companies, their worlds changed. What are your thoughts on these companies on, what they should be thinking about as far as marketing and spending money and both from their customer perspective and also how to keep their employees safe? One of the biggest things that some people may or may not realize is back in the late '80s, early '90s when there was another recession that happened, a big player came out of that and that was Clif Bars. Those energy bars that everybody has. They were a big player in that and the time to spend on marketing and advertising is in these times. People tend to remember those brands that are out there that are there for them on a personal level. They tend to remember that they were there for them during this whole time. That's been a huge part of it. You want people to...

Promotional Marketing In The Post-COVID World With Paul And Stephanie Zafarana

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