Action's Antidotes

We spend a lot of time on screens these days, whether it's for work, social media, or just relaxing with a show. It's easy to lose track of time, and hours can pass before we know it. But how much is too much? What exactly is the impact on our health and daily lives?

In this episode, I talk with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, Founder of Embedded Consulting. We discuss the impacts of excessive screen time and social media on mental health and the importance of connecting with people around us. Sumayyah shares her struggles with social media and how she observed its impact on her friends and family. Tune in to hear her insights!

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How to Break Free from Screen Time Overload with Sumayyah Emeh-Edu

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. And, today, I want to talk to you about a topic that’s really near and dear to my heart, as in I know I have my own initiative around this, which is cutting down on people’s screen time. I think you’ve probably seen in the news that we do have a lot of problems associated with the excessive amount of time in front of screens and people come up with different numbers depending on which particular study you’re using or if you’re considering phones, TVs, computers, and everything as well, but, regardless, it seems out of control and anyone that’s old enough to remember the world before smartphones and everything took it over can remember a world where we spent a lot more time relating to each other in person as well as doing things not in front of some form of digital technology and it’s hard not to make a clear connection between that and a lot of the mental health and loneliness issues that we’re experiencing today. So, today, I’d like to bring on someone who is kind of taking on an initiative in the same vein, in the same realm, Sumayyah Emeh-Edu, the founder of Embedded Consulting LLC.

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Sumayyah, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you, Stephen. Nice to be here. 

 

Yeah, thank you so much, and thank you so much for connecting because it’s always great to meet and connect with anyone else who’s kind of observed the same issue. So why don’t you start by telling me your story about kind of when you first started observing this whole issue, I think it was roughly maybe 15 years ago-ish that we all started in mass adopting these smartphones and excessive social media and the changes started to be visible in everyday life, regardless of whether or not you saw it as a problem. 

 

Yeah. So, I was on Myspace back in the day, 2008 I got onto Facebook, and I didn’t really see it as a problem. I was just like, “Wow, this is awesome.” There was a couple documentaries that came out around like 2014, 2015 that I had watched. There was also a lot of ethical folks and whistleblowers that were coming out of all of the big tech companies. And it was just information I digested but, like most people, I’m like, “Well, that does affect me,” and I would say a majority of my time was spent on Facebook. Twitter was always too fast and I wasn’t even on Instagram at that point, and I had already been a person who didn’t have, for instance, social media notifications in my email and on my phone because it just takes up space and I just hate my inbox just filled with a bunch of junk, but I had been in higher education most of my early career and then I made the transition into diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2015-ish, and it was just interesting because the election was going on, the first election with Trump, and it was a lot of negativity, a lot of just ridiculousness going on from a political perspective. And then, on top of it, I was doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work and I was deeply impacted when I would see injustices go viral or, unfortunately, the murder of a black man go viral, and so when I heard all of this thing about how social media is addictive, how it can impact your mood, and again,

Today's job search is considerably different from the busy, fast-paced job hunts of the past. Nowadays, it goes beyond having the ideal CV or applying as soon as possible. Finding a career that aligns with your values, demonstrating your abilities, and establishing genuine relationships are now important. In light of significant shifts like remote work and new hiring practices, how are you preparing to thrive?

In this episode, I chat with Wyatt Carr, a partner at The Page Group and a seasoned recruiter. Wyatt talks about the struggles of finding a job and hiring the right people in today’s fast-changing world. We discuss simple ways to stand out when job hunting, how automation is changing the workplace, and what businesses are doing differently when hiring. Tune in now!

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Navigating the Job Search in a Changing World of Work with Wyatt Carr

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic, something that I find one of the most frustrating aspects of the world we’re in today, and that is the process of finding a job or the process of connecting people with jobs. I know a lot of people and I also personally have been in situations where it just seems to just take a long time to find a job and there’s all these things about getting noticed, getting your resume out there, when all it is that you really want is to just find a job that fits what you studied in school, what your background is, what you think you’d be good at and also be interested in, do a good job at it. The process does not seem to be that much better, per se, from the employer side too because they’re just looking for talent and I know that there’s mismatches all around. So, to talk about where we are in the process of job finding, talent acquisition, all that, I would like to introduce my guest today, Wyatt Carr, who is a partner with The Page Group and an experienced recruiter.

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Wyatt, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much, Stephen. Happy to be here. 

 

Happy to have you. I just see the frustration so many people express to me, whether it be in person or even over LinkedIn, about people really looking for jobs. If anyone out there listening is in that situation where they’re looking for a job, they just need to find something, what do you think people need to be doing? 

 

So I think the number one thing to understand when you’re looking for a job is to realize that you are an investment if someone offers you a job. They expect to make more money than you cost to employ and that’s the current challenge with the current market is companies are seeming to do more with less and that is a huge concern about AI and how it will impact the workforce and how it will target or potentially take opportunity from a lot of white collar professions. Everyone thought automation would come for blue collar and it’s come to white collar, everyone’s probably heard that already.

You need to understand what value you bring to a business and then find the businesses that need your services, find the businesses that would value from what you can bring to the table.Share on X

I think we were very spoiled the last 10 years, literally, in my career, I’ve been in staffing and talent management, the economy has just continued to boom. I think during COVID, white collar workers did better. Blue collar and essential workers, they absolutely were devastated. So much money shifted to the laptop class and the billionaire class. Corporations weren’t hurt. Very few corporations were hurt from the pandemic. The small person was, the blue collar worker, the essential worker, and a lot of people did lose their jobs, but it was somewhat short lived on the white collar side, the skilled labor, laptop class, they call it or college degree educated class, and for the last 10 years with that exception where some people were impacted by...

Finding meaning and happiness in your career boils down to how you align your work with your values and passions. When we work on something that feels purposeful, it gives a sense of fulfillment that goes beyond a paycheck. How can we find a career that resonates with who we are?

In this episode, I chat with Debbie Morris, the founder of Live, Learn, Serve, a career transition coaching service. We talk about how to create a happier, more meaningful work life by focusing on things like employee engagement, career growth, and aligning your values with your work. Debbie breaks down why so many people feel disconnected at work and shares tips on finding purpose, practicing self-reflection, and adopting a positive mindset. Don’t miss this conversation—it’s packed with insight!

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Finding Meaning and Happiness in Your Career with Debbie Morris

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that’s really new to me as I’ve experienced it myself, I know a lot of other people have experienced it, which is how do we make work a better place to be, a happier place to be, a place that you really want to be? And I often comment that hating work is kind of built into our culture, if you think about Sunday scaries, Wednesday hump day, thank God it’s Friday, and I’ve often said to people that it doesn’t have to be that way. We can live a life where work is just one of the things we do along with weekends and you enjoy your weekend, you go, you dance, you party, and then you come to work on Monday and you also get to do something you love doing. To talk about how we can maybe help make that world a little bit more of a reality for more people, I would like to bring to you my guest today, Debbie Morris, the founder of Live Learn Serve career transition coaching service.

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Debbie, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you. I’m happy to be here. Thank you. I’m excited,

 

Well, I’m excited to talk to you about this because you’ve brought up the Gallup surveys that seem to be pretty consistently stuck with only about a third of the people in this country actually being engaged in their work, and then, globally, that number is even worse than the United States. So let’s start there. What leads to this result and this kind of stagnant result that, despite the fact that we’ve understood for so long that results in our organizations would be better if more people enjoy their job, why is it still that only a third of Americans are actually engaged in and what keeps it stagnant?

 

Well, I think first we have to sort of deconstruct the word and the intent of engagement. So, as organizations grow and they bring folks in, they want people to be committed to their work and to find alignment with the organization’s values. So, intrinsically, they want that level of commitment and they know that if you are intrinsically motivated, that you are more likely to stay and be high performing. So, the goal is to have that level of engagement. In order to do that, though, there has to be some level of alignment so there has to be alignment to what I believe in, what that organization believes in, and I think, first and foremost, what we’ve seen lately is that, oftentimes, there is a misalignment. So, people don’t necessarily feel like they are connected and believe in the same things their organization does. So, number one, there’s misalignment. Number two, I think people have said over and over again, we hear this all the time, is that they want opportunities to grow. So, career growth, that is a type of growth, but then as we look across generations, we see growth as meaning different things. So, growth could be vertical movement within an organization, but it could just also mean I want to expand as an individual or I want to expand as a global citizen or I want to contribute to something larger. So,

Managing group finances can be tricky, but it’s all about clear communication and setting shared goals. Whether it’s splitting bills or budgeting for a project, transparency keeps things running smoothly. Have you ever had a financial disagreement that taught you something valuable?

In this special episode, I’m joined by Joshua Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Tribe Money Pools. We talk about struggles of managing group finances, from tracking contributions to avoiding awkward money conversations. To deal with these, Joshua introduces his app, designed to streamline group financial management, making it easier to collaborate, stay organized, and maintain trust within the group. Tune in, and learn more!

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Collaborative Solutions for Group Financial Management with Joshua Lee

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today is an important day for Action’s Antidotes because it is my 150th episode, that’s kind of a milestone and, usually, I don’t make these episodes or any of these episodes about myself. Usually, it’s about the guest I’m interviewing, but this particular interview actually pertains to an area of my life personally because I’m the treasurer of an organization called Toastmasters, not the organization International, if you’re familiar, but of a local chapter, I’m a treasurer, and as a treasurer of the group, I oftentimes go to the bank, facilitate transactions with a bank account, because groups like Toastmasters or any other group oftentimes require having a budget, and a lot of people have clubs like that or perhaps you’re out there thinking about what kind of club or organization you want to start. Well, when I go to the bank, I never know what to say to the banker about whether it is a personal or a business account, because it kind of treads that line kind of between the two. It’s not a business, we’re not trying to make a profit or anything like that, we’re just trying to organize all the Toastmasters activities and expenses under this account so that we can fund our operations with our dues and what we owe the international organization and stuff like that. Given that a lot of our pursuits and a lot of us are going to find ourselves in a situation like this, I want to introduce to you today’s guest, Joshua Lee, who is the co-founder and CEO of Tribe Money Pools.

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Joshua, welcome to the program.

 

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me today. 

 

Yeah, thank you for hopping on. And so I want to start a little bit about what Tribe Money Pools does about these situations where, okay, you’re not a business but you’re also not a personal account, you’re kind of operating something together in a group.

 

Yeah, absolutely, and I think it would be a little helpful for me to provide a little context as to what Tribe Money is just very quickly. Tribe Money is a digital platform that helps groups share and manage their finances. What we’ve taken are the fragmented processes that occur in group financial management today, such as communication, facilitation, execution, and, most importantly, governance, which is all done with different applications or through different means and different channels. We’ve taken all that and consolidated it all into one platform so the actual financial management, the process of sharing and collecting finances with members of your group, whatever it might be, is much more streamlined, way easier and easier to track, and it’s much more secure than all traditional methods that really exist out there in the market today. So.

Really pertaining to what you were talking about earlier, what we’ve brought to this space to really help groups such as yours is provide these quick, virtual, shared bank accounts that people can put together with the click of a few taps.

Most importantly, set rules and access controls to ensure that people can monitor who can spend,

Have you ever been in a situation where, if something doesn’t work, it feels like going back to square one? This might make you question where and what you should pursue in life. One thing that prevents us from reaching our potential is limiting beliefs. What’s holding you back, and how can you begin shifting your mindset?

In this episode, I’m joined by Taylor Lehn, the founder of Black Raven Coaching. Taylor shares her story, starting as an aspiring coffee shop owner and eventually finding her true calling as a wellness and spiritual coach. We dive into the importance of building community and the value of in-person connections. Along the way, Taylor talks about the power of following your passions, breaking free from limiting beliefs, and creating a life that truly aligns with who you are.

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Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs with Taylor Lehn

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing that’s really important to me, in case you haven’t heard it in some of my other episodes, is bringing community together, bringing people together actually in person more and more. We have a lot of online platforms where people are connecting with one another and that’s great and that’s beautiful, but one of my goals going forward is going to be, and has been for years, is how do we reestablish on this community feel, someone to feel like you’re a part of something and that you’re actually interacting with the other people in your community. My guest today, Taylor Lehn, is a life coach and a local wellness event coordinator and the founder of Black Raven Coaching here in Denver, Colorado.

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Taylor, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you so much for having me.

 

Well, thank you for joining and I want to start a little bit by going into your story. Obviously, when you started this whole journey, you had a very different idea about what you were going to be doing. 

 

Oh, definitely. Ever since I was young, I always knew that, as far as my career was concerned, that I just needed to be my own boss. So, entrepreneurship was always where I assumed I would go. However, when I was younger, I had almost no clue what I was passionate about and finding something that I could pursue that would actually fulfill me for my entire life seemed like a very daunting task. So, when I went to college, of course, and I studied entrepreneurship and economics and the only thing I really knew I was passionate about per se was, funnily enough, coffee. I’d always been a coffee snob throughout high school, into college, while going through college, when it came time to find a job, coffee shop barista was the number one. So I dove into that and loved it, absolutely loved it. Knowing that eventually I wanted to own my own business once I got out of college, I really pursued that path of becoming a barista, really thinking that opening and owning my own coffee shop someday was what I was going to do. So I spent about the next six years or so after college really pursuing that. However, as I learned the trade, met some amazing baristas, worked my way up to becoming a coffee shop manager, really learning the ins and outs of what it takes to get a coffee shop started and to keep it running, it is a lot of work. I would say owning a coffee shop is one of the most difficult businesses you could pursue. It usually takes a coffee shop about five years to even break even. Really seeing the inside of it, seeing the people who are at the top of their game and what they had to go through and struggle through just to keep their business and their dream alive, I started realizing that that might not actually be what I wanted to do for my entire life, and that left me feeling very confused and really just not knowing what step to take. I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. 

 

Yeah, that’s a tough spot to be in, to be honest.

In today’s world, shared workspaces have become more than just a place to work—they’re hubs for connection and collaboration. They bring people together, creating opportunities to build relationships, share ideas, and grow alongside others who share similar goals. These spaces remind us how important it is to surround ourselves with supportive communities that inspire us to reach our full potential. How can being part of a shared workspace community help us achieve our goals?

In this episode, I chat with Ann Marlin, the Owner of Broadway Collective, a co-working space in Englewood, Colorado. Ann shares her insights on creating spaces where entrepreneurs and small businesses can truly connect and thrive. We also explore the impact of a well-designed workspace on productivity and how finding balance between work and life can lead to long-term success.

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Community through Shared Workspaces with Ann Marlin

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One of the things that I find most important in today’s society is connecting people, rebuilding community. You’re probably aware that compared to, say, 50, 100 years ago, we’ve seen a lot of our traditional sources of community decimated and people don’t really kind of run into each other and people will often talk about this idea of a third place, a third place being somewhere other than the home and other than the work where you still go and regularly interact with people and regularly just bump into people, and that the way a lot of people build connections is just by these chance circumstances in which you run into anyone. And in modern society, in my own life in particular, I often notice that someone has to start taking the initiative to plan meetings. Otherwise, people can easily go weeks, months without seeing their friends, without seeing the people they’re connected with. Today, I would like to bring on my guest, Ann Marlin, who is the owner, founder, and operator of a building where we’re actually sitting in right now, called the Broadway Collective.

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Ann, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. 

 

Well, excited to have you. We’re sitting here so we’re on the premise of the very initiative so this is a first for Action’s Antidotes here at the Broadway Collective. Tell us what the Broadway Collective is all about. 

 

Thank you. So the Broadway Collective really was born for the necessity of our sister company as we needed office space. We outgrew our previous office space and found an amazing mid mod building right here on Broadway in Oxford in Englewood, Colorado, and we fell in love with the building because of the floor-to-ceiling windows and just the overall vibe. It had not been touched since the 80s so I’m talking wood paneling, purple carpet, baby blue walls, but we really could see the potential in the building in that our sister company, we do real estate investments and fix and flip. The minute we stepped into this building, we’re like, “Gosh, this is amazing.” We knew, however, that this building was going to be too big for our sister company, Elevation, so we thought, well, what can we do with this building? And our passion is to support other small and local businesses and so I thought, oh my gosh, let’s make a co-workspace out of it and invite other businesses into our sphere and see if we can pass back business back and forth. 

 

Now, one thing I love about your story is how you were able to come in and play a little bit bigger than a lot of people were thinking because I think a lot of people would look at something like this and be like, “Oh my god, I love this building so much but it’s too big for us. What are we gonna do with all this space? Let’s just keep shopping for somewhere smaller or find a way to get by with what we currently have.” What would you say is it about your experience,

When we hear the word longevity, it’s not just about living longer—it’s about thriving through the years with good health. Adopting healthy habits can make a difference in our day-to-day life. What are the things we can do to promote healthy longevity?

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Cory Goldberg, a distinguished plastic and craniofacial surgeon with a vision for longevity medicine and aesthetic surgery. He discusses how to promote healthy longevity, emphasizing diet, exercise, sleep, and emotional health. He highlights the impact of poor diet and processed food on health and life expectancy. Listen now to explore strategies for a healthier, longer life!

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Unlocking the Secrets of Healthy Longevity with Dr. Cory Goldberg

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about longevity. Now, we’ve covered this a little bit in some of our podcast episodes that have covered health, fitness, wellness, but we’ve never really talked about longevity specifically. My guest today, Dr Cory Goldberg, is at the forefront and using some innovative techniques to promote longevity and some innovative ideas for the future of this entire subject as well as healthcare in general.

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Dr. Cory Goldberg, welcome to the program.

 

Hi, Stephen. It’s a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to our conversation

 

Where we began here. So you have some innovative ideas about longevity. I know, traditionally, people just talk about stuff like getting regular exercise, eating well, and even we’ve recently talked about some other kind of psychological things people can do, like controlling their thoughts, minimizing stress, and being around the right people and spending good time and good company. Is that part of your program or do you go right to some of these more innovative, less currently mainstream techniques?

 

Well, honestly, what you just hit on are two of the most important pillars of healthy longevity and good diet and exercise are keystone. I mean, you can’t have healthy longevity without that. There’s no quick fix that gets you around those basics. And I would add to that, good healthy sleep and a good emotional state and interpersonal relations so you commented on your episode on thought control and those kinds of things, being present and controlling your thoughts and your emotions and relations with other people really key for healthy longevity. So, no matter what else we add to that now, those four pillars are by far the most important things that anybody can do to make sure that they’re as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

 

And so if you think about the average person, either the average person you encounter or the average person kind of in society today, what do you think is the number one worst thing people are doing for the health on a regular basis?

 

I have to say it’s diet. People follow the diet that their parents taught them, the idea of four main food groups. They follow eating habits that are based mostly on addiction to the foods that we were exposed to on a regular basis in our society. People are eating poison, they don’t even know it, and I think that’s the biggest contributor to poor health. And the reason that in the United States, the past few years, the average life expectancy has actually gone down by a couple years for the first time in over a century and a half and that’s with corrections around the pandemic and COVID.

Even with that, the life expectancy is going down and I would say diet is the number one contributing factors to that.Share on X

 

And so what is the biggest mistake people are making in their diet? You talk about the foods that you become addicted to, the foods that you’re trained to eat. What can someone do right now to get out of that?

 

Well, as with any addiction,

Sometimes, we all stop and think about where our life is going and feel like we’re meant to accomplish more. Life might be good, but there’s something inside that is urging us to grow and do something bigger, and we are willing to work for it. It’s a feeling many of us have had, and it often leads to big changes. When you feel like this, how do you turn that feeling into real steps forward?

In this episode, I sit down with Christian Ray Flores, a performance coach and entrepreneur. He discusses the common experience  that we seek more in life despite achieving some level of success. He explains the concept of hedonic adaptation and the natural cycles of life, including the need for personal growth and fulfillment at different stages. Redefine success — tune in today!

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Embracing Growth and Change with Christian Ray Flores

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. We’ve had some episodes that have covered some broad topics and we’ve also had some episodes that have covered some specifics, specific aspects about starting a business, specific pursuits, specific components of our lives. Today, I want to take us a little bit back to the more broad topic because we’ve all found ourselves in that situation and I think the broad category of experiences around the situation can be I’m looking at my life and maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s not, but I know I’m capable of something more and I have the desire for something more, I have the willingness to work for it, which is the situation that a lot of people find themselves in and I found myself in quite a bit throughout my life. To touch on this topic, I would like to introduce to you my guest today, Christian Ray Flores, who is an entrepreneur, evangelist, media producer, and a performance coach.

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Christian, welcome to the program.

 

Thank you for having me.

 

Thank you so much for joining. So, as a performance coach, you work with a lot of people in the situation that I just kind of described there where someone’s saying, “Okay, I’m taking a look at my life and I’m deciding that I’m ready for something more, I want something more, I’m capable of something more.”

 

Yes, a lot. Me, actually, most of the people I work with are in that space. 

 

Yeah, I can imagine that. What’s a good way to kind of wrap your head around it, starts with a feeling, I’m assuming, for most people but –

 

It totally does, yeah. 

 

Right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is an excellent question, by the way. Thank you for setting me up for success here. You know what I think? I think what happens is that the world changes around us and we change and those are the main reasons why we find ourselves in these places where we go, “You know what worked for me two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, it’s just not working for me anymore. It’s just not satisfying me and something that I would be grateful for five years ago, it’s just not enough, and what do I do with that now? What kind of moves do I need to make? What kind of skills do I need to acquire? What risks do I need to take?” And that is sort of in the back of our mind. It’s a little voice telling you, “Is this all there is?” and, yes, and I think the – I’ll tell you a story of – I’ve had so many of those, so many. I can count at the very least five big ones where I’ve made, as a result of that thought, thinking about it, talking to some people, making a switch that is dramatically into another lane professionally, for example, so I’ve had five different careers, and I think I can name maybe five more that are more minor but also significant. But I’ll tell you a story of one of the earliest ones. One of the earliest ones earliest ones was I think it describes the situation when you have acquired your first level of success, you professionally have mastery, maybe you’re a senior executive, VP,

In order to grow our business, whether small or large, there are many initiatives to consider. It could be advertising. But one thing that can help you gain leverage, get exposure, and develop new clients is gift cards. How do we do it?

In this episode, I talk with Larry Rubin, Founder of Swipe It. He shares his journey, including how he overcame significant debt and the importance of supporting small local businesses. We talked about how small business owners can utilize gift cards to generate revenue and build a customer base. Larry emphasizes the versatility of gift cards, which can be used as promotions, employee rewards, and for online sales. Grow your business with gift cards. Tune in now!

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How Gift Cards can Drive Business Success with Larry Rubin

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about gift cards and a little bit about the restaurant industry, specifically the manner in which restaurant industry uses these gift cards and what it says about what we might need to do in general to help level the playing field between smaller and larger businesses or give smaller businesses, give the person that’s just starting up their own business, whether it be a restaurant or any other kind of business, a chance to survive, a chance to really make it in this particular current state of affairs in the United States, or in any other country, for that matter, given that a lot of you out there listening are trying to build something, build something that you’re passionate about and really putting your all into it, but, sometimes, when you see these bigger corporations out there, it does feel like that the cards could be stacked against you. My guest today, Larry Rubin, is the gift card guru, the founder of SwipeIt, and he’s here to tell us a little bit about his initiative to help some of these smaller, locally owned restaurants take advantage of this tool that is much more readily and easily available to a lot of the bigger restaurant chains.

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Larry, welcome the program.

 

Thank you for having me and excited to talk to you about hopefully leveling the playing field for these smaller guys.

 

Yeah, so 100 percent because I remember when we first connected, it didn’t feel to me necessarily obvious that gift cards was one of the ways that the bigger, larger chains kind of stomp on their smaller competitors, but you’ve observed something very different when it comes to leveraging this tool. First thing I’m kind of curious about is what makes gift cards such a powerful tool for any restaurant to use in kind of generating sales and customer base?

 

That’s part of our battle is going in and really educating the small business owner who, right now, they think of a gift card as a product that someone walks into my business, they purchase it, and they walk out. And that’s great for people who maybe are living or working within 15 or 20 minutes of your business. Gift cards can be utilized in many, many ways. It’s a huge revenue stream for restaurants and other merchants. It’s a great gift to give someone. I don’t know what clothes they wear, I don’t know what their activities are but I certainly know that this guy loves his chicken parm from this restaurant so I’m going to buy this gift card to his favorite restaurant. I know that you can always use it. And what we’re doing is helping the restaurants look at kind of outside the box. Great, we know that someone can walk in and purchase a gift card but do you have a website? Are you offering them online? Are you capturing last-minute gift giving by offering e-cards? All different ways to bring in revenue. And then we look at it in a different light as well and say, hey, it’s great for people to come in and pay you for gift cards but can we use these gift cards to bring in customers, run promotions,

A lot of us want to have a successful and meaningful business. After many years in our business, we all want to ensure that the business we have worked hard to establish will carry on well if we retire. Succession planning is the key to ensuring a seamless transition and long-term success. But how?

In this episode, I sit down with Lowell Mora, President of Impact CFO, who specializes in family- and privately-owned businesses. Lowell talks about the importance of planning for business transitions, especially as founders or business owners approach retirement, including finding suitable successors and maintaining business continuity. Tune in to learn more!

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Align Your Life and Thrive with Diamond Drip

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about succession planning. We’ve talked quite a bit about the process of starting up a business on this particular podcast, about what challenge you face on the come up, but then, what happens when you’re getting ready to retire and you want to make sure that the business is going to be in good hands and you want to make sure that your own wealth is going to be in good hands. To discuss this topic, I would like to introduce you to my guest today, Lowell Mora, fractional CFO, who specializes in working with a lot of these family-owned businesses around such issues.

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Lowell, welcome to the program.

 

Thanks for having me. Appreciate you having me here today. 

 

Tell me a little bit about Impact CFO. Tell me a little about your story, what you do with your clients. 

 

At Impact CFO, I help primarily as a fractional CFO, which fractional means exactly as it sounds, I spend a portion of my time helping a business that may not be able to afford – it typically can’t afford a full time CFO. So my practice focuses primarily in on the family-owned business in the small to midmarket that is looking towards a transition, either to another family member or to an external exit to maximize the wealth of the family and the value of the business. 

 

Now, when you say businesses that can’t quite afford, say, a full-time CFO, what’s a general size? What number of employees is that typical –

 

So the typical, most of us finance guys talk in dollars, but in employees, it’s typically employee levels of 25 to 100, 150. Again, it depends on the complexity of the business as well. So, in dollars, we typically talk somewhere around $5 million in sales, up to $50 million. Now, I’ve worked with smaller and I’ve worked with bigger but that’s the sweet spot. 

 

And so you’ve encountered a lot of these family-owned businesses that have gotten to this level. You said like $5, $25 million annually. I assume it means, right? So, what do you notice in some of these family-owned businesses that get to that level? Do you notice any kind of common thread in the type of people that you work with and the type of founders who are in the situation about who they are, what they’ve done to get to where they’re at? 

 

Yeah. Typically, in my practice, a lot of people out there is values based.

So I look to work with people that share the same values as me, which are pretty basic, which is a high level of integrity, strong, hard work ethic.Share on X

A lot of what I do is in the manufacturing, industrials, industrial products, industrial equipment. I also work with services, business services, and IT providers and things like that but, typically, it’s a business of an entrepreneur and they’re overwhelmingly, today in our world, they’re overwhelmingly male, and they’ve gotten to a point where they have a successful business and can support them but they don’t necessarily have a natural heir or successor. In a lot of cases, they don’t know what to do with that. And what typically happens, and it’s common,