Bizzy Signal

Dan Fallon, a Principal at One Digital gives us some sage advice on employee benefits.  Dan talks about the importance of the Benefits Administrator, where to see red flags in your current benefits plans and misconceptions about benefits plans.

Dan has dedicated his career to helping companies find the things in their plans where they are spending excessively or not getting the most benefits for the dollar.

The Independence Day week gave us an opportunity to do something a little different.  My twin 10 year olds, Huey and Hazel, take the microphone to interview me on how to grow companies revenue and decrease costs to grow smart. 

We talk about the importance of a strategic roadmap and why many company's margins stall as they grow. 

Meg Gilland, Sr. Business Advisor at G&A partners steps away from her client advocacy role to help us understand how small to mid-sized businesses can benefit from the use of PEOs.  

Meg offers us an invaluable resource in napeo.org, an organization focused on helping small to mid sized businesses find the right PEO for their needs.

This episode focuses on the difficult task of securing a home loan for 1099 and Self-Employed individuals.   Although many 1099 and Self-Employed individuals have enough income and/or assets to act as collateral for a loan, Fannie and Freddie have created stringent guidelines on lending practices.

Our guest today is Sarah Hubbard.  Sarah has been helping individuals in the process of getting traditional and non-traditional home financing for the last 12 years.  More impressively, when talking to people about who to contact for a home loan, Sarah’s name kept coming up.  She is highly respected by her peers and her clients, and we are honored to have her with us here today.

In this episode, we speak with a seasoned Fractional CFO veteran about the real costs that many companies do not see that become the real reasons for decreased profit margins.  

Our guest today, Drew Lyon is the founder and managing partner of Focused Energy.  Over the past 12 years, Drew has helped numerous companies in assessing the real issues that hurt companies as they go through growth and maturity phases.

Drew gives great wisdom on the importance of hiring and maintaining the Top 20% of employees, motivating the middle 50% and moving the bottom 30% out of the business. 

Drew states that the most important pre-planning for companies in growth mode is actually the post-planning of what you want your company to be after growth phases or M&A activity.

The cost of employee engagement has increased dramatically in the last 5 years.  While AI has been identified as a major revolution within business efficiency, there is also an important element to AI which can help understand your human capital. 

Dan Bruder, the CEO of Fusion Dynamic's Group and the thought leader behind a new AI software enabled platform, Blendification, says employees aren't as engaged as they should be because "Their leaders haven't given them a reason".  

Dan walks us through the concept of turning AI upside down to increase natural communication and feedback with human capital and how important it is to make sure all employees are part of the strategic culture of an organization.

In our next episode, we dive into the current dilemma for many business owners and executives of how to handle vacant, and many times expensive, unused space.  With the change in employee working schedules and the explosion of work from home and hybrid schedules, many of us are left trying to decide what the next best step is within the commercial leasing space.

In this episode, we talk to a seasoned veteran, Justin Rayburn of Fountainhead Commercial.  Justin gives us an excellent synopsis of the current commercial leasing landscape, creative ways to modify leasing terms, and thoughts on how to think about future costs related to commercial space.

This week on our fourth episode, we get into more of the true money matters within business; the process of preparing your business for a sale.  

Brett Story at Britehorn Partners joins us to discuss owner's mindsets when going into a transaction, their perception of the value of the business and the importance of working with the right partners to sell the business.

Brett Story is a Managing Partner at Britehorn Partners, where they have built a successful business helping companies through the transition of a sale, merger or new investment.  Brett reminds our listeners that just like other transactions of a personal nature, hiring the right M&A firm is a critical decision.

In our second episode,  we begin a mini-series on the importance of employers investing in their employees for development and ultimate retention.  The cost of employee dissatisfaction has been calculated at approximately $282 Million for median S&P 500 companies.  In this episode we talk to Wills Moore, CEO of Agilitas Human Resources.  Wills has spent more than 25 years in the Human Resources field for Fortune 100 companies including Coca-Cola and Korn Ferry.  Agilitas has been able to help companies substantially improve their profit margins through is contemporary approach to employee human resource management.

In our third episode, we finish our mini-series on human resource management by talking to Heidi Hanna who is the Chief Energy Officer of Synergy Brain Fitnesss.  Heidi helps us to understand stress in the workplace and how to turn negative stress into positive stress.  Heidi's life-long research of the impacts of stress on the brain and human body is shared as we talk about how we can turn negative stress to positive stress and become more effective leaders.

Heidi's Linkedin Learning Managing Stress for Positive Change can be viewed here:
For Linkedin Learning and Premium subscribers: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/instructors/heidi-hanna?u=104