With everyone either selling or buying, you would think it’s a simple process for them to meet and finish the job. However, many business owners and buyers alike still have a hard time looking for the right business or buyers for them. Rob Amerine, certified business intermediary of The FBB Group, Ltd, talks about selling a business and helping buyers see what they want and need. He shares some nuggets about how to have good businesses that are ready to sell as well as the things you need to have a higher sales price. Rob walks through the process and discusses the small business development council (SBDC), the market, some expectations and misconceptions, and more as he advises businesses to build to sell.

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Rob Amerine: What You Need To Know About Selling A Business

We’re very fortunate to have https://www.linkedin.com/in/robamerine (Rob Amerine). He is a Certified Business Intermediary with the https://www.fbb.com/ (FBB Group) in Colorado Springs. If you would, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

Our firm was originally started in 1982 called the FBB, First Business Brokers, and then we changed the name to the FBB Group. We wanted to become a little bit more nuanced, people have a lot of questions about confidentiality so we want to make it more straightforward. We actually added the ability to do stock transactions at that time as well. Our Founder, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronchernak (Ron Chernak), had his FINRA license. There was a little branding and name change at that point to the FBB Group.

What is it that you guys do?

If you don’t live in this world, you don’t realize that a lot of small businesses transact through intermediaries like ours where a seller needs to sell and we have buyers that come to our firm. It’s a very niche industry, but it’s very important to the economy, being able to find buyers for sellers that are looking to transition their business. It’s one of those businesses where you don’t realize it touches a lot of different facets of the business from the legal side, to the accounting side, to the marketing and the operations. You can imagine all the different things that we touch and see. It’s vital to what sellers need. Rarely do businesses sell without someone like us. If it does happen, it’s some of the bigger businesses. Small business is the engine of the economy, and selling businesses is where this value changes over.

Looking back over the past few years, would you say that there’s a fair quantity of businesses available to be sold? Is there a shortage?

There are a lot coming on the market, more so than we’ve seen before since the recession. We’re going through that cycle. No one knows when it’s going to end. There’s a lot of them out there. There are also a lot of businesses that are not ready to sell that out there. They’re trying to sell and they’re very frustrated. About one in ten go to the market actually sell. When you use a firm like ours, that can increase to maybe three or four out of ten. You increase your percentages by having a firm like ours involved.

You’ve got the business owner reading this and he goes, “I know what my company’s worth.” When you find the nine out of ten businesses that don’t sell, what are the typical reasons you run across as to why they don’t?

Unrealistic expectations. Most of the time, business owners have gotten their valuation from their accountant. The accountant does a great job of doing accounting, but they’re not selling businesses. Usually, when they value business, they may not have the latest information. Some accountants do a great job, others don’t. The question is,

Managing director of IBG, Dan Roth, went from being a business owner to advising business owners himself. Taking all of those experiences he has gained through the years, he is now one of those rare people who can give you genuine advice about the entire processes and struggles in starting, maintaining, growing and selling a business. He lets us in into some of the methods and approaches he uses in advising business owners while also sharing some pointers on how to deal with buyers and selling. He also discusses topics such as acquisitions and risk management, and shares some personal regrets. And he provides great nuggets of wisdom that’ll help you move your business forward.

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The Art of Advising Businesses with Dan Roth

Today, we’re incredibly fortunate to visit with https://www.linkedin.com/in/danjroth/ (Dan Roth). He is a Managing Director at https://ibgbusiness.com/ (IBG), a merger, acquisition and advisory firm. This is his second appearance on the podcast. We’re honored to have you on the show, Dan.

Thanks for having me again, Bob. I’m looking forward to the time with you.

Dan, tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve. In a thumbnail sketch, what does your business do and what does your ideal client look like?

I work for IBG Business Services, which is based in Denver, Colorado. We’ve been in business since the mid-1980s. We focus on primarily mergers and acquisitions of mid to small-sized companies. Most of the companies we work with are looking to sell either all or part of their companies. Occasionally, we’ll work with companies that are looking to make acquisitions where they have specific types of companies they want to acquire, and we help them manage that process. For the clients that are looking to sell, sometimes they have us work with them right away. When they want to sell the company, we work quickly to get that started. Other times we work with companies that are not ready to sell, but are looking for advice on, “What should I do now to prepare my business for sale in a year or two years or five years?” We do a lot of advising as well to help companies know, “What should I do now so that when I sell my company, I get the most value for it and I find the best buyer.”

What folks may not know is you also started and have run a number of businesses as well.

Earlier in my career, I had the entrepreneurial bug. I started a company when I was in high school in technology and software and was fortunate to hire a number of people and build that up and sell it. A few years later, I started another software company. I was building software for International Banks with a partner in London and we were again fortunate to sell that company to a buyer out of Brussels, Belgium. Working with another partner, we created an investment banking firm in New Port Beach, California. That still runs. I’m not part of it anymore, but the company as I understand is doing well.

From there, I helped start up a company in home healthcare that is now one of the largest private companies in the home healthcare space in the United States. I’ve been involved in a number of early-stage startup companies in technology and healthcare. I love the process. I love to be part of startups. I love building companies. I love to work with business owners, because business owners are a different breed. They are people that take risks, who want to build something themselves and I find a real affinity for working with folks like that.

I think about the experiences that you’ve had in the past. You’re a business owner that’s now coming in to advise business owners. What type of advantage or benefit do you think you bring to that business owner that’s going to be looking for help?

I hope experience.

Most of the people in our society are experiencing some physical symptoms that reflect the negative effects of their lifestyle. Instead of using natural stressors to calm the body and illicit self-healing in the body, we’re taking medications. Wyatt Ewing, founder of The Ice Barrel, wanted to look at natural and effective ways to improve health and escape from this epidemic of overstressed, overworked, overstimulated, and medicated people. Thus, The Ice Barrel was born. It is a custom US-made oak barrel designed for taking ice baths. Wyatt is joined by sales director Chris O’Connor and marketing director Joby Stanford to talk about the health benefits of The Ice Barrel.

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The Ice Barrel with Founder Wyatt Ewing

Radical improvements in your immune system, mood, focus, energy and overall health. Key leaders in all industries including Tony Robbins, Paul Chek, Laird Hamilton and Tim Ferriss are utilizing the benefits of the ice bath. If they’re doing it, why aren’t you?

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We’re joined by Wyatt Ewing. He’s the Founder of https://theicebarrel.com/ (The Ice Barrel). Chris O’Connor, he’s the Sales Director and Joby Stanford is the Marketing Director of The Ice Barrel. Thanks for being on Business Leaders Podcast. We’re going to jump right in. Tell us about The Ice Barrel and who it’s for.

The Ice Barrel is a custom US made oak barrel designed for taking ice baths. We are based in Colorado. We started out of a garage. The Ice Barrel was originally founded out of a desire to connect deeper, go further and maintain equanimity through life’s challenges. It’s grown to give a balanced approach to health fitness through practicality and simplification.

That’s a lot of vocabulary. Let’s drill down into it. Let’s talk about how you got the notion about Ice Barrel and the journey to taking it from thought. What got you started down this road?

I was tired of being sick, addicted to stress hormones in the body and being overworked, overworking myself ultimately. I needed something to take me to the next level and to regain health and balance in my life. When I started exploring with cold therapy, I quickly needed to make a water cooler. I was having some amazing changes in my physiology. I started taking ice baths. I was so sick and tired of laying down in my bathtub upstairs looking at the ugly ceiling. Weighing down in the cold water is not a natural feeling to begin with. You’ve got to lean forward and huddle in there. The idea came when I was driving down the road and it clicked. I need to be able to lean forward and gauge my mind in a different way. Not trying to force myself to relax, but let it come naturally. I put the idea together with the barrel. A lot of work trying to design something that would work and be suitable for the product we created.

Let’s bounce off your point. My background is in health and if we look at the state of the way things are and our population and the number of pharmaceuticals that we see consumed every day. The pain epidemics that we see. The lack of strong immune systems and functions that we see. People are sick. Most of the people in our society are experiencing some physical symptoms that reflect the negative effects of their lifestyle. Instead of using natural stressors to calm the body and illicit self-healing in the body, we’re taking medications. There’s a pill for that. Seeing this clearly if you look from a wider lens, you’ll see how much we are not helping in our traditional approach. We’re looking at natural effective ways to improve our health and escape from this epidemic of overstressed, overworked, overstimulated and medicated people. We want to move away from that.

When you look around and you think of lawyers and law firms, you think of the big ones. Truth be told, the majority of the law firms in Colorado and beyond are small law firms. Most of the time, they’re solo practitioners. Meranda Vieyra of Denver Legal Marketing says her goal is to make market space for solo practitioners and small law firms. Meranda’s goal is to have more people start choosing to spend the money that they allocate for legal services by supporting small law firms, keeping their lights on, keeping the Colorado economy booming, and supporting this level of small business in that industry. Meranda explains why the service she provides is unique and why the business community has taken notice.

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Meranda Vieyra on Servicing Solo Practitioners And Small Law Firms With Legal Marketing

I’m the owner of Denver Legal Marketing. I work with solo practitioners and small law firms in Colorado and beyond. My ultimate goal is to make some market space in the Colorado business community and beyond for the small law firms of the world, which are essentially small business.

We are incredibly fortunate. I am in the world headquarters of https://www.denverlegalmarketing.com/ (Denver Legal Marketing) with Meranda Vieyra. Thank you so much for taking the time to tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

Thanks for having me, Bob. I’m excited to talk to you. I founded Denver Legal Marketing. My business turns three on my daughter’s birthday in February. I’ve been very lucky to be successful. I have great clients. My sweet spot is solo practitioners and small law firms. I started out with a Colorado-focus, a Denver-focus and I’m looking to support my own community but word of my marketing firm has spread. At times, I’m working with lawyers in New York, Nevada, and California.

You’re widely covered and known in Denver. There’s a lot of press about you. Why do you think that is?

I’m a little bit unique when it comes to what a marketing professional or somebody in Colorado legal marketing looks like. I’m 5’1” and I am a working mom. I’ve been in Colorado law for twenty years. The way that I serve my clients and the types of clients that I serve is unique. Nobody else is doing this and so the business community especially has taken notice.

You decided in a niche, for the potential client of yours and they reach out to you. How do they find you? Where do they find you on social media?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/merandavieyra/ (LinkedIn) is my only place for social media. That is the easiest ROI when it comes to reaching other lawyers. I’m trying to reach lawyers and lawyers are playing on LinkedIn. About 90% of the lawyers in our country have LinkedIn profiles. The majority of my clients come through word of mouth. I’ve been in law for two decades. I’ve worked hard to protect my reputation. When I say what I’m going to do, then I do it. That travels. They come through word of mouth. They go to my website for confirmation of reputation and then they call.

The website is https://www.denverlegalmarketing.com/ (DenverLegalMarketing.com). You’ve niched down in your market. We were talking about why you do what you do and there are some misconceptions about the attorneys and there’s a difference you’re trying to make in that community. Let’s dig into the differences that you’re making in that community.

It’s a big goal. It’s a lofty goal. When you look around and you think of lawyers and you think of law firms, you just think of the big ones. Truth be told, the majority of the law firms in Colorado and beyond are small law firms. Most of the time they’re solo practitioners and my goal is to make market space for ...

It is incredibly important to get the right counsel involved in your transactions at the right time so that you don’t end up in a dispute later on. Jessen Gregory, attorney with Ruddy Gregory, PLLC talks about preventative medicine in terms of business transactions. Jessen says the majority of their transactions are mergers and acquisition transactions where someone is trying to sell or purchase a business or an asset within that business or get financing thereof. RG is a member of an international alliance of business attorneys that they can reach out to if a client has a transaction going on in any other country across the world. Jessen talks about what they do in their firm and shares some useful information about pothole avoidance, de-risking your business, transitioning your business, and everything else you need to know in between transactions.

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Mergers, Acquisitions, And Other Business Transactions with Jessen Gregory

Better, sooner than later. A little prevention.

Preventative medicine in terms of a transaction.

We have https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessengregory/ (Jessen Gregory). She’s an attorney with http://www.ruddylaw.com/ (Ruddy Gregory). Jessen, you and I met at a large conference, which prompted this meeting. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Bob. I’m very happy to be here.

I appreciate your time. If you would tell us a little bit about your business and who you serve.

I’ve been practicing for 13 years and I am licensed in California, Colorado and Texas. I’m part of a boutique firm. We have two offices, one here in Cherry Creek, Colorado and one in Washington, DC. There are six lawyers total. We provide high-quality services at an affordable rate. We have the same experience that large firms do. We are a smaller scale version of the same thing.

We have a collection of attorneys. What is the specialty that you guys focus on?

In the Denver Office, we have a general business practice. The majority of our transactions are mergers and acquisition transactions where someone is trying to sell or purchase a business or an asset within that business or get financing for some avenue thereof. In a transaction like that, you always see a piece of commercial real estate, whether it’s the sale of commercial real estate or a lease transaction or transferring that lease, so our business is heavily involved in commercial real estate as well. Our group in DC represents the alternative investment community, so hedge funds, registered investment advisers, private equity funds and the like. We’re also a part of the Alliance of International Business Attorneys. That means that we have a group that we can reach out to if you have a transaction going on in any other country across the world.

For the business owner that’s going like, “That’s not ringing a bell for me,” I’m a typical business owner and I go, “I’ve got a warehouse that’s no longer a key to my operation and I want to liquidate or I’ve got a warehouse and I want to move. I want to sell one and move to another.” What are the typical things that a business owner misses that they should be thinking about if they’re going to go down that road?

I’d like to separate the two into the asset itself versus the real estate because those are two separate questions. I’m thinking about concerns related to both of those.

Before we go any further so everybody knows, this is not to be construed as legal advice. If you have questions, what’s all the disclaimer stuff you’re supposed to say?

Unfortunately, I can’t provide the world with legal advice. You have to be under engagement of my services. In a typical transaction where you’re selling something of value or purchasing someth...

There will come a time for business owners to start to entertain the idea of ownership transition. In one way or another, they will have to transfer their businesses to the hands of other owners, carrying over not only the business itself but the employees as well. Shina Culberson, chartered financial analyst of Quist Valuation, talks about the processes of valuation and how businesses can drive value. She covers the importance of creating a culture of innovation among employees starting with the customer mind rate. Sharing as well how they lower the barriers of entry to valuation, Shina provides some actionable and deliverable information to business owners as she shares her business journey.

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How Businesses Can Drive Value During Ownership Transition with Shina Culberson

We are so fortunate, we’re in the world headquarters of https://www.quistvaluation.com/ (Quist Valuation )with the President, Shina Culberson. Shina, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us a bit about your business and who you serve?

We are a business valuation firm. Many people don’t know what that means. To make it very simple, what we do is we work with primarily privately held companies and/or family-owned businesses to help them understand if they were to go on or sell their company, what could they sell their company for. What is the dollar value of their company? We work mostly with privately held companies and they can range from anywhere from $2 million in revenue to a billion dollars in revenue. We believe that looking at a broad breadth of clients across various life cycles makes us better at what we do. It provides us contexts when we look at different companies in different industries.

Folks would say, “What makes you qualified to go out and do this? What brought you to business valuation?”

Business valuation experts are also called business appraisers. There is a credentialing involved. I personally hold the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, which I don’t know if you’re familiar with. It’s quite a rigorous designation to obtain. We here at Quist actually support all over our analysts receiving that designation. We hold it in the highest regard. We think it stands out amongst many different designations within the industry. To be qualified, you need to work with somebody who has experience or this is something that they are doing on a full-time basis. I have many friends who are CPAs. They’re very good with numbers like we are, but they’re not necessarily qualified to do business valuation. There are a different financial theory and techniques involved. Finding someone where they’re doing business valuations as their full-time practice would be an important qualifier.

The understatement was that the CFA is a hard thing to get. It’s a very narrow funnel. Very few people come out the other end in the CFA. Then you’re also doing credit analysis for a major investment firm, I believe, in your previous life.

I’ve been an analyst my entire career. I graduated from college with an Economics major and had an Asian Studies minor. I spoke Japanese. I lived in Japan for a little while. My first job was at a Japanese bank in Los Angeles. I started out as a commercial banker. I probably was one of the last people to go through a formal credit training program sponsored by a commercial bank. I moved into asset management with Charles Schwab Investment Management. I covered the international markets. I did credit research for them. That was a fascinating time because I covered financial institutions so I was there when the Euro was launched. I was in Europe talking with the central bank, talking about lender of last resort across Europe. I was around when there was the Russian ruble crisis.

Everybody can be successful if they want to be. With patience, persistence, and perspiration, you can accomplish anything. Successful networker and Chief Connection Officer of Firestorm in Denver, Colorado Phil Pelto helps people grow their business through relationships, strategic partnerships, and referrals. Firestorm is a business to business networking organization. They organize events and meetings for business people to meet, build relationships, and share referrals. He says no matter who their target market is, the goal is to help people grow their business. Phil shares a lot of what they’re doing and who they are serving from different industries.

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How Strategic Relationships Can Help You Grow Your Business with Phil Pelto

We have Phil Pelto. He’s the Founder and Chief Connection Officer of https://www.myfirestorm.com/ (Firestorm) in Denver, Colorado. Phil, thanks so much for being on the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Phil and I have a history. We’ve had breakfast together. We’ve talked about his networking efforts. He is an awesome networker and he’s built quite a business. Phil if you would, tell us about your business and who you serve.

Firestorm is a business to business networking organization. We organize events and meetings for business people to meet and build relationships and share referrals. The whole idea is to help people grow their business through relationships, strategic partnerships and referrals. The people that we serve are typically business owners that are still actively involved in the biz dev. I would say zero to $3 million in revenue, where they’re getting out and trying to grow their top line sales. We also have a good contingent of salespeople that work for larger organizations, the Comcast and CenturyLinks of the world, but are also going after business owners. The one thing both of those folks have in common is they are serving clients that are between $1 million to $50 million in revenue. We have all sorts of different industries. There are people that are doing the podcasting and phone systems and there are people that are doing digital marketing and websites and attorneys and CPAs and all that stuff. That’s our target market and the goal is to help people grow their business.

I was looking at your website and you had a lot of these groups up and down the front range. Can you describe the nature and the structure of each one of those separate units?

The nice thing about our organization is each one of those groups take sides on flavor, depending on who the core group of people is. What we’ll do is we’ll get a leader that has a business that it would behoove them to do this anyway. They would be out there looking for a group on their own and they decide that they want to run it. We have some good support structure in place for that. They will choose who they want to start the group with and they get to be a little bit selfish about it since it’s their group. They all say you’re in the exit planning and financial services business and so you would say, “Who are good partners for me?” We’d map out some good strategic partners and that would be the core group of people that we’d look for and then it expands from there. Depending on who the first person is, that will depend on the way the group grows and the makeup of the group going forward. It’s interesting. You can visit a chapter in Longmont and visit a chapter in Lone Tree and they are very different makeups, depending on who it was that started it.

We’re going to pretend I’m down in Colorado Springs and I want to open my chapter. Let’s go to the mechanics, your support level, expenses and that kind of thing.

We’ve been doing this for thirteen years now.

Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. Interfaith families are growing and many people find it hard to fit into the traditional synagogue model. Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker saw an opportunity in this to create a community that is founded on support, acceptance, and love. They call this non-profit organization as JTown. With congregations being spread out, they offer a place where people can easily get together and inspire one another. They share what it means to be in a community and how they foster relationships and help those in need.

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Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker: Creating A Community For Interfaith Families With JTown

We are incredibly fortunate. We have with us, Cindy Abramson and Amy Becker, Cofounders and Codirectors of https://jtownco.org/ (JTown). Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to visit with us.

Thank you for having us.

Tell me a little bit about JTown, what it’s all about, who you serve and why you started it?

JTown is a nonprofit organization that we created to offer opportunities for people to create connections and community with other Jewish people. The people we say to people who share their lives. We have a lot of interfaith families and so we want the interfaith person to be as comfortable as the Jewish person. We created this place, there isn’t a place, it’s a metaphoric place. We don’t have a building. We say JTown is wherever we are together.

We have a lot of social things that we do for fun. We do a lot of community service. That’s a huge part of our mission. We offer a lot of team programming. Then we do some alternative worship services, which means that we do a Shabbat service once a month. We do High Holidays services and Passover and they’re all lay-led. We are leading them but we encourage everyone to participate. We typically will have five or six people come out from the community and take part in the service each time we do it.

As you were talking about why you did this since you we wanted to form a community, was there not a community available for these folks?

Judaism has changed a lot over the last few decades. Jewish families look a lot different than they have in the past. The research is showing that there are more interfaith families now than Jews married to Jews in the in the generations that are coming up. A lot of people don’t fit into that traditional synagogue model anymore. Also, we’re very spread out. It didn’t use to be like that. We used to all congregate in one little neighborhood or a part of the city. Denver has it sprawling, so our Jewish people and their families can become a little isolated and not have a place to be Jewish.

Amy and I worked together for about ten years at a traditional synagogue. We both left it at about the same time a month apart and spent a few months each of us looking for another job. It was hard because at our previous job, we had so much passion. We cared so much and we loved the people so much that we couldn’t find anything to replace that feeling in a work environment.

With your other job, what was it that you guys were in-charge of?

We did the administration of a synagogue. I was the Executive Director for some time. I have also been the Assistant Exec, Program Director, Preschool Director. Cindy was the Communication and Marketing Director. She had also worked with our religious school as the Assistant Director. We both had various roles over a long period of time. One thing that we were always passionate about was the relationships that we created with people.

You knew everybody. One way or another, you’ve been a director and what you did as well. There wasn’t anybody who walked through the door that you didn’t know,

Small businesses who are looking to grow, but feel like they are stuck need to consider bringing equity into the business. This allows them to consider if they should work with a partner or partners and under what conditions and structure. Ann Bennett, Founder and CEO of KBA Associates has been helping small businesses move into a state where they can grow the company for five years then sell it or grow it so that their children can take over. Ann explains that a company cannot run without people, so strong employee management is vital for growth.

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How Equity in Small Businesses Help Growth with Ann Bennett

As our guest, we have https://www.linkedin.com/in/anncbennett/ (Ann Bennett). She’s the Founder and CEO of http://kbaassociates.com/ (KBA Associates). Ann, tell us about your business and who you serve. Before we get too far into that, let’s dig into your journey to this point and your background.

Thank you, Bob. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my business, KBA, with you. I work with small and medium-sized businesses. I’m going to give you my background first and then it’ll journey on how I work with them. I have a Big Four background, started out in audit, then in consulting, left Big Four, and started an IT company that did large trading partnerships. We developed a software and we had customer service. I did that for fifteen years then I sold it to a strategic buyer and was a director of national tax at the company that acquired my company and had a non-compete. After I left after the non-compete, I realized that I had a lot of knowledge and had been beat up a lot in the small business world that I could help small businesses.

Specifically, what I’ve noticed is the lack of the journey of finance. You don’t look at your financial statements fifteen days after year-end. The financial attributes are throughout your company from day one, and every activity within the company has a financial component and should have a return. That helps in your decision making and your planning, and that’s why I help companies in strategic planning, executing the planning, making sure that the finance flows out throughout the company and the margin area, returning on marketing in sales and promotions. When you go to a conference for example, $10,000 spent at the conference, what was your return? What did you do? What should you do with the cards? That makes a difference in your growth.

The thing that folks are thinking, they go, “You went quickly through the fact that you started a company and ran it for fifteen years.” Most companies don’t make it that long nor do they get bought out. Let’s dig in a little bit to the start of your company and the growth and then the subsequent sale of your company. You left audit in the Big Four accounting firm. What was that thought process like when you said, “I’m leaving a great job, good security, and I’m going to start my own business.” What was that like?

What happened was I was going with a company that was going to do a large trading partnership in oil and gas, because I had done a lot of systems work in oil and gas, and I got a call. I never know how the call came. It came on my phone and it said, “Ann, we need a partnership system. Your name came up and we’d like you to write it.” I put together a couple of programmers and second floor of the train station and we were off and running. However, I was very lucky. In that environment, there were only three other public accounting firms that had large mainframe systems.

Where was this at the time?

Denver. There were a couple other companies that wanted to have a system available because they wanted the audit work, but they didn’t have the systems work, but we were developing the system.

Imagine if you were to receive 500 loan applications one day and they just they showed up at your doorstep. That may be one, two, three boxes of paper, depending on all the supporting documentation that goes with that. You can imagine what this looks like. A loan package, on average, is around 600 pages. That’s what Charlie Weidman aims to solve with his company, Buddha Logic, an enterprise content management (ECM) solutions provider that helps companies streamline digital document capture and management. Folks get intimidated by the word robot or automated process and there’s some level of concern about them replacing people, but Charlie says it’s an education and an awareness that helps you eliminate unnecessary work when you start automating more.

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Buddha Logic: Simplifying Life with Charlie Weidman

We have Charlie Weidman as our guest. He’s the CTO and President of http://buddhalogic.com/ (Buddha Logic). We’re going to do a deep dive in robots, digital transformation, and financial process automation. If that doesn’t take in and make your toes curl, we’ll dig into it. Charlie, thanks so much for taking the time.

Bob, it’s a pleasure to be here.

You and I chatted in a previous podcast and we talked about what you do at Buddha Logic. I was sufficiently interested in what I thought the possibilities were that I wanted to come back and do a deep dive because I think folks don’t quite get what it is that you do.

I’m happy to share what I can and give you some insight into what robots are, what digital transformation is, and what we can do with financial processes.

We were talking before we started, you’ve been working with a Housing Authority here in Denver.

That’s correct. We’ve seen them through quite a transition. If I were to look back, we were processing truckloads of paper that would show up and be captured in one way or feature or fashion or another. Scanning, sorting, separating, and batching. It would take a week to process a paper application.

I think about that from the end-user, from the customer standpoint, “What’s going on with my app?” It’s somewhere between the loading dock and the fourth floor or whatever. What I thought would be useful is to go back and go “This is where we were years ago.” They didn’t just jump off the cliff and started doing robots. I don’t even know that “robots” were available at that time. Let’s go sequentially what were they doing.

If you really want to start from scratch, you’re an entity that has not even thought about moving away from paper, getting into the digital transformation of paper. This Housing Authority was pretty much right at that space back then. They made a decision to say, “We can’t process paper anymore and the paper we get in, we need to digitize and move it into repository and make it available for our loan processors to take care of our customers.”

Phase one, let’s define a backbone, put together something that allows us to capture that information, and understand what we have and get it into the processors hands within a week’s time. Let’s say seven business days, that would be a huge goal. At that time, it was all over the map, how quickly something got processed. Sneakernet, paper from one desk to another in inboxes and outboxes. You can imagine what a mess that that was.

I had this vision what people’s desks look like.

Just think of the storage space you need to handle that paper because you’ve got to keep these documents for a certain period of time to make sure that you captured everything and then you got to go find it if there’s an issue. Not only do you have paper coming in and you’re capturing it,